GUNNER: The Immortal Devils MC

by Zoey Parker

  “You ever ridden before?”

  “Honestly? No, I haven’t,” she admitted.

  “I find that hard to believe. You’re probably never going to want to get off the bike, knowing you,” I joked with her.

  She slid onto the bike behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist.

  “Whatever you do, don’t let go,” I said with a smirk.

  Her arms gripped me tighter and I felt her legs spread wide along mine. She leaned forward against me, pressing her chest against my back. I appreciated that she was reaching out to me to get further into my life, but I also knew she was only doing it for a job. That knowledge created a strange mixture of emotions in me.

  If Sierra hadn’t found the diamond yet, there was still time to distract her from her goal and make her abandon her work for me. Knowing how physical she was, and how much she craved pleasure, I figured giving her a ride on the back of my bike would get me just a little closer to achieving that level of distraction.

  I fired up the engine and walked the bike out of the garage, into the afternoon sun. I realized I probably should have told her to wear sunscreen so she wouldn’t burn, but I figured she could use a reminder of the ride for a few days afterwards.

  I revved up the engine a few times before letting her go.

  “You ready?” I shouted over the bike.

  “Yeah, let’s go,” she shouted back, and I felt her arms tighten again.

  Having her pressed against me made the ride so much better than it would have been otherwise. I didn’t take the bike out much these days except for when it was for the MC. We would occasionally go riding together, or I would drive it to meetings. Every once in a while we had a job to do that required us to take our bikes out.

  We had just been moving away from the biker image over the last few years. We had all become wealthy as The Immortal Devils, and with that wealth had come a change in lifestyle. We were still the MC, and we were still known as bikers, but our business had grown so far beyond what we had done as just another motorcycle club or biker gang.

  As one percenters, we definitely qualified as a biker gang, but as successful businessmen, we ran a motorcycle club. The difference was merely superficial, but the terms meant different things to different people. We had recognized that early on and used those differences when we needed to.

  One of the great things about being on the back of the bike, whether for business or for pleasure, was that none of that mattered for a little while. For a time, no matter how brief, it was just us. Just us and the road. It felt natural to be back on the road with my old lady riding behind me.

  I felt free. On the road there was no diamond. There was no other underworld boss trying to steal it from me by using a gorgeous redhead to seduce me while she looked for it. There were no concerns about the woman riding behind me with her arms wrapped tightly around my waist, other than making sure she was still there. There were no arrangements like the one Sierra and I had made. No, as long as we were on the bike together, we were together.

  I turned away from town so we could stay on less travelled roads. If it was her first time, we were going to make it special. We were going out to my favorite scenic route so she could see the beautiful land surrounding the city.

  This was what it was about. It was about making my own rules and following my own path. I figured that was something Sierra could understand. I also figured that when we got back, she would want us to forge our own path together and stop working against each other.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sierra

  The motorcycle purred underneath me after he first cranked her up. I had never realized just how open the ride was on the back of one. I had always known that it was very different from riding in a car, but there was nothing between my body and the outside world, or the road.

  I held onto Gunner for dear life as he pulled out of his driveway and onto the road. The bike roared between my legs, sending vibrations up through my whole body. The tender, delicate places between my legs trembled with ecstasy to have Gunner pressed against me while experiencing such strong vibrations.

  That wasn’t the exciting part, though.

  He steered us away from town. He took me into the suburbs, the smaller communities spaced out around our big city. There were stretches of nothing for miles, and we would suddenly drive past or through a small neighborhood, or something that looked like a downtown area as we rolled through another of the smaller towns surrounding us.

  My work took me to so many different places, but it was always by plane or in the backseat of a cab or hired car. Travelling by motorcycle was something completely different. I didn’t just see the small, old buildings and the tall, wide houses; it was like I was right there in front of them. In a way, I was, but I felt more like I was standing in front of them instead of sitting in a car and missing half of what passed me by.

  Once we were out of the big city and into the smaller towns, everything looked very different. Whereas in the city, the buildings and houses would push nature aside, the opposite seemed to be true once we pulled into a smaller town on the outskirts. We would pass newer subdivisions where everything was in its proper place and every lot looked exactly the same. Then, we would pull through an older neighborhood, and it seemed the houses were built so that they didn’t get in the way of the trees or rows of hedges.

  After riding on the back of the bike for a while, I couldn’t feel my body. I was numb from the vibrations, but it felt great. I felt free. I understood why so many people loved motorcycles. I understood the culture of rebellion that surrounded them.

  I had to stay focused, though. This trip wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about connecting with Gunner on any sort of meaningful level. This trip was about merely convincing him that I was trying to do that.

  We pulled up to an old store with a porch out front. Several men stood around talking on the porch when we stopped. Gunner pulled up to the building and cut the engine. The men looked over at us and nodded their heads in greeting.

  I pulled my helmet off and shook out my hair. I stretched out my jaw. My head felt cramped from being confined in the helmet for so long. Meanwhile, my skin felt as windblown as my hair would have been if I hadn’t worn the helmet.

  “Why are we stopping here?” I asked Gunner as he took off his helmet and climbed off the bike.

  “I just want to get up and stretch my legs, grab a drink, and maybe hang out for a few minutes before we get back on the road and head home,” he answered.

  “Sounds like a plan. What are we getting?” I climbed off the bike behind him and followed him up the steps of the porch.

  “I’m just going to grab a bottle of root beer. You can get whatever you want,” he told me.

  “Root beer? Okay,” I said under my breath as we walked into the store.

  Gunner nodded at the clerk behind the counter, and from the look they shared, I wondered if he knew the guy. And if he knew the guy, I wondered if I hadn’t just found myself in trouble for planning on screwing him over with the diamond.

  As we walked down separate aisles of the store, I noticed a couple of people giving Gunner nasty looks. They knew what he was and obviously didn’t approve. I wondered if that was why he opted for the businessman and playboy look he normally sported over the biker look.

  I watched as he went straight for the glass root beer bottles in the cooler. I grabbed a bottle of water. When we got back up to the counter, he had two bottles in his hand. The clerk punched the prices in instead of ringing us up with a scanner like so many other places did back in town.

  “Here.” Gunner handed me one of the bottles on the way out of the store.

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  “You’re drinking one with me,” he said.

  “Okay.” I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but root beer? Were we ten again?

  Once outside the store, he walked over to one of the picnic tables on the wide porch. The men hanging out by the door didn�
�t even glance at us as we passed. The whole scene just seemed surreal. We were in a town that looked like it had missed the last thirty years or more, sitting down on the porch at an old convenience store, and drinking root beer like we were kids again.

  “What’s all this about?” I asked him after we both took sips from our bottles.

  “I just like to come out here from time to time.” He looked around like he was really taking in the scenery. “You know, if I ever take the time to just get on the back of my bike and ride, I like to come out here, sit on this porch, and have a root beer, just like when I was a kid.”

  “Wait,” I stopped him. “You mean, you used to come out here when you were a kid?” Oh, it was getting thick out here. By trying to make him think I was trying to connect with him on a deeper level, I had opened the door to something I did not need to know. I didn’t need to know where he was from or what his childhood was like. Those things would just make what I had to do that much harder.

  “This is where I grew up, Sierra,” he told me.

  I sat back and looked around. The area was obviously poor. The men standing by the door wore old, worn clothes that looked stained from years of hard work. I took a deep breath and looked around at the worn out buildings around us. If he had grown up in a place like this, it certainly explained why he didn’t have any personal pictures out in his office. Instead, it seemed he wanted to focus on his successes in life. I could definitely understand that.

  “Did it always look like this?” I asked him quietly as I took a sip from my root beer. Root beer just always tasted like childhood to me. I figured if someone wanted to reminisce, it was the perfect drink.

  “No, actually. You see that building on the corner over there?” He pointed across the street to where we had just crossed the railroad tracks before pulling up to the store.

  “The tall white one with the boarded up windows?” I asked. It also didn’t have a lot. It stood right on the curb. The door opened onto the sidewalk. Or, it would have, if the place still had a door. Instead, it had a couple of sheets of plywood where the door should have been.

  “When I was little, that was the local grocery store. Unless they built one further out, everyone has to drive into the city now to get groceries if they can’t find what they need in the store here.”

  “You’re kidding!” I couldn’t fathom that someone of his stature, both physically and financially, had ever lived in a place like this. All the houses were old and run down. I turned and looked down the porch at the other end of the store’s lot. Behind the store were boarded up houses.

  “Not at all. Sometimes I wish I was, but after living here, I definitely appreciate everything I have and everything I had to do to get it.” He nodded and took a long drink from his bottle.

  If there had been any one point during the whole situation with Gunner when I truly regretted what I had been planning on doing the whole time, that was it. It wasn’t that I felt sorry for him for having grown up in a poor little town. He had obviously done well for himself since leaving. What got me was that he had opened up to me the way he did, and I was still planning on screwing him over.

  I wished I had never met him. I wished I could have turned off everything I felt. I wished I could have forgotten everything that had happened between us. In that moment, I wished I could get up from the table and leave him sitting there alone. I didn’t even know where we were, but my phone was in my pocket. I could have had Coyote call a car for me.

  The temptation was strong.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked. “You’re having a hard time believing I came from a place like this, aren’t you?”

  “It is a little hard to believe,” I admitted.

  “Would you like to see where I grew up?” he asked, tossing his empty glass bottle into the large trash can at the corner of the porch.

  “You don’t have to show me.” I really felt guilty for how he was putting himself out there for me. I didn’t need to know everything about him. I just needed to know where that damn diamond was so I could disappear from his life.

  We were getting into things I couldn’t relate to. I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like, growing up around here, in a town that didn’t seem to have a name.

  “No, come on. I know it’s more than you bargained for, but come on. We’ve spent enough time together now that I think it’s high time we start really getting to know each other.” He stood up and grabbed my hand as he started walking past the table. He didn’t give me a chance to finish my root beer, but he grabbed my water for me.

  He threw on his helmet and straddled the bike. I climbed on behind him and put on my helmet. When I wrapped my arms around his waist, he handed me the water. He fired the bike back up drove onto the road, taking the first right and going down behind the store to where the vacant houses were that I was looking at from our seat on the porch.

  I didn’t know what to expect from him next. I had no idea what he was planning or why he was even showing me all of this. For all I knew, he could have had the rest of the MC waiting for me in one of the old houses and they were going to try to get information out of me.

  When we pulled up in front of one of the houses, I figured that was exactly what was going to happen.

  “This is it,” he said after he killed the engine again and took off his helmet.

  It was a square, one-story home with a small sagging porch in front. The windows had been boarded up at one point, as had the door, but the sheets of plywood were hanging off, leaving the openings exposed.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand again and pulling me off the bike with him.

  I looked around cautiously as we approached the house, stepping over uneven chunks of cracked sidewalk where grass was growing through. I felt like I had stepped into the twilight zone. This was not the same person whose house I’d been living in for the last several days. I didn’t know this version of Gunner.

  “Watch where you step.” He helped me up onto the porch and helped me step over the fallen board that had been in front of the door.

  I looked around the inside of the house. The floor seemed pretty solid, but the paint was peeling off the walls in large patches. Light spilled in through glassless windows and holes in the ceiling and roof. It gave the interior a mottled look.

  We were alone, and the grip Gunner had on my hand tightened. It became clear what was on his mind. He wasn’t bringing me here to guilt me into giving up my mission. He wasn’t bringing me here to ambush me with the rest of The Immortal Devils.

  He wanted to take me in this old abandoned house.

  As strange as it was, I was down for anything he had in mind.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Gunner

  I hadn’t thought about it until we were out riding, but I hadn’t taken the bike through my old neighborhood in a while. I was from a poor small town on the outskirts of the outskirts of town. I grew up beyond the suburbs in a small square wooden house that had fallen on some pretty hard times since I left home to find my way in the big city.

  I figured that since Sierra wanted to connect with me again, now was as good a time as any to go by and check on the old place. I didn’t own it, didn’t want to own it. After I left home, I had lost contact with my family, so I had no idea where they had gone, why they had abandoned the property, or anything. I didn’t know who did own it. All I knew was that it was falling apart.

  I had gone in a few times in the past and looked around. I had come out a few times and drank myself stupid in the main room, which had been our living room. I had spent the night in this old house on several occasions.

  Sierra was the first person I had brought out here with me, and as we stepped across the threshold, something came over me. It occurred to me as she followed me into the house that we were completely alone in there. It was dark, and no one would be able to see us unless they walked in on us while were together.

  Furthermore, she had agreed to let me command her a
nd control her body as if she were property. I squeezed her hand as we walked in to try to communicate to her what I was thinking.

  We stepped over debris in the floor.

  “Careful,” I cautioned her as we walked toward one of the back rooms, a room that had served as a bedroom when we all lived there.

  “Gunner, what are we doing here?” she asked from behind as I led her through the dark house.

  “Just remember our arrangement and watch your step,” I answered as I stepped over a limb that had fallen through the roof at some point.

  “Okay, this is definitely yellow.” I heard her humor beginning to return to her tone.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be careful,” I assured her.

  We stepped through alternating pools of afternoon light and shadow. I pulled her with me into the room that had been my bedroom when I was a child.