Chapter 36
Knife had gotten really good at staying busy.
That was the trick, it turned out. Not thinking less about her — he’d given up on that after the first couple of days — but filling the hours so thoroughly there was no time for thought.
It made him able to pretend everything was okay. Pretend there wasn’t a huge hole in his life he couldn’t fill.
Staying busy wasn’t healing, it was management, but what the fuck. It was the best he could do.
But now his truck was loaded with the restaurant’s meat order, and he had an hour’s drive with nothing to do but watch for idiots and let his brain go wherever it wanted to go, which was always the same place.
Her.
Cataloging things she’d have said about the drive, noticing the way the light hit the valley, pointing out restaurants and telling him the best thing on their damned menu.
He considered pulling over and finding a podcast to listen to, but he turned the radio up instead.
He thought about going to wolf a few days earlier, and his wolf had been particularly vicious with the rabbit, tearing it apart without bothering to break its neck first, listening to it scream while he ate it.
The wolf fully blamed the human for losing her and was determined to punish him for it in the only way it could.
Knife turned the radio to a different channel and focused on plans for the weekend.
He’d told Brain to keep him busy with shifts wherever he could help, and tonight he’d be working the bar with Dawg.
That would keep him occupied, keeping track of who drank what, and the next five things he’d need to make.
He liked working alongside Dawg, who was competent and solid.
The truck topped the ridge cut and Chattanooga spread out below him.
He thought about standing on the Walnut Street Bridge with her, both of them leaning on the railing, looking upriver at the mountains.
He turned the radio off entirely when a sad breakup song came on, but the few seconds he heard of it helped. How am I supposed to live without you? You breathe in, then breathe out. Eat, then shit it out. Biology doesn’t care about love; it just fucking survives.
Gonzo came around back to help unload the restaurant order when he arrived, and Knife was behind the bar by seven.
This was the part that worked for him. Not driving, not the quiet moments between tasks, not the lying in his bed at three in the morning when sleep wouldn’t come — but this.
The performance of it. Six tickets up, two people waiting, Dawg calling something from the other end that he was already halfway through making because he’d seen it coming three orders ago.
His hands knew where everything was without looking.
His brain ran the calculus of what was coming next and next and next, and there was no room left for anything else.
A woman at the far end of the bar caught his eye and held it a beat longer than necessary, and he clocked her without really seeing her — dark hair, good smile, clearly interested in more than her drink order.
But he wasn’t going to fuck a customer tonight. The sweetbutts were safer, but that would come later.
Right now he had a Manhattan to build, two drafts to pull, and someone at table four who’d been waiting for their margarita and whiskey sour longer than they should’ve.
He pulled the drafts first because they were fastest, and then got to table four’s order. Dawg slid in without breaking stride and started on the Manhattan.
His hands moved and his brain ran its lists and the bar noise filled everything up. For a solid five hours he didn’t think about her once.
That was as close to fine as he was going to get, and he’d learned to cherish busy hours with his brothers.
Later, crossing the street from the restaurant to the clubhouse in the dark, the night air warm on his bare arms, he wondered which sweetbutts would be hanging out, waiting to be fucked, hoping someone might fall in love with them. Not all of them were here for that, but most were.
He thought about warmth and uncomplicated want, and making use of whoever was available, because it really didn’t matter a goddamn which one ended up in his bed.
He crossed the street, went inside, and motioned for Backdoor to follow him.
She did, and the great thing about the sweetbutts is there’s no conversation required. If he’d taken the woman in the bar up on her offer and gone home with her, there would’ve been social niceties and get-to-know-you conversation.
But Backdoor was fine with him buckling a collar around her neck, followed by wrist and ankle cuffs. She just stood quietly and let him.
He clipped her wrist cuffs to the D ring at the front of the collar, motioned her to get into bed, and then ran a chain from her ankle cuffs to the bottom bedrail, locking her legs together while making it so she couldn’t get out of bed.
He rolled her onto her side facing the edge of the bed, climbed on behind her, lubed his cock, and fucked her ass for hours — slow and deep at first, then harder, chasing the oblivion of a warm, willing hole that didn’t ask for anything.
She came twice, and he waited to let himself come long after his dick was raw and her scent told him her asshole felt the same.
When he finally fell asleep still buried inside her heat, it was from exhaustion.
The next morning, he fucked her ass again before sending her on her way. Brutal and rough, but at least he was quick with it.
He worked the gun store all day, the bar that night, took Cindy to his room around midnight and tied her the same way.
He started out by fucking her face this time, flat on her back with his dick down her throat.
He came hard and then fucked her ass until she was shaking and begging.
Once again, he crashed seconds after orgasm, and then fucked her all over again the next morning when he woke.
He worked security at the whore hotel the next day, and then stopped by the clubhouse, still undecided on whether to head home or stay in Chattanooga until Wednesday evening again.
But Chiquita was in a little red dress that made him want to hang her from his pulleys, so he took her home and bound her into a gorgeous arabesque — one leg extended high, arms bound with one over overhead in front of her and another dipping behind her, body stretched and balanced on the ball of her supporting foot.
The chest harness squeezed her tits until they were balls on her chest, and the crotch rope looped under hip harness had knots that crushed her clit and irritated both holes.
She was a work of art. Dark, demented art, but still.
And best of all, her arousal levels were all over the place while he worked on the knots and rigging.
His inner sadist thrilled and his dick throbbed when he lifted her into the air slowly, watching the ropes take her weight.
But she only lasted maybe ninety seconds before she started crying. Not the overwhelmed, endorphin-drunk kind, but broken, miserable tears with almost no arousal behind them.
He tried playing with her nipples, working the knots on the crotch rope to give her more sensation, but nothing worked. Tried flogging her upper back, but that just made it worse.
The sweetbutts don’t get to tell them no. They have safewords, and they can leave at any time, but safewording just because something hurts isn’t seen as a positive. Injury is different, but that wasn’t a problem here and they both knew it.
She was no longer into it. She’d been fine when on the ground, but she’d lost her edge once in the air — and Knife couldn’t enjoy hurting her when arousal wasn’t part of the equation, so he brought her down, gave her a few shots of whiskey, fed her a steak and a microwaved baked potato, and drove her back to the clubhouse around three in the morning.
He asked Paco what needed doing, and Paco told him he could walk with Viper on sentry duty.
The night was warm, the moon was playing peek-a-boo with the wispy clouds, but nothing was as it should be.
Thankfully, Viper was a pleasant companion, talking about the next planned ride with the entire club, sharing interesting things about his tattoo customers, and just generally keeping the conversation going.
Knife contributed as well, telling him about the cattle doing silly things while being rounded up, about odd customer requests in the butcher shop.
Eventually, out of nowhere, Viper said, “Some wounds you can only heal by walking the long way around the mountain. Not over it. Not through it. Around. Takes longer. Hurts different. But you see more that way.”
It felt like something Knife’s grandfather would say, and Knife wondered how much Viper knew about his heritage, the shared, distant Cherokee line.
But Knife didn’t answer, and Viper didn’t seem to expect him to — his brother merely changed the subject by asking about the best marinade for ribs, and turned their conversation into a debate on dry rubs versus marinades.