by Lynn Burke
EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2018 Lynn Burke
ISBN: 978-1-77339-649-1
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Jessica Ruth
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
For Sam & Naomi
NICKY
Fallen Gliders MC, 1
Lynn Burke
Copyright © 2018
Mel
For a Tuesday night, my little hole-in-the-wall bar in the sticks of New Hampshire hopped. I’d poured countless mugs of locally brewed beer, and seven o’clock hadn’t even hit yet. A smile on my face and a bounce in my step because of the country oldies jingling from the new Bose system I’d installed, I greeted most of the patrons by name. Easily done when less than a thousand called the town surrounding the bar home.
I’d always been good with names and faces, though. Came from growing up in the business—in the same brick building with wide plank floors I’d inherited from Grandpop a year earlier after he’d passed. Mom didn’t want the place. Never had. She’d always been too busy with her book groups and library volunteering to join her father and me.
A twenty-eight-year-old college dropout, and I made more than enough to keep myself comfortable. And God, did I love the business. Chatting it up with people, being that shoulder some cried on, that ear others needed to unload in. And living in Grandpop’s place above the bar meant I only had to fill my gas tank once every couple of weeks.
“Hey, Janie.” I greeted the forty-something woman—the only lawyer in town—who plopped onto one of the few empty stools in the middle of the bar spanning the room. “How’s it going?”
“Ugh.” She grimaced and dropped her purse onto the bar. “I need a drink.”
“Usual?” I asked, grabbing a tumbler.
“Better make it a double.”
Still smiling, I poured two fingers of single-malt Scotch and passed it over to her. “Bad day, I take it?”
Janie shook her head, handed me a twenty, and sipped her drink. “Can’t wait until I’m sixty-five and can retire. Some people…” She sipped again.
“Kelly’s in the kitchen tonight. Can I get you something to eat?” I asked as the bell over the door tinkled, letting me know yet another person needed something to warm their bones on the chilly, damp spring night.
Janie glanced at the entrance, her brow raising. “Damn. I’d take a piece of that to chew on for a while.”
I turned.
Thick, dark hair shot through with gray and a full, matching beard, unzipped black leather jacket hugging broad shoulders, a trim waist, long legs, and big bulge encased in matching black leathers. My attention traveled back up the tall drink of water, and our gazes collided. His piercing blue eyes seemed to glow in the dimmed overhead lighting, flaying open my skin and baring my soul.
My heartbeat kicked up a few notches, and I wiped suddenly damp palms down my jeans. Swallowing, I forced my attention back to Janie. She, too, stared at the stranger.
“Hmm,” Janie mused, while peering at him. “On second thought, he’s a little too old for my taste.” She lifted her glass again while continuing to eye-fuck him.
Perfect for mine, I thought while taking another peek at the stranger. My friend Kelly suggested I went for the older men because I never had a father figure other than Grandpop in my life. She said I just wanted a sugar daddy.
If she’d only listen to me when I told her older men were the shit and to give them a shot, she’d be hooked same as me.
The man scanned the room, then strode between the tables lining the far wall and the bar I stood behind, drawing more than one patron’s attention. Well over six feet, broad, and in leathers, never mind hot as hell, how could he not draw attention?
A bad boy, I decided as I scrutinized him again. Trouble, if the inked “67” on his neck meant what I thought it did—Fallen Gliders MC. Thank God Sheriff Elliott hadn’t stopped in for his usual off-the-clock beer.
The stranger settled onto the only empty stool at the bar’s end where he would have a good view of the entire place.
Smiling easily, as usual, I started his way. That blue-eyed gaze found mine again, and God help the tiny strip of cotton inside my panties, because the intensity in his bright eyes turned me the hell on. His attention slipped down over my long-sleeve t-shirt, tightening my nipples, all the way down my tight jeans to my low-heeled boots and back up again. One of his eyebrows cocked in obvious invitation as I drew up before him.
Forget whatever trouble he might bring. I wanted a taste if he offered.
Time to get my flirt on.
“What can I get ya?” I asked, my voice a little more breathy than usual. On purpose, of course.
“Whiskey. The good stuff.” The deep, husky timbre of his voice sent shivers down my spine.
I’d been hoping for a pickup line or downright invitation to fuck like the lust in his eyes told me he wanted, but the night was young.
“Just passing through?” I asked while setting his drink in front of him and keeping the bottle close. He seemed the type to have more than just one.
He didn’t answer, but tipped back his head and swallowed the liquor down. “Another,” he said, holding out the glass.
A man of few words. I was good with that as long as he knew what to do with the huge cock bulging his leathers.
Our fingers brushed as I took the glass, sending a shock wave straight to my pussy. My clit throbbed, and I fought to keep my hands from shaking while pouring.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he downed that one, and I stared as he licked a droplet of whiskey off his lower lip. On the fuller side, I noted, sure as shit his kiss alone would make me come harder than I ever had before.
“New to town,” he finally answered while handing me the glass and motioning with his chin toward the bottle in my hand.
A shiver swept down my skin over the fact he would become a regular. With his love for whiskey and the next closest bar a good five miles away...
Hall-a-freakin’-lujah.
“Melody Hughes, owner and operator,” I said, holding out my hand, “but everyone calls me Mel.”
His warm hand clasped mine, and my pulse thrummed with energy and the desire to strip down and ride him hard until he shouted my name.
“Dominic Landon, but you can call me Nicky.” He released my hand but continued to stare into my eyes. “I’m Ellen Jacobson’s brother.”
“Shit.” I set the whiskey bottle beside the shot I’d poured, expecting he’d be making love to it all night long or at least until I closed down at midnight. “Sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks.” Rather than down the third, he leaned forward onto the bar, crossing his arms and tightening the leather across his shoulders. “You always this busy?”
I glanced down the length of the bar. Janie winked at me, returning my smile. “Not on a Tuesday, no.” Figuring the guy wasn’t on the prowl for pussy, having just lost his sister, I put back on my business, friendly face. “Can I get you something to eat? My friend Kelly makes a mean burger.”
“Nah. Whiskey’s good.”
“Well, if you need anything, just let me know.” I turned away to attend the other patrons even though I didn’t want to
.
“What’s up with the fine biker?” Janie asked a few minutes later when she flagged me down for a refill.
“Ellen’s brother.”
“Oh.” All trace of interest faded from her hazel eyes. “Poor guy.”
“Yeah.” I glanced down the bar to find Nicky’s gaze on me. I tossed him a flirty smirk and turned back to Janie. “Said he’s new in town.”
“Sounds like he’s planning on staying, then.”
I shrugged. “You know me. I don’t pry too much. Just listen.”
“Guess he’ll be stopping in to see me soon.”
“Ellen was your client?”
“Along with just about everyone else in this town.”
Old Toothless lifted his empty glass at the other end, and I moved his way. Junior Lithgow enjoyed the locally-brewed farmhouse ale. Said the peppery hops kept his sinuses clear. More information than I needed, but he tipped like no one else. Also told stories like no one else. The oldest resident in town at ninety-six, Junior knew everyone and everything. His house also sat alongside Ellen Jacobson’s place.
“See Ellen’s brother finally made it into town,” he mumbled, his words only slightly slurred.
“You know him?” I asked.
“Looks just like their father, God rest his soul. Been wondering how long it’d take him to come back here and try to take everything from young Suzie.”
Ellen’s daughter, a few years older than me, but I knew her from our high school years. Wrong side of the tracks girl—not that we had a railroad going through town or that one side was really any richer than the other. Her father had disappeared over ten years earlier, the case stalled out with absolutely no leads. Her mother—Nicky’s sister—had been a meth addict who overdosed the week before.
“Suzie inherited the place,” I said, repeating what I’d heard from Janie.
“That man’s no good.” Junior leaned forward, his watery eyes taking in our town’s newest resident at the other end of the bar. “Steer clear of him, young lady.”
Like hell, I will. “No good, huh?” I asked, giving the bar in front of him a quick swipe with a rag.
“Motorcycle gangs, drugs, and women. He’s not the kind of man who’ll settle down and make any lady happy.”
Might make a horny one happy for an hour or so, I thought as Old Toothless continued to prattle on about young bucks and how his generation was the last one to show respect to their elders.
I breathed a sigh when someone called for another drink.
Ellen’s brother nursed another two shots before heading out without a word. He left a hundred on the bar, and I hoped like hell he’d be back, because my stash of dildos and vibrators, I had a feeling, wouldn’t satisfy.
Nicky
One bar in town, and it had to be owned by a fine woman much too young for me. A bold one who knew her mind, she’d held nothing back from her eyes when checking me out. Probably an easy lay, and fuck, did I need it. I should have stuck around until she closed up for the night, but my feet had grown restless knowing what I’d come into town to do.
My only sibling had overdosed the week before, and probably on the shit my former brothers distributed throughout central New Hampshire. Had I known Ellen had taken up meth, I’d have handed in my colors much earlier than that morning.
I felt bare riding my Harley without the sleeveless vest that labeled me a Sergeant-at-Arms in the Fallen Gliders. Their symbols inked my skin, though, permanent markers of a life I’d decided to give up after thirty years. The “67” on my neck and the FG logo, a chopper with devil horns for handlebars tattooed in the center of my back, lay directly beneath where the logo patch on my vest had been.
Loyalty to the club had always come first—had been a requirement—family and job secondary. Luckily for me, I’d never gotten tied down to an old lady, and my job was the brotherhood. Or, it had been.
I’d stopped by my sister’s, now my niece Suzie’s place, when riding into town a couple hours earlier, but she’d cursed me through the door and ordered me off the premises. The drinks at Mel’s calmed me the fuck down, and I headed back to Suzie’s place to try again.
I cut the Harley’s engine and hunkered my shoulders against the light mist falling from the dark sky. A lone streetlight tried to cast out a halo of light but failed miserably.
“I told you to get lost!” Suzie screamed through the door before I even finished knocking. “It’s your fault!”
“I had nothing to do with her death,” I said—again—my eyes closed and forehead resting on the door. “Please, Suzie, can I just come in so we can talk?”
“You’re a drug dealer who wanted nothing to do with us, and now that she’s dead, you think you can just come in here and stake a claim on what’s mine?”
I glanced around the unkempt lawn I could just barely make out in the darkness and paint peeling off the house’s siding alongside the door. “I’m not going to try to take anything away from you.” Didn’t want it. Had no need for it.
“You’re full of shit!” Suzie’s voice broke, leaning more toward hysterics than sobs. “Fucking loser! Asshole!”
It seemed that Ellen had made sure her daughter thought the same of me as she had for the past ten years.
All because she’d suspected I had taken out her abusive husband, so he would never touch her again. The bastard had simply disappeared one day, never to return. I’d taken care of him all right, but only a select few in the brotherhood knew.
“If you don’t fucking leave right now, I’m calling the cops!” Suzie shrieked, and I realized I fought a losing battle.
I stepped off the stoop and climbed back on my bike, figuring I’d try a different day. Even wet and cold, the seat cradled my ass as it had for the past twenty-plus years, offering comfort where there wasn’t much. No home or place I’d buried roots except for the club I’d walked out of that morning, vowing to leave that life behind.
Suzie watched me through a window. She hated me, but she was the only family I had left. And if the rumors held true, she’d taken up meth along with her mom. I wasn’t about to let anything happen to her.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I muttered into the mist. “This town is going to be mine just as much as yours, Suzaroo.” The childhood pet name I’d graced her with stung my eyes. How long had it been since those days when Ellen still wanted me around? The days when she was clean. Even if she hadn’t been happy with her asshole husband, she’d welcomed me without judgment anytime I happened to stop by.
My town, I thought as the mist turned to rain, pelting my head and the ground around me.
I glanced down the narrow lane leading back to the main road—if you could really call it that. There wasn’t even a single red light in town. A handful of random stop signs, and not much else, but I’d known the second I drove downtown that I wanted to stay for the foreseeable future.
I’d booked a room at the only place available, a bed and breakfast which was off the beaten path a good twenty minutes back to the south. Not yet ready to crash for the night, I considered my options. The town didn’t have much, but they did have a well-kept bar with decent whiskey. I sure as hell could use a little more burn to warm myself against the chilly rain falling on me.
The old-fashioned bell rang overhead when I stepped through the bar’s door less than five minutes later, water dripping off my leathers onto the scarred wooden planks beneath my boots.
Mel glanced up, her whiskey-colored eyes snagging and holding me captive. Too damn fine to ignore. I moved back to the stool I’d vacated earlier and slumped down.
“You’re back,” Mel said, approaching me with a tempting sway and easy-going smile. Like a beam of sunlight, she damn near lit up the dark shadow that I never noticed I lived beneath.
If I could’ve remembered how to smile, I’d have given her one in return. “Too early to call it a night just yet,” I said, nodding at the whiskey bottle she held up in offering.
Mel poured me a shot, set the b
ottle beside the glass, and peered into my eyes.
The country music cranking overhead faded, and my cock stirred to life for the first time in a long fucking time. I breathed deep, dying to catch whatever scent clung to her creamy skin, but burgers and booze flooded my nose.
“I’m not usually nosy…” Her voice trailed off, and she bit the inside of her lower lip.
“But?”
“You’re in town to settle your sister’s affairs?” Mel asked, her voice low.
I decided on honesty since I sure as shit had nothing to lose. “They’ve been settled. I just want a relationship with the only family I have left.”
Mel studied me a little longer, her long, black lashes twitching every few seconds when blinking. Not a stitch of makeup, but her eyes stood out with their pale brown color. Pink stained her cheeks along with a spattering of freckles, and her full lips had me wanting to shove my cock between them and shoot my cum down her throat.
Too damn young.
A master of control, I fought back the urge to clear my throat and adjust my swelling cock. I tilted my head back and enjoyed the whiskey burn down my throat.
“I’ve heard Suzie is pretty shaken up over her mom’s passing.”
I poured myself another. “Seems to be, yeah.”
Mel’s gaze lowered to the tattoo on the side of my neck.
“You know what it means?” I asked while turning my head to the side so she’d get a better look.
She nodded. “Pretty sure Sheriff Elliott down at the other end knows, too.”
I glanced down the bar to find a man a dozen or so years younger than me peering our way. Dark buzz cut, dark eyes. He dipped his head and sipped his beer, letting me know he knew exactly who the hell I was. The glint in his eye promised he’d take care of any trouble I thought to start.
I nodded my head in return, letting him know I didn’t plan on stirring up any shit. Leaning forward, I propped my arms on the bar and turned my attention back on Mel. “So you probably know why Suzie doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
