Motorcycle Man (38 page)

“What’s the matter?” Tack asked immediately.

Damn. I could never pull one over on him, not even on the phone.

“Nothing,” I lied then quickly moved on. “What’s Tug’s ETA?”

“I’ll tell you when you tell me what’s up.”

“Nothing’s up. I’m in your room about to grab the envelope. Is Tug going to be here soon?”

Silence then, softly, “What’s the matter, Red?”

“Nothing, Tack,” I lied again. “I talked with you maybe ten minutes ago. How could something be the matter in ten minutes?”

“The how is that you’re you. Something could be the matter in ten seconds.”

He wasn’t wrong about that. Our run was going well, it was fun, it was stress-free, we had easy but that didn’t mean I wasn’t me and Tack wasn’t Tack so the banter had not died.

But this wasn’t about him being a bossy biker, me being sassy and us trading slightly heated words that were mostly lighthearted.

This was something else. I just didn’t know what and I wasn’t going to explain what until I knew why I was feeling the edgy I was feeling.

So I hid behind a veil of sass and snapped, “Well something isn’t the matter now but it will be if you don’t quit asking me what’s the matter.”

This brought more silence that Tack didn’t break.

“Kane,” I called then prompted, “Tug?”

To which he said quietly, “Hop.”

Oh hell.

I supposed, being the president of a motorcycle club, having your finger on the pulse of absolutely everything and being able to read people and figure them out was a good thing.

Being that man’s woman and him having all that sometimes was not. And one of those times was now.

“
Yes, Hop,” I confirmed because if I didn’t, he wouldn’t let it go which was something else I decided in that moment I wasn’t all fired up about. “Or, more precisely Hop, who has an old lady and two kids. Added to that is Hopper’s old lady, Mitzi, who isn’t my bestest bud but she
is
in the sisterhood, considering she has a vagina. So, clearly, seeing Hop doing what Hop was just doing, something I’m guessing you knew he was in the middle of doing and that’s why he’s not on his way to you, didn’t make me want to do cartwheels since we sisters need to band together no matter if we’re not best buds. And, incidentally, seeing what I saw
at all
wasn’t much fun. Hop has his own brand of hot but I don’t want to see a brunette riding it. And last and mostly what’s the matter is that brunette was
your
brunette.”

“She’s not mine, baby,” Tack replied quickly and gently.

“No, apparently she belongs to Chaos. What? Do you pass her around?” I clipped back.

“We don’t but she does.”

Ohmigod!

I might need to learn the ways of the biker world but that,
that
was something I didn’t need to know. At least not now, alone, in the Compound, two doors down from a skank and a cheater and nowhere near a bottle of wine or, better yet, one of tequila.

He might know all, see all and figure it all out but he also had to learn when to shut up and let it go.

“
Okay, handsome, before I didn’t want to talk about this. Now I
really
don’t want to talk about this,” I warned.

“This is another way of our world, Red, and if you keep control on that attitude long enough, when I have time, I’ll explain it to you,” Tack replied.

I’d heard that before.

Way, way,
way
too often.

And just then, with that brunette’s catty, knowing smile burned on my brain, I’d had enough.

“Would that time be later?” I asked sarcastically.

“Uh… yeah.”

“Seems you’re going to explain a lot of things later and it seems you avoiding doing that, that means those things are like that brunette. Shit you aren’t explaining because you don’t actually want me to know.”

“Tyra –”

“Ignorance is not bliss, Tack.”

“Red –”

“Sometimes it’s lies in the form of keeping something from someone with bullshit promises of ‘later’,” I kept ranting.

“Darlin’ –”

“And in the end, any lie is a hurt that burns and sometimes that burn can kill.”

Tack was silent.

I was not.

“
Call Tug. Tell him I’m getting a taxi. And as for you, you need to send someone else to get that envelope. I’m thinking I need a little time so I’d prefer to wake up alone tomorrow. When I’m ready to talk, I’ll call you. But you need to know, whenever I’m ready, it’ll be
later.
”

“Goddamn it, Tyra –” I heard him ground out but I flipped my phone closed.

This time we would talk
my
later.

I yanked open the door and stomped down the hall. I didn’t look into Hop’s room and I avoided it so studiously, I didn’t even know if the door was open.

I would discover Hop was done when I walked out of the Compound, my phone open in preparation to make a call to the taxi company, and I saw him on his bike.

When he saw me, he lifted his chin and called, “Cherry! Yo!”

I didn’t know if, when I saw him in his room, he was so in the throes of what was happening he didn’t see me. Or if he didn’t care. Or if he expected me to get the way of their world and not care because he didn’t look embarrassed or, indeed, anything except Hop.

I gave him a chin lift as his bike roared then he roared off with another flick of the wrist to me.

I glared after his bike, spared some time thinking about poor, cheated on Mitzi while I called a cab then I stood outside the Compound knowing exactly what that edgy meant.

Chaos, fuck, most MCs, women don’t factor.

What? Do you pass her around?

We don’t but she does.

Crap.

Truth be told, it hurt when I fell in love with Tack over tequila and he kicked me out of bed. But until that moment, I didn’t realize the hurt that burned deeper was seeing him with the brunette only a day later. He’d explained it. I hadn’t made an impression on him and clearly that had changed since.

But every girl, or at least the ones I knew, hoped like everything that when they met
the one
, they’d make an impression. And thus they wouldn’t
ever
be replaced and certainly not the very next night.

And as ridiculous as it was, as inflated an expectation, as admittedly unrealistic and even stupid, that didn’t mean it wasn’t downright true.

I didn’t know how Mitzi felt about Hopper. Maybe she understood this. Seeing the hard in her face, the tough in her manner, I suspected she did.

But I didn’t.

And I might not watch TV and I might have lived in black and white but I wasn’t literally unconscious all my life. I might not be savvy to the ways of the world like Tack but I wasn’t an idiot.

Bikers chose their lifestyles for a reason. And men became members of motorcycle clubs for deeper reasons. And it wasn’t a secret sect of society that lived quiet and kept clandestine.

Fire and Wind. Riding free. That was their motto.

Free.

Free.

Tack was avoiding all the “laters” because rivers of blood and the Russian mob freaked me out. But also because he knew this wasn’t my world and he wanted me mired in it before he lowered the boom.

Unfortunately, shit happened and he couldn’t control when the boom lowered.

And, damn it all to hell, that boom fucking
hurt.

And unfortunately, that boom wasn’t near done with me.

“You got your place with the Club, I got mine.”

I jumped, twisted at the waist, tearing my eyes from their angry contemplation of the forecourt to see the brunette standing two feet outside the door to the Compound. She was dressed, fortunately, though she didn’t wear a lot of clothes. Unfortunately, seeing her and processing all that was her, not only was she gorgeous in her skanky, slutty way, she also had a great body. Making matters worse, she was standing, one hand on her hitched hip which every woman knew meant she was prepared for our upcoming verbal smackdown. And last, she was also wearing her catty, knowing smile.

I didn’t reply and turned back to the forecourt. Weirdly, my mind conjured up the image of us, two exact opposites standing in front of an MC’s compound, me in my tight skirt, cute but smart blouse and sex kitten heels and her in her cutoff, ragged-edged, very short jean skirt, barely-there, skintight top and platform slut sandals.

And it wasn’t lost on me which one of us didn’t fit.

I heard her heels clicking to me and I kept my eyes glued to the tarmac but I felt and heard her stop close.

“Had ‘em all, ‘cept the recruits. Don’t fuck recruits. They get their cut, that’s when I break ‘em in.”

Something for Roscoe, Tug and Shy to look forward to.

I pulled in breath and kept my eyes on the forecourt.

“Tack’s my favorite,” she whispered and that was when I turned to her.

“He’s also mine.”

Her catty, knowing smile got bigger, cattier and more knowing.

“As you can tell, girl, I don’t mind sharing.”

My hand itched to slap her. No, actually, my hand itched to slap someone else. Her, I wanted to know why she did what she did to the sisterhood but worse, what she did to herself. But instead of asking, I again turned my gaze to the tarmac, willing the cab to show the fuck up already.

“You’re up for it, we can share together. Tack likes it like that. Won’t be the first time I gave it to him like that so I know.”

I took that blow and while I did it took everything else not to react visibly to it.

But inside it burned deep.

He wasn’t a choirboy. He was a biker. But I didn’t need some skanky brunette reminding me of that.

What I needed was a man who knew I didn’t need it and shielding me from it. Not setting me up by sending me into a Compound that contained it to get a mysterious envelope.

My eyes went back to her just in time for her to keep talking.

“You’re his old lady so I’ll let you have his dick. I’ll sit on his face,” she offered her take on our plan of attack to pleasure my man together.

“Maybe it would be a good idea for you to quit talking,” I suggested quietly.

“Right, he’s good with his mouth. I get you want that. I’ll take his dick.”

I held her eyes. She kept smiling at me.

This went on a long time.

Finally, her eyes slid to the side and she murmured, “Cab’s here.”

“FYI,” I started, “that party you invited me to. I’ll take a pass.”

She shrugged then delivered her next blow. “That’s okay. He wants it like that, he knows where to find it.”

I had no retort. None at all. It wasn’t my place to tell her to get gone. It wasn’t my place to tell her I better not see her again. She belonged to Chaos in her way and I did in mine. We accepted our places and the boys called the shots.

Damn.

I had that box Tack talked about over me, closing me in, I couldn’t see clear and Tack was the one who put it there.

No, it was me.

I put it there.

God.

I tore my eyes free of hers and walked to the cab.

Then I got in and gave him my address.

The driver had pulled out on Broadway when my phone rang and I saw it was Tack.

Over it,
way, way
over it, when I put the phone to my ear, I asked as greeting, “Do you not understand the concept of me needing some time?”

To this, my heart stopped beating when he replied on a growl, “You call Mitzi and share, you answer to me. And if you answer to me, when you do, I won’t go gentle.”

Then I heard the disconnect.

Unseeing, unfeeling, not hearing a thing, not thinking a thing, I flipped my phone shut.

I didn’t cry until I closed my front door and I was home.

Dish Out Retribution

My cell phone sitting on the nightstand ringing surprised me and it surprised me because it woke me up. After what had happened at the Compound I never thought I’d get to sleep. Apparently, I was wrong.

My eyes slid to my alarm clock to see it was just after one in the morning.

I knew the caller had to be Tack either calling to argue with me, patch things up with me or tell me he was in an Emergency Room because Operation Rivers of Blood didn’t go too good.

I was not ready for any of those options and even though I was still hurt, still pissed and had no intention of answering, this didn’t mean I wasn’t a woman. And women were like cats.