Hard Rider

by Lydia Pax

  June didn’t swear often. She found it uncouth. But Ram was fucking hot, and that was a problem, because he was also practically the definition of fucking trouble.

  From what she knew of outlaw bikers, they treated their women in as chauvinistic a fashion as possible. Women were objects to them, not people. They cheated on their girlfriends and wives with whatever loose girls wandered into their bars. They had wild parties where women were expected to dance and strip for their gratification, to get high on drugs and become drunk as skunks.

  They coerced weak-willed beauties into doing whatever was best for the brothers—usually time alone in a rented room.

  Sometimes, they dealt drugs. With drugs came all kinds of implications, all kinds of problems. Theft. Extortion. Murder.

  How much of that were the Wrecking Crew involved in?

  What was that strange dark excitement she felt building in her mind at the prospect of finding out?

  This all processed in the back of her mind as they passed through the outskirts of Marlowe and steadily came closer to its center.

  Marlowe was a small town disguised as a city. Like many areas in the desolate space of Western Texas, its population was enlarged by census to encapsulate a few hundred thousand, mostly because the city limits stretched so far outside where the actual city buildings were. Farmers, ranchers, and other rural citizens inflated the population count, as did the migrant workers and semi-transients who worked in the oil fields on the border of the city.

  There were some tall buildings in the city, but none any taller than twenty stories. It had a small airport—an international airport because it flew to some small cities in Mexico.

  As they drove through its streets, hot temperatures continuing to rise, she was surprised by how little had changed. There were the same long strip malls with small businesses she had never seen anyone go inside of. The same huge, wide parking lots that were found all over Texas. The same unkempt roads, littered with potholes and sporting lines that turned invisible in the rainy dark (whenever it actually did rain, which was rare).

  But there were some fleeting moments of pleasant nostalgia too: the cafeteria where her family would go after church on Sundays; the local shops she and her mother visited every summer before school to grab new clothes; the small park with the great big twisting oak tree shaped like a melted scarecrow, wider than it was tall.

  It surprised her, how much she enjoyed seeing this wasteland border town again with its concrete paths and squat brown buildings.

  But that, and even the heady arousal she faced from Ram, was not all that was on her mind.

  Five thousand dollars to repair her car seemed like an insane proposition to her, like building a rope ladder to the moon. And ditching her car completely—or getting a new car—was simply not an option.

  She had graduated college in four years and had done it all on a scholarship. She’d worked a crap job at a retail clothes outlet, but that was only enough to pay for groceries and books and the occasional new discount outfit.

  She had spoken with her family several times in her absence, and even saw them a handful of times—but only when they came to Austin. Her hope was that they understood that returning to Marlowe was a non-starter for her in any conversation.

  And yet, here she was, returning to Marlowe with more than a tail between her legs—with a bike between her legs that belonged to one of the most notorious outlaws in all of Texas. Her father would love that.

  He cut an imposing figure anywhere, but especially as he rode—his triceps were flexed to keep the handlebars in place, his posture ramrod straight, his intricate framework of tattoos clearly visible on his arms. Back muscles, thick like steel bars, flexed and shifted as he steered.

  They pulled over to a gas station and he stepped off, giving her a knowing smile as she took her time sliding off the seat herself. When he pulled up, her hips and thighs had reflexively pulled upward with him, trying to capture him, keep his hardness close to her body and her wickedly moist center of arousal.

  From the look on his face, this was not lost on him. Not in the slightest.

  Get it together, June. He’s just some criminal.

  A criminal that was making her lose her mind, second by second. She took a walk around the pump, stretching her legs and clearing her head. Stepping away from Ram and looking somewhere else went a long way in establishing her sanity again.

  The moment she looked back at him, though, all that insanity rolled back again. She wanted to slide up between him and the gas pump and feel his hard, big hands sliding over her body and pushing her against the concrete and—

  That was dumb. Super, really, totally dumb.

  A feeling pushed in on her mind to do something to break the silent tension between them.

  “So what’s your name?” she asked. “Your real name.”

  “Reid,” he said. “Reid Maddox.”

  “June Colt. Nice to meet you.”

  “Colt?” he laughed. “That’s a sort of infamous name around here.”

  “Believe me, I know.” She wasn’t sure yet that she wanted to broach that subject with him. Not when he had been so friendly so far. She pivoted hard. “How did you get the name Ram?”

  He let out a breath, considering. “I got into a lot of fights as a kid. One time I was fighting the teacher. Nearly as big as him at the time and twice the man. Anyway, he called the assistant principal, and then he called the police. I fought all of them. My Dad rode up with his crew to pick me up, heard what happened, said I was as hardheaded as a ram sometimes. It just stuck.”

  She smiled. “It suits you, I think.”

  His face was indeterminable. There was no way to know if he liked that or not. “You’re coming in from Austin, right? From the college? You graduate?”

  “I did. Liberal arts. English and Philosophy.”

  “English, huh?”

  Here was a test. Would he fall into the trap that everyone did? Would he accuse her of wanting to be a teacher—and so be like every other person who has ever asked someone about an English degree?

  “So you’re going to be a writer?”

  June smiled. Not bad. “Something like that.”

  She honestly didn’t know what she wanted to be; mostly, she just knew she wanted enough money to never have to rely on her parents again. An English degree might have been a bad choice for that, but she went to college to learn, not to train for a job that would have to train her anyway.

  June had a business idea. It involved hiring football players thoroughly shaking all English majors until they changed their field of study.

  “So what’s it like?” she asked, hoping to change the subject permanently. “Being in a motorcycle club?”

  “We’re not, you know…” he made a gesture. “People make up things about bikers. We’re not as bad as they make us out.”

  “No rape parties? No murder raids?”

  She was half-joking, half-serious. Her parents had told her any number of frightening stories. Their conventional wisdom would have told her that even the biggest lies have some truth to them, but those nuggets of truth were often small. Truth nuggets like bikers sometimes had “parties,” like any other human alive.

  “Rape parties? Goddamn, no.” He let out a soft laugh. “Shit, no. I mean…there’s drugs, right? We don’t really abide much by the laws of the land. But we’ve got morality, still. We just don’t need the man crashing in to our scene.”

  June nodded. That was about what she expected. Boys playing with their toys at too old an age.

  “But what is it like being a biker? I mean, what’s your life like? The lifestyle? What should I, you know, what should I expect?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “I asked. So yes, I do.”

  “It’s…” he shook his head as he flipped open the gas tank on his bike. “You know, if you had asked me twenty-four hours ago, I would have said it’s the best thing in the world. No rules but our own. No law but ou
r own. We look after each other. We protect one another. We ride and we die, and nobody gets between us. But today…”

  “Today is worse. Because for whatever reason you’re pulling me into your life.”

  He waved a hand down the road. “You can leave at any time, babe.”

  She ignored his deflection. “But it is worse today. Why?”

  A troupe of bikers approached on the right side of the four-way intersection. Wrecking Crew, in fact. One of them recognized Ram and raised a fist to him. Ram saluted back.

  “Kiss me,” he said.

  Her hair spun as she turned back to him, nearly flying in his face. “What?”

  “You’re gonna be my old lady, right? Well, crash course. You’ve got to do what I say, when I say it, when we’re in the presence of my brothers. So, kiss me.”

  She hesitated.

  “You want your car fixed or not?”

  The reason for her hesitation wasn’t that Ram was attractive. In fact, that was the opposite of her hesitation—it was that he was too attractive, and he was just the sort of man that June didn’t need to be mixed up with.

  If they kissed, if they really kissed, that would make this entire situation suddenly very risky in a way that made June uncomfortable. She was already heavily attracted to Ram—in the biological way, the primitive way, the sense of preternatural knowing of how strong and protective he is, what a good mate he would be in some hunter-gatherer fashion.

  But June wasn’t a cave woman. Love hadn’t been in her life for a little while now, not since Simon, and if love popped its crazy head around again she wanted to be sure that it entered the way she wanted it to.

  Ram waited, expectant. He put a hand on her shoulder.

  Screw it, thought June.

  She leaned in deep, moving harder and faster than she thought she would, misjudging the distance between them. Her lips spread across his, feeling the probing, almost gentle tip of his tongue as it slipped into her mouth. Was he thinking she would go halfway?

  June Colt didn’t go halfway on anything. Something he would have to learn.

  Her hands slipped across his thick skull, heart beating rapidly. A part of her tried hard not to marvel at the thickness of his hair, the density of his shoulders as she squeezed herself forward. Her legs seemed to have a life of their own, squirming to wrap forward around him. They were kept in place only by the barest remnants of self-control, and so her thighs massaged each other slowly, a flirting heat filling up her center.

  “That good enough for you?” she whispered, sliding off of him slow.

  He looked a bit stunned. She bit her lip, feeling equal parts impressed and disappointed in herself. She let the former win, for now.

  “Good,” he said. “That was good. You’re full of surprises, aren’t you, wild girl?”

  Ram coughed and pulled the nozzle out of the bike and stepped aside. The bikers disappeared down the street.

  She made up some excuse about going to the bathroom. But honestly she just needed to splash cold water on her face before she started too deep down the rabbit hole with the world’s sexiest outlaw.

  Chapter 7

  Wild girl.

  The thought of her filled his mind still even when she was gone. His dick felt harder than it had for ages, and Ram wasn’t exactly starving on the sex front.

  It was goddamn lucky he didn’t lose control and fuck her hot ass right there on the frying pan heat of the concrete. The thought swelled his cock even more, imagining fucking her again and again, making her his in reality, until she was thanking him for picking her out of the crowd at the diner.

  A stupid fantasy, of course. Good girls like that would never go for a guy like him. Certainly not in a public place like a gas station.

  But then, there was that kiss…

  A fluke, he concluded. She was trying to show off, show that she wasn’t all goody two-shoes and college. And not a bad tasting fluke at that.

  Ram knew his form had an effect on women—that other men simply weren’t like him. But this was the first time he could remember a woman having such an effect on him

  When he finished filling up the bike, he stepped around it, looking for any imperfections in the chrome or the machinery. The kick bars would need to be polished soon, and his back tire was showing a little more wear than he would like.

  Through the window of the gas station, he saw June stepping from the bathroom and a trio of young men surround her. They were in their early twenties, wearing the standard shit-kicker outfits—expensive boots and cowboy hats, dime store shirts and jeans.

  One crowded her against the soft drinks in the long fridge lining the wall. When she moved away, the other blocked her. They were all smiles, hands out, asking her to calm down.

  Possession, hard and furious, filled Ram’s mind. They were fucking with his old lady.

  And that was a mistake.

  He stormed into the store, his steps heavy and loud. The shit-kickers looked his way, eyes opening a bit, and then opening wider as Ram approached. They were all solid-sized boys with meat-and-potatoes diets, but Ram was a full size man and then some.

  One of them wasn’t quite as scared as he should be, given the look of fury on Ram’s face. “Can I help you, bud? I’m talking to this lady, here.”

  “You got something to say to my old lady you can say it in front of me,” said Ram. “So go on. Talk to her.”

  June’s face was some heavy mixture of dissatisfaction and relief. He wasn’t sure how much of it was for him.

  “Your old lady?” said the kid. “Well, it’s just…I was saying…she looked good in that outfit.”

  “You think my old lady looks good, huh?” He towered over the other man, a head taller than him. “You want to fuck her? Is that what you’re telling me right now?”

  “Stevie, let’s go, man,” said a smart one, pulling his friend away.

  “I can say whatever I want,” said Stevie. “It’s a free country, isn’t it?”

  If he looked at Stevie right, squinting his eyes just a bit and tilting his head, he was almost like a smaller version of Beretta.

  Ram snatched him by the neck and lifted him up off his feet. His friends followed as Ram continued to carry him, kicking and choking, and tossed him out of the store onto the concrete. He followed it up with a hard kick on his ass—and lucky for Stevie that he hadn’t aimed for his ribs. They would have shattered like glass.

  “There ain’t a goddamn thing free about my woman,” said Ram. “And if I see you talking to her again, I’ll shove your teeth so far down your throat the next time you see the dentist he’ll have to cut you the fuck open.”

  They all cleared out.

  Chapter 8

  They pulled up on her street, and Ram came to a slow stop, circling back around when he saw the long line of cop cars in front of her house.

  “Lot of cops,” he said, pointing. “There trouble here often?”

  The house at the end of the cul-de-sac had about four cop cars in front of it. It was more than usual, but June wasn’t surprised to see them.

  “A cop lives there,” she said, her voice tired. “That’s all.”

  Ram grunted.

  She would have to tell him the truth soon. He would know as soon as she walked into her house. It would end his attraction to her then and there; the ride was nice while it lasted. Perhaps the charade was over altogether, it was hard to say.

  Probably not—Ram seemed like a man of his word, if nothing else. A man with a specific code, and one he took seriously. Still, part of that code would involve absolutely hating June’s family, and so her with it.

  She had been worrying over this ever since the gas station, to the point where even the tactile pleasure of holding on to Ram’s heat and bulk had not been as distracting to her as before. But she was also upset, philosophically at least, about his display of dominance at the gas station.

  “You know, those weren’t the first guys who’ve hit on me,” she said, stepping off h
is bike. “Not even the first guys who did it in a trio like that.”

  “You’re gonna be my old lady, then you’re gonna be my old lady,” said Ram. “You’re not just yourself anymore. You’re an extension of the club. I can’t let anyone fuck with that.”

  An “extension,” by which he most undoubtedly meant property.

  And there was all that heat again, riding up in her against her will, at thoughts of being claimed, being his. It went against everything she believed, and yet there was something intrinsically attractive about it.

  She would have been lying if she said she wasn’t at least a little turned on by him grabbing that asshole by the neck and tossing him to the curb. It was an incredible display of strength. But that was something she’d never admit to.

  “Have a little faith,” she suggested, “that I won’t let anybody fuck with me either. How about that?”

  He gave the sort of upside-down grin that people use, considering something for the first time. “Maybe so.”

  “But, you can stick around in the rear guard if you want,” she said, sliding her hand unconsciously across his shoulders as she grabbed her bag. “It was sort of fun to call in the artillery.”

  He flashed her a smile then that was both charming and a bit boyish. It surprised her, this flash of him that seemed so diametrically opposed to what she had seen of him so far. Mischievous, almost, instead of deadly dangerous. It made her heart pulse.

  “Thanks for the ride home,” she said, turning. “You’ll bring my luggage back to your shop, right?”

  “It’ll be there in the morning.”

  “Great. I’ll pick it up then.”

  As she started to walk back to her house, his hand grabbed at her waist and pulled her back over to him.

  “You’re really, really pretty, June.”

  “I…” she gulped. “…Thanks.”

  “And a good kisser, too.”

  There it was again—that same submissive, pliant feeling he had given her before. She wasn’t a piece of meat, not something just to be admired. But God, didn’t it feel good to be admired by him? Someone like him—so strong and sure, so effortlessly masculine?