by Zoey Parker
Luther walked with Aya on his arm, and I had never seen one man care for a woman as much as he did for her. I knew that Gunner and I shared something that no one else had, but no one showed it the way Luther did. He really was a gentle giant, but he was such a sweet, caring person anyway.
Then, of course, Duncan and Cora walked up together. It was no surprise that Duncan was the best man. Everyone had expected it. In every way possible, he was Gunner’s right hand man.
Seeing those four men standing at the altar in their tuxedo shirts and slacks with their colors over the shoulders of their tux jackets, I knew it was real. I knew that everything that had happened over the last year, from being accepted into the MC to helping Gunner and Duncan secure the sale of the Sun Stone, had simply just been a trial run compared to what lay ahead of me. I knew that once the ceremony was over, I wasn’t just going to be Mrs. Sierra Kaye. I was going to be a full-fledged member of The Immortal Devils. My name might as well have been Sierra Immortal at that point.
I took a deep breath as the music changed to indicate that the bride and groom were approaching. Since I had no one else to walk me down the aisle, no one to give me away, I chose to approach with Gunner. We were already married in our hearts as far as I was concerned, so it was incredibly symbolic to me for us walk arm and arm down the aisle.
“You ready?” he whispered as we stepped toward each other. He looked like a nervous little kid who was trying to keep from laughing.
“I am if you are,” I told him, offering him my arm.
We walked slowly up the aisle, and I thought about everything that had happened between us from the first time we met up until that day, our wedding day. I thought about how much my life had changed, and how much change I had seen in him as well.
I should have known that night when I sat and stared at the pictures in his office. I should have known that we were going to end up together. Neither one of us had cared much for the idea of settling down. Yet, we had spent so much of our time together acting like we were doing just that. Looking back, it had been obvious all along that we were going to end up settling down together, if we ever did at all.
I looked into my love’s eyes while we listened to the pastor and while we said our vows. I knew I wasn’t settling at all. I knew that my life was going to continue to be just as exciting as it had ever been before.
We were not letting go of the MC. We were planning on expanding it with the money we had added to its wealth. I was one of the top six members, and under my watch, we were already expanding to allow women into the MC. They weren’t just the old ladies. Ruby had her own colors. She was a full member, and she even had her own motorcycle. So did Aya. There were several female members of The Immortal Devils watching us from the pews.
No one was settling for anything in that church. And no one was coming down either. If anything, we were getting ready to take each other higher, together, and we were going to take the MC with us.
Finally, as we came to the end, we looked deep into each other’s eyes, and both of us, fighting back huge smiles and tears of joy, said in turn, “I do.”
As we embraced and kissed in front of the entire MC, the place erupted with cheers and whistles. Gunner shook against me as his groomsmen patted him on the back. My bridesmaids did the same.
It was the loudest, most joyous wedding I had ever been to, but I wasn’t prepared for what was coming next. As we were getting ready to leave the church, everyone lined up outside for me to toss the bouquet. In the melee that ensued after the flowers left my hands, Ruby lost her vest. She also caught the flowers, so she stood up and raised the bouquet in one hand and held the other one up just because. She was completely topless in the church parking lot, and everyone loved it.
Then, as we were leaving for the reception, everyone on a motorcycle sat lined up with their bikes purring. As we walked out to the limo—I wasn’t getting on a motorcycle in my wedding dress, thank you very much—they revved up their engines loudly, creating a loud roar in the parking lot and getting the attention of passers-by.
I got into that limousine with my new husband and the first man I had ever really allowed myself to love, I honestly felt like I had a real family for the first time.
As we pulled out of the parking lot, the bikes followed us in pairs. If the two of us riding together in front of that long line of bikers didn’t perfectly sum up our relationship and our future, nothing could have.
The road ahead was ours, and I’d be damned if it wasn’t Immortal.
THE END
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CLAIMED BY THE BAD BOY: A Dark Bad Boy Romance (Bloody Saints MC)
By Zoey Parker
Chapter One
Victoria
Victoria Parker stretched her arms over her head, the motion sending her slightly-too-tight shirt a few inches up over her stomach. It exposed the tan skin there in a way someone might describe as sexy, not that that had happened in a while. She didn’t do boyfriends. Especially now that she bounced from bar to bar. Bartending had been her thing since freshman year of high school when she was just 15 – God knows how she’d managed to get employed at all, much less in one of these dumps – and the appeal decreased as the years went by…
Not that there had ever been much appeal to start with.
She looked around her. It was just past 5 in the evening now, so the nightlife scene wouldn’t be coming to life at all for a few hours. At least, it wouldn’t if this was any other city. But it wasn’t, and patrons were already trickling in, and, to be honest, she was sick of all of it. But more than anything, she was sick of working at some shoddy bar a few blocks off Main called Lanterns.
This bar didn’t even have much of what its name advertised. It was a dark, gloomy place on a dark, gloomy street, and not many people even knew it existed. There were no social media sites up for it, none at all; not even some crappy review site where people basically extort businesses. Lanterns sat down a pot-holed street that could be described as “dim” in the best conditions, and the street posts leading to it had worn down paint. It was hard to get here, after all. Most people wouldn’t even know this bar existed unless they wanted to go looking for it.
But why would they want to go looking for it? Victoria shook her head, pulling her dark brown hair out of her loose ponytail and wrapping it around again for the eighth time this hour. It had only just turned 5 in the evening – some people might even still call it the afternoon, but those weren’t the sort of people who frequented this place – and the bar was already starting to get crowded.
Of course it was. The only people who occupied this joint belonged to the Bloody Saints. Sometimes a fresh person would walk in. That didn’t happen often. The newbie would inevitably recognize what had happened – by the sad or angry or sad-angry looks on everyone’s faces, the excessive leather, the bad tattoos, and the overly-shined motorcycles taking up the entirety of the street out front – and leave immediately.
“Aye,” she whispered to herself. She hated working here. There was only so much she could do to avoid throwing herself into her job every day, and the hours she worked there added up to a number that ended up being “too much” in her head instead of any kind of numeral. “Whatever.”
She wouldn’t have to stay here forever. There were other bars to go to.
She could bounce whenever she needed to.
It wasn’t the bar that bothered her so much as it was the people who went there, and the lifestyles they led. She had no interest in it; honestly, the obsession with money, power, and “fucking as many bitches” as they could – to quote a phrase she had often heard working behind
the bar – disgusted her.
Ignoring the regulars (read: the only effing people who walked into this trash dump), the bar wasn’t actually that bad. Sure, it was sad and decrepit, and everything in here needed to be thrown out. And sure, the bar needed a boss that actually gave a flying F about who went there, and how many times fists collided with flesh, and about the actual reputation of the place.
But then again, who would care? The only people who knew about Lanterns were the exact type of people who enjoyed going there. It was a freaking conundrum.
Victoria’s eyes went to the couch at the far left of the bar, pushed up against the wall. It was a light brown made much darker by years of use. The boss didn’t bother changing out furniture anymore; as he said, “it just gets ruined anyway.” Fair point. But…she gritted her teeth. Did no one around here even pretend to put in any effort?
Nope. The TV hung up a few feet above the far left of the bar didn’t even get reception to any channel anymore. But when had it? Not any time since she’d been here. Yet it still had people dutifully staring at it. They – three dudes in maybe their 40s who looked like they had similar enough crises that they all ended up decked out in leather, colorful variants of the same star tattoo, and sitting in a dive bar at 5 something on a Tuesday – had that glazed over, asshole look on their face that said that anyone who talked to them would be met by a stream of curses and turning the volume on the TV up (if there had been any show to watch in the first place).
Victoria sighed for as many times as she had in… just forever. Her eyes went to the far right of the bar. There were seats and tables there, which was at least remotely normal. Maybe in the past this place had pretended to be a restaurant? She didn’t know, and didn’t really care to figure out if that was the case or not, truthfully. People littered the seats there, too, and they all looked the same.
Of course they did.
It was a club. The Bloody Saints Motorcycle Club. Or, as she liked to think of them, the “I’m just a brat but I threaten people and think it makes me significant in some way” man-children.
She noticed them. She noticed all of them, and every little flaw in this place. Yeah. She had to get out of here. Too bad her experiences were all in places like this, and no decent place – like an actual restaurant – would hire her to be the bartender. And too bad she couldn’t just quit; she had to make rent somehow. She looked behind her.
The back of the bar was the only place in this joint that was in remotely good condition. It wasn’t in its best condition, but Victoria made the most she could of the materials back there, and in the supply closet just behind her. She sighed, glancing at it, thinking of how many times idiotic drunkards had tried to get in there, thinking she was just being a bitch and hiding a “public” bathroom from them. There was a piece of paper on it now because of that, and the sight of it bothered her. (“Notice: this is not a bathroom. This is a supply closet.”) Other than that, though, the rest of the back was organized.
Shelves behind her held the booze, the brands getting fancier and more costly the higher the eye traveled up the three shelves there. Beneath those and to either side of the shelves were a bunch of storage bins, chock full of extra straws (did anyone here even use straws?), jars full of olives and stuff like that, umbrellas for martinis and shit (no one ever bothered with these, either), and other stuff. In the back, in the supply closet was a fridge full of cold beers. Most people just ordered off tap, however, and that was directly in front of where Victoria stood now.
Beneath the bar top, there were various bins. Garbage bins, empty bins, bins full of things that were actually useful. Small cleaning supplies she could just pick up, so she didn’t have to go into the actual supply closet and fight with some kind of mop there. She bent down, her hand going towards that area, and she grabbed a rag.
Yeah, no one there noticed her. It didn’t bother her much; not that she wanted their attention anyway. It’d be nice to be treated as a person sometimes, but what could she expect? She hated every one of the men there. There were rarely women in the bar, so she didn’t include them in her line of thought, but she hated all the ones who did come, just the same.
Her eyes went to the wood of the bar boards in front of her. It was clean, like it had been clean when she washed it over again two hours ago. She’d come in at 2 P.M. She wouldn’t leave until 4 in the morning. It was one of the joys of being the single bartender bold enough to come into a place like this, especially as a short woman in her 20s. She brought the rag to the boards, running it over the thick indentations in the wood from where some wannabe-tough-guy had dragged a knife against it. There was way too much shit carved into that bar.
She brought a hand to her temples. If anyone tried doing that when she was there to see it, she might just have to stab them back. She didn’t have time to deal with any of this. But she had to.
Her nose twitched; the place smelled like diesel, as usual. It made sense. These jerks liked to rev their engines as they pulled into and out of the lot, and it left literal clouds of smoke all over the place whenever they did it. She bet these people, if they could even be called that, put too much oil all over everything on purpose.
Whatever.
She kept cleaning.
No cleaning was ever enough cleaning. It wasn’t so bad when they were there. The men were quiet enough when they were not fighting, anyway, it’s just that they always left everything fucking filthy. Cleaning up the same mess every night got old after the first two nights, and it had been far more than that number of shifts for Victoria.
She looked at the small watch holding tight to her wrist. 8 P.M. She could’ve guessed that by the loud chatter going on as more people flooded into the bar, their voices loud and drunk-sounding even though this place hadn’t actually been open to customers until about four hours ago. Or was it only three? She wasn’t sure anymore, she just unlocked the door when people showed up. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to, but she was also technically not supposed to use her curves to get tips out of people, either.
Her hands went to her chest and she adjusted her bra. Her entire wardrobe was based off the premise of getting tips by looking hot, but not looking hot enough to attract the attention of a potential creep. It was a fine line, and she hated having to walk it. The tips her outfits got her did her good, but there wasn’t much in the tip jar now. She removed the money anyway, putting it in a bigger jar she kept beneath the counter.
The stools in front of the bar were getting full now, too. She shook her shoulders in something that might resemble a shimmy, if you looked at it from a certain angle and ignored the lack of bounciness or happiness to the movement, and mentally prepared herself for it.
Her time to shine.
“Hello,” she smiled.
Eyes went to her chest and then loosely to her face, but always ended up looking back at her breasts before moving away. Sometimes people put money in her tip jar, but for the most part the rest of the night passed uneventfully.
“Beer.”
“Regular tap.”
With every order of something on tap – what the hell was a regular supposed to be? It varied from person to person, and she never bothered asking any of them what they thought something like that was supposed to mean – she just slid a glass across the bar. Those were kept under the bar, too. Every time they wanted a refill on tap they were supposed to tell her, but they all liked to act like they owned the place, and that included the tap. They’d reach over the bar top for a refill, but she didn’t stop them. She was constantly behind the bar. She could just see who went to the tap and who didn’t, and add it to their tab at the end of the night.
Hours passed.
She checked her watch.
Did she say hours? She meant half an hour. It was about 8:30 now. The lights in here seemed like they got dimmer whenever more people entered. Maybe that was because the crush of bodies blocked off the light from the lamps in here. The lamps put on all of the tables were the main l
ight source in this place; sure, there were some lights hanging off of the ceiling, but not many. And of the ones there were, they were too few and even more far between.
Whatever. Got to find a way to pass the time.
“Tap, please.”
“Beer.”
“Whiskey on the rocks.”
All of the orders blended together, and by the time Victoria looked at her watch again it was nearly 3 in the morning. The witching hour. Or was that the devil’s hour? She didn’t remember. She didn’t really care about that either, all that really mattered to her was how filthy the bar had gotten. She hadn’t looked around the room in a while. Her attention had been on making sure no one scammed her out of one or maybe three free beers. She didn’t mind it personally, but that added up and that ended up being a lot of cash. Just because she never saw her boss didn’t mean she could just do whatever and hope it was okay. This was still a biker club’s bar, and the man who ran it was no different, probably. Well, most likely. How could he be any different when this was what he was interested in attracting?