While waiting for me to reach him, Blood sucks in on his bottom lip. My eyes zero in on the plump, luscious target and I never wished to be a body part so badly until now. His bright eyes shine gray with flecks of blue and a dusting of yellow. I shouldn’t be turned on. Not after the last few days and how we met. Someone tell my body that. He holds his hand outstretched to me. This moment feels weightier than simply a man holding a hand out for a woman. An epiphany moment where I know down to the pit of my belly, that if I take his hand now, my life will change in a way I never dreamt possible growing up in my dad’s club.
Do I or don’t I take that chance? Glancing from him to his hand and back to his face again, I swallow down my fear to place my hand in his.
His strong one closes gently around mine as we leave the house quietly. And that’s it. I’m in it now. Whatever ‘it’ turns out to be, I’m taking the chance. We’re outside before Blood slows us down. “Duke says you can stay here until you find a place.”
“Wow,” I reply. “That’s… That’s fantastic. Thank you.”
“Wasn’t gonna throw you to the wolves. You got no money. Anyway, there’s an empty room in the clubhouse I’m supposed to show you. It’s close to mine.”
We begin walking again. He holds the door open to the clubhouse for me. I’ve never had a man hold a door before and I don’t know how to react. Do I say thank you or do I let it pass without acknowledgement?
Instead of words, I go with a smile and chin lift. His returning smile, besides being a thing of beauty, eases my worry. Our hands linked again he leads me through a big, dingy room with old veneer paneling. There’re water spots on the drop ceiling. It’s the same kind my high school had. Boys in class would throw sharp pencils at it and try to get them to stick. That was before I dropped out two years ago when I was legally able to do so without truancy officers poking their noses in my dad’s club. My wonderful father decided I didn’t need any more education than that and the club’s president agreed with him.
The Lords have a quintessential biker’s pool table. Because what biker clubhouse would be complete without it? There’s a bar, too. Again, bikers like to drink. So, it appears not all aspects of the Lords are different.
They have these cool chairs that look like they were made from barrels sitting around a felt-topped poker table. And there’s a sofa, ripped arms with stuffing falling out. There’s probably enough semen soaked into that thing that if an ovulating woman sat on it, she’d get pregnant without the need for sex.
Still, I’d like to look around, but Blood wants me to follow him and we move through an archway into a hallway that runs to the left and right parallel with the big room. He turns us left.
“Most of the brothers’ rooms are on the right,” he says.
We stop in front of a door two down from the archway and he opens it. It’s not lockable, which isn’t ideal. Until I know the lay of the land, I’d prefer to have a lock. Locks kept me out of trouble back home too many times to count.
The room isn’t big, but it’s clean-ish. The carpet hasn’t been scrubbed—probably ever. There’s a curtain-less window above the bed. Not big enough for a person to slip through. Well, not an adult man, but I bet I could squeeze through it if it became necessary to escape. The bed is a double. It reminds me of the cheap hotel bed we slept in on our way here. Not that I have many belongings to put away, but there’s an old dresser to the wall opposite the bed, and there are two doors made of that hallow, cheap plywood. One must be a closet. The other… a bathroom? One can only hope. Having my own bathroom would be a godsend.
Blood confirms my thoughts, pointing to the closet door. “Closet,” he says. Then pointing to the other, he says, “Bathroom. We all have our own bathrooms.”
“Thank you. Thank you for everything.”
“Like I told you in Missouri, you remind me of my sister, Liv. I couldn’t leave you with that fuck. I got this bad feeling when I saw him,” he says. That’s another can of worms needing to be opened, though I really don’t want to. I mean, shouldn’t I feel more? In the moment, I was sure I was going to die. Once he left the interstate my suspicions went up. When he took us down roads most cars never travel, I figured it out. Almost too late. Almost. If it weren’t for Blood and his brothers… I let that thought trail off. Still, shouldn’t I be more upset? Now it simply feels like something that happened. It’s over. Time to move on. Maybe I’m broken. Maybe I’m deranged.
Oh, hell if I know.
He walks over to sit on the bed. Undershooting the spot next to him, I walk over to drop down close enough for our thighs to brush. I didn’t mean to, but he keeps me there and I don’t really want to move away if I’m being honest. There are worse things in life than sitting close to a ridiculously handsome man who happens to be nice to boot. Well it’s nice to know I’m not broken when it comes to Blood.
“What do you need from me?” I ask.
“Well, you’ll probably need a job.”
“No probably about it,” I agree.
“Okay, well, the club is in the process of acquiring a few different businesses. Legit ones. We’re tired of death and jailtime. But we’re not there yet. Right now—and please don’t take offense at this—there’s a club across the river, a strip club. They’re hiring dancers. You might want to check it out.” His eyes harden, searching mine when he makes this offer, almost as if he’s challenging me to turn it down. I need money. That’s a legitimate means of obtaining money.
A dancer, though? Do I have it in me? Those stupid tears begin to rim my eyes, and I can’t help think, this is what makes me cry? Not Cassandra, Escalante or my near rape and murder, but the idea that I might take my clothes off in front of horny men. There has to be something wrong with me. I once again blink them back. Tears have no place in my life. What else is there for me to do? I’m a high school dropout. What skills do I have besides waiting tables or working behind the counter at a fast food joint? Neither of those would give me the income of dancing.
But… I don’t know if I could do it. I’ve never taken my clothes off in front of one man, let alone a room full.
He sits silently watching me. I don’t know what to tell him. Do I say yes? “I…” I start then stall.
“You can just go topless if that’s what you’re worried about.” He cuts into my thoughts. “They won’t make you go full nude.” His eyes remain hard, as if his words and his thoughts are at war with each other. If he doesn’t want me to do it, why make the offer? Probably because he’s a man of the world. I’ll bet he can sense that I have no skills—aside from cooking, cleaning and patching up biker injuries.
That’s not great, but at least it’s something. I’m not completely useless. Those won’t bring me big enough paychecks to save up in case I need to make a fast getaway. Dancing, however, would. I sigh. “Can I check it out first?” I ask. “See what the other women there do?”
“It’s fine. I can take you there tonight if you want.”
“That’ll work. I’d like to rest first, though, if you don’t mind.”
“No problem,” he says. “I’m two rooms down from the archway in the other direction, on the left. Come get me there if you don’t see me in the common. Oh, brothers might hit on you because you’re here and shit hot, but they won’t get mad if you turn them down.”
There’s something new in his voice—insecurity? Like does he think after he rescued me from death and defilement that I’d really hit up on his brothers? I’m not that kind of girl. I’d go elsewhere if that were the case regardless. But it’s not.
“Right.” He runs his hands through his lightly blushed, soft hair, brushing it back from his face and I find myself aching to touch it to the point that I begin to reach up before catching myself and in a swift evasive maneuver, itch a spot on my nose that doesn’t require itching. I—damn. That was close. Blood is hot, too hot for my own good. Surface of the sun, burn my retinas beautiful. Enough, Hannah. “I’ll go then. When you’re hungry, there’s a
kitchen behind the bar. Help yourself to anything. Or I can show you around the rest of the way if you want.” He sounds nervous. I don’t think this guy has ever sounded nervous in his life.
“I’m good for now. Thanks,” I say and smile at him again. “I’m going to rest now. But if you get hungry, let me know. I’m a pretty good cook. We can have dinner together if you want.”
His head turns in order for him to stare at me and I can’t discern what his stare means. Just that I feel like an idiot now. We can have dinner together? Really, Hannah? Why not just invite him to jump your bones while you’re at it? God, he must think I’m an idiot. Some girl he had to rescue now throwing herself at him.
“Never mi—” I start to tell him, but he doesn’t give me the opportunity to take it back.
“Dinner sounds good,” he says as he stands. But I kid not, he bends in to kiss my forehead before walking out the door. Like he didn’t shift my entire reality with that one little peck. My whole stinking body heats up. Heats up in a way I’m not accustomed to. It was innocent, but damn. I so want more of those. It has to be hero worship, right? Blood is the first man I’ve ever met who makes me want to give it up.
I keep staring at the door after he’s long gone, willing my thoughts to return back to the grateful ones of earlier—oh, who am I kidding? They’ve been in the gutter since the hotel, I think. All that hot man lying next to me. He had my girl parts in overdrive.
Because I don’t know who has slept on this bed or the last time the bedding was washed, I lie down on top of the shabby comforter and close my eyes. I must have dozed off because the next thing I know, there’s knocking on my door.
“You up?” the voice—Blood’s voice—calls through the door.
“Yeah, come on in.” I sit up, smoothing down my hair so I don’t look like a mess in front of him. He peeks his head in.
“I was hungry.” Oh my god. Could a biker be any cuter? He’s hungry.
“Sure. Let’s see what I can whip up.”
He has his hand outstretched waiting for me to take it when I hit the threshold to the room. The man certainly likes to hold hands. It’s not something I’m used to, but boy, I’m starting to be. He keeps this up, I’ll end up following him around like a puppy.
Behind the bar in the big room, or the common, as he calls it, there’re three rooms. One is the president’s office. The next is what they call their rally room, where the men take their meetings, so like a biker conference room, and the third is the kitchen. Whoever does the shopping has the cupboards stocked the way a man would stock a pantry. Lots of beer, chips, snack cakes. Everything is prepackaged. These men don’t actually cook. Well, that has to end. I can’t live on prepackaged foods for the foreseeable future. They don’t even have spices.
“Okay,” I start. “If I’m going to cook, I need actual ingredients to cook with. I’ll throw something in, but dude, you don’t even have spices aside from salt and pepper. My sister can take sawdust, a paperclip, and an orange peel and create a gourmet dish that even Gordon Ramsay wouldn’t hate. I’m not my sister. I need ingredients.”
“Make a list. We’ll get one of the prospects to go to the store or I can take you if you want to do it yourself,” he offers. He’ll take me to the store? Who is this guy? I guess they grow bikers differently in Chicago than in Houston. Or maybe they grow them differently in Kentucky and he’s reformed.
For now, I find a couple of boxed lasagnas and a bag of vegetables in the freezer. So that will have to do. As the pasta bakes in the oven, I go through the cabinets and the fridge to make a list of ingredients. I’m bound and determined to get Blood to eat a salad. He doesn’t know it yet.
As the smell of the pasta wafts throughout the clubhouse, several men gather in the kitchen. So far, I’ve met Sneak, Butch, Carver and the two prospects not on the gate. Sneak is hot but not too hot. He has this soft brown hair and a lithe build. Nowhere near the manly beauty of Blood, but I doubt too many men aside from Boss or Chaos come close. Carver has blond hair, a goatee and arms covered in so much ink, I can’t see skin, but he somehow has this dignified air about him. A dignified biker? That’s an oxymoron. Somehow it fits him.
Sneak is dating a school teacher. A school teacher? Boy, they really do grow them differently around here. Carver is as free as they come, according to him, which gets him a scathing look from Blood. Butch has long, blondish, stringy hair. He looks like the stereotypical grease monkey. He’s out on bond for something that has to do with the club’s past—Blood wouldn’t let him go into details—but he goes to trial soon. Now that’s what I’m used to with bikers.
They don’t offer me the prospects’ names because according to Carver, they haven’t earned having a pretty girl ask for them by name. I’m not sure, but I think Carver might be hitting on me. Blood seems to think so, the way he punches Carver’s shoulder.
These are good-natured men, though. They laugh a lot. When the timer goes off, I take the pasta from the oven. “Plates?” I ask Blood.
“I’ll get ’em,” he says to the snickers and whispers of the other men.
“You hear that, Carv? He’ll get them,” Sneak says.
“Whipped already,” Butch throws in, and that gets him a gut punch from Blood. I throw my head back to laugh.
After dinner, Blood actually helps me clean up the mess. A man who cleans? Who would’ve thought it possible? Then, with full bellies, we get lazy and don’t actually make it out to the club. Throwing back beers and shooting the shit with the other brothers late into the night.
My first night in the clubhouse went well. Blood ended up crashing with me in my room, though we only slept. Then this morning I woke up and made oatmeal for the brothers, took a shower and got ready for the day.
No one shows to the club until noon so we wait and I do a little cleaning before we take his truck down to the club. It’s colder up here than in Houston. I’m going to need cold weather gear, like a coat and gloves. As long as we have the heater in the truck, I’m fine for now.
Blood points out the streets as we take them, helping me learn my new surroundings. We cross a bridge spanning the Ohio River entering a much seedier side of town to get to the club. It’s no wonder the strip club is here with the more sin-related activities like bars and massage parlors lining the streets, and I think I saw a street walker.
When we turn into the lot at the club it looks exactly like what I expect a strip club to look like. Lights and glitter advertising SKINZ: The Hottest Babes Around. That’s a nice touch, the glitter. Blood runs around to help me out of the truck and walks me inside the place with his hand tucked to the small of my back. I internally swoon. Not good, Hannah.
My eyes need a minute to adjust to the darkened space. There’s a stage with a pole. A tacky, silver glitter curtain behind the pole. The waitresses walk around with these tiny, black, strapless things that are supposed to be tops but look more like bands stretched around their boobs barely wide enough to cover their nipples. The bands say SKINZ across the front in the same glittering silver of the curtain and the sign outside. Each of them wears a black micro-miniskirt and mile-high red hooker heels. That’s what Brinley and I always called them, anyway.
The heels and their bright red lipstick are the only color aside from black and silver glitter. There’s one girl on the stage dancing. She’s clearly had implants and a body most women would sign a pact with the devil to have. Her thong is purple and lacy, and her heels match her thong. But, Jesus, she swings herself around the pole with more ease and grace than any person has the right to. If I do this, I need to copy her.
A short, rounded man wearing a wife beater and jeans approaches Blood and me with his hand held out for Blood to shake. “What do we have here?” he asks, now shaking Blood’s hand.
“This is Hannah. She’s thinking about applying.”
The man drops Blood’s hand to look me over. He plumps my boobs—he actually plumps my boobs! What in the hell? Then he smooths his hand down over my butt.
“She’s nice,” he says. “Young. They like ’em young.”
Uh—gross. But he’s right. Guys who come to a place like this like women who look young.
“Can she dance?” he asks.
“I—” I start to tell him I’m not sure when he sits in the closest chair to him. It groans under his weight, and he tugs me onto his lap. “Show me your moves, girlie. Get me hard.”
What? Now?
My eyes begin to water as I stand, straddling the man the best I can and give him what I think is an acceptable lap dance—right there in front of Blood. I close my eyes, picturing the movies I’ve seen over the years like Burlesque and Striptease, and pull the moves from my memory of what those women did.
When I finish the man is sporting a raging hardon but says, “She’ll have to be trained up a bit, but the men’ll like her. Great tits. Go to the back office. Shelly’ll sort you out.” He points to the direction of the back office.
I guess I’m going to be a dancer at SKINZ. Blood stays behind with the man. That’s fine. I can’t look at him right now.
Shelly waves me in when I knock once on the partially open door and she doesn’t look anything like I’d expect her to look. For starters, she stands several inches taller than me and I’m not exactly short. She wears her hair big, dark and curly. Judging by her black halter with SKINZ written across the boobs and her jeans, the dress code for office workers must be casual. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s in her early thirties. Maybe she used to dance here, maybe not, but I still consider her hot.
“I’m supposed to get sorted out,” I say.
“You’re young,” she replies. “The men’ll eat you up.” She moves through files on the desk until she finds an application. I fill out my name, but the only thing I know to put on the address is Brimstone Lords Compound, Thornbriar, Kentucky.
“You’re with the Lords?” she asks, reading over my shoulder.
“Yeah. Blood brought me here. We’re friends.”
Blood Revealed (Brimstone Lords MC Book 6) Page 4