Inflamed: A Shadow Riders MC (26 page)

“This shit's unconventional as fuck but I feel like I’ve got no other goddamn choice.” He allowed a beat to pass and shut his eyes. “I plan to meet one on one, or one on two with their club’s Prez and VP. And I wanna have you at my side while I hear out what they've gotta say."

She guffawed. "What?" Her eyes went wide and she took a step back. "Are you serious – Why?"

"'Cause I gotta feelin' once they see you there and with me, any chance they might have to lie'll be tossed right out the goddamn window before they even open their fuckin’ mouths."

“You’re so sure of that?” she asked him.

“Nope.”

She blew out a load of air between her lips and rattled her head. Was this real life? "This sounds crazy. Are you crazy?”

"Some days, darlin’, yeah, I think I just might be. And this might even be one of ‘em. But fact is, if I wanna protect you and your girl, as well as my club from fallin’ down any further into a goddamn sinkhole, I gotta be able to trust the people I'm workin' with."

"And you trust me?"

He hesitated before answering and stared straight into her face. "I trust you'll help me get the truth out of 'em just by bein' there better than any of those motherfuckers who'd try to beat the piss out of 'em for thinkin' a ‘hello’ means they’re full of fuckin' shit."

"
Wow
. And you said the club can come after you for something like this?" she asked him.

“We’re a goddamn brotherhood,” he told her. “Bringin’ in outsiders to help take care of our business with certain motherfuckers ain’t somethin’ this club has ever been about. We know every motherfucker that comes in and we shoot to kill every motherfucker that tries goin’ out for any other reason aside from the one he knows he should have. And darlin’, you’re so goddamn far outside that equation and the lines we’ve set around ourselves that it scares the absolute shit out of ‘em.”

“But not you.”

“No.”

“Why?”

He chuckled. “I don’t even fuckin’ know. Maybe if I did, I wouldn’t be out here askin’ for your goddamn help in the first fuckin’ place.”

"YO, RIV!" Blue stuck his head out of the door and called out to him. "Prez and Verna are ready in here with the food."

River nodded and watched Blue slink back inside the club.

Mia dropped her head, then slowly turned her eyes back up to River and parted her lips to speak. "Why do you feel like you can trust me?"

River slowly shook his head; yet another question he couldn’t answer for himself. He didn't know why the fuck he felt as if he could trust her even above the members of his own goddamn club, members whose moves he knew before they even made them, members whose minds he knew even better than his own. And he knew what it could cost him in doing so, he knew the risk he was taking in bringing her into the fold like this despite Wolf’s warning against her even knowing what the hell was up. But even then, even knowing that he could be fucked beyond belief for doing it, he didn't care. He just... didn't fucking care.

Mia wrapped her arms around herself, still unsure of what the hell to think and how to take in everything he had said. "So this weekend is when they're coming?"

"Yeah, I've um... They'll be here on Saturday and that's when I plan to have your shit auctioned off, like I told you. Verna can bring you and Avery down to my house, and we'll get shit squared away then."

"Okay. I just...” She moved in closer to him and his cock, which was already on the verge of rising the minute they were alone again, started losing its goddamn, fucking mind inside his jeans.
Jesus
,
why the fuck did she have to smell so goddamned good on top of everything else? “I want you to be okay,” she said. “Which means I don't want you to get into any trouble with your club by involving me in this more than you should."

"Darlin’, you let me handle that shit, alright? Whatever the fuck it comes down to, whatever the fuck I gotta put up with when it comes to these assholes, I’ll deal with it, and I’ll deal with them. Come on, let’s head back inside.”

Chapter Sixteen

Once River walked me back into the club and over to the table to rejoin his mother and daughter, he greeted them both and nodded at Avery, then headed over to the bar to meet with Blue and a few others.

"So," started Jolene. She visually scanned me from my head right down to my flats as a small smile ticked up the corners of her mouth, and a flash of something that I couldn't seem to quite put my finger on shined bright in her deep, chestnut colored eyes. "What were you and my son talking about out there that couldn't be said in front of the rest of us?"

"The weather," I told her.

"Bullshit." She sat back and crossed her arms over her stomach.

I glanced over at Avery, who briefly looked up from Madison's phone and stared between us. "Erm," I started. "Do you mind not saying things like that in front of her? It's just that she has a tendency to repeat a lot of things that she shouldn't, and that word is one of them."

"Sure, honey, I'll mind my Ps and Qs in front of your young one. I remember what it's like to have one her age in the house."

"With Madison," I said.

"And the big one over there too." She nodded toward the bar and when I peeked over my shoulder to glance at River, he was already staring at me. God, his glare was so terribly intense. And the longer he kept his eyes on me, the more I started to feel certain things I knew I shouldn't have been feeling so damn early in the morning, and certainly not around other people, like my child. And
his
child. And his mother. I turned back toward the table and smiled at Jolene as she continued eyeing me as if she was some kind of cat with the wing of a canary caught between her teeth. "River never told me how you two actually met," she said.

"Oh... well... um..." I swallowed hard and looked between Avery and Madison, who had suddenly become so wrapped up in whatever was happening on the phone, it was almost as if we weren't even there with them.

"Hon?" Jolene said, recapturing my attention. "How did you meet my son? He's yet to mention a word about it and trying to get him to talk about something outside of the club is like trying to pull teeth from a day old baby."

I shrank my shoulders and smiled. "It's complicated, honestly. So much so that it's probably a conversation better left for another time."

She eyed me up and down again and widened her smile. "We'll get to it soon enough, then," she told me.

And right then and there, I wanted to physically combust. Never in all my life had I gulped as hard as I did in that moment. And it wasn't even what she said, more like the somewhat expressive yet peculiar way in which she had said it. It absolutely terrified me.

"Alright." We turned to the front of the room as Wolf stepped up to speak to everyone. Verna moved up and stood beside him like the queen standing beside her king as he addressed his royal subjects. "I just wanna thank everybody for bein' able to come out here today, and my VP for settin' this shit up in the first fuckin' place."

"
Oh, boy
," I muttered. When Madison saw the expression of horror on my face due to the constant swearing, she quickly reached inside her purse for a set of pink and purple earbuds, jammed them into the head of her phone and placed the buds inside Avery's ears. She flipped up the volume and I mouthed her a quick 'thank you'. She replied back with a smile.

"I used to do that all the time," said Jolene, winking as she leaned into me.

"You know," Wolf continued, "we don't get to have too many days like this anymore. Not like we used to, which is a goddamn fuckin' shame considerin' how close this club once was. So it's nice when we can come back to this place we've called home for over three goddamn decades now." He smiled down at Verna and wrapped his arm around her waist. "And even better when we've got another reason for it." His eyes quickly shot over to me and my entire body went completely stiff. "And here's our reason." He pointed at me with the head of his beer. "This is Mia," he said. "She's a... new/old friend of River's. Stand up, darlin' and let everybody see that pretty face."

My stomach dropped as every single person in the room turned to look at me like I was some kind of leper. I literally held onto the edge of the table as my legs and knees wobbled and lifted myself up from the chair to mutter a quick, 'Hi' to every curious face in the room before dropping back down. They all responded with a collective 'Hey' before turning their attention back to Wolf.

He continued on and mentioned a few more things about the club, and family, before Verna announced that the food was getting cold. Before long, nearly every woman in the room, with the exception of myself and Jolene, got up and followed her off to the kitchen, while every man continued to sit back, drink beer, laugh and talk with each other.

I leaned into her and asked, "What the hell's going on?"

"They're all preparing to serve their
men,
and by extension, their children, honey," she told me.

I shoved my brows together and sank down a little in my chair. "What?"

"Whenever we have these kind of get together at the club, the men usually sit around and wait to be served by their old ladies. This is like their home and we have to treat it as such." She pressed her hand on her chest and with a bit of pride said, "But I'm nobody's Old Lady, never have been, never wanted to be." She tilted her head. "Except maybe one time in my life, but that was long before River was even born." She nodded toward him. "But he's gotta be served here just like everybody else, so Madison took it up at an early age. Before she came along or was old enough to even carry a plate, it was the job of whatever random woman he was sleeping with at the time."

"Hm." I sat back as the image of a 'random woman' curdled my brain.

"Here." Madison dropped two plates of food in front of me and sat back down in her chair, while Verna moved around the table and handed plates to both Avery and Jolene.

I stared down at the both of them and pointed. "What's this?"

Verna stood between myself and Jolene and rested her hands on her hips. "It's you becoming an official member of this family," she said.

"I don't get it. Am I supposed to eat both plates of food to show some kind of solidarity or something?"

"No," said Madison with a laugh. "You need to give one of them to my dad."

"What?"

"I'm the one that usually serves him his food because Gran doesn't believe in serving anyone who hasn't served her first."

"Damn right," she said with a wink.

"But seeing as how you're his 'new/old' friend now, I told Verna that I think it should be you to give him the food this time, and she agreed. Besides, I think he might appreciate it." She shot her eyes over to Jolene, and they both grinned.

"Come on," said Verna, smacking me on the shoulder with the back of her hand. "All you've got to do is set it down in front of him and you can come back to enjoy your own food."

I wanted to protest. I wanted to tell them that no way in hell was I serving a man food, a very capably man who could've easily gotten up, walked into the kitchen and gotten the food himself. But that wasn't the kind of world I lived in anymore. It wasn't even the kind I had hoped for; but it was the one I knew I had no choice in accepting, at least until I got what I needed from him, and him from me.

"Okay." Reluctantly, I shoved myself away from the table and grabbed the plate, then got up and followed Verna over to the bar. I stepped to River's left, slid the plate in front of him and placed a plastic fork on top.

He stared down at the plate, then turned to me and arched a brow. He peeked back over his shoulder at Jolene and Madison, who immediately turned away from him and focused down on their own food. River groaned and leaned back against the bar. "They put you up to this shit?" he said.

"It's fine," I told him. "You're helping me out, the least I can do is feed you."

Blue leaned in over the bar. "If that's the case, darlin', maybe next time you can give him somethin' a little extra to nibble on then too, yeah?"

River latched his hand around my arm and shuffled us away from the bar and across the room. "Don't mind that motherfucker," he said. "He's--"

I raised a hand to stop him from going on. "I get it," I said. "Um..." I stared down between us to keep from drowning in his eyes again and said, "Enjoy your food."

"Thanks, doll."

As I walked back over to my table, I could feel those sharp steel blue eyes on me the entire time, but I never looked back. I couldn't look back because I knew that if I did, I'd never want to stop; thus making me screwed from now (
and not necessarily in the way that I had wanted
) until the end of freaking time.

After breakfast, Madison and another girl her age, Lily, whose father I had learned was Tiny (
which shocked me
), along with Styx and Trucker, took the smaller kids around to the other side of the club where a swing set had been installed a few years ago, thanks to so many of the women insisting on having 'distractions' when they chose to bring their children anywhere near the place. Meanwhile, Verna and Jolene introduced me to more of the old ladies and soon to be old ladies (
wives/fiancée’s/girlfriends of the prospects
) of the club.

As we sat around a picnic table outside, each woman told me in their own special and 'colorful' ways through the smoke filling their lungs as they passed around lighters and packs of cigarettes, the differences between the following:

An established club whore
-
A woman who had been around for longer than five years and had earned her keep by getting pregnant by a high ranking brother

A rookie or newbie club whore
-
A woman who had been there less than two years and more than likely wouldn't make it to year three unless she got pregnant

A club bitch
-
A respected
and
established woman within the club who didn't need to get pregnant to stick around because in general, her pussy was too goddamn good to pass up; she calls the shots and she’s not looking to cash in on the club’s dime; this one, they said, was both rare and the most dangerous piece of club pussy around, because a ‘club bitch’ was the most likely of the bunch to work her way up into Old Lady status within a perfect matter of time

And last but not least...

A club slut
-
Or the 'initiation pussy', which was a woman who had been passed around from member to member from day one and back again as soon as someone new was patched in

They also informed me of why it was good to pick each woman out early on and never associate with any of them unless you had to; meaning, unless you were forced into it by the members of the club. It all sounded so completely degrading and depressing as hell, no matter the status of any woman involved.

Next, they told me the truth regarding the 'pussy parties' and why old ladies weren't normally invited unless the men needed fully established pussy for one reason or another in attendance; because for the most part, as the name suggested, the parties were just about getting laid.

Finally, they gave me the rundown of why even being considered an 'Old Lady', even if some weren't all that fond of the term, was better than having absolutely no status or title at all while standing alongside your man, even if you weren't officially married to him. If you didn't, it meant you had no say, no voice, no power. To them, once you earned that status, once a member or potential member slapped a patch on your ass and claimed you for life, you were considered as good as gold.

"It's like being queen of the goddamn castle," said Miranda, whose husband was Snake. They had been married for about five years and had three kids together already, despite her trying to get pregnant with her fourth. She swung her long brown hair over her freckled shoulders, turned her head up toward the sky and blew out the smoke from her cigarette. A wide smile split her lips and for a moment, she closed her eyes and soaked in the rays of the sun. "It's like you own shit," she said. "You run shit, you own it, everybody respects you--"

"
Except
," Jolene drawled as she blew out a line of smoke between her lips. "
Your man
."

Just then, Verna hopped up from the table and looked around at each of us. "Excuse me," she said, before making her way back inside the club.

"Jesus." Miranda turned her blue eyes toward Jolene and sneered. "You do this every fucking time, Jolene," she said. "Every
motherfucking
time. Now, I respect you being River's mother and always have, but..." She shoved her cigarette into an ashtray and folded her arms across the table. "I think we're all about real sick and fucking tired of your shit, and your attitude toward Verna."

"I wasn't throwing attitude toward Verna, young one," snapped Jolene. "I wasn't throwing attitude toward anyone at this table. In fact, I was making a goddamn point about what's been said and if you had been paying even the smallest bit of attention to my tone, you would've heard that. Old Lady status means shit without respect and that's something a lot of you young girls who get broken into this life don't seem to understand. You think if he comes home to you at night, its respect. You think if he tells you he loves you despite him sticking his dick inside another bitch the night before and after, it's respect. You think if he's asking you to wash his bloody clothes because he nearly beat some asshole to death that went against his club and his code, that it's respect. He's not telling you when, if, how, or why it all happened in the first fucking place, but you get to be the one to scrub those clothes until they're white again and heal his wounds and suck his cock ‘til it no longer feels broken, so that means you have the highest amount of respect he can offer to you or anyone else. Believe me, honey, if that's what you believe, you're a hell of a lot dumber than I ever thought. Because respect goes a long way for women, especially in a world like this, and there's not a single member of this club, my son included, who knows what it's actually like to both love a woman AND show her the respect she deserves. I’ve been around here a long fucking time, a hell of a lot longer than some of you ever will and I’ve seen enough to know what’s to come when all of this shit between you and your men is said and done. Now do you have anything else you need to say to me about
that
?" she asked.

Miranda looked around to everyone at the table as they all stared between her and Jolene, and shook her head. "No."

"Good."

For the next few minutes, no one else said another word until Candy, Shiver's wife, directed her attention toward me.

"So Mia," she started. "How exactly did you meet River--?"

"She's not giving that information up yet," Jolene interjected. She took a long drag of her cigarette and peered at me, then pulled it back and swiped her tongue between her lips while blowing out the smoke at the exact same time. "But she will. She will.”

I smiled at everyone around the table and gulped again.

Chapter Seventeen

Later that night after the prospects, official members and old ladies all headed home with their kids and I had put Avery to bed back in the bedroom, I offered to help Verna wash dishes.

"Your first 'biker breakfast'," she said with a laugh. She handed me a dish to dry off, then tossed the wet towel into the sink. "And you still managed to survive it."

"Just barely," I told her. "I did walk away with a few lessons, though, when it came to the women of the club and what it means for them, you...
us?
to actually be a part of it."