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Speed
There’s no damn reason that there should be gunfire here. None. What a way to ruin what looked like it was going to be a nice damn night.
I get as many of the club girls, and some of the families that haven’t already run to safety, into the bathroom. There are seven gunmen—two of which bounce as soon as they realize that, though they outnumber us, there are still people in the bar willing to fight back. The other five spray the place with bullets, sending everyone into a panic. A couple get driven out; I watch them shoot up the bikes out front before high tailing it on out. The others are fighting and I managed to land a decent hit on one before getting clocked myself. Too much is going on at once.
As it is, everyone is all sorts of out of their fucking minds.
This isn’t going to do any good. You’d think after the last few months we’d all know better than to fuck around with guns without caution.
“Hey, you two, fucking follow them as far as you can. Get whatever details you can,” I order two of the pledges that are here tonight. They nod at me, running out of the bar at my order. I’ve got my gun out, eyes keen for anything else crazy that might be happening—and my thoughts drift back to Dakota.
I need to get her out of here while it’s starting to die down and before the cops get here in full force.
I shove people toward the front door and head back to the bathroom. I throw the door open, happy to see that everyone I sent back here is safe—if not a little shaken from what’s happened here.
“Everyone all right?” I ask. “Anyone shot? Hurt?”
“No, everyone here is fine.”
“Thanks to you.”
“Thanks so much, Speed.”
“We owe you one.”
I wave off the compliments and the thanks—taking notice of the batted eyes thrown my way by all the club girls.
Well. All but one. Dakota looks like her buzz is gone and she’s easily ready to strangle something or someone. Despite the situation and the continued chaos that’s going on, I grin. There’s something about her face that makes me think that she’s jealous—and I like the thought of Dakota being jealous over me a little more than I should.
“All right, that’s good. I’m gonna call Chains, let him know what happened. Meanwhile, you guys stay here; none of the boys should be around when the cops get here. Too many questions and poking and prodding. You all know the drill. I’ll let Chains know how good you all were. You, though.” I stride in, pulling Dakota along. “You’re coming with me.”
Dakota looks surprised to be singled out in such a way, but that doesn’t really matter either way. My reasoning is that, if the cops did decide that they’re going to show up, then there are plenty of people that will be able to point to Dakota having come with me—which, technically, could be said for any of the club girls, really, but I don’t want to leave Dakota behind.
I pull her through the bar. It’s been shot up to all hell, and it’s going to take a lot to fix it up. It’s even Paul—the owner’s—night off. He’s gonna be coming back to something shitty, but that can’t be helped at the moment.
“What are you doing—”
“Come on. We need to get out of here before the cops decide to put their nose into everything,” I tell her.
“You’re running?” she asks incredulously. “Are you kidding me? Some big hero you are—”
“The fuck are you talking about—”
“We should stay here with everyone else and get those fuckers back!”
We get outside and I stop, making her look at me.
“I’m not running,” I tell her. “I’m thinking about the club. The fewer of us that are at that bar when the cops show up, the better. Especially considering I’m there. With as much as I do for the club, do you think the cops are gonna look the other way if I’m there? The assholes that shot up the place were targeting us. Look.” I gesture to the line of bikes in the front of the bar. All Sinners’ bikes, all with a bunch of fucking bullet holes. There’s a couple that probably still run, but they’re not in good condition.
Dakota frowns. “Okay. Fine. But all the bikes are trashed; how are you planning on getting me out of here?”
“Easy. Remember how I didn’t park with the other bikes?”
It dawns on her.
See, I tend to be a little overprotective of my ride. I don’t want it fucked with, and I sure as fuck don’t want it shot up to all hell. Instead of parking it with all the other bikes, I tend to make sure that it’s out of the way and a little less obvious. So instead of parking in the line of Sinners’ bikes right in front of Jameson’s, I parked in the lot where the other patrons did.
Without any more arguing from Dakota, I pull her along with me. She stumbles a little bit but picks the pace back up. Good, good.
“Listen, about earlier—”
“Don’t mention it.”
Ah, so we’re back to playing hard to get.
Either way, I get Dakota on the back of my bike. She rarely rides with anyone—most of the boys are too scared because she’s Chains’ little girl to try and fuck with her like that, and as far as I can tell, there’s only one of the Sinners that she’s actually shown much of a real outward interest in in the few years she’s been with us.
But she wraps around me tight from behind. I soak in how warm she is, and it’s almost easy to forget the fact that we’re coming from a shootout—at least until another shot rings out from behind me.
“What the fuck—”
I glance back. There’s another biker like the ones before tailing behind me, but I can’t get a good look at his face. I don’t even recognize him, but he’s got a blood-red kutte, like the assholes from the bar, and a helmet with spikes in a row going down the middle of it. He rides with one hand on the bars and the other holding a pistol.
“Can you outride him?” Dakota calls over the roar of engines and another gunshot hitting the air.
“Of course I can. Hold on tight.”
We’ve been drinking way too damn much tonight to be doing this, but we don’t have much of a choice, and I have adrenaline working in my favor at the moment. I swerve a little on the open road as I speed up, but I try to keep us steady as I possibly can. Our speed climbs and climbs. I break seventy, eighty—getting it up there, pushing past a hundred.
Wind whips past us, and I hear nothing but the roar of the air and the peel of bike engines. Burning rubber sears into my nose, and there’s a thrill even in this danger as a stray bullet whizzes past. But the bullets get further and further apart and eventually I can’t even hear the gunshots. I glance behind again and the biker is nowhere to be seen. That’s good.
What isn’t good is the fact that I’ve totally blown the gas that was in my tank.
I slow us down safely, pulling off the side of the road.
“Is it safe to stop here?” Dakota asks as she slides off the back of my bike.
I shrug. “If it’s not, it wouldn’t really matter. I can’t go with no bike.” Glancing down the side of the road, I make a decision. Pulling out my gun, I turn off the safety and hand it over. “Be lookout, okay?”
To my surprise, Dakota nods and takes my gun without hesitation. Well. Girl’s got nerves; I should have known she wouldn’t cower at it like a timid little lady. I smirk approvingly at her before pulling out my phone. I need to get in touch with Chains—the Sinners’ president.
He picks up in about two rings.
“Speed,” he answers immediately. “What the hell’s going on?”
Someone must have called him before me.
“Someone shot up Jameson’s,” I explain. “No idea who; I didn’t recognize the kuttes or the faces. I just know they were packing like it was Armageddon or some shit. They shot up the other bikes.”
“Shit. What about you? Dakota?”
“I parked away from the others, so my shit wasn’t hit up. I got the other club girls and some of the families that were there hidden away from the fray of everything. I got Dakota with me.”
“Good, good. Thank you for keeping her safe.”
I don’t tell Chains that it wasn’t really for his benefit; it’s not something that he needs to know, and being the closest thing to a father to Dakota, I don’t think he’d appreciate the clarification. So instead, I nod.
“One more thing. We ended up being tailed. I got us away from the asshole, but the bike’s out of gas.”
“I’ll send someone over. Just shoot me your location. We’ll get this shit sorted out and then we’ll figure out what exactly we’ve gotten ourselves into. Stay out of trouble, Speed. We’ll talk later.”
“No problem, boss.”
We hang up, and I turn back to Dakota. She’s staring off down where we came from. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m starting to get a headache from the drinking and the turn of events, I might have the brain to come up with something slick about how pretty she looks in the moonlight.
Instead, I tap her on the shoulder, accidentally making her start a little as she turns around to face me once more.
“Someone’s gonna come get us,” I tell her. “Until then, we’re a little stranded. I hope you don’t mind.”
She shrugs. “It could always be worse.” She hands my gun back over to me and sighs. “All I wanted was a few drinks,” she mutters. “And now I’m stuck out here.”
“It could always be worse,” I say, mimicking her previous words. She rolls her eyes again, like she’s done so many times in the last few hours at me.
“Yeah, yeah ... Listen. That was nice, what you did back there for everyone. Getting them out of harm and shit. Sorry for implying that you were being a cowardly little fuck instead of actually helping people. I appreciate it.”
I raise my brow. She doesn’t look at me when she says all this—like giving me credit hurts her pride or something. I don’t let on that her praise settles something warm in my chest. Instead, I do what I always do. I grin at her, and shrug.
“It was nothing,” I tell her. “It was either that or possibly have a few people hurt, or worse.”
“Don’t go getting all humble on me now,” she tells me.
I laugh and reach over, nudging her. I keep my hands on her, turning her to face me. I disguise the touching as checking her over, making sure that she’s okay—and that’s what I’m doing and what I want to make sure of. But it’s a little self-serving, too. With all the adrenaline and high-stakes emotion still pumping through me, I can’t help but use the moment to tilt her head up to me.
We almost kissed back there. Before all the dumb shit broke out and it was insanity times ten.
Dakota doesn’t know, but I’ve had my eyes on her for a long time—and not just to fuck her, though that’s definitely a thought. Ever since Chains brought her here, she’s been a distraction. An interest. I thought maybe to leave her alone, her being Chains’ ‘adopted’ girl and all. But then I did something I couldn’t take back a few months ago and it put my life a little more into perspective.
I haven’t stopped being the Speed everyone expects me to be, but I like to think it matured me a little, and it made me start thinking more about future things. I wonder if Dakota was already thinking about those things, too.
“’Kota—you all right?” I ask her quietly. I turn her head, this way and that, looking her in the eyes. There’s nothing wrong with her; she obviously wasn’t in the fray of anything over the course of the night.
I watch her as she swallows. Her skin flushes. Is it from the beer? The chill in the night air? Me?
“I’m fine, Speed. I—”
I capture her lips before she can say anymore. She tastes like beer and the lipstick lightly coloring her mouth, and I sigh against her there, letting it slide into a groan as I press her closer to me. The shooting was just an interruption to the night. I still want my kiss—at the very least, I want my kiss.
Her fingers tighten in my jacket, and I almost think that she’s going to push me away. Instead, she pulls me closer, breathing out against my mouth with a little whine that has my cock twitching in my jeans. My hands slide around, settling to her hips as I pull her against me and let her feel just what the fuck she’s allowed herself to do to me. A shudder ripples through her body.
“Speed—”
Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
I groan, getting tired of the fact that our night has been marked by nothing but interruptions. However, this interruption is one that I feel is going to need my attention—it’s a cop, lights on and siren alerting us to his presence.
He’s on the back of a bike, something that I can respect. I pull away from Dakota reluctantly. At the very least, when I glance down to her, there’s a look of similar reluctance on her face too.
The cop tilts his head at us, kicks the stand of his bike, and gets off. He’s almost as tall as I am, though not quite as bulky. He nods at Dakota and me before keeping his eyes on me.
“Evening, folks,” he says. “Officer Murphy ... I got word a bit ago about a shooting at a bar not too far from here. Jameson’s, if you’ve heard of it?”
“We’ve heard of it,” I say before Dakota can answer or think to. “But we haven’t been there tonight.” I gesture to my bike. “We were out for a ride, but I underestimated the amount of gas I’d need. We’re kinda stuck.”
“Oh?” Officer Murphy eyes Dakota, eyes lingering a little longer than I’d like, but they’re not exactly leering, so I can’t really say for certain if he’s eyeing her because of the way she looks or because she’s a woman with a scary biker and he’s not sure he can trust me. “You all right, miss?”
Dakota nods. “I’m fine. Just tired. I didn’t expect this goon to do something as silly as run out of gas.”
Murphy laughs. “Fair enough.” He turns his attention back to me. “At any rate, you two try to stay clear of the road. We don’t know what exactly went down, but it’s not safe out here tonight, that’s for certain. Make sure that you’ve got a ride. You need a call for a pick-up?”
“Nah. I’ve got people coming to get us and the bike.”
“Good. And you’re sure you don’t know anything about what happened at Jameson’s? Nothing?” He stares intently at me, as if expecting me to suddenly come up with something affirming his questions.
“Nope. Nothing at all.”
Murphy looks back at my bike, and then to Dakota. His eyes linger on my face a bit.
“You know, you got a black eye—”
“Murphy! Come in, Murphy!
The static garble of Murphy’s walkie crackles in, interrupting Murphy. He seems a little flustered by this, but it’s a good distraction opportunity as he answers back.
“This is Murphy.”
“You en route to Jameson’s? We need back up. Perps are back—” The message crackles out again, but there’s the distinct sound of gunshots on the other end. Dakota and I exchange a look as Murphy frowns and immediately heads back to his own bike.
“Copy that. On my way and calling for more backup.”
Murphy speeds down the road, peeling away with a loud squeal of bike tires and smoke. When he’s gone, I let out a breath, but it’s only just so. Dakota and I both heard what the other line told Murphy; the perps are back and are shooting up Jameson’s again.