Checkmate With Bishop: A Hellions MC Novel (6 page)

Restacking the photos in time-sequence order, I went back through them again and again.

Yeah.

I wasn’t mistaken. 

I
had
been that young.

I
had
been that in love.

And I had been loved that
much
in return.

At the bottom of the box was a copy of our marriage certificate as well as a copy of our divorce papers.  The beginning and the end of our time together but which didn’t even come close to describing the life we’d shared in between the two dates.

Of the laughter or the arguments.

Not even of the dark, dark nights where our bodies had taken over trying to communicate to each other when the words hadn’t been enough to express what we felt.  Communing in secret, sexy ways that left us both boneless, more than satisfied but still reaching to touch, to be connected over and over again.  Sleepless nights that had somehow found us recharged and raring to attack the coming day.

Couplings so erotic, I found my body, even thirteen years later, responding to the memory.  A tightening and moistening as I remembered his touch, his words, the feel of him as he moved within me.

‘That’s it, babe.  Yeah.  Like that.  Give me that fucking beauty,’ he’d growl into my ear and I would go up in flames knowing I was pleasing him.  ‘So fucking tight, Dory,’ he’d murmur almost on a groan. ‘And so goddamn wet.  Did I make you that way?’

I found myself panting and when I looked down, I found one of my hands was stroking a firm, sharp nipple as the other was tracing my sodden cleft through my sleep shorts.  All because of the memory of
him
.  All at the thought of having him inside me, slewing deep between my legs as I clutched him to me with both hands and thighs. 

And I could tell I was close to orgasm at just the thought, the imagining and the sheer
remembrance
of having sex with Stan.

Perhaps I should’ve just gone with it, allowed myself that one small piece of joyful memory to overtake and appease the need inside.  To give myself permission, one last time, to remember and come with the abandon Stan always, but
always
provided.

But I didn’t.

No, instead I reluctantly removed my hands from my body and reached for my small purse on the nightstand to pull out my cell phone.

And to call the number that was stored in its history.

Chapter Five

“’Lo…” he mumbled, valiantly trying to remember where he was, much less why he had his cell pressed to his ear as his mouth moved without his knowledge.

“Stan?  It’s Dory.”

He rolled to his side, his braid tangled between the sheets and his back as he tried to wake up but the combo of the Percocet and weed still held him in its grips.  It had been a hard night.

“Hey, babe.”  Bishop knew his voice was in the deeper registers and that his mouth wasn’t fully working by the slurring of his words.  “What’s up?”

“You wanted to talk?”

Yeah, he did. 

Or he had.

If only he could remember why.

“Uh-huh.”  Was that the best he could do?  He levered himself up onto his elbows, clutching the covers over his chest as he moved.  God!  Why’d he have to get so fucked up just to sleep?  “Erm…how you doing, babe?”

There was silence down the line but not so much that he couldn’t hear her breathing.  And as always with Dory, her breath told a story.  It was deep, almost a pant through their connection.  So she was really relaxed, totally turned on or was drunk.

“I’m good but a bit confused about what we, at this point, need to discuss.”

So was he.  There had been a reason he’d felt the need to call her but damn if he could remember it in the depths of his high. So his mouth went a different direction.  Spoke of something he’d thought, but had quickly discarded as an impossible dream. “I need to see you.  Don’t care if I have to go to Casper or if you come here but I need to…”

There was a gasp that was almost too soft to hear, but even in the miasma of pills and smoke Bishop heard it loud and clear.  “I need to see you, Dory.”

“Why, Stan?” her satin voice asked, its tone slithering over his skin.  Dory had always been his weakness, her innocence belying her sexiness and it obviously hadn’t lost its appeal to him.  Not if the rod that was tenting his bed covering was any indication. 

As if in fascination at the hard-on he was sporting, his hand moved down in a firm caress over the sheet draped on his fulsome flesh.  “We’ve got things to talk about.”

“What things?”  Why did her voice sound breathily sexy instead of suspicious and snarky? 

He shook his head, wanting, no
needing
the cobwebs to disappear as he talked to her.  She’d finally responded to him and yet he couldn’t put two sentences together in order to speak.  “It’s been a long time, babe.  Time enough for me to say sorry.”

“Stop calling me ‘babe’, Stan.”

He closed his eyes at the sound of his name, his real name on her lips.  God.  He remembered watching her say it, moan it as she hit it because of all the things he’d done to her and the iron rod beneath his fist flexed.

“And we can say sorry over the phone.”  But Dory’s voice, that goddamn sexy breathiness, gave her away again.  Christ.  If she’d been in front of him, he could’ve read her like a book even after all the years they’d been apart.

“Not my way, Dory, and you fucking know it,” he countered sliding his hand underneath the sheet to touch himself skin-on-skin. 

There was a huff, a deep pant that came through the line loud and clear.  He wondered if she was even aware of it since he knew she liked to deny how turned on she was until the very last second, the very last moment before she’d be flying off the edge of the universe as she came.  Shivering and holding her shrieks back between teeth-covered lips as her body took flight.

Was she touching herself as they talked in almost monosyllables?

“I want to talk face-to-face, babe.”  His grip on his length was firm and stroking in long movements.  It felt like he hadn’t had sex in forever and if his dick wanted to play at just the sound of her voice, he was more than up for it!  “I need to see you, Dory.”

“About what, Stan?”  God.  That voice, the way she moved her mouth around her words was so close to the way she’d moved her mouth around his cock!

“Endings, babe,” he wheezed, feeling his balls as they drew up sharply against him.  He was going to come.  Come so hard with only hearing her speak and the remembrance having her beneath him.  “We never said goodbye.”

“Yeah, we did,” she argued, but then Dory was great at debating a point if she felt she was right.  “You opened my car door and I kissed you before I left.”

“That wasn’t a goodbye, babe.  Not between us.”

There was no talking but Bishop could hear a movement in the background as Dory’s breathing sped up.  The bitch
was
rubbing one out with him on the phone!  He knew it!

“That’s it, Dory.  Find it, girl,” he growled, his own fist increasing its pace, spending more time on the sensitive crest of the head of his cock as he stroked.  “Touch it like I used to.”

“Oh…oh, god,” she moaned softly.  “Stan, please…”

“Yeah, babe,” Bishop groaned, and felt the charge begin in the base of his cock.  “Rub it, Dory.  Pretend it’s my fingers, my tongue making you feel that way.”  He couldn’t believe he was masturbating to nothing but his ex-wife’s voice in the middle of the night after being apart for so long.  But if that what it was gonna take to get him off, there was no way he was gonna shut it down!

“God, Stttaaannn…”

And that was all it took for him to find his own bliss.  The sound of her coming, softly moaning his name provided the impetus for his own jets to spew forth, covering his belly and chest in the evidence of his fervent desire.  His redheaded beauty could always help him find it, whether it was with her hands, her mouth or her sweet pussy.  But in that moment, just through an electronic connection was all that he could mumble, the only word his mouth used was a simple strained, but heartfelt, “Dory.”

He could hear his own breaths through the phone, only his own sounds as his body released but there, just in the background, he’d recognized her mumbles although the words seemed garbled as if the phone was muffled by something.  But it was the “holy shit, Stan,” a phrase she’d always used afterwards that had his cock staying in the upright position. 

One that had always signified the pleasure he’d given her.

Bishop waited until the sounds of the phone spoke of it being next to her ear.

“We need to say good-bye, babe.  In person.”

There was a pause before he heard her sigh. “You told me if I left, I was dead to you.”

What the fuck? 

Had he really
said
that? 

Had he seriously spewed that kind of shit at her?  Words that had not only been untrue but were far from what he’d actually wanted in that moment?

“So which is it, Stan?  Am I dead or not?”

His forehead creased as he tried to remember the words he’d spoken on that fateful day.  The day she’d left him but his mind was too muddled.  “We need to say good-bye, babe.  In person.”

There was another lengthy bit of silence before she huffed out a breath, the sound making him think she’d been holding it.  “Yeah.  Okay.  Maybe it’s time.”

“Too right, babe.”

“I’ll come to you though, all right?”

He thought for a moment.  Actually, her coming to him would be better because for him to travel would take its toll on his already depleted body.  “That’d be great, Dory.  Appreciate it.”

“Give me a few days to arrange things and then we’ll get to you.”

He felt his forehead crease at the inclusion of the ‘we’ll’.  “Erm…okay.  Will you be flying or doing things by car?”

There was yet another pause that made his heart stutter.  “By car, Stan.  Have you ever known me to travel by any other method?”

He couldn’t help it.  The words just jumped from his heart out beyond his lips.  “Yeah, babe.  There was a time when you only traveled by motorcycle.”

There were a couple of beats of silence.  Time enough for him to rue bringing the subject up.

“That was a long time ago, honey,” she shot back softly.

And Bishop couldn’t disagree.  Though the wings his heart sprouted at her ‘honey’ had him soaring.

*.*.*.*.*

Why?

Why had I called him when I was at my most vulnerable?  After viewing the evidence, the goddamn photos that reminded me of what we’d had together.  Of what was still between us after so many years apart.

And why had we’d done…that? 

I held no allusions as to what had happened on the phone.  That we had phone sex to the point of making one another come.  And, it must be said, had made each of us orgasm as hard as we used to.  Stan had always known how to not only get my motor running but had never missed a beat in bringing me to completion.  Something that our time away from one another had taught me was not a guarantee.

With Brian it had been hit or miss.

Chet was a no-go as his touch was too soft, his movements too slow to find me hitting it.  And the fact that he liked his sex silent?  Yeah, that didn’t work for me.

And for the fiftieth time that evening I wondered what I’d ever seen in Chet.  Or Brian for that matter other than they were ‘nice guys’.  But I hadn’t realized that I’d find that particular category of men so boring, uninteresting and not able to hold my attention. 

There was no way they could.

Not after Stan.

And the last fifteen minutes had proven it.  Where even just the sound of Stan’s voice, his encouragement was so freaking thrilling that I’d hit it harder than I had in years!  Why?  What was it about him that had my body responding as if he’d been there with me, nudging my thighs apart with his knees as he aimed himself at my core?

Swear to god, hand on heart…if he’d been in the same room with me, there definitely would’ve been a round two.  Or four.  He really was that sexy, that kind of sex-on-a-stick for me.

Always had been.

Maybe always would be.

Was that why I agreed to meet him face-to-face?  Insisting that I would go back to Montana to meet with him?

Carefully placing all the paperwork and pictures back into the box, I plugged in my phone and turned off the light while my mind churned.

So I was going back to Montana.

Maybe because I could clear out the storage locker and save the $1,200 expenditure each year.  It had seemed like a good idea at the time, a place to store the stuff from my mom’s house after she’d died.  But I could barely even remember what the unit contained, of what I’d packed up when I’d sold her home.  Obviously, I’d considered it important enough at the time if I continued to pay to have it stored for so many years.

Perhaps then I could make good at putting my ex-husband and our failed marriage behind me. 

Or to tell my son of his father by way of introduction, allowing both of them the avenue to discover one another.  Maybe giving them the opportunity to have some kind of relationship.

The snort that came out of my mouth and into my pillow was one I knew was one of derision.

Yeah.

Because if wishes were horses, then peasants like me would ride. 

*.*.*.*.*

Bishop stared at the phone, almost bereft at the loss of contact with her.

With his Dory.

His former wife and the kernel of the ‘them’ that still took up so much room in his heart.

It would be a lie to say she still didn’t matter to him, that she still didn’t have the sway to bring him to his knees.  In spite of the life he’d lived after she’d quit him.

A quitting that had left him hurting at such a deep level that even the Honeys had noticed and commented on it as he’d made the rotations through the single women of the club.  He had to admit that his cock had been happy with the variety, but his heart had never been satisfied. 

The truth of it was, he ached for his wife.

That he missed being with Dory, the girl he’d loved since he was seventeen and had still been a recruit with the Hellions.  The girl that he’d seen in a hallway at Missoula High, her long red hair a beacon in the shadowed corridor holding their lockers.