Ride (Alpha Male Romance): In Between the Covers (Carolina Bad Boys #3)

by Rie Warren

  Nicky Love might ride a beautifully restored ’46 Chief—hell, he rode my sister, not that I wanted to think about that—but I handled hot metal like it was an extension of my cock. I muscled my low-slung Harley with the new angel emblems and polished ape bars through the forest of black leather, bright bandanas, and honeys slinging their bikini tops off at every stoplight.

  I reached into my saddlebag for a brew, cracked it open with my teeth and got ready to glug it while I sat at the last red light between the Suck Bang Blow Roadhouse and me. As the light turned green, I took a left and slipped into a sweet slipstream that landed me in the last ounce of space amid my home away from home. The parking lot was congested with cigarette smoke, motorcycles, the noise of laughter, and RPMs that tore up pavement.

  An unlit cigarette dangled from my lips as I throttled down and feathered off the clutch. I eased off my Harley and lifted the black half helmet from my head. I’d had it custom made and detailed to say: FUCK IT. I’m late. But fucking off takes a lot of time.

  I tapped my Marlboro Red on my wrist before lighting up. I only lit up when I planned on toking up. That I planned on doing this week, charity ride or not. As well as getting laid, every way imaginable as long as I was the one in the driver’s seat.

  I blew smoke rings and fucking sailboats with each tug, ambling through the crowd. I drew deep from the beer in my hand.

  “Hey, Steele!”

  “Brodie, dude.”

  “Where the fuck ya been?”

  During my walk toward the ramshackle roadhouse I was offered beer, coke, pussy, cock, joints, and more pussy. Armloads of pussy.

  I shook them all off. At least half of my fellow road warriors were dumb enough to ride unprotected. I didn’t have that hero cannot-die complex anymore.

  When your younger sister went off the rails and your folks died . . . When you were the one left standing to identify their bodies so they could be properly buried, you figured out pretty fucking fast how fragile life was.

  You learned where and when to take your risks. A needle full of dope or a noggin brained in the middle of the road were not odds I’d ever play with.

  I took another tug from my cig.

  It was so hot the black tar stuck to my boots. The parking lot of the SBB bar was a thousand times busier than the basement at that girl Belinda’s house in high school. For two bucks a pop, she’d let anyone feel her up. She made a killing off her size 38DDs. Whatever happened to Busty Belinda?

  The scorching parking lot may have been hot, but the women were even hotter. Okay, not that grandma-type over there. Her bikini top barely covered her sagging titties beneath the beaten-to-shit, hell-to-leather jacket she wore.

  Fuck me. My eyes.

  But whatever, her hog was bigger than mine.

  Maybe the one in her pants, too.

  Nah.

  The parking lot was thirty-bikes deep in orderly columns that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was a gleaming, glittering, rumbling heaven. The road roared with metal machines.

  I swaggered through the beer-drinking, pot-smoking, loud-talking crowd until I reached the saloon-style doors that led to Hell on wheels on earth.

  It was dark inside Suck, Bang, Fuck. Damp. Dim. The perfect place to commit some secret perversion you’d been dreaming about all year long before you returned to your real life that included work, worries, and shit-gone-sour.

  Concrete and come. Road tar and grease. That’s what it smelled like inside the roadhouse. Loud rock tunes blasted from the speakers. Every charter in South Carolina and beyond was represented from Lesbian Leathers to the Asheville hippies to Sand Hill’s Sons O’Bitches. The two-story joint couldn’t have been more different from the fancy downtown Charleston bullshit I’d been subjected to.

  Pool cues knocked against balls.

  The bar was heaving. The crowd cheering.

  A leather-clad honey held the dance floor. She worked that shit like she was earning cash instead of ear-bashing “bring it on!” yells.

  My balls knocked in my pants.

  She looked familiar. So did the bottle of beer Tuck pushed into my hand as soon as I drained my first. He was with the Presidents of Retribution MC. I was the VP. Boomer the Prez. Tuck was the moneyman. Tuck, as in Friar Tuck, plus his real name was Tucker. He was as round and bald as the Robin Hood money launderer, except for the wicked handlebar mustache he waxed to two points. Hey, we might be goons, but we weren’t fucking illiterate. We had a brain cell or two left and some of us even knew the classics. Like the Costner version of Robin Hood during which that Alan Rickman Snape-dude stole the evil show.

  Tuck was like a grandfather to Boomer, Cat, and me. He’d held our wrecked family together after our folks died.

  He didn’t wear a brown cassock but a Big and Tall Retribution MC cut unzipped over the round belly that matched his round face. The patch on the back of his leather was identical to mine: a bony white skull weighing down the scales of justice.

  Tuck knocked his bottle against mine. “Good ride up?”

  “Yeah. Fucking perfect. Open road between Mt. Pleasant and Georgetown. I just had to avoid those speed traps.” I turned and set my elbows on the bar. “I swear, Tuck, every time I see a cop on a moped, I think it’s Kingston out to bust my chops.”

  “You gotta get over that shit. The past is the past. What’s done is done. Besides, Kingston never arrested you. She nailed Cat, and that was Cat’s wake-up call to get cleaned up.” He gripped the back of my neck. “If you ask me, Officer Kingston did you a solid.”

  “Not to my folks though.”

  “She had nothing to do with their deaths, Veep.”

  I shrugged off his hand. “They wouldn’t have been on that stretch of road, heading to the rehab center, if Kingston hadn’t arrested Cat in the first place.”

  “And Cat would probably be dead from smack or worse by now, if Kingston hadn’t done what she did, boy.”

  “Who we talkin’ about?” Handsome asked from beyond Tuck’s shoulder.

  “Your momma.”

  “Bent over a Buick,” Tuck added.

  “Getting fisted,” I grinned into Handsome’s hair-covered face.

  “Cool. Guess I was too busy bangin’ Tuck’s bitch Maid Marion to notice,” Handsome riffed.

  I bumped his knuckles. “Boss.”

  Handsome—so-called because he was anything but—on his best days probably looked butt-ugly. Tall, rangy to the point of skinny, my friend just needed to put on fifty pounds or so and get his fucking hair cut. Didn’t matter. Handsome had the biggest, most giving heart, was loyal to a T, and I’d kick anyone’s ass who dared to look at him crossways. Surprisingly, the ladies always gravitated to him, as if they knew deep down he was the real keeper of the club.

  We were trading MC smacktalk—who was going Nomad, who was dissolving, who was being hounded by the pigs—when Tail stepped out of the murky depths of bike club nirvana.

  “Yo, don’t go getting fuckin’ phil-oh-sophical on me tonight. I ain’t doing that shit. I’m Zen. I am in the zone.” He shuffled up to the bar and rapped his three heavy gold rings onto the surface to get some service.

  “Yeah. Fucking Buddha material you are not.” Tuck aimed his trigger finger at Tail.

  “Who said anything about that fat bastard. The only thing I meditate about is pussy.”

  “Otherwise known as wet dreams.” I slid the fresh beer to Tail.

  “I got a wet dream right here in my pants.”

  “Because you have an early release problem. ’S’what I heard.” I lifted an eyebrow at Tail.

  He cranked an arm around my neck. “Braw, if I didn’t love you so much I’d kick your ass for that.”

  “Ready to take it outside when you are.”

  “Oh, I heard about that. Brodie Steele likes to cop a feel in public.”

  I slid out of his hold. “That happened once.”

  “Twice.”

  “Maybe.” Tuck and Handsome stared at me. “I’m ta
lking about fucking babes in public, not dudes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Jesus, my future braw-in-law was gay for a couple days with Stone.”

  “Plus Stone’s boy Javier has a sweet ass.” Tuck chuckled.

  “And a sweet boyfriend named Tate who would probably fuck up anyone who so much as came onto his man. It’s kinda cute.” Tail looked wistful for a moment.

  Tail had been my buddy in high school. Back then we’d been a couple of jackasses and part-time basketball jocks, in between smoking joints in the locker room. Tail was Taylor. He always snapped up the tastiest tail unless I got there first. And he used to be after my sis, Cat. He’d been Cat’s tail so to speak until Boomer and I gave him the lowdown on what would happen if he so much as said boo to Cat. Something ugly that would’ve included more than just losing his famed dick.

  “Hey, are we here to have fun, get fucked, stoned, blown, or what? Time to lay some cherries.” Tail slung his arm around me and dragged me into the melee.

  Smoky, muggy, murky, perfect. Bikers still streamed in from the outside. The overcrowded room quickly overheated. Sweat dripped down my back. The moist heat embraced me like a sleek hot pussy.

  We shouldered our way to the middle of the bar. The place was stacked like the bikes outside. Elbow-to-elbow, twenty-deep, hot, and out to have a good time. There was no bucking bronco or bull ride but a bucking chopper set up in the middle of the mobbed floor. There weren’t any cushy landing pads for pussies who couldn’t handle the chrome stallion, who fell off to bleed out or bust a nose. Just the concrete floor.

  “What’d I miss?” Our newest member lumbered between Tail and me.

  “Your dick,” I said.

  “It’s too small.” Tail rapped my knuckles.

  “Don’t worry. We don’t blame you.” I winked at the newest kid who wanted to be part of our charter.

  The probie had a name—I thought—but damned if I could remember it. The boy was wet behind the ears. Probably had a wet nurse, too. And not in the kinky, sexy kind of way.

  “Get us a round,” I said.

  “Of . . . uh . . . drinks?” Probie stammered.

  “No. Girls. Jesus.” Tail smacked the back of his head.

  “But I don’t think—”

  I took pity on our youngest member who shaved clean and looked fresh out of high school. “A round of drinks.” I unfolded a fifty and slid it into his palm. “Don’t forget a Shirley Temple for yourself.”

  “You’re such a dildo.” Probie pouted.

  “Aww, and you’re the cutest little butt plug I ever did see.” I got in his face. “PS. Shit-stain. You’re on toilet cleaning duty for two months once we get back to Rancho Del Retribution.”

  He ambled to the bar with a low, “Fuuuuck.”

  “You’re wearing the VP vest well,” Tuck mentioned.

  “Isn’t he just?” A feminine voice worked into my ear as slim fingers wormed beneath the waist of my leathers.

  Oh, Christ. Not that cherry. Leta had popped hers long before I’d done her, Tail had done her, Tuck had probably done her, too. She was an MC wench. She had a bad habit of hanging on and hanging around.

  I pushed Leta’s hands away and moved on. She was with our sister charter: the First Ladies of Redemption. She was numero uno there, but persona non grata with me. One fast fuck did not merit future nuptials.

  I wanted to get laid, pure and simple. To finally ditch the years of grief and get on with my life . . . with a baptismal fuck or a few.

  “Buy you a drink?” A buxom boobs-out brunette sidled up to me.

  Absolution by orgasm was headed my way.

  I laid my hands on the bar. My rings flashed in the low lights. Chunky and silver, they spelled out FUCK and OFF. I wore them for special occasions only. The tats that covered my arms trailed onto the backs of my hands. The words Forever and Never curled among the red Chinese dragons and green serpents and black ink that ran from my shoulders to my biceps and along my forearms.

  I watched in the mirror behind the bar as the woman slid beside me. My blond hair tangled to my shoulders. My eyes—ice blue like Cat’s—flickered to the chicky. The muscles in my arms stood out as I clenched my fists and released them.

  I saw the dancing babe beyond us. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her even as I nodded at the sweet thing beside me. The sexy woman taking center place on the floor . . . I was sure I knew her, but I couldn’t place her. Maybe I’d done her in a previous life. She had blonde hair with pink streaks, and piercings all the way up her lobes, visible when she rolled her head back. Christ. It looked like she was about to come because of the music alone.

  “I’ll get the first round.” I turned a smile to the woman at my side. “Two shots of Patron.” I knocked my rings on the bar as I placed the order.

  We clanked our glasses together, and I watched the woman drain hers.

  “I’m Jerry.” Her full pink lips curved in a smile.

  Jerry, not Cherry, I’ll have to remember that. “Brodie.” I smirked.

  “You dance?” She licked the last remnants of alcohol from her lips.

  “Not really.” I scratched the stubble on my jaw.

  “Shame.”

  “You ride?” I asked after polishing off my Patron.

  “Not really.” She brushed a hand across mine. “I’m more of a chopper-hopper.”

  So she was on the lookout for some MC daddy to be her permanent old man. Not my gig. “Shame,” I said, getting ready to cut my losses.

  Handsome stepped in. “Gonna introduce the rest of us?”

  I made the intros between Jerry-not-Cherry and Handsome, Tail, and Tuck, hoping she’d hop on one of their hogs instead. Eventually she led me and my tribe to her group of girls, all women out for some rough loving for the night.

  None of them did anything for me. I wanted to get laid, but I wasn’t into having it thrown in my lap. Besides, I was still jonesing for the hottie who’d started gathering more than a few admirers on the dance floor. She swiveled with her back to me. Her head was thrown back. It was that fucking song from Josh Stone’s stag party. “She Rides” by Danzig. Last time I’d heard it I’d been pissed off. This time, holy fucking shit, my mouth went dry. My cock turned into a rock solid rod in my pants.

  The woman swayed. Her half-cut road-bitch T-shirt rode up when she raised her arms above her head. It revealed the smooth toned skin of her midriff and a tat. Orange lilies of some kind or other wound around the middle of her body, disappearing into the opposite side of her low cut leathers. Her leathers dripped down her hourglass waist.

  That’s what I’m looking for.

  Sexy, but not slutty. A little bit trashy, but not trying to flaunt it. She danced like she didn’t have a care in the world, and she didn’t give a shit if anyone paid attention to her. That meant a whole lot of men were glued to her sinuous, unselfconscious movements. Dancing by herself, for herself, dreamily lost in her own world. My gaze was locked on her too.

  I strode up behind her. I’d only seen the side of her face, and I wanted the full frontal. As I slipped against her, one hand running across the soft skin of her stomach, I glimpsed her closed eyes, her smiling lips, and the almost fucking orgasmic look on her face.

  She melted against me. We started to move together, my hips against her perfect, ripe ass. Heat coiled between us and her smile grew into a grin.

  Brushing her hair aside, I lowered my lips to her ear. “You ride?”

  “A bike and a cock, baby. But I’m choosy.” She grinded against my dick and brought her hands to my thighs, gripping the hard muscles.

  “You said you don’t dance!” Jerry appeared with a screech.

  Shit, the other honey. She was as bad as Nick’s harpies at Stone’s wedding, the one or two I’d boned to get them off his back.

  My dancing babe turned in my arms to glare at Jerry. “Do you mind? You’re harshing my mellow mood.”

  That voice. That face. And where the hell had that body come from?

 
My mouth dropped open. Jerry shrieked off to the pool tables. The woman in my embrace went completely fucking still as the music continued to spill around us.

  Oh fuck no.

  I dropped my hands like she was on fire and about to burn me

  “You?” She stepped back.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I rubbed one palm down my jaw as I stared at Officer motherfucking Ashe goddamn Kingston.

  The woman I hated. The beauty I’d just decided to bag and bang for the night. It was the principle of the thing. I was here to get my rocks off, not get a badge shoved in my face. Ashe got under my skin like no one else, but she wasn’t going to get into my leathers or my head anymore. She probably had a crusade against Retribution, come to think of it.

  She also knew the entire sick history about me, Cat, my folks. I didn’t like anyone outside of my MC to know the real raw deal.

  “Bike Week, Brodie. Just like you. If you don’t mind, I’ll get back to it.” Ashe started moving away.

  I whipped her back with a hand wrapped around her waist. “So you think you can just turn this off?”

  “What?” She looked up at me. I saw how big her silvery gray eyes were for the first time.

  How to put it politely? This was my cock practically shredding through my leathers because she was suddenly so hot to me I couldn’t even see any other broad in the place. For a second it didn’t matter how much bad blood was between us. But I’d never admit that out loud.

  “Nothing,” I muttered. Fuck. Bad start to a good week.

  I stalked away. Tuck and Tail hind-legged it after me.

  “Was that who I think it was?” Tail drawled.

  “Yep.”

  “So?”

  “So we pretend she isn’t here, and I didn’t just hump her on the dance floor.” I took a long drink of beer then shook my bottle at them. “And we never mention it again, especially not around Boomer.”

  An hour later, Ashe was on the Bucking Chopper. She handled it like she knew exactly what she was doing. Her thighs gripped. Her upper body relaxed. Her head tossed back in ecstasy. She drew a drooling bunch of dickheads to her. They were probably thinking the same thing as me: Christ, the things I bet she can do in bed.