RIDE (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance)

by Daphne Loveling

  One day, I was out in the garage with Frankenstein giving my bike an oil change. It was an abnormally humid day for that part of Colorado, and sweat was dripping from my forehead as I worked. As I bent over the task and tried to ignore the sting of it falling into my eyes, I heard a female voice from the other side of the bay.

  “Hey, Frank,” Seton called out easily. Frankenstein answered with a ‘hey’ back, which is more than he usually managed for anyone. Next to Frank, I pass for one loquacious motherfucker.

  I looked up to see Seton approaching me. “Hey, Levi, can I ask you a favor?”

  “Sure, what’s up?” I asked, straightening.

  “Well, I’ve been trying to help Cherish figure out some legal stuff, to get her started. Like, she has to fill out a W-2 for her new job at Hammie’s, but in talking to her, she said she’s actually not sure whether she is actually legally married to her husband.”

  At the mention of Cherish’s name, my heart started thudding in my chest, but I kept my face a careful mask of indifference. “She doesn’t know whether she’s married?” I asked.

  “Not really.” Seton shook her head. “She said she wasn’t ever legally married to her first husband — did you know she was married once before? It’s so weird! Anyway, she was, but apparently it wasn’t actually an official marriage because she wasn’t of legal age at the time. But she doesn’t have any recollection of whether the Ranch made the second one legal.” Seton looked up at me with a guarded expression. “I know you grew up there, too,” she said carefully. “Would you have any idea whether marriages there are legally binding?”

  A surge of anger ran through me as she spoke the words, but I tamped it down. I fucking hated anyone knowing anything about my past, but it wasn’t Seton’s fault. Keeping my voice neutral, I replied. “No, I don’t know anything about that stuff. I left before anyone started talking about me getting married. Although,” I continued, “I remember Cherish said that she was Isaiah’s second wife.” What she had told me about his first wife not liking her came back to me. “If that’s the case, and he’s legally married to the first one, then Cherish can’t be legally married to him, too. Southern Arizona looks the other way on a lot of shit the FLDS sects do, but they still have bigamy laws.”

  Seton nodded as she took it all in. “Huh. Okay. Well, that’s probably good news, in the grand scheme of things, but we need to know for sure, for purposes of filling out the paperwork for her job. She needs to know what her legal name is. And also,” she said quietly, “I suggested that she should find out so that, if she is legally married, she should start divorce proceedings as soon as possible. So that her husband doesn’t have any legal rights to anything while she’s setting herself up.”

  I swore softly. That hadn’t occurred to me. As an adult, Cherish had a legal right to come and go as she pleased, but until we knew for sure she wasn’t legally bound to anyone at the Ranch, we didn’t know how difficult they could make her life if they wanted to. “Yeah, good point, Seton. Thanks for thinking of that.”

  “No problem.” She smiled. “But here’s the favor I need to ask. Cherish needs to get going on this stuff, and she needs to go over to the county courthouse and make a request to look up a marriage license, and also to see if she has a social security number. It being Thursday, she should try to get the requests filled out before the weekend, but I have to go to work soon, so I can’t take her. Could you?”

  It was the last goddamn thing in the world I wanted to do. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask Seton if she could find someone else to take Cherish, but then the thought of her asking Cal to do it stopped me. Cursing myself for being such a jealous bastard, I said, “Sure. I can do it. When does she want to go?”

  Seton smiled. “Thanks, Levi! You’re the best. I think she’s ready to go any time, actually. You want me to let her know?”

  I sighed. “Yeah, I’ll just finish up here and clean up. Have her come down in about half an hour.”

  Fuck.

  Cherish came into the garage a while later wearing a simple blue-and-white striped camisole top, cut off jean shorts and flip flops. It was the first time I’d ever seen her wearing shorts, and the sight of her legs, which I’d imagined wrapped around me so many times in my fantasies, was almost more than I could take.

  I had worked myself into a piss-poor mood anyway at the thought of having to spend the next couple of hours with her, and unfortunately I was on edge enough that I wasn’t able to keep myself from lashing out at her.

  “You can’t wear those goddamn flip flops on the bike,” I growled at her, nodding toward her sandals. “Go change into some other shoes.”

  Startled, she looked down, then back up at me. “We’re taking your motorcycle?” she asked.

  “What the hell else did you think we were gonna take?” I barked.

  Her surprise shifted to anger at my harsh words. “Okay, you don’t need to bite my head off,” she retorted. “I’ll go change.” She turned in a huff and marched back toward the clubhouse without another word. Unfortunately, her going to change meant that I had to watch her ass as she retreated. I ran through every swear word I could think of as I went to wash off my hands and splash cold water over my face.

  She came back a few minutes later wearing a pair of tennis shoes, her jaw set angrily. She avoided my eyes as I handed her my helmet and showed her how to put it on. When I reached forward to help her attach it under her chin, she pulled back. “I can do it,” she muttered. I watched her in irritated silence as she fumbled clumsily with the straps until she finally managed to snap them together.

  I straddled the bike and motioned with my head for her to get on. She paused for a moment, obviously reluctant, and I resisted the urge to bark at her. Above and beyond this being her first time on a motorcycle, I knew she had rarely had physical contact with a member of the opposite sex. Finally, after a few moments, she awkwardly got on behind me.

  “Put your feet on those pedals there,” I instructed, “and wrap your arms around me.” Again, she hesitated, and I waited until she tentatively did as I told her. My chest tightened at the feel of her pressed up against me, but I fought it off and continued. “When we turn, the bike’s gonna lean. You want to lean into the turn with me, not against it. That’s important. Just follow my lead. Think you can do that?”

  I felt her nod. “Yes.”

  “Good.” I started up the bike, and we were off. As soon as I put the bike in gear and we began to move forward, Cherish’s arms tightened around me in fear. I made sure to drive as smoothly as I could, with no sudden moves, and after a couple of minutes I could feel her relax a bit. I took the first few turns slowly, to give her time to get used to the bike leaning, and to her credit, it didn’t take her long to get the hang of it. By the time we arrived at the county courthouse, I could tell her body had relaxed almost completely. I was impressed.

  Pulling into a parking space toward the front of the building, I cut the engine and told Cherish to get off first. When she removed her helmet, I saw that she was smiling. “That was fun,” she said, giving me a sheepish grin.

  It was sort of cute that her mood had changed so quickly just from a short ride, and I felt my irritation at her begin to melt away. “Glad you liked it,” I said in a tone that didn’t come out as gruff as I wanted it to.

  We headed into the courthouse, which luckily also had a Social Security Administration office, so we went there first. Cherish gave her full name and date of birth to the woman behind the counter. I realized that her twenty-second birthday would be in just a few weeks, and that, like anyone who had grown up in the WFZ community, she had probably never celebrated it. I wasn’t big on birthdays myself, but remembering that made me kind of sad for her, anyway.

  Unfortunately, it turned out that Cherish had never been issued a social security number. In order to get one, the office was asking for the original of her birth certificate and a second form of ID like a driver’s license, neither of which Cherish had. The woma
n behind the counter suggested that Cherish could bring in an employee ID card or a school ID instead of the license, but she didn’t have those, either. After a few minutes of going around and around with the woman behind the counter, it was clear that Cherish’s first encounter with government bureaucracy was taking its toll on her. She walked out of that office in a daze, looking up at me with a bewildered expression.

  “What am I going to do, Levi? If I can’t get a social security number, they won’t let me work!” Her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

  Smiling at Cherish reassuringly, I said, “Don’t worry about it. You must have a birth certificate, so you just have to apply to get an original sent to you.”

  “What about the second form of ID?”

  I thought back to my own escape years ago. I had been lucky; I’d been able to get a driver’s license before I left. Unfortunately, you needed a residential address for that, too. I furrowed my brow, lost in thought for a moment, and then remembered that the club had a contact who specialized in creation of realistic identification documents. Chico could easily mock up a driver’s license for Cherish, but in this case, she would need a real one eventually, anyway. Better to have him do something simple, like the school ID. That would be enough to get her going on the social security number, and she wouldn’t have to wait until she’d passed her driver’s license.

  “Look, don’t worry,” I said calmly. “The club has it covered. We just need to stop at the passport office downstairs and take some ID photos on the way out. There’s a photo booth down there. It’ll just take a few minutes.”

  Next, we followed the signs to the office that dealt with marital and divorce records. Here, the process for getting information was a lot simpler. It turned out all we had to do was provide the names of the bride and groom, the county where the marriage license would have been issued, and the date of the wedding. However, since Cherish had been married — if she was married — in Arizona, she needed to contact the courthouse of the county where the Ranch was located.

  Cherish was kind of dispirited as left the courthouse. “We didn’t get anything done that we wanted to do,” she said gloomily as we descended the stairs.

  “Sure we did,” I argued. “We got a lot of information. And we got your ID photos taken care of,” I said, nodding toward the small envelope she carried.

  “What good will those do?” she shrugged.

  “Look, most offices don’t look very hard at identification cards. It’s not that difficult to make one that looks convincing.”

  Cherish’s eyes widened. “You mean lie?” she asked.

  I grinned. “I mean, give them what they want. Cherish, making up a school ID card isn’t going to send you to jail. Or to Hell.”

  She went quiet at that, and I didn’t push it. We continued out into the parking lot, and she wordlessly took the helmet I offered her. She seemed so disappointed by everything that my mind was casting about trying to think of ways to cheer her up. Suddenly, it was obvious.

  “Hey, let’s take a ride,” I suggested. “Out of town. Take a break from thinking about all this stuff.”

  Cherish looked at the bike, and then at me. A slow smile spread across her face. “That sounds like a great idea,” she said. My heart surged as she beamed up at me. I had never seen her look as radiant as now, at the simple pleasure of a ride on my bike, and suddenly all I ever wanted to do in the world was find things to do for her that would make her look at me like that forever.

  11

  Cherish

  We rode out of town in the late afternoon, and the traffic was pretty light. I felt more comfortable on the bike now, and I could feel that Levi was taking the turns a little faster, but never so much that I was afraid.

  It was such a beautiful day, and being on such a powerful machine was a thrill like none I’d ever experienced before. It was amazing to feel the wind on my skin, and to be able to smell the fresh, clean scent of pines as we flew by them. I understood now why people rode motorcycles. Being here with Levi, I felt more alive, more aware of everything around me, than I had ever felt before.

  Of course, there was also the fact that I was pressed against Levi’s muscular back, my arms around his taut waist. When he first motioned to me to get onto the bike back at the clubhouse, I would rather have had the earth open up and swallow me than do what he said. But seeing as I had no choice if I wanted to get the documents I needed to start my new job, I swallowed my embarrassment and did as I was told. The slope of the seat meant that I could hardly avoid being pushed up against him. I was sure my face was red as a beet as I realized I had to wrap my arms around him or risk falling off the motorcycle. I had never been so nervous in my whole life, not even on my wedding night with Isaiah.

  The roar of the engine underneath us wasn’t a surprise, though it was louder up close. What was a surprise, though, was that I could feel it between my legs, and every time that Levi boosted the throttle, it sent shivers of response through my body. As he leaned us through the turns, my thighs instinctively pressed together trying to hold on, but instead of gripping the seat, they found Levi’s muscular thighs. I felt them flex as he worked the pedals, and a rush of heat flooded through me, pooling below my stomach. It had been hard enough to try to ignore my desire for him at the clubhouse the last several days, when I could scurry for my room whenever he appeared. Now, wrapped around him on the back of his bike, my senses were flooded with him. I felt almost dizzy with need, and yet all I could do was hold on and hope he couldn’t sense the tumult inside me.

  We headed east for so long that I lost track of time and finally gave in to the guilty pleasure of Levi’s presence and heat against my body. Eventually, he slowed to a stop at a mesa with a breathtaking view of a valley below. I got off the bike and took off my helmet, my mouth widening in surprise at the beauty of it.

  “Ooohh,” I breathed. “Levi, it’s amazing.”

  He grinned at me. “I thought you might like it.” He headed for a large table-top rock on the edge of the mesa, and I followed and lowered myself down next to him.

  We sat for a few minutes in silence, just enjoying the magnificent view and the stillness of it all. There was just enough of a breeze to make it comfortable, and I closed my eyes and told myself to remember that if I hadn’t left the Ranch, I never would have seen this.

  Levi’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “You feeling a little better now?”

  “Yes. Much. Thank you,” I replied, opening my eyes to look at him. His expression was warmer than it usually was, and it stirred something inside me that made me look away toward the valley. “I’m sorry I got upset at the courthouse. Sometimes I feel like maybe I’m not strong enough to make it in the outside world,” I confessed to him. “It’s just so overwhelming sometimes. Like all this paperwork I don’t have, and I have no idea how to get it. It’s like everything is telling me I don’t belong.”

  He nodded. “I remember. When I left the WFZ, I realized I didn’t know how to do a fucking thing in the real world.” He glanced at me apologetically. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to swear.”

  “It’s okay,” I reassured him. “Honestly, I think over the years, I’ve started to realize that words are just words. I’ve learned from experience that people can say the nicest words you’ve ever heard, but poison can still be dripping from them.”

  He chuckled. “You’re not kidding.” We sat companionably for a few moments, lost in our own thoughts, until Levi finally turned to me with a long, penetrating look. “You know, what you told me about why you decided to escape? The final straw that made you decide,” he said slowly. “Did you ever hear anything at the Ranch about why I left?”

  “No,” I replied. “Like I said before, you’re shunned. Hardly anyone ever talked about you, and then only in whispers. And don’t forget, I was just a little girl when it all happened. Even if they were talking about it at the time, it wasn’t to me.”

  Levi reached into his pocket and took out a cigarette. Lighting
it, he blew out a long plume of smoke and sighed heavily. “I had a little sister. Faith. From the sounds of it, she wasn’t much older than the stepdaughter you mentioned having. The one who’s about to be married. My father married Faith off to one of the elders when she was fourteen, and she got pregnant pretty soon after that.

  “When she was pretty far along — at least seven months, I’d say — she showed up at our house one night. She was crying, and her face was all bloodied and bruised. Turned out, he had beaten her up, because she was afraid to have sex with him that late into the pregnancy.” I turned to see Levi’s face contorted in suppressed rage. “Instead of helping her — instead of fucking doing something — my father sent her back to him.” He looked at me with murder in his eyes. “Her husband beat her again a few weeks later for the same reason. She lost the baby and bled to death because he didn’t call anybody to help her.”

  “Levi!” I whispered in horror. “My God.”

  His face was grim as he continued, determined to finish the story. “I went after Faith’s husband with a two by four. Broke a couple of bones in his face before I was through. And when my father found out, he beat the shit out of me for doing it. So I left.”

  I sat, paralyzed, watching the muscles in Levi’s jaw work as he fought to control himself. His anger was so raw, so close to the surface, I realized it had probably taken him years to push all of it down out of sight. No wonder he hated the idea of anyone knowing about his past. And when I arrived at the clubhouse that day, I had brought everything back. I was a reminder of everything he had tried to put behind him, just by being here.

  Suddenly I hated myself for what I’d done. I’d been so selfish to just assume that it would be easy enough for Levi to take me in, that the only thing I would be asking of him was some lodging and maybe some direction. I never realized that I could be opening up old wounds that had barely healed. “Levi… I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe my coming here has brought all this back to you.” I looked at him as my eyes pricked with regretful tears. “I wish I’d never tried to find you. I was so selfish, and cowardly. I should never have forced you to help me.”