Long Ride The Slayers MC #3) (3 page)

“We’re gettin’ there. I got the prospects workin’ on building the booths. Need to build a new dunk tank, though. The one from last year can’t be fixed thanks to a certain motherfucker gettin’ carried away and breaking the damn thing.” Uno shoots piercing looks over to Gryff.

The rowdy VP gets called out for his fuck up at last year’s carnival. “I told you not to dunk me. I told you what would happen if you did.”

The rest of us laugh. We all draw straws every year to see which lucky bastard is gonna get stuck in that cramped thing. Last year, Gryff drew the shortest stick and won a spot sitting in that tank on wheels all day.

While the rest of us were having a good time drinking, and enjoying the day with our families, Gryff was dropping over and over again into an oversized pool of freezing water. Fun for us to watch, not so much for him, though.

Gryff is a damn good Vice President, but he’s also a moody bastard at times. There’s not one single brother that he hasn’t come to blows with at least once. His cockiness tends to piss people off to the point that fists get involved.

That’s why we have boxing night, to air that shit out and get it outta our system so it doesn’t fuck with club business.

Uno and Gryff had been having a pissing match for a while at that point and probably should had settled it in the ring, but we were too busy getting ready for that year’s carnival.

Well, after one too many drinks on Uno’s part and one too many dunks for Gryff, the shit came to a head.

“Enough,” Dawson mediates. “Gryff, you’re building a new tank for this year.”

Uno looks satisfied and nods to Dawson. Gryff growls.

“And Uno, you’re helping him,” Dawson follows up, catching both men off guard.

I laugh silently while taking another sip of my beer. Serves them right. If they want to act like asses then they should know by now what happens when you do. Dawson’s gonna find a way to make you hug that shit out in a manner of speaking. Even if it’s a year-old beef.

“Anything else?” Dawson opens the floor up.

Most of us are quiet.

“Got another message from Vince. He wants a meeting,” Gryff speaks again.

Vince is the president of one of our rival MC’s, The Kingsmen, over in Chisolm, about two hours south of us. We’ve had a rocky relationship with that club although there’s been a shaky truce for the last couple of years.

The Kingsmen may have started out as a bad ass club like ours, but they’ve gone soft over the years, going on the straight and narrow, whereas the Slayers keep their business firmly planted in shit that the law don’t look too kindly on.

“Sure he does. He can wait, though. I’m dealing with enough shit right now. I don’t need any of those fuckers to give me a reason to lose my shit and get my ass jammed up. Tell him I got my hands full and we’ll settle whatever he’s got to bitch about at the Council meeting,” Dawson blows it off.

The council meeting is about three weeks away. It’s a yearly event where the different clubs sent representatives to hash shit out. Sometimes it’s peaceful. Sometimes there are bullets. But it’s usually a good time.

“That it?” D gives one last chance.

Silence.

“Ok. Church adjourned.” He calls the ends to
Church
, or what most people would call a meeting.

CHAPTER THREE

DAWSON

“Angel!” I call up stairs for the second time.

I swear, this woman gets off on making me wait. No way in hell would Dawson McCade, the President of the most bad ass MC in this part of the state, ever got caught waiting on some broad.

But for Angel? I find myself waiting every single time.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Her voice trails down the stairs, from the upstairs bedroom.

I can’t resist. “That’s what you said five minutes ago, too! Now get your ass on down here. It starts in fifteen minutes!”

Sasha has already been brought to Trixie’s preschool a couple of hours ago and even though Angel’s ma lives in the apartment over the garage, she’s almost never home anymore.

Got herself a gentleman caller and is living it up like she’s a teenager again.

I’ve come to think of Lillian as kind of my own mother, and didn’t take too well to the news when I first heard it. Made sure I did the right thing and sat the guy down to give him a man to man.

Scared the ever loving shit outta him.

Earl, the man she’s dating, is a respectable enough guy. Been an accountant in town for most of his life. Had a wife once, who picked up and left one day… actually, it was a real sad kind of story. He came home from work expecting to find her and she was no where to be found. Nothing left behind but a note telling him she needed to “find” herself again.

It left the guy so broken up that he hasn’t touched another woman since and that was over ten years ago. That boggles my mind. Not quite sure how the hell a hot blooded man is able to go that long without feeling a woman under him, but to each his own.

As long as he makes Lillian happy, then I’m cool with him.

Angel’s got enough on her plate right now, and worrying about her mom’s illness doesn’t help much even though Lillian’s Lupus has been under control. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that she started to feeling better right around the time she started seeing Earl.

I may not be one of those fancy doctors she goes and sees every few days but I got enough common sense to know that when you’re in a good place in life, your body can deal with things a little better.

Angel sees it too. Her Ma is happy. Things have really changed for the three of them in the last six months.

When I first met my Angel, she was holed up in a crappy shit hole of an apartment taking care of Sasha, her niece, with no job, a stack of bills and Lillian sick in the hospital.

I could see the fire deep down in Angel, see it begging to get some oxygen and start burning again but it couldn’t. It was being suffocated. It was dying.

There’s no doubt in my mind that if I had never met Angel, if chance wouldn’t have brought her walkin’ through the doors of the strip club the night I first laid eyes on her, that she’d be nothing more than a shell of a person by now, with the hollow stare that people get when they stop looking for the good in anything.

I know that stare.

I’d had it myself more times than I cared to remember. Angel walking into my life has done just as much good for me as I’ve done for her. She’s gotten her fire back and I’ve got everything I could have every wanted.

A family.

Even if it’s a family that’s gonna be fuckin’ late.

“Babe, I swear, I’m comin’ up there and carrying you down myself.” I have every intention of doing it, too, and step on the first stair. The old wooden plan creaks under foot loudly and I know she hears it.

“Don’t you dare! I said I’m coming! You try finding something to wear that fits when you’ve got watermelons on your chest,” she’s getting frustrated.

I laugh and retreat down the stair. “But I
love
those watermelons!”

She’s early enough in the pregnancy where her body isn’t changing all that much except for her boobs. It’s like Christmas every night when I come home and look to see how much bigger they’ve gotten.

I’ve always been a boob guy, and Angel never disappointed, having a good handful to keep me occupied. Now though, I can’t get enough of them.

“Fine!” She angrily stomps out into the upstairs hallway where I can get a peek. “Happy?”

I know better than to answer that question. There’s only one acceptable thing to say right now and I better get to it before those crazy hormones of hers catch wind that I haven’t,

“You look beautiful.” When she reaches the third to last step, I lean in, holding onto the banister, and kiss her belly.

Her hand holds my head gently, thumb caressing the scruffy hairs that cover my cheek. She loves it when I dote on her like this. Must be those hormones again.

I look up and she’s smiling down at me, all traces of her frenzied last few minutes gone. She’s in a long white button-down shirt that skims her sides perfectly, even though the fabric is stretching around the top regardless of the four buttons that are undone to allow for more slack.

There’s some sort of tank top on underneath, covering the swollen mounds from popping out completely.

Not being able to resist the chance, I place one sweet kiss on each of them before burying my chin in the center, letting it fall into the tightly squeezed cleavage.

“You know these things
never
start on time. We could get one in before leaving…”

Angel smacks my head away in mock disgust. “Pig.”

“Oink, oink baby. I am completely serious, though. We don’t even have to make it upstairs. Could do it right here. No one’s home,” I wink.

There’s a flash in her eyes and I know she’s contemplating the offer. For a second, anyway. “It took me almost ten minutes to get into these skinny jeans. I’m not getting out of them until I have to. Probably won’t be able to wear them again for another year or so.”

My eyes drop down to the dark blue denim that’s nearly painted on her body. I feel my dick jump in my boxers. Every single curve is being displayed and I want them.

“I’ll give you an I.O.U. for later, though.” She manages to slink past me where I’m hanging my head in defeat. “I’ll even let you take the jeans off so I don’t have to.”

I perk up. That could work.

There’s a rummaging sound as she grabs her handbag from the hallway table near the door. “Let’s go. I want to get good seats.”

It doesn’t matter what time we get there. The best seats in the house will be waiting front and center. One of the perks of being President. And, I’m highly confident that the show won’t start until after my ass is planted in that folding chair, regardless of
how
late we are.

~*~

Trixie’s Tiny Tots Nursery School is in a white house not far from Trix and Uno’s own home a few blocks away. The home was a foreclosure that was boarded up for years, decaying and rotting away when Uno first came to me with the idea of opening up a nursery school for his wife to run.

All it took was some clever maneuvering with the bank to pay up the past due taxes and whatever was left on the abandoned mortgage, and the place was ours. Well, technically, according to the County of Riverdale, the building is owned by an LLC that we created as a front to keep the place separate from all of our other businesses.

This way, God forbid we get wrapped up in some legal shit, the nursery school has no direct ties to us and won’t be touched. That’s the theory, anyway although Trixie’s livelihood was threatened not all that long ago anyway.

The Conquistadors had made a bold move back before the change of command, back when Caterina’s Pop was running things and he was trying to put pressure on me. Next thing we knew, Trix was getting a letter from the state that her license had lapsed and they were ordering the business closed.

Sure, we got everything sorted to a degree, and got the Cartel to back off with a little bit of persuasive leverage of our own.

That leverage was none other than Caterina Jimenez.

Taking her hostage was the best idea I could come up with at the time and it worked out better than any of us could have wanted. Especially for Chase, my Enforcer. He was the lucky bastard to get stuck guarding her. It may have been a case of dangerous attraction at first, with her all but maiming him while trying to escape, but it ended up well enough.

The club helped her out by getting rid of her Pop, who, it had turned out, was even more of an evil bastard than we had given him credit for. In his place, with our assistance, her cousin Mateo was propped up as the new Cartel leader.

And after all was said and done, Cat and Chase found some crazy connection and have been inseparable ever since.

As part of the deal struck with Mateo and the Cartel, Caterina stays here, in Riverdale, as assurance that they are holding up to their end of the bargain. They become our new supplier of illegal pharmaceuticals and we call a cease fire with them.

That’s the watered down version of our agreement, although it’s much more involved.

Stitch’s parole is tied in to our peace treaty, and so is Uno and Trixie’s daycare, although that one is more of an
implied
threat. If they can pull the shit they did with the state licensing board once, then I know they can do it again.

It’s one thing to go after our club, and our own businesses. But, there’s a code, one they apparently don’t follow.

You don’t go after families.

The second they did that the first time, I knew we weren’t playing by any of the regular rules. This shit is gorilla warfare. All bets are off. Anything is fair game.

And that scares the shit outta me.

For the first time in a real long time, I’ve got shit to lose.

Shit that I’d kill to protect. People that I’ve
already
killed to protect.

Thanks to the Cartel’s pressure in our now ended war, Sasha’s biological pop, or sperm donor, showed up at my door and threatened to take his kid away. Sure he was a junkie. Sure, he was a dirt bag. But, he was her legal parent, and knowing how fucked up the court system is, I wouldn’t have put it past them to rip Sasha away from the only loving parent she’s ever known, my Ol’ lady, and put the kid right into the arms of a derelict piece of scum.

I wasn’t going to take that chance. I did what I had to do.

With that dead beat now buried under six feet of dirt, there’s no way my woman will know the pain of having the child she raised as her own being taken from her.

“Over there,” Angel waves to Caterina as soon as we enter the main room of the nursery school that has been transformed on the cheap to resemble an auditorium.

Rows of metal folding chairs are lined up, filled with plenty of parents ready to watch their kids prance around on stage in some sort of costume. That stage being a wooden platform at the front of the room hidden behind a curtain on a drawstring.

I won’t lie, I’ve never been a fan of these things even though we turn out every year to support Trix and the kids. This year? This year’s different, though. This year, Sasha’s gonna be up on that stage wearing the pink fairy princess costume that Angel’s been working on all week.

I’ve got my phone ready to take an obscene amount of pictures and act just like every one of these parents that I’ve silently mocked over the years for doing the same thing with their own kids.

“Hey, D! Can I bust
your
balls now for being late?” Stitch calls out over Chase’s head from two rows behind from where we take our waiting seats.

Angel takes the seat closest to Cat. The two of them have gotten close lately. Caterina is gonna start med school next year, so I guess the two of them have a lot to talk about with the baby coming and all.

Angel’s read a million books, articles and whatever she can find on the topic. Having Cat, who’s essentially a walking medical textbook around, is like crack for her.

“Where’s Baby?” I ask Stitch over my shoulder as I take my place next to my woman.

“Home with the kid. Colic. What the fuck
is
Colic, anyway?”

Damned if I know. I shrug my shoulders. “Some sort of rash or something?” I take a guess.

Stitch laughs loud enough for others in the audience to turn. “I don’t know what it is, but it ain’t no rash. You two live it up now while you can. You’re in for a
rude
awakening when it’s your turn.”

Angel’s eyes open wide, round and horrified.

Great! Now this is gonna give her somethin’ else to worry about, adding to the long list she
already
obsesses over. Stitch and his big mouth.

I take my woman’s hand in mine and squeeze. “Don’t even worry ‘bout it, babe. The kid’s gonna be just like me. Just stick a tit in his mouth and he’s happier than a drunk with a bottle of vodka. Trust me.”

“Shhh!” A loud whispered voice calls out in our general direction from back toward the rear of the crowd.

What the fuck?
Hell, no.

Clenching my jaw to make it pop the way I know looks most intimidating, I turn my head just enough to show the person that I’m addressing them. I point my finger toward him in silent warning.