7. Smoke
7
SMOKE
I t’s a dream.
I know it.
Not because I’m in a fancy hotel room with Quinn.
Not even because the two of us are naked.
But she’s smiling up at me like I hung the fucking moon, and that alone is the reason why nothing about this is real.
Running my nose along her neck, I can smell lemons.
Every time I ever smell that goddamn citrus, I’m going to think of her.
But I lose myself in the scent so visceral, I swear I can smell it for real.
And then, I move.
Fuck, my cock is already buried in her tight pussy.
My hips move…in the dream or reality, I’m not certain.
“You’re so fucking wet for me, Quinn,” I say.
“It’s you. You do that to me.”
Normally, sex needs an edge for me.
Something to make it kinkier.
But this is as vanilla as it gets.
Just me and her, naked, fucking missionary style.
And it feels like the best sex I’ve ever had.
Simply two bodies wrapped around each other.
As I slide my hand beneath her thigh and lift it slightly in the dream, I slide my hand beneath the bedding and grab my cock in reality.
I’m hard.
Leaking.
And the pressure of my palm feels really fucking good.
“Look at me, sugar,” I say, wanting her eyes on me.
What I see in them rewrites our history.
She loves me.
Wants me.
Needs me.
And I want her, need her, and love her more.
I can feel myself waking.
My eyes start to flutter.
But I want to stay immersed in her.
I want her to stay with me while I coax an orgasm out of her in the dream, and my own here in bed.
I roll onto my back and stroke my cock more firmly as Quinn slides her arms around me, pulling me close to her.
“Kiss me,” she says softly.
And I do. Her lips melt against mine.
Inviting. Needy.
I let my tongue drift into her mouth, savoring the taste of her.
I smile to myself as I taste sugar and sweetness on her tongue.
And I continue to thrust deep inside her.
Music suddenly fills my room, and I open my eyes.
Madonna.
Quinn is singing about being a virgin in the kitchen.
My dream slips away from me, but it’s replaced with the vision of the real Quinn in my real kitchen in my real house.
Likely in some pretty sundress, with all the tattoos that run up her arms on display.
Colorful ink that details different flowers surrounded by mountains and lakes.
My balls ache, my cock throbs, and fuck, I need to come.
The dressings pull as my abs tighten, causing a pinch of pain.
I throw back the thick bedding and pull a single sheet awkwardly over my stomach.
Don’t want to have to explain to the nurse that they need to change my dressing so soon because there are fat cum stains all over it.
My heart beats fast. It’s confusing.
It normally takes a lot more than a perky dream to bring me to the brink of coming, but when I close my eyes, I see a still image.
The moment when Quinn put her hand around the back of my neck and looked at me.
And I come hard, all over the sheet.
Some even hits my chin.
Like a seal that’s been in place since the fire is now broken, I come in thick and fast spurts.
“Fuck,” I say silently as my whole body tightens and releases.
I stroke hard through it, then ease my movements as I suck in air.
My head feels spacey, and it’s hard to focus on the ceiling.
At least your cock’s not broken.
I grin at the thought, enjoying the moment before the reality of what I’ve just done hits me hard.
I just jerked off to thoughts of Quinn.
Quinn, who still hates me.
Quinn, who is living here, and who, for some equally weird and twisted reason, I’m allowing to stay.
Quinn, who can’t really carry a tune but is singing with enthusiasm in the kitchen.
She loves me.
I repeat the realization from my dream, yet shake my head, trying to escape it.
Those are words I have no business considering.
And I need to figure out a way to get my dick sucked a lot more regularly from here on out, because though there is chaos in my brain, my body is more at ease than it has been of late.
Jesus, I’m fucked. I need to get a grip on these thoughts and stop them.
Bury them before they become something I act on and ruin both our lives.
My phone rings, and I pat around on the side table, trying my best to move the sheet without letting all the jizz on it run everywhere.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“I’m on my way to your place,” Wraith says.
“Be ready.”
“Fuck,” I curse.
“Gimme ten.”
“Fine. Tell Quinn I’m on my way so it doesn’t freak her out.”
It bothers me he knows that the noises of people arriving scares her.
It feels like an intimate detail.
And I’m clearly being irrational that such a courteous thing is irritating me.
When I hang up, I can see Johnny tried to call in the night and left two messages.
But I’m not ready to hear his voice, yet.
Plus, if Wraith’s only ten minutes away, I’ve just about got time to shower.
I shouldn’t because of the dressing, but fuck knows where all the cum went.
Using the hand-spray shower instead of the powerful overhead, I manage a cheap-ass version of a shower.
It’s good enough, and I manage to control the spray, so while the dressing ends up damp in a few spots, it doesn’t get soaked beyond use.
I’m barely dried off before I tug on enough clothes to walk out to the kitchen.
She’s smiling while she puts peanut butter on her toast. Her hips sway as she dances to the music.
It’s utterly domestic and, after seeing her naked in my dreams, really fucking hot.
Long gone is the scrawny kid I once knew.
She’s still petite, but there are curves and attitude with it.
I almost smack myself about the head.
How’s that getting a grip on my thoughts working out?
“Morning,” I say gruffly.
For a heartbeat, she smiles, and then it leaves her face like she realized who is speaking to her.
“Morning.” She stops buttering and pours a mug of black coffee for me.
“Wraith is about to pull in and come to the house,” I say, taking the cup.
“I’m late, and going out on a run with him.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” she says.
“You might want to put a shirt on, though.”
“Smart-ass.”
“You want some breakfast?” she asks.
“I’m on the later shift today so I can make you something.”
I shake my head.
“Don’t have time. He’ll be here in a minute.”
I head back to my room, and I’m halfway through managing a navy T-shirt over my head before I realize that moment felt…
good.
Wraith has always been a domestic-bliss kinda guy.
Loved his first wife hard before she was murdered.
Loves Raven at least as much, if not more, from what I can tell.
And that kid of hers, well, he looks at Wraith like a father.
Wasn’t sure about Atom.
He was always so disinterested in a permanent woman, but it makes sense given the only woman he ever wanted was Butcher’s daughter and out of reach.
But I also know he can’t wait to knock her up.
Told me on the way home from the airport, with a shit ton of pride in his voice, that they’d gotten tested and he was practicing the fuck out of becoming a baby daddy.
Me? I don’t want kids.
Up until now, my job has been too dangerous to even properly consider it.
I know plenty of firefighters have families, but it wasn’t a risk I wanted to drag someone else into.
And I prefer my own space.
Can’t imagine anyone else living in it permanently.
Wife, child, or dog.
But Quinn in my kitchen, looking happy, teased me for a tantalizing millisecond.
Fuck, I could see how a man might get addicted to that kind of wake up in the morning.
Pretty girl, fresh food, soft smile.
And a body that keeps getting better with age.
Or perhaps I’m just being a dirty old fuck, perving on a woman who is eight years younger than me.
I’ve never thought about Quinn any kind of way before I drove up to the house with Atom and she appeared on the porch.
She was a young kid when Melody went missing, and I was an adult.
And the only people who would think those kinds of thoughts deserve getting their dicks shanked in prison.
After, we stayed away from each other to the point where I hardly ever saw her, so these past few days have seemed like a reintroduction.
I slurp down some of the scalding coffee, then add some cold water from the sink in the bathroom, just so I can down more of it before Wraith arrives.
In the bathroom mirror, my reflection shows progress.
Still need a shave.
And could probably do with gaining ten pounds of muscle.
But I look a little more like me.
At least on the outside.
Wait…
I slept.
All the way through the night.
The only other times I’ve pulled that off, I needed a mix of whiskey and painkillers to put me under.
For the first time since the accident, I didn’t dream about it, because my mind was truly fixed on Quinn.
When I’ve finished the mug, I finish getting dressed, tug on some boots, and weapon up.
Shove my wallet in the back pocket of my jeans and my cigarettes and lighter in the top pocket of my cut.
I hear the wheels on the gravel outside the front of the house and make my way to the door.
I’m surprised to see Quinn standing there.
Holding a small parcel wrapped in brown wax paper.
“What’s that?”
She shrugs.
“You can’t go do whatever it is you’re about to do”—she glances at the gun she can see in its holster beneath my cut—“without some food in your stomach.”
I peek into the parcel, and it’s the toast she was putting peanut butter on, only now there’s jelly too.
It’s still warm.
Gratitude seeps through my cold veneer.
“Feels like my first day of school. Thanks for doing this for me.”
Quinn’s cheeks flush with pink.
I wonder if it’s just this morning or if she always responds that way to a little praise.
“Be safe,” Quinn says, but she doesn’t wait for a reply before heading in the direction of the kitchen.
And I watch every swish of her hips as she walks.
The honk of the horn makes me jump, and I open the front door.
Thankfully, no one is in the front seat yet, so I grab it.
“Morning.”
Wraith looks at the parcel, confused.
“She sent you out with a packed breakfast?”
I open it up and take a bite.
Peanut butter, jelly, and fresh bread tastes good on the best of days.
“One of the perks of having a baker in your house. She makes the bread too.”
“’Course she fucking does,” Wraith says.
“Gimme a piece.”
The two slices of bread have been cut into triangles, so I give him one, and we both take a bite at the same time.
“Fuck that’s good,” Wraith says.
“Right?”
He glances at me.
“Almost a good enough reason to keep her around.”
I shake my head.
“That isn’t happening.”
Liar.
I think about the dream.
This time in the image, I have my hand around her throat, and there’s still a shit ton of trust there.
“She doesn’t trust me.”
And she has every right not to.
After all, I lied to the police about that night.
But I didn’t have anything to do with Melody’s disappearance.
Wraith shrugs. “You know how weird that sounds given your missing ex’s sister, who hasn’t spoken to you in fuck knows how long, has suddenly moved into your house and taken up residence? And now you’re sitting in my truck talking about how good her bread tastes. Is bread a euphemism for pussy?”
I almost choke on the toast. “Fuck no.”
“Care to explain?”
“Also fuck no.”
But I think about how Melody and I met.
She’d come by the clubhouse because someone told her we could get her fake identification.
She wasn’t wrong, but she flirted with me while she waited for the brother who could help her out.
And I’d responded to a pretty smile and a great rack.
When I asked her how old she was, she told me she’d be eighteen in a few days.
I told her if she came back when she was, I’d kiss her.
I was such a fucking charmer back then.
Just shy of twenty-one and thinking the whole world was my oyster.
And she did.
Surprised the fuck out of me by showing up to the gate three days later for a birthday kiss.
My reminiscing stops when we pick up Atom, who bitches about sitting in the back.
Then, we grab Grudge, who bitches about not being on bikes before remembering why and apologizing.
And by the time we get to the Denver neighborhood that Vex, the New Jersey outlaw the wizard, and Calista, his hacker old lady, identified, we’re all ready to get the fuck out of this cage.
“So, we just walk?” I ask.
“That’s the strategy?”
Wraith nods.
“It’s the only one we got. But be alert. The intel says this is a hotbed of Bratva.”
Doesn’t look it.
Looks like any regular old neighborhood on the outskirts of Denver.
My first station house is only two blocks away.
“How do we know that?”
“Vex’s old lady, Calista, designed this software,” Atom says.
“You put in a picture of a person you want to find, and it sifts through every available piece of digital media and plots the metadata on a map, so you know a pattern for where they were and when. It looks for anyone who is in the photograph, not the subject. The data showed that this neighborhood has been visited by at least eleven of Zakharov’s crew, including Lev, in the last two weeks.”
I keep my eyes peeled, surveying the neighborhood.
“Clever.”
Grudge nods.
“Yeah. I kinda like the way we’ve got some additional skills growing within the larger club. Even if they are women. The New Jersey chapter has Catalina as a honey trap and assassin. And Vex’s old lady is wicked tech smart. We need to think out of the box more about who to hire. We need a doctor or a surgeon. A permanent addition to the club.”
The conversation continues as we mill around the neighborhood.
We take photographs of vehicles and homes they’ve seen in images Calista provided.
I feel a little out of the loop and make a point to try to engage and get caught up on club business more.
The sun feels good on my face, but for the first day since summer began, it’s not too hot.
And that’s the first sign that fire season is nearly over.
There isn’t an active fire burning anywhere in the Mountain States.
And if the temperature starts to drop, and perhaps a little more rain drifts in, there won’t be another this year.
Which reminds me, I still haven’t quit.
I’m technically on medical leave, but eventually, someone is going to ask when I’m returning to regular duty.
The truth is, I’m at a crossroads.
I don’t know what I want to do next.
Almost dying will do that for you.
We reach a T-junction.
“You wanna take left with me?” Wraith asks.
I nod. “Can do. How about we…?”
There is a reflection in the window of the property across the street.
Two men are walking a distance behind us, watching us intently.
And when we stopped, I think they did too.
One of them reaches for a phone, and while I can’t make out the weapon, I can see the holster.
“Don’t turn around. We’re being trailed. You can see the men in the reflection of that bakery across the street.”
The store makes me think of Quinn, being alone and assaulted in her place of business late at night.
How scared she must have been.
And I feel like kicking the shit out of these men, just for causing her that kind of distress.
Grudge glances left and right, as if preparing to cross the street.
“Looks less busy if we take the left. Let’s see if we can get them to follow us.”
We turn as one, without looking back.
“There’s a corner store ahead,” Wraith says.
“Smoke and I will go stand in front of it, as if the two of you have gone inside.” He glances at Atom and Grudge.
“Duck in the alley. Wait for them to come by, and then step out behind them, yeah?”
I like the plan, and there’s a rising vibration in my bones that we’re about to see trouble.
And I don’t even care about my burns.
I need this.
I need the release.
I need the stimulation.
I grab Wraith’s elbow.
“Let’s go before they turn the corner and see what we’re doing.”
We move quickly, and we’re just catching our breath as the two men turn.
We positioned ourselves so we can both see down the street.
Wraith leans back against the shop front, one foot up on the wall.
I stand facing the shop door and light a cigarette.
The nicotine hit is just what I need.
The rush before…
When a cheetah hunts, sometimes it will just sit for a few minutes, watching its prey, learning how it moves, before it pounces.
Wraith and I practice the same kind of patience.
As the two men turn the corner to follow us, we practice total indifference.
Unless you were looking closely, you wouldn’t know that both of us are angled such that in our peripheral vision, we can see the exact moment they pass the entrance to the alleyway.
And it’s impossible to miss Atom and Grudge when they step out behind them.
As if synchronized, despite spending the summer apart, Wraith and I turn to face them.
The sudden move stops them in their tracks.
“You’ve got two seconds to tell us why you’re following us,” Wraith says.
One of them smiles smugly.
He’s wearing sneakers with black trousers that barely reach his ankles.
“It’s a free country. Just exercising our right to walk the city.”
“In the exact same path as us?” I ask.
They look at each other, and as they do, they notice Atom and Grudge behind them.
The cocky attitude and demeanor slip a little from the one wearing a preppy polo shirt.
That alone makes me want to punch his fucking lights out.
Atom flicks the guy’s collar, and he flinches as though Atom just pistol-whipped the fucker.
“Why are you following us?” Wraith repeats.
“Same reason you’d follow someone you didn’t know if they crossed into your territory,” the guy in the weird pants says.
“The fact you know about our territory is reason enough for us to take you down that alley and get all the information we need,” Grudge says.
Polo Shirt laughs. “We got eyes on every part of this city. You won’t get away with shit.”
I wrap my hand around his throat so fast, no one has time to move.
But when they do, Grudge grabs his friend, and Wraith pulls his weapon.
“We’re well past the point of getting away with shit. You’re burning up our town, threatening the women in it, because you’re fucking cowards.” He tries to fight his way out of my grip and stops only when Atom presses the cool tip of his gun to the guy’s skull.
“Us? We’re the big boys. We wear our names so you know who the fuck we are.”
A bullet whizzes between the two of us, which is really fucking lucky given we’re only inches apart.
“Incoming,” Grudge shouts.
I shove Polo Shirt to the ground.
“Smoke. Atom. Wraith. And Grudge. Remember our names, fuckers.”
And with that, we run from the gunfire back to the truck.