by S. E. Jakes
“Please, Ryker. Just let me.” I put my mouth around his cock before he could protest. He groaned, his hand fisted in my hair, hard enough to thrill me. Mainly because it was meant to keep me in place, not push me away. My big biker was moaning my name, and I figured now was the time to enjoy that I’d pulled this off.
I put my face closer, waiting for him to grip my head harder. He did, tugged me closer, and said, “Let’s see if you’re cut out for this.”
He took out his phone and pointed it at me. “Go.”
Jesus. I closed my eyes for the briefest of seconds and then took his cock in, licking and sucking. Looked up at him to see him staring at me intensely.
“Yeah, job’s yours, babe. All yours. Only yours.”
And then he came, holding me in place, owning me. And I drank him, trusting him completely.
When he let me go, I didn’t have time to stand before he sank to his knees in front of me. He brushed my cheek with his hand, then showed me his recent videos. The one he’d just pretended to take? Wasn’t there.
“You could’ve just deleted it.”
“Worked just the same,” he said. And then I was on my back, his fingers in me, my legs spread for him. “You going to keep trying to escape?”
“Trying?”
“Are you?” he demanded, hitting my gland several times.
“Yes,” I managed.
Because it was the truth, and that’s what he wanted from me.
And instead of getting angry, Ryker’s face opened, a smile that went all the way to his eyes. “Good,” he grunted.
Like he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Like he didn’t want it any other way.
I didn’t know where this was going, how to feel—hell, even what to feel. The guy sent me flowers. He’d gotten me through the end of my last deployment with his visits and the memory of them. He’d downloaded music onto my iPod (how he got my password was another one of those great mysteries)—some Grateful Dead music he always played me, plus some old-school classic rock. I had a lot of memories to keep me going through those last months.
He knew my favorite foods. He was on his way to knowing every goddamned thing about me, and even though it scared the fuck out of me every time something new was revealed, he stuck around. And pushed to learn more.
“If I stay . . . does that mean you won’t try to lure me with pizza and Chinese?” I asked, stretching languidly, many orgasms later.
“Babe, this means you get me. Which means, if you want pizza or Chinese, I’ll pick up the phone and get you some.”
“Pizza,” I managed. “Lots of it. No anchovies. Or . . .”
“You like half-plain, half-pepperoni, and you can eat a pizza and a half by yourself.”
I stared at him. “You know way too much about me.”
“I can eat two,” he said mildly before placing the order from my favorite pizza parlor.
yker left me a note—he’d be gone all day on Havoc business. If I could help it, I wasn’t supposed to call him. But he wanted me to be there in his cabin when he got back later on that evening.
Things are good, Sean.
Yeah, things were definitely good.
I showered and ate some of the breakfast he’d left, even though it was sometime after three in the afternoon. I guess all that romantic shit really wore me out.
After my second cup of coffee, I put on the TV and figured I’d just stay put in Ryker’s place until he got home, like he’d suggested. Because I wasn’t going to walk around Havoc until I knew how pissed Sweet and some of the other guys were.
But when Noah called, all my plans were shot to shit. “What’s up?”
We tried to check in at least every other day, quick calls that let me know he was all right. Edmund’s crew was protecting him from McKibbins, but I knew time was running out. He had to ditch Edmund, and fast.
“Rush, where are you?”
“I’m at Ryker’s.”
“So it’s good.”
“Yeah, it’s good, man. I texted you.”
“Good. Listen, I’m going to get out of town for a while . . .”
“What’s wrong?”
“Rush, you’re good with Ryker, you’re happy. That’s all that matters.”
“Like you said to me before, you matter. What’s going on?” I was up now, looking for my shoes. Because that’s what we both did when we called each other. We prepared to go help.
“I fucked up, Rush. Bad.” His voice shook. “I had to do one last job for Edmund, to fulfill the contract, he said. And the second to last car I was supposed to grab . . . fuck, it was in an accident a couple of days earlier. Totaled. There was only one other like it close by. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Who’s car?”
“It was parked at the Hangmen’s compound. Registration is Casey something or other.”
Shit. I pressed the heel of my palm to my forehead and tried to remain calm. “Okay. So you took it. One more to go?”
“Right. But . . . fuck, Edmund told the Hangmen that I took his goddamned car.”
“Why?”
“If you can figure that out, more power to you.”
I didn’t have time to parse it. But I knew what I did need to do. “Where’s Casey’s car?”
“In the container. Once I deliver the final car . . .”
“Wait, you can’t fucking do that.”
“I don’t need Edmund’s buyers and the Hangmen after me.”
He was right. “Let’s get the Hangmen off your back first, all right? I’ll return the car.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to drive there in it, but I’ll go and say there was a mix-up, but we have the car.”
“But we don’t.”
“So get it,” I said through clenched teeth. “I can’t unfuck this all by myself.”
Noah drew in a breath. “Okay. Yeah, you’re right. Thanks, man. I just . . . I can’t . . .”
“I know. You don’t have to say anything else. Let’s get you out of this and then find something for us to do that doesn’t involve shit like this.”
Noah gave a shaky laugh. “We keep saying that.”
“One day, we’re going to mean it.” I hung up and grabbed the keys to the Monte Carlo. Looked at Ryker’s note one more time.
If he was around, I’d tell him. But he wasn’t. And he was busy. And I’d promised him I’d stay out of trouble . . . but I wasn’t the one in trouble. Someone was going to be, but it wouldn’t goddamned be me.
I had shit to do.
No one stopped me when I drove off Havoc’s land. I don’t know what I expected—alarms or a giant net or a row of bikers with their arms crossed, staring me down.
But when none of that happened, I breathed, drove, and planned.
First stop was Edmund’s. By the time I got there, it was the end of the day at the garage. I knew I’d find him in his office, on the phone, talking about absolutely nothing.
I slammed in, and he dropped the phone. He fumbled for the drawer where he kept the gun, but the drawer was always locked, which made grabbing it really inconvenient for him in situations like this.
“Get the hell out of here, Rush,” he told me.
I closed the door behind me and advanced. He got up, tried to go around me, but I stopped him, slamming him facedown on the desk. I held him there by the back of his neck. “What the fuck are you pulling by turning in Noah to the Hangmen?”
“I’m not taking the blame for that piece of shit. Should know better than to involve the MC.”
“What’s your game, Eddie? Why fuck your own shipment over? But I guess you’re not—you’re fucking Noah over . . . pitting the MC against whoever your buyer is?” The pieces fell together. He didn’t give anything away, but he didn’t need to.
The thing was, his buyers had to be some major players for him to think he could get a foothold over the MC. Those kinds of buyers were people Noah and I didn’t want to be involved with. People an M
C could handle, but not us alone. “Call your dogs off Noah. I’ll figure shit out with the Hangmen.”
“You think you’re so tough because of Havoc? You think they’ll stand behind a punk like you?”
I leaned in and snarked, “I never needed Havoc to be tough, Eddie. What I do need is for you to stop using Noah to create your own war.”
“He signed on for this. Fuck up can’t even steal a car. He had one job.”
“He can’t steal shit when he’s been sabotaged.”
“He owes a car.”
“And then he’s done. Got it?”
“What’re you going to do, Rush? What the hell can you do to me?”
That’s when I stopped talking and showed him instead. First thing, I beat the shit out of him. I left him semistanding, though, and I made sure he knew I took his shipping invoices, plus other proof of his stealing that he left right out in the open. Overconfident asshole.
I left him bleeding and drove to Hangmen’s MC.
If Havoc was tucked away from the world, the Hangmen appeared to be housed right out in the open. I drove right up to the clubhouse, only to find out it was basically a decoy meant to fool most everyone. Including me.
It was disconcerting, sitting in a private room I’d been forcefully escorted to, without being allowed to explain who I was or why I was there. By the time the door opened, I’d mentally prepped reciting my name, rank, and serial number mantra a thousand times.
Casey strolled in, looking way too pleased with himself. “Finally got bored with Havoc?”
Yeah, awkward. “That’s not exactly why I’m here.”
“You’re here to clean up Noah’s mess.”
Okay, so maybe not so awkward. Or covert, given the fact that I’d walked in here alone, the doors had locked closed behind me, and I was pretty much trapped. I couldn’t tell if I was getting careless or bolder. “I came here as soon as I could to try to clean up what Edmund inadvertently fucked all to hell.”
Casey slammed his fists on the table in front of me. “Edmund? Edmund didn’t steal my fucking car, Rush.” Holy hell, I didn’t want to run into Casey in a dark alley.
I tried to reason with him. “You and I both know Edmund’s running some kind of game to pit you against his buyer. I don’t know why. All I want to do is call off the bounty on my friend’s head.”
Casey’s eyes narrowed a bit at the corners. “So you’re here to make things right?”
“Yes. I want to make things right. I will make things right.”
“So you’re the rough trade?”
“What the . . .” I sat back. “Fuck no. I want to give you back the car.”
Casey crossed his arms like a recalcitrant child. With a handgun. “I like the trade better.”
He wasn’t exactly giving me an option. More telling me what was going to happen.
I tried to ignore that piece of it and lure him back onto the subject of his car. “So if I return your car, can you forget Noah’s involvement?”
“Forget? Do you have any idea what kind of shit he’s involved in? We’re the least of his problems.”
“Good. So we’ve got a deal?”
“Think about what I said, Rush. That’s my deal.”
From my perspective, Think about it seemed to mean Come back and let me fuck you or we’ll kill Noah.
To be fair, I’d had worse propositions. Either way, Noah had to get the car back to me so I could get it back to Casey, because maybe the guy would feel differently or get sentimental when he saw his car. “I’ll think about it,” I told Casey.
Casey stared down at me. “Ryker know you’re here?”
“Yeah, right,” I muttered. “That would’ve gone over really well.”
Casey jerked his head toward the window behind me. I froze for a second, unable to turn around. He lifted a brow. Finally, I stood and glanced outside to see several Harleys. One of them was Ryker’s. With Ryker on it.
I turned back to Casey. Honestly, I didn’t know which one of them I was in more trouble with at the moment.
Casey merely shrugged, a self-satisfied smile on his face. “Like I said, consider it. Maybe after this, you won’t have any place else to go.” Then he told the guy guarding the door, “Let Rush out the front gate.”
Right into Ryker’s arms. “I could just slip out the back,” I suggested.
“I don’t think so,” was all Casey said before pointing me in Ryker’s direction.
I walked out, not sure if I was supposed to go to Ryker or to the Monte Carlo. And I was honestly trying to wait for direction and not piss him off in front of his MC, out of respect, not because I wanted to be ordered around.
See, I could learn things.
Ryker made the decision easy by motioning to the car. I got in and drove back to Havoc, while Ryker and the other bikes formed a semicircle around me. Protective . . . and not letting me out of their sight.
It gave new meaning to the word cage.
ou,” was all Ryker could say to me when I got out of the car in front of his cabin. I’d been hoping that maybe seeing the Monte Carlo would remind him of the gesture and then he’d soften.
That seemed to be a total pipe dream.
Besides Ryker, the rest of the bikes had also followed me. And blocked the car in, like I was thinking about gunning it and running or something.
Again.
There was Ryker. And Sweet. And the guy I’d fought—the biggest one, at least, who Ryker turned to now and said, “What the fuck does, ‘Don’t let him out of your sight.’ mean to you, Tug?”
His answer? “I wasn’t about to stop him from beating the shit out of Eddie.”
Okay, that was good. I’d expected Tug to throw me under the bus and run me over.
Apparently, that was Sweet’s job, because he demanded, “And how does that help us? It got Eddie more pissed at Rush and Noah. And then, Rush . . . you went to Hangmen’s and what did you do once you strolled in?”
I swallowed and wondered if they’d been there the entire time. “I asked to see Casey. He told me I could come see him anytime.”
Ryker and Sweet just stared at me. I’d pushed my luck, I knew, but I swore I saw the gleam in Ryker’s eye . . . like the punishment would fit the crime.
I pulled the manifests I’d taken from Edmund’s office out of my pocket and handed them to Sweet. “I was going to give them to Casey when I dropped his car back.”
“Where is his car?” Ryker asked slowly, his voice a dark, dangerous rumble.
I turned to him. “Noah’s got to get it back.”
Sweet raised a brow. “Get it back?”
This was like a tennis match. “It’s already in a container. Noah’s supposed to deliver the final car tonight, then the shipment goes.” I paused. “Noah’s first choice wasn’t Casey’s car. But the one he was supposed to lift was totaled in an accident. And then he was desperate.”
“And you figured going out on your own was a good idea?” Ryker asked.
“To be fair, he kind of covered everything,” said my new biker BFFL, Tug. Ryker and Sweet stared at BFFL-Tug. BFFL-Tug looked at me, and we both shrugged.
“Think we can use this to get rid of Edmund?” I asked all of them.
“There’s no ‘we’ in this,” Ryker told me.
I nodded seriously. “Oh, so you want me to do it?”
BFFL-Tug smiled, Sweet looked like he wanted to strangle me, and Ryker basically dragged me the hell away from them and into his cabin.
He let me go for a second to call out, “I’ll handle it, Sweet,” before closing the door and advancing on me again. I didn’t have many places to go, except against the big oak table. So I stayed there, half sitting, trying to pretend I wasn’t freaked out over everything I’d done.
It was one thing to do what I’d done. Another to realize I’d done it. Before Ryker could ask me, I told him my theory about Edmund, that he was trying to actively start a war between the MC and his own buyers, in hopes of wiping out the compe
tition at the docks. And he was using Noah, hoping to reinvolve me, and by extension, Havoc and Hangmen.
“That’s exactly Eddie’s style,” he said. “Always has been, from his New York days.”
I was about to ask how he knew that, but hell, from this point on I’d just assume that Ryker knew goddamned everything.
“What were you thinking, Sean, walking right up to the Hangmen and handing yourself over to them?”
“I didn’t exactly hand myself to them. I told Casey I’d get his car back. And Casey did let me go out to you,” I pointed out. Even when I wanted to slip out the back instead.
Ryker was staring at me again. Sometimes it hit me randomly how big he really was. Brick wall big. “Casey expects you back.”
I couldn’t deny that. “I didn’t actually agree to his terms.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Ryker growled. “I fucking know what kind of terms Casey expects from you, that motherfucker, and it’s not happening, because I don’t share what’s mine.”
I stood then, my hand up. “Hold on there. Yours? You serious with that shit?”
The growl that followed informed me that Ryker was very serious. “It’s not like I haven’t used that term with you before.”
True, but . . . “I thought maybe that was just a . . . sex thing.”
Ryker growled again.
“No, I mean, look, it’s definitely hot in that context, but you mean it, like, for real. That’s like beyond commitment. Married people don’t go around talking about owning each other.”
“But I am.” He walked toward me, and I held my hand up. Then I backed myself against the wall, assuming the position and motioned for him to come forward. He stared at me for a long moment, dumbfounded maybe, or thinking of ways to make me pay. And then he did come forward, put his hands on either side of me and promised, “If Casey touches you, I’ll fucking kill him. Understood?”
I nodded. Vigorously. I wasn’t starting a Havoc-Hangmen war like I was some kind of man version of Helen of Troy. “Listen, you know that Casey’s not battling for my heart, Ryker. All right? I’d never pretend he was—not even for Noah. And he’d never ask me to.”