It was a pleasure to watch the fucker move like a limp paper doll, but he didn’t try to argue and just opened the cuffs.
The moment Hammer was free, he stumbled forward, watching his reflection in Dex’s big glistening eyes. The kid’s hands rose, as if he wanted to hug Hammer, only to drop when Dex realized they were not alone. It was proof that he knew some secrets should be kept, but the lack of closeness still felt almost like rejection.
Their bubble had burst, and wherever this secret thing between them was to go next, it would require effort and thought.
If it had been up to Hammer, he would have taken Dex to his house, shower together, and then sleep between Dex’s legs for the next twenty-four hours. But pleasure and rest had to wait, since more pressing matters needed to be dealt with first.
“Thank you.”
Dex beamed at him despite the dark circles under his eyes. He must have driven through the night to reach Cora’s and then get here on time. “It’s okay. Will you… come over tonight? I bet Frank will want to talk about… it all.”
Wasp snorted. “Someone’s got an admirer,” he teased.
Dex groaned and took a step back, shoving one hand into his pocket. He held his other arm close, and if he really had dislocated his shoulder, Hammer was itching to get a look at him and make sure he didn’t need a hospital visit. “He just has mad skills with that sledgehammer.”
From the corner of his eye, Hammer saw Lion raising his hand to call him over, and he offered Dex the briefest nod before joining the prez a few yards away, where he stood watching the prison containers. It took effort to walk straight, without betraying fatigue, but he managed to do well enough.
“Lion?”
“Once we vote on it, Ryker will have to die.”
Hammer stifled the smile about to bloom on his face, because it wouldn’t be taken kindly, and nodded, looking at his prez’s hard profile. “I’m sorry this happe—”
“I want you to do it.”
Hammer swallowed as the rain as the rain quickened, drizzling over his already-wet skin and hair. There was no escaping the cold. “Really?” If it was about Hammer’s own loved one, he’d have elected to do the deed himself, to make it quick and pain-free, but Lion nodded.
“He was trying to make everyone see you as this dangerous maniac. He wanted you to die so his secret could be buried with you. You deserve that much for the way we’ve turned on you.”
Hammer cleared his throat and crossed his arms when his chest felt like it was about to expand. It was more than he’d expected to hear in terms of apologies. “Appreciate it. And I will not make him suffer for no reason.”
The prez nodded and gave a soft exhale. “Right… we’ll talk about it later. You need to clean up, and I have… things to think through. I’ll call Church for 4 p.m.”
Hammer didn’t know how much time he had to rest, but when Lion stepped away, about to walk toward his chopper, Hammer grabbed his shoulder.
“There’s one more thing I wanted to talk about before that,” he said, glancing at Dex.
Chapter 17 – Dex
Thetimebetweenmorningand evening had stretched into eternity. Frank had arrived in a rented car only an hour after Hammer had left and he’d been so furious Dex half-expected him to transform into a dragon and burn everything down with his fiery breath and laser eyes. He’d made Dex pay him back for the rental, and then took him to see a doctor. While the bruising covering Dex’s skin was awful and multi?colored, he was quite well on the whole and returned home with a bottle of painkillers and his arm in a sling. And a bottle of jasmine perfume he’d grabbed at the drugstore while Frank was busy looking for snacks. If Hammer planned to dump Dex now that they were back home, the smell would remind him of how delicious their fucking had been.
Since their return, Frank had been alternating between two modes—rants and arguing, or dead silence. Dex wasn’t even sure whether Hammer was coming over in the evening, because they’d barely gotten the chance to talk, but he did warn Frank of such a possibility, for which he got a barrage of swearing and a wet sponge thrown his way.
Frank had then stopped washing the dishes and made Dex do it for him.
Dex deserved his uncle’s anger, but was still relieved when Frank left the house to let off some steam at his outdoor gym. By the time Frank’s routine progressed from walking with a weighted yoke to flipping massive tyres, Dex took a long hot shower, and thoroughly washed the dirt out of his hair, which was a pain because of the problems with his shoulder. He then gave up on his attempt to mend the sleeve of his jacket halfway through the task.
Finally clean, he fell into his bed and switched off as if he’d not slept in days. He ended up getting up in the afternoon, following a dream about Bandit choking on a pacemaker. He’d sweated so much into the sheets after that nightmare another shower was necessary, but once that was done, it dawned on Dex that Hammer might be visiting them later, and he got into a cleaning frenzy hindered by the state of his arm.
He didn’t want to think about the possibility of Hammer not wanting to see him much from now on, but it buzzed at the back of his mind like a fly he couldn’t swat. Sure, he’d saved Hammer from the other bikers, and had felt like a hero at the time, but he didn’t want a pity-fuck from a guy who had so many club hangarounds to pick from. He wanted that kiss again. Real, raw, and yet so tender and unlike utilitarian kisses with men who didn’t matter.
Worries that he’d been only an experiment to Hammer had sent Dex into a spiral of destructive fantasies in which he put people he hated into that meat grinder alive, so he ended up putting on a horror movie he remembered having a scene like that. In the end though, once he realized, there wasn’t much more he could do to improve the shabby interior in his current state, he sat back on the sofa and switched on a gory horror movie featuring scenes reminiscent of his earlier fantasies.
At least it was something to take his mind off—
The familiar roar of a motorcycle made him rise like Dracula from his coffin as soon as the sun set. With his heart beating in alarm, he dashed to the bathroom, brushed back the few hairs that remained out of place, smelled his pits, and then added more of the jasmine perfume.
A part of him worried Hammer might not come over after having so much time to think things through, yet the timing suggested it couldn’t be anyone else, and Dex checked his phone for the nth time that day. He had gotten some more Grindr messages since getting the device back, but he'd ignored them and spent all day hoping Hammer might give him a call.Thathadn’t happened, but maybe Hammer didn’t even have his number.