by Joanna Wylde
He swiveled his hips into mine, slowly dragging it up and across my clit. I’m ashamed to admit that I creamed my pants right then and there instead of kicking him in the nuts like a sensible girl. He leaned over. I held my breath, waiting for him to kiss me. Instead he whispered in my ear.
“Nice ass. Sweet. Butt.”
I didn’t like his tone, so I bit his ear. Hard.
He jumped back, and I wondered if he was going to kill me. Instead he started laughing so hard I thought he might pull a muscle. I scowled. Horse held up his arms to each side in pointed surrender.
“I get it, hands off,” he said, shaking his head, bemused. “Play it the way you like. And you’re right, we’ve got business. Go drive for an hour, that should be enough time.”
I slid off the table and darted around him. He trailed me as I went to my car. I opened the door and almost sat down, then the same stupid streak of curiosity that’d caused me trouble all my life drowned out my sense of self-preservation. I stopped in the doorway, looking at him across the roof.
“Horse isn’t your real name, is it?”
He smiled at me, his teeth white in the darkness, like a wolf’s.
“Road name,” he replied, leaning against the roof of my car. “That’s the way things work in my world. Citizens have names. We have road names.”
“What does that mean?”
“People give them to you when you start riding,” he said casually. “They can mean all kinds of things. Picnic got his name because he went all out planning some pansy-assed picnic for a bitch who had him twisted up in knots. She ate his food and drank his booze, then called her fuckwad boyfriend to come and pick her up while he took a leak.”
I frowned at his words, trying to understand.
“That seems… unpleasant. Why would he want to remember that?”
“Because when the fuckwad showed up, Picnic shoved his head through a picnic table.”
I caught my breath. That didn’t sound good. I wanted to ask if the guy had been all right, but decided I probably didn’t want to know the answer.
“And Max?”
“When he gets drunk, sometimes his eyes go all wide and he looks fuckin’ crazy, like Mad Max.”
“I see,” I replied, thinking about the man. I guess he did look sort of like Mad Max… I decided I didn’t want to see him drunk.
Silence hung heavy between us. “So aren’t you gonna ask?”
I studied him, narrowing my eyes. I had a bad feeling about this. But the words came out of my mouth, completely beyond my control.
“So why are you called Horse?”
“’Cause I’m hung like one,” he replied, smirking.
I dropped down into my car and slammed the door shut. I heard him laughing through the open window as I peeled out of the driveway.
Chapter Two
September 17—Present Day
“I’m so sorry, sis,” Jeff said, the words muffled from his bloody, swollen lips. Was he missing a tooth? I looked around the room, unable to believe that these men—two of whom I’d cooked for, one of whom I’d done a lot more than cooking for—were actually threatening to kill my brother. Could this really be happening?
Picnic looked right at me and winked.
“Little brother’s been a bad boy,” he said. “He’s been stealing from us. You know anything about that?”
I shook my head quickly. A bag fell off my arm, apples bouncing out and rolling across the floor. One of them hit Horse’s foot. He didn’t glance down, just maintained that cool, thoughtful expression I’d seen on his face so many times. It frustrated me—I wanted to scream at him to show some fucking emotions. I knew he had them. Unless that had been a lie too.
Oh. My. God.
My brother knelt in the middle of our crappy living room, bleeding and awaiting execution, and all I could think about was my relationship with Horse. What the hell was wrong with me?
“I don’t understand,” I said quickly, looking at Jeff’s puffy, bruising face, silently pleading with him to burst out laughing at the big joke they were playing on me.
Jeff didn’t start laughing. In fact, his breath rattled through the room like a movie sound effect. How badly was he hurt?
“He’s supposed to be working for us,” Picnic said. “He’s pretty good with that little laptop of his. But instead of working, he’s been playing at the casino with our fucking money. Now he has the balls to tell me that he’s lost the money and can’t pay us back.”
He punctuated the last four words with jabs of his pistol’s thick, round barrel into the back of Jeff’s neck.
“You got fifty grand on you?” Horse asked me, his voice cool and casual. I shook my head, feeling dizzy. Oh, shit, this was why Jeff had tried to get me to ask Gary for money… But fifty grand? Fifty grand? I couldn’t believe it.
“He stole fifty thousand dollars?”
“Yup,” Horse said. “And if it doesn’t get paid back right now, his options are limited.”
“I thought you were friends,” I whispered, looking from him to Jeff.
“You’re a sweet kid,” Picnic told me. “But you don’t get who we are. There’s the club and everyone else, and this stupid fucker is not part of the club. You fuck with us, we will fuck you back. Harder. Always.”
Jeff’s mouth trembled and I saw tears well up in his eyes. Then he wet his pants, a dark stain spreading between his legs.
“Shit,” said the guy with the mohawk. “I fucking hate it when they piss themselves.”
He looked down at Jeff and shook his head.
“You don’t see your sister pissing herself, do you? What a little bitch,” he said, disgusted.
“Are you going to kill us?” I asked Picnic, trying to think. I needed to make him see me as human, they said that on all the TV shows about serial killers. He had two girls, young women. I’d seen their pictures. I needed to remind him of his family, of the fact that he was human and not some kind of Reaper monster. “I mean, would you really kill people you shared pictures of your daughters with? One of them is about my age, isn’t she? Can’t we work something out? Maybe we can make payments or something.”
Horse snorted and shook his head.
“You don’t get it, sweetie, this isn’t just about money,” he said. “We could give a shit about the money. This is about respect and stealing from the club. We let this pissant fuck get away with it, they’ll all start doing it. We don’t let stuff like this slide. Ever. He pays with blood.”
I closed my eyes, feeling my own tears well up. “Jeff, why?” I whispered, shivering.
“I wasn’t planning to lose it,” he replied, his voice cracked and hopeless. “I thought I could win it back, make it up somehow. Or that maybe I could hide it in the wire transfers…”
“Shut the fuck up,” Picnic said, smacking the side of his head with his free hand. “You don’t talk club business. Even when you’re about to die.”
I whimpered, feeling myself start to tremble.
“There’s another way,” Horse said to me, still casual. “Paying in blood can mean different things.”
“He doesn’t need to die for that to happen,” I said, thinking quickly. “Maybe you could burn down our trailer!”
I smiled at him encouragingly. Fuck the trailer, I wanted Jeff safe. And me. Oh shit, if they killed Jeff they’d have to kill me too.
I was a witness. Fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck!
“Oh, we’re gonna do that no matter what,” he drawled. “But that’s not blood. I can think of something that is, though.
“What?” Jeff asked, his voice full of desperate hope. “I’ll do anything, I swear. If you give me a chance I’ll crack so many accounts for you, you won’t believe what we can accomplish. I’ll stop smoking, that’ll clear my head, I’ll do a better job…”
His voice trailed off as Horse laughed, and the mohawk guy shook his head and grinned at Picnic.
“You believe this asshole?” he asked. “Seriously, douche, you
aren’t making a very good case for yourself, telling us just how much you been slacking.”
Jeff whimpered. I wanted to go to him, to hold him and comfort him, but I was too scared.
Horse stretched his neck, dipping his head to each side, and then cracked his knuckles like he was warming up for a fight. Kind of made me think of an episode of The Sopranos, which would have been funny as hell if I didn’t happen to know how that particular episode ended.
“Let’s get a couple of things clear,” Horse said after a pause that lasted approximately ten years. “We’re not going to hurt you, Marie.”
“You aren’t?” I asked, not sure if I believed him. Jeff listened anxiously, blinking rapidly against the moisture in his eyes. I watched as a trickle of sweat rolled down his forehead, making a track through the still-oozing blood.
“Nope,” Horse said. “You didn’t do anything wrong, we aren’t pissed at you. This isn’t about you. You’ll keep your mouth shut about this if you want to survive, and you’re smart enough to know that. That’s not why you’re here.”
“Why am I here?”
“So you can see just how seriously fucked your brother is,” he replied. “Because we’re going to kill him if he doesn’t find a way to pay us back. I think he might be able to pull it off with the proper motivation.”
“I will,” Jeff babbled. “I’ll pay you back all of it, thank you so much—”
“No, you’ll pay us back twice as much, fuckwad,” Picnic said, kicking him viciously in the side with his heavy leather boot. Jeff pitched to the floor, keening in pain, and I flinched. “That’s if we let you live, which is entirely up to your sister. If it weren’t for her, you’d be dead already.”
My eyes flew to Picnic’s face. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I’d do anything to save Jeff. Anything at all. He was the only real family I had left, and while he was a dumbass, he was also a sweetheart who truly loved me.
“I’ll do it,” I said quickly.
Horse snorted, his eyes wandering down my body, lingering on my boobs, then trailing back up to my face. I realized the rest of the groceries had fallen to the floor and my fists were clenched tightly.
“Don’t you want to ask what it is first?” he said dryly.
“Um, sure,” I said, studying him. How could such a beautiful man be so cruel? I’d felt how gentle his hands could be—where was this coming from? Real people, people who laughed and shared meals together, didn’t act this way. Not in my world. “What do I have to do?”
“It seems Horse here wants a house mouse,” Picnic said. I looked at him blankly. He shot an annoyed look at Horse. “She’s clueless, you sure about this? Seems like work to me.”
Mohawk guy smirked as Horse narrowed his eyes at Picnic. Tension filled the room. I realized that contrary to what I’d have thought, things could probably get a lot worse pretty fast. What if they turned on each other? Then Picnic shrugged.
“This is your option,” Horse said to me abruptly. “You want to keep dumbass alive, pack a bag and climb on my bike when we leave. You do what I tell you, when I tell you, no questions and no bitching.”
“Why?” I asked blankly.
“So you can cook dessert for me,” he snapped. Mohawk man burst out laughing. My mouth dropped open—all this for dessert? I knew he liked sweets, but I didn’t get it. Horse shook his head at me, wearing that frustrated look he got around me sometimes, like he thought I was a crazy woman.
“Why the hell do you think?” he said, voice strained. “So I can fuck you.”
Chapter Three
July 8—Nine Weeks Earlier
My phone buzzed. I grabbed it to find a message from Jeff.
Krissys 2nite. Dont wait up
If a text could give a shit-eating grin, this one would do it. I shook my head and laughed silently, shoving my phone back into my pocket. Jeff was getting laid tonight and feeling pretty pleased about it.
That worked out nicely for me, too.
It was the end of the day and only three kids were left on the playground. Gabby had started cleaning already, so closing would be easy, and now I’d have the trailer to myself. I decided I’d stop and get a Redbox video on the way home, and maybe some ice cream. Life was a lot better now that I’d gotten my first paycheck.
When the last kid left, I checked with Gabby and discovered the cleaning was all done, as I’d suspected. We waved goodbye to each other and I went out to my car. The Redbox was outside of Walmart, which was busy this time of night, but not busy enough for me to give up on the ice cream. I settled on slow-churned French silk, which I assumed was practically a health food because the package said it had half the fat and one-third fewer calories than the regular kind. This, combined with the Johnny Depp flick in my purse, almost guaranteed an orgasmic evening.
My mood just kept improving as I drove home.
One of my favorite dance songs came on the radio, which kicked ass because I didn’t have a plug for an iPod or even a CD player in my little junker (thus the Def Leppard incident when the Reapers had come to call). I almost got caught behind a slow-moving farm truck, but they pulled off to let me by. I car-danced my way down our long driveway through the orchard to find a single low-slung, black motorcycle parked outside the house.
Not part of the plan.
I got out of the car and looked around cautiously, but didn’t see anyone. Nobody near the table, nobody in the folding chairs I’d set out in the newly cleared lawn area (I couldn’t call it a lawn in good conscience). What the hell?
I walked cautiously to the front door, clutching my cell phone like a weapon. What I planned to do with it I wasn’t sure, because if a murderer was waiting inside I wouldn’t exactly have time to call for help. I debated getting back in my car and driving away, but part of me wondered if Horse had come back. You know which part—that little nub between my legs, the bitch. The door swung open at a touch and I found Horse sitting at my counter, texting, all muscular and tattooed and incredibly hot.
I opened my mouth then snapped it shut again.
“You need to get better locks,” Horse said casually. “It took me about ten seconds to get in here.”
I shook my head, glancing around the room, although I had no idea what I was looking for. Some kind of magical leprechaun to jump out and explain what the hell was going on?
“I’m here to see Jeff,” he said, setting down his phone. “He’s got something for me. Where is he?”
“He’s off with some girl,” I replied, still dazed. “Her name is Krissy. He said he’d be late. I’ll try calling him.”
He watched as I dialed Jeff. Straight to voicemail. I sent a text, hoping he was just busy and didn’t want to answer. More nothing. I looked at Horse and shrugged.
“I don’t think his phone is on,” I said. “I can let him know you came by, though.”
Horse gave a short, harsh laugh that had nothing to do with humor.
“I rode three and a half hours to see him,” he replied. “He knew I was coming.”
I smiled weakly.
“Um, you know he’s a great guy, but he smokes out a lot and can be kind of forgetful…”
Horse narrowed his eyes.
“I’ll wait.”
I didn’t know how to deal with that, so I decided to put away the ice cream. Then my stomach growled audibly. I’d planned on eating a sandwich, but it felt weird not to offer him something.
“You want an omelet?” I asked, figuring everyone loves breakfast for dinner.
“Sounds good,” he replied. “Beer?”
“Um, yeah,” I said, opening the fridge. I was kind of surprised he hadn’t just helped himself, considering he’d already broken into the place. I handed him a bottle and started on the omelet. I’d made some cinnamon rolls last week and froze half of them, so I pulled those out too, along with a frozen thing of orange juice concentrate.
I glanced up to watch him taking a long pull on his bottle, eyes following me, throat muscles work
ing as he swallowed. I could lick right from that little dip at the base of his throat up to his jawline…
Maybe not juice, I decided. Now I needed a beer.
Horse just watched me as I cooked, not saying anything, which creeped me out and turned me on at the same time.
“What kind of work are you guys doing with Jeff?” I asked.
“That’s club business,” he replied. “Don’t ask questions like that, you’ll get yourself in trouble.”
Noted. So much for conversation.
The omelet was done and I’d microwaved the rolls, so I dished up for both of us, thinking of my movie wistfully. I didn’t get to watch movies very often and it wasn’t like I’d invited Horse over. But I had the feeling he might not be quite as into Johnny Depp as me. Should I bring it up? He decided for me, sitting down on the couch and grabbing the remote.
“You coming?”
“Um, yeah,” I replied, following him into the living room. I planned on taking the armchair, but he patted the couch next to him with an air of challenge.
Never could resist a challenge.
He clicked through channels, stopping on another one of those fights with the big cage. I sighed and decided I wouldn’t share my ice cream with him.
“You don’t like MMA?” he asked, taking a bite of his cinnamon roll.
“Not really,” I replied, leaning back into the cushions.
He nodded.
“Lotta chicks don’t,” he replied. “But a lot do. All those sweaty bodies, you know?”
He glanced over at me, the slightest trace of humor in his eyes, and I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or not. I decided to just go to my room and eat there, but he reached out a hand to catch my arm, stopping me.
“What’s the problem?”
“I’m tired,” I said. “And I know you have business with Jeff and I’m really sorry he flaked on you, but I don’t have the energy for this.”
