Rider: An MC Club Alpha Male Romance (15 page)

“I’m in the Damned. You’re just my old lady.”

“Whatever! You’re the one who’s trying to get away from bullshit like that. I’m just along for the ride until we can arrange a sting.”

“And after that, I’ll be in witness protection. And you’ll be on a different case,” he said after a few moments.

Wait. Was Fang, this biker, this complete and utter badass, really concerned about… Commitment?

“They can make exceptions. Depending,” I commented but I knew they wouldn’t, not so long as I was in the bureau. And after the case was over, there was no way I’d be able to find out where Fang was—well, not unless he reached out to me, but invariably, they’d put him on the other side of the country, and how the hell… But this was a lot to think about, and especially for a guy I only barely knew.

So maybe he was right.

“So, where does that leave us then?” I asked finally, giving him a hard look—the look of someone needing answers and not being able to find them.

“Fuck if I know…” Fang muttered, putting out his cigarette. “Sometimes, I think I should just run away again—back out onto the sea. Go to Jamaica or the Virgin Islands. Run island tours on a bike and sling drinks at some beach bar. Die from skin cancer at the age of fifty. And good riddance.”

I sat up and pressed my chest into his back from behind. My nipples, my flesh as a whole, it all loved to be close to him. My entire body responded to him like nothing else.

He was my drug, and I was becoming an addict with each passing second.

I pressed my lips into his neck, running them over a tattoo of a sad-looking gypsy girl. I ran my lips over his neck, savoring the warmth of his skin.

“Then… I guess we just have tonight to make bad decisions.”

He turned back to look me, his eyes piercing into my own. I could have drowned in those orbs.

His lips collided with mine, a tumbling mix of passion and hunger as he pressed me back down onto the table, his hardness pressing against me all over again…

FANG

Most of the Damned slept out on the beach that night. Claire and I made a bed of our clothes and slept beneath the picnic table we had fucked on. It wasn’t the first time I had slept out on a beach after fucking some chick senseless, but it was definitely the first time I had thought so much about it upon waking up in the morning.

I had to tell her that I knew Fred. I had to. If I didn’t… God. What was wrong with me? Fucking my best friend’s wife? This was like man-code rule one, abso-fucking-lutely broken.

Great job, Fang. You’ve really proven yourself to be a great fucking friend.

And still, there was the problem of what would happen after the operation. The fact was… I couldn’t just leave Claire. Not after everything I had experienced with her. Not after last night.

And if we kept sleeping together, kept acting like this… Then it would be all the harder to say goodbye when the operation ended.

But therein lay the problem, I supposed: for the operation to be a success, for it to work out and for us to not get completely fucked by Fatman, we had to make our story seem like it was the gospel truth. That was the only way we’d survive.

For a moment, I fantasized about just continuing with the ruse, for years, decades even—maybe we could really live in the Damned, as if the masquerade were true.

But no. Claire could never do that. She would never consent to that. And it would drive me crazy, too. It would kill me before long as it was.

It made me so mad, I wanted to break something—wanted to smash my fists into Fatman’s stupid face and wreck him, wreck him for wrecking me.

My train of thought was derailed, finally, when Claire’s eyes fluttered open. She yawned, stretched cutely, the clothes which formed her blanket sliding off his chest and revealing her tattooed breasts to me once more. She blushed and grabbed at her vest, pulling it over her skin.

“Morning,” she murmured sleepily, smiling at me. I couldn’t decide if I should kiss her or not.

“I don’t know if I should kiss you right now or not,” I admitted. I’ve never had much of a filter.

She bit her lip. God. It killed me when she did that.

“Just… Do whatever feels right, I guess,” she said with a coquettish smile. I leaned in, pressing my lips to hers and she molded her body to mine, moaning into the kiss as she rolled on top of me, straddling me and spreading her legs.

“Claire, there’s something I have to tell you,” I said finally as she rolled off me once we were finished, her breaths still coming in hot, slow gasps.

“Yeah?” she asked, her face flushed with lust and passion.

“Your husband, Fred.”

Her face darkened. I’m sure this wasn’t what she wanted to hear immediately after being filled with another man’s load for the second time in twelve hours. But I’m a crude, crass dude sometimes. And I needed to get this out.

“He was in Afghanistan.”

“That’s right.”

“So was I.”

She narrowed her eyes and sat back, a look of complete and total incomprehension—or, maybe more accurately, a look of unwillingness to comprehend, a look of refusal to comprehend—settling onto her beautiful, blushing face.

“What are you saying?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“I knew him, Claire. I knew Fred in Afghanistan.”

She closed her eyes and nodded slowly.

“That… I thought I had seen his picture at your place,” she murmured, slowly, confused, as if in a dream. “That all makes sense now.”

“Right. I was afraid you would have seen it. I moved it but I guess I was too late.”

She didn’t say anything in response to that. I didn’t know what I even bothered to tell her that—did it matter? Did anyone care that I had tried to cover it up?

No, the only thing that she could care about, that I could care about, was what Fred would have thought.

“We were friends. He was… He was kind of my mentor, in a way. He saved my life, Claire. He saved my life over there.”

Claire bit her lip again but this time, it didn’t drive me wild with desire. It only filled my heart with nails and broken glass.

“Why the fuck are you telling me this?” she demanded.

“Because—“

“Because, you know, you go on about how we shouldn’t fuck just so we don’t fuck up the mission, the fucking operation, but do you for a second thing this won’t fucking screw the pooch too?”

“I couldn’t fucking live with myself if I didn’t tell you!” I roared, raising my voice when I shouldn’t have. Claire glowered at me.

“Don’t fucking yell at me, you bastard,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why now?”

“I thought it was… I just never knew the right time. I didn’t think it would happen like—like this. I thought I would never have to tell you.”

Now it was my turn to bite my lip. I couldn’t look at Claire.

“I thought I could protect you. Thought I could protect you for Fred.”

“You thought you could protect me? From what?” she demanded, her voice like daggers in my heart.

“From the gang. From… From me. From I don’t know what the fuck, Claire.”

She shook her head.

“Fang, I just don’t know. I don’t know how I feel about this. I don’t know what… What I can do to go forward here.”

“Stick to the operation. That’s our only choice.”

She closed her eyes. She wouldn’t look at me. But I craved those eyes on me, craved her look, her gorgeous eyes looking deep into mine like they had last night…

“You’re right. The operation.”

With that, we got up. The sun was already overhead. In the distance, I saw the fires from the Damned—they’d be cooking breakfast over a bonfire now, making coffee, pouring what was left of their whiskeys into the fresh bonfire brew. I could already hear the yelling and hooting and hollering carrying over the beach.

We collected our clothes. We dressed. And then, we set off back down the beach.

Back to the Damned. Back to our kind.

CLAIRE

Fang knew Fred.

It was a revelation that stopped my heart and froze my mind. I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to feel. It left me cold, like a dollop of ice dropped into my soul. What was I supposed to think, supposed to feel, after learning something like that?

As we left our evening love spot, Fang tried to make small talk with me but I ignored him. I was practically catatonic and that was a problem. When we got back to the Damned, I would have to act like a party girl. Like a biker girl. Like Fang’s old lady.

Why had he waited so long to tell me? Why had he waited until after we had already… Already had sex?

Because he thought I wouldn’t fuck him if I knew?

No, that wasn’t it. I could tell that Fang was just as confused by what was happening between us as I was.

So what was it? What the fuck was it?

Honor, I realized. And loyalty. You don’t fuck your buddy’s wife.

But Fred was dead. There was no way around that.

My mind drifted back to a conversation I had had with my mother over the phone six months after Fred had died. I had just started training at the FBI, and had only just finished my first round of basic training in Virginia. I was due for another more advanced course, but before that started, I made sure to take time to check in with my parents and let them know I had survived the FBI’s equivalent of boot camp.

“And did you meet any nice men during training?” my mother had answered almost immediately after hearing my voice and ascertaining that, yes, indeed, I was still alive.

“I met lots of nice people. I think I’ll like being a Fed.”

“That’s not what I mean, Claire…” she had murmured, sighing with exasperation. “I mean… Have you met anyone you might like to date?”

“I don’t know if I’m really ready for that, mom,” I had said with a sigh. My mom sighed in return.

“It’s been six months, baby girl.”

I had hung up the phone at that point.

It figures that right when I found a man I felt comfortable with, a man I wanted to sleep with—he should turn out to be a throwback to my past.

We met up with the Damned back on the beach As Fang shared a few beers with some of his pals, I found myself drawn to a girl sitting all by herself over by the bikes. Mostly, I wanted to be away from the noise, away from the smoke and booze.

Away from Fang.

“Hey there,” I said to the girl. She looked totally wasted, thin, like a Dickensian orphan in a Christmas story, or one of those girls you see in National Geographic. And far too young to be hanging out with this crowd.

She looked up at me with big eyes. She didn’t say a single word.

“My name is Claire. What’s yours?”

“Misty,” she murmured.

“Misty, what the hell are you doing with these jokers?”

She shrugged. I pressed on.

“How old are you, Misty?”

“Sixteen.”

“You should be in school.”

She shook her head.

“Fatman owns me.”

“What?”

“Fatman owns me. He won’t let me go to school. He needs me.”

“For what?”

She rolled her eyes. So, she was a sassy teen too.

“You know what.”

“Do you like him?”

“Fatman?”

“Mhm.”

Misty shook her head.

“Then why do you stay?”

“Because he lets me get high for free. So long as I do what he wants.”

She shuddered.

“And he wants terrible things. Every night.”

I felt sick to my stomach. I was at a loss for words for a moment before I continued.

“Misty, how did this happen? How did you end up here?”

“I was an orphan. Moved from foster home to foster home.”

She shrugged.

“And now, I’m here.”

“But there must have been something in between that.”

“I started getting high and then I didn’t have enough money for it but someone said I was just Fatman’s type and brought me to him and then he wouldn’t let me leave.”

I saw her arms were covered with track marks. My heart broke for the girl.

“Misty, you know that there are… Agencies… People… Lots of people who could help you.”

Mistry shook her head.

“I already went through the system and they didn’t give a fuck about me. Why should they care about me now?”

I didn’t have a good answer for that, I suppose. I pressed on, though.

“Misty, what Fatman is doing… It’s not right.”

Mistry just shrugged.

“This is what I’m doing. I’ll just keep doing it. So long as I can keep getting high.”

She paused and looked off at the group of bikers, at Fatman in particular, who stood in the middle—no, actually, he was sitting on a tree stump—laughing and knocking back a can of Miller High Life. And at eight in the morning, no less. He chased it with a fistful of bacon and I damn near threw up in my mouth.

“But you know it’s not right, Misty. You should be in school. You should be… Somewhere else. What he’s doing isn’t right.”

She just shrugged.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

I couldn’t force her, I supposed. I stalked away from her and back to the group.

Fang noticed me and broke off.

“Everything all right?”

“No, obviously not. But Misty—did you know she’s sixteen?”

Fang shrugged.

“So? Lots of us got involved when we were sixteen or even younger.”

“She’s a minor and Fatman is keeping her as a sex slave. I need to call protective services.”

Fang grabbed me by the shoulders.

“Claire, don’t you fucking dare. Don’t shut this operation down like that. If you do, we’re dead.”

I closed my eyes.

“I don’t like this, Fang. I don’t like lying to myself like this. I don’t like playing this biker girl persona.”

“You don’t have to do it for much longer. We’re setting out for Atlanta tomorrow. They’ve got guns and C-4 ready to go back at the clubhouse. Selling it to some right-wing terrorist cell.”

My eyes widened.

“Jesus Christ. This is it.”

“Right. This could be our chance to take everything down. And then protective services can get Misty under their wing.”

I took a deep breath.

“Fine. I’ll wait till after the sting. But if anything fucking goes wrong, I’ll kill you on her behalf.”

“That’s fine. We’ll probably both be dead anyway.”

As one of the old ladies, I was assigned to clean up after the bonfire. It was a filthy, disgusting, thankless job but the other girls seemed happy with it. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to them. I just kept thinking about Misty’s sad, dull eyes.

A few minutes into the job, I felt a presence behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Fatman, chest heaving, sweaty and leering, peering down at me as I picked up bits of broken glass.

“Well, aren’t you a little fucking girl scout…” he murmured.

“I don’t want anyone to get cut on the glass,” I said lamely, unwilling to look up at him. I focused on my task, collecting as much as I could of the shattered glass in my hand without cutting myself.

“Girl scout,” Fatman murmured. “You can do a whole lot more good down there.”

And he began to unzip his pants. I glanced over at the other Damned. They were leaning on their bikes, chatting, none of them looking over at us. And the other old ladies were ignoring completely what was going on.

“Listen,” Fatman whispered. “I know the truth about Fang.”

“What truth?” I growled back.

“He’s a Fed mole. I’ve known it for months. And if you don’t want me to stick a bowie knife in his kidneys this very minute, you had better close your eyes and open your mouth. Because daddy’s got a lollipop for you.”

I wanted to puke on him right then and there, and I very nearly did. I couldn’t believe that he knew Fang was a mole. I couldn’t believe he was trying to blackmail me into doing this.

“You’ve got till the count of three,” Fatman sneered, his voice like searing oil being poured all over my face. “One… Two…”

I reached up and began to slide his jeans down. But before I could get any farther, a voice interrupted us.

“Daddy, I want to get high.”

It was Misty. Fatman grinned.

“Baby doll, daddy’s busy.”

“I wanna’ get high and I want daddy to do the no-no thing to me,” Misty said, affecting a saccharine little girl impression that made my blood run cold. “Daddy doesn’t even need to use lube on his baby girl. Just kept me high first, daddy.”

Fatman cackled.

“All these bitches can’t keep their hands off me,” he said, waddling over to Misty. He glanced back at me.

“Remember what I said. Remember what lives underground, what’s blind, what gets eaten up by snakes…”

What the hell was he talking about?

Right. A mole.