by Wild, Nikki
Didn’t matter.
We rallied the troops and hit the road. Boss stopped for dinner, because he said he didn’t march into battle on an empty fuckin’ stomach.
Speakin’ of the Devil himself…
Gridlock threw the doors open, marching out under the night. I dropped my cigarette and snuffed it out under a boot as he walked past.
“Time to go, punk,” he growled.
The pack of Bayou Boys followed him out, and I fell into line with them. They were all a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’, eager to hit the road and get their hands on this Devil’s Dragon fuck.
And so was I.
I knew I was gonna get my chance.
Felt like motherfuckin’ fate that we’d see each other again, and this time? This time, I’d be fuckin’ ready to lay the smackdown.
Only a matter of time before I had that miserable little shit beggin’ for his goddamn life. Then, the prick would get exactly what was comin’ to him…
A bullet in the fucking head.
Kate
As the weeks had worn on, it was pretty safe to say that Grizz and I were working out damn well. We had fallen into the routine of an old married couple.
Well, an old married couple that still had mind-blowing sex...
Neither of us said a word about the possibility that we’d be broken apart down the line. There was a fictional line drawn in the sand on that one, and we weren’t willing to cross that topic.
Maybe pretending that everything was going to stay fine was a bit naïve.
It had taken us a while to get to the point where we could fuck again without mentally breaking each other, so yeah. As far as the two of us were concerned, the future was a Big Scary Place™. It could just stay far ahead of us and leave us none the wiser.
While I’d picked up a little bartending gig just to keep myself occupied and make a little extra money, Grizz spent most of his days working armed protection for a couple of new contacts in New Orleans.
The first week, he was just a big guy with a gun, but now he was an enforcer for a smaller organization that fronted a few of the riverfront operations.
He worked late some nights, but so did I. Sometimes, I’d wander back home past 2AM, while he’d be in a couple of hours later.
By that point, I’d be showered and waiting patiently. When he was back, I’d let him clean up, I’d rub down his shoulders and lower back, and then go down on the guy like a horny teenager.
The sex had started off great and only become more amazing. Grizz and I grew even closer in our comfort, and we opened up to each other about lives, our sexual tastes, and anything that came to mind.
A month in the sack together, and we spared no secrets from one another.
Grizz told me bedtime stories from his past as we went to sleep at night, our bodies exhausted and sweaty.
But his stories weren’t about trickster elves or funny animals, teaching children well-seated morals.
Grizz’s stories were about battling renegade clubs and dastardly drug dealers, about overthrowing thieves’ unions and thwarting assault rifle smugglers, about uniting a network of criminals into a force for good in the desert…
Every night, he had another story to tell. It was always something that kept me on the edge of my seat, and it would always seem like hope was lost, but he and his Devil’s Dragons would come through in the end.
“There’s no way all of this is true,” I told him after the end of his latest story. “Not without losing men here and there…”
“We have lost our own,” Grizz told me. “Been getting lucky these last few times. At least ten good men have died in the line of fire in the last seven years.”
“Jesus…” I was shocked. “How?”
“It’s a life where everyone has a gun, and some people get trigger-happy,” Grizz replied solemnly. “Club rivalries went wrong. Targets fought back. Some armed protection contracts went sideways.”
“You talk about it so matter-of-factly.”
“When you wear the leathers, you have to know the game,” he spoke somberly. “Putting on the club emblem doesn’t make you a hard-ass, Kate… the wrong place, the wrong people, it makes you a target.”
“Never thought of it like that.”
“People don’t. We’ve turned away good men who didn’t get it. Plenty of people sharp with a shooter have failed to impress Hunter because they had the wrong attitude and the wrong motivations. They were gonna get themselves killed out there… Maybe even drag some of the rest of us down with them.”
“So, how did you fall in with them?”
His response was what I pictured you’d get if you crossed a sigh with a smile.
“Knew you were going to ask that someday,” he replied aloofly. “Surprised it took you this long to ask.”
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all,” I confessed. “The last I saw you, you were a Marine going off to fight in the war again, and now you’re a biker outlaw.”
“You’re wondering how that happened.”
“Yeah… if that’s okay, of course.”
Grizz scratched at his beard for a moment. “Twelve years ago, we parted ways. Half that time passed with me either fighting with my squad or trapped in the desert… When I came back to Arizona and you were long gone and I was left without direction. My father died in his trailer and he left me nothing. Place was a wreck.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
“I’ve made my peace with it… Anyway, I had money. The Marines paid me for my service, and gave me extra for my trials. Put me through to a good psychologist to help me adjust to civilian life again.”
“How was it? The therapy?”
“Never went,” I answered. “The kind of therapy the shrinks would have given me… I knew it wasn’t the kind I needed.”
“What did you do, then?”
“I left,” he answered. “Bought a shit bike at a shit price, packed a few changes of clothes, and high-tailed it the fuck out of there.”
He paused for a moment, reliving the experience. I held his strong, rugged hand in my own.
“Where did you go?”
“The desert is all I know. I understood the beating heat and how to be a soldier. Without direction I was Moses, alone in the wilderness and searching for my Promised Land. No matter where I turned, I couldn’t find it… I fell in with an Indian reservation for a few weeks, smoking peyote in the desert and having long conversations with God.”
“Peyote?”
“It’s some kind of shit they take from a cactus out there. Supposed to help you make peace with your demons. Didn’t do shit for me. Anyway, I came across a small band of bikers in search of salvation. They had been scattered to the winds after betrayal slaughtered over half of their own. They were directionless.”
“The Devil’s Dragons?” I asked.
“One and the same. The youngest among them had sharp eyes. We broke bread and he spoke of his dream – to follow in the footsteps of his former leader. He wanted to bring the criminals of the desert together to do some good in the world. The boy was naïve. But despite his flaws, I saw something in him. He had the gift. If he was molded the right way, he would become a powerful leader.”
I finally started to get it.
“They were desperate, and I was damn good with anything that took bullets. It was nothing for me to join them. Once I was in, I mentored Hunter, teaching him how to fight… and how to lead. He was still too young, and most of the club looked up to me after a while. Pretty soon, the club voted me in as President.”
“You mean… you were the real president of the Devil’s Dragons club?”
Grizz chuckled. “You sound surprised. I never wanted to be in command… I just wanted to enable the right person to take the reins. So that’s what I did – I taught the boy to lead, and then I let him lead. I named him my second-in-command, and when he was ready, I stepped down.”
“And that’s when you got into armed protection?
” I asked.
“At the time, it was unheard of for a biker gang to make their way as hired guns. Hunter demanded a new direction for the Devil’s Dragons. He claimed that there was a better way, and that everyone would get paid more than ever before. Armed protection was his idea. There was room for a gang of hired guns in the Arizona desert, so we made money. Lots of money. Enough money to bring on new men, buy better equipment, and build a solid brotherhood between us.”
Grizz smiled cryptically. “That’s when he began working towards building the Outlaws. But as Hunter likes to say… that’s a story for another time.”
I pouted. “You can’t stop it there.”
“Sure I can,” Grizz grinned, pulling me into his embrace to kiss my neck. I felt his strong fingers tickle up my body, and squealed with pleasure. “I can stop the story wherever I want…”
“Nuh-uh!”
“Which would you rather,” Grizz smirked, kissing his way along my chest. “A little more of the story? Or my face between your thighs?”
“That’s not fair,” I groaned.
“Then I’ll make the decision for you.”
“You can’t do that either!”
I felt him rip me down the bed with his incredible strength. Before I could protest, he was burying his face into my pussy, sucking on my clit, and all my complains seemed to just slip away…
Grizz
I was polishing a few guns for the crew when a real rat bastard on the team wandered up, sniveling like he always did. The guy didn’t know the first thing about professionalism, and he’d made no attempt to hide that he thought I was a narc in disguise.
No matter what our leader said.
“Boss wants to see ya, shit-stain,” he growled, scratching the back of his head. “Bet you’ve done fucked up real good now.”
I cast him a withering glance, twirling the shotgun in my hand and cocking the weapon to pop a bullet from the chamber.
The movement was crisp, fast, and absolutely useless… unless you wanted to look hardcore. It did the trick. His eyes bugged and he backed the fuck off a step.
“You think you’re tough shit.”
I matched his step, putting barely less than a few inches between our faces – or, better put, between his face and my chest.
“I know I’m tough shit.”
Placing the gun on the filthy countertop at my side, I cast him a towering smirk before turning my attention away. I could practically hear this asshole shitting himself as I left the room.
The boss wasn’t far, just up a flight of stairs and in a small, shitty office. The entire organization was run from an abandoned shop in an alley, the rooms all barely converted for “business.”
Our leader, Clemens, had a room up the flight of stairs where shop owners tended to live in cities. I figured he probably slept here.
“Come in,” he grunted from behind the closed door when I tapped.
I did as I was told.
“You’ve been doing good work, Grizz,” he smiled as I closed the door behind myself. The stench of ancient cigarettes slapped me in the face, but I didn’t say a word. “Damn good work, yessir.”
“Happy to hear that, boss,” I politely responded as he waved for me to take a seat.
Clemens was small-time.
He knew it. I knew it.
Pretty much the only people who didn’t were the peons that he had running the joint for him on the streets, which was exactly how it should be.
Part of a leader’s job was to keep the illusion that you were a part of something bigger than you really were. Like your bullshit six-hour shift in the alleyway actually meant a damn thing.
In that way, Clemens was admirable.
“It’s high time we had a little chat about your future with us,” he grunted, arms crossed as he leaned back in his chair. He had a gruff grimace plastered across that ugly mug of his.
“My future?”
“Yeah,” he nodded, eyes trained on me. The guy looked more like someone’s old, raggedy, conspiracy theorist uncle than a small-bit crime lord. “Namely, that you ain’t got one anymore.”
This was taking a turn I didn’t like.
“Not quite sure I follow you.”
He rose from his chair, flattening his palms against the countertop of his shitty little Craigslist desk. A wave of menace poured off of him as he gazed down at me.
“I know what’s really going on here, Grizz. What you’ve been up to. I’ve known all along. Your time with us ends tonight…”
Instinctively, my hand slipped out of sight. It reached for the pistol in my pocket, ready to pull it and blow this asshole away if he meant what I thought he did.
That didn’t mean that I was ready to fight my way straight through half a dozen thugs in the building, but if those were the odds I had to face…
“It’s a damn shame, is what it is. I’m gonna miss you,” he chuckled, his gaze growing eviler by the second. “Lots of us here are. Such a shame…”
“I agree,” I replied coolly. I could feel my thumb on the safety catch, fingers wrapped around my gun enough to arm myself in an instant.
The air was thick with choking tension…
“But this is always how these things go, isn’t it?” He mirthlessly glowered. “I hate losing such a good man. But the ruling came down tonight, and it’s out of my hands.”
I hesitated.
“Ruling?”
“You’ve proven yourself,” Clemens remarked, settling back down in his chair. “You’ve got a seat at the table now.”
The crackling thickness in the air was swept from the room in an instant. I bitterly chided myself for completely misreading him as I slipped my hand from my gun.
“You’re upset that I can’t stay.”
“Damn right I am,” he snapped. After a moment, he palmed his forehead and sighed. “Sorry, Grizz. Emotion got the better of me. You’re a shining example of what I expect from my crew, and now I’m being told to hand over my ace in the hole.”
“I understand.”
He smiled mischievously, lowering his hand from his eyes again. “If you stay, I’ll make you partner. We’ll take this city by storm, yeah? Give me a couple of years, and we’ll be callin’ all the shots!”
It was sad to see him desperately try to play that card. Worse was how poorly he did it. I chalked that up to inexperience. This was probably the first time he’d ever been in this position, losing a hired gun clearly outside his league.
“You just need your lucky break,” I reassured him awkwardly. “Clemens, you’ll get there. Just give it time.”
“Yeah,” he bitterly scoffed. “Time.”
We sat in silence for a moment.
Just after the passing time started getting weird, he scraped a drawer open and pulled out a bottle of bourbon with a pair of glass tumblers. He rose from his chair and poured us both a congratulatory drink.
“Here,” he gruffly commented, pushing my glass a few inches forward with a finger.
I matched his stance, rising from my chair and clinking glasses with him. “What do we toast?”
Clemens thought for a moment.
“The future,” he grinned widely. “May it always turn in our favor through lesser times, for the both of us.”
I was almost touched.
We both downed our drinks together before taking our seats again, and he poured us another pair to sip as we continued.
“So, what happens now?” I asked.
“The others are willing to hear your case.”
“My case,” I repeated.
Another roadblock.
“That’s right,” Clemens nodded as he sipped his drink. He waved with his hand for me to do the same. “They are willing to hear you out on your… proposition.”
“Bringing the Devil’s Dragons club to New Orleans.”
“Without bloodshed.”
We wrapped up our conversation, and Clemens filled me in on how to contact the rest of the group. Once we were do
ne, he and I rose to shake hands.
“If you ever change your mind…”
“I’ll know where to find you,” I noted.
Satisfied, we parted ways. My last walk down the staircase left me both pleased and disappointed.
It felt like I was spinning my fucking tires in the mud. Every time I thought I was getting ahead here, there was something else to push me back down.
Maybe I could convince Julian’s partners in the local underworld that the Dragons brought something irreplaceable to the table.
Last face I saw before ditching Clemens’ kiddie pool operation was the rat bastard from before. Standing by the wall and looking pleased with himself, he was sniffing the air as I walked past.
“Heard you got tossed.”
I shouldn’t have bitten, but I was in a bad mood. A second later, I had a palm slammed against the wall above him, and my hand wrapped around his throat.
“What… are you… doing…”
“I have turned away from putting down people who have given me less shit than you have these last few weeks,” I snapped. “I’ve been patient, ass-face, but let’s get something clear between you and me – you’re one snide fucking word away from being a smear on the pavement outside.”
The fucker quivered, his eyes wide with panic. Just like all the other yappy assholes I’d dealt with on this side of the law, he was all bark and no bite.
And the bark was pathetic to begin with. Just like a tiny, snappy dog that felt it has something to prove, he lacked intimidation but knew how to grate on a goddamn nerve.
“You understand?” I demanded.
He weakly nodded, and I let go of his throat. It was only then that I realized I had been holding him a foot up off the ground.
Enough to put the fear of God in him.
“You’re an animal,” he sputtered as I turned away to leave.
“I am only an animal when I’m made into an animal,” I replied coolly. “When left in peace, I am but a slumbering bear. Wake the bear, and you wake the beast.”
He stayed quiet, rubbing his throat and bent over against the wall. I took that as all the reply I needed, and left the building.