Taking a Dare

by J. A. Hornbuckle

  By the time he'd hit Missoula, Josh had been on his own for two months and twelve days. He'd slept in trees even when the wind was so strong he'd had to use his belt and the straps of his backpack to hold on. He'd eaten out of the dumpsters behind fancy restaurants and had learned how to lead on the truckers who wanted more than just to help get kid from spot A to place B.

  He'd been huddling in his thin little parka when he'd been picked up by one of the Hellions and put into their youth program. Something that took him but a week to figure out and begin to succeed at. Although, looking back, what he'd been given in the way of education, advice and the belief that he was a person worthy of being guided still held him in awe.

  Once he'd completed his six months in the program, the Jackson's had taken him in and he'd shared a room with Trey.

  To be raised as a biker.

  But the difference in the way a boy-biker was raised and the girls of the biker club were reared was like night and day.

  Girls were protected, coddled and treasured as much as any brother's machine.

  Boys, on the other hand, were taught early about honor, drinking and brotherhood. About the responsibility that came with having balls as they learned to fight and to whore around. And since Dare no longer had a set of parents, the entire club became his instructors, mentors and guides in all things Hellion. And Honey.

  Ryley.

  He'd tried everything he'd known to do short of riding into Spokane to be with her but had never received any response back and after a while, he'd stopped trying. Only getting his 'Ryley fixes' by overhearing Lock talking about her to others.

  Pulling into the Rosemont and using his credit card to put down a deposit to hold the entire second floor, Dare wondered again if she'd come with her club. Funny how out of all the girls he'd been with, of all the women he'd had in the ensuing years, he'd never forgotten her.

  Had, actually, held her memory and their time together close in a secret, not-to-be-shared place within himself.

  Catching a glimpse of his visage in the reflective covering of his truck's window Dare wondered what she'd think of him now. Lock had said that Ryley'd thought he was hot. Shit, the little vixen's eyes had told him that herself.

  Would she still think he was?

  He was taller and had filled out quite a bit since he'd last seen her. He saw one side of his fu-man-chu mustache lift as he grinned at the thought.

  Probably didn't even fuckin' matter. She was more than likely married by now since he'd heard some years back that she'd been engaged. Maybe even had a rug-rat or two hanging off her leathers. Or she could be hella fat and weathered like a lot of girls got after slapping out a couple of Hellionettes.

  Nah, he'd be better off if Ryley hadn't made the trip.

  It would help keep his mind on what they'd found in Billings, which Dare was sure would more than meet the club requirements. Since the business side, Hellion Construction, would also be part of the new digs it only made sense for the club to look at buying a place big enough for the compound, which would include the clubhouse and a yard slash warehouse to contain all their equipment, trucks and inventory.

  His team had zeroed in on two properties and Dare wondered what Brand and Bishop had found in their run to Great Falls.

  Each group had taken their trucks instead of their bikes even though the weather was perfect for a ride. But the area Dare'd had to travel through had the added complication of the Black Czars. The one's who had made it more clear to the Hellions that they were not to go into Czar territory without expressly given permission but then had tried to invade Hellion space. Luckily, the four Czars they'd found at the Big Bear café had left without incident after receiving a call from their own shithead of a pres.

  The Czar's were a motherfuckin' pain in Hellion ass, Dare decided.

  And while he had a real reason to take his truck on his mission, Dare thought the other team only rode in Brand's in order to be comfortable. There was no way he was going to let that shit go and planned on giving his brothers a fuck-load of grief about them protecting their pansy asses instead of using their machines.

  Idly noticing the bikes of their guests as he maneuvered the long length of driveway at the compound, Dare backed his big truck into a space back by the rooms. Though he had only been gone a couple of days, he was in the mood for a Honey hello and figured that he might as well make a night of it. Especially since he'd ensured the rooms wouldn't be taken up by overnight guests of the Spokane variety.

  Dare stepped into the clubhouse and was greeted with a wall of sound. Music and voices that were heard along with pretty giggles and feminine squeals from the direction of the kitchen. He spied Trey sitting at the bar with Gus, the man who held the gavel of the Spokane chapter. Dare noted that the older man was now sporting long ribbons of gray in his ponytail.

  Getting jostled from the side, Dare caught the arm of the Hellion who'd almost ran him down. "Shit, Hardwood. Where's the fuckin' fire?"

  "Dare! You're back!" Hardwood's normally quiet voice was loud and his face was flushed. Dare also noted the bright smell of tequila on his recruit's breath. "Just wanted to clue the brothers in on the Spokane Honeys. God, they're hot!"

  "You better not fuckin' let Lulu hear you say that," Dare cautioned with a laugh, knowing the HC receptionist and live-in lover of Hardwood, also known as Mel, would have his balls for breakfast. The rule between the two youngsters was one of 'look but don't talk and especially do not goddamn touch'. "If she catches you eyeing another Honey…"

  "I wasn't," Hardwood replied quickly, before lifting a hand and scratching the back of his head. "Well, not much. I needed to make sure Lu was driving tonight and Donny asked me to scope the shit out since I was like going to the kitchen 'n' all."

  Yeah, junior was a couple of sheets to the wind which had Dare laughing again. Not that long ago the kid had sworn he didn't drink the hard stuff. A couple of runs later and it was determined that tequila was the kid's personal flavor in adult beverages. And the Texas in Hardwood's speech always made an appearance when he'd had a few.

  Dare took a few steps towards the bar and seemed to be dragging Hardwood along with him. Shaking his arm in order to remove the kid didn't work. Nor did his muttered, "you're not my choice in arm candy, shithead."

  "There's a girl in there with aqua eyes! No shit. Dead-on aqua like the color of the ocean you see in those travel posters." At Hardwood's words, Dare froze in his tracks.

  Ryley.

  "Really?" was all Dare could seem to force out of his mouth, out of his fuckin' lungs.

  "Yeah. Really! And she fucking asked about you, man. Wanted to know if you were still with the club."

  Fucking hell. Ryley. She'd had made the run.

  Dare glanced over his shoulder at the swinging doors to the kitchen but couldn't see anything doing. Though he wasn't sure if he was disappointed or relieved she wasn't in view. But his heartbeat was racing at just the thought she was just one fuckin' room away.

  "Need to recap with Trey," Dare mumbled and pried the kid's fingers from his arm before continuing on to the bar. He took time to show his respect to the visiting club, greeting the brothers he knew on either a hug with a back thump or a handshake and a fist bump. He saw that Gus wasn't as enthusiastic in his greeting as the rest of his men. And Leif, Ryley's brother, gave an equally chilly hello. He was convinced the almost cold salutation was because they were still holding his brief connection to Ryley against him.

  It had been over ten goddamn years for Christ's sake!

  "Gotta do a recap with my boys, Gus," Trey said, coming off his bar stool and slapping the back of the older man next to him. "Catch up with you later."

  Dare was one of the first ones at the large table in the back of the big room and he'd planned it that way. He wanted a seat that faced the kitchen even if he was unwilling to admit to himself why he had to have it.

  He let Huff and Silo go first to recap their journey to Great Falls with Bishop punching in the
info into his laptop and obtaining the satellite views of the properties they'd found. "There's no other brotherhood presence that we could fuckin' find and by having a place there, we'd have better goddamn bids for work along highway 2 or highway 200," Huff summed up.

  "Do we have a lot of bids for those corridors?" Trey asked with a frown. Even Dare knew that those highways careened through a lot of forestry lands and bordered a couple of Indian reservations.

  The men all looked at each other before Bishop called Hardwood over. With his new job as a Collection Agent instead of an electrician, the recruit also assumed the duties of logging in all the request for bids.

  "Yo', meat!" Bishop called for a second time and Hardwood's head popped up from the group he was elbow deep in at the far edge of the bar. Without delay, the huge young man wove his way through the tables and stood next to where the council were seated. "How many RFB's did we get in the fuckin' vicinity of highway 2 or 200 in the last two weeks?"

  Hardwood blinked a couple of times before answering, "none, that I know of. The only ones I've sheen are for Billings up through Glendive and then Butte. And for those there were forty-sheven with the shplit between commercial and reshidential at 62% to 38% reshpec…ah, respectively."

  "Thanks, Mel," Brand rumbled with a one-sided grin at how the recruit was weaving on his feet and trying to talk clearly before dismissing him so he could go back to his fun. As soon as the younger man was out of earshot, the big Croatian turned to Dare and said, "he carries all of that info in his fucking head?"

  "I know, right? The kid's always doing or saying stuff that shocks the shit out of everybody."

  "Told you. Handles every fucking thing we throw at him and masters it," Trey told the group. More than a couple sets of eyebrows were raised at Trey's words because they all knew the praise was not cheaply given.

  It was Dare's turn to give his recap which was shorter than the other two, but he saw Trey's eyes light up at his description of the property sandwiched between the river and the freeway. "We'd still have to get all the approvals to run lines for power, water and sewage but I know its fuckin' do-able since there are more than a couple of occupied properties within a half goddamn mile of the site we're looking at."

  "Suck up," he heard big, bald Silo mutter under his breath as the large guy rubbed his nose.

  "Ass-kisser," Huff said with a cough.

  Dare laughed as he gave a one finger salute to both men in reply to their muttered comments.

  Trey viewed the laptop screen Bishop turned toward the president and nodded. "Get the particulars on it, Bish. I'll get with Burleson for his info. Biggest fucking concern though is the motherfuckin' Czars and their shithead of a chief." No one made mention of their play when the Czar's had come into their neck of the planet.

  "Yeah, 'bout that," Silo said, leaning his forearms on the table. "With Spokane here we have more than seventy fuckin' brothers on tap. Maybe now's the time to call the shithead out for a sit down." Shithead was the only name the Hellion's used when it came to the Czar's gavel-holder in spite of the council knowing his name.

  Trey's eyebrows rose and Dare saw him glance at the other president who was still holding court at the bar. "You just might be onto something, Si."

  Dare just happened to shift his gaze to the doors of the kitchen and saw a bevy of beauties start pouring out, each carrying one of the club's large industrial size metal pans. As the Honeys walked to the bar, it was to catcalls, whistles and shouts of appreciation from the brothers in the club. Sounds that Dare knew wasn't only for the food but for the view as well.

  Ryley was the fourth one in the line.

  And she hadn't changed a motherfuckin' bit 'cept to get even more fuckin' beautiful.

  Chapter Six

  I'd tried to get out of the line up to carry the food in especially after I'd heard Dare's laugh, a sound I hadn't heard in a long freaking time. Too long. But was a noise that was still stuck in a place deep, deep inside me and had my heart booming and the shakes start at the sound.

  The Honeys though were having none of my hiding in the kitchen shit.

  Dallas was the one that shoved the huge pan of mashed potatoes into my hands and since she was Trey's old lady there was no way in the world I could refuse. As Trey's chosen, she held the roost in this part of the hive. Although she didn't lord it over the rest of us like Wolf's woman in Sheridan had. Lucky for everybody, that bitch was long gone having run off with an Ohioan Outlaw if the rumors were true.

  Dallas acted just like the rest of us even though she dressed down a bit more than some of the Honeys. In fact, if you didn't know she belonged to Trey, you wouldn't even have known she was the queen bee. And she seemed to cater to Dee a lot which didn't make sense to me.

  Dee had been the last president's, Big Duke's wife. But when he was gone, she should've been shown the door. At least she would've been in Spokane. My dad didn't allow that kind of shit to go down, stating the older, newly-single Honeys created more havoc than anyone else in the club, including recruits. They were allowed to remain part of the women's activities but were never welcomed into the clubhouse, not even in the kitchen unless another brother decided to take them on.

  It had gotten so hot in the cooking space while we worked, I'd had to remove my long-sleeve t-shirt and just zipped my leather vest with the side laces pulled tight to wear over my bra. It left a little skin showing between my low riding leather pants and the hem of my vest but I figured I'd be in the kitchen the whole time and the only ones who'd complain would be my dad or my brother.

  They had a thing about me showing skin at a club.

  But when Dallas shoved the heavy pan at me, I had no choice but to take it and carry it out to the bar no matter what I was or was not wearing. After setting it down in the space Dee pointed out, I used my belt-loops to pull up my leathers and glanced around the big clubhouse only to see wall to wall men.

  The crowd parted just as I was taking the scenic route through Hellion man-country and I got my first eyeful of Dare. Sitting at a table with Trey and the other Hellion-Missoula men, he looked so goddamn good, my knees got weak and I grabbed onto the edge of the bar in order to stay upright.

  God, how could he look almost exactly the same but so different all at the same time?

  Balancing his chair on the back two legs, his eyes met mine and even from where I stood, I could see the heat in them. That's what I remembered most from when we'd first met. How his deep brown eyes could take on a sexy heat that was visible, that scored through a girl if she wasn't careful.

  I had been too young to know about being careful.

  And too immature to even try.

  I let my eyes travel over him, noting the changes the years had made. He'd always been tall, more than a half a foot longer than my own 5'6" but with lean definition. Dare had obviously hit the weights because now he was much, much bigger with muscles almost on top of other muscles easily seen rippling under his t-shirt. I noted the addition of ink on one of his arms that started at his wrist, moved upward and had me wondering where exactly it ended.

  As my gaze traveled, I saw evidence of his heavy beard that was then just scruff as if he hadn't shaved that morning. But the full mustache that dripped down the sides of his mouth to his chin added character to his chiseled handsomeness and was probably the envy of more than one brother.

  My heart skipped a beat and my breath seized as he turned his eyes forward and caught mine with laser-like intensity. It was as if our shared stare caused the rest of the world to fall away and there were no other people, no noise, no music to intrude on our moment. Nothing but the two of us linked together by just our eyes. And that shared look, a stare that had my body reacting as if I'd been electrified was only broken when I saw him lift his glass as if to salute me before it covered his grin.

  A grin I remembered but didn't have near enough memories of.

  A grin that was like water on my parched heart.

  "You might wanna save the eye-fuck wi
th Dare until your dad's not around," Lock murmured as she leaned against my shoulder. I glanced over the crowd and found my father was standing away from the bar but had his head turned towards the back of the room. He was frowning as he turned back to me. Shit! Almost twenty-six and my pops still was trying to run interference in my damn life. Even my brother got in on the act, glaring at the back of the room. I know I'd given them justification for their protectiveness but they needed to once and for all let that shit go.

  My gaze returned to Dare again only by then he was talking with the other men at the table, his face turned to the brothers.

  You'd think that nine years, seven months, three weeks and almost one day would've dulled my memory of my time with him so long ago, but from my body's reaction to seeing him again, that hadn't happened.

  I still wanted Dare.

  Had wanted him badly from the time I was fifteen.

  But that want had deepened over time and was now layered with a woman's deep desire.

  *.*.*.*.*

  Dare couldn't remember another time in his goddamn life when he'd been so motherfuckin' miserable.

  To have her so close was a goddamn dream.

  To not be able to touch her was motherfuckin' torture.

  Even his cock was complaining after having gone to full when Hardwood had said she was in the clubhouse. And the beast had started positively throbbing when she'd come into view.

  Fuck, but she was gorgeous. More dazzling than he remembered. She'd been built back in the day but the deep, full curves she carried as an adult almost screamed for a man's hands to reach, to touch. But no one would, he knew. Not as the bona-fide daughter of the Spokane Hellions. Even if she was unclaimed, which he suspected she probably wasn't, no brother in his right mind would ever treat or touch her in an inappropriate way. While most single Honeys were fair game when it came to sex with the members, daughters were different. Especially the female kin of whoever held the gavel.