Ash looked at Sledge and mouthed, “I hope so,” before putting his hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Aw, darlin’, it’s just practice like everything else. I’ll bet you have lots of talents.” She blushed, and he said, “Let’s get a drink and give the pool table a rest for a while.”
She put the stick down and he offered her his arm. Sliding hers though it, she hugged up to him so that he could feel the side of her full breast against the exposed skin of his arm. His cock was already swelling. He led her over to the bar and ordered them both a drink. This was the third one he’d bought for her, so he knew what she wanted. He could also tell that it was starting to affect her. She was getting more giggly and touchy-feely. He would encourage her to leave before they had another. Ash didn’t like fucking drunk women, unless he knew them. He always wanted to be sure that the woman was willing. He’d had an incident once...one that he could hardly remember...but it haunted him to this day. He didn’t want it to ever happen again.
They had their drinks and listened to the music for a while. Vanessa...that was it, Vanessa...she was there with a friend who had been preoccupied with a man all night. It was just about midnight when she said, “I really should find Sarah and see if she’s ready to go.”
“So soon?” Ash asked, feeling his chances at getting laid dwindling down to which girls had yet to pair off at the club.
Vanessa smiled. “Well, if I wasn’t riding with Sarah I’d stay a little longer, but she told me to make sure I dragged her out of here by midnight. She has to work tomorrow.”
“Well then, I can fix that. You can send your friend on her way and I’ll drive you home. You haven’t even danced with me yet.”
She blushed. “You didn’t ask me to dance.”
“Damn, I’m sorry, darlin’. I could have sworn I told you how much I like to dance. My mother was a dancer. She taught me all kinds of fancy moves.” Vanessa put her hand over her heart.
“Aw, that’s so sweet. Okay, let me find Sarah. I’ll be right back.” He watched her go, enjoying the view, and sat back down to finish his drink. About that time Sledge passed him with a petite redhead on his arm.
“We’re headed back to my place,” Sledge said, “You staying with me or at the club tonight?” Sledge had his own apartment; Ash lived in a room at the club. He told everyone that he felt more comfortable doing his job as an enforcer, being so close to the club all the time. The truth he’d never admit to anyone was that he hated the idea of living completely alone. He liked his privacy, but his room afforded him that when he needed it. He liked being able to almost always find someone in the kitchen or the great room, or taking a few steps out back and finding Wolf or Bruf or one of the other guys that had a trailer out there. If they had more space, he’d get himself one. Wolf had been talking about expanding, moving the club further out in the country where they had more room, for a few years now. Unfortunately, the funds just hadn’t been there, especially with the start-up of the gym the past year. Ash had already decided that whatever money his father had left to him would be donated to the club, and hopefully would be enough to help them invest in that property. Of course, thanks to Allison and her attorney, none of them had gotten anything yet...and the rate she was dragging it out in court he’d be an old man before he saw a dollar of it.
“Nah, I’ll go on back to the club.”
“Where’s your girl?”
“She went to find her friend to let her know I’m giving her a ride home.” Sledge chuckled and winked.
“That’s my boy.” Ash watched his friend leave and then looked around for Vanessa. He finally spotted her and a pretty brunette, coming his way.
“Ash, this is my friend Sarah.” Ash stood and Sarah’s eyes roamed appreciatively over his body. They focused back on his face and she said:
“Nice to meet you.”
“My pleasure,” he told her with a smile.
“I hope you understand, but Vanessa and I watch each other’s backs. Can I get a picture of you?”
Ash chuckled. “For the police in case she goes missing?”
Vanessa blushed but her ballsy friend said, “Yes, and for the guys I’m going to send after you if you hurt her.” Ash laughed again. He liked this girl.
“No problem.” He turned his face to the right and said, “This is my best side.” Sarah snapped the picture, thanked him again, and the girls hugged goodnight. As soon as her friend was gone, Vanessa said:
“I’m sorry about that.”
“No problem, darlin’. I’d much rather you ladies were being safe than not. I’ve got nothing to hide. You want that dance or you ready to get out of here?” He winked and said, “I could always give you a private dance...some other time.”
Still blushing she said, “I’d like that, and yes, I’m ready.”
He helped her slip on her sweater and they walked outside. It was still warm out and she started to peel the sweater off but he said, “You might want to leave that on. It gets a little cooler on the bike.”
Looking confused she said, “The bike?” He looked down at his kutte and boots and back at her.
“Sorry, just assumed you knew what I was riding.”
She looked embarrassed, and nervous. “I guess I should have...I just...you said a ride home and...I’m sorry. I’ve just never been on a motorcycle before.”
“You’ll never want to get into a car again,” he told her with a wink. He led her to where his Harley sat. His motorcycle was the one thing that Ash put a lot of money into. He loved his bike and he spared no expense to make it the fastest, prettiest bike in the club. The guys made fun of him because he carried around a soft cloth to buff out any fingerprints, or dirt, or road grime that got on it. But he didn’t care, she was his baby and he wanted to take good care of her.
The bike was a Softail lowrider with dual gauges on the green and black tank and completely chromed out. It had been fifteen grand on the showroom floor and over sixty by the time he got it out the door. Since then, he’d put another five or six grand into it...and it was worth every penny. “Oh wow, it’s so pretty,” Vanessa said.
“She is,” he agreed. He pulled the helmet off the handlebars and handed it to her.
“What will you wear?”
“I’ve got a hard head,” he said with a smile. “I’ll be okay, you put it on.”
While she strapped on the helmet, he slid onto the bike. He was about to start it when his phone rang. He wasn’t going to answer it, but he’d finally started building a shaky relationship with his sister...such as it was...and he didn’t want her to get tired of not being able to reach him. He pulled it out of his pocket and grimaced when he saw that it was Bruf, the club’s sergeant-at-arms. Bruf would never be calling him at this hour on a Saturday night if something big wasn’t going down. It was beginning to look like his poor, underused, and aching cock was going to have to settle for his hand again tonight.
He held it up and said, “Sorry, I have to get this. Hey, Bruf, what’s up?”
“Sorry to bother you while you’re out but the boss is calling us in for church.”
“Now?” It was definitely something big. Wolf was calling church, which meant everyone was expected to be there, not just the SA and enforcers.
“Yeah, like ten minutes ago, he said.”
“Okay...I’m on my way.” He saw the disappointed look on Vanessa’s face but when he told her, “I’m sorry, darlin’, it’s work. I’m going to have to call you an Uber or a cab...” she pulled the helmet off.
“It’s okay. I can call my own.”
He was already putting the Uber order in his phone. “What’s your address, darlin’?” She rattled it off and he put it in the app and said, “Phone number?” Again, she gave it to him. Once he had put it all in he said, “They’ll be here in two minutes...and I owe you a motorcycle ride. But no worries, I have your phone number and address now.” She blushed, and Ash reached over and put his hand on her face. He pulled her toward him and gave her a kiss, loving
the way her full lips covered his...and imagining what they could do with the tip of his cock. He groaned and finally pulled out of the kiss. “I gotta go.”
She stepped back, gave him a smile and a wave, and for just a second he wondered what Wolf would do if he didn’t show up...and then he regained his senses. It wasn’t like calling in sick to work. Not showing up was not showing respect...and that was one thing their club president would never tolerate, and in the long run, that was a good thing.
7
Wolf sat at the head of the table, looking more somber than Ash had seen him in a long time. Everyone else around the table and in the chairs set up along the walls looked either drunk, depressed, or half asleep...but that’s what you get when you called church after midnight on a Saturday night. Even Manson, Wolf’s VP, looked like he was fighting to keep his eyes open. Bruf stood against the wall behind the boss and he was the only one in the room that looked wide awake and stone-cold sober. He was about the most dedicated man Ash had ever met; when Ash first joined up with the club, he had tried to model his actions to Bruf’s...but the man was a breed all his own.
Sledge rushed in just before the door was closed, sat down next to Ash, and made a face at him like “What the fuck’s going on?” Ash just gave him a shake of his head; he had no idea, but they were about to find out. Manson was telling everyone to quiet down and Wolf finally hit the gavel with the wolf’s head on it against the table. “Okay, I know that this isn’t where anyone wants to be on a Saturday night, but we’ve got a problem and the more time that goes by, the bigger this shit is going to get.” He turned slightly and gave Bruf a nod. Bruf left the room and everyone was so silent for the few seconds he was gone that you could hear them breathing. When he returned, the silence was broken with gasps and whispered curses.
Bruf hadn’t come back alone. He pushed a wheelchair in with him. Sitting in the chair was a young man that they all recognized...barely. Bruf parked the chair next to Wolf and Wolf looked at the young man and said, “You okay, kid?”
Tex nodded and Ash saw him grimace in pain as he did. Tex and his twin brother Tensee were both part of a team out of Las Vegas that trained under former MMA champion Jacob Wright. The two young men had been in California for the past year, working as personal trainers at the Skulls gym and doing exhibition matches. Wolf took a deep breath and ran his hand through his heavy beard. Anyone that knew him knew it was a sign that he was trying to keep his cool...but his eyes had a fire burning in them that didn’t bode well for whoever had done this. He turned back toward the men in the room and said:
“Tex was at the gym alone this evening getting ready for a fight he’s got coming up next weekend. As he left, he was assaulted in the parking lot by six men. They didn’t do this with their fists...the chickenshits knew they wouldn’t have a chance against this boy one on one. They used a metal pipe and their boots...motorcycle boots.” Tex nodded again, and Ash realized as he looked at him closer that the man’s jaw was wired shut and that was why Wolf was doing all the talking. His face looked like it might still be swelling. One eye was swollen shut and the eyelid was dark purple. He had some thick gauze across one side of his forehead. Not only was the jaw wired shut, his lips were swollen and his nose looked like it might be broken. He had his arms on the armrests of the chair and Ash actually smiled when he looked at the kid’s hands. His knuckles were more swollen than his face and there was hardly any skin left on them. He may have gotten the shit kicked out of him by six cowards with a metal pipe...but the kid got in a hell of a lot of good licks for sure.
“Did he see their faces?” Sledge asked.
“Tex was able to type out what happened to him to the best of his recollection,” Wolf said, “Bruf’s going to read it to y’all.” Bruf picked up a tablet off the table, scrolled through something and cleared his throat.
“After I took Tensee to the airport, I went back to the gym to work out for a while.” Tensee was the kid’s twin brother, also a fighter, who had a match coming up in Vegas soon. Tex had agreed to stay in California and continue the training at the gym while his brother was in Vegas. A big group of them, Ash included, were scheduled to ride down in time to catch the match in a couple of weeks. Jacob wanted Tensee to spend the last couple of weeks there where he could make sure the kid wasn’t partying too much, was eating right and working on his footwork—which, despite a wicked right hook, was a big reason why Jacob the Lion was a champion. “I was locking the front doors when I heard the sounds of motorcycles. I thought it was you guys, so I wasn’t even worried. When I turned around, they were parked facing me with their headlights in my face. I couldn’t see anything. I asked what was going on, but instead of an answer, I got punched in the mouth. The fight was on. I went after whoever punched me, still blind from the lights. I connected, a few times, but there were too many of them. They got me down on the ground and I was hit with something hard and cold and kicked with steel-toed boots. I could be wrong about how many there were, but it was at least six. They never spoke, and I was never able to focus on their faces...but as they left, I got a glimpse of the back of one of their kuttes. They were Impalers.”
“Motherfuckers!” The words were spoken by more than one of the guys in the room, along with others. The grumbles started out low and were suddenly like the roar of a raging fire that Manson quickly threw a bucket of water on.
“Y’all quiet down and listen!” he barked. Wolf waited for it to go silent and said:
“We haven’t had any beef with the Impalers for years as far as I know. The first thing I did was call them and try to get Ogre on the phone.” Ogre was their founder and president...a nasty, crusty old biker with fewer scruples than the devil himself from what Ash had heard. Coyote, the Skulls’ president at the time, was far from being a saint, but even he couldn’t stomach some of the things Ogre was into, and that was what had started their feud and led to Ogre leaving and creating the Impalers a dozen or so years before. Once Coyote was gone and the Impalers began to gain ground in their own territory, they became too distracted to give the Skulls any more shit. But obviously, something had changed. “The old bastard wouldn’t talk to me,” Wolf said. “So, I tried for Sid Vicious, their VP, and that chickenshit also wouldn’t come to the phone. I hope they know that was as far as my fucking olive branch reaches. First thing in the morning I want you all saddled up and ready to ride. We’re taking a trip up to Stockton. If they’re willing to tell us what the fuck this was about, give us the six that did this and a guarantee that we’ll never see any of those bastards in Skulls territory again...I might be feeling generous. If not, then I’m sorry, boys, we might just have a war on our hands.” No one in the room said anything to that. It had been years since the Skulls were at war with anyone. Ash was sure that the men around him were thinking about their loved ones—their old ladies and their kids if they had them. The Impalers had a reputation for fighting dirty...and all anyone had to do if they needed proof of that was to look at the kid sitting in the wheelchair, to the right of their president. Smoke was surprisingly the first to speak. The biker kept his words to a minimum and usually when he opened his mouth, whatever came out was worth listening to. Tonight was no exception.
“Sometimes the only way to fight a fire is to dig a trench and light another one on the other side.”
* * *
Mackenzie was no shrinking violet. She was a force to be reckoned with in a boardroom. Asher Bennett III hadn’t hired her solely because of who she was, or what he perceived she had done for his son and therefore his family. She had a master’s degree in business management. She graduated summa cum laude from her classes at NYU, and after a short internship with a retail clothing giant that had their corporate offices on Staten Island, she’d landed a job with one of the most influential business moguls in Manhattan at the time, a very successful, wealthy recluse who ran his billion-dollar international business from the comforts of a mansion he’d built on twenty acres out on Long Island. His name was Cheste
r Mayfield and Mack’s technical title had been personal assistant. She was way overqualified for that title, but the job had turned out to be everything she had hoped it would be and then some. She rapidly went from running errands to standing in for Mayfield at important meetings and even in front of his board of directors. She had to grow a stiff spine since her presence in a lot of those places was frowned upon, and nasty rumors about what her “other” duties for the old man might be began to circulate. A big part of her getting stronger had been thanks to Asher...but that was before everything fell apart.
Now here she was five years later, calling on that strength as she drove the car she’d rented at the airport toward the address the attorney had given her for Asher. The idea of just dropping in on Ash made her nervous enough, but the idea of doing it in the midst of a motorcycle clubhouse almost gave her an anxiety attack. But it was necessary, and she hoped Ash would understand. She thought about calling him, but what she had to say needed to be done face to face.
Her GPS told her that she had “reached her destination,” and she pulled the little Honda to a stop at the curb. To her right was a cyclone fence that surrounded a big shop. The sign said, “Westside Motors.” The logo was a circle with a classic convertible in the center...with a skull painted on the hood of the blue car. This had to be it. She left the car at the curb and walked up to the gate. It was locked, but there was a little guardhouse behind it and she’d seen someone inside. She rang the buzzer on the gate and a man stepped out of the guardhouse. He was probably in his thirties, tall with a lot of lean muscle, long brown hair held back in a ponytail, and intense, dark brown eyes. He was wearing a leather vest just like the one Ash had been wearing at the coffee shop the last time she saw him. He looked at her curiously and said:
ASH: Westside Skulls Motorcycle Club: (Westside Skulls MC Romance Book 4) Page 5