by Ryder Dane
Gunner was still grinning when Baron turned the screen off with the remote. “I like seeing that little fucker actually acting like a dog for once. He did everything she wanted him to do and if she looks as good up close and personal as she does on the screen, I might be willing to have her teach me a few tricks. You game?”
The door opened before he could reply, but once she’d entered the room, he looked over to his friend and nodded his head. “I’m game.”
She was ushered into the room and waved into one of the chairs in a circle with Mel following right behind her. The one named Cash introduced each man in the room, and sat down in a chair near her. Baron, the club’s President, was impressive to look at and Gunner, the VP, was just as eye catching. However now wasn’t the time for her to get wet panties. The men called Cash and Chaucer weren’t nearly as appealing, but they would give a girl reason to pause and sigh over.
Baron was a huge man with shaggy brown hair and eyes that looked like a sapphire in the sun. His nose had a small bump in it and he wore a well trimmed goatee with a thin line of whiskers lining his jaw. His moustache was even trimmed at the lip line, and Amy liked the looks of the pierced ear with the thick gold hoop. With the rest of him, the earring gave him a pirate look, and she wished he wasn’t one of the bikers.
Gunner had a harder look about him, he wasn’t quite as tall as Baron. His hair was more red than brown, but not a true ginger. Still the hair was thick and could use a good stylist to tame the messy windblown look. He was sporting a scruffy crop of what appeared to be week old whiskers, and his full lips teased her to look and wonder how they would feel and taste. He had the darkest brown eyes, and they returned her interested look until she felt herself blushing.
She was having a hard time deciding which of the other two men was more attractive. Cash, who was a clean shaven, blue eyed charming devil, or Chaucer, that had eyes the color of tarnished brass, they changed with the light in the room and the tilt of his head to a silvery grey. He was built like she imagined a Viking as old romance novels described, except he was taller and broader. When he’d smiled, she couldn’t help but notice the gold eyeteeth.
Every man in the room wore bold tribal tattoos and each had a dragon or some kind of mythical looking beast running from their elbows to up into their neckline. She would really like to see these men without shirts, but it wasn’t the time to be fantasizing about gorgeous male bodies, even if she wanted to help them out of their clothes…while on her knees, with her teeth. The thought made her smile, but seeing their speculative looks, she sobered her own facial features.
“Thank you for seeing me, I am, as you know, Amelia Selters, my brother’s name is David Gregory, and until last night, I thought he was a pledge to your motorcycle group. I know he was involved with your people because I dropped him off twice at the gate last fall. So please don’t give me the know nothing about him excuse for allowing him to turn into the horrible creature that he has become. I have it on good authority that groups such as yours police their prospective members extensively and yet I see the drug addled creature that tried to sell his own sister for a fix to an equally drug fogged man named Reeker. They had another young man with them that had the most pitiful facial hair named Stevie.
“Last evening, David broke into my apartment and asked me for money. I refused to give it to him and he looked so pitifully skinny that I gave him a bowl of soup and a couple of sandwiches. I went to the other room and when I came back, he was letting the other two into my home. Words were said, and the man, Reeker, said he would give David drugs, if he and Stevie could try me out before selling me to other men. I managed to escape to the balcony and call for help, but they got away in the crowd coming to help me.”
She sat back in the chair as poised as a young girl in church, and Baron was digesting her story when Gunner asked her what she expected from them.
“Expect? I would think it would be obvious. I want you to take care of your responsibility for him. He was clean when he came to your group. After all, he was only out of detention for a few weeks. He bragged to me about this place and how great the club was. He got back on drugs under your watch, and I expect you to fix this screw up on the part of the club.”
Baron had heard enough. This pretty little woman wanted them to parent her brother? If she weren’t so earnest, and if he didn’t want to fuck her, he would have laughed and sent her out the way she came in.
Chapter Three
Gunner had no filter when it came to stupidity. He laughed out loud. “You expect us to parent your snot-nosed, drug addict brother? Lady, I don’t know what you think about the Breed, but we only take on men who want to be here, and your brother snuck out of here like a goddamned little pissant in the middle of the night to follow Reeker. It was just as well that he left on his own, since he was about to be thrown out. And I do mean thrown. He was lazy, and had an ego problem that would have gotten him hurt in a physical way if he’d been here the morning after he allowed two underage girls in the club after dark.
“That little fucker endangered everyone here. If Myrtle hadn’t seen the girls come in before someone grabbed them, contributing to a minor would be the least of our worries. Those little girls got the shit scared out of them and Myrtle and one of the other women took them home before anything bad happened to cause irreparable damage to them or the club. If their parents reactions were anything to go by, their twitchy tender asses are probably still grounded.”
He was already out of his chair and leaning over hers with his hands on the arms of the chair she occupied. She fought the need to shrink back as far as possible. If she let him see how badly he intimidated her with words, she would never get them to help her find David and force him into rehab. She had to keep reminding herself to act like a lady. You walk the walk and talk the talk, and you will be treated in the way you present yourself. That is what her grandmother told her, and so far, the woman had been spot on. She kept her eyes trained on the knee of Baron’s denim clad leg. Direct eye contact would be considered a challenge in any animal’s behavior pattern, and these men were animals. She could feel her inner slut begging to invite him into even more aggressive behavior. She took a slow deep breath and stifled the bitch.
Melvin had been at her feet during the power play between her and Gunner. The little dog jumped up onto her lap while the big man loomed over her, and faced Gunner with teeth bared. The man ignored him, and Melvin began to growl a low threatening sound from deep down somewhere in his stiff little body.
“You want us to chase your coffin bait and spank him, you’d better be willing to give something in return.” His demands were cut off by the evil Melvin, who’d stopped warning him and jumped at his face, ready to redecorate his features. Gunner barely got his arm up in time to avoid a direct bite to the mouth and nose. Instead, the ten pound furball latched his sharp teeth onto his forearm and was hanging on with every bit of his strength.
Gunner pulled back and stood with Melvin hanging on his arm. He turned away and tried to shake the canine loose, but that only caused the wounds to become more painful. “Lady, call this little fucker off or I will kill the son-of-a-bitch.” He looked at Amy, but she was staring at the dog with her mouth open in shock. He turned to Baron, and spoke through gritted teeth. “Get him off, man, his teeth are like goddamn nails.”
Baron tried to keep the smile from forming on his lips. Seeing his little buddy attack his best friend in defense of a woman like that was giving him a proud parent moment, but he could imagine how sharp those teeth were. It was still odd to him that Mel had attached himself to her so quickly. He reached out and grabbed Mel around his rib cage, and told him to let go. “Come on, buddy, you know Gunner wouldn’t really hurt her. Let him go, man, he isn’t near her.” Nothing he said made a difference, until the troublemaker stepped into the dog’s sight.
She held out her hands and lifted Mel up a few inches, “His teeth are stuck, he can’t let go until the pressure is off of them.” She st
epped closer and hugged her rescuer, telling him what a brave little man he was. “It’s alright now, Melvin, the mean man won’t try to hurt me again. You are such a brave boy. Come on, you can let go now.” The dog opened his jaws and Gunner was free. When she held him closer and bent her head over the mutt, and told him that his next grooming would involve a nice extra long brushing for being such a great protector, Baron lost it completely. His laughter joined with Chaucer’s and Cash's, as Gunner started yelling obscenities. He sat down, staring at the dog and woman as she made it sound like Melvin had single handedly saved her from a fate worse than death. It also explained why his dog was so attached to her. She must be the woman that gave him a bath and cut his nails each month.
Amy and Melvin slipped out of the room while three men were laughing and trying to help stem the blood trickling from the puncture wounds on Gunner’s arm. She almost ran to the bar where Myrtle was, and handed the dog over to the older woman with a kiss to the top of his head. “Hide him, he bit Gunner,” before she waved and ran out of the front door.
She was half afraid the men would call to the gate and refuse to allow her to leave, but they waved her through, so she left, wishing she had gained their cooperation before Melvin had been such a hero.
When she got back to town, she stopped at the locksmith’s small building and went inside. The young man behind the counter smiled politely as she told him about her purse being stolen, and her keys had been inside. His uncle owned the place and came from a back room while she was listing the locks that needed rekeying immediately. “My business, my apartment, and my car all need to be secured.” By the time they were through for the day, everything was rekeyed, and she felt much better. The cost was excessive, but she hoped her renter’s insurance would cover at least part of it. While the men worked on the locks of her building, she went upstairs to the old apartment that had been vacant for years. When she’d bought the small building two years ago, she had plans to fix the place up to make it livable for herself to live in, but hadn’t started doing anything more than painting the small place. She’d chosen a soothing blue for the living area, and a bright yellow for the kitchen. The bathroom was white. The bedroom was a complete change of decoration from the rest of the rooms. One wall was painted a turbulent dark bluish green, and the other three walls were murals with trees and bushes that she’d drawn and painted herself. The floor was a walnut stained hardwood, with brown and green rugs scattered around where she had left them. There was a dormer window that she’d installed louvered storm shutters on the inside for privacy too. The room appeared to be a place in a forest to her eyes, and she loved it.
There was a small balcony off the living room area that she planned to enclose with screening, for sitting outside on a warm summer day and relaxing, but hadn’t gotten that far yet. Once David had moved in with her, this place had been forgotten while she’d struggled with the cost of keeping two of them in groceries and day-to-day living. Her business was thriving, since she was the only groomer in three counties. The two counties that surrounded this one were sparsely populated, and there wasn’t enough work for most groomers to set up shop. So far she was kept busy. She could have hired someone to help her part-time, but until she was booked every day, all day, she was going to continue to be a one-woman show. She worked Monday thru Saturday and closed at noon on Saturday. When David came to live with her, he only showed up a few times to give baths while she trimmed hair and nails. He hated the little dogs and ferrets. When a twenty-two pound cat named Elmer came in, he laughed at him, and the cat knew it. He bit him, and David tried to hit the cat with a leash while it hid under the table where he had been thrown, and she’d had to intervene. That was the end of having a helper. The cat cried pitifully when she picked him up and checked to make certain he had no broken bones.
She was the product of a broken marriage, her father had no idea how to raise a baby girl, and her mother was so caught up in finding the new love of her life, she had no time for a whining child. She was foisted on her paternal grandparents for them to raise. Without the love and nurturing they had given her, she would probably be like David, hopefully she would be smarter, but she knew she would never have gone to college, or operate a business like she did. Her grandparents had never had a great deal of money, they lived paycheck to paycheck like most of the working class nowadays. Her beloved Grandma Geraldine, was diagnosed with lymphoma, cancer in the lymph nodes, and died within a few short months. Grandpa Rob died of a heart attack six months later. She always thought it was because he couldn’t live without his spouse of fifty-six years, and died of a heart so broken, it couldn’t be mended.
They’d left her the old Dodge, and their personal possessions, most of which were donated to the local homeless population, with the exception of a few items of jewelry that she kept locked up in a bank vault. After the run-in with David and his friends, she was happy she’d put the small gold earrings and necklace set, and her grandfather’s heirloom gold pocket watch in the deposit box. She took the few thousand that was left after the funerals, and bought this place. A move she needed to make.
Her grandparents were gone, her life with Arlan had gone from tense to cheating, and his dominant side had grown into an abusive situation that she was ready to leave. A month after the funeral for her grandfather, she packed her belongings and left Arlan for good.
Now she was planning another move, and it felt right. She would save on gas money, and time too. Not to mention the rent and electric at the apartment. With the new keys, and the lack of access for someone to break into her apartment here, she would be as safe as possible. She could finally get a dog of her own. Melvin’s intervention today reminded her that dogs were indeed protective to those they liked.
The apartment sliding door was repaired, and the new keys were in her hand, but for the first time in her life, she was afraid to enter her own home. No matter how she looked at it, someone could be waiting for her inside, she turned back to the parking lot and locked herself inside of her car. Now what was she going to do? She needed to sleep, and she needed a bath and food. Her protesting bladder was the deciding factor. She started the car and headed back downtown. There was an old couch and a bathroom in the apartment above her shop. She would face her fears in the light of day. Tonight she was opting for safety. As far as she knew, David didn’t know about the quarters above the shop, and she should be able to park her car behind the building. Her plan was in place, so she drove to the nearest sandwich shop to use their bathroom and grab a sandwich.
As she entered the building, two loud motorcycles roared into the parking lot, and she bit her own hand to keep from screaming when one of the riders got off his bike and started to smash the windows of her car with a long pipe. He got to her headlights and she stopped biting her hand long enough to yell at him to stop. Her cell phone was in her hand before she knew she’d grabbed it from the side of her hip and she dialed 911. The laughter that echoed in the almost deserted lot was David’s. The man with him was doing something behind the car that she couldn’t see. The dispatch woman told her to stay in the building and away from the door.
She heard the sirens just minutes after the bikes left the parking lot. She was in the bathroom when the officer knocked on the door and asked if she was all right. She was embarrassed, but once the immediate threat had left, her bladder decided that it had waited long enough and she’d run into the tiled room and sat down just in time.
She came out of the room to see the cop chatting with the owner of the shop. When he saw her standing there, he walked her to her car, and shined his flashlight on it. The car that her grandfather had left to her, was beaten on the fenders until there were rippled lines where the top met the hood. There was no glass in the windows, or lights left intact. On the trunk the words “Yur Next Bitch” were spray painted in red.
“Where would you like to call to have the car towed to? We don’t have an impound lot, so we usually call Gunner’s Garage to take care of dere
lict vehicles, or vehicles that have been in an accident. They have a fenced in yard, and no one in their right mind would break into that place.”
She nodded her head and he made the call. He offered to take her home, and she was thankful about that. He was a cop, he carried a gun. She would ask him to check out her apartment before she entered it, and if he gave her the all clear, she would lock herself inside and not come out until Monday.
The flatbed tow truck showed up, and a tall man with a red bandana over his head and a t-shirt advertising Gunner’s Garage began to hook up the car. She had spoken with him before, he was the man who fixed the water pump a few months back. His name was, her memory drew a blank for a moment, John, yeah that was it. She should excuse her memory lapse due to the fact he was some pretty damn beautiful scenery to look at. His smile was just a little crooked, and his arms were nice and thick, and his hands, his hands were enough to fascinate her too. He was another wet panty inspiration. He was actually the first bald headed man that she’d ever fantasized about.
When the car was secured to the flatbed, the driver came over to her with a paper on a clipboard for her to sign, giving him permission to remove the vehicle and take it to the garage. He was grim faced and the first thing he said was, “What in the hell did you do to piss off the guy that did this? I keep this baby in shape for you to drive, and look at what happens. They don’t fuckin’ grow on trees you know, I told you it was a classic, and to be careful, remember?”
She grabbed the clipboard and scrawled her name on the bottom, shoved it back into his chest, and turned away, muttering to the cop, “You tell him.” She stomped over to the cruiser and stood by the passenger door, waiting for Mr. Personality and the officer to finish talking. Why were all of the good looking men that had ties to Lucifer’s Breed such assholes. It wasn’t like she put up a damn sign saying “destroy me” next to the Swinger. The sound of a fire engine didn’t register. This year had been dry, and they were all praying for rain to rescue the crops in the area. People didn’t care when they tossed cigarette butts from their car windows. They were long gone before the hot ends of the cigarettes caught the dry grasses on fire.