Black Dogs Motorcycle Club: Full Series Box Set (25 page)

“Fuck, fuck…” she moaned
with every thrust of the Black Dog member that pushed ever deeper inside of
her. Will lost himself in the feel of his cock wrapped in her wet heat, in the
feel of her soft silk panties against him as he fucked her, at the sight of her
writhing underneath him, grasping at her own huge tits. He watched them move
with his thrusts and heard Tracy cry out when he bent to take a nipple in his
mouth, swirling his tongue around its sensitive nub.

“Fuck, I’m gonna come!”
she whined.

Will felt her pussy
contracting around him with delicious pleasure. He wrapped his arms around her,
grasping her hair tight in his hand for leverage, and fucked her as hard as he
could. Tracy’s rhythmic moans became one long scream as she came around Will’s
cock, milking him to his own orgasm. He buried himself deep inside her as he
came, her face pressed hard against his shoulder, biting into him.

Will was lost in
post-orgasmic haze for a few moments. He could feel Tracy planting gentler,
sweeter kisses on his neck as his cock softened, still inside her. Once the
bliss had passed, he pulled himself out of her and stood up, heading for the
bathroom. He threw out the condom and gave himself a quick cleaning before he
buttoned up his jeans and came back into the room. Tracy lay as he had left
her, stretched out on the bed half-naked, her tits hanging out of her shirt.
She gave him a lazy, satisfied smile.

“Change these sheets, will
you?” said Will as he stood over her. He didn’t wait for an answer.

Ghost was back in the den,
gathering up a handful of beers for the crowd outside. He looked down the hall
when Will emerged and gave him a big, shit-eating grin. “Heard that!”

“Fuck you!” Will flipped
him the bird and didn’t stop walking.

“You don’t deserve it twice
in one day!” Ghost’s voice trailed him down the hall. Will only laughed and
shut the clubhouse door behind him.

He headed to his bike and
got her revved up before he looked at his watch again. Close enough to dinner
time that he might as well head out to the bakery. It’s not like his
grandmother would mind the early company, anyway. If he was lucky, he might be
able to sneak a piece of cake or some incredible pastry before dinner when she
wasn’t looking. His stomach rumbled at the thought.

Will maneuvered through
LeBeau, the streets buzzing with Friday night life, until he hit the highway
and lay on the throttle. The wind in his face felt freeing, relaxing. He chased
the sunlight around the curvy mountain pass until he hit the first exit for
Howlett, and then pulled his bike off the highway and into town. He could make
this trip to his grandmother’s bakery with his eyes closed, he’d been doing it
for so long. It had been almost seven years since his grandfather died, and
since then, he had helped his grandmother open her bakery in Howlett to keep
her happy and healthy without her husband around. And every Friday night, he
made the trip from LeBeau to sit at her table and eat her delicious homemade
food, and talk to her about books and old films while she played a Sarah
Vaughan or Robert Johnson album on the record player.

Will’s mother had been a
troubled woman, he was told. Smart, but her mind weighed on her happiness. She
was too lost to be a mother. His grandmother’s voice echoed in his mind:
One
foot in this world, one foot in the other.
She left Will with her parents
when he was an infant and never came back. They raised him as their own, and
Will had never wanted for anything. Sophia was as much his mother as anyone
would ever be, and he looked forward to their dinners all week.

As Will waited at a
stoplight on Main and Temple, he was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of
sirens nearby. He turned around on his bike to spot where they were coming
from, ready to get out of the way if he had to. A fire engine and two police
cruisers came roaring up Main, swerving around the line of cars and into the
lanes of oncoming traffic, stopping only long enough to clear the intersection
before they rushed on. Will followed as the light turned and traffic coasted on
down the street. When he turned onto Rowan Avenue and up the slight hilly
incline toward Delphi Lane, he could still see the flashing lights of the first
responders up ahead, and tried to hang back so as not to catch up with them.

His heart missed a beat
when they didn’t keep going up the hill, but made a fast right onto Delphi.
Will twisted his throttle and followed faster, watching as they passed a
salvage yard, a few bars and store fronts, houses just lighting up for the
night. He looked up in the dying light of the day and saw a huge pillar of
black smoke soaring into the sky. Every mile brought it closer and closer.

No. No. It’s not her.

Will lay on the throttle,
mere car-lengths behind the police cruiser now. They passed the John Deere dealer.
Miss Locusta’s music school. The historic Armstrong Manor, left over from the
18
^th
century.

It’s not her. It’s not.

The firetruck led the
cruisers and Will around the last wide bend his muscle memory knew so well.
Brake lights lit up as the first responders came to a halt, joining a cadre of
emergency vehicles already on the scene. Blue and red lights danced in the air,
but they were nothing compared to the hellish inferno blazing against the
backdrop of the mountains and the coming night. The entirety of the two-story
building where Sophia both worked and lived was consumed by the raging fire.

Will roared his bike
around the EMS buses and fire engines without pause. Men rushed in all
directions, shouting orders over the bellow of the four-alarm blaze. He could
only stare at the fire like a dumbstruck moth as he brought the bike to a
sudden stop and stepped off, letting it drop carelessly to the gravel as he
stumbled away.

“No…
No!”
The sound
of Will’s scream carried, loud and long in its despair, as he fell hard to his
knees in the gravel.

Will screamed at the fire
for what seemed like an entire lifetime. He was still screaming when he felt
alien hands pulling at his chest and arms, trying to drag him away while he
clawed instead toward the fire, lost in delirium. He remembered feeling the
intense, unbearable heat on his face and chest before something sharp and small
stabbed into the muscle in his thigh, and the world went black around him.

~ ONE ~

Two Years Later

Eva had never been woken up by birds and the rustling
of trees before. Traffic accidents, domestic arguments, lights and sirens,
sure—there was even that morning when some insane raccoon was on her fire
escape, clawing at the windows like he had forgotten his key to the apartment.
But to roll over and feel the soft caress of early morning sunlight, and hear,
well…
silence
… almost made her wonder what she had been thinking, living
all those years in the noise.

She groaned and stretched
her neck as she pulled herself to sit on the edge of the bed. Her muscles were
screaming with new, strange aches from the old, lumpy mattress she had slept
on. A glance around the bedroom made her realize that a lot more than the
mattress was going to need to change, if she was going to stay here for long.
The ugly, wood-slat walls were bad enough, but Eva found herself creeped out by
the collection of porcelain figurines scattered around the room’s furnishings.

She thought she might say
something to Uncle Owen, but it would be tough to have that conversation
without sounding like a heartless monster.
Hey, Uncle Owen, I know you’re
moving your beloved wife to a care facility where she might die any day, but do
you mind if I pack up all her treasures and put them in a box somewhere?
Eva shook her head at herself and rubbed the sleepiness from her face and eyes.

She and Charlie had only
arrived yesterday evening, so Eva had yet to unpack or really settle into her
temporary home. She dug through one of her bigger suitcases to scrounge out her
toiletries and went searching for the bathroom. The silent house told her
Charlie must still be asleep. She wasn’t surprised; it had been a long drive.

Once she got under a hot
shower, Eva heaved a sigh and realized that she was alone with her thoughts for
the first time in several weeks—since Owen had called, in fact. Her relatively
boring life had been suddenly interrupted by that one phone call.

Charlie and Eva hadn’t had
much interaction with Owen during their childhood; he married Eva’s mother’s
sister and moved her from the city out into the quiet country, where he worked
manual labor in some industry Eva couldn’t recall now. But several years ago,
Owen had gotten some big payout—an inheritance, maybe?—and quit the hard labor
to open his own bar. Things were fine until Aunt Geri fell ill, and just
recently, the doctors had told her it could be terminal.

Backed into a corner and
in no position to lose his only source of capital, Owen had called his sister’s
kids, desperate for help. He needed someone to run the bar while he took her to
a city with a larger medical facility, where Geri could have a chance at either
recovery, or a comfortable passing.

And just like that, Eva’s
life had taken a sharp left turn: now she was a barmaid, waking up in
beautiful, quiet places.

Lost under the comforting
spray of the hot shower, Eva jumped when she heard the sharp knocking on the
flimsy bathroom door.

“Yes?” she called out.

Charlie’s voice came
muffled from the hallway. “Hey, coffee’s on. I’ll be in the bar when you’re
done.”

“Okay, thank you,” she
said. Eva wiped the water out of her face and pulled herself out of the
daydream. She wrapped up her shower a few minutes later and poured herself a
cup of only slightly burnt coffee in a well-loved mug decorated with kittens.
She shook some of the dampness out of her short, thin hair and felt the wet
tendrils lay cold on her jaw and neck.

Taking her coffee and
heading out the front door of the modest home, Eva smiled at the fairytale
scene that greeted her. Soft, spring-green forest surrounded the house, dappled
with morning sunlight. Trees swayed in the soft breeze as birds parlayed
between them, singing. The wind carried the scent of the wildflowers that grew
in the small meadow a dozen or so yards from the house. It felt like she had
stepped into a fantasy novel.

Charlie had said he’d be
at the bar, but instead, he came from around the side of the house carrying a
small hatchet. He saw her on the porch and gave her a nod. He wore what had
been his standard uniform for years, consisting of jeans, a brown belt, work
boots, and a plain white shirt, which he sometimes dressed up with a polo. His
dark, tussled hair reminded her of pictures of their father when he was young.
And like their father, Charlie loved work and almost nothing else. He kept the
rest of his life simple.

“This place is
incredible,” she said wistfully.

Charlie followed her gaze,
gloved hands on his hips. Whatever he had been doing this morning already had
him sweaty and breathing hard. He squinted, as if he was trying to find what it
was she was talking about. “Yeah, I guess. Kind of a dinky little house,
though.”

“Not the house,
necessarily, but the land,” said Eva. “I’ve never been to a place like this.”

“You used to go to the
park all the time,” said Charlie, wiping his brow and pulling off his gloves.

“That’s different,” she
said. “That’s all manufactured. This is real.”

Charlie gave her that
exasperated smile that only brothers could give. He softly tapped her arm with
the gloves. “You read too many books. You gotta get out into the world. Then
you won’t be so amazed by shitty scrub forests.”

Eva gave him a glare and
took a sip of her coffee. “Oh, Christ. I’ve been out in the world. You make me
sound like a shut-in.”

“You kind of have been for
a while,” said Charlie. He rubbed the back of his neck, something Eva knew
meant he was only half-joking.

“Well,” she said. Her gaze
fell to her sandaled feet, suddenly feeling vulnerable. “There’s no reason to
be a brat about it.”

Charlie tilted his head
and made a soft noise, something painful. He put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m
sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t mean it like that.”

Around the same time Uncle
Owen must have been building his bar, Eva had gone through a transition of her
own—she finally left her neglectful husband of three years, a man who had
charmed her romantic side, only to become something much darker once she
committed to him. She became little more than his property, and although he
never laid a hand on her, he had damaged her, regardless. The years she’d spent
married to him had withered Eva’s spirits in ways she hadn’t known were
possible.

But Charlie helped save
her, as he always had, big brother that he was. He helped her leave, and put
her up in his own apartment across town, where she could regain her footing.

Eva nodded quickly. “Look,
I came out here with you on purpose, for a reason, I know—to get out of my rut.
I know it’s time for me to get out of your place.”

“Hey, I’m not saying
that—”

Eva put a hand up. “I know
you’re not, but you’re also my brother, which means you don’t have to. I can
see it. I mean for this place to make a difference.”

“I’m not trying to push
you out, Eva. I just worry about you. I know you’re not like me. You do better
when you have people around to be with. Having you around does make me feel
less like an insane workaholic, though.”

“But that’s exactly what
you are,” she said with a laugh.

“Well, you help me hide
it.” He dropped a kiss on top of her head. “C’mon, Owen should be here any
minute. You ready to become a bartender, or what?”

Eva shrugged with a laugh
and followed Charlie through the forest. “Guess that means I have to start
drinking more.”

Charlie gave her playful
frown and a laugh and led the way.

About five hundred feet
from the house, through the “scrub forest,” as Charlie had so lovingly called
it, sat Swashbuckler’s. Owen and Geri had purposely built a modest, relocatable
home in the back to allow them better access to their business, which is where
Eva and Charlie would now be residing while they did the same. As she waited
for Charlie to unlock the back door’s hefty padlock, Eva noticed the gravel
parking lot of the small dive bar was far bigger than logic would dictate. She
reminded herself to ask Owen about that.

The building itself was
nearly brand new, built from the ground up by Owen on an empty piece of land on
the foothills outside a town called Howlett. Eva had never heard of it before
they got the call from Owen, and had only first seen the twinkling of the tiny
town’s lights as she and Charlie had arrived in the dark yesterday. It was, by
far, the smallest place Eva had ever visited in her twenty-seven years. Three
generations of her family lived and died in the concrete jungle of Silverton
City, where she had always felt like a bee in a massive hive. Only through her
deep love of literature and stories had she visited places like this, small
towns where everyone knew everyone’s secrets and people didn’t lock their doors
at night. It felt a little like stepping into another world, complete with the
unusual feeling that always came with a visit to a new place—the feeling that
adventure could be around any corner. Part of her heart beat faster at that
idea; another part of it seemed to shrink in anxiety.

Charlie wrangled with the
unfamiliar locks until they finally gave, and led Eva into the back room of the
bar. The place had no extravagant kitchen, only the necessary washing equipment
and storage for inventory and other things. Most of the space had been devoted
to the barroom itself, which sat patient and empty, its neon signs dark. Only a
few small windows around the ceiling let in the sunlight, a design choice
obviously made on purpose. As she looked around at the pretty wooden bar, the
still-cushy stools, the line of shining vending machines in the far corner, Eva
wondered what it felt like to want to be in the dark all the time, like
Swashbuckler’s barflies clearly preferred. Even after Charlie hit the lights,
the place still felt dim.

One by one, Charlie walked
by the neon beer signs and yanked on their pull cords. He unlocked the front
door as Eva meandered behind the bar itself, running her hand on its polished
surface.

“It’s not a bad-looking
place,” she said.

Charlie put his hands on
his hips and looked around. “No, not at all. At least it’s a new dive.”

“I’m not sure I’ve been in
a dive of any kind,” said Eva.

“You’d remember, if you
had,” said Charlie with a chuckle. “This place will look much different in
twenty years. Hell, in
ten
years.”

They began to check out
the situation behind the bar when they heard tires crunching in the gravel lot
outside. Footsteps came for the door not soon after. “Must be Owen,” said
Charlie.

Eva looked at her watch.
“At nine a.m., I sure hope so. Otherwise, someone has a serious problem.”

The door to Swashbuckler’s
squeaked as it swung open. Fresh daylight blasted across the black-and-maroon
patterned laminate floor and sent dust scattering into the air. A man in his
late fifties stood a moment in the doorway, hands on either side of the frame,
as he kicked a bit of sticky mud from one of his boots. He entered and the door
dropped closed behind him.

“Now, that can’t be Eva,”
said the older man. He shook a finger at her with a smile. “I just won’t
believe I’m that old, no sir.”

Eva smiled at him. She
tried hard to mentally place him in some fond memory within the Murdock family,
but she came up empty. He stood tall, dressed in a faded but clean polo shirt
and brown jacket that seemed to come standard to every old man once they
reached a certain age. Brown hair that needed a trim shot out in all directions
from under a blue trucker hat decorated with the logo of what looked like a
local brewery. He had the wrinkled face of a basset hound, eyes a bit sad, even
as they shined when he smiled.

“Would that we could all
be a little younger,” said Eva.

Charlie walked out from
around the bar and greeted Owen with a hearty handshake. “Hi, Owen. It’s been a
while.”