Still Standing (Wild West MC 1)

West “Buck” Hardy, president of a motorcycle club, kissed my nose.

I smiled against his shoulder.

He started sifting his fingers through my hair.

West “Buck” Hardy, president of a motorcycle club, was sifting his fingers through my hair.

My arm around his stomach tightened.

“Tell me about Tia,” he said into the now dark room.

“What about her?” I asked.

“She all you got?” he asked back.

“Yes,” I answered.

His hand in my hair stilled.

“Babe,” he whispered.

“It’s okay.” I gave his stomach a squeeze. “She’s enough.”

“Fuck me,” he muttered into the semi-dark (night had fallen, we’d been busy, Buck had only turned on one lamp, and it didn’t cast a very wide glow).

I raised my head to look at his shadowed face.

“No, really, she is,” I told him. “She’s sweet and she’s kind and she’s generous.”

“Darlin’,” he moved his hand to cup the back of my head and bring it closer to him, “I can tell you’re tight with her, but you gotta know, a woman who puts you in the path of man like Esposito and lets him use you like he does is not sweet, kind and generous.”

“That’s not how it happened,” I replied softly.

“Then explain how it happened,” he demanded.

“He’s done with her,” I informed him.

“Come again?” he asked.

“He’s done with her, Buck,” I repeated. “But Enrique Esposito doesn’t throw anything away. He keeps everything just in case it proves useful. And Tia is useful to him.”

“How?”

Okay.

How did I allow us to get here?

I closed my eyes and looked away, wishing I was smashed again and not just drunk.

Smashed, I could forget.

Just drunk, it came tumbling back.

And just drunk, I didn’t guard myself, and Tia, from me needing to relay this information.

But something was happening between Buck and me.

It might just last this day and that was probably precisely how long it would last.

That said, I liked him.

I liked having sex with him.

I liked talking to him.

I liked not-quite learning pool from him.

I just liked him.

And I wanted him to understand what made me.

In other words, since I did not guard myself, or Tia, from this, I needed to relay this information.

“Toots,” he called on a prompt.

I opened my eyes and aimed them at his face.

“He loans her out,” I whispered and felt his body go solid against mine.

Solid in the sense of stone.

Then he said in a way that I could tell his words were coming from between his teeth, “He does what?”

“She’s very pretty,” I told him.

“I’ve seen her.”

“So you know.”

“She’s not hard to look at,” he agreed.

“Well, if the price is right, he loans her out.”

“Fuckin’ hell,” he muttered.

“That’s about it,” I replied. “So, Tia told me this and I talked to Esposito. Made a deal. He stops doing that and I work for him.”

Buck’s body went solid against mine again.

This before he asked, “You did what?”

“I made a deal. It wasn’t a bad deal. Not only does he stop doing that to Tia, every message I deliver, I get a thousand dollars. It’s actually, if you think about it, a really good deal.”

Both his arms went around me, and he pulled me mostly on top of him and up so we were face to face.

“Toots, he’s sent you with messages to Breaker Walinski and Imran Babic. Break’s a biker who sells safe passage for drugs, guns and anything else illegal. Babic is a Bosnian lunatic who sells drugs, guns, pimps women, strongarms protection money, floats loans at a one hundred percent interest rate, makes book and is into anything else that’s illegal. These are not guys you fuck with. Enrique Esposito is a sociopath and he’s ambitious, not a good combination. Break’s got a sense of justice. The disrespect Esposito dished out by sendin’ you to the meet he’ll take out on Esposito. Babic, babe, you gotta know, him lettin’ you go in, deliver Esposito’s message and walk out in one piece is a fuckin’ miracle. I see you wantin’ to look after your girl, but the deal you made is not a good deal.”

“You’re wrong, West,” I whispered.

“I’m right, Clara,” he replied not in a whisper.

“She’s all I’ve got, and he was loaning her out,” I reminded him. “Not to mention, I need the money.”

“It worth that to her, to you, to get dead?” he asked.

“You do what you have to do,” I told him on a shrug.

“Yeah, and what you shoulda done is put her in your car and got the fuck outta town, found yourselves jobs doin’ whatever the fuck you could do under names that are not your own and prayed he never found you.”

“He’d find us,” I returned. “Therefore, that really wasn’t an option.”

“Clara, a man like Esposito burns fast, he burns bright and then someone snuffs him out. He’s makin’ enemies everywhere. He is not long for this world. All you had to do was wait him out.”