Blade

by Aiden Bates

  “That ain’t the worst thing to ever happen, though, do you think?”

  That surprised a laugh out of me. I wiped roughly at my eyes, dispelling any tears that hadn’t yet fallen. “I guess it’s not.” I propped myself up on my elbow so I could look down at Blade. I ran a forefinger over the long-healed break in his nose. “It’s really not.”

  I leaned down and kissed him. It started slow and sweet and quickly deepened. We were hungry for each other. Soon, I was on top of Blade, straddling his hips. Blade ran his hands up the back of my shirt to caress my skin before grabbing the hem and pulling it up and over my head.

  A thrill ran through me. “Here?”

  “No one knows this place,” Blade said “It’s ours.”

  The sun was low in the sky, casting rich golden light across us.

  “Okay. I trust you, Blade.”

  “Byron,” Blade said. The word spilled out quick.

  “Huh?”

  “Byron. It’s my name. The name I had before Hell’s Ankhor.”

  He couldn’t meet my eyes. The muscles in his jaw clenched as he focused on my mouth instead. The arousal in my body bloomed into a heady rush of something more. How many people knew his real name? With the way he tensed with nerves, it likely wasn’t many. That glimmer of vulnerability in his dark eyes doomed me. This wasn’t a crush or infatuation. It was way more than that.

  I had it bad.

  “Byron,” I repeated.

  Blade reached for me and pulled me back down. I said his name against his mouth, and he gripped me as if he could pull me even closer. The hard line of his cock pressed against mine, and my litany of his name devolved into a groan.

  We paused in our kissing just long enough to pull off the rest of our clothes, and the cool early evening air raised goosebumps on my back and arms. Blade worked me open fast and rough, sitting up so I was cradled in his lap as he did so. I was impatient, desperate to feel his cock inside me again, and it wasn’t long before I pushed him flat on his back.

  The air left his lungs in a surprised rush. I grinned down at him and pushed my hair out of my eyes.

  “Jesus.” Blade grabbed my hips and caressed my skin in small unconscious circles with his thumb. “You’re gorgeous.”

  Blood rushed to my cheeks. “You’re just saying that to make me get a move on.”

  “Nah.” He shifted his hips and his cock pressed against my ass. “Just like to see you turn red.”

  “Careful, or you won’t get any.”

  “Doubt that.” With a playful smirk Blade skated a hand up my chest to tweak my nipple, his touch hard and unforgiving, then slid it back down to stroke my cock just once.

  It worked. Anticipation shot through me. I slid off his lap just long enough to roll a condom on him, then I straddled his hips and reached behind me to grip his cock hard at the base and line it up with my entrance.

  Blade squirmed beneath me, his hips shifting in barely controlled thrusts.

  “Let me,” I said. The tip of his cock nudged against my hole. I braced both hands on the solid muscle of his chest. He held my weight easily. Then I carefully, slowly slid down, and the thickness of his cock stretching me punched my breath out. I exhaled through the stretch of it, and after an eternity his entire cock, all the hot hard length of it, was inside me.

  I paused, seated fully in his lap. Sweat formed at my nape and slid down the column of my spine.

  Beneath me, Blade tossed his head back. His dark hair was a halo across the blanket.

  Then I began to move. I rolled my hips forward, up and down, and pleasure ran through my bones, slow and warm like sliding into a hot bath.

  Blade kept his hands on my hips, following my lead as I rode him.

  “Byron,” I murmured, and Blade’s eyes flew open. “Touch me.”

  He sucked his lower lip in between his teeth and grabbed my cock with no hesitation, jerking me sweet and hard in rhythm with my hips. “Like that?”

  I let my head fall backward, my mouth open with desire. The slow, luxurious pace of my hips and the matched pace of Blade’s hand on my cock had my orgasm building at the base of my spine, a white-hot ball of pleasure burning like a light. Blade ran his thumb over the head of my cock, through the precum forming there, and a shiver ran through my entire body.

  “You gonna come?” Blade asked

  “Yeah.” My voice was barely a whisper.

  “So quick,” he said, warmly teasing. “That good?”

  My chin dropped forward then and I worked my hips faster, deeper. It was that good—intense and deep inside me, the physical sensation driving out all my guilt and doubt and anxieties.

  Blade stroked me faster, matching my quickening pace. His eyes met mine and something dark and adoring was there. I closed my eyes tight, and white flashed behind my lids as my orgasm rattled through me.

  I collapsed onto Blade’s chest, breath heaving. My cum was hot and sticky between us. Something about that—the marking—nearly got me going again. Blade kissed me open-mouthed and messy, like he was drunk on it, then planted his heels on the ground and drove his hips up hard and fast. The thrusts rocked my whole body forward with their force. He wrapped his arms around me, pinning me to him, and I shuddered and melted pliantly. He growled my name and it was only a few more deep thrusts until he came.

  In the afterglow, still sticky with sweat and cum, Blade pulled me close to his body. The mountains in view stood silhouetted against the purpling sunset sky.

  He combed his fingers tenderly through my hair. The cool air, the heat and warm sandalwood smell of his body, the soft chirping of the birds lulled me into a drifting almost-sleep.

  “You should stay,” Blade said.

  I blinked my eyes open and nuzzled closer to him. “Huh?”

  “Stay.” He kissed the top of my head. “Here. In Elkin Lake.”

  The unspoken: With him.

  All the reasons I had concocted for leaving—the secrets I’d been keeping, the things I’d been running from—dissipated like steam in the face of the unnamed emotion taking root in my heart. There’d be time to deal with all of that later.

  “Okay.”

  “I—what?”

  “Yes. Yes, Byron, I’ll stay.”

  15

  Blade

  “Yo.” Raven stuck his head into my office without knocking. “I’m ready if you are. You want coffee?”

  I swiveled around in my office chair. “Yeah, definitely. Thanks.”

  Raven flashed me an “ok” symbol and disappeared.

  I closed my laptop. No news of note, and no suspicious police reports other than the ones I’d already gathered throughout the week. There’d been another sighting of Vipers at our borders, and another scuffle outside a bar.

  A week ago I would’ve been chomping at the bit to get out there and knock some fucking teeth out.

  But a week ago Logan agreed to stay in Elkin Lake. And not above Ballast—in my home. It was a temporary solution, he insisted. Just until he found his own place. But I wasn’t scouring apartment listings, and I didn’t see him searching either.

  Waking up next to Logan every morning filled me with a swell of affection so strong it terrified me. My feelings for him sanded down my rougher edges, helping me tame the anger I’d held towards the Vipers into a productive, righteous determination. Against my white sheets, Logan’s skin was a stunning golden-tan contrast each night. His green eyes were red-rimmed and sleepy when they first blinked open in the early morning light.

  Sometimes I caught him watching me when he thought I wouldn’t see. His face would twist slightly, his pink mouth curling down, a furrow in his brow. He carried a weight he didn’t want me to see. But I’d seen his scars, and heard a little of his story. I wasn’t going to push or force him like others in his life had.

  When he was ready to tell me the rest, I’d be there.

  Raven pushed the door open with his butt, so his backpack wouldn’t press against it, and then kicked it closed behind him
. He set our steaming mugs of coffee on my desk. I slid coasters under them. Raven rolled his eyes.

  “All right,” Raven said. “Let me pull up my map here.” He pulled his small, sleek laptop from his backpack and balanced it on the edge of my desk, his fingers flying rapid-fire across the keys.

  Raven always got this intensely focused look when he was at his computer. His slate-blue eyes flicked across the screen and the slightest furrow formed in his forehead where his thick dark eyebrows knitted together. Sometimes his tongue would stick out the corner of his mouth, a cute remnant from childhood habits.

  As he’d grown up, he’d started to look a little bit like Ankh. The resemblance was in his defined, angular cheekbones and the slight dimple in his chin. But, unlike Ankh, he was ivory-pale with just a few shadows of freckles across his upturned nose. His mother, Ankh’s sister, had passed during childbirth. Ankh had adopted him as a newborn without hesitation, and Raven had grown up with a family of foul-mouthed guys like me hovering over him like a bunch of mother hens.

  Now, at twenty-five, Raven dressed casually, more like a city boy than a biker, in jeans and Henleys and non-leather jackets. It was when he was in his element, like this, doing something complicated on a computer I could hardly understand, that I remembered he was an adult now. Not the kid I’d babied. And we all did, sometimes, treating him like a kid even though we relied on his skills for the treasury. Ankh’s death hung over him like a shadow, and his grief still exploded out occasionally, but he was handling it as well as I could hope. And I’d seen Logan’s presence alleviate Raven’s gloom. I’d seen Raven laugh more in the past few weeks than I had in months.

  “Here.” Raven flipped the laptop towards me. The map of Elkin Lake was dotted with red pins. “This is where we’ve seen Viper activity. Either members passing through, or an actual altercation.”

  “Okay, I’m with you.”

  “And here—” Raven tapped the keyboard and a series of green pins appeared “—is where we’ve seen the drugs pop up.”

  The pins weren’t a one-to-one match, but they were certainly clustered in the same areas, along the edges of the territory and closer to the north.

  “I reached out to a contact in LA to ask if they’d seen anything like this. No overdoses that match our descriptions. So, this week, Siren went up to San Fran to check things out.”

  “She did what?”

  “Calm down, she wasn’t wearing club gear and she didn’t even ride. She took a car. It’s Siren, she’s not an idiot.”

  “And you didn’t tell me this was happening?”

  “Get on Gunnar about that, not me. I’m just the messenger. Can I continue?”

  I sat back in my office chair and crossed my arms across my chest. “Go ahead.”

  Raven pushed the laptop aside. “Anyway,” he said, drawing out the first syllable dramatically, “she did her job well and came back with this.” He reached into his backpack again, and tossed a small Ziploc baggie onto my desk. Inside was a bump or two of white powder, with a faint off-center imprint of two snakes intertwined, both open-mouthed and fanged.

  “So that’s them, obviously. What we’ve got going on in our clubs,” Raven nodded towards the map on his laptop, “is this.”

  He tossed another baggie on the table. It was the same size, with the same amount of white powder inside, but unlabeled.

  “Same thing?”

  Raven nodded. “Yeah. I ran a Marquis test and a Froehde test on both to get an idea of what the actual substance is. It’s being peddled as molly, obviously. There is MDMA present in the mix, but I also got a reaction for cathinones.”

  “Which is?”

  “Bath salts,” Raven said. He tucked both baggies away. “It’s no fucking joke. You get some of the same highs as molly but meaner. Delirium, then agitation and violence. Probably why there’ve been more fights in the clubs, too. Some people get hallucinations. And the overdose causes kidney failure, which we’ve seen hit the hospitals.”

  “Christ.” I took a sip of my coffee and wished for something stronger. “Good work. What’s your take on this?”

  “I think they’re from the same batch. I think whoever is dealing Viper drugs in San Francisco is dealing them here, too, unlabeled.”

  “To make a quick buck?” I tipped my head back. The ceiling fan spun slowly.

  “Or?” Raven said.

  “Or they’re making a push into our territory. Testing the waters. Getting people hooked and dependent on dangerous shit.”

  “What’s our next move?”

  “First step is to get this shit out of our clubs.” The fiery anger in my chest was newly stoked by the confirmation of what I’d suspected. I had a plan of attack now, a driving force forward. “Church tonight. Let everyone know.”

  Raven nodded and bounded from my office with barely a goodbye. In the sudden quiet of my office I breathed out and tried to let the anger go. What would Ankh do in this situation? Where would his leadership take the club?

  He had never seemed angry, or volatile, or violent. He was steadfast. He was the ship and Priest was the lighthouse. God, I wanted to ask Ankh what to do. This was all so reactionary and haphazard. Ankh had always had a plan. He was always ten steps ahead. It seemed like I was running behind the Vipers trying to catch up.

  That afternoon, the senior members of Hell’s Ankhor gathered in the clubhouse. Tex passed out beers.

  “Thanks, everyone, for meeting on short notice. Siren—great work this week gathering intel. I’d like to be kept in the loop next time,” I glared pointedly at Gunnar, “But nice job.”

  Gunnar took a long drink of his beer. He winked at me. “Didn’t want to spoil your good mood until absolutely necessary.”

  “If you want to stay sergeant, you won’t keep plans from me again.”

  We glared at each other from across the kitchen island.

  Coop set his beer down with a loud clunk. “Cool, so, what’s on the schedule?”

  “Let ‘er rip, Raven.” I sat down on a stool and nursed my drink while Raven caught up the rest of the leadership. Murmurs of outrage and frustration rippled through the group.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Priest asked. He turned the labeled baggie of powder over in his hands with a grimace. “What do we do? Send a convoy to San Francisco and bang on their door?”

  “No way.” The rings on Siren’s long fingers clinked against the beer bottle as she fiddled with it, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. The slight serpentine quality to her—long, slender neck, sharp eyes, elegant lithe figure—made her an excellent gatherer of intel. Throw a wig over her short hair and she could lure a straight guy without a glimmer of suspicion. “The city’s crawling with Vipers. It’s way too risky to immediately go balls-to-the-wall. Especially with how eager they were to gut Heath.”

  “We know it’s them,” I said. “We know it’s the same drug. But we need to know more—what’s their angle? What’s the goal?”

  “They want our territory,” Coop said.

  “Great insight. Thank you, Coop,” Gunnar deadpanned.

  “Seems like an odd way to get it,” I said.

  “Let’s get a dealer, then,” Priest said.

  “Get some questions answered.” I nodded.

  “Can’t be high-level guys down here,” Tex said. “Maybe not even directly connected to the club.”

  “So they won’t be missed too much if they go off the radar for a few days,” Gunnar said.

  “I don’t want to waste any time getting to the bottom of this,” I said. “Raven, reports from the incidents in the clubs are increasing, right?”

  “Yeah,” Raven said, scanning his computer screen. “Especially if you count the non-overdose reports, like the fights, and the delirium.”

  “So we set a trap,” I said.

  All eyes turned to Siren.

  “Come on, boys,” she said. “That’s not very creative.”

  “It’ll work, though,” I said.

  She laughed. “I
know it will. Because I’ll be doing it.”

  “Can you pull something together by tonight?”

  “Easily,” Siren said. She grabbed Coop roughly by the back of the neck and shook him affectionately. “Coop here can help me workshop my character.”

  “No, thank you,” Coop said as he was rattled. “It’s so weird and unnerving to listen to you being nice to me.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Siren said.

  “Where’s this going down?” Gunnar asked.

  I raised my eyebrows at Raven.

  “Club Rage,” he said. “That’s where we’ve seen the most activity.” It was one of the most highly trafficked clubs in Elkin Lake, and it was on the northern edge of the city as well.

  We hashed out the details over a few more beers. The planning was easy and efficient. It was unnerving that my enforcers had started investigating without me. Logan had been distracting me—pulling me away from the duties Ankh and Priest had entrusted me with. Keeping him distanced from the details of club life wasn’t sustainable, but he wouldn’t want to be a prospect—he’d made that much clear. And yet the club had to be my first priority.

  Balancing the two was getting harder and harder.

  I sat back in my chair. Gunnar and the enforcers took the lead while the rest of the members bounced off ideas and asked pertinent questions. Soon I’d have one of those dealers here. I cracked my knuckles.

  I wanted my turf clean again.

  16

  Logan

  Blade slammed the door forcefully when he got home, later than I expected. In the kitchen I jumped, surprised.