ROUGHNECK: A DARK MOTORCYCLE CLUB ROMANCE

by Nikki Wild

  “I’m not fucking him tonight!” I declared, covering my ears and retreating from the room.

  Natalie was loudly continuing her awful old English accent and reciting pseudo Shakespearean gibberish, but I playfully muffled out the noise as I changed into something more flattering than loose pajamas.

  Confident in my selection, I modeled it off for her beside the couch.

  Natalie responded in her most outlandishly regal voice, accentuating practically every syllable: ““Oh, darrrling, you look magnificent.”

  After a smug, countering smile, I snatched up my keys and bid them goodnight. As far as I was aware, I was coming back, but I didn’t want to make any presumptions about the night.

  Especially when Dalton was mad at me.

  Pulling up the directions on my smartphone, I kicked my car into drive and navigated into the streets. It was awfully convenient that he didn’t live very far at all. Even with some congestion, it was insisting that I could be knocking on his door within a tentative fifteen minutes.

  After a few red lights, some jackass almost sideswiping me to get into my lane, and a flock of pedestrians stalling traffic for a moment, I was pulling in front of his home.

  Dalton appeared to be renting a small house, located on the edge of the city. There was enough room for maybe two cars in the driveway – I could see his motorcycle, as well as a car I didn’t recognize. Makes sense that he has one of each, I figured to myself.

  Instead of trying to fit in there, I found a spot a couple of houses down and parallel parked out in front.

  My confidence wavered for the first time since leaving my apartment. Confronted with actually seeing him again within a matter of seconds, I wasn’t precisely sure what I was going to say to him.

  Way to think this through, Clara.

  I double-checked the address twice before knocking on his front door. His house was wrapped in white wooden siding, with his front patio receding beneath the overhang of the roof. There were a couple of windows, with the curtains drawn, but I could see light filtering out.

  A shadow moved. The curtain drew apart slightly, and I couldn’t make out who was behind it. But the silhouette moved back into place without greeting the door.

  Oh great, I thought to myself. I’ve gone through all this effort, and he just doesn’t want to see me at all?

  Swallowing my frustration, I knocked again. This time, the silhouette moved out of sight, and there came the sound of creaking footsteps from just on the other side of the door.

  I noticed the peephole, and stepped back from it to give a better look, although I fully expected to be recognized.

  “Hi?” I heard from the other side of the door. The voice belonged to someone else – a guy, somewhere between both our ages.

  “I’m here for Dalton?” I replied, guessing I was speaking to a roommate. “Do I have the right house? This is where he said he lived.”

  I heard the sound of the door unlocking, and it creaked open enough for a grimy face to peer out. The stranger was clearly trying to grow out a beard, but he wasn’t getting anything more than a thick, scruffy mess. His eyes were jittery, and he could stand to wash his face off.

  “For Dalton? Who’re you?”

  I sighed.

  “My name’s Clara. Is he here?”

  The guy looked at me suspiciously before shouting over his shoulder. He conspicuously kept his eyes glued to me, as if I were the shady one here.

  “Hey, Dalton? Some girl’s here for you. Clara? Ring a bell? Want me to make her go away?”

  A muffled response came, and the guy looked over at me with a half-sneer. “Uh, come in, I guess. Make yourself at home. Don’t touch my stuff.”

  “This is my first time here,” I told him in barely-covered exasperation. “How am I gonna know what things are yours?”

  The strange roommate froze, apparently contemplating that. “You know what? Don’t touch anything then. My stuff is mine. Not yours.”

  “Duly noted,” I replied crisply, following him inside. He pointed me towards the couch as he took up residence in a comfortable recliner, snatching up the remote. He turned the volume back up on a TV that practically dwarfed even our own, and I glanced around at my surroundings.

  The house was decorated sparsely, but it was surprisingly clean for a place where this character lived. Clearly, I didn’t have to worry about touching any of his things… there’s no way that any of this belonged to him.

  The furniture was nice and reasonably expensive, with the exception of the filthy chair that the stranger occupied. There were some throw pillows on the couch and a folded blanket, lying over the back; it seemed like it had been bought without much consideration, just to fill the space and look good.

  The walls were a soft opaque tan color, which worked well with the furniture selections and the sprawling Persian-style rug. It seemed that the whole house bore beautiful hardwood floors, which probably meant that it was going to be chilly as fuck when the winter finally came.

  As for mental stimulation, a nearby bookcase carried a number of interesting books, including a lot of literary classics and authors: Mark Twain, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Isaac Asimov, and a number of others whom I barely recognized.

  While I remained seated, glancing around my new environment and taking in a few pieces of art on the walls, I heard a lazy clamoring from deeper into the house.

  A door opened, and heavy footsteps brought someone our way until Dalton’s face finally peered in around the doorway.

  “Pete, I thought you said Clara was–”

  He looked surprised when he saw me on the couch. “Wait. Clara, why didn’t you just come back here?”

  “I, uh, was pointed this way?”

  His face settled on his roommate. “Look, Pete, the next time I tell you to let someone in and send her my way, I’d like you to actually let them in and send them my way.”

  Pete shrugged, his eyes glued to the screen.

  Covering his face and sighing, Dalton motioned for me to follow him. He led me down a long hallway and towards the light of an open door, presumably his bedroom.

  “You’ll have to forgive my, uh, guest,” Dalton replied tersely.

  “Is he your roommate?” I asked.

  “For a little while, I guess,” he conceded. “This place is mine alone, but Pete is an old marine buddy of mine. He’s suffering from some flashbacks from his days in the service… something I can sympathize with.” He paused a moment, changing his tone. “Pete’s getting back on his feet, and I told him that he could stay here a month or two. Turns out that he’s a bit skittish of unfamiliar company, I guess.”

  “He was giving me the third-degree, that’s for sure. Ignored me when I knocked. I thought that was you peering at me through the curtains.”

  “It was that bad?” He sighed. “Alright… I’ll have a word with him about that. I don’t need my weird friend scaring away the company and not opening the door for guests…”

  Dalton held his door open for me, and I stepped into his bedroom. A large king-sized bed dominated the space. The walls bore a couple of posters – mostly models, sexily strutting for the camera. In the corner, there was a desk, set up with a computer; a display nearby had some awards on it, along with what looked like his Marines graduation gear.

  There was another flat-screen TV on an entertainment stand, facing away from the bed. Although smaller than the living room set, it was still almost as big as our own television in Natalie’s apartment. He had it paused on some sort of nature documentary.

  “I know it’s not much, but with this whole house to myself, I never know how to fill the space,” Dalton shrugged.

  “No, I mean, it looks nice.”

  He smirked. “Yeah. Nice. This looks nice. I’d hate to see what you think bad looks like. Anyway, what are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to apologize for earlier,” I told him quietly. “Sorry if I came off a bit rude. And I just wanted to see you.”

  “You
wanted to see me, huh?” Dalton chuckled, although his eyes told me that he was pleased to hear this. “Come on over, then. The bed’s warm. Hope you don’t mind a little Meerkat Manor.”

  “You’re watching Meerkat Manor?” I asked, amused. I didn’t really know that much about the show. From what I recalled, it dramatized the lives of a pack of meerkats in the Serengeti.

  “Totally. This is my jam when I need a pick-me-up,” Dalton smiled. He kicked out across the huge bed, his back up against the wall. I settled down beside him, keeping just enough distance between us.

  “This is so plush,” I thought aloud as I got comfortable on his bedding.

  “Memory foam,” he chuckled.

  “You’ve got a rental house, expensive TVs, and memory foam mattresses? What kind of crazy inheritance do you have?”

  Dalton coughed involuntarily.

  “Oh, I just have a big bank account, thanks to eight back-to-back years in the Marines,” he answered. “I mean, yeah, I probably splurged a little much, but I figured I’d treat myself now and get it all out of the way.”

  “I see that,” I replied, looking around briefly.

  The computer in the corner didn’t look particularly impressive, and besides some nice furniture and the televisions, it seemed like everything else was just here to fill the space attractively. Even the vehicles outside weren’t too crazy, although I was guessing now that the car probably belonged to his roommate.

  “So, what do you wanna do?” Dalton asked, peering at me from the corner of his eye.

  “I dunno,” I answered truthfully.

  There was no way that I’d come here to fuck him, especially with the complication between us… but here I was, seated beside him in the most comfortable bed I’d ever beheld. We were watching some nature show together, the silence between us already starting to crackle with desire.

  “Well, I’m fine with us just continuing to watch this for the moment,” he shrugged, letting the next episode queue up.

  “Okay. That sounds good.”

  The show continued on, and I found myself questioning what I’d hoped to get out of the night. This was my first time in his home, and I was here in his bed… pretending that I didn’t want his strong, handsome arms around me.

  But we haven’t been seeing each other for long, I tried to reason to myself. And then there’s the matter of our parents… no reason to fuck THAT up.

  No matter what, my logic couldn’t stand up against the feverous craving that was building up inside me… the yearning need to take things further.

  Although he thought he was being coy, I could tell that he was watching me more than the show. His eyes kept subtly tracing my body, and I knew that he was itching to pull me up against him.

  “I’m glad you came,” he quietly told me.

  “You know, I’m glad that I came, too,” I nodded. My lips started to betray me when they continued: “I’ve been dying to see you.”

  “Is that so?” He subtly dragged the words out.

  I nodded. “Yeah. It’s been on my mind all weekend. That’s why I didn’t understand earlier… I just wanted to be around you again.”

  “You’ve been on mine too,” he confessed, pulling me a little closer. “And there’s something I’ve been wanting to do that entire time…”

  “Oh yeah?” I asked, feeling my cheeks go flush with pleasure. “What might that… be…?”

  I let the words drift as he tenderly gazed into my eyes, leaning forward. He pulled me into a deep, passionate kiss that felt as if it was setting off every last nerve ending across my skin, and my arms wrapped around his neck as he pushed me down into his comfortable bed…

  9

  Kissing Clara again proved to me that the sensations I felt the first time weren’t just some fluke. I felt alive when my lips were on hers, in a way that I hadn’t experienced before… not with previous girlfriends, flings, or one-night stands.

  It was real.

  The moment that I realized this, pulling her down into the bed with me, I felt significantly both better and worse about not telling her about the proposal. I wanted to get everything out of this that I could, regardless of what our parents did or didn’t do.

  Yeah, it was selfish. But guess what?

  You might have noticed that I’m actually kind of a selfish guy.

  I didn’t push any further moves on her that night. Time wasn’t on my side; there was no way I was going to scare her off before she found out about the impending wedding.

  We simply enjoyed ourselves together, keeping all of our clothes on and basking in their collective warmth and the emotion of our bodies. I tasted her mouth, nipping her bottom lip between my teeth and sliding my tongue along hers, biting at her earlobe...

  When daylight streamed through the crack in my curtains, pouring along my face, I realized that we had fallen asleep together. Clara was nestled up against me, her ass pushed into my hips as I woke up spooning her.

  I realized that I was nursing one hell of a morning erection. Oh, what I would have given to rip her jeans off and plow that rock-hard pillar of demand straight into her wet, willing pussy…

  Instead, I struggled to will that bad son of a bitch down, focusing on how angelic she looked in the semi-darkness. Her chest was slowly rising and falling with her deep slumber, and with every exhalation came a very subtle, almost inaudible groan of air.

  Tenderness overcame me. Feeling the pressure of her sleeping body, and the delicate sound of her breathing… it was all casting a spell over me.

  I feared that I was falling in love with her.

  Fate be damned, I can’t let this girl become too important to me, I thought to myself. But it was no use. As it just so happened, I loved every stupid little fucking thing about Clara Campbell.

  She didn’t come willingly into my presence, and she clearly wasn’t going to put up with any shit from me. To someone used to effortless pussy on a platter, whenever I wanted it… I reveled in the unexpected challenge.

  Besides that, she was diligent, clever, and rather intelligent. As we’d talked into the night, she’d told me about the stresses and complications of her banquet server job; I’d related a few old war stories to her from my days in the service.

  It had been an eye-opening night for the two of us, and when we did slowly drift to sleep, we had great, big, stupid smiles on our faces. We had peered into each other, learned about one another, and were only pushed closer together by what we had learned.

  From one perspective, that was scary.

  From another… it was empowering.

  Either way, I couldn’t just watch her sleep all day, no matter how much I really wanted to. Reluctantly, I nudged her awake.

  “C’mon, sleepyhead. Time to get up.”

  Clara looked up at me groggily, stifling a yawn. As she slowly came to, alertness gripped her.

  “Wait – Dalton? Where am I?”

  “My bed,” I replied with amusement.

  “What? I fell asleep here? What time is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered, growing slightly annoyed now. “My phone’s on the charger. Why, is something wrong?”

  Clara rolled onto her back and fished her phone out of her pocket. Flicking it on, the time blared brightly into the room, temporarily distorting my vision.

  “Hey, could you give me a little warning next time, love?” I asked with aggravation, shielding my eyes with a hand.

  “Oh fuck, I was supposed to pick my work shifts last night!” She grumbled loudly. “Great. I completely fucking forgot about that, and now all the good ones are taken… I can’t believe this happened…”

  “Clara, look, it’s not a big deal,” I muttered. “Just pick them later. You want to grab a bite to eat or something?”

  She jumped up from my bed, grabbing her keys and wallet up off the floor. “I’ve gotta get going,” my guest unceremoniously muttered as an afterthought.

  Before I could respond, she was darting out the door and down the
hallway.

  Well, that’s fucking great, I growled inwardly.

  I wasn’t going to let her bullshit cloud up my day, so I climbed up and locked the front door, noticing that her car wasn’t out front. Wow, she left in a REAL hurry there, I bitterly thought to myself. Traipsing back towards my room, I swiftly made my bed before turning on the faucet and stepping into the piping-hot shower.

  What the fuck was THAT all about?

  I wasn’t a fan of taking long showers. By the time I’d rinsed the traces of oil and grease out of my hair, scrubbed my entire body down, and begun toweling off, I was still plenty furious with her. The wound was fresh, but it was also irritating that I’d let her damage my typically bulletproof ego.

  There was no getting around it: Clara’s sudden departure had rattled my cage more than I’d anticipated. But when I threw on some jeans and a casual tee and lifted my phone up off the charger, I noticed a text from her.

  > Sorry to leave so quickly. Work stuff. Had a good time with you.

  “Work stuff,” I murmured to myself angrily. “Well, no shit, Sherlock. I still think that could have probably waited…”

  I tossed the phone onto my couch and started picking up after Pete. While I was questioning why I let him stay with me for free, I scooped up the forgotten bag of potato crisps, the half-empty can of Rockstar, and the dishes he’d left on my coffee table.

  At least his mess is always centralized, I thought to myself. If he’d been one of those people to make a disaster zone of the entire house, I’d have him out on his ass faster than you can say Semper Fi.

  Focusing on his bullshit took my mind off of Clara, and when I finally wiped my hands clean and started wondering about her again, I realized that my subconscious had done that little trick with problem solving.

  You know how, when you’ve got a problem, and you distract yourself with something else for a little while, when you come back to the problem it’s sort of worked itself out?

  Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.

  My gut reaction had been to just ignore her for a few days, intentionally this time. Put her on the defensive. She knew she’d fucked up, given the apologetic text she’d sent.