Reaper's Property (Reapers MC #1)

by Joanna Wylde

  I shrugged, not quite sure what she meant and not too worried about it. Her obvious respect surprised me, although I was starting to realize it shouldn’t have. There seemed to be a hierarchy of Reaper women, with old ladies at the top, but right now I didn’t care what anyone’s status was. If they’d help me get the Armory ready for Bagger’s funeral, they were good people in my book.

  “I’m glad to meet you,” she said, genuine kindness in her eyes, tempered with a fatigue that had nothing to do with being hung over. “We’ll get this done, don’t worry. Don’t take shit from anyone, okay? You’re an old lady, and not one of these girls has a right to tell you a damn thing. Not even me,” she added ruefully. “But if you don’t mind, I think some asses could use a little kicking, and that’s one of my favorite things to do. You mind?”

  I glanced at Serena.

  “Works for me,” she said. “She takes the upstairs, I’ll take the main floor and you can coordinate food. Sound like a plan?”

  “Sounds great,” I said, feeling grateful.

  Claire turned to the group and clapped her hands for attention.

  “You heard Marie,” she said loudly. “She’s nice and polite, but I’m not. Get off your asses and get working, or get the hell out.”

  Nobody moved for a minute, and she put her hands on her hips and glared around the room.

  “I’m serious, bitches!” she yelled, and I believed her. “If you’re a friend of the club, now’s the time to show it. Otherwise get the fuck out and don’t come back. You won’t be welcome. Got me?”

  About four girls got up quickly and left, but the rest seemed to break out of their stupor, sorting themselves out quickly enough and breaking into teams. Within minutes, half had followed Claire upstairs and most of the others followed Serena downstairs. I found myself alone with a woman I recognized with horror—she’d been the one on the second floor, screwing an entire room full of men.

  “Hey, I’m Candace,” she said quietly. “I’m a caterer. Can I help you get the food situation figured out? I know my way around the kitchen and have a pretty good idea what to expect.”

  She smiled at me like a perfectly normal person, rather than a woman who’d had sex with five men in a row the night before. How could she even walk? I shook my head, and she gave me a quizzical look. Of course, she didn’t realize I’d seen her.

  “Yeah, that sounds good,” I said, and we started downstairs. She led me through the lounge to the far end of the building, where double doors opened to reveal a dining room with a serving bar separating it from a kitchen. Not a full-on, modern industrial one, more like the kind you’d find in a church. Several big fridges, big dishwasher, that kind of thing. Empty platters and bags of chips littered the counters, debris from the night before, I assumed.

  “I’ve done a lot of parties for them,” she said, flipping on lights and going to the fridges, opening them to check out the contents. “I give them a deal, they take good care of me. A few years ago my ex decided to use me as a punching bag. I knew one of the girls who likes to party here and she passed the word along to Ruger. He and a couple others offered to take care of the problem for me in exchange for some help in the Armory kitchen and things grew from there.”

  “Horse beat up my ex,” I said, feeling a sudden sense of sisterhood with her.

  “It’s a relief when it stops, isn’t it?” she replied, wearing a sad little smile. She started grabbing food wrappers and tossing them in a big plastic garbage can. “Horse is a real good guy. You’re lucky to have him.”

  I nodded, not sure I wanted to go there. Everyone seemed to think he was so great—did they know the real man? Did I? I felt my phone vibrate and I pulled it out to find a text from Em. Cookie is home again. They gave her some drugs to help her sleep. Maggs asked if you can stay on top of things at the Armory, some of us will be over in a couple hours to help. ((Hugs))

  Already on it, I sent back, relieved I could tell her something positive, no matter how small. Candace and I finished cleaning up and sat down to plan food for the day. Then I sent her to the grocery store with my debit card, which still had about five hundred dollars on it, and another hundred in cash. I was torn about that—if I had to get away, I’d need the money. But I wanted to help, and the knowledge that Horse had already spent fifty grand on me still floated around in the back of my head, waiting to be processed.

  It seemed like the least I could do.

  By the time Horse took my hand and pulled me upstairs to bed that night, I was exhausted. The day had been endless, a blur of people crying, yelling and worst of all, just sitting in silence and staring into nothing.

  Candace had been amazing. She’d gone from gangbang hoochie to kitchen goddess, apparently without need for transition. Around noon she came back with a ton of food, so much I couldn’t imagine we’d go through it all, yet it disappeared almost entirely by the end of the day. The party girls worked hard to clean the Armory before melting away when the old ladies started showing up—a club dynamic I still couldn’t wrap my head around. Surprisingly, Serena and Candace stayed. They kept to themselves back in the kitchen, but every time I turned around they were quietly serving people, bringing them drinks or food, helping the few remaining guests find a place to sleep.

  Most of the visiting charter members left, although I got the impression they’d be returning for the funeral. At one point Horse cornered me and told me that the situation with the Jacks was under control, but that I’d still need to stay in the Armory.

  We waited for news on Bagger’s body.

  Cookie stayed at her house, but Maggs brought Silvie over after her nap. I took her up to the game room and we played for a couple of hours and ate dinner together. I gave her a bath in our room and dressed her in jammies before Maggs took her back home. The poor girl didn’t have a clue what was really going on, but she obviously felt the tension in the air.

  Now Horse and I were finally alone in our room and I wasn’t sure what to say. Some of the guys had been visibly broken up, while others were stoic. Horse was just blank. Nothing. No concern, no sorrow, nada. He’d found me a few times during the day, asking if I’d heard from Jeff. I hadn’t, from either email account, which simplified things.

  I wasn’t sure if I could pull off a lie tonight. I watched as he stripped down to his boxers mechanically, then sat down on the side of the bed. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, just looking toward the window. I went to use the bathroom and get ready for bed. When I got back he hadn’t moved. I wasn’t sure what to do.

  “It’s bad over there,” he said softly. I went and stood in front of him, reaching down to run my fingers through his soft, silky hair. I didn’t know where this was going, but I wanted to be close to him, absorb some of his pain. “You have no idea, nobody does. They’re crazy, they kill little kids and women and entire families. Every day, Marie. At one point my team set up shop in some town and there were these two boys who liked to come and play with us. Probably about ten years old. They were cute and we liked them, would kick a soccer ball around with them, give them candy, that kind of shit. It was my buddy’s ball, but we let the kids take it home at night, figured they’d enjoy it more than us. Just a ball.

  “One day only one of them came back, threw the ball at us and he took off running. We found out later his friend and his mom were shot in the street for being friends with the Americans. It was just a ball, babe, and he died for it, and because we gave him candy. That’s so fucked up. And shit like that happened all the time. You wouldn’t believe how many civilians are dying over there.”

  I massaged his scalp, feeling the tension tying him in knots with every touch. I wanted to ask him about the article but I couldn’t do it. Words seemed so incredibly trite compared to the pain that radiated off him.

  “Another time we found an entire village massacred,” he said, voice rough. “Whole damn place shot to hell. Kids. Women. Men. Fucking donkeys. Goats. All of them dead, houses burning, you name it. You know what’s t
otally fucked up? We go in there and find this, call it in, but the next day we’re the bastards under investigation. Apparently there’s all kinds of people saying we did it. You see how crazy that is? You go to a country, you try to help the people there and they spend all their time and energy either trying to kill you or set you up.”

  I stilled, wondering if I could believe him. Horse had no reason to tell me about this. Not unless he’d found my email account. But I’d been careful, really careful, clearing out my phone’s cache and cookies and browsing history. I’d never put the address into my email app, I only checked it on the website. Could he trace that?

  “Do you know how insane this is? Bagger just died for this country in a war that’s gone on for ten fucking years, and people around here think they’re suffering if they can’t afford a new iPhone,” he said, looking up at me for the first time.

  The stark grief written all over his face tore through me, and that’s when I knew. It wasn’t fake. Not this. Jeff was wrong about him. Horse might be many things, but he didn’t kill those people. The article said the Marines were under investigation, but it didn’t say how the investigation ended. Even Jeff acknowledged Horse had an honorable discharge.

  Horse didn’t kill those people. I knew it in my bones.

  I felt such incredible relief that I trembled with it, but I didn’t say anything. Whatever else happened, I would protect Jeff, but that didn’t mean I’d give up on what I had with Horse. There had to be a way to walk the line between the two men I loved. I just had to find it. Horse leaned forward, pressing his head into my stomach, shuddering. His arms wrapped around my hips and he pulled me forward between his legs. I have no idea how long we sat there but it seemed like forever. He didn’t talk, just held me, shaking, as his grief poured out.

  Finally the shudders eased and he pulled back. I looked down at him, running my fingers across the lines of his face, feeling the softness of his lips with my thumb. He reached up and caught my hand, tugging it to his mouth, kissing my palm. Heat flared in his eyes and he fell back on the bed, drawing me down to him.

  We’d made love so many different ways in our time together. Urgent, slow, angry and laughing—but never like this. He held me like his life depended on it, hands digging into my hips and spreading my legs across his body as his pelvis ground up into mine urgently. I took his head between my hands and kissed him, long and deep, full of pain for his suffering and relief so intense I thought my heart might explode. I couldn’t believe I’d doubted him. I knew he was a violent man living a violent life, but what he’d told me, the way he suffered—that wasn’t a lie.

  His cock pressed into me, long and hard as I rubbed myself across it. I wore a tee and panties and all he had on were boxers, but that was way too much. I wanted to be naked so I could take him deep into my body, give him my love until the sadness in his eyes changed to something else. Instead we ground against each other, too desperate for sensation to stop long enough to pull off our clothes. I let his lips go, put my hands on either side of his head and arched my head back, maximizing the pressure between us.

  “You’re going to kill me,” he gasped, hands digging into my ass so hard it hurt. “It’s worth it. I’ll take whatever you have. I never want it to stop.”

  I ignored him, focusing now on the pressure and need growing between my legs. Everything in my body wound tight and I realized I might come, just from dry humping him like a teenager in the back of a car—that’s how much his body called to mine. I ground harder, feeling it just beyond me, and then it burst and I moaned, shuddering over him.

  Then I rolled off, reaching down to slide off my panties. Horse shoved down his boxers just enough to free his cock, which sprang up between us. He reached toward me, obviously planning to pull me on top of him, but I stopped him. Instead I leaned over his lower body, wrapping my lips around his erection and sucking him in deep.

  He shuddered, wrapping the fingers of one hand in my hair as I swirled my tongue around his head and started stroking him with my hand down below. I couldn’t fix anything for him. I couldn’t bring back Bagger or change what’d gone down overseas. But I could make him forget for a little while, and I didn’t plan to do it halfway.

  I sucked him and licked him, pulling away every once in a while to attack his balls with my mouth, drawing them in and rolling them around my tongue. Then I got creative, sliding one of my fingers up into his ass as I suctioned hard, squeezing and stroking him with my fingers until he groaned and twisted underneath me, captured and desperate for release. He tugged at my hair, trying to pull me away, but I wouldn’t let him. Instead I held him captive with my fingers and mouth, swallowing triumphantly when he exploded into me, hips jerking and trembling.

  When he finished, I pulled away and sat up, wiping my mouth off with the back of my hand. He smiled up at me, and while he still looked sad, his terrible tension had eased.

  “Thanks,” he said softly, reaching up and tracing the line of my lips.

  “No problem,” I whispered. “I’m going to brush my teeth. No offense, okay?”

  He gave a low chuckle and nodded. When I came back to bed I found him naked. He pulled me close into the crook of his arm, bringing my leg up and over his. I felt peace. Nothing could undo what had happened, either to him or Bagger, but for tonight he could sleep.

  I felt like a very, very good old lady.

  Chapter Twenty

  The morning of the funeral was cold.

  I wondered how much of it was the temperature and how much was the cloud of wrongness and grief hanging over all of us. Bagger hadn’t been a religious man, but Cookie had asked a biker chaplain from Spokane to come over and do a graveside service. It would start with a viewing at the funeral home, followed by a procession to the cemetery for the interment.

  Maggs and Darcy took charge of making arrangements because Cookie couldn’t handle the details. Her in-laws, who didn’t live locally, were elderly and utterly devastated. They were pathetically grateful for the support, unable to think of anything but their lost son. That’s why the night before the service, the women of the club held a strategy session at the Armory. Apparently Cookie was particularly worried about Silvie coming to the cemetery. It would be cold and she’d started acting out, probably from all the tension and grief in the air. She still didn’t understand what had happened to her daddy, and would carry the laptop to any adult she could find so she could talk to him online.

  Cookie asked me—as Silvie’s favorite babysitter—if I’d help watch her the next day. If Silvie couldn’t handle things, she wanted me to take her back to the Armory rather than subject her daughter to something she couldn’t possibly comprehend. Of course I said yes, so the morning of the funeral Maggs parked my car around the back side of the cemetery. That way if Silvie needed me, I could take her and leave quickly and unobtrusively. Horse didn’t like the idea, but even he had to admit that the Devil’s Jacks wouldn’t dare disrupt the funeral. Not with a hundred Reapers watching, not to mention half the veterans in north Idaho.

  I hadn’t left the clubhouse all week, but Em had been my lifeline. She even bought me a black dress to wear, and that morning I rode to the funeral home with her. The men followed us on their bikes, which had to be incredibly uncomfortable in the bitter cold.

  Nobody complained.

  Driving motorcycles in a winter funeral procession didn’t seem that sensible to me, but apparently that’s the way things were done at a biker’s funeral. Maggs had warned me, but I was still stunned to see hundreds of motorcycles parked outside the funeral home. Not only Reapers, but the Silver Bastards and a bunch of other clubs I’d never heard of. There were men who weren’t part of any club, too, and vets flying MIA/POW flags off the backs of their Harleys. Even more of the riders had American flags. There was no way this many people could fit inside the funeral home for the viewing, yet nobody seemed to mind.

  Maggs took me inside and I watched as more people arrived, waiting patiently in the cold, talkin
g to each other quietly in small clumps. Some of them stuck what looked like bumper stickers on the casket, which freaked me out at first. Then I realized they were Reapers support badges and nobody seemed to have a problem with it. I saw Cookie and managed to go up to her to offer my respects. She smiled at me, but I don’t think she even recognized me. Silvie did, though, and I picked her up and carried her around. She loved it and I lavished attention on her.

  Then it was time to pile into the cars for the procession. I walked Silvie over to Cookie, who seemed completely disconnected from reality. Couldn’t blame her for that. When her mother-in-law tried to take her granddaughter from me, the little girl started crying and clung to me, kicking.

  “Come with us,” Cookie said suddenly, as if she’d been startled awake. “Whatever makes her happy. Please take care of her for me, I need your help.”

  That’s how I wound up riding in the limo with the family, right behind the hearse. It felt so wrong, so presumptuous, but it made Silvie happy and Cookie certainly wasn’t up to handling her. We drove slowly through town and I was astounded at the show of support and respect. I guess I’d been cut off from events out at the Armory, but I honestly hadn’t realized just how big Bagger’s funeral procession would be. This wasn’t just the club, or even a group of clubs. The whole town was stepping up to honor Bagger for his sacrifice.

  It started with six police cars, driving two abreast with their lights flashing. The Reapers weren’t big cop fans, but Bagger’s dad had wanted to accept their offer of an escort, so no one complained. Then came the hearse and the family in three limos, followed by the indescribable roar of hundreds of bikes. We drove right down Sherman Avenue and instead of having us avoid the main roads like a typical funeral procession, they closed off the streets in his honor. People lined the curbs to pay their respects, standing at attention as we drove by. Many held American flags and handmade signs saying things like “Thank You” and “We Will Not Forget.”