He saw her throat move as she swallowed. “What if he takes my measure and doesn’t like what he finds?”
“That won’t happen.”
“But what if it does?”
He was worrying frantically about the same thing. He said, again, “That won’t happen.”
“Ghost.”
“Don’t give him a reason,” he pleaded. “Yes, sir, no, sir, and don’t say shit about your family, or where you come from. Head down, eyes up. Mags.” He was panting a little now. “The Dogs. My brothers.” A curse in his mouth. “This isn’t like the movies. They’re scary, plain and simple. Anyone caught talking about them around town ends up six feet under.”
Her breath caught with a wordless gasp.
He got up from the chair and walked to her, each step heavier than the last. She was scared, and it was his fault. He’d put that wild look in her eyes. He’d put her in danger, simply by association.
He put his hands on her arms – soft, thin, breakable as twigs – and stared into her eyes, blue now, blue. Like storm clouds. He’d made a few big promises in his life. He knew what it felt like when one was building in his chest. Like now.
“They’re scary,” he repeated. “But I promise you. Mags, I swear, I won’t let them touch you. Stay close to me, and I promise nothing bad will happen to you.”
A tremor moved through her, all the way to the tips of her fingers. She could have said any number of things. She said, “I believe you.”
~*~
He cut her skirt in half. Worse than half. Maggie wanted to be angry about it, but he’d asked, and he apologized, and she had the feeling she wouldn’t be needing an ankle-length navy blue skirt soon anyway. She used Scotch tape to fix a temporary hem, which now fell scandalously high against her thighs.
Ghost handed her one of his shirts to wear instead of the sweater, a blue and white plaid flannel that he knotted in front so it showed off the nip of her waist. “Leave it unbuttoned.” So her tank top flashed cleavage. He had an extra leather jacket in the hall closet, too big, but thick and well-made, warm, with lots of zippered pockets. She wore her black pumps.
She didn’t look in the mirror before they left, just a quick glimpse into the side of the toaster so she could apply her lipstick. She didn’t really want to see herself.
Rita showed up, managing to look both disapproving and indifferent. “Whatever,” she said when Ghost thanked her for coming on such short notice.
Then they were outside, getting on the bike; and it was cold, and Maggie really didn’t want to be on this damn Harley while she was wearing a too-short skirt.
Before he started the engine, Ghost twisted to look at her over his shoulder, expression serious in the moonlight. “Whatever happens tonight, just hold onto me and you’ll be okay,” he said.
She wanted to believe him – she’d told him so already – so she did.
~*~
It was a large tract of land off Industrial, right on the river’s edge. Waterfront commercial property with boundless possibilities. The city had offered to buy it a few years ago, and a boat dealership a few years before that. But Duane hadn’t agreed, and so it lay fallow, weed-choked and litter-strewn, nothing but dead cats and untapped potential. There was the clubhouse. That low gray building with too few windows, too large a pavilion, and the strange look of a business masquerading as a residence.
Ghost tried to see it through Maggie’s eyes as they approached, the wind funneling around them, her arms tight around his waist. Did she think there was anything beautiful about the moon-silvered grass, never mown, bowing and rippling? Or was it a ruin?
As they neared the driveway, he saw the blaze of fires burning in the fifty-five gallon drums, swore he could hear shouted laughter over the growl of the bike. It was in full swing.
Maggie’s arms tightened, fingers catching at his shirt when he turned into the lot. The shadows of men stood backlit by the fires, sinister and too-large. Bikes were lined up like wicked dominoes at the curb.
Please, he thought, a formless prayer. And then they were parking, and he was shutting off the bike, and they were here.
He was slow about putting down the kickstand, taking off his helmet. Maggie let out a deep breath, a rush of warm air against the back of his neck. He was so nervous, and he wanted to shake, and fret, and take a few shots of something. But this was his world; he had to keep it together for Maggie. He’d told her to hold on to him, and he’d be damned if he let her down.
He helped her off the bike and stood up, shoulders squared, face the tightest, bravest mask he could conjure. Maggie stood in his shadow, trembling like a new colt. He put his arm around her waist.
“It’s fine,” he told her, grateful his voice came out steady. “We’re gonna walk in the front door, go up to the bar, get drinks, and go sit down. No sweat.” Until he had to introduce her to Duane. “Just lean on me, sweetheart, and it’ll be over before you know it.”
“You make it sound like a medical procedure,” she joked, but it fell flat. And then she said, “Okay,” and smoothed her hair back, gave him a smile that melted his insides. “Lead the way.”
He took her hand, laced their fingers together. Please.
Snippets of conversation floated toward them as they walked to the door, accentuated by the crackle of flames.
“…no fucking way.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“…blood everywhere…”
“…heard he got shot outside of Little Rock…”
“Fuck you, asshole!”
The air smelled of wood smoke, and charcoal, and beer, and sweat. Hints of road dust and unwashed male bodies.
Ghost opened his hand against her hip, cupped it around the bone there, felt the warmth of her skin through the fabric of her skirt. Held her close, felt the frailty of her ribcage against his arm.
Please, please.
When he opened the front door of the clubhouse, the noise from within rolled out and assaulted them. Air heavy with cigarette smoke, clouded with competing layers of perfume and sweat. The place was louder and rowdier than a strip club. Dogs never needed to go to those kinds of places because the strippers always came to them.
Ghost pulled Maggie in even tighter, he was probably suffocating her, and stepped inside.
When he was a little boy, when Duane was just a spitefully cheerful uncle who visited the farm on occasion, resplendent in leather, his bike shiny in the driveway, Ghost hadn’t understood why his mother seemed to hate the man. Her mouth would press into a thin white line and she’d shake her head the second Duane was out the door. “That man.” A curse. To a seven-year-old boy, the sight of bikers riding in formation was a vision, the stuff of fantasies. But then he was a teenager, and he attended his first party, and he understood what his mother had been on about.
Tonight was no different. Music blared – it would be a mix of Southern rock and heavy metal – and the bar was already tacky with spilled drinks, crunchy from spilled peanut and chip bowls. Brothers, more than the usual crew, shot pool, smoked, sat around on couches and chairs, talking too loud in an attempt to be heard over the stereo. A girl in a black bikini danced on a table; another lay across two chairs, this one topless, while Bruno sucked tequila out of her bellybutton. Desi was getting a blowjob. Justin was snorting a line off yet another girl’s thigh. Sampson and Brutus practiced with throwing knives at the dart board, a game they’d invented and creatively dubbed “Knife Darts.”
Hound was tending bar, and that was where Ghost headed, fingers digging into Maggie’s hip as they wended their way between bodies.
“Just don’t look,” he told her. “Stick close.”
If she responded, he couldn’t hear.
~*~
An older man with a kind smile and keen eyes handed two whiskeys across the bar to Ghost and gave her a wink. “Don’t think too badly of us, darlin’.”
It was a little late for that.
Maggie had been here less than three minute
s and she’d decided three things about the Lean Dogs.
One: they were a grizzled, sunburned, ill-kempt, unattractive lot. Beards, and greasy bandanas, and beer guts.
Two: they were all going to die young, be it from overdose, liver failure, bike crash, or syphilis.
And three: they were fucking disgusting.
The floor was sticky and crumb-covered; she thought she caught puddles of cat litter, no doubt poured over things she didn’t want to think about. Cobwebs danced up in the corners, fluttered at the edges of decorative signs and mounted deer skulls. The place reeked of pot smoke and BO. And then there was public sex happening. She knew kids in her classes who went on double and triple dates, making out and feeling up together in cars, or darkened living rooms, but it was nothing compared to this flagrant display.
Ghost put his arm around her and steered her toward a shadowy corner, and she went willingly. The farther they were from the fray, the better.
A black leather love seat sat beneath a neon Coors Light sign and Ghost pulled her down to sit beside him, arm never leaving her waist. She took a deep breath and wished she hadn’t, coughing on the smoke. It burned her eyes, her nose, her throat. When Ghost smoked at home, she thought it was sexy, that sharp smell and the way his mouth curved around the cigarette. This, though, was a wall of smoke. She couldn’t keep it out of her lungs, couldn’t turn her head away and wait for it to dissipate.
“Drink,” Ghost said, nudging her hand with his glass. “It’ll help.”
With the smoke? No. But she guessed it would make this whole experience more tolerable.
She was used to drinking it with Coke, and the first sip moved over her tongue like fire. The second sip was easier. And the third.
Maggie took a shallow breath through her mouth and scanned the crowd, withdrawing into herself the same way she did at cotillion, letting the scene come to her in a sequence of easily-catalogued details. If she could break something down, she could understand it; and to understand something was to find that it wasn’t as scary as she’d initially thought.
So she catalogued. The bottle-red hair on a woman – a groupie, a Lean Bitch – whose head bobbed over a man’s open fly, the same red as the lipstick on her stretched-open mouth. The gap in the smile of a man throwing small knives at a dartboard. The intricate dog tattoo on another man’s arm, the way it stretched and rippled and seemed alive with he lifted his beer bottle to his lips. The way a young member in a featureless cut that read Prospect across the bottom fetched beers and mixed drinks and carried them to the tables. The way the man doing body shots overfilled his groupie’s navel and tequila ran everywhere, all over the floor.
This was what happened, she thought, when no one told men what to do. Not mothers, not wives, not polite society, not the law.
She felt a pang of sadness, for herself, for them. For Ghost, his hand so tight on her hip she knew there’d be bruises tomorrow.
She turned her head to look at his face, the red and white sheen of neon in his eyes. He watched the goings-on with a pained expression, brows notched together, jaw clenched.
Without thinking, she reached to smooth her thumb along that tense, strong line of his jaw, saw the tendons in his neck leap in reaction. His eyes cut toward her, red, and white, and black.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice rough. “We’re animals.”
“Yeah.” She wasn’t going to disagree with the obvious. But: “It happens.”
He corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “I told you you didn’t want nothin’ to do with me.”
“Yeah, well, that was stupid of you.”
A real smile spread. “Yeah, I’m stupid. And you came out with me.”
She tried to give him a taste of his one-eyebrow lift, but she had to lift both together. “We’ve been here five minutes and you’re insulting my intelligence?” Mock-offended, biting back a smile of her own now.
“Nah. Never.” He set his drink down on the end table and used both hands to pull her into his lap, a development she wholeheartedly approved of. Like this, she could lean against his chest, feel his stubble against her throat when he hooked his chin over her shoulder.
“Okay. So,” she said, settling against him. He warmed her better than any sip of whiskey. “Introduce me.”
He smiled into her neck. “Okay.” And subtly pointed out the people in the room around them.
Hound was serving as bartender tonight; Ghost said he could track a man better than any blue tick. Justin was the one with the coke habit, Bruno the now-tipsy tequila drinker who’d decided to pour the rest of the bottle of Cuervo onto the groupie’s breasts and suck it off her nipples. Desi – who did look alarmingly like Desi Arnez – was sprawled across a sofa with the girl who’d just sucked him off, completely unconcerned that his pants were still open. Knife Darts was a game that Sampson and Brutus had invented – they looked like their names ought to be Sampson and Brutus.
He didn’t see everyone in here, he said; the others must be out by the fires.
The fires – the sight of them had bothered her when they first pulled up, made her think of hell breaking loose, and Mad Max post-apocalyptic wastelands. The smell of that smoke had been considerably more pleasant, though.
She turned her head so she could whisper in his ear. “Where’s Duane?”
He put his lips to her ear in turn. “Probably in back. He’ll be out here, though. He never misses a party.”
~*~
One whiskey left her warm, and then the prospect brought them another round and she was glowing. The horrors of the party seemed less important now; she was more amused by the goings-on than repulsed by them. Safe in the circle of Ghost’s arms, with his warmth and strength all around her, she was lulled into a false sense of wellbeing. This was just a funny diversion, and soon they’d leave and go home, where Aidan was asleep, and Rita was watching crap TV, and they would fall into their bed together. Theirs. Because she was his.
And then Ghost stiffened beneath her – not in a good way.
“Duane,” he hissed in her ear, and she wished she could take back those two whiskeys.
Her first instinct was to stand; years of good manners dictated she get to her feet, smile, shake hands, say it was a pleasure to meet him. But Ghost held her hips and kept her on his lap, so she didn’t budge, glancing out of the corner of her eye as a man came into view.
He didn’t look like Ghost. That was her first impression. He had dark hair and dark eyes, yes, but the man who stepped in front of her reminded her in no way of the man who held her on his lap.
Duane Teague was about six feet, and in good shape. Wide shoulders and narrow waist, hair trimmed, clean shaven save a shadow of stubble along his jaw. The biker life had aged him, deep lines around his eyes and mouth – laugh lines, but they struck her as cruel. His nose had been broken more than once, but it was a good look on him. The word rugged came to mind. He wore a Lean Dogs t-shirt under his cut, and his forearms were tan, and scarred, and strong. Big paws for hands, and more scars on his knuckles.
He looked down at her, made eye contact, smirked, and suddenly he was Ghost. The Ghost of the future, and it terrified her. He was the worst kind of frightening: you knew he could snap you in two, but there was nothing outward to warn you off. No repulsive scar, or deformity, or a bright blinking sign over his head. Unlike the beer-bellied, bearded men around him, he was handsome. And all the parables spoke of handsome devils – sin always looked like something you wanted.
“Kenny,” he greeted, and dropped down into the chair across from their loveseat. He turned the broke-down recliner into a throne. “She came.”
Ghost sat up straighter, took a deep breath, and rearranged her on his lap. His hand went to her hip again, fingertips fitting over the bruises he’d left earlier. “Yeah. This is Maggie. Mags, this is my Uncle Duane.”
Maggie tamped down her nerves and let her training take over, extending a hand. “It’s lovely to meet you.”
His sm
ile broke slow and sly, eyes moving over her in a way that was almost vulgar. Just a look, but it felt physical. “Lovely,” he echoed, taking her hand in his large, scarred, callused grip. He held the shake a beat too long, gaze boring into hers. “Aren’t you a pretty piece. Ghost, you didn’t say she was pretty.”
Ghost cleared his throat and Duane let go of her hand, slowly. “Didn’t think it mattered.” Voice tight, grip tight, thighs hard beneath her own. Tensed and ready for action.
Unfazed, Duane settled back in his chair, legs spread, relaxed, and a blonde groupie appeared at his elbow as if by magic, handing him a drink. She made as if to sit on the arm of the chair and he waved her away.
“Come back in five,” he instructed, and she retreated, head bowed.
Maggie felt panic welling in her throat. She was in so far over her head, she couldn’t see the surface anymore.
Duane took a long sip of his drink, savoring it in his mouth a moment. “Maggie.” His dark eyes had never left her, black and sharp. “How’d you end up with this dipshit?”
“Duane,” Ghost started, shifting forward. She felt the thud of his heart against her shoulder blade.
Maggie silenced him with a hand against his wrist. This was supposed to be about making a good impression. Duane’s insults were something she could handle right now – maybe the only thing. Small talk had never been her forte – just ask her elocution instructor – but she’d had a lifetime of sidestepping put-downs at home.
She met Duane stare-for-stare and prayed she didn’t wind up dead by the end of the night. “If we want to talk ‘dipshit,’ I was the moron who asked him to buy me beer. We met outside Hiram’s.”
His smile widened, delighted. “That right? What’d you ask for?”
It wasn’t the question she’d expected. “Whatever he could get for twenty bucks. Whatever he thought was best.”
American Hellhound Page 24
