by Isabel Wroth
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll get Todd out here with the backhoe to dig a pit.”
“Babe, that hippie bastard isn’t coming anywhere near this house, driving heavy machinery. I’ve got it.”
“Oh-kay.”
Chapter Twelve
She was regretting her invitation to let Perdition throw their bash at her place. They processor had brought back her boars just in time, and both of the hundred pound hogs were on spits roasting over an open flame. A few of the prospects were in charge of turning the big metal spit, loud music was pouring from the speakers that had been set up on her back porch, the beer was free flowing, and not only were the brothers here, someone had brought a car full of club sluts. Those club sluts had brought drugs, and pot, which was typical, but she didn’t want it on her property. She also didn’t want to kick up a huge fuss about it either, so she just locked her bedroom door and did her best to just ignore it.
She’d met every one of the brothers and been warmly welcomed into the fold, easily accepted as Roar’s old lady, that acceptance complete with the brothers teasing Roar about his previous stance on being a family man. “Pretty sure I heard you say the words, never ever, gonna happen.” One big brick shithouse of a man, Rover, drawled at Roar, then waved his beer around at her land. “And here you are, a sign planted out front proclaiming this to be Never Ever Land. Old lady, baby on the way, what’s next, wedding bells?” Roar had looked down at her with his brows raised expectantly, and she shook her head, which made him roll his eyes and hook her around the shoulders. “Workin on it.”
She tagged Susan and went into the house, thrilled when she saw Tara peeking around the open front door with a handful of some kind of desert dish. Poor thing about jumped out of her skin when she shouted a welcome at her and nearly dropped the dish. Susan loved her instantly, and drew her into the house with a motherly arm around her shoulders, praising her for bringing brownies that didn’t have pot in them. “Club slut bitches think it’s not a party without some kind of hallucinogenic additives to their brownies. None of the boys eat’em, but they do enjoy the girls behavior afterwards. We’ll keep these over here for the rest of us.” Tara’s smile was forced, and she intended to tell her to stay only as long as she was comfortable, but she caught a whiff of someone smoking and turned to see a trio of the club groupies, smoking in her living room. “Ladies, smoking outside only.” She said in what she hoped was a kind but firm tone, and all three of their bleach blonde heads turned her direction.
The ringleader, evident by her shitty grin and her challenging posture, jerked her chin up and folded one bony arm across her chest. She took a defiant drag of her cigarette, propping her elbow up on her folded arm and tapped the ash off her cancer stick so that it dropped on the rug. “Don’t worry, we’re not gonna burn holes in your couch or nothin.” She cooed, her voice sarcastic and saccharine. She’d played this game before, hadn’t liked it then, but her daddy had taught her not to take shit from bikers, or their bitches. “Take that cigarette outside, or put it out, now.” She repeated, and the bitch’s eyes narrowed, her cronies snickering under their breath as she took up a defensive posture meant to make her feel intimidated. “Or what?” She drawled. “Is she for real?” She heard Tara softly, incredulously ask Suzie, and the tramp turned her nasty gaze and her even nastier smile on Tara. “She ain’t nothing special, sugar. Thinks her shit don’t stink now cause she’s knocked up and landed her a primo spot with a brother. She probably went and poked holes in the condoms or something to get herself this nice little spread.”
Susan sucked in a slow, nasty breath and was rubbing her hand up and down Tara’s arm where she’d thrown it around her shoulder. “Part of being affiliated with a biker club, Tara, is dealing with sluts like…” She turned to look sideways at Susan, and Susan curled her lip, “Bobbi Anne.” She named the bitch, “Right. She’s got it in her head that having fucked almost every member of the club is some kind of sport deserving of a trophy. Chaps her ass that Roar won’t give her dirty cunt the time of day.” Bobbi Anne’s face turned florid with rage, her smirk mean and nasty, her tone vindictive and meant to wound deep. “He gives my cunt plenty of time. Mine, Judy’s, Sassy here. Sometimes all at once. You don’t wonder where he is when he can’t stand the sight of your fat, bloated body?” She smiled slowly, knowing it wasn’t a very pretty smile. “Last time, you want to smoke, take your skank ass outside.”
Bobbi Anne inhaled a deep drag and let the smoke curl up into her nostrils before she dropped the half smoked stick to the floor, to her rug, and ground it out under her heel. Well. Looked like she was going to have to assert her dominance after all. The bitch sauntered over and blew her lung full of smoke, right in her face, “Make me,” She shrugged, said, “Okay.” And planted her fist in the dirty whore’s face. She went down with a scream, and was still screaming when Ever grabbed her by the hair and drug her kicking and screaming out the back porch. She tossed her down on the grass, turned just in time to catch the arm of one of the other bitches to send her sailing through the air, landing on Bobbi Anne with a shriek. The third one was a fuck of a lot smarter and walked a wide berth around her and down to her friends. “Babe, what the fuck?”
She reached over, slapped her hand on the stereo to turn the music off, and looked up at her irate biker. She planted her hands on her hips, seriously starting to like the way Roar always came up to her and put his hands on her belly. “Did you fuck her?” She demanded, and Roar glanced sideways at where Bobbi Anne was huddled on the ground, weeping huge crocodile tears while her friends held her between them, and the entire MC stood around them watching the show. “Which one?” Roar asked, and her eyes narrowed, hearing some hisses and some chuckles from the crowd. “Any. Of. Them.” She bit out, and his eyebrow slid up, “No. Don’t like dirty pussy. What’s goin on?”
“Oh nothing. Just a good old fashioned bitch versus bitch to establish the pecking order.” She told him with a sunny smile, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Ever asked Bobbi Anne nicely, to smoke outside. Bobbi Anne was her usual cunty self, insinuated that she and her dirty trio there would be the ones to relieve your boredom with her, called Ever fat and bloated, and after stomping her cigarette out on Ever’s nice rug, walked over and blew smoke in her face.” Susan tattled helpfully, and Roar’s eyes turned molten. His hands slid over her belly and around to her back, pulling her into the shelter of his body, “You know you’re not supposed to lift anything over twenty five pounds. The pair of them weight at least a buck ninety, and you threw her a good ten feet.” Her lips twitched, and after she rolled her eyes, he jerked his head at one of his brothers. “Jules, you wanna take out the trash so my woman doesn’t have to get her hands dirty?”
“Sure thing, bro.”
“Oh, just one thing,”
She slipped out of Roar’s arms and walked down the stairs, glad when Bobbi Anne shrank back against the biker holding her arms. It made her smirk, her nose wrinkling in disgust when she leaned in and whispered in her ear, just loud enough for her to hear. “I’d like you to think about something on your way home. Those two hogs on the spit? I slit their throats and gutted them myself. You put your hands on my man, or shake your bony ass in his general direction, I’ll do the same to you and bury your body out in the middle of my compost pile.” She smiled sweetly when she leaned back, glad to see that from the sickly green tone of Bobbi Ann’s face, that she believed the threat. “Oh and by the way, the three of you, whatever perfume combo you’re wearing, you smell like a walking advertisement for the dirtiest whore house in Texas.”
The laughter that echoed all around them made two of the sluts turn pink with mortification, but Bobbi Ann turned red with rage. Roar came up behind her and slid his hand possessively over her belly, which drew her attention and made one final scathing insult fly from her puffy lips. “You might be his top bitch now, but once you pop out that brat, he’ll get tired of you.”
“Did I just hear that slut insult your old lady, t
o her face?” Top, who’d just arrived, materialized out of the dark like some kind of demon, and Bobbi Anne shrank by about three inches under his glare. “We were just sorting that out, Top.” Roar growled dangerously, “Please, don’t worry. It’s sorted.” She told the Prez with an easy smile, giving a wiggly finger wave to the retreating sluts. She waited until Bobbi Anne was in the perfect position, and whipped one of her throwing knives out of the holster across her spine. One good flick had it burying in the tree trunk a hairs breath away from Bobbi Anne’s face, making her and both her bitches leap back with a shriek, “Have a safe drive home, and remember what I said, sweetie.” She called, getting her last word in with a helluva point.
After escorting the sluts to their car, Top came back and was the one to fetch her knife, wiping the blade on his jeans before bringing it to her and flipping it around to offer it to her hilt first. “Your daddy teach you to throw like that?” He questioned, his deep voice resonating in the quiet stillness of the night. “He did.” She confirmed, making the knife disappear behind her back, watching him glance from her, to Roar, to the hogs on the spit and back. “He teach you to shoot too?”
“Yup.”
“Boy,” He told Roar seriously, “You better marry this bitch, fast.”
She ducked her head to keep from laughing into his face, and Roar grumbled behind her, “Workin on it, Top.”
Things went back to normal after that, except for the replay of her actions and the hilarity that followed. The remaining club sluts still lingering were much better behaved and did any of their smoking far, far away from her or her house. The hogs turned out to be delicious, Roar had her next to him the rest of the night, and when they were done eating he scooped her up to sit in his lap on the Adirondack chair he’d appropriated, just like the first night they’d met, only this time he kept one arm curled around her body, and one hand on her belly. He talked and laughed with his brothers, and when she lay her head down on his shoulder he’d turn every few minutes to brush his lips across her forehead. Warmed by the fire, by the heat of his body, and lulled by the familiar sounds of family and laughter all around her.
Chapter Thirteen
It had turned out to be a good night.
She thought that until she was in the house cleaning up the few dishes in the sink, relieved when she got the text from Tara telling her she’d gone home and was safe. Girl had just up and disappeared and it had freaked her out. Squatch leapt up from his place by her feet, where he’d been contemplating the rough life of a puppy who’d been denied table scraps, to greet Top with an all over body wiggle and air kisses. “Hey dog,” Top chuckled, ruffling Squatch’s ears before leaning back on her counter with a beer in one hand and a brown paper wrapped square of something in his other. “So girly, what’s the story? Took my boy’s brand, but not his ring?”
Her first thought was to tell the older man to mind his business, but on the heels of that thought was the understanding that in an MC style family, the Prez was everybody’s father. He’d earned that place, and earned the respect from the brothers to allow him to meddle, somewhat, in their lives. “He didn’t want a family outside of the club, so when my implant failed and I popped pregnant, I wasn’t going to go running back and demand he take care of us. I can do that on my own. Luck or fate or whatever, he showed up here and saw me, and decided to be that guy who does the right thing, even if he doesn’t like it. Or want it. I’m gun shy when it comes to weddings anyway, what with the whole massacre thing that happened at my last one. And I’m not going to let him do the right thing, or what he thinks is the right thing, when he doesn’t really want it.” His dark eyes went bright with amusement, sipped his beer and then waved the bottle at her, “You’re not paying attention then, cause it looks a helluva lot like he wants it to me.”
“He’s settling into the idea of being a father. I’d like him to not have to deal with too much settling too soon, then wake up one morning, realize he shouldn’t have settled.”
“Cause settling for a beautiful woman he can’t keep his hands off of, a woman that can shoot the tits off a hog at six hundred yards, who has knives strapped to her body at all times, cooks like a fuckin angel and puts a helluva satisfied grin on his face, is really a hardship.”
She blushed at his sarcastic drawl and put another dish in the dishwasher, rethinking the idea to allow this line of questioning. She’d tried the gentle truth, now she went for the balls. “I’m adjusting to having him in my life, and so far, we’re getting along fine. He’s very likely to be a great dad, because he’s determined not to be like his father. But I don’t know him well enough to believe he’s going to be an equally great husband. He ordered me to take his brand. Busted his way into my house, my life, and made it plain that we’d be married before I have this kid. I said fine, that he had until March to convince me. The rest and how we go about that, is our business.”
Top smiled slow and deep, nodding his approval and after setting his brown paper wrapped package on the counter, slid them her way and tilted his chin back towards the door. “Roar asked Nasa to find that for you, I snitched it first so I could butt into your business.” Naturally she was curious, so she peeled the paper off and stared at the pair of framed pictures in her hand. Tears immediately welled in her eyes and she looked up at Top knowing he understood the look of shock on her face. His smile turned kind, “My boys like a challenge, but they ain’t stupid.” He said that with a wink, snagged her by the back of the neck so he could pull her forward and drop a kiss on her hair, then walked off and left her alone in the kitchen.
Alone with a blown up picture of her father on his bike beside her, and her, sitting behind a handsome dark haired biker, on his bike, her arms around him, her chin on his shoulder with a huge smile on her face. That picture was blown up from the second one, a picture they’d had taken by one of the prospects, of the entire club. It was the day she’d gotten engaged. “Babe, you got any more of those brownies Tara brought, stashed…what the fuck? Are you fuckin cryin?” She laughed at the outrage in Roar’s voice, laughed weakly, and looked up at him, not sure if she had the ability to put into words why she was crying. She just showed him the picture she was holding, and he scowled, “Who gave you that?”
“Top,”
“God damn meddling old man.”
He caught her around the back of her neck and pulled her into him, just like Top had, taking the picture from her shaking hands to look at it curiously. She wrapped her arms around his waist, wondering what her father would have thought about him. “You looked happy,” She sniffled back her tears and nodded, “I was that day. The next one I was pretty pissed.”
“How come?”
“Dad had been fighting a merger with the skinheads. They wanted in on the action the Tornadoes were getting, they were a bigger club, had more soldiers but not enough connections to feed all those mouths. Dad and grandpa weren’t happy about it, didn’t want anything to do with a gang of racist bastards and the hassle that came with it. I didn’t know anything about it except that they were fighting another territory battle, which wasn’t new to me, and one day this guy comes into the garage, needing parts for his bike. Hot shit, interested in me, bold as brass asked me out in front of a bunch of the brothers. I was thrilled, cause dad and the guys had totally put the kibosh on my love life. I’d had like four dates at that point, because someone always showed up on a Harley and threatened my dates with gruesome bodily injury. Jack didn’t seem to care, I liked the look of him, and we went out. He met dad, withstood the inquisition and the threats, and I think deep down dad just wanted me out of the way while he was taking care of business. Totally fell for that dumbass, and the day that picture was taken he’d asked me to marry him.”
Roar got stiff, but he didn’t say anything. Didn’t let go of her. Didn’t put the picture down or drop it, so she went on. “The day of my wedding, I was late because I’d gotten a phone call, someone instructing me to check my email. They hung up, I checked my email,
and there were pictures, dozens of them, of Jack wearing his cut and smoking with his brothers. Soldier, for that rival club of skinheads.” Roar hissed out a breath and tossed the picture and it’s frame down onto the counter to hug her up tight and turn her away from the sight of them. “They were playin you.” He snarled, his voice deadly soft, menacing and outraged. “While dad and grandpa were so busy trying to fend off the merger, they’d sent Jack in after the weak link. He didn’t have any tattoos that I would have been able to identify, he didn’t talk the talk or spout racist shit. He played pool with Big Mike, who was so black it hurt, we even went out with Big Mike and his old lady on a group thing once. He did everything right to fly low under the radar, and if not for that email, I’d not have known until it was past to late, and they had a pawn to play to get my dad on board.”
“Who sent you the email?”
“I don’t know. I never could track down the IP address, and I didn’t want to risk putting a target on my back by pushing it at the time while I was on the run. I figured that from the sheer number of bodies and bullets, Jack and his gang had showed up at the wedding to make sure it happened, and my family wasn’t having it. By the time I knew and tried to call and tell my dad, they were already dead.”