Gearhead

by Evelyn Glass

  “What the—” I started, righting myself and turning around just in time to take a blow to the cheek. My head whipped to the side, and I felt a pinch in one of the muscles in my neck.

  In a flash, a few of the Hellions had the man by his arms. It was obvious he was drunk. He staggered even while being held up. Honestly, it was a wonder he’d managed to land such a solid punch to my face. I studied his kutte and saw the Jagged Jackals emblem.

  “You killed Lonny, you son of a bitch!” he spat. His cheeks were red from the alcohol and his rage.

  “I didn’t kill anybody,” I said, turning away from him to help Marin off the floor. She rubbed her knee, and I saw the beginnings of a bruise already. “But you did hurt my girlfriend.”

  “I don’t give a damn about your whore,” he shouted. “Angel will kill you both.”

  Without hesitating, I wound back and punched him square in the nose. Immediately, a burning sensation started in my thumb and shot up my arm. I shook it out while the man cursed. Blood was pouring from his nose and running down his lips.

  Bear broke through the growing crowd and assessed the situation. He moved behind the Jackal and wrapped his thick arm around his neck, pinning the man to his chest.

  “How did he even get in here?” I asked, the question directed to no one in particular. Then, I nodded at Bear. “Get rid of him.”

  Marin’s face had gone white, and it was even more pronounced against the deep color of her dress.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Is he going to kill that guy?” Her eyes were wide, following Bear as he hauled the man towards the exit.

  “Are you seriously worried about that creep?”

  She nodded. “He was drunk. He probably didn’t mean it.”

  I shook my head in disbelief and bit down a smile. “Bear is just going to toss him out. We don’t make a habit of killing every drunk nobody who throws a punch at a party.”

  She took a deep breath, her shoulders relaxing. Then, she glanced up at me from under her long lashes. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” I said, though I felt a headache blossoming at the base of my neck.

  Marin reached up and brushed a finger across the tender spot on my cheek. “You have a bruise.”

  “So do you,” I said, pointing at her knee and fighting the urge to grab her hand, keep it pressed against my face.

  Word of the altercation was spreading, and people were starting to gather in the center of the room. The appearance of a Jackal had everyone’s haunches raised, and they were ready for a fight.

  “I saw their bikes outside Sparrow’s Bar on my way here,” Tats said, his voice rising over the din of the crowd.

  He was answered with a roar from the crowd. They were a mob, ready to destroy anything in their path. If they went to Sparrow’s someone would end up dead, and for what?

  “Hey.” I didn’t raise my voice any more than normal, but the room silenced within a few seconds, all eyes – including Marin’s – were on me. “We aren’t fighting tonight. No one is going to go to jail or worse because of a drunk Jackal. Understand?”

  The energy in the room was palpable, an electric current running under everything, but slowly heads began to nod.

  “Who turned off the music?” I asked, spinning towards the speakers. “This is a party, right?”

  The crowd cheered, and just as quickly as they’d been whipped into the idea of a fight, everyone was back to drinking and dancing. Some of the men, however, lingered nearby, eyeing Marin. I saw them sizing her up, running their eyes over her hungrily. She definitely stood out from the crowd, and she didn’t look anything like the club girls.

  I cast a glare at a few men, effectively sending them scattering, and grabbed Marin’s hand. “Come on.” The curtains along the back wall released a cloud of dust as I swept them aside. “After you,” I added, holding it open for Marin to step through.

  She looked slightly leery but moved into the makeshift room. The curtains blocked the few lights that had been set up near the speakers, so we were standing in a gray darkness.

  “These parties aren’t usually so exciting,” I said, rubbing my sore cheekbone.

  “I don’t believe you.” Marin turned away from me and explored the small room. A card table had been set up in the corner, littered with drug paraphernalia, and a stained mattress laid expectantly in the center of the room. It was clear what this room was supposed to be used for.

  “Not exactly glamorous, is it?” I asked, wondering what Marin thought of my life now.

  “I guess I don’t know you very well, either.” She chuckled.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Kayla thinks I’m on some swanky date right now, and all the girls at the restaurant are dying of jealousy.” She turned to me, her eyes shining even in the darkness. “I was just thinking how different things would be if they knew the truth.”

  “Is it hard working at the restaurant while you’re dating the boss?” I took a step closer to her, my desire drawing me nearer.

  She shrugged, and her hair fell over one of her eyes. “It would be easier if I were actually dating the boss, instead of pretending to date the boss. Then I wouldn’t be lying to everyone.”

  I reached out and swept the loose hair behind her ear. “You don’t have to work at the restaurant anymore.”

  “I need the money. I can’t afford to quit. And before you even suggest it, I won’t accept anything from you.”

  “Anything?” I asked, taking another step closer and wrapping a hand around her small waist.

  She glanced around the room. “Here?”

  I nodded and leaned down to bite her earlobe. I felt her give way under my touch.

  “That mattress is disgusting.”

  “We won’t use the mattress.” I pushed her until her back hit the only solid wall in the room.

  “There are people just outside,” she said, protesting, though she had lifted her leg and wrapped it around me, pulling me into her.

  I wondered when she’d become so comfortable with me. I ran my hand over the growing bruise on her knee, then up her leg towards her hip, savoring the feeling of her smooth skin. Then, with a hand wrapped around her waist, I spun her around, so she faced the wall.

  She let out a yelp, but I ignored her and grabbed the bottom of her dress, lifting it over her hips. Marin turned around to look at me, but I pushed her head away and bent her forward. I pushed her white thong down her legs, and she moved as if to step out of it, but there wasn’t time for that.

  I needed her.

  When I unzipped my pants, I practically burst out of them, and I wasted no time finding her opening. Marin arched her back as I ran myself along her slit, toying with her. She leaned further forward, pushing herself against me, and I gave her what she asked for. With one thrust, I pushed myself all the way inside of her.

  Marin groaned, stifling the noise against her arm, but she didn’t flinch or pull away like I’d expected. She pushed herself harder against me, moving her hips from side to side. I felt her clenching and unclenching around me, and the sensation was enough that I could have released right there. But it wasn’t time for that yet.

  I wrapped my hands around her hips, and slid her off of me slowly, inch by inch. Then, I slammed into her, our skin making a loud slapping noise.

  “Oh, God,” she whimpered.

  I did it again. Pulling out nearly all the way, and then slamming back into her as hard as I could. I repeated this over and over, speeding up as she more easily accepted my size. Marin reached behind her and placed her hands on each of my thighs.

  I slid my hand from her hip down to her center. She moaned as my finger circled her in time to my thrusts. It only took a few seconds, and I felt her legs shaking against mine. Then, she was clenching and unclenching around me, unrestrained moans escaping her.

  That was all it took for me to release. I quivered inside of her and made shallow thrusts with each spasm. By the end, we were both shakin
g, collapsing into the wall, our breathing ragged.

  I dropped her off at home, watching from the car as she walked gingerly up the sidewalk to her apartment and shut the door behind her. I liked knowing I’d been the one to make her walk funny, that she would be sore in the morning because of me.

  We’d had sex less than a half hour earlier, yet I was already aching for her again. What was happening to me? A woman had never had this kind of hold over me. I’d shown her the Hellions party expecting her to be disgusted, or, at the very least, frightened. But Marin was tougher than I gave her credit for. Even knowing my secrets and my past, she never failed to speak her mind.

  She wasn’t like the club girls who told me whatever I wanted to hear or the women who threw themselves at me because of my money and success. Marin didn’t want anything from me, and she had so much more to offer than her body.

  As I pulled into the driveway, the motion sensor light on the front porch kicked on, and I saw a piece of paper stuck to the door, which was odd. The gates at the end of the driveway had been closed when I’d pulled in, and my security system alerted me whenever they were opened.

  Before getting out of the car, I checked my surroundings for anything obviously out of the ordinary. And then, just to be safe, I grabbed my gun from the glove compartment and stashed it in my suit jacket. I hadn’t shot anyone in a long time, but I wouldn’t hesitate if someone came at me.

  However, I made it to the door without incident and ripped the note down. The paper had been torn from a spiral notebook, and it had two words written on it in black sharpie:

  Call me

  Below that was a hastily drawn Jackals emblem.

  Angel.

  An arrow had been painting on the door in some kind of sticky brown paint. I followed it to the side of the porch where a crudely wrapped box sat beneath a bush. Carefully, I peeled back the flaps to reveal a mound of fur. For a moment, I wondered whether Jasper had delivered a mink scarf to my door, but then the smell hit me.

  Death.

  I didn’t need to look any further to know the animal was dead. I scooped up the box, holding it as far away from my body as possible, and walked it to the dumpster next to the garage. Clearly, I was going to need to deal with Angel sooner rather than later, and when I did, I’d kill him.

  Chapter Twelve

  Marin

  Work became more and more unbearable. The waitresses wouldn’t even look at me, though they all fell over themselves to greet Jasper every time he came into the restaurant, which was becoming more and more frequently. Kayla stopped talking to me at work as well and responded in concise sentences at the apartment. At first, I’d tried to make her tell me what was wrong, but as time went on, the answer was obvious.

  Kayla, along with the rest of the waitresses at Jasper’s Grill, was jealous.

  They were jealous of my fake relationship with our boss/motorcycle club leader. I wished I could tell them how willing I was to switch places with them. I wanted nothing more than for my biggest worries in life to be going to school and taking care of my siblings. Jasper had made good on his promise to take care of my family by passing along enough cash for new clothes and plenty of groceries, but we’d been going out every night, and I hadn’t been able to actually see my siblings in a few weeks.

  We went to galas and business lunches and newly opened restaurants and, one night, the premiere of a documentary about gun violence. (I chanced looks at Jasper throughout the whole thing to see whether he was keyed into the irony of the situation.) And somehow, people cared enough to share our pictures online.

  One of the few times Kayla had actually talked to me was to show me the headline in a local gossip blog:

  Jasper Black and Do-gooder Girlfriend Get Cozy at Documentary Premiere

  “Wow, I can’t believe someone cares enough about my boring life to write about it,” I said, excited to finally have a conversation with my best friend.

  My modesty must have come off rather false, though, because she only rolled her eyes and went

  back to eating her oatmeal.

  In all fairness, life with Jasper was anything but boring. Even though I asked him not to, he kept showing up to our dates with extravagant gifts in the form of flowers and clothes and jewelry – he replaced the fake gold necklace he’d broken with a real gold one. We’d attend events, drinking the finest alcohol and eating food I’d only heard mentioned on cooking shows, and then most nights, we’d end up back at his house. I told myself every night that I wasn’t going to sleep with him, but then he’d put his hands on me, and I’d turn to putty.

  We had sex in his kitchen, in his bed, in the guest room, and one night we didn’t even make it past the entryway. He would rip his way through my clothes and shove himself into me, and though it was rough, he awakened something inside of me. An animalistic side I’d never tapped into before. I tried hard to deny it, but I felt chemically attracted to him, as if something in my blood gave me a predisposition to having phenomenal sex with him.

  Still, the lies ate away at me. I wanted nothing more than to tell Kayla the truth. I’d never been the kind of person who had a lot of friends, but Kayla had been my person. Though we were almost nothing alike, she gave the best advice and listened to my complaints. But now, I couldn’t talk to her, and even if I could have explained everything going on, she wouldn’t have wanted to listen. The last few weeks with Jasper had driven a wedge between us.

  “Those girls are boring anyway,” Jasper said, stretching out next to me on the bed, his strong arm bent beneath his head.

  We’d just finished having particularly rough sex – I could already feel bruises forming on my hip bones – and Jasper, in a rare moment of compassion, had asked how things were back at the apartment. I’d complained to him only once before about how the other waitresses had been treating me, and he’d snapped.

  “There is much more at stake than your popularity. Deal with it and don’t tell anyone about our arrangement.”

  His harshness had caught me off guard and ensured I would stay quiet on the topic of my relationship with the other waitresses. Now, though, he brought up the topic as though it were no big deal, and I tried to match his casual demeanor.

  “She is not boring! You just don’t know her,” I said. Kayla was the least boring person I knew. If he thought she was boring, I must be the human equivalent of watching paint dry.

  Jasper dismissed me with a lazy wave. “I know women like her. Trust me, she’s boring. All of those waitresses are shallow. Insipid. Trite.”

  “What are you, a thesaurus?” I asked, laughing despite myself. “Plus, I am one of those waitresses, so I take offense to your comments.”

  Jasper rolled over, the sheet only barely covering him, and lifted himself onto one elbow. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

  “About what?”

  “About you being a waitress.”

  “What? Like, how to be a waitress?” I joked. “It’s very easy. You just have to learn how to stack hot plates up your arms and not rage-throw beer in a man’s face when he “accidentally” grabs your ass.”

  Jasper’s eyes widened. “Does that happen a lot?”

  I nodded. “Way more than you’d think.”

  “You should have pointed them out to me, and I would have kicked them out.”

  “But then who would I serve food to?” It was a joke, but also true. The number of scummy men I’d encountered while working at the grill had nearly ruined men for me forever.

  “You’re distracting me,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you about your future employment.”

  I knew where this conversation was headed. I’d been broken up with by enough men to recognize the tone of rejection. “Are you firing me?”

  He laughed. “No. Would you shut up and listen to me for a second?”

  I resisted the urge to speak again and zipped my lips closed with my fingers, throwing the imaginary key over my shoulder.

  “You’ve been ha
ving a hard time with the waitresses, and it is becoming pretty obvious. Honestly, I don’t think it’s a good work environment for you or anyone else. Tension isn’t great for morale.”

  “It isn’t my fault—”

  He held up a hand to silence me. “I know. But that doesn’t change the fact that you are the cause.”

  “It could actually be argued that you’re the cause,” I said. He glared at me, and I held up my hands in surrender. “Sorry.”

  He sighed. “I’ve been thinking about placing a higher priority on my charitable giving.”