Edge of Chaos

by Brynn O'Connor

  When they finally depart, Kayla locks the door and goes in the kitchen to find something strong to drink. She settles on a glass of red wine and collapses on her couch to decompress. Her hands begin to shake. Suddenly, she can’t breathe and she has to set her glass down to keep from dropping it. She begins to get light-headed and the room starts spinning.

  “What the hell?”

  She forces herself to breath slower even though her body’s telling her she needs more oxygen. Finally, she buries her face in a pillow and that does the trick. Pretty soon, she’s breathing normally and the dizziness has gone. She checks her pulse; seventy-five and even. Kayla picks up her glass and takes a long drink. What an afternoon.

  Chapter Thirteen

  My White Knight Dresses in Black

  Kayla’s about to pour herself another glass of wine when, all of a sudden, she just can’t stand to be in her house any longer. She quickly changes into a pair of skinny jeans, a white cotton tee, and her favorite pair of tennis shoes. When she first pulls out of the driveway in her new Camaro, she has no idea where she wants to go; all she knows is that she has to get away.

  After about forty-five minutes of driving around aimlessly, she suddenly realizes where she is; Luke’s neighborhood. And, without knowing why, she just turns and makes a beeline for Luke’s house. She’s surprised to see his bike sitting in the driveway. Maybe he works nights. She pulls over at the curb in front of his house. For the next ten minutes, she sits behind the wheel, trying to find a good reason for being here. Finally, she decides on the truth. She’s just too freaked out right now to stay alone in her house. She gets out and walks up to the front door. She’s about to knock when the door opens and Luke is standing there. Kayla has always prided herself on the fact that she is seldom swayed by someone’s physical attributes; she’s more of a, what’s on the inside, type of girl. Well, she was until she met Luke.

  Her heart flutters in her chest, seeing him standing in the doorway with nothing but a pair of black jeans on. He’s not wearing a belt and his jeans are hanging loosely around his hips. She can’t help but stare, and stare she does; this time beginning from his broad shoulders and his colorful tattoos. She allows her eyes to caress his powerful chest, letting them examine each bullet wound and every jagged slash from a knife. One more time her eyes find the hash marks running down the length of his bicep on his right arm and she is disturbed to find that there are two new ones in the process of healing. Kayla doesn’t even know what the markings are for but she is disturbed, nonetheless. Her gaze is drawn further downwards to the finest abs and sexiest oblique’s she’s ever seen. She deftly unsnaps his jeans with her hungry eyes. She licks her lips as the zipper parts to reveal the ultra- thin, taut material stretched across his manhood.

  “Kayla, what are you doing here?” he asks, breaking her train of thought.

  “What? Oh…yeah…there was a little problem at home and I just had to get out…”

  “Oh no! Come in.”

  Luke stands aside and lets Kayla squeeze past him and into his house. It is modern and very tasteful. Everything, from the kitchen appliances to the leather furniture, seems expensive. Kayla flops down on the living room sofa without being invited. She can hear the tinkling of glass, ice, and the pop of a cork, coming from the kitchen. A few minutes later, Luke emerges with two glasses filled with a light amber liquid. He has put his shirt back on.

  Seeing the question in her eyes, he simply replies, “I don’t like being treated like a piece of meat.”

  “I see,” Kayla replies. “Is that why you answered your door almost naked?”

  “Did you enjoy your snack just then?” Luke asks.

  “I’m not gonna lie to you. I found the main course a trifle disappointing.”

  “Well,” he begins, “It’s too bad you won’t be having the desert. I hear it’s exquisite!”

  “I’m sure you do hear it…from yourself,” Kayla replies with a mischievous smile forming on her lips.

  He hands her a glass. “So tell me what happened,” he says, changing the subject dramatically.

  Kayla takes a deep breath and tells Luke everything that has just happened. She explains her whole relationship with Dillon; what initially attracted her to him and why despite the abuse it’s hard to just up and sever all ties.

  Luke listens, nods and just lets her talk. No wonder she’s dead set against getting involved with another biker. Her last experience was enough to push her into lesbianism. Luke sneaks a glance at his watch; it’s nearly five in the evening.

  “Would you like a drink?” Luke asks.

  “Sure…”

  “What would you like? I’ve got wine, Corona’s, tequila, Jack—"

  “A Corona would be great actually,” Kayla replies.

  Luke comes back in with a pair of Corona’s with limes. Kayla smiles and takes the proffered drink. Dillon would never have treated her like this. For one thing, she would be getting the beers, not him. She takes a long drink savoring the cool liquid all the way down to her stomach and little by little she begins to feel better about being in the home of another biker.

  Suddenly, Luke sets his glass on the coffee table, walks over to where Kayla sits, and leans down to her. He takes her chin and gently lifts it up to where their mouths meet; and it’s electric! Kayla’s body becomes a big bundle of nerves singing the praises of Luke as his hands are everywhere at once. Her tee shirt, followed by her bra and his jeans, pools the floor. Luke kisses her neck with wild, passionate abandon and Kayla is left breathless. She shoves his head down to her breasts. When he finds her nipples, he sends lightning bolts of pleasure from one hot spot to another, nipple to brain to hot pussy and back to breast again. It’s a non- stop hedonistic lick-suck fest. As he works his way down, past her breasts to the bottom of her rib cage and then to her flat, taut tummy, her skin comes alive. Even the little short bursts of air from his flared nostrils makes her tingle with pleasure. Kayla surrenders to unbridled ecstasy when his lips reach her sex.

  Luke seems to know her body far better than she herself. When they move from the couch to the bed, Kayla does something she has never been able to do before; she takes the lead. In prior lovemaking, it was all about what was being done to her body; whether it was to make her feel good or to make her partner, Dillon, feel good. She could never have taken control with Dillon, nor would she have wanted to. She didn’t desire him enough to put out any effort to please him or herself. It was, after all, a seriously one-sided affair.

  Luke flops down on the bed first and lies there on his back, seemingly unashamed of his own reaction to their lovemaking, and for a second she can do no more than stare; he looks that good. Then she falls on his rigid frame, determined and driven to give him the same panoramic sexual experience encompassing his mind, body and soul. His masculine scent is both dizzying and captivating. As their hips join and move in concert, she can’t help but inhale deeply as she tries to fill her soul and drive out any last remnants of the injuries at Dillon’s hands. It’s not until they are completely spent that she realizes what a cathartic experience this has been and maybe, just maybe she can let go a little of her damaged past.

  As they spoon dreamily on Luke’s bed, Kayla lets her mind drift in and out of consciousness. She moves easily from one sequence to another as her mind recounts the time she has had with Luke and how very different he is from Dillon. But Luke has his secrets too and though she’s not sure if she can have a serious relationship with someone having a double life, it feels as if she’s already attached to him…

  Chapter Fourteen

  You Can’t Handle the Truth

  What began as a calm conversation twenty minutes ago has escalated into anything but calm. She should have known better than to press Luke about his activities with the Suicide Kings. Not even ‘old ladies’ are privy to that kind of information.

  Finally, he shouts at her, “You say you want the truth, but you’re not prepared for it!”

  “Try me Luke,
I can handle the truth,” Kayla screams. Just about the last thing she wants is to be with a man who just assumes he has to protect her from the harsh realities of the world (or his life) by lying to her. It’s insulting.

  “You don’t know what you’re asking,” he counters.

  “All I ask is that you give me the chance to come to my own conclusion about whether something is too frightening to handle, but you don’t even respect me enough to do that. In a lot of ways, you’re totally different from Dillon, but in some very crucial areas, you’re exactly the same.”

  I know I shouldn’t have said that last part; that wasn’t fair. But it was truthful, though. Just like Dillon, he thinks I can’t handle anything and that’s not true at all. I can literally see the change come over his face when I say Dillon. He knows some of the terrible things Dillon did to me and for me to compare the two…well, that’s an epic fail!

  “If I let you in, there’s no going back. I’m sure there are things you’ve seen in the ER that you wish you’d never seen, right?”

  “Yes, but these were horrific things I’m talking about,” Kayla argues. “Tell me something about yourself that you’ve never told another person. Let’s take this test run to see if I can handle it.”

  Luke agrees because he knows he won’t see her again if he doesn’t play along.

  “Okay…,” he begins. “I enlisted in the military when I was 17. I was an emancipated minor so no one had to sign for me. I found early on that I had unique wartime skills.”

  “What were you good at?” Kayla asks.

  “I have this uncanny ability to control my body’s reaction to painful stimuli and I learned how to override physical discomfort and how not to let pain dominate my brain. Because of that, I flew through Special Forces and Army Ranger School, and I became an expert sniper, and an expert with explosives. You name it, I was good at it. I also found out I was very good at killing without remorse.”

  “Don’t most guys feel that way? When you’re sitting in a tank or something shooting at the enemy during a war, don’t most people feel good to be serving their country? I read a lot about the Vietnam War and most all of those guys were either very patriotic or just fought for their brothers beside them and nobody was running around feeling bad about it.”

  “I’m not talking about war, Kayla. Sure, I was involved in some fire fights in my first tour in Afghanistan, but I’m talking about my last two tours. When I re-upped, the army found that my specials skills were needed in not just Afghanistan, but Iraq, Iran, Syria, the Gaza Strip, Palestine, Russia, to name a few. I became a one-man missile for our wonderful government. They would just point me and pull the trigger and I would do whatever necessary to eliminate my target, whether that included a sniper rifle, a silenced pistol, a knife, or my bare hands to kill.”

  Kayla just nods her head while taking everything in. After a little while, a question pops up.

  “Those hash marks on your bicep. What are those for?”

  “Oh, I think you already know the answer to that,” Luke replies.

  She does. “But some are black and some are red. What’s that mean?”

  “The black ones were kills done in the service of my government and the red ones were done for the club.”

  Kayla catches her breath. That just about falls under the too much information category and something she’d rather not know the answer to. But she has to, so Kayla painstakingly counts the black hash marks and they come to a scary 103 kills for his country.

  Then she counts the hash marks that to her really count; the red ones. Those come to the impressively scary number of twenty-seven! This guy can’t get enough of killing in the army so he has to come back and kill for his club? How twisted is that? But on him, the killing stuff, it just looks pretty normal like your everyday course of business activities.

  “Uh…Kayla, you haven’t said anything in a while, are you okay?”

  “Yeah…just adjusting…”

  “Dammit, I told you… Now you just learned something about me you can’t unlearn; you can’t forget.”

  “And I’m okay with that,” Kayla replies, sounding much more confident than she actually feels. “These people that you kill for your club…it’s not just random, right? Tell me there is some strategy or some valid reason behind those kills…”

  “This is not the Thrill Kill Cult, Kayla. Of course, there’s a reason and the guys I kill are usually some pretty bad dudes. They’re drug dealers, gang bangers, extortionists, murderers… These are people who would rob your grandma for her life’s savings and not give it a second thought.”

  “Are you describing yourself,” Kayla interrupts. “Or are you describing the people you kill? ‘Cause you kinda are a…a mur…” She can’t say it.

  She had meant to call him a murderer, but she just can’t spit the word out. By her reasoning, anytime you kill and you’re not a cop or not a soldier in some war, that’s murder. Can she actually come to terms with what Luke does for the club? She has no idea right now.

  “I’m a murderer, is that what you were going to say? Luke asks. “Fine, call me what you will, but I’m comfortable with what I do and if you’re going to be with me, you have to accept that part of me too.”

  “Fine…but I wanna go with you next time,” Kayla announces.

  “What? What are you talking about, Kayla? You don’t mean….No, I am not taking you the next time I do anything for the club and especially not a hit. That’s insane! I don’t tell you shit for your own protection and that’s also why I won’t take you with me next time I have to kill someone for the club. You have to be able to look at the police and answer truthfully if they ever question you about me. Also, I will not let you make yourself an accessory to murder just so you can feel more comfortable with me! We come from different worlds, Kayla…more like different galaxies. I will never fit in your world and I’m damn sure you’ll never fit into mine. And that’s one of the things I love about you; your innocence. You can still look at the world through rose-colored glasses despite the work you do for a living.”

  Twenty minutes later, they are still arguing, so Luke suggests they take a ride to clear their heads. He takes her up to Tilden Park and Wildcat Canyon. The ride there is spectacular in the summer and it’s the perfect distraction. By the time they leave the rim, Kayla has decided she doesn’t really need to see Luke ‘work’. She trusts him and that is enough.

  They’re just entering the city of Oakland when Luke starts getting calls on his cell phone. Luke pulls over immediately. He rips off his helmet, pulls his phone from his pocket and answers it.

  “What’s up?” he asks.

  Then after a long pause. “Turns out I happen to be with a doctor as we speak. We’ll be there in ten minutes. Just hang on bro, we’re on our way.”

  Luke turns to Kayla. “Well…you said you wanted to be more involved in my life. Do you still feel that way?”

  Kayla responds without hesitation, “Yes. Are you going to go…uh kill someone now?”

  “Not now, but there’s been an attack and one of our brothers needs a doctor. After that, who knows what will go down? Now are you still in? And remember, if you say yes, there’s no backing out, understood?”

  “We’re wasting time, Luke,” Kayla replies.

  That’s all the confirmation Luke needs. He jams his helmet back on his head and they’re off.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kayla to the Rescue

  Kayla can feel her adrenaline soar as they speed towards the club’s headquarters. One of his brothers must be badly injured. Otherwise, Luke wouldn’t bring her in after the conversation they’d just had .Then a thought occurs to her. How much can she really do with no medical supplies?

  They reach King’s clubhouse in no time at all. There’s a sea of two-wheeled metal monsters filling the parking lot.

  There must be fifty bikes here, Kayla observes as she follows Luke into the clubhouse.

  It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust
to the low light of the smoky bar. All she can see is a grim lot of bikers in their traditional leather jackets or vests. An older, grizzled biker meets Luke at the door and motions him to follow. They go around behind the bar to a thickly-padded door. Kayla follows the two men through and barely controls a gasp when she sees the problem.

  A man, dressed in leather from head to toe, is lying on a huge oak table. He is severely wounded. The stench of blood and sweat in the cigar smoke filled room is nauseating. Kayla tries not to breathe too deeply.

  The man on the table suddenly wakes up and cries out in obvious pain. She rushes to his side.

  “What happened?” she asks no one in particular.

  “Harbingers jumped him,” someone replies.

  “Can you be more specific?” Kayla asks, as she begins to unbutton the man’s bloody leather vest.

  “Someone shot the hell outta him,” a voice nearby replies. “I think—"

  The man on the table begins to thrash about. One of his arms smacks Kayla across the face, snapping her head around. Two men grab his arms before he can do any more damage to her. With the help of the surrounding bikers, she manages to get his vest and shirt off and it does not look good. She grabs a towel someone hands her and she uses it to wipe the blood from his chest and stomach. She sees four small round bullet holes; one dangerously close to his heart, one just under his right clavicle, one in the upper stomach area, and the last one right over his right lung. There really is nothing she can do for him here. She directs them to roll him over, so she can see where the exit wounds are, if any. That might give her a better picture of which organs are damaged. A quick search tells her all four bullets are still in the man’s body. As they lay him on his back again, he begins kicking his legs and screaming in agony.