by Karen Renee
Cal strode toward Henry with his cell phone to his ear, “Yeah. Yeah, hang on,” he said and held the cell phone down by his thigh. He said something in Henry’s ear and Vamp left my side to find out what was being discussed.
The three of them exchanged nods and chin-lifts, then Cal put the phone back to his ear and turned around saying, “I’m back, but let me get behind closed doors.”
Well, so much for eavesdropping my way into some intel! I turned on my heel and went back to Vamp’s room to change my clothes. I noticed my other two shoeboxes on the floor. I didn’t know who brought them in for me, probably one of the prospects, and I was glad they did. Opening my overnight bag, I pulled out a pair of white shorts and a black t-shirt with a very deep scoop neck and silver foil beading in the shape of multiple fleur-de-lis symbols running up the side of the shirt. Now I was much more comfortable and didn’t stick out like a sore thumb. I pulled my brush and a hair-tie out of my overnight bag. In the bathroom, I pulled my thick hair into a ponytail at the back of my head.
I had wedged my flip flops into my small overnight bag, so I pulled them out and slid my feet into them. With my cell phone in my back pocket, I wandered back to the common room and saw Vamp shooting pool against Roll. The other pool table was being used by Blood and Cal. I needed some fresh air so I went out the front door and found Major and Patch sitting in some plastic Adirondack chairs and smoking cigarettes. Both men gave me chin-lifts. Feeling a little like a moth to a flame, I ambled over to where a line of ten bikes were parked. There was something so appealing about seeing multiple bikes lined up with each other. No other mode of transportation did that to me. I mean, it wasn’t like I wandered the parking lot at Target ogling all the cars sitting outside. Seen one car, you’ve pretty much seen them all. I just never felt that way about motorcycles though.
A silver Toyota Tundra pick-up truck rolled through the gates to the compound and parked three feet from where I was standing. Major and Patch both stood up.
“I didn’t think that guy had any kind of cage,” I heard Patch mutter.
A tall, well-built man slid out of the truck and rounded the hood toward Patch and Major. I felt his eyes on me and when I looked his way, he pulled a pair of Oakley sunglasses off his face. His eyes were almost as startlingly blue as Vamp’s. He had thick, dark hair cut close on the back and sides of his head, but left just long enough in the front that it would hang over his forehead. He stopped mid-stride and gave me a hard look.
“Mallory said she didn’t have any sisters. You her cousin or somethin’?”
As if she heard her name, the door to the clubhouse opened and Mallory said, “No. She’s claimed by Vamp is what she is, to you.”
His gaze softened as he looked to Mallory, and he said, “Fireball, she’s almost your spittin’ image, if you spent more time in the sun and ate more food.”
I gave this guy the side-eye. “You might want to watch your words, bub. You’re nearing some damn-thin ice if you’re insinuating that I eat too much or spend too much time in the sun.”
He gave me a lopsided grin, “Not even close, babe. You’re built just the way I like my women, but apparently I’m late to the party, yet again.” He held a hand out to me and said, “I’m Razor, by the way. You are?”
As he approached me, I was waylaid by the smell of expensive cologne. Dear God, did Ralph Lauren swallow a bottle of Polo Blue and then throw up on this guy or what? I had to stifle a giggle as that thought went through my head. My eyes were threatening to water from the strength of his cologne.
I put my casted hand in his. I knew he wasn’t one of Riot, so I didn’t mind inconveniencing him in that way. “I’m Frankie.”
Patch said, “Ok, Razor. That’s enough damn flirtin’. You bring what you were supposed to?”
Razor gave Mallory and me a skeptical look, and said, “There somewhere more private we can discuss this?”
Both men nodded and led Razor into the clubhouse. Mallory quickly stepped back into the clubhouse as the men approached the doorway she had been occupying. As he walked away, I saw that the leather cut Razor was wearing had the Leatherneck emblem on the back. That was weird. My cell phone rang, and I tugged it out of my back pocket to see my cousin Diana was calling.
“Hey, Di!”
“Hi yourself, girlie. Where are you? It’s practically the end of the month, I’m sure you’ve got a hefty commission check comin’ your way and we’re having a sale on the down-low.”
“Really?” I asked, skeptically.
“Sure. As far as you know,” my cousin replied with a chuckle.
“That’s more like it, because I was gonna say that Jared’s never has a sale as such, it would sully the image, right?”
“Right, right, but seriously, you need to come in here today.”
I groaned, “I’d love to, but no can do.”
“Why?”
“My vehicle was car bombed just a little bit.”
Diana gasped, “Okay, where to start? Number one, are you okay?”
“Yes, honey.”
“Great, now for number two, how in the hell do you get a ‘little bit car-bombed?’ That’s more whacked than being a little bit pregnant or a little bit dead.”
“That’s a long story that neither of us has the time for.”
“Or the right amount of vino, I imagine.”
I laughed. “You got that right. I need to arrange for a rental car until I find out what the full damage is.”
“Oh. No you don’t,” Diana ordered.
“What are you talkin’ about? I need to have wheels, ma’am.”
“You do. Good for you, Duane and I have my parent’s old Malibu that just sits in our driveway much of the time. You’ll drive that until you sort something for yourself.”
I sighed, “Diana, I can’t impose on you guys that way.”
“Impose? Hell, you’d be doin’ us a favor. Our stupid HOA has been givin’ us grief about the thing being in our drive for so long and shit. Damn nosy bastards. You get a ride to our place tonight, I’ll give you the keys.”
“All right. If I can swing it tonight, I’ll let you know.”
“Why on earth wouldn’t you be able to?” Diana asked. I realized I hadn’t spoken to her since late April and she wasn’t aware I had been attacked.
“Also a long story. I’ve been in some minor danger –”
“‘Minor danger?’ What is with you and these odd-ball statements, today? There’s no such thing as minor danger unless we’re talking about dangers to minors plural or dangers to miners, like the professionals who go dig out diamonds and coal and shit. What kind of danger have you been in? Spill it!”
Shaking my head, I said, “Nope. I’ll spill it when I see you, but just so you know, Vamp and I are back together.”
“Really?” she asked excitedly.
“Yeah.”
“Did he bring you this danger? Or is he saving you from it? I think I know the answer, but if he’s brought the danger to you, I’m gonna kick his ass.”
“He’s saving me from it, but I’ll let you get back to selling some fine jewelry and stuff.”
I slid the phone back into my pocket as Razor exited the clubhouse and went directly to the passenger door of his truck. He pulled out a small black canvas duffel bag. He was halfway to the clubhouse when he said, “This might be inappropriate, so I hope you won’t take offense. But I can’t help but notice that you and Vamp are attracted to the same gene pool, in a way.”
“And how do you figure that?” I asked, even though I really wanted to ignore him.
“Stillman and Starla are half-siblings. Almost seems like too much of a coincidence that you both hooked up with those two.”
I had no comment to that, so I didn’t make one. However, it did get me thinking. Maybe it wasn’t so coincidental after all. Mark approached me, and it wasn’t that long after I had thrown Bradley under the bus and also run into Vamp for the first time in six years. I quickly followed Razor bac
k into the clubhouse, and he veered to the right toward the meeting room. I scurried through the common room and down the hall toward the brothers’ rooms. I opened the door to Henry’s room where Starla was being kept.
“Frankie, you need to turn around and shut that door,” the prospect said, when he saw me in the doorway.
I stepped inside shaking my head, “Nope.”
I closed the door and asked, “How long have you been following Vamp?”
“Fuck off,” she sneered at me.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Henry’s not the only one who can compound the damage to your nose.”
“Do it.”
“You see him at Jared’s?” I prodded.
She said nothing, but she didn’t control a tic of her eyebrow.
“Cheesecake Factory?”
“You ain’t gettin’ shit out of me.”
The door opened and a waft of cologne preceded Razor into the room.
“What are you doin’ in here?” he asked with a small grin.
“Tryin’ to find out why she’s been following Vamp since at least April. Don’t know what went down in March, but you don’t have to be a patched member to know she was told to keep the fuck away. Definitely not to stalk a brother.”
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?” Vamp growled from the doorway.
I tossed my head to the side and said, “Seems she saw you and me at Jared’s back in April and she saw you at the Cheesecake Factory afterward.”
“You are shittin’ me,” Cal said from the hallway.
“What made you think of it in the first place, super-sleuth?” Razor asked me.
I gave him a disgruntled look, but said, “Pains me to say it, but you did with your observation of how coincidental it was that Vamp and I both hooked up within the same ‘gene pool,’ if you will. I don’t believe in coincidences, and I’m surprised you do. Then again, if you were a member of Riot, they’d rid you of that habit quickly. Stillman approached me, and it wasn’t that damn long after my run-in with Vamp at Jared’s, as it so happens.”
Razor gave me a lengthy stare, “For a woman, you’ve got brass balls to talk to a brother of any MC that way, but I have to say, I was wondering some of the same things. Just didn’t have the backstory to ask the more pertinent questions. You sure you want to be claimed by Riot?”
Vamp moved further into the room, growling, “Shut your face, asshole. Get that skank the fuck out of here and good riddance to bad rubbish.”
Razor lifted his hands a few inches with his palms out, “No harm, no foul. Just tired of you Riot brothers gettin’ the good ones first.”
CHAPTER 25
“Raisins? What the fuck? They’re meatballs, not oatmeal cookies,” Abby bellowed at me.
Wrist-deep in a bowl of ground meat mixture, including raisins, I chuckled and said, “It’s my mother’s recipe. Well, actually I suppose it would be my grandmother’s recipe. I can’t say exactly, but she did tell me it comes from my father’s side of the family. Course, I haven’t met any of those people.”
The sharp screech of aluminum foil being torn rent the air, and Abby said, “Yeah, yeah. I get that, but you never asked her about the raisins? Seriously?”
“No, I never asked. You haven’t met my mother. She’s nuttier than a pecan tree at harvest time, let me tell you.”
“Now if that ain’t a gen-you-wine Southern sayin’, I don’t know what is,” a female voice said. I turned to see Natasha striding into the room. She was wearing maize-colored shorts with a matching tank top and a gauzy short-sleeved blouse with such a wide boat neck collar it fell past her cleavage and often slipped off one shoulder or the other. The blouse had a red-orange, white, maize, and purple tribal pattern happening and she had paired it with a bold red-orange statement necklace with huge daisies across her neck. On her feet were bronze strappy high-heeled sandals.
“Hey there, Natasha,” Abby called out.
“Hi, Natasha,” I added with a wave of my cast, which I was not subjecting to the ground meat cesspool in a bowl.
She clicked and clacked her way over to us on her heels, “What are you chicks makin’?”
“Sicilian meatballs, or so my mother tells me.”
“Hence the ‘nuttier than’ comment earlier?”
“You got it.”
Trixie, Abby and Jackie had gone on the food run, and brought back a third of the available inventory at the nearby supermarket. Ok, that was an exaggeration, but the clubhouse was now well-stocked with multiple brands of beer, five bottles of wine, steaks, chicken breasts, and, obviously, ground beef for spaghetti fixings.
Natasha looked at me and then said, “Um, no offense to your skills in the kitchen, but would you like me to relieve you of your duties? You know, considering your bum arm?”
“Yeah, if you’re sure you don’t mind. Not much more needs to be done, except roll ‘em up and put ‘em in the oven to bake.”
“You got it, girl. It may only be 3pm, but it’s damn sure past five o’clock across the pond, so take a load off and have some wine, why doncha?”
I grimaced. “I think I’ll pass. I’m hoping to all that’s holy that I’ll get to go back to my own place tonight.”
I worried that meat was going to be flung my way as Natasha stopped mid-knead and her hands came up abruptly when she said, “Say do what now? You ain’t comin’ out with us to the Jazz Festival and the Jazz After Dark jam? No, no, no. This may only be our second time hangin’ with each other, but you’re part of the fold now.”
I shook my head at her, “I appreciate it. I really do, but let me think about it. In the meantime, I think I’ll head out back to see the damage to my SUV.”
Turning around, I found myself chest to chest with Vamp who said, “No need, baby. It ain’t turnin’ over, and we ain’t dealin’ with that right now. Probably not at all.”
“Excuse me,” I started, trying my damnedest to keep my tone light.
“I need to kiss you?” Vamp whispered, but Natasha giggled so I was guessing she heard him.
In a firmer tone I said, “No, you need to explain why my SUV is not going to be dealt with right now, or possibly ‘not at all.’”
“When we rolled out from the Waffle House last night and everyone took that left-hand turn, you were in such a hurry that I saw your vehicle nearly roll. It isn’t—”
“You did not! I took that turn perfect and all four wheels stayed on the ground,” I interrupted.
“Baby, I was right behind you. I know you were worked up last night after seein’ that asshole Bradley, and that SUV ain’t safe when you’re in a state.”
“But I won’t be driving while worked up by a cheating scumbag again, now that I have you back. So my vehicle is not at risk to flip, honey.”
“No, you won’t be driving around while all worked up, but I still don’t want my woman in a vehicle that could roll.”
My hands went to my hips and I said, “Well, your woman still has a car payment, and won’t be able to trade in her ride if she doesn’t see to getting it fixed, like soon!”
In a hiss, Vamp said, “You asked for it.”
His hands cupped my cheeks, and he kissed me hard, brief and closed mouthed. I pulled away from his lips and hissed, “Don’t do that when I have questions that demand answers.”
I watched Vamp’s lips press together and the edges tip up slightly, and I knew he was trying not to laugh at me.
“Don’t you dare laugh at me, mister! You can’t just tell me I’m getting a different vehicle. I need to fix the one I got, and then do serious research and start lining up my financing with the auto loan depart—”
Again my rant was interrupted by Vamp’s lips on mine, but this kiss was long, wet, and wild. My hands left my hips and wound around Vamp’s waist, and he stepped further into me. His head slanted and he pushed my head back slightly as he deepened the kiss. The barbell in the middle of his tongue was gliding over my tongue and zings were traveling from my breasts straight do
wn to my pussy. I moaned into Vamp’s mouth with the strong sensations moving through me.
“Shee-it! They don’t stop soon, I’m gonna have to go home and jump Leon’s bones. Thank God this chick wasn’t around while Leon was healin’ up from his snip-snip!”
I pulled away with a giggle. “Well there’s a first. Any talk of snip-snips is apparently a mood killer.”
Vamp groaned and then dragged me to his room, and I do mean dragged because my flip-flops were threatening to fall of my feet. He kicked the door closed behind us and then, grabbing my waist, he tossed me onto his unmade bed. He had his fly open and dropped his pants not thirty seconds later.
“What are you doing?” I asked what I knew was a rhetorical question.
“You,” Vamp said as he put his knee on the bed.
While the zings I felt earlier were great, I was still focused on my end goal.
“I need to get home, which means I need to figure out a vehicle,” I said as Vamp inched up my body.
His hands slid under my shirt and pulled it up. He kissed my belly and swirled his tongue at the top of my navel.
“Miss your bellybutton ring, baby.”
The zings were getting stronger with his tongue and his warm body on me. My eyes were straying from the prize.
“I need to get to my cousin’s house. She’s loaning me a car until I get things taken care of.”
Vamp pulled down the cup on my bra and gently dragged his lip ring over my nipple, “Later.”
“Mmm-hmmm. I’ve heard that song and dance before, bub.”
Vamp pushed up on his elbows and was hovered over me in a plank position. “Did you just call me ‘bub'?”
Hit a nerve, did we? That was a good thing to file away for future reference. I pressed my lips together so I didn’t smile with victory. When I found ways to bend Vamp to my will, no matter how minor that bend might be, it always delighted me.
“You better not be happy you called me ‘bub’.”
“Nope,” I said, popping the ‘p’.
With an over-the-back reach, he pulled his t-shirt off. He rolled to his back, thrust his hips up and said, “For that infraction, you’ll suck my cock. If you’re lucky, I’ll drag your pussy over my face and return the favor.”
