Merry Blissmas (Biker Bitches 3)

As she was closing the oven door with the cookie sheet inside, Bliss heard the front door slam shut.

“Drake?” she called out, not wanting to leave the cookies. It was the last of the dough. It was supposed to make over forty cookies, but twenty-nine were already in the trash.

“I’ll be down in a minute. I’m going to take a shower.” Drake’s voice sounded muffled.

Bliss frowned. Drake typically took his shower before bed. His bedroom was downstairs, so why had he gone upstairs to the boys’ bathroom? He had only gone out to get a last-minute present for Cal.

She turned on the light in the oven. Seeing the cookies were still in the little balls of uncooked dough, she figured she had enough time to go upstairs and check on him.

Bliss hurried up the steps. Maybe he had ripped open his stitches, or they were infected, and he didn’t want her to know.

She opened the bathroom door, screaming at the sight of him with his shirt off.

His hands and face were a bloody mess, and his ribs were black and blue. He was washing the blood off his hands, which were swollen and resembled raw hamburger.

“What happened?” she cried out as she hastily grabbed more towels from the towel rack.

“I got in a little fight.”

“On Christmas Eve? Who with? Did you call Knox? You need to go to the hospital.”

Drake didn’t have time to answer before Bliss heard the doorbell ring.

“Go answer the door. I’m all right,” he told her.

“I’ll be right back.”

Bliss ran down the steps. She looked out the peephole to see who it was and thought for a second she was imagining the face staring back at her.

“Open the door, Bliss.”

Shade’s voice had her shaking as she did so. The Last Riders brushed by her as they filed inside one by one. After the men came in, the women each stopped to give her a hug before moving forward to let someone else take a turn.

“Looking good. I like that red sweater. May I borrow it tomorrow?” Raci grinned, giving her a tight squeeze.

It was the first Christmas she would have spent without The Last Riders, so to see them coming through the door was filling the aching emptiness that had been present all day.

“I’ll think about it.” Bliss bemusedly hugged the woman back.

“Where’s Drake?” Rider slung an arm around her shoulder, giving her a sideways hug.

“Upstairs. He’s…” Her eyes narrowed on Rider then the other men standing near. “Are you the ones who hurt Drake? Why?” She pulled angrily away from Rider.

“Don’t blame us. He’s the one who wanted to be a pledge and a member on the same day.”

“What are you talking about, Rider?” Drake wanted to be a Last Rider?

“Train, go up and check on him,” Viper ordered.

Bliss gasped while Train took the steps upstairs with a medic bag slung over his shoulder. The president of The Last Riders looked as bad as Drake.

“Train will patch him up good as new.” Jewell gave her a warm hug. “What’s burning?”

“Oh, God.” Bliss ran into the kitchen, grabbing the mitt to open the oven, smoke coming from inside.

Bliss carried the cookies to the counter, practically in tears. Her Christmas Eve wasn’t turning out to be the romantic occasion she had planned.

“You burned the shit out of those.” Stori made a face at the charred dots that lined the black cookie sheet.

“That’s the last of the dough, too. I managed to burn all forty of them.” Bliss tried to shake the cookies off, but they didn’t budge. Frustrated, she dumped the whole sheet in the trash.

She couldn’t bring herself to move away from the trash can when she heard the doorbell again.

“I’ll go answer it.” Raci took off.

Bliss was willing to bet she wanted to escape the stench of the smoke still wafting around the room.

“I wanted to make cookies for Drake. I ordered dinner from King’s, but I didn’t want to fake baking the cookies.”

“Fake baking?” Willa asked as Beth, Evie, Lily, Diamond, and Winter all crowded into the kitchen. They were dressed in church clothes. Christmas service at the church must have just finished. Lucky took one step into the room, his nose wrinkling at the burned smell, before turning around and going back into the living room.

“I ordered dinner from King’s and pretended I cooked it,” Bliss explained.

“Drake knows you can’t cook.” Evie went to the kitchen counter and began making coffee. “Where are the cups?”

Bliss pointed to the cabinet over the microwave, asking, “How do you know?”

“He had lunch there a couple of weeks ago, and he told King the next time you called an order in, he likes his steak medium rare.”

“Why didn’t he say anything?” Drake hated being lied to, yet he had known she had lied to him about cooking.

Bliss flushed at the thought of how she had accepted his compliments on her fake cooking. She was tempted to give him a fake blow job.