by Hope Stone
The waitress came to take our orders before scurrying away. The place was busy tonight and looked to be understaffed. My mom turned to me.
“Tell me how you’re doing. It’s been too long since we saw you.”
“I’ve started a new job.”
“What happened to the old one?” my dad interrupted.
“It didn’t work out,” I tried to be vague.
“Because?”
I gritted my teeth. Why did he always have to push it with me?
“Let’s just say that the boss and I had some fundamental differences.”
“Translation, you pissed him off and got sacked.”
“Harold,” my mom placed a hand on his arm with a frown on her face. This always happened, no matter the occasion. We ended up bickering, and she was stuck in the middle.
“Fine,” he grumbled, placing his larger hand on top of hers. “Tell us about the new job.”
“I’m a tattoo artist at a little shop in La Playa.”
He scoffed.
“You’ve always been so artistic. That’s a great fit for you,” my mom said, but I could see the concern in her eyes. “Do you make enough money there? Can we help you in any way?”
The look on my dad’s face told me that he’d rather chew his own arm off than give me money.
“No, Mom. I do just fine.”
It wasn’t a lie. The cut that Brie took was small enough to allow me to make a decent living.
“Here,” I handed over the gift. “I got you something.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
She tore open the wrapping paper, pulling out a white box. Inside, nestled among tissue paper, was an elephant figurine. She’d collected them for as long as I could remember, always looking for unique designs. This one was opulent with a headdress covered in Swarovski crystals and gems.
“Oh, Blade. It’s beautiful.”
There was a moment in which I allowed myself to feel good about my gift as she handled it carefully, looking over the ornate design, but it was ruined by my father.
“Looks a little expensive for you,” he commented drily.
Asshole.
The shop keepers had treated me like that when I bought the thing, too. Looking at me with raised eyebrows and uninterested glances. Granted, I was dressed in my usual black jeans and white t-shirt, with my tattoos on full display and a helmet in one hand. So, I didn’t look like I belonged in a shop full of delicate and expensive collectibles.
It still pissed me off, though.
“You don’t know shit about my finances,” I spat. His eyes darkened, and out of the corner of my eye, I registered the disappointment on my mother’s face. I hated myself for being a part of the problem, but I couldn’t bite back my anger now.
“I know you,” he countered. “Your lack of discipline and irresponsibility are common knowledge, so you’ll forgive me if I question your ability to buy something like this.”
“No, actually, I won’t.”
I stood, taking a moment to remove my damn tie while both of my parents watched. I tossed it down on the table, glad to be rid of it.
“Sorry, mom. I gotta go.” I didn’t bother making up an excuse. We all knew what was going on here. “I’m glad you like the gift. And dad, if I’m such a fuck-up, I guess you better cover the cost of my dinner.”
I left the restaurant with anger battling guilt for dominance. This kind of thing was the reason that I was eager to join the Outlaw Souls. I’d seen firsthand the way that they treat each other like family, and I wanted that. My mom was great, but the friction between my dad and me made it hard to be close to her. Alex was the closest family I had these days, but he didn’t even live in La Playa.
I knew that things would be different if Mark was still alive. My big brother had been the perfect child that my dad wanted. He was smart as a whip and willing to fall in line. When he died, he’d already signed up for the Army.
I wasn’t Mark, and I never would be. Sometimes, I thought that my father’s real problem was that he just couldn’t forgive me for that.
Kat
There was something different about Blade at work today. He was more reserved than I’d ever seen him. There were no teasing flirtations. I didn’t know him well, and it might not even mean anything, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was bothering him.
I took several customers in the morning and spent most of the afternoon finishing the full sleeve I’d started yesterday, so I had plenty to do to keep myself busy. But I had this awareness of Blade the whole time. It was like there was a connection between us that was impossible to ignore.
“What’s up with you today?” I asked when the shop closed and we were getting ready to leave. Piper had a date, so she’d hurried through the cleanup and took off right away.
“What do you mean?” His tone was just a little too nonchalant to be believable.
“You’re…” I searched to find a word, “broody.”
“Am not.”
“Whatever,” I said, turning away from him. For some reason, his denial frustrated me. “I don’t care, anyway.”
I started to leave, making it to the curtain that separated the front and back of the shop before I felt a strong grip on my arm, making me stop.
“I think you do care,” Blade said, his voice a low rumble in my ear.
My heart pounded against my ribcage. His touch was sending a tingling sensation all over my body, and I found myself leaning back into him until our bodies were flush. I could feel an erection poking at my ass and wanted to grind into it, but I held back. If I started down that road, I wasn’t sure I could stop. I was already so hot for him, and we’d barely touched yet. I could hear Brie on the other side of the curtain, cashing out the register while she hummed to herself. Knowing that she was so close made our contact feel risky and cranked up my desire further.
“Tell me, Kitten, have you been trying to figure me out all day?”
Damn him for being able to read me so easily.
I turned around so that we were face-to-face, our bodies still flush. He was hard in all the right places, and I wondered if he liked it rough.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But you don’t seem to mind.”
My eyes darted to his lips, and the next thing I knew, he took my mouth in a hard kiss. Blade’s hand came up to the back of my neck, holding me in place.
But I wasn’t going anywhere.
My lips molded to his, fire spreading through my veins. I raked my nails up his arm, wanting to moan at the taste of him when he licked his way into my mouth.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so turned on by a man, and the idea of taking this somewhere private was appealing. Before I could even consider doing it, Brie’s voice brought me back to reality.
“Kat? Blade? You guys almost finished up back there?”
I ripped my mouth away from Blade’s, mentally chastising myself for doing this here.
“Uh, ye-yeah.” I cringed at the breathless quality of my voice. Blade stepped back, putting distance between us, and I made sure that my shirt was straight. My hair was pulled back in a ponytail today, so at least I didn’t have to worry about mussed hair giving away what we were up to.
“You okay?” Her voice was closer.
I stepped to the side, putting more distance between myself and Blade. I ripped open the curtain to find that Brie was only a few feet away. I knew that it shouldn’t thrill me to come so close to getting caught, but it did.
My lips were tingling from the feeling of Blade’s kiss as I smiled at Brie.
“Just fine,” I said chirpily.
Brie furrowed her brow as she looked between us, trying to figure out the weird vibe in the room. Finally, after several long seconds, her expression cleared.
“Good.” She gestured to the front door. “Now, let’s get the hell out of here.”
We shuffled past her, going out the front door while she shut off the lights and locked up. No
rmally, Blade took off on his bike right away, but today, he lingered in the parking lot with me. We bid goodbye to Brie and watched as she got into her car and drove away.
“You know what I think, Kitten?” He didn’t wait for me to guess before continuing. “I think it’s time I took you on a date.”
“Like dinner and a movie?”
“Come on, I think I can do better than that. We’ll have some fun.”
All I could imagine was getting horizontal with him, which sounded like plenty of fun.
“What do you have in mind?”
He shook his head, and his cocky smirk made its first appearance of the day. I was surprised by how much I missed it. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”
Okay, I was intrigued.
“When?”
“Friday night,” he said, pulling his helmet onto his head. “After work. We’ll take the bike, so dress accordingly.”
I understood that to mean wearing pants. I’d learned that lesson the hard way as a teenager on the back of my dad’s bike. I’d gone on a ride with him on a hot summer day, insisting on wearing shorts. After an hour on the road, we’d stopped for gas, and I had brushed against the screaming hot header pipe. The burn on my skin was instant and agonizing. I still had a scar on my calf from it.
I’d make sure to bring my helmet, too. I never got on a bike without one. I didn’t give a damn if it was lame, as I had been told by some of the Las Balas members in the past. My dad had told me a story about a biker he knew that got into an accident without one on, and it was gruesome. I liked the shape of my skull as it was, thank you very much.
“Okay, but you better feed me. I’m not one of those girls that won’t eat in front of a man.”
Blade got onto his bike. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fed. You’ll need the energy.”
Heat locked in my lower belly at his words, but before I could form a response, he fired up the bike and rode away.
“Please, Kat,” Jason’s voice was whiny, and I rolled my eyes.
“No way.”
“Come on, the future of my relationship depends on you.”
“Why is that my responsibility?” I asked, exasperated. We were at my house again, but Jason wasn’t visiting because of a fight with Lexie this time. It turned out that he’d promised to take her out this Saturday to make up for canceling their plans on her birthday, but, as usual, Las Balas was demanding his time instead. They wanted him to bartend at their bar, The Pit. They were supposed to have a band playing that night and expected a big turnout, so all prospects were expected to be there slinging drinks all night long.
“They told me that I could only get out of it if someone else covered for me. And they love you down there.”
Yeah, some of the bikers loved me a little too much. They might have watched me grow up, but that didn’t stop some of the older men from looking at me like a fresh piece of meat. Adding alcohol to the mix might even make a couple of them handsy. My dad would be there, but he wasn’t the type to be protective.
“You’ll probably make a killing in tips,” Jason added, clearly pulling out all the stops to entice me to do this for him.
I considered it. It didn’t sound like the ideal way to spend my Saturday, but at least I wouldn’t be stuck at home alone. I could put the money I made toward my savings for a motorcycle. As for the men that hit on me, I felt pretty confident that I could take care of myself.
“Fine,” I sighed. “I’ll do it, just this once.”
Jason hopped up from the couch and hugged me. “Thanks. You don’t know what this means to me.”
I hugged him back but pulled away after a few seconds and gave him a grave look. “You’ve got to figure out what matters more to you. Lexie or Las Balas. I know that you want to follow in Dad’s footsteps and get closer to him by joining the club, but don’t forget that the reason neither of us is close to him is that he put that club above his family, and it ruined his marriage.”
“You don’t understand. The club is like a family. They just want loyalty.”
“Well, you can’t keep putting Lexie on the back burner and expecting her to stick around. That’s all I’m saying.”
I could tell that he wanted to argue with me, but he wasn’t really in a position to do so since I was doing him this favor. Instead, he thanked me again and left, eager to head home and tell Lexie that their plans for this weekend were still on.
Part of me felt that I shouldn’t get involved in Jason’s relationship like this. He had to figure this shit out for himself. But I didn’t want my brother to be lonely like me. Without Lexie, he’d have no one, just the club.
Home alone once again, I considered going out, but Piper was on a date, and I didn’t want to go alone. Blade’s face flashed through my mind, but I quickly discarded that idea, as well. Our date was in two days, and I didn’t want to go out with him before that. A night of drinking that would probably end in sex would be fun, but I felt like there was a potential for more with him. I’d rather wait and see what he had planned for Friday night.
Blade
I went back to the fighting ring two more times this week. It was making me a crowd favorite since I won all my fights, but even more importantly, it gave me the opportunity to get close to Kane, which meant that I was getting closer to Luca.
I’d even seen the snake that Kane had told me about, a big yellow thing that I wasn’t too proud to admit made me nervous. Luca came into the warehouse tonight with it draped around his neck like some living accessory. It made him look like the villain in a vampire movie or something ridiculous like that.
I came alone tonight for the first time. It made me feel jumpy, but the closer I got to Luca, the more uncomfortable I was with bringing Alex along. It was one thing for me to knowingly get close to a man that Outlaw Souls suspected to be a killer, but Alex didn’t know what he was getting into. I couldn’t tell him, so I didn’t bring him.
I’d decided to work a new angle to get information. Kane had mentioned that Luca was looking for some muscle, a man that could do his dirty work for a big payday. I’d put my name in for that, knowing that they’d all seen me fight and knew what I was capable of. What they didn’t know was that I wasn’t into roughing up people that were indebted to Luca. I preferred a fair fight.
“Blade, it’s good to see you here again,” Luca said when Kane brought me to him. He was always removed from the crowd, on a wooden platform that I suspected was built for him to see the fights from his chair. He was like a king on his throne here, surrounded by men that openly carried their guns on their hips. I was packing tonight, too, but mine was tucked away, out of sight.
“Luca,” I nodded in his direction, not getting close enough to shake his hand while that damn reptile was on him. “I hear you might have some work that I’d be suited for?”
Luca nodded. “I might. Depends on what you’re willing to do.”
“Whatever the boss tells me to do.” I could tell that was the right answer by the look on Luca’s face. This guy got off on being the big man in charge.
“Good. Walk with me.”
Luca put his snake into an open tank on the floor beside him, and I remembered what Kane had said about him being eccentric. That was an understatement. He stood, and two of his men came forward, stopping just behind him as we walked together out of the warehouse. The street was dark, with cars parked in the unused lots of the warehouses around us to avoid drawing attention to our location. It seemed like a wasted effort when I realized that I could hear the crowd yelling at the fighters out here.
I followed his lead as we made our way west, moving closer to the docks, which were abandoned at this time of night.
“Have you ever hurt a woman?” Luca asked, not looking directly at me. His eyes roamed over our surroundings, always alert.
My stomach somersaulted. What the fuck?
The answer was no, but I was sure that wouldn’t be what he wanted to hear. Whatever he wanted me to do had to be tied to this
question.
“I believe in discipline,” I replied. The words disgusted me, but I had a part to play here.
Luca laughed as if what I said was hilarious. He clapped me on the back like we were old pals.
“Me too,” he said. “But some people don’t think like you and me, which is how we end up with a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“A mouthy little bitch by the name of Cecilia Groves.”
Shit. That was Raymond Groves’s wife, the woman that Outlaw Souls was supposed to protect.
“Tell me about her,” I said, glad that my voice didn’t betray anything going on in my whirring mind.
“She has something that I want, and someone has to persuade her to give it up.”
“What is it?”
He smiled. “A primo piece of land just five miles north of La Playa.”
My excitement nearly gave me away, making me keen to push for more information, but I forced myself to pause and take a deep breath. If I appeared too interested, he’d likely suspect something, and I’d end up with a bullet in my back before I even knew what happened. Luca’s bodyguards were still tight on us.
“Why not just look into something else? If it’s land you want, there’s plenty in La Playa that could be obtained more easily.”
Luca slowed to a stop, and I was sure that he was on to me. My pulse raced, and I tried to figure out how to get away from these three men in one piece, but Luca surprised me.
“You know what? I like you, Blade. You’re bold, an innovator. So, I’m going to let you in on a secret. It’s all about location, location, location.”
That wasn’t exactly a secret when talking about real estate, but I wasn’t going to correct him. Luca started walking again, quicker this time, but I kept pace with him.
“You see, there’s something special about this location. Something that Cecilia doesn’t know about. Her late husband was good at keeping secrets.”
“Secrets?”
