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Maria
That kiss.
That unbelievable kiss.
I can’t believe it. I mean, I can’t believe it. This biker guy, this guy from a motorcycle club, he’s so different from me – so different from anyone I ever saw myself being with. And yet... and yet...
And yet I find myself drawn to him. It’s not like he’s my first or I’ve never fallen in love before. I’ve definitely been there, done that. But with Blade, it’s... different. He makes me feel something I’ve never felt before, down deep in my gut. Weirdly, for a guy who kidnapped me, he makes me feel safe. Secure. He makes me feel like I have the freedom to be whatever I can ultimately be, and when I’m with him, I feel that freedom distinctly.
And the sex is... well, it’s pretty awesome.
So when Blade tells me that he has to go, that he has to help his crew with the run, I find I have butterflies in my stomach. I don’t want anything to happen to him. I make him promise he’s going to be careful, with the implication that he’s coming back to me. I hope I’m enough to give him something to live for.
I spend the next few hours walking on eggshells, doing my absolute best to think about anything except Blade and how their run is going. I try binge-watching a cooking show on Netflix, but I keep hitting the pause button, getting up, walking around, washing the same dish in the sink, and sitting back down again, only to repeat the process five minutes later.
This goes on for some time before I curl up on the sofa, my eyelids heavy, and find myself falling into a gentle sleep.
I’m jolted awake by the sound of motorcycles rumbling outside Blade’s front door. Their headlights shine through the windows and right onto my face. Moments later, Blade bursts through the door, holding Crusher up as he hobbles towards the kitchen table. I see red on his shirt, along with a tear that’s very clearly from a knife.
“What the hell happened?” I ask, jumping to my feet and going over to help Blade help Crusher to the table.
“Everything went according to your plan,” Blade says, panting, “but we hit a little... snag.”
“You call this a snag?” I demand, rushing to Blade’s linen closet to grab some towels. “Blade, Crusher’s been knifed.”
“Yeah, that’s the snag,” he says with a hint of irony in his voice.
“How did this happen?” I ask as I push the towels hard onto Crusher’s side in an attempt to stanch the bleeding.
“Everything was going as planned,” Crusher echoes Blade, “and we were coming out all right, with all the shit that’s in the sidecar of Blade’s bike. The boys should be—”
Within seconds, the door has burst open again, and three guys enter Blade’s house with boxes that I’m certain are full of cocaine.
“Twenty bricks in all,” Crusher winces as I begin patching him up with gauze and surgical tape Blade has brought me from the bathroom. “Not a bad haul. But then, your boy, Marco? Apparently, we didn’t knock him out as much as we thought we did. Motherfucker comes at us, and I stupidly get in his way. Thought the dumb son of a bitch was going to shoot me, but instead, he pulls out a knife and lays it into my side.”
“Well, you’re lucky,” I tell Crusher. “It looks like he managed to miss any vital organs, so it’s just a superficial wound. You’re going to be fine, but there’s going to be a scar.”
“Big shit.” Crusher grins. “We got the drugs. That’s what we came for.”
“What about Marco?” I ask cautiously. I brace myself for what’s coming, and Blade looks at me directly.
“Maria,” he says quietly, “we – we had no choice. We – we had to take care of business first.”
“What does that mean?” I demand, tears stinging my eyes.
“We had to waste him,” Crusher says. “Now I know we said we’d do our best not to hurt anybody, and we did, but that just wasn’t possible.”
“I see,” I murmur as I continue to patch Crusher up.
I feel a numbness seeping into my body. Marco was my cousin. He was blood, family. I grew up with Marco; he is only a couple of years older than me – was only a couple of years older than me. We used to take baths together in the sink when we were babies. And now he’s just... gone.
I want to cry, but I can’t, not in front of Crusher and the other guys from the Blood Ravens. I know that in war there are winners and there are losers, but I guess it just never occurred to me that the people dying could – would – be my people. My family.
When you come from a family like the Espinozas, death is all around you, but it never seems to affect you. That’s how it was for me. I’d known plenty of my dad’s henchmen who had gotten picked off or just gone randomly missing, but Marco was the first person who was in my family, the first one I’d known, who had been killed.
And it was my fault. I was the reason Marco had been put in that position. I gave away where the storehouse was, and I had devised the plan that set the Blood Ravens on the house. It was my fault as much as if I had pulled the trigger of the gun that had killed him. And that blood was now on my hands. If my father ever caught me, I know now, he’ll kill me. He doesn’t suffer traitors lightly, and now, that’s exactly what I am: a traitor to the cause.
But then I look at Blade, and I see something in his eyes that surprises me: pain. He is actually in pain over what has happened. And why? Because he can see that I’m in pain. He hurts because I hurt. I’ve never been with someone like that before, with someone who cares so much about me that they’re willing to literally feel what I feel. It’s so empathetic of an otherwise hard-nosed, badass criminal – and so comforting to know that no matter what, Blade will feel my own feelings. We feel them for each other now.
After a couple of hours and more than a few beers, Crusher and the other Blood Ravens leave. I warn Crusher to change his bandage when he gets home, but I’m certain he won’t, which means his cut will get infected, so I tell him that he should also probably visit a doctor to get a prescription for antibiotics to clear up any infection. He agrees that maybe he’ll do that, though I know he won’t unless it gets really bad, so I shrug and give up.
I go to check on Blade. He’s already laying down in his bed, and he seems to have passed out. Poor little tyke is all tuckered out, I joke to myself. I decide to take a shower, my first in I don’t know how many days at this point.
I turn on the water and take off Blade’s oversized shirt and his athletic shorts. It takes a while for the hot water to come on, so I stand and wait, feeling the water on my hand every so often to see if it has gotten any warmer yet. When it’s finally at the temperature I want, I get under the water and let it spread over me, feeling the grime and grit of the last few weeks literally melting off of me.
I get out of the shower and towel myself off slowly, allowing the cool air to give me goosebumps up and down my legs and arms. It feels good to be walking around naked again, without the heavy boy clothes weighing me down.
I look around the bedroom and find my clothes in a pile, folded and washed – aww, he washed them! How sweet. They smell like cheap detergent, but it is, I suppose, the thought that counts. I put them on and go over to the bed to thank Blade, but he’s still snoozing, so I decide to let him sleep.
That’s when I realize – I could just go, and he’d be none the wiser. I could walk out the front door and never look back, hitch a ride or just grab a taxi, and be out of here and back in my dad’s house before dawn.
No, I couldn’t do that – I’ve already burned that bridge, especially with what happened to Marco tonight. No, what I could do is use up all my savings and get on a plane to somewhere – maybe disappear in a big city like Chicago or New York or Los Angeles, somewhere where this feud between the Blood Ravens and the Espinozas couldn’t touch me. Someplace where I could just be me, anonymous and alone, doing my own thing.
There is a certain romance I feel to that idea, but I know it’s as implausible as my going back to my dad’s at this point. The truth is, I care too much for Blade at this point to not see this through to the end. And as for my dad, I can’t imagine wanting anything more than to see him brought down.
Even if I were to escape, I could never be completely free of him until the Espinozas are out of business. That means sticking with the Blood Ravens no matter what. I guess I’m a little bit of a Blood Raven now myself. I’ve committed myself to a cause; it just happens to be a cause that opposes my family.
That’s a hard thing to really feel good about, but being here with Blade, it almost feels like it doesn’t matter. I’m here with the person I want more than anything in this entire world, and I’m not about to let it get me down.
So, instead of running away or dashing off to some new adventure, I lay down in the bed beside Blade, my gut telling me that what I truly want more than anything else is to kiss him. So I do. My kiss wakes him up like sleeping beauty, and I find myself in tears – tears for myself, tears for what I’ve lost, tears for what I’ve gained – there are even some tears for Marco in there. I just feel so confused, so alienated from everything, so detached from my own emotions but at the same time overwhelmed by them.
Blade doesn’t worry about any of this. He just kisses me, not in the usual way he does, where he’s all dominant and almost scary, but in true passion, kissing away my tears, kissing me on the cheeks and on the forehead, then kissing my lips again. And that’s when I realize what I really want at this moment: him. I want him wholly and completely – not in our usual roles of dominant and submissive, but together, as one, fully equal and fully alive.
He kisses me again, and I make a move to take off his shirt. He does the same to me, exposing my bare breasts to his massive chest as we hold each other in a tight embrace. I feel my nipples harden as he moves from my face to my neck, kissing, nuzzling, and caressing me every way possible.
I let him slide my jeans off, and it’s then that I feel him come alive – again, not dominant, but soft and sweet, as if he’s truly there with me, reading my thoughts, knowing exactly what’s on my mind.
I undo his belt and slide his pants off of him, taking care around his engorged cock. I move to slide down to just taste him and kiss down his chest to his huge dick, licking the underside from the bottom of the shaft to the top, then putting my whole mouth over the tip and doing it again. I move my mouth faster, bringing him just to the point of breaking, until finally, I move upward, kissing his pelvis, his strong abs, his solid pecs, his angular collar bones.
I nuzzle into him as he touches me with his hands, his large palms brushing my pert breasts as he moves on top of me.
There is no discussion, no negotiation necessary – we both know exactly what we want. And it’s so different than every other time we’ve had sex so far. There isn’t that same animal look to his eyes, and the primal nature of our previous encounters is absent. In its place are feelings and sensations beyond my wildest dreams.
Slowly, he enters me, his large and swollen cock filling me up. Instead of trying to rip me apart, he moves in and out of me gently, taking care to kiss me and caress me, kissing my lips, my neck, my clavicle, my shoulder.
He lifts my arm up and peppers me with short, sweet kisses from my armpit to my fingertips, and I cry out “Ohhh” as he tickles me ever so slightly.
He doesn’t pound into me. Instead, he takes his time, allowing his cock to fill me up. He begins pumping into me, his pelvis thrusting towards my clit, filling me with electric shocks each time his hard body slams into mine. It feels amazing. I can tell he’s nearing orgasm, and I throw my head back as suddenly I begin building towards my own.
He pumps faster and faster, the length of his shaft thrusting in and out of me and making me see stars. Suddenly, I feel his legs stretch out, and he explodes inside me, his cum blasting from his cock and into my wet, waiting pussy. This sends me over the edge; I cry out again in triumph as I feel an orgasm overtake my entire body, sending shivers down my spine, from my neck all the way down my legs.
“Oh fuck!” I call out. “Blade! Uhhhhh!”
A moment later, it’s all passed, and he collapses onto the bed beside me.
“Holy shit,” he whispers, as if he’s afraid to break the still silence between us. “That was...”
“Incredible,” I breathe out. “That was absolutely incredible.”
“I’ve never had sex like that. At least, not in a really, really long time.”
“It’s nice. I don’t want it like that every time, but it...” I blush, knowing that I was about to say something silly and schoolgirl-ish.
Blade manages to pick up on it anyway. “I want you to know, Maria,” he says, still in barely a whisper, “that I care about you. This isn’t just something for me. What I feel for you is real.”
“I feel the same way,” I say, moving down his body to lay on this chest. “Blade, I—”
“I know,” is all he has to say. “I know.”