“It’s getting light,” I whispered, feeling the head of his cock pushing against my swollen lips, my body exhausted and limp from where he’d just fucked me with his tongue.
“I know, Grey. And I want to see it break as I do inside you.”
He thrust his hips without warning, and the terracotta above me turned red, my eyes fluttered shut. Ryan grunted as he moved, grabbing my hips and pumping into me hard. The metal seared my insides, my pussy clenching instantly, my legs wrapping round him as I met his thrusts.
“Fuck, Soph,” he reached forward, nipping my earlobe between his teeth, and my insides melted, unconditionally accepting everything that he was and that his body contained.
His fingers entangled mine, lifting them above my head, teeth pressing into my earlobe, delicious, radiating paineverywhere. Ryan grunted loudly, his thrusts growing shallower, faster, and then, as morning broke over the top of us, I felt him shudder and groan into my ear.
“You’re fucking everything, Soph,” he grunted as he thrust slowly in me now. “You’re absolutely everything I’ve ever needed.”
*****
The funeral had been noise. Lots of it. Engines rolling through Newcastle in long black lines. Visiting clubs. Handshakes. And respect paid in patches and revving motors.
Now it was only Kings. Family.
The clubhouse had emptied hours ago, strangers and associates drifting back out into the dark while those who remained settled into the heavy silence that grief left behind. No posturing. No speeches for show. Just the people Magnet had loved most trying to work out how the world kept moving without him in it.
Indie stood slowly, pushing off the stool he sat on at the bar, whiskey glass in one hand and Magnet’s cut folded over the other arm. The room hushed.
The leather looked wrong without Magnet inside it. It was worn on the shoulders. The Kings’ patch stretched broad across the back. His road name stitched over the breast in thick white thread. Proof he’d existed. Proof he’d belonged.
I watched Suzy straighten slightly beside Mamma Dot, her fingers knotting together so tightly that her knuckles blanched white. Indie didn’t speak immediately. He just walked toward the wall behind the bar where the old cuts hung. Some newer than others. Some faded, almost brown with age.
The room stood with him. Every man. Every woman too. And I pushed to my feet with everyone else.
“May the heart of Harley beat eternal,” Indie’s words filled the bar, rolling low through the silence.
“May the roar of the Kings never die.” The men around me joined their voices to his.
Then Indie lifted Magnet’s cut and hooked it carefully beside the others. Not hidden away. Not buried. Still riding with them. Something inside my chest cracked quietly at the sight of it. Up there, Magnet still belonged.
The old radiator hissed beside the bar. Someone cleared their throat roughly. Glass clinked softly somewhere behind me. Then the music started again. Soft this time. Almost hesitant. The same song we’d listened to only hours earlier, as the curtains fell closed in front of his coffin.
Maybe time running out is a gift…
The lyrics of ‘If We Were Vampires’drifted through the clubhouse and settled into every corner of it. Around me the Kings sat back down slowly, heavier now somehow. Quieter. Reap beside me, broad shoulders tense beneath black cotton, one hand wrapped around a pint glass he still hadn’t drunk from.
I’ll work hard ’til the end of my shift…
My throat tightened painfully. Because suddenly I understood what this life really was. It wasn’t recklessness or stupidity. Or men playing at being dangerous. It was loving people while knowing exactly what it would cost you one day. And choosing them anyway.
Across the room, Suzy rested her head briefly against the shoulder of the woman beside her, eyes fixed on Magnet’s cut hanging over the bar like part of him might still walk back in for it.
It’s knowing that this can’t go on forever.
Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone.
Maybe we’ll get forty years together.
But one day I’ll be gone.
Or one day you’ll be gone.
Forty years. The song made it sound impossibly precious. A miracle instead of an expectation. Beside me, Reap’s fingers brushed mine beneath the table. Rough. Warm. Real. And sitting there in the dim light of the clubhouse, surrounded by grief and whiskey and old leather and people who would bleed for one another without hesitation, I realised something terrifying.
If someone offered me another life; a safer one, an easier one, I wouldn’t take it. Because this place, for all its violence and darkness, loved harder than anywhere I’d ever known.
