Twist (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  Sometimes, Leah would sit under the table while the trains rolled above, and she’d set her hands on those black boxes. They were warm, and they hummed and made her hands tingle.

  Gunner had felt like that at the cabin, like a steady current moved through him, and he felt the same now. Or maybe the engine he’d been working on would be a better metaphor: he felt like his ‘mixture’ was off. Like he might catch fire or explode.

  She thought of that day in the church parking lot. That had been an explosion, she thought.

  At the cabin, she’d hugged him. She’d done it for herself, because he’d been scaring her, and she’d wanted not to be afraid of him. But it had helped him, too. He’d calmed down; she’d felt it happen.

  So she did the same thing now. She wound her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest. He smelled of sun and sweat and engine, and all she wanted to do was hold on and love him forever.

  “Love you,” she whispered.

  The beat of his heart against her ear slowed, and the hum inside his skin quieted. When his arms went around her, she knew that the crisis was over.

  He sighed and kissed her head. “Love you.”

  ~oOo~

  “You sure you want to do this? You can still get out.”

  Leah looked around. They were out in the country, parked on the road, with flat, harvested fields on either side. The warm, sunny afternoon had grown overcast, and now, just before sunset, the bruise-colored sky seemed to sag over them. Flanking the road was a crowd of maybe fifty people—most of them young men, and some women as well, all of them strangers. In the lane at Gunner’s side, an old blue Ford Mustang with a strange, bulbous hood rumbled and shook.

  Directly before them, the road ribboned out, perfectly straight to the horizon.

  The only street race she’d ever seen before had been in Grease. She’d sort of expected to see a hot chick in yellow pedal-pushers and big hair standing up front, ready to wave her scarf.

  Instead, it was a heavyset black guy in red track pants and a long, bright white t-shirt, holding a flashlight.

  Gunner goosed the gas pedal, and the Chevelle’s engine roared. The car seemed to lift off the ground.

  She’d wanted to come with him to this street race thing, which was all cloak and dagger, with codes and secret names and lookouts posted. But now she’d seen a few races, and they went really fast. One car had shimmied like crazy all down the road, going well over a hundred miles an hour and looking like it was going to crash any second.

  But no one had crashed…yet. Or exploded…yet.

  The guy with the flashlight tapped the Chevelle’s hood and waved him forward, and Gunner inched the car up until he bumped the guy’s legs—which seemed to be the intent for both of them.

  “Now’s the time, Lee.”

  “I don’t want to get out.” She kind of did, and she kind of didn’t. About fifty-fifty. What tipped her toward a decision was the thought of standing on the side of the road without Gunner, surrounded by all those guys, none of whom looked like anyone had ever described them as sweet. Then again, Gunner himself was that kind of guy, and he was chock full of sweet.

  When Gunner grinned happily, she was glad she’d stayed. “Buckle up, baby. Time to rock and roll.”

  He liked to slip a ‘baby’ in here and there. Leah was starting to like it a little. It didn’t seem like he was saying it because he thought she was immature.

  She buckled her seatbelt.

  The guy with the flashlight stood between the two cars. When he held the flashlight up, Gunner gripped the gearshift and seemed to lean forward. Leah gripped the armrest in her door.

  The flashlight blinked twice, and Gunner stomped on the gas. The Chevelle roared and flew forward. Leah felt like she’d left all her organs back on the blacktop. She fought against the need to slam her eyelids shut, and she watched the world speed right at them.

  All her nerves fluttered and twitched. Even more than riding on Gunner’s bike, she felt this speed deep between her legs. If she hadn’t been holding on for dear life, she might have shoved her hand into her jeans and between her legs, over skin that was still almost perfectly smooth and extra sensitive. Getting a Brazilian wax had been an…eye-opening experience. Gunner was totally into it, so she was going to keep it that way. And hope it hurt less next time.

  Shift-clutch-shift-clutch—Leah’s car was a manual transmission, too, so she knew what he was doing, but it happened so fast it all seemed like a single move. They and the Mustang were jockeying for position, basically even with each other. Then the Mustang made a wild screeching noise and blasted forward.

  “Oh no!” she cried, thinking they’d lost. Gunner, his focus like a laser on the road ahead, put his thumb on a switch near the shifter. Like he was waiting for the perfect timing, it sat there for a second, and then he flipped it.

  And they rocketed forward so fast and with such a howl that she wouldn’t have been surprised to find a Chevelle-shaped skin of red paint fluttering in their wake. Leah squealed in shock—and then laughed. She laughed until tears streamed from her eyes.

  Gunner caught up to the Mustang and then blew suddenly past it. “Whoo!!! WHOO!!” Leah screamed, clapping happily.

  Then she saw the end of the road up ahead—an intersection where the road they were on stopped at a ‘T’. Growing ever bigger was a black-and-yellow striped warning sign that they would crash into before they landed in a field.

  Coming up so fast. So fucking fast.

  Gunner wasn’t slowing down. Leah tried to yell, but her throat had twisted into a knot. She couldn’t even breathe.

  At what had to have been the last possible second, something changed about the engine, and Gunner slammed on the brakes and wrenched the steering wheel around. The tires shrieked in protest as the Chevelle slued and spun.

  Leah sealed her eyes shut. She did not want to see their bloody, fiery deaths.

  But the spinning stopped, and the tires went quiet, and either she’d had the gentlest possible passage to the hereafter, or they hadn’t crashed. She peeled one eye open. They were on the road, facing in the opposite direction, back toward the start of the race.

  She opened the other eye. Gunner sat there, grinning maniacally. He had a huge erection—it made such a ridge in his jeans that it must have been painful. “You good?”

  Twisting in her seat, she looked through the back window. The striped sign could not have been more than three feet from the rear bumper.

  “Oh my gosh,” she gasped. “That was…oh my…THAT WAS AWESOME!”

  He threw his head back and laughed at the ceiling. “Jesus fuck, I love you, Leah.” Flipping his seatbelt off and grabbing her head, he leaned close and kissed her hard, rasping his beard over her lips and cheeks. He let her go and headed back to the starting line, at a comparatively sedate pace.

  When they got back and pulled off the road for the next pair in the round, Gunner climbed out and went around to help Leah out as well. Still shaking from the bolus of adrenaline that had blasted through her body, she leaned on his chest once she was on her feet.

  People came up to congratulate him and to shake his hand, but he didn’t let go of hers. A lot of them wanted to ask him about the engine, so she stood at his side and listened to the car talk.

  Then there was a jostle of the crowd, and a black guy pushed through, coming hard right at them—the driver they’d beaten, with the Mustang. Gunner yanked on Leah’s hand and dragged her behind him, and he put his other hand up in a warding gesture.

  “Whoa, man. Back off.”

  “You cheating piece of shit. What the fuck did you do?”

  “You think I cheated, but you don’t know what you think I did? Come on, bro. I beat you square.”

  Leah couldn’t see much from behind him, but she was surprised to hear a smile in his voice. He wasn’t taking the guy seriously at all. Leah sure was. She’d seen the anger in his eyes as he’d stormed up to them.

  Somebody moved between
them, and the Mustang guy yelled, “Get the fuck off me!” so the intervener must have tried to pull him back. Leah tried to move so she could see, but Gunner’s arm and hand were like iron, holding her fast—all of the tension the situation warranted seemed to be in his arm.

  “I beat you square, bro. It happens. Better luck next time.”

  Then Gunner’s head rocked back—the guy had punched him.

  Gunner shoved her out of the way. He made a strange sound—like a laugh, but that couldn’t be right—and jumped at the guy. Somebody, one of the guys he’d been talking to, grabbed her arms and dragged her farther out of the way, around to the other side of the Chevelle. “You’re safe here, so stay put,” he said and ran back into the fray.

  She watched through the car windows, but could only see the people who’d made a ring, and occasionally Gunner’s tattooed arm or his head. Then the guy who’d moved her wrapped his beefy arms around Gunner and pulled him back.

  Hoping it was safe, but too worried and curious to care either way, Leah went back to the other side of the car.

  Gunner’s mouth bled freely, but that was the only damage on him that she saw. The other guy was unconscious, a pulped mass lying in the remnants of a wheat harvest. But she could see his chest move, so he wasn’t dead. His shirt had ripped in the fracas, and it lay open in shredded tatters. The guy had a lot of ink. More than Gunner, though it didn’t show up as well on his dark skin.

  She went to Gunner and held his face so she could see his hurt mouth.

  He took her hand from his face and held it. “I’m okay, Lee.” He nodded at the body on the ground and asked of everyone, “He alive?”

  “Yeah, Gun,” said a guy who obviously knew him. “But you got trouble, maybe, anyway.”

  “What?” Gunner gave her hand a squeeze and led her over.

  The guy’s face didn’t look much like a face anymore, but everybody seemed to be studying his chest—all that ink. A big piece in the center, now that she was close enough to really make it out, was a solid D in Old English script, like calligraphy, over a strange shape that was almost a rectangle except for a few outcroppings in the corners.

  Gunner dropped her hand. “Oh fuck me. Are you shitting me? What’s Dyson doing all the way down here? FUCK!” He kicked the guy on the ground, who moaned weakly. “Motherfucker!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Delaneys didn’t live in Tulsa but in Bixby, a small town about twenty miles southeast—not far from where they’d met up to race. Delaney and Mo were homebodies unless they were doing something with the club, so Gunner expected them to be in on this night. After he was assured that the Dyson guy—Jermaine Stewart; they’d checked his ID—was going to stay alive and get help, he drove straight to Bixby, not bothering to stop and find a phone.

  Leah sat beside him, quiet and tense. He could sense her peeking over every now and then, but he looked straight ahead and drove. She knew there was trouble, and where they were going now because of it, but he hadn’t told her what or why—he didn’t know what he could say. He’d never had anyone in his life who might expect or demand answers about the club, so he didn’t know where the line was.

  Besides, he didn’t know how much trouble he was in, or how much he’d caused. He was supposed to steer clear of Dyson—they all were, but him in particular—but he hadn’t been on their turf. That guy had had no fucking business being so far south.

  Their house was a brick ranch in a quiet, cozy neighborhood, where all the houses were set far back from the street, centered in acre-sized lots. Gunner pulled up the long driveway and parked behind Mo’s Cadillac Eldorado. Delaney’s old FXS Low Rider chopper, his main bike, was perched on its stand beside it. As expected, they were home.

  He killed the engine and sat back, keys in his hand. Could he lose his patch over this? Fuck, he was tired of always worrying about that, feeling like he could never find ground solid enough that he could relax. He was trying to keep his shit in bounds, but it didn’t seem to matter.

  “Gun? Are we going in? Or—do you want me to wait in the car?”

  Like he’d leave her sitting out here in the dark. He turned and brushed a wisp of blonde hair from her face. “We’re going in. Sorry about all this.”

  She studied him for a second with wide, worried eyes, and then she shrugged. He got out and went around to collect her.

  At the front door, Gunner had to knock repeatedly, finally pounding and calling out, “D! It’s Gun!” before the door finally swung open. The Bulls president stood there, shirtless, his jeans open—clearly showing that he was commando—and his thinning, dark hair wild around his head. Gunner nearly yanked Leah behind him to shield her from the view.

  “What the holy blazing cocksucking fuck do you fucking want?”

  The whole picture developed in Gunner’s head in a rush, and Mo peering over her husband’s shoulder, tying the sash on a green silk robe, her own dark hair mussed, put the sealant on it. They’d interrupted some middle-aged escapades.

  “Fuck. Sorry, D. It’s just—I need…”

  “Brian, let the kids in. It’s obviously important.”

  At his old lady’s command, Delaney stepped back, sending an eyeball message to Gunner that it had damn well better be extremely important. It was, so Gunner led Leah into the house.

  “Hello, loves.” Mo accepted Gunner’s cheek kiss and patted his arm. She took Leah’s hand from him. “Let’s you and I put the tea on, Leah. It appears the men need to talk.”

  Gunner watched Leah follow Mo down the hallway.

  “What the fuck did you do now?” Delaney growled at his side.

  The president was shorter than Gunner by probably three inches, and lighter by at least twenty pounds, but just now, Gunner felt impossibly small. His heart sinking to the floor of his stomach, he said, “I swear, D. I was not looking for this. But it’s Dyson trouble. Maybe.”

  Delaney grabbed the sleeve of Gunner’s t-shirt and dragged him toward his office.

  ~oOo~

  “You make me tired, son.”

  Those were Delaney’s first words after Gunner had obeyed his directive to start at the beginning and tell him everything. As stressed and scared as he was, he felt a burgeoning anger as well. He’d been in bounds. He hadn’t been banned from racing—though that was probably off the menu now, dammit. He’d been far from Northside Tulsa, nowhere near Dyson turf. He’d been wrongfully accused of cheating, and he’d been hit first. Yes, he’d gone overboard hitting back, but he hadn’t started any of this. He’d stayed in his goddamn lane.

  Actually, though, he’d started all of it. Back when he’d started the brawl that had almost destroyed Terry’s Billiards. April of last year. On the anniversary of the tornado that had killed his twin and his mother. That was always a hard day, every year, but last year, for the first time, his father and sister had forgotten the date. Gunner had had a lot of trouble dealing with that. About a hundred thousand dollars in property damage worth of trouble.

  More than that price tag, the brawl had killed a long-term truce with the Dyson crew, pushed Dyson to affiliate with the Chicago franchise of a gang with a country-wide profile, and put the Bulls in the position of owing Irina Volkov, who’d brought pressure down on Dyson to force a new truce.

  Irina had called in that marker by having Maverick ice a Dyson lieutenant at McAlester. This was not a good time to give Dyson cause to beef with the Bulls.

  “He came at me, D. I’m supposed to take a sucker punch and not hit back? And I didn’t know he was Dyson. We were way down off of Hectorville Road, and he was alone.”

  “How much hurt’d you put on him?”

  Gunner looked down at his raw knuckles. No point in hedging the truth. “A lot. I…I had trouble backing off. He was alive, but mostly out. Buddy of mine is getting him to the hospital. He—he probably isn’t gonna look the way he did.”

  Delaney sighed and leaned back in his leather desk chair. A big, antique-looking map of Ireland in an ornate gold fram
e hung behind him, and Gunner studied that while his president rubbed his beard and considered the problem. When he kept on considering, Gunner kept himself calm by letting his eyes wander around the room. As many times as he’d been in this house, he’d only been in this room once before. It didn’t look much like a space Delaney would have for his own.

  This office was small, just one of the house’s smaller bedrooms, with plain, crème-colored drapes hanging at a paned window facing onto the front slab porch, and it was much tidier than his office at the clubhouse. Mo’s hands were all over this space. The walls were a brown like hot cocoa, and all the furniture, dark and sleek, matched. The bookcase wasn’t filled to overflowing—in fact, there was room for random knickknacks, like a brass motorcycle and a heavy, round piece of marble stone.