Tank, page 15
Turning, I grab the tea towel and dry my hands, then I hang it back on the hook beside the stove. I’m about to head back to bed when something catches my eye from the doorway. My blood runs cold. My heart beats faster. My head swims.
Not here. Not now.
Terror has me frozen to the spot. Dread glues my feet to the slate tiles. Panic seizes me head to toe, because it isn’t just that it’s the middle of the night and I’m standing buck-naked in the kitchen while a shadowy figure leers at me from the glass doors, or that Butch is now up off the arm chair and barking at the intruder, it’s that I know the man who stands on the other side of that pane of glass, and I know exactly what he’s capable of.
The porch is dark, save for what little light the moon casts on it, but I see him as clearly as I would if it were daylight. You never forget the face of the devil. A scream tears from my throat, and in the blink of an eye he’s gone, and Butch is no longer barking at the door, he’s barking at me.
Rough hands seize my shoulders. I scream again, lashing out at the man holding me. My nails rake his solid, tattooed chest, and then my frantic mind sobers long enough to recognise the hard set of his bearded jaw, and his worried blue eyes that are fever-bright.
“Ivy, what’s wrong?” he asks, shaking me. My gaze is locked on the middle of his chest, as though I could see right through him to the door beyond. As though I would still see him standing there.
My breath seesaws in and out of my lungs, ragged and tainted with fear. The dog is still barking, and Tank takes his eyes off of me for a moment to yell, “Butch, shut the fuck up.”
He takes my face in his hands and coos gently, “Babe, talk to me, please.”
“He’s here.” The trembling starts in my legs and spreads to my whole body. My gut twists and I feel as if I might be sick.
Not here. Not now.
“Who’s here?” Tank asks.
“My father, he was here.” My teeth chatter. Cold creeps into my bones as fear worms its way through every fibre of my being. “He was at the door.”
“You’re sure?” I nod. He smooths a hand over my cheek and says, “Wait here.”
“No. You can’t go out there. Tank, he’ll kill you. Please don’t go out there. Please?” I claw at him, desperate to keep him from leaving me alone.
“Babe, there’s nothing out there. The alarm hasn’t been tripped,” Tank glances at the little plastic security consul on the wall beside the door. The red light isn’t flashing methodically the way it normally does. He pales, and his eyes are wide as he glances down at me. “Fuck. I forgot to turn it on before we went to bed.”
“I saw him. He was out there. He was standing right there.” I gesture wildly to the door. “He’s going to kill us, Tank, he’s—”
“Shh,” he says, pulling me firmly into him and tucking my head against his chest. He rests his chin on the top of my head, and I feel his Adam’s apple bob as he speaks. “Listen, I read about people seeing things … hallucinating when they go through withdrawal.”
“I didn’t imagine it, Tank.” I shrug out of his embrace, and glare at him accusingly. “He was here. I saw him. The dog was barking.”
“Yeah, because you’re flippin’ out, Babe. You scared the shit outta both of us.” He exhales, and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I need you to go back to the bedroom and wait for me. I’m goin’ outside to check on things.”
“No!” I shout. “Please don’t leave me. Please, Tank, please?”
“I’ve gotta, darlin’.”
“Tank—”
He takes my face between his hands. “Ivy, you gotta calm the fuck down. There’s no one out there. We’re a million miles from anywhere, and sleepin’ or not, I woulda heard a car comin’ up the drive, but I’m just gonna go out and double check for myself. I’m taking my gun with me. I need you to head back to bed. When I’m done out there, I’m gonna need your sweet arse to warm me the fuck up. Got it?”
I nod, even though I have a very bad feeling about this. “Yeah, okay.”
“I’ll be right back,” he says, and takes his gun from the table, where he left it when we came home earlier. He grabs a pair of jeans from the back of the chair that he’d hung out to dry this morning, and slides them on and heads out the door.
I wait a moment, watching him out on the deck before I pad softly down the hall. My legs tremor as I climb into bed. I shake all over. I bury my head in my hands and attempt to calm my breathing and the sick twist of fear in my belly.
I hear the sliding door leading out to the deck open and close, and heavy footsteps pound down the hall towards me.
Oh God, I wanna be sick. Please don’t let Tank be dead. Please.
“Jesus, fuck, it’s colder than a nun’s cunt out there,” he says, and I uncover my eyes and practically leap at him. His skin is freezing, but I don’t mind because I’m too warm and prickly with panic.
“Hey, not that I’m not grateful for the warm welcome but you need to calm down, babe. Your heart’s racing a hundred miles an hour.”
“Did you see him?” I ask, my voice pitched high with fear.
He slides his hands into my hair and leans down to kiss me. “Nothin’ out there but the icy cold wind, babe.”
I sit back on my heels. “But I—”
“It’s a side effect. It happens.” He takes off his jeans and climbs under the covers. “I set the alarm, I got a gun in the bedside drawer, and a hunting knife strapped to the underside of the bed. We’re safe as houses.”
I glance at him, annoyed that he’d had weapons stashed in this room, probably all over the house, and I didn’t know about it.
What I would have done with that information a week ago.
“Now get your arse in here,” he says. “My balls are fuckin’ freezin’ off.”
I rub my hands up and down my arms to ward away the goose bumps that have broken out all over my body, and then I climb under the covers. Tank rolls me on my side and pulls me against him. He’s freezing, so different for him, but I hardly feel it because the chill in my bones has already struck me to the core.
If he wasn’t here, then I hallucinated it. While that may be infinitely better than him finding me, it still means that no matter what I do, where I go or who I’m with there is no escaping my father.
Maybe this is my karma for all the shitty things I’ve done—to live in fear for the rest of my days, to have to run from not just my past, but my future too. I wish I had a hit right now. I wish I hadn’t tossed those pills down the drain, and I wish I hadn’t made promises to Tank I couldn’t keep.
Tank collapses on top of me with a groan. “Christ, you kill me, bitch.”
I laugh. “Yeah well, be thankful you only came twice. I thought by orgasm number six my clit was going to drop off.”
He groans and stirs, raising himself up on his forearms so I’m not completely squashed beneath him, and then he kisses my forehead. I close my eyes and sigh. Despite the restless night’s sleep, and the anxiety gnawing at the edges of my conscience, as if it were reminding me of something I forgot to do—hang out the washing, feed Butch, run for your life—I feel good this morning. Tank has a way of knowing just what a woman needs when she needs it.
Tank’s cock slides deeper as he shifts his weight again, and I suck in a sharp breath. He glances down at me with an eyebrow raised and an incredulous expression.
“Fuck, woman. You tryin’ to kill me?” I push my hips towards him and he growls. “You gotta give me a minute to catch my breath.”
I laugh. “Come on, old man. Surely you can go another round?”
He shakes his head gravely. “I need food before I go another anything.”
“Damn, here I was hoping you could just eat me.”
“Tempting,” he says. “Really, babe, but a man can’t live on pussy alone.”
“I’ll get you a sandwich.”
“Fuck no, you’ll probably poison me,” he says, and I pout. “I’ll make the food. You come sit your pretty arse on my bench and let me see that pussy while I cook.”
“Done.” I laugh and admire the view as he gets up. The huge demon tattoo on his back ripples as he moves. It’s such a terrifying piece; in fact his whole demeanour is a contradiction to such a sweet, attentive man. I laugh inwardly at the thought. If I said that aloud, he’d put me over his knee and spank me to show me how “sweet” he wasn’t.
Okay, so sweet might be a stretch, but up until this point all I’ve ever known from men is a hard hand and an even harder cock, and it’s always been enough. It’s what I was used to, but Tank shows me tenderness I’ve never known before, and it puts every kiss, every touch, and every damn whispered word that came before him to shame.
“What’re you thinkin’ ’bout, pretty girl?”
I smile and shake my head. “Nothing. Just it’s odd how I’m here, in your bed, you know?”
“Doesn’t look odd to me. Looks fuckin’ perfect, actually,” he says, pulling on his jeans and tucking his thick cock inside. He watches me, watching him. “Now get the fuck up before I eat you out again.”
I laugh. “Er … that’s not really a deterrent.”
“Oh, I’ll make it one. Get your arse in the kitchen, bitch.”
“No,” I say, and roll over onto my stomach. Tank climbs back onto the bed and hovers over me. He kisses his way over my arse and up my spine, and then finally lowers his body down on top of mine and whispers, “You have three seconds to get this hot-as-fuck arse out of bed and into my kitchen before I spank you like a naughty girl.”
I laugh softly and stay exactly where I am, and Tank sits back on his heels. “Gonna be like that is it? Alright then, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he says, and no sooner than the words leave his mouth his hand smacks my arse, hard. I squeal and turn around to glare at him.
“Arsehole,” I screech.
“I did warn you.”
I rub at my smarting flesh, but then find myself airborne and flung over his shoulder, as though I weigh nothing. “Put me down, you bastard.”
“No,” he says, as he slides off the bed and carries me into the kitchen, depositing me on the island bench. “Stay.”
“Bite me.” I scowl. Tank smiles and sinks his teeth into my shoulder. “Ow.”
I playfully shove him off, and he gives me this look that has my heart stuttering. He’s like a little kid, and it makes my chest hurt, though I’m not sure why. He leans in and kisses the teeth marks he left in my shoulder, and then takes my face in his too-large hands and tenderly kisses my lips. His tongue pushes into my mouth, but it’s not passionate, it’s not sexual. It’s sweet. He’s gentle, and I kiss him back with just as much tenderness, because he deserves that. He deserves so much more than that. In all the time I’ve known him, it never occurred to me that he might have needed me just as much as I needed him.
Tank cooks up entirely too much food—bacon, eggs, sausage and beans—and we sit at the dining table to eat. We sip coffee as though we both want to be exactly where we are right now, as though we hadn’t been thrown together by circumstance or fate, or his Prez’s orders. Somehow—despite years of friendship, tantrums, drugs, sex and lots of illegal activity—we are meant to be exactly here.
I stare at him for a long time over the rim of my coffee cup, and he stares back. It isn’t awkward; it’s enlightening. We’re reinventing, he and I, and I don’t think either of us knows how to stop it. Of course, I don’t think either of us wants to try.
When we’re done eating, I ask questions about his past: girlfriends—there were none, save for some girl in high school. Family—he tells me all about growing up with his mother, but doesn’t say a word about his father, and he changes the subject when I prod further. Finally, I ask what he would have done with his life if he’d never found the club, to which he just shrugs and says, “What’s the point in thinking about the maybe? All we have is who we are today, and who we’re satisfied with being tomorrow.”
And he’s right. I’ve never really thought about what could have been, if I hadn’t had a father who’d destroyed all the strength within me. I never gave those things any thought, because thinking like that was reckless and foolish. Thinking like that would get me killed. I couldn’t have had a life other than the one my father had created and I’d followed, but sitting across from Tank, in his quiet mountain cabin, thoughts of another life don’t matter. I have this life, and despite what I’ve been through, despite the fact that I still fidget and shake and my body still craves the poison I’ve willingly fed it since the time I was seventeen years old, it isn’t so bad.
“What are you smiling at?” Tank says, as he stands and takes the plate from in front of me, sitting it on the island bench behind us.
“I’m smiling because I’m really glad Prez ordered you to babysit me and not Country, or Grim, or … Kick.”
Tank comes up behind me and gathers my hair to the side. He gently kisses my neck, his hand coming around my front to squeeze my breast, as he whispers, “You’re here because I want you here.”
And I believe every word, because if there’s one thing I know about Tank it’s that he doesn’t bullshit, and he doesn’t say anything he doesn’t mean.
“Why do you want me, Tank?”
He continues kissing a path down my neck and across my shoulder. Both hands knead at my breasts, and I don’t really expect an answer, but I get one anyway, “I’ve wanted you in one way or another since the first day I laid eyes on you, babe. You sucked my cock and stole my goddamn heart, and I don’t even want the fuckin’ thing back. Keep it, ’cause I ain’t got no use for it without you in my arms, and in my bed, and on the back of my bike.”
He trails more kisses over my neck, and then he lowers his voice to a whisper as he says, “If there’s a God up there, I ain’t ever fuckin’ seen him, and if there is I know I’m goin’ to hell for all the shit that I do, all the people I killed, but I’d take an eternity in hell over never havin’ you in my arms.”
I don’t say anything to that. What can I say? I just push away from the table and turn towards him. Grabbing his face in my hands, I pull him down to me. I kiss him as I never have before. I kiss him as if we’re in a damn movie, and I don’t care that it’s cheesy, or that I can’t possibly feel the way for him right now that he does for me. I haven’t given him my heart. Up until now, I’ve been too stupid to see what I had right in front of me, but the fact that this big, stoic, scary-as-fuck biker has given me his heart completely? Well, you can be damned sure I’m going to take care of it, because no one has ever trusted me with that before. No one has ever treated me like I’m the most important thing in their world, until now.
Until him.
I didn’t expect to spend the night of my formal, my last farewell to high school and all the bullshit that that entails, with blood on my hands. Well, that’s not entirely true.
I’d been putting up with Tami Roger’s bullshit for the last three months, and so far she hadn’t yet put out, but after agonising over this fuckin’ decision as if it were going to change her entire life, she’d finally decided tonight was the night.
And I’d thought I’d fuckin’ earned it after the bullshit she’d put me through for weeks in the lead up to the dance. I’d been rimmed out by Tami’s dad for wearing my leather jacket instead of a fuckin’ monkey suit, and her mum hadn’t wanted me in the pictures at all. Suited me just fine. I hated havin’ my photo taken. I had confiscated a Polaroid of Tami though, and tucked it in the pocket of my leather jacket, because she looked fuckin’ hot in that dress, and I’d use it to spank my monkey to when she wasn’t around to blow me.
We’d danced at the formal, surrounded by all of her friends in their dresses with their dipshit dates in fuckin’ tuxedos. If they’d played that fucking Kylie Minogue song one more time I was gonna outright execute some motherfucker. Tami had gone on and on about how this was “a night we’d remember for the rest of our lives”.
I’d remember it, alright, but it wouldn’t have anything to do with reaching a milestone to mark the passage of time.
In a way, I guess I’d expected to get my hands bloody tonight, and I had. Twice.
In a cheapo hotel room after the dance, I’d taken her virginity and she’d bled like a bitch. She’d also freaked the fuck out when I’d tried to go down on her afterward. So instead, we’d lain there in silence, naked and wrapped in one another’s arms. Or I’d lain there in silence; as usual, Tami talked too fuckin’ much about all the shit I didn’t give a fuck about, and then she’d bitched me out when I’d fallen asleep. It wasn’t that I hadn’t realised what this night had meant to her, or that I resented her fantasy for the perfect first time. Truth is, first times will always suck, no matter who you’re with. I tried to make it okay for her, but I know it wasn’t the experience she built it up to be. It wouldn’t have been, not with anyone.
She wanted romance and those three little words that she seemed to say almost every time she opened her mouth, but that I could never say back. I liked Tami a lot; I liked going down on her, I liked her going down on me, and I’d even enjoyed fuckin’ her, but I didn’t love anyone. I never would.
To love was to hurt.
My mother had taught me that, and it had been a lesson she didn’t even know she was teaching, yet it was likely to be the most valuable one I’d ever learn.
I see that now, as she crouches down on the floor beside the body of her husband. All the shit he put her through, all the bruised and busted up eyes, all the rapes, the violence, and the mental beatdowns, and still she cries over his dead body.
“Jonah, what did you do?” she whispers.
“What I had to,” I say evenly, though the blood on my hands makes me feel like the whole world has tilted on its side. I’m the only man left standing, and I don’t feel a single ounce of relief because of it. I pull her away from his prone body. “You need to stop touching him. Fingerprints, Ma.”
Her panic-stricken gaze meets my serene one. “We need to call the police; we need to report it. We can say he attacked you. We’ll say that it was self-defence. There’s a history of violence there; they won’t question it.”
