RUNNING GAME (A SECOND CHANCE SPORTS ROMANCE) (91 page)

I
t was
thirty minutes after I stopped hearing movement from Daddy’s bedroom that I pocketed my phone, whipped off the covers, and crept back out of bed.

Project: Wayward Teen was a go.

This wasn’t my first rodeo in sneaking out of the house. I’d already picked the right clothes, favoring black jeans, a dark shirt, and an all-black pair of Converse sneakers.

Quietly, I slipped into the clothes in the darkness of my bedroom. I didn’t need anything but my little wallet, my phone, and my keys – and the keys were dangling downstairs anyway.

Thinking ahead, I’d already packed the wallet in the jeans. The phone had helped keep my boredom down while I’d waited for Daddy’s fatigue to set in. He’d had a busy evening on shift, and I knew he’d be sleeping hard tonight.

Which made tonight
perfect
for this.

With nimble reflexes, I slipped down the hallway, avoiding the creaky floorboards right outside the bathroom door. Further down, I slipped past the end table and the vase on top, unwilling to let a brief bump of the hip, or shattering clay, announce my little rendezvous beneath the stars.

My footsteps took me down the staircase, hooking around towards the front door. There were a few tricky floorboards here too, and the acoustics were painfully good in the open floor plan of the downstairs.

As silently as possible, I snagged my keyring from the hook by the door, listening for any evidence of Daddy near the top of the stairs.

Nothing.
The coast was clear.

I carefully turned the lock, slipping outside and locking the door behind me. I hesitated near the door, listening against the panel for any movement from inside.

When nothing happened, I exhaled a thick breath of relief.

Turning and strolling down the driveway, I found myself wondering what Mom would have thought if she’d still been around to see me now.

I had been really young when she passed, too young to particularly remember her. Outside of her smiling face, gazing down upon me from portraits in the house, I had very little in the way of memories when it came to Mom.

Naturally, that made Daddy cling to me harder, since I was now all that he had left. He was a stern but strong father, but very, very strict.

Of course, as I glanced over at the weather-beaten Crown Victoria car in the front driveway, I knew that this wasn’t the
only
reason why he was so careful about keeping me on a tight leash.

My father was the local sheriff, working his way up through the force for the last twenty years.

And there was
no way
he was going to be okay with his little girl sneaking out in the middle of the night… Especially if he knew where I was going.

You might say that I have a problem… and his name is Hunter.

My particular problem comes roughly six feet tall and built with powerful muscles. He had the short and thick wavy hair I loved, a seductive little chuckle, and handsome blue eyes.

The kind that could never lie to you…

Slipping into my little beaten-up Hyundai coupe, I pressed my keys into the ignition and turned. The engine cranked to life, and I quickly pulled back through the driveway and onto the streets of our neat, suburban subdivision.

I always loved how our community looked at night. Passing under the streetlights, I glanced over clay-colored landscaping with its bits of desert shrubbery.

This place was pretty nice, all things considered. We lived in a good part of Phoenix, although it certainly helped to keep the local neighborhood safe when you had the local precinct’s Sheriff living across the street.

I wasn’t sticking to the nice parts of town. Not tonight… My little moonlight excursion was taking me about thirty minutes away. I was heading towards the seedy center of the city, the kind of place no self respecting good girl would find herself so late at night.

My phone remained quiet the entire time I drove, which was a pretty good sign to me.

The last thing I needed was Daddy waking up in the middle of the night and realizing I’d gone…

I saw the sign for the strip club perched a couple of blocks over. Despite all the work the city had done to improve its downtown image, the club had survived, neon pink sign and all. The parking lot was usually full of motorcycles which intimidated the locals and kept them out… People were probably waiting for the day the whole building would be knocked flat and replaced with yet another Starbucks.

But I knew that was
never
going to happen.

For public appearances, an investor who spent most of his time out of town owned and
technically
operated the strip club. He kept a couple of managers on the premises, and the girls were well taken care of for their efforts. He was keeping the whole thing afloat with an old inheritance.

The truth was a little different.

There
was
no investor. No mysterious and wealthy benefactor. Look beyond the parking lot and the big pink sign and you’d see the huge roll-up garage that butted up to the back of the building.

The strip club nothing more than a front for the local biker gang, a dangerous group of criminals known as the Devil’s Dragons MC. They were the guys who ruled the local roost, and most of the city’s illegal activities gave a quick nod to them.

It helped that their leader, a ruthless criminal known only as Eduardo, had made plenty of his rivals disappear. The lowlifes that remained gave the Devil’s Dragons the respect they demanded.

Just the thought of Hunter involving himself in that world made me grimace. He hadn’t told me much of
why
he’d done it…

I knew it had something to do with his sister. She disappeared a few months back and the police had done nothing but file a report and tell him they were very sorry. Hunter turned to the biker club for help and, and whatever terms he’d offered in return, they agreed.

His sister was brought home four days later. She looked like she’d been put through hell…

She probably was, if the rumors about where she was taken were true.

I feared that he’d joined them in payment.

Maybe I can talk some sense into him,
I thought to myself.
Surely, Hunter will see things my way.

Daddy opposed the Devil’s Dragons for all of the obvious reasons. He wasn’t exactly a big fan of Hunter either, and the second he caught wind that he was joining the ranks of those infamous criminals…

Yeah, lets just say a swift ban on Sarah-Hunter contact was very quickly enacted. I had to promise daddy that I’d never, ever see Hunter again.

But true love doesn’t have to resort to such stupid promises, does it? I was going to go see my man and save him from whatever trouble he was squeezing himself into.

And that was the end of that.

I pulled into the parking lot, ominously passing an entire fleet of motorcycles.
The entire goddamn club must be here,
I thought to myself.

Parking my car, I crept out and walked past the line of bikes. My first impression had been wrong. There were
way
too many motorcycles here… I stopped counting around thirty.

Half of them looked out of place. They were dressed different from the others with blacked out engines instead of the chrome I’d come to recognize.

Are there two clubs inside?

I might not have been a cop myself, but I knew trouble when I saw it. I’d grown up around enough law enforcement to know something big was going down tonight.

That didn’t matter. I was past the point of no return. Hunter was inside, and I needed to see him.

I swallowed my apprehension and continued onward, passing around the side of the building and to the very front. I paused and allowed myself to be repulsed by the exterior décor for a moment.

Bright pink neon signs flashed in my face, offering all sorts of lewd decadence and fun times inside.

Yeah, okay,
I mumbled to myself.

Glancing around quickly, I spotted a few people ambling around on the pavement. It didn’t look like any of them were paying any heed to me, although I knew that I could never be too sure.

I was ripped from my thoughts.
I’m spending too much time loitering around outside,
I realized.
What if somebody sees me out here and tells Daddy?

Steeling myself, I reached for the doorknob and pushed myself inside, totally prepared for the rest of the night ahead.

Spoiler alert: I was
really
fucking unprepared.

A
s I pressed
into the building, my eyes immediate drew to the surprised hostess. I recognized her as one of the previous year’s graduates; I think her name might have been Chastity. Tall and lithe, she played up her excessive perkiness in the workplace with accent ponytails. She stepped out to try to head me off as I came in.

“Sarah! We weren’t expecting you tonight–”

“Where’s Hunter?” I asked immediately, cutting her off. I didn’t mean to be rude. I needed to see him, and I just didn’t have the time for this.

“They’re in the back,” she answered involuntarily, then scoffed at herself for the slip. “Now’s not a good time, though. I can send word for you if you’d like. Can I get you a drink of water or something – wait! – You can’t just…”

It was too late.

The moment that I processed her answer, my beaten-up Converse sneakers were taking me around the edge of the club and towards the private rooms.

I crossed down a hallway, glancing into open rooms and throwing a couple of doors open. I interrupted a couple of private sessions by mistake, choosing to apologize and close the doors again as I continued onward.

Chastity had just about caught up to me in her heels when I threw open another door, slamming into a tall, broad chest… not
Hunter’s
chest, but that of an older, gristlier stranger.

I peeled my face from his leathers, staring up at the distinctive patch of a long red dragon with great, curled goat horns, coiled through flames.

The emblem was immediately recognizable.

It belonged to the Devil’s Dragons MC.

“Lost, little missy?” An ancient, dusty voice growled. I stared up into the thick, scraggly beard of the biker, and into the curious but stern eyes gazing down upon me.

“I… I’m looking for Hunter…” I murmured.

“Hunter, looks like yer girl’s here,” he groaned loudly, turning to face the rest of the room.

As he stepped aside, I realized that I’d happened upon a conference room. Old and splattered with the merriment of a beer glass too many, a thick wooden table filled the room. There had to be fifteen or twenty bikers were seated around it. More dangerous looking men were standing behind them in a row that wrapped the room, barely crowding into the private chamber.

Close to forty pairs of eyes directed their undivided attention to me. My breath caught in my throat as I spotted that same emblem on about half the men in the room… There
was
another club here… One that I didn’t recognize.

And I was staring right at their leader.

The man seated at the very center of the table was hardened and vicious-looking. His bushy black whiskers barely masked a distinctive lip twitch, and my eyes cast quickly downward onto the mystery emblem on his chest. Even from this distance I could read the word emblazoned beneath.

President.

The rest of the room focused between the two of us as he rose from his seat.

“Who the
fuck
is this?”

“That’s Hunter’s girl,” one of the other bikers laughed. “Apparently, she’s come to say hello.”

“Hunter, you say?” He turned his head further down the table and laughed. “Your new boy, Eduardo? What a surprise! I guess his pretty little bitch is loyal, eh?”

I followed his gaze.

Hunter was seated among his kind, his stoic face gazing towards me. Surrounded by bikers, he definitely looked like he fit in: he was just as big as anyone else around that table, with powerful arms and fresh tattoos visible from beneath his new set of club leathers.

With careful, thoughtful eyes, he offered me a definitively wry stare. He was clearly
not
happy to see me. I felt my spirits collapse somewhere in my chest.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Hunter told me loudly, addressing the rest of the club as much as myself. It was apparent that he was trying to distance himself from the interruption in front of the other bikers.

I felt a lithe hand on my shoulder, and turned slightly. The hostess had chosen this moment to peek into the room. “I’m so sorry, gentlemen, I’ll escort our guest to the front while you continue…”

“No need,” the mystery biker leader spoke, leaning forwards to flatten his palms across the table. “You’re
very
lucky that we’re done here, little girl…”

With that, he lifted a nearby gavel, giving a quick slam to the table.

“Boys, go get your dicks wet, yeah? Plenty of pussy in the building, after all…”

He turned to another older biker, seated at the table with them. I instantly recognized the President of the Devil’s Dragons, Eduardo. Practically my father’s nemesis, his lips curled into a grin as he turned to face me.

I counted myself lucky that Eduardo thought himself well above the local law enforcement. If he’d had any idea who I really was, I’d be in the shit right about now…

“Agreed,” he growled. “Dragons, dismissed.”

Regardless of emblem, the bikers hooted and hollered before moving out the room in cacophony. The hostess gave me one last little sour look before disappearing off with the pack, and the Presidents paused to glance at me for a moment.

Eduardo glanced down at me as he passed by, and then turned to Hunter. “Keep your little bitch out of here, boy.”

With that, he was gone.

The other club president, the one with the mystery patch, stifled a chuckle as he passed by as well. “Nice legs on this one, boy. Better for wrapping around your head, eh?”

With a surprised and indignant expression, I turned to face Hunter. He shifted in his seat, his stoic expression quickly replaced with veiled venom.

“No need to bristle, boy,” the President laughed. “I’m telling you, though… I can see trouble a mile away. This girl here? She’s trouble. Don’t let her interrupt us again, you understand?”

“Crystal clear,” Hunter growled.

I squared my jaw as the President gazed in my eyes for a moment, a slick smile crossing his lips.

Before I could muster up the courage to say anything, he was out the door, whistling his way towards the front of the strip club – eager to whet his appetite with whichever girl valued his wallet enough to meet his needs.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Hunter repeated furiously, rising from his chair and crossing the room. He snatched me by the wrist and dragged me nearby to a small champagne room.

“You can’t just rush into a club meeting like that! This shit is serious! Do you have any idea what these guys do to girls like you?”

The anger was palpable on his tongue, and I shrunk inside. I’d been stupid and selfish, impulsive, and he had every right to be angry…

What was I thinking?

Hunter could see that his words had sunk in, and he pulled me into a deep embrace. “I’m sorry, Sarah… I’m happy to see you here. Thanks for coming, Princess”

I nodded softly against his chest. The familiar, subtle scent of his natural body musk, mixed with the worn leather, filled my lungs. I loved the smell of him, but this new layer – the biker leathers – invaded the happy memories.

It was a sign of how things had changed.

“You joined the club,” I noted sadly, pressing my face deeper into his chest.

“You know I had to,” Hunter replied softly, his fingers stroking my hair. “I gave them my word, and I abide by that.”

“There could have been another way – something else you could have done,” I started rambling. “There must have been something, anything–”

“It was my choice,” he reiterated firmly.

“I… but why?”

“My sister,” he said. “The Devil’s Dragons found her, just like they promised. They saved her before she disappeared into the sex trafficking circles down south. She’d be some rich asshole’s plaything if it wasn’t for the Dragons. I have to pay my dues…”

“There’s got to be another way,” I pleaded. “My dad has some money… I could steal his checkbook.”

Hunter lifted my chin with a finger. “You’re not going to do anything sweetheart… It’s not as bad as you think Sarah. Sure, they do some rough stuff, but you know that I can handle myself. They wouldn’t have accepted me if they didn’t believe I could.”

“I believe you,” I responded quietly… But that was a lie.

The Devil’s Dragons had a reputation:

Living fast.

Riding hard.

Leaving
plenty
of crime in their wake.

It was a wonder how the police hadn’t torn the club apart. Maybe they were just too powerful, or maybe they were just goddamned lucky. My father had always had a bone to pick with the Dragons, and as Sheriff of these parts, it was only a matter of time before he had the enough evidence stacked up to put an end to their freedom.

I didn’t want Hunter caught in the crosshairs when that trigger was finally pulled.

“Listen, Sarah,” Hunter began, his chest heavy with a deep sigh. “You
know
we can’t keep this up forever.”

Wait, what?

“Hunter…” I tentatively began.

“No, you need to listen to me,” he replied, facing me down sadly but firmly. “This life – I don’t want you dragged into it. The last thing you need is to get swept up into this world. I chose this, but you don’t have to… you’ve got a bright future ahead of you. I can’t let you throw that away.”

“Hunter, that’s
my
choice,” I insisted.

“You say that now… but you’ll regret it.”

I shook my head defiantly.

“No, Sarah, I
know
you,” he continued. “I’ve
known you
for years. If you follow me down this road, you’re not going to like where it goes. Maybe not for a few months, or a few years… but eventually, you’re going to see where you went wrong, and you’re going to blame it on this decision. I’m just saving you the pain.”

I bit back the tears.

“No, Hunter,
you
don’t get it: I don’t
have
a choice. Whatever comes, whatever happens, it’s going to be you. It was
always
going to be you. Wherever you go, whatever you do… I always want to be by your side. No matter what.”

Hunter swallowed. I could see how his jaw set, how his iron defense was beginning to rust. He didn’t want to do this, and that only encouraged me further.

“Sarah…”

“No,
you
listen to
me.
You
need
me. Do you know why? Do you
understand
why?”

He shook his head softly.

“Because you’re a great, big block of ice.”

He smiled, shaking his head again. “A block of ice, huh? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

I grinned back. “You have this icy wall around you, Hunter, keeping everything out – everything but me. But if you throw me away then you won’t have anything to warm you. Like a shifting glacier, you’re going to carve your way through the world… but what happens if you drift the wrong way?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You
need
me to keep you on the straight and narrow,” I told him. “You need someone like me who understands you – someone you can depend on to keep you on track.”

“You’re not very good at metaphors,” he grinned. “You think I’ll stiffen up and descend into the world of drugs and whores, huh?”

“It’s inevitable,” I answered. “Surrounded by that, without any good little angels on your shoulder to keep you safe…”

“And is that what you are?” He asked wistfully, gazing upon me with reflective, thoughtful eyes. “My good little angel?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“You know what I think?” he said, taking a step toward me menacingly. I backed away until I felt my shoulder blades pressing against the wall. “I think
you’re
the addict…”

“I don’t do drugs,” I whispered back.

“I’m not talking about drugs,” he said, moving in closer. “You’re addicted to the things I do to you, princess… You’re willing to throw everything away to get another ride on my dick.”

Hunter shook his head. “If you’re my angel… I’m your
devil
. I can’t let you join me in this life. This world isn’t for you, Sarah. I have to do this
alone
.”

“Do you really believe that?” I asked, my fingers lighting across his shoulder. I could feel his warmth, even through the black leather. Hunter always put off a lot of heat.

“The longer we speak, the less I do,” he admitted. “But I can’t let you make that kind of decision.”

“I’m eighteen, and that means I’m old enough to make my own damn choices,” I replied, staring up into his eyes with whatever hellfire I could muster.

“The last thing you need is a bad boy,” he murmured, his fingers under my chin again. I could see the inhuman restraint in his eyes; he was wrapping his soul in chains to keep himself from separating the layers from between us.

“You’re wrong, Hunter” I told him, a little kinder. My eyes were still firmly locked onto his, underlining the point as strongly as I could. His restraint visibly and completely collapsed with my next six words.

“I’ll
always
need a bad boy…”

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