Rush - Blue Devils MC Book 2 (Book 1 Included FREE for a short time only!) (31 page)

~ Lain ~

As they were cruising down the road, Lain thought back through lunch, and that morning. Ella had been so amazing with his mother and with all of the bikers in the rally. Except Brock; she seemed to tense up every time he came around.

But Brock aside, she just fit in so damn well. And then…it changed. He tried to remember exactly what it was that had happened before she went all stiff on him, but couldn’t recall. She was laughing and they were chatting with other bikers as they wandered by, and then, she was as stiff as one of the board planks. Even now, as they were tearing down the freeway, she was holding onto him, but it was different than it had been that morning.

Before Tombstone, she’d been running her hands up and down his abs and thighs, and her whole body had been nestled against his. You woulda been hard pressed to fit a piece of paper between them.

Holy shit, now though, she was there and holding on, but he had the distinct feeling that this was out of pure necessity. No more wandering hands. No more teasing brushes against his cock. It was straightforward. Businesslike. Professional. She was no longer tempting him with fantasies of pulling off to the side of the road and fucking like rabbits under the shade of a saguaro.

This is exactly what you need, though
.
She’s leaving in a few days. At least one of you is smart enough to pull away, before…

Before what?

Before he fucked her again?

Before he spent every waking moment watching his fellow club members, making sure nothing happened to her?

Before he fell in love with her?

If he wasn’t in the middle of a goddamn biker rally, heading up the pack, he woulda pulled off the road right then and there and thrown up.

No fucking
way
was this supposed to happen.

She was a…

And he was a…

And they just didn’t mix! He couldn’t fit into her world any more than she fit into his. She wasn’t going to be anyone’s Old Lady - she was too stubborn and smart and clearheaded and independent and funny and…

Oh motherfucking goddamn son-of-a-bitch, I sound like a whiny fucking pussy right now!

He wanted to run away from it all. He wanted to ride up into the mountains and forget the world existed and clear his head and figure out what the fuck he was going to do, but he couldn’t. Holding onto him in that very moment was the one person he simultaneously wanted to run away from…and to.

Was this even possible? Could an outlaw biker and a reporter even date? “Yeah, I run illegal guns and drugs for my MC and here’s my girlfriend, who follows every rule and every law and would love to write about the illegal shit I do, if only I were stupid enough to tell her about it.”

Oh motherfucking goddamn son-of-a-bitch, I am so fucked…

Chapter 15

~ Ella ~

She felt the air change a little at a time around her - cooler. Cleaner. The bike was twisting around corners, forcing Ella to hold onto Lain a little closer than she’d originally intended to after their lunch discussion. She wasn’t sure if she was happy for the excuse to hang on tighter, or angry with herself that she was happy for the excuse to hang on tighter.

So goddamn complicated…

Reluctantly, she opened up her eyes to find short, scrubby bushes lining the road, with green undergrowth carpeting the desert floor as they wound their way through the hills. They must have entered the Coronado National Forest while she’d been in a ride-induced trance against Lain’s back. She wondered for a moment if she’d fallen asleep as an infant whenever her mother put her in the car and went for a drive. She should ask her mom, because it sure happened every time she got on the back of a motorcycle.

She heard the turn signal flip on for a moment and then they turned down a narrower road, a brown wooden sign used in all national parks flashing by before she could read it.

And then they were stopping. Finally. The loss of thrumming between her legs was disorienting. She struggled to get off the bike quickly, before Lain could take her clinging to him mean something…more.

She pulled the helmet off her head and felt slightly woozy from the change in head pressure. As comfortable as the helmet was, it had been pressing on her head for hours, and to have it off was heavenly. Stretching her neck and jaw muscles, she looked around and saw she was in a low, shrubby forest with some stumpy pines thrown into the mix. The air smelled light and clean. The heat of the day was finally beginning to melt away as the sun dipped lower in the sky.

The rest of the bikers began pouring into the campground or were passing them on the road that presumably led to the next campground over. “How many people are here today?” Ella shouted to Lain as a particularly noisy Harley passed them.

“Several hundred. This year is one of our better rallies, attendance-wise. Not everyone can spend the night - some people rode with us and then continued on, and others only rode to Tombstone and then headed back. A lot of these guys are out of Phoenix and so they already drove a couple of hours just to get to Copper.”

She watched as the Budweiser van pulled in and the employees jumped out and quickly began assembling a beer garden. “What’s up with Budweiser?” she asked.

“They’re a big sponsor for us. A lot of our money comes from sponsors, like Budweiser and the local Harley-Davidson dealership. They get a lot of business from this every year, and in return, we ask for a sizable donation in order to give them exclusive rights to sell here. You’re not going to find a Miller beer van pulling up anytime soon.

“Anyway, we need to grab our tent from the support van and get it set up before it gets dark. Ever set up a tent before?”

She stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out if he was making fun of her.

“Ummm…no. They don’t exactly set those up in the middle of Central Park,” she finally said drily. She hadn’t actually grown up in New York City, but still, her family just didn’t
do
camping.

“Well, then this should be an adventure for you.”

They headed over to a van stuffed to the brim with every imaginable piece of equipment needed - air compressors, first-aid supplies, water, snacks, tire repair kits, and tents and sleeping bags galore. Lain rummaged around until he pulled out some oblong shapes and said, “Let’s do this.”

They headed to a flat piece of ground with a tiny marker “Lain” written on it, and set about putting up the tent. Between uncooperative tent poles and Ella’s complete lack of knowledge about erecting such things, she was fairly sure that this process was taking longer than it normally would have, and that Lain had the overwhelming urge to tell her to go away and let him do it on his own. He restrained himself though, and finally (
finally!
) they got it up and Ella took the opportunity to wander around and take pictures. She’d gotten some great ones of some cute, younger bikers flirting with a couple of young girls -
Are they even legal??
- when she felt Lain’s hand on her arm.

“Stop being a reporter for a minute, and just have fun,” he said, dragging her back to the tent so she could put the camera away. Sighing, she acquiesced. It might be fun to just kick back and relax for a bit.

She heard a roar of approval rumble through the trees, and Lain grinned.

“Shit’s about to get fun,” he shouted into Ella’s ear.

‘Shit’ was apparently a wet t-shirt contest - men
and
women. The cheers were louder in general for the women (which wasn’t surprising, considering the predominance of men in the crowd) but when Lain got up on stage, Ella whooped and hollered for all she was worth, forgetting for a little while just how pissed off she was supposed to be with him. She wondered for a moment if she was going to have a voice in the morning. Lain lost out to another biker who was
obviously
lacking in every way possible, and Ella thought for a moment that perhaps the competition was rigged. Or at least the judges were blind. No way any guy up on that stage outshone Lain.

She allowed herself to relax. To have fun. Not to worry about articles or leaving or whether Lain felt something for her. To just…be. It was heavenly. And unusual. And just a tiny bit more heavenly because it was unusual.

Lain appeared next to her, dripping, his pecs clearly showing through his soaked white t-shirt. Ella had admired him up on stage but this close to her, it was hard not to rip his shirt off with her teeth.

“You ready for something to eat?” he asked.

Hell yes!

Nodding as if it really could go either way, when in reality, it felt like her stomach was trying to eat her backbone, she followed him over to the food line forming. It was simple food - shredded beef on a bun, potato salad, some weird pinky stuff mixed in with canned fruit - but Ella surprisingly loved it. Her New York coworkers would no doubt turn up their noses at such a spread, but Ella dug in. “What…what is this?” she finally asked, pointing to the pinky stuff.

“Fruit salad,” Lain said around a mouthful of food.

Huh
.

She wasn’t going to bring her own to a potluck at work, but somehow, it just fit…everything. It fit this club, it fit the ride they just went on, it fit camping.

Lain refilled her beer and then wandered off, chatting with other bikers. Ella didn’t mind - she loved people watching, and she knew that as VP and as the son of the biker that this ride was dedicated to, he had his duties he had to fulfill.

She saw tall, blonde Rush walk over and urgently start whispering in Lain’s ear. She watched as they walked away into the forest, presumably to get some privacy to talk. She wanted to follow him and find out what they were discussing, but she knew that any trust Lain did have in her would be completely shot if she pulled such a stunt.

Finally, they reappeared, Rush looking completely distressed, Lain looking worried. He caught her glance and shot her a big, nothing-to-worry-about-here grin. She grinned back and waved, thinking, “Something is up and you’re hiding it from me. If you think I’m dumb enough to fall for your ‘nothing is wrong here’ smile, you don’t know Ella Anderson.” She waved a moment longer and then decided that she’d faked it long enough, and dropped her hand down into her lap.

Members of the other MCs had been slowly dispersing to their own campsites, until slowly, only the grinning blue devils were left, weaving around in the semi-darkness. A campfire blazed up, and Ella realized that she was actually a little cold - something she hadn’t been able to say since she left New York.

Lain walked over, holding out his hand. “You wanna come sit by the fire with me?” he asked. She couldn’t say no to a smile like that, even if she knew it was a mask, covering up a lie. She held up her hand so he could help her to her feet, and they walked over to the campfire. Camping chairs and tree stumps encircled the roaring fire, and Ella watched carefully as they walked over to it. Beneath the laughing and jokes, she felt a small undercurrent of tension.

She didn’t know what was going on, and she sure as hell didn’t like that Lain didn’t trust her enough to tell her.

Lain

Lain walked Ella over to two chairs around the campfire, and left her there with a promise to get her another beer. As he walked towards the Budweiser beer truck, lights spilling out, music blaring, and lines of people waiting, he thought back to what Rush had told him.

The club was slowly splitting in two under his feet. Despite his attempts to keep it together by proposing the plan to be VP, despite his agreeing to go along with Brock’s moves farther and farther into illegality to keep the peace, peace was quickly disappearing. Even now, the group around the campfire was split in two, if you knew what to look for - those who were happy with the direction Brock was taking the club, and those who were pushing back.

And that second group was recruiting Lain to be the new president. He’d heard it over and over again in private conversations - Lain should’ve been the prez all along. Lain wouldn’t have gotten them into this deal with the
Chupacabras
.

This talk was good for his ego, sure, but was it right? Would Lain have told the
Chupas
that they weren’t interested, and moved on? He wasn’t so sure - after all, he hadn’t fought the idea when Brock had first told him about it.

Standing in line for beer he didn’t want, surrounded by drunk bikers and half-naked sheep and Old Ladies, Lain realized he’d never been so alone. He wasn’t much for soul searching - he was a go-and-do-it kind of a guy, not a navel-gazing yuppie - but maybe he needed to start really looking at his club. Where it was going. What it was doing under Brock’s leadership. Did he want it? Did he want his Blue Devils to be gun runners? Drug runners?

When Brock had first brought up the idea, it made sense. They were a trucking company. It was just as easy to deliver drugs as it was legal cargo, and because they’d been around for years without a whiff of illegality attached to them, the law enforcement didn’t suspect them. They interspersed a carton of drugs or guns in with a whole load of quilts and blankets, and no one was the wiser.

But Brock kept going after bigger and bigger payloads. One carton of drugs wasn’t enough - they needed to move three cartons in a load instead. This upped the chance that drug-sniffing dogs would catch them, but he didn’t care. The payout was never enough.

Lain wandered off into the woods to think, leaving the beer and the bikers behind as he went. He sat down on a sandstone rock and stared off into the distance. It was dark now, and the moon and stars were shining brightly in the night sky. The saguaros were standing silently in the night, dark sentinels against a gorgeous night sky. Even Copper Lode didn’t get a view like this. How people could stand to live in crowded cities with smog and lights and no view of the moon or stars was beyond him. This…fed his soul.

He dropped his head and stared at the desert floor. He had to figure out what he was doing, and what the club should be doing. Did he want to lead the charge in cleaning up the club? Did he dare to split them like that? Brock would never acquiesce to going back to being “just” a motorcycle club. Putting his bike up on the lift and working on it all day and delivering legal cargo for multi-national companies wasn’t going to be enough for him, or for some of the other club members. The large payouts were more addictive than the drugs they delivered, and for some of the club members, there was no way they’d agree to lose those large stacks of cash coming their way.

Brock had always been blunt about what he wanted, so Lain couldn’t cry foul and say he didn’t know. Brock had even told him last year that he only continued this charity ride for Lain’s dad because it was the perfect cover for them. Who would suspect an MC that raised money for a trauma center? Lain couldn’t argue with the logic, but…

Somehow, their club had lost their way. Rather than being a club that helped vets re-integrate into society and gave people with a love of motorcycles a way to connect, they’d become just as dirty, just as wrong as some of the outlaw clubs that he’d read about in the news. Did he
want
to be associated with a group like that? But on the other hand, how could he give up his club, his family, his
life
?

“Hey Lain, how’s it going?”

Ella’s soft voice broke into his thoughts, startling him. He jumped up and spun in a half circle, his hand dropping to Roger, half pulled out, before he realized who it was. And what she’d said. And that it was okay to relax.

“God Ella, you scared me!” he barked, more rough than he’d intended to. She paused, staring up at him, hesitating, unsure of whether she could come closer, unsure of what he was thinking.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” he said, trying again, calmer this time. “I didn’t hear you coming. I’m not normally so jumpy,” he ended with a smile, trying to pass it off as a big mistake. As if he hadn’t, in some dark corner of his mind, thought Brock had come out to confront him, to force their issues out into the open…and stake his claim on the club.

She smiled back at him, her even white teeth glinting in the darkness. “Well, I did sneak up on an armed man in the middle of the night in the middle of the desert. I kinda deserve whatever happens at that point.” She laughed, and a shiver went up his spine.

No matter what shit went down with the club, he had to keep Ella out of it. She was one of the few pure things left in this fucked-up scenario. More than protecting the club, he had to keep the truth about the Blue Devils from Ella to protect his relationship with her. She’d never trust him if she knew what he’d done in the name of the Blue Devils.

She’d never love him if she knew the truth.

He reached out and drew her to him. “Well,” he said seductively, staring down at her green eyes that sparkled even in the dim light, “I can think of at least
one
way for you to beg my forgiveness.”

“Oh really,” she said, laughing up at him, biting her lower lip. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to suck her bottom lip into his mouth and make it his. Taste its sweetness and never fucking let her go.

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” she teased. “Who knows what an outlaw biker would want an innocent girl like me to do?”

Her words, teasing and light and funny, struck at him like darts thrown dead center. They echoed his thoughts exactly - what the
fuck
was a girl like her doing with a guy like him? He’d done things to people that she couldn’t even begin to imagine. Sure, she was from the big city and sure, she’d probably seen some shit that wasn’t pretty.

But she wasn’t an Old Lady. She didn’t know how fucked up things could get in an MC.

Anger covered up his self-recriminations and instead of asking himself what he should change to be the person she thought him to be, he lashed out instead. His arm shot out and he wrapped his hand around her upper arm and dragged her towards him. No questions, no possibility of telling him no. She was his and she was damn well gonna start acting like it. Fuck the consequences.

He crushed his lips against hers, pulling her up onto toes, wrapping his arms around her body. He thrust his tongue into her mouth cruelly, pushing, sucking, moving against hers.

It took him a moment to realize that she was meeting him, thrust for thrust. Instead of pulling back and demanding him to stop, she was sinking against him, wrapping her arms around him, giving him as good as he got.

He calmed down a little and began kissing her with not just anger, but passion. She may not know he loved her, and she probably never would, but he could tell her with actions.

Even if he could never tell her with words.