A Gorgeous Mess

by Layla Wolfe

  What the fuck?

  “Yeah, this style of house is called Mid-century Modern. I’ve seen a lot of these houses down in Yuma, built in the fifties.”

  At first, my brain could only comprehend that there was a fucking realtor outside my front door, jiggling a key in the lock. Then my brilliant grey matter put two and two together. The voice was Brick “Noodle” Mantooth, my fellow Prospect, roommate, and subordinate in the club. Well, realistically, we were on the same level. But Turk had given me a leg up over the two Diné Prospects. We had figured out Brick and I shared membership in the Towering House clan. Now we knew who we were. We owed each other kindness and loyalty. But with Turk’s blessing, I could still order Brick around. I’d saved his life more than one time, and he owed me.

  Yanking my dick out of my lover, our feet moved in blurs across the kitchen floor.

  “Holy fuck!”

  “What the fuck? Isn’t Brick at work?”

  We made it to the master bedroom, slamming and locking the door, and my first task was to turn the cuff key behind Ormond’s back and release him.

  “Sorry no time for aftercare,” I said, referring to the wonderful, pleasant time after a mind-blowing fuck.

  “No big deal, but why isn’t he at work? You need to get on top of him for that.”

  “No, you do. You’re the patch-holder. Here, put this shirt on. Your old one’s on the kitchen floor.”

  “I’ll give him shit about not being at work. But why’s he bringing a realtor here?”

  “That’s what it sounded like to me, too…”

  Brick came right to our bedroom. He didn’t even try the knob first, just knocked, as was his habit.

  “Hey. Anson. There’s someone to see you. I’ll give them coffee if there’s any left.”

  “It’s empty!” called Ormond.

  I became presentable first, since I hadn’t taken off any clothes. I washed my hands and combed my hair before putting it back into a short ponytail, then strode off down the hallway.

  A woman in her late thirties or so sat at our Formica kitchen table. She was tanned, and already lined in the face, as though she worked outdoors, or liked to play tennis. I was absolutely fucking clueless about why Brick would bring this citizen woman in here. It must have something to do with business, with the dispensary or my bail bonds office. Yet she had a teenaged kid with her, a blond rebel type with pierced, jutting lower lip. He already wore a black leather jacket, a thug in training, just like I’d been at that age. And he wore a black bandanna around his neck and a Metallica T-shirt, just like I had.

  I folded my arms. “What can I do for you?”

  The woman eagerly stood. She had stars in her eyes, as though I was some fucking famous rock musician or something. I became even more perplexed as she came forward to shake my hand. “Anson Dineyazzie!”

  “That’s me,” I said uncertainly.

  Brick helped out. “Anson, this is Amanda Carpenter. She’s a graphic artist in Yuma.”

  I still had no clue, but I smiled woodenly anyway. “Great. Just…great.”

  Amanda filled in. “Stuart Grillo is my father. I’m your older sister, Anson.”

  Oh. Holy. Fuck. Stunned amazement flooded my face as my lower jaw fell. We were still shaking hands, and now I gripped hers as if it were a lifeline to another dimension. “Stuart Grillo,” I repeated dully.

  “Riker,” Brick needlessly clarified.

  As we stared stupidly into each other’s eyes, the son started carrying on. “Yeah, massive boneheaded fucktard, had sex with my grandma a zillion years ago and just dumped her. She was a fuckin’ stewardess and he lost her her job.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far, honey. Being pregnant didn’t lose grandma her job.”

  I smiled warmly. “Loving and leaving stewardesses? Yeah, that sounds like Riker’s speed, all right. God. It’s fucking great to meet you, Amanda. Here. Let me make you some coffee.”

  “Already on it,” said Brick.

  “Have a seat,” I said, gesturing. I offered my hand to the thuggish nephew of mine. “Anson Dineyazzie, half-uncle of yours.”

  The kid nodded with approval, offering me a limp—and therefore cool—hand. “Nice. I’m Tyler Carpenter. We went by the dispensary looking for you. Brick here told us all about your club. Very bitching. Except, why are you wearing a Prospect patch just like Brick on your vest?”

  I shared a look of mirth with Brick. I’d been explaining this one for months now. “On my cut. I joined up at the same time that Brick did. We have to start off on an even footing. You might know that Brick’s a clan member of mine, so he’s remotely related to you, too.”

  Tyler nodded appreciatively. “Navajo relatives. Cool.”

  Brick stepped up. “But Anson here has killed about a bazillion guys, and I haven’t even killed one.”

  “Whoa, whoa,” said Ormond, before I could say the same. He entered the kitchen tucking a new wifebeater into his jeans. His hair didn’t betray that he’d just had the stuffing fucked out of him on the very counter where Brick was lining up coffee cups. “It’s not about who killed who.”

  Tyler’s eyes gleamed. “Hell yeah it is.”

  Brick looked blank. “It isn’t? Then what is it about?”

  Ormond explained. “It’s about brotherhood, about loyalty, about sticking together through thick and thin. It’s a fraternity of men who’ll always have each other’s backs no matter what.”

  “And sometimes more than just backs,” giggled Brick, mentally elbowing the younger teen.

  Tyler surprised me by holding up his hand like a stop paddle. I knew Brick wanted to appear to be cool in front of the younger kid, but I was still going to backhand him for not sticking up for his club. Brick could be straight, that didn’t matter a rat’s ass to us, but he could not take the side of any type of gay-bashing that might go on. “Who cares if they’re having backs or dicks or butts?” He nodded serenely, his eyes glassy, as though he were viewing me through the fog of a Bob Dylan concert. “I think it’s cool no matter if they’re bent or straight. It’s bitchin’ to say my half-uncle is in a fuckin’ biker club.”

  “Even more bitchin’,” said Ormond, handing Amanda her coffee, “is the fact that Anson personally, single-handedly took down about two hundred insurgents overseas. He’s like that guy in American Sniper.”

  “Sure hope he doesn’t wind up like that guy,” said Tyler.

  Amanda changed the subject. “So you guys contribute to Toys for Tots, Big Brother, that sort of thing?”

  “All the time,” I was quick to say. “We do poker runs with the proceeds going to charity. We’ve got a run scheduled next month with The Bare Bones, The Assassins of Youth, other clubs in Arizona.”

  Ormond added, “The American Indian College Fund.”

  “Cool.” Tyler looked as though he’d been sampling the wares over at Herbal Legends. Everything was probably cool with him, and I liked him. He reminded me of myself at that age, just as Brick did. He’d be gathering on mesas with his friends to make campfires. They’d drink homemade whiskey or Garden Deluxe wine, finger-fucking girls in the back of pickups. They carried knives, thinking that would protect them from all the dangers of the world. They were dumb and naïve, like I had been before all the wars.

  So these were my first relatives—aside from Brick—to know me as a gay biker. It put me on edge, but I knew I’d have to get used to it. If I wanted to own my own persona, to embrace my lifestyle, all sorts of different people were going to have to know me as a gay biker. My square older sister from Yuma would just be one of the first. And my newfound hip, cool nephew. I was going to have to use my share of Riker’s bold, brash personality to assist me in my coming out. Take the good from Riker. Leave the bad.

  So I asked Tyler, “You’re leaving high school soon, right? What did you plan to do as a career?”

  He looked shy now. “Well, I used to think I wanted to be either a pilot or a software engineer. You know, video games. But lately, I
think I want to be a biker.”

  Everyone burst out laughing, each probably for our own reasons. Tyler looked sheepish, as if he wanted to crawl under the table.

  Brick blurted, “You can’t just be a biker, man! You have to have some other kind of occupation. Ormond here is in special effects makeup, like his ink. You saw what I do.”

  Tyler pointed. “I could do that, too. Looked easy.”

  Brick frowned. “Isn’t easy,” he said, surly.

  Tyler brightened up. “Can I look at your hog?”

  “Sure,” I said, standing along with Tyler.

  “It isn’t a ‘hog,’” said Brick. “It’s a scoot or a ride.”

  “Whatever,” said Tyler, already dismissing his distant cousin in his sprint for the front door.

  Ormond and I hung back. “That’s amazing, babe,” he said softly. “Your sister. And Turk said you’ve got a bunch more.”

  “You know what’s weird? Last night I had a dream I was coming home somewhere. It was like a reunion party, but every family member was someone I don’t currently know. Yet they kept saying ‘You’re home. Thank God you’re home.’ When I woke up, I was confused. Then I wrote it off as being symbolic. But maybe it wasn’t.”

  “You had a dream,” Ormond marveled. “One that wasn’t horrific.”

  He made a good point. Usually I had no dreams, and that was preferable to the literal nightmares of reliving a particular event over and over. For instance, strangling someone to death with my bare hands. That had been a popular one for my psyche to re-enact, until I had trained myself to not dream at all.

  “Well,” I said. “Fate might shake us, but our roots run deep. Come on. Let’s go educate Tyler about the mechanics of a ‘hog.’”

  “Hog,” Ormond laughed. “Let me go check on Shonda.”

  So I went out front, where Brick was proudly telling Amanda about our upcoming trip to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. Apparently he’d already skimmed over the part where we went looking for Sheena in Gallup. Like us, he’d assumed we wouldn’t find her.

  Brick said, “The Army confined all the Diné who had lost the war to Fort Sumner in the middle of the 1800s. Thousands were force-marched hundreds of miles to the fort. They went through captivity for four years that killed one-eighth of the tribe. They puked from drinking bad water, starving on shitty government rations. See, this is what the club is doing for some of us. Elevating us from the muck. The old ladies and kids who couldn’t make the march were just shot. Anyone who stopped to help their wife or grandma was just shot. The coyotes and vultures could be seen for miles across the desert.”

  “Then why do you want to see this depressing place?” Amanda asked.

  I rubbed my face, thoughtful. “It’s a reckoning of my past. Do you know the main thing Fort Sumner is known for is being the final resting place of Billy the Kid? One fucking dead Anglo—excuse the phrasing—has a tombstone bigger than any plaque for the unmarked graves of thousands of Navajo.”

  “That’s sad,” Amanda said, “but typical. Hey, hey! Tyler, get off there!”

  “Yeah, get off there!” yelled Brick.

  “It’s okay,” I said, laughing. “He’s not hurting anything. Here, let me turn it on for you. You can hear and feel the rumble of the idle.”

  I knew then that I was already home. I had returned from overseas confused, a muddled mess of a man. I had started on a journey looking for my father, accidentally gaining so much more.

  Way more than I’d bargained for. And that was fine with me.

  Did you like this book? Let everyone know by posting a review on Amazon. You will be awesome, and Layla will be grateful!

  About The Author

  Layla Wolfe lives in coastal California with a leather jacket, one bad-ass pink camo compound bow, and a vicarious outlaw lifestyle.

  Layla Wolfe is the pen name of multi-published erotic romance author Karen Mercury.

  Visit her at:

  www.laylawolfe.com

  www.facebook.com/layla.wolfe

  More Books from Layla Wolfe

  A Dangerous Reality

  The Bent Zealots MC Book 1

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00S4BZHZU

  Keep your lovers close—and your enemies in bed.

  TURK. My club sent me to track him down. And when my mission was over, I never wanted another one again. When I found him, I kicked the crap out of Havelock Singer. I issued the mightiest beatdown of all time. Problem is, we’re evenly matched. We’re equals in every way, and when we finished whaling on each other, exhausted, we fell into each other’s arms.

  I’ve never regretted it for an instant. It’s been the ride of my life. But loving another man in the MC world is a risky business. As if our business isn’t already brutal and ruthless enough, Lock’s homophobic sergeant-at-arms Stumpy gets an eyeful of our lovemaking and blackmails us into doing some of his dirty work, or be exposed for what we are—a couple of deviants. This run into the Indian reservation is sleazy and beneath us, but now I’m cornered, and I’ll do anything to keep my sweet Master from being lynched by his club.

  LOCK. When that kingpin Carmine Rojas got a load of my beautiful stallion Turk Blackburn, he’d stop at nothing to have him—and Rojas gets what he wants. It’s my fault we’re in this situation. I should’ve kicked Turk’s ass and sent him packing back to The Bare Bones. I wasn’t even close to being ready to come out, but now they’re forcing my hand.

  I can hear my destiny calling me. Either I’ll slink back to my club like a hetero bounty hunter with no morals—and no respect from anyone in my own backyard—or I’ll step up to the plate and be the lion of the day. Either way, my lover and I are screwed. Our clubs are going to hound us underground or into another country before we escape this mess—if we don’t die trying.

  “Living off the grid and being an outlaw brings a dangerous reality.” –Ron Perlman

  Publisher’s warning: This book is not for the faint of heart. It contains scenes of gay sex, consensual BDSM, illegal doings, dubious consent, and man-on-man violence. There is no cheating and a HEA.

  The Bare Bones

  Book #1 in The Bare Bones MC series

  http://amzn.to/1mYMr22

  If you ain’t living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room.

  The rose-colored illusion of Madison Shellmound’s girlish crush on biker Ford Illuminati is stomped into smithereens by his crude father Cropper, Bare Bones motorcycle club President. Fearing Ford will kill Cropper if he finds out, Madison flees, becoming an upstanding cardiology nurse.

  Madison and Ford have an ill-fated, star-crossed love that will last their lifetimes. Ford is a lifer in a different sort of enterprise, the gritty full-throttle club of guns, blood, and allegiance to his brothers. Twelve years and several tours of SEAL duty later, Ford is thrust back into Madison’s arms on the worst day of his life. Madison’s prospect brother Speed has screwed up big-time and owes the club his life. She offers herself to Cropper as a sacrificial lamb to save Speed.

  But how long until the fiery, full-on outlaw Ford discovers that the woman he loves was treated like a degraded slave by his own father? Well, meet the new boss. He’s not the same as the old boss.

  Publisher’s Note: This is not your mother’s contemporary romance. Readers will encounter molestation, drugging, consensual bondage and discipline, violence, and a HEA. It’s a full-length novel of 65,000 words. Recommended 18+ due to mature content.

  Stay Vertical

  Book #2 in The Bare Bones MC series

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KKTMGR6/

  Publisher’s Note: This is Book #2 in the Bare Bones MC series. This book is a stand-alone and can be read out of order. However, it is advised to read THE BARE BONES first to get a complete picture of the club’s background, storylines, and setting. This is not your mother’s contemporary romance. Daring readers will encounter sexual assault, violence against women, general violence among men, consensual BDSM, and a HEA. It is not for the faint of heart. I
t’s a full length novel of 65,000 words with no cliffhanger. Recommended 18+ due to mature content.

  One two three four five six seven. All good sinners go to heaven. Peace Corps volunteer June Shellmound returns to Arizona to care for her dying mother. At the clubhouse of The Bare Bones motorcycle club, June is swept into the drama when half-breed Lytton Driving Hawk barges in and demands recognition as president Ford Illuminati’s half-brother.

  Hot enough to melt steel, Lytton has forged a life apart from the reservation as a brilliant chemist, living the high times at his pot farm in the mountains. Lytton is no fortunate son, though, and the mortal secrets Ford’s been hiding about their father drive the last nail into their brotherly coffin.

  Lytton turns his back on the Bare Bones and sweet bleeding heart June. Blinded by vengeance, Lytton becomes ruled by his own demons, raising hell alongside Ford’s mortal enemies, The Cutlasses. Alliances are torn apart within the club, loyalties are divided, and everyone’s true spirits are tested. When the dust clears, Lytton and June find themselves running for their lives just to… STAY VERTICAL

  Bad to the Bones

  Book #3 in The Bare Bones MC series

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O2IRLB2/

  Publisher’s Note: This is Book #3 in the Bare Bones MC series. This book is a stand-alone and can be read out of order. This is not your mother’s contemporary romance. Daring readers will encounter sexual assault, dubious consent, general violence among men, and a HEA. It is not for the faint of heart. It’s a full length novel of 73,000 words with no cliffhanger. Recommended 18+ due to mature content.