PHENEX’S RETRIBUTION
Demons on Wheels MC, 4
Ravenna Tate
Copyright © 2017
Chapter One
If only her stomach would stop cramping tonight. Meghan Sanders, known to the Demons on Wheels MC members as Wonder Tongue, had already taken more Tums than the recommended daily allowance printed on the fucking bottles. She’d done it before, though, so she wasn’t too worried about the consequences. The consequences of not taking any at all were more ominous, as far as she was concerned.
She’d been to multiple physicians in the past two years, and none of them could find an organic reason for her pain. It happened when she was anxious more often than not, but it had occurred during times when nothing was going on to stress her. In other words, without anyone actually saying the words, she’d been told this was all in her head.
There was a specific incident after which the periodic, cramping pain had begun, and her physicians knew about that incident. But none of them had wanted to definitely declare there was a direct connection between it and Meghan’s unexplained pain. She had no other symptoms, although the pain itself was enough. She was grateful it wasn’t accompanied by anything else, but that fact also made it difficult to come up with a diagnosis.
Tonight, though, she could pinpoint a specific trigger that had set it off. Four men who were likely associated with either the Outlaw Dogs MC, a rival MC that was determined to eradicate the Demons on Wheels, or with one of the Mob bosses currently involved in a turf war, had come into the club to make trouble. At least, those were the rumors that had circulated after the Demons on Wheels MC officers had subdued the men.
Meghan had also heard rumors that several men who worked for Donny Messina, their own personal protector and Mob boss, had been present during this commotion. But any true information she was to discover about the incident would have to come from one of the officers. And right now, Meghan was in too much pain to seek anyone out, other than to ask them to drive her to the ER.
She hadn’t had pain severe enough to send her there in well over a year, but it might happen tonight. As she sipped her peppermint tea, alternating that with a bottle of ginger ale, she closed her eyes and tried the visualization techniques she’d been taught over the years. Sometimes they worked.
They would tonight if she could get the image of those two men out of her head. One of them had asked for a Jack and Coke with lemon. Not the kind of drink she usually made for the gruff crowd that frequented Scotty’s Place, the strip club that the Demons on Wheels MC owned and operated, but adding a lemon twist to a standard mixture of Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola was easy enough.
Except that’s not what he’d wanted. He’d slammed the drink down on the bar after staring at it, and started ranting about grinding the lemon peel into it, not balancing a slice of it on the edge of the glass. This rough-looking dude with a full beard, sporting a cut from which he’d obviously torn off patches, wanted ground up lemon peel in his fucking drink. At first Meghan thought he was joking, which likely hadn’t helped the situation.
By the time she’d tossed the drink into the sink and started to make him another one, his friend, sporting the same odd cut with the patches ripped off, had joined in the fun. They’d called her the usual misogynistic names. She was used to that. Didn’t sting any less when it happened, but she’d been called worse.
As nice of a club as this was compared to anything else in this part of the state, they occasionally got creeps inside it. These two, however, had been off-the-wall-batshit-crazy. Either that or the drink complaints had merely been an excuse to stir shit up.
A knock on her door startled Meghan, but she was grateful for the interruption to her thoughts. So much for visualization techniques. They only worked when you could clear your head first, and tonight she couldn’t do it.
“Oh. Hi.” Phenex, their Road Captain, and whose real name was Rick Gucwa, stood there in all his six-foot-five, muscled, tattooed glory. “I didn’t think anyone else was awake.”
“I came to check on you.” His gaze cut to the left side of her face, where Mister Ground Lemon Peel had struck her, after leaping over the bar like some drunken anti-hero in a cartoon.
“That’s really thoughtful of you, Phenex.” Her heart pounded. His wavy brown hair hung loose, and those big puppy dog hazel eyes with the impossibly long lashes never failed to make her pussy wet.
He was still staring at the bruise coming up on her face. “No real man would hit a woman.” His voice was angry and hard.
Only the officers and Chloe Dolan knew the watered-down version of the original incident. Meghan had told them that half-true story to explain the frequent stomach pains, and only so the officers wouldn’t assume she wasn’t able to do her job.
As she’d grown closer to Chloe, whose stage name was Legs, she’d told her, too. But no one knew the entire truth, including how many physicians she’d been to. She kept all that to herself. Meghan was both embarrassed and horrified by the memories, and had no desire to share them with anyone.
“That’s why I feel safe here,” she said, forcing a neutral tone to her voice.
“You are safe here.”
She knew that. None of the patched members had ever struck a woman, or forced them to have sex. The Brothers didn’t tolerate that shit, and they tossed prospects out of the MC if any of them tried it. But Phenex hadn’t come up here in the middle of the night to talk about her safety. None of them ever did that. “Do you want to come in?”
“Only if I’m not disturbing you.”
There was a surprise. Meghan was a part-time bartender at Scotty’s Place, but also worked kitchen duty. She wasn’t a dancer, like Chloe. And she’d never run her own business, like Rai had, who now worked for Donny right here in this building. Meghan was a sweetbutt, and happy to be one. But the members didn’t usually ask whether they were disturbing her when they sought her out for sex.
“Of course not.” Meghan stepped aside. “Come on in.” She closed the door behind him. “I’m in some pain tonight. My stomach.”
“I thought you might be. That’s why I came to check on you.”
“So, I’m not sure I’m up for anything rough or long, but I can—”
“Meghan, I didn’t come up here for a blowjob.”
“Oh.”
“I really did come up here to check on you. To make sure you’re okay.”
Holy shit. “Thank you.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m in a lot of pain.” Actually, it had subsided quite a bit from earlier. “Or, I was.” She smiled up at him. “Must be you. It’s easing up a bit now.”
He sat next to her. “I thought you’d like to know what happened after Kayla brought you up to your room.”
Kayla, whom Mastema, their Secretary, had dubbed Bedroom Eyes, was a dancer who happened to be sitting behind the bar tonight, chatting with Meghan while she worked. Kayla had punched one of the men in the gut, shortly before several officers subdued the pair.
“We caught the other two as they were trying to leave. Took all four to Donny’s office.” Donny Messina had an office in the building, and he was a frequent visitor here. “Gene and Dominic helped us tie them up and gag them.” Gene and Dominic were two associates of Donny’s who lived here now, to help with the ongoing threat from the Outlaw Dogs.
“Are the four men still here?” If they were, Meghan wasn’t going near the offices until they were gone.
“Ah, no. When Donny showed up, he brought two more men with him. They ungagged the man who hit you. The one whose nose I broke.”
“You what? I missed that part.”
“He tripped over the toe of my boot. What can I say?” His sexy grin, and the way he spread his hands, made Meghan laugh for the first time since the four men had arrived in the club.
“So anyway, he was more than willing to tell us who they were and why they’d come here tonight.”
“Because you broke his nose?”
“No, because one of Donny’s creepy goons threatened him with a pair of pliers and a stun gun.”
“That’s a good reason.”
“They were with the group who split off from the Outlaw Dogs after Mad Dog was killed.”
Mad Dog was the former President of the Outlaw Dogs. That MC’s former Road Captain, Howler, had shot Mad Dog a couple of months ago during an argument. No charges had been filed. It had been determined he’d shot the man in self defense. The MC was in chaos, though, with half the group siding with Mad Dog’s followers, and the other half defending Howler’s actions.
“Is that group forming a new MC now?” she asked. That had been one of the rumors circulating through the club lately.
“Actually, that’s what the guy who hit you said. The group that is still pissed off about Howler shooting Mad Dog have officially broken off from the rest. That would be good news, except we have a new wrinkle to worry about. Remember shortly after Mad Dog was shot and Howler came here to talk to the officers?”
“Yeah.” An unprecedented act, and one which sparked a lot of speculation.
“Seems he wasn’t too far off his predictions that day. Not only about the group splitting into two, but that Mad Dog had indeed been talking to other Mob bosses.”
“Does Vito know this?” Vito Cinquepalmi was the Mob boss who protected the Outlaw Dogs. He was one of Donny’s rivals, and he’d also been the one to try to force Rai into business with him. She’d been running from him the night she ended up here, after discovering he’d put a hit on her for going to the FBI after he first approached her.
Phenex shrugged. “No clue. But this man tonight told us Mad Dog was definitely talking to Mob bosses in other states, behind Vito’s back.”
“We were all hoping that wasn’t true.”
“That’s for fucking sure. But it is. The group that split off is forming their own MC, and Donny is pretty sure they’re under the protection of a boss named Roberto di Stefano. He’s based in Queens, and Donny knows his family. Donny called him bad news.”
“Fuck. If Donny says this man is bad news, he’s really bad.” Donny was as badass and scary as they came, as far as Meghan was concerned. Not a day went by that she wasn’t grateful he was on their side.
“Yeah. This is the shit movies are made of.”
“What are we going to do?”
He shrugged. “Business as usual.”
“Where does this leave the deal Donny and Vito made?”
“Don’t know. None of us asked. That’s their shit to worry about.”
“Why were the men that came here tonight wearing those weird cuts?”
“I think they took the patches off, that’s all.”
“Where are they now?”
“Um, in a place where you never have to worry about them again.” He reached out and brushed a finger gently over the bruise. “That asshole fucker. I’d rather have had the chance to take his fucking head off myself, but it wasn’t my call.”
Which meant those men were dead. It wasn’t the first time men had been killed here, but it always unnerved her. She’d never tell them that, though. This was the life she’d chosen, and these people were her family now. They certainly treated her better than anyone in her real family ever had. And definitely better than anyone she’d known outside her family. Their goals were her goals, and she’d fight to protect this place as much as anyone living here would.
Phenex brushed his finger along her hair, his eyes all soft and filled with unmistakable lust. Her pain was completely gone now, which was so exhilarating it sent a surge of desire racing through her. “Are you sure I can’t do anything for you tonight?” she asked.
“I thought you were in pain?”
“It’s gone.”
“Well damn, Wonder Tongue. I’m not going to say ‘no’ to you. That would be fucking crazy.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t.” She reached for his jeans but stopped when he caught her mouth in a kiss hot enough to catch the bed on fire. This man was the best kisser she’d ever met, and now that his tongue was in her mouth, she couldn’t wait to have his dick inside her again as well.