HAMMER: Wolves MC (Riding With Wolves Book 1)

by Faith Winslow

I waited until Tony was out of earshot, then leaned in towards Rachel’s ear again and gave her the least fun of my instructions.

  “I’m gonna get up and go talk to Tony,” I said. “After I leave the room, stick around here for a minute, readjusting your clothes or whatever—then leave. Leave this fuck room. Leave this house. And leave Culver City… Go back to your apartment and wait there for me. I’ll be there as soon as I can—I promise.”

  Rachel looked up at me with what seemed to be a combination of fear, sadness, and confusion.

  “Do you understand what I just said?” I asked her. My hard-on was still raging, but—miraculously, and thankfully—I was able to ignore it.

  “Yes,” Rachel answered.

  “Alright then,” I replied, removing my body from atop hers.

  But before I could remove it completely, there was something else I had to do first. I leaned back down toward her reddened, flushed face and kissed her. It was a soft, delicate kiss, unlike any other I’d given her during our encounter. It came from “somewhere unexpected” inside of me—and I was finally beginning to understand just where that “somewhere unexpected” was.

  Chapter 22

  ~ Rachel ~

  Sam Hammond…

  That son of a bitch…

  He had a lot of nerve…

  He’d left me high and dry—and God damn it, I was furious about it. I wanted to punch him square in the jaw, poke him in the chest, and kick him in the balls… repeatedly—when, and if, I ever saw him again, which given what he’d just done to me, I didn’t plan on doing any time soon.

  If it sounds like I’m being a little extreme again, I’m sorry. But take another walk in my shoes—or if you’d prefer, my calf-high suede boots—and tell me you wouldn’t have wanted to kick Sam Hammond in the balls (repeatedly) with them.

  When Sam left me in that room at Tony Ink’s party house, he left me with a promise that he’d meet me back at my apartment as soon as possible, and he left me with a kiss that suggested he’d give me more than whatever information he gathered from Tony when he did.

  Sam told me to leave the room, leave the house, and leave Culver City, and go home and wait for him—and I followed his instructions down to the last letter.

  And as soon as I got home, I prepared myself for Sam’s arrival—and I’m a little embarrassed to tell you all that I did… but what the hell, if I’m gonna convince you that Sam deserved to be kicked in the balls (repeatedly), I might as well go balls out and just tell you.

  First things first, I slipped out of my new clothes, which had been soiled by my time at Tony Ink’s party house. Not only did I roll around on a filthy, stained mattress, but I was surround by smoke and the scent of stale beer, urine, and vomit—and I wanted to rid myself of it.

  I’d just had my hair dyed earlier in that morning, if you’ll remember, and it was too soon to wash it, so I tied it up in a Pebbles Flintstone-like ponytail and hopped into the shower to clean myself up from the neck down.

  It was a quick, but effective shower, after which I refreshed my eye and lip makeup and slid into a black lace camisole and matching pair of black lace boy-short panties. I slipped on my black silk dressing robe, loosely tied it, and went to my bedroom to fluff my pillows, straighten out my sheets and comforter, and leave my new scarf suggestively placed near the headboard. Then, I returned to the living room to make a few more preparations.

  I picked up the magazines, store fliers, and other odds and ends that cluttered my coffee and end tables. I rearranged the throw pillows on the couch, adjusted a few things on my mantle, and lit three tea candles. I kept myself busy with little chores likes this… and three hours later, my apartment was perfect and spotless; the candles had burned down to their wicks; and I was livid with Sam Hammond.

  He’d said that Tony Ink didn’t like to talk, so I couldn’t imagine what was keeping him so long.

  Actually, I could imagine, and what I imagined only further incited me. I’d left Sam at a party house full of hookers, drugs, and whatever else Tony Ink dealt in—and Sam probably went on to enjoy all of those things, and then some. And while I sat waiting for him in my perfect, spotless apartment, wearing just a robe and undergarments, he was probably on his back on one of Tony’s filthy mattresses, high as hell and deep inside a hooker.

  I couldn’t believe I’d just readied myself to fuck him, or that I’d been so turned on—and misled—by the ruse at Tony Ink’s party house. Sam was right—again. I obviously wasn’t a good judge of character. I’d actually started to trust him and had been developing what could have turned into “feelings” for him—but clearly, both were piss-poor calls on my part.

  Once I determined that Sam was a no-show and concluded that I’d been a fool for expecting him, I took off my dressing robe and put on a pair of yoga pants and a loose-fitting T-shirt, then I plopped down on the couch and started flicking through the channels in search of something to distract me.

  Digital cable sure is something these days, because I was still flicking through the channels forty-five minutes later, when I heard a knock at my door.

  My heart jumped, and my pulse quickened. It had been approximately five hours since I left Sam—and if it was him at the door, he’d better have one hell of an explanation.

  I got up off of my couch, walked over to the door, and peered out the peephole. But it wasn’t Sam I saw. It was his biker brother, Gator.

  “Miss Rachel?” Gator asked in his Louisiana accent. He must have seen the shadow of my feet beneath the door or heard me as I drew near it. “I need to talk to you ‘bout something real important. Can you open up your door, please?”

  Sam and the rest of the Wolves might have had their vices and problems, but I was pretty sure that none of them wanted to actually harm me, so I opened up the door and greeted Gator.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “We got a little bit of a problem,” he said.

  I looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

  “Don’t know exactly how to say it,” he went on, “but Sam’s in the hospital near San Marino, and Crete told me to come over here to get you.”

  “What?” I shouted. My heart jumped again, and my pulse further quickened. “Sam’s in the hospital?”

  “That’s right,” Gator affirmed. “He got beat real bad, and he’s in one of them comas.”

  “What happened?” I demanded to know. “Who beat him? Was it Tony Ink?”

  “I don’t’ know nothin’ for certain, Miss Rachel,” Gator explained. “And I ain’t the one to talk to ‘bout that. Crete only told me to come out here, tell you what happened, and offer you a ride out to San Marino, if you need or want one.”

  “Let me get my purse,” I told Gator.

  I turned around, collected my bag, and slipped on a pair of flip-flops I kept by the door, then locked up and followed Gator out to his bike.

  I’d felt let down, furious, and foolish since I left Sam at Tony Ink’s, and now, I felt an emotion far stronger than all three combined—complete and utter terror.

  Chapter 23

  ~ Rachel ~

  I’d never actually ridden on the back of a motorcycle before. Terry had tried to get me to ride with him many times, but I never wanted to. It just didn’t appeal to me. I preferred a vehicle with a full seat, four doors, and a steering wheel.

  But when Gator told me about Sam being in the hospital, I decided to have him ride me out to San Marino because I didn’t feel in any shape to drive there myself. I was a wreck and didn’t want to get into one.

  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not gonna go trade my Chevy for a Harley, but I have to admit, as soon as Gator started careening down the highway on his motorcycle, I saw once and for all what I’d been missing—and sure enough, I really had been missing something.

  The way the air brushes over your face, hair, and body when you’re on a bike was like nothing I’d ever experienced in a car. And the purr, vibration, and size of the vehicle made me feel connected to it—even t
hough I wasn’t driving it—in an organic, integral way that no person could ever achieve with a “full-size” automobile.

  Like I’d done with the Wolves, Sam, Hannah—and, yes, even Terry—I’d turned my nose up on this form of transportation and failed to see its unique assets and value. It was a hard lesson to learn, at a hard time, but to this day, I’m grateful that I learned it and am grateful for what else I learned in the hours and days that followed.

  By the time Gator got me to the hospital in San Marino, it was well after ten at night—and well after regular visiting hours. However, Sam was in the critical care unit on a high security floor so that the time of my “visit” simply didn’t matter anyway.

  Gator escorted me to Sam’s floor, wing, and unit, and left me just outside Sam’s door.

  “Hannah’s in there,” he said in parting. “And if y’all need me, she knows how to find me… I gotta go tend to some other business, but I’m gonna be praying for my brother to wake up the whole time. If he wakes up before I get back here, do me a favor and tell him I’m gonna kick his ass twice as hard as the little punks who done this to him for puttin’ me in such a scare.”

  I smiled at the big lug and what he held out as humor, and I knocked on Sam’s door, out of courtesy for Hannah, before entering.

  “Come in,” Hannah said in a strained voice.

  I opened the door and walked in, and she looked at me curiously as I entered.

  “Rachel?” she asked, adjusting her puffy, tear-filled eyes and leaning forward in her seat. Again, I’d completely forgotten about my “new me” appearance, especially since Gator hadn’t said anything about it.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” I clarified. “I got a haircut and did a little makeover.”

  “You look good,” she replied, wiping her cheeks with a tissue.

  Unfortunately, however, the same could not be said for Sam.

  The same man who, only several hours ago, had been on top of me, kissing me, groping me, and digging his manhood into me was now laid out in a hospital bed attached to wires, tubes, and machines. His face was swollen and stitched up in a few places, and parts of his head were bandaged. He wore a hospital gown over his beautiful, statuesque body, but I could see that there were similar bruises and bandages on his arms and chest.

  Gator was right. Sam had been “beat real bad,” and he was “in one of them comas.”

  “What the hell happened?” I asked Hannah, taking a seat in a chair near the foot of Sam’s bed.

  She shrugged her shoulders, as she shifted from wiping to blotting. She was shaken, stirred, and visibly trembling.

  “All we know is that he was out at Tony Ink’s today—and we know that you were there with him for a while. But that’s it,” she said, sniffling. The tears kept pouring from her eyes, but she spoke through them. “Nobody at Tony’s is talking, and whoever brought him here just did a drop and roll. So we don’t have any info to go on.”

  “A drop and roll?” I asked, unfamiliar with the term.

  Hannah shook her head and scowled. “A drop and roll is when somebody throws an injured person into their backseat or trunk, drives them close to the nearest hospital, and dumps them on the side of the road somewhere. It’s a kinda coward move that jokers make when they don’t wanna get dragged into whatever injured the injured person.

  “Most of the time, in situations like this one, it’s the person who did it to the guy that does the drop and roll—and they do it for their own selfish reasons. They drop him off near the hospital to make sure that he lives long enough to deliver, or demonstrate, whatever message they’re trying to send.”

  “That’s horrible,” I said, cringing at the concept of anyone being so callous.

  “I know,” Hannah lamented. “But that’s life.”

  Just then, there was a knock at the door, and Hannah told whomever it was to enter. We were on a high security floor after all, so it’s not as if we were expecting riffraff.

  But when the door popped open, what I saw was something more unexpected than riffraff, and it made me wonder just how critical Sam’s critical condition really was.

  “Hannah,” said the minister who preached at Terry’s funeral, greeting Sam’s sister as he entered the room. He’d arrived solo, and he shut the door tightly behind him.

  “Miss Cramer,” he said, turning his attention to me. He slanted his bald head to the side. “You look quite different than you did yesterday,” he said.

  “You don’t,” I replied, looking into his eyes, trying to read them underneath his thick, black-framed eyeglasses. They matched his entirely black ensemble, which was slightly different than but just as avant-garde and high-end as the one he’d been wearing the last time I saw him.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. I knew it couldn’t be a good sign to have a minister show up at Sam’s bedside.

  “Have you said anything to her yet?” the minister asked Hannah.

  Hannah shook her head. “No,” she whimpered, as she went from crying to bawling.

  “Good,” the minister replied. “Thank you for waiting for me, and thank you for letting me start our story.”

  Something about the situation seemed strange, and I was starting to feel nervous and uncomfortable.

  “But before I start our story,” the minister said, redirecting his gaze at me. “We should begin with an introduction. Of course, I know who you are, Miss Cramer… And if I may, may I please call you Rachel?”

  “Yes,” I mumbled as I nodded.

  “Thank you, Rachel,” the minister said. “Though we’ve met before, I realize you never asked me my name—and I never offered it to you either. My apologies for that, but I’ve grown accustomed over the ‘don’t-ask-don’t-tell’ mentality over the years. But please, allow me to correct my oversight now—and to tell you more than you would have ever known to ask when we first met.

  “My name is Grant Connors. For many years, I was known by the ridiculous, though fitting, street name ‘Concrete,’ which after my rise to power within the Wolves’ organization, has since been shortened to ‘Crete.’”

  “You’re Crete?” I asked, totally flabbergasted. “You’re the one who calls all the shots for the Wolves?”

  “Correct,” Crete answered.

  “But I thought you were a minister?” I asked.

  “I am,” Crete replied. “And I’m a Wolf. The two are not mutually exclusive, you know.”

  “But they don’t walk hand-in-hand either,” I replied somewhat defensively. I couldn’t believe this Wolf had pulled the wool over my eyes. It pissed me off—and truth be told, scared me.

  “You should have told me who you were,” I asserted. “You should have—”

  “Rachel,” Crete interrupted, speaking in the same calm, considerate, compassionate tone in which he’d delivered Terry’s funeral sermon, “I tell people what they need to know, on a need-to-know basis. And each person’s need to know is weighed against the needs of others, and of the masses, and is analyzed in terms of the greater good and bigger, overall picture.

  “In general, I maintain a very low profile and try to keep my personal information out of the public’s knowledge. We ‘gang bosses,’ as some would call us, are continually targeted by our rivals on the streets, as well by other rivals as in police officers, courthouses, newsrooms, and social circles.

  “My real name and identity are a tightly-held secret that only those who need to know know—and if you would have asked me for my name on the day of Terry’s funeral, I could not have told you in light of the balancing acts I’ve just described, the names I mentioned. I would have said my name was Reverend Greg Thomas, and we’d still be sitting in the same boat, and hospital room, that we are sitting in now.”

  “And now what?” I asked, as enraged as I was intrigued. “Now that I know your secret, what are you gonna do? Kill me?”

  “Do you think that I’m going to kill you, Rachel?” Crete asked, raising his eyebrow over his black frames.

  “No,�
� I answered, shaking my head and averting my eyes.

  “Then, please,” Crete responded, “do not interrupt me again unless you have something meaningful to say.”

  I looked at Crete’s face again and nodded in affirmation.

  “The fact that I’ve told you who I am,” Crete continued, “means that I’ve determined that you need to know that information—or at least deserve to know it. And there’s a lot more information that I’m willing to share, if you’re willing to listen not just with your ears, but with your heart and spirit as well.

  “The information I have shared—and intend to share—with you is damning to me, my organization as a whole, and several specific individuals within it, such as Sam, Hannah, and of course, your dearly departed brother, Terry, to name but a few.

  “I’ve decided to share this damning information with you because I respect you and see how committed you are to clearing your brother’s name—and I trust that, after you’ve heard what we have to say, you’ll make the right decisions regarding what we have told you, and that you’ll hold your needs in comparison to the needs of others and consider them in light of the greater good.”

  Crete was obviously a well-educated man and an eloquent speaker, but his rhetoric was a little too thick for me to handle at the moment. I understood his words and knew what he meant by them, both directly and indirectly, but I wanted him to move past them to get to the meat of the matter.

  “I’ll make those decisions and comparisons as best I can,” I assured Crete. “I promise.”

  “Very well,” Crete responded.

  I sat back in my seat, though I, figuratively, remained on the edge of it, piqued to hear what followed.

  Chapter 24

  ~ Rachel ~

  “Are you familiar with what those in our world call a ‘gang stamp,’ Rachel?” Crete asked.

  “Yes,” I nodded. “Sam showed me the Seraph stamp on the junkie who attacked me in the alley yesterday after the drop. It was an angel’s wing, pointed to the guy’s left—and Sam said it meant that the guy was a lackey, not a real biker.”