by Joanna Wylde
“I don’t know about Em, but Kit seems pretty upset. Oh, and just so you know, the girls figured out what you and I were doing and started giving me shit, so I yelled at them. Now they’re hiding downstairs.”
He started laughing again.
“That’s almost worth the heart attack you gave me.”
“I’m really sorry about that,” I murmured. “They scared me.”
“They’re scary girls,” he said. “I don’t suppose you want to pick up where we left off?”
I considered it, but the thought of Jess and Kit down below . . . it wasn’t working for me.
“No more phone sex until I get a lock for my bedroom door. I don’t think I can take another scare like that.”
“I’ll do it first thing tomorrow.”
He sounded so determined I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Would it make me sound like a crazy girlfriend if I asked what time you’ll be back tonight?” I wanted to take the words back as soon as they left my mouth. I’d meant it as a joke, but guys like Painter didn’t have girlfriends. He’d told me himself he didn’t date. Now he probably thought that I thought he was my boyfriend and . . . “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Mel?”
“Yeah?” I asked, closing my eyes against whatever he might be about to say.
“I wouldn’t mind having a girlfriend like you.”
My pulse sped as I careened from freaked out to elated. I wanted to jump up, maybe do a fist pump or two. Instead I somehow managed to keep my voice casual.
“I wouldn’t mind having a boyfriend like you, either.”
“If I ask Pic to give you a key, will you sleep at my place tonight?” he asked. “I’ll be getting in late. Really late, probably not until early next morning, but I’d like knowing you’re in my bed, waiting for me.”
“Sure,” I said, feeling all warm and happy. “I’d like that, too.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Jess seems to be recovering from the shock,” London said, her voice dry. We were out at Bam Bam and Dancer’s place—they were another of the club couples—because the Hayes girls hadn’t been able to book The Line on such short notice. My private theory was that it wouldn’t matter how much notice they’d had. One thing I’d learned from watching the Reapers the past year was that if Reese wasn’t on board, it didn’t happen.
Except this party was definitely happening.
Kit, Jessica, and Em had made the best of things, somehow throwing the entire thing together during the time it took Em to drive over from Portland. They’d tried to suck me into it, but no way I wanted to get involved. Reese and Loni had to love them—they were blood relations. Seeing as I was something of an add-on, I didn’t feel like risking it. (Not only that, as a person with a soul, I hated putting Loni on the spot like that.)
I’d spent the afternoon working on my paper instead, right up until the moment that Jessica tricked me into driving to the grocery store with her. She’d dragged me out to the party instead, which even I had to admit was turning out to be fun. Or at least, it’d been fun until the strippers showed up.
Now Jess was sprawled across a stripper’s lap with one arm around his neck, laughing like a crazy woman. A second guy was doing the same with one of the old ladies—Marie—while Kit took pictures with a glee bordering on the obscene. Then a third danced up to Jess, waggling a gold lamé banana hammock in her face.
(Okay, so maybe we weren’t bordering on the obscenity line so much as dancing over its grave.)
“London’s turn!” yelled Darcy, one of the old ladies about London’s age. Her man was part of the Silver Bastards, the same club that Puck was part of. I’d only met him a couple times, but based on that it was safe to say that the Silver Bastards were every bit as scary as the Reapers. Dancer and Kit grabbed London by the arms, dragging her over as Jess jumped off her guy to make room for Loni.
“Smile, London!” Kit shouted, taking a picture as they dumped her into his lap. Loni bounced right back up again, grabbing a throw pillow and launching it at Kit. Jessica leapt to her defense, pitching another pillow toward London, and then it was on.
Battle royale.
(It’s worth mentioning at this point that we’d had a lot of alcohol. Jell-O shots. Fireball shots. Some kind of pomegranate martini punch shit that Em mixed up and was serving in big bowl. It tasted like candy, but I’d stopped drinking after my second glass, when my cheeks started to go numb. Unfortunately that’d still been enough to make me seriously buzzed.)
A pillow smacked me in the head, knocking me down to the floor. I landed on top of Banana Hammock Man, putting a hand on his waxed, muscular chest to push myself up, confused as hell.
“Hey,” he said, giving me a sexy smile. “You wanna go hide together under the table?”
“Smile!” Jessica shouted out of nowhere. What the? I looked up to find her snapping pictures of me on top of him.
“Oh, you little bitch!” I shouted, scrambling off. He gave a startled shout of pain. Shit. I’d just used his banana hammock like a gold lamé springboard, poor man. “I’m so sorry.”
He moaned pitifully, rolling over to curl up on his side. Meanwhile, Jessica was skipping across the floor, waving her phone triumphantly.
“Jessica, you delete those fucking pictures right now!” I screamed.
She tore across the room and through a set of French doors that opened onto a deck. Then she was over the side, sprinting across the meadow that backed against the house.
“I’m going to kill you!” I shouted, ignoring the laughter from those watching us. She turned her head to taunt me, flipping the bird as she ran.
“Come and get—shit!” the words cut off as she suddenly disappeared. Not disappeared, as in tripping and falling. I mean disappeared. One minute she was there and the next she was gone.
“Jess!” I shouted again, anger turning to fear. She hadn’t been that far ahead of me. I kept my eyes open, stopping just short of where she’d been, approaching slowly. It seemed unlikely that she’d been teleported away by aliens, but you never know . . .
“Jessica?” I called, hesitant.
“Down here.”
Looking around, all I saw was grassy meadow. “I don’t see anything.”
“There’s a hole in the ground,” she said. “You’re right over me—I can see you. Look down.”
I looked down, and sure enough, there was a hole in the ground, maybe a foot wide . . . foot and a half, tops. I dropped to my hands and knees, peering down. It was dark, really dark. I could hardly see her, but she seemed to be down there a ways. Shit.
“What the hell is that? It looks like a cave.”
“Sure looks like it.”
“Do you see a way out?” I asked, looking back at the house anxiously. Our watchers had lost interest in us. I dug in my pocket for my phone, hoping I had service.
“Step back,” Jessica told me. Frowning, I followed her instructions, mouth dropping as her head and shoulders popped out above the ground.
“How did you do that?”
“I just stood up, silly,” she replied. “I would’ve sooner but I needed to text this.”
She gave me a wicked grin as she held up her cell phone, showing off the picture of me on top of Mr. Banana Hammock.
“If you tell me you sent that to Painter, I’m going to kick your head off like a dandelion,” I hissed, glaring at my best friend. Former best friend.
“Settle your panties,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Do I look like I’d send it to Painter? No, I sent it to Hunter, Em’s old man. I may have sent it to Reese, too. Hard to remember. I know I sent him the one of London.”
A very, very dark suspicion reared its head.
“Jessica . . .”
“Yes?” she said, fluttering her lashes at me innocently.
“Are you and Kit using the party to collect blackmail material on all the women in the club?” I asked, my voice carefully level. Jessica frowned, and I swear she looked almost hur
t.
“Of course not,” she said, pushing herself up and out of the hole. “Blackmail means you want money or something, right? We’re just doing this for fun, Mel. I’m not trying to take your money. I’d never blackmail you or any of the other girls.”
She shook her head at me sadly, conveying profound disappointment in my lack of trust.
“I’m going to find Dancer. She should know about this cave thing—I got out just fine, but some little kid could get stuck down there for real.”
• • •
The pillow fight had ended by the time we got back, apparently transitioning into a water fight. Either that or Dancer was using a hose in an attempt to control the herd of drunken women currently dancing in her backyard.
“Jessica!” Kit yelled as we came back. “You’re here—good news! We’re already getting responses on our pictures!”
Fuck, how many people were they sending them to?
“Reese is going to strangle me,” London said, coming to stand next to me. Her white T-shirt had gone totally transparent, showing off a gorgeous black bra.
A spray of water hit me in the face, then splattered down across my chest.
“You’re welcome!” Dancer shouted, laughing. I shook my head like a dog, trying to get some of the water off. Bad idea, because I still wasn’t totally steady on my feet. What the fuck was in that punch? Dancer and London caught me, one on each arm.
“Thanks,” I managed to say, watching as Dancer aimed her hose again, spraying down another woman I didn’t recognize.
“Why are you hosing everyone down?”
“Damage control,” she said, her words slurring ever so slightly.
“Damage control?”
“Yeah, the girls have been texting pictures of us with the strippers to the men. I got a tip-off—Bam Bam, Horse, and Reese are coming to break it up. I guess once we started groping random naked guys they’d had enough of the bachelorette party.”
“So you’re spraying everyone with water because . . . ?”
“Because guys get off on girls in wet T-shirts,” she said, as if the answer were obvious. What? “There isn’t a man alive who doesn’t secretly pray that when women get together, we have pillow fights followed by wet T-shirt contests. Bam has a thing for mud wrestling, too, but I’m drawing the line here—gotta keep it classy. By the time the guys get here to claim their old ladies, we’ll be ready for them. I already paid off the strippers. If they’re smart, they’ve already left.”
Wow. Just . . . wow.
“That’s impressive,” I admitted. She nodded sagely, accepting my praise as her just due.
“Not my first rodeo, baby girl.”
Jess came up behind me, throwing her arms around me for a big hug.
“You’ll get this old-lady shit figured out, no worries,” she said, ruffling my wet hair.
Wait. I wasn’t an old lady.
I didn’t want to be old. Or a lady.
Pushing Jess off, I turned to Dancer, but she’d already gone off to spray someone else. London was missing, too. Marie was nearby, though.
“Hey,” I said, lurching toward her.
“Hey,” she said back, grinning like an idiot. Her eyes were big and sparkly and her cheeks were all flushed. At least I wasn’t the only drunk one here.
“Am I an old lady now?” I asked. She blinked.
“What?”
“Painter asked me to be his girlfriend, so does that make me an old lady?”
Marie’s eyes widened. “Painter seriously asked you that? Holy shit. Hey, Soph—Painter asked Mel to be his girlfriend!”
Ruger’s old lady, Sophie, turned toward us. Her long hair was plastered against her head and back. Totally soaked. She looked between me and Marie, obviously surprised.
“Really?” Sophie asked. “Wow, never saw that coming. Like, he used the word ‘boyfriend’? That’s hysterical.”
I frowned, because it wasn’t funny at all, let alone hysterical. No wonder Painter was always heading out of town on club business—I would, too, if I had to put up with this shit.
“He’s a really nice guy, you know,” I said, glaring at them. They looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Hey!”
They laughed harder. For the very first time in my life I gave serious thought to punching someone in the face. Totally would’ve done it, too, if the world hadn’t started spinning on me.
“Sorry,” Marie finally managed to say. “I can think of a thousand different descriptions for our guys, but ‘nice’ generally isn’t one of them. And no, you aren’t an old lady yet—being someone’s old lady is more than being their girlfriend. It means the whole club has accepted you as an official partner, and they support the relationship. Maybe you’ll be an old lady at some point, but that’s something Painter would talk to the club about first.”
Sophie nodded. “They have some sort of supersecret process for it. Ruger won’t tell me shit about it, but I think it mostly involves an announcement and then drinking beer together. But they can’t possibly tell us that, you know? Gotta keep the mystery . . .”
“Oh,” I said, swaying. Chair. I needed a chair or something. Standing was way too hard. I looked around, spotting an empty folding chair near the wall. I wandered toward it, slumping down as my phone buzzed.
PAINTER: What the fuck is going on? Hunter just texted me a picture of you climbing around on some naked guy.
Oh shit.
ME: It’s not what it looks like.
PAINTER: You got one hand on his chest and the other on his dick
ME: I swear, Kit and Jessica set me up. Em may be in on it too. Kit and Jess together are like some nasty demon bigger than its indiviudiual parts. They get together an things like this happn. I think we need one of those priests to come and cast the devls out
He didn’t respond right away. Finally my phone buzzed again.
PAINTER: Drunk?
ME: There was something in the punch . . .
PAINTER: Where are you?
ME: Dancers house. It’s the bachelorette party
PAINTER: Got it. FYI—don’t ever drink Dancer’s punch again. I’ll send someone to get you, okay?
ME: ok
“Babe!” Marie shouted, distracting me. She ran toward the front door, jumping up and wrapping her legs around a giant man who’d just stepped inside. Horse was a big guy—even taller than Painter—and Marie looked like a little monkey hanging off him.
Reese stepped in past them, taking in the scene.
Kit was sitting on the floor, giggling as she flipped through her phone. Em gave him a thumbs-up as she finished chugging a big cup of punch. Jess had disappeared completely. Reese stalked over to the entertainment center, turning off the music with a flick of his finger. Silence fell, and then Em gave a loud burp.
“Excuse me,” she said, wiping her mouth delicately with the bottom of her shirt.
“Fuckin’ girls,” Reese said, shaking his head. “You’re going to kill me.”
“Hey,” London said, coming up to wrap her arms around him. She kissed the side of his face, which seemed to soothe Reese. Kit stood slowly, then walked over to stand right in front of her father.
“This is what happens to people who get married secretly,” she said, poking a finger into his chest. “Don’t do it again.”
A smile quirked the edges of Reese’s mouth. Then he dropped his hand down to give Loni’s butt a squeeze. Ewwww . . . Kit and I exchanged a look, and I could tell she was thinking the exact same thing that I was. Old people shouldn’t be having sex.
“If I promise I won’t get married again without telling you, will you stop destroying people’s lives in search of revenge?”
Kit considered his words carefully.
“I’ll try,” she said, nodding. “I suppose you’re forgiven. This time.”
“Wow, I’m just so fuckin’ relieved to hear that,” he replied. “Now I won’t have to cry myself to sleep tonight.”
PAINTER
&nb
sp; I needed to slow down.
Every time I thought about Mel and that fucking stripper, I found myself pushing the bike’s speed higher. Couldn’t quite decide what I should do first when I got home—strangle the Hayes girls or slit Mr. Banana Hammock’s throat.
The picture of them together was burned on my brain. Hunter’d sent it to fuck with me, of course. Bastard still hated me for what I’d done to Em. Fair enough, because I fucking hated him, too.
Almost as much as I hated the stripper.
But not quite.
Her hand had been on his dick.
Reese had messaged me a couple hours ago, letting me know he’d dropped Mel off at my place for the night. Good to know she was safe. I’d slept for a while in Bellingham, but I was still pretty fuckin’ exhausted and it was a damned long ride all the way back to Coeur d’Alene. I had to be careful, too—leaving the state without permission was a parole violation. That meant no speeding, no splitting lanes . . . I didn’t even stop at rest areas, just pulled into truck stops when I needed a break.
Last thing I needed was a parole violation putting me in the same state as a murder victim. Torres should be able to cover for me back home, but if a Washington cop pulled me over, there’d be a paper trail not even he could disappear. Never used to worry about shit like that, but knowing Mel was warm and waiting in my bed? Changed shit. Changed shit in a big way.
I’d just passed the Spokane airport—still a good thirty miles from the Idaho border—when it happened. I’d flown over the crest of the hill into the city and changed lanes to pass another car when I saw the lights behind me. For an instant I convinced myself they were after someone else, because, swear to fuck—I hadn’t done anything wrong. Nothing.
Then he was right behind me and it was all over.
I pulled over and waited for the cop . . .
Fuck.
• • •
“Good evening, sir. Do you know why I pulled you over?”
“No—I wasn’t speeding,” I said, trying to figure out how a woman who was five and a half feet at most had the balls to pull over a biker twice her size. Kind of pretty, too, although hard to make out much of her figure under what I assumed was a bulletproof vest.