Lynette is worth so much more than she believes she is.
Besides, I couldn’t have her working in the titty bar, all I would have done is watch her strip every damn night. I would have so that I could get a look at her rocking body. Then I would have killed any man who looked at her. I don’t even want her going on dates with fuckers who have no right to so much as sneak a peek at her. I make sure she knows I am not too fond of the thought of it, so Lynette tells anyone who asks her out that she can’t make it, that she needs to focus on her daughter.
Who gave me the right to tell her what to do? To expect her to do as I say? Whatever cunt thought it was okay to let her steal my fuckin’ heart so long ago. She should have been the one I was with not Celia, but she was too damn young back then. Just sixteen years old, and way too fuckin’ young for me. I didn’t know her age when I met her, and I already had Tate with Celia. I thought Lynette was at least nineteen; she seemed much older, more mature than her sixteen years. Drove me crazy when I found out she was a kid. I felt like a damn pervert of the worst kind for liking her the way I did.
There’s no way on this earth I would have touched her back then. I would never touch a young girl in that way, no matter how beautiful she was.
There’s an understanding in this place. You don’t touch what doesn’t belong to you. Lynette may not be officially branded as mine, but every brother knows she’s off limits to anyone but me! I will put a bullet in their heads if they so much as look at her for too long! I had no damn to go there, but it gives me a headache thinking about her with any of these fuckers.
“How about a private dance,” I may have had too much to drink already, but seeing her standing behind that bar in that tight red dress... the dress that hugs all her natural curves has sent all the blood in my body to my fuckin’ cock. She’s the sexiest woman in this place, and she knows it. I'm sick of fighting what I feel for her. Lynette is not a little girl anymore; she’s twenty-eight. However, something always stops me from claiming her.
She cocks her head to the side with a smile on her face.
That smile does something to me. I’ve fucked many women in my time, but none have had me wanting them the way I want Lynette. Pussy is pussy at the end of the day. I get drunk, and I fuck whoever is on hand at the time, I don’t even remember half of them. However, I’d never forget Lynette’s sweet little pussy should I get my hands on her for the night. That I have no doubt about.
I fight what I feel for her every damn day because I put my boy first. Tate needs to be one number one, and he is, but even my father has been in my ear about taking her for my own. Reckons she’s got a thing for me. Said he can see it in her eyes. Sees it in mine as well, so he said.
I don’t know, maybe he’s right. Celia has been gone for two years; I’m VP, do I want to teach my boy that the only way to treat women is to use them to get off? Never showing him what a real relationship could be like? He’s at an impressionable age. I don’t want to mold my boy into a man that can’t form bonds with women because of his mother.
I won’t use Lynette for one night to get off. She’s worth so much fuckin’ more than that.
“If I thought you meant that...” Her voice trails off with a shake of her head.
She wants me, I can see it in her eyes. I finally understand what my dad has been telling me. Maybe I always saw it but just ignored it. I don’t give a fuck about the age difference between us anymore. She’s ten years younger, not fucking twenty. Even then it wouldn't bother me. Not anymore.
“You’d what?” I ask her, my eyes on Lynette’s mouth and those made to suck cock lips.
She swallows hard. “Shepard?” Fuck this!
I jump over the bar, and she backs up against the mirrored wall behind her, bottles clang as if they’re about to fall. They won’t. I grab her waist and pull her against me. She was made for me; she fits me like a fucking glove.
“You’re driving me crazy,” I tell her while leaning in and breathing in the rose scent of her hair. “Every time you look at me, I want to tear your fuckin’ clothes off and fuck you senseless.”
“You do?” Her voice is husky, wanton.
That’s what I love about Lynette; she’s not a shy, timid little thing. She’s all woman, and she knows what she wants. If my dad is right and she wants me, I know she won’t have said anything because she would never take my attention away from my son. Lynette knows Tate is everything to me. I’ve seen the way she, herself is with him, the way he clung to her when Celia first fucked off. The way Lynette took care of Tate when I couldn’t. The way she still does. My boy loves her, and I know she loves him.
I’m not saying I want a mother for my son, but if I did, I couldn’t think of anyone better. Her daughter is her world, just as my son is mine. I know she’d never expect anything I couldn’t give, just as I wouldn’t expect what she couldn’t.
I can feel her curves beneath my hands, and my mouth is watering!
“You’re so beautiful, Lynette, more beautiful than I’ve ever known. It should've been you, baby. It should’ve been you.”
It should always have been her. Celia and Lynette were friends. Celia met Lynette through a class she was taking at the local college in town. Of course, Celia was a little older than Lynette, seven years older, but she befriended her because Lynette didn’t seem to have any other friends. Lynette was a sweet girl, and I liked her instantly. She was smart and funny, great bothered me like you wouldn’t believe. Lynette told me she was happy with the guy, and he took care of her, so I said nothing, even if my dad did tell me to keep an eye on the man. Something didn’t seem right with him, and my dad picked up on it right away.
The only reason the club didn’t beat the shit out of the guy for sleeping with Lynette when she was fifteen was that at first she lied about her age and said she was eighteen. We found out the truth when she accidentally told Celia, but then she asked me, no begged me, not to do anything to Jose because she loved him. She said he was the only family she had, and he was the father of her baby.
I should have known it was bullshit. I should have known Jose was hurting Lynette. I should have looked out for her better. She was a good girl, always there to take care of Tate when Celia couldn't be bothered. The boy even slipped up and called Lynette Mommy one day.
I think that’s why Celia began being bitchy toward Lynette. It wasn’t Lynette’s fault that she was more of a mother to Celia’s child than she was.
Once I knew the truth about Lynette’s age, I pushed away any thought of her. Fuck, I felt like a damn pervert for lusting after her in the first place. Besides, I had something to keep my mind occupied. Celia already had my boy, she who bore my children, she who walked out on one child and stole the other.
Lynette isn’t a little girl anymore, and nothing is standing in my way now, I could claim her. I could make her mine. God, I want to make her mine.
I lean my forehead against Lynette’s, her face in my hands, hers clutching my cut, and I’m seconds away from kissing the life out of her right here in front of the whole damn club.
“Shepard, please,”
“Please, what, beautiful?”
“Don’t do this to me. You don’t want me; you’ve been drinking. I don’t want to be a one-night thing. I’m worth more than that. Isn’t that what you keep telling me? Isn’t that why you won’t allow me to...” I don’t let her finish. She’s right; she’s worth more than what I can give her.
I kiss her forehead and pull away from her. She audibly groans as if not having my body against hers hurts. “I’m sorry,” And then I’m gone.
Chapter Two
Lynette
It's not that I didn’t want Shepard, the man is all I’ve thought about since I was sixteen. I watched him struggle with his relationship with my friend for years. A friend who took me in for a short while after I ran away from my father.
I watched Shepard become a father to her children. I argued with Celia many times about the way she treated not onl
y Shepard but the children, children I took care of most of the time. I loved them as if they were my own. I still do.
Shepard is the man who helped me when my daughter’s father left us because he believed I’d cheated on him and had someone else’s child. Why would he think such a thing? Because he was Puerto Rican, I’m white; our baby was my color, not his. His family pushed the idea into his dumb brain that even a half Puerto Rican child would be dark in color.
My beautiful baby girl had light skin, hazel eyes, and looked just like me. However, she was most definitely Jose’s baby. For two damn years, he made me feel like crap over what his family believed. He wouldn’t allow me to name him as Willow’s father on the birth certificate, and he wouldn’t have anything to do with her at all. If she so much as walked up to him, he’d flip out, and it would scare my little girl so badly she would sob in fear. Which, of course, would make me angry, which made him more furious. Once I’d calm Willow down, Jose would take his anger out on me. Sometimes, he’d batter me so severely, I’d have to hide away until the bruises disappeared.
Jose was no kind of father to Willow. He never celebrated with me when she said her first word, walked her first steps, cut her first tooth. No, Shepard did. Even though Willow wasn’t his, Shepard always treated her like his child.
I’ve spent years loving a man I never believed would be mine. He’s my best friend; there is no doubt about that. How can I be best friends with an outlaw biker ten years my senior? Because beyond the criminal, beyond the violence is a fantastic man, friend, father. A man not many get to see. A man I have seen many times.
Whenever he’s down and drinks himself stupid over missing his little girl, I’m there to pick up the pieces and make sure he’s okay. I’m the one who takes care of his son so that he doesn’t have to see his father at his lowest.
I’m the one who loves them both so much, I would die for them as much as I would my little girl.
I think Tate also deserves a mother who will put him first. A mother who will never leave him, always love him, and I do love him. Not that I’m saying I should be his mother, but I love him like he was my own. Every day since Celia walked away, I’ve been there. Tate always comes to me when he needs something. Even just someone to talk to. We spoke a lot after Celia walked away from him.