The Stray Sister: Blades and Red Skulls (Hellriders Book 1)

by Amy Law

  The Red Queen couldn’t follow Jess out of the forest and she cursed and threw metal shards after her. Jess was free and Cracker pulled himself up the other side of the rocky knob, dragged down by his wet clothes.

  Jess ran towards him and they met at the point of the summit. As they met, she pressed against the wetness in his clothes and felt his heartbeat and his heat like a current through the water, like a message in a primeval code, something that her body, her DNA, needed to decipher.

  They stood, gripped together, breathing hard, their bodies clinging hard and tight in a single throbbing mass of breathless wetness and heat.

  The water carried pulses between them, and Jess felt the hot beat enter through her hardening nipples, pump through her breasts and echo down her body to her core. In between her legs, the rising throb pulled ancient walls down and an iceberg began to crack open and melt.

  In her throat, the rhythm made a song, a song of sound, a song without words and the sound drew their bodies closer, tighter. Her muscles clenched. His heat, his living, breathing hardness, pressed though their wet, heavy clothes and made her need unbearable.

  She pulled at his clothes to free him. The wet shirt dragged on the ripples of his torso as it pulled out of his jeans. Droplets of water followed that line of fine hair pointing and leading the way down below his navel and behind the hefty buckle of his thick ancient leather belt.

  The water dripped down there, into the front of his jeans, down where his huge uncoiling hardness grew. She wanted to follow the rivulets of water, to chase them and dry him. To clean him. Rub him dry. Buff him with her breath. And with her tongue. Polish him to perfection.

  His jeans were heavy, sodden with the black water, and Jess had to pull and pull with all of her might to get them off him. As she clawed the denim down his clenched and bulging thighs, the strength of his huge erection rose above her.

  When his jeans were jammed down to his knees, she couldn’t wait or hold off any longer. Jess knelt and took the girth of his massive shaft between her hands. She gazed in rapture and girlish delight at the sheer strength and power of it, and in wonder at her own delicate hands being able to hold it.

  Heat pulsed through it and it had a scent like a dark magick. She knew that if she licked the length of it, popped the head of it between her cherry-red lips and lovingly held his soft sack as she slipped her mouth over the shaft, that she would release a power to defeat both of their enemies.

  Her hands slid around the mast of mighty manhood and marveled at the power of its pulses and the velvety roughness of its ridges. As her lips parted, the smoky, secret taste of power and will wove a wreath of mist across her tongue.

  Jess moaned her eyes widened. The huge slick bulb rose up to nuzzle between her grateful lips. It pressed hot on her open, wet mouth. She closed her lips over it. Lightning flashed and the ground shook beneath her with the burst of rolling thunder.

  Jess sat bolt upright, blinded by the morning sun, sobbing and bathed in a sheen of sweat.

  Chapter 7

  The next night, Bear and Cracker shared a joint and watched the evening horizon from the clubhouse stoop.

  “Haughey’s put a proposition our way. A run.”

  “Hardware? The Skulls’ hardware?”

  Bear nodded. The two men looked at each other awhile.

  Cracker said, “Don’t make sense, does it?”

  “Nope. Makes money though. They say it’s because of their two ranking officers being in the pen.”

  Cracker’s brow knotted. “I heard about Iron and Jam getting busted.”

  Bear said, “Haughey wants an answer, and John Reader wants to talk it through with you.”

  “Me?” Anger and confusion flashed in Cracker’s eyes, “Why me?”

  “John Reader thinks the Skulls could be setting us up for something.”

  “And he’d rather they set me up instead?”

  “No.” They both chuckled. “Well, yeah. Obviously. But he thinks there’s a way it could go down differently if you were willing to head it up it instead of one of us Blades.”

  Cracker shook his head and said, “Man, I hate business around guns. Some fucker always confuses the product and the deal.”

  Bear said, “Haughey’s sending Mace to crack out terms.”

  “Here to the clubhouse? Not out on a disused lot or in some beanfield?”

  Bear considered it, “Maybe he’s coming for the visitor’s rights.”

  Cracker’s lip curled. He held the smoke in and then said, “We’ll have to be sure and repay the kindness.”

  “Amen to that, bro.” Bear took the joint.

  Cracker shook his head as he looked up the road, “Can’t say I’m looking forward to seeing Mace, all the same.”

  “Nope. I don’t think his headlamps are anybody’s favorite sight.”

  Taking back the joint, Cracker said, “He’s got too much enthusiasm for mayhem and carnage.”

  “It’s useful to have a man that won’t flinch from a grim task, Cracker.”

  “Sure, but a man who relishes it, that always leaves some questions.”

  Bear nodded slowly and said, “Mace has a reputation for recklessness, too.”

  “Carelessness the way I hear it, plain old couldn’t-give-a-fuck-ness, in fact. He’d probably spitroast his grandma just to hear the funny noises she’d make.”

  “Truth, bro. A man like that’s a danger to everyone.”

  They were both quiet for a while. Then Cracker said, “You’re right, Bear, I’d sooner see his tailpipes any day.”

  Bear’s face screwed. “You just put a picture in my mind for which I do not thank you, bro.”

  Chapter 8

  When Mace finally did arrive, he lumbered into the smoke and noise of the clubhouse with the swagger of a visiting emperor. He was tall, broad and wiry, with wavy black hair and thick red lips framed by a thin mustache and pointed beard. His narrow green eyes flicked about in constant motion.

  Bear and Cracker stepped up to give him bro hugs and a club welcome, set him up with drinks and generally make him feel like the honored guest, although he seemed like he felt that way already.

  John Reader waited for him in the big chair in the club office at the back. When Bear said, “Come through. John’s waiting,” Mace grabbed the nearest two girls by their arms and dragged them along with him.

  Mace’s voice was like cracked glass. “Bring a bottle,” he told Bear.

  There was a form to club manners, and, whatever it was, sticking a big hand in the candy jar on your way to meet the club president wasn’t it. Cracker and Bear shared a look, but they led him to the office where John awaited.

  They showed him the way, then waited either side of the closed door while he took the girls and the bourbon inside to make the proposition that he had been sent to deliver. They heard squeals and yelps from the girls and occasional male grunts and growls.

  Now and then came an impact like a thwack or a thud. The proceedings lasted no more than fifteen minutes before the door opened. Mace filled the doorframe, one arrogant eyebrow cocked. His hand gripped the two girls’ wrists. The girls looked rather more disheveled than they had on the way in.

  John’s smooth, dark voice came from inside the office. “Give him the rumpus room.”

  The rumpus room was used for all kinds of activity that was of a partying nature. It was spacious and it had low lights, soft rugs and couches low tables and a stereo system. Thick, soft fabrics covered the windowless walls.

  As Bear and Cracker showed Mace inside, he held out the wrists of the two bedraggled girls. “Get me a couple of fresh ones.” Bear took Mace into the room to settle him with a spliff, maybe a line or two, and Cracker led the girls away.

  He had seen that he smaller of the two was limping. “You okay, Hazel?”

  She put on a bright little smile, “Yeah, Cracker. I’m great, thanks.” He doubted this had been her best night at the club. “You stepped up for the club there, Hazel. Go upstairs and
rest up tonight. Play some games or watch a movie. You too, Shereen.”

  Shereen’s eyelashes fluttered. “It’d be a lot more fun to play a game with you, Cracker.”

  He patted her ass and encouraged her up the steps, “That would be a heap more fun for me too than an evening entertaining the Neanderthal but, duty calls.”

  As their cute little butts wiggled—well, Hazel’s half wiggled—Cracker said, “I’ll have someone bring you some drinks. A little food maybe. Okay?”

  Shereen pouted as she called back, “Can’t you bring it?” and Hazel said,

  “Yeah, Cracker. Come play with us.”

  Cracker smiled. “You got a favorite prospect? If you do, I’ll try to send him.” Why not? Improve everyone’s evening. Everyone’s except his.

  The two girls giggled and they said, “Sparks! Send Sparks.”

  What really would improve his evening would be a visit from that fine, squirmy little Jesska. As the thought came to him he realized that he didn’t particularly want to see her around Mace, either.

  As Cracker passed the office, he looked in on John Reader. The big man’s frame was settled in the wide leather chair like he and it were made as a pair. His quiet, unhurried authority added as much of an impression of importance to the president’s chair as it gave him.

  John Reader looked up at Cracker and indicated for him to sit. He looked at Cracker for a long moment. Unmistakable strength, sharp intelligence and the kind of a mind that considers the future implications of every decision shone from his pale blue, hooded eyes, but what he was thinking, few ever attempted to guess.

  At length, he said, “So, Cracker, will you take the run?”

  “What did you negotiate with Mace?”

  “He said the Red Skulls can’t take the cargo because of the heat they’re getting while Iron and Jam are penned up. They want to hand it off to us.”

  “This month’s shipment or ongoing?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  John Reader poured a shot of bourbon for each of them. They clinked and each took a bite, then Cracker said, “How about the price?”

  “I offered him a number, he said, ‘perfect’.”

  Cracker’s eyes were still. “He took the first number you put out?”

  “Mmm. I told him we’d think it over.”

  The two men rolled their whiskey around and sipped some more. Blades’ president asked Cracker, “Will you take it?”

  “My team, my terms?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I will. The risk will be on me, but I think you and I both know what’s happening here.”

  John Reader raised his glass, “Let’s hope so.”

  Cracker clinked with him again, “So let’s keep all of this between you and me.”

  “Agreed. There’s enough subter-fucking-fuge in this mix already.”

  Chapter 9

  Jess wondered whether Cracker would actually remember asking her to come back to the clubhouse. He had admitted that he had a ‘game plan.’ She knew almost nothing about him. What little she did know all told her, stay away.

  The feelings he had stirred up were deep and they were real, but she knew they were wrong, or at least that they were liable to bring her a lot of trouble and probably not much else.

  As she stepped through the door of the Blades clubhouse that second night, Jesska had a strange sensation in her stomach, a feeling somewhere between fear and elation. A feeling that she didn’t trust.

  Several of the bikers acknowledged her with a look, a nod or a raised hand as she waded through the clubhouse fug. She didn’t see Bear or Cracker. At the bar, Gyro said, “Hey, Jess. What can I get you?”

  She asked for a beer and then, as he handed her a cold bottle, just casually she asked him if he knew where Cracker was. He said that he wasn’t sure but he’d ask someone to take a look for her.

  Mary Ann stepped up from behind her with a breezy smile. “Oh, I think he’s in the rumpus room, back there,” and her grin widened as she linked Jess’s arm, “C’mon, honey, I’ll show you through.”

  Mary Ann steered Jess through to the back of the bar, down a long corridor and opened a door ahead of them. Inside were Bear, Cracker and another biker, who had the two dancers in his lap.

  Cracker was sat on a couch building a spliff on a coffee table. He had on a ‘Who, me?’ little boy grin on that Jess could have knocked off with her beer bottle.

  The biker with all the girls on him waved to her and Mary Ann, “Hey, the more the merrier. Come on and get a line, girls.”

  A beautiful girl who looked Mexican danced in the middle of the room. A couple of the girls wore torn hold-up stockings, and all but one of them had on heels.

  Other than that, none of the girls wore any clothes. The girls’ skin all shone with a wet sheen. The room reeked of pot and sex.

  The brown-haired girl who had being working so hard under the tables last night was crawling up from below the table in front of Cracker, her head appearing between his thighs.

  A painful knot twisted in her stomach when Cracker said, “You want to come in and play, Jess?” with that damned grin again.

  “Nah, looks like you already got your hands full, Cracker.”

  The biker she didn’t know had a gleam in his eye and he said, “You can chow down on Cracker’s cock while the rest of us bros pump you up. How about that?”

  She didn’t look at him, but at Cracker. “Any one of these girls will do that for you, Cracker.”

  “Damned straight.”

  “Maybe I will, too.” She studied his eyes, “Not tonight though.”

  As she turned to go, Bear blocked her path. Cracker said, “Bear, let her go, okay?”

  Bear didn’t move. Cracker just said, “Bear,” and Bear backed away.

  Jesska strutted all the way through the club with her hips swaying and her head high, and straight out the door. Her eyes stung, but she didn’t risk making eye contact with anyone.

  The idea seemed to creep around the tops of her thighs, made her nipples kinda sore: a pile of hot, hectic bodies, all over each other, all into each other. But she didn’t want it like that. Not with Cracker, not now. Not like she was just a beer that could go warm any second and be replaced by another one.

  Chapter 10

  Jess made her way across the dusty lot to the shadows where she had parked. She swung her legs over her beloved bike, but she didn’t start it up straight away. She sat and thought about what had happened.

  She had wanted to come and get a peek at the MC world and she had certainly got that.

  She hadn’t been looking for an emotional attachment, and she wasn’t out in pursuit of the powerful feelings that had churned her insides. As she reached for her keys, she heard boots scrape quickly on the ground behind her.

  Cracker couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. “Woah! You sneak off around the corner, and you’re leaving on a motorcycle? I didn’t even know you could ride, girl.”

  She glared at him. “I keep quiet about it because I didn’t want you—didn’t want anyone in the club to see my damned bike.”

  “Why? You ashamed of it?”

  “Of a pristine nineteen fifty eight, four-forty-one BSA Shooting Star? Ashamed, are you nuts? I adore the fucking paint off of it.”

  “So?”

  “So I know you club guys and your ‘only American built motorcycles.’ I can’t ride a Harley, I’m too small. An eight-eighty-three Sportster is five hundred and fifty pounds. I can’t ride that.”

  She scowled. “If I showed up in front of the clubhouse on this, it might just as well be a damn Honda as far as you bikers are concerned. I’d get nothing but shit for it, so I kept it to myself.”

  The light was bad and she must have imagined it, but there was something that looked an awful lot like a glow of respect in Cracker’s eyes. Quietly he asked her, “This your only mount?”

  “No.” She sighed. He grinned. His grin just about melted her pants.


  “Come on, spill. You have got a Honda, right?”

  “No. But, like I said, it could just as well be. I’ve got a T120.”

  “A Triumph Bonneville? No good for club business, like you say, and you couldn’t follow with one either, but as a ride there aint much wrong with a Bonneville. What year?”