Two Hitmen: A Double Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Lawless Book 1) (41 page)

From under a table close by, two girls’ heads and shoulders rose and fell in the laps of bikers who leaned back in their chairs, laughed, drank and maintained a conversation with their two buddies.

The scents of beer, whiskey and pot smoke mingled in the air, thick with sex. Jesska had dreamed of coming to a place like this. Now that she was really here she felt small and vulnerable, but she was damned if she would show it.

The brown-haired girl looked up from below the table with mascara streaked around her glistening eyes. She wiped her wet mouth on her arm as she moved on to the next guy.

Jess had trouble keeping her eyes off the girl opening up the biker’s jeans. Soft white cotton was stretched hard inside, pressed outwards and up. The girl slipped her hand into the cotton underwear. Her eyes sparkled and her face lit up as she took ahold of what was inside.

“See,” said Bear, his grin wide, “she knows what’s expected of a hang-around in here.”

Jess said, “Like I said, I’m just here for a quiet drink. I’m not a sweet-butt or a honey or a saddle-whore or whatever you call them here.”

“Just a gash, then,” Bear chuckled.

From the far corner, those smoldering eyes still watched her. The hungry intensity of his expression made Jess’ insides flip.

A biker at the table with a girl in his lap leaned farther back and stretched his neck, shaking his thick, frizzy mane. His voice was thick, “Oh, you got it there, baby! Oh, yeah!
Harder!
”

His fingers wound and dragged in her hair as his big paw clamped hard on the back of her head and his pelvis jerked hard.

Along the bar was a noisy clump of men who Jess figured for ‘civilians.’ They wore shinier jackets with no patches. They had tidier hair, more self-consciously ‘cool’ t-shirts with day-glo print logos. Visitors, she thought, but a different kind from her.

These looked more like the weekend warrior types, regular Joes and working stiffs who fantasized all week about the biker lifestyle. Guys who came to a bar like this so they could scare themselves up a bit, then tell each other afterwards how they hadn’t been scared.

They’d take stories to their work buddies in the bank or the software firm, all about the bikers they knew. For them, Jess thought, this was a titty-bar with a fantasy thrill ride thrown in.

The patched bikers around the group had the tightening looks of angry cats when they go very still, their ears go back and their eyes narrow.

Jesska felt more than saw the biker from the corner make his way up to the bar. She sensed the way that men moved aside as he ranged slowly through the crowd. He wore a hefty cut-off leather jacket, with an open belt at the bottom, and heavy denims, low, with another leather belt. A big knife was sheathed by his thigh.

His soft, slow, rolling walk knocked Jess’s heartbeat out of rhythm. When he got to the counter, he leaned his elbows on the bar and Gyro turned to him. “Ryder. What’ll it be, bro?”

His voice was soft, low and strong. “A shot of Jack, please, Gyro.”

He was long and lean. His thick, dark, mussed-up thatch was turning to Jess. When he shifted his hips, her breath caught in her throat. She met the amber glow of his eyes and a shock bolted through her, all the way down to her crotch. Her urge to smack him almost overtook her. He blinked slowly and drew a breath, ready to speak.

Then his attention, hers and everyone else’s was yanked away by the big, round, reddening civilian. The group had moved near to where Jess was standing and they were taking up a lot of space. The red-faced guy waved his shot glass and everybody heard his voice shift up a gear.

His speech was fluid and warmed with alcohol. “A bike’s a bike, amiright? We got bikes, just like yours. We got Harleys outside. Hell, I got an Indian Chief back home in my garage. What do you think about that? So, why shouldn’t I drink the whiskey, partake of the honeys, wear the patch and you can make me a member of the club. There’s a lot I can bring to a place like this. Whaddayasay, fellas?”

Ryder cut from the bar and through the group like a knife. He grabbed hold of the ear of the nearest tourist and leaned his tensing lips towards the lobe stretched in his hand. Jess heard his voice, low, rhythmic and solid. He spoke through his closed teeth.

“You should be real grateful to me right now. You should probably kiss my boots.”

The man’s bleary-eyed face turned slowly towards Ryder, “Oh, why’s that?”

“Because I’m giving you the chance, this one chance, to get your asshole friend out of this clubhouse so you can all ride off into the sunset.” The guy blinked, trying to take it in. Ryder tugged harder on the ear as his voice deepened. “Right. Fucking. Now.”

The civilian looked back at Ryder. His reactions were slow and his thoughts were written across his face. First, when he heard Ryder he understood that he was being offered a way out. He was grateful, until his watery eyes drifted back to his bigger pal.

His pal was just getting warmed up. “How many of you have ridden along the edge of the Grand fucking Canyon?” His eyes swept around, bluff, challenging and ignorant of his audience. “That’s some real biking, man. I tell you.”

Bear’s voice slugged an unmistakable menace through the dense group, “I’m going to have to ask you boys politely to leave.”

Ryder said, “It’s okay, Bear, I already asked one of ’em politely.”

“But they ain’t gone.”

“Seems not.”

Ryder grabbed the man he’d spoken to by the lapels of his jacket, banged his forehead into the guy’s nose and shoved him hard into the gaggle of his friends. His eyes bulged as he staggered backwards. Ryder hit him with a hard jab under the eye and a red gash opened up.

Bear got two of them by their collars. They struggled, and they were big men, but they were soft and Bear was a lot bigger. Even Bear was startled by how vicious Ryder’s assault was. The pudgy man was bleeding, howling and crawling as fast as he could on his back for the door.

Ryder stepped to the big guy who had made all the noise, grabbed the front of his jacket and overbalanced him, shoved him towards the door. A molten sea of leather erupted in a roar as bikers leaped from all around the clubhouse and engulfed the civilians.

Arms flew in at them, and some bottles, too. Jess heard heavy glass shatter in the fray as the four men were beaten, chased and kicked to the door, through it and out.

The clubhouse was suddenly very quiet and almost empty. From outside came a series of dull thumps. The two girls on stage exchanged a look and stepped off the platform to light up cigarettes.

Soon a few bike engines fired up. Accompanied by shouts and a few more sounds of glassware shattering against hard objects, several bikes thumped across the shale and skidded away into the distance.

The bikers tumbled back into the clubhouse in a wave, just like they’d left, but in a lighter mood. The rumble of boots and chatter was a happier ruckus. These boys loved nothing more than a disturbance. Jesska realized that her thighs were trembling. Her panties were hot and damp.

Bear romped back with a big grin and said, “Well, your first night here and you got a show.”

When Ryder returned to the bar, Gyro said, “I fixed you a fresh glass, in case yours had gotten spilled.”

Ryder’s smile was boyish, almost shy. “I’m alright, thanks. I put my shot down on the table here for safe keeping.” His eyes meandered down the bar to Jess. Her breath caught as he looked at her, and handed her the fresh shot of bourbon.

“You may want this to steady your nerves.”

“My nerves are fine,” she looked up at him and her pulse raced. “I’ll take the shot, though. Thank you.” As she took the glass their hands touched, and a shock bolted through her body. Her nerves were anything but fine. When Ryder had begun the fight, her body had crackled with excitement.

Now the tops of her thighs burned and the scent of her heat was so strong in her nose, she thought it must have reached every nostril in the clubhouse. Ryder came nearer. Her eyes fixed on him, taking in his lithe, strong frame.

He said, “I’m sorry for the… disturbance.” She felt her breasts rise and swell as he looked her over, sized her up and assessed her with that boyish grin on. “This is a club,” he said, “We have rules for members, and from guests we ask a certain…” as he spoke he weighed her breasts with his eyes, “a certain etiquette.”

She took a hit off the whiskey. He moved closer. She felt the warmth of his breath on her cheek and her neck as he spoke. “The motorcycle clubhouse is kind of a home to us. When we welcome people into our home, all we ask is that they don’t be assholes. Doesn’t seem too much to ask, I’d say.”

Now he studied her hips before his eyes made a leisurely journey back up to her neck, then her ear and then back to her eyes. “That and one other thing.”

Jess felt the muffled boom of a depth charge in the pit of her stomach. She slid backward, up onto a bar-stool. She had to hold onto it to steady herself. Why didn’t he back off and give her some more space?

“And what’s that?” Her throat was tight.

“Don’t take any shit from Bear.” She saw the gleam of his teeth as his grin widened. “You passed that one at the door.”

Ryder said, “I’ll be back,” as he took his drink back to the table in the corner and left Jess sat alone at the bar. She nursed her bourbon and looked around the room. There was no trace that a fight had recently broken out. It was just another evening in the clubhouse.

The dancers were back on the stage. They swung their tits and swayed their asses provocatively near to their attentive audience. Jess wondered if the two girls at the nearby table had found more laps to play in. There was a good and ready supply. Order was restored and all was right with the world.

Yet, in some way, her own world wasn’t the same place as it had been when she’d arrived. Something had shifted. The look in Ryder’s eyes and the heat of his body had set off a chain reaction inside of her, and nothing was quite the same. Her equilibrium was off-kilter.

The whiskey rasped on her throat and burned its way down, seeping outwards through her body like slow lightning. She had fire burning from both ends. What would happen when the flames met?

After this shot of bourbon, I’ll leave
, Jess told herself. She should go. Should she have just one more whiskey? She shouldn’t be on the road with the amount she’d had already. He would probably be hours with whatever it was he was doing. He just as likely wouldn’t come back anyway. Gyro set a fresh glass in front of her. She should go.

Gyro told her, “You’ll get used to it,” and his look was reassuring, even though she wasn’t sure what he meant. Get used to waiting for Ryder? She had no intention of doing that. Get used to the club, maybe, but without some kind of status she would be taking big risks if she were to return.

“You want to fix yourself to be a nomad’s ol’ lady?” A woman’s low, Texan accent startled Jess out of her thoughts. The blonde at the bar next to her had elaborate ink decorating her arms and her chest. Swirling serpents, images from playing cards, flames and Celtic knots tracked her generous curves in a swirling red and blue contour map. They exchanged wary looks.

“And
that
nomad?” she asked Jess while she waited for her order. “You’re cutting out a tough road there, sister.”

The petite blonde looked Jesska up and down. A chain belt hung with silver charms and trinkets emphasized the sway of her firm, round ass in tiny ragged fragments of sprayed-on denim shorts.

Her stomach was bare up to the bottoms of her tits, which swung free below the cut-off gingham shirt. Red and blue ink wound over her bare arms.

Jess asked her, “Why do you call him a ‘nomad’?”

The blonde smiled. It wasn’t a particularly friendly smile. She said, “You really don’t know anything, do you?” as she carried two beer glasses away.

Jess did know a little about motorcycle clubs. They had rules, and they took them seriously. From what Jess could see, the clubs were about rules and codes almost as much as they were about bikes. Codes, honor and status. Male status.

Across the bar, Gyro told her, “Don’t let Mary Ann get to you, honey. She’s just fucking with you.”

Since she was little, Jess had learned everything she could about motorcycle clubs, probably since the first time she saw how her Daddy didn’t want her to know about them.
 

She knew that only two positions with any status were available for females. A woman who was ‘property of,’ belonged to one biker as his ‘ol’ lady,’ and he had all rights over her. He could treat her however he wanted, no other man would make a sound about it, and none would ever make a move on her.

Otherwise, women were ‘honeys’ or ‘sweetbutts,’ available to all the men in the club, like a communal property. A woman was owned by one man, or by all the men. Jess wasn’t sure if she could adapt to either of those situations.

If she returned to the clubhouse as a girl with no status at all, then she really would be just a ‘hangaround.’ Hangarounds were common, tolerated and mostly seen as easy prey.

Jess didn’t think poorly of them or look down on them. If anything she had a sneaking—perhaps even an envious—admiration. But she didn’t want to be one of them. She still hadn’t figured out what she could be in a club. Or, rather, she still hadn’t accepted that she couldn’t just become a member of the club.

As she nibbled off the rest of her drink, Jess saw Mary Ann weave through the crowd of bikers. She had little flutter of her eyelashes or a roll of her hips for every one of them, it seemed. Every man she passed got a flash of her eyes or a blow of her pursed lips. Those she passed closest to were favored with the lightest scrape of her fingertips dragged across his shoulders or down the side of his neck. She had a tiny gift of intimacy for all of the men.

Chapter 2

Ryder came to lean back with his elbows on the bar beside her. Jess had to drag her eyes off the rise and fall of the curves of his big chest, and the flat slope of his stomach down to the big, metal belt buckle.

As she sipped her whiskey, he said, “Look, I could be way out of line here, but I get the sense that you want to spend some time here, get a feel of the club and not have to throw yourself into the whole groupie stroke sweetbutt free-for-all thing. If I say that you’re here with me, that will be the end of it.” She wondered how he could be so sure, but her stomach fluttered at the calm certainty in his voice.