by Marla Monroe
Delta crossed the room in her modest heels and took a seat in the chair across the desk from a good-looking man with shaggy black hair and what could only be described as electric blue eyes. She quickly crossed her legs and forced herself to present a relaxed appearance. The first rule of playing among the wild and dangerous types was to show no fear but always show respect. Delta waited for one of them to make the first move.
The man sitting behind the desk spoke first. His cut made him as Dominic, President of the MC. Next to him was a tall man of about six feet and maybe three inches. His cut said “Vice President” so that made him Reece. He had a buzz cut that wasn’t nearly as short as Mr. Goatee’s and it was a sandy blond in color. His eyes were grass green. At last, she was in the presence of the ruling pair of The Ghost Riders MC. Both men appeared relaxed and confident, but she knew not to trust appearances.
“I just got off the phone with Knuckles. He verified that he’d sent you here for work. However, he also said that you might be in some kind of trouble,” the man sitting behind the desk said.
“Um, I’m not sure. Why does he think I might be in trouble?” she asked instead.
The man cocked his head and stared harder at her. “Maybe I’m not making myself understood. What kind of trouble are you in?”
“Don’t bother lying. If you’ve got trouble, it will eventually follow you here, so we’d rather be ready than caught with our pants down. Get my drift?” Reece, the vice president said.
Delta moistened her lips. “I honestly am not sure that there’s anything to worry about, but I suppose there could be. Until six months ago, I was working for a small chain of restaurants as the district manager, making sure everything ran smoothly and that revenue remained at an acceptable level. When I wasn’t traveling from business to business, I was headquartered at one in Birmingham, Alabama.” She stopped to take a deep breath.
“Is all of this background really necessary to tell us about the possible threat?” Goatee asked.
“Yes. It is,” she said, turning around to glare at the man.
“Butch,” Reece said.
“Go ahead, Delta,” Dominic said with an obvious smile.
“Anyway, I began dating this man who ate at the restaurant in Birmingham nearly every day. He’d finally worn me down after about two weeks of asking. I really thought one date would be it. I wasn’t interested, and with my busy schedule, I really didn’t have time for dating.” She remembered how she’d scoffed at having a boyfriend in her life right then.
If only I’d listened when my brain told me not to go. I wouldn’t be in this mess. I should never have given him the time of day with my track record with men.
“So you accepted his invitation and then what?” Dominic said.
“Nothing at first. We went out a few times for dinner or drinks after work, but other than that, we didn’t really interact much. Then, slowly over a period of maybe three weeks, we began to get more involved, and he was beginning to get clingy, wanting more of my time, demanding to know where I was when I wasn’t with him. I’d really thought he was a nice guy up until then, but after he started getting too demanding, I broke it off with him,” she said.
“I take it he didn’t like being brushed off,” Walker said.
She twisted around in her chair and smiled at him before returning to stare at the two men in front of her. “About a week after I explained that it just wasn’t working out for us, he called me and asked me to meet him at one of our restaurants for a meal. I explained that I couldn’t and that it was best if we didn’t see each other anymore. He didn’t say anything, just hung up. I brushed it off since I was in the middle of a grand opening for a new restaurant. I realize now that I was wrong to do that.”
Delta looked down at her hands and willed them to stop shaking as she gathered herself to tell them what she was worried about, why she’d left her job and never looked back.
“When I got ready to leave for work the next morning, I opened the door to my apartment to find a box sitting on the floor with my name on an envelope taped to it. The envelope and the note inside had all been typed, so I will never know definitively who sent it, but I know deep inside it was him. The note said that I’d disappointed him, and he didn’t tolerate disappointments. Nor did he handle them well. Inside the box, he said, was a present to help me make up my mind once and for all.” She drew in a deep breath, then let it out and told them.
“Inside the box was a plastic bag holding the remains of what had once been a picture of me and Cassidy that I kept on my desk at work. He’d taken the picture out and demolished the frame. Then he put a big red X on my sister’s face and stabbed my face so many times that if you hadn’t known it was me, you wouldn’t have been able to tell looking at it. The bag had ketchup in it that had smeared all over everything. Let’s just say that I got the picture loud and clear. I asked my sister to run with me, but she said Knuckles wouldn’t let anything happen to her. He had the backup of his MC club, so I knew she was safer with him than with me. So I just walked away, making sure he knew that I wasn’t planning on ever coming back.”
“How did you do that?” Reece, asked as he walked around to the front of the desk and propped himself up at the corner.
“I sold my car, packed everything I owned, and left a note for my boss saying I was sorry, but I had to leave and wouldn’t be back. I had a friend who lived on the Alabama line who agreed to come get me and take me home. My old car that I’d built myself was garaged at a high school friend’s place in his barn. I figured it would take me a day or two to get her running again, then I could disappear from there.” Delta sighed and wondered for the thousandth time how she’d ended up back where she’d started just in a different state with a different club.
How did others manage to rise above their shitty lives when she’d done everything right and was right back in the same place? She was beginning to believe in curses and that one had been put on her.
“I haven’t seen or heard anything to indicate that he’s looking for me, but I honestly don’t know what to expect from the man. I mean, I never saw that box of gruesome coming. That’s for damn sure.”
“According to Knuckles you’re unflappable,” Dominic said. “What really made you run, because I can’t see ketchup on torn up pictures doing it if you’re as fearless as he claims?”
Delta swallowed hard and looked down at her hands while she worked to slow her racing heart down. She’d hoped not to have to say any more than that, but it was obvious the bikers were smarter than she’d given them credit for. And Knuckles, bless his heart, trying to give her a good reference for a job, had instead thrown a wrench in her story.
“Delta?” Reece prompted.
“He’d included a black, um, slave collar in the box. It reminded me of something he’d said to me once.” Delta looked up at the two men facing her, hyper aware of the two still standing behind her as well. “He’d wrapped his hand around my neck when he was, um, kissing me once and whispered in my ear that one day he’d collar me and make me his. At the time, I’d mistaken it for a declaration of his affection and that he planned to marry me one day. I wasn’t really thinking along those lines at the time and brushed it off. Later I realized how serious he was and that marriage had nothing to do with it.”
“You broke it off with him when he tried to introduce you to his type of BDSM, didn’t you, Delta,” Walker suggested as he stepped from behind where she was sitting to stare down at her. For some reason, his muscular build didn’t intimidate her or scare her. Instead, it seemed to soothe the nervousness that talking about it had triggered.
“Yes. He’d taken me to several clubs and shown me around. None of it really bothered me or freaked me out, but I knew it wasn’t for me. I’m not going to crawl around on the floor with a collar and leash in next to nothing. I’d already told him this several times, but he just smiled and said that wasn’t something he needed. But that last night that we went out before I broke it off with him
, he took me to a private party. They call them play parties.” She shivered remembering the kind of play they considered fun. “It was nothing like the clubs. At the clubs there are dungeon masters or monitors who make sure everything is safe and consensual. At the private parties, you’re just screwed if you don’t like what’s happening.”
“What did you see that pushed you into breaking it off, Delta?” Dominic asked.
How could the man read her so well? Was it something that all MC presidents had or was she that transparent? Delta had never considered herself a weak woman. Like Knuckles had said, she was pretty much unflappable, but what she’d seen had spooked her, and even hundreds of miles hadn’t seemed to lessen the affect it had had on her.
“One of the men there who’d brought his slave with him had secretly arranged to let all the men there have a turn with her. The surprise and fear in her eyes broke my heart when I realized that no one was going to help her. She refused and tried to run, but they tied her down on one of the specially designed tables they had set up in his personal dungeon. I assume they all raped her, but I wasn’t there. I objected and threw a fit about it. One of the men told the banker to get me out of there, so he dragged me back to the main area of the house and we left. He drove me home and told me he was sorry, he hadn’t realized they were planning that. He reminded me that I’d signed a confidentiality statement, then apologized again. I just nodded and accepted his apology,” she told them.
“He just apologized as if it hadn’t been a gang rape they were planning? You know he’d probably planned to participate, Delta. Otherwise he’d have called the authorities,” Reece pointed out.
“After I’d thought about it for a while, I remembered his face when they’d revealed what they’d had planned for her. He’d looked excited until I said something. Then when I kept protesting and trying to get between them and the crying woman, they demanded he either control me or leave. He wasn’t excited anymore by then. He was angry and a little worried. None of that had registered until I’d made it home safely. I called him at home the next morning and broke it off with him. I should have called the police and told them what I’d seen, but one thing I do know, when powerful men are threatened, they will use all of their resources to remove that threat.”
“What did he say when you told him you didn’t want to see him any longer?” Walker asked.
“He didn’t say much. Just reminded me to forget what I’d seen and heard and think about the paperwork I’d signed. I didn’t think it was legal anymore when I was witnessing a serious crime, but the legality of it wasn’t really what stopped me from going to the police. The next thing he reminded me of was who had been there and that I could easily disappear. They were connected men. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. Not with who all had been at that play party. I was stupid,” she admitted.
“Who is the banker you were seeing? And who was at that party?” Reece asked.
“Aaron Caldwell of the banker family in Alabama. At the party I saw the state’s attorney general, a US senator, and several very wealthy businessmen from the area. It wasn’t so much that I’d seen them. It was that they had all seen me that worried me.”
Chapter Two
Butch watched as Dom, Reece, and his partner interrogated the sultry female who’d driven up in the worst excuse of a car he’d ever seen. He’d wanted to get under the hood and find out what all was wrong with it. Instead, he’d made sure Vernon and Rhodes would check it out while they were sequestered in the leader’s office.
Delta was one hell of a looker. Her slight southern accent was just perfect without being too sugary and over-the-top. She had curves that begged a man to explore them, take them for a test drive to see if he could handle them. And her ass? Damn, but it was made for fucking. He could easily see himself plowing into her from behind, both hands full of those meaty globes.
The hair? What the hell? It couldn’t be hers. It was maroon for crying out loud. Why would anyone color their hair maroon? He cocked his head and looked at her again. Maybe she’d thought it would help keep her hidden. If someone was after her, he’d have sure found her by now with that hair color. She stuck out like a sore thumb.
Butch shook his head. If Dom let her stay, he was sure going to get him some of her. He and Walker could rock that for days and days. He could ignore the funky hair. No doubt Walker thought it was fun looking. He had the weirdest tastes, but Butch trusted no one more than him. He’d saved his ass more than once.
“So what is it you can offer us if we were to hire you, Delta?” Reece was asking her.
Butch pulled his attention away from his baser thoughts and concentrated on the business side of the woman instead. He couldn’t afford to let anything past him. He was basically head of security for The Ghost Riders. He was their sergeant at arms and Walker was his second. Besides having a background in electronics and security, they’d worked as intelligence officers in the Army as well. Nothing would get past him and Walker.
“Did Knuckles tell you that I’m a crack mechanic, bikes, cars, trucks, and even imports? I’m also good with weapons. I can shoot nearly anything you might have with the exception of an Uzi. I’m fine at single shot, but it’s too much for me otherwise. I’m also experienced in reloading and can probably disassemble and reassemble anything you have faster than most of your members. I grew up with guns and got to the nirvana point that a lot of servicemen get to when overseas under combat situations achieve,” she said.
Butch exchanged glances with Walker. That she even knew what that was told them a lot about the woman. She didn’t mess around. And the fact that she had said all of that without sounding the least bit boastful or conceited said she didn’t see it as a means to compete with anyone.
“Can you pull beer, cook, or clean house?” Dom asked without smiling.
Delta sighed. “I can pull beer but can’t cook worth a damn. I can do some housecleaning, but that’s a waste if you have me doing that. Plus I’ll just get bored, and that’s never a good thing.” She sounded like she was smiling to Butch, but he couldn’t see her face.
“Don’t worry, sweet Delta Dawn, I think we can keep you too busy to get bored,” Walker said, looking down at her.
“I’m not a sweet butt and won’t be a bed warmer, so don’t even try it, buster,” she said in what sounded like a threatening tone to Butch.
“Name’s Walker, sweet thing. I think I already told you that,” his club brother told her.
“Well you can live up to that name of yours and walk away. I’m not interested.”
Butch looked over at the sound of muffled chuckling to find both Reece and Dominic holding their hands up and coughing to cover up their amusement. Butch frowned at them, which only made them cough louder. Assholes.
“I do believe you’ve challenged me there, sweet thing,” Walker said with a wink.
“Stop calling me sweet thing and what is it with men in general that everything is a challenge to them? ‘Oh! She says she isn’t interested, but she’s just playing hard to get. I bet I can change her mind. Watch this, guys!’ And that’s when they find out that I’m not joking,” she said with a definite snarl in her voice.
Now Butch was intrigued. She’d messed up when she got his attention. He looked over at Walker, and his brother was right there with him. Yep. Little miss Delta Dawn had awakened the beast. He wanted her and before she left their clubhouse, he and Walker would have her.
* * * *
Jeez, Louise.
Why can’t I keep my big mouth shut? I know better than to antagonize a bunch of wild bikers. Mom’s probably spinning in her grave right about now.
Delta refused to back down from her unintended challenge. If they wanted to play games, she’d show them that she could stand her ground. She’d made her last mistake trusting a man. No more. Men were devious and would say or do anything necessary to get what they wanted. Namely, to get in the bed of every female they took a fancy to. Well she wasn’t having any of wh
at they were dishing out.
“Let’s stick with what we know that you know, Delta—the bar. We just took it over a few weeks back, so it still needs someone running it full time. It’s a fucking mess right now. The previous owners were more interested in making their money on the drugs than the bar. It was just their front for the real money maker,” Dom told her. “If you can succeed in turning it into a producer instead of a drain, we’ll consider making the position permanent and pay accordingly. Right now you’ll work for minimum wage.” Dom pushed his big body up to his full height signaling the meeting was over.
“Hold on just a minute. In order to turn a mess into a producer, a lot has to happen. Namely, someone has to work her ass off, and it sounds like that’s going to end up being me. I’m not working for minimum wage and turning the bar around to make good money, then have you pay me a modest salary. I want ten dollars an hour or a signed contract for a bonus once the bar is running smoothly,” she told Dominic.
“You’re not going to run the bar singlehandedly. You’ll have help,” Reece said with a wide smile. “Most of the sweet butts work shifts there.”
“And most of them will be pissed that you hired a stranger over them. They’ll want to test me and throw up roadblocks to making it work. If I’m going to deal with that while trying to turn the place around, I want hazard pay as well,” she added with a sweet smile of her own.
“Sounds like you should have quit while you were ahead,” Walker drawled, crossing his arms.
“Shut up, Walker,” Reece said, in an amiable voice. His smile said he wasn’t angry at the other man for speaking out.
That made Delta wonder if the club was pretty laid-back with one another. The few clubs she’d had any dealings with were always fighting among themselves over something. Usually it involved a woman or a bike.
“Just saying, brother,” Walker said, shaking his head.
