by Nicole Fox
“I don’t need anything,” he says, voice flat. “Thanks for the offer and the hospitality, but this ain’t really that kind of a visit.”
I get myself a beer, crack it on the counter, and go into the living room. I sit on the armchair with my legs tucked beneath me. I’m aware of the way he looks at my body, and of the way I look at his. His forearm muscles twitch, causing his tattoos to dance as he strokes the barrel of the gun.
“Can you put that thing away?” I ask. “It’s making me nervous.”
“No,” he says, no intonation in his voice at all. “I don’t know who you are, truth be told, and it’s a stupid man who puts his gun away when a stranger asks him to. A dead man.”
“Do you think I’m dangerous?” I giggle. It’s the nervous kind of giggle I normally hate hearing, but I can’t help it. “I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think I could hurt you if I tried. You’re … well, let’s be honest, you’re much bigger than me. You’re a real hulk, if you want the whole story. You could flick me and I’d go flying into space, so I don’t see why that gun is necessary.”
“Maybe it isn’t,” he agrees, but he doesn’t put it away.
I take a long sip from my beer. The sun has set now, the only light the stars and the moon. I go to the corner and turn on the lamp, yellow light cascading across the ceiling. I return to the armchair and take another long sip, almost draining the glass. “Are you sure you don’t want one?”
“I’m sure,” he says. “Shall we get down to business or do you wanna waste more time?”
“Business?”
“Don’t play innocent with me, Allison. Let’s start with the facts, at least. You’re pretending to be a man so you can get into my MC. I know that ’cause I saw you at the gun shop, and you saw me. I know that. What I can’t figure out is why you’re doing it. When I saw you at the bar I thought you might be a cop. That’s why I followed you. But there’s no damn way they’d put a woman into undercover work and make her pretend to be a man. They’d just put a man in. So what are you? A private investigator? A freelance journalist? What?”
“Nothing as exciting as that,” I tell him. “I’m not looking into your club because of anything that’s specifically to do with your club.”
“Yeah, right, but that doesn’t make much sense. It sounds to me like you’re saying you ain’t looking into the club because of the club. But then why else would you agree to wash bikes all damn day long? For fun? There’s somethin’ going on here. And you’re going to tell me about it.”
“Or you’ll shoot me?”
“Might be that I will,” he says.
“Just then.” I sit up; the beer has given me some confidence, slowed down my heartbeat a little. “Your face went tight when you said that. I don’t think you want to shoot me.”
He turns to me, face still tight, blue eyes the only bright thing about him right now. “There are lots of things a man like me doesn’t want to do, Allison. And there are a lot of things a man like me has to do. You’re right. I don’t want to shoot you. But I’ve done plenty of things in my life I didn’t wanna do.”
“So you’re saying you will shoot me, then, if it comes down to it?”
He swallows. His Adam’s apple shifts. “I’m sayin’ what I’m sayin’. And now it’s your turn to start talking. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Okay.” I close my eyes, afraid that voicing this plan aloud will sound sillier than it does in my head. But what choice do I have? The barrel of a gun really does simplify things. “My mom died a few years ago and my big brother didn’t take it well at all. He used to be a good kid, but ….” I tell him about how Brandon went off the rails, how he turned to drugs. “Then he decided to join the Brass Skulls, but I’m not sure if saying he decided to join them is the best way to put it. It was more like he made friends with his dealer and his dealer invited a bunch of people over to his place and now they’ve never left. He’s in deep with them. He’s going to get himself killed. He’s an idiot, a real idiot. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He has no clue what he’s gotten himself into. He just … he thinks he can just join a club and have everything work out. Or no, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he’s just scared.
“But this is the problem!” I snap, getting angry at him even if he’s not here. “Usually we’re close. We talk. But at the moment I have no idea what’s going on with him because he won’t talk to me about it. He just tells me to leave him alone. But that’s the thing. I can’t leave him alone. He’s my big brother. My dad ran out when I was little, so he became the father figure. Even if he is a little twerp sometimes.”
“Right.” His voice is devoid of emotion. “I don’t see how joining the Thunder Riders has anything to do with that.”
“Well, it’s like this. I can’t go to the cops and I can’t go to anybody else. I don’t have anybody else. But I know that your club and his club are at war with each other, so if I can become a patched member of your club maybe I can prove to him that I can protect him. I can bring him over into the club. He won’t have to be afraid anymore. He’ll be safe.”
He lets his head fall back. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I can’t guess at it, only that his heart must be beating quickly because his pulse shimmers. “There’s some merit to that plan,” he mutters. “In principle, it’s a good idea. But do you really think you’ve got what it takes to get patched?” He opens his eyes, stares at me. Something has changed in him. He doesn’t seem as on-edge. “But still, it ain’t a bad plan.”
“In principle,” I say.
He nods. “So it’s all about your brother, eh? Goddamn, that’s some situation. That really is some situation.” He clears his throat. “I … I could do with that beer now.”
“Sure,” I say, watching him curiously. For some reason, hearing about Brandon has softened him. He opens and closes his fist, taps his foot on the floor. His knee bobs up and down. “I’ll get it now.”
I go into the kitchen, pick up one beer, and then grab the pack and place it on the coffee table. Granite opens it with his teeth and takes a long swig. He leaves his pistol on the table, no longer seeming to care about it. He props his feet on the edge of the table and leans back. “I don’t know why, Allison, but I feel like I wanna tell you somethin’. It’s somethin’ I’ve never told anybody. I never talk about it. Never have. Never will. That’s what I always say to myself. But sittin’ here with you and hearing your story, it … I don’t know, goddamn. I feel like I can talk to you.” He turns to me, a plea in his eyes. “Am I goin’ crazy or do you feel the same way?”
“I feel the same,” I tell him. “Even if it confuses me just as much as if confuses you.”
He laughs, but there’s something grim in there. “People ain’t ever simple, are they? But you’re right. It’s confusing as hell but I feel like I can talk to you, feel like there’s somethin’ here, somethin’ I don’t have with anyone else in my life. Let me tell you, then …
“I had a brother once. His name was Jimmy. Good kid, sweet kid, the nicest goddamn kid there ever was. He was one of those kids who’s always smiling, who always sees the bright side of shit. When he was little he used to go down to this field near our place and look for animals that needed help. He never found any, but that was his dream: find a bird or somethin’, fix it up, let it back out into the wild. Then we got older, and he saw that his big brother was gettin’ involved in some outlawing. He saw me in the club and he wanted to be like me. Maybe it was my fault. I should’ve let him in so he didn’t decide to try’n go out on his own. I don’t know. Life is never as simple as all that, I guess. But right now it seems pretty damn simple. Hindsight is a real motherfucker.
“A real motherfucker,” he repeats, clenching and unclenching his fist. “I didn’t want shit to go bad for the kid. Never wanted that. He was my brother, you know? I loved the little bastard. But he just couldn’t let it go; let me go, I guess. I was off livin’ the club life and he wanted a piece. So one day he
decided to walk right into the most dangerous neighborhood in town, just walked right in there with his fuckin’ knapsack and his stupid grin. I don’t know what Jimmy was thinkin’ in that moment, if he was even thinkin’ at all. All I know is that one decision can change a life forever.”
My heart aches for him. I want to reach across and touch him, but he seems almost on fire, like he’s burning up with emotion. The tendons in his throat shudder. He said he’s never talked about this and I believe him. It’s as though the past is physically working its way through his body, twisting him, contorting him.
“He walked right into one of the most dangerous places in town, up to one of these corner guys. What I didn’t know was that he’d been growing weed in the shed at the back of the garden. He was a real smart kid. He would’ve been somethin’ if he’d stayed away from all that drug shit, somethin’ really good. An engineer or somethin’ like that. Things went pretty predictably after that. I read it all in the police report years later. Jimmy tried to offer this guy his knapsack of weed so he could get in on the business, and the drug dealer accused him of being a cop, and the drug dealer started firing—and that’s the end of the story.”
He drains his beer and then takes another, drinking down half of it quickly. “I’ll help you the best I can, Allison. I won’t tell the boys or the boss who Al really is. You can stick with the Thunder Riders if you think that’s what best. What’s it to me if you wanna help your brother? There ain’t nothin’ evil in that. There ain’t nothin’ wicked to it. I wish I could go back and help my brother. Goddamn, I wish that. I wish I could go back and tell him that he ought to stay on the straight and narrow, ’cause this life is no life for a kid like him.”
He pauses. He’ll help me! That’s something then: a boost instead of a hurdle.
Then he places his beer on the coffee table, his hands on his knees, and stares into me with his sapphire eyes. “Now the question comes back around, I reckon. I’m gonna do somethin’ for you. What’re you goin’ to do for me?”
Chapter Eleven
Granite
“Why the fuck did you tell her that?” Sometimes he’ll come to me, when I’m not being careful and I leave myself open. Jimmy, with his mop of hair and freckles spread across the center of his face. He sits in my mind with the gunshot in his chest, staring up at me from an impossibly deep abyss. “What good do you think that will do, big brother? You’ve really gone and done it now. You’re not supposed to reveal yourself like that. You’re supposed to be hard. Have you forgotten about that? You can’t go around being soft and wimpy, like I used to be, because you’re a club man.”
Allison is in the bathroom. After I asked her what she’d do for me, she basically fled.
“Yeah, that was some kind of question, wasn’t it? What did you mean by that?”
“I didn’t mean to ask it,” I mutter, not aloud but in my head. “She’s just so damn hot, kid. You’ve never seen a woman like this.”
“Don’t lie to me. It’s more than that. Maybe you think you can redeem yourself by saving her brother! Ha! Is that it?”
“There’s a reason I keep you locked up in a box in my mind, kid.” I close my eyes, sip my beer. “I shouldn’t have told her about you. I’ve got those feelings locked up, locked up nice and tight. I don’t need this shit. Any ridin’ man, any outlawing man don’t need this.”
“Well, you have it now. And it’s your fault. So the only thing you can do is go along with it.”
“Leave me alone, kid. Just leave me alone.”
He does like I ask, disappearing back into the recesses of my mind. I lean back and listen to Allison in the bathroom, running the faucet. I don’t know what she’s doing in there. Maybe she’s trying to think of a way to make me leave. If she comes right out and asks me to leave, I’ll do it. I won’t hang around where I’m not welcome. But if she doesn’t … my cock gets hard just thinking about it.
She comes back into the living room with those tight legs and those pert tits all too easy for me to see. Those shorts, man, that face … She skips over to the chair and sits down with her legs crossed, fingers trailing up and down her thigh. Does she know what she’s doing to me with that?
“Thank you for sharing that with me,” she says. “It—it really means a lot.” She swallows. She must be nervous. My question must’ve meant something to her then. I decide to let this play itself out. See what she wants. I never wanna be the man who trades favors for sex, not with a lady like this one. “I know how hard it is talking about stuff like that, so thanks. I don’t like talking about my mom’s cancer, or my dad running out, so … yeah, it really does mean a lot. I know I already said that.”
“It’s all right.” I smile at her. There’s nothing like a beautiful, sexy lady to make a man forget about the horror he just let out into the open. “You can repeat yourself all you damn well please. I’m not going to hold it against you. You can repeat yourself until the end of time if you want, Allison.”
She shivers, as though a ghost is running its finger from the bottom of her spine to the top.
“You cold?” I ask.
“No, it’s just …” She lets the words disappear into the air and then grabs a beer, drains half of it, looks at it for a moment, and then drains the other half. “I’m not normally the Dutch courage sort of gal, but there you go. It’s just when you say my name.”
“Allison.”
She shivers again. “I … I like it.”
This is the moment with a club girl where I’d pounce on her, but I want to take this slow, linger on her legs awhile. And, if I’m being honest with myself, watch her try’n work up the courage. It’s so damn sexy watching as she stretches out her legs, looks at me under her eyebrows, smiles shyly. It’s way sexier than anything the club girls do, including the sexual stuff.
“Allison.” I smile. “I can say your name all day long if it makes you happy. I don’t mind.”
“What did you mean before?” she whispers. “When you asked what I could do for you, I mean.”
I lean back casually. “I reckon I’ll leave that up to you to work out.”
Her eyes move over my arms and to my face. Her cheeks are flushed. Her hands fidget. It’s like she wants it, wants it bad, but doesn’t know how to take it. I could end her uncertainty here but I like watching her getting horny, getting restless. I like that flush of red moving up from her chest to her neck. No club girl ever gets a flush like that. They’re too used to this side of life.
“Well, that’s quite the challenge.” She giggles. “Today has easily been the strangest day of my life. I’ve learned what it’s like to be a man, be a pledge, and then you walk in with your gun, and now … It’s like I’m dreaming or something. I remember after Mom died and I got wasted for ten days in a row, it felt like I was dreaming then. I’d be way drunker than I’d ever been before that, just lying in bed, wondering if she really was dead or if I’d dreamt it. Or if everything was a dream because it was so strange. I don’t mean to ramble.”
“You can ramble all you want.”
She bites her lip, lets out a breath. She’s really dying here. Perhaps this is cruel. But dammit, it’s just too hot when she squirms like that. “Ramble, ramble, ramble,” she mutters. “I never asked you, Granite. Do you have a girlfriend?”
“A girlfriend?” I laugh. Then I hear the laugh. Grim, dark. “No,” I tell her. “I don’t have a girlfriend. I never have, not really.”
“Not really,” she repeats. “So you have had girls, then.”
“Do you really wanna talk about that?”
She tosses her hands up. “Excuse me for wanting to know if I’m talking with a virgin!”
“A virgin? No, you’re safe on that front.”
“Not that I mind.” She pouts, but there’s something vicious in it. “If poor little Granite never got up the courage to ask a girl to the dance, to take a girl’s hand, I won’t judge him for it.”
“It’s true. I never did ask a girl to dance
or take her hand. But in my world that don’t mean you’re a virgin.”
“So you’re more of an animal type of guy then, are you?”
I lean forward, resting my forearms on my knees, and stare at her for a full five seconds without saying anything. Once she’s wriggling and nervous, I say, “It seems to me that you’re tryin’ to work yourself up to something. Now, me, I got no idea what that is. I’m just sitting here drinking a beer with no idea what you’re doing with yourself. But let me tell you somethin’ about getting things done, Allison. When you need to get somethin’ done, especially somethin’ that makes you nervous, the best thing for it is to just take the plunge. Otherwise you’ll be eighty and still working up the courage.”
Her eyes widen a fraction. She knows what I’m saying. And she knows that I know she knows what I’m saying. An entire conversation passes between us, unspoken.
Then she stands up and pulls her tank top over her head, revealing the sexiest damn body I’ve ever seen, a tight belly with tits pert as hell, trapped in a lacy pink bra until she unclips it and lets it fall to the floor. Her tits are small but round, begging to be grabbed, with pink nipples that curve toward the end. My cock was already hard but now it’s so hard it might explode.