by Amy Law
Chapter 4
Outside the clubhouse in the hot night air, Jesska asked Ryder, “What does it mean when they say that you’re a ‘nomad’?” He handed her the glowing spliff.
The wide horizon glowed purple and orange behind broken strips of slate-colored cloud and the night air was hot and still. There wasn’t much traffic passing the clubhouse. The muffled thump of the music inside and the swells of voices didn’t drown out the rustle of the soft wind through the dry scrub.
Jess felt like she and Ryder were in a place of their own, a step out of time. Jess felt a connection with Ryder, and she thought she saw him reciprocate. She didn’t know what his interest was, but she hoped it wasn’t just sexual. “A nomad is like a member of clubs everywhere, and kind of like not being a member of club anywhere.” To Jess it had a lonely sound. Maybe it was a familiar one.
“And Ryder, did you choose that? Were you ever a club member?”
His faraway look hardened and turned more serious, “Some things you’re better off not knowing. Other things, you’re better off not even asking.” He looked her in the eye, “Asking questions around a motorcycle club is a dangerous hobby, even for a cute little girl.”
She wasn’t sure about him calling her ‘cute,’ and the ‘little girl’ part made her hot with anger.
He made a move toward her and she caught his arm. Feeling his strength, she realized that she might not be able to resist him if he used force, especially as her body wanted to give in. But he stopped. He smiled as he said, “I get it. That’s cool,” and he stroked her cheek with the back of his hand.
Her eyes stung. She felt deflated, like she’d lost rather than won.
As she turned to pass the joint back, her face came closer to his than she expected. Their smiles froze and slowly fell away. She watched his full lips as the bottom one tensed and trembled. His thigh slid between hers and clenched.
Her thighs slipped tight around his. She moved to pull farther away, but he made the tiniest movement and it was like magnetism. She couldn’t get away, and she didn’t want to. She felt it was about to happen and she tried to stop it, but somehow she could not. The heat from his pelvis called to her, and her rising scent called back.
When her eyes flicked up to his, he was, again, closer than she expected and looking directly into her gaze. She shouldn’t. She absolutely should not, especially not on a first meeting. Not with this dangerous and unpredictable man. She should leave. Now.
Her thighs gripped his as she tasted his breath. She inhaled to draw it in and watched as his nostrils flared. His eyes smoldered into her, deep into her, deep down. She lifted her hand to give him the joint. As she turned, her breast pressed against his waiting hand.
He moved his hand away to take the joint, but she seized it back and pressed it with her other hand onto her swelling breast. His lips pursed. Her nipple stung, irritated inside the bra as his hand held her warm, rising fullness.
“Are you old enough for this game?” he asked her with that infuriating boyish grin creeping around his lips. She wanted to smack his face when he said, “Should I be asking you for I.D.?”
His hand was achingly close but maddeningly far, outside the spongy thickness of her bra cup. The cotton of her shirt sighed, slipping against it. Her breath thickened in her chest as she pressed harder, pouring herself into his hand.
Her thighs dragged around his, the two thicknesses of denim warming, caught in the friction. By her hip, she felt his heat begin to uncoil. His breath and hers curled and entwined and his free hand slipped around her waist. She felt as though her world was opening up inside her, like she was growing in his arms. It was if she were coming to life for the first time.
As he encircled her, she stretched up to bring their mouths closer. Leaning up, she felt the pounding outline of his intense heat against her crotch. She licked her lips, and then parted them. She and he breathed each other’s breath for what seemed a long moment, out of normal time.
Their mouths drifted towards each other. When she first tasted his lips, her body pressed hard against him, She wanted to feel him all around her, all over her, and in her. Their lips crept, pulled, sucked and thrust on each other as their bodies raced to connect.
Bear’s big hand clapped on Ryder’s shoulder and Jess was shaken out of her spell. Bear leaned towards his ear, but they were close enough that Jess heard him say, “Haughey was on the phone just now.”
Ryder pulled back and said, “Haughey from Red Skulls?”
“John Reader needs words with you.”
He pressed his lips together and he looked at Jess. “I have to do this. Don’t go away, I’ll be right back.”
“It’s okay, Ryder.” She ached inside. “I’m going anyway.” The look of disappointment on his face made her heart thump.
He said, “Stay,” but she was moving away. It felt like she had to tug herself from the spot. When he saw that she was determined to go, he said, “Come back tomorrow.”
“Maybe.” As she left, he held onto her arm, letting it slip through his hand. When their hands touched, his fingers gripped hers, just for a moment, before he let her go.
Chapter 5
She thought about him all the way home. All the time she showered, stroking her hard body as she let the water rush over her. All through that hot night. When she finally slid into sleep, he invaded and dominated her fitful night.
A storm, a great black beast of a thunderstorm pursued Ryder through a jagged metal forest with a cruel black rain.
Jess ran into the forest from the far side, chased by the cackle of the Red Queen. The mist was so thick it was an effort to run through it. The forest rose steeply up the sides of a mountain and the higher they climbed on the opposite sides, the harder the black rain fell.
Jesska’s boot caught on a savage rusty spike and she saw the steam of the Red Queen’s breath mounting the slope behind her, coming nearer and nearer.
Jess heard the stamping as it got louder through the nails and twisted steel. She wrenched herself free, but lost her boot. She wouldn’t be able to ride. She couldn’t put her foot down on the metal splinters of the forest floor. Now she could only hop.
From behind her the riff from Motorhead’s ‘The Ace of Spades’ repeated like an awful buzz-saw loop under the approaching Red Queen’s cackle.
As she leaned forward, Jess found that she could run on her hands, and fast, too, but she could not risk touching the ground with more than the tips of her fingers. The Red Queen gained on her, and Jess felt the big, clawed hand reach for her leg as she burst suddenly clear of the forest and onto the dark, rocky mountaintop.
The Red Queen couldn’t follow Jess out of the forest and she cursed and threw metal shards after her. Jess was free, and Ryder pulled himself up the other side of the rocky knob, dragged down by his wet clothes. She ran to reach him, but the faster she ran, the harder it was to move forwards.
Jess fought through the thickening mist towards him. He reached the summit and she strained to get there. Finally, her hand stretched out in front of her and met his. She pressed against the wetness of his hand, and reached for him through his sodden clothes. She felt his heart thump, and his heat travelled up her arm like a current through water, like signals her body needed to decipher.
They stood, gripped together, breathing hard. Their bodies clung tight in a single throbbing mass of breathless wet and heat.
The water carried the pulses between them, and Jess felt the hot beat enter through her hardening nipples, pump through her breasts and echo down her body to her core. In between her legs, the rising throb pulled ancient walls down and an iceberg began to crack open and melt.
In her throat, the rhythm made a song without words, and the sound drew their bodies closer, tighter. Her muscles clenched. The way his heat, his living breathing hardness, pressed against her made her need unbearable, despite their heavy clothes.
She pulled at the soaked fabric to free him. The wet shirt dragged on the ripples of h
is torso as it pulled out of his jeans. Droplets of water trailed through the line of fine hair leading the way behind the hefty buckle of his ancient leather belt.
The water dripped down into the front of his jeans, where his huge uncoiling hardness grew. She wanted to follow the rivulets of water, to chase them and dry him. To clean him with her tongue and buff him with her breath, to polish him to perfection..
His jeans were heavy, sodden with the black water, and Jess had to pull with all of her might to get them off him. As she clawed the denim down his clenched and bulging thighs, the strength of his huge erection rose in front of her.
When his jeans were jammed down to his knees, she couldn’t wait any longer. Jess knelt and took the girth of his massive shaft between her hands. She gazed in girlish delight at the sheer strength and power of it, and in wonder at her own delicate hands being able to hold it.
Heat pulsed through it, and it had a scent like dark magic. She knew that if she licked the length of it, popped the head of it between her cherry-red lips, and lovingly held his soft sack as she slipped her mouth over the shaft, that she would release a power to defeat all of their enemies.
Her hands slid around the mast of mighty manhood. She marveled at the power of its pulse and the velvety roughness of its ridges. As her lips parted, the smoky, secret taste of power and will wove a wreath of mist across her tongue.
Jess moaned. Her eyes widened. The huge slick bulb rose up to nuzzle between her grateful lips. It pressed hot on her open, wet mouth. She closed her lips over it. Lightning flashed and the ground shook beneath her with the burst of rolling thunder.
Jess sat bolt upright, blinded by the morning sun, sobbing and bathed in a sheen of sweat.
Chapter 6
Ryder and Bear shared a joint and watched the evening horizon from the clubhouse stoop.
“Haughey’s put a proposition our way. A run.”
“Hardware? The Skulls’ hardware?”
Bear nodded. The two men looked at each other for awhile. The Skulls’ President and Sergeant-at-Arms had been taken into custody, so it was well known that the club had problems. Weapons trade, principally rifles and explosives out of Mexico, were the Skulls’ major source of income.
Ryder said, “Don’t make sense, does it?”
“Nope, but it makes money though. They say it’s because of their two ranking officers being in the pen.”
Ryder’s brow knotted. “I heard about Iron and Jam getting busted.”
Bear said, “Haughey wants an answer, and John Reader wants to talk it through with you.”
“Me?” Anger and confusion flashed in Ryder’s eyes, “Why me?”
“John Reader thinks the Skulls could be setting us up for something.”
“And he’d rather they set me up instead?”
“No.” They both chuckled. “Well, yeah, obviously. But he thinks there’s a way it could go down differently if you were willing to head it up it instead of one of us Blades.”
Ryder shook his head and said, “Man, I hate business around guns. Some fucker always confuses the product and the deal.”
Bear said, “Haughey’s sending Mace to crack out terms.”
“Here to the clubhouse? Not out on a disused lot or in some bean field?”
Bear considered it, “Maybe he’s coming for the visitor’s rights.”
Ryder’s lip curled.A senior representative from another club would expect a high level of hospitality. He held the smoke in and then said, “We’ll have to be sure and repay the kindness.”
“Amen to that, bro.” Bear took the joint.
Ryder shook his head as he looked up the road. “Can’t say I’m looking forward to seeing Mace, all the same.”
“Nope. I don’t think his headlamps are anybody’s favorite sight.”
Taking back the joint, Ryder said, “He’s got too much enthusiasm for mayhem and carnage.”
“It’s useful to have a man that won’t flinch from a grim task, Ryder.”
“Sure, but a man who relishes it, that always leaves some questions.”
Bear nodded slowly and said, “Mace has a reputation for recklessness, too.”
“Carelessness the way I hear it, plain old couldn’t-give-a-fuck-ness, in fact. He’d probably spit-roast his grandma just to hear the funny noises she’d make.”
“Truth, bro. A man like that can be a danger to everyone.”
They were both quiet for a while. Then Ryder said, “You’re right, Bear, I’d sooner see his tailpipes any day.”
Bear’s face screwed up. “You just put a picture in my mind for which I do not thank you, bro.”
Chapter 7
Ryder watched Mace lumber into the smoke and noise of the clubhouse with the swagger of a visiting emperor. He was tall, broad and stocky, with wavy black hair and thick red lips framed by a thin mustache and pointed beard. His narrow green eyes flicked about in constant motion.
Bear and Ryder stepped up to give him bro hugs and a club welcome, set him up with drinks and generally make him feel like the honored guest, although he seemed like he felt that way already.
John Reader waited for him in the big leather-padded swivel chair in the club office at the back. When Bear told Mace, “Come through, John’s waiting,” Mace grabbed the nearest two girls by their arms and dragged them along with him.
Mace’s voice was like cracked glass. “Bring a bottle,” he told Bear.
There was a form to club manners, and, whatever it was, sticking a big hand in the candy jar on your way to meet the club president wasn’t it. Ryder and Bear shared a look, but they led him to the office where John awaited.
Then they waited on either side of the closed door while he took the girls and the bourbon inside to make his proposition. They heard squeals and yelps from the girls and occasional male grunts and growls.
Now and then came an impact like a thwack or a thud. The proceedings lasted no more than fifteen minutes before the door opened. Mace filled the doorframe, one arrogant eyebrow cocked. His hand gripped the two girls’ wrists. The girls looked rather more disheveled than they had on the way in.
John’s smooth, dark voice followed them out of the office. “Give him the rumpus room.”
The rumpus room was set up for all kinds of activity that was of a partying nature. It was spacious and it had low lights, soft rugs and couches, low tables and a stereo system. Thick, soft fabrics covered the windowless walls.
As Bear and Ryder showed Mace inside, he held out the wrists of the two bedraggled girls. “Get me a couple of fresh ones.” Bear took Mace into the room to settle him with a spliff, maybe a line or two, and Ryder led the girls away.
He had seen that he smaller of the two was limping. “You okay, Hazel?”
She put on a bright little smile, “Yeah, Ryder. I’m great, thanks.” He doubted this had been her best night at the club. “You stepped up for the club there, Hazel. Go upstairs and rest up tonight. Play some games or watch a movie. You too, Shereen.”
Shereen’s eyelashes fluttered. “It’d be a lot more fun to play a game with you, Ryder.”
He patted her ass and encouraged her up the steps, “That would be a heap more fun for me, too, than an evening entertaining the Neanderthal, but duty calls.”
As their cute little butts wiggled—well, Hazel’s half wiggled—Ryder said, “I’ll have someone bring you some drinks, anda little food maybe. Okay?”
