His Wild Desire (Death Lords MC 1)

“Who I sleep with isn’t any of your business. Who Chelsea sleeps with isn’t any of your business.” I bend down and take out the spike. “And I’m going to teach you that lesson tonight.”

I jam the spike about seven feet off the ground into the tree trunk and then pick up the sledgehammer. He starts blubbering. “Fine, fine. I won’t say anything about you and Chelsea.”

“And you’ll give the money back?”

“Yes,” he cries. “Whatever you want.”

The weight of the sledgehammer is satisfying in my hands. Real good. “You know why I killed that asshole outside Rowdy’s? It wasn’t just because he was a racist skinhead. Can’t kill everyone for that. It’s because he said something about Chels. No one gets to say things about Chels and go away unpunished. I’m not going to kill you, Ellerby, because you need to spread the word. She’s untouchable.” I lift the hammer and raise it above my head. “You don’t speak of her.” I swing. He screams. “You don’t touch her.” The hammer hits home. “You don’t even think about her.” I swing again.

The ringing of metal against metal is a gratifying sound. Not as great as hearing the crunch of his skull against the steel mallet would be, but good enough. I look down and Ellerby is crumpled into a ball, a slobbering whimpering mess. The scent of urine rises up. He’s pissed himself. Unsurprising.

“This happen a lot?” I ask Michigan, pointing toward Ellerby’s piss-stained pants.

“Now and then. Depends on who you’re dealing with. That’s why I mentioned the plastic.”

I reach into the bag for my rope and swiftly tie it around Ellerby’s wrists. I loop the rope over the spike I’ve driven into the tree and start winching Ellerby up. Because I’m a nice guy, I turn his body so he’s facing the trunk, otherwise the position would rip his arms out of his sockets. “I’ll get a roll from the hardware store next time I’m in.”

“You’re pretty good with the hammer,” Michigan observes.

“Thanks.”

Once Ellerby’s toes are just touching the ground, I stop and tie off the rope. “You can try to get down but I doubt you’ll be able to. I’m showing you a great deal of mercy here. Someone will show up in six or seven hours to start work and they’ll find you and let you down. If you’re smart, you’ll spend that time giving your arms a rest by climbing the tree with your legs. In the meantime, enjoy having the ants, bugs, spiders and possibly snakes crawl all over you tonight.”

“You’re not going to hit me with that?” Ellerby’s head tips toward the hammer.

I slap it against my hand. “Not tonight. But if I even see you standing within ten feet of my girl, next time I swing this, your head will be on the other end instead of the spike.”

I gather my bag and nod to Michigan. We walk out leaving Ellerby hollering at us to let him go.

“So you and Chelsea,” Michigan muses on our way home.

“Got a problem with that?”

He’s quiet for a moment and I want to turn around and hang him from a tree.

“No,” he says finally. “Not everyone’s going to be okay with it. A lot of folks probably see you as brother and sister and forget that Judge isn’t her bio dad, so there’ll be censure and judgment. What’s Judge’s take on it?”

“Haven’t talked to him about it. Chels is reluctant.”

Everything depends on Judge. If he places his blessing on it, the club will back him up. If not, then Chels is probably right. I’m going to have to leave the club and home. Just when I returned.

Michigan claps me on the shoulder. “If you two are okay with it, then fuck the rest of the world.”

I drop Michigan off at the bar so he can pick up his bike. The house is dark when I get home. Dad’s sitting at the table waiting for me.

“You get everything taken care of?”

“Yup.”

“Will there be blowback?”

“As in will he run off to Chief Schmidt? I don’t think so. We went down to the gravel pit. That’s outside of Schmidt’s jurisdiction.”

“What about the other thing?” He tips his head toward Chels’s closed bedroom door.

“It’s not drugs, Dad.”

He looks relieved. “Then what is it?”

“I…I’ll tell you in the morning. I need to talk to Chels.” Halfway out of the kitchen, I turn back. “Why’d you hook up with Gwen?”

I’d never asked him that. When he brought Chels’s mom home with him after hooking up with her for several years at the meet up down in Missouri hosted by a one percenter national club, I figured he wanted some convenient pussy instead of banging different club sweet butt. Since I was sixteen and nearly out of the house, it was none of my business.

The real shock was how much I enjoyed having Chelsea around and then how my feelings transformed from friendly interest to lust to some stronger emotion. Gwen took off soon after and Chelsea stayed which I figured was the right trade-off.

“She was a shit mother,” Dad admitted. “A good lay but a shit mother. She’d bring Chelsea to these meets which were adults only and leave her to sleep in the car. Part of me wonders if I started banging Gwen to be able to keep an eye on Chels and make sure no one touched her. Gwen started making noise that Chels was getting to the age where she could find a man of her own at the meet up. I knew that I couldn’t leave that sweet girl alone so I brought Gwen home with me. Figured she wouldn’t last long but she left us Chels like I’d hoped.”

“Like you planned, you mean.”

“Six of one, half dozen of the other.” He shrugs.

“You’re a crafty bastard,” I say admiringly. “Always thinking three steps ahead of everyone else.”

“Don’t you forget it.” He smiles and then pushes to his feet. “You oughta check in on her. Think she’s worried about you. Going to head to the club now. See you in the morning.”

I wait in the living room until the engine of Dad’s motorcycle echoes down the quiet night street. Is it my imagination or did he throttle it extra hard? Chelsea opens the door and comes out, a cock-stirring vision in my white tank which drops down far enough that I don’t know if she’s wearing anything underneath.

“Where’s Judge going?” she asks.

“The club. All night.”

She sighs with relief and drops onto the sofa next to me.

“I had a nice chat with Sean Ellerby tonight,” I begin without any preamble.

She shoots to her feet, full of worry. “Why? You’re going to get sent back,” she cries.

“No, I’m not. Give me more credit than that,” I respond evenly. There’s no sense in getting angry with Chels. What’s done is done but I’m not going to pass up this opportunity to redden her ass.

“What did he say?”

“A lot of shit.”

“Like we’re a perversion or something,” she guesses.

She’s miserable. We need to lance the boil before it ruins her.

“He’s not going to say a thing. I promise you that.”

“What about the money?”

“I got three hundred back,” I tell her. I show her the money and her shoulders sag. “I’ve got five grand in the lockbox under my bed which you moved. Why didn’t you dip into that?”

“I’m not taking your money.” She draws back in shock. “I’ve got some money in the bank. If Helen hadn’t come when she did, I’d have replaced the missing petty cash and no one would have known.”

“Until the next time he came back. When you paid that shit-stain money to keep quiet once, you opened the door. But you know what frustrates me the most, sweetness? That you didn’t come to me and tell me what happened. That I had to guess what went on. Isn’t this our fucking problem?”

“I was trying—”

I cut her off with a raised hand. “I know what you were trying to do but let’s turn this around. You would’ve wanted me to come to you before running off half cocked paying Ellerby some kind of hush money. You knew it wasn’t going to end with one payment.”

“I was buying time,” she protests.

“What was your next move?” I challenge. “Tell me, what were you going to do when he came the next day and demanded a grand instead of five hundred.”

“I had a week. He said he’d be back in a week!” she yells. Her finger is jabbing into my chest. She has zero sense of preservation.

“You’re lying to yourself. He was going to return tomorrow and every day after.”

She’s fired up and angry—but more with herself than with me. Finally, I stand and throw her over my shoulder.

“We’ll finish this downstairs.” With a hand clamped around the back of her thighs, I trot down the stairs, leaping the last three. I’m anxious to get to the bedroom.

Her little fists pummel my lower back the whole way. I toss her on the bed and she bounces once. Before she can gain her balance, I flip her over onto her stomach and cover her. She futilely struggles underneath me and I raise my hips so I can give her panty-covered ass a quick slap.