Meant for Sin: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Thunder Riders MC) (Beards and Leather Book 4)

by Nicole Fox

  He just watches me as a man will watch an insect to see if it shrinks or braves the microscope. I brave it as best I can, staring back at him, not allowing my lip to tremble, trying with everything I have to make him believe that I am club material.

  He stands up, smiling. “All right then, tough-guy Al. You can come on as a pledge. That doesn’t mean that you mean shit, or that you’ll ever be a Thunder Rider. That doesn’t mean that you have a place here or that any of our brothers will help you if you ever need helping. That right is reserved for true brothers. It means that you’re dirt, and maybe one day you won’t be dirt if you show your loyalty. Go outside and ask Michaels if he has any jobs for you.” He pauses. “Right now! What the fuck are you staring at me for?”

  “Yes, sir.” I jump to my feet and walk back outside. “The boss told me to ask if you have any jobs for me.”

  Michaels studies me for a moment. “He did? And if I go and check that with him, he’ll say the same?”

  I stand aside. “Go check. See what he says.”

  He runs his nicotine-stained fingers through his greasy hair. “I want every bike in the parking lot cleaned. You can get water and sponges from around the back.”

  It’s only when I’m kneeling down near the faucet, filling the bucket, that I allow myself a small smile. A nervous smile, a shaky smile. But a smile all the same.

  Chapter Seven

  Granite

  “You just can’t get her out of your head,” Ranger says, sliding the bottle of whisky across the table to me. It’s evening time and the diner is almost empty apart from a few old fellas in the corner. “You don’t have to be ashamed of it. I get it. You know how I met Maria. I was working in the kitchen and she came in with her friends one day and just sat there and man, if I wasn’t the most goggle-eyed person in the world. I couldn’t talk to her, she was so beautiful. I loved her. People say love at first sight is bullshit, but I don’t know. I sure as hell felt something there.”

  I take a swig of whisky. “That might be a little extreme. I don’t love this girl. I don’t even know this girl. But yeah, you’re right. I can’t get her out of my head. Every time I close my damn eyes, she’s there. I’ve been followin’ her most days, keeping an eye on her, ’cause the worst of it is I don’t know what her game is. She clearly has an interest in the club. Last week she was riding around the block on some piece of shit bike; thing was so rusted I couldn’t even see the make or model.”

  “I never said I followed Maria home.” Ranger grins at me. “I never thought you were a Romeo, Granite, but stalking’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not stalking. It’s club business.”

  “So your boss knows about it?”

  I take another sip so I don’t have to answer.

  “Ah, so he doesn’t. Let me guess. You know that if you tell your boss you think some journalist or private investigator or whatever she is, is sneaking around, he’ll put other men on the job. He’ll force you to break into shifts and there will be other men watching her, and you can’t have that, because this is your girl. Even if you don’t know it yet. Even if she doesn’t know it yet.”

  “Maybe I’m not looking into her as hard as I would if …”

  “If she weren’t as purty?”

  “It’s not just that.” I sigh, resting my head in my hands. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t have words for this kind of shit. I could describe a headshot to you in a hundred fuckin’ ways, but this shit? All right, let me put it like this. Whenever I’m at the club or the bar and I see some girl in the crowd, for a second it’s her, every time, and then my eyes adjust and I see that it’s just another club girl. But in that second when I think it’s her, I find myself smiling. But that don’t change the fact that she did come sniffing around the bar, asking questions. I’m doing the right thing by keeping an eye on her.”

  “And it just so happens that, for once, the right thing for the club is the right thing for you too.”

  “I preferred you when you were a scared little pledge.” I knock back two swigs of whisky, the fire liquid burning down my throat and burning in my belly. I roll my neck in my shoulders. “Goddamn, but this whisky is good.”

  “Don’t change the subject. You came here for advice. Well, here’s my advice. Buy a big bunch of flowers, put on a shirt, knock on her door and introduce yourself. Give her some story about how you spotted her on her porch and wanted to say hello.” He pauses to tip his Stetson to two old men who wave to him from outside. “And then you get talking, and then something good might actually happen.”

  “I’m tryin’ to picture myself in a shirt with my hair slicked down and a bunch of flowers in my hand. Really, I am. It just don’t fit the way I see it. I’d feel like an imposter if I walked into a flower shop.”

  “Florist. They’re called florists.”

  “See? I don’t even have the name down. No, I can’t introduce myself anyway. I can’t let myself cross that line, Ranger, ’cause what if I do and it turns out she’s an agent for the Brass Skulls or something else, something worse, and I have to …”

  Ranger turns away from me, watching a raven as it pecks apart the remains of a cheese burger. “That’s a horrible thing to have to think about. This is the life for me. This diner. A burger. A shake. Closing up. Opening up the next day. To have to think about …. a woman you … goddamn, Granite, I’m glad I left the life.”

  “I know you are. I don’t blame you. But I’m still in and there are things I’ve gotta think about. This is just a funk. That’s how I’m looking at it. I’m pissed ’cause he didn’t make me an officer so I’m letting myself go all weird. There ain’t nothing else to it.”

  “Do you really believe that, though?” he asks. “Or do you just wish you did?”

  I laugh, not because it’s funny but because if I don’t laugh I have to take him seriously. Then I take a few more sips of whisky, closing my eyes and letting it burn onto the insides of my eyelids. I imagine that the sunlight is the whisky: whisky flares instead of solar flares.

  “If you’re gonna start meditating, you mind doing it someplace else?”

  I open my eyes. Ranger is on his feet, making for the counter. A group of around ten has come in, a nice-looking family, the father with one of those fanny packs and the mother wide-hipped, the sort of woman who bakes apple pies and leaves them near open windows to cool them off, getting the whole neighborhood excited. They look at me like they might go somewhere else, not wanting to bring their brood into the same place as an outlaw. I stand up and go out the back door, into the shadows.

  There’s a homeless guy sitting up against the trash cans across the parking lot, rolling a cigarette. I go over to him. “I’ll give you ten dollars for one,” I say.

  “Ten dollars? You can take one, friend. No need to pay a man ten dollars.” His hair is a nest and his face is hidden under layers of grime, but his eyes are as green as leaves. “Here.” He hands me the one he was rolling. “Do you need a light? Oh no. Come on, pal. There’s no need for that.”

  I push the ten dollars into his hand, take his Zippo, light my cigarette. “You ever been in a funk?” I ask him, handing him the lighter. “You ever felt like you ain’t yourself?”

  “You’re asking me that?” The homeless guy narrows his eyes, causing some of the dirt to crumble. “That sure seems like an odd question to ask me, friend. But I guess I can answer. I haven’t felt myself for twenty-some years. Sometimes it just goes on that way. I’m going to make a change tomorrow, though. I’m going to clean myself up and get myself a job and a place, but first I’m going to have one more big night, one big blowout. Just one more.”

  I leave him there, puffing my cigarette. Life ain’t as simple as it was a couple of weeks ago. My head is always full, fuller than it ought to be, fuller than makes sense. Haunted, maybe that’s the word. Haunted by the quick glimpse of her in the gun store, the way she moved in the bar, the way she walks to and from her door. Haunted by that tight a
ss and those big eyes. Haunted by the thought of her lips.

  I finish the cigarette—head swimming with the whisky-nicotine combo—and ride toward the clubhouse. Maybe that’ll help me forget. Maybe the men and the bullshitting and some more booze will make this seem like some ridiculous high school pining.

  Dagger, Jax, and Michaels are standing outside the club when I get there, sharing a joint. Jax offers it to me but I shake my head. “I don’t mess with that shit,” I say. They’re standing in a semi-circle facing the parking lot. “What’re you all standing like this for?”

  “Wait,” Jax says, smiling like a kid on Christmas morning.

  “The boss let in a new pledge today,” Dagger explains. “He must be no older than fifteen, maybe sixteen, but I guess the boss saw something in him. His name’s Al and he’s been cleaning bikes all day, from around one o’clock. He keeps cleaning them and men keep riding in.”

  “A real carwash service,” Michaels says, eyes red from the weed. He grins widely. “When he swaggered over to me earlier I never would’ve guessed this. No way. Just look at all these bikes.”

  I turn with him: around twenty-five bikes, all of them glistening where they’ve been washed. “That sure is somethin’,” I agree. “But working pledges ain’t nothing new.”

  “You haven’t seen this one yet,” Jax says, hopping from foot to foot. “You know I hate it when people call me a kid, but this kid really is one. He must have stepped right out of kindergarten yesterday or some shit. Yesterday!”

  I watch as Al the pledge walks out from around the side of the clubhouse, a bucket and sponge in his hand. No—a bucket and sponge in her hand. My world spins over and over as I watch her, moving with the same grace as when she was in the bar, her eyes the same green and her fringe poking out from underneath her beanie. My instinct is to tell the men at once that they’ve been fooled, but I repress it.

  “Where’d this Al come from?” I ask.

  “No idea,” Michaels says, coughing as he takes a big puff of weed. “I was just standing out here with this other pledge and he comes walking over like he thinks he’s something big, comes right out and asks for the boss.”

  “Goddamn,” I whisper, watching as she gets on her knees and wrings the sponge in the bucket. I want to say: “Are you stupid? Look at the way she’s moving. Look at that tight ass. She might’ve tied her tits down but damn if that body ain’t fine. She might have cut her hair but damn if that face ain’t pretty. Do you seriously think that she’s a man?” But if I say that, Mr. Ivarsson might punish her. Michaels and Jax and Dagger might punish her. The whole club might punish her. So I only repeat, “Goddamn.”

  “I’ve seen some pledges in my time,” Michaels goes on, talking in that low, slightly-paranoid voice he uses when the weed has really hit him. “I’ve seen men come and go. But I’ve never seen the boss let a guy like this into the club. I mean, look at him, fellas. You ever seen a movie set in a high school? My girl had one on the other week. He’s that kid, the nervous one who’s always in the library. That ain’t the stuff bikers are made of, no, sir.”

  “I’m gonna go talk to him,” I say. “Maybe there’s more to him than meets the eye, eh?”

  “Doubt it,” Dagger mutters. “I can read people, and all I read on him is fear.”

  “Maybe.” I shrug. “Let me go see.”

  I walk toward her, a ball in my throat. It takes me a second to pinpoint the source of the ball. At first I think it’s ’cause I’m nervous to talk to her, but that ain’t it. At least, that’s not mostly it. Mostly it’s ’cause I’m a weird combination of scared for her and angry at her for coming here.

  “Hello,” I say, standing over her.

  She glances up; her face drops. “Uh, hello.”

  Chapter Eight

  Allison

  Does he know? I try to read his face, but the setting sun is behind him, partially blinding me, and even if it wasn’t, I don’t know him well enough. Hell, I don’t know him at all even if I think I do: more than the other men here, at least, since he’s haunted my dreams for the past week. I stand up, dropping the sponge in the bucket. My instinct is to stand with my hand across my belly, but that’s a girlish way to stand, or at least a non-biker way. So instead I let my hands fall to my sides and stare him straight in the face.

  I don’t let my eyes roam over him, even though I want to, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, his tattoos on display, his muscles on display, his piercing blue eyes staring into my soul.

  “So you’re the new pledge,” he says.

  “I’m the new pledge.”

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Al Marshall-Brown.”

  He holds his hands up. “I just asked your name, kid. No need to bite my head off about it.”

  “S—” I bite down. I was about to say: “Sorry. I didn’t mean to. But I do bite, you know.” No, that’s flirting, and right now flirting should be the last thing on my mind. I cannot flirt with him. He thinks I’m Al, Al the pledge, and the last thing Al the pledge needs to do is flirt with one of the Thunder Riders. “Just telling you my name,” I mutter.

  “So they’ve had you cleaning bikes all day?” He paces around the bike, hands behind his back. He’s the biggest man I’ve seen, even bigger than the boss. I wonder what it’d be like to lift his shirt just a little. Is his belly tattooed? Running my finger along his abs would be something, wouldn’t it, something to think about, to dream about … No, no, no. I kill the thoughts. I. Am. Al.

  “Yeah,” I say, with what I hope is a casual shrug. “I get it. You’ve got to put the pledges through the wringer. I’m not taking it personally.”

  He comes right up to me, standing so close I can smell the whisky and cigarettes and cologne on him. Some animal part of me awakens, urging me to rest my head against his rock-hard chest. “Where’d you hear about the Thunder Riders? ’Cause let me tell you, folks don’t normally just walk up to the club askin’ if they can be pledges. Normally they know somebody in the club, and that’s how they get in. The boss has taken a liking to you and maybe it’s ’cause you’re brave, or maybe he’s just having fun. I don’t know.”

  “I heard about them on the Internet,” I say, glad not to have to lie. “You have an Internet forum. I don’t know if you’re aware.” Fuck! Some of my own voice enters my growl, the ‘you’re aware’ going high-pitched toward the end. “It wasn’t no tough thing to find you.” I deepen my voice, compensating.

  “Why do you keep looking at my arms, Al? Have I got oil on ’em or something?”

  His blue eyes dance. He knows, but then if he knew, he would just come out and say it. Wouldn’t he?

  “I’m not,” I say, sounding appropriately defensive. “I’m just trying to get on with my work. That’s all.”

  “Hmm.” He nods, whistling softly. “I get that. A man needs to work. You ever stopped to think on that? I’ve known fellas who were hard as nails right up until their seventieth birthday, and then they quit the life and disappeared into retirement and they were dead in a year. Funny thing, life. Al, what’s a camshaft?”

  I take a step back. I don’t mean to but the question catches me off-guard. I feel like an idiot for not looking up some motorcycle terms. I should’ve guessed one of them might ask me. “Um …” Don’t say um, dammit! “It’s an engine part, far as I know.”

  “That’s like if we were at a pond and I asked you what a carp was. ’Course you’d say it was a fish, since we’re standing at the edge of a pond, and course you’d say that a camshaft is an engine part, ’cause we’re standing near a bike. What does it do? What’s it for? I’m guessing you know a good deal about bikes to feel confident enough to just walk up to a clubhouse like this one and ask for a job.”

  It would have been so easy to research motorcycle parts online, but the idea didn’t occur to me. I guess lots of things didn’t occur to me, especially being interrogated by a man I’d be flirting with if it wasn’t for the getup. “Well, I’m more of an instinct g
uy,” I tell him, leaning back on my heels. “I don’t know all the names, but I know the parts. When I get down there and start tinkering, I know what I’m doing. But the names? Nah, they’re not wheelhouse.”

  “Ah.” He nods slowly. “So you’re a childhood prodigy who never bothered to learn the names. You just went into the garage and worked on your daddy’s bike and never bothered with all that technical shit? Far enough.”

  “That’s right.” The lump in my throat is the size of a golf ball. I wish he would leave me alone. It’s hard enough playing the tough biker when I’m on my own. “I just tinker where the tinkering is.” Tinker where the tinkering is … I sound like a character from a flipping Tim Burton movie! “I don’t think too much about the technical stuff.”

  “Right. So if I take this bike apart right now and ask you to put it back together, it’ll be easy as pie for you?”