Threat: A Blood Riders MC Novel (Book 1)

by Tia Lewis

  “Thank you.” Darcy snarled.

  “Especially after a big party like the one you had last night.”

  We paused.

  “How did you know that?” I asked. I had to find out. I didn’t care if I wasn’t supposed to ask or what.

  He winked. I hadn’t imagined I could be more disgusted with him until he did that. “I make it my business to know things. You two run along.” He stepped back, and we hurried past him. I felt his eyes on me as we went, and my skin crawled. I wanted to take a shower.

  “Oh, my God. What the hell was that? He’s so disgusting, I could throw up,” I whispered when we got to the cash register. He hadn’t followed us.

  “Now you know,” she replied. “Hawk’s the worst. Filthy, ignorant, nasty. Just vile. All of his guys are like that, too. They don’t all look as bad as he does, but they might as well because they have ugly hearts.” It was interesting, the way she worded that. Ugly hearts. That was how she could look at the Blood Riders and call them good guys because she saw them as having good hearts. Personally, having met Hawk, I was starting to agree with her. If that were the alternative, I would rather have stuck with the Blood Riders any day.

  By the time we got back to the Clubhouse, Darcy was more her old self. She joked and laughed all through the dinner preparation, and I played along for her sake. Inside, I trembled. Why had he looked at me that way? Why did he seem to know me? Did he know me? Did he know who I was? I make it my business to know things. His words rang in my head, nauseating me. Was he for real? How did he know about the party unless he’d been watching the Clubhouse?

  Once I was sure Darcy had dinner well in hand, I snuck away to find Drake. I had to tell him. If there was a chance Hawk was watching, he needed to know.

  I found him in the lounge area, playing a video game against one of the guys whose names I didn’t know. His patch said, Phil. Phil was kicking Drake’s ass in Mario Kart.

  “Oh, hey.” He used my entrance as an excuse to forfeit the game, and I chuckled at his blatant tactic. Phil was pretty pissed since he was so close to winning outright.

  “Drake, can I talk to you? It’s really important.” I led him to Jack’s office, which was empty at the moment. It smelled like vomit, and I wrinkled my nose in distaste. “Is Jack sick today?”

  “He probably had too much to drink last night. Who didn’t?” Drake chuckled.

  “You didn’t,” I pointed out with a coy smile.

  He nodded. “Thanks to you.” He pulled me to him by my waist, crushing his lips against mine. I had to give in for a minute, I just had to. Something inside me always leapt to life whenever he touched me, whenever he kissed me. I couldn’t help it. It was a part of me I wasn’t used to dealing with. I couldn’t control it because I’d never had to before.

  By the time our kiss ended, we were both out of breath and his erection pressed against my hip. I rested my forehead against his chest, inhaling his intoxicating cologne and struggling to control myself. “There was an actual reason why I asked you to join me in here,” I managed to say between gasps. “It’s pretty important. Or it might be, that is.”

  “What’s up?” He leaned on the door, trying to adjust himself but failing miserably. He looked uncomfortable as hell, but I wasn’t in the mood to do anything for him even though the first touch of his lips had made my pussy wet.

  “Okay, I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m a little overwhelmed—”

  “What’s going on, Bree?” he interrupted.

  “Okay. I thought you should know that Darcy and I ran into that Hawk guy at the supermarket.”

  “What?” he roared.

  “Calm down, Drake. Don’t freak out.” My sentence rambled on as rage seemed to slam into Drake at my mention of Hawk’s name. His fists clenched almost automatically.

  “He was there? On our turf?”

  “He was there, and he stopped us.”

  “He stopped you?” he yelled.

  “Calm down, please. I wouldn’t have told you if I thought you couldn’t control yourself.” He was breathing like a bull wanting to get out of its pen. If he’d started dragging his feet back against the floor like he was ready to charge, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  “What did he say?”

  I took a deep breath. “He knew there was a party here last night. That was why I thought I should tell you. I believe he’s watching us, Drake. Otherwise, how else would he know?”

  His face went blood red. “That fucker! That sack of shit motherfucker!” He bit down on his fist, groaning. “I wanna take him out so bad. You don’t even know. You have no idea how much he needs to die.”

  “Calm down, please.”

  “Did you touch you?”

  “No, no! He didn’t do anything to us. I just thought you should know so that you can plan accordingly.”

  “Plan what? Bree, the man, isn’t like other humans. He doesn’t think the way we do. He’s one of those types who would probably wire a pregnant woman with a bomb, the way they do in those countries overseas. Ace and Phil saw that when they were over there. That’s the kind of person Hawk is. He doesn’t care who gets hurt or killed, as long as he gets what he wants.”

  “What does he want?” I trembled.

  “The Club—the club’s business, really. That’s it. Hawk wants to expand, and he wants to take us out. It’s not enough to negotiate or earn something. He’s trying to take it and wipe us off the map. Period.”

  “Wow. I don’t even know what to say.” I didn’t know it was that deep between the Blood Riders and the Cobras. Evidently, my father hadn’t told me everything about his job.

  “You don’t have to say anything. Look, I’m glad you’re safe, and that’s all that matters.” He wrapped his arms around my back pulling me close to him. He squeezed so hard I almost couldn’t breathe.

  “What could he have done to us in the middle of the supermarket?” I asked, trying to be reasonable.

  “I don’t even wanna think about it,” he said, hugging me again. I let him hug me until he felt better. Then, when he released me, “I don’t want you going anywhere by yourself. You hear me? Nowhere.”

  “Drake—”

  “I mean it! Nowhere. I can’t take a chance with you. Is that understood?”

  It was flattering, but… “I don’t want to feel like I’m your prisoner.”

  “You’re not a prisoner. It’s for your own good. It’s for all the girls, too, not just you. I want you safe. You’re the most vulnerable ones of the Club, and he knows that. And he knows we would do anything to get you back if he took you away from us.” He ran a warm, gentle hand down the side of my face. “From me.”

  Something stirred, deep inside me. I didn’t know what to think or how to feel. On the one hand, I wanted to pull away and tell Drake I didn’t belong to him. Nobody could take me away from him because I wasn’t his in the first place.

  On the other hand … I wanted to sink back into his embrace and never come out. It wasn’t wrong of me that I’d referred to the Club as “us,” as in “he’s watching us.” It was also wrong of me that I’d told Drake about Hawk in the first place. What did I care what happened to the Club? I hated them.

  Didn’t I?

  16

  Drake

  “Dinner’s ready!”

  Bree looked up at me. “Come on. It’s time for dinner. I worked my ass off on it, so you better eat it.” She grinned, trying to lighten my mood. I could have kissed her for it.

  “Shit, I don’t have an appetite now.” I leaned my head against the door, looking around the room. The last thing I could think about was eating

  “Well, you better pretend to have one,” she commanded. I looked at her in surprise and was even more surprised at the way her eyes burned into mine. “I mean it, Drake.”

  Lost in a trance I begin to ponder. What this Club needs is a strong leader. You’re their leader. You have to put on a show, if only for their sake. Don’t let Hawk get to you like this.
He’s not here. They are. Show them you’re not afraid.”

  “I’m not scared of Hawk, Bree. You have nothing to worry about.” I said. And I wasn’t. But I couldn’t tell Bree how much deeper the story went. Not yet.

  “Then prove it. Go out there and eat a plateful of spaghetti. I made the sauce with these two hands, damn it.” She grinned, holding her hands up. I kissed both palms then moved my mouth over hers. She was more precious than anything I knew. I had no idea they made women like her anymore.

  “Okay. Dinner.” I opened the office door, and she followed me through the lounge, into the dining room. The place was a zoo, everybody practically climbing over each other to get their food. It smelled great, and my appetite actually woke up a little. I grinned down at her as I plated up some spaghetti. “Is this enough, Mom?”

  “Shut up,” she muttered, taking food for herself. I saw her glance at Violet, who sat in one corner, alone. “I think I’ll sit over there, with her.”

  “You sure?” I asked, looking over at Violet.

  “Yeah. I don’t want to twist the knife.” She went over to the table, put her things down, and started talking. I couldn’t hear what she said, but at least she was trying. She was so thoughtful, I couldn’t believe it.

  I couldn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, either, since I had bigger problems to take care of. Namely, Hawk. I looked around the room for Creed, and when I caught his eye, I jerked my head in the direction of the bar before going to it myself. I wanted to be alone, without everybody else. I had to tell him what Bree told me.

  “So, what do you think?” I mumbled with a ridiculous amount of food in my mouth. The food was delicious. I would have to thank Bree and Darcy personally.

  “What do I think? I think he’s a fucking slimeball,” Creed muttered. “I could kill Hawk with my bare hands. Threatening our women like that. Watching us. He has no fucking soul, I’m convinced.”

  “I know. He’s a mad dog, and we’ve gotta take him out.” I replied. I didn’t know how, yet. I just knew we would. The thought alone was enough to get me excited.

  “You think the girls are safe?”

  “No, I don’t. That’s why we can’t let them out alone. I already told Bree. We have to tell the others, too. No way they can go out on their own. You know that’s the first fucking thing he’ll do—follow them, take them and do God knows what.”

  “Right.” Creed nodded.

  “It’s how that piece of shit thinks, and he wants us to know he’s thinking about it. That’s why he made sure they saw him at the supermarket.”

  “He’s an animal, man,” Creed muttered, tearing a piece of bread apart with his hands. I knew he wanted to tear Hawk apart so easily. “The worst part is, they’re all like him. It’s as if he went from door to door at the asylum, asking the guys inside if they wanted to be part of his club.”

  I barked a harsh laugh. “Too true.” I hated to even think about going head-to-head with them. We had the manpower and the muscle, but we didn’t have the brutality. I shuddered to think how it would turn out. If it came down to it, we would go in with guns blazing.

  Why did the thought bother me more than it normally would have? Any other time, I’d be on my bike already, itching to go. I knew the answer, but didn’t want to admit it to myself. I looked over my shoulder into the dining room. Bree sat with the other girls, including Violet, and all of them laughed together. I couldn’t imagine leaving her. I didn’t want to get myself killed and leave her. But I would go into it if it meant keeping her safe.

  What the hell had happened to me in one day?

  “Okay. It’s your turn. Tell me something about you.” Bree’s head was on my chest, one of her long legs wrapped around my hips. She was a goddess. I stroked her thigh—not sexually since we had just finished our first round of the night. I just wanted to touch her.

  “Let me see.” I thought about it. “I still watch cartoons sometimes.”

  “You do? Me, too!”

  “Liar.”

  “I’m not lying. I swear!” She picked up her head, looking me in the eye. I could just about make out her face in the darkness. “I mean it. I watch them.”

  “So, what’s your favorite cartoon, then?”

  “Spongebob.” She didn’t even have to think about it. I was impressed.

  “That’s a pretty good show,” I admitted. “Okay, that was my thing. Now it’s your turn.”

  “Hmm. I didn’t learn to ride a bicycle until I was twelve.”

  “I never learned to ride a bike,” I admitted.

  “Stop playing! Really? And yet you ride a motorcycle.” She ran her nails over my chest.

  “I know. Weird, huh? We could never afford a bike.”

  “Huh. But you could afford a motorcycle?” She didn’t sound convinced.

  “That was different. When I was thirteen, I started doing odd jobs around here for the money. I would sweep up, empty ashtrays, wipe down the bar. Stuff like that. And they would give me money which I saved up for three years.”

  “Wow, no way. So you got your license as soon as you turned sixteen? That’s so cool, a teenager on a motorcycle.”

  My mood shifted. I felt it clearly. “It didn’t happen quite that fast. I didn’t learn until I was eighteen.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t ask any questions, which I thought was interesting. Didn’t she want to know why it had taken another two years?

  “Yeah. So by the time I had money for a real motorcycle, why would I bother getting a bicycle?”

  She snickered. “That makes sense.” We both went silent. Then, she asked. “What did you do for those two years? If you don’t mind my asking. Were you here, with the Club?”

  “No.” My body tensed, and I willed myself to relax. It wasn’t her fault, any of it. She wasn’t there. And it was ages ago.

  “What happened?”

  “I was away.” What would she think if I told her? It was the one thing I felt she needed to know about me, so I had to tell her. Otherwise, if I waited, she might think I was holding something back. I didn’t want to hold anything back from her. “In juvie. Have you heard of it?”

  “Juvenile Detention Center?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t move away. She didn’t flinch. She took it like a champ. “So, I guess it would be rude of me to ask what happened to put you in there.”

  “Not rude. Curious.” I shrugged then laced my fingers together behind my head. It would be better for me not to touch her while I told her. I didn’t want to feel her flinch away.

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  “Nah, it’s cool.” I cleared my throat. “I beat the hell outta my stepdad. He was hitting on my mom, and it was just one time too many.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Yeah. I was tired of listening to him hurt her. It had been years since he first started. Do you know what it’s like to hear to somebody you love suffer again and again? And you can’t do anything about it?”

  “No.”

  “So, when they first got married, he was okay. Everything was great. I was eight then. By the time I was nine, he had started with it. When I was thirteen, he stopped using his palm and started using his fist. That was when I started working out. I wanted to bulk up, so when it came time to take him on, I could do it. He didn’t hurt her all the time, you see. Only once a month or so, when he got really drunk or really pissed off about something. But that last time—”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  I shuddered when I remembered it, and it took me awhile before I could talk again. “He had her on the floor, and he was just beating her. She was unconscious by that point—good thing.”

  “That was a good thing?”

  “Yeah, because she didn’t have to see what I did. I pulled him off her and asked him how he would like it for someone to beat him. He tried to shake me off, told me I was just a bastard anyway so what did I care, all this shit. I didn’t care what he said, though. I co
uldn’t stop looking at my mom. She was just—bleeding. Bleeding everywhere and unconscious. And he was hitting her anyway, you know? I couldn’t understand that part. He was still hitting her even though she wasn’t conscious anymore.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Then I lost it. I punched him once, laid him out flat. I got on his chest, the way he was on her chest, and I just wailed on him. I couldn’t stop. I waited until he was unconscious, just like he did with her. Then I hit him a few more times. It’s a crazy thing what happens to a person when they finally get to do what they’ve been waiting to do for years, you know? I only stopped because I was afraid I might kill him. I had that much built up rage in me that I could have killed him.”

  She didn’t say anything for a long time. When she did, it was, “What did you do then?”

  “I called an ambulance. The police arrested me that night. I spent almost two years in a juvenile detention facility. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I would fucking do it again. Because he never touched her after that. When he got out of the hospital, she had already left town—I think she was ashamed that people knew what happened. Women like her always believe that they can hide the truth from people, you know? Like nobody knew he was beating her. Once I made it to juvie, that was it. She couldn’t take the shame. She moved to Brooklyn, and he stayed in Queens. I keep an eye on him sometimes, just to make sure he leaves her the fuck alone.”

  “Wow,” Bree breathed. “That’s incredible.”

  “Incredibly bad,” I said, joking.

  “No. It’s incredible, period. You did that for your mom. I mean, he sounds like the kind of person who wouldn’t have just stayed away if you had asked him to.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed. I took the chance of touching her again, and she didn’t jump or flinch. I was never so relieved. “He needed to be taught a lesson. He needed to feel how it felt.”

  “That was brave of you. Not that I condone that sort of thing, but you were very brave to do it. And to sacrifice all that time in a detention facility?”