Hot Set

by Ivy Blake

  The person I was growing into broke their hearts.

  But, there was nothing I could do about it. And I knew once the election was over, they would want nothing to do with me. I had coped with that reality. Come to terms with it. Cade, and the type of men like him, would never care for me either. I was on my own one hundred percent, and I preferred it that way. No one to answer to, no one to disappoint, and no one to ram their own beliefs of my life down my throat. Despite what my parents thought, I worked hard through school. I saved up as much money as I could. I was strong, I was intelligent, and I knew I would be able to care for this child on my own.

  Which was what I intended to do after this election.

  I was going to pack up my shit, throw it in my car, take what money I had, and leave. I could figure this out on my own, raise my child to be better than my own fucking parents, and stand in awe of who this little boy would grow to become.

  That was my plan. But first, I had to get through this fucking rally.

  My mother tossed me some clothes to get into and told me to put on a nice face of makeup. Even though I hated the shit, I obeyed their every word. Until this election was over, they were all I had. Following their lead was the only thing that kept the vultures of the media at bay, and I knew if I just kept my head down until the election was finally over, everyone in our town would move on, and I would be ancient history. Besides that, I needed to keep this roof over my head as long as I could. I put on the clothes and painted on the makeup, looking as good as I could for the cameras that would be focused on us.

  Then, I rode with my family so we could stand backstage and be introduced.

  I hated rallies. I hated this stupid ass campaign trail. I would’ve rather gone to law school four times over than dealt with this shit. But it was my decision, and I had to live with the consequences. It was all so fake. Smiling and waving for the cameras like the perfect fucking family. It was all pretend. All a sham to get people to shade in a box come November.

  Finally, our family was introduced, and my mother took my hand as we walked out.

  I got up on stage and plastered on a smile. My father was waving as people cheered, holding signs that bore his name. They chanted and clapped, and some people even whistled. They adored my father, and he adored them in return.

  Too bad he didn’t fucking adore his own damn daughter.

  I stood off to the side with my mother and slowly scanned the crowd. There was a circle of men in leather cuts, sitting on bikes with their engines running. They had sunglasses on and pistols on their hips, and I wondered why they were there. Everyone knew about The Black Angels. No one talked about them because they were fucking outlaws, but everyone also knew of the benefits they gave this town. They were guns for hire. Offered protection services at the right cost. They lived by a code that didn’t fuck around with women or children, and that was why the town tolerated their existence.

  I was in awe of them. How they ran their lives and how protective they were of their own. I lived off stories about them when I was younger. How they would come riding into town, leave their mark, help someone in need, then ride off into the sunset. They were a real family. They stuck by each other’s side. They were devoted to their gang and their code, and they looked fucking hot in their leather cuts. The men were real men. Muscular men with attitudes and loyalty that ran as deep as the ocean.

  And the women were strong. Thick-legged women with attitudes, a nurturing heart, and a mouth that could run down a sailor. Nobody messed with them or their town.

  No one fucked with us because of them, and I loved that. But there was one man in a leather cut that didn’t have sunglasses on. One man who was looking right up at the stage.

  And I held my breath as my eyes finally caught his. I would recognize those eyes anywhere.

  Cade.

  Cade was in the fucking crowd.

  Chapter 4

  Cade

  The morning of the rally came around, and it was time to start my ritual. A steaming hot shower that left my skin red, two cups of black coffee, four hard-boiled eggs, and a fresh pair of jeans. The monotony and the regularity of the routine gave me time to think. A death threat against a pregnant woman usually meant one of two things. One, the person making the threat was the father of the child, or two, the person making the threat had a vendetta against the mayor and wanted to get to him through his daughter. I had to prepare myself for either scenario, just in case someone showed up and decided to do some damage.

  I pulled my leather cut over my shoulders and started for the clubhouse. All of us gathered and stacked ourselves with weapons; then we headed out. Knives in our pockets, guns on our hips, tasers on our belt loops. Not to mention running down people on our bikes. Whenever someone called on our protection, we meant business. No one came into our part of New Mexico and fucked around like this. These people were ours. These towns were our turf. And while our club was guns for hire, the one thing we never fucking did was mess with the good people that lived in our space.

  That was fucked up, and this world had enough bullshit in it to slay the heavens.

  By the time I got to the clubhouse, most of us had shown up. Usually, it was the core group that took on a job like this. But with it being Ryan Thomas, we figured the whole of the club should get involved. A statement needed to be made, especially when it came to his pregnant daughter. If you fucked with them, you fucked with all of us.

  All in all, there were one hundred of us. We rode out at eleven in the morning to get to the rally site so we could scope things out. We would have people backstage watching out, we would have people surrounding the rally crowd, we would have people on the sidewalk, and then we would disperse people through the crowd to watch out.

  I was always on crowd control because of how tall I was. Standing at six-foot-four, I could see above the heads of every fucking person in a crowd. It gave me a vantage point no one else had, and it allowed me to easily scan for threats.

  As for the core group, they all had their stereotypical positions. Doc, Ink, and Vex were the backstage workers and Blade was always higher up so he could overlook the crowd. We got set up with the intercoms in our ears, making sure we could all hear one another. Blade was our call guy and our sniper. I kept things in close range in my peripheral, but he scanned the whole of the crowds from above. He was our bird’s eye view with the ability to take down anyone with a fucking head shot within eight hundred feet.

  Blade was our secret weapon for shit like this.

  The crowd started funneling in, and we all went on high alert. Doc, Ink, and Vex were chattering away, making mindless jokes as the Thomas family pulled up. The group surrounded the quickly-growing crowd as I stuck myself in the middle of it all, keeping my head on a swivel just in case something happened. Being in the middle of the crowd enabled me to get to any corner of the crowd quicker. Blade watched my back, I watched everything else, and with all of us combined, we could catch the son of a bitch if he appeared.

  “This family’s pulled up in a limo,” Ink said.

  “You’d think he was running for president,” Doc said.

  “I don’t know; they’re daughter’s already pregnant. Isn’t that a box future president’s have to tick?” Blade asked.

  I grinned at their jokes as they kept chirping in my ear.

  They always had fun with this type of shit. When it was all of us, and we busted out the earpieces, they felt like the secret service. We had on our black jeans and our leather cuts with sunglasses and earpieces. We all stood out in a crowd, and that was how we liked it.

  Why? Because we wanted people to know how many of us there were to fuck them up if they tried to pull some shit.

  “All right, gang. Listen up. They’re gonna be introduced in about five minutes, so get your eyes ready. You see anything?” Doc asked.

  I started my first scan of the crowd and watched as the rest of the gang did theirs.

  “Normal in the crowd,” I said.


  “Normal back here,” Ink said.

  “Family’s safe right now,” Vex said.

  “All clear up here,” Blade said. “Nice ass, Cade.”

  “Thanks. I work hard on it,” I said, grinning.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming,” the announcer said.

  “It’s starting. Shut up,” Doc said.

  “I would like to introduce you to a personal friend of mine. I grew up with this man. We played together in the creeks down by the red clay mountains. He’s lived in this town all of his life, married his high school sweetheart, and they both had a beautiful baby girl. Now, he’s about to become a grandfather for the first time. He has vowed to be the strong, firm male role model his little grandson will need in the presence of an absent father. He’s a good man, with strong morals and a backbone with the strength of Atlas himself. Here he is, Ryan Thomas!”

  “How much you guys wanna bet this dude’s a dick in real life?” I asked.

  “Probably. All self-proclaimed family men are,” Doc said.

  Everything was going smoothly so far. There were no shifty characters in the crowd, and nothing seemed out of place. The crowd was going wild as Ryan Thomas stepped onto the stage, then his wife and his daughter quickly followed to the other end of the stage.

  And time ceased to exist in that very moment.

  I’d recognize her anywhere. Those deep blue eyes and that beautiful strawberry blonde hair. She had piled the makeup on so I couldn’t see the dusting of freckles on her nose that crinkled whenever she smiled. Her strong shoulders slipped into a beautiful rack I could remember burying my face into. Tits I remembered marking as my own bled into a delicate waist despite the pregnant stomach she was carrying. Her hips were a bit wider, no doubt shifting in order to accommodate the load her body was carrying.

  Memories of our night together pounded behind my eyes as I scanned her once again.

  Harper. The woman at the bike rally that I couldn’t get out of my head. Harper. The woman who rode my cock with such elegance and grace that it spun my head. Harper. The woman with the sun in her smile and the sensuality of a vixen.

  Harper was Ryan Thomas’ pregnant daughter.

  And someone wanted her dead.

  Chapter 5

  Harper

  I kept blinking my eyes, thinking I just saw things. Was Cade part of The Black Angels? I never saw him wear the cut at the rally. I had no idea what to do. My mother’s arm was around me, keeping me close to her as my father droned on mindlessly about policies he wouldn’t keep and morals he didn’t hold. My stomach was concealed well, but it was still obvious. I could see his eyes latched onto my stomach while his body stood in the middle of the crowd.

  I wish I’d worn a looser dress. His eyes shifted back to my stomach as something akin to panic crossed his face. I should’ve put myself in a control-top girdle. Anything to hide this stomach. If I minimized it for the rally, I could’ve brushed it off as eating a big breakfast.

  A really big breakfast.

  But it was no use now. Cade was here, Cade was looking at my stomach, and Cade now knew. I broke my eyes away, casting them out towards the crowd and smiling. My father said something that made the crowd erupt into applause, and that sent The Black Angels looking around. I tried my best not to let tears come to my eyes. The last thing I needed was to show that kind of emotion on stage. If I did, my parents wouldn’t stop hounding me until I told them what was wrong.

  And that would mean telling them who the father of this child was.

  I scanned the crowd and looked into the faces of people I knew. Mr. McDaniels, who owned the barbershop on the corner of this block. Andrea Lee, who owned and operated the best daycare in the city. Michael and Tina Carver, our neighbors and wonderful friends of the family. I recited all their names and how I knew them in my head, trying to distract myself from the fact that Cade was standing right in front of me.

  His eyes were penetrative. Even from the stage, I could see his muscles underneath his leather cut. His strong arms and his chiseled abs popped into my head, puckering my nipples behind my bra as I swallowed hard. I had to think about anything else. Dead ponies or screaming babies or my grandmother naked. Anything to distract me from the fact that the drop-dead gorgeous man that knocked me up was standing right there.

  In the middle of my father’s election rally.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, if you elect me as your mayor, I have given you all these promises. However, there is one thing I can give you as mayor that my running mate, Alexa Harrison, cannot. And that is an unbiased opinion in everything I do. Everything Mayor Harrison does is steeped in emotion. Conflict. Opinion. She doesn’t seek out facts, she listens too much to those around her, and she’s easily swayed by emotional outbursts from those who pay her under the table. What you will get with me is a fresh start. An unbiased man with strong morals who will not only uphold what you want but not allow money to deter his mindset.”

  It took all I could not to roll my eyes at his statement.

  My father wanted to paint himself as the perfect person, but underneath he was the biggest misogynistic asshole I’d ever known. I watched him boss my mother around while complaining about all sorts of bullshit. Like how the house wasn’t clean enough or something was missing from dinner or how she hadn’t showered even though she was sick. My mother’s place was in the kitchen and with me while I was growing up, and he wouldn’t accept anything more or less. I watched my mother go from this strong, outstanding community woman to a housewife with no opinion and no sway when it came to her own damn life.

  Watching my mother succumb to my father is what flourished my own passion for independence.

  My father couldn’t stand it. He tried to control me, and my mother stood by while it happened. And sometimes, I caved. Like the school, I went to. I wanted to go to California State. Right there on the beach where I could get a degree in marine biology. But my father figured I would be better off as a lawyer, so I stayed here to do school while living at home. My father checked behind my grades, made friends with my teachers, and constantly made donations to my school to be kept in the loop with things. It was disgusting, and I wanted out from underneath his thumb.

  I wanted to spread my wings as I had at that biker rally with Cade.

  Cade.

  My eyes snapped back to his.

  Holy shit, he was still staring at me.

  The crowd was clapping, but I had no idea why. My mother started putting pressure on my waist, dragging me off stage as I came back to reality. Our part was done. Being the smiling, picture-perfect family was over. Which meant I could get the fuck out of here. My mother escorted me to the curtain, and I chanced a look back, just to see if Cade was still standing there.

  Just to make sure I hadn’t been dreaming anything.

  And sure enough, he was there. With his piercing green eyes and his sharp facial features. Just him looking at me shivered my spine. I could almost feel the rough calluses of his hands on my ass. I could feel his teeth on the side of my neck. I could feel his hand coming down on my ass, punishing me for being such a bad girl before he licked my pussy dry.

  He was still staring at me and watched me as my mother dragged me off stage.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” my mother asked. “Come on.”

  “I need a bathroom,” I said.

  Pulling away from my mother, I rushed off before anyone could catch up with me. I knew I was supposed to stay with The Black Angels that were backstage, but now that I knew they were affiliated with Cade I didn’t want to be around any of them. Would they recognize me? Would they rat me out to my mother? My parents thought I was with my best friend that weekend researching shit for law school.

  They had no idea I was spreading my legs on the back of some stranger’s motorcycle.

  I shoved myself into the bathroom and locked the door. I felt like I was going to vomit. I stormed into a bathroom stall and dropped to my knees, heaving into the t
oilet in front of me. I couldn’t allow myself to cry. It would ruin my makeup, and my mother wouldn’t stop bugging me until I’d fed her some lie that satiated her incessant need to control something. It wasn’t my fault she lost control of her life because she was a weak little bitch. And it wasn’t fair that I had to pay the price for it.

  I threw up the measly breakfast I’d had before I peeled myself off the floor.

  What the hell was I going to do? Was there any way for me to get out of here without anyone seeing? Would Cade come after me and bombard me with questions? I never dreamed I would see him again, and now he was here. And he knew I was pregnant.

  Was it possible to pawn this child off as someone else’s?

  I knew why he was here. He was here because he was protecting the rally. Which meant he was just as blindsided as I was. But if he came after me and my mother saw, all hell would break loose. He wouldn’t be safe, I wouldn’t be safe, and this child wouldn’t be safe.

  Our child wouldn’t be safe.

  “Harper?” my mother asked. “Open this door.”

  “Just give me a second, okay?” I asked.

  “What’s going on? Do you need a doctor? Is the baby okay?”

  It made me sick that she was pretending to care. I knew she didn’t care. She didn’t give a damn about her grandson. All she cared about was making sure the image of our family wasn’t tainted in the public eye. Once my father won this election-- and he was projected to do so-- they’d go back to not even trying to give a shit about me.

  “Harper, you’re embarrassing me. Whatever this is, it can wait until we get home. I’m going to the car. You’ve got ten minutes.”

  And there she was. The mother of the year, hissing at her pregnant daughter to hurry the fuck up so we could get home. I wished the city could see this side of them. See how they treated me and how my father treated my mother. It was my mother’s fault she had caved to the likes of my father, but I couldn’t blame her for how she coped. She’d have to live with the mediocrity of her life for the rest of it. But I didn’t have to.