Bad Ride (Men of Valor MC)

Thou shall not look upon Annie’s tits. Unless you are Charles Drake. All others, thou shall fuck off.

There’s a little gold cross she wears and her thick thighs and lush belly make my mouth water. She’s barely five feet making those womanly curves more pronounced, and I want to pick her up and carry her around like my own personal American Girl Doll.

Her mystic green eyes flick from my face to my boots, then pause near my center and stick there for a long moment, and I wonder if she’s counting the inches she sees or just thinking about what she needs from the grocery.

When her tongue dances out onto her lower lip and I see her nostrils flare as she takes a deep breath, I’m hoping for the inches, because very soon she’s going to get an up-close lesson in how to handle the thunder down under that’s been violently craving for her touch for too long now.

“I’m going to wait here with you until the tow truck from my garage comes. Then, I’m taking you to dinner. Then from there, we’ll see.”

She snorts out a laugh. “Is that what you think? I called roadside assistance, they called you. I didn’t, so if you’re thinking I tried to get you here under false pretenses…”

“Whatever pretenses they are, babe, they’re here now, true or false, and I’m done waiting.”

“Waiting?”

“It’s been two years since we saw each other that first time. I know you remember. We’re way overdue, so when your insurance company called, I just took that as fate taking a hand. Telling us to quit fucking around and get to it.”

“Get to what?” She shakes her head on a dismissive laugh, leaning her voluptuous ass on the bumper of her car. “You are something, you know that?”

“That I am. And I’m very soon going to be something to you. Going to do something to you. With you…”

“What?” A pink glow slips onto her cheeks as she lowers her eyes to the ground and kicks at a rock with the toe of the simple, beige flat-heeled shoes she wears, then narrows her eyes back at me. “I’m a teacher. I have a moral turpitude clause in my contract. I’m not thinking spending time with a biker—sorry, but a biker with prison tattoos—fits with my career path.” She releases her arms and points to mine, exposed in the vest, where dark ink speaks in code words that most people wouldn’t understand. “Stop being so presumptuous. It’s ill mannered.”

Presumptuous. Ill mannered. Fuck, if her condescension doesn’t turn me on more. If that’s possible. I’ve always loved a challenge.

Give me something someone says is impossible, and I’ll show you something that’s not.

I run my hand down my beard. She’s tough, I get it, but under that tough shield there’s a sadness in her eyes and I want to know what it’s about, but even more, I want to be the one to make it go away. Looking at her, sitting there kicking the ground, I want to rip open my chest and let her see what’s in my heart. Something I didn’t know was possible until I saw her driving through town two years ago.

She’s why I decided this would be home. I’d been friendly with the Valor bunch before I got sent up to Lennon, but never got patched in until after I came back. They’re my family now, along with my parents who are both still kicking it old-school, living like nomads in their Airstream as they visit every naturist camp in every town and city where the temperature is over seventy-five.

There’s an uncertainty in her eyes as she looks at me and I know I’m not Prince Charming. My jaw is crooked, I’m thick, tatted, I wear this black knit cap even when it’s a hundred degrees, and when I do string my words together in fair order, my voice is a rough baritone, broken and thick, the result of a lead pipe to my throat I took when I was twenty.

I want to reassure her, to tell her I’ve been watching her. That I’ve protected her every time I saw a potential threat or even a perceived threat. But that would only scare her more, I’m sure. I’m not from her world, just like she said, but somehow all my patience has turned into urgent fury and now is the time to spin what shouldn’t be into what will be, starting right now.

I see the headlights pull off the side of the road as the sun gives way into the horizon. The pink and orange of its last fight of the day flicker off Annie’s ripe cheeks and I’m drawn to the defiance in her eyes.

“Hey, hey.” Rodney hops out of the driver’s side of the tow truck and walks back towards us. “Someone called for a knight in shining armor?” He chuckles but it’s not funny.