Skull Kings MC: the collection

by Sage L. Morgan

  Officer Hamilton raised his hands. “I’m just doing my job, man.”

  “This business is legit—”

  “If it is, then you have nothing to worry about, do you?”

  Liam’s face purpled with rage, but whatever words he planned on speaking died on his lips when Noah approached his side.

  “Let it go. I’ll deal with it,” Noah said.

  Liam calmed himself down, and I felt a tingle of resentment at the fact that it had been Noah’s stern words rather than my gentle touch that had done it.

  As Liam stalked off to cool down, I was left stranded in the middle of the parking lot. Officer Hamilton looked too busy to notice me as he scribbled some more in his notebook, but then he tore the page out and handed it to me.

  “That’s my personal number, in case you need anything,” he said.

  I didn’t look at it until after he walked away. The handwriting was surprisingly neat for a man, each curve and square carefully shaped to form his cell phone number and his first name: Josh.

  Now that the club was shut down, I was temporarily out of a job. But I couldn’t stomach the thought of going back to Buddy’s. I remembered passing a row of restaurants on the edge of the interstate when I first came into town. Mostly diners and dive bars catering to motorists just passing through, they were grimy but saw decent traffic. With Liam holed away in the clubhouse, still fuming over the sheriff’s office taking over Amazon, I had a whole free day to check out each joint.

  The Four Corners Café looked like it used to be a fast food burger place with its vinyl booths and grease-stained ceilings. I promptly paid for my coffee and left. I had a decent lunch at the Gaslight Grill, but I didn’t take very well to the leering busboy. My next stop, a pizza restaurant, wasn’t even hiring.

  I drove along the cracked asphalt roads, resigned to the fact that I would just have to wait until Amazon could open again. Then I saw it: a huge neon sign flanked by a ‘60s throwback chevron. The R&R Diner. On a whim, I steered into the parking lot and walked in. What did I have to lose?

  A waitress in a starched uniform greeted me. “Table for one?”

  I followed her to a corner booth and declined the menu. “Just coffee, please.”

  The waitress frowned. “Coffee’s bad for you on an empty stomach. How ‘bout a slice of cherry pie with that?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  She whirled away in a haze of powdery lavender perfume, heels clicking all the way across the restaurant. I sat back and surveyed the interior. It had a cheesy vintage theme, the décor comprised of chrome, vinyl records, and black-and-white photographs of girls in poodle skirts and bouffant hairdos. A jukebox in the corner played some Billie Holiday. Basically the R&R Diner was everything that Amazon wasn’t: quiet, kitschy, family-friendly. But for some reason, I was itching for something a little different.

  I was about to ask the waitress for an application when a movement near the door caught my eye. At first, the man who walked in struck me as unfamiliar, yet my stomach clenched in a way that made me feel like he was bad news. And then, I finally knew that I recognized him, I was just used to seeing him in a leather jacket with red sleeves.

  Ryan, a youngish, burly guy with a shaved head, was the leader of the Scorpions. Liam didn’t consider them to be an actual motorcycle club, namely because they didn’t ride Harleys, but they were the Skull Kings’ rivals all the same. The crew usually sported leather jackets with red sleeves, but today Ryan wore a plain navy blue tee shirt and jeans. He scanned the restaurant before taking a seat at the counter.

  I grabbed a newspaper off of the next table and ducked behind it. I haven’t gotten my pie yet. Should I just leave? I wondered. As I stared hard into the black print of the newspaper, trying to make up my mind, I heard the bell on the door jingle. Another customer had just walked in. When I took a peek over the edge of the newspaper, I saw that this person was making his way to join Ryan at the counter.

  I was shocked to see that I also recognized him, and even more shocked to see him greeting Ryan like a brother. Like Ryan, he had decided to walk in without his MC colors. But unlike Ryan, he wasn’t a Scorpion.

  He was a Skull King.

  My hand flew inside my purse. My first impulse was to call Liam, but my fingertip froze as it hovered over the keypad. I’m jumping to conclusions, I told myself, even after my heart jumped up to pound in my throat. There has to be an explanation for this. Maybe it’s somebody else.

  I slipped my phone out of my purse anyway, but not to call Liam. I was confused, especially since it hadn’t even been a full twenty-four hours since the sheriff’s office forced Noah to shut down his club. I didn’t know how, but it just couldn’t be a coincidence.

  All I knew for sure was that I couldn’t process this without Liam. If I was going to go to the Skull Kings with this info, I needed proof. I licked my finger, poked a hole through the newspaper, and trained my phone’s camera lens through it, waiting for the perfect shot.

  I pulled up to the converted warehouse that served as the Skull Kings’ clubhouse. I counted the bikes in the parking lot, concluding that everybody was there. Without the strip club, they had nothing else to do, including me. My job hunt had still left me without a job, but I came back with something else.

  I’d decided on my way over that I should talk to Liam and Noah first, before confronting the rest of the club. My opening line was an easy one. Can I talk to you guys for a second? I rehearsed it a few times in my mind as I walked up to the door. But just as I raised my fist to knock, a few shouts and a bang coming from inside dissolved all of my thoughts.

  Without knocking, I opened the door and poked my head in.

  “—be damned if I let that smug asshole keep me from doing my job.”

  I recognized Liam’s voice immediately. He stood by the bar, gesturing wildly while standing in between a few toppled stools. I could easily imagine him knocking them down in a rage, and I supposed that was where the banging sound had come from.

  “Liam?” I said.

  Several heads turned to look at me. Liam’s expression softened slightly.

  I cleared my throat. “Can I talk to you for a second? And Noah?” I looked around the clubhouse. “Where is he?”

  Eddie raised his hand from his seat on a leather couch. “He drove down to the capital this morning. Had to renew his business license or something.”

  “Oh.” I turned my gaze to Liam, whose expression remained carefully neutral. “Well, this should only take a minute.”

  “This isn’t exactly a good time,” Liam said.

  “We were discussing what to do about the club,” Eddie explained.

  “And I say we should carry on as usual,” Liam finished, his tone steely and cold.

  I scanned the faces of the other Skull Kings. Then, I looked back at Liam and raised my eyebrows, trying to convey the weight of my message. “Liam, I really need to talk—”

  “You know what? I’m calling an emergency church,” Liam said exasperatedly. He was addressing his brothers as a whole, but the sharp edge of his voice told me that his words were meant for me, and what he was saying was, No women allowed.

  “I guess I’ll see you later,” I said dejectedly.

  Liam bisected the lounge area and opened the door to the back room. Logan was the last to pass through it. He cast one apologetic look at me over his shoulder before closing the door behind himself.

  * * *

  “You did the right thing coming to me.”

  “Thanks...Josh.” It felt strange to call him by his first name. I hoped it would get easier eventually.

  No! a voice piped up in the back of my head. I’m not supposed to hope anything.

  As if in defiance toward my own conscience, I peeked through my eyelashes at Josh. He’d agreed to meet me within twenty minutes of the text I’d sent him after Liam called the church. A part of me had flinched when he responded, the same part that recognized the special disdain Liam harbored for Josh. But t
he rest of me felt vindicated when Josh took one look at the picture I’d snapped on my phone and confirmed my suspicions with two simple words:

  “Well, shit.”

  I trusted Liam, but he wasn’t exactly thinking clearly. There was just something about Josh that set him off.

  What could it be? I wondered as I watched him from across the table, the same exact one I’d been sitting at when I caught the illicit Skull King-Scorpion rendezvous. Josh was young and pleasant to look at, I had to admit, with his chiseled cheekbones and toothpaste ad smile. He had longish dirty blonde hair that he kept combed back off of his forehead. I blushed when he caught me staring at his face and cast my eyes down onto his hands.

  “So tell me about these two guys,” Josh said as he streamed creamer into his coffee.

  I closed my eyes and inhaled. “Well,” I began, “the bald one is Ryan. He’s a Scorpion. They’re wannabe bikers, mostly young yuppie kids who want to feel like bad asses.”

  Josh quirked an eyebrow, looking amused.

  Color rose in my cheeks as I realized how Liam-like I sounded. “And,” I continued quickly, “they have drug connections. The Skull Kings forced them out of Canyon City when they tried to set up shop here. The two clubs haven’t gotten along since.”

  Josh nodded, his hands folded neatly together. It bothered me that he wasn’t taking notes in his notepad, like he’d been doing last night at the club. He was in his uniform, so didn’t that mean he was on the clock? I felt a flare of irritation.

  “Uh-huh. And who’s the other guy?” Josh asked.

  His face rose to the surface of my mind, but I still couldn’t believe it until I said his name aloud. “Logan.”

  Josh frowned. “Logan Schmitt?”

  “I don’t know his last name, actually.”

  “Let me see that picture again.”

  I handed him the phone across the table.

  “Gotta be Schmitty,” he muttered under his breath as he scrolled to my camera roll. His brow furrowed as he squinted at the picture. “I’m positive it’s him.” He handed the phone back to me. “The kid’s harmless.”

  My mouth fell open. Did you hear anything I just said? I was tempted to say. I flailed to explain my thoughts. “The Skull Kings chased the Scorpions out of town when they tried to move in with hard drugs. They’ve never gotten along, yet here’s Logan and Ryan meeting at that lunch counter without their colors, incognito.” After a second, I added for good measure, “I bet the dead stripper was one of their customers. Logan was working security that night.” And maybe it wasn’t an accident that she died on Skull Kings’ premises.

  Josh sighed. He folded his hands just in front of his steaming stoneware mug. “Listen, Aspen. You’re new in town, correct?”

  I nodded.

  “And you’ve only been seeing Liam Olsen...for what, a month?”

  Reluctantly, I nodded again.

  “I’m not trying to invalidate what you’ve seen of the Scorpions or anything like that. But isn’t it strange that the club is blaming another motorcycle club that isn’t even from here? Isn’t it strange that Noah owns Amazon, that his security staff are all Skull Kings, that he’s had a shooting and a death at his strip club, and he’s not taking responsibility for any of it?”

  “But—”

  “Liam was there, too. He was also working security, wasn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but...” My voice dropped half an octave. “He was...occupied.” I coughed and thought I saw a flicker in Josh’s placid expression.

  “All I’m saying is that you’ve only heard good things about the Skull Kings.” Josh leaned close. “But how many other friends do you have in this town?”

  I chewed on my lip. Apparently satisfied, Josh sat back and took a long sip of his coffee.

  “What now, then?” I asked. I’d told him about Logan meeting up with Ryan. I’d told him everything I knew about the Scorpions. Somehow, the dots seemed to connect, pointing the finger at the Scorpions and Logan, but Josh was connecting them in different ways.

  “I’ll keep this meeting in mind, but I’ll follow my department’s protocol in regards to the official investigation. In the meantime, I suggest you tell Liam everything you told me. Just don’t tell him we saw each other today.”

  I stared, shocked into silence. Whatever I expected him to say, that wasn’t it. “Wouldn’t it hinder your investigation if the Skull Kings found out what Logan did? What if they try to exact some sort of biker justice?”

  Josh drew his mug to his lips. His green eyes glinted mischievously. “That’s exactly what I’m counting on.”

  My skin buzzed with apprehension on the whole drive home. I braked and turned without really noticing my surroundings, my mind filled with the sound of Josh’s voice.

  You’ve only heard good things about the Skull Kings, but how many other friends do you have in this town?

  I gripped my steering wheel. There were the other old ladies, the “Skull Princesses.” They counted, right? Probably not. I bit my cheek. There was Carmen, but we’d fallen out of touch ever since I quit working at Buddy’s.

  Damn, I thought. But Josh was wrong. He didn’t know the Skull Kings like I did, and he certainly didn’t know Liam. At the same time, he was only trying to help, wasn’t he? I recalled him sitting across from me in his uniform, his smile confident but kind, his gentle way of nudging me toward his opinion. He thought that there was more to the Skull Kings than I knew, and I was convinced that Logan and the Scorpions were in cahoots. One of us was bound to be right.

  I did trust his opinion for now, and the last thing he’d said to me was to tell Liam everything I’d seen. My conviction rolled over and over as I closed the distance between my car and my apartment. A vignette unfolded in my imagination of me calling Liam to come over, sitting us down on the couch, taking his hand, and showing him my evidence. I could just see it now, Liam’s conflicted expression, hurt and angry. I dreaded and anticipated it at the same time, the I told you so already crouched in the back of my mouth.

  But all my bravado dissolved when I pulled into my apartment parking space, only to find Liam’s Harley parked on the sidewalk right in front of it. He was standing near my front door, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. He perked up when he saw me, and the corner of his mouth rose into a half-smile.

  I carefully arranged my face into something passably happy, as if Liam could tell, just by looking at me, that I’d been thinking about Josh. “Hey,” I said softly as I approached.

  “Hey,” Liam echoed. He scratched the back of his head. “I’m sorry about earlier.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “We were having a thing before you got there,” he said, talking about his Skull King brothers. “Nobody was taking my side when you showed up. I was just in a shitty mood all around.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s talk inside.”

  My feet carried me to the kitchen as Liam collapsed onto the couch.

  “I’m just so fed up, you know?” he began immediately. “Sure, I feel bad that the stripper died, but we didn’t put that needle in her arm. I’m so tired of the sheriff’s department treating us like a bunch of criminals.”

  My interest piqued. “It’s happened before?”

  Liam’s arm rose over the back of the couch, dismissing my question with a wave. “Yeah, once or twice. Some noise complaints, disturbing the peace, things like that. Most of our troubles happened when the Scorpions tried dealing in Canyon City. The deputies thought it was us.”

  “That’s not what—” I swallowed my words. I’d almost said, That’s not what Josh said.

  “Whatever, though,” Liam continued. “Fuck them. Fuck Hamilton.”

  I put a kettle on the stove, boiling water for tea. “What’s your issue with Officer Hamilton? It seems like you guys have some history,” I said in a carefully measured tone.

  Liam scoffed. “We were in the same grade and rolled with different crews. That’s al
l.”

  “I see.” It seemed like there was a lot more to that story, but for now I had to figure out how to break the news about Logan. “Well, I’m glad you came over,” I began, “because—”

  Liam suddenly jumped up. “Let’s go for a ride,” he said, crossing my apartment in three strides. He looped an arm around my waist and tugged me close. I felt his voice rumbling in the middle of my chest. “You and me.”

  “Wait—” I said, but it was already beginning. At the mere mention of riding, Liam was getting hard, his growing erection pressing through his jeans and into my fleshy thighs. I looked up into his eyes, surprised.

  “How about it?” he said, his voice dropping into a growl. “We’ll take the interstate out into the canyons. Let the seat rumble against your pussy the whole way. Get you nice and wet.”

  My lower lip trembled as my breaths grew ragged and short. Liam grabbed my chin and tilted my mouth up to meet his. His kiss was rough, and I felt every ounce of frustration in the pressure he forced behind it.

  I tried to pull away. Liam yanked me back, pushing his mouth more forcefully against mine. His tongue jammed itself between my teeth, choking me. I fought to keep the issue of Logan and the Scorpions in the front of my mind, but it was getting progressively harder, especially with Liam grinding himself against me. I didn’t even need the vibrating seat of his Harley to get me wet.

  It can wait, I finally told myself.

  I pulled off my top. Liam’s hands immediately snaked around my back to unhook my bra. His chest heaved as I slipped my hands into his shirt, feeling along the ridges of his muscles. My fingertips brushed down his abs and hooked into the waistband of his jeans. In a few swift movements, I had him unbuttoned and unzipped, and we pushed our pants down to our ankles at the same time.

  “Come here, baby,” Liam whispered.

  Our bodies fell together, comfortingly familiar. He put me on my back on the linoleum floor. His weight crushed my breasts as he came down on top of me.

  “Liam!” I gasped as his teeth sank into my shoulder.

  He jerked his hips, groping toward my pussy. His breaths were short and frantic, and I got the sense that all rational thought was gone, leaving the mind of an animal in Liam’s body, driven only by the instinct to fuck. His face was slack, lost in pleasure. When he plunged his cock into my body, there was more pain there than I could handle.