by Vivian Lux
“Mmm,” he brushed his lips across mine. “Don’t tempt me.”
“Why not?” I stood on my toes, flinging my arms around his shoulders. I felt renewed. I also wanted to be fucked again. I kissed his neck; right where it met his broad shoulder, then licked the fine sheen of sweat from his skin. “We could ride that way forever, ‘cause I’m yours now.”
HIs playful manner retreated. “Not quite yet.”
“But you said.” I smiled playfully. “I heard you.”
He sighed. “I keep trying to tell you. This thing you want—to ride with the Devils—it’s not as easy as you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“You already saw what we do to the women who ride with us. That happened to you...”
“You warned me. I didn’t listen.” I shut down the part of my brain that wanted to dwell on the eyes on me during my initiation. “It’s behind us.”
“It isn’t. Now you have to be approved by the president of the whole club. And Lainey, if he doesn’t like you... that’s it. We’re done. I have to cut you off right there. No more ties. No protection. You’ll be alone in a strange city where you don’t know anyone.”
I swallowed. I had already been in a strange city. If he hadn’t been there to protect me... I didn’t want to think about that.
“Well then,” I said brightly. “I’ll just have to be certain he likes me.”
Cade looked like I had punched him in the gut.
“What?” I asked, crestfallen.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“I need to know what I should do here, Cade.”
The stricken look on his face was at odds with the words coming from his mouth. “You do whatever feels right for you, Lainey-girl.”
I blinked. “It feels right for me to be with you,” I protested.
He nodded and smiled sadly. “I hope you continue to feel that way.” He looked down, suddenly bashful, and the sight made me want to laugh out loud. My huge biker, embarrassed. “I like you, Lainey-girl.”
I touched his face. “I like you too, Cade.”
He smiled again.
“So, how should I deal with Moloch?” I pressed.
“Moloch is...” Cade dropped his voice. Then he thought even better of it and turned on the water full blast. He put his lips close to my ear, but I still had to strain to hear him say:
“I’m hearing things. Things I don’t like. But...” He trailed off for a second and I rested my head on his chest. “But I don’t know. I can’t be sure. And he’s our leader.”
“You don’t like him.”
“I’ve been... away. I can’t say for sure.”
I pushed back from him, frustrated. “Why are you being so cagey?”
Fury blazed in his eyes for a moment, then died away. “Because, Lainey-girl. I can’t trust anything until I see it with my own eyes. Rumors and gossip and all that bullshit—that only gets you in trouble.”
“Well, tell me the rumors.”
He sighed. “There are some guys—good guys, brothers through and through. They tell me things are changing. The club ain’t what it was. And that’s ‘cause of Moloch. They want...” He trailed off again. “They want me to do something about it.”
“Do you want to do something?”
“Like I said, I don’t know what I haven’t seen with my own eyes.”
“Why do they want you to do something? Why can’t they?”
He grimaced, and fury flooded back into his face. He turned from me and stalked away, as far as he could in the tiny bathroom.
“Don’t be asking so many questions,” he growled. “You may hear an answer you don’t like.”
I clamped my mouth shut, but couldn’t hold back. I was irritated. It didn’t make sense. He wasn’t telling me something—something very important. Something vital to my understanding of my new life and the new challenge that lay ahead. He was keeping me in the dark deliberately.
But I couldn’t think of what to say to him. My thoughts were a confused jumble of fear and exhaustion.
I must have been lost in thought, because the next thing I knew, he was at my side. I jumped to see him there as if nothing had happened. He was looking at me the way he had before, lovingly and slightly amused. I regarded him warily.
He caught my wrist and brought my fingers to his lips. “We have to ride now.”
“Clothes, Cade,” I said carefully, looking down at my tattered bra and filthy skirt. “I need clothes.” I needed to buy time to think.
He grimaced. “Wait here.”
I chewed nervously at my shredded fingernails while he was gone, taking stock of the danger I was in. I could go back. I could leave right now and use a pay phone to call Cora. It would be a scandal, but she would help.
I touched my cheek. She would cluck over me and then take me right back to Darryl. I would go right back to the shitty little life I had sacrificed so much to escape. But this time, Darryl would know I had defied him. I shuddered to think of the punishments he would dream up.
I didn’t know what lay ahead of me. But I knew what I was in for if I returned to Flint Springs. The devil I knew versus the devil I didn’t.
I took a deep breath and made my choice.
I would rather dance with the devils I didn’t know.
Cade knocked lightly on the locked bathroom door and I let him in. He handed me a dark green bundle.
“Truck stops are short on clothes in your size,” he explained.
I unfurled a t-shirt the size of a bed sheet and broke out laughing. Emblazoned across the front in crude typeface were the words, “Hide Your Chick, I’ve Got a Semi.”
“Brilliant,” I laughed. “How am I supposed to wear this? It’s a tent.”
“Relax, I got you covered.” He whipped out a package of hair ties that still had the price tag on it. With deft fingers, he looped several of them together. “Put it on,” he said, looking quite pleased with himself.
The neck hole was so wide the t-shirt puddled effortlessly over my head and fell all the way to my knees. Cade looped his creation around my waist, tying off the chain of hair ties into a makeshift belt that pulled the t-shirt in at the waist.
I looked in the mirror and laughed hysterically to see myself in the world’s weirdest, most inappropriate dress.
“I’m a trendsetter!” I sang out, striking a runway model pose.
Cade bent to kiss my bare shoulder as it peeked out of the neck hole. “Here, your hair keeps blowing into my face.” He broke open another package and began running a hairbrush through my tangled, knotted hair. He was so gentle and careful that I closed my eyes in bliss.
Working the tangles out piece by piece, he teased out the knots and began smoothing it back from my face. I felt a tug and opened my eyes to see my huge, imposing biker deftly plaiting my hair into a tight braid. He must have seen my stunned look in the mirror.
“We have to learn how to tie knots,” he muttered gruffly, and I suppressed my smile.
“There, how’s that?” he asked, stepping back appraisingly.
I looked in the mirror. Without the curtain of hair hanging in my face, I felt unprotected. I could see the bruises and cuts and all the puffiness around my eyes from my tears. Without my hair in my face, I was forced to look at myself as I was.
My wide-set blue eyes were red-rimmed and frightened. My lips were swollen and bruised. I was dancing with the devil of my own will, and I needed to face that fact head on.
“Better,” I replied, squaring my shoulders. “Let’s ride.”
As we roared out of the truck stop, the rest of the gang followed behind. I wrapped my arms around Cade and sighed. I didn’t know where he was taking me, but I was glad to be with him on that road.
Chapter 16
We rode through the night, stopping only to refuel along a dark stretch of highway. The gas station shone from afar like a blazing sun on the horizon, but when we reached the pumps, it was only a bored attendant who greeted us.
>
I stepped off the back of the bike to stretch and shivered in spite of myself.
Cade saw immediately. “You cold?” he asked.
“A little,” I grimaced. The sleeves of the t-shirt dress didn’t quite make it past my elbows and the wide neck left me exposed to the wind.
Immediately, Cade was at my side, draping his leather jacket across my shoulders. “Well, shit,” he grumbled, “I’m an asshole. Here.”
I smiled up at him. “Won’t you get cold?”
“I got you wrapped around me,” he said simply.
The shock of his sudden sweetness brought a tear to my eye. “That’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.” I chirped, trying not to let things get too sappy.
“Don’t get used to it,” he said as he smiled, watching the gallons tick by on the pump.
I shrugged my shoulders into the sleeves. The jacket swallowed me whole and was still warm from Cade’s heat. I nuzzled down into it, smelling that leather infused with his scent. I was surrounded by that intriguing smell of honey that clung to my tongue and made my whole body feel kissed.
Nearly drunk on his scent, I climbed back onto the bike and wrapped my arms around his waist. I had to roll the sleeves up to reveal my small hands.
He looked down at them, secure around his waist, and paused. For the briefest of moments he touched them, covering them with his massive hand in a protective gesture.
Then he kicked the hog to life and we sped back onto the highway.
The lonely darkness of the empty road faded like the stars as we reached the outskirts of Puerto de Fuego at dawn. The vast stretches of scrub gave way to feed stores and rolling ranches.
In a few short miles, we emerged into the far suburbs that ringed the city. Highway exits snaked into former farmland now turned into a playground for the rich. Ahead of us lay the steel and chrome of Puerto de Fuego, too far off still to be anything more than a glint on the western horizon. But out here it was all stone and brick.
Purple light glinted off the windows of the rich houses in the hills above the highway. We were going too fast for me to get a good look, though I craned my neck to its limit. I wanted to spy on those people and see their lives. What did rich people do? What did big city people do?
For the first time in my life, I was able to see the kinds of houses I had only ever seen on TV. I saw wide expanses of green lawns, greener than I had ever seen in my life. They were rolling, park-like, carved straight out of the desert. And they all were lavishly irrigated at the expense of people downriver. It was always the poor that suffered, it seemed.
As the Devils roared into a tight formation, the few cars already on the road parted to make way for us. We moved through the sea of traffic like we were Moses in one of Cora’s stories.
The bridge over the train yards led us into the shimmering embrace of Puerto de Fuego itself. I squinted at the dark storefronts. The dawn light that had been warming my shoulders on the highway couldn’t penetrate the steep canyons of the city. It was still as dark as midnight behind those buildings.
Cade led the Devils through the dark maze of one-way streets, twisting and turning down narrow alleyways. I was instantly confused. Without the sun to help my country-girl eyes, I was utterly lost.
We passed through a narrow opening between two skyscrapers and boiled out onto a broad avenue of low, squat buildings. Cade slowed to a crawl and turned into one of the uglier buildings on the strip.
It was long and low and rambling, as if it had been added onto piecemeal by a bunch of unskilled workers. An ugly chain link fence surrounded the huge parking lot, much bigger than seemed necessary. But I soon figured out why it was so big: the entire club must have parked their bikes there.
Even in this early morning hour, the lot teemed with gleaming hogs. The bikes stood alongside several large pickups. I even spied a few black Cadillacs that reminded me of those that had parted for us on the highway.
Cade killed the engine and I glanced around some more. Trash was stuck in the links of the fence, fluttering like leaves in the warm breeze. This place was ugly—almost as ugly as Flint Springs itself. My heart sank as Cade held out his hand to me.
He led me around the back of the building and paused at a roll-up metal door.
“So,” he said, taking a deep breath, “remember how I said I had been away a while?”
I nodded. “In the mountains.”
“Yeah. Well, this is gonna be the first time some of these guys have seen me in... a bit.”
I nodded, once more hearing the reticence. Whatever he was doing while he was away must have had something to do with Moloch. He was deliberately not telling me how long he had been gone.
“Okay,” I said brightly. “I bet they’ll be glad you’re back.”
“Some will.” He took a deep breath and rolled up the door.
I squinted into the vast, echoing metal expanse of what looked like an oversized garage. I looked at Cade, about to ask him what I was looking at, but the look on his face stopped me short.
He was standing in the doorway, slowly surveying the empty space. Whatever he was expecting to find, it wasn’t there.
“Are you okay?” I ventured.
He shook his head slowly. “This is... different.”
“Where are we?”
“The clubhouse.” He stepped in, looking around with a furrowed brow. “There should be guys here. There should be a bunch of guys working on bikes and shooting the shit. It shouldn’t be...” He spread his arms. “Empty.”
“Well,” I stifled a yawn against the back of my hand. “It is really early in the morning.”
“No, you don’t get it. Devils live here. We work here. This is where everything happens.”
“But I thought you we all at the meet-up?”
“No, Lainey-girl.” His voice was tight. “That was a fraction of us. This place should be crawling with my brothers.”
I surveyed the space. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I could see signs of recent habitation. A pair of leather boots was shoved into a corner. A musty looking bedroll was lying under a pile of binders.
“Where do you think they all are?”
“I don’t know. Maybe things have changed since I’ve been gone.”
“But you haven’t seen it with your own eyes.”
He looked at me sharply, frowning
I held up my hands in an effort to placate him. “What happens now?” I asked
He led me back through the metal door and rolled it shut behind him. “I have to figure some stuff out. And you need a safe place to stay while I do it.” He walked ahead of me, his long limbs covering so much ground that I had to trot to keep up.
“Have you ever made a drink before?” he asked as we crossed the parking lot and back up to the nondescript door.
I startled, and then thought about Darryl, collapsed into his sagging bed with a drink still in his hand. He only drank beer and rotgut whiskey straight from the bottle.
“Not really, but I can learn. Why?”
“I need a place to put you, and here is the best I can do. Don’t freak out.”
“After everything I’ve been through, you think I would freak out?” I scoffed.
He looked at me mildly, but didn’t answer. Then he pushed open the front door of the building.
Chapter 17
Thumping music assaulted my ears and I squinted in the sudden gloom. The crowded parking lot made sense all at once. In spite of the early hour, the place was packed.
Well, here’s where everyone is, I thought as I fell into the sea of bikers. Why is he worried?
Then the throng parted and I could see girls. Topless, dancing strippers were dangling from poles all around the cavernous room. Heavy metal music blared from the sound system. I could feel it reverberating in my chest and buzzing up through the floor. The slinky girls on stage eyed me up and down as I stood there, feeling stupid in my oversized t-shirt-dress.
They were uniformly
gorgeous. I stared openmouthed at their ripe breasts and flat, toned tummies. What little self-confidence I had managed to keep in my ridiculous outfit drained away.
I spied a flame-haired redhead grab the pole and flip herself upside-down. She spun like an acrobat to the appreciative hoots and hollers of the bikers. Dollar bills rained onto the stage.
She spun down the pole and slunk over to one biker, crawling like a cat. Her back undulated to the beat of the pounding music. Licking her lips, she took the dollar bill on offer between her teeth. The biker had a bottle of whiskey that he lifted to her lips. She threw the flames of her hair back from her face and flipped onto her back. The she arched backward, bending almost in half, to close her lips around the neck of the bottle.
She slid them onto the opening so lasciviously that I blushed. The biker pounded on the stage as he poured the liquor down her throat. When her eyes bugged slightly, he pulled it from her mouth to pour the remaining golden liquid over her breasts. She allowed him to lick it from her cleavage while she smiled a Cheshire cat grin. The whole crowd roared.
I looked at Cade. Did he expect me to be able to do that? I could barely stand upright. I would never be able to dance like that. The thought of the bikers’ eyes on me flashed me back to my initiation, and I shuddered again.
As if he was reading my mind, Cade ripped his eyes from the red-haired spectacle in front of us. “No, you’re not going to do that,” he grumbled.
“Oh, darn,” I mocked.
He shot me a dark look, and then smiled. “Oh, I’m sorry for getting your hopes up. Do you know how to dance?” he teased, slipping his hand around my waist.
“Weren’t many places in Flint Springs I could learn to dance like that!” I watched the woman as she strutted away from the biker. The whiskey hadn’t affected her at all. She twirled and undulated her way across the stage, regally accepting the money thrown her way.
“Then here.” Cade led me through the throng and towards the long bar that lined the bar wall away from the stage. The grizzled, bearded biker behind it seemed almost bored. He watched the red-headed stripper critically, his mouth turned down in an appraising frown. He barely took notice of us as Cade led me through the waist-height swinging door.
