Taming Blaze (2 page)

Top down on the convertible, the scarf I had wrapped so tightly around my hair threatening to unravel itself in the wind, I pressed harder on the gas pedal as I meandered down the scenic Pacific Highway on my way back home.
Home. 
Just like any other normal college student during summer break.  Except things would never be normal for me.  Not as long as I was my father’s daughter.

I could only imagine what
my father would do now, when he saw what Billy had done.  The trouble is, by going home I wasn’t sure whether I was signing Billy’s death sentence or my father’s.

The blonde in bed beside me stirred. 
What the fuck was her name again?  Jessie?  Jessica?  Jane?  Something with a J.  I hope her name is "Judy". I've always wanted to fuck a "Judy,"
I thought.
  My head pounded like someone was driving a nail through my temple, and I tried to focus. 
Shit.
I needed to take it easier on the partying when we made runs up the coast.  I was getting too old for this.  I went to take a leak, still groggy, but when I came back, I definitely started to perk up at the the sight of the blonde.

She was sprawled across
the dirty sheets, her ass bare, tribal tramp stamp snaking across her lower back, accentuating her curves.  Not that they needed accentuating.  She had a nice ass.  Of course, I didn't remember it from last night.  Not at all.  This morning, though- today was a new day, even with my splitting headache.  My cock was getting hard just looking at her.

I slid my hand over her rump and she looked over her shoulder at me, face tired. 
Yeah, I’d definitely worn beer goggles last night.
 
No matter.  I didn’t need to look at her face.

“Aw, baby,” she said.  “Aren’t you tired?”

“I was,” I said.  “Now I’m not.”  I pressed my cock against her so she could feel my hardness.  Reaching around, I cupped her breast, feeling her nipple stiffen at my touch.  She moaned softly, and I knew I had her.

I rolled over, reaching for a condom
, and she watched me over her shoulder as I unrolled it on my length.  She wasn’t a
terrible
looking girl- still young, probably early thirties, a few years younger than me, with a good figure.  Not like some of the girls you’d see around the clubs, their tits sagging to their stomachs.

Fuck.
My head was pounding.

The door swung open, and Tank stood, framed by
the doorway.  “Get up, Blaze.”

“Hey!” The blonde’s voice was shrill.  “Can’t you see we’re about to fuck here?”

I grinned.  “Get the fuck out, Tank.”

“Itchy’s ready to go.”

“Head out.  I’ll catch up with you guys later.”

“You sure, Veep
?” he asked, not caring that I was lying in bed with a naked girl, holding my cock.  If I had to sit here and converse with him, I was going to lose my boner.

“Yeah, I’m sure," I said, doing nothing to keep the irritation out of my voice.  “Get the fuck out of here.”  I heard the door shut behind him.

Back to the business at hand.  I ran my thumb over the girl’s nipple again, listening to her moan softly as I cupped her breast.  Her tits were nice, soft and natural, not like a lot of the girls who hung out at the club.  The club whores were mostly strippers or girls who wanted a free sample, either of the merchandise or the bikers.  I hated that, more than anything.  I might booze up a lot, smoke some weed, do a line of coke every so often, but real drugs?  Meth?  Not my scene.  That shit would kill you.  I had way too many other potential ways of being killed to overdose or have that shit eat out my brain.

“Lik
e what you feel?” she asked.  “I bet you don’t see natural tits like these on the girls in L.A.” 

“No way, baby,” I said.  “These are Palo Alto originals.”  She liked that.  She would have liked anything I said.  She was ready and willing, eager to please,
probably hanging around the clubhouse angling to be someone’s Old Lady.  It wouldn’t be mine.

I nuzzled her neck, kissing the back of it as I slid my hand down the length of her body, slipping my fingers between her legs. 
Nice.

“You ready?” I whispered.

“I'm always ready for you, Blaze,” she said.

Pushing her legs apart, I plunged my finger
s into her, spreading her.  She was tight. I wished I remembered last night.

“Here.”  I pulled her by the waist, helping her to her knees as I got behind her, my cock rigid.

“Oh yeah,” she said, looking over her shoulder.  “Come on, Blaze.”  I teased her opening with my cock, and pushed into her, entering her hard.  She threw her head back as I began fucking her from behind, her hair falling down her back.

Gripping her waist tightly, I held her as I gathered momentum, my thrusts short and quick.  I wanted it fast and hard, didn’t give a shit whether she came or not.  But she moaned anyhow,
apparently liking what I was doing.  She reached up to rub herself as I fucked her, my movements hard and rough.  But the rougher I was, the more turned on she was, and her moans grew louder as I plunged deeper inside her.

"Yeah, baby," she said.  "Do it j
ust like that."

I smacked her ass cheek, the flesh jiggling from the impact of my blow, and heard her scream, but not from pain.  Her muscles clenched down around me as she came, triggering my orgasm, and heat flowed through me.  When I was finished, I pulled out of her, slapping her on the rump.

"That was good, Jessica."

"Fuck you," she said.  "It's Brandi."

"Sorry, Brandi," I said.  "See? That's how good the sex was.  It made me forget your name."

"Nice try," she said, pouting.  She reached for a cigarette on the table beside the small bed, lighting up as she pulled the dirty sheet around her waist.  She blew smoke, the smell contributing to the cacophony of odors in the small room.  The room was a crash pad in the clubhouse, a room for guests of the MC or a fuck pad for the brothers.  If someone r
an a black light over it, the whole place would turn white.  It was filthy.  I tossed the used condom in the trash and looked up at her.

"Sorry, Brandi.  No offense."

She blew smoke at me.  "None taken."

"I have to shower a
nd jet.  Need to get back to LA.”

She pointed toward the door.

I wound down the road, hugging the coastline, the bright blue ocean stretching for miles beyond the cliffs.  Lucky for me, it was all clear skies and sunshine; I’d driven this before when I’d had to inch along the road at barely a crawl because the fog was so thick, worried I might miss a hairpin turn and plummet to my death.  Sure, I could have driven the highway back to Los Angeles, but I needed the distraction of the scenery.  The drive would buy me time, time to figure out what to tell my father,
how
to tell him.  I wasn’t in the best frame of mind to be driving.  I wasn’t in the best frame of mind to meet
him,
either- the man who would change everything.

I zipped down the stretch of road as it opened up, no longer on the wi
nding cliffside death trap area of highway.  I flicked on my turn signal, about to pass a minivan packed to the brim with kids and suitcases, a family probably headed on vacation, and pulled out around the car.  I glanced at them as I passed.  They didn’t know how lucky they were to have that.  I would have given anything to be loaded into a minivan when I was a kid, driving to a vacation cabin to make s’mores with my normal parents, with the dad who was a boring accountant instead of the head of an organized crime ring.  The kids in that car looked like they would be singing songs around a campfire, not refilling their criminal father’s bourbon glass while he gave cryptic orders to his thugs.

“Shit!” I yelled, flooring the gas pedal to pull ahead of the minivan.  From my peripheral vision I saw the guy on the bike veer to the shoulder, and I looked in the rearview mirror, watching him make it back on the road.  My heart was thumping wildly in my chest.  I had nearly hit
him.

I should pull over
and make sure he’s okay,
I thought.  Then,
yeah, that’s what I need to do.  Pull over and make sure some biker is okay.  That’s how you get killed.
  That thought was ironic, given what had just happened with Billy.  Besides, I hadn’t actually hit the biker.  But it was a reminder that I needed to get my head screwed on straight. Maybe I shouldn’t be driving home by myself after all.

My heart pounded in my chest.  I breathed in deeply, big calming breaths, trying to get my heart rate
to return to normal. 
It was just a scare, that’s all.

It took a half hour for my heart rate to come back down and for me to feel less on edge.  I wasn’t usually the panicky type, but today was just not my day.  I was exhausted already. 
I should look at finding a nice hotel and spend the night relaxing in a bubble bath with a glass of wine.  Maybe at the bed and breakfast up the road, the place I'd stayed before. 
That might be exactly what the doctor ordered.

I drove on until I saw the red light on the dashboard.  How had I not noticed the low gas light before?  Five miles left until empty.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Now this day could not get any worse.  There were no billboards, and I tried to remember if there were any towns along here, anything that might have a gas station.  Was there a gas station before the hotel?  I fumbled for my cell phone on the center console, sliding my thumb across the screen. 
No signal.
Of course I had no signal.

So, I was going to be stranded on the side of the road.  Then my father would send one of his men
up to school to find me gone.  Maybe next my mother’s killer would come along and get rid of me too.  After all that had happened with Billy last night- now this?  My father would flip out.  He’d insist that I have an escort everywhere, and who could blame him?  The idea of being under house arrest on top of everything else struck me as hysterical.  I felt a giggle build up in my chest, and I started to laugh, first just a little and then uncontrollably.

When the car actually sputtered, jerking as it came to a stop, I was resigned to my fate.  Apparently I was just a magnet for shit right now.  Checking my phone for a signal again, I confirmed I was in a dead zone
. 
Perfect.  What the fuck am I going to do now?
  I tried to calm myself, think through the options.  Okay.  I could hike to a gas station or sit here and wait for a stranger to help me.  Both seemed like choices that involved getting picked up by an axe-murdering serial killer, so they were equally stellar.

I leaned forward, resting my head against the steering wheel, and breathed out. 
Calm.
  I breathed in. 
Relax.
  I practiced the deep breathing I had learned in yoga.  Yoga didn’t exactly prepare me for this.  I breathed in and my breath turned into sobs.  Deep, heaving, body-racking sobs.  Once I started crying, I couldn’t stop, tears streaming down my face.  I suddenly felt like I was gasping for air, choking.  In my mind's eye, Billy's face flashed in front of mine, inches away, and I felt his hands, a vise grip around my neck, squeezing the life from me. 

I can’t breathe.  I can’t breathe.

Pulling at the door handle, I stumbled out of the car, falling to my knees in the dirt and overgrown grass on the side of the road.  I heard an engine, and knew I should be out there flagging down the vehicle, but I felt bile in the back of my throat, and then the contents of my stomach came up, burning.  Even after I’d vomited, I knelt there dry-heaving and sobbing.

When I finally stopped, I wiped my mouth with my hand.  My nose dripped, and I brushed it against the back of my hand, sniffling. 
Gross.
  The last time I’d cried was at my mother’s funeral.  I felt like I’d just spilled out years worth of tears.  It was like I’d expelled everything I’d been building up since I was fourteen. 

I spit on the ground. 
My mouth tastes like crap.  I need a piece of gum
, I thought
.
  Standing, I brushed the dirt from my jeans and straightened the scarf I’d tied around my neck earlier.

Fuck my life
.

There he was, the biker I’d nearly side-swiped before, standing by my car, helmet in his hand.  Motorcycles weren’t exactly quiet.  How had I not heard him pull up?  How could I have been that absorbed in my own shit that I hadn’t noticed?

Oh, crap.
  That meant he had to have seen me crying and throwing up.  I felt heat rise to my face as I flushed with embarrassment.  That was just great.  My face was scarlet, I was sure.  Then I looked at him.
Really
looked at him.
  Holy shit, he is hot. 
That made this doubly embarrassing.

Blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, blue eyes, chiseled jawline.  He was
n't hot the way Billy had been attractive, compensating for some inner insecurity with all his pricey things.  This guy was different.  Absolutely nothing about him said money.  But everything about him screamed raw masculinity.  I had a brief fantasy of what he would look like naked, wondered whether the tattoos that snaked up his forearm covered the rest of his body as well, thought about how it would feel to have his body pressed against mine.  What the hell was wrong with me that I was thinking about this biker that way, hours after Billy had choked me?

Way to go, Dani,
I thought. 
Congratulations.  You officially have the world’s worst taste in men.  They should give out awards for that.

I wiped my nose again, aware I had to be standing there in front of him covered in vomit and snot.  This day could not get any worse. 
Who cares what he thinks, anyway?

“You okay?” he asked.

“I ran out of gas,” I said, as if that would explain the vomiting and crying.

“Okay.  But are you al
l right?”  He gestured toward the grass where I had knelt.  So he had seen everything.

“Yes.” I paused. “No. I’m having a really bad day.”  I half expected him to laugh at me, the rich girl in the Mercedes, whining about having a rough life.  But he didn’t laugh.  He
just nodded, looking at me.

“I can see that.”

“I’m sorry about nearly running you off the road before.  I didn’t see you at all.  I was going to stop, but you were still riding…”  My voice trailed off, and I knew my excuse sounded lame, even as I spoke.  I felt naked under the intensity of his stare.

“Okay then,” he said.  “You wa
nt a lift to the gas station?  I'm pretty sure there’s one a couple miles down the road here.”

“That would be great.  Thank you,” I said.  “I’m Dani.”

“Blaze.”

Blaze?  What the hell kind of a name was Blaze?
I opened my mouth, then closed it again.  “Blaze?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for the help.”

He nodded, and I followed him to the motorcycle, a blacked out Harley Crossbones
.  “You ridden a bike before?”

“
A couple of times.”

“Good,” he said.  “Hang on tight.  You have to move with me.”  Move with him. 
That won’t be a problem,
I thought.