Page 13 of Diesel’s Desire

“I’m gonna call a cab,” I tell him. “Long night.”

“Nonsense.” He waves that off before I’ve even finished the sentence. “We’re headed out too. Come on, we’ll drop you.”

“You sure? I don’t want to⁠—”

“Penny.” He gives me the look, the one he’s perfected over decades of telling deputies exactly how things are going to go. “Get in the truck.”

His wife laughs and pats my arm on her way past, and Morris fishes his keys out of his coat pocket, presses them into my palm instead of his own.

“Go on and get settled,” he says. “I need to say goodnight to Jenson first. Man’ll take offense if I sneak off without shaking his hand.”

I take the keys, the metal still warm from his pocket, and watch him make his way back toward the lights, his wife falling into step beside him, unhurried, comfortable, comfortable together even after a long night.

I head for the truck alone, gravel crunching under my heels, and let myself breathe out slowly in the quiet dark, away from the noise, away from blue eyes and old names and two boys—now men—who apparently never learned to hate me the way I assumed they would.

9

DIESEL

The mattress feels too lumpy tonight, or maybe being alone makes it harder to ignore. I flip onto my back for the fourth time in ten minutes, staring at the ceiling, and try to remember the last time I actually just slept in this bed.

Bass from the reception thumps through the wall behind my headboard, steady as a pulse. Every few minutes something crashes hard enough to rattle my window—a chair, a body, something—followed by a peal of laughter that could be Sasha’s or could be one of the sweetbutts. Hard to tell.

Havoc and Sasha have never been shy about putting on a show once the drink starts flowing. Wouldn’t surprise me if they’re christening the head table right now in front of God and half the club, her dress hiked around her hips while he growls something filthy against her throat. That’s usually the kind of party I’d be right in the middle of—Honey on one arm, a drink in the other, watching my President fuck his new wife in public because that’s just what a good reception looks like around here.

Instead I’m up here. Alone. Staring at the ceiling.

Something bangs against a wall hard enough that glass rattles somewhere down the hall, followed by giggling pitched high and breathless. I clench my jaw and roll onto my side, putting my back to the noise like that’ll do a damn thing to block it out.

I keep thinking about those framed-out houses past Bluebell’s pen. Bare rafters, open walls. A place to come home to instead of sleep off a party.

I never wanted one. Not once in almost twenty years of clubhouse living have I looked at Sharon’s blueprints spread across the table during church and thought that could be mine. The dorm room’s always been enough. Four walls, a lock, somewhere to crash before the next run.

Tonight I want one. Bad enough it scares me a little, lying here mapping out where a couch would go, whether I’d want a porch, if Bluebell’s pasture would still be close enough to hear her at night.

I know exactly why that thought showed up, and it’s got nothing to do with Sasha’s wedding and everything to do with a woman standing ten feet from me in the dark by those same half-built houses, hair down around her shoulders, smelling like vanilla and something floral that’s been stuck in my memory since I was a teenager.

Christ. I’m hard just thinking about it. That blue dress. The way it caught the moonlight when she crossed her arms like she needed something to hold onto.

I press the heel of my hand against my slacks, more reflex than decision. Doesn’t help. Doesn’t do a goddamn thing except confirm what my body already knows—I’m not sleeping tonight until I deal with this one way or another.

Fine.

I work the button open, drag the zipper down, and free myself with a hiss I don’t bother swallowing. Nobody’s here to hear it, and even if there was, half the club’s currently occupied doing worse.

I wrap my hand around my cock, let my head fall back against the pillow, and my mind goes exactly where I knew it would.

Not the parking lot from seventeen years back. Not the ring, not the way she looked at it and then looked at me like she was sorry before she’d even said the word no.

Tonight.

Her hair down, gold under the string lights wound through the trees. That blue against her skin, simple the way she’s always worn things, because she never needed to try harder to be the best-looking woman in any room she walked into.

I picture my hand in that hair instead of just imagining it loose. Pulling her close by it, tilting her head back the way I used to when we were kids figuring out what our bodies wanted in the back of my truck, except now I know exactly what I’m doing. Exactly how to make a woman shake apart from the inside out.

I stroke myself slow at first, matching the bass still thumping through the wall, smearing the precum over my shaft with each pass.

Penny in that dress, but it’s coming off. My hands working the zipper down her spine while she breathes my real name against my jaw—Evan, the way she said it out by the houses, low and rough like she’s not used to how it feels in her mouth after seventeen years of not saying it.