by Penny Dee
He nestled his bulk between my thighs, and I began to tingle.
“Baby, the day I can’t make time for this is the day they should bury me,” he said, driving a hard thrust into my body and making me gasp.
Kissing me fiercely, he began his encore performance from the previous night, his hard body turning mine to mush for the next hour and leaving me well fucked and spent in the tangled sheets when he left.
I was still lying in the sheets with a smile on my face when I heard the front door open and a woman’s voice announce her arrival. I sat up abruptly and patted down the bed covers to find the T-shirt and panties Chance had ripped off me the night before. Quickly putting them on, I hunted for my denim cutoffs and found them on the floor. Shoving my legs into them, I hurried out of the bedroom to find and an old lady with bright red hair and even brighter red lips unpacking groceries at the kitchen counter. She was wearing a dazzling multi-colored caftan covered in tiny crystals, and in the sunlight she glowed like a prism. She was unpacking two grocery bags and humming.
“Hi there,” I said, doing up the button to my denim shorts as I walked in.
She looked up when she heard me, and her face broke into a big smile. “Well, hello there.”
She breezed across the room to me, her caftan sparkling like a disco ball as she walked through the rays of sunlight spilling in through the windows.
“You must be Cassidy,” she said, her eyes wise and bright as she looked at me.
“I am,” I replied. “You must be Grandma Sybil.”
She seemed impressed that I knew who she was.
“Why yes, yes I am.” Her eyes gleamed mischievously. “Well, aren’t you just a beauty. I always knew my grandson had good taste.”
“Oh, um… it’s not… you know… to be honest…” I stuttered under her gaze. I didn’t know what was happening with Chance. I knew I was falling for him. Hell, I was bat-shit crazy falling in love with him. But as far as his feelings… I wasn’t sure if he was ready to tell the world.
“Well, I know my grandson. You must be pretty special for him to bring you here.”
I couldn’t stop the goofy smile from spreading across my face, because her words and her kindness had just turned my heart to mush.
“Thank you for letting me stay here for a while,” I said.
“You’re so welcome, sweetheart. When Chance mentioned he was bringing you out here, I thought to myself, Sybil, this girl has got to mean something to your sweet boy. She’s going to be something pretty special for him to do this.”
I didn’t know what to say. I shoved my hands into the back pockets of my shorts because I was suddenly feeling all gooey inside like a lava cake.
“Now, you come with me,” she said, taking my hand and guiding me into the kitchen. “You can help me bake my brownies.”
“Sure. But I have to warn you, I pretty much suck at baking.”
“Not after today you won’t, my gorgeous girl. Because I’m going to show you how to make the perfect brownie.”
I watched as she took an apron from the pantry and put it on over her caftan. She found a second one and handed it to me.
“Ready?” she asked with a glittery sparkle in her eyes.
I nodded. “Ready!”
“Right. Get me a baking pan out of that drawer over there and turn the oven on to 325 degrees.”
I did what she asked and placed the baking pan in front of her. “What’s next?”
“I’ll just whisk these together and then we’ll get to the secret ingredient,” she said, measuring flour, sugar, and cocoa powder to a glass bowl.
“What’s the secret ingredient?” I asked, watching her add a pinch of salt to the mix.
She reached down and pulled a second bowl from the cupboard beside her.
“Cannabutter,” she said as she cracked an egg into the new bowl.
I looked at her blankly.
Cannabutter?
Then it hit me.
We were making cannabis brownies.
Laughter tugged at my lips. “Are we making brownies with weed?”
The old lady with the wild red hair, face full of makeup, and crazy colorful nails leaned in and gave me a wink. “Are there any other kind?”
I started to laugh.
I was falling crazy in love with this old lady.
“I bake them out here because I have nosy neighbors,” Grandma Sybil explained, adding a splash of milk to the egg mix.
Grandma Sybil didn’t seem like the type to let a neighbor force her to do anything. Hell, Grandma Sybil didn’t seem like the type to let anyone force her to do anything. I was pretty sure this whole thing was a charade just to check me out. The girl staying with her grandson in her river cabin.
I didn’t blame her because I’d want to check me out too.
And I couldn’t help but smile at her ruse.
Cannabis brownies.
Grandma Sybil was fucking hilarious.
For the next twenty minutes she showed me how to make a marijuana pouch using grounded up marijuana and a muslin cloth, and how to double-boil butter and water on the stove.
“The perfect cooking time for potency is two hours,” she explained as she pulled a container out of the grocery bag. “That’s why I’ve brought some already made. We can let this simmer while the brownies bake. Means we’ll have plenty for next month’s batch.”
I watched her heat the pre-made cannabutter in the microwave and then mix it through the batter.
“So what do you do with special brownies?” I asked.
She tipped the batter into a baking dish, scraping it off the sides with her spatula.
“I belong to a ladies’ circle. Ladies of the River, we’re called. A ridiculous name, I know. Makes us sound like we dress in togas and sacrifice animals to a water god. But they are a fun bunch of women. We meet once a month at the town hall. Have been going on forty years now. We used to meet to swap recipes and support one another. Now we catch up with bottles of wine, my brownies, and Led Zeppelin playing on the radio.”
She ran a spatula over the mix to smooth the top layer before shoving it into the oven. “I’ll tell you what, sweetheart, it’s a lot more fun at my age. You get away with a lot more than you do when you’re young!”
I thought about my foster grandmother back in California. She was cold and impersonal, immaculately put together with an over-sprayed bouffant, Chanel suits, and gold jewelry. She wasn’t fun or colorful like Grandma Sybil. We never received a hug from her. Children weren’t her thing. They annoyed her.
How different my life might have been if Kerry Silvermane had been raised by someone as cool and as fierce as Grandma Sybil. It might have given him some balls.
I was just about to ask her what else they did at this Ladies of the River circle when the front door burst open and two very large men appeared in the doorway.
At first I thought they must be friends of Chance. They were big, biker big, although there was something a little less sophisticated about them than the other Kings of Mayhem bikers I had met. One had a long mullet and looked like he’d stepped out of a nineties redneck movie while the other looked scary with beady eyes and a heavily pock-marked face.
A cold chill ran down my spine.
They weren’t friends of Chance.
They were there for something very different.
My panic started in my bones. I thought of my handgun in the nightstand next to the bed, but I knew I had zero chance of reaching it before one of these brutes put their hands on me.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” The tall, beady-eyed one said as he sauntered into the lounge room. Grandma Sybil stepped in front of me as if to protect me.
The one with the mullet raised his chin and inhaled the aroma of baking weed.
“Seems to me these lovely ladies are baking up some ganja brownies,” he said with an ugly grin.
“Mmm, I love me some weed brownies,” his gross friend said as he walked around the kitchen counter toward me, peel
ing the clothes from my body with his horrible eyes.
“What do you want,” Grandma Sybil demanded calmly.
“What do we want?” our unwelcomed guest said as he reached out and touched my hair. He made a sound. A vile, aroused sound that sent a tremor of terror rolling through me. He licked his lips. “I want a taste of that brownie.”
I knew that look in his eye. Knew what the suggestive leer on his lip meant.
“Take whatever you need and get the fuck out of my house,” Grandma Sybil said.
Beady-eyed man snickered. “Oh, lady, it’s going to take a little bit longer than that.”
I eyed the knives in the knife block on the counter. If Beady Eyes got any closer to me, I was going to grab one of them and put it in his chest.
“Where’s the weed?” the man with the mullet demanded.
“I used it all in the brownies,” Sybil replied.
“I don’t mean that weed.” Mullet Hair joined us in the kitchen. “I mean your stash. I know who you are. Bet you got pounds of the stuff stashed everywhere.”
“I sure hope you’re not a betting man, son, because you’re wrong. There ain’t no more weed here. Just an old lady and her grandson’s girlfriend is all. Now I suggest you boys leave before my grandson comes back and kicks both your asses so hard you’ll be tickling your assholes every time you brush your teeth.”
Both men snickered.
“We got ourselves a feisty one here,” Beady Eyes chuckled. He turned his attention back to me. “What about you, baby, are you feisty like the old lady? How about you and me go into one of those bedrooms and you can let your feisty flag fly?”
He looped a finger through another lock of my hair, and I gritted my teeth.
“You touch me and I’ll break every bone in your goddamn hands.”
Our eyes met and I realized I was looking into a greasy pit of hell.
He leaned in closer and moaned. “Oh yeah, you’re a fighter. I like it when they fight.”
I was seconds away from lunging for one of the knives in the knife block when Mullet Hair interrupted.
“That’s not what we’re here for,” he reminded him. “We got no time for that.”
But Beady Eyes wasn’t deterred. He kept his eyes riveted to mine as he said, “Yeah, but I’m willing to make time.”
“I need to pee,” Grandma Sybil said suddenly.
It was so random it caught us all by surprise.
“Hold it,” Mullet Hair demanded.
Grandma Sybil remained calm but gave him a very direct look as she said, “Son, when you get to my age and you gotta go, it ain’t a suggestion.”
The intruders looked at one another before the one leering at me shifted his eyes to her and jerked his head, indicating for her to go. “Make it quick.”
Grandma Sybil dusted off her hands and slowly made her way to the bathroom while I stared off with the beady-eyed man.
I shifted uneasily. I wasn’t wearing a bra and my fear had puckered my nipples so they poked through the thin fabric of my shirt. I watched Beady Eyes lick his lips, and goose bumps spread across my skin with a cold chill.
I was seconds away from lunging for a knife when the sudden boom of the shotgun reverberated throughout the little room and sent my ears ringing.
Across the room, glass exploded and timber splintered as the crystal cabinet was blown apart from the shotgun blast. I swung around and saw Grandma Sybil brandishing a 12-gauge shotgun.
“Jesus Christ!” Mullet Man yelled.
“Crazy old bitch!” Beady Eyes growled.
When she shot a second round into the wall behind them they jumped and scrambled toward the door.
“Yeah, you’d better run you little twerps!” She yelled after them as they ran out the door and down the driveway. “Next time you set foot in my house, I’ll blow a hole in you the size of fucking Texas, you pussies!”
If I wasn’t so freaked out, I would’ve laughed.
Grandma Sybil was one gun slinging badass.
“Are you okay, sweetheart?” she asked, turning back to me.
Gob smacked, I watched her walk to the kitchen and load more rounds into the shotgun. She was calm and collected, moving about as if nothing had happened, while I remained frozen to the spot like my feet had grown roots and had burrowed into the floorboards.
“What the fuck just happened?” was all I managed to say.
“That, my darling girl, was a home invasion.”
I glanced around me.
“Do you think they’ll come back?”
“Not if they don’t want their innards being used for dog food!” she said, digging into her apron pocket for another round and jamming it into the shotgun.
My mouth dropped open again.
“I’m just kidding,” she said, waving her comment off. “It’s much easier burying a whole body than a body bleeding guts all over the floor.”
I stared at her, still dazed.
“Where on Earth did you get the shotgun?” I asked.
She gave me a sweet old lady face. “Son, when you get to my age and you gotta go, it ain’t a suggestion.”
“You mean to tell me you keep a shotgun in the toilet?”
“And a handgun behind the refrigerator.” She gave me a pointed look as she rammed another round into the shotgun. “This is the MC world, darlin’. If you want to survive, you need to expect the unexpected and make sure you got enough firepower to cope.”
CHANCE
I saw him when I was hammering the last of the roof shingles onto the fisherman’s cottage. He was standing on the riverbank, staring across the water at me. A man dressed in black. But he was no ordinary man. He radiated darkness and bad news, and wore a skull bandana that covered half his face.
I rose to my feet, but he didn’t move. He remained rooted to the spot just fucking staring up at me like an intimidating ghoul.
When the sound of a shotgun blast rang out across the river, the shock of it violently crashed into me. Another blast only seconds later sent me shimmying down the outdoor plumbing to the ground below. But still Skull Face didn’t move. He continued to watch me from across the water, only glancing over his shoulder as two men raced out of the cabin and ran toward the driveway. When he looked back to me, our eyes locked and stayed riveted to one another before he slowly turned away and walked back up the riverbank toward his companions.
I ran to my truck and chewed up the gravel getting back to the cabin. By the time I got there, Skull Face and his friends were gone. I didn’t pass them on my way because they had probably parked their bikes further down the road and made their way through the trees on foot.
In a plume of dust, I skidded to a halt at the front door. Inside, I was surprised to see Grandma Sybil crouched down and looking on in dismay at the remnants of a shotgun-blasted glass cabinet. My eyes darted to Cassidy, who was as pale as a ghost, standing as if she was frozen to the floorboards.
I crossed the room to her and ran my hands up her bare arms, my heart pounding. “Are you okay?”
I knew my feisty grandmother would be unfazed.
Cassidy nodded, her gaze glued to the mess on the floor. “Her gun is much bigger than mine.”
If I wasn’t so pissed at the situation, I would have smiled. Hell, I would’ve laughed. Because this woman. This angel. Christ, she was amazing.
The stuff queens are made from.
I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her to my chest, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here.” I was also fuming that the prospect hadn’t shown up.
She shook her head and gently pushed away from me. “Your grandmother scared the hell out of them.”
“Pussies,” Grandma Sybil said over her shoulder as she rose to her feet and walked to the kitchen.
It was only then I noticed the aroma of weed hanging heavy in the air. Grandma Sybil was simmering cannabis butter on the stovetop. I raised an eyebrow at her, putting two and two together, a
nd was about to say something when the prospect stumbled through the front door looking banged up.
“Where the fuck were you?” I growled at him.
“Motherfuckers ran me off the road a few miles back,” he panted. “Fucking Satan’s Tribe. Three of them. Took me twenty minutes to get my bike out of the ditch and started again. I made it as far as the end of the driveway before it gave out on me.”
“Call Bull, tell him the Tribe has paid Grandma Sybil’s cabin a visit,” I said to him. “He’ll organize a tow for your bike.”
Twenty minutes later, Cade, Bull, Ruger, and Maverick roared up the driveway, with Animal and Cool Hand not far behind in the tow truck. As the six of them surveyed the scene, Grandma Sybil filled them in on what happened while I did my best to comfort Cassidy. I felt fiercely protective but utterly useless at the same time.
Thankfully, the color had returned to her cheeks.
“A bit extreme, isn’t it?” Cade said, holding up an oil painting peppered with shotgun pellets.
“You didn’t see them. They were trying to intimidate us, so I intimidated them right back,” Grandma Sybil replied.
“Are you sure it was Satan’s Tribe who did this?” Ruger asked.
I was sure it was.
“They said they knew who lived here,” Grandma Sybil explained. “Said they wanted the weed.”
If Satan’s Tribe bikers were in town moonlighting, perhaps they were after some free weed while they were here.
But the million-dollar question was why were they here?
Behemoth had said they were working for someone. Was that someone Quinn? Or worse… was it Barrett?
My head did the math.
Quinn had ties to Gulfport. But what involvement could Barrett possibly have with a biker gang thousands of miles away from California?
I also had to consider it was possible they were working for someone who wasn’t even on our radar yet.
“You think this has something to do with the weed fields?” Cade suggested.
“Maybe.” I wasn’t convinced, though.
I heard gravel on the driveway as Sheriff Buckman pulled up to the house. A minute later, he appeared in the doorway. He took off his hat and shook his head at the pile of kindle that used to be Sybil’s glass cabinet.
