Inflamed: A Shadow Riders MC

by Kiki Leach

  While she did her best to try and avoid Verna, who had just come out of the back of the club with a happy-go-lucky Wolf at her side, I waved to a few of the girls across the room, namely Miranda and Candy, and moved straight over to the bar. If I was going to be forced to get through this shit, I was going to need a hell of a lot more help than what I had in doing it.

  Once the crowd parted and moved across the room to dance to whatever the hell was playing on the radio, I found Styx sitting alone at the other end. Though he was partially slumped over, and in spite of what was bound to be a mind splitting headache by the morning, he seemed to be having more fun knocking back shot after shot of what I assumed to be tequila than anyone else in the entire place.

  When he noticed me staring, he tipped his head toward me and grinned. I made my way down to him and bumped his arm.

  "How the hell did you manage to get out of your babysitting duties tonight?" I asked, bending over the bar and swinging my hair back and over my shoulder.

  He looked up at me and grinned even wider. "Ask and you shall receive, babe." He laughed and threw back yet another shot. "Wolf put another motherfucker in charge of watchin' her tonight. VP didn't seem to like that shit too much, though."

  "Hm. Any reason as to why?" I asked. He shook his head and grabbed a handful of peanuts from a bowl sitting on the other side of him. He offered me what was in his hand, but I smiled and shook my head. "Anyway, speaking of River..." I reached over the bar for an unopened bottle of beer and cracked the lid. "Have you seen him around here at all tonight?" I spun around on my heels and tried my best to pick him out somewhere in the land of milk and pussy, but gave up after a few minutes when I realized he was nowhere to be found. "I tried calling him earlier to let him know I was on my way with his mother, but--"

  "He's around here someplace," mumbled Styx. "Saw him with a bit of pussy earlier--"

  "What?"

  "One of the regulars who's been trying to get at his cock for the last few good years now. Guess he finally gave that bitch a whirl." He poured himself another shot and stuffed his mouth full of peanuts.

  "Thanks." Within a matter of seconds, my overinflated ego had been deflated like the tip of a needle being shoved inside a balloon with that unfortunate bit of information.

  After about an hour and a half or so of crap rock music, warm beer, a passed out Styx at my side and River still on the loose someplace (not to mention an absentee Jolene who had bailed out at least thirty minutes before), I contemplated asking one of the other, more sober brothers to drive me home so that I could at least sleep off the growing anger that had been building up inside of me from the moment I first sat down. It was clear that not a single person here, not even a piss drunk Tiny, gave enough of a damn to ask about Eightball or why he hadn't shown his face tonight. No one mentioned anything about Slim missing either, who I hadn’t seen or heard from since yesterday. It was as if neither one of them were nearly as important as River had made them out to be, making the party seem like more or less an excuse for him and his brothers to get openly drunk more than usual and get laid, and not necessarily by the women they had come with.

  After downing my third or fourth tasteless beer, I finally spotted River on the opposite side of the room, emerging through a cloud of smoke. He had come around the corner, from the back of the club, and was sucking down a beer of his own while staring out at everyone else in the room. God, even in my anger at him, I still couldn't deny just how freaking beautiful he was as a man. Between his chiseled, rustic looking face, that three-quarter tight white tee and those jeans that seemed to wrap around his thighs so perfectly that it almost looked as if they were painted on, no wonder women had practically lined up to get a taste of him; and not just tonight, but any night of the freaking week.

  When he turned his head at a certain angle and spotted me sitting at the bar next to Styx, he shoved his way through the every growing crowd and immediately made it over to me.

  He leaned into my ear and wrapped his hand around my back. "Hey," he said. And I melted, I just freaking melted like a bowl of ice cream that had been left out in the sun for too long. When he pulled back from me, the whiskers around his jaw brushed against my cheek; it was in that second I realized just how close he had been to me, and what he had maybe been hoping to expect out of it as a result. He eyed me up and down while taking another swig of beer and nodded. "You been sittin' here with this motherfucker the entire goddamn time?" he asked me. His tone was hard, and I smirked at the twinge of jealousy in his voice.

  I peeked over him at Styx, who remained passed out, and bobbed my head. "He's not such terrible company, even when he can't speak or doesn't have much to say."

  "Yeah, he seems like a real chatty motherfucker in this state, babe. No wonder you two are so goddamn friendly." He moved his eyes around the club again, then after a few seconds turned back to me. "Where the hell's my mother?" he asked.

  I knew in telling him the truth about her leaving to meet up with her new man that he would flip his shit, so I avoided. "She's around here somewhere, I don't know."

  "When's the last time you saw her--?"

  "How long have you been in the back?" I asked, attempting to change the subject entirely. "I mean, have you been back there since you got here, or--"

  "How long you been sittin' here with this asshole, babe?" he retorted.

  "I don't know, I haven't actually been counting the minutes."

  "Neither have I." He grinned. I sneered.

  "Well, he said he saw you take off with somebody earlier," I informed him. "One of the regulars around here that I'm assuming isn't a wife or an Old Lady."

  He scrunched his brows. "He sure I'm the motherfucker he saw?"

  "It's what he said."

  "And it sure as fuck looks like you can trust the shit he's sayin' givin his goddamn current state of mind."

  "He wasn't drunk when he told me," I snapped back.

  River leaned against the bar and tilted his head back to roam his eyes across the ceiling. "You know we've got cameras inside this place?" he told me. "Wolf's got monitors behind a door inside his goddamn office showin' just what the fuck goes on out here and around it."

  I shrugged. “So?"

  "So, his office is where I've been this entire goddamn time, doll. What's around your neck can only give me so much info. And I was with a club bitch," he confessed. He eyed me up and down and ticked up the corner of his mouth while staring. "But I wasn't lookin' to fuck."

  "I don't exactly know what they told you in school, but oral sex is sex too," I said.

  He tipped his chin down and laughed aloud while pointing at my beer. "How many of those have you had so far tonight?"

  I stared down at the bottle and shrugged. "Not very many."

  "You eat this evenin'?"

  "Enough," I replied. "Why?"

  "Never a good thing to drink on an empty fuckin' stomach."

  "I don't remember you eating anything before you left to come down here, and you seem fine."

  "That's 'cause I had my fair share of food, doll. In the kitchen back there." He sucked back more of his beer.

  I placed my empty bottle on top of the bar and spun around in my chair to fully stare up into his face. "Let me ask you something," I said. "This woman that you were with before I showed up, if you weren't looking to screw her and you weren't seeking her out so that she could get on her knees in front of you, what the hell were you doing with her?"

  He pulled the beer back from between his lips and leaned forward. "Truth?"

  "Yes, truth. Always."

  He clamped his teeth together and closed his eyes, and I got a strange feeling inside my stomach that he hated what he was about to say to me a hell of a lot more than I was going to hate in hearing it.

  "I needed to know if my cock could respond to another bitch in the same goddamn way it's been respondin' to you as of late."

  The minute those words came out of him, I laughed. I actually, genuinely looked up in
to those steel blue eyes of his and laughed as hard as I could without actually falling over. "Are you're serious?"

  "As a goddamn, motherfuckin' heart attack, babe--"

  "And?"

  "And what?"

  "What were the results?" I asked him.

  He exhaled sharply and brought his eyes down to my skirt. "Shit."

  I knew the answer. Right then and there I knew, and he didn't have to say another damn word to me about it.

  "Come on." I wrapped my hand around the beer in his hand and sat it down on top of the bar. "I want you to come out here and dance with me."

  "I don't fuckin' know how," he told me. A smile spread across my lips and I threw my arms around his neck. When I slid my fingers back and forth across his nape and up into his hair, he grunted and bent his head down to my face. "Baby--"

  "I can teach you." I tilted my head and stared directly at his lips as his eyes went across every inch of my body. "Or, you can just come out here and watch me."

  "Babe--" he growled.

  "Come on." I dragged him away from the bar with my arms still around his neck and moved us out into the middle of the floor. When another song that I was familiar with started playing on the radio, I dropped my hands from around him and swayed my hips to the beat of it. He remained completely still with his eyes still on me. "You have to actually move," I said.

  "I've got no problem just standin' here and watchin' you like you said I could, doll. I don't even know where the fuck to put my hands on a woman when I'm right side up like this."

  "Maybe it's time that you finally learned." I reached out for his rough and rugged hands, hands that despite being worn with callouses and scars were still more beautiful to me than any other pair I had ever seen on another man before, and placed them on either side of my waist. As his long, thick fingers brushed the skin beneath my shirt, I felt a chill travel up my spine and into the back of my hair; my skin instantly became hot at his touch, and though it burned like hell to be this close to him, there was no way I could even think of letting go, not when I finally had him -- not when I was at least close enough to it.

  After a few minutes, he dropped his eyes down between us and dragged me close enough to feel his cock as it lengthened and expanded inside his jeans. And then he dipped himself beneath me just a little, almost forcing me to feel it against my pelvis, between my thighs.... And he started moving to the beat of the music, albeit slowly, much more slowly than he should have, more like grinding against me as if we were in bed together.

  When the song stopped and another one played, he didn't even skip a beat, he just kept going, kept moving, kept holding me, pulling me closer, kept grinding and even let out a few grunts in between.

  God.

  "River?" I asked, breathless thanks to my heart rate pounding at what felt like over one-thousand miles per second.

  He tightened his jaw and gulped. "Hm?"

  I slid my hands up the muscles in his arms and wrapped them tight around his neck again. I dipped my head back and sucked on my bottom lip. It was the one thing that finally got him to look me in the eyes again. "Don't you think this is nice?" I said.

  "Nice?"

  "Mm-hm. Just... you holding me close like this and the music just playing throughout the room. It's like we're the only two people in here."

  "Darlin', if we were the only two people in here, my hands sure as fuck wouldn't still be just around your goddamn waist."

  "Where would they be instead?"

  He pulled his head back from me and contorted his features into a scowl. "You are playin' with fuckin' fire here, babe. A goddamn, motherfuckin' ball of flames and you're bound to get burned."

  "So let me burn." I swung my hair over my shoulder and smiled up at him. "Just let me burn with you."

  “Shit.”

  I lifted up to my toes and pulled him closer to me. "Every touch from you to me is like a lit match to lighter fluid. You’re like a liquid flame and I just want to take every part of you inside every part of me and--”

  "Fuck." He yanked me even closer and bowed his head to brush the tip of his nose across mine, then he moved down to my lips and swiped his mouth back and forth across them. "Jesus, baby. Goddamn. The thought of finally tastin' you is just... fuck." His hands tightened around me as they moved even further up inside my shirt, and a soft moan escaped his lips, forcing me to tremble. "You've got no goddamn idea how much I wanna sink my cock right inside that sweet as fuck pussy, baby. Deep inside that cunt ‘til you feel nothin’ else, and sink it somethin' fierce."

  I almost fell over and into his arms right there. "After last night," I said, gulping in between my words, "I think I've got a pretty damn good idea of just how much you want to sink yourself inside me."

  "Shit, babe," he replied. "Fuckin', shit. My heart's never gonna catch up to my goddamn cock when it comes to you, darlin'. Not like you're wantin'."

  "I think it already has," I told him. "I think it was close to being there already eight years ago, no matter what you might've thought or how you might've felt about it. And as much as you keep trying to ignore it and tell me otherwise, I think it's there now." I dropped my hands from around his neck and attempted to pull back from him, but he kept his arms tight around my waist, dug his fingers into my skin, shoved his cock against me and nodded. I whimpered.

  "Song's not over yet, doll," he said.

  His hands dipped to the rim of my skirt. He knew that I would've given just about anything for them to move lower and up inside and between my thighs.

  But....

  "It's over for me," I breathed, just barely managing to get out the words.

  Hesitantly, I wrapped my hands around his wrists and removed them from around my waist. I wanted to stay in that moment with him, I wanted to feel him, I wanted him to feel me, but I knew that I couldn't. I knew that I couldn't stay and give him what he wanted until he gave me what I needed, and that was to finally hear the truth.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  While propped up on the picnic table outside the club and hunched over his knees as he blew out the smoke from a freshly lit joint, River thought back to those few minutes Mia had spent in his arms as they danced inside to that piece of shit called music that was blasting over the radio. And Jesus, did he want that shit back, all of it, right down to the goddamn shit music, to the look in her eyes as she stared up at him and the feeling that built up inside his chest all over again as her fingers caressed him while it played. He had realized in that moment, right when he thought it might've been too goddamn fucking late to even make a difference to her now, that more than any other thing in the entire goddamn world, more than Ricky's head on a silver fucking platter, more than even his own goddamn dignity, pride and every other motherfucking thing he had ever believed in before now, he wanted that fucking feeling back, and he wanted that shit back with nobody but her.

  As he took another hit of the joint and dropped his feet to the bench, a warm hand slid across his back, forcing him to flinch. When he turned to see Verna standing right beside him and smiling, slight disappointment overcame him.

  "Why are you sitting out here all alone?" she asked him. He flicked the ashes of his joint to the ground and shrugged. "Ever since you were little, you've always hated being alone."

  "I just needed some time to think about alota shit," he replied. "Shit I can't think about with a bunch of other motherfuckers and booze floatin' around."

  She nodded and climbed on top of the table and sat down right beside him. "Are you thinking about something in particular?" she asked him. "Maybe even someone in particular?" He looked over at her and grimaced. She turned her eyes ahead and sat up straight. "You are gonna let every single one of your biases lead you away from a damn good thing with a damn good woman, Jacob Hawkins."

  "She ain't my kinda woman, Vern."

  "No she's not, which not only makes her a better alternative to anything you've ever had or could get in the future, but it makes her a better alternative for you,"
she said. He glowered. She placed a hand on his knee and looked straight up into his eyes. "This woman is smart, she's beautiful and she sees past that surly, angry, son of a bitch demeanor you've been carrying around inside you since you were a child. She embraces the man that you are entirely, right inside of here." She placed a hand on his chest and pointed directly at his heart. "She makes you see things, River, not just as they are, but how they could be, and better. And she does something I've never even seen another woman do for you before, and that's make you smile for longer than a few minutes at a time without even needing to mutter a single goddamn word to you first."

  "Madison makes me smile all the goddamn time," he said.

  "She should as your child, but you know that's not what I meant," she replied. He leaned back and smoked down his joint to the tip before crushing the end and tossing it across the parking lot. "You can keep denying how you feel about this woman, and pretending you're out here thinking of ways to try and get her out of your system when you know damn well that if she left tomorrow, you'd search out every way you could in trying to drag her back here, with or without her consent." She dipped her head and smiled. "Or you can admit that you might be falling in love with her, and that you have been for a long time now. At the very least, you can admit that you might already be there."

  "At the very least, Vern, I can admit that you're absolutely crazy as fuck." He jumped down from the table and moved across the lot.

  "River," she called out.

  He stopped in place, shook his head and dropped his hands inside his pockets. "I don't even fuckin' know this bitch."

  "Yes you do," she said. He peeked at her over his shoulder and remained completely still as she got up from the table and moved in behind him. She placed her hands against his back and he shut his eyes at that stark feeling of comfort, one he had almost forgotten how to react to. "You know her better than you're willing to admit because you know that if you do, it opens up a whole new world for you that you're not sure you're ready to be a part of just yet, and that's okay. It'll take some time for you to get there and I understand that, and I know why. But if you take too damn long, that world just might close up with you in it, swallowing you whole and leaving her on the outside to be the sun in somebody else's sky." He turned around completely and stared down at her. She placed her hands on either side of his face and watched with complete fascination as the whites in his eyes slowly began turning red. "Don't let the idea of what you think life should be cloud how it should actually be for both you and her."