Wild: Tiger's Blood MC (6 page)

Elliot

After I got my head screwed on straight, I went down to the clubhouse and started asking around. I wanted to know if any of my boys had seen the woman, or if they had anything to share with me that I wouldn’t have been able to come up with on my own. Her mysterious identity was driving me crazy and I knew that I had to find out who she was, or risk losing my whole MC.

Nero, Tony, and Calvin were all hanging out at the bar, sipping beer and playing pool. Nero and Tony were some of my oldest friends, guys I’d trust with my life. Nero and I had been palling around since we’d been in high school together, but they both understood the deep inner workings of an MC. Nero especially understood the deep mechanics of our politics, of everything at play, and how hard we all had to work to keep this thing running and on the ground. Part of belonging to an MC meant playing by the rules, and our rules were pretty fucking different than the rules for civilians.

“Hey,” Nero greeted me when I sat down and grabbed a drink. “You look like shit. What happened?”

I rolled my eyes. “Long fuckin’ story,” I said. “We’re in a whole mess of trouble, though,” I added. “What’s new with you?”

Nero stretched, exposing his hairy flat stomach. “Nothin’,” he said with a shrug. “Just tryin’ to get by, you know how life is.”

I laughed and poured some of the beer down my throat. “Don’t I fuckin’ know it,” I grumbled. “We gotta have us a club meeting before too much longer.”

“I know,” Nero said. He leaned closer. “You know, there are some problems going on in the middle of the club,” he added. “Tony and Calvin are beefin’ over something.” He rolled his eyes. “They’re such pussies. They don’t know how to take it out back like real men and settle it.”

“Fuckin’ tell me about it,” I said, exhaling loudly. “I’ve been fighting with Calvin since he patched in.”

Calvin was one of our youngest members. He’d come highly recommended from a charter up the coast, and I trusted him, although sometimes that trust wavered. I didn’t know if he was the kind of guy who was in it for the benefit of the group or for the benefit of himself—either way seemed like something he’d have trouble with in certain situations. He’d been on probation for two years and after I’d patched him in, he and Tony had gotten in a hell of a fight that had lasted for weeks. The tension had been through the roof, and none of us had been happy. It wasn’t good for an MC’s morale when two of the members were beefing like Tony and Calvin had been, and now I wondered whether or not they’d ever get back to normal.

“He’s a good dude, but his heart isn’t always in the right place,” Nero said. He lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. “And now he and Tony are fighting about some kind of boundary shit. Calvin don’t think he should be required to keep the details of the club from his girlfriend, and Tony thinks he’s being a reckless motherfucker.”

My head snapped up. This was news. Most of the guys in the MC didn’t have an old lady, and as far as I was concerned, that was for the best. Women tended to fuck things up when they hung around for too long, and even though Calvin had a good head on his shoulders, I knew that was no exception. Nothing made a man crazy like pussy, and a man who was going to turn on his men could easily be tempted by a whiff of a woman’s musk.

“I’ll talk to him,” I said darkly. “He around?”

Nero shook his head. “Tony and him and I went to some party at the Amazons’ clubhouse a couple of weeks back,” he said with a dry laugh. “Those cunts are real bitches! Some of ’em, at least. Real man-haters! They all must be dykes.”

My mouth went dry. “You went to a fuckin’ MC clubhouse for a party that wasn’t for us?”

“Yeah,” Nero snorted. “It was a real fuckin’ hoot, man. I got punched out by the biggest dyke I’ve ever seen. She was real ornery,” he added, opening his eyes wide. “She didn’t want us menfolk hanging around with our dicks hanging out.”

I laughed. “I’m surprise she didn’t shoot your dicks clean off,” I said with a smirk. “That group is full of bitches.”

“Real young ones, too,” Nero agreed. “And yeah, I thought for sure she was gonna clean my clock just for daring to walk my cock into a woman’s space.”

I finished the bottle of beer, tossed it on the floor, then reached for another one. All this talk of women was making me think about Grace again, and I knew that was a dangerous path to go down. The dream I’d had the other night was disturbing. I couldn’t keep thinking about her. Not now, not when everything I’d worked for was finally starting to pay off. And especially not now that I was dealing with this mysterious woman bullshit. It was too much to handle.

“Where’s Calvin?”

Nero shrugged. “I saw him earlier, moving some boxes in the back,” he said. “You might wanna go check there.”

I hopped up from the bar stool and sauntered into the warehouse portion of the bar. This was where we kept all of our booze and smokes, and the guns that we hadn’t unloaded or managed to sell yet. Sure enough, Calvin was shirtless and hunched down, pulling something out of a carton. Straw had spilled all over the floor and he was rooting through the box with a determined expression on his broad face.

“Hey,” I said shortly. “We need to talk.”

Calvin poked his head up from behind the box. “What’s up?”

“What’s this about a girlfriend?” I sat down on the floor of the warehouse and stared at him in the eyes. Calvin was a pretty handsome guy, he never had trouble keeping the girls away. When we had parties with strippers and other girls for entertainment, Calvin always had three on his lap and two curled up on the ground in front of him. He had a babyish face with big brown eyes and wide lips. He kept his hair closely trimmed and he always looked like a soldier out on leave. Maybe that was one of the reasons why he couldn’t keep the girls away.

Calvin grinned. “It ain’t nothin’,” he said with a wolfish smile. “Why you askin’?”

I snorted. “Because you’re a member of my MC,” I said. “And it’s my fuckin’ business. I gotta make sure you’re not spilling trade secrets to some broad.”

Calvin actually had the nerve to laugh. I wanted to punch him in the gut and wipe that smug smirk right off his face. Even though I respected him most of the time, I didn’t like this backtalking shit. He was going to have to learn who his elders were, and how to respect them.

“She’s not gonna steal any secrets,” Calvin said. He held his hands up like he was jokingly admitting defeat. “She’s in an MC, she knows how things go.”

“Oh yeah?” I glared at him. “This woulda been the information to tell me before you wanted to actually date her,” I said. “We scout these girls. We gotta make sure they’re clean, and we gotta make sure they’re not out to harm our club. Here, we look out for each other first, you got that?”

Calvin rolled his eyes. “She’s a hot piece of snatch,” he said. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew how this girl fucked.”

Before I knew what I was doing, I got to my feet and strode over to him, kicking him in the ribs. Calvin went flailing on his back, groaning and rolling around with his hands clutching his sides. He retched and a string of vomit came out, covering the concrete floor with iridescent slime.

“What the hell, man,” Calvin sputtered. “What the fuck!”

I got down on my knees and gazed into his brown eyes, hardening my face and making sure I looked like a real asshole. “You know exactly what that was for,” I muttered. “And you knew! You knew going into this that you weren’t going to shack up with some bitch and tell her all about Tiger’s Blood!”

Now I was really angry. I strode away, leaving Calvin rolling around on the floor like a pathetic, whimpering little scamp. I couldn’t believe his nerve! The way he’d be willing to fuck his club just for a piece of ass! Men nowadays weren’t like the guys I’d known growing up, they were different. Selfish, myopic. Just real assholes when it came down to it.

As I was leaving the warehouse, it occurred to me that I hadn’t asked Calvin if he knew the woman who had attacked me the night before. Nero and Tony were still at the bar, chasing shots of whiskey with beer. I swallowed and coughed, trying to make my voice sound as normal as possible.

“Hey, you guys ever seen a woman hanging around with black hair and blue eyes?” I looked around, trying to seem casual. “I mean, not that I care.”

Tony snorted. “You askin’ about a chick, boy, I think you care a lot.”

Nero laughed. “Yeah, man, I have to believe you’re wanting that pussy if you saw some girl and you’re asking around for her now.”

Thinking of my dream about Grace from the previous night, I
almost
denied it. Then I realized that it would be a great way to act like it wasn’t a big deal.

“Yeah,” I said, smiling a little. “That’s it, I want to fuck her. She was here last night, drinking at the bar. When the band was playing, I stumbled in and sat down next to her and bought her a drink. She was really game, but when I went to the bathroom and came back, she’d wandered off.”

Nero rubbed his fingers together. “She probably just wanted some money, brother,” he said, laughing. “Those greedy bitches know we’re loaded.”

That wasn’t what she wanted
, I thought sourly.
But what did she want
?

“Maybe, but she didn’t seem like that kind of girl,” I replied. “Tony, you seen her?”

Tony shook his head. “Sounds like a hot little number, you know I like those black-haired girls. But no, I haven’t seen her. At least not anyone with blue eyes.”

Her blue eyes. I couldn’t get those eyes out of my head. They were exactly like Grace’s eyes, exactly like the eyes I used to spend hours staring into and planning my future.

“I’ll wait around until tonight,” I grumbled. I knew the bartenders who had worked yesterday were coming back for another round tonight. “And then I can see who remembers her.”

Between my hangover and the after-effects of the drug I’d been given, the hours crept by. I spent time at the bar, helping Nero and Tony clean up. And then I walked around with my hands shoved in my pockets, killing time until sundown. A miraculous thing happened as soon as the sun disappeared below the horizon: the club became our zone again. It didn’t belong to the attendants, or to the women who came looking for a piece of biker ass. It belonged to us, the Tiger’s Blood. This was our place, our little slice of heaven that we’d managed to forge in this fucked up world. This was more than just a bar, it was like a second home to me. And for some of the guys, it was their first home. Nero and Tony never would have dreamed of forsaking their club just for the sake of a piece of ass. But Calvin on the other hand…

By the time night had fallen, I was pretty sick with worry. I still hadn’t been able to remember what I’d told the woman from the night before, and my body was aching like I’d been thrown down a well. All I wanted was to go home and curl up in bed with a glass of bourbon, but that wasn’t exactly an option right now. Not when my club and my life were potentially at stake.

The first bartender who came in was a thin, reedy man with a handlebar mustache. Despite his lean build, he’d served time with the Marines and I knew that he was more than capable of defending himself and the rest of the bar. Tom wasn’t the friendliest guy around, but he was there for a reason.

“Yo,” I said as I swaggered up to the bar. “Need to ask you somethin’. Did you see a woman hanging around here last night, about this tall,” I added, holding my hand to my chin in an approximation of the mystery woman. “She had black hair and bright blue eyes.”

Tom grinned. “No,” he said. “But now I feel pretty fuckin’ bad that I missed out.” He winked at me. “New girlfriend?”

I snorted. “Not hardly,” I said. “I just need to find her. She was…well, I need to find her again. I talked to her for a bit last night, over there.” I pointed towards the back bar, closer to the stage.

Tom nodded. “Minnie was tending bar back there,” he said. “Why don’t you ask her?”

Frowning, I walked over to the back bar. Minnie was a bigger woman who always wore low-cut tops, exposing her massive cleavage. She had a smile for everyone but I’d seen her knock a few assholes out in her day—like Tom, she was stronger than she looked.