Chapter 1 #3
She smiled against his lips, needing no words to answer his question. Her body responded for her. They rose higher and higher, their rhythm in perfect synchronicity. Jack’s familiar touch coaxed her towards the precipitous and ultimate crescendo.
Ollie was already eating breakfast when Jenna and Steel made it downstairs.
There was no doubt their son knew what they’d been up to, but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.
Steel had recently had another safe sex talk with him after Aaron and Ollie had broken curfew over the summer.
Ollie swore they hadn’t done anything beyond kissing—not that Steel specifically wanted to know—but that tidbit made him feel slightly better.
Aaron, Cage’s son, was seventeen and a senior this year in high school.
His birthday wasn’t until June, but he was already signed up to join the Army following graduation.
Ollie was only just sixteen and a junior.
Since there was no official record of his birth, Ollie had always guessed at his birthday and age.
But based on dental records and his less than stellar education prior to the club rescuing him, they decided to lean on the younger side.
The fact that he might be older than they legally made him didn’t make the idea of him having sex with his boyfriend, no matter how much Steel liked and trusted Aaron, any easier.
Neither Steel nor Jenna cared that Ollie was gay. He was their son, regardless of blood or sexuality. What they cared about was Ollie being safe and healthy. It would be hypocritical of them to scold him for having sex as a teenager, but they would do their part to teach him to be smart about it.
Aaron was a good kid, and it wasn’t like they could get pregnant, but there was still more to safe sex than just the risk of pregnancy.
When Aaron had come into their lives, Cage had very openly announced his love and acceptance of his gay son.
He’d gotten a pride tattoo, a pride patch for his cut, wore pride socks, and had purchased any book he could find on safe gay sex.
He’d let Steel borrow them when they realized their sons were making ‘googly eyes’, as Cage put it, at each other.
As a heterosexual man nearing his sixties, Steel never thought he’d need to learn so much about gay sex, but he’d gone in with his eyes open.
He wouldn’t be a responsible parent if he hadn’t.
What he didn’t do was what Cage had done and embarrassed his son to the point where he openly admitted he wasn’t ready for sex.
Just before Aaron’s last birthday, Cage had gifted him, what was now known as, the Sex Basket.
Along with a very bedazzled sex diary and rainbow shredded paper, there was an anal sex training kit, a dildo, a vibrating butt plug, anal beads, and more lube than at a WD-40 factory.
Pride flag pins and a rainbow ribbon also decorated the cellophane wrapping.
Cage’s point was not to necessarily embarrass his son, though there was no doubt he had.
He more or less wanted Aaron to think twice before engaging in an activity he wasn’t ready for.
And it had certainly worked. Despite them missing curfew a couple of times, as far as either set of parents knew, Ollie and Aaron were not sexually active.
“Good morning,” he said with a bright smile.
Steel guided Jenna over to a chair next to their teenage son. She leaned over to kiss Ollie on the forehead as soon as she was close enough. “Eggs or pancakes?” Steel asked her.
“Pancakes, please,” she answered before turning to Ollie. “Why aren’t you in school?”
“I wanted to be here this morning in case either of you needed anything,” was Ollie’s immediate answer.
Unlike the other club kids, Ollie, Bree, and Aaron knew where Steel had been the past weekend. Ollie was understandably concerned, but what Steel wasn’t sure he liked was how little grief Ollie was showing over Dixie’s murder. Regardless of how she’d treated him, she was still his birth mother.
Steel hadn’t grieved his father’s death.
He hadn’t cared what had happened to John Duncan’s body once the police had taken him away.
He was solely focused on taking care of Lilly and Mr. Zarin.
But his mom? In his own way, he’d grieved for her.
To this day, Steel had no idea if his mom was dead or alive.
He assumed dead based on her history of drug abuse, but there was a chance she’d gotten clean.
What he’d grieved, long before the Zarins had come into his life, was the mom she’d been.
Before Lilly had been born and John Duncan had suspected his wife’s infidelity, Fiona Duncan had been a good mom.
They’d been poor and there’d been struggles, but she’d loved him.
At least, his young mind had been convinced she had.
Ollie’s mom had abandoned him just as Steel’s had. It was possible that he’d already grieved her loss, long before she’d died. But news that she’d been murdered was different than if she’d overdosed or had a heart attack.
Steel could understand Ollie’s instinct to cling to him and Jenna right now.
It was why they both had agreed to allow him to skip school yesterday when they still weren’t sure whether the DEA was going to charge Steel with first-degree murder.
Steel’s alibi hadn’t been proven without a shadow of a doubt, but Jenna’s testimony that he was with her at the time of the murder and Keys’ proof that Steel hadn’t left club property was enough that the prosecuting attorney had refused to charge him.
The fact remained that he was still a suspect. DEA Agent Strouse had made that very clear. Steel might not have pulled the trigger, but someone had. Someone with enough skill to know how to frame Steel.
He had a meeting with Lucky and Bulldog in his office soon to go over what it was they knew that he didn’t.
After all, there was only so much they could say in the sheriff’s station with cameras on them.
They couldn’t risk Carlos getting in trouble if it was discovered Keys had fudged the footage under his watch, especially when he was already making exceptions for Jenna’s presence in his station.
“Last day,” Steel told his son. “I’m free, and your education is too important to fuck around with.”
“Language,” Jenna scolded without ire. She was far too used to Steel’s cussing around their kids, but they’d long ago come to a silent understanding that he wasn’t going to stop cursing and she wasn’t going to stop scolding. In a way, it was foreplay for them, neither one backing down.
Steel got out the griddle and supplies for Jenna’s pancakes.
Ollie was eating a bowl of cereal. It had taken a good number of weeks after he’d moved in for him to stop hoarding food in his bedroom.
Steel and Jenna had not stopped him, knowing it was a part of his trauma from being half-starved most of his life.
Just because they’d opened their home to him did not mean he automatically trusted them.
And until it had caused an ant problem, they hadn’t cared.
Thankfully, by then, Ollie had gotten used to them and no longer felt a need to squirrel supplies away.
Ollie shrugged. “Fine. By the way, have either of you looked at your phones this morning?”
Neither Steel nor Jenna had. The outside world had not been a priority for them.
Ollie pulled his phone out of his super-tight jeans that Steel had no idea how he breathed in but were a staple in his son’s closet. He tapped a few buttons before sliding the phone in front of Jenna. “Pumpkin got pumpkined again.”
Mixing bowl in hand, Steel leaned over Jenna’s shoulder as they looked at Ollie’s phone.
There, in the club’s group chat that included the adults and three teens, was a picture of Pumpkin, naked but for a large pumpkin covering his junk.
Steel had seen a similar picture for years, following Pumpkin’s patch-in party, but this one was certainly more recent with his full beard.
Jenna giggled, her shoulders shaking. Steel would have stopped the crusade the club had to make sure Pumpkin never forgot waking up naked next to a pumpkin after his patch-in party years ago if it hadn’t been for the fact that each prank made Jenna laugh.
He didn’t care at whose expense, he’d allow anything that made her smile.
Jenna passed the phone back to Ollie. “I’m glad he finally found her. I’m looking forward to getting to know Dosia.”
“I can’t believe she kept a kid from him for six years,” Ollie stated, accepting his phone back. “I could never.”
“That’s because you can’t keep a secret to save your life,” Steel butted in.
He headed over to the griddle to test its temperature before pouring the first pancake.
He always claimed the first ones because they were messy and not quite perfect as he made sure the temp was correct.
The container of chocolate chips was already on the counter and waiting to be added to Jenna’s pancakes.
He preferred them plain, but she liked chocolate chips with strawberries and maple syrup on hers.
Ollie beamed at him. “Still not as bad as Scotty.”
Jenna snorted. “No one is as bad as Scotty.”
“Speaking of which, I got a video of him winning a date with Uncle Lucky at the auction. Want to see?”
As Jenna leaned over to watch, Steel stayed by the griddle to finish making their breakfast. He would soon have to put his hardened mask on, the one he showed the world, the one that had given him the moniker of ‘Steel’.
The emotionless mask that the Marines had put on him when they taught him to pull that trigger without remorse.
The mask that let him make the hard decisions and think ten moves ahead.
It was moments like this that made up for it, that gave him back his sanity.
He would do anything to protect his family and his club.
There was a new threat hunting them. He knew it, but he would never yield.
He’d faced worse, and he would never allow anyone or anything to take these moments away from him.
They were part way through their meal when there was a knock on their front door. Ollie, who was already done eating, leapt up to answer it. “Um, Steel?” he called out.
Steel’s back stiffened, but not because his son called him by his road name.
Ollie had yet to call Steel and Jenna ‘Dad’ and ‘Mom’.
They were fine with it, because in Ollie’s experience, those titles did not mean love and protection.
If he wasn’t ready to call them so, that was fine with them.
It did not make them any less his parents.
Standing, Steel headed to the door, his hand on his gun at the small of his back. No one should be able to get onto property unannounced or uninvited, but Ollie’s voice had warning bells going off in his head. As did the pain in his lower back that reminded him where he’d spent his weekend.
But as soon as Steel rounded the door and he saw who was standing on his front stoop, Steel’s shoulders sagged and he released the grip he had on his gun. “Why are you here?” he demanded.
Lilly raised an eyebrow. “Now is that anyway to speak to your baby sister?”