CHAPTER ONE
Ky
The night had been a bit of a bust. I was hanging out with my brothers around the huge fire pit but even as I laughed and told stories, I just felt like I was ready for bed. When Sketch, Blade, and Charming came back from the bar, they’d brought a group of desperate women. Maybe I was judging a bit harshly. But honestly, when you wear next to nothing, tag along to a biker compound, and plant your ass on me without so much as asking my name, it kinda fit. Needy? Desperate? Clingy? Dumb? At least more than one of those titles belonged to each and every one of those women.
Now, I wasn’t saying that all women were that way. I actually had a lot of respect for women. Gwen and Cami, for example. My grandmother. And you could have said my sister, a long time ago. Okay, so the list was pretty short but that didn’t mean that I didn’t know strong, amazing women and recognize that I was lucky enough to get even a fraction of their grace and beauty in my life.
However, even with all that negativity and name calling, I wasn’t about to turn down the attention. Think what you want, I loved all women, even the desperate, needy ones. They all served a purpose and the thing that was great, most of the time they knew the score. Just because I took them back to my room didn’t mean they’d get a callback.
While I wasn’t as bad as some of my brothers—Sketch, for example—I did have a pretty decent sized list. Most of them didn’t even have a name in my mind, let alone a face. I should have felt shitty about it, but I just didn’t.
I wasn’t opposed to a relationship, exactly, it was more that I figured I’d eventually find someone I’d want to give it a go with. However, I also was smart enough to know that the women I mostly hung around were not ones I should even entertain the idea with.
So, there I was sitting with some bottle blonde overtaking my lap, each of us had a full beer in hand. She was giggling like the air was funny and I was doing my best to talk to Mouse and Lake about nothing of importance. I was trying to relax and get out of my head. I spent most of my days alone with my head buried in or under a car. I loved it because most of the time I was a huge fan of the quiet. But there were times that it was a little too deafening. Moments when I didn’t have a distraction, and since the work was like a second nature at this point, it wasn’t much help because I could’ve practically done it in my sleep. That usually sent my overactive brain into action. And right now, I was tired of fighting the things it was trying to think about.
Half of me wanted to take this chick up to my room just to prove a point to myself. As I looked over…uhh…Sally—sure, she looked like a Sally—I imagined she wouldn’t have any problem with that at all.
Brand came walking back, Cami tucked into his side. Knowing it was late, I would bet that Chris wouldn’t be far behind. I’d stopped by the bar earlier and saw that he was the one working the closing shift tonight.
Brand and Chris had an interesting relationship. I couldn’t deny that even though Brand was with Cami, the fact that I’d seen a kiss between him and Chris still confused the hell out of me. I’d been trying to figure it out for far too long now, scratching my head while I maybe watched them a little too closely. Part of me thought that it could have been that they were both deep in the closet and that Cami was some kind of beard or whatever it was called. But one look at how Brand was with her, and I knew that wasn’t it. He had fucking stars in his eyes for that girl. I couldn’t blame him, Cami was pretty cool. And she drove a kick-ass car, too.
Whatever was going on, I had a feeling I wasn’t going to figure it out unless I flat out asked one of them. And I knew I wasn’t going to do that. It wasn’t my business and I didn’t really care, or so I kept telling myself.
“So, hot stuff, you wanna take me for a ride on your bike. I’ve never been on one but I’ve dreamed of it.”
Fuck, no!
That was my gut reaction. No one had ever sat bitch on my bike and I wasn’t looking to change that. I didn’t exactly see the commitment thing in it like some of the other brothers did. It was more that I felt my skin crawl at the thought of sharing that part of me. Sure it was only a motorcycle, a way to transport me from one place to another. I honestly could see where some people might think that. But being on my bike, even driving the short distance I had to just to get somewhere in this city, it was my time and I wanted to fucking keep it that way.
“Can’t,” I grunted. “I don’t ever drive unless I’m sober.”
There, that was not only the truth but a good excuse as well.
She huffed and pouted like a damn bratty child. My ears tuned her out as my eyes caught on the figure emerging from the shadows near the corner of the building. I knew it was Chris before his body stepped out into the flickering light of the fire pit. His eyes latched onto mine as if he could feel my stare. In a blink, he narrowed his gaze slightly as his brow furrowed with a hint of frustration. Then he was turning is attention away from me, his face softening and a smile overtaking his face as he looked at Cami and Brand.
He took a seat and easily started talking to everyone that was around him. I was too far away to catch any of their conversation, but by the way everyone was laughing and carrying on, I could tell I was missing out on a good time.
Chris may not have been in the club but most of us considered him family in a way. He ran the club bar and had known a few of the brothers here a while. He grew up in Moon Hill and was around the chapter that was there. That was where he’d met Brand and Lake. I considered him a good friend at one point and I knew the strain that was between us was all my fault. I felt like shit about it, but at the same time, I had no idea what was going on with me.
A leggy brunette sauntered her way up to Chris and he didn’t even try to stop her when she sat down in his lap.
That was when I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Want to go to my room?” I asked the chick in my lap, but shamefully, my eyes were still on Chris.
“Yeah,” she purred, then licked the shell of my ear. I supposed it could have been sexy to someone. But not me. Nope. I felt like I was forcing myself to go through this for some unknown fucking reason.
That was the moment Chris jerked his eyes in my direction. Instead of getting up and taking my messed up ass somewhere else, I chose to tangle my hand in the hair of the woman desperate for my attention and all but swallow her tongue down my throat. It wasn’t even a good kiss. It wasn’t what I’d been dreaming of. It lacked the intensity and passion of the one that I couldn’t get out of my head.
Of course, this only pissed me off further.
“Let’s go,” I grunted, jumping up so fast that she almost fell on her ass. I didn’t miss a beat as I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her flush with my body.
This was going to happen, I’d decided that much.
I made it up the stairs and into my room with my full attention on her. She didn’t seem to care that I couldn’t remember her name or that I was rushing through things.
Clothes went flying and her naked ass hit my bed with a bounce.
“Oooh, eager boy.” She bit her lip and I imagined that she thought it was sexy. Her hand went to my pants and I let her work them down my legs. “So big.”
Then she attempted to stuff all of me down her throat. Her mouth was warm and wet, but that was about it. I wasn’t looking for fireworks and rainbows, but a little tingle in my balls would have been fucking nice. The harder I tried to get into it, the softer my dick fell.
Fuck!
“You alright, baby?” she asked, her hand stroking my cock trying to bring it back to life.
“Yeah, just give me a minute,” I said in an angry, frustrated tone. I screwed my eyes closed tight and worked myself back and forth in her hand.
Images danced in my mind but I wouldn’t admit them to anyone, possibly not even myself.
Her mouth wrapped around me again and I gripped the hair at the top of her head, imagining the longs strands were much shorter. I drowned out her fake moans with my own grunts. Yeah, it was fucked up, but as my balls began to tingle and tighten, I knew there was no going back.
“That’s it,” I said, sadly not talking to blondie in front of me. “Take my cock. Swallow me down that tight throat.”
I came, grunting and biting down hard on my bottom lip. There was a name at the tip of my tongue, begging to be screamed out. Only, it wasn’t the one of the chick currently lapping up the last of my cum that had dribbled down her chin.
“Well, that was fun,” she said after a long moment of dead silence. The slight aggravation in her tone wasn’t missed by me.
“Yeah,” I said, scratching the back of my neck. “Thanks?” I gave her a little shrug.
It was a shitty thing to say. And as I held open the door as a blatant attempt to let her know this whole thing was done and over, I knew it was a fucked up thing to do.
I was sure that if I tried hard enough I could get it up for what could have been next, but that would have come at a horrible cost. I already felt crappy enough about what I’d just done and I didn’t need to dive further into that dark hole.
“Okay, whatever,” she said as she hurried to put on her clothes then brushed past me and out of sight.
I shut the door and breathed a strange sigh of relief.
What the fuck just happened?
The answer to that question was not one I wanted to search out. No. There wasn’t even a tiny part of me that wanted to explain to myself what was going on with me. So I grabbed a beer from my fridge and downed in as fast as possible. I needed the buzz tonight to make me forget and to help me sleep.
I paced my tiny room. Everything here was mine. I’d made my way in life, found my place, and I wasn’t ready to shake that foundation even a little. Even if I entertained the ideas and feelings that had tried to overtake my head the last couple of months, I had no clue how that would affect things—change things. That right there said something that I hated. It made me think that I didn’t know my brothers as well as I should have. Because if I did give in to whatever was going on with me, I wasn’t sure if they’d still accept me.
The uncertainty of that gutted me and left me gasping for air. I could lose all of this. My place. My job. My club. All the things that I loved and respected. I didn’t want to let it go just yet, and at the same time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a part of something that had that kind of bigotry attached to it.
I’d been there before. I’d seen what the hate and fear could do. And I’d promised myself ten years ago, that I would never be apart of something that vengeful ever again. With that said, it felt completely different when it was your own skin and feelings that you were trying to protect.
I moved to the window and slid back the curtain with my pointer finger. I felt like a creep peeking out at my brothers like that, but I had to see them as an outsider. Just for a second, I wondered what I could have been missing. Maybe it was nothing.
These guys were solid. They’d been there for me and I’d done the same for them. I’d helped them. Partied with them. Killed with them. There was a bond there that was stronger than anything that could ever be explained.
My eyes caught on the chick that had fled my room not even half an hour ago. Her body pressed tight against Charming’s and it was clear that she had been using me just as much as I was her. The little bit of guilt that I had dissolved away and I couldn’t care less about what I’d done.
I flopped down in the middle of my bed. Alone, I drifted off to the muffled sounds of the ongoing party. The sounds that had started to feel like home. The very same ones that I fell asleep to nearly every night.