by Wolfe, Layla
Ford grinned cruelly. “Ain’t I, though?”
Turk jammed his brain bucket onto his skull while Ford turned on his heel and walked back to the hangar, practically whistling a happy tune.
CHAPTER TEN
MADISON
“So he shows up at the Bum Steer rocking this glow-in-the-dark cut that makes him look like a fucking Iron Man villain.”
It was wonderful to be back around the Bare Bones brothers. Cropper had cast a few glances at me but hadn’t tried to talk to me. I wasn’t nearly as traumatized by seeing Cropper and his ugly Cro-Magnon mug again as I had imagined I’d be. He was standing outside the hangar with a crowd of men flying colors proclaiming them to be Baal’s Minions.
His steely glance just flickered over me, doing a classic double take when he first caught sight of me. Then he forced himself to laugh at something his brothers said. He was much greyer now. I guess there were so many people around—about two thousand, someone said—that I could pretty much ignore Cropper. Maybe he was too old to bother girls anymore.
His lack of effect on me made me wonder. Maybe I can visit Speed here sometimes. Maybe I can even stand seeing Ford…with other women…
Apparently this “rally” involved brother clubs from all over the southwest. A live band was playing Lynryd Skynyrd covers, and a sea of choppers was parked on a nearby butte on an old runway, shining so painfully in the sun you needed shades to look. Old ladies with rainbow-colored hair wore see-through shirts and black hobnailed boots, and there were enough rhinestones to be seen from outer space.
They had lined up all the Illuminati equipment parade style to showcase a corral area where grown men rode old rice rockets and clunkers in a sort of demolition derby.
Pass-arounds and club whores wore black leather chaps and little else. It was threatening to my womanhood, actually, to be nearing thirty and unable to hold a candle to these pumped-up, plastic, Botoxed girls. I knew this was the sort of raunchy chick Ford and his brothers liked. I just had never been hit over the head by so many of them at once. One gal standing in my group had a painted-on fishnet bra. Another draped over Turk’s arm had a Wonder Woman bikini that was barely hanging on by her nipples.
I was dressed as conservatively as I dared without risking looking dowdy. As much as Ford terrified me, I could never risk being seen looking drab or plain around him. Around these free-living women, I was way overdressed in my simple khaki sleeveless shift dress and strappy but sensible high-heeled sandals. I had endlessly debated how to dress. I was still in love with Ford. I had never stopped being in love with Ford. Of course I wanted to impress him, attract him, make him long for me.
But I’d blown it more than once. A man could only tolerate rejection so many times before he turned hard and heartless to a woman’s machinations. So many times? Men like Ford could tolerate it never. Now I’d turned my back on him twice.
I still had that womanly need to be attractive, so under my simple dress that buttoned up the front I wore a barely-there pushup bra and a pair of boy shorts I knew showed off the curve of my butt. It was twisted and perverse of me, I know. But nobody could see it. Maybe, just maybe I had a fantasy of finding Ford and bending over to take a can of Bud from a bucket of ice, or whatever. He’d get a good eyeful of my tasty muff that he’d seemed to love so much at the hospital.
And then he’d take me like a rampaging, virile bull.
Right. I know. Stupid. And selfish and immature as all hell, because Ford wasn’t for me. He needed to get a new old lady—one of these loud, brassy women who could shove ten hot dogs at once in their mouths or support a stars and stripes bikini top with their implants. There were nipple tassels made of chain mail, suede fringes, and simple flower pasties. True, there was a plethora of sagging boobs, too, on the old ladies who’d been around the block. I probably rated somewhere in the middle, my only ink a tramp stamp of bones on my butt crack that no one could see.
I kept telling myself I didn’t care. I was here to have fun, to show support for Bobby—Speed. Ford Illuminati was simply the hottest thing on two legs and my pussy had never stopped craving him. I had to remember. He wasn’t for me. He would always be the “one who got away.” Life just wasn’t that good to me. I didn’t deserve Ford.
You know what? I admitted to my deepest darkest most password-protected diary—and you—that the incident in the quiet room had been the most erotic, sensual, and passionate memory of my life.
How could it not be? Ford Illuminati was the most smoking piece of man meat to walk the face of the earth, and his face had been between my legs.
Making me come.
For the first time in my life, with another human being.
It hadn’t happened since.
I was more the type for Dr. Jacob Dubois. He had nearly thrown me out on my ass after he’d found out through the hospital grapevine about my quiet room escapade. I’d only admit it was one of my mother’s friends from the old days and we were carried away reminiscing. Jake wouldn’t talk to me for a week and then things returned to normal. Just that alone raised my suspicions. Did that mean he was cheating himself? He was from Belgium. All European men cheated.
Turk now said, “I can’t stand it when they show up in public looking like they’re wearing their old lady’s bedazzled vest. Rags should be simple, streamlined, not cluttered up with a bunch of fucking patches or beads.”
All the men around us agreed heatedly.
“I’m old school,” said Duji, a New York Italian who had aged well, like Al Pacino. “I don’t want to see no fluorescent cuts. You go black or jeans material all the way. And this thing about pink and baby blue undershirts? Leave that for the Bee Gees, brother!”
Luckily, Russ Gollywow was there to sing in falsetto. “Well you can tell by the way that I use my walk…” He’d been known to rock a powder blue sequined suit or two in his time, and to my surprise Speed jumped right in there with him, snapping his fingers and high-stepping like a disco king.
“I’m a woman’s man…”
Speed didn’t have the pipes of Gollywow, but he’d always been a superb dancer. Sometimes when Ford was out on a run, Speed and I used to drink schnapps or Bud and put on some old seventies tunes. Ingrid had a turntable, actually, so we grew up knowing a lot of the same groups Gollywow impersonated now.
I even started swaying and snapping my fingers a little bit, I admit. The sweetbutts didn’t know what the fuck we were singing, but even Turk must’ve been listening to oldies radio. He stepped right in sync with me singing the backup portion of the song.
It was kind of funny, these muscular, inked, shirtless guys wearing only cuts and leathers singing an old Bee Gees tune. Especially with the lead singer onstage wailing about how he was born to be bad.
Then I saw him.
He didn’t look surprised to see me as he strolled by with his arm slung over some whore or other—I don’t know, I didn’t look at the girl.
His eyes were dark, cynical, despairing. I knew that underlying flash of deeply ingrained sorrow. He had looked like that the day at the high school when he’d told me that Cropper had a perversion. He likes to look…he wants a taste of you. More and more it was starting to seem like I should have laid the blame for everything squarely at Cropper’s feet. If we can make it until you leave for school, then we’re home clear.
I sort of stumbled in my dance, and when I ran into Turk he steadied me by holding both my upper arms. Turk smiled down at me protectively. Of course by then, all I wanted to know was whether Ford had seen Turk touch me.
Yes, Ford was looking at us over his shoulder. But when he saw me looking at him, his eyes snapped back to the front and he continued on with the slut.
I was crushed. But what was I expecting? After I’d given him the heave-ho at the hospital on what was probably the worst day of his life, what the fuck did I expect? Flowers and chocolates?
“Ugh, too much watery beer,” I told Turk. “Did you notice where the port-a-potties are?”
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I knew for such a large crowd they wouldn’t be letting people indoors. In fact, I saw a couple of burly nomads with folded arms guarding the stairs that led to the top floor of the hangar, probably offices. I stumbled on blindly, thinking how I had probably blown it.
Fear—and immaturity—had prevented me from seeing that Ford actually did want me back when I was seventeen. He had a serious, legitimate gripe about Cropper’s perversion and he didn’t want to add fuel to the fire.
I wound up inside the hangar walking past lots of big trucks. A flash of something flitting about moved in my peripheral vision.
I hesitated. A dog? A coyote?
I plowed ahead. And who should step out from behind a big truck but Cropper.
It was too good to be true, thinking he was out of my hair.
I tried to plow on by him, but he grabbed my upper arms just as Turk had a few minutes ago. Only this wasn’t nearly as protective. Unaccustomed to wearing three inch heels, I wobbled, nearly falling. Mortifyingly, I had to grab onto his forearms for support.
Fuck all.
“Cropper.” I tried to be polite, as though we’d just bumped into each other at a cocktail party while holding martini glasses. “Nice to see you again.” I yanked my hands off his odious flesh and stepped back.
He didn’t remove his hands. He steered me toward the dispatcher’s office, pressing me against the corrugated metal.
“Good to see you, Maddy. You’re looking mighty tempting with your titties as big as ever.”
I tried to squirm away. “I’m not a teenager anymore, Cropper. Don’t you have younger girls to molest?”
“Not when I’ve got you. Didn’t anyone tell you? At a rally you shouldn’t be going to the john alone.”
“Then I should’ve taken someone with me? A guard?”
“Another old lady.”
“I’m not an old lady, Cropper.”
“No. You’re an extremely hot and juicy young lady. You’ve ripened into the sort of lady I love to get up on.”
“Sorry. I’m spoken for. And I’m not a hang-around either, Cropper. I’m just Speed’s sister. I want to be able to come around here without being afraid for my…” I couldn’t think of what I was afraid of.
Cropper noticed this hesitation, and he laughed in my face. “Of your virginity? That’s long gone by now. And I believe Ford’s moved on from his childish crush on you.”
That remark hurt me more than any of his predatory comments. I was old and callous enough to handle his gross, drunken letches. I broke free from his grip, elbowing his arm aside to stalk vigorously to where the toilet trailer was parked inside the hangar.
Eyew. I guess some things never change. Why don’t men just go for women who actually want them?
I felt so dirty. Three or four old ladies were in the trailer washing up and gossiping, fixing their Cleopatra eyeliner, but of course I didn’t know them. Hurriedly I washed my hands and clanged down the metal steps, heading for the wide-open back hangar doors. Brothers were climbing on and admiring the construction equipment parked inside, so I pointed my compass in the direction of the music stage.
I wasn’t going to let Cropper ruin my time. I’d take some sweetbutts with me next time I went to the can. Thanks, Cropper, for the good advice.
I was just about to round the corner of the sliding hangar doors, though, when a hand grabbed my bicep and yanked me back inside. The whole ceiling flew by my vision as I was jerked around the corner and slammed against the metal wall.
Cropper again? No, three different leering guys. I blinked, and saw they were Baal’s Minions, whoever they were. The lead guy who had grabbed me had sort of a Gregg Allman look. He had the sunburned look of the white boy who had been riding awhile wearing shades, like a negative raccoon.
“Who you claimed by?” he asked. This one was breathing Jack Daniels on me.
“Claimed?” At first it didn’t make any sense to me. Just as I got it, Gregg clarified,
“Property of. Who you property of?”
“Well, no one. Why do I need to be property of if I’m just attending a rally?”
Gregg smoothed my face with the back of his hand and tipped my chin. He looked at me every which way, as though buying a slave at a market. “A little old, but trainable. What do you think, Slit?”
Oh great. Not Slash or Grunt, but Slit. I was going to have to fight my way out of this one.
“Trainable,” echoed Slit.
Incredibly, Gregg’s fingers were all over his belt buckle now.
What the fuck? What planet were these guys from? Any woman not wearing a “Property Of” patch was an automatic target, as though she had implied her consent by not being spoken for?
“You’re kidding me, right?” I tried to keep my tone light, but just as I started to make a dash for the open hangar door, I noticed the glint of metal in Slit’s hand. A knife.
Slit said smoothly, “I think it’d be in your best interest to let Mack train you.”
“Be a good little girl,” goofed the third guy, who I hadn’t even looked at yet.
Breathing deeply, I prepared myself for a good long wait. I could think about other things. I could think about my job, of coronary artery bypass grafting, about laser revascularization, of making channels through the heart muscles and chambers. Yes. This would work, and then it’d be over, and then I never had to come to the Citadel again.
“Ooh, yeah, chickie,” gushed Mack, grabbing one of my boobs full-on. “I think you’ll be trainable into a—”
He never got the chance to finish, though, because suddenly he was flying through the air.
At first, in the dim light of the echoing hangar, I thought it was Cropper who beat on Mack.
The assailant was pummeling away on the fallen warrior, just mercilessly pounding his face, gut, chest with strikes that were blurry, they were so fast.
Slit took off like a shot, and I started inching toward the door, hoping no one saw me.
“Motherfucker,” seethed the assailant. It seemed like I could see droplets of sweat flying off his forehead as he pounded, but I realized it was droplets of blood I saw glinting in the thread-like rays of sunshine that came through cracks in the walls.
“Dude! Dude!” Mack kept crying. His only protest was to stomp his feet and slap his hands against the cement floor, and his face was increasingly beginning to look like a piece of raspberry pie.
“Ford!”
With my instinctual nurse’s training, I leaped on top of Ford and pulled with all my might. I couldn’t stop the pounding machine he’d become. He just kept punching the guy, snarling “motherfucker.”
“Ford! It’s me, Madison! Stop it right this instant! Do you fucking want to kill the guy? Do you want his blood on your hands?”
This was laughable, because the guy’s blood was already on Ford’s hands.
But it seemed to work. Ford wrenched himself to his feet and stood with bloody hand at his side, snarling down on the fallen Allman Brother. When he whipped his head around to look at me, the snarl fell from his mouth, and his fist unclenched.
“You’re coming with me,” he said mildly, as though it were only a suggestion.
Taking me by the hand, it was Ford’s turn now to jerk me through the hangar.
“That guy!” I protested. “I’m a nurse, Ford. I can’t just let him lie there in a pool of his own blood.”
He glanced from side to side as though expecting an ambush. His beautiful brown eyes flashed with emotion. His nostrils flared with the exertion of having pummeled Gregg into a pulp. “No worries. There are always tons of brothers around to help the fallen.” He stopped by the dispatcher’s door, his hand on the knob. “In here, woman.”
I would have gladly gone—in fact, had no choice, with Ford yanking me toward the office—but the sight we both saw when Ford shoved the door inward had us pausing, stunned.
Turk Blackburn was pressed up against the wall, furiously making out with another man. They ground their h
ips together lustfully, no holds barred.
I was so shocked I’m sure I just stood there gaping, and Ford’s hand in mine froze absolutely solid.
I don’t know how severely Ford was shocked because I sure as hell didn’t look at his face.
I was too busy looking at this abso-fucking-lutely stunning man in the throes of lust, the back of his cut blurring the dry-erase list on the board behind him.
Biceps clashed with biceps, erections ground together, muscular jaws working, mouths clashing.
I was simply stunned speechless. It was Ford who slammed the door shut on the two groping men, so as far as I know, they didn’t even notice us.
“This way,” he said simply. “Let’s go somewhere more private.”
He was hauling me back toward the toilet trailer, clattering up the front steps.
“I don’t call this more private,” I said, but Ford had already yanked the women’s door open.
He bellowed into the fluorescent interior, “All right, ladies! Clear out! Need this room. Shake it, shake it!”
Their chattering stopped abruptly, as though someone had hit the pause button on a party sound effects CD. Hushed, they hustled themselves out the door with their combs and lipsticks. Ford slammed and locked the only door of the windowless trailer. It was actually a smart idea.
Turning to me, he rushed me.
Every inch of my skin tingled with anticipation of what Ford might do. Was he going to make love to me, or hit me?
The answer turned out to be neither.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FORD
“The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of being miraculous. The language of society is conformity; the language of the creative individual is freedom. Life will continue to be a hell as long as people shut their eyes to reality.” ~ Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird
Ford crushed Maddy in his arms as though he wanted to break her bones.
She felt like a little bird in his big, punishing arms. He hadn’t even bothered to wash that guy’s blood and teeth off his hand before lifting her ass onto the rickety sink and grabbing a fistful of her hair.
