Harlow

 

 

The guys play poker for another hour before everyone gets sick of losing to Raw. I don’t know why they bothered playing. He always wins.

They shuffle through the bar, finishing beers and handing me empty glasses. I’ll wash them before heading to bed, but I won’t clean up the table or the mess of food and wrappers on the floor around it. I’ll leave that for one of the other girls. Lila or Vanessa, newbies still earning their place here, both of whom are probably waiting for Skeeze and Kill in their bedrooms in the back. The other guys have homes in town. Hyde has a wife waiting up for him. Raw’s kid is sleeping peacefully in the spare room at Bear’s.

Devo and I share a trailer out back behind the bar, but still inside the fence surrounding it. It’s part of the club, inside its protection. Opal is a quiet town, but we don’t live in Opal. We live on the outskirts, on the outside, and what passes for law in Opal doesn’t reach us here. They stay out of club business but in return they aren’t expected to come running if shit hits the fan. If the place caught fire tonight, the fire department would watch it burn from across the bridge.

It’s not like they hate us. They need us as much as we need them. The Winslow students coming across the bridge for a thrill and a beer are what keep us afloat, and the club pours a lot of support into the town all year. When a storm rolled through and tore the roof off two houses, smashing windows out of businesses, the boys were out there that afternoon hammering plywood over storefronts and tarping rooves. Every Christmas Bear’s wife, Angela, has the girls over to bake tray after tray of cookies and pies to hand out at the tree lighting ceremony in the park. The club sponsors a Peewee football team. They’re called The Little Devil’s and they’re the cutest fucking things I’ve ever seen.

But that doesn’t mean we’re allies. It doesn’t mean they love us, and to be honest, it doesn’t mean we love them. Not by any means. Every chapter of the Devil’s Due operates outside the law in some way. They’re part of the One Percenters; the rare motorcycle club that operates illegally. Each of these guys are outlaws, and not just by name. By action. By desire. They don’t want that nine-to-five bullshit. They don’t want to wear a tie or punch a clock. They don’t want the government involved in their lives in any way. They want freedom to do as they please. To be who they are without apology. Without judgement or approval. That outlook is almost everything that drew me to them after a lifetime of living under my dad’s thumb.

Well, that and Devo. Big, bad, beautiful Devo.

“Hey, girl,” he mutters tiredly in my ear. His arms wrap around my waist, pulling me in close to him. Against my back, his chest is a wall of strength, his arms like steel bars around me. “You ready to go?”

I nod, tipping the last glass upside down on the black rubber mat where it’ll dry overnight. I wipe my hands on a towel before tossing it on top of a mound of them at my feet. “I’m ready.”

He kisses my neck before letting me go. The scruff on his jaw chafes my skin in a weirdly delicious way. I follow him out from behind the bar, waving to the boys as they disband. Everyone looks dead tired. I know I should be too, it’s more early than it is late, but I’m wired for some reason. I’m jittery in my blood like I just had a shot of caffeine straight to my vein. The pace of Devo’s shit-kickers thumping on the hardwood floor feels too slow in front of me. I want to rush him. I want to grab him, kiss him, mount him. I want to do something, anything to get this buzz out of my body.

When he opens the door to the backlot, the cold hits me hard. I wrap my arms around myself tightly. Devo sees it, but he wisely doesn’t offer help. He knows what my answer will be.

There’s a wind whipping up off the empty plains around us. There’s not a cloud in the sky to gauge its speed, but it feels angry. It feels like bad things are coming.

I’m relieved when Devo unlocks the trailer, holding the door open to let me in. I snap on the light as I step inside. It flickers for a second before deciding to stay on, bathing the pastel painted space in a wan yellow glow. This thing is an old relic from the eighties; set up on blocks, the wheels busted and stripped off years ago. A long time before I got here. Bear and Angela lived here originally, back when this chapter of the Devil’s Due was formed and the bar was being built. The fences weren’t up back then. The boys in the gang, they slept in tents scattered behind the trailer at night and worked on building the bar during the day.

Bear is the only original member that’s still here. The rest are either buried or moved on to another gang for personal or political reasons. One guy straight up quit. Moved to Texas to open a diner with his born again Christian girlfriend. No one talks about him much anymore. They don’t say his name in the daylight.

It’s a hard thing to get into a biker gang; at least it’s hard to get into a good one. It’s an ugly thing to get out. I don’t like to think about what he had to do to accomplish either.

Devo empties his pockets onto the tiny kitchen counter, his eyes downcast. “What was Stratford doing out in the middle of the night?”

I shrug, unhooking my earrings. “I didn’t ask.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

He glances at me sideways, his face in shadow. “Funny running into him.”

“Funny haha or funny weird?”

“Which do you think?”

“I think it’s hilarious.”

He shrugs out of his cut before handing it to me. “What’d he want?”

I frown as I hang up the soft, worn leather. “What do you mean?”

“Everybody wants something, Harley. What’d he want?”

“Nothing. He didn’t ask me for anything.”

“He didn’t ask you to bring him to the club to meet everybody?”

“No,” I answer emphatically. “I invited him, and he wasn’t sure he should be there.”

“He was right.”

I cross my arms over my chest, squaring my shoulders. “What does that mean? I thought you liked him.

“I never said I liked him.”

“You said he’s a good guy.”

Devo leans against the wall, shaking his head. “Not the same thing.”

“He doesn’t want anything from me. Or you. I actually tried to tell him if he needs anything he can come to me for help, but he wouldn’t let me finish. He’s too proud.”

“Must be in the water, huh?”

“Why do you assume he needs something?”

“Is he having trouble with money?”

“Everyone is. Opal sucks. College is expensive. His grandpa is in a home and Josh is the only family he has.”

“And you’re the only family Josh has. Where else is he gonna turn for money?”

“What is your problem?” I demand impatiently.

He rolls his jaw the way he does when he’s thinking. He’s a quiet guy, pensive and slow to speak. When I first met him I thought he was an idiot. He hardly spoke, he barely reacted to the conversations going on around him. It made me wonder if he didn’t understand. Turns out he just didn’t care. It takes a lot to catch Devo’s interest, but once you’ve got it, good luck getting rid of it. He’s hyper-observant. Not intelligent like Josh, but I think crafty is a perfect word for it. He’s always connecting the dots. Always watching the way the world dances around him, quietly learning the steps.

“I think it’s weird that you haven’t seen him in years,” he tells me finally, quietly, “and now out of nowhere you run into him. It’s a small town. Seems like it should have happened before now.”

“He doesn’t exactly keep the same schedule. I work all night and sleep through half the day. He’s gotta be up for classes by, what, eight in the morning?” I swallow hard, willfully keeping my voice steady. “And he lives next door to my fucking father. I’m not going over there for a visit. And apparently he’s not welcome here, so when the hell would I see him?”

Devo doesn’t answer right away. He watches me closely, his eyes taking in the flush in my cheeks. The anger folded in my brow.

“I know you miss him.”

Devo’s words hit me harder than they should. Of course I miss Josh. He and Pops were like blood to me. They were my sanity when I lived inside a nightmare. And I wonder if that’s why I’m so worked up; because seeing Josh reminds me of the way it felt to live like that. Always on edge, always waiting for my dad to walk into the room and say something awful. To tell me I’m wrong. To tell me lies about myself and my mother. About Josh. Always waiting for him to take away everything, even the daylight.

“We can move,” Devo offers simply. “There’s another chapter in Oregon that’ll take me. Their Prez likes me. I did him a solid in that pot swap last year. We can get out of this town and away from your old man.”

I shake my head ardently, unwilling as always. “I can’t do that to you. You’re set here. Bear loves you. You’re primed to be VP when Kill steps up to be President someday. If we leave, you lose all of that.”

“I can start over.”

“What about your sister? And Duke? You know she can’t take care of him alone and there’s no way you’re leaving your nephew behind.”

His face darkens. “We’ll send money.”

“It’s not enough and you know it. She needs us here. They both do.”

“We can take them with us.”

“Or we can stay,” I remind him, stepping closer. Wrapping my arms around his waist and looking up into his eyes, begging him to silence the anxiety tearing through my blood. “We’ve got a good thing here. Ghosts can’t chase us away from our life, and that’s what Dad is to me. A ghost.”

Devo lifts his hands to my face, threading his fingers into my hair. “He’s not dead yet.”

“He will be someday. And you’ll be VP and I’ll take over for Angela leading the girls, and we’ll own this fucking town.”

He grins faintly. “That’s assuming Kill doesn’t put an old lady on the back of his bike.”

“That man is never tying himself down.”

“You sound pretty sure of that.”

I stand up on my tip toes, touching my lips to his. My palm to his dick between us. “I’m very sure,” I whisper against his mouth. My hand rubs him up and down over his jeans slowly. “So sure I’d bet your balls on it.”

Devo breathes out slowly, roughly. His grip on my face tightens. “You’d bet your unborn babies on it, huh?”’

The buzz in my body cranks up to an eleven. So high I feel like I’m vibrating in my skin. So high it hurts.

I have to make it stop.

“Devo?”

“Hmm?”

I take his hand, dragging it down my neck until it rests on my breast. “Stop talking and fuck me.”

He growls in the back of his throat as he kisses me hard. He squeezes my tits, teasing the nipples through the fabric of my shirt, rolling them roughly. It sends a bolt of lightning to my core, making me weep. Making me instantly ready. Devo knows how to play me. He knows exactly how to make me hot.

After three solid years of practice, he sure as shit better know.

We’re quick to strip each other naked. There’s no exploring, no discovering. We know each other’s bodies. There are no secrets to be uncovered. Just buttons that need to be pushed to get the reaction we need. It’s less than a minute before he’s inside me. Before I finally feel like that buzz is starting to fade into the background.

“Shit, Harley,” he moans as I ride him slowly. “Your fucking body, baby. Goddam.”

His own body is coated in sweat, glistening in the low light trickling in from the window. It casts shadows over his curves, deepening the cut of his muscles until he looks unreal. Impossibly ripped and deliciously dark. I’ve never seen Devo without a tan. I can’t imagine it. I can’t picture him ever living anywhere but here in the desert surrounded by sun and sand, sagebrush and bikes. He’s chrome reflecting in the sun. He’s black hair and black eyes, black tires on black asphalt. He’s the roar of an engine rumbling under my feet as I wait for him to come home. The roar of a man inside my pussy as I wait for him to come.

He flips me off of him in one smooth move that takes me by surprise. I’m on my knees on the bed, and before I can breathe, he’s behind me. He’s inside me. He pushes down on my shoulders until I’m leaning on my elbows, my ass in the air and him so damn deep I can hardly handle it. He feels for me, finding my clit and flicking it hard.

“Fuck!” I yelp, burying my head between my arms. My fingers grasp at the sheets, pulling them into tight balls in my wet palms.

Devo lightens his touch, teasing me. Gentle circles that make me whimper into the bed. That make me push back against him, rolling my hips.

“You’re gonna come, aren’t you, Harley?”

“Yes,” I groan.

“You don’t wanna wait for me, do you?”

I shake my head, my hair falling in a curtain around my face. It sticks to my skin soaked in sweat.

“Bad girl,” Devo scolds quietly.

He slaps my ass hard, taking me by surprise. Making me cry out. Making me nearly come.

“Fuck you, Devo,” I gasp.

“Come on, baby girl. Say what you really mean.”

I lick my lips, arching my back. Squeezing him tight. “Fuck me, Devo.”

He pushes hard on my clit, rubbing fast and furiously as he drives into me again and again.

The orgasm hits me hard like a train in the dark. I go blank for a second, my mouth open and noiseless. Too full for sound. I’m shaking as he keeps going. As he finishes inside me, a sharp bark from his chest punctuating his victory.

He collapses on top of me, draping his large body over mine. Enveloping me protectively. I feel him sigh, his breath brushing against my naked neck. It brings me back to reality. Back to myself and him and the heat in the room. The scent of cigarettes and alcohol. Sweat and sex.

I feel tired, finally. Exhausted and euphoric. That anxious feeling is lost somewhere in the air above the room. It drifts like smoke from a snuffed candle up into the sky, out over the stars, dissipating into nothing. Gone. Chased away with all the other demons Devo keeps at bay.