Page 6 of Lick

“You really want me to answer that?” He runs his nose down the column of my neck. When I feel his hand twist my curls around his fist, my breath catches. “Do you like to have your hair pulled when you’re being taken from behind?” My stomach tightens at his words.

“What’s wrong, baby? Cat got your tongue?”

Turning around, the wet paint brush hits the white of his T-shirt, tagging him with pink paint and barely missing the black leather of his cut.

“You’re playing with fire, Mr. McCoy.”

I meet his playful gaze as he steps closer, his chest hitting mine and trapping the wet paint brush between us. He leans down, and when I think his lips are going to find mine, he changes course, aiming for my ear. I feel his teeth nip at my skin.

“That’s one fire I wouldn’t mind being burned by,” he whispers.

“Jenni?” Savannah yells from the other room, making Lick step back and breaking our moment.

Another one that’s only ours.

Since I arrived at the club, I’ve been at war with myself. Lick does something to me that no man has before. I want to be close to him. I’ve heard the hush-hush rumors that float around the clubhouse. The tales of a tragic childhood with his mother being the reason for all that tragedy. He’s never confirmed anything, though. He never wants to talk about his past.

I often wonder if there’s more truth than not to the things I’ve heard. I want to show him that his awful upbringing shouldn’t cloud his mind when it comes to his happiness, or a possible connection with someone else. His heart has been shadowed by a woman who didn’t deserve his love, and because of that he’s now broken. Closed off from women. I want to break through his armor and let him see that he can count on me.

But I hold back.

I don’t want to lose myself or break my own heart.

After blowing up the last two balloons, I grab a beer and take a seat under the Mulberry. Being around Jenni and the mixed feelings I’m getting are stirrin’ up memories of my childhood and the love I always saw shining in my father’s eyes when he looked at my mother. I fucking hate that I would even think of these two women in the same thought since Jenni is nothing like her. She’s a breath of fresh air. Since the day she first stepped foot on Fury dirt, she’s had a mouth on her and a fire no man will ever be able to extinguish.

They’d be stupid to even try.

Jenni is deserving of so much more than my mother ever was, and knowing that scares the shit out of me. Love does stupid shit to people. It does things that I want no part of. My father loved my mother, a woman who wasn’t worthy of that love. He loved her so much that he killed for her—no, not for her. Because of her. He killed the man who supplied my mother with heroin, the drug that she chose over us, again and again. She would rather be high and unfeeling then sober and living. I’m not sure what happened to her that made her think that getting high was a better option than actually caring for her family.

My father was stupid and in love, and he thought by ridding my mother of her connection it would bring her back to him, to us. He didn’t think she would just find someone else to supply her. See, love made him stupid.

Love is fickle. It’s full of unpredictability and inconsistency. You can be in love with a person one minute and hate them in the next. In one breath, you’d lay down your own life for theirs, but in the next, you’d be pulling the trigger, ending them. I don’t want to be weak. I don’t want another person to have so much influence over my life that I’m no longer in control. I’ve given up too much to allow that to happen.

Closing my eyes, my mind drifts back to the night they came for my father. The night my life changed for good. I was only twelve…

“You have the right to remain silent. The things you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney…”

I watch as the two cops come into my house and place handcuffs on my father. His face is like a stone. No emotions. No expression. My mother’s screams come from behind me, but my gaze remains on my father. He hangs his head as they click the cold metal around his wrists. I stay transfixed as the officers lead him from the room, ripping away the last remaining shred of my childhood.

The sound of my mother’s voice breaks through my thoughts. “Tylan, you’re the man of the house now.” She sniffs, “You hear me, boy?”

I don’t answer. I don’t look at her. I only stare at the closed door in front of me.

“Tylan! I’m talking to you!”

I finally turn towards her. Her face is blotchy red, but it isn’t because she’s crying. They’re sores, years of drug use evident on her skin. Her greasy hair hangs limp, and three of her front teeth are missing.

“W-What?”

“I said you’re the man of the house now.”

I roll my head on my shoulders, easing the tension and taking a long swig of beer. My past, the memories of my parents always leave me with a sour taste in my mouth. Shaking my head, I pull myself back to the present and reach into the cooler to grab another beer.

“Man of the house,” I mutter quietly, twisting off the cap. Later that night I’d realized my house, my room, would never feel safe to me again. That night, one of my mother’s friends came into my room to show me what my mother meant when she said I was the man of the house. I was responsible for getting what my mother wanted. Since my father’s hard-earned money was no longer available to pay for the poison that my mother needed, I paid for it the only way I could.

With my innocence.

After that night, I truly learned how much of a vile person my mother was. I was raped and sodomized by a man who became a fixture in my mother’s life for years to come. I was repeatedly used in order for my mother to get her fix. I should have run away. That night, after I bled from my ass for the first time, I should have left. But my thoughts came to my sister. Betsy was only eight years old, and it was up to me to try to block her from the darkness our mother brought into our lives. No matter the hatred I had for my mother, my love for my sister outweighed it. It’s because of that love that I stayed and allowed myself to live the horror that was my life.