Hard Rider (Bad Boy Bikers Book 1) (2 page)

He strolled up to the bar, gesturing for a bottle of whiskey from Manuel. Manuel had on a white button-up, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. Thick layers of sweat covered him like they covered anyone working a real job this close to the border under the merciless sun. Even indoors and at night, the sun invaded, ever pushing and creeping, pressing through the battered efforts of the decades-old air-conditioner.

The bar owner knew Ram was good for the bottle and did not ask for him to pay. As a point of pride, The Wrecking Crew always paid their tabs.

Six years ago when a brawl had broken a bar in Beaumont so hard that it was closed for near half a year with renovations, the Wrecking Crew paid for every wall, chair, table, pool cue, and window they wrecked.

Ram knew the figure he cut at the front of the bar. Tall. Built like a young god. His muscles darkened from the sun and the road dust of the day. Biceps thicker around than most of the necks of the pretty little things sliding up next to him. They were smiling and busty, and his cock pushed against the heavy denim of his pants, ready for action.

He'd been too long without a good fuck, that was for damn sure. 

The whiskey went down his throat smooth and burning like the road he had left behind for the night. Both girls sidled up next to him were Latina, both were pretty. As the whiskey hit his blood and then his brain, he toyed briefly with the notion of bending one over on the bar and just taking her in front of the Black Flags. It might do those pussies good to see a quality dick in action.

Women went crazy for him. He was used to it at this point. He liked it. They always wanted a trip on the wild side. They wanted to know what it was like to fuck a man who didn’t follow the rules—a man who would rather die than live in chains. A man who preferred the unpredictability of lawlessness to the lazy comforts of an office or a paycheck.

One was a blonde with breasts almost as big as her head. They hung loose in her tight shirt, bouncing with every other movement. The other was less busty, but had a longer torso, the kind he could imagine stroking his hand down—grabbing, gripping, never letting go. Girls like this were common around the Wrecking Crew bar back in Marlowe—broads, honeys, chicks. A dozen names for them all amounting to the same thing—women who liked to be in the presence of the pure, unrestrained masculinity of an outlaw.

“You’re with the crew, huh?”

He nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. Best in Texas.”

“You got here pretty late for the party,” said Blonde.

“All the other guys have been taken up,” said Long. She pointed at the Black Flags gathered around at the other end of the bar, shouting and laughing, tequila dripping down on their shoes.

When he'd heard her say “crew,” he had heard “Crew,” as in, his Wrecking Crew. But now he knew what these girls were—paid company for the Black Flags.

That was trouble.

Already, some of the more sober of their company had started sending glances his way, talking in hushed whispers.

If it weren't for the Wrecking Crew, the Black Flags would be the baddest gang—let alone motorcycle gang—this side of the Mississippi. Their leader, Acero, had a reputation for making brutal examples of the people in his territory who refused to pay rent. The last one Ram had heard of had been strung up above his house on a length of barbed wire.

The reason the Wrecking Crew were badder than the Black Flags wasn't that they hung more people, though. It was just that people knew the Crew well enough not to get themselves hung by causing some shit. Their reputation was solid.

Another whiskey splashed down his throat. He’d had nearly a quarter of the bottle now and he felt like he was just getting started. If the girls wanted to talk to
him
instead of those bozo wimps, that was their problem, wasn’t it?

He hadn’t called the honeys over. He hadn’t forced anything on them. They wanted to slide their hands around the monster waiting in his pants, and he wanted to give it to them.

Both of them, why the fuck not? He'd done two before, and he could do it again. Women like this wouldn't satisfy him for very long—no woman ever had—but they could dull the burning in his heart for at least a little while.

“Why don’t you girls have a drink?” he said, winking at a Black Flag giving him the evil eye. “Didn’t you come here to have some fun?”

Shots of whiskey lined up on the bar and then disappeared down the gullets of Ram and the girls. He could see Ace explaining something in detail to the prospect, Mikhail not listening and getting antsy. Whether Mikhail was antsy from the lack of girls near him or the fight starting to brew was anyone’s guess.

Ram slid Long on top of his lap, resting her crotch on his heavy thigh. He could feel the heat of her, the wetness. Her skirt was short and pleated, her panties barely there. Dark brown fingers slid up his thigh, resting against the heavy bulge he'd been forming since they had started talking to him. No doubt she had done this sort of thing before, but she had never done it with a man like Ram, and that made all the difference.

Blonde pushed her heavy breasts against his back, whispering in his ear in soft Spanish that Ram couldn’t quite catch. He had a tin ear for language, and needed to hear them at full volume to really take them in.

Still, he assumed it was something sweet from the way her hand slipped around to his crotch and squeezed on the fast-hardening shaft filling up his pants. Her fingers slipped against Long's, and they both giggled and stroked more as his bulge grew even more, practically bursting through his pants.

Long had one hand wrapped around his neck. She had pretty eyes—servile eyes, the sort Ram liked in a girl.

In the outlaw’s world, the place of a chick like this was to serve and be seen, never heard. A girl who spoke up too much was trouble for the brotherhood—and the brotherhood came before anything else. He slipped his hand up under her skirt to no protest.

Almost right away his fingers found that same wetness and heat he'd felt plying against his thigh. Soon after that, the tips of fingers brushed against the pulsing, gentle mound of her clit. She gasped, her thighs tightening around his leg. She leaned in and began whispering something heated and Spanish in his ear—he supposed more admiration. Her kisses were wet and messy against his neck.

Blonde tugged at his crotch harder, whispering faster in that lilting rapid tongue. He wondered what it would feel like to have her slide all that language against his cock, every word choked on his meat. He turned and called Manuel over—Ram had taken his drinks, now he would take his women.

“A room,” he called. “With a big bed.”

The girls giggled, clearly fine with the request. Manuel’s eyes were big—he did not approach.

Steps, heavy and full of violence. Ram had half-expected this.

“You touching the wrong girls, man.”

This was a Black Flag. Ram recognized him—Beretta.

Ram was a little pissed that he hadn't seen Beretta in the bar already. If he had, there would have been a much, much different atmosphere to the night. In all likelihood, he wouldn't have come in, so as to avoid a fight.

Beretta was a lot of things. Sergeant-At-Arms for the Black Flags. An enforcer, a gunman, a man so bad ass in his own gang that it was his elected job to police the other members of the Black Flags, just like it was Ace's job for the Wrecking Crew. Big, dark-haired, and scary. He was nearly as big as Ram and had a face toughened from years of fighting. A long clawed scar was etched down one side of his face from behind his eye to his jaw, and he had a long jagged patch of healed burned flesh on one shoulder.

He was also Ram's former brother; a former member of the Wrecking Crew, and the number one reason that Ram had been pissed off for about two years straight.

To say the two had unfinished business was like saying that the ocean was a little bit wet. No other man was more responsible than Beretta for the death of Ram's sister.

The only reason Beretta was still alive—as far as Ram was concerned—was to keep the peace with the Black Flags, and that was something that Ram cared less and less about as time went on.

Ram did not turn, keeping his hand outstretched for a key to the flophouse.

“They came to talk to me,” said Ram. “I got nothing to do with you. Looks like they don’t want to either.”

The girls realized, very suddenly, that they had misjudged who Ram was. One biker may have looked like another to them. A rookie mistake. Long, her entrance still wet on top of Ram’s hand, shifted to move away. Instead, his fingers simply rubbed harder on her clit. She shuddered, throbbing in pleasure, sliding up against his thick body with a little moan. She could not stop herself from giggling and kissing against his neck, hormones taking over her judgment.

Blonde backed away though, leaving Ram’s hard cock untended—and thirsty for release. His eyes narrowed on Beretta, wondering where the traitor scum would take this little dance.

Ram was the sort of man who could find a thrill in anything. If he wasn’t going to fuck, then he was going to fight, and that was that.

“Let’s keep this nice, huh?” said Beretta. “You step away. Go back to your table. Jack off with your friends, I don’t care. But you leave these girls to us. We paid for them.”

“They drank my whiskey,” said Ram, finally turning around. “So who’s gonna pay me for that?”

His voice reached a dangerous tone. The longer he and Beretta talked, the closer they would come to fighting. He looked for reasons to keep talking. The fight was close now, bending at the edges of their reality.

Several Black Flags stood up—and so then, did the Wrecking Crew.

Long finally got her shit together enough to back off of Ram's lap, whimpering a bit as she did. He could still feel her wet arousal on his pant leg.

Ram might have been in the wrong to start a fight at
The Hammerin' Nail
—but that was a question for later. Brothers backed each other up in the moment, no matter what.

The Black Flags moved forward like a wave. Pool cues and chairs in their hands. The Wrecking Crew did the same—Mikhail pulled out a pair of brass knucks and Ace unwrapped the chain he kept looped through his belt holes.

Gunfire. In the brewing melee, Manuel picked up his shotgun from behind the bar and let it unleash on the ceiling, filling the bar with a heavy boom and dust from the shattered plaster. He pumped it and leveled the barrel at Ram and Beretta, who had been circling each other with fists up.

“Get out of here,” he said. “Now.”

Ram and Beretta backed up together, both keeping an eye on each other and on Manuel's shotgun.

Once through the door, Ram heard the telltale snick of a knife popping open. He twisted and snapped Beretta’s hand away just in time to avoid having steel jammed in his kidneys.

Just like a coward-ass thieving' low cocksucker like Beretta to try and stab him in the back. Once clearly hadn't been enough for him.

More bikers rushed through, fighting the second they flooded through the door. Fists flying into each other's faces, boots kicking into ribs, hard wood smashing against backs—it was a brawl, plain and simple.

There were seven Black Flags to their four Wrecking Crew. It wasn’t good odds.

Ram liked that.

Fists flying, knees hammering. He and Beretta rolled through the concrete and he smashed the traitor against the hard ground. The gas pump outside was near. He heard Ace and Mikhail duking it out with the Black Flags, the prospect roaring like mad, no shots fired yet. It wouldn’t be long. Ace and Mikhail were both packing, and no doubt the Black Flags were too.

Ram didn't carry a gun unless absolutely necessary. He was trouble enough on his own, most of the time.

Beretta groaned on the ground. Blood spilled around his teeth and cheek where a cut had opened up. Ram pulled the nozzle from the gas pump and whacked him over the head with it. It made a hard, satisfying clang and thunk sound, opening up another gash on his head. Then, Ram sat down on his chest. The nozzle clanked against Beretta’s teeth—Ram wanted to drown the fucker in gasoline and set him on fire.

Shots fired, bullets banging against the metal roof of the bar. Red and blue lights swarming in the dark of the night. The highway patrol, probably nearby to check the ID’s of the girls partying with the Black Flags.

An old sting and an effective one if you weren't careful.

Intercom voices ordered the crowd of brawlers to stand down. Someone in the mess of outlaw bikers shot back at the cops, filling their newly-arrived cars with bullets. Ram saw blood—saw through the darkness one cop take one hard in the head, dead in an instant.

Mikhail shouted to him. “Ram, we gotta get out of here!”

Ram roared with frustration, so close to killing Beretta, to ending the son of a bitch who might as well have killed his sister.

And a good death, too, burned alive from the inside out. Too good for Beretta, but plenty painful all the same.

No fuck, barely a fight, and not even a kill to speak of. His blood pounded, his cock still hard from the excitement in the bar.

He got up, keeping himself level, and rushed back to his bike. Ace, next to him, started to swear.

“Mother
fuckers
,” he growled. “They fucking took my bike?”

“What?” said Mikhail. “When?”

“It doesn't matter,” said Ram. “Get on!”

Ace hopped onto the back of Ram's bike, clearly unhappy. Ram was ready to murder every last cop and Black Flag on the scene. But there was too much heat on them already—and he had just started an all-out war with the Flags.

They rode off into the night, leaving the mess—and the dead body—behind.

––––––––

J
une was lucky the diner was there. Her car started smoking just fifty miles out of Marlowe. It was packed full of her entire life, stuffed into the trunk in a series of tote bags and grocery sacks, some luggage, and a long crate that she only barely had room for. The rest was in the boxes strapped to the top of her small sedan with heavy rope.

She knew how to tie knots. Her dad wouldn’t let her join any wilderness groups like she had wanted when she was a kid, but she did manage to tag along on all of her younger brother’s adventures in the Boy Scouts. From the bowline to the clove hitch to the sheet bend, she could do them all.