Sexy Bastards Anthology: Bad Boy, Biker, Alpha, Motorcycle Club, Contemporary Romance Collection

by Lexy Timms

  “He’ll find out what’s going on sooner or later.”

  I clenched my jaw and just looked at Banner. The Rugged Angels worked for DiEmanuele, in a way. The half dozen or so businesses we ran were really just covers for the crime boss, a place for him to drop money without it looking suspicious. In exchange for the protection we gave DiEmanuele, he provided us with a cut of any and all dealings. One other way to look at the relationship between the motorcycle club and him was to say we were partners, except DiEmanuele was much more powerful than any motorcycle gang. To say you didn’t want to get on his bad side would have been an understatement.

  Banner seemed to be forgetting all of that. His mind was still on his family, it was obvious, and every other issue seemed to fade into oblivion.

  “Kim blames me for the split with her mom,” he said thickly, the heavy intoxication seeping out through his words. “Kim always wished I would have just put on a suit and tie and gone to an office like all her friends’ dads.”

  “That’s not you, and you know it. You’re a free spirit, Banner, just like the rest of us here. There’s nothing that can change that.”

  “Maybe I should have tried harder,” he murmured, his eyes drooping.

  “Or maybe Kim needs to have a little respect. Isn’t she in college now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And whose money got her there?”

  “Well, mine. I’m her pops.”

  “There you go.” Setting my unfinished drink on the coffee table, I stood up, not ready to see Banner punish himself for what happened to Lisa. “You should sleep here tonight. You can have my room.”

  He looked up at me with a raised eyebrow. “The one where you were just screwing those two broads?”

  “Good point. How about the couch? I’ll get you some blankets. Come on.”

  In his close to drunken state, I hooked a hand under his arm, helping him up and over to the far wall.

  “You’re a good president, Kane,” he said, collapsing onto the cushions. “And a damn good man, too.”

  “Thanks. So how many drinks did you have while you were waiting for me?”

  “Five or six. Maybe seven.”

  I laughed. “Good to know, in case you don’t wake up in the morning.”

  He mumbled something incoherent and dropped his head onto a pillow.

  “What was that?”

  He lifted his face slightly to get the words out. “If I had done things the way Lisa wanted them I wouldn’t be here today,” he slurred. He was clearly not himself. “Now we can’t even go to her funeral without someone trying to shoot us or lock us up.”

  There wasn’t anything to say to that. It had to be the liquor and grief talking.

  “You wait here. I’ll be right back with some blankets.”

  “Kane,” he called out as I unlocked the office door.

  “Yes?”

  “Do everything you can.”

  I nodded, even though his eyes were already closed. “I will.”

  Chapter Three

  Kane

  It had been a few sleepless nights and nerve wracking days. By the time night fell again the anxiety had coiled up so tightly in my stomach it felt like a venomous snake just waiting for the opportunity to lash out. Banner and I had spent this morning planning, figuring out what to do and when to do it. He’d spent nearly an hour in my office on the phone with his daughter, trying to convince her to go to his mother’s in Idaho. The girl refused. She was as stubborn as her father. By noon when he called her one last time, Banner’s shouts at her would permeate the thick wood and fill the entire floor of the clubhouse. He was exasperated.

  After that, Banner took a couple men and went out to go do a patrol of our half a dozen nightclubs and bars. Not much had been resolved. Staking out the Arroyos Bandidos and implementing a direct attack on them was what we both wanted to do, but at that point it was still too risky. We knew where their clubhouse was, of course, off near Picacho Peak, but we also knew they were no doubt just waiting for the Rugged Angels to launch an attack on them so they could surround us and do us in for good. We needed an advantage, and hitting them on their turf was not going to cut it.

  The next evening, I was just about to leave the club to ride around for a bit and clear my head when the side door banged open and Deuce rolled in from the garage entrance. He was angry, and a thunderstorm of wrath showed on his face. Deuce was always mad as hell but this time it was worse. This time the man turned into the kind of storm that threatened to take out a whole town. He was seething, his eyes wide, his broad shoulders squared under his cut, and his fists clenched at his sides.

  He stopped in the foyer and stared at me, taking in a breath as the jawline beneath his short trimmed black beard grew tighter by the second. I waited for him to speak. There was nothing else to do. When Deuce got this angry he needed more time to say his peace. Also, it had only been a matter of time before news of the Arroyos Bandidos’ next move would get to us, and now that I was standing there waiting for it I was exceptionally calm.

  As my Vice-President finally got his breath the words came out with steel edges. “They’ve attacked Fever. Banner has been shot.”

  “Shit.” I bit the inside of my cheek. They were brazen to hit our best nightclub like that. The next words were hard to say, but they had to come out. “Is he alive?”

  Deuce nodded sharply. “Yes, but it’s bad. Stomach wound. He’s still over there. They took him to the reinforced back room. Steph is working on him.”

  Pulling my black leather cut on over my white t-shirt, I turned swiftly and walked back through the foyer, towards the side entrance to the garage. Deuce’s boots thudded heavily against the smooth boards as he followed.

  “Anything else? Did they take anything?”

  “No. They just busted in, an army of them, and one shot Banner. The club wasn’t open yet.”

  “Good.”

  “Good? What do you mean this is good?”

  “I mean exactly what I just said.”

  Deuce and I were good friends. The best, really. We went far back, having done one tour in Afghanistan together. He knew things about me no one else in the Rugged Angels knew, but that didn’t mean I was going to pander to his stupid questions. It was the opposite with us. It meant I could be assertive with him, borderline asshole even, and he wouldn’t take it personally. He knew me too well. We had an understanding between us.

  Still, his questions. Sometimes they were stupid. Like right now.

  If we were lucky, no one in the neighborhood had heard the shots and reported them. Even better, no one outside the circle had been hurt, especially patrons. The last damn thing we needed was the police showing up. Motorcycle clubs like ours didn’t do police, just like we didn’t do hospitals or anything else that required us to show personal records and face.

  I cleared the few steps down into the garage, landing heavily by my black Harley. “Does Steph know if her help will be enough yet?”

  Deuce climbed on top of his own bike. “I’m not sure. She didn’t when I saw her last, and I came to tell you right away. You didn’t pick up your phone. Why the hell don’t you ever answer that thing?”

  That was another question I wasn’t going to answer. Like an idiot, I’d left it on vibrate somewhere upstairs. I wasn’t going to tell Deuce that. I had my most recent burner flip phone in my pocket, but that was only for emergencies, for when I had to keep a low profile and receive or make calls that we didn’t want traced back to us.

  Gritting my teeth, I reached over and hit the button to open the garage door. The world blurred and shook in an odd manner. The repercussions of Banner dying would be too hard to handle. It was exactly the blow the Arroyos Bandidos were looking for. No doubt they hoped that by taking out the Rugged Angels’ ex-president we would have no choice but to come to them. That retaliation meant walking right into their clutches.

  I wasn’t that stupid, and I couldn’t be duped by such a rookie move. We rode the back way
to the night club, keeping to side streets as much as possible. The dry summer air whisked by, lapping at my face and kicking up the open sides of my unzipped leather jacket. The ride felt nothing like it usually did. All exhilaration was gone, replaced by a tight nervousness that scratched beneath every inch of my skin.

  Outside of the night club was quiet when we got there. It was dark, and still an hour or so until opening time. Apparently no one had heard the gunshots or called the police. Or maybe they were too afraid. Or it could be they just hadn’t cared.

  Banner was in the back office, stretched out on the table with his head on a smooth, shiny pillow that had been nabbed from one of the club’s couches. Steph, the old lady of one of the club’s members and a woman who had worked as a nurse in a past life, was hovering over him. Her husband, Danny, managed the nightclub and was standing in the corner conversing low with Skate, our MC Secretary and Treasurer.

  “Kane,” Skate said when he saw me. He had his long brown hair tied into a low man-bun at the nape of his neck and his jaw was flinching with tension. Skate was a pretty boy. He could have been one of those male models, if he hadn’t gone for two tours in Iraq and then picked MC life. His good looks were something that constantly made him the easy pick for provoking around the clubhouse. It also got him into trouble with the ladies. Sadly, after a day like today, with Banner shot, joshing around again was going to be a long ways off.

  Skate took a step toward me. “It was a surprise attack. They outnumbered our team four-to-one. The thing is, they knew what they were doing. They didn’t shoot anyone but Banner. This was a planned, targeted attack. Right after they stormed the front door and came in, one of them shot Banner, then were gone before we even knew what was happening.”

  “So no one else was hit?”

  “No. Just Banner.”

  “They were targeting him.”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Deuce said from next to me. “They might have been trying to scare us by being this targeted. It’s not their style at all.”

  From the other side of the room, Banner let out a groan.

  “Hush now,” Steph whispered to him. “You’re going to be all right. A big man like you can take just about anything.”

  I clapped Skate on the shoulder and pushed past him to get to Banner. My heart was beating ten times as fast as it should have been. His getting shot was my responsibility. Being a club’s top dog came with a lot of perks, but it also came with accountability for all its members. Anything that happened to any member of the Rugged Angels was my doing. It’s up to me to protect them, not stand by while someone gets pumped full of bullets. I’d been over at the clubhouse all day while he’d been out risking his skin.

  Basically, it should have been me and not him.

  “Don’t even look at me like that,” Banner groaned, turning his head slightly to look at me. “I don’t need pity.”

  “It’s not pity you’re seeing, Banner, but drop it anyway. How are you hanging in there?”

  “I’ve been through worse,” he groaned.

  His face was pale and streaked with sweat. He grimaced and went to sit up, but Steph put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Watch it,” she said. “You need to rest now.”

  For a second Banner looked like he wasn’t going to comply, but then he scowled again and gave up, his head falling back down onto the pillow.

  “He was shot twice, but he’s lucky,” Steph explained. “Both were flesh wounds. I got the bullets out, so now all he needs to do is stay put for a few days, or he could start bleeding again.”

  “You better do as she says then, Banner.”

  He bit his lip. “I saw their faces, the sons of bitches. They came in here with their cut. All their patches were on full display. They weren’t even trying to hide.”

  “They want us to know it’s them, just like you said. They’re trying to lure us in, that’s why. They want to put us on the defensive and that’s not going to happen.”

  “Good. Kane, listen.” Banner reached up suddenly, clutching at my arm forcefully. “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Anything,” I said, and I meant it. My loyalty to the Rugged Angels went as deep as any commitment could. They were my brothers, and the only thing I could really count on when it came down to it.

  “Protect Kim for me. I mean I need you to do it yourself. Take the team and go to her apartment, then get her out of there.”

  “All right.”

  I knew what he meant when he said ‘the team’. He was talking about the five people who held office in the club—Deuce, the Vice-Pres; Skate, the Secretary and Treasurer; Big Tom, the Road Captain; Kyle, our Sergeant at Arms; and me. Some other Rugged Angels officer might have questioned Banner’s suggestion to send the entire team to take care of his daughter, but not me. There was logic to it. True, with the five of us gone that would leave less than ten men to protect the clubhouse. Either way you tossed the coin, we were shorthanded when it came to defending our turf, but even that came second to protecting our kin.

  Banner groaned in pain and rubbed his palm across his face. “What does it take to get a fucking drink around here? This is a nightclub, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll get it,” Deuce answered quickly, stepping up to the bar to pour a glass of whiskey.

  Steph was about to say something to stop him, but Banner sounded off with, “Don’t tell me not to sit up, Steph. Not when I need a drink this bad.”

  Banner began to hoist himself up, and I leaned over him to help him into a sitting position. Deuce passed him the whiskey, and we all looked on as he took a big gulp of the clear drink. “Next time bring the whole bottle, got it?”

  Deuce laughed. “Yes, Sir.”

  “Kim is going to fight you tooth and nail,” Banner continued after another long sip. He glanced up me. “She’s not going to want to go with you.”

  “I assume five men can take on one woman. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Here.” Banner reached into the inside of his leather vest. “Take this.”

  I held out my hand and he dropped a round pin into it, a simple, round gold pendant decorated with flowers, and the letters ‘JLK’ at the center.

  “Give her this. It was her mother’s.”

  “This will do it? How will she know we didn’t just nab this off her mother’s body?”

  “She’ll know. That pendant is special. Kim helped her mother pick it out for me as a Father’s Day gift years ago. She’ll know it’s coming from me. Kim may have pushed me away, but she won’t forget about this. When you show it to her, she’ll understand.”

  I closed my fingers over the cool gold and reached into the zippered inner breast pocket of my cut to put it away for safe keeping. “Deuce and Skate,” I called out. “Are you two ready for this assignment?”

  Skate nodded, and Deuce shuffled his feet, anxious to get a move on. “I was born ready. Let’s do this.”

  “All right then.” I slipped a sure hand on Banner’s shoulder, looked him in the eye and gave him an understanding nod before straightening up again. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Four

  Kim

  “Damn,” I muttered to myself, trying one of the silver keys for the second time. There were nearly a dozen of them on the keychain, and I only had use for three of them. That was my problem. I had a tendency to be sentimental, so I had hung on to several old, unusable keys over the years. That resulted in not being able to immediately get into my goddamned apartment most of the time.

  I stopped my frantic clawing at the door and took in a long breath. It was stress. That’s why I was borderline freaking out. That’s why my hands were shaking almost uncontrollably.

  Actually, it wasn’t stress. It was grief. It was time to face the music. I was grieving, and I shouldn’t have gone to class that evening.

  Too bad I had.

  Honestly, what else could I have done? It wasn’t as if there was any point for me to stay at home alone. I’d probably have h
ad a meltdown. There was no place to go or people to grieve with either. My mother was an only child who mostly kept to herself, her parents were dead, and I was her only child too. The only living relative I had now was him. Jake Banner. Lawbreaker, biker gang member, roughneck, badass and mostly absentee father. There was no way I was going to see him to share in the pain of losing Mom. I hadn’t been to his place in years, and I had no intention of stepping foot there ever again.

  I hadn’t told anyone at college about the call I’d gotten that morning either. I hadn’t told anyone that my mother, the person I’d been closest to in the whole wide world, was now dead.

  Probably murdered.

  Instead, I’d gone about my day like it was any other, picking up my books and going to Pharmacology and Pathophysiology classes, and even made it through three hours of studying at the medical library afterward, as if losing her was no big deal.

  Of course it was. I was just numb, and now, the emotion was coming to a head. In fact I wouldn’t have been pressing my forehead against the front door of my ground floor apartment right now, crying in the dark because I couldn’t find the right key, if I hadn’t just been through the worst day of my life.

  “Ugh!” I yelled, pounding my fist against the peeling wood. The tears were red hot fire, blinding me as it seeped out of my closed eyelids and trailed down my cheeks.

  I fumbled in my pocket for my phone, thinking about calling my friend Bethany and asking her to come over. She was my best friend, but I really didn’t want her to see me break down. I couldn’t even imagine keeping it together long enough to tell her to come over on the phone without sobbing my eyes out. Bethany had seen me at some low moments, including breakups, disappointments over campus job losses and the odd bad test grade. This personal catastrophe felt too heavy and abysmal. I wasn’t ready to share it with anyone else.

  I gave up reaching for the phone and just let the tears flow down my chin, against my neck and either to the floor or the top my shoes, depending on how powerful each sob came. The world had been flipped upside down in one day and I was suffocating under the weight of it. With each breath I took, it became harder to think.