I wasn’t paying attention.
Later, I wouldn’t blame myself because I was still reeling from the complete loss of my childhood idol, the broken heart I nursed at realizing my first love was nothing but a dream.
Still, I was taking the trash out to a poorly lit back alley behind a titty bar. It was straight up dumb-blonde of me not to take note of my surroundings.
I paid for it when something heavy slammed me into the brick wall. The trash bag fell to the ground beside me as I tried to bring my hands up to push away but someone strong captured them in one hand and brought them around to the small of my back.
“Stupid bitch,” Quentin Kade hissed into my ear. “Think you’re too fuckin’ good for me to fuck, huh?”
I tried to buck him off but there was no torque.
“Fuck yeah,” I bit out, enraged by my helplessness, so angry with myself for being oblivious in a dark fucking alley.
He chuckled in my ear. “Don’t worry, bitch, I’m not going to stick my dick into a bitter cunt. I have a better idea. We’re going to play a little game, okay? Zeus fuckin’ Garro thinks he can intimidate me? He’s not the only game in town anymore and it’s about time he knew it.”
He spun me around, kicked my legs apart and pressed something cold and hard to my left temple.
A gun.
Fear spilled over my head like an ice bucket and for a moment, I was afraid I was going to pee myself.
Instead, I worked the minimal saliva left in my mouth into a pool and spat it at him. “You think I’m the right thing to send a message to the Prez of The Fallen? I’m just some girl that works in his titty bar.”
Quentin’s grin glinted dimly in the grimy light cast from the red stripper sign over the side door. “You know, you’re probably fuckin’ right? But I don’t really give a shit. He’ll know it’s a message when I kill one of his filthy new dancers and if I don’t kill you, I want you to give it to him for me. Tell him that the Nightstalkers are back and they aren’t fucking around this time.”
I watched as he stepped back, the gun in front of my face now, leveled just between my eyes so that they crossed as I stared down the small barrel. He kept chuckling as one of his lackeys handed him a shot glass.
“Hope you like vodka,” he said as he placed the shot on top of my head. “Now stand real still or this game will be over a lot quicker than either of us want it to be.”
I frantically thought about who might come out into the alley to see us, who might save me. There was no one left inside but Michael, a sweet middle-aged man with Autism that I’d convinced Debra to hire a few months ago.
Everyone else was gone and I didn’t think Michael would recognize the sound of a gunshot and come running.
I closed my eyes. Maybe dying from a bullet in the head would be a better way to go—quick and done—than from the cancer, slow and creeping.
Silver lining, right?
I opened my eyes again and glared at him as he took position two yards away from me in the narrow alley. I decided if I was going to die, I was going to do it with sass.
“Betcha twenty bucks, you miss,” I goaded him, like a reckless fool.
He laughed as he brought the gun up in his right hand, used the left to steady it, squinted one eye and… POP!
The bullet exploded up and over my head to the left, shards of metal and brick raining down on my face. A tiny sliver caught my left cheek but I didn’t flinch because I didn’t know what he’d do if I spilled the shot myself.
He laughed uproariously and it was clear he was higher than a fucking kite.
I was going to die at the hands of a coked-up drug dealer just because I wouldn’t grind on his lap. Sometimes, I seriously questioned my morals. As in, were they necessary?
“Told ya,” I sneered at him.
“Bitch,” he chuckled, waving the gun erratically back and forth. “You talk like that when I got the gun? You’re whacked.”
I managed a small shrug without dropping the shot, keeping an eye on his loose gun hand. If I could disarm him enough, I figured that I could make a run for it and duck back into the bar before he could get a clean shot off.
“I’m just saying,” I continued, as if I was having a casual conversation instead of a deadly one. Panic was a knife’s point at my throat but I forced myself to take a deep breath and forge on. Zeus had once told me that being high made you feel like a king, invincible in an ironic way because being high made you anything but. “I don’t think you can hit it clean off. Ask your buddies, I bet they agree with me.”
Bringing his friends into it was the right move.
He turned to them with exaggerated horror, flapping the gun around as he demanded that they vouch for him.
It was my moment and I took it without conscious thought.
I pushed off the wall, leapt over the mounds of garbage and sprinted the four steps to the huge metal door, yanking it open just as a shot popped against the brick beside me. I slammed the door shut, my heart thudding in my throat, then bolted it shut with a finality that made me want to cry.
Seconds later, I heard them cursing as they tried to get in.
I didn’t wait around even though I knew the door would hold. We still had a front entrance and I couldn’t afford to be stuck there all night. It was already two in the morning and I had school the next day.
I turned and ran through the darkened halls. They were so familiar that it was easy to grab my rucksack from the back room and dash back into the main bar toward the front.
When two huge hands grabbed at me, I screamed and swung around to thwack my bag against the intruder.
“Stop.” A tall, broad shadow of a man ordered as his strong hands held me still by the shoulders.
“Get off me,” I ordered, struggling under the hold.
He didn’t budge.
“Brother of The Fallen,” he explained in a low voice that seemed rough with disuse.
Immediately, I settled, peering harder through the dark to see the glint of the small white patch on the front of his leather cut that claimed he was a member of the MC.
“Thank God,” I said in bone-deep relief, sagging against him.
He stiffened in intense discomfort, so I sprung away from him instantly. I wasn’t normally an overtly affectionate person, but I’d been weak with relief that I wasn’t alone with a group of four stoned, misogynistic assholes just outside.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “There’s a group of guys outside that literally just tried to shoot a shot glass off my head.”
The Fallen brother blinked huge brown eyes at me then turned away, squatted slightly and jerked his chin at me from over his shoulder. “Up.”
I stared at him a little slack jawed because if I didn’t know better, it seemed like he wanted to give me a piggyback ride.
“Up,” he repeated.
A guy that clearly didn’t like to be touched was going to give me a piggyback ride out of the bar?
“Um, I don’t think that’s necessary,” I tried.
He sighed impatiently then lifted his hands to show me the small black gun in one palm and the glint of a sharp blade in the other. “Up.”
I swallowed my fear and climbed onto his back. He stiffened as soon as I touched him, so deeply not okay with my body against his that I immediately wanted to get off him.
“Hold on,” he ordered.
I barely had time to blink before he was running, running, through the bar as if I was light as a shadow. I could feel the immense power in his body as he thrust us through the front door at an incredible speed and immediately fired off two shots to the left of us where my abusers would be emerging from the side alley if they were indeed following me.
There were shouts and another shot rang out somewhere behind us.
Yep, they were following us.
What the absolute fuck!?
I clung to the stranger beneath me and ducked my head into his neck as he ducked behind a van and halted in front of a motorcycle. Without any degree of gentleness and all haste, he threw me off his back and onto the tiny backseat of the bike before he swung a leg over it and gunned the engine.
“Hold. On,” he gritted between his teeth as he peeled out into the streets, the bike at such a horizontal angle to the pavement that my hair brushed across it before we righted and shot forward into the night.
The shouts faded behind us when we took the first corner. A few minutes later, the eloquent biker pulled over to the side of the road to make a call.
“Got ’er on my bike,” he said into the phone.
I tried to listen to the other end of the conversation but couldn’t hear anything because I’d released him from my tight hold as soon as we pulled over. I was used to an aversion to touch because a lot of kids I worked with at the Autism Centre were touch sensitive. I didn’t want to cause my hero any further discomfort than absolutely necessary.
“Yeah. Yeah. Back at Lotus. Yeah. Yeah,” he responded. “I’ll bring ’er.”
Bring her?
Bring her where?
He hung up the phone and immediately started the bike again so I didn’t have time to question as he swung back onto the street into the dark. I’d lived in Entrance my whole life so I knew immediately where he was taking us when he veered away from the ritzy coastal neighborhoods and into the east side of town.
We were going to The Fallen Compound.
I’d only seen it from outside the huge chain-link fence encircling the industrial lot. I’d been sixteen, just after Zeus had ended our correspondence and I wanted to catch a glimpse of him. I’d waited for three hours across the street in a small strip complex before one of the brothers, a non-descript until you looked at him kind of man with white skin and copper hair, had noticed me. He’d approached me and told me gently to get lost.
I’d obeyed.
And I’d never gone back because I was still living scared and obedient back then.
Now, I watched with my heart in my throat as the metal gates to Hephaestus Auto and Mechanics groaned open and we swung up a slight incline on to the lot.
Zeus’s inner sanctuary.
He was waiting for us at the door to a long, low brick building slightly behind the main garage complex and as soon as my silent companion killed the engine, Zeus was coming at us.
Before I could speak, he plucked me from the back of the bike and plastered me to his side with a heavy arm belted around my hips. Then he promptly ignored me.
“Mute, brother, you did good tonight,” he told the silent man who’d helped me.
Under the huge industrial lights of the complex, I could make him out better and was surprised to find he couldn’t have been much older than me. Mute, appropriately named, was over six feet tall but stocky, so wide with muscle with a face so craggy under his severely buzzed hair that he looked almost like a cartoon drawing of a thug. Then I noticed the way his fingers thrummed against his left thigh in a staccato rhythm, the way his face was blank and absent as he nodded at his Prez.
He was busy with a ritual.
I frowned as I recognized the trait from Sammy, my best bud at the Autism centre who had similar rituals, having to stomp his feet five times whenever he put on his shoes, eat his dessert first thing in the morning before he’d ever have anything savory… I frowned at my hero and wondered if a biker could be autistic.
“Sent Bat, Priest and Axe-Man,” Zeus was growling, his fury a cloak I pulled tight around myself because I found it, strangely, comforting. “They’ll pick ’em up and bring ’em back. Get me when it’s done.”
Mute nodded then turned to walk into the clubhouse but stopped just as abruptly and walked over to me in the circle of Zeus’s arm. He stared hard into my face with an inscrutable expression before he reached out to tug a little too hard on a lock of my pale hair.
“Stay safe,” he ordered with a solemnity I felt in my chest.
I nodded slowly, a gesture he echoed before he turned to go into the brick building.
“Got shit to do so let’s get this over with, yeah?” Zeus finally said, though not to my face because he was already walking us inside.
“I need to go home or like, call the police,” I said, so discombobulated by the turn of events that I didn’t know which way was up or down.
As always in those moments of panic and pain, all I knew was Zeus. So, even though I knew I had to return to Louise’s life in less than six hours, I leaned into Zeus as he propelled me forward and enjoyed his proximity. I took the opportunity to learn his scent, something I’d wondered at for years.
Dark forest; pine and cedar, fresh air bitten with the slight tang of tobacco. I dragged the heady mixture into my lungs, closed my eyes and committed it to memory.
“No police,” Zeus growled as he propelled me through the dark interior and then lifted me up as if I weighed nothing to plunk me on a tall stool beside a bar. “Wait here.”
He didn’t wait for me to respond but stalked off down the hall.
I took the time to take a deep breath and instead of focusing on the craziness of having a gun in my face (somehow not for the first time in my life but the second), I studied The Fallen MC clubhouse.
It was a fairly enormous open room wrapped in dark wood paneling but coloured by the plethora of neon bar signs on the walls that signaled things like “Live Free, Die Hard But Only If You Can’t Kill ’Em First.” There was also a collection of prison photos lighted by an overhead lamp leading down the hallway Zeus had disappeared into. I noticed his immediately, dead center, his scowl fierce, tongue out, rock on symbol constructed by his fingers just beside the plaque he carried so that at first, the emblem of rebellion wasn’t noticeable.
There were two pool tables covered in black felt at the far end of the rectangular room, a jukebox between them that even now was playing hard rock (Zeppelin), and a couple of high tables with stools. A huge antique Harley was mounted on one wall, a massive TV on the other fronted by a couple long, low black leather couches. The recreational space and the bar area that I sat in was partially divided by a black chain-link wall that made the entire place wicked cool and would have been my favourite feature but for the fact that the massive square bar I sat at was absolutely covered in graffiti, the biggest of which was a huge image of The Fallen logo, a skull with fiery, tattered wings, and their motto: Live Free, Die Hard.
“Wow,” I breathed.
“Fuckin’ somethin’ else, isn’t it?” A tall, skinny guy covered in tattoos appeared beside me, sliding onto a stool with a wide smile.
He wasn’t a bad-looking guy despite being vaguely terrifying but there was something about his smile that rubbed me the wrong way, like he expected my panties to melt off at the sight of it.
I crossed my legs, suddenly extremely conscious of the tiny length of my work shorts.
“Yeah, it’s a cool place. Cleaner than I thought for a group of bikers,” I admitted.
He laughed. “Got bitches who keep the place clean.”
I tried not to wince at the terminology or the thought of one of those women with Zeus. “Figures, only women would know how to keep a place this clean.”
Another chuckle. “Should see it after one of our shindigs. Fuckin’ mess.”
I wrinkled my nose at the thought, which made him grin even wider at me.
“You’re a real treat, you know that?” he asked me, leaning forward to put his forearms on his thighs, which brought him much closer to me, his face on level with my breasts in my deep-cut crop top.
I leaned back slightly but winked at him to soften the rebuke. “I’ve been told.”
“Get a taste, figure it’ll be just as sweet,” he continued, eyes sparkling.
It was my turn to laugh, covering my mouth with my hand as I did it loudly. “You’re kidding me with this, right?”
His grin was unrepentant when he straightened with a shrug. “Can’t blame a man for tryin’ now, can ya?”
“She might not, but I fuckin’ well can. Back off, Skell. Lou’s too smart to fall in for your cheesy fuckin’ lines,” Zeus grumbled as he prowled back into the room, a skinny ginger kid barely older than myself and a man with an eye patch following behind him.
The guy named Skell held his hands up in surrender. “Girl looks like a fuckin’ Barbie doll, Prez. Gotta say, I’d put up with a beatin’ if it meant I could have just one minute with my face up her skirt.”
I didn’t know whether to be strangely flattered or seriously offended but Zeus took matters into his own hands by hooking a foot in Skell’s stool and tugging so that the biker went tumbling to the ground.
The other men burst into laughter and even Skell chuckled good-naturedly as he rubbed the back of his head and rolled to his feet.
“If you weren’t six foot fuckin’ five an’ harder ’an a concrete wall, I’d fight ya for that.”
Even I laughed when Skell jumped around on his toes, his hands up in faux fighting posture.
“Breathe on ya right and you’d fall over, brother,” Zeus said, his lips tilted to the left in a small grin. With his arms crossed over his wide chest, one booted foot over the other and lean hips against the side of the bar, he was the picture of badass biker guy.
I had no doubt he could blow on someone just right and bowl them over.
I also didn’t doubt that he could blow on me and I’d go down, but probably for different reasons.
“Right, brothers, this here is Loulou,” Zeus introduced with a chin nod. “She’ll be around seein’ as she won’t leave me the fuck alone.”
I beamed angelically up into his scowling face as he continued, “Lou, got Cyclops, Skeleton and Curtains, other wise known as Cyc, Skell and Curtains.”
“Why Curtains?” I asked warily, because the other two biker nicknames made sense but I couldn’t picture the skinny, stoned-looking ginger biker sewing curtains.
His pale skin went as red as his hair when the others burst out laughing but he continued to pass out the cold beers he’d grabbed from the bar fridge.
Zeus clapped him on the back, rocking his slight frame with the movement. “Think you’d be used to answerin’ that by now, Prospect.”
“It’s, uh, cause the curtains match the drapes,” the poor kid told me.
I blinked at him before I dissolved into laughter. “That is too funny!”
When I stopped laughing long enough to see him frowning at me, I laughed even harder. “You should feel grateful no one thought to call you ‘Fire Crotch.’ At least Curtains is kind of subtle.”
“Fire Crotch,” Skell snorted beer through is nose and all over the bar. Immediately, Curtains grabbed a rag to wipe it up. “Damn, we missed out, boys.”
“Do I get a nickname?” I asked, leaning forward to bat my eyelashes at Skell who stopped laughing and blinked dumbly at me.
“Uh, you want one, I can think of a few things to call you, sugar,” he finally responded on a wide grin.
“Don’t you fuckers have better things to be doin’ like, oh, I don’t know, findin’ those scumbags that scared Lou so fuckin’ bad?” Zeus asked, deceptively calm.
Immediately, the men snapped to attention like soldiers, only Curtains tossing me a wave as they moved in formation out the doors of the clubhouse.
I turned back to Zeus, watched him as he collected an unopened bottle of Knob Creek Canadian whiskey and pried the cork out with his teeth. It was astonishingly sexy, watching him manhandle the bottle like that. I wanted his teeth on my body, his big hands plumping my flesh before those strong white teeth bit into it.
He caught sight of my expression and scowled at my flush.
“I’m gonna make you a deal, Lou,” Zeus started, his voice and face stern like a parent lecturing a child. I didn’t care because he hadn’t called me Lou once since I’d seen him again and the sound of those syllables in his mouth were better than a song.
“Okay,” I agreed, apparently too eager, because his face darkened with disapproval.
I squirmed in my chair because he was impossibly sexy in stern Dad mode. I resolved to be naughty more often.
“There are rules. You know I didn’t want this life for ya, but you seem hell-bent on it so I figure the only way to get you through is to show you myself.”
“Show me what?” I breathed.
“Show you how to live on the wild side. You wanna drink, party and rebel? I’m the safe place to learn that shit.”
“Definitely,” I agreed again, this time carefully trying to hide my enthusiasm.
It didn’t work.
His scowl deepened. “Before you get too fuckin’ excited, there’ll be rules.”
I echoed his frown. “I thought bikers don’t follow rules?”
“So young and naïve, little girl.” He leaned forward, his messy tumble of hair framing his rugged face. “See, without rules, a person is aimless. You gotta believe in somethin’, adhere to some kinda code or your soul can wander down some dark fuckin’ paths. We got rules; brotherhood, bikes and bitches you treat like fuckin’ queens because they give you the kinda sweet a rough man can’t find anywhere else. And you know who enforces those rules, Lou? Me.”
“You aren’t the boss of me,” I told him because I couldn’t help myself. Something dark and eager inside my soul called out to him, wanted to test his edges like a sharp blade point against my thumb. I wanted to see how far I could push him, if it was farther than anyone else ever had and what he would do when I finally went too far.
Something told me, it would be just as dirty and dark as I’d always imagined.
“I’m the boss of this world. All those monsters you picture under your bed, in the dark corners of hospitals and night black forests? They’re fuckin’ real, Lou. And I own ’em. So, yeah, you want this world, you better believe I’m the fuckin’ boss of ya.”
“Fine,” I pouted just to watch his hot eyes fall like a kiss on my lips. “What are your rules, then?”
“No touchin’,” he responded immediately as he dragged his eyes away from my mouth. “As in, you don’t get to touch me.”
“What?” I cried, thrusting my arms in the air so that he had to duck away from my flying hand. “That’s so unfair.”
“Tough shit, kid. I don’t need you touchin’ me, cuddlin’ or some shit when you get scared and, trust me, little girl, you’ll get scared livin’ this life. Can’t coddle you every time somethin’ goes sideways.”
I crossed my arms under my breasts and glowered at him. “I’m not seven years old anymore, Zeus. And don’t tell me you haven’t noticed, because you have.”
His beautiful mouth twisted into a sneer as he landed a heavy palm on the table and leaned close. “Yeah, I fuckin’ noticed ’cause I’m a man with goddamn eyes and any man—monk, eunuch or married—is gonna get off on the sighta those tits, that ass, and a waist that spans one fuckin’ hand and not think about touchin’ ya. Difference is, I don’t wanna touch you. I don’t even wanna fuckin’ think about it.”
“Because you’re tempted?” I whispered, my hope like a dove struggling to take flight in my chest.
“Nah, ’cause I’m a man. The kinda man that needs a woman to satisfy him. Little girls, however stacked, don’t do it for me and, Lou? They never will so kill that hope in your eyes. I quit talkin’ to ya before because of these little girls dreams and I’ll do it again, you don’t obey my rules.”
Ouch.
I tried not to let the colossal amount of hurt radiating through my chest crack through my eyes and let the tears spill through but it was a monumental effort that left me strangely breathless.
“Got it,” I murmured.
The heartbreak of his words was that he spoke the truth. The man sitting across from me was all man, from the top of his wild mass of gold dipped brown waves to the tips of his heavy motorcycle boots and the ends of his deeply calloused fingers. He smoked, drank, marauded and fucked like he was on Death Row, like every single moment counted more than the next.
Who was I to claim a man like that?
I closed my eyes as I took a deep breath to settle the ruckus of insecurity that surged through my mind.
I was Louise Lafayette and that obedient, sad excuse for a woman didn’t deserve a man like Zeus Garro.
But, I thought with sudden verve, Loulou Fox could give him a run for his money.
So, I opened my eyes and knew they burned on his skin as I said, “Fine, no touching. But you never said you couldn’t touch me, and I’m telling you now, Z, I’m going to do everything in my power to make these tits, this ass and this tiny waist as tempting to you as possible.”
He stared at me for a long minute, inscrutable and arbitrating like the God of Olympus on his throne casting judgment on a mortal. And then, to my utter surprise and delight, he threw back his great mane of hair exposing his corded brown throat in the process, and laughed.
The sound was just as rich and warm as I remembered from my childhood and I let it wash over me as I stared at his throat and thought I’d never known how sexy an Adam’s apple could be.
“Finished?” I asked snottily when he finally wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of a hand.
“Don’t figure I’ll ever finish bein’ surprised havin’ you back in my life,” he said through his grin. “Can’t believe little Loulou just threw down with me.”
“You bet your ass, I did,” I said with a defiant chin tilt. “I’m not a kid anymore, Zeus Garro. And with or without you, this is who I am and I’m in this world to stay.”
“Then it’ll fuckin’ well be with me,” he growled, his smile so quickly replaced with a scowl that I lost balance and leaned toward him. “Hear this, little girl, you got what you wanted, yer guardian monster is back but this time, he’s teachin’ ya how to keep the monsters at bay yourself so when the time comes that you no longer need me, you’ll be good.”
I rolled my lips under my teeth and held out my hand to secure his promise with a shake. His eyes sparked with humor as his huge, rough hand engulfed my own and then his lips stretched into an arrogant grin when the warm contact made me shiver but I didn’t say anything.
I was too busy thinking, Game on, Zeus.
