“This is fuckin’ ridiculous. He’s gonna get us all killed.”

Layla sat down against the wall and ran her fingers through the sparse grass and dirt around her. She watched the dry blades crack between her fingertips, so fragile, so brittle. The Marauders were a lot like that dead grass, not just because they were all about to die, but because they fell apart so easily.

All it had taken was one man down. As sweet as Camel was, she couldn’t believe he was the lynch pin holding it all together.

And he wasn’t. That wasn’t the issue at hand. These were all boys—boys from the rough side of town, sure, but boys nonetheless. They hadn’t been prepared for the big leagues, and the only realist among them had no interest in expanding the club. Bear was only too happy to keep them all under his wing, safe from harm. But what was a motorcycle club without danger? Just a bunch of guys hanging out talking shit at a hardly-used chop shop?

It was pathetic.

Gareth paced back and forth in front of her, his boots kicking up puffs of dirt and dust as he mumbled to himself. He was sucking frantically on the butt of a new cigarette, and each time the cherry flared, she saw a glint in his whiskey-colored eyes. Out of all of the Marauders, Gareth was the real bad boy. The other were just playing with the idea; Gareth was executing it.

“You should’ve been president,” she muttered as he passed her from the umpteenth time. He paused, and she continued: “Camel deserves revenge. And the Marauders deserve respect. Neither of those things will happen as long as Jesse’s at the helm.”

Gareth blew a cloud of smoke into the air. “You really think that?” he asked her.

Layla shrugged. “I mean, yeah. We’re knee-deep in shit, and instead of trying to build ourselves up, we’re just sinking lower and lower. I’m not an expert on shit like this—obviously,” she added. “But I remember being bullied in middle school, and this seems to be a lot like that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gareth asked, a defensive edge to his tone.

She sighed. “It means that when somebody’s hell-bent on making your life miserable, you don’t just sit down and have a chat,” she said. “You go for their throat. You hurt them so bad they don’t wanna get back up. And then, when you’re sure that you’ve crippled them, you move on.”

She brushed her palms together to clear the dirt from between her fingers. “I’m just sayin’ that what’s going on between us and Los Muertos seems a lot like that. They got where they are by killing people like us, or shutting them down. The only thing they know is blood and violence. That’s the language they speak. No matter what we say, that’s all they know how to respond with.”

“You’re smarter than I figured you for,” Gareth said, one side of his lips drawing up in a little smile. “I mean, for a yuppie bitch, you seem to know your stuff.”

She ignored the slur. Sadly, she was getting kind of used to it.

“I get where Jesse’s coming from, y’know,” she said. “He’s the one that’s gotta make the decision that could get a lot of people hurt, or worse. Having that power’s gotta be… difficult. At the end of the day, it’s all on him. How much can a person’s conscience take?”

Gareth nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, I get it,” he grumbled. “But if he ain’t ready for that, then he’s got no business bein’ president.”

“I know,” Layla sighed. “How’d that happen, anyway?”

Gareth shrugged. “Me’n Jesse have known each other since grade school,” he answered. “I was the poor kid with the deadbeat dad and the alcoholic mom. Jesse was the foster kid with a hungry belly and holes in his shoes.”

He took a long drag and let it out toward the stars. “We always talked about bein’ bigger’n badder than we were. Especially when the rich kids would push us around. We wanted to be their boogeyman—the monster under their beds at night. And we both liked motorcycles, so…” He shrugged again.

Layla nodded. She understood the desire to be frightening. It was what made people keep their distance, and if nobody ever got close, you couldn’t get hurt. It was a skill you learned pretty quickly in the foster care system.

“But why not you?” she asked him. “Why Jesse?”

“He had a way with people,” Gareth answered. “Jesse knows how to talk. I know how to piss people off. He just seemed like the guy for it.” He paused, then: “Until now.”

Layla looked up at the moon hovering high above them. “So, what happens next?”

“Gordo sets up a meetin’ with el Coyote, I guess,” he said with a sigh. “And then we hope he doesn’t blow our fuckin’ heads off.” He looked hard at Layla. “But, y’know, there’s another option.”

“What’s that?”

He flicked his cigarette into the dry brush. “Lemme take you home,” he said. “You don’t gotta be part of the Marauders’ downfall. It ain’t your fault you got mixed up in this. It’s me’n Jesse’s—always fightin’ over the same girls. You got a home you can go back to, Cinderella. And maybe you should.”

“No,” she said quickly, firmly. She didn’t even have to think about it. “I’m a Marauder now, too. I’m sticking around. I might be able to help.”

“How?” Gareth asked her. “What do you think you could do to fix this mess I helped get us into?”

Layla didn’t answer. She remembered the way el Coyote had looked at her back at the Bottle Cap—the way his gaze groped at her body even though his hands remained still. She also knew how important it was for him to humiliate Jesse, and if she could pull it off that she was his woman, maybe he’d settle for her instead of the whole gang.

He wasn’t that bad-looking. She could do it.

As if reading her thoughts, Gareth shook his head. “You can’t be serious…”

“If it gets him off our asses…” She looked up at him and smiled faintly. “Gotta do what’s best for the club, right?”

Gareth frowned, his face turning into a patchwork of shadows and moonlight. “Why do you care so much?”

“At first, it was just a way to piss off my parents,” she admitted, looking away. “And then it was about Jesse. I never met anyone like him, and the way I felt on the back of his bike…”

She squinted as a gust blew dry clay toward her eyes. “But now… I mean, I know I’m an outsider, but the Marauders feel more like family than anyone else I’ve ever known. And you…”

She looked up at him. “You could be a good guy, Gareth. You know that?”

He didn’t answer her. After a moment, she plucked another few blades of grass and clenched them in her hand.

“I wanna prove that I’m good enough,” she said. “I wanna prove that I’m tougher and smarter than people think. I don’t want to be the rich bitch or the beauty queen anymore. I wanna be a Marauder. I wanna mean something.”

Gareth reached down, offering his hand to her.

“That’s what bein’ a Marauder was s’pposed to be about,” he said, lifting her onto her feet.

As she rose, Layla pressed into Gareth, the heat of his body radiating through his clothes and into her body, prickling her nipples against the cups of her bra as she looked up into his eyes. Tentatively, she placed her fingertips onto his waist, softly tracing the lip of his jeans.

Gently, Gareth reached down and slipped his fingers between hers, lifting her arms up over her head and guiding them around his neck as he leaned down to kiss her. His mouth was soft, and when his lips parted, the taste of fire danced across her tongue, scorching her from the inside out. She felt his arms encircle her waist, drawing her up against him as they leaned against the wall, using it to support their weight as they writhed against each other.

It was so different from the last time they’d kissed. She remembered the frantic, violent searching of his mouth; the desperate way he’d clawed at her body, trying to bend it to his will. But there was a calm about him now—a stillness that translated his need even better than his groping hands once had, and she melted in the face of it.

Gareth lifted the hem of her shirt, gliding it up over her breasts until he exposed the sheer cups of her bra. He ran his thumbs over them, and the coarseness of his flesh against her sensitive nubs made her gasp, particularly as he circled them through the diaphanous fabric. Then he pulled it aside, freeing one of her creamy white mounds from its prison, and closed his lips around her rosy pink nipple.

Layla arched her back, pushing her breast into Gareth’s mouth, moaning as his teeth scraped her delicate skin as he teased and pulled on her full tits. His tongue flicked expertly across them, bringing them to attention before he blew on them softly, eliciting a shiver that ran all the way down to her knees. She could feel her pussy leaking into her panties, slickening with each twist and turn of Gareth’s lips on her breasts. Her breath hitched. She was already aching for it.

Gareth crouched between her legs and took a long, deep breath as he nuzzled along the crease of her thighs. “Goddamn, you’re wet,” he murmured, savoring her fragrance.

Layla spread her legs and watched him slip her jeans off from around her hips, exposing her lacy panties just barely covering her soft, shaven lips. They were almost completely soaked through, gripping her vulva like a second skin as he breathed her in once more. Then he bit the sopping wet crotch, holding it tightly between his teeth as he yanked them down to her ankles, staring at her pussy hungrily as she kicked off her shoes and stepped out of them.

His mouth was back on her skin in an instant, spreading her lips wide as he dove his tongue into her cleft and groaned at her taste. Layla threw her head back, almost giving herself a concussion on the wall as Gareth lapped at her slit, working her clit in a delicious rhythm that curled her toes.

He reached up, took one of her thighs in each of his hands, and then straightened, sliding her up the wall as her knees linked over his shoulders, fueling a cry of both surprise and pleasure as he lifted her into the air.

Layla whimpered, gripping his hair between her fingers, pulling desperately as he wriggled his hot tongue against her. Her cunt began to throb with each of his panting breaths, the danger of being so high up only adding to the thrill as he ravenously devoured her pussy from below.

Gareth’s hands seized both her ass cheeks, kneading them as he slurped and sucked at her tortured nubbin. As he swept his thumbs past her wet, sweltering cunthole, she felt something inside her give way, and knew she was about to cum.

“Gareth,” she whispered into the air, gyrating eagerly against his lips. “I’m so close…!”

“Mmhm,” he answered, quickening his pace as one of his thumbs sank into her cunt and began prodding her swollen sweet spot.

Layla cried out in ecstasy, arching against the cold wall and pulling Gareth’s head back by his hair, looking down at him as he focused his efforts solely on her clit, his pink tongue fluttering against it as she came on his face.

“Fuck!” she hissed through clenched teeth, squeezing his jaw hard between her spasming thighs.

He pressed her hard into the wall, let his hands down away from her, and then unzipped his fly. A moment later, he grabbed onto her again, pulling his head back just as she bent to kiss him.

“C’mere,” he growled, then dropped her down onto his thrumming, rock-solid cock.

Layla dug her nails into his shoulder, squealing with delight as his dick penetrated her wanting folds. She could feel him throbbing inside of her, and as he thrust forward into her again, she felt his heart skip a beat. He was so close already—she could feel it.

Her hand moved to his cheek, caressing his golden scruff as he stared into her eyes.

“Hold onto me,” he told her. And she did.

Gareth’s movements were slow, deliberate, like the first motions of a steam engine before it barreled down the tracks. He was longer than Jesse was—not as thick, but with a curve that teased her most sensitive spots at every thrust of his hips. Layla buried her face into the mane of his hair, bobbing her ass in time to his own efforts, taking him in up to the hilt and garnering guttural groans of approval in return.

She kissed along the corded muscle of his shoulder, shuddering in his embrace. It was the first time she had felt safe since the night Jesse took her.

This was nothing like that. There was an intimacy here. Even though he was ravishing her in the back of a chop shop on the eve of what was possibly their doom, Layla felt close to him somehow.

She pressed her forehead against his, brushing his hair from his eyes as she kissed him again and again, submitting to the pleasure and the power he exerted over her. She’d never wanted anything so badly in her life.

He crushed her cheeks in his hands, dropping her onto his dick again and again, his grunts becoming more strained with each passing moment they were entwined. She could feel him trembling against her and leaned back, opening her eyes to stare deeply into his.

“Cum,” she commanded him, her breath forming ghosts between them in the cold night air. “Cum for me.”

Gareth licked his lips. The next time he dropped her, he spun her around, forcing her hands against the wall and her ass against his hips as he pressed into her again, pummeling her from behind at breakneck pace, her cheek slapping into the wall with the force of his labored strokes. His hips bucked erratically, his breath came in short bursts, and finally he pulled out, slid in between her ass cheeks, and rocked back and forth until he began to spurt all over the small of her back.

“Goddamn!” he barked, his creamy load pooling in the dimples above her ass. “Fuck, Layla!”

She bit her lip and shuddered. It was the first time he’d ever called her by her name.

It made her feel special.