Patriot Read online

I dragged his face down to mine and kissed him passionately as I thrust my hips into him. This man hadn’t just been a great guy to me, he’d literally saved my life. And yes, I suppose I had really saved his in some sense, but because of everything that had transpired, there was really only one man that I knew could understand me. Fortunately, it was the man that I, yes, loved the most.

  Michael Giordano.

  And at that, at the very thought of his name, at the thought of all we had been through, I came on him, my sex pulsating around his thrusting cock. I squeezed his body with my arms and tightened my legs around him, the intensity of the feeling nearly unbearable. I hadn’t had sex in some time, but the pleasure that this was producing was unforgettable.

  When I finally finished, Michael was still going. I suppose being as fit, athletic, and lean as he was made things a hell of a lot easier to have sexual endurance.

  I had him get behind me for doggy style, but really, that was just because I needed a breather—literally, I couldn’t keep up with how good he was making me feel. Probably for the better, though, it meant that when he went back into me, it was like starting fresh all over again, and within minutes, he had made me come again.

  “Michael, ohhh, yes,” I said, although saying anything more than that was beyond my capabilities.

  Eventually, Michael finally came when I was on top of him, leaning forward, kissing him. There was a pleasurable cry, and then there was the actual orgasm. The moment just made me want to cradle him, hold him under my legs and in my arms, forever.

  Maybe it was getting a little carried away. Maybe it was projecting ahead off of too much. Maybe it was risking a lot of my emotional well-being to say that I loved him and that I felt like we could really make it work.

  But if my stubbornness and my hard-headedness could make me reject the Black Reapers as a group to work with, those same personality traits could make me believe we would live happily ever after. We understood each other on a profoundly deep level, far beyond what even some married couples knew, and that understanding and appreciation for each other could help carry us through some dark times.

  It also helped that it was hard to imagine anything darker than what we had just experienced for a long, long time. It was, honestly, only uphill from here.

  “Wow,” Michael said, looking up at me in admiration.

  “Wow, what?” I said.

  “Wow... you,” he said. “I never thought, after everything I’ve been through, that I would ever see something so beautiful in my life. But now, looking up at you? I’m seeing it now. I’m seeing the most beautiful thing in the world. And that’s you.”

  It wasn’t corny in the slightest. I could see how serious he was. It was so sweet, I almost teared up.

  I had to lean forward to kiss him just to avoid this very issue. But I didn’t need that excuse— I would have kissed him anyways.

  Because I could say the same thing back to him.

  Michael, likewise, was the most handsome man I had ever seen. He was the man that had changed my mind for the better on a lot of things, kept me on my good side about some others, and had ultimately made me better at understanding the person, not the image. Michael made me a better person, and I had no doubt ho I felt about it.

  “I love you, Michael.”

  I could feel him stir under me. He didn’t know that I’d felt that way about him.

  There was no doubting it now.

  “And I love you, Kaitlyn.”

  Epilogue

  Two Weeks Later

  The scene was quite familiar.

  I sat at an empty bar on a Friday early afternoon, sipping on a Yuengling. To my right was Axle, the man we had once considered a rat and whom I now owed my life to. And, just like we had been on the day that he first saved my mind, we were now outside San Diego, having just visited Rosecrans National Cemetery.

  “Cheers,” I said, holding out my Yuengling. “To always living up to our fallen brothers’ legacies and standards.”

  “Amen,” Axle said.

  We each took a sip quietly, but there was something much more peaceful and much more gratifying about this silence than the awkward, tense silence that had filled the air our last visit. Granted, remembering the fallen was never easy, but thanks to his leadership and thanks to a second chance at saving those I cared about, I had a much better perspective on things. I could much better understand where things were going.

  “Still gotta figure out who the rat is,” Axle said.

  “We will, I’m sure of it,” I said. “These things have a tendency to reveal themselves.”

  Axle didn’t respond, but I knew he agreed with me.

  “Oh, and just in case it was clear, I’m not going to ask to become co-VP. Too much effort and responsibility.”

  Axle gave a slight chuckle, perhaps even a smile, though maybe I imagined that. His phone buzzed. Axle stared at the screen for far longer than I would have ever pegged him being engaged by a text.

  “You good?” I said, briefly worrying if it was something to do with the club.

  It took another half-dozen seconds for Axle to shake his head and put his phone away.

  “You’re not the only one with a past that has caught up to him,” he said. “Mine is just alive. And she’s back in California.”

  Preview of “Axle”

  Prologue

  LeCharles “Axle” Williamson

  The scene was quite familiar.

  I sat at an empty bar on a Friday early afternoon, sipping on a Yuengling. To my left was Patriot. And, just like we had been on the day that we first hung out outside of Springsville, we were now outside San Diego, having just visited Rosecrans National Cemetery.

  It was an emotional moment for Patriot, visiting the grave of his fallen brothers. It was emotional for me too, although I didn’t show it nearly as much as he did. I had nothing against Patriot and in fact liked him probably more than most people in the club, but I believed that showing excessive emotion was a sign of weakness, not strength.

  “Cheers,” he said, holding out my Yuengling. “To never forgetting our fallen brothers by always living up to their legacy and standards.”

  Bad emotion, at least. There’s a time and place for good emotion.

  “Amen,” I said.

  We clinked our glasses together and took a long sip. There was reason to cheers a lot frequently—we’d managed to kill more of the Fallen Saints, we’d seemingly gotten Cole at least somewhat back in the picture, and we were tightening up the club ranks.

  But unfortunately, on that last one, things were going to get worse before they got better. Much, much worse. And it was because of an issue that had plagued the club for over a year, one that I had faced accusations of, one which I still did not understand well enough.

  “Still gotta figure out who the rat is,” I said.

  I said it to myself as much as I did to Patriot. I felt a certain responsibility as the club’s vice president to figure it out. Lane was doing all that he could as president, but he was young and inexperienced, and tact and subtlety weren’t exactly his strong suits. That was another reason why I think I preferred to be on the quiet side; people had trouble understanding you and figuring you out when you didn’t give them much to go on.

  “We will, I’m sure of it,” he said. “These things have a tendency to reveal themselves.”

  I agreed with him. I just didn’t like that it would have to wait so long. The longer we waited, the longer we would have to mourn the future deaths that struck our club.

  “Oh, and just in case it was clear, I’m not going to ask to become co-VP. Too much effort and responsibility.”

  I laughed and smiled at that. To think, he’d actually thought I had believed him when he said he was going to try and become co-VP. People must have greatly underestimated my intelligence—

  My phone buzzed. Thinking that it was nothing more than Lane asking us to come home or checking in, I casually checked it, expecting to put it right back away.
I treated it as a welcome respite from the thoughts of the rat.

  It had the opposite effect.

  It was a number I did not have saved in my phone. And yet, despite this, as soon as I saw the area code, as soon as I saw the first words of the text, I knew who it was. I didn’t know why they had really messaged me, but knowing who it was enough.

  Worrisome enough.

  “You good?” Patriot said.

  I heard Patriot’s words, but I was concentrating so hard on the text message on my screen that they only registered after the fact. The words should have been nothing more than an old friend saying hello.

  “Hey LeCharles, I’m back in SoCal. Would be nice to catch up over drinks or coffee if you’d like.”

  There would be nothing nice about doing any of that. Not with you.

  “You’re not the only one with a past that has caught up to him,” I said. “Mine is just alive. And she’s back in California.”

  Rose Wright.

  She might as well have been named Rose Wrong for all of the trouble that she had caused in my life. When we had first started dating about a decade ago, it had been an absolute delight. Great sex, great adventures—she genuinely made me smile more than anyone else ever did.

  Unfortunately, that only served to increase my hostility and frustration with her, because after the initial honeymoon stage, things completely fell apart. We dissolved into the kind of dramatic, ugly relationship that could tear a man’s soul in half. We never inflicted violence on each other, and we never stole or broke things of each other, but in some ways, it might have been better if we did that.

  Rose could cut me down like no one ever could. I wasn’t any better by the end; both of us were trying to pierce the other person’s soul with our words, to leave them metaphorically bleeding out on the ground as we stood over them, taunting them. And the sickest part of it all?

  The only reason we really broke up was because she moved to Utah for veterinary school. It wasn’t like I grew a pair and dumped her, nor was it like we had an epiphany of courtesy and honesty where we both just recognized we weren’t right for each other. Only the good—yes, good—fortune of distance broke us apart.

  But boy, once I got out of that relationship, the entire club seemed to rally around me and tell me how awful she was. Butch had always been on my case about her, and Lane too, but at the time, Lane was just a punkass teenager who I wanted to beat the shit out of more than listen to him. Even Lane’s father, the late, great Roger Carter, told me I needed to pick my women more carefully.

  The efforts had their desired effect. I swore I would never go back to her. No matter what, I would never make the mistake of dating someone so unhealthy for me.

  And let’s be honest, it wasn’t like you were great to her either. It takes two to make a relationship that particularly ugly.

  “Damn, are you going to go and see her?”

  “What?”

  “I said, are you going to go and see her?”

  I snorted at the idea.

  “No,” I said. “Back to the topic at hand. We got Butch, Red Raven, or Father Marcellus.”

  And yet, even though I changed the topic, my mind still lingered on that text from Rose. Why the hell had she reached out to me? Was she that desperate?

  Or maybe she had changed…

  No. I swore never go to go back. So I was going to be true to myself. I was not going to go back under any circumstances, no matter the temptation or desire.

  “We haven’t paid much attention to Red Raven, man,” he said. “Could be.”

  “Doubtful,” I said. “Red Raven’s older than the founder. I’ve seen Red Raven run into gunfire to act as a human shield for Roger.”

  Patriot shrugged. He didn’t have the same level of connection to the rest of the club that I did. By no means was I an old fart—I was, after all, thirty-six years old—but compared to those two kids in their twenties? I felt like a senior officer in comparison.

  The person I suspected the most, actually, was Butch. Like me, he was quiet, but unlike everyone else, who mistook quietness for calmness and loyalty, I understood that, with the right person, it could work as an effective mask. I didn’t have any proof about Butch, but then again, I’d had to spend most of my energy fighting the accusations from Lane and Patriot. How the fuck could I look at someone else when all eyes were on me?

  My phone buzzed again.

  “Damn, that girl really wants some of your Axle, huh?”

  I gave Patriot an askance glance as I pulled out my phone. Sure enough, Rose had not gotten the hint.

  “Whenever is good for you, sincerely, I’d like to see you, LeCharles. We can do daytime tea or coffee if you’d like.”

  There was something almost desperate in her words, almost yearning for me, that left me with a sinking feeling in my gut. Why the hell would she suddenly come crawling back to me now? She had to know I was in Los Angeles, so “SoCal” really meant there, not here in San Diego.

  I had no idea what could have possibly compelled her to reach out to me. She had everything—a daddy that spoiled her, a career path, everything. There was nothing I could give her other than some male company, and with her olive complexion, brown hair, mesmerizing brown eyes, and incredible curves, there was nothing about her that didn’t attract male attention.

  Maybe she was just lonely. Or maybe she just wanted a familiar face.

  But that wasn’t going to be me. She didn’t need me.

  She didn’t need anything. She had it all already. What more could I add?

  Rose Wright

  Everything I owned was in my 2004 Nissan Altima.

  And when I say everything, I literally mean everything.

  My clothes. My accessories. My movies, electronics, and memorabilia.

  And, in the front seat, most importantly, Shiloh.

  My German Shepherd.

  I had more things back in Utah, but as far as I was concerned, I was never going to see those items again. I didn’t want to see them again, anyways; to go back and get them would mean going back to the lowest point in my life, and I’d already made an enormous step forward by leaving that hell. I didn’t need to return to it just so I could have a pillow or a TV or something else that would ultimately prove fruitless.

  Sitting in the front seat, with Shiloh panting beside me, I looked at him and smiled.

  “I know you want some,” I said, nodding to the In-n-Out fries in my seat. “But I don’t think this salt is good for you, buddy.”

  Shiloh whimpered, which made me laugh and roll my eyes. Shiloh could be a dramatic doggy, but he was my doggy, and if he wanted to be dramatic, well, damnit, he could be as dramatic as he wanted to.

  If it made me a little less crazy and a little less stressed, all the better.

  Shiloh then put his paw on my shoulder, actually scratching me.

  “Dude!” I said with a laugh. “OK, fine, you get one fry.”

  I gave him the one fry. He sniffed it, opened his mouth slowly, as if expecting me to pull it back at the last second, and then chewed it, dropping it to the floor. It was so silly, I couldn’t help but laugh uncontrollably.

  It reminded me…

  It reminded me of the good times an old flame and I used to have.

  A flame that, I believed, was living in Springsville still.

  Unfortunately, for as good as the relationship had been in certain spots, there was also no denying the fact that it had ended in utter chaos and drama. There were faults on both sides, but much of the fault laid in the fact that we were both immature and unwilling to have tough conversations. Chaos in my life didn’t make things any better, and looking back on it, it was small wonder that it ended.

  That didn’t mean that now, though, with the benefit of maturity, I could see that if we had both grown up, it could be something great. I could only speak for myself, but the way life had kicked me in the ass the last few years, I felt pretty sure I could say that I was in a much more mature place than
I was before. I just had to hope LeCharles was too.

  I decided I had nothing to lose. I still had his phone number saved in my phone for no reason other than I had held out hope that we could someday be friends again. That day, I prayed, was now.

  I sent off two quick text messages before finishing my food. Shiloh continued to beg, and I decided to spoil him a little. Hey, it was a welcome distraction from thinking about the alternative.

  Eventually, with no food left to finish, I crumpled up the In-n-Out bag and leaned over to hug Shiloh close before kissing him.

  “We’re almost there, buddy,” I said. “And when we get there, I’m going to take you on a long walk through my old town.”

  It may be in a more ghetto part of town than before and in a less safe part of the town, but it’s still my roots. It’s still home.

  I drove to the address I had listed on the southeast side of town, with Shiloh curling up into a ball as best as he could in the front seat. He was not the kind of dog that liked to hang his head out of the window; on the contrary, he loathed car rides. I think given the option between a visit to the vet and an hour long car ride, he would choose the vet visit. At least the vet could be friendly and give him scratches on the ear.

  When I pulled up, the place looked even worse than it had in the photos—and let’s just say the photos weren’t promising either. It felt symbolic of my entire return to this town, really. I was only here because no place else would take me in after my path, although that didn’t mean it was going to be all bad.

  Even with my car engine on, I could hear the sound of multiple motorcycles just a few blocks over, driving up and down the streets, their engines crackling and popping. It was just the kind of obnoxious noise that I hadn’t had in Utah—and the kind of noise I had failed to appreciate being absent.

  “Wait here, buddy,” I said as I parked the car, even though Shiloh started barking at me to stay with him.