Ruled

by Anne Marsh

  Rocker and I don’t talk about our dad or that night everything changed. Once a month, we send a check to the state prison where dear old dad is serving a twenty-five-to-fifty-year sentence, and he sends back a postcard with a scrawled thanks. He also sends the occasional Christmas and birthday card. Mostly, Rocker and I pretend our childhood is a big happy blank. Nothing to write home or talk about—just something we got through on our way to being reasonably happy, productive adults.

  At least, that’s what I do. I’m a business owner and halfway to a degree in finance at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I have a mortgage, a minuscule retirement account and enough shit that I had to rent a medium-sized U-Haul when I moved into my new house. It’s wonderful and scary at the same time—I’m so close to finally getting us out of the series of bad neighborhoods and loser streets we’ve lived on all our life and I should be celebrating. I should be able to go out on a Friday night and cut loose for the space of a song or two. And yet I’m so tired that I just want to crawl into bed and sleep instead.

  “Jack says he’d love to meet you,” Samantha announces triumphantly.

  “Okay,” I tell her. “I’ll do it.”

  While Samantha texts an opus to Jack and Carlie cackles gleefully next to her, I pack us up. I need to double-check the site, too, and make sure no one’s leaving anything behind. I’m busy tying up our loose ends when I hear the small plop from the lake followed by Carlie’s giggle and Samantha’s curse. Yeah. Guess we’ll be stopping by the Apple store, too.

  Chapter Two

  Rev

  I’M NO SUPERHERO. Definitely no Prince Charming. Your first clue is my ride. I’m all about the Harley Davidson—not a fucking white horse in sight. The Hard Riders club president must have ignored that memo when he put me in charge of today’s mission, because the woman in front of 837 Second Street is dressed exactly like a princess, right down to the tiara. Although the diamonds have to be fake, like so many things in Vegas, the crown still sparkles in the setting sun. A disorganized mob of small girls in rainbow-colored dresses surrounds her, talking and shrieking in an ungodly racket. Fucking looks like a rainbow exploded everywhere and rained glitter.

  “Goddamn,” Vik announces loud enough to be heard over the pipe’s roar as he pulls his bike into the curb. I kill my engine and follow, both of us focused on the commotion happening on the lawn of the run-down rental. The lawn isn’t much to look at—the Nevada sun has cooked the grass to a crispy brown and the place hasn’t had a paint job in decades. Two bedrooms, one bath, based on the visible square footage, but gone to seed like a hooker working the nearby Strip, still open for business even though she won’t command top dollar. The neighborhood hosts mostly working class, the usual mix of single moms and family units where cheap rentals are always in demand. The place squats on the edge of Hard Rider MC territory, and it might be time to expand our holdings. Claim this block, make it ours, put it back to rights.

  I fucking love that idea.

  Princess sticks out. The neighbors hanging over the chain link watching the show have dressed down for the heat because East Las Vegas in August is hotter than any armpit of hell I’ve visited as a US Navy SEAL. Today’s audience wears mainly shorts and tank tops. Princess, on the other hand, sports a puffy yellow dress made out of some kind of fluffy shit. The fabric bells out revealing a really nice pair of legs as she gets into it with...a dragon? The thing’s about ten feet tall, bright purple, and has a tail with floppy cloth spikes on it. Princess retrieves a ginormous plastic sword from somewhere and proceeds to attack. While I applaud the enthusiasm that makes her tits bounce, she doesn’t know the first thing about fighting.

  Vik groans. Brother’s a fucking drama queen. “I could have taken that dragon in the first twenty seconds.”

  As the dragon collapses in mock death on the crap lawn, Princess whirls, declaiming something that wins applause from her host of mini-me’s. I can’t see her face, which is a pity, because her back’s damn spectacular. Soft, honey-colored curls are piled up on top of her head, kinda pinned in place by the tiara, and the dress dips all the way to her ass, the straight line of her spine a lick-me-here-big-boy invitation I’d like to take her up on. As I watch, some of those curls go AWOL, bouncing around her face and down her neck. I want to take her apart, undoing first her hair and then her dress. Wouldn’t stop either until I had her screaming my name as she came undone in my arms.

  “Showgirl?” Vik’s mutter interrupts the unwelcome fantasy. Daydreaming on the job is a rookie mistake. We’ve seen some crazy shit in our day, but this is unfamiliar territory. Since Princess doesn’t show so much as an inch of tit and the dress drags on the dead grass rather than stopping two inches short of her ass, I’m certain she isn’t working a Vegas show on the Strip. Her audience is our second clue. Third clue? The enormous pink-and-purple inflatable castle poking up over the roof of the house from the backyard and the equally outsized sheet cake with a number 5 candle poking out of the center. We’ve crashed a birthday party.

  “You sure we got the right address?” GPS isn’t a magic bullet and maybe we aren’t parked in front of Eve Kent’s workplace.

  Vik leans back on his bike, folding his arms across his chest as he surveys the front lawn. A happy grin lights up his face, because he’s definitely enjoying the show and most of the audience is female because hello...birthday party for kids. Vik likes women. Women like him. It all works out, usually with Vik naked, in bed, and banging his newest acquaintance. He may be the vice president of the Hard Rider motorcycle club, but you can bet every one of us gives him shit about the mileage on his dick. “Let’s go introduce ourselves.”

  Vik also subscribes to the act first, think later school of thought. Probably explains why our prez put me in charge of this particular mission. If it involves pussy, Vik’s gonna want to make a detour before he gets down to business. While he checks out the women on the lawn, I check my phone and confirm we’re hitting the right party.

  “We can’t just go in there and make demands.” I do a quick headcount and arrive at fifteen possible adult witnesses in addition to the dragon and the screaming, frosting-smeared horde. Never mind that we’re not doing anything illegal—yet.

  We’re assholes, but we’re not criminals. Being a biker isn’t a crime, even if the boys in blue sometimes act as if it is. There’s no free pass—you earn your place in the Hard Riders MC. To ride with the Hard Riders, you have to be ex-military. Most of us are SEALs or Spec Ops, but we got a few exceptions. We ride in East Las Vegas, but the Vegas area is home to multiple MCs and tensions run high. The steady flow of drugs controlled by Los Angeles–based gangs like the Hells Angels, Mongols, Crips and the Vagos add to the tension. Too many fighters, too little turf. That’s a bad fucking recipe right there, and the Black Dogs MC recently made it their personal mission to be a pain in our ass.

  Sin City is the country’s playground, but almost two million people also live and work here, just trying to make a decent life for their kids and that’s a goddamned right, to my mind. Forty thousand decent, hardworking people in East Las Vegas and almost seven square miles of streets of working-class apartment complexes, bars, liquor stores, check-cashing businesses and single-story adobe ranches with palm trees in the front yards and fucking geraniums in pots. You don’t get much more American than that.

  We get plenty of people from Nellis Air Force Base, too, people who have either come to serve or to support a loved one who was serving. The Hard Riders MC is behind that shit. Makes our neighbors honorary brothers and so we watch their backs since we’ve served, too. We’re more sinner than saint, but our territory is as free as we can make it from the drugs and violence that plague the rest of Las Vegas.

  You prospect and then you patch in and get your colors. Get club ink, too. Our club president likes to call that our bar code—Vik jokes it’s our expiration date. You remain in the club until the day you die, and if you s
crew up, the club cleans up the mess. Locals respect our vests and the club patch. When they see that MC cut, they know we mean business, and they usually get the hell out of our way. You don’t disrespect us.

  Unless you’re Rocker Kent, Eve Kent’s baby brother, who rides with the Black Dogs and who’s recently decided he and his crew should run illegal street guns through Hard Riders territory. He’s the reason we are here. Idiot compounded that brilliant plan by networking with the Colombian drug cartels (he’s had a busy fucking month), and that’s trouble the Hard Riders plan to shut down if we can run him to ground long enough to talk. We’re mature like that—gonna start with words and then work up to fists. Practically deserve the key to the city for that restraint, but we may have to make do with Eve. Word on the street is that her brother checks up on her regularly.

  She’d make one hell of a hostage.

  “You really think she knows where Rocker’s at?”

  Vik swings off his bike and leans against it. “Give it a minute and we’ll ask. The show’s winding down.”

  While the knee-high crowd stampedes into the house after the lady carrying the cake, I keep my eyes peeled for Rocker. He’s shown up at three of his sister’s last four gigs according to a girl who works for her. Usually slinks in quietly because apparently Eve has a no-bikes rule—something about us big, bad biker types scares her mom crowd. If I can catch him now, it will solve all sorts of problems. Of course, since the girl in question provided this information after Vik banged her silly, she may have been just babbling shit. All that mileage on his dick? Plenty of it is repeat business from happy customers.

  My phone buzzes, distracting me from the rapidly emptying front yard.

  How’s the party?

  Fucker.

  “Sachs is checking in.”

  Vik nods, his eyes are glued to a mom in a pair of pink sweats, a white tank and flip-flops. She looks curvy and sweeter than the cake her kid is mainlining as they disappear into the house—and Vik has always had a sweet tooth. Momma better watch out, or he’ll take a bite out of her.

  What’s up?

  Shrieks sound from the backyard, the purple castle rocketing back and forth like it’s about to take off. Princess and the dragon disappear inside. I’m getting impatient when Sachs finally texts back.

  Had another drive-by. Heading over to check it out. Save me a cupcake.

  Ever since the Black Dogs MC hopped into bed with the Colombians, our streets have been heating up. This is the second drive-by in as many weeks, and it’s two too many. This shit ends now, and the best way to accomplish that is through Rocker. I don’t care if he tenders his resignation to his drug-dealing buddies, or if they take it out of his ass in trade, but he runs no more drugs or guns in Hard Rider territory. It’s gonna take the entire club to bring him down without escalating shit to a full-blown war, though—and Sachs has a hair-trigger temper. He’s more likely to Rambo his way inside the other clubhouse and do his discussing with his fists.

  I text him back.

  Wait for backup.

  Sachs’s only response is a kissy-face emoticon. Someday, his lack of caution is going to bite him on the ass.

  “Time to get serious.” I throw a leg over my bike. “Take one for the club.”

  Vik grunts and motions me forward. I may be joking about the kiddo’s party, but we both know I’d lay everything on the line for the club. So would Vik. That’s how we roll—the club and our brothers come first.

  When I stride up the walk, what’s left of the peanut gallery hanging over the fence turns to stare, because six feet of former SEAL in motorcycle boots and a club vest makes an impression. Fuck them. I don’t try to hide what I am. I’m the MC’s muscle. I make some stuff happen—and I make other stuff go away. Whatever my club prez needs, I do—and right now he needs Rocker’s buy-in on getting the hell out of our territory and the drug trade.

  Since staking out a birthday party for kiddies isn’t getting me any closer to this goal, I need to find another way to get to Rocker. I do another quick survey of the house, but there’s still no sign of that asshole, and I don’t have his number. But I bet Evie knows how to call her brother—and I bet I can motivate her to share. I’m fucking awesome at motivating.

  And today’s my lucky day because turns out that I don’t even have to go in after her. She pops out of the house alone and heads for the pink monstrosity parked by the curb, juggling a plate of cake in flapping plastic wrap. She looks like Christmas and the fucking Tooth Fairy rolled into one, with a dash of Tinkerbell and porn star. Okay. That last bit may be pure fantasy on my part, because she looks as sweet as Vik’s MILF in that fluffy-ass get-up. Unless my luck has changed, she’s not hiding a dirty girl underneath all that sparkle. I change course and wait on the other side of the pink RV for her.

  Chapter Three

  Eve

  “GOING SOMEWHERE, SUNSHINE?” The deep voice comes out of nowhere and I whirl. Off balance, I promptly trip on my dress and head for the pavement.

  An arm fastens around my waist, rescuing me from my imminent face-plant. The plate of cake is plucked from my hands and set down by my feet. Huh. The arm tightens briefly as we dip and it’s a big, hard, tattooed, scary-as-shit arm, although the tattoo actually isn’t bad. Bold black ink covers the skin between his sleeve and his wrist... Is that a dragon? The animal looks almost Viking. Or as if the beast is seriously contemplating eating anyone who gets too close. If I need to file a police report, I have plenty to say when they ask about distinguishing marks.

  The arm’s owner is sun-bronzed, and when I inhale, I breathe in leather, oil and something else. That something else spells trouble because the scent is hot and male. What my head can’t describe, my body recognizes, my libido perking up and demanding we revert to our former bad girl ways. Immediately. My princess costume works better than a chastity belt thanks to all that material, so it’s difficult to fully appreciate the hard male body pressed up against my butt, but I make an effort.

  Maybe I’m hallucinating because men like this don’t exist.

  I pinch his arm hard.

  “The fuck?” Those two offended words rumble in my ear. I guess he’s real after all. He sets me carefully back on my feet and backs up, giving me twelve inches of space. Maybe a whole eighteen. And I mean the distance between us, not anything else, because...

  This man is a whole lot of wow. I brace myself against the side of the RV. Knees don’t fail me now.

  His face is way better than his arm. He’s a big guy, tall and broad-shouldered, traits that tick all the best boxes on my sexual wish list. He’s also more rough than good-looking, with short, dark hair and a cold, watchful expression that never leaves his face as he takes in the happenings on the lawn. Almost military, except that the local air force base would never let this bad boy in. He wears a leather vest covered with patches, a dark T-shirt and jeans that are white around the seams. Despite the full-sleeve tattoo on both arms, I spot no visible piercings, but trust me—he doesn’t need the metal to shout trouble.

  He braces an arm on either side of my head. Despite his not actually touching me, it suddenly feels like we’re naked and he’s got his dick inside me. Under other circumstances, I might not mind. Since keeping up appearances in front of my paying public matters, I reach out and give his chest a discreet shove. We have an entire RV between us and any party guests, but I shouldn’t take chances.

  He doesn’t budge. “I need to reach your brother, princess.”

  There are so many different ways to define reach. Still, however you define it, he’s not here for me. I know I shouldn’t be disappointed about that, but I am.

  “You’re a friend of Rocker’s?”

  His face gives nothing away. “We’ve got business.”

  I treat myself to a second glance at his leathers, the faded T-shirt that hugs a muscled chest and the boots. God. The bo
ots. You know how some boots are made for dancing? These boots are made for pain, for kicking ass and for getting a point across one steel-toed tip at a time. And just in case there’s any question at all about where this man falls on the naughty or nice side of things, he rocks a leather vest with a club patch on it. Whatever Rocker’s done this time, he’s in deep. Pulling him out is going to be a bitch.

  Ergo, despite my pressing need to get him away from Perfectly Princess Parties’s current place of business, I stall. Big-time. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Rev. You tell him Rev is looking for him.”

  I’m pretty sure my mouth hangs open for a minute, because Rev looks amused. What kind of a name is that?

  Since that’s not the kind of thing you ask a man, I go for the obvious. “Why?”

  “Club business,” he says tightly.

  In other words? Penis business. Also known as none of my business. I love my brother, but he has his head up his ass about things like sticking on the right side of the law and boy things versus girl things. When I try to duck under Rev’s arm, the man moves effortlessly with me. Shit. Pretty soon, we’ll start attracting attention.

  “If I let him know you’re looking, you’ll leave?” Giving Rocker a heads-up that trouble is knocking on his door seems like my best two-for-one solution at the moment, so when Rev nods, I fish inside the bodice of my dress. I also do my best to ignore the slow grin spreading across Rev’s face as I retrieve my phone from its hiding place. What is it about men and boobs? He doesn’t back off and give me any space either, which makes dialing awkward.

  “What’s up?” Miracle of miracles, Rocker actually answers his phone on the second ring.