by Amy Law
She wanted to know more about what was happening in the ‘rumpus room,’ but she didn’t want to ask. She had a strong sense too that if she found out she’d regret it. She wanted to take him on trust,even against the odds, the evidence of her eyes, and the storm of emotion that brewed up inside her as she clung to him.
Chapter 10
Haughey, Red Skulls VP, was the acting president while Iron was on his enforced leave of absence. The big, red-headed Irishman came to the clubhouse door to greet Ryder and Bear. He gave both of them wide smiles, firm bro-hugs, put an arm on each of their shoulders and steered them to the bar.
It seemed every man in the club clapped their shoulders. Whiskey flowed and Haughey said he would take them into a back room, “To nail the details.”
Bear whispered to Ryder, “Details? I didn’t think we’d agreed yet.”
The Red Skulls had a setback, something of a disruption of service, when Iron, their President, and his Sergeant-at-Arms, Jam, both had been hauled into the cells forselling, or allegedly attempting to sell, a pound and a half of ninety-six percent pure coke, according to Bear’s contact in the PD.
Bear spoke quietly into Ryder’s ear, “Never mind that nobody sells coke that pure, nobody can even get coke that pure. It’s been stepped on harder than that before it ever gets near a US border.”
Ryder nodded. “Damn right. That isn’t a commodity, that’s a goddamned collectors item.”
Bear said, “And, forget that the Skulls don’t ever sell coke wholesale. The biggest bag anyone ever bought from them would be about an ounce, two at the most. The Skulls ship or buy coke wholesale, and they sell it retail.”
“Makes no sense,” Ryder agreed.
Bear went on, “While we’re at it, just overlook about the fact that the two senior men in the club would never be out on the street for a one-time deal.” Their eyes met and Bear said, “Street whores in Tijuana smell less of fish than that deal.”
So, the Skulls’ top men are in the county lock-up, and their VP comes to Blades MC, asking them to take over the Skulls’ next monthly arms shipment. He’s offering a big slice of the Skulls’ main earner to Blades, a rival club. Blades send Ryder and Bear to the meet on their behalf, and Ryder, an unaffiliated nomad. Haughey doesn’t even bat an eye.
No, he treats Ryder like he’s the goddamn rainmaker, and Bear like he’s the King of Spain.
Haughey brought four girls into the back room with them. The stacked redhead carried a spliff and a baggie full of weed, and the petite raven-haired minx had a silver tray with a bottle of bourbon and gleaming shot glasses.
Bear and Ryder settled on a couch. Bear whispered, “Let’s just see where this road leads.”
The girls’ wide eyes shone. Women always wanted a piece of Ryder, and he was usually happy to oblige. It wasn’t often that a motorcycle club high council member came offering his best girls as—as what, a tribute? as a sweetener?—but why did Haughey want to please them so bad? It should have been the other way around.
Bear was determined to take full advantage of the gifts on offer. Two of the girls dragged his jeans open and they squealed and giggled as they hauled out his long, thick cock. They took turns to lick along the length of it, to suck on his balls and to plunge their young mouths over his proud, stiffening shaft.
He slowly pulled the redhead’s panties down over her nubile thighs and chuckled at her pubes, shaved into a red heart. Her eyes widened when he sunk his bearded face into her soft, tight little wet pussy. Her back arched and her hands flew into her hair as she moaned and rocked her pelvis on his mouth.
Ryder watched with a detached look of amusement and accepted a fat joint from the nimble black-haired girl. She stroked and nuzzled his chest, nibbled at his nipples and slid her sharp teeth down his abs.
When she dragged her neat little nails down his stomach and got to his belt, he breathed thick and hard, but to her surprise and his, he pulled her hands gently away. “Restricted zone, sweetheart,” he told her with a smile.
He could have just been having some fun, but he realized that he knew what he wanted. This young girl, lovely though she was, was not it. He had no appetite for distraction. He knew where the real thing was. Bear saw what was going on and, when he figured it out, he did his level best to torture Ryder.
He got the redhead on the couch on her knees with her face inches from Ryder’s. He felt her pants of breath and watched her gleaming eyes water as Bear pried her open. She gasped and moaned as his hard bulb popped into her. She stretched and bent her back. Her fingers clawed as his length reamed up her.
Her little wet tongue lolled out of her red lips and she sighed as Bear’s thighs slapped against her upturned ass. He pounded into her until she collapsed into Ryder’s lap. She moaned, flexed, and shouted helplessly as she came over and over.
Out the corner of his eye, Ryder watched Haughey. Haughey took tiny sips of his whiskey with long gaps between them. He let the girls crawl over his lap, but his attention was never on them. He was watching Ryder and Bear.
When the girl on Bear’s dick was done, he grabbed the next girl to make her come with her face in front of Ryder’s nose. Ryder smiled and said, “Okay, bro. That was enough. Get your jollies and fire off down this sweet girl’s throat. Then let’s get our business done.”
When he was done and the girl gurgled happily with sticky dribble over her face, Ryder beckoned Haughey over.
“A’ight, Haughey, we’ll take the run, and I’ll head it up. There’s terms and conditions, though. I’ll set the place. Click to confirm that you have read and agree to all of the terms and conditions.”
“Well… we’ll need some time to get set up…”
“I’ll call, I’ll tell you where, and I’ll give you an hour. That’s exactly how long you’ll have to get your circus there. Are we on?”
Chapter 11
Ryder and Bear rode two miles down the straight road back from Red Skulls’ clubhouse before Ryder stopped and looked about him. Bear stopped up ahead and turned back to where Ryder was.
This was some bleak and desolate terrain. Reddish brown rocks and dirt, spiky, bare spines of shrubs and blue-gray ridges shimmered together in a dull haze all the way to the horizon.
Sound didn’t travel, it just fell at your boots.
He turned and looked back up the road to see that there wasn’t anyone following. You want any covert surveillance out here, you’d need a lizard to do it for you. Anything more than a foot high, you’d spot it coming from a mile away.
Damn place gave him the creeps. He got out his cellphone. No signal, of course. He pulled out a spliff, thinking about what he was going to tell John Reader back at the Blades’ clubhouse.
He and Bear turned off their engines. Bear waited for him to speak.
Haughey had welcomed Ryder and Bear into the Red Skulls clubhouse like they were visiting royalty. He offered dope, whiskey and the Skulls’ finest pieces of tail, when it was the Skulls who were offering the big prize, and the Blades were getting the bargain. Why was he sweetening the deal? It made no sense.
Ryder thought it over. He said, “Haughey didn’t ask any of the right questions, Bear. He didn’t ask why I was there, or even why John Reader wasn’t there. Most telling, he didn’t say anything about the money.”
“Yeah, I was ready for some hard bargaining.”
They looked at each other and looked back up the road.
Bear said, “You know it, bro. There is some truly devious shit going down here.”
Chapter 12
Jess spent more and more of her evenings at the club. Bear teased her when she arrived. “You ain’t a member and you ain’t a pass-around. What you still doing here?” Either that or he would call her ‘Ryder’s tail,’ partly hinting that she followed Ryder around, partly a suggestion about their relationship.
Gyro greeted her when she arrived, and other club members knew her name. As Ryder had promised, she enjoyed some status from the protection of being
‘with’ Ryder, officially at least. She was treated with respect by the men and mostly by the women as well.
Jess felt as though she was getting along with everyone, except for Mary Ann. They instinctively avoided each other like Kryptonite. Jess saw Mary Ann in brief little intimate huddles with a lot of the regular bikers, but especially with Bear and with Ryder. When she saw Mary Ann whisper to Ryder, or flash her eyes across the room at him, it always made Jess’ blood pump hard.
There was no outward sign of anything more going on, but the way she leaned close, spoke softly and body blocked every man she spoke to, it always looked as though she had some special something with every one of them.
Everyone knew, or at least probably knew, that Jess wasn’t Ryder’s ol’ lady in the usual sense, but when Ryder said, ‘she’s with me,’ that was enough. At least it was for a time.
Her unofficial status, not quite one thing or the other, was enough for Jess feel to feel comfortable and safe. That was how she’d lived most of her life, practically.
The men of this club with their rigid codes and rules made a space for her, an exception that was for her alone, that made Jess feel as though she really belonged in a way she hadn’t felt before.
They had chosen to let her in and, to a degree, had let her in on her terms. This was the first place Jess had ever felt that she was accepted.
She began to feel that this was a place where she was truly be at home. It was a place that wouldn’t up and move, people that she wouldn’t have to lose, people she could risk having real attachments with.
Bear continued to bait her, but she felt a protective warmth beneath his jibes. Gyro always treated her like a lady, as all of the MC members did. The sense of community and of honor ran deep and was firm and dependable.
When a prospect was arrested, when a member had money trouble, the whole club was there for them. The club felt more like family to Jess than anything she had known before. These were the people she wanted to be with.
Ryder, the nomad, was a whole other story. Talking to Gyro, to Bear, even overhearing John Reader one night, Jess got a sense of affection and regard for Ryder, like he was an adopted member of the clan.
Chapter 13
Ryder watched from the bar as a biker no-one knew crossed the clubhouse floor to the bar. He looked just like a regular biker. Kit, he said his name was. No patch, but not everybody’s affiliated, it didn’t mean anything. He didn’t have the civilian too-clean look. He was authentic enough in that way.
His thick beard was well-trimmed and his face scrubbed. There was wear on the edges of his shirt cuffs and the sides of his regularly polished boots. A cop in fancy dress always looked scruffy and unkempt. Cops were clean, tidy men trying to look disheveled. Ryder figured this guy was a man trying to look his best when his circumstances wore him at the edges. In his late thirties, his ponytail and beard were clean and reddish. His biker jacket was scuffed, but he’d cleaned it up. His Harley outside was matte black and perfect.
He came up to the bar and stood between Ryder and Jess. Before the guy even crossed the floor, Ryder saw Jess put out her bottom lip, corners of her mouth down. Kit seemed okay to Ryder, and to Bear too. Jess looked hard into Ryder’s eyes and made a single, tiny shake of her head.
After a couple of beers, Kit got the talk around to a couple pounds of fresh Californian outdoor grown weed, primo quality. Bear looked over at Ryder. Something had sounded a little off in the way that Kit had brought it up.
Bear and Ryder were noncommittal and changed the subject. Soon Kit stepped out to the porch for a smoke. After a moment, Ryder followed him out.
“You’ve done dope deals before, right?”
“Sure, plenty.”
“But none like this one.”
The guy looked in Ryder’s eye and drew a long breath.
Ryder laid a hand on the guy’s shoulder and looked hard into his brown eyes. He saw conflict and discomfort. Kit was about to speak when Ryder gestured with his finger to his lip, then he pointed to his ear, traced a line like a wire down to his breast pocket.
Kit’s head shook slowly as his face fell and aged. He looked in Ryder’s eye and drew a long breath. Then he shook his head and said, “No, no wire. That was meant to happen next time. This visit was to set it up.”
Ryder leaned his elbows on the rail and looked down the road toward the far horizon. “I heard about a girl,” he said. “Regular girl, worked nine to five in an insurance office. Got caught up on some bullshit drugs rap. She was entrapped into buying a tiny little personal quantity of pot.”
He watched Kit as he went on. “Next thing she knew, she’s in a hard room and she’s looking across a metal table at the FBI.” Kit’s eyes shone. “The dark suits tell her, ‘Wear a wire, help us nail this scumbag drug dealing biker gang. We’ll make the charge go away. We’ll tell you what to do, and we’ll be watching you every step of the way.’”
Ryder looked back at Kit and offered him a toke of the spliff. Kit took a long draw and said, “I got a kid. My little daughter is seven years old. She’s a beautiful child. Her momma passed last fall. Now little Audrey’s got nobody but me.”
Ryder thought for a moment. “So if you go down, what, she goes into care?”
The biker looked at Ryder with an age of hopelessness in his eyes.
Ryder told him, “Girl that I was telling you about? Didn’t have a clue what she was into. FBI set up a meet. Lord knows how. They sent her into it with a wire, and found her the next morning in a dumpster.” The guy took a long look down the road.
Ryder said, “Thing is, bro, those entrapment raps, they’re no different from any other kind of blackmail. Just like any other blackmailers, they’ll always say, ‘This is a one-time deal,’ but it never is. You do it once and they’ve got you. They own you from then on, and they won’t ever let you go.”
Kit looked at the ground and started fishing for his keys. He was turning to go when he stopped and looked back up at Ryder.
“Listen, thanks, man. There’s other ways you could have handled this, and I’m grateful for it.”
As the man was shuffling down the steps Ryder said, “Wait up,” and looked into the biker’s lost eyes. “An MC we have some associations with bring people in from Mexico. If you’d be willing to help them out on the other side, they could get you and Audrey across the border, no charge. Can’t say anything’s risk-free in this life, but they’ve been doing this run for some time, with zero problems to date.”
Some light returned to the biker’s eyes. Ryder said, “Think about it. See Bear inside. Maybe we can arrange to collect Audrey from school tomorrow for you.”
They gripped hands. Ryder gave the guy a hug and called him ‘bro’ again, and left him outside to think it over, not envying him one bit.
The thing was, Jesska knew. She spotted something was off before the guy got three steps into the bar. How did she do that?
Chapter 14
Jesska remained wary of Mary Ann. She watched from the far side of the bar as Mary Ann put her hand on Bear’s chest to speak to him. Then she leaned towards him and tilted her head a little to murmur softly into his ear. Bear’s eyes shone as he bent his head to hear her. His smile drifted as she talked, like he was getting secret knowledge.
When Ryder slipped out to the lobby at the back of the clubhouse and Mary Ann soon trotted quickly after him, Jesska’s hackles rose.
Leaning up by the doorway, Jesska watched as Mary Ann cornered Ryder. She held on to his upper arm, her hands around his strong bicep. Jess could barely hear Mary Ann as she looked up at him and said, “Bear asked me to do something, you know?”
“Mm-hm.”