Chapter Ten

Interlude

While being Patrick’s lover, his sex kitten, his publicist, his sub or slave, depending on the day and the hour and his mood, our relationship went far beyond the kinky sex that brought us together. Patrick meant big things to me that I’d never dared to feel. After a long and tenuous dance with fate and my crazy lust, he provided the discipline and love I needed. Feelings of home, warmth, stability and peace began to feel possible in a life with Patrick Helms. I hadn’t experienced these things in years, and I felt as if I was finally coming home after a long exile.

It had been a rough journey.

In the blissful days just prior to my eighth birthday, life was tranquil. I felt complete with all the right things in place: mother, father, two siblings and a roof overhead. One errant bullet ended that innocent bliss, one split second of doom, and twenty years later I still felt the effect of that momentous shift; that day when lead and bone collided and I was left to fend for myself without the nurturing hand that fed and clothed me. Daddy survived that gun blast, but only the shell of the man remained. What the bullet left behind were bitter, lingering days for a former cop who’d once made manliness his prime virtue, and heroic acts the fire that gave his life its purpose. Locked in his wheelchair, Daddy never was the same.

Twenty years later—enter Patrick Helms, and the driven life I’d been leading for so many years was finally able to slow to a lazy first gear.

“You know this scares me sometimes,” I mused aloud one afternoon, when, after a wild scene of punishment and sex, we lay side by side in bed absently staring into the ceiling.

“This what?” he came right back. He’d just taken my pussy to a dozen climaxes on his tongue and mouth, brilliant ones. Flipping me over, he’d tied my hands behind me and raised my bottom high so he could screw my asshole from behind. Since my training with Jess, I never balked about anal sex. That day was no different. With him ravaging my behind, I shuddered deep, screaming softly as the rugged orgasms ripped through me, as violent as any I’d ever felt. It wasn’t long before the savage bucking had wrung us both dry. In the aftermath of such intense physical pleasure, the most peculiar questions often pop into my head from out of nowhere, just as they did that day.

I turned on my side and lazily fingered his chest hairs. “It scares me how well you and I fit together. How much I like being with you. How I have my hopes up and do silly things like mapping out my future—like we’ll even be together twenty years from now.”

“You don’t think that’s possible?”

“Possible, yes. But I’m not that kind of lucky.”

He turned to face me, reaching for my hips and drawing me close. “Why wouldn’t you be that lucky, Claire?”

“Oh…” I wanted to sidestep the question—though that was never easy with Patrick, especially when he was looking into my eyes. If he didn’t demand an answer at the moment, he could be counted on to bring it up later—days even weeks later. I smiled like a flirty debutante. “Oh, you never know what kind of damming secrets I might be hiding,” I shot off in jest. A few wrinkles creased his brow and he cocked his head as he stared at me with that one keen, clichéd eye. Humm…that gave me the jitters, and ruffled my sexual feathers so much that I dove back into his body, in particular his cock, and staved off the unpleasant questions I sensed him formulating in that genius brain of his.

There were still secrets that I wasn’t yet ready to divulge—that I never planned to divulge. However, life happens and circumstances change. I didn’t realize until I was already heavily invested in Patrick Helms that our relationship had put me on a collision course with those secrets that I wouldn’t be able to avoid. The barriers that separated me from my past were crumbling, as if the steel, the stone and the mortar erected in my mind was never anything but an illusion, held fast by thought alone. What had held that impermeable wall together turned to dust now nearly every day as memories floated back to me, first like dreams, all fuzzy and clouded by a lack of focus, then more tangible, when I would see those memories clearly, touch them, taste them, smell Bellis’ breath, hear Bellis’ voice, remember well his unshaved and surly face and how it felt against my cheek: warm, invigorating, and dangerous. Dangerous but safe—because this was Bellis, and Bellis was indestructible as a steel door.

He’d been my umpteenth crush, but my first lover—maybe boyfriend is a better word. I’m not sure there was ever ‘love’ involved. Just sex and domination and my utter surrender to the man. When I was just a girl, he was the man who made me into a woman.

After years of sidestepping him in my thoughts, the memories of him came on me with every northwestern breeze…

The night I turned sixteen, my cousin CJ arrived at my front door. CJ—that’s short for Chrystal Jean, though I later dubbed her Calamity Jane, since she usually brought a whirlwind of chaos with her. Pissed over another disaster of a birthday, I hopped into her busted up old CJ-7 (I think she just picked it for the name) and we took off for the mountains, stopping at old Jeeters Hideaway, a biker bar where she normally found the men she fucked. She was just a couple years older than me but she had a lifetime more experience with men and sex. She was never one of the biker girls, just a kinky hanger on who liked it rough with no attachments and no grief to clutter up the hard sex she required from time to time to calm her down. “They take me down a peg when I get too cocky,” she told me once. “I think I need that now and then.” However they ‘took her down a peg’ was probably good medicine for the over-the-top CJ.

That night at Jeeters, she managed to get me served. I wasn’t even carded. I’m not sure the clientele, or even the owners of the bar, worried about what was legal and what was not.

A little uneasy in a tavern, I sat back and observed, mostly the burly leader of the ‘Riders’—short for some bigger bolder club name that was barely uttered in my company. His name was Bellis.

We took turns shooting glances back and forth for nearly an hour. As soon as I saw him look at me with those daring eyes, I immediately looked away. I knew I didn’t belong there, and that the two beers I’d downed the first half hour were more than enough to make me drunk and unstable. When I saw him hoist himself from his chair and amble toward the back of the tavern, I breathed a sigh of relief and turned around to talk to CJ, who’d just landed back at our table with a dreamy sigh on her pale face.

Not more than a minute later, someone brushed against my side. Bellis. I could tell without looking up. The leather pants, the boots, the jingling hardware, the tattoo of a snake that began at his wrist and moved up his arm—all Bellis. Where the hell had he come from!

When he didn’t move on, I turned into a bundle of fear. Looking at CJ across the table, I saw her smile slyly, as if she knew something I did not.

I felt him breathing down my neck, then his hand in my hair tugging my head back.

“What the hell are you doing out here with the likes of me?” he finally demanded.

“Umm… ah…keeping CJ company,” I stammered.

My head hurt, my palms were sweaty and I was afraid I’d pee my pants.

“You want to come with me?” he asked.

I didn’t have to think twice, though it took a lot more than a few brief moments for me to answer the question.

“No second chances, bitch,” he went on. “But then you’re just jailbait, ain’t ya?” He started to laugh and he let go my hair. I was about to be pushed away like someone’s tagalong kid sister.

“Hell no! Just turned eighteen,” I spit out proudly. Lying made me nervous. But it made me tremble with excitement, and I liked the way that felt. I sure hoped that CJ hadn’t already disclosed my age. She’d left the table when Bellis decided to stay, and I saw her beaming at me from a few feet away, smiling broadly.

“Yeah, right,” Bellis chuckled darkly.

I lost my virginity that night, in a half-drunk, half remembered event that’s been little but a blur to me ever since. So shocked by the stunning events of that night, I wouldn’t get in CJ’s Jeep for months, afraid that she would take me back to Jeeters and back to Bellis. I knew at some point I’d return to that bar to find him, though for a long while, as I focused on finishing high school and getting into college, he was far off my radar, just a passing thought that would cross my mind from time to time.

Bellis didn’t have me again until I actually was eighteen. Although it had been two years since we met at Jeeters, when we ran into each other at another biker bar, the instantaneous attraction was as strong that night as it had been before. Bellis was ready to pick up where we’d left off, as if two years prior he’d just staked his claim and was waiting for the final paperwork to come through. Older and wiser, I was ready for him. Just a kid before, I was woman enough to have him.

Once we reconnected Bellis became my world. I rode with the ‘Riders’ whenever I could, though there was always sneaking around involved. Lies. Deception. I learned how to con my parents with such panache that I doubt they would have ever learned what I was up to if my brother Duncan hadn’t started telling tales.

What I didn’t do was screw the man that first night, nor the second or third night I rode with him. In fact, he made it clear that he wouldn’t screw me until I’d been properly initiated. Nearly three weeks passed before that finally happened, and by then my lust was on the edge and I would have done anything the man wanted.

When the Riders took off for the beach that night, I was clinging to Bellis’s back as the Harleys moved in a synchronous tandem through the winding mountain roads. The small inlet where they conducted their tribal rites was secluded on all four sides, enclosed by trees on three, and open to the water on the fourth.

After being ordered to strip, I stood on the sand while Cougar etched a quarter sized yin/yang symbol on my ass with tattoo needles. I suppose I was lucky it wasn’t my boyfriend’s initials, or some garish ‘Rider’ insignia. The ancient symbol was Bellis’ personal choice. He gave no explanation, he didn’t need to. Although Cougar told me I could figure it out myself, he went on to elaborate—I was the girl with two faces, two souls, two hearts, split in the middle. That was way too weird for me to understand at the time, but I was willing to let the matter rest for another day and another explanation.

After the tattoo, my hair was cut short, no more than a butch. I understood that most of the Riders’ female initiates were shaved bald, but not Bellis’s women. He preferred a little fuzz.

I knew that the rest of my world would freak when they saw me, but I was ready to a make statement and ready for something that extreme. Those were days when flipping off one’s parents was a rite of passage. As long as I fit in with the Riders, that’s all that mattered to me.

The night had already taken enough odd twists to tie my stomach in knots and send my arousal to the breaking point. But before I could get to Bellis, I had a few other men to take care of. A bonfire burned on the beach, while music blared from loud speakers. Dragged to the water’s edge, someone christened me with Rider’s ‘holy water’ while reciting lines from some obscure poem. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it then, nor remember the incantation now. Gales of laughter rose up from the once somber crowd, but once the laughter died away, I was thrown over the seat of my boyfriend’s Harley, tied down so I couldn’t move, and was pretty much fucked and abused until dawn.

Piss was running down my leg before I was finally untied. Thankfully, Bellis didn’t notice that I peed on his bike, or I would have taken a hell of a beating before he set me free. All that mattered to me was that the initiation was over, I was officially one of the Riders’ girls, and I could finally fuck the man who’d I’d been dying to fuck for two years.

It didn’t matter that Bellis had reduced me to a stereotype. I was his pretty white-trash bitch and proud of it.

I managed to make it through my freshman year, maintain my honor roll status, and still be Bellis’ white-trash bitch. But by the following summer as sophomore year approached, I knew that there was no way to combine my two lives into one that worked. College was more important than riding with Bellis…and things were getting increasingly dangerous with the club. What had been a wild lark for the first few months had lost its glitter. I was bored with his friends, the fucking became surprisingly routine, and the Riders’ brushes with the law were starting to scare me. Nothing but petty crimes, but how did I know that’s all they had in mind? What I really wanted—whips and chains and S&M sex—seemed reserved for his part-time females. I watched dozens of scenes, hungering for my own. But when I told Bellis I wanted that kind of sex myself, my appeals were met with a scowl. He’d bait me, tease me, take me nearly to the brink of doing something wickedly wonderful, then drop me cold with a derisive laugh.

He always said that he was just getting geared up, that he needed the right time, the right place, the right inspiration, and most importantly I needed to be ready for the shock. What shock? I’d already seen what he could do and I wanted the same thing for myself. I pleaded with him, knowing that I was as ready as I’d ever be, but he brushed me off. I didn’t know my own mind was all he’d say.

The night of the summer solstice, the most risky of Bellis’s illegal activities went off without a hitch. I should have rejoiced with the others while they partied on the same beach where I was initiated the summer before. Instead, I remember smoking my third joint while I stood alone on the sidelines near the water. Suddenly, I felt as if the heavens were opening up, the stars and the moon, with its big bright face, were converging on me from above. In that quiet rapture, a year’s worth of wisdom seemed to descend into my head all at once. I turned and stared toward the crowd of boisterous bikers, becoming more detached as the whirlwind of laughter, fights and fucking played before my eyes like a grainy black and white film. This was the family that I’d chosen over my own broken one at home. Distraught by that fact, a decision began to form in my mind. Within seconds, I knew what I had to do. Even after coming down from that brilliant high, I didn’t waver from that firm resolution.

I was gone a week later. As soon as I set my plan in motion and could slip unnoticed from Bellis’ apartment, I dropped by my home, packed up what I wanted, kissed my parents on the cheek and assured them I’d be okay. Daddy had pretty much written me off, but I got the feeling he was okay with my leaving, abrupt as it was. He certainly didn’t argue. Mom just sobbed as usual, her little girl was going away again.

With that unpleasantness done, I pointed my old Toyota in the direction of Chicago, and took off.

My college transcripts were already in the hands of three prominent institutions. I’d be accepted to one of them by September, if I was lucky. Or I’d take a few junior college classes until I was. That part didn’t bother me, nor did finding a place to live and a job to get me by. I’d mapped out my future years in advance, and I wouldn’t budge from the plan. I’d graduate in three year, have an internship with a major company before I was finished, and be jump-started into the ad world with plans to become its next superstar. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d put my career, my livelihood and my future above the people in my life. Career seemed to be the safest place to put my trust, the one thing I could always fall back on, the one hope to cling to when everything else failed.

My career path didn’t fail me, until that fateful day when Tate Larimer put his hand to my ass in his office, and sacrificed a damn good ad exec to satisfy his own prurient need. Had I known then what I learned later, I would have stopped the man when I still had the power to do so.

I’d placed a lot of importance on keeping my career above my sexual escapades, but apparently not enough. I guess some things written in stone need to be erased, no matter how tough that might be.

***

Six months into my relationship with Patrick, thoughts of Bellis began appearing to me almost daily. He showed up in dreams, in daydreams, in nightmares, looming in my life like a ghost. I’d reach into the back of my closet and some article of clothing or an old snapshot would fall from the mess and jog another Bellis memory. I started to wonder if he’d finally met his demise and had come back to haunt me.

Despite the annoyance of those old memories, I knew why they were returning with such vigor.

Returning to Seattle had always been in my plans. But it was something that was easy to put off. I’d made two quick trips to visit my parents in seven years, but just as soon as Daddy started harping about my life and mom started tearing up, I’d have to split. As much as I still loved them and the wide open spaces of the Northwest, I knew that moving back would never be a good idea.

Suddenly, Bellis was back, riding shotgun in my mind, clinging to me like a steel claw. I couldn’t shake him, no matter how hard I tried. Just a figment of my imagination, I kept telling myself. But I knew better. I knew that his haunting presence wouldn’t leave no matter how hard I tried to will it away. It was time to meet it head on.