Tempted by the Devil: Highway Titans MC

by Cora Black

  It was more of Ben’s fault, if he was being honest with himself. It was his responsibility to help Danielle, to get her off the drugs when things went too far, to make sure she never got on a bike by herself when she was high out of her mind and unable to slip past bullets. And he failed. He failed her. And now Uncle Wally was telling him he had to be a leader, he had to be in charge of all these young men. How could he lead anybody when he failed the person that meant the most?

  Wally put a hand on his back to comfort him, but Ben stiffened up more. He hated being touched unless it was in the form of a fist smacking against his face.

  “I just want to help you, Benny,” Uncle Wally said in a low voice. “All I want is to see you become the man you were meant to be.”

  Ben smirked humorlessly. “I’m already exactly the person I was meant to be. Fighting, fucking, making money— That’s what this club is all about, right? I do all that shit all the time. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  “It’s about more than that, Benny. The family—”

  “Fuck the family,” Ben said simply, keeping his voice down. “Fuck it. It’s a job. I do my work, but that’s it. You can forget about molding me into a new man.”

  Uncle Wally shook his head. “Too late, Ben. Already paid her.”

  Ben just laughed. “Well, tell her to keep it. I’m sure she won’t care. I’m not doing it, Wall. Period.”

  He got off the stool and finished his drink in one huge gulp before slamming it down on the table and marching away. He could faintly make out the sound of his uncle yelling after him, “You can’t walk away from this forever, son.”

  Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.

  Chapter Two

  Ben swung his leg over the side of the bike and slipped his helmet off, hanging it off the edge of the handlebar. The other men that rode into the desert with him that morning to pick up the goods were already inside the HT lounge, probably drinking in celebration. As usual, Ben planned to drink away the feeling of restlessness that plagued him. He wanted to get on his bike, ride away for hours and hours and days and days until the sand whipped his face raw and he didn’t even look like himself. So why don’t you do it? Why don’t you just go ahead and do it if you’re so fucking sick of this place? His inner voice pestered him like it did at least once a day. Maybe that’s why he drank so much— Just to get it to shut up.

  On his way into the lounge, he bumped shoulders with someone almost painfully hard. “Ay, watch it!” he shouted.

  “Oh, yes, of course, Your Highness,” the other man retorted sarcastically. Oh, great, it was Axel. That fucking bastard.

  Axel had been in the organization for five years now. He was an adoptee, someone accepted in rather than born into it through family lines. Even so, he acted like he’d been in his whole life, bossing around the boys like he’d been voted president. Most of the other boys were scared of Ben and shied away from any kind of confrontation, but not Axel. For now, Ben just scowled at him and kept walking. Maybe later I’ll teach him a thing or two about the Highway Titans.

  Ben went through the lounge, nodding in acknowledgement to the young bucks Noah and Tom on his way out to the back stairway. He took the steps two at a time up to his apartment in the loft.

  He walked in, tossing his backpack on the floor and marching over to his kitchen to grab a cold beer before he heard the sound of a throat being cleared.

  There, on his fucking sofa, sat Uncle Wally and a tall, leggy woman he’d never seen before.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” he barked at his uncle. Sure, Wally probably had a key to every room in the building, but he’d never barged in without asking before.

  “Sit down, Benny. We need to talk.”

  “And who the fuck is this?” Ben yelled, gesturing at the beautiful woman on his couch.

  The woman got to her feet, straightening her short dark dress so that less of her toned thighs showed. “I apologize, of course. It was rude to come in without introducing myself first. Charlotte Howard.”

  She offered her hand for Ben to take, but he just stared at it, then looked back at his uncle. “Who. The fuck. Is this?” he repeated.

  Uncle Wally cleared his throat again. “Last week, we discussed how to help you, remember?”

  Realization dawned on Ben like a cold shower hitting him right in the face. “Jesus, fuck. I told you no, Wally! I said no!”

  “It’s perfectly normal to be resistant to the idea at first,” Charlotte spoke up. “But I assure you that together we can reach some common ground and help you get to where you need to be.”

  “Oh, what’s that? Patented parole psychobabble? Save it,” Ben said, going into his kitchen to get his drink. He definitely needed one now.

  “Come on, Benny, we both know that you’re not happy. Why not try this, just once, to see if it works? She’s done a lot of—”

  “Yeah, I’m sure she’s babysat a ton of felons, but I ain’t one of them,” Ben said, pouring himself a shot and downing it so fast he almost gagged. “You really think I want to be followed around and told what to do? I’m 29 fucking years old, Unc.”

  “Then start acting like it,” Uncle Wally shot back, his voice icy cold. “It’s time to stop the fighting and the fucking and whatever bullshit you get into around here. It’s time to be a fucking man. If you can’t do it on your own, I’ll help you get there, even if I have to drag you kicking and screaming the whole way. Now, sit down and talk to this dame before she has to go home.”

  Ben poured himself another shot but just held it in his hands for the moment, too frustrated to drink. “You can’t force me to do anything, Uncle Wally. Isn’t that what you want from me? To be a leader, to be strong? How can I do that if I just do whatever the fuck you want?”

  “Ben—” Charlotte attempted to cut in.

  “Can it, lady!” Ben yelled before finally downing his drink. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I need. You don’t know what I want. You can’t help me.”

  Charlotte leaned her head to one side, brows furrowed. “You’re right. I don’t know what you need. But if we work together, we can figure it out.”

  “Nah, I don’t think so,” Ben said. “Sorry, Wally. I know you must have paid a shit ton of money to get her here, but there’s no fucking way anyone’s going to be following me around, let alone a fucking cop.”

  “Ben!” Wally protested, but Ben marched past him, back toward the stairs, running down into the main level of the clubhouse. That fucking asshole. Who the fuck did he think he was, going behind his back after Ben already told him no? He wasn’t going to be anyone’s pet project, let alone some woman who worked for the police. Nobody can force me to do any—

  A pair of wide, strong hands pushed against his back and slammed him into the wall next to the stairs, just out of sight of all of the partying club members in the neighboring room. Ben bit hard onto his tongue through the impact, tasting blood. He swallowed the thick and coppery fluid and turned around to face his assailant: an incensed Uncle Wally, breathing like he’d just run a marathon.

  “I will fucking tear you limb from limb, boy,” Uncle Wally growled, shoving Ben back into the brick wall, hard. As tough as Ben was, as many fights as he’d won over the past few years, there was still a part of him that was scared of his uncle.

  The other part of him wanted to bite back his fear and growl at him, tell him to fucking try it, knock his skull back into the wall until Ben bled.

  But he looked down into his uncle’s eyes and felt himself start to tremble at what he saw there. No, it wasn’t just the fact that he was serious about beating him to a pulp, although Ben could plainly see that in his uncle’s gaze. It was the terror there, the desperation. His uncle clearly wanted this more than Ben had ever known him to want anything.

  “What’s it gonna be, Benny?” Uncle Wally grunted, tightening a hand around Ben’s throat.

  Ben just shrugged. “I don’t know, Wall.”

  “Well, I do,” Wal
ly insisted, toughening his grip on Ben’s neck. “You better talk to her, at least once, or I will never speak to you again. You got that? Ever.”

  Ben sighed. If he wanted to, he could flex out of his uncle’s grasp and just gun it out of the clubhouse. Maybe it would be a good thing, leaving this all behind. Maybe Ben could finally be happy.

  But his uncle’s face was so raw and open. Angry yet so vulnerable, so breakable. If Ben walked out now, would it kill the old man? Would there be another person he loved, dead because of him?

  Ben shrugged, feigning indifference. “Fine. One time, if it’ll get you off my back. But you gotta promise to stop nagging my ass day and night. Okay, Wall?”

  Uncle Wally relaxed his grip, keeping one hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Okay, Benny. Okay. Now get on up there and talk to her.”

  “Tomorrow, okay?” Ben suggested, stepping out of Wally’s half-embrace. “I need to do stuff today, all right? Tomorrow, I’ll talk to her. Just not tonight.”

  “Benny,” Wally said in a warning tone of voice.

  “I promise, okay? You have my word. On Ma’s grave, I swear it. I’ll talk to her. Once.”

  Uncle Wally chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. “How about on Danielle’s? Can you promise me that? On Danielle’s grave?”

  Ben cleared his throat and nodded.

  “I need you to say it, Benny,” his uncle prompted.

  “Okay, okay. I swear, on Danielle’s grave, that I’ll give it a try. Happy?”

  Uncle Wally sighed deeply, nodded, and gave Ben space to walk past. “Thank you, Benny. You’re a good boy. You’ve always been a good boy.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Ben huffed, walking through the lounge at breakneck speed, ignoring the catcalls from the group of club ladies huddled around the bar.

  On his way out the door, who else should he run into again but fucking Axel. Axel, with his stupidly over-decorated jacket and his dumb wide grin. “Gee, sorry, boss!” Axel said in that same sarcastic tone, rubbing his own shoulder as if Ben had hit him too hard.

  “Shut up,” Ben grunted, trying to step around Axel and get to his bike.

  But Axel stepped in front of him, getting too close to his face. “You know, the old man is getting rickety. Almost fell off the bike today on an arms run. Did he tell you?”

  Ben just stared at him. What the fuck was the point of this?

  “Seems like it’s time for somebody else to step in, you know? Lead the boys. Uncle Wally can’t do it forever.”

  “He’s not your uncle,” Ben spat out, hoping that Axel would get the underlying implication. The club’s not yours, punk. It never will be. Axel was thirsting for that leadership spot like he was starving to death in the desert. It was obvious to everyone with half a brain inside the group. It made Ben sick to see how fucking desperate he was.

  “You’re right, he’s not,” Axel agreed, that silly-looking grin spreading across his scarred face. “But blood ain’t everything. Guess you’re proof of that.”

  “You wanna fucking go, punk?” Ben spat, feeling his muscles tense up, ready for action.

  “Oh, I’ll go wherever, whenever. Fucking count on it,” Axel promised, his smile slipping off his face as he straightened up.

  Ben smirked, mean and dangerous, before raising his fist to slam into Axel’s face.

  ***

  Charlotte sat alone in Ben’s apartment, awkwardly tapping her feet on the floor and fidgeting with the fabric of her dress. Well, that didn’t go very well.

  Honestly, she’d had worse first meetings, especially with felons showing up to their first check-in with her after release. Even on some of her life coaching jobs, a lot of young kids were rebellious at first, running out of the meeting like they were being punished.

  I guess he is being punished, Charlotte thought. She briefly fretted about the ethics of what she was doing. She worked with criminals all the time, but her felons had already been put through the system and paid time for their crimes. And it wasn’t like Ben was being punished for his drug running. The whole point of this was to make him even better at it.

  But she had taken the money without even blinking. Without pausing to think for a single second about it. What did that say about her?

  Before she could berate herself any further about the situation, Wally walked back up the steps, much slower than he had bolted down them. “So. Tomorrow. He says he’ll speak to you then.” He sat down next to her and cradled one of his knees in his hands, wincing slightly.

  Charlotte stared at his legs, trying to imagine the types of aches and pains that elderly MC members felt as they developed arthritis. “Tomorrow works. I’m surprised he came around so quickly.”

  “Yeah. That’s a good sign, right?” Wally asked, turning to her with hope in his eyes.

  She opened her mouth to respond, but she was interrupted by loud noises rumbling from the far right corner of the room, coming in from the open window. Wally clearly heard them, too, as he got up from his seat and walked over to the window. Charlotte stood up and followed him, flinching a little as Wally cursed under his breath. “God fucking dammit,” Wally muttered. “That little fucking prick.”

  She leaned over Wally’s shoulder and peered out of the window, looking down onto the front of the HT clubhouse.

  Two men were fighting, one of them completely dominating the other one, bending him over a bike and slamming his head into the metal. “Wanna talk about blood now, you fucking asshole? Huh? How’s your blood taste now?”

  It was Ben’s voice, Charlotte realized, and she blinked her eyes several times to focus them more clearly on his body, how he moved in combat, like an animal fighting for his life with every punch and kick.

  “Well,” she said, more to herself than to Wally, who was still cursing at his nephew and flexing his fists on the window screen. “This should be interesting.”

  Chapter Three

  The next day, Charlotte showed up on time, pen and paper at the ready, ignoring the weird looks she got from MC members and their groupies on her way up to Ben’s loft. Wally had given her a key for her own personal use. She made a mental note not to mention that to Ben until trust had been established. And I will establish trust, she promised herself. She had never failed before, not even with the most violent criminals. There was no way this silly little biker boy was going to stump her, no matter how unpredictable he was.

  When he walked up into the loft, he didn’t look surprised to see her this time. He nodded in greeting, slamming his backpack down roughly on the ground and stretching his arms out like he was getting ready to either break into a run or go to bed.

  “You’re late,” she said to him in as strong a voice as she could muster. He was really only about four or five minutes behind schedule, honestly better than she expected, but she needed to establish rules early on. They were partners, but she was the authority here. That’s how it worked. It was the only way they could make progress.

  But Ben didn’t acknowledge her comment, instead marching over to his kitchen area to grab something from the fridge. Charlotte sighed deeply. Oh, of course. This couldn’t be easy, could it?

  “Would you mind remaining sober for the duration of our visit today? I’d like to get the clearest, most lucid answers possible,” she said.

  “You want one? All you had to do was ask,” Ben said, turning around to head back to the kitchen.

  “No! Nope, that’s fine,” Charlotte said, and Ben sank into a chair near Charlotte instead.

  He cracked open his beer and took a deep drink. When do I bring up his obvious alcohol abuse? Charlotte wondered to herself. But, then again, her inner voice argued, you’re really in no position to judge, hanging out at the bar every night of the week.

  Fuck off, Charlotte told her inner voice. It’s not my job to be a fully-functional adult. It’s my job to help other people get there.

  Ben stared at her expectantly, his legs spread out as far as they could go. Charlotte wondered if he was trying to be obnoxious
or if he just naturally sat that way. She cleared her throat and clicked her pen to signify the start of the session. “So. Ben. What do you want to get out of this partnership with me?”

  He answered by way of a half-shrug, barely lifting one shoulder. His face was expressionless, completely blank.

  Okay, so this was going to be a hard nut to crack. That was fine with Charlotte. She had plenty of experience with unwilling, obstinate clients. She could do this.

  “Are you unhappy to be here with me?” she asked.

  Ben just grunted. Charlotte waited, expecting him to open his mouth and say actual words, but a true response never came.

  Charlotte sighed. “So I’m getting the sense that you’re not excited to be here.” She tapped her pen impatiently against her paper. “What would you like to talk about? Nothing’s off-limits. We can open with something easy.”