TANGLED WITH THE BIKER_Bad Devils MC

by Kathryn Thomas

  I reach into my jeans pocket, take out a folded-up piece of paper, and hand it to her.

  “What’s this?” she asks.

  “The time the driver will be outside your apartment on Saturday, the make of the car so you know who it is, and a number you can reach me on the night of the party if I can’t get to my phone.”

  “Oh, okay, cool.” She leans forward and places the paper on the coffee table. “Maddox,” she says. “Can my friend come? Nat—she’s my coding partner.”

  “Maybe,” I reply. “I’ll have to check. I’ll see what I can do, though.”

  “Thank you.”

  I stand up, adjust my jacket, and make to leave.

  “Wait,” Eden mutters, when I’m at the door.

  I stop and turn back to the apartment. She lets the towel drop to the couch as she stands up. She walks to me naked, poised on the balls of her feet. Then she leans up and kisses me softly on the cheek, kisses me like no woman has kissed me before: loving, sweet.

  I take a stunned step back.

  “Be safe,” she murmurs.

  I take another step back, doubly stunned, and then leave the apartment.

  “See you tomorrow,” I mutter, closing the door behind me.

  I thought I was the love ’em and leave ’em type, I think as I ride back to the clubhouse. I thought I didn’t get attached.

  Yeah, a voice answers. But Eden is smart, Maddox, and you’ve never been with a smart woman before.

  I stop outside the clubhouse for a few moments, sitting on my bike.

  It’s true, I realize. I’ve never been with a really smart, driven woman. Those women aren’t usually drawn to bikers. But Eden is; Eden’s unlike other women.

  I’m in deep now.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Eden

  Once a day, he finds me. And once a day, I have the best orgasm of my life.

  I’ve had orgasms before, of course. What self-respecting woman hasn’t stayed awake late at night with an image of her favorite hunk in her head, her hand creeping slowly and gloriously down her underwear, a coy smile on her lips? And I’m even one of the lucky few who’ve received orgasms from men before. But nothing like this, nothing like with Maddox. He knows my body better than any other man ever has—better than I do, sometimes.

  I have the power to stop him from coming to me, but I never use it. I never even think about using it. Because I know that when he gets to me, the pleasure will be explosive. It will move through me like some creature of pleasure, exploding inside my pussy, crawling through my body, and exploding in my head. When it’s over, I lay back, panting, face bright red and cheeks on fire.

  The day after he makes his solemn vow, he pulls up beside me when I’m parking my car outside the apartment. I’m not sure if he’s been waiting for me or if his timing is particularly perfect. All I know is that he kicks his bike stand, dismounts, and slides into the passenger seat. And then his hand is on my leg, stroking up, up, and clamping down hard on my pussy. He makes me into his toy when he feels like it: makes me submit to him totally.

  “Beg for me to finger your tight cunt,” he breathes, his hand inches from my pussy. Part of me doesn’t want to beg, and yet another part wants it more than anything. To submit, to be his, to let go of power, if only for a half an hour. I know that, afterward, I’ll be my strong self again. So I beg, moan, let him spank me, let him own me.

  We fuck in the car, and then he reaches inside his jacket and takes out a small case. Inside of it is a necklace with a pendant of an angel holding a scythe. “An angel of death,” he tells me, his hand lingering on my knee. “Just like your video game.”

  He makes to leave, but I reach across and grab his elbow. “Stay for a while,” I say.

  “Why?” he asks.

  “So we can talk.” It’s like I hear myself, but do not say it. So we can talk? Is there anything to talk about? I expect him to laugh his cocky laugh and smirk his cocky smirk. But he stays, and we do talk. About anything, about everything.

  The day after that, he texts me: Come to the clubhouse. I shouldn’t submit. I even tell myself not to: Don’t do what he says. You don’t have to. He doesn’t own you. This should infuse me with pride, should make me feel strong. But when I think like this, I feel an emptiness in my chest. I want to be owned by him, for a while. Afterward, afterward… And he knows that I return to my strong self. He respects it. We become skilled at separating the sex and the talking. As soon as the sex is done – the wild, untamed, uncontrollable sex – I am Eden the Student, and he respects that. We don’t fuck that day. We just go down on each other behind the clubhouse, mouth-fuck each other until we are both smiling like fools. He goes into the clubhouse and returns with a bunch of roses, handing them to me with a grin.

  “I love to spoil you,” he says.

  Is this what they mean by ‘swept off your feet’? I wonder. Is this what they mean when they say a man has ‘wooed’ you?

  I take the flowers because they are beautiful and I find that I love being spoiled as much as he loves spoiling me. It doesn’t infringe on who I am. I tell myself this over and over. I can be a feminist, a programmer of a video game based on feminism, and a grad student of gender theory. None of this stops being the case because I submit to a man like Maddox. None of the begging, the spanking, the moaning and the smiling as he gives me gifts changes who I am.

  The day after the clubhouse, he’s waiting for me outside college, smirking at me as I walk across the parking lot to his bike. He hands me the helmet. “Get on,” he says. I could say no, I think, but even as I think this, I’m climbing onto the back of the bike. He rides us to a swanky hotel, the kind of hotel I’d never be able to afford, and takes me to a penthouse suite. We fuck in the hot tub, warm water splashing onto the tiles, bubbles tickling us as he slides in and out of me.

  All of this – the gifts, the pleasure – burn into my chest. I feel hot the second I see him, and the only thing that can cool me is the press of his body, the writhing, the thrusting. The explosions of pleasure. The absolute loss of ourselves in each other. It’s never been like this with any other man.

  I’ve never known anyone like him.

  Despite all this, I’m slightly scared of him. When his hands roam over me, I know they’ve done other, grittier things. I know he’s not an angel.

  But the party on Friday. That’ll be a chance to be seen as his woman. That’ll be a chance to make it official.

  Think what the professor would say! Eden Chase, devout feminist, going to a swanky, fancy-pants party at a rich person’s house on the arm of an outlaw!

  I smile into my pillow that night. I can’t wait.

  Chapter Thirty

  Maddox

  I wake on Saturday morning with a huge grin on my face. It’s a grin that still feels odd. The leader of The Miseryed doesn’t grin like that! I tell myself. The leader of The Miseryed wakes up with a grimace on his face! The leader of The Miseryed wakes up spitting and groaning!

  I sit up in bed, reach across to the side table, and take the glass of water. As I sip it, I can hear a few of the men in the bar. Irish lets out a long laugh. Somebody drags a chair across the floor. Pool balls click and then thump as they hit the padding of the table. Markus grunts something loudly. I place the glass down and try to wipe the smile from my face. I don’t want the men to see. They can’t get it into their heads that their Boss has gone soft.

  Is that it? I ask myself, leaning against the headboard and staring at the window. It’s half past nine and morning sunlight shines through the blinds. Am I soft now? I know the answer is no, but I’m definitely changed. That’s undeniable.

  I remember sitting with Eden in the car after we fucked. I thought it was just going to be a quick fuck, bang-bang, done. A quick burst of pleasure and then it’s done. I didn’t expect…

  “Stay,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked, my cock already growing hard again. Does she want more?

  But then she said, “So we c
an talk.”

  This is the point where, with any other woman, I’d be gone. To talk? I’d get out of there as fast as I could, ride away, and never look back. I’m not the talking type when it comes to women. Eden is a wildcat; a woman who feasts on pleasure, and that should be enough. I should have laughed, smirked, something. But instead, I took my hand off the car door and turned to her.

  “About what?” I asked, looking into her eyes. She looked at me so openly I was sure she’d seen right through me. Had seen through all the bullshit directly into my chest. Maybe she’d somehow pried open my blackened ribs to take a look at my decayed heart. The thought made me swallow a massive lump.

  The night was dark, and we’d sat under a broken streetlamp. We were in near-total darkness except for a shaft of moonlight, which speared down and glinted off the bumper.

  Eden shrugged, her bra strap falling down, that gesture which is cute and sexy all at once. “Anything,” she said.

  She made to bite her lip, her lips parted, but then she closed her mouth, making her lips into a straight, determined line. A moment later, she said, “Or not.”

  Did she think she could pout with me? I’d thought. Make me care? Leave, Maddox! Show her you don’t care—

  But I couldn’t leave.

  “Let’s talk,” I whispered. I searched my mind: what is it men ask women? I’d never been on a date, a proper date, so this sort of thing was new to me. “Tell me about your childhood,” I finally said.

  She grinned at me. “You’re really trying here, aren’t you?”.

  “I am,” I admitted. “Is it that obvious?”

  “I think you’re doing alright.” She raised her eyebrows quickly, playfully. “For an outlaw biker.”

  “Are you going to tell me or not, Red?” I grunted.

  “Sure.” She shrugged. “I was born here, in LA. My father was a computer programmer—”

  “Like you.”

  She nodded. “Like me.”

  “My mother was a stay-at-home mom.”

  I let out a gasp, and she grinned mischievously. “Yes, I know, right? Here I am, desperately clinging to feminism, studying gender theory, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. I know what you’re thinking. Were there problems? Is that why I became a feminist? Nothing as exciting as that, I’m afraid. I respect my mother a great deal, but I never wanted to be like her. I guess that’s pretty normal, isn’t it, not wanting to be like your parents?”

  I stroked the thumb of my right hand over the knuckles of the left. “Pretty normal,” I agreed. “Where are they now?”

  “Malta,” she said. “Well, my dad is. He moved when I was twenty-one. They had me when they were quite old. They’re retired. My mom lives just outside town. I see her every now and then. What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Your parents…”

  “Ah,” I muttered.

  I stared down at my tattooed hand. She leaned across, touched my chin, and turned my gaze. “You can talk to me,” she said.

  “Can I?” I breathed; hardly able to believe where this has ended up. One moment, we were grinding, panting. The next I was spanking her, and she was moaning into my neck. Then the next, she was probing into my past.

  Do you want to tell her? Really? I’d thought.

  “Yes,” she said firmly, stroking my face.

  “My mother died when I was two. I don’t remember her, except that she sang to me sometimes. That’s all. My father was…” I sighed. “He wasn’t a nice man, Eden. That’s all I’ll say. I can’t be too hard on the old man. He taught me how to fight, how to take care of myself. But he wasn’t a good man.”

  I stopped, my mouth suddenly dry.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to say anything else.”

  I nodded, reached up, and touched her hand, pressing it hard into my face.

  I open my eyes back in real time, to the morning sunlight, shaking my head.

  Eden is a wildcat, a woman who needs sex just as much as me, but it’s more than that. It’s like I’ve found a friend who’s as hungry for sex as I am. That alone should thrill me. But it’s not just the sex; the talks afterward are almost as important to me. After that night, talking afterward became the norm. We didn’t stray to parents again, but I learned a lot about her. I learned that she’s an only child, she was obsessed with computers as a teenager, and that she’s never had a serious boyfriend. I learned that her favorite genre of video games is role-playing games and that she’s completed Knights of the Old Republic three times. I learned that she’s allergic to crab and her favorite food is Hawaiian pizza.

  But what has she learned about me?

  That one’s murkier. She knows I like to ride, but that’s about all. When she asks about me, I usually change the subject, and we end up talking about nothing in particular. Just talking for the sake of talking. Which is fine by me because I like the sound of her voice.

  I stand up and stretch out.

  Time to get to work.

  It’s the day of the party, after all. One of the biggest gigs The Miseryed has had in a long time. I can’t waste time overthinking about a woman.

  But she’s not just a woman.

  No, she’s not, but that doesn’t make any difference.

  Chapter Thirty One

  She was so innocent, I think, sitting in my soundproofed office. It’s just gone one o’clock, and I’ve finished the final touches for the night, and now, inevitably, my mind returns to Eden. She was so innocent. At least, she looked so innocent. Damn, but she isn’t anymore. Not even close. Now she’s as wild as me, as hungry as me. I’ve finally met my match, and that’s a fact.

  I’m replaying the scene in the hot tub over in my head when there’s a knock at my door. I get up and open it to Markus, whose bald head is sweating madly, beads of sweat sliding down over his stern eyebrows into his eyes.

  “Something wrong?” I ask.

  “Uh… not sure,” he grunts.

  I close the door behind him and return to the desk. He drops into the chair opposite me so quickly that the legs of the chair creak. “Maybe,” he mutters, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead. “Uh… yeah… maybe…”

  I interlock my fingers and rest my chin on my knuckles, staring at him across the desk. “Tell me,” I say.

  He rests his huge fist on the table and tap-tap-taps with his forefinger. “You know your old ex-girlfriend?”

  “Which one?”

  “Cassandra,” Markus mutters, and it’s like a sheet of ice falls over the room.

  “I remember Cassandra,” I say, voice shaky. Why is he bringing her up? Why now?

  Markus meets my eyes. His eyes are wide, as though he’s scared I’m going to get angry with him.

  “Whatever it is,” I assure him, “it’s not your fault. I promise you that.”

  Markus blushes. “Okay.” He takes a deep breath, his cheeks blowing up puffer-fish-style, and then lets it out slowly. “Cassandra is dating Mason Abraham. I heard it from a few of the guys, so I sent them to check it out, you know… to make sure. And it’s right. It’s her.”

  “So she’ll be there tonight,” I say, gripping the arms of the chair. “She’ll be there with him. She’s dating our employer. Damn…” The urge to scream, to throw something, comes over me. But I fight it down. Scream at who? Markus? It’s not his fault. A leader must learn to control his anger, use it only when necessary. I can’t cancel this gig now. The men are expecting the pay. Hell, some of them may even be relying on it.

  “I’m sorry, Boss,” Markus says, his booming voice oddly quiet. “I know that it’s not…”

  I plaster a smirk to my face, let go of the chair, and clap my hands together. “Don’t give it any thought,” I say. “Cassandra is there. Fine, we can deal with that, eh? We’re not going to crumble ’cause one psychotic bitch has decided to date a Silicon Valley billionaire, are we? Anyway, we’re The Miseryed. What sort of party would tonight be if it didn’t have a little ang
uish?”

  Markus nods.

  “Go on,” I say, nodding at the door. “Go and get yourself into the party spirit. Have a drink. One drink—I want you sharp.”

  “Yes, Boss. Thanks, Boss. Sorry, Boss.”

  Markus climbs to his feet and shuffles out of the office.

  Just before he leaves, he says, “I think she might still be obsessed with you. According to one of the guys, anyway.” He shivers. “Sorry, Boss. Sorry.” Then he closes the door behind him.

  He’ll need cheering up, I think, still numbed by the news.

  I take out my phone and send a text to Eden: Bring your friend tonight.