Checkmate With Bishop: A Hellions MC Novel (24 page)

“It
was
club bidness, babe.  One of the worse, if you ask me.  And one that I was sure would change your opinion of me if you ever found out.”  His eyes were lit with not only humor but with what I read as apology.  “Bikers are supposed to be doing all sorts of badassery kinds of shit in order to gain respect.  But no one
ever
allows a fucking young and dumb recruit to participate in any of that!  Uh-uh.  I was  called to help move furniture, drive out in the middle of the night to find a brother that needed help when his bike broke down or even break up a domestic fight between a brother and his old lady before the cops were called.”  He shook his head and laughed again.  “No, babe.  Your husband wasn’t the hard-riding, bigger than life, bad ol’ biker when you were married to him.”  His smile faded but the light never left his eyes.  “I was nothing but a glorified errand boy doing whatever the fuck any Hellion told me to do, the motherfucking second he told me to do it.”

“Jay-shus, Schtan…” I uttered in disbelief, my drunken voice rising into almost a plea.  “Ya couldn’t’ve told me tha’?  Ravver than’ve me worried, half-out’ve my mind with vish-visions of ya bein’ arreshted or killed ever’ time ya walked outta our apar’ment?”

He brought my hand, the one he still held, up to his mouth and placed a kiss on the back of it.  “I just didn’t want you thinking I wasn’t a man.  That I wasn’t man enough for you, babe.”

I yanked my hand out of his and turned unsteadily away to continue on in the trajectory towards the back of the clubhouse, my mind a whirlpool of swirling thoughts that were more than fueled by the tequila.  Of the remembrance of all the fear I’d held each and every time he’d gotten on his bike.  And especially if he did so after he’d receive a middle-of-the-night phone call.

And the thought that I’d been duped, had been lied to on such a scale, pissed me right the fuck off!  How dare he? 

To make me think he had been… 

While he’d only been…

What a
fucking
rat bastard!

“You are such a
shit
!”  It was the only thing I could come up with to yell at that moment after his admission, which fell way short of exactly what I wanted to say but at least it wasn’t slurred.  I parted my lips to really let go in that tiny moment of lucidity, but Stan stepped in front of me and pressed two fingers gently against my mouth, his eyes dead-center on mine.

“I just confessed to being the club’s lackey, Dory, when I wanted you to think of me as your hero.  Please don’t fucking say something that’s gonna make me regret it.”  What I saw in his gaze, in his face, told me in no uncertain terms that he was talking honest and was more than sorry that he’d led me on.

I nodded slowly because I knew those feelings, could admit to doing the same, something I probably wouldn’t have copped to had I been sober.  But I wasn’t and was at that moment able to admit to knowing what it was like to create some kind of persona that was so far from the truth of the life you were leading.  Much like I’d hidden how I had been treated by the Honeys from him way back in the day.

And in hiding J.R. and his parentage from everyone but Joy.

“We good, then, babe?” 

I forced my chin up and down before he lowered his hand from my mouth only to slide it around my shoulders as he pulled me against him.  He let out a long, deep sigh as my forehead found its way to the area between his jaw and shoulder, a special place I’d always claimed as my own.  And which had always felt doubly good when I was well and truly drunk.

“C’mon, you need to see this,” he said after a time, what felt like a long calming moment.  Turning me but still keeping an arm around my shoulders as if he could tell I needed steadying, we continued along the edge of the building, turning at the corner and I saw a row of six doors that all faced the back of the lot.  “We took the space from where we had the pool tables and made rooms, each with their own bathroom here at the back.”

His arm dropped from around my waist and I leaned against the building, felt the hard prickle of stucco on my arm before I heard the snick of a padlock, the squeak of a door announcing it was open.  He pulled me in and kept his hand on my forearm as he shut the door in the dark before flipping a switch, turning on a small lamp that sat on top of a small desk.  Turning to me with a grin, he swept an arm around the tiny room and I found my eyes following it as it moved.

The room wasn’t big but contained a double-sized bed, bracketed by nightstands with the desk tucked underneath the one window.  I saw a doorway and from the bright smell emitting from it, I knew it was a bathroom.  It wasn’t fancy and I couldn’t imagine why Stan thought the area was important enough to show me in such detail.  I mean, I could’ve just stood weaving in the doorway to admire the way the Hellions had turned the space into a cozy room.

That was, until I recognized the furniture.

It was the bedroom suite Stan and I had searched for, decided on as we’d roamed the various furniture stores together.  Arguing for or against this or that.  Deciding we both liked maple and wanted something that had both a headboard and footboard for the bedstead, one that came with nightstands, a nine-drawer dresser and a desk.

I couldn’t help myself as I stumbled to the bed, my fingers automatically finding the scratches on the spindles of when we’d decided that the novelty handcuffs were for wimps and we’d sprung for the ‘official’ kind.  Dents in the wood that had been result of Stan laying me out spread-eagled and with a blindfold as he’d had his nasty way with me, so wonderfully delicious that the next door neighbors had banged on the wall at my very loud though thoroughly involuntary moans.

“I think they’ve probably changed out the mattress.” Stan said into the quiet, apropos of nothing since I hadn’t said a word.  “What with all the baby oil stains before we finally figured out how much to use, it was kind of…”

I shot my eyes to his as I clung to the footboard and in that exact moment, I saw the bad boy I had married.  Of a Stan that had been at the beginning of his adulthood even as my mind played with the various scenes, the various ways we’d used that bed.  How we both had laughed as we ascribed the nightly price to our installment loan and sometimes adding more money to the occasion based on how much we’d both enjoyed our bed-play of the day.

Or night.

And, oh dear god. 

Those nights.

Nights filled with heat and of others filled with such tenderness, such sweetness between us that I caught my breath at the clear, vivid memories of them.

Of Stan on top of me, my calves over his shoulders as he told me how much I turned him on, of how very much he loved being inside me.

Or with chest to mattress as he filled me from behind, his words, his very voice causing the fire he’d created between my legs to flare out of control.  ‘Damn, Dory.  Your pussy, that fucking tightness…’ he’d moan which was all I’d needed to send me over the edge in order to find my orgasm.

I’d been standing, swaying with my back to Stan, my ex-husband who I suspected still held in my heart, before I turned to look at him over my shoulder. 

“I donated this to the club after I did a re-do of my house, my grandparent’s place after they died.” His words were succinct and given without much emotion, but I knew how close he’d been to the people who’d raised him.  I’d only met his grandmother, though, since Dave, a Hellion known to the club as ‘Pops’, had passed long before I’d met Stan.  “But letting it go was hard, babe.”  His eyes, which I’d seen had been on the bed frame, moved to mine. 

I saw him swallow as our gazes caught and held.  “Do you ever think of it?  The time we spent together, of us breaking in the mattress and mentally giving our play a dollar value in order to pay off the loan?”

I quit touching the wood, trying to force my woozy head back into the present moment, staggering toward the desk with a thought to grabbing at its edge in order to hold my swaying self still. 

But he intercepted me, moving until he was just inches from where I stood, his large hands gentle on my waist.  “Do you, Dory?”

I kept my head down, avoided looking at him as I tried to take a step back and away.

But he wouldn’t let me.

Or maybe I wouldn’t let myself disconnect from him, from his touch.

So taking in a deep breath, I went into my backup mode, the snarky bitch I’d more than learned to be in our time apart.  “Wha’ would be da fuckin’ point, Schtan?”

Chapter Nineteen

Bishop let himself back into the little efficiency apartment, noting that J.R. had done just as he’d asked in packing up his stuff.  As soon as he’d gotten them both upstairs, Bishop had gone to the manager’s office and paid for another room, one right next door.  The fact that Dory hadn’t sprung for two but miserly rented only one for her and their boy to share was like a barb underneath his skin.  “Here’s the card-key to your new place.  Let’s get you moved, kiddo.”

J.R. turned to look at his mom who had been unceremoniously dumped in the middle of the queen bed and was currently face down, fully dressed, on the bedspread snoring lightly.  “Is she gonna be okay?”

“Yeah,” Bishop drawled, trying to make light of Dory’s drunkenness as he snagged a handle on one of J.R.’s bags.  “I’ll stick around though just to make sure.”

“I’ve never seen her like this,” the teenager mumbled as he also picked up a suitcase and carrier bag.  But the kid’s eyes even as he moved kept shifting back to his mother’s still form.

Bishop was a little surprised by the word ‘never’ since he and Dory had enjoyed a buzz often back in their early days, but he figured she must’ve played ‘Susie Upright Citizen’ after giving birth.  Which meant she was more than overdue in blowing off some steam.  “She’ll probably be hurting tomorrow so try and find something quiet to do until she wakes up, dig?”

“I couldn’t disconnect my game system without moving the TV,” J.R. advised over his shoulder as he opened the door and stepped out, glancing yet again to where Dory lay.

Bishop shrugged as he followed the young man outside and watched as the kid entered his new room, dropping his stuff on the table and chairs after turning on the lights.  “So we’ll get to it tomorrow after your mom wakes up.  I think you can fucking handle one night without it.”

Placing the bag he’d carried next to the others, Bishop’s eyes followed the boy as he walked through the small space, checking out every room before coming back and using a toe-heel motion to remove his kicks.  “Keep the fucking door double locked, J.R., and use that peep-hole thing before you open it to anyone.  And I
do
mean fucking anyone, yeah?”

The kid stilled and Bishop watched as his sharp jaw tensed and his skinny shoulders straightened.  “I know the drill.”

“Good,” Bishop replied firmly, keeping his face serious.  “But there’s a big fucking diff between knowing and doing.  And I expect you to
do
, dude.”

“Sheesh!  I’m not seven, Bishop!”  Christ, if that was the kind of attitude parents of all young teens got slapped with, Bishop was kind of glad he’d not been around!  “I can handle myself.”

Allowing the boy both his play and attitude, Bishop bit back his retort and simply advised, “just keep the fucking door locked, all right?”  But it was said on a sigh, one Bishop was sure had been given by every parent since the beginning of time.  “Sleep sweet, little man.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”

J.R.’s face went pale and his eyes got round.  “How’d you know about that?”

With a hand on the doorknob, Bishop stopped both at the view and at his son’s words.  “About what?”

The kid swallowed deep.  “It’s what my mom always says, you know, before I go to bed.  Something she’s
always
said.  The stuff about sleeping sweet.”

Yeah, Bishop could believe it because it was something they’d always exchanged every night they’d been together.  But rather than get into that or how the remembrance affected him, Bishop just shrugged before letting himself out of the room, waiting outside of the closed door until he heard the double snick as J.R. shot both locks.

He went back into Dory’s room, idly noticing she was no longer in the bed but he could hear her retching in the bathroom, its door partially open.  Heaving another sigh, he sat on the edge of the mattress and removed his boots before standing and taking off his cut, his t-shirt even as one part of him listened to the noises coming from where Dory was.

It was when he was undoing his belt buckle, the clinking of the metal loud in the quiet when he heard her flush the toilet and he walked barefoot and bare-chested to the doorway of the tiny room.  She was still bent over the bowl, hanging onto its sides with a white-knuckled grip, her head turned away towards the tub. 

“Mama’s shorry, baby.  I mushta ate shomethang b-bad,” and the slurred whisper she used echoed in the small space.  “Jush go ta behd.  Ah’ll be all raight in a fe-few.”

Christ!  Dory wasn’t just a little drunk, the woman was fucking
trashed
!   And both the thought and the view of his beautiful ex-wife well and truly snockered found Bishop biting the his lips to keep from laughing out loud.  Although his mind supplied a lot of fucking one-liners with which to tease her about her condition, Bishop kept his peace and just reached for one of the clean washcloths, wetting it with cold water. 

“Okay, babe,” he crooned softly as he took a knee beside her on the floor.  “C’mere.  Let’s clean you up a little before we get you back in bed.”

She lifted her face from the toilet seat but kept her eyes closed as he ran the cloth over her face, paying particular attention to her amazingly lush mouth.  He stood and rinsed the square bit of fabric out before kneeling again to drape it over the back of her neck.  “You wanna brush your teeth, mama?  Get that fucking yucky taste out?”

Dory nodded but it was slow as if the movement caused her pain although Bishop suspected it had more to do with her queasy stomach than her head.  In his mind, she was still too drunk to even be aware of the headache that he knew would be coming.