I thought about Alba the entire day. Literally the entire fucking day—when I was changing oil, when I was rotating tires, when I was hammering out a dent in some guy’s Honda. All I could think about was her tight body under mine.
How she’d felt, so hot and soft.
How badly I’d wanted to bury myself deep inside her.
But I held back for the reasons I always did.
Yeah, I had the same impulses as every single guy in his twenties, but much to the chagrin of my fellow penis-owners, hooking up had never been a priority for me. I distracted myself instead. I slaved away at the garage. I worked out. I spent time with my uncle and my sister. I did whatever the MC asked of me, and when I wasn’t doing any of that, I tagged along with whichever brother needed backup.
That had led me to Alba and her amazing offer.
“I’m looking for someone to fuck. People want to see me cream pied. Gotta give the fans what they want, right?”
The way she’d casually said it fucking shocked me, and the filthy images that went through my mind afterward made me hard as fuck.
Instantly.
She wanted to be cream pied? Sign me right the fuck up.
But…
A deal like that from a girl like her? Dangerous. Too dangerous. Especially for a guy like me.
True, my mother and father had died together, but it wasn’t like their relationship was great when they were alive. They’d fought as often as they fucked, and I remember times when they beat the living hell out of each other. And then I watched Thor and Gemma live separate lives in the same house, barely talking or touching.
I reached the age of sixteen without having an example of a healthy, stable relationship. Little surprise that I immediately went into an unhealthy one of my own with Nikki—blonde, beautiful, spontaneous; big laugh, big eyes, big tits.
I’d been in love with her my entire life, and when I hit sixteen and finally looked like a man, she’d been too eager to reciprocate. It started out great. She was my first real girlfriend, and it lasted five good years. By the time she turned twenty-one, she’d started looking elsewhere. And for the five years after that, we played a bullshit game of on again, cheat again, off again.
God, the fights were intense. We’d had the cops called on us three times, and at the end, I did a night in the slammer because she’d told them I choked her in a blind rage. (I hadn’t seen the bitch in weeks.) But bruises were bruises, and she wanted me miserable.
After that, I’d had enough. I’d never put my fucking hands on a lover, and I wouldn’t have people thinking I did. I cut her off, blocked her number, and refused to see her.
The problem was that she’d been an MC hang-around longer than we’d been together. So it’s not like I could stop running into her. Six weeks ago, she’d married one of my brothers, Pie, having been knocked up several months back. I struggled to feel anything about the news.
She broke my heart. She broke my pride. She could fuck off.
The opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s apathy, and all the emotion I’d had for her slipped away as I rotted in that jail cell.
No more. Not again. Life was too short. Why spend it with people who made you miserable?
“Jer!” Selene called from the office. I slid out from under the car and wiped my hands on a rag before slinging it over my shoulder and sitting up.
“What?” I shouted.
“Thor’s looking for you.”
I stood and grumbled, certain I was about to catch shit for dipping last night. I was supposed to be watching Trojan’s back and helping him sell weed to those upper-class, overprivileged assholes. Instead, I sat on a couch and talked to Alba for three hours. Then I’d driven her home and spent the night watching her sleep.
Real obsessive stalker shit, right?
I know. Not a great look.
But I couldn’t help myself, and as I walked outside to face the music, I decided I wouldn’t even try. If they were pissed, I’d take whatever beating they wanted to dish out.
Legally, Thor was my uncle. But he was only ten years older than me, so he didn’t try very hard to be a father figure. Gemma had been the only parent Selene or I knew, and when she disappeared, Thor and the MC were all we had left.
I joined up as soon as I could, and Selene would likely be an old lady to one of my brothers before long. It wasn’t perfect, but what family was?
“There he is,” Trojan said, standing next to Thor. They were friends, even if they looked more like brothers. They both stood about six-three with long dark-blond hair and tattooed sleeves on both arms. Fucking modern-day Vikings, both of them.
“Trojan says you snuck out early,” Thor said. The question was implied—Where did you go?
“Yeah.” I nodded, staying purposely vague.
“You left a man hanging?” Thor wiped his oily fingers off on a rag and raised an eyebrow.
“He was balls deep in some brunette bitch by that point,” I said. “The deals were done.”
“Who was the girl you left with?” Trojan asked.
“Who says I left with a girl?”
“I saw you,” he said.
“Her name’s Alba.” I pointed toward the mountain. “She lives up the street.”
Thor narrowed his eyes. “You mean Penny Wright’s little girl?”
“She’s not little anymore,” I said, intention in my tone and memories of her mesmerizing curves flicking through my mind. “She needed a ride home. Trojan was covered. I figured it was fine.”
Trojan raised an eyebrow, seemingly satisfied by the response, and Thor patted him on the shoulder. “All good, brother?”
“All good,” Trojan said.
“You coming to the clubhouse tonight?” Thor asked.
“Of course,” I answered. Prez had called church. I didn’t have a choice.
“Good,” Trojan said. “The drop next week is going to be tricky.”
“Shit, really?” I ran a hand through my hair, pushing it back from my face.
“Out near Baltimore,” Thor said.
“I’ll be there.” I nodded.
The topic moved on to other club shit, and I added input where I could, but it didn’t mean much. Thor was the sergeant at arms. Ex-Navy SEAL. A real fucking badass. But he didn’t talk about his time in the military. War messed with people in different ways, and whatever happened to Thor had caused him to leave the service and join an outlaw motorcycle gang. I reckoned it was real fucked up, whatever it was.
Trojan and his brother, Hollywood, had joined a few years ago, earning their patches shortly after. Trojan was also ex-military, so he and Thor bonded quickly. I was closest to Hollywood and my eldest cousin, Bear, but I got along with everyone all right. We were sixty members strong at this point, with more prospects due to patch in any day.
I finished with my brothers and headed into the office to look at my next job while the oil drained out of the car in the garage.
Selene sat at the front desk, reading the romance novel open on the counter in front of her while she idly played with a strand of her dark hair.
I snickered to myself. “Thor paying you to read on the job?”
“Thor pays me to ring out customers.” She blew a piece of gum until it popped and pulled it back into her mouth. “You see any customers?”
“You’re going to give that man a stroke.”
She raised an eyebrow, not looking at me as she flipped the page. “He deserves it.”
As someone who graduated medical school on a scholarship and completed a full surgical internship, Selene was a million fucking leagues above this job. She could be at a hospital or some shit, but after a while, she said she was burnt out and needed to take a few months off.
Not that I blamed her.
We were carbon copies of each other, tall and lean with dark hair and bright blue eyes. When we were little, people couldn’t tell us apart, and now that we were grown, she liked to say we made a matched set.
Things were weird between Thor and my sister, even before Gemma died. It didn’t always used to be like this, but one day something happened and they stopped being as close as they once were. She shut him down when he tried to talk to her, and he gave her muffled grunts instead of complete sentences. Anytime I brought it up with Selene, she told me to mind my own business, which only made me more curious.
What was there to talk about, and why wouldn’t she talk about it? But I let it go. They were entitled to their own shit, and it had been a rough couple of years for us all.
“What happened to you last night?” she asked.
“Met a girl.” I reached into the plastic bin for the next work order—a Toyota pickup with a rattle in the engine. Fun. I liked my patients with a bit of mystery.
“What girl?” Selene’s eyebrows furrowed. Another page flip.
“Ummm…” I scratched at the back of my neck with my dirty fingers while I tried to think of reasons it might be rattling. Could be the struts. Could be th—
“Jer.” Selene brought my attention back to her. “What girl?”
“Alba,” I said.
“Alba who?”
“Oh… uh… Wright, I guess.” I didn’t get her last name. But Thor knew Penny, and Penny’s last name was Wright. Alba’s dad wasn’t in the picture, so I would assume Penny had given Alba her own last name.
“Don’t know her,” Selene said, a bit deflated by the anticlimactic answer.
“She’s cute.” The words came out of my mouth absently as I backed out of the shop door and found the truck in the parking lot. I unlocked the doors so I could get inside and start her up, thankful I’d gotten out of there without a fucking gauntlet round of questioning.
I loved my family.
I really did.
But I wanted to get the fuck out.
Thor had moved in with us when he married Gemma, and now we were living like a fucked-up version of The Brady Bunch, crammed into the tiny house where we grew up. I had a freezing basement room to myself, nowhere near as nice as what Alba had done with hers, and Selene still had her bedroom upstairs. Thor kept the primary after Gemma was pronounced legally dead.
I should have moved out years ago. What twenty-seven-year-old still lived in his childhood home? But it wasn’t like I was rolling in dough on a mechanic’s wage, especially when my uncle was the shop owner and took a large chunk of the profits. I’d just managed to pay off my truck, bike, and some credit card debt, so I hadn’t been able to save a lot. Besides, we’d been through so much in the last few years, it never seemed like the right time. They needed me. I needed them.
I listened to the rattle in the truck engine, my mind racing with the possible causes. But my thoughts went back to Alba and what she was doing.
Probably rubbing one out in front of millions of subscribers. Touching that beautiful pussy and moaning for an audience that would later include me. Did she have on a skirt and those thigh-high socks with the Mary Janes?
Fucking hell.
I got half a chub thinking about it.
Her request went through my head again.
She hadn’t asked me specifically to be her cam guy, but I could offer. When I’d ended up on top of her in the bed where I’d watched her masturbate so many times, there was desire in her eyes. She wanted me to kiss her. She wanted me to fuck her.
And fucking hell, I wanted that, too. I would have done it. I should have done it and gotten it out of my system. But I couldn’t.
I needed to keep my dick in my pants for three very important reasons.
First, after Nikki, I’d fucked enough club hang-arounds to know that random sex didn’t do it for me. Call me old-fashioned, but I wanted to like the person before I fucked them. Yeah, hooking up was cool. But I was too old for that shit.
Which led to problem number two. I liked Alba.
Really liked her.
Enough to leave her ass alone to protect her. I did a lot of shit for the club, some of which I wasn’t proud of. Sometimes the people we loved got hurt because of what we did. Look at Crow—wife, brother, sister, and sister-in-law all gone because of this blood feud with the Caputi family. A feud he didn’t even start.
And I couldn’t live with myself if Alba took the brunt of my reckless lifestyle.
Hence problem number three. I knew myself.
Even if I said at the beginning the situation was transactional, I was an old-fashioned son of a bitch.
I remembered her stomping into that kitchen with her hands in fists and fire in her eyes, reading me the riot act because I didn’t ask for her number. She moved her lips and her hair bounced around her head, but the whole world faded away. And suddenly, the only thing in it was her. She had on a sweater and a knee-length skirt (who wears a sweater to a party?), but she could have been in a muumuu for all I cared.
I wanted to wrap my hand around her throat, push her up against the wall, and tell her exactly what I’d been thinking when I met her. All the filthy, rotten things that had gone through my mind.
I wanted to shove my hand in between those thighs and claw at her tights, tearing them until I knew how wet I made her.
I wanted to pull her over my lap and turn her ass red for talking to me like that. Didn’t she know who I was? Didn’t she know who I ran with?
I’d never experienced a surge of lust that intensely before. She surprised me, and after the life I lived, very few people could do that. So offering myself up and fucking her over and over again while insisting it was professional was thin ice to cross.
Remember problems one and two?
I wasn’t down for random hookups, and my feelings for Alba were complicated after only one night. How would I feel after a week or a month of acting out my wildest fantasies with her? On camera? For all the fucking world to see?
Every exhibitionist kink I had in my balls clenched, and I winced as I adjusted myself.
* * *
“You ever have a girl put a collar on your neck and drag you around like a dog?” Hollywood asked, clapping Bear on the shoulder. We sat around the bar at the clubhouse, talking before church. A few other members hung out in the background, bullshitting behind us, but I always ended up with these two idiots.
Hollywood was only two years older than me and Bear a year younger. We grew up together and knew everything about each other. Too many things, in my humble fucking opinion, and definitely more about Hollywood than I’d like.
“No,” Bear said, taking a sip of his beer. “What the fuck, man?”
My cousin and the eldest of Crow’s four children had only ever known the MC. When his old man eventually kicked it, he’d take over as prez himself. He knew it. Everyone else knew it. But some days, I wondered if he struggled with the responsibility. He could be an emo shit when he wanted, introverted and shy. He was fucking smart and had once talked about going to college, maybe being an engineer. But that was years ago, and it had been a while since he’d brought it up.
Hollywood, on the other hand, loved to be loved. That was why he’d gotten his name when he patched in. Beautiful and tan with brown eyes, he attracted women like moths to a fire pit. From what I heard, the men loved him, too. Not that I judged. Who Hollywood fucked was his own fucking business.
“This bitch had me howling at the moon last night.” He leaned his head back so he could mimic a wolf’s cry. I laughed and took another drink. “I never knew I had that kink, but here we are.”
“I wish I could continue not knowing you had that kink,” I said.
“Don’t be a prude.” Hollywood patted my back. “Trojan says you left Aliza’s party with some girl last night.”
“Yep.” I swallowed down another gulp but said nothing else, not even when he raised his eyebrows at me and then looked at Bear.
“And?”
“And nothing.”
“Who is she?” Hollywood leaned closer so he could whisper. “Did you finally get laid?”
“Man.” I shoved him away while Bear laughed. “Shut the fuck up.”
“Hey.” Hollywood held his hands up, flashing a shit-eating grin while he backed away. “I’m just trying to look out for my man, KC. How long’s it been since you got your namesake wet?”
I took a deep breath and sipped my beer, but didn’t answer.
“I rest my case.” He turned to Bear, who shook his head and smiled.
KC stood for Killer Cock, a nickname the club had given me after I’d accidentally flashed Nikki’s elderly neighbor standing in front of the fridge in the middle of the night. The next morning, an ambulance showed up out front. We later learned she’d died due to complications from a recent surgery, completely unrelated to my flashing incident. But once Nikki told Hollywood and the rest of the club found out, the nickname stuck.
It didn’t help that I had a big dick, over ten inches when it was hard, something Hollywood insisted on seeing for himself. For two years, he’d been trying to walk in on me fucking so he could get a glimpse. I’d almost reached the point of taking pity on him and showing him so he’d finally fuck off.
“You gossip like a fucking bored housewife, you know that?” I said. “You think I want my business all over the fucking club?”
“Your business is already all over the fucking club.” Hollywood winked and grinned. How did I end up with these two? Hollywood and Bear continued to bust each other’s balls, but my mind drifted to Alba. I should text her. Maybe tell her I’d like to help her. If it didn’t work out, no hard feelings.
But let’s be real. On top of all the other reasons I shouldn’t do this, the biggest and most obvious was putting sex videos of myself on the internet. Once that shit’s there, it’s permanent.
Look at me, covered in tattoos, worried about something being permanent. Never stopped me before.
The door to the back room opened, revealing Crow and Thor and the giant meeting table the officers huddled around when church was in session. Crow sat at the head. Well into his fifties, he had salt-and-pepper hair down to the middle of his back that he kept loose around his shoulders.
Despite his towering height and generally growly disposition, I liked my Uncle Crow. I’d never seen him lose his cool on a brother, and once you cracked that angry glower, he was a softie on the inside. Warm and paternal, he’d been a surrogate father to Selene and me when we’d needed one most. He and his kids were the only blood family we had left.
But there was a reason he was the president. For all that he loved his family, he was fucking ruthless when it came to protecting us. I’d seen him rip a man apart with his bare hands, and trust me, standing next to Crow was a helluva lot better than being in his way.
The rest of the crew took their spots. The VP, Aristotle, sat at Crow’s right. He was just as tall, intimidating, and gray around the gills, but where Crow wore his age in his face, Aristotle looked ten years younger than he actually was. He had short gray hair and piercing blue eyes—the kind of eyes that matched a soul as cold as ice.
He’d been in the club longer than I’d been alive. He ran the MC’s strip club and renovated old houses on the side. He said he’d been born with a photographic memory. He knew everything about anything. His only blind spot was his daughter, Ru, who was like a little sister to me. Last December, she’d started a relationship with Aris’s best friend and fellow MC member, Saint. As far as I knew, the shit was still secret. But again, I kept my nose out of other people’s business, just like I wanted them to stay the fuck outta mine.
On the other side of Crow sat Thor, who was responsible for keeping the brothers in check. Doc, Slip, and Picasso filled around them, and once we had a quorum, Aris stood and cleared his throat. Even though everyone was still having their own conversations, we quieted down when he spoke.
“Church is in session. Everyone shut the fuck up.” Aris sat and tapped his ringed fingers on the wooden table, officially opening things up for discussion.
“Thanks, Aris.” Crow interlaced his fingers and leaned forward on the table. “Brothers, we’re at a precipice. I need your guidance.” A pause. “This is a war that none of us started, but we’ve been picking up the damage Piston left ever since Benito killed him.” Crow met my eyes. “Some of us more than others.”
I thought of my parents and my Aunt Gemma, all casualties of a war they’d inherited. I bit back the emotion brewing in my chest and turned to stone to save face.
“We’ll never forget what they did to Esquire and his old lady. Or what they did to mine.” It had been a decade and his voice still cracked at the mention of her. “We still don’t know what happened to my sister, Gemma. But we do know this… There is not enough Caputi blood to pay for their sins. Not until every last one of them is gone from this Earth.”
Whoops and claps of approval came from everyone around us, including me. When I found that motherfucker Benito, I’d put a bullet in his head. No questions. No regrets.
“Help me,” Crow continued. “We know they’re planning a big shipment into the Holabird Docks next weekend. We know they have to come through here to get it.”
“How do we know this?” someone asked.
Crow narrowed his eyes. “A little birdie told me.”
“This birdie still singing?” someone else chimed in.
Our enforcer, Doc, snorted, crossing his arms over his chest. “Not after I was through with him.”
I didn’t know Doc’s background, and with that scary fucking look in his eye, I didn’t ask. In his mid-thirties, he’d shown up with his younger sister a few years ago, and after a quick convo with Crow, he’d been welcomed with open arms. He was our healer. He closed up bullet wounds better than anyone I’d ever seen. But he also knew how to bleed a man dry in seconds using only four deep cuts. I tried to stay off his radar.
“The point is,” Crow said, refocusing our attention, “if the intel is good, and I have every reason to think it is, we have the opportunity to steal over half a million dollars in fun and games.”
“How many men?” Thor asked.
“We think six or seven,” Doc said. “Our birdie wasn’t sure.”
“Can we spare the crew?” Aris looked at Thor and raised an eyebrow.
Thor nodded, and growls of approval came from the group.
“If it were up to me,” Crow continued, “I would have already packed my shit to ride. But it’s not up to me. It’s up to us.” He looked around the room.
“We can cut them off at the knees,” Picasso said. “They’ve been slinging their shit through our territory for too long.” He shook his head.
“I won’t bullshit you.” Crow ran his hands through his long hair and sighed. “If we do this, it could be bloody.”
“It’s already bloody,” said Coins, our treasurer. “And it’s on their hands.”
I couldn’t deny it. The Caputis and the Roses had been at each other’s throats for decades, much to the chagrin of the local PD. We’d lost more than our fair share of brothers to this violence. And for what?
So here we sat. Planning to steal half a million dollars in arms and drugs from these dickheads.
“Before we vote, let’s talk logistics. Can we even do it?” Aris asked.
Slip, our road captain, gave the rundown. He’d been in the club all my life. A former pilot, Slip could drive, fly, or sail anything that moved. And I do mean anything. “By the time we get out of there, they won’t know what hit them.”
“Thor?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, giving a small grunt before muttering, “Doable.”
“It’s a tight window,” Aris said. “I don’t like the odds of the rabbit making it without getting caught.”
“That’s always the risk, isn’t it?” Crow leaned back in his seat and lit a cigarette. “Do we have anyone who could make that run in that amount of time?”
All eyes turned to me. I’d spent a lot of time making my bike faster. A Harley was an old man’s machine, big and bulky and notoriously slow. But not mine. Because I’m a fucking mechanical genius.
It was dangerous, but all this shit was dangerous. I could walk out of my house tomorrow and get hit by a bus. Why live in fear of death? The bitch came for everyone in the end. This would fuck over the Caputi cocksuckers, and I’d do anything to bring them down.
“It’s tight.” I cleared my throat and nodded. “But I can do it.”
“Think on it,” Crow said. “We’ll vote at the end.”
We went over other club business, an upcoming charity drive and the annual club cook-off in September. Regular shit. At the end of it, the officers dismissed the prospects so we could vote on the run.
“Well?” Crow looked at me, raising an eyebrow.
“I’ll do it,” I said. Like there was any other answer.
“All in favor?” Aris said.
“Aye,” came the chorus around me.
“Any say nay?”
Silence.
Crow looked around the room and smiled before saying, “We ride at sunset on Sunday.”
Some people clapped. Some whooped. I drank my beer and turned to head out, but my uncles called from their spots at the table, stopping me.
“KC,” Crow said. “Come here a second.”
I took a step closer, my boots echoing on the concrete floor. “What’s up?”
He waited until everyone else left before continuing. “This is a big run.” Crow stood so he could look me in the eye and put a hand on my shoulder, the same way he used to do when I was a kid. “You sure you’re up for this?”
I gazed around the club, spotting Nikki and Pie in a corner up front, her hand on his stomach, that huge fucking diamond on her ring finger, and the baby bump low in her belly. My thoughts went to Alba, and a gooey warmth dripped through my chest. Wouldn’t it fucking be something to get her big and round with my kid like that one da—
“KC?” Thor asked, bringing my attention back to my uncles.
“Yeah.” I shrugged, taking another long pull on my beer. “No big deal.”
“You sure?”
I nodded.
Crow leaned forward. “You know everyone’s looking at you to replace Aris one day.”
I laughed and ran a hand over the back of my neck, glancing up at Thor. “I would have thought you’d be eyeballing me to replace Ole Sarge over there.”
Thor gave me the finger. “I’m only ten years older than you, prick.”
I chuckled and took another swig. “Yeah, I get it.”
“How you feel about that responsibility?” Crow tilted his head to the side and leaned back against the table, crossing his arms over his chest.
Again, I shrugged. “Figure I got a while before I need to worry about it.”
“Death comes for us all.” Crow laughed low and deep. “Bear’s lucky to have you.”
“You’re lucky to have each other,” Thor added.
“When the time comes,” I said, “if that’s what the club wants, I’ll do it.”
Thor turned to Crow, who clapped my cheek and nodded toward the front. “Go get some tail.” Then he leaned in real close. “Stop worrying over that dumb bitch who ain’t worth it.”
Was that what I was doing? Worrying?
No, I didn’t think so.
I didn’t care that Nikki had moved on. Hell, I didn’t even care that it was with another member of the club, my own brother. I missed the intimacy of what we used to have and the trust that came with it.
Of course, if I really thought about it, I never could trust Nikki, and that was what pissed me off. Twelve years down the fucking drain. For what? Goddamn nothing.
I said good night to my uncles and went out front, but no one here held my attention. Hollywood and Bear entertained some girls in a corner, and Doc’s sister, Fingers, corralled a few others into dancing over by the jukebox. I could have my pick of any of them. Fingers even stopped to smile and wave at me.
But what would be the point? Even if I had any fucking interest in taking her up on it, my mind would be far away, thinking about a pair of big blue eyes and perfect pouty lips.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and rolled my finger over Alba’s contact, lingering on the text message box.
I should call her. Tell her the truth. Tell her how badly I want her.
Such a stupid thing, right?
Fuck, I’d just volunteered to lead the merry fucking goose chase out of Nowhere, USA, knowing everyone trailing me would be armed. Why the fuck should I care about anything else?
The money sounded good. Fucking Alba sounded good. All of it sounded… So. Fucking. Good.
I took another drink of my beer and shook my head, running my hands over my hair.
Maybe I should tell Alba I’ll do it. Maybe I should fuck her until I couldn’t fucking stand anymore.
I ruminated for five minutes before I made up my mind to get the hell out of there, no matter where the road took me.