Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 129980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129980 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
He locked the house and went to his Harley. He wasn’t that surprised to see Savage sitting on his 2015 Night Rod Special. The motorcycle was all black with dull gunmetal-gray trim, blacked-out chrome and the image of a dripping gray skull. It had one more adornment that Maestro—and all the other club members—had thought he would remove. For his birthday, the Red Hat ladies, a group of older women, had gotten Ice to make them a form of a hat in rubies and diamonds. They had no idea those gems were the real deal, but they’d had Mechanic and Transporter weld the hat onto the bike. No one thought Savage would take the prank so well, let alone keep the gleaming hat on his stark bike.
The prank had been played on him by Jackson Deveau, a deputy sheriff. He’d made the suggestion to the women. Not understanding that no one touched a man’s bike, they had happily made Savage an honorary member of their club. For some unknown reason, Savage had allowed the decoration to stay. He was used to it now, and it would have looked strange not to have the embellishment on his bike.
“Keys let me know you had come home for the night,” Savage greeted. “Just checking to make sure you’re doing okay.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it, although you should be home with Seychelle. If I had a woman, I wouldn’t be away from her if I could help it.”
Savage shrugged. “Seychelle worries. She worries, I take care of it. As soon as she heard you’d driven to Caspar tonight and would have to turn around and head back to San Francisco, she was afraid something was wrong. She wanted me to check on you as much as I needed to. Heard the music. You have a gift, Maestro.”
Maestro threw his leg over his bike to straddle it. The moment he did, he felt familiar peace slipping over him. “I can lose myself in music. I don’t always feel the passage of time.”
“Haven’t heard that song before. You played it over and over, adding to it.”
“I was writing a new piece.” He hesitated, but Savage had managed to find happiness, and he was a sadist when it came to sex. He also was controlling and had no problem punishing his woman if she disobeyed him. She did so often, but never over safety issues. Maestro thought she might like those punishments just a little too much. When Savage and Seychelle were together, the chemistry between them was electric. He wanted that for himself.
Savage just sat on his bike, seemingly in no hurry to rush away. He didn’t probe, just waited to see if Maestro was going to talk.
“I had a difficult time believing Seychelle would stay,” Maestro admitted. “I made life hard for you by giving you the wrong advice. She took the things I said to her wrong, but I shouldn’t have said them.”
“I was at fault, Maestro,” Savage corrected. “Not you. I was in the relationship with her, and I didn’t act like it. Unfortunately, I’d never been in a relationship. I didn’t know what to do to fix things between us. In the end, I turned to Czar and Blythe. I also encouraged her to talk to her friends if she was concerned about the nature of our relationship.”
“Her friends?” Maestro asked.
“She’s very close friends with a lot of the women in the Red Hat Society. I don’t want her to ever feel alone. We have a unique relationship, one that can be hard on not just her body but her mind. I learned to listen to her. To hear what she needed or wanted. It took a while for me to get it, but she’s the most important person in my life. She sacrifices a lot for me. I want to make certain that she knows she’s loved.”
“How do you do that?” Maestro asked. “I don’t have a clue.”
“It took time for me to hear her. She needed to feel she was my partner. She doesn’t ask about club business, but I know she worries if I’m gone, so I make certain Czar fills her in on my status, so she knows I’m alive and unhurt.”
“How do you find the balance of control and giving her freedom?” Maestro asked the question whose answer most eluded him.
“I think the thing I learned about being in a relationship that was the most helpful was that it is important, even essential, to communicate clearly. I made certain Seychelle knew what she was getting into every step of the way. I told her about myself, what happened to me and why I am the way I am. I told her it wasn’t going to change. I needed a certain type of sex, and I would enjoy her fucking up, so I would have the excuse to punish her. I also explained what kinds of control I needed to have in my life to stay sane.”