Savage Saviors: The Complete Boxset (Savage Saviors MC)

by J. C. Allen

  “Well, I suppose one cheat meal isn’t going to hurt,” she said.

  “Nah, Eve, this isn’t a cheat meal,” I said, being unusually pedantic. “It’s a celebration meal. Rock’s gone. Gone. Dead. I made sure of it. That asshole is never coming back. This is our feast!”

  Eve giggled as I sat on the edge of the bed, placing my hand on her leg.

  “So by all means, as Roost used to say, ‘laugh an’ get fat!’ Deal?”

  “Oh, fine, deal,” Eve said with a playful eye roll.

  We picked at the buffet of food I had prepared for the next half hour, with Eve impressing me with the amount of food she consumed. Then again, given that I don’t think she had eaten since… well, certainly not since I had picked her up early in the evening, I suppose it wasn’t that big of a surprise. It was just her indulging, her giving herself the necessary nourishment she needed to survive.

  I was admittedly a bit of a whore myself for food, but for what she’d done last night, I didn’t mind trying to make sure she had room for seconds and thirds. By the time we had gone one for one and I could pick up the scraps, there were only about two biscuits, four sausage links, and some leftover eggs to be had. Together, we had killed all of the bacon, waffles, and pancakes and close to everything else.

  “Man, I don’t know that life can get any better right now,” I said as I had the last of the bacon.

  “I know,” Eve said with a content smile. “Great food. Great man. Freedom. Now I guess the only hard part is deciding how to spend that freedom.”

  If not for the plates on our bed and the glasses nearby, I probably would have said something just erotic enough to get her interested before saying “freedom to explore each other,” leading to the only way to cap a perfect morning.

  But, alas, delayed gratification could be a good thing, so I just smiled.

  “Well, you do have that freedom now to do whatever you want,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere with the club. We used to operate without rivals, you know, or at least consistent, dangerous rivals. I think I’d like to know a little bit about what that’s like. What about you?”

  “Hmm?”

  It was interesting to think of how, in that moment, for as much as I had said I loved Eve, I really didn’t know that much about her future hopes and dreams. I knew that I would do whatever I could to give them to her, but I just could not recall much. She was a smart cookie, so she’d be able to do whatever she wanted, that much I knew.

  “I mean, as much as I’d love for us to just stay here for the rest of our lives and screw like cats in heat, I gotta imagine even we’ll get tired of that eventually.”

  “Debatable,” Eve said with a wink, the kind of look that got me stiff in a matter of seconds, as if it was my duty to be hard. “But I see what you mean. I don’t know. I might go back and finish school, although that might take some work on my part since I never really gave an official notice of leave.”

  “Because—”

  “Exactly, I just wound up in Rock’s hands,” she said. Even hearing this bugged me, but the anger faded quickly given that I didn’t have to worry much about it anymore. Rock’s hands were probably ash by now anyways. “I could do that. I’ve also… this might sound weird, but I’ve always wanted to own a jewelry store.”

  “Why would that be weird?”

  Eve smirked and gave a short chuckle to herself.

  “Sorry, I forget you didn’t know me growing up. I was kind of the smarty-two shoes in my family. Everyone figured I’d go get some white collar job. No one saw me as the girl who would go run a jewelry shop—but it’s always been something I’ve really, really enjoyed.”

  I smiled knowingly and silently congratulated myself for having the wherewithal to have gotten her that ruby necklace at the store in Samsville. I hadn’t known that it would work so well for her, but it sure did the trick.

  “Well, let’s make a deal,” I said, my mind racing with a nice little train of humor. “You would feel weird doing a jewelry store here? Let’s go somewhere else. I’ll retire to Italy and change my name to… I don’t know, Dom Dominico.”

  Eve just laughed at the terrible repetition that I had come up with, and I sure deserved it for something that corny!

  “Oh man, so we’re going from biker clubsters to Italian clubsters? Do I at least get to say, ciao, bello?”

  “You mean ciao, bella?”

  “No, it’s bello. I’m referring to you, Derek, the man, masculine. Bella is feminine, so you’d say bella to me, and I’d say bello to you.”

  Goddamnit.

  I knew I liked how smart she was.

  “Well, let’s make this simple,” I said, grabbing her plates and moving them to a place where raucous activity wouldn’t break them. “Ciao, bella, arrividerci.”

  “Do you even know what you are saying?” Eve said with a laugh.

  “Not at all, but I know who I’m saying it to—the most beautiful girl in the world.”

  Eve cooed, but I didn’t give her a chance to say anything else. I leaned in, kissed her, and then pulled her underneath me. Our kiss turned passionate and intense as our tongues darted and collided, each feeling the other, trying to taste the other’s joy and arousal. Eve moaned under me as I reached a hand down and pressed it between her legs. She let out gasps and moans as I took my shirt off.

  And then my phone rang.

  “Ah, just ignore the fucker,” I said.

  I kissed her and waited for that phone to stop ringing. It was a long and painful couple of dozen seconds, most notably because I just wanted Eve to beg for me and not beg for me to shut off the phone, but when it finished, I had already lifted Eve’s shirt off and begun working my way toward her underwear.

  And then the damn thing rang again!

  “You’d think the world would be considerate enough to know when I’m with you,” I said with a snort.

  “Get it,” Eve said encouragingly. “Probably the same person, they wouldn’t call back twice so quickly if they didn’t have to speak to you.”

  I really didn’t like the idea of anything interrupting my time with Eve, most especially a phone call—at least if someone had barged into my apartment somehow, I would have to take action.

  I liked it even less when I saw it was a number I didn’t recognize nor have saved in my phone. That made it more likely it was just some scammer or some telemarketer offering me a great deal on a magazine subscription I had ended in the 20th century as a kid… but on the other hand, they had called twice. Who knew? Maybe one of the members of the Saviors had a new phone.

  With my dick still hard, I sighed and hit hello.

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to sound not completely pissed off.

  “Derek Knight?”

  It was a woman’s voice. In the background, I heard beeping and some other bustling.

  “Yes, how can I help?”

  I’m sure the impatience in my voice was obvious, but to the woman’s credit—or perhaps against it, given I wanted her to hang up—she didn’t seem bothered by it.

  “I’m calling about your friend, Matthew Rose.”

  I was so taken aback by hearing the formal name of Matty “Roost” Rose that I didn’t recognize what she meant for a good few seconds before I shook my head.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  Cold. But how could he not be?

  “Well, no, technically not yet,” the nurse said. “He’s in a coma and he’s on life support right now. We don’t know if he’s going to make it, but…”

  The doctor rambled about some more medical terminology that I zoned out on. My thoughts about Eve and the arousal in my pants had vanished at this news that was either a cruel tease of a possibility that would never come true or potentially the best news this day could have offered.

  So Roost… he was alive. But only because of the miracles of modern medicine. It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten shot, but he’d never dropped unconscious or looked dead because of a violent episode like
that. Instead, this just seemed like the final end—and now God was testing me to see how much I could take before he’d snap his fingers and take Roost up for good.

  “Mr. Knight?”

  “I’m sorry, I thought for sure he would be dead,” I said. “I’m glad… I’m glad he’s alive though.”

  I really was, even though I didn’t sound like it. I was just such a hot mess and so taken aback by the news that I doubted I could show genuine joy at the news.

  “Well, Mr. Knight, since we cannot reach any of Mr. Rose’s family, you are the next in line to make a decision for him. Do you want to keep him on life support?”

  It was a strange feeling to consider that just moments ago, I considered him dead, a man to be mourned and remembered, one whom I’d be making funeral plans for as soon as I finished my morning session with Eve.

  And now, I held an even higher question in my hands.

  I considered the reverse. What would Roost do for me?

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll come visit him later.”

  “OK, we will do what we can Mr. Knight.”

  “Thanks.”

  I hung up the phone and let it hang in my hand, staring in disbelief. I really didn’t want to get my hopes up, especially since the nurse herself had said they weren’t sure if he was going to make it—which I felt was just code for them saying “he’s not going to make it in 99.9999 percent of cases, we just don’t want to be too cruel and blunt with you.” I didn’t want to believe there was a chance—I mean, for fuck’s sake, I had seen Roost in what should have been his final moments.

  But if there was a chance…

  “What was that about? Who’s alive? Matty?”

  I turned around to see Eve put back together, her clothes somewhat on, standing in my door frame. By now, sex was not going to happen, but that wasn’t a worry of mine. It wasn’t like we’d had a fight and would never hook up again—we just had something more important.

  “In a sense,” I said. “I… the nurse said he’s in a coma. Not gonna believe he’s alive until I hear him call me a jackass with his own mouth. But…”

  “There’s hope,” Eve said with a faint smile.

  Someone between us has to believe.

  “Only in the smallest sense,” I said. “But yes.”

  I sighed. She came up to me and did perhaps the most intimate thing she could have done. She simply gave me a hug.

  We had shared some truly special moments together, some intensely passionate moments, and some incredibly erotic ones. But that one right there—that hug that she gave me… well, it was just sweet in a way that, as a man, I had trouble admitting.

  But I could say it was needed.

  “We should go to the shop,” I said. “I need to let the Saviors know what happened. They’re going to wonder where we are.”

  “Agreed,” she said. “Let’s go there, and then we can go visit Matty, and then we can come back here when we know how he is?”

  I nodded. It sounded like as good of a plan to me as I could have hoped for.

  I pulled into the back of the shop with Eve on my bike, roaring at a slightly faster-than-normal speed but not so fast as to have drawn the attention of some rookie cop. It was only when I saw how disorganized the place looked that I realized what lengths Eve must have gone to to get herself free of the place. I’d done her a favor, but damn if she wasn’t smart enough to escape that “favor.”

  Still, there was precious little time to waste, and I wasn’t going to spend the day examining every crate and nook that Eve had touched.

  “Everyone,” I said.

  All eyes fell on me as all work stopped. Clearly, they knew something had happened, especially without Roost present. It wasn’t that common for me to not be in the shop, but for Roost to not be there was akin to walking into a car dealership and not seeing the cars—it just didn’t feel complete.

  “Last night was a night of triumph and tragedy,” I said.

  I took turns to look every man in the eye, to make sure that they all understood what was going on. I caught in the corner of my eye the two oddballs of the room—the two girls, Eve and Crystal, or, Tara. Tara whispered something into Eve’s ear, but Eve didn’t seem to pay much attention to it.

  “As you all know, after the murder of Brick, the club wanted to escalate the battle, and so we did. We discovered that the Black Falcons had a meth lab and that Rock would be nearby. So, Roost and I went in. We killed Rock.”

  No one applauded, and with good reason—they knew that on the other side of good news, some morbid, dark news was coming. And they knew what it likely was.

  “However, in the process, Roost was severely injured. I would have died if not for the actions of Eve over here. I think it goes without saying, but all of you are to treat Eve as you treated Maggie.”

  The words came out without me thinking about them much, but Eve’s reaction told me I had just said something almost too Earth-shattering for her. Not that it mattered—it was true and, frankly, I didn’t have time to think about its meaning. Not with Roost’s state at hand.

  “I left that building with Eve convinced that Roost had died. I guess the ambulances and firetrucks showed up a short time after and rescued him. I got a call this morning saying that he was still alive, but…”

  It was too late to say he wasn’t alive. I didn’t think I’d lie to my crew by any means, but I just wasn’t sure “alive” was the proper word to describe Roost.

  “He’s in a coma. The nurse said they aren’t sure if he’s doing to make it. Frankly, we have to prepare and act as if he’s going to die. I don’t want to admit it as much as anyone here, but this is the reality we face. So… that means that we have to start making funeral plans, everything but the date.”

  And now, as I looked beyond even that, I knew what was coming—and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  “We dealt a hard blow to The Black Falcons last night, one that they will be feeling for quite a while now and one that has probably knocked them on their asses for at least a few days. But we did not eliminate them. That will take time. There are many former members of this group still active who will take Rock’s place as leader of Falcons. And when they are organized, shit will get much harder on the streets for us. We must prepare accordingly for when that time comes.”

  Leave them on a good note, Derek. It can’t be all doom and gloom.

  “For now, though, we should have a few days while they try and figure out what the hell happened. So, if you want to pay your visits to Roost, do so as soon as you can. You may not get past today or tomorrow.”

  I looked to Eve. She gave me a faint smile, the kind that said she supported me in whatever I did. I guess I should have expected it, and I wasn’t necessarily surprised by it per se, but it was still reassuring and very nice to see.

  “Eve and I will be going straight from here to the hospital. In the meantime, carry out your duties as you normally would. I will leave it up to Eagle to oversee everything,” I said, nodding to the second-most senior member of the group behind only Roost, a man in his mid-40’s with a Hulk Hogan mustache and the voice of a baritone God but the quietness of a hibernating bear. “While we figure things out. Understood?”

  “Yes,” the Saviors said in unison.

  I smiled back.

  “Let’s make sure we all understand one thing,” I said. “Roost was damn proud of what happened here. And if he saw anyone here being sad, he’d say ‘yer goddamn pussies, all of ya!’”

  The accent—which I swore was much better—drew some much needed laughs from the crowd. It was exactly how I wanted to leave the Saviors; aware of what was going on, but understanding we weren’t going to falter and crumble just because of Roost’s damage.

  I went to Eve and hugged her.

  “Damn, boy, I swear you could be a president with your silver tongue,” Tara said. “I see why Eve likes you, that and what I guess you’d be sporting between your legs with that snake!”

  “Tara!�
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  I just blushed and laughed.

  “There’ll be time for more banter later, Tara,” I said. “In the meantime, stay here. Eagle will give you something to do.”

  “Damn well better, woke up this morning with the damn air vent open, made me feel like a dildo in the freezer!”

  I just shrugged, looked at Eve—who shrugged too, but with a guilty grin—and grabbed Eve gently by the shoulders.

  “C’mon,” I said. “We’ve got a friend and a hero to pay a visit to.”

  Tara pouted something about how she needed to ride a bike so she could feel a good vibration between her legs, but I just kept walking, knowing Eagle would give her a real job—not sucking someone’s dick at gunpoint—while Eve and I paid our visits.

  One thing was for sure. I didn’t know if Tara would want to avoid a life of prostitution, but Eve was never, ever going back. For as great a body as she had, as much as that ass jiggling and those hips swaying could make a man make a mess in his pants just from observing her, her mind was even sexier. I felt like a bumbling meathead in most of our conversations, and if I felt that way, I felt sure pretty much everyone else did. She deserved to have a more mentally challenging task than trying to figure out how to get a man off as quickly as she could.

  I let Eve get on the bike with me as she wrapped her arms around her. Despite leaving the shop on a relatively good note, I could feel the tension in her arms. I think she felt my nervousness about seeing Roost—the fear that was growing by the second as our distance to the hospital closed, the fear that came from wondering if there was any point to it—and was empathizing with it.

  Whatever the reason, our bike ride to the hospital was a short one. I could not decide if it was mercifully so or cruelly so, given the need to see Roost but also the fear of it. I walked up to the front desk and asked, pausing to feel the words come out of me, for “Matthew Rose.”

  Still weird. Like asking for the full name of my high school history teacher, not Roost.

  I was directed to a fourth-floor intensive care room and took the elevator without a word. Eve took my hand and gave a gentle squeeze, which I appreciated. It was so easy to play it cool and not get my hopes up from afar, when I could look at statistical probabilities. But up close?