Survivor's Remorse: Brothers of Ink and Steel (16 page)

“Mmmm…” she purred. “This is nice. Thank you.” They were quiet for a time. “I’m glad you are staying,” Jamie murmured before pulling one of his hands to her lips.

“I hope it’s not a mistake. Death seems to follow me everywhere I go… touches anyone that I care about.”

“Shhh…” she whispered. “That’s not true, and you know it.”

“It seems to be.”

She turned in his arms to face him. “Let’s not talk about death anymore tonight. I’m alive and you’re alive…” She again touched his face with a gossamer touch, a gesture he was becoming very fond of.

He covered her hand with his own and brought it to his lips. “No. Let’s not,” he said as he allowed her hand to fall from his lips.

“What?” she asked as she looked into his eyes.

“I need you, Jamie. You help keep the darkness away.”

Jamie’s blood surged as her heart thudded in her chest. She smiled softly, his words touching her. “I’m glad.” She pulled his lips slowly to hers and they met in a slow kiss. When they separated she looked into his face. “I want you,” she mouthed silently.

He read her lips and felt a rush of warmth flow through him. He wanted her, too, but all of her, not just her body. He wanted her at his side so he could bask in the radiance of her presence, the bright light of her kindness and understanding illuminating all the dark recesses of his soul. “I want you,” he mouthed in return before taking her in another gentle kiss.

As the kiss deepened, she slowly rolled to her back, holding him in the kiss as she moved. He moved with her, his passions flaring to life as the kiss continued to deepen, their tongues slowly intertwining, relaxing, then intertwining again.

He pulled back from the kiss and stared into her eyes, his face intense and… something… something she couldn’t put her finger on. She touched his lips with a finger for the pleasure of touching them as she watched his face soften, then become hard and determined, before softening into a smile as he lowered his lips to hers in the most erotic kiss imaginable.

As she touched his lips, he felt an all-consuming anger take him. Death may follow him, but he would fight death itself for this woman. He would
earn
the trust she had placed in him; he
would
protect her from harm and defend her to his dying breath. He would become her knight and protector, her…
paladin
. As he looked into her eyes he could feel the darkness in his soul begin to wither and die in the light of her presence as he took her lips again.

She pulled his head to her neck with a gasp; the intensity of the kiss had taken her breath. With his smile, he had come alive, energized and vibrant like she had never seen him before. He moved over her, positioning himself between her legs while his lips teased her neck. She pulled her legs up and prepared to accept him, but he made no move to enter her.

His world had focused down to this single moment, this tick in time. He was consumed with the need to prove to himself, and to her, that he was there for her, and that he would never waiver or surrender. “I’m here for you, Jamie. I’m here for you. You can depend on me,” he murmured as he kissed the skin of her neck then chest, then breast. He took one hard nipple into his mouth and worked it over thoroughly with his tongue. “I will never let you down.”

“Oh, god…” she gasped as he began to exude a power and confidence that flowed over her like a blanket. He began kissing down her body, each touch of his lips and tongue a sharp flair of pleasure as his breath became hard and ragged.

Leo slid off the end of the bed, bending at the waist so that his chest was lying between Jamie’s legs as he began to kiss and touch her most intimate area. Jamie began to move and gasp as he gently flicked her with his tongue and pulled with his lips. As he slowly worked her toward her release, he began to press, his tongue darting faster and harder as he used it to stroke her button.

Jamie could feel her orgasm bearing down on her. She has had lovers please her with their mouths before, but never with the skill that Leo had. She had thought the power of the orgasm in her office was cranked up to eleven because of the trauma of the evening, but he was doing it to her again. With a long drawn out moan, her orgasm took her as her back arched in erotic agony.

He pressed in harder still as she began to moan – the most erotic sound he had ever heard. As she began to shake, he slid his finger into her and touched her most sensitive place as he teased it with deft, sure motions. Her moan deepened as stroked her, his fingers, tongue, and lips working together to draw out and maximize her pleasure.

“Shit! Fuck! Stop! Stop! Fuck!” she panted as she pushed frantically at his head. She couldn’t stand it anymore. Despite her begging, he continued to punish her before he suddenly pulled back and his lips were on hers. She lunged at the kiss, pulling him down onto her as she thrust her hips, desperate to feel him inside. “Take me… take me… please take me! Please… please take me,” she begged.

Then he touched her. He stopped her begging by adjusting his position and taking her lips anew. As she squirmed and bucked, he began to fondle her pussy, stroking along her length, before he gently pinched and kneaded her clit. She tried to pull back from the kiss but he held her firmly, their tongues jousting in an erotic duel.

Jamie was powerless to stop her thrusting hips as he tenderly played with her pussy, his fingers busy stroking, touching, pinching and pulling as he devoured her lips. Another orgasm, as powerful as her first, collapsed on her, burying her under pleasures she could barely stand. With a hard shudder that shook her to her core, she groaned into the kiss as her orgasm burned through her like a wildfire.

“Wait… wait… I need a moment,” she gasped as her release washed out of her, leaving her adrift in the backwaters of her pleasure. She relaxed and pushed her hair out of her eyes as she puffed and blew, trying to gain some semblance of control.
I don’t know if I have ever come any harder, but I am damn sure I have never come that hard twice in a row, or so close together.

Leo kissed about her face with soft, fleeting, touches of his lips, delighting in Jamie’s state of affairs. He had almost forgotten what it was like to delight in the pleasures of a woman, to enjoy her for more than physical gratification.

As he leaned in and took her lips, she rose and pushed at him to turn him to his back. “My turn,” she said as she began kissing down his body.

He had positively devastated her, but she wasn’t ready to concede to him just yet. This was the first time she had a chance to pleasure him… and she intended to make it something he would remember. She slowly crawled down his body, careful to avoid sore spots, her lips and tongue busy. She teased him, holding his balls in her hand, as she worked ever lower, making loud sucking noises to remind him what waited.

As she neared his cock, Leo’s breathing began to speed up in anticipation of the pleasures to come. She smiled as she took him, kissing the head of his cock with feather light kisses, as if she could enjoy nothing more. She licked him down the outside, her tongue wrapping it in a loving embrace. With a deep sigh, he closed his eyes.

She watched him close his eyes as he began to pant, his hands on her head, light as feathers, holding her but not trying to force himself into her mouth. Deftly, and without warning, she plunged him deep into her mouth. He wasn’t so big that she couldn’t take him all, and she slowly worked down him the last little bit, his groan sending a tingle through her, before she backed off to catch her breath.

“Fuck…” he breathed as she took him again, forcing herself down and holding herself there before backing off once more.

She continued to torment him, as he had done her, his groans growing harder, louder, and more frequent.

“You’re going to make me come,” he finally gasped.

“Don’t fight it. I want you to come. Come for me now and then make love to me all night,” she cooed before plunging him into her mouth once more, pinching her lips tight and bobbing her head.

“I’m going to come,” he grunted as she bobbed her head, giving her warning in case she didn’t want him to come in her mouth. She removed him from her mouth and stroked his saliva-slickened cock a moment. With a barking grunt he came with three energetic spurts of semen as she slowed her stroking, using his own ejaculate as a lubricant to milk him dry.

“Please stop,” he gasped as she continued to torture him in the most pleasant way possible.

“Mmmm,” she purred as she kissed him fully on the lips. “I love it when a man begs,” she whispered as their lips parted.

He released a long exhalation. “That was… intense.”

“Good,” she murmured as she rolled to her back, tugging at him to follow.

Leo followed Jamie’s turn, moving to take her. He entered her, his sigh of pleasure and contentment mixing with as Jamie’s own. As he began to move, they luxuriated in their giving and receiving of pleasure, not speaking, their quiet gasps, tender touches and soft kisses saying all that needed to be said.

As he settled lightly on her she wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight as he moved within her, setting her nerves alight with pleasure. His lips found a special spot on her neck that made her gasp as she thrilled in their joining. Never had it been like this… the pleasure running deep and rich, warming her soul as well as her body.

He moaned softly into Jamie’s neck as he plunged into her depths in a steady comfortable rhythm. Feelings, emotions he thought long extinguished, began to sprout forth from the darkness of his soul, brought to life by Jamie’s light, her kindness and support a beacon in the darkness showing him the way. He began to thrust harder as they gasped and whimpered in pleasure, the touch of her skin pouring energy into him, charging him like a battery. With a flare like an igniting sun, he felt his soul begin to glow with a light and power that banished the darkness. With another cry of pleasure, he began to thrust harder still, pulling Jamie tight to him, holding to her like the lifeline she was.

She couldn’t explain it, but Leo was changing even as they made love. His thrusts became more purposeful… but there was more still. It was as if some great weight was being lifted from him and he was no longer bent and twisted under the burden. As he softly cried out, he began to drive into her harder, then harder still, his passion fueling her own. She held to him as her muscles twisted in pleasure. With a cry of her own, she crashed into her orgasm. The release didn’t have the mind-twisting power of her first climaxes, but it flowed through her, warming her like the summer sun.

With another small cry of pleasure, Leo could feel his orgasm begin to take him. He held her tight, needing to feel her closeness, knowing in his very core that so long as she was with him, the darkness couldn’t take him. With a final cry, he came, driving into her with a final firm thrust as he spilled his essence into her. Then he was still, breathing hard from his release and his exertions as he kissed along her neck before taking her lips. 

Panting from her own release, Jamie steered Leo’s head to her neck, still holding him tight, sensing, at some level, that what he needed was her touch, her closeness. As their breathing slowed, they lay wrapped into each other’s arms, touching and kissing, long into the night.

EPILOGUE

Three days later, Leo drove out to the remains of the clubhouse. His bike was at
least
another week in the shop for repairs.

The first order of business was to replace Tuck and Two-Tone on the board. Nominations were made, seconded, and the strictly formal vote was taken.

Once the board was back to strength, the entire club discussed the cartel problem. Everyone was thirsting for revenge for what happened to Tuck and Two-Tone, but Leo was, once again, urging caution. Despite his desire to flay the flesh from the bones of every cartel member he could find, he knew their first responsibility was to the town of Vallecito de Grande.

“I’m surprised you are not the first one in line to deal a little payback,” Ron sneered when Leo finished speaking.

“It’s not about payback, Ron. It’s about doing this smart. We can’t possibly hope to match the cartel in a straight on assault. We have to this guerrilla style, and we have to protect the town while we do it. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Jesus Christ, Leo. If we hit the cartel hard enough, we won’t have to worry about Vallecito. We’ll bloody their nose so much they won’t want to tangle with Lima 6 again.”

“That is exactly the wrong thing to do! It just leads to escalation – an escalation we can’t match. We need to perform surgical strikes against select targets. And in order to do that, we need intel.”

“What do you propose, Leo?” Fitz asked.

“I propose we pull back. We don’t retaliate. We pull Carlos out and pump him for information. We promised him that. Find out everything we can about their operation. Then we do some reconnoitering… try to figure out how we can do the maximum damage with minimal risk. We need to keep this fight as far from Vallecito as possible. That is where our priority lies, and if Tuck were here he would tell us the same thing. He would want Vallecito, and Maggie, protected.”

“Is every member of this club pussy-whipped?” Ron asked sarcastically. “Ever since you started sniffing around Jamie, trying to get some of that fine ass, you haven’t been worth a shit.”

Leo fumed. Ron was baiting him, but he couldn’t let that slide. “You leave her out of this or we’re going to go… just you and me,” he said, his voice cold and deadly.

Ron held up his hands in mock surrender. “Glad to see something can piss you off. Anyone else have anything to say? Okay, let’s vote it. All in favor of Leo’s plan to not retaliate and pull Carlos out, say Yea.” Ron waited a moment and voted first by tradition. “Nay.”

“Yea,” Leo said.

“Yea,” Copper said, his voice firm.

Fitz looked at Leo then Ron. “Yea.”

“Ron’s right. If we don’t hit back, and hard, the cartel is just going to keep coming,” Gigolo said. “Nay”

“Nay,” Lucas said as he cast his lot.

“Yea,” Duck said. “This is a mistake. We can’t win this war.”

Leo knew the two new members of the board, of the voting nine, would be who would swing the vote. He needed one of the two to win.

Allen looked back and forth between Ron and Leo.

“Just vote your conscious,” Leo said, silently urging him to make the right choice.

“Nay,” Allen said, looking at the ground as if ashamed.

“Nay,” TC finished.

Ron slapped his hand on the hood of Leo’s truck in triumph as he grinned. “Motion is defeated. Carlos stays and we are going to take the war to those Prieto fuckers and show them what Lima 6 can do.

Leo stood in stunned silence.
This is so wrong. If only Tuck and Two-Tone were here.
Gritting his teeth in anger, he got into his Tahoe, started it, and backed onto the road without saying a word. Had he been looking, he would have seen the President smile as he drove away.

Read on for an excerpt from the sizzling sequel

PROLOGUE

Leo put his razor away and leaned into his hands, propping on the sink in Jamie’s bathroom as he stared into the mirror and thought about all that has happened in the last month. He had been doing a lot of that the last couple of weeks. Even with Jamie’s calming influence, the darkness stalked him. He knew from past experience if he did too much thinking about friends lost, the demons came calling. His eyes shifted and he watched the female form moving in the mirror, the outline softened and blurred behind the frosted glass of the shower door. If it weren’t for her, he was certain he would have ended it all by now.

The Lima 6 Motorcycle Club had gone to war with the Prieto Cartel. They had taken their lumps, but they had dealt some out as well. After the cartel had burned down their clubhouse, they had taken out the cartel’s primary drug lab. It had cost them… cost them dearly, with eight dead and five wounded.

The cartel had hit back with an attack on
He’s Not Here,
the bar and grille favored by Lima 6 and owned by Jamie. He, along with his best friends Charles “Tuck” Tucker, and Tomas “Two-Tone” Marro, had fended off the attack with no loss of life. No loss of life for the good guys anyway. After the attack he had gone against Ron and convinced the club that they should pull back and wait for the cartel to make the next move. That had been a mistake. Only a few days later the cartel had come at them again, trying to kill him, and succeeding in killing Tuck and Two-Tone, as they rode to the bar after a club meeting.

Lima 6’s reprisal had been swift and vicious. He and Ron, the President of Lima 6, had led a party into Mexico where they had waited in ambush outside another of the cartel’s drug processing labs. The Prieto Cartel ran their drug empire with business like efficiency, and when the second shift began arriving, Lima 6 had moved in and killed everyone in the facility—over fifty men and women—then burned the place to the ground. Tuck and Two-Tone’s deaths had been paid in full, with interest. 

But things have settled down since then. The Prieto Cartel must still be reeling from the double hit dealt by Lima 6 and their war with the Cuervo Cartel to their south. 

Leo heard the water shut off. With a mental shake, he dragged himself back to the present. Today was her day and he pushed the dark thoughts aside, something that seemed to be easier and easier for him to do. With a smile he snagged the towel from the bar and wrapped her in it as she stepped from the shower.

“Thank you,” Jamie said as he folded the towel around her. He was still naked from his own shower and she admired the trim, cut lines of his body. “It’s too bad we have to leave for El Paso so soon,” she purred as she stepped in close and took him into her embrace as the towel fell away.

“You don’t mean that, and you know it,” he said after he kissed her on the lips.

“I do mean it. I wanted to go and spend the night in El Paso last night, remember? That would have given us more time this morning.”

“I need to ride with the club. Things are still a little strained between Ron and me and I need to show the club that I’m still part of it.”

“I know,” she said softly.

He pulled her to him and held her close and tight as he enjoyed her warmth. “Hey… it’s okay. Things have cooled off with the cartel and things are getting back to normal with the club. Doing this for Will is a good thing. It’s something we all agree on.”

“I understand,” she said. “I just worry that you will be hurt again. You’ve been hurt enough.”

“It’s okay. With you… I wouldn’t have made it without you,” he murmured as he leaned his cheek against her head and breathed deep to take in her scent of apples and soap. “You’re all that has made it bearable… and kept me sane.”

She smiled as she held him, her eyes closed, as she felt the connection they shared strengthen just a tiny bit more. She knew he still fought the darkness that was inside of him, but he won his battles more often now… and she was glad, glad she could be there for him.

He tipped her head up and kissed her once more, with meaning. “We have to get ready. Lima 6 will be here soon,” he murmured when he pulled slowly back.

“I know.” She reached up and touched his cheek, a slow light caress that she had discovered he liked so well. He closed his eyes, smiling slightly, as he stood still and allowed her to touch him. As she finished the soft caress, she stepped out of his embrace, bent to pick up her towel from the floor, and began to dry herself. There would be plenty of time for more caresses later.

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