He defended drug dealers, gangsters, motorcycle club members, and in pretty high profile cases, sometimes. Kids at school told her about them. They always knew way more about it than Jesska did, or they claimed to. Daddy wouldn’t ever discuss his work, so she heard more about it in the schoolyard than she ever did from him.
Even when Daddy became a judge, everyone at her school seemed to know the details of every big case he presided over. More than once, she found herself surrounded by what was known as the ‘bad element’ of the student body.
She had been pressed up against the clattering echo of the steel lockers and a voice hissed menace into her ear. “You better tell your daddy to do the right thing,” more than once. They were talking about some drugs case, armed robbery, or once even about a murder case.
Jesska’s answer was, “If I even told my daddy what he should do in a case, not only would he not do it, but this place would have the FBI crawling all over it in minutes. So, if that’s your cousin’s trial strategy, all I can tell you is he’s going to need better counsel.”
First time she said it, her legs shook so hard after she could hardly stand to watch as the sullen bully slunk away, murmuring dark threats. After she traveled that road a few times, she got used to the terrain.
She’d spit in their eye if they didn’t get the message fast enough. It never came to that. Probably just as well.
It seemed like everywhere she went, either Daddy had carved a place out for her or his name had. If it hadn’t, there was always Tiffany looking out for her. Tiffany was two years older. She was bright and beautiful and everyone loved her. Tiffany would do anything, risk anything for Jess.
She loved the idea of bikers. Everything she learned about them made them seem sexier, more attractive. From what Jess could see, bikers didn’t accept what they were given; they just took what they wanted. Don’t fit with the rules? Doesn’t matter, they’d do it anyway. Jesska admired that. The few bikers she’d seen were smoking hot, raw alpha dudes. That was a bonus, too.
Sex seemed complicated to Jesska, and scary. When she was still in high school, it appeared to be no more than a recreation and, from the looks of it, very much overrated. Girls in her class couldn’t wait to do it, and then when they did it, it just messed them up. They got miserable, they got into fights and lost their friends, they were dumped and many of them got pregnant.
One time after school she took Stephen Mohan up to her room and Daddy burst in.
Stephen was a year above Jess in school. When he breezed down the halls, girls looked up from under their eyelashes at him. He had a great body, an easy, rolling walk and shy blue eyes.
Tania White shoved him up against the lockers one time. Wet kissed him while her little gang looked on with their eyes wide and their mouths open. Tania was almost a year older than Stephen. She pressed her body against his for at least a minute. When she pulled back, she had face like a lioness who’d just fed, until she saw the look of pity in his eyes.
Stephen sat by Jess at the back of the bus from school that afternoon. She turned down the volume on her iPod. She had an urge to take out the shiny little metal box with the white plastic top and the tiny screen. She was very proud to be one of less than a dozen kids who even had one.
She wanted it in her hand, so he could see how cool she was. She knew enough to know, however, that whatever you do to seem cool will have the precise opposite effect.
“Poor Tania,” Stephen said as he slid in by her side. “She doesn’t know how to talk to anyone. That’s why she puts on the big act like she’s tough.”
Jess told him, “I don’t think I know how to talk to anyone, either. Should I put on a tough act?”
He laughed. “No. For one thing, you can’t put on a tough act.”
She tightened up and her face pinched. “Oh?”
“You can’t act tough, Jess. You are tough. You’re the real deal.”
She didn’t know if he’d been complimenting her or if she was doubly insulted. That was the thing with Stephen. He was genuinely, effortlessly cool. He didn’t say things for effect. He just said what he thought. And he was usually right. So Jess didn’t know why did she felt all knotted about it now, but she did.
He still had on his easy smile, “Anyway, you can talk to anyone, Jess.”
She didn’t know if she could talk to him. There was something she desperately needed to say to him right then, but she didn’t even know what it was, never mind how to go about saying it.
He said, “That thing you played me on your iPod yesterday?”
Jess remembered playing him the track. She was surprised at his abrupt change of subject, but the tension melted out of her as she felt the conversation move to familiar ground. Jess knew her music. “It’s the coolest mashup. Everything fromAC/DC to Outkast and Aphex Twin, jammed up with like Good Charlotte and all kinds of rad stuff. There’s even music from a Hitchcock movie soundtrack. It’s got to be super illegal.”
His voice kind of softened. It slowed down as he said, “You said you had a whole album of it? Could I come and listen to it with you sometime?”
She knew he was saying something different from what was in his words. She said, “Now’s a time. You mean like now?”
Immediately she understood what he’d been asking. He was giving her the chance to ask him back to her room. She just jumped on it like a slut. Like Tania White would have done. Except she’d have grabbed him by the collar. Jess’s cheeks stung with embarrassment.
She only needed to say, ‘Sure. Why not?’ or something less gushy, less like she were desperate. But he was talking. He said, “Now’s a great time.”
Up in the sordid, stinky mess of her room, he sat next to her on the floor, leaning up against her bed. She talked too much. She told him everything she knew about every sample and every break on the album. “See, it’s not even an album. There’s no CD, you can only get it as a download. – Oh, this sample’s that guitar riff from Hole, dada-dada-da, speeded up,” and she leaned across him to pick up her iPod and run the track back.
His lips were near to hers. She stopped. Her lips were dry. As she licked them a frown flicked over her eyebrows. His tongue pressed out between his lips. His eyes moved from hers to her mouth. Then back. His fingers touched her cheek.
“Jess, you know, you’re…”
She couldn’t stop herself. She closed her eyes as she pressed her lips to his. Her senses filled with the scent of him as the music swirled in her head, The world drifted backwards and faded away. Her arms wrapped around him as he enfolded her. Her head tipped back and she yielded her mouth softly to his tender invasion.
Her fingers curled up into his hair. His body pressed against hers. His chest was so warm. pressed against her breasts. She couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to. She wanted to spin forever in this dance with no movement. She wanted it to widen and grow. To deepen.
She jumped as the door slammed open.
Seeing the look on Daddy’s face, Stephen went straight out through the window. He turned his ankle when his foot hit the lawn and slipped, but when he saw Daddy come after him by the same route, he got up and he ran like hell.
Jesska’s daddy in raging pursuit was a terrifying sight that anyone would instinctively run from. Still, every time she saw or heard of Stephen after that her lip tightened in contempt. Her early exploration went bad on her, and she lost a friend.
That was the only time she ever brought a boy home. Afterwards, Jesska grew pretty wary of sex altogether. As for relationships, she heard someone say, “Sex is the currency of relationships.” Jess thought she’d save her currency, in case she found something she really needed.
Among the kids who she knew at school, it wasn’t just the currency, it was the whole business. A friend described a relationship as, “Like friends but with added benefits.” As far as Jess could see, it usually meant without the benefits of friendship.
Chapter 4
Outside the clubhouse in the hot night air, J
esska asked Ryder, “What does it mean when they say that you’re a ‘nomad’?” He handed her the glowing spliff.
The wide horizon glowed purple and orange behind broken strips of slate-colored cloud and the night air was hot and still. There wasn’t much traffic passing the clubhouse. The muffled thump of the music inside and the swells of voices didn’t drown out the rustle of the soft wind through the dry scrub.
Jess felt like she and Ryder were in a place of their own, a step out of time. Jess felt a connection with Ryder, and she thought she saw him reciprocate. She didn’t know what his interest was, but she hoped it wasn’t just sexual. “A nomad is like a member of clubs everywhere, and kind of like not being a member of club anywhere.” To Jess it had a lonely sound. Maybe it was a familiar one.
“And Ryder, did you choose that? Were you ever a club member?”
His faraway look hardened and turned more serious, “Some things you’re better off not knowing. Other things, you’re better off not even asking.” He looked her in the eye, “Asking questions around a motorcycle club is a dangerous hobby, even for a cute little girl.”
She wasn’t sure about him calling her ‘cute,’ and the ‘little girl’ part made her hot with anger.
He made a move toward her and she caught his arm. Feeling his strength, she realized that she might not be able to resist him if he used force, especially as her body wanted to give in. But he stopped. He smiled as he said, “I get it. That’s cool,” and he stroked her cheek with the back of his hand.
Her eyes stung. She felt deflated, like she’d lost rather than won.
As she turned to pass the joint back, her face came closer to his than she expected. Their smiles froze and slowly fell away. She watched his full lips as the bottom one tensed and trembled. His thigh slid between hers and clenched.
Her thighs slipped tight around his. She moved to pull farther away, but he made the tiniest movement and it was like magnetism. She couldn’t get away, and she didn’t want to. She felt it was about to happen and she tried to stop it, but somehow she could not. The heat from his pelvis called to her, and her rising scent called back.
When her eyes flicked up to his, he was, again, closer than she expected and looking directly into her gaze. She shouldn’t. She absolutely should not, especially not on a first meeting. Not with this dangerous and unpredictable man. She should leave. Now.
Her thighs gripped his as she tasted his breath. She inhaled to draw it in and watched as his nostrils flared. His eyes smoldered into her, deep into her, deep down. She lifted her hand to give him the joint. As she turned, her breast pressed against his waiting hand.
He moved his hand away to take the joint, but she seized it back and pressed it with her other hand onto her swelling breast. His lips pursed. Her nipple stung, irritated inside the bra as his hand held her warm, rising fullness.
“Are you old enough for this game?” he asked her with that infuriating boyish grin creeping around his lips. She wanted to smack his face when he said, “Should I be asking you for I.D.?”
His hand was achingly close but maddeningly far, outside the spongy thickness of her bra cup. The cotton of her shirt sighed, slipping against it. Her breath thickened in her chest as she pressed harder, pouring herself into his hand.
Her thighs dragged around his, the two thicknesses of denim warming, caught in the friction. By her hip, she felt his heat begin to uncoil. His breath and hers curled and entwined and his free hand slipped around her waist. She felt as though her world was opening up inside her, like she was growing in his arms. It was if she were coming to life for the first time.
As he encircled her, she stretched up to bring their mouths closer. Leaning up, she felt the pounding outline of his intense heat against her crotch. She licked her lips, and then parted them. She and he breathed each other’s breath for what seemed a long moment, out of normal time.
Their mouths drifted towards each other. When she first tasted his lips, her body pressed hard against him, She wanted to feel him all around her, all over her, and in her. Their lips crept, pulled, sucked and thrust on each other as their bodies raced to connect.
Bear’s big hand clapped on Ryder’s shoulder and Jess was shaken out of her spell. Bear leaned towards his ear, but they were close enough that Jess heard him say, “Haughey was on the phone just now.”
Ryder pulled back and said, “Haughey from Red Skulls?”
“John Reader needs words with you.”
He pressed his lips together and he looked at Jess. “I have to do this. Don’t go away, I’ll be right back.”
“It’s okay, Ryder.” She ached inside. “I’m going anyway.” The look of disappointment on his face made her heart thump.
He said, “Stay,” but she was moving away. It felt like she had to tug herself from the spot. When he saw that she was determined to go, he said, “Come back tomorrow.”
“Maybe.” As she left, he held onto her arm, letting it slip through his hand. When their hands touched, his fingers gripped hers, just for a moment, before he let her go.
Chapter 5
She thought about him all the way home. All the time she showered, stroking her hard body as she let the water rush over her. All through that hot night. When she finally slid into sleep, he invaded and dominated her fitful night.
A storm, a great black beast of a thunderstorm pursued Ryder through a jagged metal forest with a cruel black rain.
Jess ran into the forest from the far side, chased by the cackle of the Red Queen. The mist was so thick it was an effort to run through it. The forest rose steeply up the sides of a mountain and the higher they climbed on the opposite sides, the harder the black rain fell.
Jesska’s boot caught on a savage rusty spike and she saw the steam of the Red Queen’s breath mounting the slope behind her, coming nearer and nearer.
Jess heard the stamping as it got louder through the nails and twisted steel. She wrenched herself free, but lost her boot. She wouldn’t be able to ride. She couldn’t put her foot down on the metal splinters of the forest floor. Now she could only hop.
From behind her the riff from Motorhead’s ‘The Ace of Spades’ repeated like an awful buzz-saw loop under the approaching Red Queen’s cackle.
As she leaned forward, Jess found that she could run on her hands, and fast, too, but she could not risk touching the ground with more than the tips of her fingers. The Red Queen gained on her, and Jess felt the big, clawed hand reach for her leg as she burst suddenly clear of the forest and onto the dark, rocky mountaintop.
The Red Queen couldn’t follow Jess out of the forest and she cursed and threw metal shards after her. Jess was free, and Ryder pulled himself up the other side of the rocky knob, dragged down by his wet clothes. She ran to reach him, but the faster she ran, the harder it was to move forwards.
Jess fought through the thickening mist towards him. He reached the summit and she strained to get there. Finally, her hand stretched out in front of her and met his. She pressed against the wetness of his hand, and reached for him through his sodden clothes. She felt his heart thump, and his heat travelled up her arm like a current through water, like signals her body needed to decipher.
They stood, gripped together, breathing hard. Their bodies clung tight in a single throbbing mass of breathless wet and heat.
The water carried the pulses between them, and Jess felt the hot beat enter through her hardening nipples, pump through her breasts and echo down her body to her core. In between her legs, the rising throb pulled ancient walls down and an iceberg began to crack open and melt.
In her throat, the rhythm made a song without words, and the sound drew their bodies closer, tighter. Her muscles clenched. The way his heat, his living breathing hardness, pressed against her made her need unbearable, despite their heavy clothes.
Hard Core: Biker MC Motorcycle Club Menage Steamy 3 Story Bundle Set (Hot Tales From a Hard Road Book 1) Page 9