Then his head dipped lower and he kissed me, his breath sour in my mouth, arsenic on my tongue. I tried to pull away and stumbled slightly.
“Lila,” I whisper-yelled because my lips were going numb.
She stopped mid laughter talking to one of the EBA boys a few feet away and turned to me with a frown. “You okay, H.R.? You don’t look okay. And what the fuck are you doin’ talkin’ to that shit head?”
“She’s fine, I think she’s just had too much to drink,” Rick told her with a small, hateful smile.
Only Lila didn’t smile.
She knew I was a biker chick.
I could hold my liquor.
She stepped closer as I tried to lift my hand to prop my aching head up.
“Call Lion,” I said weakly, but then my head seemed to tumble off my shoulders and I succumbed to the weight and the blackness.
Danner
I was on a date with a cute woman who ran the local library when I got the call from Rosie’s phone. It was rude to take it, but I did anyway because it was Rosie. Only, it wasn’t. It was her best friend Lila, her voice frantic as she told me what had happened, that Harleigh Rose had passed out in the arms of the boy she’d been arrested for assaulting six months ago.
I hadn’t seen her since that night, since I’d turned her over my knee and laid into that sweet ass, taken my fingers to her sopping wet cunt and made her come on my hand.
But there was no way my guilt or morals were going to keep me away from my girl when she was in distress.
That fucking fucker had tried to roofie her.
I said my abrupt goodbyes to my date, knowing that she liked me enough to reschedule at the same time knowing that I wouldn’t, and then I drove to the field with my police lights on, tearing through town well over the speed limit.
When I arrived, Lila had done what she was told, and the cops were there. I’d walked up to the paramedics leaning over a totally out of it Harleigh Rose and gotten debriefed.
She was going to be fine, she just needed to sleep it off and she hadn’t been assaulted, thank fucking Christ.
I turned to my partner Gibson, who was on call that night and demanded to know what was being done about the fucker who drugged her.
He’d hesitated before explaining that nothing tied Rick Evans to the drug and she hadn’t been assaulted so there was nothing to be done.
Nothing to be done.
Without another word, I’d collected Rosie from the paramedics, swallowing my fury as she curled into my arms and carried her to my car.
I told the officers on duty that I’d get her home safe and debrief Garro on what had happened.
And I would, but not that night.
She was staying with me so I could watch her through the night and make certain she was going to be okay.
I put her in the bedroom I’d come to think of as hers, the same one she kept a toothbrush in, the same one I’d spanked her in months ago.
Tenderly, I took off her tight jeans so she would be more comfortable and slid her into bed, brushing her heavy hair back from her face and giving in to the impulse to kiss her soft cheek. Hero jumped onto her bed, licking her face with a low whine before he settled against her.
She turned her head to me, eyes heavy but clearing before I could move away.
“He kissed me,” she whispered, mouth twisted with disgust. “He put his lips on me.”
“Hush, I’m with you,” I told her, stroking back her hair again.
“Lion,” she said in the voice soft and silky as rose petals. “Make it go away.”
“What, Rosie?”
“His kiss. I can’t sleep with it on my mouth,” she told me, her eyes blue as melted gemstones.
I shouldn’t.
I’d been careful to draw distance between us again after the spanking incident and I didn’t want to confuse her. But looking to her eyes, seeing the fragility of her soul shining out from them, I knew I couldn’t deny her.
“Okay, rebel,” I said softly. “Close your eyes.”
She immediately obeyed.
Gently, I leaned over to press whisper light kisses against each of her fluttering lids, then when she opened her eyes, her mouth parted to protest where I’d kissed her, I pressed my open lips to hers.
She sighed into my mouth and melted into the bed.
It was a short kiss, as sweet a one as I knew how to give.
And it rocked my simple world temporarily on its axis.
In the span of that minute with her plush lips on mine, her silky tongue in my mouth, and the scent of her floral skin and bonfire imprinted hair in my nose, there was no future for me but her.
An MC princess from the same biker gang my family was determined to see ruined.
A girl ten years younger than me that pretended to be seasoned, but who was as fresh and beautifully untouched as morning dew. I wanted to smear that innocence with my rough hands and taint it with my cock at the same time I wanted to preserve it, fight to defend it.
It was an impossible contrast, but in those seconds we kissed, it seemed wildly possible.
Natural, even destined.
I pulled away abruptly, my heart thumping hard, my deviant cock pulsing.
Her eyes remained closed, but she smiled and mumbled, “Love you, Lion.”
And then she was out. I could see it in the way her head drooped, and her breath deepened.
My rebel Rose looked so peaceful in her sleep, so at odds with her waking hours when she seemed provoked to take on the world. That was the beauty of Harleigh Rose, she was a walking contradiction, the rebel and the saint, the good girl and the sinner.
I sat in a chair beside her bed and watched her for hours.
I thought sitting sentry and seeing with my own eyes that she was going to be okay would be enough to quell the nuclear rage that blasted through me on repeat, but it wasn’t.
It only grew stronger.
There wouldn’t be justice for Harleigh Rose because sometimes, too many times, there was nothing the police could do.
I was faced for the millionth time with my own impotency in the face of unjustness and the feeling burned cleaned through my rational brain until all that was left in me was pure, bestial instinct.
I left her.
The alarm armed, my dog at her feet.
But I left her.
I got in my ‘Stang, Hozier’s “It Will Come Back” pumping through the speakers because the singer reminded me of Rosie, and I drove to Evergreen Gas where teenagers from Entrance Public like to hang after parties.
The stupid fuck was there, laughing with his buddies as if he hadn’t just tried to rape an innocent girl.
I parked my car in a darkened lot across the street and waited.
I didn’t have to do it long, it was late, and they were still children even though they pretended not to be.
Rick Evans said goodbye to his friends and went into the gas station to buy a snack before heading home himself.
Fate was smiling on me.
I was waiting in the shadow by his car when he finally ventured to it and I had him pressed to the metal with his arm wrenched behind his back, one hand over his mouth before he could even call out.
His open packet of Skittles fell to the ground and tumbled out like a broken rainbow.
I leaned into him, my voice hard in his ear. “Next time you think to mess with any woman, let alone Harleigh Rose Garro, you’ll fuckin’ think again.”