A long, loud cheer goes up among the men, the groupies, that wait on the stranger’s reply. It’s like their lives depend on getting his approval, but the man’s face doesn’t change. He takes a few heavy steps up the stairs, his long and lean legs stretching the right out as he goes. He avoids answering them, but he gestures for something– a drink.
Desperate for his approval, Seb reaches over to me and takes the drink right out of my hand. I manage to squeak out a protest, but Ariel’s arm around my waist smothers me back into submission.
She whispers into my ear, “Come on, play along. I’ll buy you another one. Seb needs this.”
Yeah, but I needed that drink if I’m going to get through this night! I think as I sulk.
The rest of the boys watch Race eagerly sink back the remains of my drink. A small drop drips down along the edges of his angular face. It travels from the corner of his pinkish, full lips to the round crevasse between his chin and right cheek till it slides down the outline of the artwork on his neck.
As he finishes, he opens one eye and seems to focus in on me. I notice the upward crawl of his lips as he finishes the last drop and then examines the empty glass. I’m not ready for him reaching over Seb to hand the glass back to me with a sly, devilish grin.
Returning back to Seb, he pats Ariel’s man on the back with a strong, pounding palm as he says, “Thanks, man. I needed that.”
Seb’s entire demeanor changes in an instant. I always thought of him as some kind of lackey brownnoser in the club, but he stands taller with Race’s approval. His head held high, he ignores his lady and the woman he stole a drink from altogether and heads straight into the bar with the rest of the cheering, noisy group of leather-clad drunks and stoners. The door opens and music booms back into the patio over the speakers. The Bad Devils’ party has just begun.
With the guys gone, and just a few of the club girls mulling around the porch, I turn my attention back to Ariel. She’s sucking down her prissy vodka cranberry with an innocent look on her face.
Annoyed, I ask her, “Now what the hell am I supposed to do? Your man stole my drink to give to that… ugh… beast! The bar’s gonna be crowded for a good hour because they’re fawning over that pretty mountain boy and his entourage!”
“I’m sorry, Del. You know how important it is for Seb to move up. He wants a paid position, and this guy can get him there if he gets in good. He’s been gunning for an organization role for years now, and the old president wouldn’t give him the time of day. I’ll make him get you a new drink. I’ll text him now.”
“Don’t bother.” I push her off, still annoyed as hell. “Let him do what he has to do to impress that asshole. I’m sure he’s the kind of guy that needs men like Seb catering to his every need. They’re all like that. They think they’re tough shit, but the guys at the top know nothing. They’re just whiny, arrogant, pieces of—”
“Shit?” A booming voice stops me in the middle of my rant. From behind me, an arm stretches past my shoulder with a drink in hand. Without even seeing him, I know exactly who is behind me, offering me a fresh whiskey for my troubles. I stare straight at Ariel who is frozen in her place. Her eyes widen with fear as she attempts some kind of half-smile, half-apologetic look.
I take a deep breath, reminding myself of who I am. I’m Del. I’m not anyone’s girl. I’m not claimed. I’m not property. I’m not fixated on MCs or the Bad Devils. I don’t owe this guy anything, including my time or attention.
With my self-pep talk over, I spin on my heels to face him, but my feet fail me, and I’m nearly swept right into his arms by my deceptively dangerous heels on the wood planks. He catches me, wrapping his free arm around my back so that I’m forced upright. He bows down slightly to take a long, lingering examination of my face.
His pierced eyebrow flicks up a little. The large nostrils of his nose pulse and I see a vein pop slightly out as his jaw swishes back and forth. The pursed lips move into something almost like a smile, but he’s not giving it away– at least not for me.
He pulls back and then hands me my drink. “For a girl talking crap about me, you could at least stand on your own damn feet. I could have you thrown out of here for saying that shit about me.”
Before I can stop myself, I push him. “Then do it, buddy. Kick me out. Show everyone here what kind of a badass you are.”
I know he doesn’t like it as soon as I say it. The sort-of-smile disappears, and he glowers at me. Each step forward he takes forces me back one until my heels are right at the edge of the stairs. I hold on tight to the banister, thinking he may push me over himself as some kind of show of force.
I hold my breath and glance to where Ariel was once standing. I’m alone. Damnit. My heart races as I get a whiff of his musky cologne and the slight tinge of whiskey on his breath. His head cocks to the side as a hand moves to my waist.
In one swift move, he pulls me back onto the patio as he asks, “Now who the hell are you?”
“Delilah,” I answer, but I’m not sure if the word even escaped my quivering lips.
Chapter Two
Race
She looks like sex on a stick– red hair like fire streaming down her back, pretty lips puckered up in a sigh, her skirt hitched up those twigs of hers are all an invitation for guys like me. If she’s not conscious of what she’s doing, I’m gonna make her know what signals she’s sending.
“Delilah?” I reply back. My lip twitches slightly at the light weight of her name.
She doesn’t look like a Delilah. It’s not a name you hear around Denver or all the other hundred and one places I’ve lived over the past ten years. It’s a flower’s name. It’s a name for the spring. It’s a name that doesn’t belong in the blistering heatwave they’ve been having in La La Land.
“Yeah. Delilah.” She smolders. All the girls do.
I hear something drip off her words– want. She licks the corners of her mouth with the tip of her tongue, unknowing that it’s a signal. She can put up a tough girl act, talk shit about me behind my back, and then challenge my territory and position, but she can’t hide the fact that I am who I am.
Still, she surprises me when she doesn’t offer up an apology. She holds her tiny piece of ground on the edge of the deck. Her arm still is tangled around the banister for support, though I’m doing my best to hold on to her with a drink in my other hand. I can tell she’s been drinking already tonight. She’s not wasted, but a few more drinks and she’ll be gone with the fishes. This is a girl that holds her alcohol well, but not as good as some of the pros that are taking up the front row of the bar.
“Well, Delilah, I don’t appreciate hearing you talk crap about me when you know nothing of me.” I growl. “You do know who I am, right?”
She pauses as she thinks over her next steps. She can keep this cool girl attitude going and try to impress her way out of a fight. Or she can drop it all and run. I try to watch her body for signs that she’s going to cave under the heat of my stony glare.
Finally, she croaks out, “I know you’re some tool from Denver who thinks he owns the damn bar because he was appointed vice president of the local MC.”
I chuckle slightly. The rumble gets caught in my chest, and I brush away a small, surprised cough. I take a small sip of the drink I brought out for her, not caring who it belongs to anymore. This girl is more proud than I thought, and she’d drink me into submission– I can tell that from the fire her in voice and the way she keeps my eyes fixated on hers. I let go of my grasp of her waist, and she stumbles forward a little, catching herself before she lands on me again.
Once she’s got her feet under her, I pass her the drink. “Whiskey. Neat. You don’t look to me like a girl who mixes business with pleasure.”
“No. I take it straight. It’s better to savor.” She eyes me cautiously as she takes a seat in one of the vintage rockers the bar has got lined up against the back wall of the patio.
Delilah eases her back into the metal and then crosses one l
eg over the other. Her black-mesh stockings creep up the length of her legs, and I can see by the hem of her short skirt where the elastics around her thigh stops. The bare, pearly white skin nearly matches her crisp shirt.
“You work here?” I ask as I lean against the railings. I like to know who is under me, and who I can get under me.
She sputters a laugh similar to mine earlier, hiding the guilty humor with the back of her hand. When she’s composed herself, she explains, “I don’t do the whole Bad Devils shit. My daddy was in the MC, and I promised myself I wouldn’t become a legacy or some passed around princess like the girls inside.”
“Your dad still in this club?” I search for some familiarity, but shit if I’m any good at names. It’s gonna take me a solid year or two before I learn all forty-five full-time member’s names and aliases. Their stories would be even longer.
In Denver, I stuck to myself, kept out of everyone’s business. But that’s clearly not the order of operations in L.A. It’s run more like a traditional brotherhood. And if this girl is someone’s claim, someone’s child, I probably should put it down in the back of my brain.
“Used to be,” she answers somewhat quietly. “Don’t know where he is now. Probably dead like the rest of the old dogs. You all seem to die out quick.”
“Life passes like a shadow,” I murmur to myself. Delilah shoots me another curious look. I try to turn my back on her, but she catches me with another question.
“What the hell was that? ‘Life passes like a shadow?’”
I’m not one to share, especially with barflies like her, but I humor her. “It’s a motto of mine. Work in the night. Live in the day. Remember that life is only temporary. Better to live fast, die young.”
“You’re a fucking poet?” She smiles wildly at me.
“With another four of these, I can be.” I wink. “I pride myself on being everything you don’t expect.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that I’ve been around these parts– lots of fucking parts to know what would surprise a girl like you. I know just about every thought that’s been spinning through that pretty little head of yours since you spotted me. It’s what I do. I study people. I see what makes them tick and what ticks them off.”
“You can’t be serious.” Her voice goes deadpan, and her chair begins to nervously rock.
I’m used to this reaction from girls about to give in to me. Her fingers wrap around the arm, her knuckles turning white under the stress of the silver and gold rings around her fingers. After a beat, she spins her head and looks directly into me as she spits out, “I think you’re a bullshit artist.”
“Try me,” I suggest, not letting her bad attitude break my mood. It’s too fun to play with girls like this– to lead them on like dogs on a leash. I offer to her, “Let’s make a game out of it. I’ll tell you your story, every bit of it from your birth till what you did today. For every point I get right, you take a drink.”
“You get me drunk? That’s the point of this game? What’s in it for me for playing along? What happens when you get my story wrong because you’re a terrible liar who knows nothing about me or my history?”
“Fair. Even though I will win and get you hammered, I’ll play along. Every question I get wrong, I’ll take a chug of tequila. It’s the only drink strong enough to get me hammered. And if you win, you get the rare satisfaction of seeing me get my damn guard down.”
She appears to mull it over, my words turning in her mouth and her brain. The knuckles ease up slightly and begin to wrap against the metal. Her nails make a twinkling sound as they strike the steel frame.
Finally, she takes the last swig of her drink and says, “Fine. I’m in. Go get us a bottle of tequila and another few glasses of whiskey.”
Delilah Anne. I got that guess of her middle name on the first try. Her last name, Smithson, was a wrong answer. One drink for me. One drink for her. But I keep that last name in the back of my mind as I suck my tequila down hard and fast–fast enough to feel the tingling of my hair stand on the back of my neck. I was honest with her on that– tequila is my weakness.
“You like rock music. I can tell by the way you dress.” It’s my next, softball guess. All girls who go to bars like this are into rock music.
She nods slowly and picks up the glass to her puckered lips, but before she can take another sip, I sneak in, “But you secretly like pop shit too– the kind you hear on B93. You dance and sing to it in your car on the way to work. But you wouldn’t admit that to a guy like me, would you?”
She pauses and eyes me with those almond, doe eyes. They look slightly heavier than when we started this game. Even her hand looks less steady as she sighs and tips the clear liquid back as easily as if it were water.
She coughs and then proclaims with slurred words, “You tell anyone about that, Race, and you die.”
“I don’t take threats too kindly, girl,” I snap back. “Do you know what that would cost you?”
“I don’t care!” she shouts so the few people who have been brave enough to join us outside turn their heads tentatively towards us. “I don’t give a fuck who you are!”
She’s drunk, but this is my territory now. Any test to it, even by some prissy princess who can’t hold her drinks, is walking into the danger zone. I steady myself before I reach over to her, grabbing the empty glass from her hand.
Her head whips up in shock. “What the hell, man!”
I point a long, calloused finger square into the center of her bare chest, right above the last button fastened and say as firmly as I can, “I don’t fucking care who you are, Delilah. You’re just like the rest of the girls I’ve met. You’re just some messed up, twenty-something chick who had potential when she was growing up. Top of your class in middle school, faded away in high school, couldn’t catch a break and make it to college. You ended up doing something maybe your mama did… In this outfit with the bleached-out stains, I bet you waitress at a ritzy place that’s better than you and full of people you think you deserve to be. But let me tell you something, Delilah Ann Smithson. You’re not as good as you think you are. And you certainly ain’t shit around here. So, if I were you, I’d keep your head down, your mouth closed, and your fucking legs spread because that’s all you’ll get at a place like this with a man like me in charge.”
There’s a fleeting moment when I think she’s going to slap the fuck out of me. Her shaking hand wraps around the chair’s arm, and she lips the words, “How dare you?” But nothing comes out. She’s speechless. For the first time since I set eyes on her, her spicy, out-of-place words have escaped her.
Finally, when I’m about ready to get the hell out of here and find something a bit more… easy, Delilah reaches over me to the small table I’ve laid the nearly empty bottle of tequila on and pulls it back to herself. Without breaking eye contact, she puts the lip of her bottle to her mouth and proceeds to chug.
Seconds pass and small drops slide out the side of her mouth. But she goes on until it’s all gone– the remainder of the bottle.
After a deep, blistering swallow, she asks without any hesitation or anger in her voice, “Where can we go?”
“Follow me,” I command her. “Don’t make it too damn obvious.”
I stand to my feet and head back inside the bar. The boys are getting rowdy. There is the crashing of glasses on counters, hands slapping backs and asses of the ladies serving them, and raised voices as fights threaten to break out. I’m okay with this. I love the noise, the hell breaking loose, the feeling that any moment something could happen. And with sloppy, angry Delilah following me with those flashing lips and tits, I know it can and will.
I pull her into the back room–the room where Nico and I’ve set up shop while our place in headquarters is being finished. It’s not much to look at–a few chairs, two desks, and some paperwork still sticking out of the beat up, wooden filing cabinets– but I didn’t bring Delilah here to impress her. I’ve brought her
here to take a piece of that body and to show her who is running this territory now that I’m in town.
She looks around cautiously, scanning the room in apparent approval. She stops at me, moving her eyes from my boots to the top of my head. A sly smile leaps across her face and the color in her pale cheeks goes from nonexistent to nearly the same shade of her fire red hair. As she licks the small corners of her lips, I know she’s mine.
“You’re the boss,” she whispers.
“Yeah, I fucking am,” I reply coldly. “Get on the desk.”
“What?” She looks over her shoulder at the emptier of the two.
“You heard me. Jump up there.”
She walks backward two or three steps before her ass hits the edge of the long wooden desk. She lifts one leg slowly up and then another until her ass is resting on the top and her legs dangle. Her toes barely touch the edge. She looks towards me for my next command.
“Strip.”
TANGLED WITH THE BIKER_Bad Devils MC Page 2
