by Kati Wilde
With a laugh, Six-Point admits without any shame, “I do. Because it’s the only damn story I’ve got.” He looks to Anna. “Can you guess?”
“Um, six points? Something…about a game?”
“Heh, no.” He settles in, forearms braced on the table. “So one day me and my brothers are riding up the coast highway. Beautiful day, right? Got the ocean on one side of me, and I’m making love to that road, riding all them sweet curves. The sun’s shining down on me, and I’m just enjoying the scenery, minding my own damn business when a six-point buck jumps out in front of me and BAM!”—he pounds his fist into his palm—“I wind up in traction for three months.”
“Oh my god,” Anna breathes. Because she’s been around bikers long enough to know that even though he’s telling it like a joke, it was no joke then.
“Yeah, but here’s the best part.” He sits back as the waitress—Janice—sets a Budweiser in front of him, then two more for Anna and me. “Because I’m lying there in the hospital—”
Janice snorts. “This story again?”
“Get out of here, you ugly hag. Before my beer goes sour.” He gives her flat ass a swat as she goes. “So I’m lying there, suspended facedown over my bed, with all these goddamn braces on, and this fucker”—he indicates me with a sharp jab of his finger—“comes in with David, and they’re carrying this big ass picnic basket between them. And the smell coming from this basket, Jesus. It’s like meaty heaven. That’s where those fucking terrorists get it wrong with those virgins in heaven, yeah? A man almost dies, he doesn’t want cherries. He wants meat. So, David, he starts laying out these paper plates and piling heaps of steak on them. And while he’s doing that, Zach here comes over to my bedside with his plate, and he’s just slicing through that meat, saying, ‘Isiah, it’s so fucking juicy. It’s sooooo good.’ Then he starts eating it in front of me, moaning like he’s Muncher on a pussy. Then David joins in. And you know what it is they’re eating?”
If Anna’s already guessed, she can’t say because she’s giggling so hard.
“The fucking deer! Our mama fried up all that venison to give to the hospital staff, but these two fuckers bring it in and practically wrap it around their dicks. Zach, he’s groaning like it’s the best meat he ever had, saying my body slamming into the buck tenderized it real nice for them. And me, I’ve got my fucking jaw wired shut and I’ve been sipping pudding through a straw for a week! Fucking deer almost killed me and I don’t even get a goddamn bite of it.”
Anna’s laughing and shaking her head. Six-Point takes a swig of his beer, grinning—but I see the moment where it hits him: that was one of the last times he saw David. He was still hobbling around on crutches when David went after my father with an ax.
His smile fades. “Anyway. So I’ve seen worse. But I can’t say I like seeing it on a girl. Especially a pretty one.” Eyes like chips of ice, he looks to me. “You take care of it?”
“Trying to. They were threatening her brother.”
“So you’re looking for help?”
“Information, mostly.”
“Mama’s going to ask a price.”
“I know. I’m prepared to pay it.”
He nods, holding my gaze. “You hear Adam’s out?”
“I did.”
His mouth flattens. “Seventeen years inside, he’s a bigger prick than ever. Muncher and I hightailed it out of there tonight. We’re making ourselves scarce while he fucks all that time out of his system.”
Knowing Adam, he isn’t just fucking. His dick’s like a rage barometer. The angrier he is, the hornier he is. “Mama’ll keep him in line.”
“Yeah, you’d think. Except Strawman is poking at him every chance he gets. He got real comfortable acting as prez and now he has to step aside. So she’s come down on him, instead of Adam.”
Fuck. Bad enough coming to the family for help. Now we’re walking into this. “She must be happy he’s back.”
“Oh yeah.” Six-Point laughs like that’s the biggest understatement he’s ever heard. “But she’ll be happier her baby’s back. Adam going to prison, she felt nothing but pride. What he did was for the good of the chosen. You bailing…that’s something else.”
The ice in his eyes tells me exactly what it was. Betrayal. I turned my back on them at the worst damn point.
I’m not sorry. I’ll never be sorry.
But I can agree with him. Me going was something else. It was freedom.
What my mama’s going to offer is not.
He draws a deep breath, lets it out slow. “She’ll be real glad, though. She’ll help you. But if you’re smart, you’ll give it a few days before showing your face. Let Adam work all that shit out of his system.”
I would if I had a choice. “We don’t have a few days.”
“You wouldn’t get them, anyway,” he says wryly. “Word’s probably already reached the farm. Where you staying, if Mama’s got a mind to pay you a visit?”
“I’ll come out to the farm and see her tomorrow.”
The amused twist of his lips says he noticed how I didn’t offer the name of our hotel. “All right.” He pounds the table with his fist, stands. “I’m glad you’re back again. Because it just occurred to me that my favorite story is about my two brothers who are gone. And you’ve been gone a damn long time.”
I was right to go. So that shouldn’t twist in my chest. But it does. “I’m here now.”
Like it or not.
“Yeah,” he says and nods. “See you tomorrow, then. Me, I’m going to get more pussy before my dick’s too drunk to stuff one full.”
Anna watches him go, then turns wide eyes on me. “Holy shit. You really do look alike. I thought you just meant, ‘We have a strong resemblance.’ But it’s way beyond that.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes narrow. “Genetically, you know, that’s kind of crazy, because half your genes come from your mom. Does she look like you, too?”
“Not a bit.” I take a drink, letting my gaze run over her like it’s just for comparison. “She’s about your height. Blonde. Although she’s got blue eyes, too.”
“Like yours? That freakish pale color?”
“Freakish?”
She doubles down. “Yes. Absolutely freakish.”
I guess she’s spent a lot of time looking at them if she’s that sure. “My mother’s are regular blue. Like anyone’s.”
She nods, her gaze never leaving my face as she studies me. “Six-Point’s eyes were a little darker than yours. His jaw a little wider, too.” Her gaze drops. “His mouth not as…”
She trails off and takes a long drink, like whatever she was thinking made her need to cool down.
Now I’m real interested. “Not as what?”
She bites her bottom lip before saying, “Don’t take this the wrong way.”
“With an introduction like that, sweetheart, there’s no other way to take it.”
Her swift grin quickly fades when her gaze settles on my mouth again. “Okay, well, your lips are more…pouty.”
“I look pouty?”
“You don’t. But your lips are…” She touches her own lips like she’s imagining the feel of mine. “Pillowy.”
“Pillowy?” I echo, with no intention of easing up on her. She’s struggling to find words, her gaze glued to my mouth.
My cock’s never been so fucking hard.
“Yeah. Soft and full. But they’re not, are they? Not soft.” Her eyes glaze a little, as if memory. “Just…sexier than his.”
“Sexier? I’ll take that.”
Her low, breathy laugh almost has me coming in my jeans. “Thank God. Because I was digging a hole.”
“You dig like that, you can dig whenever you like.” But now I’m the one taking a long cold drink. The icy beer doesn’t do a damn thing to quench my real thirst or to cool the need burning in me, but it keeps my mouth busy enough that I don’t say the rest of what I want to—telling her exactly what I can do to her with these pillowy lips.
And what she can do to me with hers.
A slight flush tinges her cheeks when she finally tears her gaze from my mouth. I’m sorry she does, but it’s probably for the best. She keeps staring at my lips like that and God knows what I’ll do.
“So, um—” She starts writing on the table, using the water from the ring of condensation forming under her bottle. Anna was here. “So there’s Six-Point, and Muncher, and Strawman, and Adam. Right?”
“Right.”
“Adam doesn’t have a road name? Or is that his road name?”
“It’s Hunter. But everyone calls him Adam. Because he’s the firstborn.”
Her lips purse as she nods. “And Strawman? Is it because he sets people up and knocks them down?”
That takes me a second. I hear ‘straw man’ and I think of a scarecrow. But the way she grew up talking with her mom, pulling apart the way people argue with each other and hide from each other, I realize Anna would think of something else. “You mean like a straw man argument?”
“Yeah.”
I shake my head, laughing. “No. Nothing that clever. Though he’d like that explanation better than the real reason behind his name.”
“Which is?”
“My father got onto him for something. I don’t remember what—I was maybe eight or nine years old then. But he did something stupid and my father said his head was stuffed with straw. Then he started calling him Strawman instead of Jacob. So it stuck.”
She winces. “Ouch.”
“Yup. Especially because—you remember we were talking about those traits that were passed on? Strawman actually got some of the brains.”
“You did, too.”
For all the good it’s done. “Sometimes I don’t think so.”
“Oh yeah?” She leans forward onto her forearms, tilts her head and meets my eyes with a challenging stare. “What about all those books?”
I snort out a laugh. “I started reading so I could imagine being anywhere but here. But I’m back here again. So what’s that say for brains?”
“That…just said plenty.” Her gaze searches my face before she says, “You signed up with the Marines seventeen years ago, right? That’s how long Six-Point said Adam was in prison. Was that the reason you left?”
“Part of it.” Not him going to prison—he deserved a hell of a lot worse than a cell—but what happened before it.
“What did he do?” she asks, and I can tell she doesn’t expect me to answer. Maybe throw some ‘club business’ at her.
But the Notorious Few aren’t my brothers yet and she should know this.
“He murdered a sixteen-year-old girl,” I tell her. “He was supposed to be in for life.”
Her eyes are wide. “So he got parole?”
I shake my head. “His conviction was overturned.”
“Overturned?” She’s silent for a long second, just staring at me, and I can see her mind working it over. “But did he do it?”
Throat thick, I just nod. He did it. Killed a girl, and destroyed David. And if the family had any idea how I felt about Anna, he’d do the same to her.
Anna’s biting her lip again, watching me. “I won’t ask for details, but you and Stone, for the Riders—”
I know exactly where she’s going. Because I’ve killed, too. “There’s not a single one I’m sorry for,” I tell her. “Each one, I think the world’s better off without. What happened to this girl was different.”
“The law probably wouldn’t think so.”
“It wouldn’t. But I feel it’s so. Now are you going to give me shit about moral relativism?”
“No.” Steadily, she holds my gaze. “Because I get it—probably better than you think. Because of Jenny. I mean, Saxon saved her from being raped and yet he had to go to jail for it. And last year when she was being hassled by the Eighty-Eight, the law couldn’t have helped her until it was too late. But the Riders did.”
“Yes.” Helped her by putting down the skinheads running that chapter. Anna shouldn’t know that. I shouldn’t be confirming it.
But I’m not going to tell her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
“So when I hear some of the Eighty-Eight are dead, I can’t pretend that I’m not glad. Of course I wish it didn’t come to that. But given a choice between that or Jenny hurt? I’d chose what the Riders did to them every time.”
“Me, too,” I say easily.
She huffs a little laugh. “Because you have chosen it. And my brother has, too. I probably would, too. If my mom or dad or Stone—or my friends—were in danger, I can’t say I wouldn’t cross that line. I understand protecting your own. And even if it’s not right, there’s a line between that and murder in my own morality.”
“Yes.” But I need her to know this, too. “But to my family? Adam killing this girl was protecting their own.”
“How?”
“She was pregnant. She was Asian. So she’d have fucked up the bloodline.”
Horror drops her jaw open. “Oh my god. Did you know her? Was she…your girlfriend? Is that why you left?”
I shake my head. “My brother David’s girl. Ivy Tan. He was smart enough never to bring her around the farm, but he was crazy about her. So proud of her. And he wouldn’t keep it quiet. He said our family had to be better or he’d leave to be with her.” I have to stop for a second. Anna watches me silently. “I liked her. She wasn’t a threat, in my mind. But my mind works differently than theirs.”
“It’s a good difference.”
“Glad you think so.”
Her faint smile has no real amusement in it. “Six-Point said you were both gone. David took off, too?”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh.” Her slender fingers grip my wrist, squeeze lightly in sympathy before letting go—because she’s just her brother’s sister. I never hated that line between us as much as I do now. “Sorry.”
I take another drink, try to close all the emotion down. This is why I need to be cold. “It is what it is.”
She doesn’t look convinced but nods anyway. After a long second, she asks quietly, “My brother…what will the Cage do to him? He has to kill someone in the ring—but not someone who’s an enemy in a war or threatening the club. Someone who’s basically innocent. What will it do to him? What would it do to you?”
She already knows. Maybe she’s looking for another answer from me, but I can’t give it.
My throat’s tight as fuck. Not cold yet. “It’s going to hurt him. It’s going to fuck him up bad.”
Her eyes go bright, shimmering with unshed tears. “So when I get this call—it’ll be after he wins. But it won’t really be a victory.”
“No, it won’t.”
There’s no winning until we get him home.
20
Gunner
I don’t sleep. I’m pretty damn sure Anna doesn’t, either. I hear her tossing in the other bed all night. And me, I lay motionless with my cock so hot and hard against my stomach I’m surprised the shape of my dick isn’t branded into my skin by morning.
When she gets up early, puts on her running shoes and a pair of little shorts, I go with her.
And the exercise doesn’t help a damn bit. The past ten years, this is how I got through—always working or working out. Laboring on the maintenance crew. Pounding fists at the gym. Riding with the club. Reading at home. I filled every minute, trying to keep my body and my brain too busy to think of her.
It didn’t work, but it helped. I went to bed every night so damn tired, I didn’t have to spend many sleepless nights like this. That was pain.
This is fucking torture.
A long sleeveless T-shirt covers the tent in my loose shorts. Running with a hard cock? Not the best start to my morning. So that’s a lesson learned. Tomorrow, I’ll jack off before we head out for a run.
Shit. The way this is going, I’ll be spending the next few days with my hand glued to my dick.
She sets a hard pace for five miles,
using her phone to navigate through the city until I realize what she’s doing and start pointing out the best route. A block from the hotel, she slows to a walk and finally takes out her earbuds.
“So what’s the plan today?”
About a mile in, my cock finally got the message and heeled, so I drag up the hem of my shirt to wipe the sweat from my face. Her gaze drops to my ridged abdomen before shuttling away, but it’s enough to get my dick rising again.
I need to get my head in the game. “I’m going to ride out to the farm, get the help we need.”
“You really think they’ll give it?”
“Yeah, they will.” I just don’t want her to know what I’ll be trading. “I’ll be taking my bike. The truck’s yours to use. There’s cash in the safe—spend it on anything you need. I don’t know if these fuckers from the Cage can trace your cards but there’s no reason to risk it. You’ll be fine in the hotel or heading out of the city. You’ve got good hiking that way, ocean that way.”
“Maybe I will.” She pauses in the hotel lot, bending over and stretching her legs, her body in a long, lean line. Christ help me. “I should have brought my paints.”
“Use the cash and get some. We might be here the better part of a week.” Maybe even a month, but I don’t want to start thinking that yet.
Jesus. The way she’s folded over with her hands on her ankles, I’m not thinking at all. Just about how flexible she is—and how I could get her heels up by her ears and get into her so fucking deep.
She straightens up, arms raised high in another long stretch that lifts her shirt above the waist of her shorts, exposing her tight stomach and smooth golden skin. I’m biting back a groan when she looks over her shoulder at me. “I get the shower first.”
“All right.” And I’ll just be pressed up against the bathroom door, fucking my fist.
It’ll only take about two strokes to come. Especially if I picture the way she smiles like she is now, playfully catching the tip of her tongue between her teeth before saying, “I’d be your slave forever if you have coffee waiting when I get out.”
“Shit. I’m not passing that up.”
She laughs and heads in, passing the elevator. We take the stairs up, Anna jogging a few steps ahead, and me in heaven with her delicious little ass bouncing in front of my face.
