Hard Rider

by Lydia Pax

  She had threatened this alpha, this outlaw, and he was protecting himself.

  By pressing her against the wall, he had not hurt her. And he did not hurt her now—not bending her arms, not squeezing her—but he did hold her firm against the brick, her front facing the wall. She could feel his breath against her ear, heated. And she felt…

  She felt something else, too. His legs were pressed right against hers, and his crotch rested against the small of her back. He was so much taller than her. The thick, long member of his manhood pushed forward, probing into her body through the fabric.

  Her sense melted, her thighs splaying open almost naturally. Wanting to take him inside of her just like that.

  “Let go of me.”

  She almost regretted saying it. That hardness, so brilliantly fierce, pushed off from her. He let her turn around, but still trapped her against the wall between his arms.

  “You don’t tell my brothers anything without my say-so. You got that?”

  “Fine,” she said. “But you need to get me a ring. All right? There’s a party tomorrow night. You have to come, and when you do, I need to have a ring on my finger. That’s just how it is.”

  He kissed her. Startled, she didn’t know what else to do but kiss him back. Every part of her conspired against her will, her mind—her hands wanted him, sliding up through his hair and across the impeccably hard expanse of his chest. Her legs wanted him, one looping loosely across his calves and tugging him forward. Her nipples wanted him, becoming uncomfortably stiff in her bra, pushing forward to meet the crushing weight of his muscles, sending electric thrills up and down her spine as they slid against his marble body.

  Finally he pushed away.

  “Fine,” he said. “But you want me to act as an attached man? You better get used to a lot more of that. I ain’t even gonna act attached to a woman I can’t kiss like that whenever I damn well please.”

  He left her behind the shop. June breathed hard, her entire body on fire, wondering what it was that she had gotten herself into.

  Chapter 12

  The night of the party came and Ram soon found himself at June’s front door, about to be surrounded by cops. Cops who knew who he was, who knew who the Wrecking Crew were, who knew the Wrecking Crew were involved in the shootout at The Hammerin’ Nail just a few nights before when one of their own had been gunned down.

  Chances were good that he would die here.

  He felt okay about it.

  Death had been on Ram’s tail more than once. Every brawl he’d ever been in could have ended with a broken neck, a broken bottle cutting his throat. The pressure of death set upon him was almost comforting—he understood death a lot more than he understood cops.

  For the last few years, he’d been a sore spot in the rear end of one of the most dangerous men in Texas or Mexico in Acero—the leader of the Black Flags. A guy who strung up his enemies by their guts if they were lucky. The unlucky were scalped, sometimes skinned—while they were still alive. He was a man with so much hate in him that anything approaching a peace seemed as unlikely as the moon turning into a baseball.

  And yet being here, in this place full of cops, filled him with more certainty that he might die than he’d ever had.

  The only regret he would have would be not taking out Beretta before he went.

  This whole situation was that motherfucker’s fault. Ram couldn’t see it another way; Beretta blocked the entire scope of his vision. Every decision he made was an ascent over the mountain of resentment he felt for the man.

  On the face of it, Ram didn’t have to be worried about the cops. They weren’t pulling in any members of the Wrecking Crew in for questioning for some reason; Ram didn’t know why. Ostensibly, there was no proof that the Wrecking Crew had killed the cop—no proof, even, that Ram was there.

  Ram had contacted a few informants before committing to come to the party tonight. Everyone he spoke with told him his record showed up clean outside of all his priors. There were no warrants for his arrest, no listing of him as a person of interest.

  Manuel, proprietor of The Hammerin’ Nail, would keep his tongue quiet, and neither group would wag their tongues to the cops. There was nothing lower for an outlaw biker than a rat.

  But proof had never really gotten in the way of the Marlowe police department before. They’d been arresting Wrecking Crew members like crazy over the last six months or so, all on trumped up charges. Ram’s uneasy ease stayed with him.

  Ram dressed up for the occasion: button-up white shirt, tight black slacks. He put his vest with all its patches away, leaving them in his truck, which he drove to the house instead of his bike. No sense in just wandering around asking for a fight with the cops.

  When a biker wore his colors, he advertised who and what he was. When the Wrecking Crew were strong in numbers, that was a good thing—enough of them banding together was as good of a deterrent as anything else for any kind of conflict. There was always some mope out in the world trying to prove himself a bad ass by taking on a real outlaw, but usually he wouldn’t chance it against three or four or more of them.

  But for cops, the rules were different, made on the fly by the men with the badges. Just being associated with the Wrecking Crew was enough for most cops in Marlowe to pull you over and inspect your vehicle for up to two hours at a time. These inspections turned into arrests if you didn’t answer a cop in the time he wanted, or in a way he liked.

  Ram had seen it happen; he had been subject to such abuse.

  The door opened, an older woman opening it. She was short and dark-haired, a pretty streak in her that marked her clearly as June’s mother. Deeper in the house, voices carried—stories being told, laughter echoing across the walls.

  “You must be Sheila,” said Ram. “I’m Reid. June’s fiancé?”

  “You’re Reid?” Sheila asked. She clearly recognized him; wife of the sheriff probably had her nose in everyone’s business. No fool, she. “I…see. How…interesting.”

  Ram watched her lips scrape as she tried to reclaim her tact. His ink was clear just beyond the sleeves of his shirt; no doubt she didn’t want her daughter dating some tattooed bad boy, let alone getting married to one.

  “Well, there’s drinks in the kitchen. Beer. No hard liquor.” Her eyes narrowed as she said this, expecting him to argue. When he didn’t, she continued. “And then there’s barbecue in the backyard. Do you have any…uh…friends, coming?”

  “No friends,” said Ram. “Just me.”

  Relief visibly passed through Sheila. Ram understood. He wouldn’t want a war starting in his backyard either. “Wonderful. Well, June’s upstairs, getting ready. You can feel free to mingle or…anything else.”

  “Thanks.”

  He watched her go, no doubt unloading the news on her husband and his brigade of cops. He’d half expected to be shot the moment he stepped through the door, and that was fine by him—but now that it hadn’t happened a new nervous energy filled Ram.

  It was an unfamiliar feeling. Most of the time, he was never nervous. The fact that he should be afraid usually hit him well after the fact of some action, drilling him in the gut after he’d already taken ten steps in a five step line.

  His fight-or-flight system being so predominantly disposed toward “fight,” and with fights against Ram lasting such a short amount of time, often the adrenaline in his system took care of most of the fear he would feel.

  But he couldn’t fight here, not unless he wanted to ruin everything. And so he leaned against the wall, waiting for June, knuckling his hands into the door frame behind him.

  A few minutes passed—he could hear the voices further in the house changing tone very abruptly. Talking about him, no doubt. A smile crossed his lips; it was nice to be noticed.

  A deputy he knew—Theo Kirkpatrick—stepped out into the entry from deeper inside the house.

  “What the fuck are you doing here, scumbag?”

  “Me?” asked Ram, looking around. “I’m
engaged to June. You ain’t heard?”

  Theo stepped close to him. Ram could smell the beer on his breath. Theo was a large man, almost as big as Ram. He’d taken Ram into lock-up a number of times during the past few years, usually overnight stays in the jail to let him cool off after a bar fight.

  Up until this point, their relationship had almost been cordial, sort of like a bad student and the principal. But Theo’s eyes were murderous now, and Ram only knew one way to respond to that kind of threat—by staring murder right back at him.

  “I heard you were at a bar the other night when a good man died. What have you got to say about that?”

  Ram pushed off from the wall. “Am I being questioned, officer?”

  “That’s Deputy.”

  “I’m sorry, Deputy. Am I under suspicion?”

  The air between them could be slammed with a hammer and still stay just as thick with pressure.

  “What I think,” said Ram, “is that if you had a shred of evidence on me, you’d already have me on the ground in handcuffs. Ain’t that right, Deputy?”

  Theo’s look told the whole story—and convinced Ram that, while he might not escape from this place alive, at least he wouldn’t get arrested outright. Theo looked like he would say something else, but from above them, June began to walk down the stairs.

  Ram turned to look, and had to hold his breath to stop from gasping.

  She looked gorgeous. She had put on a short white dress with a scooping neckline, showing off the sensational expanse of her breasts. Her legs, long and fetching, were clad in smoky dark tights. His heart raced—and his cock came alive. He wanted to run his hands through the chestnut locks of her hair and hold it tight while he drove himself into her for hours.

  Theo was forgotten. All he wanted in that moment was to take June aside and give her the ride of her life.

  Take her away from this stuffy place, from all these cops, and fuck her until she didn’t even know where she was from anymore, until all she knew how to say was his name. His heart hammered against his chest.

  “Leave my fiancé alone, Theo,” said June. “He’s good people.”

  The deputy was clearly disappointed about being interrupted, but he relented. Theo gave her a curt nod, and then turned to Ram briefly.

  “You’re on notice,” he hissed. “You and your whole clan. You’re going to pay for what you did. Watch your back.”

  Chapter 13

  The real party was in the backyard, which had been expanded in the years June was gone. At one point, it had held horses—as the Sheriff of Marlowe County, sometimes her father needed the animals to go and investigate robberies and other crimes out in the country.

  But some budget updates in the past few years had allowed the stables to be on the property of the Sheriff’s Department, and when the old stables were torn down, her family had also bought up some of the land surrounding.

  Now they had a good five acres of land to themselves sprouting out behind their house in the cul-de-sac. Most of it was wilderness, but there was still a great deal of green flat earth to walk among. Patches of it here and there were still brown and barren from where the seeding and irrigation didn’t take. The neighbor’s houses around them—some of the posher places in Marlowe—didn’t have even half the amount of green grass that the Colt family did.

  It had been a strange day so far. She got a callback from Pet Luck, and felt a little embarrassed that it was only in the middle of that conversation that she realized their name was a play on “Pot Luck.” They wanted her to come in for an interview, and so they had set a date.

  That good feeling had carried with her all the way into the evening until she saw Ram—and then it intensified even further.

  She and Ram entered into the backyard arm-in-arm. The air was warm and dry. He was good to hang on to, at least, with all that muscle. She caught herself more than once leaning into him, enjoying the feel of all that heavy dense tissue more than just for the show they were trying to put on.

  More than a little part of her wanted to see if he would kiss her again. She wasn’t sure that she would kiss him herself—but she was damn sure she wouldn’t fight him if he tried.

  It was wrong; it was stupid; nothing between them could ever go anywhere serious, and June was a serious-relationship kind of woman.

  But the way he felt…the way he looked at her…

  June would have been lying, openly and badly, if she had said she hadn’t hoped for the reaction she got from him when he saw her in her cleavage-baring dress. It made her feel alive to be eaten whole by his gaze, knowing that behind every second of his eyes on her was hours and hours of intent—the intent to take her hard, to ferry her back to some secluded place and spoil her for any other man.

  Simon had never looked at her like that, no way. He was passionate in his own way, but that passion never seemed to translate into much for June. When they were together, they had been great friends, but their love life never really got off the ground. There was about as much spark between them as between a rock and an ice cube.

  With the constant floating feeling she got from touching Ram, seeing Ram, smelling Ram, that was only more and more obvious. This was how attraction was supposed to feel—riding away with your attention and burying every other sensation.

  She pushed those thoughts away with some effort, enjoying the look on Ram’s face. He was aghast as he scanned the crowd. She thought she understood.

  Someone looking at this childhood home of June’s for the first time might have thought she was rich growing up. But the Colts weren’t. The home was small when she grew up, only really taking off when she was sixteen or so. There were always people in and out, but it wasn’t until then that there was actually room for them all.

  The additions—the buying of land—this was always attributed to her mother’s handling of the finances. They saved and saved and saved, and now they had the home they wanted. It wasn’t like property was expensive in Marlowe.

  “More than you expected?” she asked.

  They were relatively alone on the patio, though there was a small line formed where the bartender had set up shop.

  “When you told me barbecue, I thought…you know, a few friends. Something more intimate,” he said. “The barbecues that I’ve been to with this many people usually go on for a few days.”

  “A few days?”

  “Wrecking Crew likes to party, babe. There’s drinking, pot, acid…you know, a party.”

  “I think my people would collectively implode if they tried a drug,” June laughed. “And my mother and father haven’t been intimate since probably I was conceived.”

  Now Ram chuckled. “Doesn’t sound like a great recipe for a marriage.”

  Bad soft jazz powered out into the backyard from large speakers posted at regular intervals, mostly near the lights.

  “They put their attention in different areas. My mom, for example, probably knows half of the city. So, that’s who she invited tonight.”

  “For a homecoming party?”

  “Homecoming. College graduation. Engagement, sort of. Honestly,” June squeezed tight on his forearm. It felt like bands of oak. “My mother could throw a party for a rainy Tuesday. It’s what she does.”

  There were three grills cooking barbecue, each one with a different kind of meat. The juicy smell of sausage, brisket, and hamburgers filled the air. Ram was actually more dressed up than most of the men, who arrived in polos and khakis if not just plain jeans and tees.

  June did not exactly like that she enjoyed it, but she did enjoy holding the arm of the most well-dressed, biggest, handsomest man at the party. It was a girlish thrill, one she both rejected and reveled in.

  He created many such feelings in her.

  “Is that June Colt all grown up?”

  David Prince approached them from across the patio. He wore a maroon suit jacket and a deep blue shirt, his brightly polished shoes shining in the torch light. A short blond goatee attended his chin an
d his well-kept hair was parted to one side, as always. It was as though he hadn’t aged a day since June had seen him last. Prince was the mayor of the town of Marlowe and had been for almost as long as Colt had been Sheriff.

  He was also one of the few men besides Ram actually dressed up for the dinner, though Prince was notoriously overdressed for everything. This was one of the reasons cited—in quiet conversations, shuffled about in small whispers—that he was suspected of being a homosexual. The people of Marlowe put a whip on the word like they might with “nuclear bomb” or “carrying Ebola.”

  The fact that he had a son didn’t seem to matter much to them. His wife had divorced him long ago—a scandal all in itself in a town like Marlowe, worthy of newspaper headlines—and he’d never been seen around town courting another woman.

  “Hello, Mayor,” said June. “It’s nice to see you.”

  It wasn’t truly, but it wasn’t exactly unpleasant either. Her feelings on the mayor—like a lot of people who worked closely with her father—were at their most favorable when they were neutral. There were none that she actually liked, save for her mother and brother.

  “Mayor, oh god.” He took her hand. “Call me David, huh? And you, you’re the lucky fella?”

  Prince took Ram by the hand, who shook it firmly without wavering. “That’s me.”

  “I hear you’re a part of Marlowe’s very own Wrecking Crew?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Good for you. Love their bake sale. They’ve got those,” he snapped his fingers, thinking, “those pecan sandies? Love ‘em. You know you’re quite brave, landing yourself in this crowd, don’t you?”

  Ram shrugged. “I don’t know that bravery has all that much to do with it.”

  “Oh, but it does, son! It does indeed. Brave. Stupid, too, but that’s part of brave, so we can leave it out. Anyway, I thought I would say hello before they carry you off in handcuffs. Nice meeting you, though.”

  He smiled all the while as he spoke, each word brimming with sincerity—to the point where it was difficult to tell which words were jokes, lies, a mixture of both—or just sarcasm. The second he left them he struck up a conversation with another couple, carrying that same tone. He could have been announcing ingredients on a cooking show.