by Marla Monroe
Their parents didn’t know what to think of them. Instead of teaching at some prestigious university or designing new ways to create more energy or some shit like that, they rode motorcycles in a gang.
“Hey! Is that the truck?” Cassius asked, grabbing his attention.
Merrick walked over to the middle of the road and listened. He didn’t see anything right away, but heard the unmistakable sound of motorcycles. A few seconds later, the unique sound of the truck Dominic and Reese had redone for Raven could be heard amid the rumble of bikes. He grinned.
“Yep. Raven’s with them. Sounds like at least two bikes and the truck,” he said.
“What the hell did you tell them?” Cassius asked frowning up at him.
“Just told them to send one of the trucks, that we’d found a woman on the side of the road who was beaten up pretty badly.”
“Must be a dull night at the clubhouse,” his brother grumbled.
“Well, we are going to be taking her to the hospital. With the problems we’ve had with The Skulls, I’m not surprised they sent backup for us.”
The noise of the posse heading their way prevented them saying anything more. To his relief, they stopped a few yards down the road to keep from stirring up too much dust. Everyone cut their bikes off but the truck lights remained on as whoever was driving slowly inched forward until they had the back door even with where Cassius was leaning over the unconscious woman.
To his surprise, Raven jumped down from the cab with a first aid kit in her arms. Reece climbed out of the driver’s side. Dominic joined everyone forming a semicircle around Cassius and the woman.
“Hey, guys. Move over, Cassius, and let me see.” Raven knelt next to Cassius. “Hell, someone’s beaten the hell out of her. Why is there tape wrapped around her chest?”
“She’s probably got some broken ribs. We didn’t want to chance puncturing something when we moved her to the truck,” Cassius explained.
“Didn’t want to put the tape on her skin, so we just wrapped it around her shirt,” Merrick added.
“Good thinking. So you think she might have some broken ribs?” Raven asked feeling around the woman’s neck.
“Yeah. Pretty sure she does by the look of the bruising. Couldn’t find anything else other than her face. She was burning up when we first found her, but with the sun going down, she’s cooled off a good bit,” Cassius explained.
“I can’t really do anything for her to help until we get her to the hospital. Let’s move her, guys.” Raven started to get up, but Dominic just plucked her off the ground and stood her back up.
Merrick covered a sneer at how the president of The Ghost Riders MC catered to the woman. His vice president, Reece was just as bad. The two men shared Raven between them and seemed happy doing it. Hell, he and Cassius had joked around about doing the same thing if they ever found a woman who could hold their interest long enough. Most of the women they encountered, being bikers, didn’t appeal to them. All they wanted was someone to take care of them and keep them in shoes and purses.
Merrick winced when he looked at Raven. Well, not all of them were like that. Raven could care less about purses or shoes. She was an erotic romance writer and forgot to eat if someone didn’t drag her ass away from her computer. Ginger, Ajax and Murdock’s old woman, wasn’t like that either. She worked out at the camp they were running and was in school to be a paramedic for the place.
Of course, in his defense, they weren’t the normal biker chicks that hung around the club house or biker bars. Maybe one day they’d happen on a woman that could keep them occupied for more than a few nights. He grinned. Trying to find her had proven to be fun.
“Merrick, help us lift this board to get her in the truck without jarring her so much,” Cassius yelled out.
He grunted and helped Reece, Dom, and his brother lift the board. They nearly threw her off when they picked it up. She couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds soaking wet in addition to the board. It looked like one of the boards they kept in the garage for carting heavy parts around.
They lifted it to the back door of the truck that Raven had thrown open then pushed it across the seat where Turk waited on the other side to pull from that end. Once they had her settled with the seatbelts secured around the board, Reece took the driver’s seat and Raven climbed in next to him.
“We’ll meet y’all at the hospital,” Dom told them. “Let’s ride.”
He and Cassius quickly joined the other men on their bikes. Less than a minute later, Dom and Turk led the truck toward the hospital with them riding the back end, eating dust. Even with the full face helmet, wearing a bandana around his nose and mouth was necessary on the older roads in Texas.
It took nearly an hour to make it to town. Reece drove the speed limit or under the entire time. No doubt they were trying to keep the ride as smooth as was possible on the rain-rutted road. He hoped she wasn’t conscious for most of it. The damn road waved like a washboard in places. When they rode down it, they normally kept to the edges where it wasn’t as bad, but you couldn’t do that with a truck.
When they pulled up outside the emergency room, a sheriff’s office SUV rolled up behind them. Merrick groaned. They didn’t need this. He hated dealing with cops, county or otherwise.
“What’s going on, Dominic?” Sheriff Platt asked as he got out of the vehicle. “Who’s hurt and how did they get hurt?”
“What are you, man? The Ghost Riders’ personal bike chaser?” Merrick snarled.
“Back off,” Platt advised.
“Cool it, Merrick.” Dom turned back to the sheriff as a couple of nurses rolled a stretcher out to the truck.
Merrick followed Cassius over to where they were about to pull the woman out of the back seat. He could hear Dom explaining to the sheriff what was going on. He didn’t much care what the ass-wipe thought. He assumed that because they were all bikers they were dumb criminals. Idiot.
He and Cassius followed the gurney into the emergency room all the way to the curtained off room they were going to put her in. No one even tried to stop them, but then as big as he and his brother were, it would have been a lost cause anyway. They each stood nearly six and a half feet tall. Though he was the older but fourteen months, his brother actually had a half inch on him.
“Tell us what you know,” the nurse with dirty-blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail demanded as they started removing the woman’s clothes.
The dark-haired nurse wielded a pair of scissors and went to work on the tape job as Cassius reviewed what he knew. Once they were down to cutting away her pants, he and Cassius automatically turned their backs. They’d seen enough of her chest already to know what to expect there. She was a black and blue mess. You couldn’t miss her impressive breasts though. Even with all the bruising, she had some amazing tits.
“So you don’t know if she was hit by a car or thrown from one,” ponytail said.
“Nope, other than she said she walked there when we asked,” Cassius said.
“How far was she from the nearest town or house?” the darker-haired nurse asked.
He and Cassius exchanged looks. “At least ten or twelve miles,” he told them.
“Okay, you can go now. X-ray’s here to shoot some film, and if you want your little boys to keep working, you need to leave,” ponytail said, pushing them toward the curtained door.
The X-ray tech got ready to push his portable machine into the room as they walked out. “That’s means that if you want children one day…”
“We’re not stupid. We know what it means, dickhead,” Merrick snarled.
The tech’s eyes grew large when he got a good look at them. He had obviously been looking the other way when they’d first walked out of the room. Now he scrambled all the way in and got to work.
“Still scaring the kiddies, Merrick?” Reece asked with a grin.
“Idiots. All of them,” he said with a growl.
“How’s she doing?” Dom asked, walking up with Rave
n.
“They’re taking X-rays now. Haven’t seen a doctor yet,” his brother told them.
“She’s still alive. That’s something,” Raven pointed out. “She wouldn’t have made it this far if you hadn’t stopped and helped her.”
Merrick figured it was all going to be for nothing. She looked bad, and at the rate they were doing anything constructive, she’d be dead before they figured out what was wrong with her. He wanted to yell at them to get off their asses, but knew it would only get them kicked out if he did. Cassius turned and looked at him with the same frustration apparent on his face that Merrick was feeling.
“Turk and I are going back. We’re waiting to hear what the news is on The Skulls from the others. With your report being a big fat zero, we’re still not sure what they’re up to.” Dom nodded over to where Reece and Raven were talking to a nurse they knew through Ginger. “Reece and Raven are staying if you want to head back. They’ll keep us informed.”
Merrick didn’t like the idea of leaving her like that. He stared over at his brother. Cassius nodded at him then turned back to Dom.
“Unless you need us there, we’re going to stick around here,” he said.
Dom shrugged. “Suit yourselves. Don’t stir any shit up, guys.”
Cassius grinned. “We’re the quiet ones, remember?”
Dom shot them the bird and walked over to talk to Reece then gave Raven a hard kiss and a pat on the ass before he and Turk walked out. Reece looked in their direction with a question in his gaze before turning back to whatever Raven and the nurse were talking about.
“Any idea why we’re still here?” Cassius asked, staring at the curtained-off doorway.
“Nope. Just feel like we need to be here,” he said.
They stared at the doorway until the X-ray tech backed out with the machine and all but ran to the elevator across the room. Before they could go back inside, an older man cut them off as he raced inside ahead of them. He looked at his brother. That didn’t bode well for the woman. When they pushed through the curtains, it was to find what looked like chaos erupting during a tornado.
“Get another line in her right now. She’s crashing!” the man shouted at the nurses as he listened to her chest.
* * * *
River tried to pry her eyes open, but they were just too heavy. Her entire body hurt. Had she fallen off a mountain or something? She knew she was in a hospital by the smell. They all smelled the same, so she didn’t have a clue where she was or if she was even in the states or not.
“Has she woken up yet?” a soft, feminine voice asked.
“Not yet. Her fingers have twitched a lot in the last few minutes though,” a gruff, unfamiliar male voice answered.
Well, that settles that question. I’m in an English-speaking country and it’s probably the US by the sound of the accent. Wonder what coast? Doesn’t sound like the East, that’s for sure.
Everything softened around her again until she couldn’t hear the usual hospital sounds or anyone talking anymore. The distinctive medicinal odor faded as well. River felt as if she were floating on a cloud in the sky or maybe a raft on a stream. Had she just dreamed the other or was she dreaming now?
Something nagged at her subconscious, but as hard as she tried to focus on it, the thought eluded her. All she managed to glean from it was that there was danger. Danger to her? To someone else? From what?
Again everything changed, and she floated along, not able to really concentrate on anything except the vast nothingness that surrounded her. If she had her camera, she wouldn’t even be able to capture it on film because there was nothing there to photograph. Could you take a picture of nothing? Where was her camera anyway? For some reason, that was important.
Pain exploded across her ribs, drawing her back to the hospital at turbo speed. Her eyes flew open as she cried out.
“Hey! You’re being too rough. You’re hurting her.” It was the same gruff voice she’d heard from earlier.
“If you don’t move back, I’m going to call for security to have you thrown out,” a different male voice said. “She’s got busted ribs, they’re going to hurt.”
“She’s a person, not a piece of furniture you can throw around,” the gruff sounding man said.
“I think you better leave before he loses control and shows you what a piece of furniture feels like when he moves it.” This came from yet another male voice that sounded similar to the first one, but not as rough sounding.
She heard the sound of the door closing loudly then nothing. River opened her eyes again but only saw the railing on the bed and a window that had the curtains closed. She heard the sound of shoes first then a body walked around to the side of the bed she could see. It was a big body, a very big body.
“Are you awake?” the man from earlier asked in that growly voice. He bent over so that she was finally able to see the face of the voice she’d heard.
He had shaggy black hair with a prominent five-o’clock shadow along his jaw and chin. His facial features could have adorned any of the many sculptures of Michelangelo’s beautiful men with his classical bone structure. She gazed into the most amazing blue eyes she’d ever seen on someone with black hair. They looked almost unreal. River couldn’t take her eyes off of them.
“Can you hear me?” he asked. Those amazing blue eyes darkened slightly with worry.
River tried to speak but ended up coughing which hurt like a son of a bitch. Tears leaked from her eyes before she could control them. She hated to cry. It served no purpose. She cleared her throat, determined to answer the dark-haired demigod standing before her.
“Awake. Thirsty,” she managed to get out without dissolving into a fit of coughing again.
“Here.” The other voice that sounded so similar to her blue-eyed demigod spoke from the foot of the bed.
She tried to look down, but it hurt her head to move too much. Instead, the other man moved closer to the first man and bent down to stare at her. She couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped. They could have been twins. She had to be dead and in heaven for there to be two such amazingly handsome men standing next to her bed. To her surprise, the second giant of a man offered her a mug with a straw.
“It’s water. You can’t have a lot at one time, but you can have a few sips.” He held the straw to her lips so that she could suck on it.
Cold water bathed her parched mouth as she slowly got the hang of sucking on the straw around her busted lips. He pulled the thing away after she’d filled her mouth. Once she’d managed to swallow the welcome water down her raw throat, she licked her sore lips in preparation to ask for more. He surprised her by placing the straw between her lips again. This time she sipped a smaller amount and swallowed then one more time before he again took it away.
“That’s all for now, sweet thing. Don’t want your stomach rebelling. Throwing up would hurt those ribs of yours for sure,” he said.
“You told us yesterday that your name was River. Did we understand you right?” the first hunk asked.
“Yes. It’s River James. Don’t laugh. My parents didn’t ask my advice at the time.” She winced at how raspy her voice sounded.
“Well, we can’t say much,” the second man said with a chuckle. “My name is Cassius and my brother’s name is Merrick.”
She gawked at them. “Like Cassius Dio, the Greek author of the history of Rome?” She looked up at Merrick. “Like Frank Merrick, the English pianist or James Merrick, the English poet?” she asked.
They stared at her as if she’d grown a huge wart on her nose. If she hadn’t hurt so badly, River might have felt her nose to be sure there wasn’t one.
“What?” she asked, wishing her voice didn’t sound so scratchy.
“You know about Greek and English literature?” the one named Merrick asked.
“Yeah.” She had to clear her throat again. “Guess I look pretty ratty right now.”
“It’s not that. I’ve never met anyone outside of our parents’ circle
s who knew who we were named after before,” Cassius said with a grin.
River looked at Merrick. “So is it the poet or the pianist?” she asked.
“Don’t have a clue. Mom and Dad still argue over which one of them named me.” His gorgeous blue eyes twinkled.
She sighed and closed her eyes, suddenly too tired to keep them open any longer.
“Do you need something for pain?” Cassius asked her.
“No, just tired.” She wasn’t sure if he heard her or not or even if she’d said the words out loud.
“I’m not telling that bastard she woke up. I don’t want him back in her room. He’s worthless as a nurse,” Merrick said in a gruff whisper.
“I agree, but if you threaten him, you’re going to get us thrown out, man. Cool it. I’ll handle it,” Cassius said.
River smiled to herself. They were cute. She wondered about the T-shirts devoted to heavy metal and the leather vests, though. It made her wonder what they did for a living. Of course it didn’t really matter. Once she was well enough to go home, she’d never see them again. And wasn’t that a shame. They were fine-looking specimens of the male population from what little she’d been able to see. More than likely, once her head cleared up some more, they wouldn’t appear as good looking as she thought they were. Her eyesight was still kind of fuzzy around the edges.
She realized that she’d forgotten ask them where she was and how she’d ended up in the hospital. She’d have to ask when she was able to wake up again. Right now, sleep was pulling on her pretty hard. With the way her head ached and her ribs hurt, sleep was probably the best thing for her. She detested drugs. They left her feeling flaky for days.
River relaxed into the spreading warmth and let it take her away. Reality would intrude on her soon enough. She’d learned from somewhere that it was best to savor the floating time when you could get it.
* * * *
When River opened her eyes again, it was obviously dark outside. Her room seemed to have a night light somewhere near the floor because the light seemed to blossom from beneath her bed. She lay on the opposite side as the last time she’d woken up and was thankful she hadn’t been awake for that position change.