Hard Rider

by Lydia Pax

  “It’s his fault,” said Ram. “His fault. She never would have gone in if he hadn’t first—”

  “But he did. And she did. They did. She couldn’t live long enough to get help, and that’s it. That’s just…that’s just how it is, for Christ’s sake, can’t you see that? Nothing gets done in the present by living in the past, Ram.”

  Ram walked away from Howitzer now, approaching the bars. He didn’t want to look at him anymore. But he could hear Howitzer following him, still.

  Howitzer said, “He’s cleaned up, did you know that? Still an asshole, of course. But clean. I heard about that, and that’s why we started looking to trade with them. You are my son, Ram, no doubt about it. But, in Beretta, I thought I had another. When we kicked him out, I thought I would be saving you…but now I’ve got none of you.” There were tears in his eyes and he turned away, wiping them down and sniffing harshly. “None of you.”

  Ram didn’t know what to say. He turned from the bars and looked at his father, shrugging slightly. What did you say to that?

  “Get the fuck away from me,” said Howitzer, walking away. He had composed himself entirely; stone-faced entirely, commander-in-chief once again. “Two days and we vote you out. I don’t care who you’re pretending your old lady is. You’re lucky the vote’s not today. Make whatever arrangements you have to.”

  Chapter 24

  June knew well enough where the police station was, where the jail was. She waited for Ram in her car when he came out, greeting him with a long kiss.

  It felt right and natural to do it, and she had to admit part of her was kind of excited by it. There was something dirty to her, something taboo about kissing a man freshly released from jail. Being the first woman he’d touched or seen even for just a few hours.

  “Are you okay?” she asked after they broke away.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Fine. Thanks for coming.”

  She shrugged. “I figured it would look bad if I didn’t.”

  He laughed. “I don’t know. You don’t see a lot of old ladies come out to pick up their guys now, do you?”

  She hadn’t, as a matter of fact.

  “They know it’s part of the territory,” explained Ram. “Jail time’s no problem with the Crew. That’s why we keep Cattleprod out of all the brawls. He finances our bail.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Yeah, maybe not for too much longer, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He sighed. “I mean my da—Howitzer, he’s got a bug up his ass. Says he’s seeing straight through us, that sort of thing.”

  She nodded. “I had an argument too.”

  He made a noise. “I wouldn’t call what he and I had an argument. Standard line. I’m irresponsible. He doesn’t believe anything about you and me. Won’t believe it unless we’re married, probably. He’ll get to the bottom of it…” His shoulders were heavy. “Didn’t give a shit that I tried to stop the brawl. Said a real leader would have stopped it, no trying, no ifs or buts.”

  “I didn’t see him stopping it,” said June, automatically defensive.

  “Me neither. Probably thinks he was testing me.”

  “Fun,” drawled June.

  They stood across from each other for a moment, both of their arms crossed. She had to admit she was curious about the brawl.

  “What was that fight all about?” she said. “What set it off?”

  “The Wrecking Crew and the Black Flags, those were the other guys, we don’t get along.”

  “I sort of got that, given you all were punching each other in the face. I meant more specifically. Who was the one guy who kept talking? The one with the box?”

  Ram let out a long sigh. “You mean the Black Flag in front, the big one? That’s Beretta. He and I, we used to be like brothers. Both in the Crew. He…there’s a whole long history here, June.”

  “I’d like to know.”

  “The short version is he and I don’t get along anymore. He got into smack a few years back and dragged my sister Madeline into it. She overdosed; we kicked him out of the Crew. He joined up with the Black Flags and has been fucking with us ever since. So, there was a brawl with him a few days ago at this other bar, and those fuckers stole Ace’s bike in the meantime. All those pieces? That was Ace’s bike.”

  “He just tore up his bike?” June asked. “Ace must have been pissed.”

  Ram nodded. “He was. He is. I still gotta find a way to pay him back.”

  “So that’s why—all of that you said, I mean—that’s why you’ve got this war going on between you and the Black Flags? Because of what happened with you and Beretta?”

  “Yes and no,” said Ram. “We’ve had a lot of trouble in the past anyway. Skirmishes, here and there. It was bound to come to a head sooner or later. At least, I thought it was.” But he didn’t look so sure now.

  “A lot of the brawl…I’m not saying it’s my fault, but maybe it wouldn’t have happened how it did if it weren’t for me. Ace needs a bike to ride. It ain’t right.” He ran a hand through his hair, looking in the distance. With his face framed against the flat horizon and the setting sun, he looked more handsome than she had ever seen him. “Goddamn, I’m not even talking about this last brawl, but maybe it’s true for this one too.”

  “You sound a little like your Dad.”

  “Like Howitzer?” He laughed. “Nah. Biker needs a bike, that’s all.”

  That wasn’t what June was referring to—she meant the admission of Ram’s culpability, however loosely worded it was.

  “Howitzer was right about one thing, though,” said Ram. “The vote’s the day after next, and I’m probably out. I don’t think too many of the Crew will mind the brawl, you know. They were on our territory. They’ll vote for fighting. But Ace losing his bike—it reflects on me. I was the one to take him to The Hammerin’ Nail. I’d hoped I could get the bike back. Hoped I could fix it for him.”

  He entered her car and she started it up, thinking.

  The Hammerin’ Nail. June knew that name. Why did she…oh.

  “You were there? When that cop was shot?”

  He held up his hands. “Hey, I had nothing to do with that. Nothing.”

  She drew up into herself, suddenly keenly aware of the sort of man she was with. An outlaw. A criminal. A man who probably had killed before.

  “How do you know?”

  “We had guns. I won’t lie. Ace always has his. But we didn’t shoot any cops.”

  “Then how do you know—”

  “Because we don’t shoot cops. Not unless we have to. You shoot one cop and you’re put away for life. Probably executed. Probably tearing the whole club apart. It’s bad business. I’m not going to pretend to you that it’s a moral decision. It’s not. The only good cop to me is a dead one. I told you about my mother.”

  June didn’t have the emotional wherewithal to get into that particular fight with Ram right then. He wasn’t ever likely to back down off from that point.

  “But,” said Ram, “that doesn’t mean I’m the one to put them in the ground. It’s a practical decision. Less dead cops by our hand means we get left the fuck alone.”

  “That’s an…interesting argument,” she said. “I wouldn’t try it out in front of a jury.”

  “I’m not on trial.” He took her by the shoulders. “Am I? Do you believe me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “It’s important to me that you believe me, June. Really, it is. I don’t know why, but it is. I want you to trust me.”

  “I…” She swallowed. God, he was handsome. Why did he have to be so goddamn handsome all the time? “That’s asking a lot, Ram.”

  He sighed and nodded, sliding a hand through his hair. She turned out of the parking lot and began driving down the main drag of Marlowe.

  “Yeah, I know. I know it is. Look,” he pointed up the road. “I live just right over there. Come hang with me.”

  “I don’t want to listen all nig
ht to arguments about trust, Ram. I’m tired. I—”

  “It’s not like that.” He grabbed her leg now, insistent. She warmed to his touch instantly. “Come hang out with me. I’ve had a rough fucking day. I just saw my friend’s bike in pieces and I’m probably kicked out of my club for good. You’re good company. Be with me.”

  Chapter 25

  The house Ram lived in was small, but it was his—not on loan from the bank, not the government’s—his. He kept it tidy, if only because he was out of it so often that he didn’t have a chance to get anything that dirty. There was a small living room with a flat screen television propped up over a long table full of wrenches and spare parts. Sometimes he polished and tinkered, prepping upgrades for his bike, as he watched the game.

  Through the hallway there was a bathroom on the right, paisley blue wallpaper wrapped around the walls. A kitchen in the very back of the house, small again with a small breakfast nook where he had hardly ever sat. The table there was more of a repository for mail most days, though he had just tossed most of it out a week before.

  And then there was his bedroom. His bed was most of the room, a chest-of-drawers under the window. The sheets were soft cloth, the comforter denim. None of it matched—none of anything in his house matched, really, a Frankenstein work of parts he’d acquired from garage sales and hand-me-downs from other brothers in the club.

  With June there, he arranged atmosphere quickly. The television played baseball on mute; the Rangers were losing. He brought June a beer and one for himself and they sat down on the couch.

  It was all very natural. They didn’t speak. She sat next to him at first, not quite touching. The two just sipped at their beers. But his weight was substantial and the couch was old, and soon she was sliding down against his body, into his lap.

  Very shortly after that she turned to him and began to kiss at his cheek and then his jawline, her face sliding through the thick surface of his beard. Small, delighted gasps left her as his hand grabbed at her waist, pulling her on top of his body. They didn’t seem able to be alone with each other and not start making out…or more.

  He loved her hair. Long, thick, smelling like fall and the harvest, when he rode his bike through areas more fertile than West Texas, when he could feel the freshness of life flowing through his nose and mind. Her body ground against his, hips dropping to slide her heat across the heavy muscles of his torso.

  They kissed for what felt like an hour. There was no clock in the living room. When they had started, the sun was still out and bright, but it was quickly fading now. His cock had been pushing, yearning up toward June’s body that entire time. He wanted her—all of her. He didn’t care what it meant, what it took. Ram wanted to be inside of her.

  Wild Girl. My Wild Girl.

  And she could feel him. Her thighs or her pelvis slid against the stiff rod. Sometimes her ass would land on it, rubbing gently back and forth against the heavy meat, moans leaving her like steam from a kettle.

  There was no mistaking it—June wanted him. He took his good body and looks for granted most of the time, but what most woman wanted from him seemed to be just that—a ride on the wild side and then to be done. But the way June looked at him, she made him feel like she wanted to fuck every part of him. She made him feel like she wanted to ride his soul.

  June rose up to meet his eyes, taking his head between her hands.

  “I don’t know if I trust you,” she said softly. “But I am trusting you not to hurt me. So don’t, okay?”

  He felt a little insulted. “I’d never touch a hair on your head. I don’t know—”

  “That’s not what I mean. You know that’s not what I mean.”

  The anger fled him as soon as it came. He nodded. “I know what you mean.”

  “I don’t want either of us to say…to do anything that makes this more than it has to be. I want us to play and not get hurt.”

  “That’s a deal.”

  He was happy to oblige her, happy to play along. But somehow, thinking that they wouldn’t start feeling anything for each other felt like a bigger game of pretend than anything else they were doing.

  Because Ram did have feelings for her. Possessive, primal feelings, wanting her to be his and his alone. Wanting to own every part of her, to claim her like no one else ever would be able to. He’d give up every other pussy on earth for June—but there was no easy way to say that.

  She slipped down then, unzipping him quickly. There was a mischievous glint in her brown eyes that he was quickly coming to love.

  Wild Girl.

  When she took him out, he was already hard. Ready for her. The meat of it, the length, the thickness, made her mouth pop open with desire. He saw the saliva dripping down from her lips, barely caught by her slow, careful tongue. His cock surged forward, delicious essence dripping out and sliding down the heavy shaft.

  Tenderly, her hand slipped around the shaft and massaged the dripping essence back into the skin, making her soft grip slick.

  “I want to make you feel like you made me feel the other night,” she said, stroking with confidence. “I want you to relax.”

  He had absolutely no objection to that.

  She slipped her mouth down over him, enveloping him slowly. Still she stroked up and down, even as her lips slipped slowly over his cockhead. He was large for a man, he knew that—but he had no way to know that he was significantly larger than the last man she had been with.

  It took her time to adjust, to appropriate. But as she did, she stayed affectionate, letting him enter slowly, licking and kissing, inching him into her throat bit-by-bit. All the while, she stroked calmly but firmly, keeping his hardness iron firm.

  Soon, her lips pressed all the way down on his crotch, her face buried in the heavy bush of pubic hair he possessed. His body was not unnaturally hairy; he had a man’s amount of hair, a long t shape across his chest leading into a long happy trail down to the heavy power line of his cock.

  He could feel the tip of his cock deep in her throat where she swallowed, creating a vacuum-like slick tightness that made him lean his head back and moan.

  She felt ungodly good. It was difficult to control himself—and Ram always controlled himself.

  And she was enjoying it. He was used to women enjoying themselves with him, used to girls who liked to please a man like him. But he could see her hands sliding against her crotch, applying friction to her heated center while her head bobbed up and down with such stunning alacrity.

  June was so turned on from sucking him off that she had to touch herself while it happened. That alone made him spurt out heavy threads of precum down her throat, coating her. Marking her. Making her his even more than she already was.

  Her response to this was to moan and suck harder. With her lips running up and down his shaft with such eminent ease, she’d had to abandon her strokes altogether. Instead, her free hand slid up and down the heavy brick palace of his abdomen, fingers trailing between each dense ridge of tissue.

  Touching him like that only made her pleasure herself more. Her face was getting red, small beads of perspiration forming on her forehead. His hands swept through her hair again and again, losing himself to her, losing himself completely to the power this beautiful woman had over him.

  No one had ever pleasured him like this. No one had ever made him feel this way before. Ram had been with more girls than he could count, but not a single one had made him feel this free, this unburdened, this needy.

  He had to come inside her, had to come down her throat. He had to mark her completely as his property, had to ensure that this magic mouth belonged to no one but his. He wanted his seed inside her; he wanted it to be the only thing she tasted for days and days.

  He warned her, let her know—but she wasn’t that type of girl. She just moaned in approval and in need, encouraging him to finish inside of her.

  My Wild Girl.

  Pleasure throttled him, his orgasm feeling like it had been built up for months. Heavy
spouts of his seed emptied down her throat, splashing hotly and filling her mouth. Each new round of his gift was met with encouraging moans as she sucked him all down.

  He kept going for what felt like nearly a minute, and she stayed on, draining him of the hot, heavy pleasure that she had taken so long to earn. She continued to pleasure him using her tongue and soft kisses with a gusto that made Ram throb and buck on the couch.

  It took her several minutes to disengage completely. She seemed to enjoy suckling and cleaning him off, taking her time, licking him sweetly. When she was done, wiping her face with his shirt, she slid back up next to him and cuddled up beneath his heavy arm.

  Ram was more than willing to reciprocate.

  “Do you want me to…”

  She shook her head. “No. I did what I wanted. Let’s just sit for a bit.”

  They did, and both began to drift—content, sated, relieved from the stresses of the day.

  Chapter 26

  They had been so close to fucking when he had eaten her out. June could feel it—and she knew Ram did too. If he started licking her pussy, she didn’t know if she could stop there without needing him to shove his cock as hard as he could inside of her tight body. That’s why she needed to stop there. She suspected it was fine by him after a blowjob like that.

  But soon enough he would have her—when she wanted it—and he’d make sure she never wanted any other cock in her life ever again. That’s the sort of man Ram was.

  That scared her. It electrified her.

  So with his seed still warming her belly, they dozed for an hour, holding one another tight.

  When he woke again, she was positioned across his lap, tinkering with a bit of hair. She perked slightly when she noticed he was awake.

  “I have a proposal for you,” she said.

  “Anytime you want to give me another blowjob like that, you go right ahead,” he said. “No proposals required.”

  “No, different than that.” She took a breath. “I think we should get married.”

  Ram sat up. His beer on the coffee table was still cool, though not entirely cold. He picked it up and downed it, shaking his head.