CHAPTER FIVE
RILEY
When Tiny said wherever Nicky goes, he goes, he really wasn’t kidding. When we left The Lodge, Tiny insisted that we take his truck and he would drive us home. When I asked what would happen to my car, Raven swooped in and said she’d drive it to my house for us. Then when I asked how she would get home herself, she flashed me a picture on her cell phone of herself smushed between two very different looking, but very handsome men. One with long dark hair and a scruffy beard, the other a buzz cut and stubble are her Old Men.
The smile on her face was infectious as she proudly said they were already on their way to pick her up. I’m not exactly sure how a relationship of three people works, but to each their own. I’m not one to pop anyone’s kink bubble.
I gave Tiny my address and he navigates his way into Tellison, then into my neighborhood without any need for directions. When he pulls in the driveway with still no assistance, I question him. “How did you know how to get here?”
“Eighteen years in the Marines gave me a good sense of direction,” he says with a smirk, “but I’ve lived in this town for my entire life. My parents, mom and stepdad, live in the nursing home by the park. My Gran and Gramps are buried in the cemetery at the edge of town. I was born and raised a Tellison kid. Growing up, I rode my bike all over town and know these streets like the back of my hand.”
“I grew up and lived in Henderson until I was twenty-four. That’s when I bought this house.”
“That’s awesome.” Tiny opens his door and gets out of the truck. He turns to look at me still sitting in the passenger seat. “You gonna get out so we can go inside? Or are we gonna turn into popsicles in the driveway?” His sass and sarcasm gets my butt moving.
Raven pulls up just as I shut the door and a giant four-door black lifted truck follows, stopping at the end of the driveway. “Love your car.” She tosses me my keys, then jogs down to the truck which now has the front door open. She crawls up inside, over the lap of the long haired guy in the passenger seat, and sits between her two men. Just as quick as they appeared, the truck is gone and I’m left in the relative silence of my street at nine o’clock on a Saturday night.
“Based on the smell comin’ from the little man, I think someone needs to be changed.” The expression on Tiny’s face is priceless as he looks down at Nicholas in his car seat, which he managed to get out of the truck on his own and is looking at like it’s a bomb. “And I call not it.”
“Oh no Mister—I’m a dad and won’t let my son out of my sight.” I laugh as I lead us up onto the porch and in the front door. Once we’re locked inside, I point him toward the couch and he sets the seat down. “We have a rule in this house. Whoever smells it first, changes it.”
His look of ‘eww, that’s stinky’ turns to absolute horror. Eyes bugged wide, mouth flopping open and closed like a fish, and hands raised as he backs away, Tiny is retreating. “I’ve lived with hundreds of men, in some of the worst places, not bein’ able to shower for weeks at a time, and I don’t think any of us smelled as bad as what is comin’ from that diaper.”
I can’t help but roll my eyes at him again. Tiny sure loves to exaggerate. Everything is to the extreme with him. It’s either his way or his other way, there are no other options. If he wasn’t so damn hot and super loving toward Nicholas, other than not wanting to change his diaper, I’d kick him back out onto the porch.
“If you want to do this dad thing, you need to suck it up.” Before I unbuckle the somehow still sleeping Nicky from his car seat to carry him into his room, I walk over to the Christmas tree in the front of the picture window facing the street and step on the handy foot clicker button on the floor. The entire living room begins to glow.
“Whoa,” Tiny’s eyes go all around the room, taking in all my decorations. In addition to the eight foot Douglas fir wrapped in white lights and red garland, the built in bookshelves along the short wall are filled with not only books, but also light up village houses. I’ve been growing my collection a few pieces at a time, and I’m quite proud of how it all comes together. It may seem like a lot of work to put up and take down each year, but it’s also part of the fun.
The fireplace kicks on when I flip the switch. It’s gas, and the faux logs look as real as fake logs can, but I don’t complain. A fireplace that gives off heat is a great thing when you live somewhere where the temperatures drop below freezing every night for months on end.
I have a stocking hanging on the mantle for Nicholas’s first Christmas, as well as a special ornament on the tree. Spoiling him rotten is going to be my lifelong goal, but within reason. I won’t let him grow up to be ungrateful, but I just can’t help but want to give him a great childhood.
“One thing you’ll learn about me if you stick around,” I say with a chuckle as I pick up Nicholas, “is that I love the holidays. My village is my pride and joy.”
“Seeing all this, I have no doubt.”
“Grab the diaper bag and follow me.” There is more décor around the house, but he can find those things later. I tried to act tough and make it sound like stinky diapers don’t bother me, but there’s no denying this is a ripe one. “You can watch me change this one, but you’re helping with the next half dozen ‘til you get the hang of it. After that, it’s fair game, buddy.”
Now that I know why the bedrooms are a mess, the thought of having to clean them is pissing me off. Nicky must feel the tension coming off me from my irritable thoughts and starts to wiggle and whimper a little as I pull of his clothes, swap his stinky diaper for a fresh clean one, then wrestle him into some jammies.
“Can I lay him down?” Tiny asks from my right side where he’s stood watching every step of Nicky’s nighttime routine.
“Here,” I hand him the now half-asleep zombie baby. “I need to heat him a bottle.”
From there, feeding the little man, and getting him settled in his crib for the night goes pretty quick and with no muss or fuss. I switch on the baby monitor, grab the receiver, and pull the bedroom door almost shut, leaving it open just a crack. Tiny follows me into the kitchen and I grab us both a beer from the fridge. He accepts his with a nod.
We’re both a few sips in and I can feel the sexual tension rising. Before anything happens that shouldn’t, because of too many reasons to name right now, I need to get out of the same space as him.
“Feel free to eat whatever you find in the fridge.” I point at the stainless-steel appliance like he’s never seen one before and needs to know where it is. “We’ve got satellite T.V. and a couple streaming services. Feel free to watch whatever you want.”
“And what are you gonna to do?” Tiny is leaning against the counter in front of the sink, arms and ankles crossed just like he was when he was using his body as a humor shield to stop me from grabbing the baby and running out of that office. He looks way too comfortable in my kitchen.
I point toward the hall. “I’m going to go search Taylor’s room and see if there’s anything in there that can tell us why she ran or where she went.”
“I thought you looked in there before you came to find Nicky?” Tiny tips his beer back and drains the last bit before setting the bottle in the sink.
“I mostly looked at the mess she left behind. I didn’t dig through the carnage to see what all was left behind.”
Opening the freezer door, Tiny inspects what his options are, not that there’s too much because I haven’t been to the grocery store in a couple weeks. Shopping was on my agenda for tomorrow, but with this new situation still developing, who knows when I’ll make it.
“Go see what you can find,” he says as he pulls out two frozen pizzas and heads for the oven. “I’ll heat us up some dinner and we’ll have that chat while we eat.”
“Yes sir.” I give a mock salute to his back and back away.
Tiny turns in my direction so fast, I don’t think I blink before he’s got me backed against the nearest wall. “Don’t start anything you don’t plan on lettin’ me finish, little Vixen. Because once I get you under me, we won’t be doin’ much talking.”
“We won’t?” I don’t know who asks, but it surely couldn’t have been me. My heart is racing too fast, my palms are sweaty and pressed flat against the wall at my sides, and my mouth is dry. The heat radiating from Tiny, soaking into my pores, sends shivers all across my body.
“I’ll be telling you what to do,” he almost purrs as he uses the tip of his nose to trace my cheek, “and you’ll be calling out my name as I push every inch of my cock into your pussy,” his lips find a sensitive spot behind my ear, “but there won’t be much else until after I make you come all over my dick.”
I let out a sigh, melting where I stand. My eyes close as he licks a short line down my neck. “Please,” the whore in me begs out loud. I don’t know when she was invited to the party, but the hussy is falling too quickly for this man’s wicked ways. I just wish I knew how to push her back to wherever it was that she came from.
“And while I would love nothing more than to fuck you right here on the kitchen floor,” I feel myself start to fall from the aphrodisiac high that Tiny set me on and crash into the freezing cold pool of reality, “we have too much to sort through before I take you to bed.”
Untangling myself from his arms, which somehow ended up holding my hips, I continue my backward journey to Taylor’s room. “While I can’t deny a small part of me wishes that can happen, we can’t. Nicky is too important to risk us getting involved.”
“Whatever you have to tell yourself, Vixen.” And with that, he turns back to the oven and I escape down the hall.
Our house sits on a wide lot, attached garage on the left, house to the right. When you walk in the front door, the kitchen is on the left, dining room further back, main bathroom behind it, and my primary bedroom and bathroom at the back. The hallway runs down the center, with the living room to the right, Nicky’s bedroom next, and Taylor’s bedroom in the other back corner. I kick my shoes off into my room, then march into the madness.
It doesn’t take me long to find what I didn’t know I was looking for—Taylor’s journals. I had no idea she wrote in journals. How did she keep this hidden for so long? She has a stack of ten notebooks, filled with dated entries going back to when she was fifteen. I flip through a few of the oldest ones, but once I see that they’re her private thoughts about what happened to her as a teenager, I move those to the bottom of the pile and let them remain her private thoughts.
All of the journals are different. Some are spiral bond, while others are the perforated composition style notebooks. Some are a full eight and a half by eleven inches in size, a few are smaller and various different sizes. It looks like she bought something new each time she ran out of pages, because no two are the same. I find the one with a date I recognize and start the reading.
June 15 th —I just had a baby boy. Brown eyes and black hair just like his daddy, not that Tiny has any hair on the top of his head. He’s shaved smoother than a cueball. Nicholas Scott Wilkenson. I don’t know if we’ll eventually shorten it to Nick or Nicky, but I’ve always loved the name Nicholas. Scott is to honor dad’s memory. I don’t remember anything about him, but Riley tells me he was the best dad. Giving his name to the next generation just feels right. I hope daddy is looking down on his grandson and keeping him safe. Speaking of Riley, the look on her face when I told the nurse the name, she burst into tears.
She’s not wrong. I full on ugly cried until the tears wouldn’t fall anymore. I am not a pretty crier. My face turns red as a tomato, my eyes squint and get all puffy, and my lower lips does this unproportionate pout thing, I turn into a mutant disaster.
August 2 nd —It’s my first weekend back to work after having Nicholas and I already wish I could quit. I need to find a different job, but it’s not going to be easy getting out of this mess. I didn’t tell Riley about borrowing money from Leo to cover the medical bills that never seem to stop pouring in, but I thought I could handle it myself. She’s sacrificed enough by being by my side and so supportive of taking on the role as a second mom to my baby, that I can’t let her know the hole I’ve dug myself.
Taylor borrowed money from her boss to pay her medical bills? Why would she do that? If she needed money that bad, she should’ve asked me for help. And who is Leo?
I asked her a couple times why I never saw any statements or bills from her prenatal care or Nicholas’s delivery, but she insisted that she was taking care of it. She said she had money saved, in addition to getting good tips while she was pregnant and bartending instead of stripping.
With the cash she said was coming in, I had hoped once she went back to work after having the baby, that she would keep bartending. But based on the next chunk of pages, things only get worse.
I can’t read them all. I have to skim, picking up on keywords that make me sicker page by page, until I get to the last entry. It’s dated this morning.
December 14 th —I have to go. It’s too much. He has gone too far. When I got to work last night, I made it through two dances on the main stage before he pulled me aside. There was a request from someone who used to be on my list of regular customers. Leo keeps a list of men who pay god only knows how much for private time with a dancer, and any time a man on my list would come into the club, I would get pulled from whatever spot I was in and forced to spend time with them whether I wanted to or not. I never wanted to. The first time I borrowed money from Leo Castelucci was to repair a dent I put in the front fender of my car. I never told Riley about it. She wouldn’t have been outwardly mad, but my car is a hand-me-down from her when she got a new one last summer, and I didn’t want to disappoint her. Another one of the other dancers overheard my phone conversation with the guy at the auto body shop, heard me gasp when I heard how much the repair was going to cost, and suggested I ask Leo for a loan. She just failed to mention what dancers had to do in order to pay back the loans. I punched her square in the nose when I found out—Leo tied my hands behind my back, held my head, and forced me to give him a blowjob. It only got worse from there. Riley, if something went wrong and you’re reading this, please stop. Don’t read any more. I don’t want you to witness my most embarrassing moments, even second hand. Go get Nicholas. He is with his dad. Tiny is a member of the Rebel Vipers MC. I know you know who they are. His real name is Henry Taggert. I met him one night when I went to a party at their clubhouse with some co-workers. I didn’t go there planning on sleeping with anyone, but one drink turned into five, and a couple hits of weed later, I was feeling pretty down on myself. He noticed that I was sitting at the bar by myself, because everyone who came with me was already paired off, and one thing obviously led to another. I don’t need to bore you with the details, but since it gave me my baby boy, I wouldn’t change that night for the world. Go find Tiny, I’m going to leave Nicholas with him. He’ll know how to keep you both safe from Leo. Last night a customer went too far in the private room, and when I tried to tell Leo, he punched me and told me to suck it up. He threatened to hurt you and Nicholas if I ever complained again, so I knew it was time to go. Thank Jazz for me. She’s a club girl for the RVMC. I called the clubhouse looking for Tiny and she told me he was playing Santa for the kids tonight at The Lodge, so that’s why I’ll be taking Nicholas there. Go there and hopefully you two can work out some arrangement so you can share time and he can get to know his son. I never meant to keep him away for so long, please tell him that. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone for, but the threat from Leo should go away since I’ll be out of the picture. I’d rather Nicholas be safe with his dad than all of us being threatened and constantly looking over our shoulders. I’m sorry. I love you, sis. Please forgive me. I’ll see you soon.
“What’s wrong?” Tiny kneels down next to me on the floor and wraps his arm around me. “What happened?”
I can’t speak. The words won’t come out, so I hand him the journal so he can read the words for himself. One arm still over my shoulders, he takes in what drove Taylor to do what she did and I can feel his body get tenser by the paragraph.
Closing the my worst nightmare, he sets it on top of the pile of other horrors, stands up, and pulls me along with him. Wrapping me in his arms tighter this time, pulling me into his chest, I have no choice but to return the embrace.
My hands barely reach behind his back, but I like it this way. I like that he’s bigger than me. I like that his entire body dwarfs mine in his shadow. I’m five foot six, so not short but nowhere near as tall as he is, and I feel protected in a way I don’t think I’ve felt since I was ten years old.
Tiny pulls back a bit and kisses me on the cheek. Now talk about a mood killer.
Cheek kisses are for your sister or grandma, not a woman you’re interested in. Whatever lines he was buttering me up with before must have been just to see how far he could push me to get what he wants. I have no doubt he wants to get in my pants, I could feel what he’s packing in his when he had me pushed against the wall, but I didn’t feel it this time when he hugged me. This was a platonic hug. He found me crying and comforted me because I’m his son’s aunt.
I take a step back but he keeps me from running away too far by grabbing my hand. I feel my cheeks turning red in embarrassment, but hopefully my prior tears keep him from noticing.
“I need to call Whiskey about this. Will you be okay for a couple minutes?” Tiny tucks a piece of my wild hair behind my ear. “I’ll come right back.”
“Do whatever you need to do.” I pull my hand free with a little bit of force, then flee to the kitchen.
Reading Taylor’s inner thoughts took longer than I realize, because I find one and a half perfectly cooked pizzas cut and set out on the island. Tiny obviously started eating without me, so I dig in without waiting for him to finish whatever phone call he needed to make.
I’m not sure who Whiskey is, other than obviously one of his club members, but he must be important enough to warrant a phone call at just before eleven at night. If anyone other than Taylor called me this late, I would be pissed. And unless it was an emergency about Nicholas, she would be testing my patience.
Not bothering with a plate, I scarf down three pieces of pizza leaning over the carboard circle before Tiny joins me. “I filled Whiskey in on the new info.” He sets his phone on the island and grabs a piece from the second pie.
“Who is Whiskey?” I say behind my hand and a mouth half full of cheesy pepperoni goodness.
After finishing chewing, the whole piece gone in four bites, he tosses the crust in the garbage. Looks like we might have something in common after all. I don’t like a lot of crust, unless it’s filled with cheese, so I toss it out and he does too.
“Whiskey is my club President. Everything club related goes through him. And since your sister decided to drop her son on club property, he needs to be kept in the loop.”
I pick the pepperoni off another piece and pop it in my mouth. “So what does your President have to say about the mess that has become of our lives?” I can hear the snark in my question, but I’ve never been one to like other people nosing their way into my personal life.
“Let me get one thing straight with you before you go all bitch mode on how I choose to live my life.” Tiny braces his hands on the island and leans in. He’s standing perpendicular to my left, so his face gets real close. “I know you don’t understand the way my MC functions, and that’s okay for now, but do not ever talk about my President like that ever again. He’s put his blood and sweat into earning the patch that’s sewn on the front of his cut and I won’t let you disrespect that. The Rebel Vipers and my Brothers mean everything to me. I was an only child, and after getting out of the Marines, I needed a Brotherhood to keep me sane.”
He's not wrong in me not knowing the MC life, but it’s obviously very important to him, so I need to respect that. But when I open my mouth to tell him, he holds up a hand to stop me saying so.
“I joined the club as soon as I discharged and they kept my ass in check.” I try again, but this time I get an angry glare. “I’m not done.”
“Fine.” My one word comes out soft, almost a whisper.
Turning to face the window above the sink, looking out at the street, Tiny’s next words show me the real man under all the ink and muscles. “Joinin’ the club has kept me sane. The things I saw over there, the fucked up childhood I lived, those things will mess with you if you don’t have a strong beacon to center you. My club does that for me. I may be a grumpy fuckin’ asshole, but it’s only on the outside most of the time. I keep myself in check, report back to my President or another officer when I’m supposed to, and keep chuggin’ along. I wake up before the sun comes up, go to bed after it’s down, and wait for my turn at the pearly gates.”
I feel like I need to give him an out. I appreciate him being so open and honest with me, but I wonder if this is all too much. He didn’t ask to be handed a baby today. He didn’t ask to be lied to and have a child hidden from him for almost a year and a half. This isn’t fair to him.
“You can go if you’d like. Nicholas and I will be fine if you need to step away. I won’t judge if this is all too much.”
He slowly turns on a dime and I can imagine that is a habit ingrained in him from his time in the service. Stepping into me, he lays his forehead on mine and I feel his body deflate with a sigh. “I appreciate what you’re tryin’ to do, Vixen, but you can’t get rid of me that easy. You’re stuck with me now. Try and push me away again and you might not like what happens next.”
“Oh really?” I can’t help but be a little cheeky again, but feeling him this close to me again is addicting. I don’t know if he’s good for me, but he sure knows how to spin me around with words. “What would happen?”
“That’s not how this works.” Tiny’s eyes are locked on mine and the smirk he’s sporting is pure evil, but in a good way. My panties have never been so damp. “I don’t give away my secrets ‘til it’s time to punish naughty girls.”
“And what if I want you to punish me?” Walking my fingers up his chest, I don’t stop until my hands are holding the back of his neck. I tug him down slowly. “I want to know your secret, Tiny.”
“Are you sure?” I feel his lips move against mine, his words no louder than a whisper but I hear them with the intensity of a jet engine. “There’s no goin’ back if we do this.”
Denying my attraction is useless. I can tell myself this is wrong until I’m blue in the face, and a shrink would probably want to have me committed for having these thoughts and not caring, but it won’t ever matter. The physical attraction I felt when I saw him for the first time, mixed with the gentleness and love I can already see and feel him expressing for his son even only after a few hours, and I have no choice but to give in. It’s not just one thing that makes this right, its everything all mixed together that push me over the edge.
Lifting up onto my tiptoes, closing in on the last few millimeters between our lips, I kiss Tiny like it’s my last day on Earth.