Reapers and Bastards: A Reapers MC Anthology

by Joanna Wylde

  I’d just gotten out of one shitty relationship, and while I might not see Boonie very often, I knew far too much about him. He was Callup, born and bred, and we kept track of our own whether they liked it or not. He’d given the ladies down at the Breakfast Table more than his fair share of gossip since he’d come home last year.

  According to them, the man was hornier than an alley cat.

  Shit. I couldn’t think about that right now.

  “I’m a professional, Boonie,” I told him firmly. “I’ll step outside and let you get ready. Undress to your comfort level and lie face down under the sheet. I’ll be back in just a couple of minutes.”

  I stepped out of the room and shut the door, leaning back against it. Could I do this? I wasn’t sure. If I’d had any idea he’d actually expected me to touch him I wouldn’t have let him back into the room at all.

  Liar.

  Why hadn’t he gotten fat? Or started losing his hair? Granted, twenty-three was young to start balding but that hadn’t prevented it from happening to Farell. God, I wished I could go back in time. Maybe if I’d walked out of the hospital without talking to Renee that night, things would be different right now.

  Except they wouldn’t. Even if I’d been free, Boonie hadn’t been. And now the Bastards held him tighter than any woman ever could.

  “You okay?” Kelly asked, peering through the small pass-through window between the rooms and the reception area.

  Say you can’t do it. Just tell her you’re not feeling good, you’re going to throw up, anything to get out of walking back into that room.

  But I’d only been working here for six months. For three of those, Farell had been leaving nasty phone messages and while Gloria had been patient, did I really want to risk causing trouble? Because getting rid of Boonie would be trouble, no question. He wouldn’t just get up and walk away without a fight.

  Boonie never, ever backed away from a fight.

  I knocked on the door, then stepped inside. The man who’d beat up my boyfriend on graduation night (before fucking me on a stranger’s grave) lay on his stomach, watching me speculatively as I came toward him. Everything about the situation was completely appropriate on the surface—the sheet covered him to the middle of his back, just like it was supposed to. He should’ve been just another massage client, one of hundreds I’d seen.

  He wasn’t, though. Not even a little bit.

  I swallowed, then came to stand next to him. “Everything comfortable?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right. Just go ahead and relax. Let me know if the pressure’s all right or if there’s anywhere I should concentrate on.”

  Once again, the words were the same I’d used a thousand times, but somehow they seemed different today. Dirty.

  Thankfully I could ease into this. Pumping my hand full of lotion, I reached down and touched his back for the first time. Oh crap . . . All these years I’d told myself I’d imagined how good his body felt. That I’d been drunk, that whatever Boonie and I had between us had been a figment of the booze and the fire and all the adrenaline that followed.

  I was wrong.

  His skin felt smooth and hot against my fingers, silky soft over a layer of hard muscles. My heart skipped a beat and I stilled.

  “You okay?” he asked, his voice low. I swallowed.

  “Fine. How’s the pressure?”

  The words hung between us and I bit back a giggle. What was wrong with me?

  “Give me everything,” he finally said. It took all I had to force my hands to keep moving. I warmed up his back with slow, steady strokes, studying his Marine Corps tattoos. Every touch reminded me of that brief, incredible night that he’d pulled me out of the party and taken me in the darkness. I still had dreams about it. Not that Boonie cared—it’d obviously meant a lot more to me than it had to him.

  Not a huge surprise, I guess. We’d never even had a date. Just a fast, hard fuck. One of many in his life.

  “So you’re living in Coeur d’Alene now?’’ he asked as I started working his shoulder.

  “Uh-huh,’’ I answered, falling into the rhythm of my strokes. “I moved out three months ago. They tell me the divorce should be easy—I don’t want anything from him.”

  The words came out sharper than I planned, and I felt his body tense.

  “Did he hurt you?”

  Fuck, how to answer that one? I considered my response carefully as I smoothed down the length of his arm.

  “Not physically,” I finally said. “But that night changed him . . .”

  Boonie snorted, muscles growing tighter.

  “According to your letters that was a good thing.”

  “You read them?”

  “Yeah, I fuckin’ read them.”

  Then why didn’t you answer?

  I didn’t ask, moving down to his lower body instead. Reaching for the sheet, I folded it back to tuck behind his leg, fingers brushing the back of his right glute in the process. The technique called for me to fold it across, revealing the sides as I tucked it down between his legs. His muscles flexed, and he took in a harsh breath.

  Oh, wow. My nipples were hard as rocks and need twisted me up into a tight knot. That strange, intense chemistry between us sure as fuck hadn’t faded.

  I started massaging his feet, giving myself permission to enjoy the interplay of muscle and skin as I worked him over. By the time I reached his upper thigh, we were both breathing hard. I felt a bead of sweat on my forehead, and reached up to brush it off with the back of my hand.

  Despite the tension hanging in the air—or perhaps because of it?—Boonie stayed perfectly still. I was starting to actually believe this wasn’t about the money Farell owed.

  “Why are you really here, Boonie?” I asked him softly as I adjusted the drape, moving to the other side. He shifted, hips pressing down into the table. Without thinking, I smoothed my hand down his back. A light sheen of sweat covered it.

  “Are you too warm?’’ I asked, moving back into professional mode. “I can turn down the heat on the table.”

  “That won’t help,’’ he gritted out. Okay. I dropped my hands back down, fingers trailing over his ass as I tucked the sheet between his legs. I pushed it down a little too far and brushed what could only be his erection.

  We both froze, me in utter shock and horror. Men got them of course. It was a basic biological function, and I was a professional providing a therapeutic service. Like a nurse, I knew better than to take it personally.

  But this was very, very personal.

  Boonie pushed to his elbows, turning back to look at me.

  “Either grab it right or move your fuckin’ hand,’’ he growled. “Because I’m about five seconds away from bending you over this table.”

  I jerked away, stepping back. We stared at each other, history hanging heavy between us.

  “I think you should go,” I managed to whisper. “There won’t be a charge. Just leave, Boonie. I can’t do this.”

  He gave me a slow, predatory smile. Like a shark.

  “Farell owes the club twenty-five thousand. But that’s nothing. He owes the Reapers, too. He spends it faster than the Evans family can bail him out. It’s not gonna end well. So far I’ve kept them off you, babe. Let’s hope it stays that way.”

  I swallowed at his veiled threat.

  “That’s unfortunate,” I replied after a long pause. “But I don’t see what it has to do with me. Renee gave me an allowance—it’s the only cash I ever had. I have two thousand dollars saved up and that took me three years. That’s all I can give you. It doesn’t matter what you threaten. I can’t give you money that doesn’t exist.”

  “I don’t want your money,” he said, eyes burning. We stared at each other, a whole world of unspoken words between us.

  “Why did you stop writing to me?” I asked him suddenly. I’d spent years wondering. Now I had nothing to lose by asking.

  “Every letter you sent was full of him,” Boonie replied, almost
snarling. “You never said a goddamned thing about us. Then I realized there wasn’t an us, at least not to you. I’m not a fuckin’ masochist, Darce. You think I didn’t see what was happening?”

  “I felt guilty,” I whispered. “You don’t understand—you weren’t here. Everywhere I went, people looked at me. They talked about me, called me a slut. Said it was my fault, because of our fight. Someone at that party saw us together, did you know that? I never found out who, but the whole school knew about it. You beat him up and then we fucked on a grave while Allie died. You think it was easy, walking into that school every day?”

  Once the words started flowing, I found I couldn’t stop them. It felt good to let it all out. The only person I’d ever talked to about it before was Shanda.

  She knew exactly what it felt like to be judged.

  “So long as Renee stood up for me, I could handle it,” I continued, my voice rising. “And I liked helping her. She was good to me, Boonie. She always had been. Treated me like a family member, and it felt wonderful. Their house was clean, their food was decent, and they listened to nice music and actually talked to each other in the evenings. You were gone, Boonie. You have no fucking idea what I was up against. And you know what? I liked helping Farell, too. It felt good to be needed because nobody else gave a shit about me. You didn’t even fucking write back!”

  I practically shouted the last sentence, and my body trembled. Someone knocked at the door.

  “You all right in there, Darcy?” Kelly asked, her voice hard. I held Boonie’s eyes.

  “Yeah,’’ I replied. “Everything’s just peachy keen.”

  “Okay, but I’m right here,’’ she said, sounding skeptical. “Gloria has no problem with us asking a customer to leave if they aren’t appropriate. You might want to remind Mr. Boone of that.”

  Boonie stared me down.

  “I don’t have a problem right now,’’ he said slowly. “But if you don’t finish, I will.”

  Asshole.

  “I can do my job.”

  He nodded, lowering back down to the table. I pumped more lotion and started in on his thigh. This time my hands were rougher, harder. He’d said he could take whatever I gave out? Well, he was about to learn I wasn’t the same weak little girl he’d known in Callup.

  My hands were strong now, just like the rest of me.

  Boonie grunted as my fingers dug in, finding each muscle and working it until I knew he’d be sore the next day.

  “Is that too much?” I asked ten minutes later. He gave a low laugh.

  “I’ll take everything you have and more, Darce. You should know that by now.”

  After that it was a contest of wills. No matter how hard I worked him, he refused to complain.

  “I’m ready for you to roll over,” I said finally, feeling frustrated. “I’ll hold the sheet.”

  “You don’t want me on my back right now,” he said, pushing his hips lewdly into the table. I watched the flex of his butt and thigh, his meaning all too clear.

  Goddammit.

  “Um, I can just do a relaxing massage on your back for the rest of the time, I guess.”

  “Darcy?”

  “Yes?”

  “I think it’s time for this to end,’’ he said, his voice strained.

  “Sounds great,’’ I replied quickly, not even pausing to gloat. “I’ll step out so you can get dressed. We didn’t go the full time, so I’ll tell Kelly that—”

  “Sit down.”

  It wasn’t a request. Fuck. I reached for my small rolling stool and sat down. Boonie pushed to his elbows, putting us face to face. For the first time his face softened.

  “Renee Evans came to my graduation from basic training,” he said slowly. “Did you know that?”

  His words stunned me.

  “What?”

  “She came to my graduation,” he said again slowly. “Afterward she talked to me. She said that you were doing well, but that life had gotten hard for you. She told me how people were, and she told me how big a help you were to their family. Then she told me that if I cared about you at all, I’d let you go.”

  I swayed on the stool, trying to process what he was saying.

  “Why?” I asked. “Why would she do that?”

  “I think she believed it,” he replied slowly. “She said she’d protect you, but only if I stopped writing. Otherwise you’d be on your own, at the mercy of that whole damned town. So I stopped writing. I couldn’t be here for you and you weren’t even a legal adult yet . . . She said your life would be a living hell. I knew she was right.

  Every word was like a knife cutting me.

  “Is that why you never came back to Callup?”

  “I did come back,” he replied. “The summer you finished high school. I saw you with Farell at the park. He was in his chair and you were racing each other. You were both laughing and you looked so happy together, Darcy. I had nothing to give you and he had everything. Not even I’m that big of an asshole.”

  I swallowed, studying his face. He was telling the truth, absolutely no question. I couldn’t believe Renee had done it. Even now she was like a mother to me. Why?

  To protect Farell, of course.

  She’d been his mother first.

  “That fucking sucks,’’ I whispered.

  “Were you happy with him?”

  I sighed, wishing I’d never gotten out of bed that morning. It was too much. All of it.

  “At first, maybe. He didn’t get bad until after we’d been married for close to a year. He’s got a lot of pain—the nerve damage makes it almost constant. He was drinking more and more, and he burns through pain pills like you wouldn’t believe. Then he started gambling and things got ugly. His parents spent more than six hundred thousand bucks bailing him out that I know of. Like I said, they’ve finally cut him off.”

  “You never answered my question—did he hurt you?”

  “He never hit me. My lawyer tells me he was verbally abusive, whatever that means. All I know is that I was dying inside. I’m not ready to be dead.”

  We stared at each other, then he reached out to wipe something off my cheek. A tear. I hadn’t even realized I was crying.

  “I want you, Darce,” he said, his words more intense than anything I’d ever heard in my life. “I never stopped wanting you. Not for one day. You’ve been in my blood since we were kids.”

  Swallowing, I closed my eyes, desperate to carve out enough space to think. This was huge, all of it. Him still wanting me, learning that Renee had set me up.

  That hurt. I’d trusted her.

  I guess there wasn’t much I wouldn’t put past the Evans family. There was a reason I hadn’t asked for anything in the divorce—their money didn’t just come with strings.

  It came with chains.

  “I’m not ready for a relationship yet,” I said, looking at him again. “For the first time in my life, I’m free. I’m not sure I can give that up again.”

  Boonie’s eyes darkened.

  “Give me a chance,” he said softly. “That’s all I’m asking.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  I spent the rest of the day obsessing about our talk. Part of me wanted to call Farell’s mom and confront her—she’d been my ally, my savior, even my friend for so long now.

  I couldn’t believe she’d done this to me.

  Of course, she probably thought she’d been doing me a favor. In her mind, I was a poor girl who’d done well for herself, marrying into one of the most prominent families in the valley. I knew better than that now.

  You can’t buy happiness.

  By that evening I was tired of thinking, so a night partying with Kelly and her friends sounded perfect. I didn’t know the girls that well, but we’d gone out a few times and they were all fun and nice. Not only that, there was a huge car show going on downtown. Thousands of people were flooding the streets to see the hot rods on parade, which meant lots of good music, cheap booze, and dancing in my future. So wha
t if Boonie confused me? That didn’t mean I shouldn’t go out and have fun.

  Tomorrow was soon enough to figure him out.

  Popping a beer, I pulled on a short skirt and a sexy thong/bra combo I’d bought for myself to celebrate the divorce. I finished it off with a low-cut top that showed off my shoulders, and cute sandals. My hair was long and free, my makeup was just this side of slutty, and I was ready for action.

  Unfortunately, it was still two hours before I was supposed to meet my friends. I decided to go down early, finding a spot on Sherman Avenue to sit on the curb and watch the cars drive by. All around me little children jumped and squealed, their parents drinking beer and arguing about whether Ford or Chevy should rule the world.

  Time passed as the kids disappeared and younger people started filling the bars. It felt good to be out. Farell didn’t like being around people after his accident, so it seemed like we always ended up staying home.

  The Ironhorse had a live band for the night, and they’d opened up their big sliding glass doors onto the street, creating a beer garden outside. Kelly was already there when I came in, along with her friend Cherise. I knew there were more girls on the way, but they weren’t going to join us until later. We did a round of shots before hitting the dance floor. By midnight I couldn’t remember why the hell I’d ever considered staying home.

  “I need water!” I yelled in Kelly’s ear, lurching toward the bar. We had a table staked out in the back corner, but flagging down a waitress was next to impossible.

  “Grab a pitcher for the table!” she replied, turning back to the dance floor. I wound my way through the crowds of people, trying not to fall on my face. I’d lost track of how many shots we’d done. More than a lot, but not too many. Yet. I giggled at the thought—when was the last time I went out and just let myself go?

  The bar was slammed, of course. Not exactly a huge surprise, but I didn’t mind waiting my turn. I could use the break. Even though I was in good shape, all that dancing left me out of breath and covered in sweat. I probably looked like hell, but that didn’t matter—I wasn’t here to find a man.

  Fuck romance. Being single kicked ass.

  I should tell that to Boonie, I decided. He might be hot and have a nice dick, but I wasn’t going to let any man tie me down. Ha!