“Just stay away from me,” Sierra snarled as she shoved past Colt and heading into the kitchen to help prepare breakfast. She was in no mood to deal with him this morning. She spent most of the night fending off one man or another, all of them there for one reason. Bobbi never had to intervene, but she’d been scared the entire night, afraid that one of the men wouldn’t take no for an answer and would rape her.
She’d also been paid a visit by Skye and Monica, both of them wanting to bed her, as well. While she could admit both women were sexy as hell, she didn’t swing that way, so she added them to the list of ten men she rejected, all of whom now wanted a piece of her ass, either in bed or in the ring.
“Bad night?” Blu asked as the women got organized.
“You might say that,” Sierra muttered as she began cracking eggs.
“Did you accept anyone?”
“No. And I’m not going to either. I’m out of here today, as soon as breakfast is over. This isn’t what I signed up for.”
Angela Bludowsky, Blu to her friends, nodded. “This life isn’t for everyone. I’ll be sorry to see you go, though. I think you and I could become good friends.”
Sierra snorted. It would be nice to have some friends, but the price was too high. “Yeah me, too. I hoped I would fit in.”
Vicki stepped up behind Sierra. “How many?”
“Twelve, counting Monica and Skye.”
“Monica and Skye? What did they want?”
“What do you think? The same thing everyone else wanted.”
Blu and Vicki looked at each other. “They’re setting you up. You must really have them worried.”
“Setting me up how?” Sierra asked, holding a cracked egg over the bowl.
“Monica and Skye are a lot of things, but lesbians they’re not.”
Sierra went back to cracking eggs as she thought. “Why would they do that? What if I had taken them up on their offer?”
“I don’t know. I guess they are looking for a challenge where they can control the event,” Blu said. “Have you told Colt?”
“I’m not speaking to him.”
Vicki frowned and nodded as she turned away to tend to the sausage.
Sierra made it a point to sit at the table with Vicki, Blu, and the rest of the lower ranked brothers and sisters. She could see the hurt and concern in Colt’s eyes, but she didn’t waver. What did she care? She was leaving in an hour or so anyway, and if Colt wouldn’t take her, she could offer to lay on her back for one of the other guys once they got to Reno.
She ate, and laughed with the people sitting around her, but she couldn’t shake the weight in her stomach, the sickness that came from Colt’s betrayal. She was stupid to trust him, a mistake she wouldn’t make again.
After breakfast she helped clear the remains, smirking to herself as Colt hovered, obviously wanting to talk to her but unwilling to make the first move, so she ignored him.
“We need to talk,” he finally said, taking her by the arm and pulling her to a stop as she emerged from the kitchen to collect more dishes.
She shook her arm free. “I don’t know what there is to talk about. You made your feelings pretty clear last night.”
“That’s what we need to talk about,” he hissed as he leaned in close. “But not here.”
She huffed. “You going to tell me of your undying love, now? How last night was a test, and I passed?” She turned her back to him and began to gather the last of the dishes, but he grabbed her and spun her back to face him.
“I know you’re pissed, and you have a right to be, but you can get off your pissy high horse right now. You’re the one who wanted to come here, remember?”
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way! I’m not some whore for you to pass around to all your buddies!”
“I know! That’s what we need to talk about.”
“I just want to go.”
“Go? Go where?”
“Reno. Or Vegas. I made a mistake coming here.”
Colt fumed. “Come with me,” he said, taking her by the arm again and dragging her out of the clubhouse. “Get on,” he ordered as he mounted his bike and thumbed it to life.
She stalled but finally mounted behind him. The moment she sat down, he gunned the bike, fishtailing in the loose dirt as they rocketed out of the clubhouse compound.
They rode about halfway to the main highway before he stopped and killed the bike, waiting for her dismount. He stepped off the bike and leaned against it to prevent it from falling over on the rutted road. “You can leave if you want,” he said without preamble. “I won’t try to stop you, but last night wasn’t supposed to happen. Paul and some of the members are trying to make an example out of you. There was no reason for you to spend the night in the barracks. I could have picked any other woman there and taken her to my trailer and nothing would have been said.”
“So what’s their beef with me? What did I do? Nothing!”
“It’s not what you did…I think it’s what you’re doing.”
“I’m not doing anything!”
“But you are. You’re bringing the club together. Some of it anyway, and that’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous? How?”
“You’re new blood and you’re shaking things up. Things have gotten stagnant in the club, the lines have been drawn and, for the most part, everyone has settled into their roles. There hasn’t been a serious challenge to the rankings in a couple of years. Monica and Skye see to that. But you’re stirring the shit and that has some people nervous.”
Sierra crossed her arms. “Like I give a shit. I just want to take my money and leave.”
“You’re going to back down from a fight? That’s not like you.”
“I’m not fighting every man I turn down, Colt. I came back to be with you, not to be passed around like a cheap whore. All you had to do was say I was your old lady. Would that have been so bad?”
“It’s not that simple! You think you have problems now? Imagine what it would have been like if I elevated you over every other person in the club. You wouldn’t have the respect you have earned so far. Every man and woman in the club would be gunning for you. That’s the problem with the system we have now! Nearly everyone thinks if one person moves up, someone else has to move down, rather than all of us rising together. It’s fucked up, but I can’t change it by myself.”
“I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”
“You have taken on two challengers, and won both times. But rather than, the woman especially, seeing you as a threat, they see you as a friend. I’ve never seen that before in the lower ranks. My crew trust each other, and there are few others that I trust, but most of the members are nothing but a bunch of backstabbing fucks.”
Sierra stared at him, reading the frustration and anger in his eyes. “Maybe they are that way because they don’t have any other choice.”
“Exactly! Look, when I brought you back to the clubhouse, I didn’t expect this to happen. I just knew I wanted to be with you, but something is happening. Something I didn’t plan for or expect. Some of the members are beginning to rally to your side. I can use that. We can use that to start to turn the club around. We can make it better than it is now, and you can be part of that. I need you Sierra.”
“You need me to get the shit beaten out of me, you mean.”
“No. I need you to be an example for the other members. Someone from the outside, someone not tainted by the bullshit of the club. This could be our big opportunity, and I want to take it.”
“So that’s why you asked me to come back with you. You wanted to use me as bait.”
Colt sighed in exasperation. “No, I asked you to come back with me because I wanted to be with you. There is something about you, Sierra, that I like. Something beyond the way you look, or how you fuck, or any of that. I’m not sure what it is, but I want to find out. This is totally unexpected, but it’s the break I have been waiting for. Remember how I said you could be part of something bigger? This is your chance to make a real difference. You just have to take it.”
“And if I don’t?”
“There’s always Reno.”
“You’ll let me go?”
“I’ll take you myself. I’m not going to make you stay, Sierra. I need you to want to do this, but if we pull it off, then there can be some great things in our future, I’m sure of it.”
“Our future?” she asked, her voice lilting up at the end, unsure of what Colt meant.
“Ours. Yours…mine…the club’s. I would like you to be here for it.”
“Because you need me?”
“Because I need you for this, but also because I want you for myself.”
Goddamnit! I said I wasn’t going to trust him again! “What’s the plan?”
“I don’t have one. Fletch and I worked out the first part of it last night, but, I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t plan this and I’m kind of winging it. We’re going to be making it up as we go.”
“Why doesn’t that fill me with confidence?”
Colt chuckled. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“I’ll remind you that you left me hanging last night.”
“No. The entire crew was watching over you. Had they not, I would have come back, after I calmed down, and gotten you out of there. Fletch showed up before I could do that and told me they had your back. Then we started trying to figure out what to do next.” He paused and looked at his boots, almost as if he was embarrassed. “But, I’ll be honest, I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Yeah, I know the feeling. So what do you need me to do?”
“Nothing. Or, a better way of putting it, do what you need to. The less you know the better off you will be.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
Colt chuckled. “Harrison told me what happened. You can take the challenges in any order. Take Skye’s first. She always goes for sex of some kind.”
“I’m not fucking another woman!”
“Don’t worry. It won’t be that. It’ll be something like what you have already done.”
“And Monica?”
“I don’t know. It could be fucking, or fighting, or both. That’s why I said take Skye first.”
“And the men? I’m not going to just roll over for some dick, and I can’t fight them. They’ll kill me.”
“It won’t come to that.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll take you away before then. We’ve got your back, Sierra. Don’t worry.”
“Easy for you to say. It’s not your ass on the line.” She stared at him a moment. “Were you really coming back for me last night or did you just make that bullshit up?”
“No bullshit. Ask Fletcher.”
She continued to stare at him, trying to determine if he was telling her the truth. “If you hang my ass out like that again, I’m out of here, understand? You can take you big plans and stick them where the sun doesn’t shine.”
Colt chuckled. “Fair enough.”