Three Hot Wishes (Fantasy Come to Life - Magic in the Real World Novel) (12 page)

Chapter 23

"So," said a biker a few minutes later, inclining his chin at the empty seat across the table from me. "Is that seat taken?"

He was a big, bald guy that looked like he'd been in his share of bar fights. He wore dirty jeans and an old wife beater, and I couldn't help but notice the words
Live to Ride
across his chest, high up beneath his non-existent neck.

That could well be the title of Stinger's book
, I thought.
You should write that down before you forget it.

That was when I realized that, although I'd made sure to leave the hotel room with my keycard and wallet, my purse was still back there, along with my phone, my notebook, and everything else I'd brought with me.

Great.

I gave the big bruiser a little smile, hopefully not enough of one to entice him into thinking he had a chance with me. I was here for one man, and one man only. "Sorry," I said. "I'm expecting someone."

He shrugged my words away and sat down. "I'll keep the seat warm for him. When he shows up, we'll see how badly he wants it back."

I looked around for help, but the bikers that were already there just looked on in relative silence. The bartender kept her head down, no doubt telling herself that what she could pretend she didn't hear she could pretend she couldn't have stopped.

I thought about simply bolting, but I didn't think it had come to that just yet. Besides, there was no way of knowing how this guy would react. If I could talk him into leaving me along, that would be preferable. Of course, if guys like him listened to reason, they probably wouldn't be so eager to ride around the freeway at a hundred miles an hour in an open vehicle with a motor between their legs and no helmet...

"They call me Bambi."

Of course they did. "Really?"

He shrugged. "Hit a baby deer on my first ride. Splattered."

I made a face. "That's terrible.

Bambi nodded. "Sure was. Fucked my bike up."

"Bambi, can I ask you a question?"

"Only if I can ask you one."

I thought that over for a second before agreeing. "Yeah, okay. Me first though. Have you ever heard of a biker gang or club or whatever called the Gravedigger's Union?" That had been what I'd called Stinger's fictional band of mischief makers, and I wanted to know if someone other than myself could verify whatever changes I was able to make to the world.

"Nope. Sound like a bunch of pussies, if you ask me. My turn."

"Fire away."

I sly grin spread across his broad face, and I felt my blood run cold. "Tell me, girlie, are you going to come over her and give me some lovin', or am I going to have to come over there and get some for myself?"

I planted my feet and curled my fingers around the edge of the table, getting ready to flee. Before I could, a man stepped in behind Bambi and clapped his big hand on the bald guy's shoulder. "You better watch what you say to my woman," he said, his voice full of menace. "I'm going to look unkindly on that sort of talk, if you keep it up."

Bambi jumped to his feet, knocking over his chair and whirling to face Stinger. I watched my creation and my harasser stare each other down. Bambi had about eighty pounds on Stinger, but the President of the once fictional and now I thought very much real Gravediggers' Union was all muscle. Bambi looked flabby and out of shape standing next to him, and when he swung on Stinger and caught a fist in the throat for his troubles, the bigger man looked like he knew he'd already lost.

Bambi went over with a crash, landing heavily on the floorboards.

"Thanks!" I said, standing up and taking a step toward Stinger. "I was worried that you weren't going to show up. I should have known you'd have a dramatic sense of timing and-" I stopped talking when I saw the look in Stinger's eyes.

He spun on his heel and launched a vicious kick into Bambi's ample midsection. I could hear the air rush out of the big man's prone body, and when the steel-toed motorcycle boot Stinger was wearing connected again, the crisp crunch of broken ribs greeted my ears.

"Stop!" I yelled, trying to drag Stinger away. I may as well have decided to go outside and pull the building itself over a couple of inches, because this guy wasn't moving. "You'll kill him."

"Not likely," Stinger growled. "Just give him some time to think about what it means when he tries to take what's mine."

I was still hanging on to Stinger, trying my best to tug him toward the door. "Let's go before the cops come," I said, doing my best to talk some sense into him. I was pretty sure that a guy like him would have a record, though that would be interesting if the cops tried to run the ID or the fingerprints of a man who hadn't existed until I'd written him into being a couple of hours ago.

Stinger looked at me like I was a fool, which I guess is exactly the look I deserved. "They'll never call cops to this place. Nobody here would get away with a shiny new pair of handcuffs around their wrists, and that's only
if
the boys in blue had the
cojones
to step foot inside, which I doubt." He picked a place and then smashed his boot into Bambi's crotch one last time, prompting a sick groan from the big man and a chorus of sympathetic noises from the men watching the beat down.

"Okay," he said, as if he'd finished a job that had simply needed doing, like painting a room or dotting the last 'i' and crossing the last 't' on his tax return after signing
Stinger
in a scrawling script. "Where to next?"

Good question. I knew he'd have a big, black motorcycle out there waiting to whisk us away somewhere. The freedom a man like this could provide had seemed like exactly what I'd needed when I'd written him, but now that I was meeting him in the flesh I was quickly understanding that some things are better left on the pages of a bodice-ripping, hunk-straddling romance novel.

Because that wasn't
real life
. And more importantly, it wasn't meant to be. I'd always been such an arrogant cow about it, looking down my nose at the people who paid my bills and put food on my table by buying my books in their thousands.

But my fans knew all along what I was just beginning to see. The worlds I built for them were fantasy. They went there to escape for a little while, and not because their own reality was dull or boring.

No, they were smart enough to know that, if things in the book got bad, if the biker that grabbed the heroine and dragged her out of the bar got too scary or real, they could always close the book and come back to it later or simply choose another.

I didn't have that luxury, and when Stinger shoved me out into the night ahead of him and pointed at his bike, which was indeed big and indeed black and indeed a Harley, I felt a little like Bambi back there, kicked in the guts when I was down.

Chapter 24

"Where are we going?" I asked.

He shrugged. "That's for you to say."

"Really?" I'd half been expecting him to drag me off by the hair, especially after the way he'd hurried me out of the bar.

He must have seen the look on my face, because he said, "That back there was just to get you out of danger. A woman like you'll get eaten alive by those lowlifes. Stick with me, and nobody will hassle you ever again."

I nodded. True or not, the very idea of not having to worry about getting hit on by jackasses and wolf-whistled by guys in hard hats and high visibility vests had a certain appeal. "Let's ride for a bit," I said.

He grinned. "What about your car?"

"It can stay here. Like you said, nobody will bother it, right?"

He nodded and threw one long leg over his Harley, motioning me over. "You ever been on the back of one of these things?"

"My dad used to ride," I told him. It was the truth, too. "That was years and years ago, but I sort of imagine you don't really forget. Like riding a bike and all of that, right?"

"Exactly."

He held the motorcycle steady while I climbed on behind him. I'd been a little kid of eight or nine the last time I'd ridden, and I wasn't prepared for how shockingly intimate the shared seat had become. I had no choice but to press my body against his, and when he gunned the engine and opened up the throttle, the rumble the bike sent through my body lit me up like a firecracker.

I'd always heard stories, anecdotally of course, of lonely housewives cranking up the spin cycle on their washing machines and perching on top of them as a way of spicing up their boring afternoons. I didn't know if that worked or not, but I had a feeling that I was experiencing something like that effect cranked up to eleven. My pussy was crying out for some attention, and the way I had to sit, with my pelvis basically pushed against the tight ass he was hiding in his jeans was making me ready for anything with him.

That's what I told myself, though if I were willing to be more honest I'd have admitted that being so near to a man like him was intimidating. He had the dash and dare of a guy who takes whatever he wants, and I didn't see him going the 'wine me, dine me' route.

"Take me to the clubhouse," I said, having a vague idea of how these things worked from books and TV. Surely, if my imagination could somehow make a figment into a man, it could give him a decent place to cash as well, right?

I held on even tighter as the Harley roared even louder and we peeled away from the bar, his tires throwing up a plume of smoke as we raced away.

It didn't take long to get back on the freeway, and I saw him swing the big bike east, toward the mountains. The sun going down behind us, throwing our shadows so far ahead of the speeding motorcycle that it felt like we'd end up chasing them forever.

I held on tight, wrapping my arms around him and enjoying the warmth of his broad back pressed against my breasts. He smelled of leather and oil and gasoline and some sort of spicy aftershave that tickled the back of my throat deliciously.

For the first time in a long time I found that I wasn't really worried about where we were going. I wasn't even
that
concerned with where I'd been. Someone would find the car and have it towed back to my house. If not, then too bad. It was insured, and I'd buy something else. Or not.

The bottom line was, it didn't matter. The world that lay ahead of me could be anything I wanted it to be. Stinger was as free as any creature alive, and as I pressed my face to the back of his jacket and breathed him in, finally willing to be convinced that the man I'd written about was honest to god flesh and blood and not some crazy delusion or apparition, so many of the worries I'd been carrying with me blew away on the wind.

I closed my eyes and let the world rush at me. I wasn't thirsty. I wasn't hungry. I wasn't hurt, or tired. My body was still tingling from the thrum of the motorcycle I straddled, and the press of Stinger's muscled body still lit me up like a Christmas tree, but other than that I was empty in the best possible way I could be.

I let the ride carry my mind away as quickly and as easily as the Harley swept away my body, determined to live in the moment.

And it worked, for the most part. In fact, if it weren't for the niggling thoughts of David, I’d have been able to lose myself to the power of Stinger.

David.

Just the thought of him somewhere out there, left behind with all of the shit I couldn't deal with, broke my heart. I'd never really cleared up the crazy text I'd sent him, and I know he'd thought something
very
different was going to happen in the bedroom then what actually went down.

His feelings for me had always seemed like a weakness, a door he could ever quite close that I could use against him during negotiations or arguments or whatever.

But there, on that back of that Harley being spirited away to God knows where, I wondered why I couldn't get David, of all people, out of my head...

Chapter 25

When we arrived at the clubhouse, it was everything I'd imagined it would be. I suppose that made sense, but I still wasn't over the way that these new places had the eerie feeling of familiarity to them. I'd never been inside, but I knew without a doubt that if I went in and looked left I'd see a sign that threatened non-members with castration if they didn't turn around and leave. On my right, there'd be a security camera high up in the corner of the ceiling, locked in a little cage of black bars to prevent someone from getting drunk or unruly and chucking a beer bottle at it.

Stinger pulled the motorcycle up to the front of the row of bikes that already waited and backed it into his spot. Once it was motionless, I did my best to gracefully hop off, looking around once more even though I knew every detail, down to the faded paint and the sagging roof that couldn't have been more than a couple of years away from desperate repairs.

"So," he said, giving me a wink that made it very clear what was on his mind. "Are you sure you're ready for this?"

I tossed him an as-ready-as-I'll-ever-be look and shrugged. "Should I be worried?"

Stinger frowned. He didn't really know how to answer that. Well, I guess he
did
, but it was pretty clear that the answer wasn't going to be anything other than the truth, and he didn't want to scare me off.

Because these guys knew only one way to have a woman. Rough. Hard and fast. They took their pleasure and they gave it too, but it was a primal passion that scared me much more than I was willing to admit.

"Listen," he said, "you need love. I get it. I guess everybody does, on one level or another. But you also need something I can't give you. When I ride out tomorrow I'll be through with you, and if our paths happen to cross again it won't be the love-at-first-sight romance bullshit you're thinking of.

I shrugged again and looked away. He was right. Of all the encounters I'd imagined myself having by way of 'research', the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am sort was the least on my bucket list. I needed a man to want to stick around, and I
certainly
didn't want to worry about him fooling around on me.

Stinger nodded, and I saw that there was at least a touch of compassion in his otherwise worldly gaze. "Go on in there and write me someone to fuck, okay? Because it can't be you. To tell you the truth, I'd probably break you anyway."

I didn't argue. Stinger was giving me an out, and I'd be a fool not to take it. The freedom of the open road was an infectious thing, but what these clubs didn't bother to remind you was that the women stayed home. They cooked and cleaned, just like women everywhere did, and enjoyed very little of the raucous, badass lifestyle that appealed to so many.

"There's a room around the side," he told me. "We use it to give the guys on probation a place to look at porn and call the people who owe us money. Use it. Get in there and write your way out of this, or I'm going to have to find you and share you with the guys inside the clubhouse."

"Really?"

He nodded. "Like I said, that's the way these things go. You wanted gritty and real, not me. Some girls live for the sort of thing that could happen next, but I can already tell you're not one of them."