Underworld Champions (The MC Outlaw Series) (2 page)

As the train lurches around a bend, I’m jolted awake, guilt tickling my mind as I remember my dream. Although, I should probably call it a memo
ry. It was about the night my father died, and how I had secretly hoped that the ambulance wouldn’t make it in time. I was so sick of saving him. So sick of caring for him. I wished him dead so many times. I should probably be happy that he’s gone. But I’m not. I’m just empty. A shell of a human.

The carriage speaker crackles to life and announces that we’re about to stop at Coonabarawong Station. I stand, ready to alight with my bag on my back, and my sunglasses shoved on the top of my head. I rub my hand over the back of my neck, feeling the warmth of the day as my long blonde hair hangs loosely down to my arse. 

Stepping off the train, I take in the absence of a view. Why the motorcycle club is situated in Coonabarawong is beyond me. It’s some old, backwater town that no one in their right mind would ever go to willingly. I can only imagine what the gang looks like. It’s probably full of ancient looking, beer-gut-toting, greasy haired, gap-toothed-losers.

Pulling my glasses over my eyes, I check the hand-drawn map I created from the computers in the library (I couldn’t afford to pay for the printing), and trudge along, my oversized army boots rubbing at my bare feet and giving me blisters in the warmth of the afternoon.

Flies buzz around my face, and I curse my mother for not living in the city. Seriously, who does this club think they are? The Ned Kelly Gang? Perhaps that’s why they called themselves Outlaw Riders and hang out in a shit town like this - they’re trying to emulate Australia’s most infamous gang.

Swatting away the flies, I lift my glasses back onto my head as I look at the residence in front of me. I marked it on my map with an X, like it was some sort of treasure hunt. But it’s no treasure. Not even close. It’s this massive old corrugated iron wool shed (complete with rust marks) surrounded by barbed-wire fences and dirt, with a few tufts of grass here and there for decoration. Massive gum trees tower all around the property, and I swear I see a kangaroo or two jumping in the distance. 

“This place is fucked,” I mumble to myself, rattling at the locked gate, although doubting that anyone will hear me over the music that’s sailing out from inside. The only way you’d know that anyone was even here is because of that music, and the fact that there is a neat row of about twenty Harleys looking pristine, despite their dusty surroundings.

“Is anyone there?” I yell out, expecting that surely, there would be some sort of a lookout guarding the perimeter. But there’s no one. That’s when I hear a
click.

“What the fuck d
o you think you’re doin’?” a male voice asks from behind me, jerking a handful of my hair roughly as he presses the barrel of his gun to the back of my head.

“I…I…” I stammer, feeling frightened for the first time in the last ten years. There’s nothing like the hard metal of a gun to remind you how to feel.

“Fuck off. We don’t need any dirty whores like you hangin’ around.”

He pushes me roughly by my head, causing a pain to shoot up my neck as I stumble sideways. Regaining my footing, I rub at my head where he held my hair and turn back to scowl at him. “Fuck you dickhead. I’m not a fucking whore.”

“Walk,” he commands. Tilting his head in a way that tells me to walk back the way I came.

“Unbelievable,” I mutter to myself. I give him one last filthy look, getting a glimpse of his tattooed arms, displaying the same skull s
ymbol that I saw on my… what do I even call that guy? I guess he’s my step-father? Anyway, it’s the same symbol that was on his cut. I can’t see the back of this guy’s cut, but on the front it says ‘Banger’ so I assume that must be what they call him.

“Leave,” he repeats, his voice even more stern this time.

“Fuck. I’m going. Maybe I just needed to use the bathroom,” I say over my shoulder as I walk away.

“Piss behind a fuckin’ tree.”

Shaking my head, I trudge my way down the street, pulling out my makeshift map once again to find a way to the other address my mother gave me. It’s a little further out, but I’m assuming that this one must be her house.

I walk in the heat for a good forty-five minutes, being plagued by the incessant buzzing of flies and the pain from the blis
ters on my feet before I finally find it. It’s an old, sky blue, weatherboard house, with an overgrown lawn and uncared for garden. I snap the dried stem of a dead rose bush as I make my way up the cracked concrete path to the front door.

I knock, but I don’t expect anyone
to answer. I’m fairly sure my mother is probably at the compound where I met the not-so-friendly ‘Banger’.

Trying the door handle, it’s of course locked. But I’m not one to let a locked door stand in my way, because windows tend to be so a much easier entry point.

I drop my bag on the ground and step over to the front window. They’re your typical sliding ones, with a clip lock on the side. Easy. I place my hands on the glass and jiggle the window in its track, dislodging it enough so I can get my fingers around the side of it and remove it fully without breaking it.

Grabbing my bag, I climb through and replace the window before taking in my surroundings. Everything is pretty old looking. The walls are that fake wood shit that make the room look really dark, and the carpets are a faded lime green.

There’s a few pieces of furniture around. An overstuffed brown-leather couch. An old dining table, and coffee table, as well as a dusty looking book case that holds very few books, but a lot of motorcycle paraphernalia. The only modern thing in here is a massive flat screen TV that’s mounted on the wall.

It’s tidier than I expected, but there’s the distinct odour of dust and stale pizza boxes
, and I wonder if a woman actually spends any time here.

Dropping my bag on the couch, I head toward the kitchen in the hopes of finding something to eat. When I open the fridge, there’s fucking nothing – just a few bottles of beer, a mangy looking pack of butter, and a wilted looking lemon. I grab a beer and move on to the cupboards. But there’s nothing there either.

I don’t know what I expected when I got here. It certainly wasn’t an opened armed reception. I mean, my mother has only offered me a place because dad is dead. Before that, he couldn’t even give a shit.

My life has been filled with useless excuses for human beings. Each and every one of them have only been out
for themselves. Including my father, and I guess, in the end – including me. I took whenever I could too.

I wonder whether the bikers will be any better. Although I don’t hold out much hope. What type of men would a gang named,
Outlaw Riders
attract, anyway? Certainly not the kind of guys women swoon over. You know the ones I'm talking about. They’re in TV shows and movies. They're always so sexy, so kind and loyal. I often wonder where those men are. I’ve never met one, and honestly, I don't expect to.

I don’t know a hell of a lot about bikers. I've always thought of them as a pack of worthless, filthy criminals. Always fighting, always involved in things underhanded. I d
on’t really think life with my mother will be much different than life with my father – although I’m hoping I won’t have to prostitute myself out, just to keep a roof over my head this time.

Not that I have much hope in that, I just remembered that there’s such a thing as a
biker whore
. Great. Looks like this is just going to be the same shit with a different smell.

My stomach rumbles, and I chug down the last of the beer, placing the bottle next to the others. I decide I need to go and shower. I haven’t changed clothes for days. Although, I don’t really have much to change into, everything I have is dirty.

I enter the main bedroom. Clothes are strewn about the furniture and on the floor. It’s mostly T-shirts, jeans and underwear. I don’t touch any of that. It’s probably dirtier than what I’m wearing. Instead, I go through the drawers and find a clean white cotton T-shirt and a pair of jeans that aren’t too worn looking.

As I shower away the days of filth, I
start to feel slightly human again.

Once I’m done, I head to the
laundry and throw all of my clothes into the washer, switching it on and smiling to myself – I have
never
had a washing machine at home. When we needed to wash, we would go to the Laundromat, but half the time, my father had used all the money, so I ended up washing clothes in the bathroom sink, with the cracked bars of soap I used to steal from school.

Reaching up, I remove the towel from my still wet hair and hang it on the top of the door to dry, before heading out of the laundry in search of a comb
or hair brush.

“That’s the little bitch trespasser I was tellin’ you about earlier,” Banger announces, the moment he sees me. I suck in my breath, feeling a little surprised when I’m confronted with my
step-father and Banger, who are standing in his living room, looking slightly pissed off.

“You couldn’t call and say you were coming?” my
step-father rumbles, his hands on his hips as he looks at me pointedly. 

“Surprise?” I try to sound confident and behave as though having two angry bikers staring at me
, doesn’t faze me. But it does. Fuck I’m weak.

“You know her Prez?” an older man I didn’t see before asks from by the front door, his voice even more smoke worn than my
step-father’s.

“She’s my daughter.”

The statement causes both Banger’s and my jaw to drop, like we’re both characters in a cartoon show. “Shit Prez. I had no idea,” he bumbles.

“Don’t you mean ‘
step-daughter’?” I demand, wondering what the hell is going on.

He
just grunts and doesn’t give me an answer to my question. “You and me. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“But…” I
start, only to be interrupted.

“We’ll talk tonight. I’ve got shit to attend to back at the club, and your mother will want to have this talk too. Just make yourself at home until then. Alright?”

“Fine,” I say. What else can I do?

“You know we ha
ve this place alarmed right?” a voice says from in the hallway. Shit. There’s someone else here too?

When my eyes search for the source of the voice, my heart stops. I see him. He’s the most perfect specimen of a man, I’ve ever laid my eyes on. If an angel, fell to earth and decided to go all rugged and shit, then join a biker gang - You’d have this guy. He’s the exact opposite to what I’d imagined my father’s men to look like. He has dark messy hair and blue eyes, so piercing that I swear they’re lasering the seam of my panties as we speak. Because ladies, those panties are about to drop to the floor. Oh. My. God.

There’s talking going on. But I don’t even hear. I’m too mesmerised by the man moving toward me, and the fact that as he speaks, I see the flash of silver in his mouth. He has a tongue piercing.

My pussy just clenched.

My eyes rake over his body, drinking in every divine detail of his hard, lean, physique - the silver chain on his neck and his Harley Davidson ring are downright sexy, as are the leather cuffs that adorn the wrist of his tattooed arms. On his cut, it says he’s the club VP.

“Did you even ask her who she was at the compound
, Banger? You’re a fuckin’ idiot. I don’t even know why we patched you in.” His voice is thick and deep, and rolls over me like a caressing hand. I clench my insides again, sure that my panties must be drenched just from looking at him. 

Clench. Clench. Clench.

“Enough,” my step-father interrupts, silencing the two men. The hot one narrows his eyes at Banger, whose face has turned pale. “Banger. Go back with Robbo and man your post. Next time, find out who the fuck you’re pullin’ your gun on.  And you,” he says, his eyes landing on me. “Don’t ever break into my house again. You’ll fuckin’ wait outside on the fuckin’ veranda. Got it?”

“Whatever,” I return, rolling my eyes at the whole stupid situation. Banger makes some sort of apology and leaves.

“You’ve got a giant set of fucking balls on you girl,” the hot one says to me.

“Balls are soft. I’ve got a vagina. Much tougher.” I straighten to my entire five foot-six height and fold my arms across my chest defiantly.

“Is that so?” he grins, his cheeks creasing into dimples that make him even sexier than he already was.
Clench.

He saunters over, pausing in front of me, a cocky look on his face as he openly ogles me. “Not bad.” His eyes are on my tits when he says that, so I push him away. Annoyed. Embarrassed… something.

“Cole,” my step-father growls, taking a hold of my arm and pulling me around so I’m facing him. “How long are you stayin’ for?”

“I don’t know. Just until I’m back on my feet
.”

“
You can stay as long as you like,” he says, his voice holding an hint of kindness.

“I don’t need your fucking charity,” I bite out, tightening my arms across my chest.

“Sure you don’t. Why the hell else would you be sniffing around here then?” Hot guy/VP/Cole says from behind me.