Survivor: Steel Jockeys MC (16 page)

"She's tuned-up, waxed, and she runs better than ever."

Colt had been standoffish so far. He'd been trying to treat her like daughter, but at the same time, Joe had made it pretty clear that his dirty-old-man tendencies were liable to come out now and then. But as if to atone for any perceived impropriety, he'd outdone himself, Ruby decided, as she set her eyes on what he had unveiled. He stood in the backyard in front of the pole shed, looking benevolent and satisfied, like some kind of bizarre leather-clad Santa Claus.

The black and silver super-low Dyna Glide was exactly the way she remembered it--only better. Colt had done such a thorough job that it looked like it had never even been ridden, except that she recognized the customized leather saddlebags and the crooked mirror that Kyle had never bothered to fix. Colt had left it as it was meant to look, and she appreciated that beyond words.

"It took me forever to find it. They had turned it over to evidence. I had to call in a favor from Madelia PD, who called in a favor from Oakland PD. Luckily, they owe me a lot of favors."

"I'm not sure 'owe' is the operative word there," remarked Holly, who stood nearby, hugging herself, content to watch the astonished expression in the younger woman's eyes as she took in the present. "More like 'have to do what you say if they want to keep their families fed.'"

"Hey," Colt said, holding up his arms. "I don't believe in bribery. I believe in reciprocal friendship. When you live in a town with a police department that's two cops strong, is it a crime to buy them a few rounds now and then?”

Fox had offered to buy Ruby a motorcycle many times. But the idea of riding around on a brand-new Harley seemed ridiculous to her when she had done nothing but avoid them for most of her life. This was totally different; this was a part of Kyle that she thought she’d lost forever. It was like part of him still inhabited the bike. She could still see him on it, helmet over his chestnut curls, hunched over the broken mirror, pointing at her as he rode away. She reached out a finger to touch one of the handlebars, as if she expected the polished chrome to shock her. It didn't though. In fact it did the opposite and seemed to feel very right under her touch.

"The thing is, I couldn’t figure out why I had to have it. It wasn't until now that I realized the answer." He looked at Ruby proudly, almost fatherly. "Try it out."

"I--I've never." She shook her head. She winced, expecting Colt and Holly to be shocked that the sister of the Steel Jockeys' late president had never driven a motorcycle before. She remembered Fox's words at the dealership.
A pretty girl on a bike. It's like poetry.
Well, she could take care of that, anyway, she thought, hopping up in the saddle. She felt instantly stronger and more powerful, almost scarily so.

"The keys in the ignition," remarked Colt. "I had to get a new one made."

She took a deep breath and turned the key. Her stomach lurched as the bike seemed to leap forward, excited to run after so long sitting in a lonely warehouse somewhere. For some reason, she thought of the guys she'd met at the Bird. Kyle's extended family, and by proxy, her own. Why had she waited so long? Why had she denied her nature? This bike, and this life really, was a part of her. She stopped, watching her white knuckles grip the handlebars.

"Ruby?" Holly ran over, looking stricken. "Are you okay?"

"What? Of course."

"You're crying."

She swiped at her face. “No,” she said, smiling. “Well, maybe a little.”

Joe wasn’t at the Bird. In fact, he didn't come back that evening at all. She'd gotten up the nerve to take Kyle's bike and cruise along Main Street in Madelia from end of the tiny town to the other. Though she’d kept at least ten miles under the speed limit to be safe, it was as exhilarating nonetheless--even Zen, as Holly had described it. To sit where her brother once sat, to feel the way he must have felt in the saddle; the collective might of all bikers, the emptiness and freedom of the sky, of the road. But it couldn’t discount the pit in her stomach over the fact that Joe didn't come to dinner. Ruby was beginning to wonder whether she was going crazy. Whether he had ever existed at all or that he’d sat next to her bed, making love to her verbally, if not physically. She didn't dare ask, for fear of giving the impression that she cared about him.

She knew only that he'd said something about riding down to Modesto as an escort; apparently this was something he and the other Jockeys did regularly. But he hadn't asked her to wait for him; hadn't said when he'd see her again, or even if he'd see her again. He'd just...left. As if he didn't expect she would care.

Something told her she'd blown her last chance last night, and again this morning when she'd been so cold to him at the bar. Playing hard to get was one thing, but she was giving the impression that she didn't want him. And yes, it was probably for the best. But then why did it feel so awful?

Holly made a beef stew for dinner and served it with warm, crusty bread; it was delicious, and she tried to paste a smile on her face while she ate it, though she knew everyone in the room knew why she seemed so quiet. For her part, Morgan took three bites and asked to be excused. Holly and Colt invited Ruby to the living room to watch a Redbox movie Holly had rented, but all Ruby wanted was to not be seen. She made an excuse about being tired and slipped out.

As she climbed the stairs, she heard throat-clearing. Ruby stopped in her tracks and turned. "He'll be okay, you know," Regan said with a shrug. "Riding out to god knows where, never making it back until the wee hours. It's just what they do. You get used to it." She sounded like she spoke from experience.

"I'll never get used to it," said Ruby fiercely. "And anyway, if he doesn't care enough to tell me where he's going, then why should I care if he comes back?"

But she did care, she thought with chagrin up in the spare room, as she quietly stripped out of her clothes and into another pair of borrowed pajamas--Holly's, this time. She pulled the covers up to her chin, staring at another alien ceiling, in a darkness that felt strange, with silence that hid the strangeness. Why did she care? She was back here, helpless, in a place she'd vowed never to be again. And all she could think about was how Joseph Ryan had come to occupy that hollow space inside her, and how empty it would be without him.

In her dream, she rode with Kyle on the back of the Dyna Glide.

The bike looked the way it did when he'd last rode it--crooked mirror, road dust and all. But the landscape didn't look like home--it was vaster, greener, wilder, more like New Zealand, or at least what she'd seen of it in the movies.

Colorful birds of paradise, dozens of them, glided by as if to sing to them. Over the horizon, the ocean roared. The feeling of peace and well-being was more palpable than anything she'd ever felt before. It was so different from the wet, desolate street that had been present the last time she'd laid eyes on her brother in this life. He was strong and happy again, warm. She could even hear him breathe.

He was alive. And nothing could ever be wrong again--until he stopped and hopped off the bike.

A wind blew up, and the vastness looked menacing and strange now. She couldn’t go back to the emptiness of this world; to the desolation that her life was without him.

“Kyle, please. Stay. I need you to make things okay again.” She grabbed his jacket, and he spun around.

“I can’t,” he said. “I told Joe to take care of you, so let him.”

"I already have someone to take care of me," she informed him angrily.

“Who?”

“Fox Keene.”

The scene changed. She was graduating from somewhere, wearing a green cap and gown at the head of a vast auditorium. Kyle was nowhere to be seen; the faces in the crowd were dead-eyed, strange.

A hand held out her diploma. She reached for it, but instead, the hand grabbed her wrist. She pulled away, struggling, and bolted out of the auditorium. She recognized nothing about where she was, but a giant biker in leather pointed silently to a nearby garage.

Tentatively, she stepped into the murk, lit only by a small work lamp in the back corner. Standing there in the half-light of the garage was a man stripped to the waist, leaning over something as if he was searching the floor for a tool he had dropped. He reached up behind him and pulled his shirt off. She must have drew in a sharp breath, because he turned around and saw her.

"Oil spill," he said with a shrug.

But she barely heard him; his torso was something to behold, from his perfect ivory skin to his strong shoulders tapering down to those taut, narrow abs. His hips indented just below the low-slung waistband of the old jeans he was wearing. But she was drawn away from that toward the vortex of sadness and longing in his eyes. It couldn’t be just about something he had dropped.

She stepped over to him, hand shaking, reaching up to cradle the back of his head. He tilted his eyes down to regard her, put a brave smile on his face, and all of a sudden his youth and newness changed to fire, to pure intensity, and everything was okay for a second as he kissed her, without restraint, without hesitation. Suddenly, the sensation of happiness and comfort she had felt when she was with Kyle had returned.

But there was something else mingled with it: pure male desire. Like he had wanted it all along, like she did as well. It wasn’t possible, but in the kiss, she felt herself enveloped in him, wholly contained. In a second, he had her arched over the dark leather seat of the bike he was working on, his rough, oily hands sliding down into her panties. She submitted as he brushed his fingers over her clit, then his entire hand. Her body practically leaped into his touch, at the longing to feel everything, to feel every part of the man who had come to fascinate and enthrall her. It was at last time. She moaned, breathless, high on adrenaline, and wet, so wet--

He broke away. She reached out and touched nothing. The space where he had been was empty. Even his voice sounded leagues away.

"I'm sorry," he said, and hung his head. "It's too late.” The longing, sadness tempered with rage in his eyes was a physical hurt. "You should have come sooner."

The garage fell away and she was on her knees on the side of the road, a familiar cold wind battering at her, and a dark, lifeless form at her feet, black blood oozing.

"No." Her mouth tried to shape the words, but, like always, no sound came.

She looked down, and she saw it now--the mussed blond hair, the full lips, the fair young face still, lifeless, staring at nothing.

Only… it wasn’t Kyle this time.

It was Joe.

She screamed. Not loudly but deep in her throat, coming out more like a gurgle. But it was enough to wake herself up. It had been a dream, of course. She should have been ashamed, but the terror was as real as anything. Her heart was rattling against her ribcage and her body, causing the sheets to be damp with sweat. She dug her fingers into the quilt and pulled it up to her chin, cocooning herself.

Downstairs, a scraping noise. Except for her heart, she froze under the blankets, keeping utterly, impossibly still while listening. It was her imagination; it had to be. She was simply acting crazy and paranoid. Her dream had clouded her judgment.

But no. There was somebody on the porch, she realized with terror. Where was Colt; Holly? Didn't they hear it? The house was dark; everyone had gone to bed. She flipped on the lights and threw open the door to the hallway, hands brushing the wall blindly for a light switch. She couldn't stay in this room, walls closing in on her like a coffin. She needed air. She paused on the stairway landing, noticing a shapeless black form standing below. It grabbed her arm. She shrieked and tried to wrench away.

"Quiet, you're going to wake up the whole house," he whispered, laughing, and pulled her into him. When she didn't respond, only stood limp in his arms, trembling, his demeanor changed. "Are you okay, Ruby? What happened? I didn't mean to scare you."

Her cheek touched the black leather of his jacket, and her fingers curled around the cold metal of the open zipper. She inhaled, exhaled. It was all fresh air and night, and it was real. A living, breathing man, here in her arms. Not a dream. Not too late. “What--”

"Just tell me it's really you," she cut him off, knowing he wouldn't understand.

But somehow, he did. "It's me," he whispered. “Who else would it be?”

She guided his arms around her, and he didn't hesitate to follow her lead, his hands curling around her waist and brushing across the small of her back, then further down, cupping her ass, pressing firmly, almost experimentally. She knew he'd wanted to do this for a while, days maybe, and yet had resisted. She didn't mind. It comforted her and she eased into it like warm water.

"I'm sorry," she breathed into his chest. "I'm sorry I didn't come earlier. There's still time, isn't there? Please don't tell me I'm too late."

"What are you talking about?" there was whisper of amusement in his voice, and that, too, was inimitable, unmistakably Joe.

She melted into it, reached behind to touch his hands, cold from the outdoors as they always seemed to be. She slid her fingers past the inner arm with the tattoo that she couldn't see but knew was there, up to the curve of the broad shoulders that now felt so solid, so real, under her touch. No dream. “Tell me there’s still time. Please.”

"Of course there's time, Ruby. There always will be."

"How do I know that?”

He paused for a second. "What do you want me to do? Do you--" He sounded confused and at the same time, resolute--maybe he thought this was a dream, too.

She replied automatically. "Kiss me."

"Are you sure?"

She knew he wasn't just asking to be polite; she was spooked, and he knew it. He wanted to make sure she was talking out of desire rather than fear. She loved him for that.

"Yes."

He crouched a little, bent his head, then his mouth was covering hers and he was giving her everything she wanted. He pressed her to him tightly, lifted her to her toes, then off the floor completely as his tongue probed her mouth, as far as he dared. He lightly bit the corner of her lip, playfully at first, but he seemed to fall deeper into the kiss. She closed her eyes, coasting along with it, not daring to think about what might happen when he pulled away. "Tell me what you want, Ruby," he sighed into her ear.

"I want--" His hand was cold, his fingers rough, but beneath all of that, there was a warmth.

She could feel it. She wanted it on her; in her. Locking her fingers into his, he squeezed, and her clit cried out to be handled and to feel it all. "I want you to touch me. Here." She led him down her body, and his hand slid below the waistband of her pajama pants. The fit of his hand in the temple between her legs seemed god-given perfect, and the friction of his fingers on the skin of her inner thighs made the wetness and heat seemed to radiate out, like a rainforest, lush with fruit.

"Let's go to the bed," he whispered. She led the way back into the guest room, and sank down into the nest of blankets, still messy from where she'd thrashed; but it was welcoming now.

Nobody turned a light on, but she knew when he quickly took his jacket off and tossed it away. In the darkness, he eased himself down over her and replaced his hands where he'd left off, arching his broad shoulders and cradling his head in the hollow of her neck and, at the same time, increasing the pressure of his fingers between her clit.

Almost bucking, she peeled down her panties and pajamas, kicking them down to her ankles. Shaking them all the way off, he grabbed at the bottom hem of her camisole, pulling at in vain. She smiled and fumbled for it with one hand, getting it up almost up over her head, where he took over and got it the rest of the way off, tossing it across the room.

He dove down to her breasts, where he must have noticed how rock-hard her sensitive nipples were. He touched his mouth gently to one and she could feel it curl up instantaneously. It sent tiny tendrils of lightning over the surface of her skin, radiating out and down. One of his hands touched her navel, parting it like a flower, bending down to inhale it like a hummingbird.

Meanwhile, she reached up behind his head and grabbed one of his thick locks of hair, squeezing where the dampness of his exertion met the coldness of the outdoors, breathing in his scent of earth and sun and gravel and the wind of the road he loved so much, to the deepest place, as her legs went stiff, urging every sensation to converge there.

He worked his lips and tongue down the center line of her torso to the top of her pubic mound, and she arched her back and squeezed him tighter, letting out a natural sigh of bliss. She wasn't consciously urging him on--it was instinct. His lips were warm and perfectly soft now, leaving a slight dampness on her bare skin, open to the night. She was vulnerable, unshielded, and unarmored, as she had vowed never to be.

He could touch and kiss every inch of her; she had no respite. As nude as the day she was born, she pulled him closer, and his touch was indeed like being in some warm womb, swimming, reborn in him.

She placed her hand on top of his, curling her fingers over his, guiding him to the place where the pressure was starting to build, throbbing, small now, like a seed beginning to sprout gorgeous leaves.

"More," she breathed, urging him on. "Higher."

He parted his mouth to kiss her neck gently, then nip at her ear, claiming her with his teeth, and she clenched her jaw with the pressure of it all. If he wanted to claim ownership of her, that was okay, and it was a release for her.

It was a new kind of freedom, to be free in him. The sting of the bite coupled with the thrust of her hand on his, urging him deeper, and she could hear the intake of breath to his lungs. He drew in air as he concentrated, taking it so seriously, determined, she knew, to get it right, to touch her the way she needed him to. The way they both realized she had craved since the very first time she turned around in her apartment and found her body crashing into his.

She wanted to feel every ounce of his weight coming to bear on her, his weight pushing her to the edge. She let out another little cry as he followed her lead, urging him further still. There had to be more, and her hands clamped down on whatever she could reach--his hair, the back of his neck, the t-shirt he still wore as she dug her fingers, claws into him. She went stiff, but she poured into him as the pounding increased, her walls broke down; he was going to take her there.

"Yes."
She finished with a spontaneous cry of glee, then sighed, the pressure draining away like a pool of clear water. She sucked in lungfuls of air. Her eyes had been closed, and she hadn't even realized it. When she opened them, blinking like a newborn child, she regarded the sweet amber pupils gazing back at her, eyelashes blinking as if to ask if everything was okay.

Her fingers were shaking as she fumbled for the waistband of his dark-denim jeans, for the button and zipper, but he was ahead of her already. Their hands met as he quickly stripped himself down, his clothes ready to come off of his pulsating cock, whose contours she could already feel almost bursting through the fabric. She'd done it; just fingering her, bringing her to the edge, had gotten him hard as steel, and that delighted her. Joe reached over to the bedside table and pulled out a condom from the drawer.

"Good god, who uses this room usually?" she breathed through laughter.

"Me," he joked as unwrapped it. "No, but seriously. Colt, after causing three unintended pregnancies himself, looks after his houseguests."

Taking the opportunity, he threw off his damp t-shirt, and it thrilled her. The vision that he was now almost as bare as she was, pillowed in the warm privacy of this quiet room. There was silence for a second as he rolled on the condom, but he perched on his knees, and pitched forward, hands braced on either side of her. He flipped up the lock of hair that hung down over his eye and bent down again.

"Things will change if we do this," he murmured in her ear, a warning, but also a question. "Not in a bad way. But they will. You know that, right?"

"Everything changes," she replied. "I have to change, too."

The corner of his lip turned up at that; a nod, a pact between them, as she readied herself for his entrance. It was as primed as a flooded river, its walls engorged with fluid, and she could feel the way it took up Joe as she moved up to tunnel inside her. She arched again, letting out a little puff of air, almost a grunt, as he crossed the threshold, claws digging into the sheets. The way he fit inside her was nothing short of ideal, and now that she could see him as he thrusted, characteristically patient and serious. Encouraging him, she reached up to caress his shoulders, delighting in the tautness and the intentness of the arch of his back over her as he rose and lowered.

"I'm close," he whispered. A few strands of hair had gotten caught in Ruby's mouth and, amid his thrusting, he reached up to gently remove them and tuck them behind her ear. "Open your eyes, Ruby," he said in a voice that was both labored and ecstatic. "I want to see them."

He kissed her as he came, as if to share it and transfer the energy of the release. She took it in, all of him, as he collapsed gently onto her chest, her fingers flexing on the warm, smooth dampness of his upper back, the broad shoulders that she knew had borne so much.

She wanted to ask if they could bear more, if they could bear her and all of her ghosts. Would that be too much? Not for tonight, she decided, as she cradled her head where it had started, at peace in this strange new realm.