Devil's Mark

by Megan Crane

  Holly did not feel shy. She felt a little bit dizzy and entirely too warm, and she didn’t know what to do with her hands. She gripped the edge of the desk on either side of her and hoped for the best. But Uptown only moved closer. She could smell him then. Leather and something she associated with hard liquor, though he didn’t seem the least bit drunk. The frat boys she’d known in college had all splashed themselves with the same spicy, citrusy colognes, but not Uptown. There was no specific scent, there was only him. Male. Bold. Beautiful.

  Something silvery and intense slid through her, making her hum…everywhere. And she was terrified that somehow, he could tell.

  “I’m not shy,” she told him, though her voice was far too fragile for that to sound anything like true. She cleared her throat and reverted to “prim” instead. “But I think that if you’re used to marathons of public sex and blow job interviews, you might have a different set of standards.”

  His face suddenly seemed tauter. Fiercer. Her breath tangled in her throat.

  And his hand tightened in her ponytail again as he leaned close. “Kiss me.”

  There was nothing but white noise between her ears then. And his beautiful mouth right there in front of her. Not far away at all. She could go up on her toes and tip herself into that rock-hard chest, then press her mouth to his. Nothing could be easier.

  Or more fucking insane.

  “What?” she managed to ask.

  He clearly knew she was stalling. “Get your mouth on me,” he told her, his face stamped hard with the same hunger that glittered in his eyes. And it slammed through her, making her feel jittery and weak at once. “Use your tongue. Make it deep and wet and dirty. Go on. I’ll wait.”

  Holly’s mouth opened, but she couldn’t speak. There was too much fire coursing through her veins, too much need. There was too much she didn’t understand—

  That was what snapped her out of it, right when her knees started to feel a little questionable and her intentions even more frail. She’d been around this town forever. So had he. With the exception of that one memorable afternoon in the cemetery behind the church, she’d never really crossed paths with Uptown. Yet now he was pressing her back against a desk and acting like he couldn’t resist her? It didn’t make sense.

  “Does this have something to do with my father?” she asked. Because in her experience, most things in Lagrange did. One way or another. Whether she was pretending to ignore them or not.

  Uptown let out a short little noise, not quite a laugh.

  Then he dropped his hand and stepped back, and Holly had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from making an involuntary little sound of foolish, suicidal disappointment. What was the matter with her? Why was Uptown the only man alive with this strange power over her?

  “If I’m not here when you come in to work, tell everyone I’m looking out for you,” he said after a long, tense moment dragged by. As if nothing had happened. Still, Holly was sure he could read her mind. That he knew exactly how he got to her and he liked it.

  “Why would you do that?” she asked, but only when she was sure she could keep her voice cool and even. Or anyway, closer to that than before. “Why do you care what happens to me here?”

  “Because,” he said, and this time, she had no trouble reading him. Hunger and intent, all wrapped up together and enough to make her breath feel shallow. “My brothers have a tendency to break their toys. They’re a little too enthusiastic, if you know what I mean, especially with anything new.” And when he grinned at her this time, he reminded her of a wolf and her curse was that she liked that, too. “And if anyone’s gonna break you, princess, it’s gonna be me.”

  —

  Uptown rolled up to the clubhouse the next day with a little time to spare before the meeting Digger, the local club president, had called late the night before. That kind of summons meant every full-patch brother who wasn’t out of town on some kind of business showed up and sat around the table in the room they called church. That was where they cast their official votes about how shit should go down across the club’s numerous income-generating enterprises. It was where they voted in new brothers or prospects, handled disputes and problems and gave each other shit, promoted brothers within the ranks or recognized extraordinary service, talked freely about club enemies, and occasionally made new club bylaws.

  Not that a vote was likely to be called on what had been eating at Uptown lately. That being Digger’s increasingly random and unexplained absences and the unearned, definitely suspicious swagger of Whale, Digger’s punk bitch of a son, who was the only member of the club who didn’t seem to understand he’d gotten his DKMC colors purely out of widespread respect for Digger. Not because anyone wanted to hear him shoot his mouth off and act like he was the club’s rightful VP when he wasn’t. That position had gone to the far more respected T’Roscoe, back when Digger was making good calls and Roscoe still tolerated that T in front of his name, Cajun for “little.” No one talked about the fact that Digger appeared to be heading straight off the rails—although small, careful groups of brothers sometimes met where no one could overhear and everyone was sure word wouldn’t leak that people had…suspicions.

  Uptown hated suspicions. He hated maybes and rumors and undercurrents. He’d grown up having to deal with that shit. Way too much of it, in fact. Having to read a room the minute he entered it to figure out if this stepfather or that boyfriend or his fucked-up mother herself was going to take a swing at him. Or worse. He’d spent years of his life existing in a state of endless fucking dread, waiting for the next hit, the next eviction, the next explosion of violence. The club had always been his escape from that mess. The biker life was black-and-white. There was the club, where the brothers pledged themselves to each other and the outlaw life they’d built as Devil’s Keepers, and then there was everything else.

  The club had been Uptown’s salvation. He’d done his time as a prospect without a single second thought, and the day he’d gotten patched in still ranked as the best in his life. That Digger, a man Uptown considered the only father figure he’d ever had who hadn’t stabbed him in the back at the first opportunity, could be betraying the club he’d helped form up in North Dakota in the 1970s made Uptown feel sick. Physically fucking ill. It pissed him off on a level he mostly didn’t let himself think about, because it made him want to burn shit down. If it was true—and so far there was nothing but weird coincidences and a whole lot of unfortunate conclusions, nothing solid—it made the Devil’s Keepers no better than those epic pieces of shit, the two-faced asshole Black Dogs, who were the club’s major rivals in this part of the country and were forever trying to snake the DKMC’s cartel ties and other long-held business connections right out from under them.

  If it was true, it was some seriously grim shit. But there was zero chance of possible betrayals coming up for a vote if Digger had been the one to call the meeting, so Uptown knew he had to compartmentalize and repress his feelings on all the coincidences and rumors until there was something more to go on than bad feelings.

  Accordingly, Uptown pulled his head out of his ass as he drove his bike into the long parking area in front of the clubhouse. He parked in the line of Harleys and nodded to the prospects waiting there, ready to make sure his bike shined just as bright as the rest. What he did not do was give in to the crazy thing inside him when he saw Whale walking into the clubhouse a few yards in front of him. He didn’t “accidentally” run over the president’s pain-in-the-ass son, no matter that Whale deserved it and more. Uptown didn’t call him out. He didn’t even taunt the little shit the way he—and everyone else—liked to do, because there was nothing funnier than a ridiculous asshole with no sense of humor.

  He was a goddamned saint.

  It occurred to him that it was the second time in less than twenty-four hours that he’d had that thought. The first had been last night, when he’d let the mayor’s little virgin drive off into the thick May night without even getting his hands down he
r pants. And then he’d compounded that madness by not getting one of the club groupies to handle his hard-on afterward. Now this.

  If Uptown didn’t watch himself, he’d end up the only tattooed altar boy in Our Lady of Mercy next Sunday, an event that he suspected would lead directly to a targeted lightning strike from the heavens above. He’d probably find that funny, of course, but doubted the tough old priest who ministered to the Lagrange flock would feel the same.

  “Did I hear this shit right?”

  Greeley, the club’s sergeant at arms, was swinging off his bike outside the old, unwelcoming warehouse that crouched menacingly at the end of a dead-end bayou road, daring anyone who didn’t belong there to come close and risk their lives. Uptown had loved the place since he was a kid. It said “home” to him in a way none of the shitty trailers he’d lived in with his always-spiraling-farther-down mother ever had. There’d been years he’d lived here rather than deal with staying in a place anyone—including his mother—could access whenever they felt like it. The front door was always guarded, and that was assuming someone made it down the long, flat road without getting a bullet for their trouble.

  “You suddenly turn into Prince Charming, brother?” Greeley was wearing a shit-eating grin. “That would make a killer fairy tale. The Princess and the Dirty, Degenerate Biker.”

  “I’m charming as fuck,” Uptown replied. Then he shook his head. “Did you bitches stay up all night gossiping about my business while you braided each other’s hair?”

  Greeley didn’t bother to flip Uptown off, though it was implied as he fell into step beside him. He raked a hand through his dark, unbraided hair, still smirking in that way that indicated he wasn’t done handing out shit. “Not sure it’s your business when you made Bart hire her on the spot and then put a KEEP OUT sign around her neck.”

  “It’s not a KEEP OUT sign.” Uptown smirked at him. “It’s more that I’m reserving the first shot at all that untouched territory, that’s all.”

  “Does pussy take reservations?” Greeley laughed. “Life must be different with a pretty face like yours, man.”

  Uptown grinned, even though something weird moved in him that he didn’t much like. “It’s a curse.”

  They walked into the clubhouse and greeted the rest of their brothers, and it wasn’t until Uptown was sitting in his place at the big, wide table, still fucking proud he’d earned the right to be there, that he realized what was bothering him.

  He didn’t like Greeley talking about Holly. How messed up was that? He didn’t like another man, even his sergeant at arms, calling her “pussy.” He didn’t like the fact that every one of his brothers was smirking at him now, which meant he could look forward to a lot more of that bullshit coming at him today.

  And none of it made any sense. What did he care what anyone said about Holly Fucking Chambless, to him or in general? She’d been prancing around the town like her shit didn’t stink her whole life. Now that her daddy had lost his club protection and his good name in the course of a single week, Holly might as well have had a target on her back, encouraging all the brothers to take a shot now that she was fair game—and she’d walked right into Dumb Gator’s like she didn’t know it.

  It wasn’t surprising that Uptown wanted a taste of her. Who wouldn’t? What was surprising was that he didn’t like the fact that his brothers were already talking about her like she was any old piece of club ass. Like that blond friend of hers who’d been fucking her way through the ranks for years.

  Uptown really, really didn’t want to think about Holly taking part in one of those typical DKMC parties. And he was a little too aware that thinking that kind of crap was how brothers ended up shackled to old ladies. Like Greeley himself, who should have known better, yet had shacked up with his old lady a few months ago after a shady cartel psycho had tracked her here. At least Merritt Broussard was useful to the club, able to use her law degree to help the brothers out in their various skirmishes with the police, in addition to finding a place on the back of Greeley’s bike.

  Holly Chambless, on the other hand, was about the most useless creature who’d ever been born.

  Not that it fucking matters, he reminded himself sharply, because he had no idea how the hell he kept getting confused on this point. You’re not looking to do anything with her but get your dick wet. And maybe fuck with that douchebag Benny while you’re at it.

  Digger pushed his way into the room then, Roscoe at his side, effectively starting the meeting with his presence. And Uptown couldn’t help but slide a look over to Whale, just to gauge his reaction. Sure enough, the little dick wasn’t making much of an effort to keep a sneer off his face—though what, exactly, he was all smug about remained a mystery. Uptown, meanwhile, had to expend far more energy keeping his mouth shut.

  But when he looked away from Whale, he caught Greeley’s grim look in the same direction. Fuck. This shit kept happening. It got more tense every time, and it wasn’t just Uptown and Greeley and a few others noticing it. At some point the tension was going to boil over and if that happened when there still wasn’t any evidence either way? It was going to be a shit show. Brother against brother and a club turned against itself.

  And aside from the fact that club drama was bad for business and would basically be giving the Black Dogs a personal invitation to take over the transportation corridor from Texas into the Northeast that the Devil’s Keepers currently controlled, it would rip Uptown’s heart right the fuck out.

  “Got the usual shit to take care of up in Shreveport,” Digger said when he took his place at the head of the table. He stroked a hand down his gray beard, his gaze drifting over the brothers sitting at the table and in their chairs around the big room. Then his impenetrable old gaze landed on Uptown. “But first, a question. You banging Benny’s little Barbie doll, Uptown?”

  “Mayor Barbie,” Roscoe added, cracking himself up.

  “Fuck you.” Uptown aimed that to the table in general, which had absolutely no effect. He hadn’t imagined it would.

  “He didn’t bang her,” Tick chimed in from the other side of the room, the dick. “It was like junior high. Maybe he’s going to pass notes with her. Ask her to prom.”

  Uptown raised his middle finger in the air. “If you hadn’t dropped out of elementary school, you illiterate fuck, you’d know there’s no prom in junior high.”

  “This is the saddest thing I’ve ever witnessed.” Roscoe shook his head, kicking back in his chair next to Digger with his usual easy smile on his face. “I expected better from you, Uptown. Why not hand the girl your balls the next time you see her and get it over with?”

  “This is the problem with you assholes,” Chaser, one of the club’s enforcers, chimed in from where he lounged against the far wall. “You’re a pack of fucking monkeys. You can’t appreciate a romantic gesture when you see it. Uptown, fine and upstanding southern gentleman that he is, offered the lady employment and walked her to her car. On their fifth date, maybe she’ll let him hold her hand.”

  The brothers were all howling, of course. Uptown could only shake his head and take it. And make damned sure that if he opened his mouth he didn’t sound the slightest bit defensive or possessive or any of the other things he shouldn’t have been feeling in the first place. His brothers would be so all over that, they’d make ants at a picnic seem restrained and tentative.

  “None of you gossipy little bitches would know a strategy if it bit you in the ass,” he pointed out.

  “I wouldn’t think Holly Chambless was much of a biter,” Butler grunted from next to Uptown. “She wears too much pink and, brother, you gotta know she’s got ‘professional virgin’ written all over her. Bitches like that only give it up for a wedding ring.”

  That thing inside of Uptown that had twisted into existence outside the clubhouse earlier shook itself awake again, and did not bode well for a peaceful, easy conclusion to this conversation. He had to talk himself out of punching Butler’s teeth down his throat and w
orse, it took some doing. And he had to do it without getting visibly tense or giving these fuckers any more ammunition because they were relentless bastards, every last one of them. Any possible opportunity to poke at him? They’d shove it right up his ass. Happily. He usually loved them for it. There was a reason they were the only family he acknowledged.

  “I hope she is a virgin, brother,” he said instead of losing it. He smirked around the table. “Consider it a favor I’m doing for the club. After I ruin her for other men, you bent and twisted motherfuckers can sit around and tell yourselves it’s because I was her first. If that’s what you need to believe.”

  There was more roaring laughter, and when it died down, Uptown thought they’d get down to business—and out of his face at last.

  But Digger was still peering at him.

  “Maybe you need to leverage that,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “Use the situation to our advantage.”

  “Why does the fun of popping that cherry go to Uptown?” Whale asked. Uptown told himself it was that voice that set his teeth on edge, not the idea of someone else—much less a little bitch like Whale—touching Holly.

  “Well, first up, she knows who the fuck I am,” Uptown replied with a grin that he hoped hid the murderous feeling pounding around inside his chest, with Whale’s name written all over it.

  Whale, meanwhile, didn’t bother to cloak his scowl in anything like a smile, but the guffaws of the rest of the brothers kept him quiet.

  “Benny’s had a week to think about double-crossing the club and stealing our fucking money,” Digger said then. His gaze cut to Whale, but quickly returned to Uptown. “Why don’t you go have a little talk with him and when he gives you some bullshit about how he doesn’t have what he owes us the way you know he will? Use the girl to land a sucker punch.”

  Uptown nodded, and who cared if he liked that idea or not? It was a decent plan. It combined revenge with what was likely one of Benny Chambless’s worst nightmares, which was a win for Uptown any way he looked at it. Or it would spur the douchebag mayor on to pay back the money he’d stolen, which was a win for the club. The fact that it was Holly in the middle of all that should have been nothing but a bonus.