12.

Beau

“Did you see her?” I bellow, stumbling out of the bathroom, still cupping my balls and barely able to stand straight. Jesus my woman packs a bigger fucking punch than I gave her credit for. I didn’t even have time to do my pants up.

“She get away again, Bossman?” Bloodhound can hardly contain his laughter as he sits at the bar with his sister, who’d incidentally, known Elise all this time, and I never knew. Bad fucking luck there. She’s sexy as hell but doesn’t even come close to my woman.

“I don’t see anything fuckin’ funny about this.”

“She ain’t the only snapper in the sea,” Rick, the bartender, calls out to me.

“Yeah well—she is for me. Which way she go?”

“Elise didn’t come out this way,” Livvy, Blood’s sister tells me.

Shit.

“Let’s ride, baby girl,” Blood says to his sister pulling her by the hand, and we file outside moving toward our bikes. At least we know she’s not with the Horde. It’s not much to console my burning nuts, but it’s something. Damn that woman can be stubborn when she wants to be. Won’t hear me out. I’ve got a side, and I’d like to share it if she ever gives me the chance.

I mount my ride and just scream into the air. “Uggghhhh!” Then crank the engine to life and rollout. The four of us, Bloodhound, Carver, Chaos and myself, along with Liv of course, who’s straddling her brother’s bike, head back to Blood’s sister’s apartment. She says we can stay as long as we need to.

We rumble up Lake Shore Blvd. to a high rise condo. Nice digs. Phone sex must pay well. Well enough to get her two parking spaces. Nobody gets two parking spaces on Lake Shore unless you’re shellin’ out big time. So we roll into the attached parking garage. Livvy don’t even own a car. She says she can get everywhere she needs to go by bus, L train, or taxi. We’re able to fit our four bikes in her spots no problem.

We’re imposing as we stand filling the elevator. Men and women in business suits or clubware wave us away as the door slides open for them at each stop. We hear a lot of, “I’ll catch the next one.”

Apparently they ain’t used to our kind on this side of the city. Becoming more and more impatient at just about everything. “Jesus,” I complain. “How far up do you live?”

“Fifteenth floor,” she says casually, completely ignoring the fact I’m being a whiney bitch right now. It’s gonna take fuckin’ forever with all the chumps ringing for an elevator, so I hold down the door close button, allowing us to bypass all remaining floors.

The whole time I feel Blood’s sister study me.

“What?” I lash out.

“So you’re Beau?” I don’t say anything, and she continues. “As in, ‘cuz Beau had to die?” She sings the lyrics Elise had changed. Even I have to admit that was pretty clever, if not that funny.

I nod. “But you call me Boss or Bossman. Elise is the only one calls me Beau.”

She bites down on her bottom lip.

I watch, and I see Chaos watching for an entirely different reason. So I gesture for her to spit it out, whatever she has to say to me to get her to quit with the lip biting, because I figure Blood won’t be too happy with him if he reads what I’m reading.

“It’s just,” she continues, “She was so angry—what’d you do?”

“Liv.” Blood steps in, admonishing his sister. “You of all people know how this works. Not our business. Not our place to judge.”

They’d grown up in this life, their pops a lifer in the Illinois chapter, ‘til he was gunned down in a bar fight. Blood took his revenge but had to leave town to keep the blowback from his retaliation from hitting his sister. Found out all this when he prospected with us, came in about six months after me. The same time as Chaos.

“You listen Raif, I’m not in that life anymore. And anyway, I wasn’t judging. She’s my friend, or she was until your bunch showed up tonight ruining the fun. I’m so glad to see you, I’ve missed you. But the honest truth is I’m a phone sex girl who grew up in biker culture. I don’t have many friends, and if you’ve just lost me one, I’d like to know why.”

“You stay out of it,” Blood says. “Boss has it handled.”

“So then why are you here, again? Simply to pay your little sis a social visit after being gone for almost five years?”

“He’s my brother,” is all he says for explanation.

“And this is why…” she whispers, shaking her head in disappointment at not just him, but all of us.

When the bell chimes the fifteenth floor, I let up from the door close button, and they slide open.

She pushes past us digging around for her keys in her purse. She finds them once we’ve stopped outside her door.

“Your keys should already be out and in your hand.” Chaos doesn’t look happy as he watches her. “Any fucker could catch you off guard. You gonna live in the city, Livvy, you need to remember. To be smart.”

“Wow. Thanks, Dad. Because I haven’t been on my own for years now.”

“I sure as hell ain’t your dad, but I’m more than willing to spank that ass,” says Chaos.

“Brother,” Blood warns. He keeps his hands at his side, calmly walking inside.

“What? I’m just telling it like it is. You show up to the party, expect party favors.”

“Women…” Blood shakes his head, disapproval radiating off him. “We wouldn’t even be here if Boss could remember that pussy tastes the same no matter where you get it.” Clueless. The man is clueless as a mother-fucker.

I can’t help laugh. “Then you ain’t tasted the right pussy yet, brother. I’ll do anything I have to, to keep her with me, safe. I gotta jump through hoops to get there—so be it. It won’t last long. She’ll get it. And when she gets it, we can move on to the parts I’m ready to move on to.”

“You will never find me jumping through hoops for some bitch,” he says. “I’m happy to fuck club pieces until I die or my dick falls off.”

“Careful, Blood,” I warn.

At the same time Liv says, “Nice, Raif.” And stares down her brother through hard, squinted, pissed off eyes.

Carver hasn’t spoken this whole time. Chaos just continues to watch Liv. Damn sure hope he thinks with the head on his neck and not the one on his cock. That’s Blood’s sister. Screwing over a brother for a piece of ass—even if she’s as pretty as Livvy—you just don’t. Period.

She flicks on the light then locks the door behind us after we’ve all filed inside. The place looks right out of the nineteen sixties, the walls are white but with color blocks of brown, orange and green. And the chick seems to have a thing for mushrooms. They’re everywhere. Painted on the walls. Ceramic knick-knacks. A flower vase. A rug.

But her view kills, an entire wall of windows looking out over Lake Michigan.

“There’s beer in the fridge if you want a drink.” She pulls me from my thoughts. “Help yourself to any food. I have a spare bedroom, the sofa and love seat pullout into sleepers. But I’m afraid two of you will have to spoon, or someone ends up on the floor. I’ll get blankets.”

“She’s my sister, so I get a bed,” Blood says.

“Calm your tits, brother,” says Chaos. “I’ll take the floor. Carver’s been quiet this whole time, so we aren’t denying him, and we’re here to stave off Boss’s impending freak-out if he doesn’t bed his lady again soon. Just remember who’s the bigger man here.”

Back from the spare bedroom, Liv drops an armful of blankets and pillows onto the floor in front of the windows.

We stay up drinking beers and stuffing our faces full of nachos Chaos made from fixins he found in her kitchen. I’ve seen that look she’s givin’ him before. It’s the look that says she can’t believe he can cook, that she’s clearly underestimated what the brothers are capable of.

Yes, we like to party and we like to fuck, but we’re more than that. ‘Course, I know from talkin’ with Blood, those ain’t the kind of men she’d’ve ever seen growing up.

About three o’clock in the morning Liv stands, stretches and announces she’s going to bed. Carver and Blood immediately start pulling out sofa beds, Chaos grabs a pillow and blanket, lying it flat over a white shag throw rug nearest the hallway, which leaves me the spare room.

I sit at the edge of the bed, pullin’ off my boots and stripping off my cut, T-shirt and jeans then slide underneath the covers. I wish I could sleep, but dammit, just thinkin’ about fingering Elise earlier this evening has me rock hard and ready. She won’t get away from me again. Hell, the woman will be lucky if I don’t bend her over my bike and fuck her in front of my brothers for putting me through this.

There’s rustling in the next room, then I hear through the thin walls. “Chaos, what are you doing?”

Dammit brother, don’t be stupid.

“I’ll be good, Liv. I just want to hold you tonight.”

“But my brother—he’s right out there.”

“Said I just want to hold you. Promise I won’t try anything.”

“Heard that before. I’m not eighteen anymore, Chaos.”

“Neither am I, Liv. And when it’s just you and me, you call me Gage.”

“Why? It won’t make a difference now just like it didn’t then. I gave you your one night.”

“Maybe one night with you wasn’t enough.”

“It’s going to have to be. You of all people know why. I’m not spending my life as a club whore.”

“Have me or Blood or any of the brothers ever treated you like a piece of ass?”

“Yes, when you fucked me when I was eighteen, and I never heard from you again. And don’t even get me started on Blood.”

“Hey, Blood loves you.”

“He talks to me like our father did. His mom was old lady, mine was club whore. Half the time I wasn’t even sure why the fat fuck acknowledged me as his daughter. That man didn’t give two shits about me. I work phone sex because I’m good at it, and it pays the bills while I’m in school. But I’m not that girl, despite who my mother was. That was her, not me, and you won’t drag me down into that life.”

“Didn’t know you felt that way about the club.”

“Well, I do.”

There’s a long pause in the conversation, long enough for me to readjust and close my eyes, hoping to finally get some shuteye. Unfortunately, Chaos ain’t done.

“Best not be saying anything to scare off Elise. You have your opinions, that’s fine.”

“Yeah, when is it fine for a woman, no less a piece, to have an opinion in the club? I won’t say anything, though. My opinion on club life, that’s a fight for the two of them. She’ll see. Or maybe she won’t, she’s an old lady. She matters.”

Liv is right. She does matter.

“Night, Livvy,” Chaos says softly.

I see where she’s coming from. If I’d been raised in her shoes, as the kid of a whore and not the kid of an old lady like her brother, I guess I’d have animosity toward the brothers, too. But what’s most interesting is what she dismissed.

When it’s just the two of them, Chaos wants her to call him Gage, his given name. There’s only one reason for that. The same reason Elise is the only one to call me Beau. Got a feeling a shitstorm’s about to unleash onto the club. Looks like Chaos and me need to have a talk.