Fractured & Formidable: The Sacred Hearts MC Book V (20 page)

Mandy…

When I had woken the morning after we’d all received the
news about Grinder, it was to an empty room. Zander had already risen and was
cloistered in the MC’s little fishbowl of a room they reverently referred to as
the ‘chapel’. I rose and with a shiver, dressed quickly. It was a white and
pristine winter outside. Beautiful and serene. To add to our heartbreak it was
just passed the New Year, a time that was supposed to be all about new
beginnings, which just made this seem all the more awful, didn’t it? To greet
the New Year in such a way?

I found Ashton and Everett in the kitchen, the three of us
being the early risers among the Ol’ Ladies, which I was still coming to terms
with the title. Zander had presented me with a leather vest on New Year’s Eve,
beautifully embroidered with the somewhat distasteful moniker of ‘Property of Revelator’
on the back, the little name patch on the front boldly spelling out ‘Red’. He
explained to me what it meant to belong to him, the commitment he was offering
me and suddenly the choice of words on the back,
property of
, didn’t
seem at all distasteful but rather a very special honorific.

Evy and the rest of the girls had a laugh over my initial
reaction and all but Chandra and Shelly had agreed that Everett’s first
reaction had been along the same lines as mine. Evy had nearly torn Dray a new
one and they’d had quite the argument until Shelly had stepped in and explained
it to my sister from another mister. Apparently Reaver and Trigger had been
much better at explaining it to Hayden and Ashton. Shelly and Chandra had just
been around the MC long enough to know what such a thing meant. Chandra had put
it best when she said for a lot of the men, an engagement or wedding ring meant
far less than bestowing a woman with their ‘rag’ as she called it.

“You look thoughtful,” Evy remarked, lifting a steaming mug
of coffee to her lips she blew before taking a tentative sip.

“Just wondering what happens now, I mean, what do we do?” I
stretched and Ashton poured me a cup of coffee, I took it gratefully and added
the requisite amount of cream and sugar from the tray of offerings to make it
palatable.

“I talked with Chandra and Shelly late last night. They said
it’s up to us to do what it is women do during funerals, make the arrangements,
buy a casket, and have the funeral home bring him here once he’s released. Cook
for the club, clean up after and be there for our men for whatever they may
need.” Ashton shrugged.

“Best be expecting a lot of company in the coming days,”
Chandra said from the kitchen door, her sentence punctuated by the flick of her
Bic lighter. She took a deep drag off her cigarette and released a large plume
into the air with a harsh exhale.

“Shit gets crazy at a biker funeral,” Shelly agreed shoving
past the older woman.

“How does it work?” Evy asked, chewing her bottom lip
thoughtfully.

“Well, just about every chapter across the states sends out
at least one representative, unless the entire chapter shows up. Not sure how
many brothers Grinder was good with, that makes a bit of difference. We could
be packed to the gills and then some. Two, three hundred strong maybe more.
Given the weather here though? My guess would be more like fifty or sixty. Again,
depending on who he was good with,” Shelly explained, fixing herself some
coffee.

Chandra smoked some more and sighed, running her long nails
through her short platinum blonde dyed hair, the dark roots coming in.

“We have a wake here, things get crazy. A lot of eating, a
lot of drinking and a whole lot of fucking, with no mind to where they do it.
You girls better wear your man’s rag or it’s just assumed you’re fair game, you
get me?” she pinned us all with a hard look as we three nodded mutely.

“Everybody gets up the next mornin’, hung the fuck over and
the ride happens, a grand ol’ procession to the cemetery. I don’t know if
Grinder’s brothers are takin’ him back to his home state or if he’s being laid
to rest here. The Sacred Hearts were in such a bad way some years back gettin’
killed, that Dragon bought a hell of a plot over at the ol’ Brundle Hills
cemetery. Bought half the damned place out. There’s still a lot of ground out
there left for anyone in the club has no place else to go. Sacred Hearts take
care of their own, no matter where they’re from.” She took another thoughtful
drag and pushed off the doorway where she’d been leaning.

She was dressed in jeans and knee high boots, a white lace
edged camisole peeking out from the front of her fitted snap-button flannel
shirt in reds whites and blues. The club colors. She tucked her cigarette
between her lips and set about fixing herself a cup of coffee. Chandra never
went without her makeup and this morning was no exception, her kohl lined eyes
making the light color stand out vivid, her cigarette stained with her light
pink lipstick.

“I can handle food, but could use some help,” Ashton
remarked softly but she was looking at me. I nodded.

“I’ll talk to my father today about conducting a grave side
service,” I said.

“I can keep the coffee flowing,” Evy shrugged, “Pitch in
with whatever else.”

“I’ve got the funeral home’s number that we use, Shelly can
help me with figuring the cost. Everett you need to make sure the bar is
stocked because these boys are going to go through it,” Chandra looked my
friend up and down but Everett was already nodding.

“Aye, I can do that.”

“I wonder if Reaver has called Hayden,” Ashton remarked and
speak of the devil, there he was just appeared out of thin air in the doorway.

“Yeah, she’ll be here for the funeral but then she’s got to
fly back out,” he said and didn’t look too happy about it. Ashton immediately
went to him and hugged herself to him. Reaver smiled down at her and kissed the
top of her head, rubbing up and down one of the small woman’s arms.

“Thanks Sunshine,” he murmured and she beamed up at him.

“Well okay, everyone knows what to do, you boys got a count
and a time frame for me?” Chandra asked.

“Looks like around fifty to eighty and about a week Chandra.
Body won’t be released until the final autopsy is done. Dragon’s gone down
there but from what the po-po was telling us last night, best we just do a
closed casket.” His words dropped like a stone into the well of silence the
kitchen had become. None of us wanted to think too hard about the implications
behind his words. The whole thing really was bad enough.

Zander found me a short time later and we took a time out to
hold each other before the flurry of activity set in. Before long, Everett and
I had to head in to work and Chandra commandeered Shelly and Ashton into giving
the clubhouse a good going over.

Dray drove me and Evy in to work in my car, his Trans-Am not
exactly built for the snow. He stayed with us until Reaver could come in and
then left. I let him take my car, with the promise that he or Zander would be
back to take us to the club later. Reaver played on his phone in my kitchen and
from the odd smile or chuckle I gathered that he was texting back and forth
with his wife, Hayden.

I snuck him an odd sample or two of chocolate when he grew
too solemn. It was hard to see Reaver, who was always laughing or smiling or
telling a joke, look so terribly unhappy. The light in his eyes decidedly
dimmer than usual.

The rest of the week went much the same. I spent my days
keeping the shop stocked with confections and made enough to set aside for
Grinder’s wake too. My evenings were spent with Ashton in the club’s kitchen
making enough food to feed an army. The first night was spent preparing lasagna
dinners in the foil throw-away pans. We made so many, and then froze them so
all we had to do was pull them from the freezer and reheat them.

We spent the remainder of the week doing similar things. The
night we did the cinnamon rolls to have for breakfast we could barely keep the
men out of the kitchen and ended up having to make quite a bit more than we
initially anticipated because of it, but it brought with it a margin of levity
to the club as men and women from other clubs began to trickle in.

The evening before the wake itself, Zander slipped into the
kitchen and held out my
property of
vest out to me with a sad little
smile. I slipped into the proffered bit of clothing and retied my apron over it
to protect it with a quizzical look.

“Bunch more brothers just showed up,” he explained quietly,
“The three brothers that came up with Grinder are out there. They might come
back and talk to you and Irish. He did spend a bunch of time in your shop.” I
nodded and pursed my lips and Zander sighed.

“Not how I pictured you wearin’ my rag for the first time,
Sugar.” His voice was tinged with such a deep regret my heart gave a fractured
ache for him. I nodded and he left the kitchen. Ashton turned from the sink
full of dishes and Trigger brought her the vest he’d given her a short time
later, giving her a lingering kiss after she’d donned it.

The women of the club were kept feverishly busy all the way
up through the wake and I have to honestly say, I have never seen anything like
it! The drinking and partying and carousing was just phenomenal and I was
almost grateful when Zander pulled me into his arms and walked us to his club
room, even with as drunk as he’d gotten.

Still, something was different about him tonight than ever
before and Disney’s words of advice tumbled through my mind,
just don’t get
scared if he gets rough with you in the bedroom…
I didn’t fully understand
the implications of what Disney had said until the door swung shut behind us and
Zander fell on me.

He shoved me back, hard, against the closed door, his thigh
riding up between mine, pinning me, my sex pressed to the top of his leg as his
mouth crashed up into mine and his hands delved beneath my black sweater to
find skin. The veracity of his kiss stole my breath and my heart very nearly
stopped in my chest, doing a flip and plummeting into the pit of my stomach.
Fear fizzed through my veins like sour champagne and I dragged a deep breath
through my nose and fought my urge to squirm, to try and get away. Instead I
cupped his face with my hands and kissed him back and kept reminding myself
over and over
this is Zander, this is Zander; this is Zander.

He broke the kiss and ripped my sweater over my head. I
yelped as one of my earrings caught and pulled painfully before slipping free
of my earlobe. It stung for a moment but it seemed there was no real harm done,
but it was as if Zander hadn’t even noticed. He pulled me tight and tighter
against his body until I cried out into his mouth which just seemed to excite
him further. He broke the kiss and pulled me away from the door, turning me and
giving me a shove onto the bed.

“Zander, you’re scaring me!” I cried under my breath.

“Sorry, Sugar,” he said with a crooked grin but he honestly
didn’t look or sound sorry at all, which only served to scare me more. I’d
never seen him so drunk before either and so I kept telling myself that he
would
be sorry when he sobered up. Still, this wasn’t exactly a good feeling.

“Ohhh hey, don’t look like that Red,” he said, voice deep
and unsteady. He came to me where I sat on the edge of the bed and cupped my
face in his hands, pressing his forehead to mine. His eyes were closed and he
seemed to be sobering a bit.

He asked me, “Remember the locker room?” I covered his hands
with mine, firmly as his thumbs stroked back and forth over my cheeks.

“How could I forget?” and I tried a tremulous smile.

“Can I have that Red? Do you trust me enough to give me
that?” he asked and he shook lightly with his restraint. I closed my eyes, not
entirely sure what it was I was getting myself into but the short answer? Yes.
Yes I trusted him, yes I loved him and so I would see. I would see if I could
take what he needed to give.

Heart in my throat I let the answer he was looking for fall
from my lips, “Yes.”

He hauled my lips up to his and feeling a bit more left of
center, a bit more like I was in control, him having asked, me having given him
permission, I let him kiss me and returned his kiss with an equally savage
intensity. We clawed at each other’s clothes, and Zander ripped his shirt
completely in two to be rid of it. I pulled myself further back onto the bed and
with a snarl he came after me. He got between my thighs and shoved his way
inside, brutally fast, brutally hard, wringing a cry from my lips that was half
fear, half desire. It felt
good
, surprisingly so, with just that little
bit of added edge of pain from my not being quite ready, not being quite worked
up enough to take him.

It was okay though, my body would catch up soon enough and
it wasn’t like Zander was going to give me any quarter. He slammed his body
against mine and set a punishing cadence of hard fast thrusts, the report of
our bodies coming together filling the room with rhythmic pounding to equal the
pulse of blood through my veins.

There was nothing kind, nothing gentle or loving about this,
but it felt
so good.
So freeing and intense and so, just, unlike
anything I had ever experienced before, just
ever.
I was vaguely aware
of my nails biting into the flesh of his back, of scoring down his skin in such
a way it left him arching into me harder, his thrusting stilling.

“Oh, awe fuck, Baby! Yes!” he cried above me and adjusted
his angle, he grabbed me behind the knees and folded them up to my chest, his
hands pressing the backs of my thighs as he drove into me harder. I bit back a
scream at the intensity of it and tried to relax but it was almost too intense,
too extreme. I cried out a feral sound and squirmed and he eased up just enough
to make things comfortable again.