ONE MORE RIDE

by Sophia Gray

  The buxom bartender remembered me. I cringed as she smiled at Isaac. “I see you found your mystery girl,” she said with a laugh as she passed me a glass. The outside of the glass was sticky and smudged and I stared at it warily.

  “It’s safe,” Isaac said with a smirk. “I’m not the kind of asshole who goes around drugging people.”

  I stared at him indignantly. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I snapped. “What is this? You storm into my clubhouse demanding that I come with you, and now you’re buying me drinks?”

  Isaac laughed. “Don’t be such an uptight bitch,” he replied casually. He’d ordered a shot of tequila and I hated that I couldn’t take my eyes away from his throat as he drank it. “I’m just trying to loosen you up.” He winked. “You women tend to guard your secrets a lot less closely after you’ve been drinking.”

  Just as I was about to snap back at him, the bartender set another glass down in front of me. “On the house,” she said with a grin. “We like to keep the Jungle’s Thorns girls happy.”

  I knocked the whiskey over, taking pleasure in the startled look on both the bartender’s and Isaac’s faces. “I’m not anyone’s girl,” I snapped. “I’m the fucking president of the Succubi, and I wanna know what the fuck I’m doing here already.”

  Isaac’s shock turned into a look that was almost something like admiration. “Come on,” he said gruffly, setting his empty glass down on the bar. “Come upstairs with me.”

  I followed Isaac through the crowded, twisting bar and up the same narrow staircase from the night before. Now that he wasn’t intoxicated, I could see how big Isaac had grown—there was nothing boyish about him, he was a solid, muscular, hunk of man. I had to admire the way he confidently swaggered up the stairs like he knew that I was only moments away from giving in to whatever he wanted. When he turned the knob and kicked the door open, I saw that the room looked exactly as it had the night before.

  “Who are you?” Isaac demanded as soon as the door was closed. “And what do you want with me?”

  I shook my head and laughed. “I’m not telling you shit,” I said softly. I walked over to the bed and sat down, spreading my legs and relaxing on the old, creaky mattress.

  Isaac came closer. He had a warning look on his face, a serious look that I knew meant trouble. His presence was nothing short of alarming. My whole body tingled whenever Isaac stepped close and my mouth went dry. Seeing him did things to me, things that I’d forgotten about in all of these years. I hadn’t been with a man since Isaac, and now part of me was wondering what it would feel like if he pulled me into his arms and kissed me savagely.

  “Tell me who you are,” Isaac said. His voice was a dark, harsh rasp. His green eyes sparkled in the low light and I saw desire there, somewhere, hiding behind the anger.

  I swallowed and shook my head. “Not a chance,” I said softly, crisply enunciating each word. “I ain’t telling you shit. You found me and you know I lead the Succubi. What else do you need to know?”

  Isaac paced around in small circles, like a caged animal. He stared at me so fiercely that I felt my heart skip a beat inside my chest. When he spoke again, the words came out as a harsh growl. “You’ll tell me what I need to know, or I’ll destroy you and the Succubi,” Isaac threatened.

  Not if we destroy ourselves first, I thought with a trace of sadness. Being away from Val and the girls wasn’t softening my anger, but I was admittedly relieved that I no longer had to deal with her at this exact moment. Even though I was staring down a whole new set of problems, it didn’t bother me that much. It still felt better than getting stabbed in the back—or punched in the face—by the woman who I considered my best friend.

  “You’ll do no such thing,” I purred. “You have no idea what piece of information I got from you last night, and until you find out, you can’t do anything to hurt me. And you won’t find out, by the way. Memory loss is usually permanent.” I smiled at Isaac. My face was swollen and throbbing from Val’s vicious punches but it felt good to be on top of my game for once. The fighting with the girls had really punched down my ego, and it was a relief to feel like once again, I knew what I was talking about.

  Isaac let out a sound halfway between a growl and a roar. “Fuck,” he spat. He leaned over me and looked deeply into my eyes. I was aware that we hadn’t been this close since before, since years ago, and it took my breath away. Isaac’s green eyes staring into my own only made me hungrier for him than ever before. His forehead was almost close enough to touch mine, and I could see the blond hairs that grew above his upper lip. Isaac had been clean-shaven as a boy but now he grew a scruffy beard. I closed my eyes, thinking about how his facial hair would feel against my smooth and bruised skin.

  “Tell me what I said,” Isaac hissed in my ear.

  I shivered, the stream of air against my skin undeniably erotic. The whole moment was charged and the room itself seemed to be shimmering with lust and confusion.

  I shuddered softly. “No,” I said in the same soft voice. “It wasn’t important.” I looked deeply into Isaac’s eyes, my blue connecting with his green. “It was nothing, just drop it.”

  For a moment, I thought he was going to slap me. The staring contest continued unrivaled and unblinking. Isaac was heaving and breathing hard and I could smell him: a potent musk and blend of cigarettes, booze, and leather. Being this close to him was the most unsure, exciting thing that I’d felt in years and years. How the fuck was I ever supposed to just disappear again?

  Because you will disappear again, you know you have to, I thought to myself. I didn't like thinking about how I'd left Isaac, but at times like this, it couldn't be avoided. All those years ago I thought I'd been doing the right thing.

  But now I wasn’t sure.

  “I don’t believe you,” Isaac whispered. His words tickled my lips, made me crave even more of him. “I think you’re lying.”

  “It was nothing,” I repeated, licking my dry lips. “You told me nothing useful.”

  Isaac shook his head and grinned disdainfully. “I doubt that. I’m always useful,” he said with a wink.

  “Maybe you should have kept it in your pants,” I shot back quickly. My heart thumped against my ribs and my breath caught in my throat. The way Isaac was looking at me made me feel like I was about to come in my pants.

  We stayed like that for a moment, frozen in our equal disdain. Then, Isaac grabbed me and kissed me hard. He pressed his lips against mine and slipped his tongue into my mouth. He tasted just like he smelled and I melted instantly. Between my legs grew damp and sticky and adrenaline coursed through my body, lust replacing all of the anger towards Val and the girls that I’d felt not five minutes before. I wrapped my arms around Isaac’s neck, pulling him close and moaning softly as he pressed his rock-hard body against mine. The bruises from Val’s punch ached as Isaac shoved his face against my own but I reveled in the feeling: they made the kiss seem even more real, more urgent.

  As Isaac devoured my lips with nibbles and kisses, I ran my fingers through his hair and tugged hard at his scalp. Isaac groaned and I could feel a massive bulge between his legs. To my surprise, it made me blush. It had been years since I blushed but the blood underneath my skin felt both welcome and delicious. I wanted Isaac to rip my pants off, to bury his tongue between my legs and suck my clit until I was screaming. Isaac slipped a hand under my shirt and roughly fondled my nipples the way he used to. They were instantly hard and stiff and I moaned with pleasure loudly as Isaac pinched and rolled my tender skin between his fingers. Every cell in my body, every drop of blood in my veins wanted Isaac.

  He broke the kiss and pulled away, breathing hard and staring at me. I bit my lower lip and stared right back, feeling desire swirl around us like dust in the air.

  “Who are you?” Isaac asked in a strained whisper.

  I realized that I was barely aware of that myself.

  Chapter Eleven

  After our kiss, the meeting ended quickly. Isaac showed me ou
t and I wasn’t exactly dragging my feet to leave. I knew that I had to get away from him as quickly as possible or else I was going to be in even bigger trouble than before. Isaac was dangerous—dangerous as a man, dangerous as a lover, dangerous as a member of Jungle’s Thorns. Isaac was the kind of man I should never have crossed.

  I wished that I’d really run away.

  Back when I was nineteen, my parents were killed. I thought it was a car accident at the time. The details of their deaths were sticky and mysterious to me, almost like something from a movie that I’d fallen asleep in the middle of. When I’d found out, it had been in the middle of the day. I had a part-time job that summer, working as an apprentice mechanic in a garage owned by a friend of my father. I remembered that I’d been learning about vintage motorcycles from the ’60s that week. I'd be annoyed when someone told me that I had a phone call.

  “Don’t be long, Candace,” the garage owner warned me. He was mad that day because Isaac had visited me the previous week and I’d spent two hours away from the shop. “You know we got a big project on our hands.”

  I shrugged as I walked back towards the phone. The voice on the other line had been gruff and unfamiliar—not someone I recognized. When he told me that my parents were dead, I thought it was a joke. I’d laughed.

  “What the fuck is this?” I’d said in disdain, glaring at the receiver. From a distance, the man’s harsh voice now sounded tinny and laughable, like something from a cartoon on the television.

  I’d gone back to work like nothing had been wrong. When my boss had asked me who called, I’d shrugged and told him that someone had pranked me. When I got home, the house was quiet. That in itself wasn’t unusual, my mom usually spent her summer days at the pool, reading and smoking cigarettes all day. My dad was always at home, though—he loved being outdoors, by the garden. When I went to look for him, he wasn’t there. That was the first moment when I actually believed that something was wrong. His tools were out of the shed and spread haphazardly around in the grass like he’d been in the middle of a project and then he’d been called away. My mouth went dry as I picked my way through the backyard with his mini shovel and trowel in hand. I didn’t want to believe that anything had happened, but it was starting to look like the phone call hadn’t been a joke.

  “It’s nothing,” I remember telling myself as I went back inside and turned on the television. “He probably got an idea for dinner and went to the store for ingredients.”

  Except my dad never did stuff like that; my mom was the cook of the household. I stayed inside with a glass of water and the TV on until it got dark outside. Then, when my parents didn’t come home, I began to feel really afraid. I went outside and ran down to the police station. I was afraid that my parents would come home and be angry with me if they found out I’d left after dark. Even though I was nineteen, they were still pretty strict. Besides, Isaac and I had just made plans to move in together and I wasn’t sure how they’d take the news. They didn’t approve of people living together before marriage, and even though I wanted to marry Isaac, I didn’t think he was about to ask. After all, he was exactly my age. We were only born a week apart. Some people used to say that made us soulmates.

  The police officer down at the station obviously didn’t know what I was talking about. I probably looked like a crazed girl, babbling and sweaty with dirt-streaked legs from running through the downtown streets. LA had never been a picnic, but back then it used to feel grittier. I wasn’t sure if that was because I eventually got used to the city or what, maybe I was just too young to understand it. But the cops stared all the same.

  “My parents,” I said in a gasping voice. “They were in a car crash! I got…I got a phone call this morning but I didn’t believe it and I went home and they weren’t there!”

  The cops pulled me into a back room and gave me a blanket and a warm bottle of water. I thought that was strange. Later I found out that they thought I was a kid, and they wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be afraid when I found out the truth. One officer came into the room with me and sat down. It was a woman with shiny thick blonde hair and brown eyes, and I remembered thinking that she looked friendly, but not trustworthy. She looked like the kind of woman I’d had as a teacher in elementary school, the kind of woman who took delight in tormenting the fat, unpopular kids.

  “Now, Candace, here’s the thing,” she’d said, pausing as she looked down at a sheaf of papers. “The bodies of who we believe to be your parents were found.” She looked up at me and reached out, touching my hand with her lotion-soft palm. “They were found in a car, Candace, a red Camaro. Do you know anything about that?”

  I shook my head. “Mom has a Volvo,” I said. “And Dad has a Nissan.”

  The officer frowned. “There’s something else strange,” she said softly. “The Camaro wasn’t damaged at all. It was like someone moved the bodies of your parents there, to be found.”

  I blinked. “It couldn’t have been my parents,” I said hotly. “They wouldn’t do this to me! They wouldn’t disappear like this!”

  The officer looked at me. “But they did, Candace,” she said softly. She squeezed my hand. “And I can’t explain why.”

  Having to identify their bodies was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my entire life. I called Isaac and he was in the lobby with me, but he couldn’t come inside the morgue because he wasn’t a family member. I could tell that it was killing him to see me in so much pain but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t pretend to be stronger just so it would be easier for him. Now, if that happened, I would try to shield a lover from having to see me that way. But back then I was simply too young; I was nineteen and I didn’t know a goddamn thing about the world.

  The mysterious phone call haunted me. I didn’t go home from the hospital that night, I slept curled up in the waiting room and pretended I was waiting for a friend of mine. I couldn’t face my parents’ empty house, the way their bills and cell phones were still lying around like they were just about to come home. It seemed to me like they would burst through the door at any moment and leap out, tell me that everything had been a joke.

  Not that my parents were the type of people to play such a cruel joke on their daughter. I was their only child, after all.

  The first night I was home alone again, I heard a soft knocking at my window. The most familiar sound in the world: Isaac coming to my room in the middle of the night. When I let him in, he crawled up the rest of the rose trellis and lay panting on my floor. I remembered wanting to laugh, wanting to cry, and wanting to bury my face in Isaac’s neck and cry for hours. But I didn’t do anything like that. I simply sat there and let him hold me while I tried to keep breathing. Losing my parents was the most painful thing I’d ever gone through, and Isaac was right by my side exactly when I needed him.

  “Why didn’t you just come to the front door?” I asked softly after I’d finished crying.

  Isaac made a funny face. I guessed he felt awkward. “Because,” he said quietly. “This is the way I’ve always come to see you. I thought the routine would make you feel better.”

  Ever since then, I couldn’t remember loving anyone the way I’d loved Isaac in that moment. He knew me so well. I was a creature of habit, someone who liked things just so and didn’t ever want to leave room for change. Isaac understood me, and he could always give me what I needed.

  I’d never felt safer in my whole life.

  Chapter Twelve

  Isaac’s not a boy any longer. He’s a real man now. That was the thought that kept repeating in my head all the way back to the Succubi’ headquarters. I couldn’t believe how he’d changed. Where he used to be sweet and sensitive, now he was tough and firm. He growled, he groaned, he was exactly the kind of man who knew how to turn me on. But more than that, he’d lost whatever shaky, unsure quality that he’d had growing up. When we’d been kids, Isaac and I had always fought for balance of power. I usually won; I could get him to agree to anything, especially if I even h
ad one lame reason. “Because I said so” worked on Isaac, and as a bossy little girl I more than abused my share of privilege.

  But now, Isaac wasn’t like that. He didn’t give in and he didn’t back down. When I’d gone running out of his clubhouse, I could tell that he was stunned. Isaac wasn’t the type to show that though. Now, Isaac was the silent, tough type, the type that hunkered down and got shit done. I knew that he wasn’t a man to cross, that fighting with him wouldn’t get me anywhere. And yet I still felt the urge to rub him against the grain, to push him to the limit and see where it took me. Isaac was dangerous and I needed to stay away from him, but something deep inside of me was compelled to see where this went.

  My heart felt heavy when I knew that my girls would be turning the Jungle’s Thorns MC into the cops. I knew it was against MC code, hell, it was against civilian code. Normal people didn’t snitch to the cops as a way of revenge. Even my somewhat sheltered outlook had taught me that. Normal people handled their business the way I’d fought with Val earlier, normal people didn’t rely on threats and accusations to get them through whatever was happening to upset their lives.