by Maren Smith
Fear reignited as he climbed off his bike and crossed his bulging arms. I couldn’t answer. My mouth opened but then it froze. Just froze! My maw just hung there open like a Venus flytrap or something. And my brain shut down as if it packed up and left the building with a wave and a ‘see ya, you’re on your own with this one.’ Even breathing was difficult—which made sense since it was part of the autonomic nervous system, controlled by the brain. Which had left, remember? Gonzo.
And then we both looked behind me at the sound of a firm shout.
“All clear back here.”
I turned fully, realizing it was a cop just as his words sunk in. All clear back here. The crunch of gravel behind me and the big biker’s hand coming to rest on my neck made my own shout for help die in my throat. The cop gave one quick nod to us and then turned, disappearing around the side of the building.
Jesus. Corrupt cops.
The biker cleared his throat and turned me back to face him. His thick neck pulsed and I realized why I wasn’t breathing. I knew I wasn’t walking away from this. I’d clawed my way out of hell and now I was falling back in.
“Name’s Python and you’ll be coming with me.” He tugged me effortlessly to his bike, popping a skull cap helmet over my freshly washed, Tallulah Jane Olsen, the friendly, sweet vet tech, hair. Next, his huge hands were on my middle and I was plopped onto his bike. He was big enough that he threw his leg over the handlebars to straddle the bike.
He looked back over his shoulder at me, and reaching into one of the saddle bags, he handed me a cell. “Prepaid burner. My number’s programmed in it. I call or text, you answer. Got it?” When I didn’t move, he continued. “Nod that you understand.”
I did and he took my wrists to wrap my arms around his solid middle.
Before we’d even gone a block, we were flanked by two more bikes and ten minutes after that, I was inside a small wartime house surrounded by Python and two other even scarier members of Satan’s Ransom.
One, who played way too skillfully with a butterfly knife, sat me on the sofa, a yellow and brown threadbare thing that looked, and likely was, older than me. He took his place on the arm of the matching chair to my right, shoving his dark, shoulder length hair back before continuing to play with his knife. I was surprised the chair held his weight. He was only slightly smaller than Python, although his arms weren’t nearly as anaconda-like as his MC brother’s.
Python stood near the yellowed lace-curtained window keeping a watchful eye. But Python and his slightly smaller wing man weren’t my focus. It was the guy that sat on the coffee table directly in front of me with eyes so cold they made my insides weak.
He was sinewy and at least a half foot shorter than the other two, but despite looking weaker physically, he was clearly the leader. A gun hung loosely in his grip, the arm attached to it dangling between his wide spread legs as if he didn’t have a worry in the world. I focused on that gun, except when I was attempting to memorize the tattoos that covered his arms, one of which was a naked woman nailed to a cross with a snake crawling between her legs, or when I was distracted by his dark, dead eyes.
“You called 911 and that makes you responsible.” His dialect was odd, as if he was performing a sermon rather than having a conversation.
They didn’t know I flushed the drugs, but it didn’t matter. The cops would have taken them.
“He was dying,” I said in a cracked voice.
“The circumstances do not absolve you.” The flatness in his dark gaze was terrifying. “How much does she owe us, Slash?”
Slash’s knife clicks shut abruptly and he deadpans me. “Just replenished his supply, Preach.”
And with those words my life changed. I had to take a second job as a night janitor to help pay my drugs-flushed-down-the-toilet debt, and still, I lost everything I’d worked so hard for. My apartment with its nicely tended grounds, the savings I’d built to buy myself a new car, and the safety, financial and personal, I’d felt for the first time in my life, it was all gone. It all went to Satan’s Ransom.
In an instant, Tallulah Jane Olsen was gone. Just like little Tallulah Jane, the night my parents died in a car accident.
Once again, the tough and gritty, dark-humoured Lu had replaced the person I was meant to be.
Because surviving required it. Required her.
So even though I swore I would never again be at the mercy of another, I owed Satan’s Ransom, thus I was at theirs.
Just like the countless foster families that treated me as property growing up, Slash, Python, and Preacher owned me.
I shiver as if just thinking their names could summon them.
Anyway, back to me being a jackass pudding thief. Since I stand the very real chance of being maimed and/or murdered any day now by lethal members of a one percent motorcycle club, it’s only right I get to do so with a little something in my stomach. Even death row inmates get a last meal, right? Hence my lunch kleptomania.
I couldn’t get away with it at my day job, but there aren’t many people hanging around the lunchroom during the afternoon shift at the factory. So for the last month or so, ‘Jeff’, or so it says in permanent marker on his paper bag, has lost his pudding.
And really, Jeff, fuck you. I hate pudding. How about some fucking Oreos, dude? Would it kill you to bring a snack cake? I’m on death row here!
But these aren’t things I really want either. I actually crave real food, like meat, vegetables and fruit, oh God, pasta with meat sauce, but in the grand snack of things, there is a heck of a lot more out there besides freakin’ pudding.
What man ate pudding with his lunch every day anyway, and—I glance at the note again—used discommodious in the diatribe note?
I huff, fighting the urge to doodle a happy face on the note, and tuck it back into the brown bag. Lu’s a bitter sort, which goes well with Jackass.
Shoving the only food I’ll get today into my pocket, I continue my job of cleaning the staff room. One day I’ll get enough money to buy this guy a whole case of pudding to make up for my miscreant ways, but that day won’t be any time soon. Because every penny I have goes to Satan’s Ransom to repay my debt. And if I don’t hurry, I’ll become their first employee in a whole new entrepreneurial endeavor.
Prostitution.
Or possibly, their first human trafficking victim. They’ve threatened both. Python also offered me a position as a club whore, but that was back when I had the curves of a woman instead of a two-by-four. Now he stares at my face when he talks, not my chest, and I have to admit, it’s a little insulting.
I look down at my shrunken breasts. I’ll need a helluvalot more pudding to bring these babies back to their former glory. Who would want to rent or buy a woman with shrivelled tits and hips so sharp they could cut a man’s dick off? The answer to my question comes in the form of Python’s voice in my head.
A man can close his eyes while you suck his dick and come just as hard.
I shrug off my thoughts and wash the mugs and plates that some inconsiderate jerkface left in the sink. I press my lips and decide it was Jeff. Only a man that loved pudding as much as Jeff did, would leave his dishes in the sink, amirite?
I swallow thickly just thinking it. I really was turning into a bitter jackass, as if Jeff’s sharpie brought it to fruition.
I finish putting the dishes away and head to the garbage can. I’m lugging out the trash bag when the door opens and in walks the security guard I’ve been secretly ogling since he started working here a few weeks after me. I quickly duck my head to hide the grimace contorting my face because oh, God, someone’s tuna fish sandwich is clearly more than a day old and my about-to-puke-face is not going to impress anyone, least of all Sexy Security Dude.
I prefer to gawk at SSD from a distance. Besides being in the same room with any member of the law, no matter how distantly associated with the kind that could arrest me, makes me nervous. Not that I’ve done anything illegal. At least not yet anyway. And if I’m guilty by a
ssociation, it’s still not my fault. Duress is powerfully motivating especially when being provided by a one percenter motorcycle club.
“Sorry. I’ll be out of your way in a minute,” I mumble, tying the black bag and heading for the door.
“You going to replace that?” SSD’s voice, both deep and smooth, albeit grumpy, makes me freeze, my heart pounding. I look down to see if the pudding has fallen out of my pocket.
“Excuse me?” I ask, my voice cracking with some sort of guilt chasm. A quick glance up and my gut flips as his stern brown eyes pin mine. He points.
“The bag.”
I follow the direction of his finger with my eyes. The trash can is bagless.
“Oh.” I clear my throat. “Uh, yeah. Gimme a minute. This thing reeks.”
He only narrows his eyes on me and I feel heat burn up the back of my neck as I set the full bag by the door.
“You forgot last night,” he says in a deep vibrating grumble. “I had to do it myself.” His mouth, and it’s a beautiful one, turns down. “After I’d already dumped my garbage in it.”
I grunt, suddenly irritated as I grab a new bag off my cart.
I liked SSD much better from a distance. He just had to open his mouth and ruin it, didn’t he? The one good thing in my life was fantasizing about Sexy Security Dude and now that’s gone too. I pause for a moment of silence in my grief.
“Trish?”
I blink and look over at him. He’s now standing in front of the open fridge.
“Huh?”
He frowns at me, or actually at my chest. I look down at the patch on my coveralls that says ‘Trish.’
Oh. Even my work overalls are hand-me-downs.
“Have you seen anyone else here in the last half hour?”
He’s big, did I mention that? Sexy Security Dude is like over six feet big. Wrestler big. And I don’t mean sumo. SSD has muscles even bigger than Python, but without the thick, veiny neck.
And he’s super hot!
Who’s your daddy, hot.
Mmhm.
“Trish?”
I mean he’s not movie-star handsome… I pause considering, okay, maybe he is with his brown, sun-streaked hair, and those downward tilted, warm chocolate brown eyes and full, sculpted lips. Oh, and the tidy beard that doesn’t disguise his angular jawline—that I regularly imagine tickling my thighs.
“Trish!”
“Huh?” I look up blankly at the semi-shout, my eyes itching to go back to his perfectly shaped jaw or his butt. “Name’s Lu, not Trish. My uniform isn’t in yet.” I tap the name sewn beneath the BBW’s Friendly Cleaning Service patch over my left breast.
He frowns his masterfully molded lips and grunts, tossing his brown-bag lunch on the table and points. “That’s false advertising.”
My eyes widen, flicker down and back up, and then narrow. He’s pointing at my chest. I cover my pathetically small breasts and his brows shoot up as his face pales.
“I didn’t—” He waves both hands in front of him.
I don’t, I said, do not, notice how big his hands are because I’m not, I said, not, a perv like him who ogles other people’s body parts. Uh, dude, you just imagined him tickling your thighs.
Anywho, I definitely don’t picture those hands wrapped around my upper arms as he shoves me roughly against the wall to take my mouth…
“Not the BBW…” he blurts, snapping me back from my quickly-developing fantasy.
My brow arcs and I shift my jaw before grinding out slowly, “It stands for Big Bill Williams.”
“I know. I was—” he gathers a breath, hanging his head a moment in defeat before looking back up. I make a show of crossing my arms over my chest, smugly cocking my head to the side, daring him to continue.
He clears his throat. “I was referring to the friendly part.” He shuts his mouth then, letting the silence grow heavy between us and scrubs a hand through his thick hair. I want to take over stroking those silky waves. I want to clasp handfuls of it as he buries his face in my....
Good God, Lu’s as horny as a nineteen-year-old college frat boy.
I press my lips and shake my head. “Sure.”
He looks skyward and I turn my head down to hide my smirk. This guy is amusing to toy with. And since I’m basically a death row inmate I have to take fun wherever I can get it.
“Look, I’m sorry.”
I eye the logo on his v-neck sweater. He’s wearing a security lanyard, only it’s hidden beneath the V of the sweater, but the security emblem is still plainly there. It’s a bear in a red oval with the words Grizzly Security beneath.
“Yours is bang-on I see.” I point to his patch. “You’re about as personable as a grizzly.”
“I guess I deserve that.”
“Only for pointing out I forgot the bag yesterday. The other stuff…” I shrug. “You’re easy to poke.”
He smiles and I see a mischievous spark in those brown eyes.
“Haven’t you heard the saying ‘don’t poke the bear’?”
I scratch my chin. “Haven’t you heard the saying ‘don’t poke the janitor’?”
His left brow goes up. “No, actually.”
“Well, it should be a saying ‘cause no one who has to deal with day-old tuna fish and urinals should ever be poked.” I eye him, walking around to check him out. He waits patiently for me to come back around. “And are you actually a bear?”
“I can be a little growly and bear-like,” he admits with a small shrug.
When he says this, I feel a spike in my blood pressure. His words definitely come out a little growly.
“Truce?” He extends his hand. I eye it, then him, and finally take it with reluctance. His much larger hand envelops mine and an electric zing rushes through me. And before I can even get my bearings and shake, I’m yanked forward and slammed against his deliciously hard chest. I gasp at the wind being knocked out of me and feel his hand by my hip. I can’t decide if I’m scared or excited that my sexy fantasy from earlier might be coming true. But then I realize what he’s doing.
Busted.
“Get your hands—stop!” He steps back and his smile is confidently cocky. He’s holding the pudding cup up like a trophy.
“Gotcha!”
My brow furrows and I frown. So busted.
“Shit.”
Chapter Two
Lu
“Shit is right, thief. I saw it in your pocket as soon as I walked in.”
“You’re good,” I add, purposely lacing my words with boredom. “You pass the test.” I look down and fiddle with the new garbage bag still in my hand, trying to open the end, but when I sneak a glance up, I can’t help but swallow.
He crosses his arms, pudding still in hand, and rolls his eyes before pointedly pinning me with them. “Don’t even.”
“What?” I shrug, shaking the bag open with exaggeration. “I like to make sure the security around here is good.”
“Uh huh.” He cocks his head, this time eyeing me from head to toe. And then he does something that makes my heart stutter. He uncrosses his arm and extends it, attempting to hand me the pudding.
“Take it. It’s yours. I hate pudding.”
I stare at the pudding, blinking, my mouth turned down. I want to tell him to shove his pudding up his ass; Lu takes charity from no one, but my stomach makes the loudest growling noise I’ve ever heard and I swallow thickly. I’m famished. Beyond famished. Think forty-days-lost-at-sea starved. Except it’s actually been months. And I’ve had pudding here and there and the occasional donut when my boss brings them into the staff room at the animal hospital.
“It’s yours?” I point. “You’re sharpie Jeff?” My voice is ripe with disbelief. How on earth could someone as sexy as him also be pudding Jeff?
“Er…if you mean it’s my name in sharpie on the pudding, then yes.” His brow furrows. “Sharpie Jeff? You don’t actually call me that, do you?”
“Uh, no.” I look down and scratch my eyebrow. “I call you so
mething entirely different actually.” I look up and my eyes sharpen on his face. “If you hate pudding so much why do you have it in your lunch every day?” My words are crusty and accusing and my hands fly to my hips. Searching his ring finger, I continue. “Doesn’t your girlfriend know you’re a pudding hater?”
God, I sound like a brat.
His mouth curves up on the right.
”Oh? What do you call me then?” His grin deepens. “And I don’t have a girlfriend.” He looks down at his left hand then too. “Or a wife.” He holds it up and wiggles those long, thick fingers.
Long and thick.
It’s amazing when you’re in end-of-times, well, my end-of-times anyway, how much your base instincts are on the forefront. Food and sex basically haunt me. All. The. Time.
Steak and beefcake.
I push air out of my mouth in a rude sound, looking at my feet instead of him or the damn pudding still in his hand. “I don’t care if you have a girlfriend or a wife,” I mumble.
“So what do you call me?” he prompts.
“SSD.” I mumble it again.
“SSD?”
I sigh, forcefully. And eye him with impatience. “Sexy Security Dude.” My words are loud and clear this time and loaded with contempt. “It’s not a compliment,” I add, disgruntled.
He laughs. “Uh, hell yes, it is.”
“Pfft, nah, sexy people are only good for one thing.”
He nods with that stupid grin on his face. “Sure. I’m definitely good for that.”
“Whatever, now you’re Grizzly Jeff anyway. And clearly, Grizzly Jeff is brainless because who puts something they hate in their lunch daily?”
“My niece puts the pudding in my lunch.” He reaches forward, grabs my hand and slaps the cup in it. “She’s four and loves pudding. Especially—”
I blink first at the pudding cup in my hand and then at him and finally, I finish his sentence.
“Butterscotch.”
A smile splits his handsome face and my heart flips.
“Right. I guess since you’re the pudding pilferer you’d know that.”
