Raina felt herself blushing slightly as she stammered out an answer. “It was the only vehicle left in the yard. Everybody’s out working on storm damage up north. Daddy needed someone to take a part up to the switching node and I was the only one available.”
Neil’s eyebrows raised and a look of mild surprise flickered across his face. “‘Daddy’? You’re Miles’ daughter. It must be something really serious if he sent his Little...” He stopped in mid-sentence as a flash of anger flared on Raina’s face.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a soft voice. “You don’t like that name, do you?” He shrugged his shoulders and said, “But that’s all that anyone in town ever calls you.” He paused and seemed to examine her from top to bottom. “I guess they are all afraid to tell Miles that his daughter is all grown up.”
He brushed against her arm once again. This time it was definitely not an accident. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Raina,” she answered. She returned his smile for a moment before reddening and looking down at her lap. She was embarrassed. But why? Nothing was happening. Neil was no threat to her and had done nothing inappropriate. She felt like a teenager on her first date.
The sound of another engine caused her to raise her head. Another bike was pulling up alongside where Neil was standing. “What’s the deal?” the rider asked. “The guy’s are wondrin’ what’s up.”
“The best-laid plans, Tommy,” Neil answered. “The weather won this round.”
The other man looked up at the clear sky with a puzzled expression on his face.
“Storms up north must’ve torn up a bunch of towers last night,” explained Neil. “Everybody’s gone except a few techs and the boss’ daughter. We’ve got no beef with them. We’ll have to come back another day.”
Tommy pointed at the window of the jeep. “Is that Little Pri–”
“Uh-uh,” said Neil, holding up a wagging finger to cut off Tommy’s question. “Her name is Raina.” He turned back at her, smiled, then turned to face the other rider and said loudly enough to be heard by the waiting Reapers, “Tell the boys that they can take the rest of the day off. I’ll be back in town in a little while after Raina and I finish our ... conversation.”
He laughed softly and turned once more to face her. “That is, if that’s OK with you?”
“Sure, I can talk for a while,” she answered. “Daddy isn’t expecting me back for a while.”
“So, does Daddy always tell you when you have to be back?” he asked, stroking her arm lightly.
“Daddy likes to protect his property,” Raina replied. Then she grimaced and said, “I shouldn’t have said it like that. He loves me in his own way, but I don’t think he really knows how to love. So he treats me like I’m some treasured piece of property.” She continued, “Daddy had nothing as a child. He had to fight to ‘free himself from the chains of poverty’... his words. Now all he wants is money and power. He thinks giving money is the same as giving love. And he thinks having money and power make people love and respect him. But all it does is make them fear him.”
Raina reached out and stroked Neil’s arm. For the first time she noticed that all his tattoos ended slightly above his elbows. “I don’t know if he hates you, or what you represent,” she said. “He thinks you’re trapped where you are by ignorance and poverty.” Her voice changed in imitation of her father. “If they had the strength and determination I had, they could break free of that way of life.”
She shrugged and looked into Neil’s eyes. He smiled back at her and, after a moment, said softly, “Your Daddy’s the one who isn’t free.”
He chuckled at her look of surprise. “I’m a third-generation Reaper. I could’ve done something else with my life, but I chose to come back to the club. You aren’t really free from something until you can choose to come back... or not come back. The freedom to not be requires the freedom to be. The freedom to refuse is the other side of the freedom to choose. I chose to be a Reaper.”
His eyes seemed to open very wide. It was as if he was letting Raina inside himself. “Momma insisted I go to college so I could get away from all this.” He laughed. “She had some other rules. No chewing tobacco. Learn proper English so you can blend in if you have to. No tattoos you can’t cover with a shirt and a pair of pants.”
He laughed again. This time it seemed almost like an embarrassed little boy laugh. “She’s been gone over six years, and I still can’t bring myself to put ink on my lower arms. That’s her space.” Then he laughed a very bright laugh. “But I do have some very interesting ink where it almost never shows. Why don’t you come out to the clubhouse some evening and I can give you a tour of the artwork?”
Raina reddened slightly as she pictured herself and Neil lying in bed naked exploring each other’s bodies. Her mind was quivering between “Yes” and “No” when her cell phone rang. It was Daddy.
She held up her finger to tell Neil to be silent and then answered the call. Neil could clearly hear Miles Chaplin’s voice. “GPS pinger says you haven’t moved in over an hour. Is everything OK out there, Princess?”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she replied. “It’s been a really hectic week and I was just enjoying the beauty of Texas.”
She looked up into Neil’s eyes and giggled slightly as he stood as if posing for a glamor photo. “Well you hurry back in here, Little Princess. We’re short-handed and I may need you for a few things around here.”
“Yes, Daddy,” she replied. “Be there soon.”
After she had disconnected, Neil said, “Give me your number. I’ll text you and we can talk about getting you out to the clubhouse. Looks like it may take a little work to get out from under Daddy’s watchful eyes, but I’ll think of something.”
He then leaned down through the window and gave her a kiss. It was a light-brush-of-the-lips kind of a kiss, but in those few seconds of contact, she kissed him back, and he knew that she kissed him back. “Right, then,” he said. “I’ll figure something out.”
***
The rest of the day at the office was a blur for Raina. Daddy was in meetings, or on the phone, or talking on the radio constantly as the engineers and linemen laid out their plans for restoring power. Despite Miles’ concern that she return if needed, he gave her nothing meaningful to do. There were several calls she could have made for him to various suppliers or community leaders, but he instead delegated those to his overwhelmed secretaries. Raina was left to sit at her desk, as usual, trying to look busy.
The only bright spot was when Shirley, one of the office supervisors, commented to her, “You must’ve really enjoyed your ride in the country.”
When Raina asked why she had said that, Shirley answered, “You just look... different since you got back. I don’t know. You look... happy. If I didn’t know that you were out in the middle of nowhere, I’d suspect that you’d found the man of your dreams.”
Shirley and Raina laugh. Raina felt her skin warm slightly and almost said aloud, “If you only knew.”
Was that what had happened? Had she met “the man of her dreams”?
It couldn’t be. Neil was one of them. And yet he had been so nice and polite. Yes, there was an element of danger about him. Yes, he and his club were going out to pick a fight with Daddy’s security people.
Why? What was it that he had said? Something about the way the security men were treating his people when they caught them alone. Is that what Daddy meant when she overheard him instruct the security guards to “teach these hoods to respect my property”?
She stared at the paperwork in front of her, lost in her thoughts. What was it that so attracted her to Neil? Was it his body? She smiled and glanced slyly around her as she thought that. Yes, part of it was his body.
Was it the excitement? Yes, part of it was the excitement. But there was something else. What was it?
Her eyes widened and she looked up as she realized what it was that was so different about him. Neil was... free. That was it. He was free. He w
asn’t trapped by anything. He was one of the first truly free human beings that she had ever met. And he was offering her freedom... at least she thought he was.
“Or maybe it was all just talk.” She looked around quickly as she realized that she was talking aloud, but no one had heard her. Or, at least, no one had paid any attention to her. No one ever did.
Her phone chimed to indicate an incoming text. It was one word, from Neil.
“Safe?”
“Yes,” she texted back, “we can talk.”
“Can you tell your parents that you’re meeting with a girlfriend down at the diner tonight for a couple of hours? Maybe from 8:00 until almost midnight?”
“Yes,” she replied, “I often do that.”
“Be there at 8:00. I’ll have you back before midnight.”
“People will see me leave with you,” she sent back. “Someone will call Daddy.”
“No they won’t.” he replied. “Get there at 8:00. Don’t order anything. Go to the restroom as soon as we get there. No one will know you left with me.”
“K,” she texted back. Then she added “ILY” just before sending.
Her heart seemed to stop as she realized what she had just done. Then his reply appeared on the screen.
“U2.”
***
At little before 8:00 p.m. that night, Raina was pacing her room. Would she really do this? Was she going to sneak out and meet someone her father hated? Was this just to defy her father? Or was there something about Neil that was drawing her toward him like a moth to a flame?
“Maybe it’s both,” she said to herself. “Defying my father is what’s making me tremble with fear. But the idea of going to Neil is what’s making me wet with anticipation.” She looked at the clock on her dresser. It was almost 8:00. Then she looked at herself a final time in her bedroom mirror and said aloud, “Wet wins.”
With that, she walked downstairs and announced to her parents, “I’m going up to the diner for a couple of hours for some coffee and girl talk. I should be home before midnight.”
“Have fun,” her mother answered.
“Call if you’re going to be later than that,” her father instructed.
“Love you,” Raina said as she started out the door.
Her mother’s voice responded, “Love you, too, honey.” Raina paused in the doorway waiting for her father’s voice, but heard nothing. It would be nice to hear him say it just once in a while.
At exactly 8:00 p.m. she pulled into the parking lot of Dottie’s Diner. Remembering to park her car toward the back of the lot, she hurried inside. A waitress offered to show her to a table, but she said, “Meeting somebody. I’ll just wait up by the counter until they arrive.”
A few minutes later, Raina could hear the roar of a half-dozen or so motorcycles. Most of them pulled up and parked directly in front of the doors, but one parked farther back in the lot near her car. Three male and three female bikers entered noisily. They were almost a caricature of how people thought bikers should act. They were loud and vulgar and distractive to everyone in the place, but Raina could see from their faces as they glanced over at the counter that it was all an act. One of the girls, who was carrying an oversized purse, looked over at her and nodded toward the restrooms.
Oh, she thought. I’m supposed to be in the restroom. She hurried toward the back of the diner and entered the restroom. The Reaper Girl entered immediately behind her.
“Put these on,” the girl said, holding up a set of leathers and a long, blond wig.
A few minutes later, two Reapers Girls left the restroom. One went back up front with the rest of the Reapers, who suddenly settled down and began examining their menus. The other turned and went out the back door. Shortly thereafter, Neil Gunn pulled out of the parking lot with a Reaper Girl riding on the back of his bike. Her long, blond hair was flowing behind them as he headed out of town toward the Crossed Reapers’ clubhouse.
Raina had never seen the inside of a motorcycle club clubhouse. It reminded her a little of some of the bars she and Daddy had eaten in while traveling in small towns, only cleaner and brighter. There was a small bar, obviously self-serve, along one wall. Two pool tables took up the main portion of one room, and a very large-screen TV was mounted on the wall of the adjoining room. When you adjusted for economic status and preferences, it was actually not very much different from the country club Daddy insisted they eat out at every Sunday afternoon.
Neil was looking at her as though expecting her to say something.
“Just like the country club, but no swimming pool,” she said with a grin.
He grinned back. “They have a small pool. We have a large hot-tub. That almost counts.”
“How large?” she asked, and he motioned with his hand toward a back deck than ran the length of the house. The hot tub, though empty, looked as if it could hold at least a dozen people. You could almost swim very short laps in it.
Raina gasped slightly as they walked onto the deck. It wasn’t the hot tub that surprised her, it was the view. The ranch the Reapers had purchased sat on a slight rise just outside of town. That meant that standing on the deck, you could see the lights of the entire town of Porter, and beyond that, in the moonlight, vast stretches of Texas cow country could be seen in the back ground. It was truly beautiful.
“Can we sit out here and talk?” she asked.
Neil responded by saying, “Here?” pointing to a couple of padded chairs and a padded couch-like bench, “or in the hot tub?”
“Here, for now.” she answered, patting the couch. “I didn’t bring my swimsuit.”
“I don’t own one,” he replied.
Raina again felt her face warm and redden, but the heat of her face was nothing compared to the heat that was starting to build between her legs. You came out here to talk, she told herself silently, Didn’t you?
As she sat on the padded bench, she could see the curtains being pulled closed on the sliding doors going back into the clubhouse. Neil saw the question in her face and said, “I told them I wanted some privacy tonight.” He chuckled. “There are some advantages to being the President of the Reapers. My wish is often their command.”
He sat beside her and turned slightly toward her. “Your father and I are a lot alike in many ways,” he said. “We are both in positions of power.”
He was sitting with his arm on the top of the couch so that his shoulder was available, but he made no attempt to pull Raina onto his chest. When she snuggled against him, however, he did bring his arm around her.
They sat in silence for several minutes. Finally Raina replied, “The difference is in the way you use your power. You offer it to people. Daddy forces it on people.”
There was another long pause. This was not a conversation that could be hurried because there was much more happening than just the words. The mind and body and emotions behind the words needed time to catch up with the whirlwind of events that had brought them to this moment.
Neil broke the silence. “Sometimes you have to use force. Your father and I both know that.”
“Sometimes you don’t,” Raina answered. “He doesn’t know that.” She was surprised at how rapidly she had answered and at how cold her voice had suddenly become.
Neil said nothing. He gently pulled her more tightly into his chest. Then they sat in silence looking at the lights of the town, and the moon and stars in the night sky. In the far distance, the hills created a darker shadow where the sky met the ground.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” he finally said softly. “Or maybe I’ve never met anyone I was attracted to as much. I want to know you better. I want you to know me.” His voice changed, “But I won’t force you. You have the freedom to refuse at any point. Just say, ‘Take me home,’ and your wish is my command.”
Raina stood up. Neil’s face was almost expressionless, but his eyes showed his fear that she was going to ask him to take her home. Instead, she began unbuttoning the tight leather jacket.
<
br /> “The freedom to refuse is also the freedom to choose,” she said. “I’m not truly free unless I can make either choice. For now, I choose to get in the hot tub and watch the stars.”
Neil sat on the couch and watched her slowly remove the leathers, and then the light blue blouse and white shorts she wore under them. She turned away from him as she undid her bra, and hesitated slightly before sliding her panties to the floor. Then she turned to face him.
“Are you going to join me?” she asked. “Or am I going to have to guess where the other end of that snake tattoo actually ends?”
Unchained: A Biker Erotic Romance Page 2
