GRIFFIN

by Paula Cox

  The men arrived from all over West Texas and a mini campground quickly sprung up around Zachariah’ trailer. Little fires popped up, grills sizzled, men laughed, and throughout it all Griffin watched with a smile on his face, as though he were a particularly kind ruler looking over his kingdom. Natasha loved to watch him this way, and she did it at any given opportunity. It was strange, they hadn’t had sex since the raid, and yet, the days of his recovery had made an intimacy grow between them that hadn’t existed before.

  The best thing about all of this was her newfound lack of fear. Natasha didn’t feel the need to cower in the corner anymore and hope that some big bad guy wouldn’t come and kill her. No, she fearlessly rode through the streets whenever she wanted to, and even (although it killed her to think of how girly it must have looked) rode to a local biker clothing store to deck herself out in the appropriate attire. She was ready, she was fearless, and she was going to ride in with them.

  The night before the new raid felt almost like a party. Charters mixed with each other, jokes were exchanged, the beer flowed, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. There was an acceptance of Natasha that surprised her, mostly because with this acceptance came a level of respect that she had not expected. It was pretty incredible for her, and as she sat by the fire, Griffin’s arm around her, she felt like she finally belonged somewhere.

  When the morning of the raid came, she dressed in the outfit that she had put together for that very purpose and spent time checking over her bike before they all rolled out.

  She never would have worn something like this otherwise, but she needed to feel like a warrior, and this was the best way to do it. Natasha had opted for a tight pair of leather pants, which originally she thought would have been impossible to actually wear, but instead fit her like a glove that had been tailor-made for her. Complete with a dark tank top, some motorcycle boots, and the vest she had taken from the Disciple who had tried to kill her, she felt sexy and utterly powerful. Damon Stokes was going to have to watch the hell out.

  “Well, look at you,” she heard a voice purr from behind her. For a second, she turned around, prepared to argue or tell the stranger to fuck off, but instead it was Griffin, standing there and eating up her appearance with his eyes. She had forgotten that the outfit had been a surprise, and she grinned at him, as she stretched out her body, giving him a good view of her slim hips and waist, watching as his eyes flicked up to the swell of her breasts.

  “Like what you see?” she asked playfully. Griffin nodded.

  “I never thought I’d get to see you in leather like this,” he said, moving up to her and sliding his hands around her leather clad hips. She moved into him and their lips met. His lips parted and his tongue reached out to brush against hers and it felt as though the fire that had been flickering inside of her from the moment they had first touched each other roared back to life. She threw herself into the kiss, feeling the heat of him, loving the taste of him, and suddenly the backs of her thighs touched against the seat of the bike. In one fluid motion, she jumped on, wrapping her legs around his waist and feeling him against her.

  “We can’t,” he whispered, as they separated as quickly as they came together. Natasha knew he was right. They were about to roll out, and not to mention in full view of several of the men. Natasha could distantly hear some cheers and a few good-natured catcalls, but instead of blushing, she decided to own it. She grinned and catcalled back, leaving Griffin to watch her in utter amazement.

  “You’re a completely different person,” he said to her.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “No, I mean, it’s good. You seem a lot more comfortable, but yeah, also different.”

  Natasha felt different. She felt alive; she felt entirely like herself. She watched as the fifty or so men that they had gathered together all mounted their bikes, gathered their guns, and planned everything out. She couldn’t wait to go in there with them.

  “I guess I just really feel in it, you know? You were right the entire time, as Emanuel’s daughter this is where I belong.”

  He wrapped his arm around her, kissing her on the temple as he did so. She leaned into him, still seated on her bike, and together they watched as the men revved their engines and waited for Griffin. It looked as though he were thinking about something, and Natasha prayed that he wasn’t changing his mind about her decision to join them. The last thing she needed at that moment was for him to suddenly want to put the princess back in the tower. That didn’t happen though. Instead, he turned to look at her, those bright blue eyes full of resolve.

  “You ready?” he asked her. She nodded.

  “You bet I am.”

  He leaned in and gave her another kiss. It was quick, but full of an intensity that nearly took her breath away. He walked over to his own bike, mounting it and turning it on. Riding through the crowd, he looked like some sort of conquering hero ready to set out and finish his quest. Natasha saw that, and more important, she liked what she saw.

  She put on her own helmet and rode after him, basking in the excited words that were tossed her way, knowing that they were about to ride off and get the revenge that Damon Stokes so richly deserved. She could feel the guns that she had tucked into her vest against her skin. They made her feel so powerful, and she knew above all things that she was ready to go and spill Damon Stokes’s blood.

  Griffin paused at the front of the crowd, removing his helmet.

  “This may not be the best day for the Disciples, that’s something I’ll readily admit. Our recent president not only killed our beloved old president, but also killed a lot of his own men in order to get a foothold of power. That’s pretty unfortunate. I know that teaming up with me like this probably wasn’t the easiest decision—because if you keep your heads down maybe you’d make it out alive, but I’m glad that all of you came to the same conclusion that I did. Keeping your head down might keep you alive, but it doesn’t make you a Disciple, and what would be the point in that?”

  At that, everyone cheered and Natasha herself basked in the excitement of the day. Julian rode up beside her on his own bike, giving her a happy grin as they both nodded at each other.

  “Nervous?” he asked her quietly.

  “No, but it makes me a little nervous that I’m not nervous.”

  “Good,” he replied with a grin. “That’s smart.”

  The rest of the crowd was enraptured with Griffin’s speech, and Natasha found herself sucked in again as well.

  “They always say that you should never turn your back against a boss. Brutus killed Caesar and guess what he’s remembered for? Killing Caesar. But this isn’t just us toppling some leader. This is us toppling a tyrant, and if that’s what it takes for us to be free, I say we kill Caesar!”

  The entire crowed erupted in cheers again, revving their engines. None of them would dare to fire a shot in the air while still on Zachariah’ turf, and Natasha turned to see him standing in the doorway of the trailer, watching Griffin with a pride in his eyes that touched her. Zachariah had claimed to be way too old to be riding into battle, and while Natasha didn’t agree with him—Adrian had decided to join them, and he had at least a decade on Zachariah—she was happy he wasn’t going nonetheless. They needed someone ready to take care of those who would inevitably become wounded.

  The thought of getting wounded didn’t scare Natasha anymore—although she was still a little worried about Griffin. He had only recently been shot, and there he was at the front of the line, preparing to lead the charge. He sought her out in the crowd and their eyes met. She smiled at him, excited to see him lead, until she realized that he hadn’t even remotely started moving.

  What are you waiting for? she thought.

  He stayed there, and slowly, it began to dawn on her. Revving her engine slightly, she began to ride forward, passing the other bikers with their eyes fixed on her in something close to wonder. She knew she was the only woman there, and she also knew it probably wasn’t because she was t
he only one who was willing to go. No, it had probably never occurred to these men that women even belonged there, but she was going to change their minds.

  She made her way up to the front and idled by Griffin’s side, turning her head to take in the motorcyclists who had lined up to help her get her revenge.

  “For those of you who don’t know, this is Natasha Morrison.” There was a small murmur coming from the crowd as the name hit home, and it was then that Natasha had the courage to speak.

  “Yeah, that’s right. I’m Emanuel Morrison’s kid! I may not have been brought up in this world, but damn does it run through my veins. I didn’t know my father like you did, although I wish I did. All I knew was a dad, and I know that that dad is dead, and I know that he’s probably looking down on us right now going “Go give them hell!” So…do you want to give them hell?”

  A cheer rose up again, and it filled Natasha with a certain type of joy. Soon, she was joining in with them, hooting and hollering, and it was then that Griffin decided they were ready and rode off to the place where Damon was hiding: the Lost Disciples’ clubhouse.

  Chapter 33

  It started before Natasha had realized it. First, they were all parked outside the old clubhouse of the Lost Disciples—now currently inhabited by Damon and the Los Diablos. Griffin had groaned in disappointment when he saw, and Natasha felt for him. In fact ,the idea of these traitorous assholes hanging out in the same place her father used to enjoy spending his time made her feel sick. At first, they really thought that they had the jump on everything, until a great crack rang out and she heard someone make a sound of pain.

  Turning, she could see one of Flores’s guys slump over and fall off of his bike. Immediately, she saw a flash of an eye in the top left corner of a window.

  She ripped her own gun out of its holster, aimed, and fired. The glass of the window shattered, and the sniper slumped against the window, alive but incapacitated.

  “Nice shot,” Flores murmured from beside her.

  She was about to thank him when all hell broke loose. At first, she thought there would be tension, that someone would come out and say something. Instead, gunfire immediately filled the air. It felt as though it was everywhere, and very quickly Natasha noticed that this was a lot different than the situations she had faced before. She thought it wasn’t going to be much different than the situation at the funeral, but instead, it seemed as though the violence was everywhere.

  She ducked down, panic racing in her veins. She was completely out of her element even if she had fired the first shot for her side, but as she stayed ducked and felt the bullets whiz by her, she realized that she was nothing more than a coward. That snapped her out of it quickly.

  She glanced up, saw a Los Diablos rush out of the clubhouse, aimed her gun, and fired. She watched as he crumpled to the ground and felt good about it. It served him right, didn’t it?

  This went on for what felt like forever, and it seemed as though they were making a decent amount of kills, but it wasn’t until she looked around her that she realized they were taking losses as well.

  Brendan lay on the ground, staring up at the sky with quickly emptying eyes. Natasha wanted to go to him to see if there was anything that she could do, but what could she? One of the members of his charter stopped to see if he was okay and came away devastated. It gave Natasha chills. Did her father ever have to do this? Had he been as scared as she was? If he hadn’t, what did that make her?

  Someone grabbed her sleeve and pulled her down behind a fallen motorcycle, for a moment she struggled until she realized that none of the so-called “bad guys” were outside the house, having instead opted to stay inside and go on the defensive. She turned to see Flores, the leader of the Vallejo Disciples grinning back at her.

  “First firefight?” he asked with a bit of humor in his voice. Natasha gawked at him, shocked that he could keep such good spirits when the entire world seemed to be crumbling down around them. There was something reassuring in his voice though, and she couldn’t help but laugh a little.

  “Yeah, how could you tell?” she said in an attempt to match his tone.

  “It’s okay. Everyone has to have a first time.”

  “Well, they could just not have this time at all,” Natasha said helpfully, peering over her cover and taking a shot. She heard a Los Diablos curse as she hit him in the leg.

  “But what’s the fun in that?”

  “Well, do you have any suggestions?” she asked him. He smiled in a way that made him seem like a fighter pilot in a plane that was going down.

  “Only one. Don’t get shot.”

  Natasha laughed, warming up to Flores in the way that she imagined people on the battlefield became friends. She knew that they would probably never go shopping together, would probably never go for coffee or watch movies or do whatever it is that normal friends did, but she could imagine her buying him a beer at a bar if they both happened to be in at the same time, and that in and of itself was powerful.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, she heard a crack, and turned to Flores. He looked back at her quizzically for a moment before reaching down and touching his chest. A flower of blood looked as though it had bloomed there, and before he could say anything else, he fell over and lay still. Natasha stared down at his body in dumb horror. She looked back up and saw a familiar clean cut face through the window.

  It was Damon.

  Meanwhile, Griffin had taken up residence in the back of the ray, definitely not stupid enough to be near the front where he knew he would make an easy target. He hadn’t seen Damon yet, but he could hear him, calling orders to the men inside the house. It was a tricky situation, ideally the men inside could stay there indefinitely. This wasn’t the old days in Medieval England where castle sieges could take months. They weren’t going to be able to starve them out, because Griffin knew that even if the police didn’t come soon, they were going to come eventually, and the police were the last thing he really wanted to face down.

  He caught a glimpse of Natasha’s blonde hair in the crowd and called out to her. Upon hearing her name, she whipped wildly around, and it was then that he realized she had been sitting next to the still, most likely dead body of Flores. Goddamn it, he thought. Not Flores too. Brendan was already dead, which meant that two charter leaders were off the board. Griffin knew that they shouldn’t have come, but he wasn’t high enough on the totem pole to deny them. Hopefully they went down with guns blazing.

  Natasha’s wide amber eyes bore into his, and he made a gesture to have her come to his side. Watching out for any flying bullets, Natasha ran as fast as she could to him, and he gave her a quick squeeze on her arm in order to keep her calm. For a person who had been a civilian a mere few days ago, she was holding up remarkably well, although he could see a little tremor in her hands as she worked to reload her pistol.

  “Have you seen Damon yet?” he asked her. She nodded.

  “Yeah, I’m probably going to go for him soon,” she replied. “I just want to end this before more people get hurt.”

  So…she had actually noticed what had happened to Flores; Griffin had been hoping that she didn’t. It didn’t matter now. He’d plan those funerals later. All he knew was that he didn’t want to plan hers.

  “We need to come up with a decent plan first,” he told her. “We can’t just go in there with guns blazing now can we?”

  If she was listening to him, she didn’t show any indication of it, and Griffin wanted to remind her about her quiet past in order to keep her from being a hero.

  “Listen, I’m going to pick out a handful of guys that are still standing, then we’re going to go around the house and order his surrender, does that sound okay to you?”

  The fire was back in Natasha’s eyes, and she shook her head. “No, I don’t want to give him any time to escape. He can see us better than we can see him, and I don’t want him to realize what we’re doing. I need to do an ambush.”

  “What?”

 
It was then that another great spray of bullets roared overhead, causing everyone to duck. Griffin rolled to the side, propped himself up, and began shooting, turning to find Natasha and to see what she might be doing.

  Natasha wasn’t there anymore.

  Frantically, he looked around in the hopes that she had just moved position and didn’t do the very goddamn dumb thing he had been terrified that she would do.

  His heart sank as he saw a flash of her blonde ponytail as she disappeared around the house. God, no. Keeping low to the ground, he made his way to the back of the house, knowing that she was moving too fast for him to stop her before entering, but hoping he could at least be there to back her up. He had two guns, more feelings for her than he would have ever liked to admit, and was fully ready to kill for her if given half the chance. As he looked at the carnage this shoot out was doing, he couldn’t help but realize that those were really decent odds.