Текст книги "Rogue Stallion"
Автор книги: Carmen Faye
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 6 страниц)
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nicole finished her accounting and was both happy with the results and a little sad about them, too. Once she crawled into bed beside Cole, she put her plan out of her head and curled up beside him. If she was forced to admit it, the one thing she did enjoy about the call girl life was that she didn't have to sleep alone most of the time. Being alone in bed was miserably lonely to her.
Having Cole's muscular warm body next to her was so calming and soothing; it surpassed basking in a hot tub. For those long nights she was alone while he was running cocaine from the Chicago Harbor into the mid-west cities, she was not only worried about him, but alone with that worry in bed. Her sleep was fitful and she woke often in the dark by imagined noises and threats.
She had planned out his homecoming much differently than it turned out. It was amazing to her that Cole and Jim were risking so much for her. Maybe she should have left for New Orleans, but after playing the scenario in her head, she realized it wouldn't have changed anything. If Antonio would have found Cole home, without her, then the conversation would have quickly turned to torture and the pain wouldn't have ended until Cole was forced to tell them where she was. The moment he broke, Antonio would have killed him. Cole would have been caught flat-footed at the door with no chance against Antonio and Davis.
The bottom line was leaving Gabriel had no meaning if she couldn't be with Cole afterward. The only place she felt the safe, recuperating sense of belonging was as a child with her mother. When her stepfather came into their house, he ruined her safe refuge from the world. After a few years of his presence, being away from home felt safer than being in her own room. But now she had a new refuge and he was stronger than a house. Now, Gabriel wanted to take this from her. Another insane man was ruining her refuge. She couldn't let that happen.
When shit with her stepfather began, starting close to her fourteenth birthday, she was too young and too inexperienced to do anything about it; she had no means of fighting back. Mama had already shown that she wasn't a refuge against her stepdad. He ruled with his anger and his fist, and Mama couldn't fight back or leave him. Nicole spent many hours before sleep wondering why Mama didn't tell him to go away. It made no sense to her at all.
Looking back on it now, those before-sleep thoughts proved just how naïve and young she really was. Her mother feared sleeping alone, as well, probably far more than Nicole did.
Her mother didn't believe she was beautiful or able to make it as a single mother with three children. Fear, Nicole had learned after countless demonstrations, was a powerful and paralyzing emotion. It made you do things you never believed you were capable of doing. It forced hands and drove wedges into the deepest commitments.
Since running away from Gabriel, layers of blinders, woven by fear, were falling away from Nicole's eyes. While Cole was gone on his run, she admitted to herself that the real reason she never left Gabriel before and never found any pursuit interesting enough to tempt her was that she was too frightened to leave. Not of Gabriel coming after her, why would he?
No, she was terrified of being out in the world alone again. She could have easily hooked up with Max and even thought about it several times, but while Max was extremely rich and powerful, he didn't project a sense of protection. Not like Cole did.
Cole felt protective, and strong and comfortable. He felt committed, as well, and while he might not offer to help fight all of her battles, he wouldn't leave her to face them alone. He would always be there and ready with a hug, and a safe place to rest. Cole attracted her so strongly, her blinders didn't have a chance of blocking him out.
Jim impressed her. He was by far the largest man she had ever met, but even larger was the feeling of pure loyalty flowing out from the man. He not only respected Cole. In a way, he loved him. She felt that same sense of loyalty extend to Brian when he came in the room and even to Hank, the bartender. The tone of his voice and the body language he projected bellowed the clear promise I have your back.
Toward her, he was sympathetic, and open and polite – also he loved looking at her tits. But he held back the full commitment he extended to the others. Even without his full commitment to her, it made her want to impress him somehow. It made her want to be worthy of his level of loyalty.
His presence gave her the same desire to please as she remembered having toward her own father before he died. It wasn't mixed up with sex or attraction or any of that crap. She didn't have any desire to be a member of the Horsemen, but what Jim offered his men, what he demonstrated with Cole and Brian, was so attractive that it crossed her mind to ask Cole what the requirements were.
She wondered why the man wasn't married. Surely other women could sense the amazing amount of loyalty he projected. He would never cheat on his woman and always come home to her. With that last thought, she had an insight to her question, sensing that Big Jim wasn't looking for a wife, because he already had one.
He had the club, the Chrome Horsemen, who trusted him enough to make him president. A man with that kind of loyalty and protection invested into something he thought of as home, was not a man whose home you wanted to threaten. The reprisal would be tectonic. She realized then that Jim was all-in with this thing. He didn't do it because of her directly; he did it because Gabriel had proven to be a true threat, by sending enforcers to Cole's house, to come after her. Gabriel crossed a line that Big Jim felt was too bold and too obvious to miss on accident. He could not accept apology at this point any more than Gabriel was capable of contemplating his mortality.
"Men are going to die very soon," she whispered into the dark. This sentence made the commitment to her own plan even stronger and the expenditure an acceptable investment into the life she had fortunately had fallen into.
Besides, one of those men, lying motionless on the battlefield her mind conjured up, might be Cole and she needed to be ten years married to him. Needed to be. Those strange illusions she had with him were too good, felt too right to risk.
She was deeply excited when Cole asked Brian's thoughts on running to New Orleans. That Cole was thinking of getting her out of Chicago and coming with her felt wonderful. But with the outriders riding through the city right now, tearing up Gabriel's little world, the war had begun and Cole was too loyal to his club – his family – to leave them under these conditions.
Much of what he would be trying to protect with a move would still be threated by the same source with an equal amount of violence. So he wasn't going to run with her. He was going to stay. He would get her into a safe, hidden environment, and then he would turn his bike around and he would fight.
She snuggled closer to him. She couldn't ask him not to fight. The reasons he would ride into this war were the same strong qualities she loved about him. She couldn't and wouldn't change him. She may discover some things about him as they grew closer that she didn't like – no man was perfect – but these qualities were very dear to her. They saved her from a life of servitude and deep-current fear so powerful it blinded her. Now she had new fears created by love rather than despair.
When she woke, the sun outside was glowing along the edges of the thick hotel curtains and Cole was talking to someone named Rat on his cellphone.
"Again, man, sorry to wake you so early. See you at noon," Cole said after many short, unconnected things she couldn't make sense of. Cole set his phone down on the nightstand and slid onto bed beside her, "Hey, lover. Did you sleep well?"
"I'll let you know after you give me a kiss," she murmured.
"I have to earn your answer to a simple greeting?" he asked amused.
"Yes, before coffee, yes," she pouted. "Who is Rat? Is that his real name?"
"His real name is Rafael, but he refuses to answer to it. There are some seriously deep hate-currents between him and his family. So, now he is Rat. I asked him to let you stay at his house for a few weeks and he talked to his wife, Angie. They both agreed they can help us out."
"You're not going to be there?" she asked, feeling suddenly a little afraid.
"I'll be there, but with everything that is going on, there's a lot I'll need to pitch in with, too. So will Rat and everyone else in the brotherhood. Once we take care of this, though, we can get back home and try this again," he promised.
She nodded, but was unwilling to express agreement with words. He's found someplace safe and now he's already turning his bike around to ride into war. She knew it was coming; she was aware this was coming last night, but now that it was here, it hurt her in ways she didn't know she could hurt. Wrapping her arms around him, she clung to him with sudden desperation. "Don't die. I won't live if you aren't here with me."
He petted her like she was a great cat and his most precious possession, "While I don't have the pure conviction that Gabriel is thought to have about being bullet proof, I do have a strong sense of self-preservation. I promise not to get into anything I can't see my way out of, all right?"
She nodded into his chest, surprised that she got that much. She was expecting something along the lines of 'a man's got to do what a man's got to do', which she would have slapped him for. Then, after he fell asleep tonight, she would have put a pin in his butt just so he would remember that she was very upset. "Can't you guys just snipe him or something?" she asked, amazed that she suddenly felt gunning someone down was reasonable.
"If it gets to that point and we have a shot, I'm sure we'll take it," Cole told her, still petting her. "Things have rarely been that easy in my life, however. Have you ever had good things fall in your lap like that?" Cole asked her.
"You, but before that, no," she admitted.
"I believe on our first date, I was in a gun fight, so I can't agree that it has been all that simple for us to get together."
She nodded against him and then kissed his left nipple. "No, it really hasn't been all that simple, has it? Have you thought that I might not be worth all this … all of this?"
"Not once. Not even once," he told her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
He untangled himself from her and then got under the covers and wrapped her back up, kissing her with deep passion. Then his hands began to explore her body and fondle her ass.
"Cole, are you trying to seduce me? Because it's working wonderfully if you are, but it would be an unforgivable tease if you aren't," she sighed with breathless moans as he suckled and pulled at her nipples.
He didn't answer, though she thought she felt a chuckle of pleasure thrum in his chest. Her breasts were hot and her nipples were painfully aroused by the time he began to kiss his way down her abs, going lower with each kiss. Was he going to…?
He did continue all the way down, between her thighs, which were now spread, and shaking with micro-vibrations of anticipation, wanting very much for his tongue to perform what no one has done for a very long time. It had been so long, she considered once taking on female clients just to get some head every once in a while, but couldn't visualize making the leap.
The heat and smoothness of his tongue on her arched her breasts to the ceiling and expelled a hot gasp of pleasure from her lungs. "Oh, sweet mercy, yes, oh yes please," she moaned and curled her fingers into the sheets, gripping them, as he explored her pussy with lavish attention. He wasn't bad. In fact, the sweet sensations radiating through her were telling her that he was very good, so very, very good.
When he came up to her clitoris, she was on the verge of enraptured adoration for him. When he focused all of his attention to her heated nub, she crossed that line with reckless abandon. Those first sweet, golden sensations soon beautified into eager yearnings and she ran her hands over her body, loving every moment of being a woman and having a body that was so responsive.
She was, of course, aware that her body attracted most men's attentions, which she would freely admit was a blessing of DNA and the lucky coalescence of cells. But having a body that generated such glowing wonder from those attentions was a gift from the Almighty and she gave praise again and again as yearnings evolved into urges and needs.
She knew that the more the body's arousal level refined, the more it hungered for greater levels of arousal. Those hungers, when Cole brought her to the breach of climax, were sweet, fully developed agonies, which clutched and curled her abs, forcing her hands to knead her breasts with fervent passion. She came to the mental and spiritual place of offering – the climax's closeness compelling her to do whatever it took to keep him doing what he was so good at doing. "Yes, Cole, yes, please don't stop, please. I'll do anything you want, baby. Please. Oh shit, I'm going to come! Oh, please don't stop now. I'm fucking going to come!"
She promised him pleasure, servitude, and fulfillments only gods could claim, all with urgent assurances that she would not only perform these fantasies for him, but would love doing them. Not in so many words did she make these offerings, because during those moments her vocabulary seemed to be crippled, but she was sure the areas lacking in her words were being soundly communicated by the lustful, surging seductions of her body.
The climax came with a turning and twisting clash, throwing her from one direction to the other, and then lifting her only to throw her back down on the bed. Her hips twisted and thrust, as her heels dug into the bed, powered there by quivering legs.
Cole continued to arouse her clitoris to riotous, electric pulses that convulsed her with powerful drums of devastating release. When she began coming completely undone under his continued tongue, he wrapped his thick arm around her thigh and pressed her hips firmly to the bed, holding her there with his forearm, restraining her convulsing body so that she couldn't disturb his continuing efforts.
His goal, she felt, while in the midst of this orgasmic storm, was to sustain her agony and not let her come down. While such a thought during a bath moment or as a distracting fantasy would be very potent, the thought of actually enduring such treatment threw her swimming emotions in the direction of panic and trepidation.
"Oh, no, oh please. God, please. Let me down!"
Cole didn't let her down and his conservation the rhythm he preformed was astounding. Her pleas for mercy only seemed to urge him to continue. She was completely at the will of her orgasm now.
Her legs and arms and body all flung and clawed and did everything they could to break his rhythm, to stop the surging wave of electrocuting bliss. If the pleasure levels were removed, she realized, this would probably feel very much like being electrocuted. No other reference experience came to mind.
"Stop! Please, Cole! Oh God! I can't … I can't … I can't"
Breathe! She screamed in her head, not being able to get the word out pass her hard panting.
Cole finally let her down and her abs jumped and convulsed with aftershocks. Her hands were pulling at her hair, holding on to great clumps. Her chest heaved for air and expelled it as fast as she could take it in. After several moments of recovery, she said, "Dear God, Cole, I'm sorry. Whatever I did, I'm truly very sorry."
"Are you really?" he asked with a touch of doubt as he lay back down beside her.
She bit her lip. The afterglow raging inside of her was fucking amazing. "Well, sure. I mean, well, no not really."
"I didn't think so. And best not to pile lies on top of such heinous crimes," he smiled at her. “Time to get up, breakfast with Brian is nigh."
"Nigh? Did you just say nigh? Who the fuck talks like that?"
"My dad," he told her without hesitation.
"Oh," she said, "But, um, don't you want me to… well… treat you?"
"Not right now. That's all the monkey-sex we have time for. We slept too late. So, get up and showered or I'll spank you, and you don't want to see that."
"You aren't into spanking, are you?" she asked a little softly, clutching the blanket.
"Not sure. Never had the opportunity to find out. Are you going to force me to explore a new area of sexual interest?"
"No," she said, and started moving as fast as her ravaged body would allow. "I'm getting up. See? I'm moving. No worries. I'm heading for the shower. See?"
"Good," he said and followed her into the shower.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
She found Jacob's Diner to be cozy and the service was perfect. They rode here on the bikes and the morning air still held some chill from the night. She was glad she wore her jeans and boots yesterday, and that Cole tossed her the leather jacket he bought for her since hers was too thin and strictly for use as fashion, not protection.
She brought with them three hundred from her just-in-case stash bag, telling Cole that she needed at least a change of clothing and some basic necessities which they didn't have time to gather yesterday evening.
"Angie will take you for a full shopping trip, I'm sure, but yes, there's a super-store we can stop at on our way back to pick up what you need today. Just keep in mind the size of the saddle bag while you shop," he told her.
"Are those the largest size?" she asked curiously.
"Without going custom, yes. Why?"
"Just wondering, as I plan on going on trips with you in the near future," she said and leaned over for a kiss.
After he kissed her, he looked at Brian who was studying traffic through the large windows, "Any word from last night's raids? Rat said his group hit three places and came away with a sizable amount of cash, as well."
"Pillaging is one of the great wealth bringers known to man," Brian said without turning from the window. "There's a car across the street, two men in the front seat. A Cougar, I believe. Red. See them?"
She searched at the same time and found it just as Cole said, "Got them. What's up?"
"They were outside the club at the curb down from where we were. We were most likely the first patch-holders out on the sidewalk this morning."
"I'm not liking where this is going," Cole growled.
"Me neither," Nicole piped.
"How do you want to play it?" Cole asked Brian. When Brian turned a little with a raised eyebrow, Cole said, "Don't give me that look. I'm a street fighter. Learned all I know from gang fights and getting jumped in the wrong neighborhoods. I only have one tactic: kill them. That's as far as planning ever gets with me. However, Jim tells me you're a walking Art of War and I follow directions very well."
"Thanks," Brian told him. "You're senior and thanks for letting me handle this for you."
"Hey, buddy, I like breathing. So you lead. I'll follow."
Brain nodded his thanks again and then looked back out the window. "Well I doubt they are coming in here. If they decide to, we'll spot them long before they get here. Are you armed?"
"Yeah, the cops took mine last night since it was the weapon that was used, but I have extras," Cole informed him.
Brian nodded to the wisdom of this and then asked, "Who is up and close right now? Got their numbers?" Brain asked.
"Yeah," Cole said, taking out his phone and looking over to her. "Hey, baby, eat. It's still good food. Best breakfast in Chicago."
"I seem to be losing my appetite." She murmured.
"Not a good time for that," Cole told her. "You're going to need all the energy you can get."
She looked at him wide-eyed and then Cole added, "Well, you're going shopping after this, right?"
She didn't quite get it, but when it hit, it was lame and cute, and funny as hell under the circumstances. She laughed and gave him a smile, "That is so chauvinistic. I'm shocked you think of me like that."
He returned her smile and started to eat. She checked the car outside again and followed suit.
Cole reported, after a few calls, that he could get two men there in ten minutes. Brian nodded and told him where he wanted the men to arrive at, what direction they needed to come from, and what to do.
Cole listened and she watched his expression, and the growing concentration in his eyes as Brian's words built up the scenario like a model in his mind. could almost see the plan unfolding in his facial expressions as it controlled the enemy’s movements, forced the men in the car to divulge their intentions, and then killed them after the plan revealed they were looking to do the same thing to the Horsemen.
Through her studies, Nicole came across descriptions of people who possessed eidetic memories – memories that were highly visual in nature. These memories tended to degrade very slowly over decades, not hours, with amazing recall clarity. Cole had told her during their first evening together that he never finished high school – yet he reads Shakespeare. She felt a low, deep sadness that Cole's life hadn't allowed him to make use of a gift like his, if he in fact possessed such a gift, and the odd connection between them was telling her he did.
Cole had quit eating halfway through the plan, falling into a state of pure mind power as he concentrated on what Brian was laying out for him. When Brian finished, she watched Cole's eyes as they continued to move around the table, as if he were replaying it and studying it from different angles. "Shit, Brian,” Cole announced after a few moments,” Jim sold you short. That's fucking brilliant."
"Thanks," Brain said and calmly took a sip of his coffee while Cole got back on the phone and told Mark and James the plan, and their parts in it.
When that was done, they paid the check, but were set to wait for twenty more minutes.
"Cole? What was I wearing for our first ride together?" she asked, unable to control her curiosity.
Cole recited her outfit without hesitation and from what she remembered, which she felt was fairly accurate since she spent a lot of time picking out her clothing, it was near perfect. In fact, she felt he was dead on. "What color were the eyes of the first man you saw on the boat that day?" she pressed.
"Green," he said, "You going someplace with this?"
But Nicole noticed that Brian was suddenly very interested, as well. How he might have picked up on where she was going with this, she didn't know. Fucking brain trust in this group of motor junkies. "That car across the street, did you see it at the hotel?" she asked.
"Yeah, just where Brian said it was, but I didn't notice it here until he pointed it out," Cole explained.
"What's the license number?" she pushed.
Cole, again, told her without a second of hesitation. There was no brain searching. It was just there, in his mind, like magic.
"Wow," Brian said, not bothering to hide his amazement and sat back looking at Cole, "Eidetic memory?"
"What's that?" Cole asked, looking from Brian to her and then back again.
Nicole walked him through what she knew about eidetic memory, admitting that the subject, at the time she came across it during her research, didn't hold much interest for her, so her understanding was limited. "No one has ever brought that up to you?" she asked him with slight wonder.
Cole shrugged, "I get the visual part. I use that a lot and certainly during every fight I'm in." Then Cole ran a play by play with the boat ambush he walked into, even moving pieces like the salt and pepper and sugar packages around as he explained how he knew where the attackers were behind the curtain, or at least the couple of places physics would allow them to be and used that to aim.
"Again, wow," Brian said with a little more wonder in his voice. "I've heard about it, too, but listening to how you use it puts chills in my spine knowing I was so close to going up against it."
Cole checked his watch, "It's time. We can talk about my brain after we take care of this little chore."
"No we won't," Nicole told him, "You're going to avoid the subject like a plague." She smiled teasingly while she rose from her chair and shrugged into her jacket, "aren't you?"
Cole grimaced at her.
"I don't know what impresses me more, your memory or how well she knows you," Brian laughed. "You two have quite a connection with each other."
Cole looked at him, "Buddy, you have no idea."
