ONE MORE RIDE

by Sophia Gray

  Part of me didn’t want revenge, not against Isaac. I couldn’t speak for the rest of his guys but it didn’t seem like he deserved what would be coming. He’d never done anything to me. Aside from storming into the Succubi’ hangout and demanding that I return with him, Isaac had been as mild as anything. And yeah, I knew that he ran guns. Hell, he’d probably killed people before. But that wasn’t my responsibility to judge; I’d seen my share of the same shit. And I did the same thing as Isaac for a career. But here I was, ready to turn him over and ruin my reputation forever. No one would trust me when they found out how readily I turned over one of my own. Hell, I’d be lucky if I made it through the rest of my life without someone carving snitch in my forehead.

  No, revenge against Isaac himself didn’t seem like a good idea. Val had seen what she’d seen, and now she was hell-bent on dragging the whole club down to her level. I didn’t like it, but I felt powerless. Even as the president, if everyone was against me, what choice did I have? It was either bend my will to the group or risk being run out of my own club. And with Val’s temper and anger, right now I had the feeling that I wouldn’t get out alive.

  That evening, I went over to the clubhouse to see Val and the rest of the girls. Everyone seemed back to normal and pumped about ratting out the Jungle’s Thorns. The girls kept cheering, "Down with the Thorns!" and whooping with their fists in their air. I cringed; it was like the scene from a rally, right before something went horribly wrong.

  “So, you come to your senses?” Val eyed me and took a sip of her beer. Her brown face was puffy and bruised from where I’d punched her, but she didn’t look nearly as bad as I did. One of my eyes was nearly swollen shut—I’d gasped when I’d looked in the mirror, unable to believe how Isaac could have been attracted to me.

  “If you can call it that,” I said delicately. I picked up a beer and tapped the cap against the lip of the counter, then pounded it with my fist. The cap popped off and I threw my head back and took a long, relaxing swallow. Being around Val was tense but I had to make it work for the sake of the club. And maybe after this whole mess was over, we’d get back to being as close as we had been before.

  “I got in touch with the Russians,” Val said with a nasty smile. “And I’ll see what I can do about turning their business over to us.”

  “Really?” I grinned, despite myself. “That’s awesome.”

  Val smiled cattily. “Well, you made your point loud and clear,” she said dramatically, exhaling loudly. “If we snitch on the Thorn’s, ain’t no one gonna trust us. We’re gonna have to have us a new source of income.” She grinned like she’d come up with the idea herself. “And now, we’ll have the Russians all to ourselves.”

  I bit my lip. “That’s a lot of extra service. We’re gonna have to step up our customer operations, maybe get some new girls in on probation. We don’t have the manpower to cover the grid right now, especially if we’re taking over their part of town.”

  Val shrugged. “You the boss, you’ll figure it out,” she said, winking at me. I knew that I should be feeling relieved that things were starting to smooth over, but part of me didn’t trust this new, friendly side of Val. Even when we’d been close, she hadn’t ever been what you might call helpful. She’d always been out to get hers and that was all that mattered. Now part of me suspected that this was still the case, she was just trying to make it seem to the other girls like she’d forgiven me.

  “I don’t know about taking revenge on the whole MC,” I mused aloud. “Isaac didn’t have shit to do with this, and I think you know that.”

  Val tutted. “And how do you know that?” She laughed at me and for the second time that day I felt a blush rise to my face. “I mean, he could have ordered it! He’s the president of the most corrupt MC in the city!”

  I swallowed. “We’re pretty corrupt by the same standards,” I said evenly. “We run guns and we’re about to run a whole lot more of them.”

  Val put her hands on her hips, sassing me. “And you worried about this all of a sudden? Whatchu have such a conscience for?”

  I couldn’t tell her the truth. No one in the Succubi knew about my past, only my motives for the future. Again, I was beginning to wish that I’d run far away after the death of my parents.

  I walked away from Val without answering. Something in my chest felt tight, like I wasn’t getting enough oxygen to breathe. I couldn’t think about hurting Isaac again, after all, I’d probably come close to ruining his life before. And now I was about to turn his crew over to the cops just because of something my second-in-command had seen?

  Then I remembered Jessica and the painful way she'd lowered herself into a chair for weeks after the incident. I remembered her telling me that she wouldn’t be able to have children, that her hopes of having a family were ruined. I shuddered when I remembered all of the blood in the spare room, how it had soaked into the mattress and turned it into a soggy cushion. It was a miracle that Jessica was still alive. Against my will, I felt my heart hardening inside my chest. No, I had to take revenge. I had to do something. Even if it meant hurting Isaac and the rest of his men, I had to avenge Jessica’s assault.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Isaac

  That night, I had another dream about Candace again. Or rather, I thought I had a dream about her. We were laughing and playing together, roughhousing outside like a couple of kids. She was so real that I could feel the touch of her soft skin against mine, so close that I could smell the faint vanilla musk of her perfume.

  That was when the dream started to change. We were playing in a park and the skies darkened. Candace looked at me with fire in her blue eyes and reached for me. As always, I felt my cock stiffening between my legs as Candace’s hands snaked around my waist. She’d always known how to turn me on, and this was no exception. When we kissed, I closed my eyes and felt the universe spinning around. I was hit with an overwhelming feeling, like how it felt to know how deeply in love with someone you really were. And Candace was that person for me. She was my everything; she was my world.

  And then I woke up. My skin was sweaty and my hair was sticking to my forehead even though the air conditioner was on full blast. Candace was still parading through my head and try as I might, I couldn’t get the image of her to go away.

  But now, things felt different. Now that Stephanie had come into my life, I wasn’t sure what to think. In so many ways she reminded me of Candace, but I knew that wasn’t a logical connection. After all, Candace disappeared. She wouldn’t have hung around. I spent years looking for her.

  Now it was time to accept that she was really gone.

  Later in the morning, I drove over to the bar. There were some cars parked in the lot from the night before and Nick and TJ were bellied up to the bar itself, drinking whiskey and chasing it with beer. They both grinned at me.

  “Hey, man,” Nick said. He slapped me on the back and I felt a twinge of unease. The guys still didn’t know about my conversation with Stephanie from the other day. To them, she was just a hot chick in another local biker gang. But inside, I knew that I could have revealed some damaging information. Don’t worry about it, I thought. You’re the leader of Jungle’s Thorns. You don’t need to waste time worrying about what some chick can do to your reputation.

  “Hey,” I said as I slipped onto a stool and reached over the counter for a beer. “What’s up?”

  Nick grinned at me. He was still sporting a bruise on his face. “I got to meet the Russians later,” he said, miming like he was aiming a gun at the wall. “We got a big shipment coming in.”

  A flash of the other night came back to me; Stephanie on top of me, straddling me with her muscular legs and demanding to know something. God, it was killing me! If I didn’t remember what I told her, I was fucked!

  “Oh yeah?” I swallowed hard and took a long drink of beer. “What kind of deal?”

  Nick grinned and flexed his arms. “The kind that’s gonna permanently set us up for life, brother,” h
e said with a nod. “The kind of deal we’ve been struggling to make for years.”

  Another alarm bell went off in the back of my head but I ignored it. Something about the way Nick was talking sounded familiar to me, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Hey,” TJ said sharply. “Man, what happened last night? Did you find that girl?”

  I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. I flashed back to Stephanie in my arms, her hot little mouth pressed against mine, her tight body wriggling. “I found her alright. I brought her back here.”

  TJ raised his eyebrows. “And? Anything good?”

  I snorted. “I’m not telling you shit,” I said dismissively. “I don’t need to talk about getting laid when I can actually do it.”

  TJ and Nick laughed, high-fiving each other. Being around the guys normally made me relax, but today I felt like I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I knew that I had to find Stephanie again, and get her to tell me what had really happened.

  “I’m gonna go ride out,” I said, standing and finishing the last of my beer. “You guys need me around for the deal?”

  “Yeah,” Nick replied. “That would be fuckin’ great, man.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be around later. When are you meeting with the Russians?”

  “Ten,” TJ said. He looked more solemn than usual and I wondered what was wrong with him. “I mean, if you can swing that.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, no worries,” I said. “I’ll be back by then.”

  When I left the bar, I felt a weird sense of relief flood my body. It wasn’t that I hated being around the guys right now, but there was so much shit flying around in my head that I had no idea how to talk to them. It was hard to concentrate on Thorns business when I had to worry about Stephanie and what information she’d pulled out of me. But I had to come out on top; I had to show her who was boss.

  I grinned. And I don’t think I’ll have much trouble with that, I thought nastily as I remembered the way Stephanie had shoved her tits against my chest and slipped her tongue into my mouth. She was a hot little sex kitten and all I had to do was make her mine. As soon as she was mine, I knew there was no way she could fuck over the Thorns.

  I hopped on my bike and rode it to the outskirts of town, staring at the city from high above. I always loved the canyons outside of LA; they made the city look like some kind of weird, mythical creature. But right now they just made me feel alone, with the weight of my decisions in my mind. I have to find her. And soon.

  I rode down to the Succubi’ clubhouse. I had to hand it to them; Stephanie was a good leader. She’d managed to turn the MC completely legit in less than a few years, and they looked like they were turning quite a profit. The clubhouse was a nice building: sleek, with all the modern touches that an MC could possibly want. They even had a state-of-the-art surveillance system outside. I swallowed hard as I knocked on the front door.

  A diminutive-looking girl answered the door. I recognized her from last time—her name was Lyndsey or Jessica or some shit. “Hey,” I said shortly. “Is Stephanie around?”

  The girl swallowed hard. She had light brown hair and big, scared-looking eyes. She looked more like an ingénue than a biker, and part of me wondered what she was doing with a club as tough as the Succubi.

  “Yeah,” she said softly after a long pause. “You wait out here. I’ll go get her.”

  I rocked on the balls of my feet, feeling slightly impressed. Despite the girl’s soft looks, her voice had come across with an undertone of steel. Stephanie must have seen something in her, even if the others didn’t, I decided. She must have a good eye for that sort of thing.

  When Stephanie came to the door, her face was pale and beginning to contort with anger. “What?” she asked in a huff. “What do you want now?”

  “Come with me,” I said sharply. “We need to talk.”

  This time, Stephanie didn’t resist. She folded her arms across her chest and called something to the girls before grabbing her jacket and climbing on her bike. “I’m not riding as your bitch,” she said. “And I leave when I want to leave.”

  I shrugged. “You’re not under arrest, you know,” I told her sharply. “You can leave whenever you damn well want to leave.”

  A different look came into Stephanie’s eyes just then, something akin to respect. She nodded curtly and climbed on her giant hog, making it roar to life with the mere twist of a key. I waited until she was good to go and then climbed on my bike, steering it out of the driveway and back up into the hills.

  The air was humid and damp but it felt good on my face as I rode. The moisture clinging to every cell cooled my face down and I closed my eyes, enjoying the feel of the sun and the clean air. I hadn’t ridden for pleasure in what felt like a long time, and even though I was working I didn’t feel too horrible about it. Everything will be fine, I told myself. She’s with you. You’ve got her now. You know she would be yours, if you wanted.

  In some ways, it didn’t feel as much like a betrayal to Candace as I would have thought. Maybe it was because I hadn’t been laid in a couple of weeks, maybe it was just because Stephanie had something about her that didn’t make me question her. It was in her smile, in her swagger, in the way she carried herself so confidently. Stephanie was one of those women who always seemed on top of her game. I was impressed. She could teach the Jungle’s Thorns a thing or two about loyalty, and about classiness within the rules of the MC.

  I was surprised when she turned out to be moody that day. We parked our bikes just above the Hollywood sign and strode around in the brush, kicking at clods of dirt and dried lumps of cactus that had fallen off.

  “Do you always come up here?” Stephanie looked at me. Her blue eyes seemed focused, but I could tell that her mind was elsewhere. “I mean, this is a cool place. It’s good for thinking. But I’ve never seen you here before.”

  “I used to come up here with an old girlfriend,” I said as casually as I could muster. I still couldn’t think about Candace without feeling a tug at my heartstrings, but whenever Stephanie was around the pain wasn’t nearly as hard to deal with as it was when I was alone. “It was years ago, though. Now I come up by myself when I need to be alone.”

  Stephanie nodded. She lowered herself down onto the dirt and relaxed, leaning back on the heels of her hands and staring straight up at the sky. “I come here a lot,” she said softly. She glanced down at the ground. “Whenever I really need to be alone with myself and think, you know?” Stephanie looked into my eyes and I felt a shiver of lust. Even though the moment was solemn, there was something about her that made me itch to put my hands all over her body and make her mine. In my pants, my cock chafed, eager to be inside Stephanie’s warm, wet body.

  “I get that,” I said, scooting closer. “What do you think about?” I winked at her.

  “Everything,” Stephanie said dramatically. She pulled her black hair up into a ponytail and knotted it with an elastic. “The club, my girls, everything that’s going on right now.” She let out a long sigh. I stared; I hadn’t exactly expected her to make me a serious answer. “There’s a lot going on with the Succubi that you don’t know.”

  I laughed. “My club is the same way,” I said, getting to my feet and brushing the dirt off my jeans. “There’s so much shit going on right now that I can’t even see through it. Has that ever happened before?”

  Stephanie rolled onto her flat belly and stared at the ground. I admired the lean curve of her waist and the way her ass stuck out into the air. She was a natural beauty, and I was feeling the itch to fuck her even more strongly than before. “Things are just messy right now,” she said, plucking a piece of grass from the earth and gnawing on the tip of it. I watched as her pink tongue stuck out of her lips. A shiver of lust seized my body and I had to glance away before I started imagining that same pink tongue licking my hard cock. “I don’t feel like a good leader. I feel like I’m failing my girls.”

  I shrugged. “They’re adults,” I said. “They need someone to
make decisions for them sometimes. They must respect you. That new club house is ace."

  Stephanie nodded. “We did a good job,” she said in a quiet voice. Her face grew serious again. “I just don’t know. Sometimes I don’t think I’m a good fit for this life. I always wanted to be in an MC, but sometimes I wonder if I wouldn’t do better on my own.”

  I shook my head and leaned up against a tree, watching Stephanie’s face intently. She’d closed her eyes and rested her cheek down on a forearm. She looked troubled, even in a peaceful pose. I couldn’t imagine her falling asleep despite her relaxed posture.

  “You’re doing fine,” I said mildly. Stephanie looked into my eyes and the air between us crackled with tension. “I mean, you’re doing the best that you can, right?”

  Stephanie nodded. She let out a long sigh. “I don’t wanna talk about this anymore,” she said abruptly, rolling onto her back and staring at the sky. She shielded her eyes with a hand and took a deep breath. “What do you want?”