Page 8 of Coach (Shady Valley Henchmen #8)

Coach

My gaze slipped from watching the taillights of Este’s car as the prison’s alarm rang out through the quiet night.

In all the years I’d been inside, I’d only ever heard that siren twice: once, during an all-out rival gang brawl in the chow hall, and once when someone tried to escape.

“Is that the prison alarm?” Colter asked, materializing out of nowhere to stand near me, his gaze trained on the place that had been our home for years.

“Yeah.”

“Cons taking advantage of the partial outage?” he asked, but there was a skeptical edge to his voice. A blackout would have meant a full lockdown. Save for people beating the shit out of each other in their cells, there was no way for anything to get that out of control.

“Maybe.”

The sirens droned on and on.

Then, not long after, the dogs.

“Oh, shit,” Colter said.

I wasn’t sure Colter had been inside with me when that last guy attempted to escape. But they’d found him in under twenty minutes. They hadn’t even needed to bring out the dogs.

Down in town, I watched several headlights turn on in the police station parking lot.

You knew it wasn’t good when the local PD was getting involved.

“Dunno how to feel about this,” Colter said. “On the one hand, as someone who was chained in there like some kind of animal, I want to cheer the fuck on.”

“On the other, you were locked inside there with actual animals who shouldn’t be free to roam the streets.”

“Exactly,” Colter agreed.

Unbidden, my mind traveled across the town to some unknown house where Este was stuck in the dark she was so terrified of.

And there was possibly some sick bastard on the loose.

She had her dog, I reminded myself. One who hated men. Who was hopefully the type to bite first, ask questions later.

I should have sent her home with a gun along with the flashlight. Or, better yet, insisted she stay. I could have gone with her to her place to get her dog.

I didn’t want to scare her off, though.

I could already sense her awkwardness as we said goodbye at her car. Not regret necessarily, but something akin to uncertainty.

Maybe I shouldn’t have let it go as far as it did. But when a woman was moaning my name and begging for what she wanted, it felt wrong to deny her.

In retrospect, she might have been vulnerable after her panic attack. She may not have been thinking as straight as usual.

Oh, well.

What was done was done.

Even if she didn’t happen by at some point, this was a small town; I was bound to bump into her sometime. If not, I could always head to the pool hall to see her.

“Should we be texting Slash about it?” Colter asked.

“I’ll let him know. Get the news spreading. Not a lot of places for someone to hide in town. Don’t want to take a chance of him showing up at one of our doors.”

“Should we drive the girls home?”

“They’re probably all here for the night. Go on back in and enjoy the party. I will keep an eye on the grounds.”

I needed some time away from the conversation and music to think anyway.

“If you’re sure.”

“I am. Maybe don’t get too wasted, though. Just in case.”

To that, he gave me a nod before heading back inside.

I reached for my phone, dialing my boss’s number and listening to the ring.

“This something to do with the blackout?” he answered.

“Yeah. And no. You hear the sirens?”

“There’ve been a lot of sirens.”

“Yeah. But I’m talking about the prison sirens.”

In the background, I could hear Slash moving through the house. Then, likely, opening a window because I could hear the sirens from his end of the phone.

“Dunno if I’ve ever heard those go off before.”

“Once. When someone attempted to escape.”

“Now I see why you’re calling.”

“The dogs are out too. And someone mobilized the SVPD.”

“So someone’s out out. I’ll see what Rook can dig up. If he can dig anything up. Dunno if their computer systems are up and running during an outage.”

“It would be good to know who we’re dealing with. We both know the kind of crimes some of those men went away for.”

“Yeah,” Slash said, sighing. “I can ask Detroit to ask his brother for a name. He’s not usually someone to relay information. But for something like this, he might bend on that. For the safety of everyone.”

“It’ll be on the news first thing in the morning anyway. If they don’t find him by then.”

“Yeah. Alright. Is anyone there not shitfaced? Otherwise, I’ll head over to keep an eye on things.”

“I haven’t been drinking.”

“Good. Keep it that way. If anything seems off, I want a call.”

“Got it.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

With that, he ended the call, and I dipped back inside to grab a gun before doing a tour around the grounds.

Several more cars rushed their way toward the prison.

The sirens had gone silent. I couldn’t help but assume it wasn’t because they’d found the escapee, but because they didn’t want the other prisoners to think someone actually got away, that it was possible, that they could potentially do the same someday down the line.

I clicked off my light and made a wide circle around the clubhouse grounds, letting my eyes adjust to the dark, listening for any strange sounds.

But there was nothing.

The absence of anything else to focus on allowed my mind to wander. Unsurprisingly, it went right back to a stalled elevator, a heavy breath in the dark, the way the air grew thick with Este’s panic.

The club, my brothers, even my family, all assumed the yoga and meditation were just a simple personality quirk. They didn’t know it was something I turned to out of desperation, as a way to cope.

First, there was the anger that could sometimes get the better of me—the very thing that sent me to prison in the first place.

I didn’t regret beating the shit out of the man who’d been beating on my sister.

But I did regret the rage that had been able to overtake me, making it possible for me to get caught for the attack and sent away in the first place.

When I’d been out on bail and going through my trial, I knew I needed to do something about my anger; I had to learn to control myself.

But then I’d gotten sent away, been led to a small box that I had to share with another man, with barely enough room to spread out my arms.

And I’d always had an issue with enclosed spaces, with not being able to leave them.

Then there I was.

Trapped in one.

For years.

Meditation and yoga had become necessary to keep my sanity as the walls seemed to shrink, close in, press down on my chest, making it impossible to breathe.

Luckily, by the time I was closed into my cell that first night, I’d watched several introduction to meditation videos online. So I did my one-nostril breathing. I grounded myself with my senses.

It worked so well that I found myself hooked. When I got access to the library, I went straight to the self-improvement and spirituality sections.

I read everything I could get my hands on: every translation of the Tao Te Ching , the Dhammapada , the Upanishads , the Bhagavad Gita .

I studied yoga sutras, Zen koans, Tantric texts, tai chi manuals, and even some obscure martial arts philosophy.

I binged on Stoic philosophers, Sufi poetry, indigenous wisdom, and monk diaries.

I’d become obsessed with anything that offered some glimmer of balance, of peace, of discipline.

Slowly but surely, it all became a part of me. It was the energy I put forward. The anger slipped back and got tamped down.

I wasn’t naive enough to believe it wasn’t still a part of me.

It was there, creeping closer to the surface in tight situations, in times when those I cared about were in danger.

And, sure, it even crept out in smaller ways.

Like pulling pranks on corrections officers who’d made our lives hell inside once I was free to fuck with them.

But as a whole, that ugly burning heat inside me that had been a part of me ever since I was a little boy getting whipped with a belt for any small, childish offense, was neutralized.

And that little spark of panic in the elevator was the first time in months—maybe even years—when the claustrophobia had reared its ugly head.

It was something I needed to work on more. Even if I’d been glad that its presence allowed Este to not feel so alone with her struggles.

It wasn’t an uncommon fear—the dark. Even in adults. But I got the feeling that Este’s fear stemmed from something a little deeper than the fear of the boogeyman following her into adulthood. It read to me as something more acute, more based in reality.

That, mingled with the fact that she’d been on the road for a while, it suggested to me that she’d been running from something. From some one . Based on experience, that man was likely an ex.

In that case, I felt like Shady Valley probably was a good place for her to settle.

It was easy to see when someone new was around.

And thanks to the area being a hotbed of criminal activity (the Irish and Russian mob, our club, and more independent guys like Czar and Erion), no one liked when new people started coming around and asking questions.

On top of that, now knowing she was probably on the run from her past, I knew to keep an eye out for shady characters or anyone looking too hard in her direction.

Slowly but surely, the noise inside the house died down as lights started to flash inside the second-floor bedrooms while the men took women to bed.

A car pulled up out front a few moments before the front door slid open and the remaining women spilled out, making their way toward their ride-share.

I watched until the taillights disappeared into the area near the apartments before making one more turn around the warehouse before heading in myself.

I made my way around the lower level, turning off the music, cleaning up the bottles and cups, then setting all the dishes in the sink to do in the morning when the power was back on.

Finished, I dropped down onto the couch and settled in to keep an eye all night. Just in case.

And again, in the stillness, there she was.

Her soft lips under mine. The press of her body against mine. Her pleading. Her whimpers. The velvet softness of her walls around my fingers. The way her hips rocked with her need. Her moans. The sweet way she cried my name.

It wasn’t long before just the memory had my cock straining against the fly of my pants, the light friction of the material sending shockwaves of pleasure through my system.

No amount of meditation or deep breathing could ease the ache, the clawing need for release.

Shrouded in darkness, I let my hand slide down to curl around my aching length, stroking myself with the thoughts of her wet pussy clenching around me, her nails scratching down my back, and her moans in my ear.

I came hard enough to make my vision flash white for a moment.

“Fuck,” I sighed afterward, a little unsettled by how I already felt achy right after release.

As I took myself to the bathroom to clean up, I had a sneaking suspicion that nothing was going to satisfy that desire but getting my hands, mouth, tongue, and cock on and in her.

When I walked out of the bathroom, the sun was just starting to spread across the sky.

And the power finally flicked back on.