Lead (The Brazen Bulls MC, #8)

by Susan Fanetti

  Did she actually want to fuck him?

  Well, yeah. He was hot, and there was something else going on, too, but she couldn’t see it clearly enough to know what it was. Just a vibe she liked about him.

  So, yeah, if he wanted to fuck her, she’d totally be down with that. That growing stiffy had made a pretty impressive bulge last night.

  Under his stereo was a rack of LPs, and beside it another rack of CDs. She’d just gone over to check out his music—a last-minute test of his fuckability—and had spied a couple of choice titles when he was back, just as the song ended, and the turntable arm returned to its post.

  In the shock of quiet, he handed her a cold bottle of Budweiser. As she took a polite sip—she didn’t actually like beer—he watched her.

  “What’re you doing here, shortcake?”

  That was a lame thing to call her, though she maybe didn’t hate it too much. Every time he said it, she caught the flavor of his interest in the sound.

  But she didn’t want to be too easy. That was no fun. “I have a name.” Did he remember it? Also, she still didn’t know his.

  “Sage. What’re you doing here?”

  “We covered that already. I brought you a gift.”

  His eyes didn’t leave hers as he put his bottle to his mouth and took a long drink.

  Seeing that he waited for more of an answer, Sage shrugged. “I don’t know. I like you.”

  A chuckle made of rocks and burs tumbled from his throat. “You don’t know me.”

  “So introduce yourself. What’s your name?”

  He blew out of frustrated puff. The dude was a big fan of breathing his feelings out. “Becker.”

  “Is that your first or last?”

  “You taking a census?”

  Sage normally had a hide made of old leather, but she was starting to feel a little bit vulnerable and awkward now. “Is there a reason you don’t like me?”

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

  As a last-ditch play, Sage took the few steps until she stood right in front of him, almost toe to toe—her thrift-shop Docs and his (nice) bare feet. She set her free hand on his belly. Oh lordy, feel that. Firm and hot. He sucked in a breath but didn’t move away.

  “I told you I’m legal,” she said, trying put a sassy challenge in her tone. Normally she didn’t have to work this hard to get fucked.

  “That’s what you’re here for?”

  She nodded and licked her lips. Becker stared, watching her tongue move, his eyes sharp and flashing heat.

  He took her bottle and set it, with his, on the empty mantelpiece. Then he put his hands on either side of her face—oh, they were hot, too, and coarse—and licked his lips.

  He was going to kiss her. Score!

  His head came down, his lips met hers, and oh Daddy! Her lips went off like the Fourth of July, and all the nerve endings in her face caught fire at once. That fire chased a molten line straight down, through her center, and turned into an inferno. He didn’t play around, either—his tongue shoved its way into her mouth, his hands gripped her head, his mouth covered hers completely. He was rough, and forceful; his teeth pressed into her lips, his scruff of beard dragged over her mouth and chin and cheeks and made them burn. But it didn’t hurt. He wasn’t trying to hurt her—he was trying to scare her.

  Sage was overwhelmed. She was dominated. She couldn’t have stopped him if she’d wanted to.

  Which she did not.

  So she wasn’t scared.

  Right there and then, Sage renounced all skinny punks and skater boys. Older men were where it was at. Holy smokes!

  She moaned and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him back as hard as she could. He flinched and made a rough, bearish noise, and his hands dropped from her face to her hips and dug in. He lifted her up like she weighed nothing, and she hooked her legs around his hips—oh, yeah, he was hard and fucking huge, she could tell. And he was going to carry her to his bed and pound her with that thing.

  He started walking, devouring her mouth as he did, his fingers digging into her hips and ass.

  Just as she was trying to force herself to remember to demand he wear a condom, he broke away and set her down, pulling her arms from their clutch around his neck.

  She opened her eyes. They were still in his living room. They were at his front door.

  He stared down at her. Color had risen in his cheeks, and his breath came as harshly as her own.

  “What ...”

  He bent and picked up her bag. Pushing it at her, he said, “You’re twenty? Well, I’m forty-four.”

  Okay, that was older than she’d even thought. He was seven years older than her mother. Still it made no difference—and it made no sense. He was hard. He was panting. Obviously he wanted her, and she’d arranged herself on a silver platter and added parsley sprigs. Where exactly was the problem?

  “Who the fuck cares? We’re both adults.”

  “That’s debatable. You don’t know what you’re getting into here.” He put his hand on the doorknob.

  “Oh, right. Because I live such a sheltered little life. Fuck you.”

  “This is not playtime with Daddy, shortcake. Whatever you think you know about me because of last night, I am a bad man. I was in prison when you were born. Because I killed someone.”

  If he was expecting a dramatic reaction, he’d be disappointed. Sage had lived around violence her whole life. Still, it warranted investigation. “Man, woman, or child?”

  Confusion creased his forehead. He had indeed expected a dramatic reaction. “Man.”

  “Did he deserve it?”

  His confusion deepened, and he actually cocked his head. “I think so. The State of Oklahoma disagreed.”

  She noted the present tense in his assertion—he didn’t regret what he’d done. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why’d you kill him?”

  His answer took a long time to arrive. While it made its way, he—Becker, his name was Becker, first or last—kept his eyes fixed on hers, and Sage could almost see the train of his thoughts. He wanted to make her leave. The things he was telling her, he didn’t tell many people. That vibe she’d been picking up, that ephemeral connection, he felt it, too. How she knew that, she couldn’t say, but she was sure. He was into her. He didn’t like the age difference, but that was just arithmetic.

  “Because he hurt my mother.”

  Well, now everything made sense. That was the vibe: Understanding. The connection between them was strong, and Sage didn’t need him to say out loud that the man who’d hurt his mother had been living with them. Becker had had a Denny, too.

  What was happening in her house, what had happened her whole life, Becker understood it. What she was going through, he knew it.

  Her mom had told her about the nosy biker who kept shoving himself in where he didn’t belong, and last night he’d been willing to do violence, violence that could have gotten him into real trouble, to protect a woman who’d been nothing but contemptuous of him.

  Because he understood.

  She dropped her bag and set her hands on his belly. “I don’t want to go. You don’t scare me, Becker.”

  “I should.”

  A shrug was the only answer she had.

  A smile fought its way up his cheeks and took hold—she liked his mouth, so soft and strangely square, as much as she liked his eyes—and he brushed his fingers through her bangs. He saw the lilies at her temple, seemingly for the first time, and swept a fingertip over them. “You are a stubborn little shit. You have to go, because I have to go. I’ve got work in a few minutes.”

  That came out of left field. “It’s ten-thirty at night.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Can I come back tomorrow?”

  Another sigh. With all that rhetorical huffing and puffing, she was surprised the man didn’t pass out from lack of oxygen. “I don’t know.”

  That wasn’t a no, so she’d consider it a
yes. She rose up on her toes, seeking another kiss, but Becker evaded her and opened his door. As he pushed her out, his hand at the small of her back, he bent down and brushed his lips over her cheek.

  “Stay safe, shortcake.” He handed her her bag and closed the door between them.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “The kid better not be late,” Rad grumbled as he dropped his ass onto the picnic table. With Gunner, they were at a rest stop off of I-44, just inside the Missouri border, just inside one o’clock in the morning. The interstate was eerily quiet, and the rest stop was, except for them, deserted.

  Sitting on the bench at his side, Becker leaned back against the edge of the table. “Unless there’s trouble, he won’t be.”

  “We thinking this job could be trouble?” Gunner asked, walking back from the tree he’d just pissed on.

  “I stopped thinkin’ any job won’t be trouble years ago,” Becker answered with a smile. “But nah. It should be smooth. Just a little commerce among friends.”

  The ‘kid’ they were waiting for was Isaac Lunden, the president of the Night Horde MC. Isaac wasn’t yet thirty, but he’d been at the head of the Horde for more than a year, since his old man had dropped his bike on an icy highway. He was still pretty green—he hadn’t had a patch for even ten years—but he’d shown himself to be smart. Seeing as the Horde was a tiny, inconsequential club, with only six members, all of whom had been born and raised in the same skeletal little town in the asshole of Missouri, he wasn’t president of much. But he didn’t seem particularly interested in power or significance. What he wanted was to take care of his town. He seemed ready to do just about anything to make that happen.

  Tonight, Isaac was buying from the Bulls’ stock of Volkov guns, getting a crate of military-grades weapons wholesale, which was a hell of a friends-and-family discount for Russian steel. He had something going in Signal Bend that required more and better firepower than the Horde had on their own. When Becker had pushed the question, Isaac had been circumspect, but he’d promised that it wouldn’t get in the Bulls’ way or blow back on them in any way.

  Becker wasn’t satisfied with those answers, but they were good enough, at least, for a face-to-face meet. Better to have a talk like this in person.

  Rad jumped off the table and walked away a few steps to scan the empty interstate. Lunden still had about five minutes before their meet time, but Rad had been in line with the Devil for seconds of bloodlust when the angels were handing out patience. “If that kid thinks he’s gettin’ into the gun business again, I’m gonna straighten his cocky ass out.”

  “Chill, Sarge,” Becker said, putting some heat in the words. “We’ll talk when I can look him in the eyes.”

  Rad called people ‘kid’ not so much for their age but their experience. Becker was only three years younger than Rad in age, but he’d called him ‘kid’ for years, all the way until Becker had been named VP and outranked him, because his patch was ten years younger.

  These days, after Dane’s death, and Ox’s, and Delaney’s retirement, Rad was both the oldest and the longest-patched Bull at their table. Conventional wisdom might say that it should have been Rad wearing the president’s flash now, but the grumpy bastard didn’t want it. He thought he’d be a shitty leader, and, honestly, Becker agreed. Rad was a warrior, through and through. His problem-solving strategies were all about violence. He was much better as their Sergeant at Arms.

  Becker had been one of Rad’s enforcers for years, up to his shoulders in blood, and he tended to want to strike first, too. But as the president the club had voted in, he hoped he’d be able to see more than violence from the head of the table.

  He had to remember that experience was more than time served. It was lessons learned. And he hoped he’d learned the lessons he needed to lead the Bulls and be worthy of the trust of his brothers. Time would tell. Despite his constant unease about his ability to do his job, he hadn’t been truly tested yet, but there was no doubt he would be, and soon. Their work with the Volkovs had been nothing but tests for the past few years, and Irina wasn’t happy that Delaney had retired. Becker could feel Russian crosshairs on his back. He’d have to prove his worthiness to Madame Volkov, too.

  The Russian work had lightened up since 9/11, and though it meant that their accounts had lightened up as well, Becker wasn’t sorry. Once Irina had a full understanding of the way things worked in this terrorized world, she’d be back in full operation and leaning on the Bulls as hard as ever. In fact, she intended to expand her operations and stir up serious shit in Mexico and Central America. The Bulls, her middle men for the western half of the country, would be expected to pull all that weight and then some. Once she accepted that Becker was now president and Delaney was no longer her point man.

  But for now, while Becker was himself coming to terms with his new position, the club’s work was mostly quiet. They could take a beat and help out the Horde, who’d been friends to the Bulls for as long as the clubs had existed.

  “There they are,” Gunner said, nodding toward the horizon. “Three riders.”

  Becker stood between his brothers and watched the headlamps approach the exit ramp for the rest area, riding from the east. All three waited in wary readiness, ready to draw, ready to find cover, just in case this wasn’t the Horde coming up. The unmistakable roar of Harley engines caught up with the lights, and, before they were close enough to fully identify, Becker could tell by the posture of the riders that they were friends. He headed toward the edge of the lot, where he, Rad, and Gunner had parked their bikes.

  Isaac lifted a gloved hand as he came onto the lot followed by two riders—one of them was Showdown, Isaac’s VP, and the other was Len, his new SAA. Becker didn’t know Len well, but he recognized the ink, even in the dark and glare of deep night. His arms were sleeved in tats.

  All that ink made Becker think of the little chick he’d pushed out of his house a few hours earlier. Sage. Talk about a kid—twenty fucking years old. Almost a quarter century between his birth and hers, and still she’d been trying to do a deep dive into his Levi’s. She had to be a danger junkie, or have a Daddy fetish. He’d seen it time and again in the clubhouse—plenty of nubile sweetbutts offered themselves up for biker dick because they liked the rush of getting fucked by outlaws, getting dominated by rough, grizzled men.

  Those were the girls who burned out in a year or two. The girls who really clicked, they were just as tough as the Bulls and were there not for the rush but for the camaraderie. They enjoyed rough biker dick, too, but for girls like Kendra, Janine, or Kymber, there was more to it. The Bulls were the people they wanted to hang out with as well as the guys they wanted to fuck.

  If Becker was going to fuck a danger junkie, he’d grab himself a sweetbutt, who’d been read the rules. He was too old and too busy to play Mean Daddy for a sassy little tatted-up piece of ass in his own house.

  But she got to him in some way, and that unsettled him. It had been a long time since he’d had a girlfriend or even a civilian fuck beyond a one-night stand. Since the Russian work had taken over the club, he’d decided it was safer for everyone to keep to women who were already in the game. Certainly not post-adolescent imps who lived practically in his back yard.

  But Sage had a bullet-proof sense of herself, apparently. All the ways he’d tried to discourage her, make her see that his pool was too deep for her to play in, she’d swatted it all away like nothing.

  He shouldn’t have kissed her. He’d mauled her face, meaning to scare her a little, just enough to make her think twice, but instead, she’d dived right in with him, and the whole thing changed from a warning to a promise. Twenty-year-old danger junkie with a Daddy fetish or not, if he’d had time to do it properly, he’d have fucked her instead of sending her off to safety.

  No doubt she’d show up again the next night and try to pick up where they’d left off. He needed to figure out a way to get her to take no for an answer.

  But she was pretty goddamn cute. Stu
bborn little shit. She wanted to be all tough, standing toe-to-toe with him but barely coming to his armpits, covered in ink, even on her face, with about fifty earrings in her ears and that ring in her nose, but those big brown eyes told the real story. She wasn’t so tough.

  Twenty was legal.

  Shit. Maybe he should just camp out at the clubhouse for a while until she lost interest.

  Isaac parked his bike beside Becker’s, and Showdown and Len pulled up alongside him. Missouri was a helmet-law state, so they all three undid chin straps and took off black lids.

  Becker stood where he was, as did Rad and Gunner. They made Isaac and his men come to them.

  Isaac came right for him, his face serious but ready to be friendly. He held out his hand; he wore leather cuffs around his wrists, which was a silly affect, in Becker’s opinion.

  “Hey, Beck. Thank you for this, brother.”

  Becker gripped arms with him and let Isaac—considerably younger but substantially bigger—pull him into a rough, quick, one-armed embrace.

  “Happy to help a friend.”

  The others were greeting each other as well. When the greetings went full circle, Isaac looked around, his friendly expression crimping with wary confusion. “No truck?”

  Becker shook his head. “It’s off site. I asked Dandy Hayes and his boys to keep an eye on it.” Hayes ran a crew out of Joplin. Not an MC, and strictly a small-time operation, focusing on stripping cars and fencing small goods, but they were solid friends who liked being on the Bulls’ good side.

  Isaac cocked his head. Becker could see him sort through the information and his reaction to it, trying to decide how angry he should be.

  Showdown set his hand on the Horde president’s shoulder. “There a problem?”

  “No problem,” Becker answered. “We just need to sit and talk. We need to know more about what you mean to do with this cargo, why you need it.”

  “That’s Horde business,” Isaac growled.

  “With Bulls product, Horde business is Bulls interest. There’s a case in the back of our van that holds half a dozen AK-101s, half a dozen Makarov 9mms, and ammo for both. That’s a lot of Russian steel for Signal Bend to keep. We gotta know what you mean to do, what exposure we have.”