“I can’t explain it, really. It’s more of a feeling. It sounds cheesy, but whenever you are around, my soul recognizes yours. One thing brings us together more than anything, and our bodies notice.” He takes my hand, closes his eyes, and blows a breath out through his lips. Eric lays my hand on his upper shoulder, under his shirt.
I feel the ridges, the puckered, angry skin. He trembles and turns his head away to look out the window. Heat rises from his skin, and my fingers slide against sweat. This is why he doesn’t like his back touched, but he’s letting me. “The cuts.” I realize what he means now. I continue to gently rub my fingers over the ridges, and the longer I touch, the more he sweats and shakes, like he’s reliving every single tear of his skin.
I rip my fingers away, and he gasps, holding his hand to his chest as he struggles to catch his breath. Beads of sweat dribble down his temple, and he pales. “I never want to hurt you. Why did you do that?”
“Because I want your touch. I don’t want to shy away from you.” He leans his head on the window that’s drenched with condensation from our body heat.
I cup his face with my hands, rub my thumb across his bottom lip, and press a whisper of a kiss against him. “Let’s go home, Eric.”
He nods, lifts me, and places me onto the seat, and then buckles me in. He puts the truck in drive while blaring the air conditioning to cool his skin. He’s sweating through his shirt and running his fingers through his damp hair.
Watching him, I feel happier and less confused after talking to him like that. The last time I felt this good was when I was packing my bags in the trailer to go to college, but then Dad sold me. I bet my bags are still on my bed because my dad doesn’t ever change anything.
We pull into the driveway, and I let out a relieved breath that we are home. I forget all about the shit stain that my dad is.
Home.
What a foreign word.
“What the fuck?” Eric hisses as we hear shouting coming from inside the clubhouse. “Shit.” He slams the truck in park and climbs out. As always, he opens my door and helps me out. The shouting is loud and dramatic, but I can’t decipher what anyone is saying. There are multiple people talking. “Stay behind me, Jo-love.”
I nod and clutch onto the back of his shirt but then immediately let go and drift my hands down to his belt loop. I curl my fingers in as we make our way up the steps of the porch. The front door is open, dented from the bullets. We step inside, and Tongue is back, sitting on the couch, drenched in blood.
His face, hair, clothes—everything is red.
“Holy shit, Tongue. Where the hell have you been? Do you need a doctor?” Eric asks as he darts to Tongue’s side, who is currently cleaning the blood off his blades. All four of them. He acts like he doesn’t have an issue in the world.
“I’m good, Doc.” Tongue smacks his lips together and ponders. “Actually, I’m a little thirsty. Can you get me some water?”
I hurry to the other side of the couch, away from the shouting match between Reaper and Bullseye. Bullseye isn’t the kind of guy to argue with Reaper. He has been acting out of character lately, and no one understands why.
“You’re covered in blood,” Eric points out to Tongue.
Tongue grins and then starts to clean out the grime under his nails with his knife. “I am, aren’t I? Feels good. You should have seen the tongues I cut out. I saved them. They’re in a bag. I’m sending them to New Orleans for my swamp kitties.”
Eric is baffled and scratches the back of his head. “None of the blood is yours?”
“No,” Tongue grunts, not giving us any other reasons as to why he’s finally here after missing for three days. No story. No nothing.
“Maximo wouldn’t do that!” Reaper roars at Bullseye. The vein in his forehead is throbbing and looks like it’s about to burst from anger.
“How can you say that? Did you see the bag of tongues Tongue just brought back. He said they were Maximo’s men. Maximo’s. This guy, he’s up to no good, Reaper.”
“Stop fighting about it.” Tongue rolls his eyes and stands, then walks out the front door, vanishing in the night.
“Is that…” I start to say when I see something bloody stuck to his shoulder.
“That’s a tongue stuck to his back, yeah.” Eric rubs his temples. Reaper and Bullseye are having a stare off.
This day isn’t getting any easier, and the more time that passes, the more tension builds in the club.
“Ask him.” Tongue throws a guy through the front door, and he falls on his knees. He’s young, around my age, and beaten to a pulp.
“You let one live?” Reaper asks. It’s his turn to rub his temples. “Why didn’t you just say that!”
Tongue leans against the wall and the tongue on his shoulder slips off and plops on the floor. “Was looking for that.” He bends down and picks it up, placing it on his shoulder, and I hold back a bit of vomit.
The baby doesn’t like that. Nope.
He wipes his hands on his blood-soaked jeans and shrugs. “You didn’t ask if I left one alive.”
“Tongue, that’s the shit you start out with.”
“Well, I was gonna, but you started to fight, and I was tired, Reaper. I’ve been up for three days.” The tongue slides off Tongue’s shoulder again, and the man grins at it, as if it’s being playful with him before he picks it up again. This time he places it on his other shoulder.
“I’m going to be sick.” I run to the bathroom and don’t have time to slam the door, puking into the toilet.
“You okay?”
I jump when I hear Tongue’s voice, and then I hear the slick slop of the tongue hitting the floor again.
I puke again and Tongue, the sweet crazy guy that he is, pats my back and croons at me. He has no idea the reason why I’m sick is because of his obsession with the appendage on the floor.
Time travel needs to be real because too much has happened in a short amount of time, and the clock needs to be reset.
Tongues, blood, and bikers, oh my!
Yeah, I’m not in Kansas.
This is definitely Ruthless territory.
We settled on shoving the guy in the playroom for the night and letting him brew in darkness. Tomorrow, we’ll interrogate him. Until then, I’m going to lay down with my girl, maybe end the day on a damn good note by eating her pussy if she lets me, and then I want to go to bed with the taste of her cunt on my lips.
It’s been a long fucking day, and I want to feel something other than devastation.
I want… elation.
First, Tongue has to tell the story of where he’s been, why, and what took him so long to get back. All the club members are crammed in Church. Tongue is still drenched in blood. Slingshot curls his lip and rolls away from him, but Tongue grabs his chair and pulls him closer, then tosses an arm around him.
Slingshot turns a shade of green when his face touches the tongue on the bloody shoulder.
Knives chuckles, playing with his ninja stars. He aims one at the tongue and flicks his weapon. It lands smack dab in the middle of the… appendage. Tongue growls and plucks the star from his prize and throws it back at Knives. He catches the blade with two fingers. The man has scars all over his hands from his ninja stars, throwing them around and catching them like that.