by Penny Dee
When he stopped, it was almost disappointing. But I didn’t dare move, I was afraid if I did he would see me, watching him like a stalker from the gap in the door. Holding my breath, I watched him climb to his feet, his broad torso gleaming with a sheen of sweat, a deeply carved V disappearing behind the belt of his black pants. I tried to swallow, but my throat felt thick, and I had to force down the saliva that had pooled in my mouth.
Turning his back to me, he grabbed a gym towel from his desk, and I drank in the wide shoulders and the broad back tapering down to a thick waist. On his back was a massive Kings of Mayhem tattoo with the words For Life inked in black beneath it.
He wiped the thin mist of sweat from his heavily tattooed arms and across his broad chest, his muscles flexing and clenching with every movement.
“Are you going to come in?” His voice cut into the air between us. “Or were you planning on standing there all afternoon?”
Fuck.
I was busted.
I let out a shaky exhale.
“I’m sorry,” I said awkwardly, taking a cautious step into his office.
“For what?”
He turned around, and for a moment I was distracted by his chiseled six-pack and all that damn muscle.
A small grin played on his lips. “Taylor…?”
You’re being ridiculous, I told myself.
I lifted my chin. “I heard a noise.”
“And?”
“I thought you might…need…assistance?”
Wow.
He raised an eyebrow. “Assistance?”
“I thought I should check to make sure you were okay.”
I shrugged like it was nothing.
Because it was nothing.
It wasn’t like I was standing there with soaked panties and a thumping heartbeat.
Okay, I was standing there with soaked panties and a thumping heartbeat, but the important thing was he didn’t know it.
Or did he?
Fuck, he did.
It was written all over his ridiculously handsome face.
He took a step toward me, bringing with him an aura of heat and pure manliness. “And you thought you could save me from whatever it was that was happening in here?”
I stepped back. Because I could feel the pull of his orbit, and it was powerful. “I thought I should at least try.”
For every step I took backward, he took one forward. Predatorily.
“And what if I was in here with a woman. Would you have saved me from her? Or would you have…joined us?”
It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
He grinned. He was fucking with me.
I shook my head, deciding this whole encounter was stupid.
“I’m sorry. I should’ve respected your privacy.”
He stepped past me, his deeply carved chest only inches from my body as he reached for a shirt hanging on the door behind me.
“Don’t be,” he said, his voice low and seductive. “I like it when you watch me.”
A shiver rippled through me. His words excited me. And the raw scent of him hit me like a drug.
He slid his t-shirt over his head and down his body, but didn’t make an attempt to move away. “Can I help you with anything else?”
“No,” I said under his warm gaze.
And with legs as steady as Jell-O, I walked out of his office.
TAYLOR
I settled into life at the clubhouse with ease.
But it was an MC clubhouse. It was an unpredictable world. Anything could happen at a moment’s notice. Peace and quiet couldn’t be taken for granted, because a peaceful afternoon could easily be spun on a dime, and I could find myself with my guard down, exposing a little bit more of myself than I would like.
Like this afternoon, when I was startled by the sudden bang bang of shots being fired. My eyes darted to Randy, who looked more annoyed than concerned. We were alone in the clubhouse. I followed him outside into the midday sun where we found Tully, Nitro, Vader, and Cool Hand in the parking lot. Cool Hand was standing as straight as an arrow with a gun in his hand, aimed at a wall of sandbags. He let another round of shots ring out across the compound.
“Have you guys lost your minds?” Randy said, walking over to them. “You almost gave our new girl a fucking heart attack.”
Tully, Nitro, Vader, and Cool Hand glanced over at me.
“That might be a bit of an exaggeration—” I mumbled, feeling a little embarrassed. I hadn’t been scared. I’d been startled. There was a big difference. I was no scaredy cat. And the last thing I wanted was these guys treating me like I was a little porcelain doll who jumped at the sight of her own shadow, or the bang bang of a handgun. I wasn’t that kind of girl. Never had been. Never would be.
“Sorry, sweetheart, but it ain’t nothing to be scared of. Just Cool Hand getting a feel for his new Beretta,” Nitro said.
I thought of my Beretta in my purse.
“You got a new one?” Randy asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Check it out, brother.” Cool Hand gave him the gun, and after admiring the sleek-looking firearm, Randy fired three shots into the target on the sandbag. He was an awful shot. All three bullets landed outside the painted lines.
“She’s beautiful,” Randy said, admiring the weapon. “Nice and smooth. Little kick back.”
Cool Hand glanced over at me. “You want to try?”
Nope. I didn’t want to try. I didn’t like guns. They were an unfortunate necessity in my life because of my past, so standing there and shooting at a wall of sandbags for fun was about as appealing to me as a root canal with a pair of pliers.
“It’s okay if you’ve never fired a handgun before,” Cool Hand added, a little condescendingly.
I folded my arms across my chest.
“Dude, does she look like she’s ever fired any kind of gun before?” Nitro asked.
Which grated at my nerves.
“Good point,” Cool Hand replied.
I didn’t like being shoved in a box by someone’s assumption.
I let my arms drop to my side.
Fine.
I would shoot the damn gun.
“Nothin’ to be afraid of, darlin’. No one gets it perfect the first time,” Cool Hand said as Randy handed me the Beretta. “I’ll walk you through it.”
But before Cool Hand had the chance to show me anything, I had the safety off, my feet stepped apart, my back straightened, and I was firing five rapid shots into the target on the sandbag with an eagle-eyed precision no one saw coming.
In seconds, I had blown the center target to pieces.
Because I don’t like people making assumptions about me.
When the echo of the last shot faded into the sunny afternoon, you could hear a pin drop. I stood for a moment, watching the waterfall of sand spill from the sandbag onto the concrete before taking a look around me. Chins had dropped. Mouths were open.
I handed Cool Hand his gun. “How’d I do?”
But he couldn’t find the words.
Feeling a little smug, I walked away and made my way toward the clubhouse, smiling when I overheard Vader say, “That’s fucking it. First Star Wars, and now this. If Bull doesn’t make his move, then I’m going to sweep her off her goddamn feet and marry her.”
Randy followed me inside. “Want to tell me what the fuck that was all about?”
I shrugged. “Nothing to tell.”
“Uh-uh. What you did out there was not beginner’s luck. Now spill. How’d you learn to shoot a firearm like that?”
Brushing him off wasn’t going to work here, so I looked him square in the eye and I told him the truth.
“Once upon a time, someone made me a victim. Afterward, I decided it would never happen again.”
TAYLOR
The following Monday, after dropping Noah at school, I stopped into the gas station to fill up.
“Your card has been declined,” the attendant said when I went to pay.
&n
bsp; “Are you sure?” I felt the sudden flood of heat run through me. I knew we were running low on money, but I was sure I had enough for gas. “Can you try it again?”
The attendant looked put out as he retried my card. “Declined.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“Not according to the machine it’s not.”
“Can you try it once more?” I asked, praying for it to be a mistake.
This time the attendant sighed dramatically as he put my card through. But just like the previous two times, it was declined.
“That’ll be twenty-three dollars…cash.”
I swallowed back my embarrassment. I didn’t have twenty-three dollars. Hell, I didn’t have ten dollars.
I felt the lady behind me shift on her feet impatiently, and the person behind her huffed out their frustration at having to wait for me to pay. I looked over my shoulder and saw it was a man in a dark blue, pinstriped suit, looking very exasperated.
I swung back to the attendant. “Look, I’m sorry, I don’t have the cash. But today is payday—”
“Sure, it is,” he said, his apathy astounding. “Listen, I don’t care if today is payday, your birthday, or freaking Hanukah, or Christmas day…you gotta pay twenty-three dollars, right now, or I’m calling the cops.”
The cops were the last people I needed to be called.
“What’s the hold up?” The man in the pinstriped suit called out peevishly.
“Her card is declined, and she doesn’t have any money to pay,” the attendant announced to the store.
I glared at him. Jerk.
The large lady behind me sighed. When I looked over my shoulder at her, she looked me up and down, and shook her head with pure, uninhibited judgment.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” The man in the pinstriped suit pushed past her to get to the counter and handed the attendant his card. “Put hers with mine, will you, and let’s get this fucking done. Some of us don’t have all day to stand around.”
“You don’t need to do that,” I said, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole.
“Excuse me, but from where I’m standing, it looks like I do,” he snapped, looking at me with the arrogance of a person who had never seen skid row, or felt the grip of hunger pains because money was tight and you had to pay for your kid brother’s school excursion.
I stood as still as a mouse as we all waited for the transaction to go through, my body aching with mortification. When the attendant handed him the receipt, he shoved it into his wallet and gave me a contemptuous look.
I followed him out, grateful for his generosity, even if he was being an asshole about it.
“Thank you,” I said, sincerely. “That was really nice of you. If you give me your number, I can call you and arrange to give you your money back this afternoon. Like I said, today’s payday.”
Pinstripe just looked at me with his conceited, gray eyes. “Give you my number? You’re kidding me, right?”
I was taken aback but managed to hide it. “How else am I going to get you your money?”
He scoffed. “It’s twenty-three dollars. Hardly worth the irritation of having to give you my number.”
Okay, this guy was an absolute jerk.
But still, he had helped me out of a tight spot.
And just because I wanted to punch him in his egotistical mouth for the way he was talking to me, didn’t mean I should show it.
“Well, thanks again,” I said.
“I don’t need your thanks, lady. Just get out of my fucking way. I’ve got somewhere important to be, and you’ve already made me late.” He brushed past me abruptly, and I watched him stride across the parking lot and get into his Porsche. With a violent rev of the engine, he sped off into the morning.
Feeling the hot sting of humiliation, I climbed into my car and made a deal with myself that if I didn’t cry, I could blow ten dollars out of my paycheck on a big juicy bottle of wine tonight.
And maybe some ice cream. Not the cheap kind either. No, it was going to be the good stuff, thick and rich, and so damn sugary you could feel the calories thickening your waistline.
Feeling hopeless, I looked at the picture of Noah swinging from the rearview mirror and felt a renewed strength harden in my bones.
I refused to cry. And by the time I got to the clubhouse for my shift, I had found my resolve.
Because sometimes it was easier to do things when you were doing them for someone else.
It was a quiet day in the clubhouse with a lot of the Kings in town helping set up for the Fourth of July celebrations on the weekend, so it gave me a chance to get to know Red, the Kings of Mayhem cook, a little better.
Toward the end of my shift, he helped me carry stacks of glasses from the dishwasher in the kitchen and out to the bar, and as we stood drying them, he filled me in on how he came to be a part of the MC’s inner realm.
“The first time I met Bull, he put a gun in my face,” he said with an amused chuckle. “Damn near scared the skin right off my body…fuck!”
Red had Tourette’s, and despite his medication controlling it, his tick often peppered his conversation with curse words.
“I was running with a bad crowd. Really found myself at the bottom of the barrel hanging out with the pond scum. They were a rival MC. They stirred up some real shit with the Kings. Roughed up some girls. Stole something from Bull. I knew they didn’t see me as one of them. Didn’t treat me none too good neither. But I had nowhere else to go, so I stayed. You know, better the devil you know. Motherfucker!”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Bull came looking for payback. Rode right up to the door and stormed in. I was the first he saw. He put a gun to my head and told everyone he was going to start shooting unless the president gave him back what he stole.”
“And did he give Bull back what he stole?”
“Yeah. Bull can be an intimidating motherfucker.”
I could imagine. Every time he walked into a room, he dragged in a powerful energy with him.
“What was it?” I asked him.
“What was what?”
“What did Bull take back from your president?”
Red chuckled. “Oh, it was his dog.”
“A dog?”
“Yeah, his dog, Max. He fucking loved that girl. That’s one thing about Bull everyone knows. You don’t fuck with what he loves, or he’ll rain down some heavy shit on you. He was ready to start a war over that dog.”
I had already heard things about him.
That he was ruthless.
Hard.
Unforgiving.
But the more I heard about him from the people he spent time with, the more I realized he was passionate rather than cold-hearted.
Charming rather than cruel.
And sexy as fuck.
“How did you end up staying with him? Once he got his dog back, didn’t he take his gun out of your face?”
“He had me carry Max out to his car, and in a crazy, panicked moment, I begged him to take me with him.”
“Really? Why?”
“Like I said, they were a bad crowd. Fuck. Fuck. Real bottom feeders. It was only a matter of time before they killed me. I wasn’t one of them. They kept me ‘round to do the dirty shit no one else wanted to do. Clean toilets. Mop up puke. But they thought I was a joke. Treated me like I was entertainment. Laughed at me.”
He did a good job in hiding it, but I could still see the hurt in his eyes.
People could be real assholes when someone was different.
He grinned. “If Bull hadn’t come along when he did, I reckon I’d be dead.” He glanced over at Matlock, Cool Hand, Davey, and Nitro playing pool across the room. “They’re my family now, and that’s how they treat me. They might look big and mean, but they’re good men. They’ve had my back ever since.”
Across the room, I noticed Tiffani and Hawke enter the room from the corridor leading down to the bedrooms. While Hawke joined his friends withou
t giving her a backward glance, Tiffani sauntered toward us looking like the cat that licked the cream. A mouthful of it.
She threw her little purse onto the bar and took a seat on one of the stools. Throwing her blonde hair over her bare shoulder, she looked at Red.
“I’ll have a coffee,” she said dismissively. “And make it strong.”
Red and I exchanged a look, and it seemed to irritate her.
“Hey, Stuttering Stanley, are you deaf?” She snapped.
I crossed the bar until I was standing opposite her. “What the fuck did you just say to him?”
She was lucky there was a bar between us.
“Oh, settle down, Shorty, he knows I’m only kidding, don’t you, Red Bear?” She gave him a flirtatious wink, followed by a sweet smile. “And make it extra sweet, will you, baby.”
“Don’t do that,” I said.
She looked at me blankly. “Do what?”
“Don’t talk to him that way.”
She rolled her eyes and pulled her pack of cigarettes out of her purse. “No need to get your panties in a twist. Red doesn’t care.”
“Well, I do. You don’t treat people like that. Not in front me.”
She paused before lighting her smoke. “Here’s an idea, why don’t you mind your own damn business.”
“It becomes my business when you do it in front of me.”
Again, she rolled her eyes and then lit her cigarette. “He probably gets off on it. A pretty girl paying him attention. Fucking freak.”
This woman was a rude bitch, and she needed to know that I wasn’t going to put up with it. She might have the Kings fooled, or maybe they just kept her around because she gave out blowjobs like candy, but whatever. She wasn’t getting away with the bullshit on my watch.
And no one—and I mean no one—was going to pick on someone in front of me because they might be a little different and expect me to say nothing.
I wasn’t a sit back and watch kind of gal.
I was reactive. Probably too reactive. And if she ran her mouth off one more time, she was going to experience a mammoth reaction, so it was a good idea if she left.
“Get the fuck out,” I said.
Tiffani turned her attention back to me, and I watched her phony mask slip and her eyes harden. “Excuse me?”