by Lynn Burke
Chapter Two
Pia
Arrestingly cold eyes…
I couldn’t rid my mind of their green depths that chilled more than heated, and the black lashes framing them. And the equally hardened forearm that had flexed beneath my grasp…
Sighing, I moved ahead one spot in line, needing an iced coffee to soothe the dryness in my throat. I’d planned on a hot cup regardless of the heat outdoors, but the second I’d slammed into the tall biker in the parking lot, my innards lit on fire. Burned up to a crisp the second our gazes had connected.
I’d recognized the tension in him beneath my fingertips—the inability to withhold from flinching. He’d been hurt same as so many people I’d fought to help over the years. The teenagers I’d devoted my life to, the unwanted, those left to the system and whatever foster parents willing to take them in.
Once inside Dunks, I’d watched the biker drive off on his chopper, his black leathers and boots much too hot for summer, yet required, I’d supposed, for riding.
I moved another step closer to the counter, glancing over the array of fresh donuts, the icing and sprinkles enticing me to ignore the fact I didn’t need another inch on my thighs.
The thought of the stranger between them, his bike rumbling beneath us, rekindled the fire he’d invoked, and I squeezed my legs together beneath my frumpy skirt as wetness dampened my granny panties.
Just as alluring as his virile masculinity, the sense of freedom his bike offered, tempted my imagination to run wild.
Wind whipping through my shoulder-length hair, the coolness kissing my heated face. Complete liberation from the window-less, tiny office awaiting me.
“Miss Pia!”
I stepped forward, pushing aside dreams of freedom and smiling at the young man behind the counter. “Jesse—it’s been forever! How are you doing?”
“Great.” He grinned. “Tell me you aren’t going with your usual scalding coffee?”
I shook my head, glancing once more at the strawberry iced donuts behind him. “I’ll take it over ice today.”
“Sure thing, Miss Pia. Anything else?”
One hot biker with cold, hazel-green eyes…
“That’ll be it today,” I told him, ignoring the call of the sugary carbs and freedom I would never have to whet my appetite.
Jesse moved off to get my coffee, and I considered the barely eighteen-year-old I’d had beneath my wing for over eight years. He’d been one of the lucky ones, while in and out of foster homes, he hadn’t been troubled by aggression or unwanted advances. He’d never found his forever home, but he’d had it easier than most.
So many of my kids struggled through their final years in foster care. One had disappeared a year earlier—Sophia Delgado—a beautiful Latina her final foster father had lusted after.
I hadn’t been able to get her out of the home in time. At seventeen, she’d left me a message telling me what he’d attempted to do, and that she was done with the system.
She’d erased herself from the face of the earth as far as I and the law who didn’t give two shits about a family-less runaway knew. No body had ever turned up, though. I hoped for the best rather than the probable truth of her existence as a sex slave in some far-off country.
“Here you are, Miss Pia.” Jesse handed me my coffee in exchange for a five dollar bill.
“Do you remember Dasia?” I asked, watching his face closely as he made change.
A hint of a frown creased his forehead for a second. “The little redhead from the Carters?”
I nodded, accepting my change, my throat tightening over the latest disappearance. “Have you seen her around town at all?”
“No, ma’am. Is she in trouble?”
Expecting my smile would wobble, I tried for one anyway. “She left her foster parents’ home four days ago and never returned.”
Jesse’s face fell, and I longed to lean over the counter and hug the sweet young man. “I hope you find her.”
“If you see her…”
“I’ll let you know, Miss Pia.” He nodded. “Promise.”
Two minutes later, I drove toward Boston, the windows rolled down rather than cranking the AC, enjoying the hot breeze blowing through my hair—as close to freedom as I expected I would ever get to experience.
Had Dasia run off for the same reasons as Sophia? She’d told me she hated the newest home she’d been placed in, but I’d begged her to hang in there with only a few months until she turned eighteen…
I exhaled a heavy breath and pulled into my Monday through Friday parking garage, escaping the sun, the darkness weighing like the layers of cement and steel overhead.
Both Sophia and Dasia were beautiful young woman, on the cusp of adulthood. Ready to begin their own lives, free to choose what they would. Had Dasia chosen to leave on her own as Sophia had, or had someone noted her natural ginger beauty and stolen her off the streets?
Cold shivers licked at my spine as I walked through the dark parking garage toward the exit leading back to Boston’s downtown. Sweat trickled down my back and between my breasts but did little to cool my body.
The heavy scent of exhaust clogged my lungs, and even though the bright sunlight squinted my eyes once more, I breathed easier once outside the claustrophobic atmosphere of the garage.
My hole in the wall office didn’t offer much better, but at least clean air filtered through the air conditioning ducts thanks to my boss who insisted on purifiers throughout the office space.
A few phone calls into my day provided no news on Dasia. My daily online search for Sophia and missing Latina girls provided the same as every morning. Sighing, I sipped the last of my ice-melted, watered-down coffee, and stared at the search bar on my computer screen.
Even though my door remained closed, murmurings from the neighboring offices droned through the thin walls. The AC kicked off, and with seconds, heat prickled my skin again.
I closed my eyes against the feeling of the walls creeping in on me, counting to ten and back down to keep anxiety from rising and tightening my throat.
Breathing steadily with purpose to stay calm, I opened my eyes and typed in Vicious Vipers without thought, remembering the rockers on the back of hazel-eye’s leather vest.
News articles and images popped up.
Group photo…
I clicked on the picture from a charity event they’d been involved in a few years earlier, my gaze landing on the bearded man I’d plowed into that morning. Cold eyes, even in black and white… My heart jumped as I noted the names listed beneath.
Fingertip trailing air above my screen, I found him.
Ryker McGrath.
I focused on his face once more, seeing beyond the cool reflection I expected he masked himself with to hide the hurt within. Unable to help from digging, I opened another tab and searched his name, perusing articles and various websites.
A Southie boy who’d left for the North Shore twenty years earlier. Forty-three, single, and a mechanic. The Sergeant at Arms for the Vipers’ local chapter.
I imagined being one of the bandana-wearing women on the back of the bikes—skin tight jeans even if they wouldn’t flatter my figure, shit-kicker boots … rooting out the cause of Ryker’s pain and helping to heal the wounds deep inside him.
Shaking my head, I pushed thoughts of romance and breathing easy and free from my mind.
I needed to get a grip—I had work to do.
Reality sucked a big one.
Closing out all five browsers, I considered who else I might call, who else might have heard from or might have seen both of my missing girls. I prayed they still lived even though I felt I didn’t while choosing to help the kids who needed me.
“Someone must know where they are.” I picked up my phone and dialed another of the young adults I still kept in touch with since their release from the state’s care.
They’re who I live for, I reminded myself, but the truth I’d spent over ten years doing so didn’t ease the new ac
he—the longing for more—inside my chest.
Chapter Three
Ryker
The window unit in Mom’s condo ran on high, but it didn’t do much to lessen the stifling heat in the small place. I swore in my head while shutting the door behind me, disappointed to not find it a bit cooler inside than out or the fact the stale cigarette stench from Mom’s bad habit still clung to the walls.
My sister Jenny sat at the kitchen table, her face drawn and pale, a mug in front of her.
I glanced back at the hallway leading to the two bedrooms. “How’s she doing?”
Jenny shrugged and let out a heavy exhale. “Back to muttering about our shit head father and what a great man he was.”
My lip curled as I pulled the coffee pot out to pour myself a mug. “Want more?” I asked, gesturing to Jenny’s mug.
“Sure.”
I filled her mug, put the pot back, and settled into the rickety chair across the table from her.
“Hospice nurse just left,” Jenny said as I sipped, her hands wrapping around her mug as though to warm them.
Scalding, fucking delicious, coffee slid down to my stomach that had yet to recover from the incident at Dunks—Martínez and that damn fine Jane Doe’s fingertips.
“Got any watermelon in the fridge?” I heard myself ask.
Jenny frowned at me. “What?”
“Never mind.” I sipped again, fighting off a frown at the lingering tingle in my forearm, and glanced around the condo I’d been paying for since Mom had gotten sick. For over a year, I’d single-handedly supported her and Jenny, from rent to cell phones, groceries and cable. Came easy since I’d paid off my own house up in Topsfield years earlier. The Vipers’ chop shop did well—and I oversaw the daily operations except while on vacation. As though I took them often…
“When are you heading home?”
I shrugged and met Jenny’s inquisitive stare. More green than mine, her hazel eyes peered at me as though reading through clear to my soul. Younger by almost five years, single due to her disinterest in dicks since one had been shoved inside her against her will while a twenty-something innocent.
That fucker had met his end earlier in the year, compliments of me and my knife. Looking into his eyes while slicing his neck and watching blood pour down over his front had been one of the better moments of my life—if only it had given me the satisfaction I’d hoped for.
I’d told her about the fucker’s death, but that truth hadn’t helped her move on, either. Celibate to the extreme, Jenny didn’t even bother with dating. Mom’s illness had given her something to focus on after years of battling depression and psych ward stays, but I feared what she would do after Mom finally gave up the ghost.
“You shouldn’t be here, Ryk.”
I met Jenny’s stare.
“You ought to find yourself a good woman and never come back. This place is nothing but a life suck. It’s pulled you down even in the week you’ve been here.”
I rubbed at my forearm, the desire for watermelon hitting me again. “Not gonna happen,” I muttered, ripping my hand away and wishing for something ten times stronger than black coffee.
Jenny eyed my forearm before turning her focus on my face again. “Still?”
“Always.”
Lips pursed, she finally looked away, her tired eyes gazing out the window overlooking the apartment building across the road. A lone car horn muffled through.
“It wasn’t,” I said before she could spout off the shit she always did when our father’s memory entered conversation and she blamed herself for what he’d done to me.
“Thank you,” she whispered, turning toward me once more, tears in her eyes.
“I’d do it a thousand times over to protect you, Jenny. I just wish I could have been here every time he came home drunk.” Guilt ate at my gut like it always did when I thought of my later teenage years and how Jenny had inherited his wrath in my absence. Wasn’t her fault, no matter what she’d claimed over the years. I’d always taken the punishment, turned his anger toward me whenever she’d gotten into trouble.
It hadn’t always been like that, though. Our father hadn’t started ignoring me and my need for affection until Jenny had been born—but I’d never told her that, nor would I ever. Mom had serious post-partum, and her depression pushed our father toward drugs and alcohol. But, it’d been his decision to take a turn down that slippery slope—not Jenny’s fault.
“That fucker is dead, too,” I told her, wishing I’d been the one to spill his blood. It’d been a drunken car accident, and thankfully he’d only taken his own life. It’s what had started Mom on her downward spiral of drugs and alcohol. Her body finally had enough. It was just a matter of time.
Death hung like a shroud, black and heavy, over the condo, and like Jenny had said, I felt it pulling me under, lining beneath my eyes as it had done to her. She’d always appeared defeated in stance and self-confidence since that day, though.
“When Mom passes, you’re moving up north with me.”
Jenny jerked her head toward me at the declaration.
“You need to get outta Southie,” I expanded on what I hadn’t planned on offering, but with it being out… “Fucking change of scenery will do you good and I’ve got two extra bedrooms going to waste at my house.”
Jenny let out a heavy exhale again, her eyes lighting up the slightest bit. “And what happens when some lady comes along, steals your heart, and gets all fat and hormonal with your brats?”
“Not gonna happen,” I grumbled.
She snorted a fake as fuck laugh. “I just might take you up on that. Hell. Maybe what I need is a badass biker to get me over my dick aversion.”
“Fuck.” I scowled. “Don’t even talk like that. One of my brothers so much as looks at you sideways, I’ll break his goddamn nose.”
“I always found crooked noses sexy.”
“Shit.” I eyed my sister, knowing she joked by the saucy tilt to one corner of her mouth—yet almost wishing one of my brothers would help to heal her, set her free. “You take an interest in one, you tell me first, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
We sat in silence for a little, the most comfortable I’d been in a long ass time.
“Actually, I was thinking that I might go to Vegas for a couple weeks to visit Phoebe once Mom passes. Really get the hell out of here for a while.”
I nodded, thinking that was just as good as her moving up north with me right away. “That works, too. How’s she been?”
Phoebe, Jenny’s best friend from childhood, had headed west while still in high school and her dad had taken a big-wig job at some casino. They’d called each other PB&J when kids, and had been close ever since even though thousands of miles separated them.
“Doing good. Works at the same casino as her dad. Waitressing.” Jenny shrugged. “Says she loves it.”
“It’d be one hell of a change of scenery,” I said, remembering the dry heat and desert I’d traipsed through earlier in the spring to help rescue Stone’s woman.
Jenny let out another heavy sigh and glanced back down the hallway again. “Well, Mom isn’t going to need me much longer. What’s the point of sticking around here? I’d only end up cramping your style eventually—”
“You make better coffee than I do.”
She let out a small, real laugh, something I hadn’t heard pass her lips in years. “You and your coffee.”
“I think it’s a good idea, Jenny,” I said, my lips even twitching at her lingering, rare smile. “Take off. Get the hell out of here and see the world. Mom doesn’t have much, but that life insurance policy I took out on her a few years back will give you enough to just live and not worry about responsibilities for a while. Fuck knows, you deserve it.”
Tears filled her eyes. “Thanks, Ryk. I love you, you know that, right?” Her whisper warmed my heart, something I hadn’t felt for a long fucking time. I scratched at my chest.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice gruff, but rather
than say it back, I decided to respond to her original question about how long I planned on staying in Southie. “I’ll hang out until the end.”
Jenny nodded, peering into her coffee mug. “Only be a couple days, the nurse said.”
I didn’t give two shits. “I’ve got my lawyer putting everything in order. This place will be yours until you decide what you’re going to do. Here, Vegas, or my place. You do whatever the fuck you want.”
“Thanks, Ryk.”
I eyed her fingers still wrapped around her mug, wishing I could squeeze them and tell her I loved her back.
Instead, I dipped my head and got up. “Got some calls to make, then I’m heading out for the night.”
“You’re the best, Ryk.”
Her whisper followed me back the hallway, but I pretended to not hear.
****
I sat in a dark corner of the seedy strip joint a few blocks from Mom’s, nursing a beer, my attention on the spot-lit stage, but my focus beyond the redhead and her perky tits.
The younger woman was more my brother Devil’s type than mine, anyway, with her sultry looks and sexy moves. Sassy flashes of her blue eyes didn’t do jack shit for me like it seemed the men sitting around the stage tucking singles into her thong.
The bright red of her hair, however, reminded me of the scent of watermelon tormenting me all damn day. I’d even stopped by a grocery store to get some pre-cut shit in a container. While sweet and cold, the fruit hadn’t quenched my thirst.
My forearm tingled, and scowling, I sipped at my drink while wishing it’d been a shot of whiskey sliding down my throat. I’d thought I could pick up a woman to suck me off—if she didn’t mind getting on her knees in some alleyway and not touching me with anything other than her mouth. The joint I sat in hadn’t let me down in the past whenever I’d hit Southie for a day or two, but I wasn’t feeling it.
The wholesome Jane Doe from earlier in the day haunted my goddamn mind, and the thought of some whore in a back alley didn’t so much as twitch my dick. Fucking waste of time, I muttered inside my head, trying like fuck to focus on the youngster on stage.
