by Trent Jordan
I opened up my phone to read the message.
“Hi, there—reminder tonight is the family party. Please come dressed appropriately. Imagine you are going to your grandmother’s house for dinner.”
It was not a personalized message, though at least Axle had had the courtesy to not blast all of us in a group message. I was the only recipient of this message, although I was sure that Axle had copy-and-pasted that message to more than a dozen girls.
Nevertheless, I still felt happy that I’d get to actually show up in clothing that didn’t hang a scarlet letter around my neck. I could dress in jeans, a tank top, maybe even some nice heels. It would be a little warm outside, but not so suffocatingly hot as to mandate that I wear shorts. I could get away with casual jeans.
Maybe if I did this, one of the club members would actually see me as a woman and not as a bunny.
OK, I couldn’t get my hopes up that high. You could dress up a snake in a suit and a tie, and it would still be a snake.
But maybe, because of the casual wear that tonight’s party would entail, I might catch the eye of a man who saw my smile, or my face, or anything from the neck up and not how big my breasts were or how far out my ass stuck.
The first sign that this was not going to be a typical club party was when I didn’t hear any loud music bumping from the clubhouse.
On a normal night, whenever I pulled my car in behind the shop, I could hear the music blaring from the clubhouse so loudly that nightclubs in Los Angeles would have suggested turning the volume down. The music would often be some old school 70’s or 80’s rock, never the modern hip hop or pop music that could be heard on most radio stations. Someone suggesting that music get played would get kicked out before they could have even touched a dial.
The second sign that this was not going to be a typical party was that instead of having about dozen men eye-fucking me, with the winner being whoever happened to be closest to the door, I saw most of the men with their wives, girlfriends, or even mothers.
That’s right—the club that typically had a bunch of boorish assholes running around, smacking asses, snorting drugs, and taking shots was now the one that was on its best behavior with the women in their lives keeping a close eye on them.
There were multiple other signs, of course. This party was primarily taking place outside—there were grills, cornhole sets, chairs, and other spots to casually lounge. There was music, but it was country music, something that could easily blend into the background. Loud laughter and dares were replaced by quiet conversations, short laughs, and genuine smiles and pats on the back.
That didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be someone trying to make a move on me. Especially as the night went on, as the older crowd left and the biker crowd got more and more intoxicated, this was likely to morph into a more typical night. But to walk into something like this for at least a couple of hours was a nice change.
I got in line for the keg, which no one was doing keg stands on or making remarks about women’s curves, and looked around at the rest of the crowd. I saw the two young leaders of the club, Lane and Patriot, standing with their arms around two girls—and the girls looked completely at ease. Girlfriends. Not just hookups.
Lane’s girlfriend still was in professional attire, as if she had just come from a white-collar job. She looked a little uncomfortable with his arm on her, but he looked at ease. Her appearance reminded me of my own style back when I was a working woman—to what I could still have been.
Patriot’s girlfriend, meanwhile, was dressed much more casually. She looked far more relaxed and happy, although whenever she saw another Black Reaper approaching, her demeanor stiffened. I pegged her as someone likely to leave before the end of the night, whether because she just didn’t want to spend time with the rest of the bikers or because she and Patriot had “places to be.”
And then I saw Axle with his new girlfriend.
It was the first time I had seen her in person, though I had heard plenty about her. In many ways, her body was the exact opposite of mine, almost like… he had chosen me to forget about her? Or maybe the reverse was true.
No, the reverse wasn’t true; I wasn’t that important to Axle.
But what was important was that, to be honest, I was sadly jealous of what they had that I did not. Stability. They had happiness. They had each other to lean on.
As for me? Well, I had guys that I would try and interact with, but as soon as their cocks had shot their load and they had finished, they were done with me.
Maybe I just haven’t found the right guy in this club yet. I’ve gone through so many of the members… maybe one of the officers will be that way?
There weren’t many options. There was the priest guy, who seemed nice enough, but I wasn’t religious. There was the older man, Red Raven, I think, but his son had already claimed me before, and as much as I was willing to do things with the club for their connections to jobs and other opportunities, I wasn’t willing to bang the father of someone I’d already slept with.
That left just one.
A man so tall, so thick, and so intimidating that he might as well have been a bounty hunter.
Butch.
Unfortunately, that was about the extent of what I could say about Butch because everything else was just a giant mystery, a box whose inner contents I couldn’t even conjecture at. He spoke very rarely, expressed emotion on a barely more frequent basis, and revealed next to nothing about himself. Rumors said that when outside of the club, he was quite gregarious, but in the presence of his fellow Reapers, he was as quiet as a sleeping dog.
A dog that could chew you down to the bone if he wanted.
Butch could—
I saw Rose leaving Axle.
I didn’t know why, but I felt compelled to go say something to him. I didn’t even want to flirt with him or do anything sexual. I definitely didn’t want to do those things. One thing I was not was a homewrecker.
Rather, I figured that on some level, making peace with Axle might, in turn, give me the chance to relieve myself of the burden of… I didn’t know, being a whore?
I just wanted the freedom to not feel like a slut and the freedom to do what I wanted—which was create short films, to fulfill my creative side as my content manager role had done so—but as long as I was in the Black Reapers’ grasp, that wasn’t going to happen.
Taking a gulp, I walked over to Axle, my hands by my side, my walk casual. Axle wasn’t looking at me at first, checking his phone.
And then he saw me approaching, and his eyes narrowed.
“I’m taken now,” he growled. “Go away.”
“I just—”
“No, I don’t want to hear it,” he said. “You were fun while it lasted, but I’m not going to take any chances. Stay away.”
And without another word, without saying my name, without doing anything to acknowledge me as a human being, he moved away, siding up next to Patriot and his girlfriend. I wished I could say I had never felt so humiliated, but the truth was, encounters like these were common enough that humiliation like this happened on a pretty frequent basis.
I could, however, say that I had never been pushed aside by someone who’d had sex with me so often and then made the decision to ignore me entirely. Even with my ex, I’d been the one to break it off first.
I looked around for something else to do. None of the bunnies were really friends; whenever we spoke to each other, it was always with false modesty. We were all competing for the top dogs in the club, and nothing could get in the way of that. Of course, I wondered why the hell I was even playing this little competitive game, but it was hard to snap out of it once you got dragged in.
I decided to get a beer back at the keg stand, which was now about six people deep, and just casually stand on the outside—looking sexy on the outside, despairing on the inside. I got in line behind one of the old ladies of the club—or, more easily stated, a wife of one of the members—who did very little to hide her disgus
t with a bunny being present. Maybe she thought I was a threat to her man. I only assumed she was an old lady because of the ring on her finger and the smell of motorcycle oil; she could have just as easily been cheating on a man at home.
And then, behind me, I suddenly felt a very tall man looming over me. It didn’t happen that often that men towered over me—actually, I had the opposite problem, where most of the guys I had gone on dates with in Los Angeles were shorter than me—and so when it did happen, I took notice.
And sure enough, it was Butch. I smiled and nodded.
“How are ya?” I said.
“Good,” he said.
There was something in his tone of voice that wasn’t as harsh or strict as I would have guessed. He was curt, sure, but he wasn’t rude; he wasn’t like Axle. I waited for him to say something more.
But then nothing came. I turned back around, now about number three in line, and waited for Butch to say something else. I guess I should have put my faith somewhere else; maybe Axle had somehow spread the word that I was damaged goods.
I got my beer, looked at Butch, perhaps hoping he would say something, and then sauntered over to a table with one other girl who ignored me when I sat on the edge of it. The girl had spiked green hair, and she looked pretty content to be alone.
“Hey, you.”
I looked over.
It was a prospect I did not recognize. Perhaps the club had recruited someone new. I wasn’t impressed, though, to be fair, I wasn’t impressed with most of the club members’ bodies.
He was shorter than me, probably a couple inches under five-foot-ten. He was on the chunkier side, but he had an odd body shape—it looked like all of his fat was about three inches higher than it should have been, giving him skinny hips but an enormous gut and sternum. He had a ponytail, a goatee, and some sunglasses that looked like they had been bought at a knockoff store for under ten bucks.
“What’s goin’ on, pretty lady?”
He had a bit of a Southern accent. When he spoke, I couldn’t help but notice the yellow teeth and the foul breath. As bunnies, we were supposed to engage with the men and go along with it… but…
I just could not.
“Ugh,” I said in as bitchy and nasty a tone as I could.
To be frank, I felt bad being so rude. Whoever this prospect was, he did not deserve to have anyone, let alone a woman, treat him like shit so bad. But after everything that had happened the last couple of weeks with Axle and with me approaching my breaking point, I didn’t much fucking care if the Black Reapers kicked me out of their little circle. If I lost my job, fuck it. I’d find a way to hitchhike back to my parents’ place in Arizona.
I’d repair my relationship with them somehow.
“Well, fuck you too, whore,” he said, spitting on the ground, just barely missing my feet. I wasn’t sure if his near-miss was purposeful or just a happy accident, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
“You’re not good enough for me,” I said.
He glared at me. I glared back at him. Do whatever you want to do. I don’t care anymore.
Because I’m not good enough for myself either. For what I once was?
I watched him leave and approach Butch. I didn’t care. I almost wanted him to rat me out.
“I would’ve done the same thing,” the other girl said. “That dude looked like a Big Mac with a ponytail.”
I snorted with a chuckle.
“I don’t know. You probably don’t want to get kicked out.”
“Kicked out?” she said with a smile. “Oh, sorry, no, I’m not… no, I used to bartend at Brewskis. I’m just here on an invite from Lane. Said that he could give me work here helping to pass out drinks.”
“Oh.”
So much for that.
“Do you…”
“No.”
I had no idea what she was going to ask. I didn’t much care. Whatever she was going to ask was going to be embarrassing enough.
And then Butch started walking my way.
“Hey,” he said. “Come with me.”
Butch
Prospect Jon thought that I was about to go kick a bunny out of the club for being rude.
But what he didn’t realize was that one man’s rejector was another man’s prize. And if it could dig the knife a little bit into the prospect, then why not? It wasn’t that I liked treating my prospects like shit.
Well, OK, I did. There was a part of me that enjoyed having that sort of power over someone. I liked knowing that Jon could complain to me, and then, thinking that I was going to help him, I would thank him for looking like the bad guy while I swooped in and claimed the spoils. Life wasn’t fair, but the imbalance of fairness often tilted in my favor—being very tall and muscular as I was gave me advantages that short and pudgy guys would never have. It was like having a cheat code, and I was unapologetic about having it.
“Where are we going?” the bunny asked.
OK, I knew the bunny’s name. It was Thea. I had known Thea as the girl who had been all about Axle until Axle recently found himself Rose, and though that hadn’t exactly been a long time, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have Thea in my sight for some time.
I liked the taller girls. I liked the notion that someone might stand up to me, even if it was, at this point, more metaphorical than literal. It wasn’t any fun to take someone who offered no resistance and spread their legs. There was just something about height that made it seem like it would be more fun.
Remember to listen to your better self. She’s a person, not just a toy.
“Just over here,” I said. “Let me grab some food.”
I grabbed about two pounds of meat and potatoes from the table some of the club members, including Pink Raven, had set up. Thea did the same, albeit with about a quarter the amount of food that I did. Hey, it was impossible to stay this big without eating way more than the average person.
I was already stuffing my face when I sat down.
“You smell much nicer than the other guy did,” Thea said as she stuffed some potatoes in her mouth.
It was a comment that, in a regular party context, would have suggested she just wanted to get right to fucking. I could respect that. But here, it just sounded more like relief, like she was utterly grateful to be away from Jon.
“Not hard to,” I said. “Gasoline makes him smell nice.”
“I can imagine,” she said. “I’m Thea, by the way. You’re Butch?”
“Yes. I know who you are.”
I stabbed a big piece of pork at that point, ignoring the look that Thea gave me. I hadn’t meant it in a shaming way, just more an acknowledgment of reality. It was hard not to know the six-foot blonde girl who looked like she could have modeled in Los Angeles.
“And yes, I’m Butch.”
“Pleasure,” she said, though she sounded a little deflated by what I had said. “You’re quite handsome, you know. Has anyone ever told you that?”
I had no reaction to that. I didn’t care to play that game. Actually, I didn’t just lack desire. I actively did not want to play the game.
“Look, I know at any point, I could tell you to come back with me, and you would,” I said. “So, while we’re here, let’s try something different. Entertain me.”
“Really?”
She actually sounded… relieved? Was she not used to having people ask about her? Was her life like this so much that she needed to have something this different to feel good?
Boy, I knew very little about the life of the bunnies in the club.
Apparently, they were as fucked up as I was.
“Well, I grew up in Arizona, went to school at UCLA, got a job working in a marketing firm for Hollywood. It was great. I had a dream of making short films about gritty parts of life. Actually, wanted to do something with an MC like this.”
I had never heard anyone in the club, let alone a girl who was primarily onboard for strictly sexual fulfillment purposes, sound so enthused. It was kind of… c
ontagious?
It was hard to say. I was trying not to seem so interested and so curious; I didn’t want Thea to get any ideas that I could be an Axle surrogate. I’d take her home eventually and have my fun with her, but I didn’t expect to be as curious about her as I was here. It was a part of me that I was fighting; as Sergeant-at-Arms, I didn’t want anything that could make me weaker in my work.
I didn’t need to have things that might hold me back like Lane, Patriot, and Axle did. Things like women.
“But, you know, things got in the way, and so here I am. But it’s good. You all treat me well. And so… yeah.”
I took one last stab of my pork, chewed all of it, and tossed the plate to the side, turning to Thea.
“You don’t have to lie to me, I know that you want something more,” I said. “I see it. But you got me curious. Let’s get out of here.”
For the briefest of moments, I could see her face drop into disappointment. She probably saw me as someone just faking interest to get laid. And while she wasn’t totally wrong—I did want to get laid, and being at a family-friendly party with no family or friends besides other club members wasn’t helping that—I did have an interest in her.
I just told myself that it might behoove me to treat her well. Who knew? There might just be…
If there is anything more, don’t take it. That’s not going to end well.
Thea took my hand as I led her to my bike. As I hopped on, I saw Jon staring at us, jealousy obvious etched on his face. I didn’t say a word or even so much as look back at him.
He was a prospect. He wasn’t going to get the luxury of a reaction to his reaction from me.
Hell, not even Lane got that as President.
No one did.
Thea knew the drill by now, and that made things go pretty smoothly as we got on the bike.
She wrapped her arms around me tight enough that she was secure, but not so tightly that I couldn’t breathe. It was, admittedly, a little tighter than most, but it wasn’t anything that made me stop to turn and look at her. She leaned with me when I leaned to turn, and otherwise, she remained upright, secured, but not desperate to hold on.