Chrome & Leather - The Novel (Adriana Ness ♯1) (Motorcycle Club Romance) (18 page)

He felt shame at how easily he had been taken down. Taken down by a mere cripple, a broken and weak man. Everything that he had built over the years felt like it was being ripped to shreds before him. The threads of his way of life, unraveling and unspooling at his feet. For the first time he could remember he felt powerless and it was not something he liked to experience. Amidst the dual attacks on the gang and himself there was one beacon that shone brightly and offered him some hope. Linda Lake. Even at this moment of self doubt he couldn’t get her out of his head, he could smell her on his skin and feel her hands on his body. She was beautiful and strong and fierce and unlike any woman he had meet before. Like him she had been born in the crucible of fire, a person hurt by someone they thought they loved, and like him she was a better person for destroying her tormentor.

When he had left the safe house he had wanted to return immediately to Linda and sweep her up in his arms. His cock throbbed painfully in his tight trousers and his mind was filled with images of her dark limbs wrapped around his shoulders as they made love. He somehow felt lesser when not in her presence like a badly sketched drawing in pencil his edges felt ill defined and fuzzy. When he was around her everything snapped into sharp focus and nothing else mattered to him. Every time she looked at him his heart beat fiercely and thunderously in his chest. It had been so long since he felt anything but lust around a woman. He had closed himself off so as to never feel any real connection with someone, because of this the rush of feelings he was experiencing now was like a bucket of ice water thrown over him, shocking and bracing all at once. For years he had slept with a succession of women that were nothing more than tokens by his side, never anything more than a warm body to screw at the end of the day. He never treated those women badly and most of the time they got more out of the arrangement then him. A lot of them got to live out some sort of fantasy by being by his side. If he was honest with himself they both used each other, no harm no foul. Linda was different, he felt immensely attracted to her and at the same time he could see that she was a force to reckon with. Whatever hell she had gone through with her abusive husband it had somehow not broken her. She had come out the other side hardened and ready to fight for whatever she wanted. He could see that and appreciate it. He had also been forged through pain and hardship and degradation. Blackjack shuddered, he always did when he thought about HIM and his past. It was like black oil seeping into his thoughts and if he allowed memories of the past to seep into his bones and skin coating him in a thick oily residue he felt like he might go a little mad. He pushed it deep down into a dark recess afraid to let any of the oily residue of his past bubble up from below.

Blackjack pressed a portion of the smooth concrete wall in a far corner and a panel slid aside. Hidden behind it was a waist high safe with a digital keypad to unlock it. The door swung open soundlessly exposing the contents. Inside were six neatly stacked metal boxes and on the door of the safe were affixed three handguns. He ran his finger down the front of the boxes. The cold metal under his skin reassuring him in their metallic reliability. These boxes were his guarantee of a new start and a new life if he had to disappear. He had passports and fakes documents for countless identities and enough money stashed away so that he could live very comfortably south of the border. This was his emergency ripcord and he had come close to pulling it a few times. He took a magnum off its mount and levelled it towards the bikes. The gun felt good in his hand, heavy and powerful. Sometimes in an altercation all he would have to do was draw his magnum and the sight of this massive hand cannon was enough to make anybody think twice about messing with him. It had an old school vibe that he liked. From one of the boxes he grabbed some bullets and a set of keys for his chosen bike. Once the concrete panel slid back into place hiding the safe it was completely invisible. The seam was barely visible and only someone who knew what they were looking for could have found it.

Blackjacks chosen bike was a vintage model from the seventies, built for speed and manoeuvrability and world famous for its stubborn reliability. It was known as a bike that could take a serious beating and still keep on going. It was a mixture of Russian design and ingenuity and an American flair for masculine lines and a throaty roaring engine.
 

Armed and ready Blackjack gunned the engine and took the smoothly sloping incline out towards the back alley exit. Nobody saw him exit the underground car park and the graffiti covered shutter slid down securely behind him as he roared off down the street.
 

The first thing that caught Blackjacks eye was the beat up dune buggy parked in front of the ranch. This was the vehicle owned by Doc Vilner, the coked up ex surgeon the gang held on retainer. Vilner had let his little drug habit get the best of him and one two many patients had died under his shaking scalpel. He had avoided a long stint in prison when one of the main witnesses, a younger doctor vying hungrily for his position, suddenly changed his testimony weeks before the trial with a little coercion from Blackjack and friends. The Doc was now permanently indebted to the gang and was their on call field surgeon.
 

Blackjack hated dealing with the Doc, he was a shifty squat man in his fifties with thickly haired forearms that would look more suitable on a man digging ditches. He always trailed off as he spoke and you could never tell if it was from some pharmacological haze or general disdain for the person he was talking to. For someone whose life was saved by the gang, Doc barely hid his utter disgust at the low life’s he had to mingle with. His drug habit was legendary but he didn’t like to mingle for longer then was needed with the cogs in the drug acquisition game. Blackjack didn’t trust him at all but he was needed. The Doc had patched up and saved the lives of countless gang members all without ever having to leave a paper trail from visiting a regular hospital.

Blackjack strode into the ranch and the circle of men turned to greet him, they crowded around him slapping him hard on the back as obvious relief lit up their faces. He felt good to be back among his gang, these men would fight and die for him without hesitation and Blackjack could feel the dark pressure building knowing he would have to call on them if all out warfare was to break out. He couldn’t let them know what had happened yesterday with the crazed gimp and his fucked up partner. Right know he knew it was time to show his men the solid fearless man of legend, it was time for them to go on the offensive, they had been caught off guard for too long now. This ends tonight he vowed to himself even as he could feel a creeping dread undermine his outward show of confidence. The men crowded around him as he walked into the large living room area that was now a makeshift hospital room. He could feel the men feeding off his outward show of bravado as his heavy boots thumped across the floor, each step seemed to strengthen and embolden his men in this time of crisis. Inside Blackjack sneered at himself, he did not feel like the strong capable leader that these men needed. Grit it out he told himself, no time for self doubt now.

The pool table had been pushed into the corner of the room and in its place was a wooden table with Pops lying on it. Blood had soaked into the wood staining it in several places and blood stained rags were strewn across the floor. Pops face was the color of wet newspaper and his skin had a damp sheen to it. The Doc was bent over his shoulder trying to remove a bullet fragment from deep in his flesh. Beads of sweat ran down the Docs forehead and his eyes were ringed by deep dark circles. Pops’ eyes fluttered open as Blackjack came forward and he reached out. Blackjack took his hand and clenched it hard and let go. Pops tried to speak in a croaky voice, “Red and the others, all dead. I barely made it out before…” his sentence was stopped by a series of wracking coughs. Blackjack looked around at the others for confirmation. They nodded in unison and someone spoke up “It was a massacre. Pops was lucky to make it out alive.”

Blackjack clenched his jaw tight and his face was a solid mask which betrayed none of the emotions exploding inside him. He turned back to Pops and nodded grimly at him as the Doc finally dug the bullet piece out from his shoulder. A wordless agreement passed between the two men. Years of friendship and hard fought battles, close calls and vicious triumphs negated the need for words, both men knew what needed to be done for the sake of the gang and its future.

Blackjack turned to the waiting men and readied himself to speak, the weight of the next few words crushing him before they even left his lips, the certainty that troubled times were ahead pressing down on him. The only glimmer of light at the end of the hell that was about to come was Linda. If he could hold on to how he felt when he was near her, the sweet tightness he felt in his chest every time she looked at him with a smile in her eyes, this was what was going to wrench him free from the darkness threatening to destroy his gang. In the moment before he addressed his men it hit him, it was as if a super nova exploded above his head and his human form was insignificant below its incandescent light. He knew in that moment that he was already in love with Linda and that he would do anything to see her again. This realization emboldened him as he spoke in his deep baritone and said to his waiting men, “Tomorrow we go to war.”

CHROME & LEATHER: INITIATION COMING SOON.

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