Their Forever Home (2 page)

Hell. Who am I kidding? He’s kind of grown on me. Yeah, it’s official. I’m all kinds of fucked up in the head now.

“Why would they take us, Lance? We’re two men without a woman. They shouldn’t let us anywhere near theirs. It’s too dangerous in this world to expose your woman to single men. I’ve seen even good men change when there’s a woman involved,” he said with a snarl.

“It’s still worth a try. If nothing else, we can find a place close by and maybe trade with them for things we don’t have,” Lance argued.

Carver stared at his new self-appointed friend. Lance was a thirty-five-year-old lawyer with sandy-blond hair and blue eyes. He screamed money and success with his waspish good looks that would have passed any Aryan skinhead’s test. Carver wasn’t of that mind at all. He and the MC he’d ridden with hadn’t adopted that type of racism. Despite being called The Rebel Riders, it was rebel against the norm, the social morals of man that crushed their freedoms. Yeah, they’d run some weed, a few guns, and owned a few strip clubs, but they’d kept the hard stuff out of their towns.

Lance’s good-boy looks had fooled him once. Despite his outgoing personality, the man was deadly in a fight and stronger than he looked. Carver had gained a new respect for the man when they’d been jumped by some fuckers who’d wanted their weapons. Carver had more than held his own and stopped one asshole from planting a knife in Lance’s back. Lance was a solid guy, but he had screwed-up ideas and plans.

Those people will take one look at me and refuse to even let us live close by. I’m not angel, and I won’t be changing my stripes this late in the game.

He’d already pretty much decided that once they got close enough to the camp they’d heard about, he would slip away from Lance so the man would have a chance at getting in. If he stuck with the man, they wouldn’t let him in even if Carver walked away. No, that was his plan since Lance was going to steering them in that direction no matter what Carver said.

“Whatever. I’m going to start calling you mule, though,” he said with a half-smile.

“Why? I’m not an ex-biker,” Lance said as his mouth turned down in a frown.

“’Cause you’re stubborn as one.”

“Screw you, Bull. You never did tell me how you got your name,” Lance said with a scowl.

Carver laughed. “Not a story for mixed company, man.”

“What the hell? It’s just you and me.”

Carver sighed. Lance didn’t get it. He was too normal to deal with his kind of shit or his past. But, if he didn’t tell him, Lance would drive him crazy about it.

“A road name is like a nickname that sticks with you for life. Most guys in a club would never even know your real name. It’s given to you by another club member based on something that happens on a ride or at the club. Mine was given to me because of two things.” Carver wished he had a smoke. Those had long been gone, though. There was nothing much left in any of the stores and houses worth taking anymore.

“I tend to be like a bull in a china shop. I bulldoze over everything and anyone in my path when I’m on a rampage or a mission. I don’t back down and I don’t settle,” he said, looking at the other man.

“Yeah. I can see that. What’s the other reason?” Lance asked.

Carver grinned. “First time I decided to play with one of the sweet butts who hung around the club, we were having a party for one of the guys coming home from overseas. I’d refrained from doing any of the girls at the club when I first got patched in. Wanted to figure out who was who and how it all worked. By the time the party for Shaggy rolled around, I’d pretty much figured out who I wanted to steer clear of and who wouldn’t be so bad to spend some intimate time with.” He stopped and picked up the canteen to take a sip of the refreshing water. Talking made him thirsty. The only good thing about settling down in one place for very long was that he could set up a distillery to make some home brew.

“Anyway, I grabbed T.J. and let her go down on me. When she pulled my dick out, she fell back on her ass and yelled. It grabbed several of the guy’s attention, and everyone laughed at how T.J. had gotten bowled over by the size of my cock. She told them I was hung like a bull and she wasn’t shoving that down her throat or up her cunt for a million bucks. The name stuck after that,” he said, watching Lance’s reaction to the story.

“Holy shit! Really? Sure as hell don’t want to get in a pissing contest with you then. Sounds like you’d win hands-down,” he said, shaking his head.

It surprised the hell out of Carver. He’d have expected the man to laugh and call him on it, or at the very least not believe him. The bastard kept surprising him every time he thought that he finally had him figured out.

“Come on. Time to move on. We’ve been sitting here so long my ass is numb.” Carver stood up and stretched, popping his neck from side to side.

“Crap, man. That weirds me the hell out every time you do it,” Lance said with a grimace.

“I stiffen up when I’m not moving. Don’t want to start walking without all my parts working at top speed. Too much danger out there to screw up,” he told him.

Lance was built more like a swimmer, or maybe a bicyclist, all lean and sinewy. It meant he didn’t get as stiff as Carver did with his bulked-up body. If he didn’t stretch the kinks out, he’d pay for it later, either with muscle cramps or with screwing up in a fight because he wasn’t loose enough.

“That stream on the map shouldn’t be too much farther now,” Lance said. “We can fill up our canteens and decide on whether to try and cross there or look for a better spot.”

“Water’s going to be nipple-stiffening cold, Lance. It might only be fall but those early snows will be melting now. We’ll have to look for a bridge to get across, no matter how narrow or how shallow it is. A dip in water that cold will give you pneumonia no matter how warm it is out here.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Hope we can find a bridge fairly soon. I don’t want to wait around till the water goes back down to cross it. Once we make it across there, the campground we were told about isn’t far, about twenty miles or so heading northwest,” Lance said.

“Fuck.” Carver was tired of walking. What he wouldn’t give to be back at his old clubhouse sitting back with a beer in his hand and his fingers tangled in some sweet butt’s hair while she swallowed his dick.

“Gonna be a long fucking day.”

“It’s already been a long fucking life,” Lance said almost too softly for Carver to hear.

“What was that, Mule?” he asked, knowing the nickname would piss him off.

“Don’t start with the name, asshole. I’m not one of your biker buddies,” Lance said and started walking without looking back to see if Carver was following or not.

Truth be told, the lawyer had started to grow on him some. Better there were two of them than just one on their own in these times. He just wished it had been one of his family and not a stranger he still wasn’t a hundred percent sure of. Yeah, he’d been there when the knife was coming down, but why? Neither of them had any loyalty to the other. What made Lance step in and almost take the knife for him? That was what bothered him.

They walked for another hour before the sound of water rushing over rocks and through fallen limbs could be heard. It grew louder and louder until it was enough to drown out all of the wildlife around them. When they stepped out onto the bank, Carver wanted to curse at fate. The fucking stream had turned into a river from the melting snows up north. The early snows were melting now that it had warmed up again. No fucking way they could take a dip into that and survive. If they didn’t end up bashed against one of the rocks, they’d die of pneumonia for sure.

“Looks like we follow the stream until we find a place to cross,” Lance said.

“Stream? That’s a fucking river, man. Where do you get stream from?” he asked with a snarl.

“On the fucking map, man. It says stream. I guess they drew the damn thing during the summer when it wasn’t like this. I don’t know. Stop bitching at me like a whiney girl!” Lance glared at him with the map held up.

Carver couldn’t stop it. He grinned. “Well, all right! ’Bout damn time you grew some balls.”

“Fuck off, Carver. Just start walking.” Once again, Lance turned and walked off without seeing if he was going to follow.

They’d gone maybe two hundred yards when Carver caught sight of something in the water. When he stopped and looked, it was gone. He shrugged, figuring it was something that had gotten washed downstream from somewhere.

A hundred yards later, he saw it again, only this time it was caught up in a huge limb that had fallen half in and half out of the water. It just floated there like a piece of fabric caught in the current but unable to float free because of the hold the branches had on it.

Once they’d gotten closer it hit him. That wasn’t some blanket or something. It was a human being clinging to the damn limb, and it looked like they were losing the fight.

“Lance! Someone’s in the river hanging on to that limb. Hurry, man!” Carver took off running as fast as the underbrush would allow. Lance was closer. If anyone made it before the body in the water lost their grip, it would be him. He was generally faster on his feet and was much closer than Carver.

He saw Lance throw himself on the ground at the edge of the river and reach for whoever was still holding fast to the limb. Fuck! It looked like his arm wasn’t quite long enough to reach them.

“Hold back, Lance. I’m coming,” he shouted over the roar of the water.

Just as he reached them, one of the branches the person was holding onto cracked and gave. Lance surged forward and grabbed the arm of the person, and Carver fell onto Lance’s legs to prevent him from ending up in the water with the half-drowned rat he was attempting to save.

“Fucking hero!” Carver screamed as he started pulling on Lance’s legs to bring him back onto solid ground. “You’re fucking heavy, too, asshole!”

“Shut the hell up and get us back on dry ground. The water is fucking freezing!” Lance’s cursing let Carver know the other man was scared but holding it together.

Just as Carver managed to pull them both up on the bank, part of the huge limb Lance had been clinging to gave way, dropping into the swirling water and shooting out into the current. Carver rolled over onto his back, gasping for breath. Pulling Lance, who had to be close to two ten, along with the wet rat he was holding on to had just about ruined him.

Carver rolled back to his stomach and got up on all fours to check on their catch. It was then that he realized their fish had turned out to be a woman—a very wet, very cold, and probably dying, female.

“Well, fuck me.”

Lance couldn’t believe they’d pulled in a woman when he’d grabbed her out of the stream. As soon as he’d gotten close enough to the bank, he’d seen her pale face and frightened hazel eyes, filled with colors like an autumn rainbow. He had seen her slipping away and had made a split-second decision when his arm hadn’t been long enough to reach. He had shoved his body until he was able to grab her arm, and just before he ended up in the icy water, Carver had tackled him, grounding him with his own body.

He figured they both weighed about the same, close to ten, but where Lance had the height at about four inches over the other man, Carver had the brawn with muscles on top of muscles that more than made up for the four inches. His legs were going to feel that mountain that had crashed down on him for a few days.

Even as he looked at the female she closed her eyes and any starch she’d had left in her slipped away. Lance figured being unconscious was better because he figured there was only a slim chance she’d live anyway.

“We’ve got to get her warm, or she’s going to die on us,” he told Carver.

“No shit. Even if we can get her warm, we don’t have any idea how long she’s been in that water. She’s probably going to die anyway, man.” Carver touched her throat and shook his head. “She’s a fucking human popsicle.”

“We need to get these wet clothes off of her.” Lance started trying to wrestle with them, but they were clinging to her like a second skin.

“Not yet, man. It’s cold and we don’t have a lot of time. We have to get her out of this or she definitely won’t make it.”

“Where the hell are we going to find shelter out here?” Lance asked. He wanted to do something, not sit there while the woman died.

“The map showed some caves around this area. We need to find one and get her out of these wet clothes. I’ll find firewood and we can build a fire and get her warmed up.” He wasn’t about to lose hope on her. They hadn’t seen a female in weeks. He hadn’t seen an unclaimed female in longer than he and Carver had even known each other.

“Hell, Mule. She’s not even shivering. You can’t bring someone back from that.” But he helped Lance wrap her in a blanket from his pack. “Fuck. I’ll carry her. You find us that damn cave,” Carver said, picking her up. “And make it damn fast. She’s already soaked through the blanket, and now I’m getting wet.”

Lance ignored him. The man was all snarl. He had to complain about something or he’d admit he was worried about the woman.

While the other man carried the unconscious woman behind him, Lance combed the map, trying to pinpoint their exact location so he could find a direct path to the closest area where he figured there would be caves. They continued following the swollen stream while he did. It felt like hours had passed before he realized they were barely a ten-minute walk from a cave marked on the map.

“Got one! Follow me,” he yelled out with a whoop.

“‘Bout damn time,” Carver snarled. “She’s getting heavy.”

“Don’t you dare drop her,” was all he said as he wound around a particularly thick section of scrub and used his compass to keep walking in the right direction.

After a good ten minutes plus some, the cave came into sight. He was about to run inside to check it out when Carver yelled for him to stop.

“Don’t be stupid, man. There may be wolves or even a mountain lion living inside. We need to build the fire and see if it smokes anything out first.” Carver started to set down his burden, but Lance stopped him.