Checkmate With Bishop: A Hellions MC Novel (7 page)

The fact that she’d been only a sophomore to his senior was a bonus.  Untried, unschooled and unlike the other girls that threw themselves on a guy who sported the Hellion recruit patch was a turn-on.  Because it meant that she was just for him.

Would unfurl at
his
touch, at
his
urging.

And she had.

Bishop had played it slow with Dory, working all the magic he’d learned with the Honeys, practicing on the slutty classmates that more than fucking liked bad boys until he’d convinced her to like the feel of him.  Of his hands on her beautiful breasts, almost making her peak as he stroked and then mouthed her comely nipples.

But it had been when he’d finally,
finally
put a hand between her legs, feeling the heat of her pussy through her jeans, he’d realized that she was truly his. 

His in the way she’d sighed his name as he’d stroked the denim over the flesh he so wanted to sink himself into. 

His in the way she’d shiver before doing a hip thrust against his fingers.  At the wetness he felt through the thick fabric, knowing it was because of his actions.

And his in the way she’d sighed as he first eased himself into her after peeling her out of those jeans.  So tight, so wet as he’d fingered her before aligning the head of his cock in the pink depths he’d been dreaming about for weeks.

The dream being so much less than the reality.

It hadn’t been just a coupling.  Not with Dory.  He hadn’t been out to just get his but had made it a point to ensure she found her heaven in their joining.  Bishop remembered how his fingers had played, skimming then circling her bud of pleasure, rubbing her until she had been almost mindless.  And just as she’d walked the cusp of it, just as her thighs had started to quiver, he’d eased the head of himself into her sopping chasm.  “It might hurt, Dory,” he’d warned.  “You know, when I put myself inside the first time.”

‘I don’t care, Stan.  God.  I don’t care.  I just need…
need
…’ she’d groaned.  And he’d known exactly what she meant because he’d had to have her too.  Was driven to assuage himself within her, to join in the way that men and women had been coming together since time immortal.  And as he’d sunk his hard, firm member inside her it was like…was like…coming home.  Only to a home he’d never experienced.

One of total acceptance of him just as he was.

Of her filling every sense he knew he had.

Of a completion.

Bishop stroked his renewed hard-on, still clutching his then dark-screened phone.

He’d missed her, missed everything about her and had been devastated when she’d pulled up stakes and cut him loose.  Something he’d never even seen coming, although he’d known she’d been unhappy.

Unhappy with the amount of time that had been required in fulfilling his Hellion duties as a recruit.

Dismayed at his insistence that she become a part of the Honeys.

Hating the way the club had taken over their lives even though he’d warned her that it would happen.

Bishop felt his dick’s firmness decrease at the memory of Dory’s eyes, the expression her face had held as he’d explained why he needed to ride out again in the middle of the night.  ‘It’s club’s business, babe,’ he’d told her, but in retrospect he heard the finality of his words.  Ones that were said so firmly, that allowed no further discussion.  Words he then wished he’d delivered better.  Because he knew both from her expression and from the way the memory of them made him flinch, were the wrong words to say.

‘When will you be back?’ she’d always asked on a quiet question, deadpanned with no expression on her face.

‘When I get home, I guess,’ he’d reply, trying to harden his heart against the accusation that was never offered by her in either word or tone, but had been very apparent in her eyes.

And his heart remembered the rest.  The way she’d lay back down on the bed, her back toward him as she’d murmur, ‘be safe, honey.  And come home to me, okay?’

Now he recognized what that must have cost her.  Cost his girl as she watched him leave her side never knowing if her man would come back. 

But he hadn’t seen it then.

Hadn’t recognized that every time he left her, she counted it as a goodbye of the long variety.

As in the totally gone arena.

That was until she piled herself, all her mis-matched suitcases and duffle-bags into her tiny Corolla the morning after one of their last and most devastating fights.

The one where he hadn’t recognized that his words of, ‘if you think that your pussy is better than any other Honeys…’ was the clincher in severing his marriage.

Christ almighty!

How could he have been so completely and totally fucking stupid? 

Been so callused in hurting the one girl that had ruled his world?

But she’d shown him.  Shown him in no uncertain terms when he’d arrived home that next day to find her leaning against her Corolla.

 ‘I’m leaving,’ she’d announced with no expression on her beautiful face and an unfocused gaze.  ‘You were right.  The Hellions will either make or break you.  Well, they’ve broken me, Stan.’  She’d focused in on his eyes before continuing with a gaze that had shrunk his balls to the size of pebbles.  “I’m done.”

‘Err…’ he’d started, but she’d cut him off in his stutter.

Casting her eyes over the street that they’d lived on, she again brought her green eyes to his.  ‘This isn’t me.  It isn’t what I wanted nor what we talked about having.  I love you and all, but I gotta go.’

He’d tried to work it, attempted to put the fear of god into her by issuing some half-assed ultimatum, which according to her was when he’d told her to consider herself dead to him.  He still wasn’t sure about that but he knew his words hadn’t had made one motherfucking, goddamned bit of difference. 

Not to her leaving. 

Not even to her expression as she’d stared at him. 

Taking the two steps to meet him on the sidewalk, Dory had grabbed his t-shirt on either side.  ‘I’ll always love you, Stan.  You are my heart.  But this just isn’t my life.’  And after kissing him in the sweetest kiss she’d ever delivered, Dory had turned and went to the driver’s door of the car.  ‘Take care, honey.’

And before he could even rally, before he could even react, Dory was gone.

He’d been served the divorce papers less than two weeks after she’d left.

For Stan, life as he’d known it, had joyously planned it out, was over.

It was at that moment Bishop, the smart-mouthed, devil-may-care fully developed man made his way into the world to replace the smart-assed youth.  A fully grown man who carried only pieces of his heart.

Receiving those papers so soon after she left, he decided in his thirty-eighth year, had been the motherfucking worst day of his entire, miserably short life.

Chapter Six

I pushed open the screen door with my foot, carefully balancing two glasses of ice tea as I went out to the front porch.  J.R. was pushing the lawn mower as he did every Sunday morning in the summer, studiously strafing the machine in straight overlapping lines.  The ice clinked as I set the tumblers down on a side table before the smell of grass hit my nose.  It was an aroma I loved, the smell of freshly cut greening reminding me of girlhood summers, of indolent days where my biggest problems were in deciding what to do and who to do it with.

The motor cut off and I turned just as J.R. cleared the stairs, swiping at the wet hair on his forehead.  “Thanks, Mom,” he offered before dropping into one of the chairs that dotted our wide porch.  I caught a whiff of male sweat and turned my head to hide my smile. 
He’s growing up so fast
, I found myself thinking. 
Too, too fast
.  But I kept my thoughts to myself, knowing he wouldn’t appreciate my sentiment.  J.R. had let me know on many occasions that he was impatient to grow up.

“Thought you could use a break.”  I took the chair on the other side and promptly propped my heels on the railing.  And in the ensuing silence, my mind went back to the arguments that had plagued me from the moment I’d opened my eyes.

Of why I’d told Stan we’d come to Montana. 

In all truth, I had no need to hear him apologize or to even say goodbye.  If he truly needed to accomplish those things, we could do it over the phone without any required face-to-face meeting.  In fact, in my opinion, it was a bullshit excuse and was a cover for something else even if he wouldn’t admit to it.

But I wanted J.R. to see where I grew up, to share the stories and the scenery of when I was a girl.  I also needed to go through the storage locker and finally resolve it.

And maybe, just
maybe
, introduce my boy to the man who’d help create him.

I opened my mouth to tell J.R. about the trip I had alternately been planning and deciding against.  But none of those types of sentences came out.  “You never ask about your dad anymore.”  I think I shocked him as much as I did myself with the statement because the look his face held when I finally turned my head to glance at him was just shy of stunned.

“You’d get upset when I did,” he muttered over the rim of his glass, his hazel eyes dead on mine.  “Upset or sad.  So I just stopped.”  The accompanying shrug seemed to indicate his lack of interest in the subject.

I thought I’d done a pretty good job at sidestepping his questions, giving short answers but in hindsight I could understand how J.R. had read my responses differently.  And it was true that his inquiries had unsettled me whenever he’d broached the subject of his father.

“After a while, I just thought it was stupid to keep asking when you wouldn’t answer or anything,” he continued, setting his glass to the side as he stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankles before anchoring his hands behind his head.  “Besides, with him dead and all…”

I felt my heart stop and my eyes widen at his summation.  “I never said your father was dead, J.R.”

He frowned and shifted his butt in the chair.  “Sure you did.  You told me…”

“That he was gone and wasn’t a part of our lives.”  Dear god!  All this time, I thought I’d explained it well without going into detail and my poor kid thought his father was dead and buried?  How old had he been the last time he’d brought the subject up?  Six?  No, seven.  The same year he’d fallen out of the Bailey’s tree house and broken his arm. 

“He’s alive?”  My boy’s question wasn’t as shocking as the tone he used to ask it, marked as it was by disbelief and a sharp note of betrayal.  “Are you trying to say that my dad is alive?”

I swallowed deeply and turned away, unable to deal with the look in his eyes.  “Yes, J.R.  Your father is alive and lives in Montana.”

The tension between us was almost an invisible but physical wall that seemed to thicken with every second that passed.

“Montana?  But that’s just up the freeway!”  I could tell he was struggling and it made my heart hurt to think that I’d caused it just by trying to avoid a subject that still hurt in the deepest places inside.  “So he’s close but never tried to see me?  To get to know me?”

“He…ah.”  Damn!  I didn’t know how to explain, to justify my decision of not exposing my past to my son.  To tell him that his father was a biker, a Hellion because then I’d have to tell of myself as a Hellion Honey and of the lifestyle that went along with being in a motorcycle club. 

My mind was racing on how much to say and what to keep hidden.

“Jesus!”  I’d been so lost in my own thoughts, in scheming of a way to talk about it without giving J.R. too much info, I’d not seen him jump to his feet.  “He didn’t
want
me!  That’s
it
, isn’t it?”

“He…erm.”  Shit!  The devastation on J.R.’s face broke my heart, and the fact that I couldn’t squeeze the words out to tell him Stan didn’t know of his existence was almost too much to handle.

Fists clenched and muscles strung so tight in distress gave a good indication to what J.R. was feeling.  Emotions that I didn’t know how to deal with because any explanation from me would only add to it. 

“Jesus!” he said again although this time it was said almost on a yell.  “You freaking
lied
to me, Mom.”

“No, I didn’t.  You just assumed…”

J.R.’s palms came up to press against his eyes and with the movement, I saw the twin blotches of red stain his cheeks, coat the outside edge of his ears.  “Yes, you
did
.”  His voice was cracking, sounding broken as he corrected me.  “All my life, you told me that
we
don’t lie to each other.  But you’ve been lying to me for
years
!”

“I didn’t lie, J.R.,” I yelled back, levering myself out of my seat, intent on taking my hurt child in my arms to give him comfort as I always had.  But he was having none of it and let me know by stepping back away from me.  I tried again on a softer note.  “I didn’t lie, baby.  I just didn’t think that it was important.”

He dropped his hands and I watched the tears as they overflowed to run down his cheeks.  “Not important?”  J.R.’s eyes stabbed at mine in confusion and outright pain.  “That knowing my father was alive wasn’t
important
?”

I didn’t respond, couldn’t when all was said and done.  Not in a way that wouldn’t cast me as the bad guy in the whole of it.   “We’ve done okay, haven’t we?  I mean, you had a good childhood in spite of not having your dad involved, right?”

“You don’t freaking get it, Mom,” J.R. intoned, his voice almost weary as he turned his face away.

But that wasn’t true.  I understood even if I didn’t want to.  I just didn’t have the words to talk it through.

He was halfway down the stairs before I found my voice.  “Where are you going?” I asked when he didn’t go back to where the lawnmower sat but aimed towards the side of the house.

“Out!” he yelled over his shoulder, every line in his stance an accusation aimed my direction.  “I don’t know when I’ll be home.  I just can’t stand to be around you at the moment.”

I watched as he appeared in the driveway on his bike and took off down the street, my movements held in place by the raw emotions the last few minutes had exposed.   Ones of panic and of a guilt that ran muscle deep.  As well as fear.   Fear that my time with the Hellions as one of the Honeys would be exposed to my little boy.