Twenty-One
Colin
“You’re a very bad influence on me,” he said to the ceiling as he caught his breath.
“Me?” Jenny chuckled. “I’m not the one who came back here looking to get laid.”
“That’s ‘cause you manipulated me into making the first move.”
She laughed and he felt the sound move through her body and into his own, where they were pressed together, shivering into his skin. “Yeah? How’d I do that?”
“Sweetheart.” He rolled his eyes. “You can’t walk away twitching your ass like you did and think that’s not some kinda invitation.”
“That’s the most sexist thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, but when he glanced over at her, she was grinning.
“I’m a pig. Sorry about that.”
“You’re not sorry.”
“You’re right. I’m not.”
They lay tangled in the aftermath. Colin on his back, Jenny nestled up against his side, one leg hooked over his hips. Her breasts were plumped up against his ribs and when she flexed her foot, her thigh tensed against a very sensitive area of his anatomy. If she didn’t stop wiggling, she’d buy herself another round.
She stilled, though, one hand pressed tight to his chest, above his heart. “Colin?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you–”
A knock sounded at the door. Then Candy’s voice floated through: “Pants on, prospect! We got shit to do.”
“Be right there,” he called back, and sighed. “Sorry, baby.” He cupped the back of her head, pressed her soft cheek against his shoulder a moment in farewell.
“It’s okay.” She pulled away and sat up, and that was when he saw the emotion shining in her face. Whatever she’d been about to say, it had made her nervous.
“You sure?”
She smiled and pushed her hair back. “Yeah, it’s fine. Better go see what he wants before he knocks the door down.”
As Colin tugged his jeans and shirt back on, he reflected that if the man wasn’t his VP, Candy would be begging to have his ass handed to him. But, VP, and all that. Not to mention Colin felt a little disquiet in the pit of his stomach as he let himself out into the hallway. It didn’t matter how old you got, facing a girl’s male relative after you’d just boned her senseless was always uncomfortable as all hell.
Colin stepped out and shut the door quickly, to shield Jenny, under the covers, but still very much naked and glowing with aftershocks.
Candy smirked and gave him a long, slow up-down glance. “Look at you. With your hickey and your fucked up hair.”
Colin slapped a hand to his neck out of reflex, to cover said imaginary hickey, and Candy burst out laughing.
“Haha, asshole,” he muttered.
Candy slung an arm around his neck and pulled him in close as they started down the hall. Proving to be one of the few people who had the size and strength to throw him off balance. The only other who could claim that was probably his brother – haha again.
“Prospect,” Candy said, “you’ve got to lighten up. If I can get over you being my sister’s new favorite pet, then you can get over me talking shit about it. Deal?”
“Hmm,” Colin said.
“Alright. Game face. We gotta go rattle a puppy’s cage.”
~*~
Two trees. Gnarled, desert-scarred things that twisted as if in pain. Colin didn’t know what kind they were, and didn’t feel inclined to ask, as his eyes moved down the length of chain attached to each. In the glare of the truck headlights, the stubby limbs seemed like claws. A breeze whispered across the ground, brushing against the chains like an affectionate cat, setting them to swinging.
Colin stepped into the beams, broad-shouldered, strong, and as mysterious in that moment as some ancient warrior. “Come here, prospect,” he called.
Colin felt Pup glance at him, and looked back, face feeling heavy in its resolute expression. “He means you,” he said quietly.
Pup’s eyes widened. “He does?” He glanced at the chains, then back at Colin. He wasn’t the sharpest tool by any stretch, but he’d figured out that something was amiss. Clearly, if any one of them was in trouble, he expected it to be the guy humping Candy’s sister, and not himself.
“Pup,” Candy said, “what did I say?”
Blue stepped up on the other side of the scrawny prospect and patted his shoulder. “Do what he says, kid. It’ll be alright.”
Pup started to shake, a noticeable trembling of his chin.
“You deaf?” Talis asked, and grabbed the guy by the forearm, tugging him forward.
“Ack!” Pup squawked, startled. He stumbled forward a step, and Jinx drew up on his other side, taking a grip on that arm. “What’s going on? What did I do?”
“Shit,” Colin muttered. His stomach tightened; this was just…wrong. There were two brothers he might enjoy seeing strung up between those trees, but Pup was an idiot child with biker dreams. He didn’t deserve this.
Just like Jenny doesn’t deserve to get hurt, a small voice in the back of his head reminded. He took a deep breath and told his stomach to settle down. The club was brutal? So was life. Time to get over it.
“Jesus,” a voice said quietly beside him, and he realized it was Blue. When he glanced over, the grizzled old biker was shaking his head. “One man.” He wasn’t addressing Colin; was watching Talis and Jinx haul Pup up to the gap between the trees. “How is one man still giving us such hell?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Colin answered: “When one man has a brother with the ATF, that changes things a little.”
Blue looked at him sharply, expression cautious. “Yeah. It does.”
The stainless cuffs snapped together with a clink. The chains had been set high, so Pup’s arms were cranked up above his head and fully extended to the sides. It looked painful. In the bright glare of the headlights, his skin radiated with an unhealthy sheen of nervous sweat. His teeth chattered, Colin could see.
Shit.
Candy propped a hip against the front fender of the truck and folded his arms, the picture of relaxed authority. “Okay, little Pup-Pup. I’m gonna ask you some questions. Answer them honestly and quickly. Understand?”
“I…”
“Understand?”
Pup’s teeth snapped together as he swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Now. Let’s start simple. What’s your name?”
“N-Nick Goodwin.”
“Right.” Candy nodded. “Okay. When did you begin prospecting for us?”
Pup swallowed again and dampened his lips. The muscles in his arms were twitching with the strain of being held at their unnatural angle. “About…about three months ago.”
“You don’t know exactly?”
He bit his lip. “Three months, one week, five days ago.”
Shit, Colin thought. He would have had to consult a calendar to know how long he’d been here. This kid was hooked. He was dedicated.
To something.
“Why did you want to join the club?” Candy asked.
Pup’s eyes flicked to the dirt, then back up, expression pained…and not just in a physical way.
“Yeah, you told us before,” Candy said. “Tell us again.”
The prospect took a deep breath. “I always liked motorcycles. My uncle was in a club–”
“What kind of club?”
“A civilian riding club. The Red Riders.”
“Right. Go on.”
Pup took a deep breath, sounding shaky and terrified. “He used to let me ride with him sometimes. When Mom and Dad were fighting, when…Well, he got me to loving bikes. I always wanted to be a Lean Dog. We used to see you guys, sometimes, in formation going down the street.” He tried to smile. “I wanted it more than anything, to be a Dog.”
“But you didn’t come running to us the second you turned eighteen, did you?”
Colin folded his arms and braced his feet apart to take some of the tension off his back. This was going to take a while, apparently. Candy wasn’t just interrogating – he was starting at the beginning, going back over every story the kid had ever told them, searching for holes and mistakes. That was the beauty of lies: the liar so rarely remembered what he made up a few months before.
Pup gulped. “I had to get a job.”
“How’d that work out?”
“Fine. Until…” His eyes dropped again.
“Say it.”
“I fucked around with the boss’s daughter and he fired me.”
Colin hadn’t been expecting that, of all things. He caught his smile before it could bloom. Skinny little Pup, breaking boss’s daughter’s hearts. Good for him.
“And could you get another job after that?” Candy asked.
“No. Um…no. He trash-talked me to every other place I applied to.”
“So we were your last choice.”
Pup went tight as a bowstring, eyes flashing. “No. No, I wanted to be, but I–”
“You thought it’d be best to try and be legitimate first. A real member of society. Before you threw it all away on the one-percenter life.”
It seemed a trick of the headlights, the sudden brilliance of wetness in Pup’s eyes. But then the tears began to leak down his face in crystal tracks. “It wasn’t my last choice. It never was. I was afraid…shit, I was afraid you wouldn’t take me. That I couldn’t…”
“Be an outlaw?”
“Because look at me.” He sniffed hard. “Nobody ever wanted me. Not my folks. Not anyplace I ever worked.” He sent a pleading look toward Candy. “Please just tell me what I did. I swear, I’ll make it right. I will!”
Colin wanted to step forward and remove the shackles.
Candy pushed away from the truck and approached their captive. “Shhh. Hush, hush.” Like he was talking to a child. “Don’t get all upset. You didn’t do anything.” He closed the gap, just a step away from the prospect. “That I know about.”
Then the knife made an appearance. A quick flash of silver from Candy’s hip. A soft sound of it leaving a leather scabbard.
“Oh!” Pup gasped. “Shit! Candy! I swear, what did I do?! I didn’t mean to! I swear!” He burst into noisy tears. “Please. Please!”
Candy stepped in close enough to kiss the boy, and laid the knife against his windpipe.
Pup gasped, strained his head backward.
“Who do you work for?” Candy asked.
“W-what?”
“Who do you work for?” The knife glimmered as it tilted. If it hadn’t cut Pup yet, Colin didn’t know how. “That was a question, prospect. Who–”
“You!” Pup shouted. “I work for you!” He squeezed his eyes shut and sobbed, tears and snot pouring down his face. He swallowed and the knife jumped against his throat. Colin saw a bright pearl of crimson slide down the kid’s neck, and heard his swift, hitched breath as the blade cut into his flesh.
“Oh, God,” Pup said, shaking. “I work for you. Candy, I don’t understand!”
Colin couldn’t watch this. It was pathetic, and clearly, the kid knew nothing. He’d grown up around liars, pickpockets, and shysters, in the dark backstreets of New Orleans. Pup was none of those things; a blind man could have seen that.
He took a step forward.
A hand landed on his shoulder, its grip strong. It was Blue. “Leave it,” the old timer said. “Don’t get in his way.”
“His way,” Colin said, “is gonna kill an innocent kid who doesn’t know shit.”
Blue’s scruffy brows went up. “You gonna take a suspect’s side over your VP’s?”
Colin didn’t get a chance to answer, distracted by Pup’s truly pitiful scream.
“Please! Shit, Candy, please!”
Their faces in shadow, Jinx and Talis looked nothing short of grim reapers, bare, muscled arms writhing with tattoos.
Candy stood statue-still in front of his captive, wide shoulders and narrow hips throwing a triangular shadow back behind him.
Stop, Colin willed him.
Candy said, voice low but carrying, “Stop crying. Get your shit together a second. Hush. Listen. Do you know Judson Riley?”
Colin understood the method. Disarmed, panicked, emotional, Pup couldn’t hide a knee-jerk reaction to hearing Riley’s name. So Colin took it as genuine when the boy didn’t react with any surprise. He shook his head.
“No. No. I don’t know him. Please…”
“Nick,” Candy said. “Do you work for the Riley brothers?”
Pup’s eyes opened, swimming with tears, his face screwed up with fear and pain. “Who?”
Candy leaned in closer.
Pup screamed, the sound strangled, incoherent.
And Candy stepped back, threw the knife down into the dirt and stalked to the truck.
Pup gasped and sagged against his bonds, crying quietly with his head bent down.
Jinx and Talis joined Candy at the truck, and they talked quietly, too low for Colin to hear.
Fuck. Colin scrubbed his hands down his face, exhaling loudly through his gapped fingers. He was exhausted, suddenly. He wanted a drink. A soft bed – one softer than his dorm mattress. And he wanted Jenny. Her arms around him, her feminine curves pressed against his own hard body, the whisper of her breath in his ear.
I love you, he imagined, in her throaty voice. Where had that come from? He didn’t know. The only woman who’d ever claimed to love him was his mother. His lying, cheating, weak-willed mother.
He suddenly, desperately wanted Jenny to love him. Even if it wasn’t fair, even if she couldn’t possibly. He wanted to be loved. Didn’t everyone? Acceptance and fraternity only went so far. He wanted someone to love him, for him, specifically. Not the Lean Dog, not the soldier, but Colin O’Donnell.
Jenny was right. He was a sap.
He was staring at Candy in a detached, unfocused sort of way, until Candy glanced up and headed toward him. He stood his ground, because retreat wasn’t an option. But he curled his hands into fists, prepared for the worst.
Candy’s face was all in shadow as he drew up in front of him. His voice was emotionless as he said, “Did you learn anything just now, prospect?”
Yeah. He’d learned his VP would go to great lengths to frighten and intimidate. But he said, “Yes, sir.”
Candy’s teeth were a flash of white in the dark as he grinned. “Yeah? You ain’t seen shit yet.”
~*~
He didn’t wait around to drink and socialize when they got back to the clubhouse. He slipped down the back hall, paused, and then entered the sanctuary. It was dark and smelled faintly of something baked. Potatoes maybe. He couldn’t tell.
He didn’t knock when he reached Jenny’s door, but let himself in, pushed the door shut, leaned back against it.
She was sitting up in bed, back against her headboard, knees drawn up. She’d dressed: yoga pants and a sweatshirt. She was writing in her little journal, low sounds of music coming out of hidden speakers.
She glanced up and didn’t seem surprised by his entrance. “Hi.”
He was breathing hard, as if he’d been running. “Hey.”
She frowned and set the journal aside, sitting up straight. “What’s wrong?”
He wet his lips. “Do you…Do you care about me?”