Mating Fever

by Susan Hayes

  Ogre nodded.

  “Stupid fuck. He better have it.” Rod wondered if the meth cook knew how much shit he was in if they got there and he didn’t have what they’d come for. He didn’t have all the details, he didn’t need them. The cook had used too much of his own product and started beaking off to the wrong people. The cops tracked down a shipment that was in transit, busts were made, and now several of Ogre’s club brothers were waiting for their day in court for trafficking meth. It was a three-ring fucking circus, and from what Rod had seen so far, everyone in the club was a goddamned clown.

  They left the main road a mile later, following a rock-pitted track until they came to a clearing with a decrepit looking barn and couple of RV’s that had seen better days. Dust-smeared windows and rusting walls. Every tire flat and half-rotten. A scrawny mutt started yapping as they parked their bikes and took off their brain buckets, but the moment Ogre barked back at him the dog got smart and took off, dragging his chain behind him as he took cover under the nearest RV.

  The barn door opened, and a caricature of every junkie stereotype Rod knew shambled into view. Ghost pale, sunken eyes, and open sores on his face and hands. With all that going on, he looked like an extra from a low budget zombie movie. He had to be their cook.

  “Hey, guys. Good to see you,” the cook muttered, looking less than happy to have guests.

  “Stow the small talk, ya fucking tweaker. Do you have our shit or not?” Mutt demanded, while Ogre took up a threatening pose a few feet away.

  “Yeah, Dwayne! Where’s our shit?” Freak added, then immediately clammed up when Rod shot him a dirty look. The kid needed to learn to shut his mouth.

  “I got some of it…” Dwayne said, his fingers starting to twitch as he picked at his threadbare T-shirt.

  “Not good enough. You fuckin’ know better. Snarl sent us out here to get what you owe us, or…” Mutt didn’t finish, he just shrugged and looked back at Ogre.

  “Fuck, I did the best I could! You know I did! I cooked up a couple batches quick as I could, and I got a little money, but I don’t got all of it. But I got something better. A trade.” Dwayne’s teeth were clicking together he was nodding so hard.

  “What the fuck could you possibly have to trade in this shit hole?” Mutt asked, gesturing around them.

  “My sister. Half-sister, actually. She showed up a few days ago, looking to reconnect with family,” Dwayne said.

  “And what, she’s rich? She going to pay your way?”

  “No man, she’s broke. No job, no place to go. She’s crashing with me. You think Snarl would cut me a deal? You take her off my hands, and we call it even? I don’t need to be supporting some bitch I can’t even fuck.”

  Rod’s gut twisted in revulsion. Was the little sleaze really asking if the president of the club wanted to take his sister in trade? Some things were supposed to be sacred, and at the top of the list was family. You didn’t fuck with your family, and you sure as hell didn’t trade them to a bastard like Snarl. He waited for Mutt to tell this asshole to fuck off.

  “She hot? She better be fucking hot, man.” Mutt asked.

  Son of a bitch. He couldn’t let this happen, but his options were limited. Very fucking limited.

  “If she wasn’t my sister, I’d be doing her,” Dwayne said.

  Freak cackled. “You’d do a chain-link fence, man. All you need is a fucking hole.”

  “Where is she?” Mutt demanded.

  “Making me a sammich. Want me to get her?”

  “Not yet. Show me what else you got for us while I call Snarl. See if he’s even interested in this fucked-up horse trade.” Mutt ran a hand over his tattooed scalp and looked at Ogre. “You, come with us. You want to join us, Ramrod?”

  Rod rolled his shoulders and nodded. “Beats standing around here watching the dust devils.”

  He followed them into the smothering heat of the dimly lit barn and immediately regretted his decision. He didn’t leave though. This was what he was here for. He needed eyes on the goods and confirmation that this was the local club’s source. Once he had that, he could call in the cavalry and get the fuck away from these assholes.

  The thought of being done with it all soon kept him from walking out of the hellish sweatbox of a barn. By the time his eyes had adjusted to the light, sweat tricked down his back and made his shirt cling to his body.

  Mutt was on the phone, filling his president in on the situation in terse, clipped tones that didn’t bode well for Dwayne’s long-term survival. There wasn’t much in the barn apart from a few bales of moldy hay and a trestle table with a couple of dozen baggies strewn across it, each one full of white crystals. Crystal meth.

  “See? I’ve been cooking. Good stuff, too.” Dwayne said, passing a shaking hand over the bags with an almost obscene tenderness.

  “What I see ain’t enough to save your pathetic ass. We lost a shitload more than this in the raid.”

  “I’ve got cash too. Tell Snarl I’m good for the rest. You know I am.”

  Ogre started packing up the baggies, stuffing them into a backpack Rod had no fucking intention of carrying on the trip home. Not that he expected them to ask. If they had any brains at all, they’d make Freak play mule. It had to be the real reason the fool was here at all. He was the patsy if shit went sideways.

  Where the fuck is the little shit, anyway?

  He’d barely formed the thought when a woman started screaming. “Don’t touch me! Get your hands off! No!”

  Rod turned around and ran out of the barn. Drugs, violence, and all manner of fuckery he could deal with, but rape wasn’t on the list. The sunlight had faded as the storm got close, but it was still bright enough to make Rod blink a few times before he could see what Freak was up to. Sure enough, the scrawny bastard had a woman pressed up against the side of one of the RV’s, grinding his hips against her as he laughed.

  “Let her go, asshole!” Rod was across the dusty yard in seconds. He grabbed Freak by the back of his leathers, tossing him a few feet away. The next thing Rod knew, he had a curvy bundle of trembling female wrapped around him. Normally he’d be all for this plan, but it was going to be a problem if Freak decided to continue being a fucking idiot.

  Things only got worse when his new attachment lifted her head to look at him. He found himself staring into a pair of big blue eyes framed by lashes the color of honey. He sucked in a breath to clear his head, but that only made it worse. All the blood in his body drained into his cock, leaving him with a hard-on and a head rush.

  She’s fucking perfect.

  “And she’s ours.” His wolf growled, prowling the back of his mind.

  He tore his gaze away from those pretty eyes just as Freak was getting to his feet. The smaller man had blood on his face and murder in his mud-brown eyes.

  Rod managed to peel the girl off and shove her behind him before Freak made his move. He wasn’t in any real danger. Even if he’d been an average human he could have handled this asshole, and he wasn’t either of those things.

  Still, carelessness killed more of his kind than anything else, and he wasn’t ready to check out of this life just yet. Especially not until he got another whiff of the woman standing behind him.

  His wolf had to be mistaken.

  “Fuck you.” Freak screeched. “She’s going to be coming back with us, so what if I wanted first go instead of waiting at the back of the line?”

  The smaller man came at him, fists raised, and his thumbs tucked inside his fingers just waiting to get broken the first time he hit anything. The fucking idiot didn’t even know how to fight decently. Why the hell were they letting this waste of space hang around the club?

  Rod threw a haymaker and sent Freak sprawling. Then he planted a booted foot on his sternum and leaned in until the little asshole started to gasp and whimper.

  “No patch, no snatch, you fucking know that. Snarl hasn’t even agreed to the deal yet, and even if he did, you’re a fuckin’ prospect, you haven’t earned
the right to claim club property. Keep your dick in your pants and your mouth shut, asswipe.”

  Rod heard a squeak of fear come from the woman currently cowering behind him. Yeah, this was going really fucking well. He knew what she was going to do now, and the idea of running after a scared woman in this fucking heat was not appealing to him.

  Of course, his wolf thought it was the best idea ever. Fuck.

  She was gone before he could grab her. She took off down the driveway, giving him an eyeful of long, blonde hair and a nicely rounded ass wrapped in a pair of faded jeans as she bolted for the road.

  He went after her, cursing as his rock-hard dick took a beating with every step he took and his wolf howled inside his head.

  Thankfully the chase didn’t last long. She lost one cheap, plastic shoe and the other fell apart as he ran after her. She tripped over it and tumbled face-first into the dirt. He was on her before she could get up again, and his dick got even harder as she fought and twisted beneath him, grinding her plush ass against his crotch until he was seeing stars.

  “If you don’t stop wriggling, sweet cheeks, you and me are going to end up intimately acquainted right here and now.”

  She froze, her next words coming out in a terse whisper. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Fuck you right here? Yes, I would.”

  “But you made the other guy stop….”

  He wanted to comfort her, but he couldn’t. He’d have to settle for scaring her into behaving until he could get her somewhere safe. “If you think that makes me some kind of hero, you’re wrong. I’m a bad man, sweet cheeks. A very bad man who wants to do very bad things to you. I’d just rather do them without an audience.”

  “I’d rather not do them at all,” she muttered, but at least she quit struggling.

  “That ship sailed the second your scum of a half-brother offered to trade you to save his own ass.”

  She whimpered and turned her head, letting him take his first good look at her face. Feelings he’d thought long dead and gone surged through him. Protective feelings and desires far beyond a fast fuck with a warm body. She had petal-pink lips, high cheekbones and golden skin softer than silk. There was a streak of dust on her cheek, and he found himself brushing it away with his fingers, enjoying the brief contact more than he should.

  “I’m not going with you,” she declared. There were tears shimmering in her eyes, and Rod knew he was fucked six ways from Sunday. There was no way he was leaving an innocent like her here with Dwayne, and if he let the others take her… No. That wasn’t happening either.

  His wolf was in full agreement. All he was getting from the damned creature was lust, protectiveness, and a word he was not ready to deal with until he had liquor in his hand. Mate.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Ignoring his wolf, his hard-on, and the intoxicating scent pouring off the woman, he pushed himself up and stood. Then he reached down and pulled her back on her feet, one hand still locked around her wrist.

  “You don’t have a choice. So, sweet cheeks, you got a name?” He started walking back to the others but stopped when he realized she wasn’t following him. With a sigh, he jerked her into his arms and hoisted her over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry, her ass in the air and her feet kicking in protest.

  “Put me down!”

  “Nope. You had your chance to play nice, you lost it. Now, we do this my way.” He slapped her on the ass and headed back to where everyone else was waiting, mind racing as he tried to figure out what the hell to do next.

  He didn’t get three steps before the skies opened and a deluge of rain came pouring down. This day kept getting better and better.

  He grunted and shifted her on his shoulders as they walked. “Let’s try this again. What’s your name?”

  “Lily. My name is Lily White, and I think I hate you.”

  2

  Lily/Trina

  Fuck my life.

  It was a good thing she wasn’t armed right now. Special Agent Trina Thorn was seconds away from shooting everyone and calling it a day, which would have blown any chance she had of taking down these assholes once and for all. They’d been trying to take down the Legion club for what felt like forever, but they’d never managed to get someone on the inside.

  Their break had come when more than half the club’s leadership got themselves slaughtered by a rival club. The massacre had been so big it made headlines across the country. In the power vacuum that came afterward, shitty decisions were made. The wrong people took over, and now factions were tearing the club apart, leaving cracks big enough to drive a tank through.

  Trina had been sent to take advantage of one of those cracks.

  Getting traded to the club like a pack of baseball cards hadn’t been her idea. No, the plan had come from her asshole of a supervising agent, Max Patterson. He tried to get her to sleep with him. When she’d laughed and told him to pound sand, he’d taken it badly. Working for someone who had it in for you was never fun, and in her line of work it was a fast way to an early grave.

  She’d requested a transfer, but the son of a bitch had dropped her into this op before the paperwork had gone through. So here she was, dangling over the shoulder of some unwashed barbarian biker, soaking wet and madder than hell. When she saw Max again, she was going to feed him his spleen.

  To add to her fury, the arrogant son of a bitch with his hand on her ass was laughing at her, or more likely, laughing at her name. Fuck knows she couldn’t blame him for it, she’d laughed, too until she’d discovered it wasn’t a joke. Another gift from her asshole supervisor.

  Lily White… yeah. Max was a dead man.

  “Lily, if you want to hate me, that’s just fine. Most people do. But right now I’m the only one standing between you and getting fucked by every patched member of this club, so I’d suggest you be nice to me from now on.”

  Her hulk-sized captor set her on her feet again, and she finally got a decent look at him. He didn’t look at all familiar, which meant he hadn’t been in any of the intel she’d been given. Wonderful, an unknown player, just what I fucking needed.

  She took a closer look and felt her temperature rise a few degrees. Fuck a duck, when did the Legion start recruiting sex gods? He was big all over, from the width of his shoulders to the still-hard cock nicely outlined by the snug fit of his jeans. The rain had soaked his shirt, and it clung to every muscle of his sculpted chest and tattooed arms. His dark hair was long enough he had it pulled back in a ponytail, which only emphasized his chiseled features and smoldering brown eyes. All her indignation at the way he manhandled her evaporated as a flood of liquid heat drenched her pussy and drenched her panties. Holy hell, the man was hot. An arrogant bastard who had threatened to do unspeakable things to her in the middle of the driveway, but still… hot.

  I need my head examined.

  He wrapped one massive, tattooed arm around her waist and tucked her into his side before scowling at everyone else present. “This one’s mine while I’m here. No one touches her or I’ll break off whatever body part they touched her with. We clear?”

  “Snarl’s not gonna’ like it,” the biggest of the bikers said with a frown.

  “Snarl can have her after I’m gone, Ogre. Call it a loan. I haven’t got an old lady, and the skanks you have at your clubhouse are so nasty not even Freak will touch ‘em. I’ll break her in, and when I hit the road, she belongs to the club.”

  Lightning streaked across the sky and the thunder cracked loud enough to stop all conversation for a few seconds, adding a dramatic pause to an already surreal moment. This was not how the deal was supposed to go. Nowhere in her briefing had anyone mentioned sending her in as a fucking sex slave. Dwayne was supposed to introduce her as his half-sister and see if any of them took an interest in her. If they did, she’d go with them, and if they didn’t, she’d work her way in slowly, using Dwayne’s connections. Someone had changed the plan, and she wasn’t fucking happy about it.

  She let her h
ead sag until her bangs fell over her eyes. Now her face was partially hidden. She started looking around for Dwayne.

  He was standing a few feet away, twitching so badly she half expected him to shake apart at any second. He caught her looking his way and ducked his head, his feet shuffling in the rapidly forming mud. When this operation was over, she was coming back here to kick his skinny ass for this.

  But all that would have to wait until later. Right now, she had a bigger problem… one standing about six-foot-three and had delusions that she somehow belonged to him just because he said so. Her mission was to gather enough evidence to link the mother chapter of the Legion to the drugs and weapons being transported out of the Cummingford area. This change in plans meant she was going to have to find a way to do her job while avoiding the asshole Adonis who wanted a playmate.

  This wasn’t going to be fun.

  While she was coming to grips with her new reality, the guys seemed to have come to an understanding.

  “… if you say so, Ramrod, but you’ll be the one explaining shit to Snarl when we get back.”

  The guy holding her just shook his head. “I don’t have to explain myself to anyone in your fucking club, Ogre. I report to Rocket, not Snarl. You want me to send word you’re dicking me around?”

  Ogre winced. “Not really.”

  “I didn’t think so. Stop fucking with me and keep that shit-for-brains potential away from me and my property. I see Freak’s ugly face again once we’re back at the clubhouse and he’s going to bleed. We clear?”

  So, the big guy had a name, Ramrod. Awesome, another biker with a road name screaming “overcompensation.” Then again, having been up close and personal with this particular biker’s equipment, maybe it was less bragging and more a statement of fact. She had no interest in finding out. Hot or not, he was a criminal, and there was nothing sexy about a man who made a living from other people’s pain and suffering.

  “You ride with me, sweet cheeks,” her new admirer murmured in her ear.