Never Kiss an Outlaw: Deadly Pistols MC Romance (Outlaw Love) (35 page)

It wasn't fair. There wasn't any balance.

Where was my prince? Where was my happy ending?

There had to be more to my life than working for this grubby, cruel man who smiled like a crocodile and never paid me a single cent for my slavery. There had to be another way out besides ending up with a sicker, richer, more brutal stranger, right?

I hoped and prayed. The months wore on, long and cold and brutal. The police didn't find me.

Life in the whorehouse became such business as usual that I wondered if I'd ever known anything else, or if my life in the big ranch on the hill had been a dream. Only the faded white summer dress hanging in my closet told me the truth.

Some nights, I held it close, trying not to stain it with more tears, my only reminder that another world was possible. I'd had it once, and had it stolen away.

“Don't forget,” I'd whisper to myself. “There's a whole, wide world beyond this place.”

Yes, there was. I'd known it once. Mountains, grand family picnics, and beer fueled laughter with friends and soft, playful men. Times with girlfriends and lovers who laughed at the gaudy billboards along the highways, who'd never dream of stepping foot into a trucker's spa with the sticky floors and hallow-eyed women.

I thought about Becky, Crawford, and my parents the most. Too bad they weren't as easy to hold onto as my dress, the last thing I'd worn as a free woman.

Lately, I couldn't even cry about them anymore, and I wondered why they felt so empty. My memories were fading with my mind, perhaps. He'd already taken away my name, depersonalized me the second week, when he started calling me Fresh.

Fresh,
as in Fresh Meat. At first, I despised it, but little by little, it wore me down, until I forgot what it even felt like to be called by anything that wasn't fit for a low budget whore.

I accepted my name. It fit this hell, and most anything else I could imagine.

Sooner or later, I had to stop waiting, wondering, hoping. I had to accept my fate.

There were no heroes in this story, and there wouldn't be a happy ending. I was going to be Ricky's until the bitter end.

And if I wanted to stay alive, I had to be dead inside to the man who took me next. Strangers used my lips, my tongue every single day, and giving up more of my body didn't bother me anymore.

But I wouldn't give them any joy, any spark, any life. I had none left to give.

Meg died. Fresh lived.

I swore I'd go to my grave with that name, and if any filthy bastard who touched me ever called me anything else, he'd have to strangle me to make me stop tearing pieces out of his flesh.

The pimp killed Meg without a fight. Fresh wouldn't go down so easy.

She wouldn't wait for her knight or her happy ending. She'd pick up the shattered pieces of herself and wield them like broken glass.

Twenty-four Hours Earlier

T
he worst part about the club being flat out broke? No fucking pussy.

When I heard the Prez wanted us to shakedown the trucker spas toward Knoxville, I could've ripped out my nine millimeter and shot it through the ceiling, screaming like an idiot.

I rolled out of bed early, showered and dressed, threw on a clean shirt and my cut. I took a second to study myself in the cracked mirror, a morning ritual I'd started the day I earned my prospect patch.

The colors on this leather had changed a lot over the years, but what it meant hadn't. Everything here was
earned,
just like a soldier's medals, the story of my entire adult life writ in blood and fire.

My fingers trailed up cold leather, grazing the skull with the one-percent sign etched into its head. I got that the first time I went away for the club after a bar fight. I could still feel myself gripping a pool cue, slamming it across the disrespectful motherfucker's head, the smartass who'd pushed the Veep and called our club
piss.

I'd slowly filled my cut with skulls and pistols after that, patches I'd earned for killing more disrespectful fucks and finishing runs for the club. I turned around in the mirror, glancing at the backside, which told all the rest.

Everything I'd ever die for appeared in the blood red smoking pistols and the skull sewn into the back. DEADLY PISTOLS MC, TENNESSEE, surrounded it.

Seeing my colors sent hot, angry blood flowing through my fists.

Some men had careers that kept them running like fucking hamsters, and other boys had families. This club was my job, my blood, my whole life.

I didn't do cubicles, and I damned sure didn't do love. That gun with the smoke pouring out of it reminded me of my place in the world every day – the only place I'd ever belonged.

The club had been good to me, and always would be. She might be in dire straits now, but fuck if I'd go limp and walk away. When I got patched in as a full voting member, I vowed my life, and now I was trying every day to stop the MC's lifeblood from bleeding through my hands as Treasurer.

We needed money, and lots of it. Collecting our tribute from the Deadhands' network of shitty whorehouses would tide us over for a while, but we were really after a treasure map.

I was putting on my helmet when the brothers filed out, one by one, everybody heading for their bikes.

The Veep, Joker, wore the same deadpan rip-your-arms-out-of-their-sockets expression he always did. The two prospects, Tinman and Lion, walked with him, and they all started their engines, holding position for the Prez.

“You remember the plan, Skin? Or did you forget last night while you were beating off to cable porn?” Firefly got on his bike next to me and shot me a sharp look, a fresh smoke in his mouth, blowing contrails over his bars.

“Fuck you, man. You know I'm more in love with the ladies than the bottle. Sorry all that sweet Jack makes it so hard to get your dick up.”

He grunted and laughed, then blew a long stream of smoke toward me. I ducked, wondering if there was some truth to the shit I flung at him.

Yeah, I'd been jerking off last night. What red blooded man with hurricane force testosterone and no pussy in sight wouldn't? I thought about the last girl I had under me while I pumped the volume up so high it must've disrupted our Enforcer's beauty sleep.

Her name was Stockings. Or at least that was the nickname I gave her. She was too drunk to mumble out her name, and I didn't fucking care. She looked a lot like the whore on the screen I beat my cock to last night.

One hard night with my face and cock buried in her pussy taught her mine. They
always
remembered Skin. And they always fell hard and fast too, coming back to find me in a bar or at the clubhouse with those big doe eyes.

I had to turn 'em down. I rarely fucked the same chick twice, and never when they were expecting something.

Too many wanted to bag themselves a biker boy and turn into proper old ladies when times were better. Ever since our budget dived into the red, the real sluts didn't come around no more. They gave it up for easy, free flowing booze or bud, and that shit was the first to go when I delivered the financials last month, and the Prez laid down the law.

Speaking of the Prez...shit, he stomped through the garage looking like he had a fire breathing dragon crawling underneath his skin. Every man who heard his name before they saw him expected someone older, weaker, a stallion put out to pasture.

But Dust had been running this club since my balls dropped. He'd ridden with my old man and squeezed my shoulder at Dad's funeral. He'd given me my prospect patch and my bottom rocker. He'd killed more sonsofbitches than all of us combined.

Fun wasn't this man's specialty. He was all business, all the fucking time, and he looked more intense than ever today, slowing his walk as he stepped past us, hitting us with those dark gray eyes like a commander inspecting his troops.

He fit the part. And he left Crawl and Sixty mumbling apologies as they swung their legs over their bikes, making excuses about being late because they had a call, or the coffeepot was broken or some shit.

I rolled my eyes. Firefly pulled his helmet down and stubbed out his cigarette, flashing me an energetic look that said it was about to get all too real.

“All right, boys, you know the drill! The Prez, the Veep, and the prospects are gonna hit the little cock stops on the edge of town, and fan out toward Tri Cities today. As for the rest of us, we're taking on the big one run by that goddamned viper, Ricky McNumbnuts or whatever the fuck his name is.”

The brothers laughed. Even I cracked a smile, not that the dirtiest pimp in the county was a laughing matter.

“Any questions? Hit 'em now or I'll hit all you sorry fucks later for not asking me or the Prez.”

We waited about ten seconds, and nobody had anything. The Prez pulled up on his bike and the VP followed, everyone filing into formation, before we split into two groups on the highway.

Attack mode. We'd done this drill before. I'd been through it a couple dozen times over the years, and it still got the adrenaline flowing, which meant more testosterone and more raging hard-ons if shit got heated enough.

Fuck.
I regretted not beating off a few more times last night, or trying to track down that Stockings chick to fuck and dump again.

“Ya'll heard the man,” Dust growled, stopping at our open gate and looking over his shoulder. “Shut those shitholes down for a day. Don't come back 'til you do. They're human toilets, and we've let 'em troll for the Deadhands for too damned long in our own backyard. They ought to be paying us for the privilege of operating in our territory. They owe us big for hosting our enemies on our turf, and we're not walking away 'til they pay up. You know what we accept – talk, blood, or cold hard cash.”

Men cheered. I just nodded, having a funny feeling the last one excited the Prez the most.

“Remember, boys – forever deadly, forever pistols.” With our battle cry, the Prez surged ahead, and we all rode out behind him, a flock of roaring motorcycles gunning into the mountains.

We split into two teams several miles down the road, our group heading for the massive trucker spa. A man couldn't miss the damned place – the billboards only got closer together and more outrageous the closer we came.

I'd never stepped foot inside it before. I looked up at the plastic-looking models on the billboards and clenched my teeth, unsure whether to laugh or rage.

I'd bet my left nut there wouldn't be a single chick there half that good-looking. I'd heard all about these places before. They were nasty little rat nests full of greasy pimps and desperate girls, usually chicks being paid in booze, crystal, or smack, while the shitheads controlling them pocketed all the money.

Some guys said Ricky's joint had women there unwillingly. He'd have his day of reckoning one way or another, if that was true, but the club couldn't bring him down while we were flat out broke.

We needed to rattle the bastard first. Scope the place out, see how well armed he was or how much he'd let his guard down. The Deads taking him under their wing couldn't fly either.

We should've run the fuckers outta our territory the first time we caught a whiff of them coming across the state line. But the club was distracted then, putting its fingers into too many projects in a desperate shot at going legit.

Dust had two auto chop shops, a strip club, and a bar going. Everything except our main garage went bust in less than a year. I knew it better than anybody, handling the financials as the club's Treasurer.

Talk about a goddamned train wreck. Nobody blamed the Prez for trying. We had to find something after Dust's old man decided to wind down the drug trade before passing the gavel to his son, and we did our damnedest to keep ourselves clean.

Naturally, it didn't work, and now the only path open to us was guns. Too bad we were lined in by enemies like the Deadhands, and we'd have to fight our way through them to the coast if we ever wanted a shot at trading with the bigger, more powerful clubs out West. The Prairie Devils and Grizzlies wouldn't give us the time of day unless they respected us – and right now we ended up in fistfights at Sturgis because the other bastards didn't even know our name.

I watched Firefly make a sharp turn in front of me, going down the exit. I held onto my bike and gunned it, feeling the Harley's comforting growl between my legs. The ride gave everything below my waist the most excitement I was likely to see all week – unless the whorehouse had even one fuckable woman worth paying for.

We pulled into the cracked parking lot. Sixty whistled, pulled off his helmet, and squinted at me, stroking his goatee.

“Fuck a duck. Am I the only one who expected this place to look like a carnival on the inside only?”

Crawl and I both snorted. He wasn't wrong.

The outside walls were flaking neon pink paint. The entrance was flanked with four big circus poles painted barber shop red-white-and-blue. Didn't notice they were round at the top like dicks 'til we got off our bikes and started heading for the door.

I pushed my way in first, hand at my hip. The entryway looked like a run down lobby, and I rang the bell, taking a careful look to make sure we hadn't missed any girls or Johns loitering out front.

When we did this housecleaning shit, we put everybody on lockdown. No stragglers.

“Hey, gents. You here as a group, or are you looking for some one-on-one action?”

A thin, wiry man came walking up. Skinny, ugly, and too damned young to be working in a shithole like this.

Didn't mean he wasn't dangerous. I reached for the nine millimeter on my hip and drew. All three of my brothers pulled their guns too, and I heard them click behind me, aiming all our firepower at the gawky-looking asshole who came up to the front desk.

“Hands in front of you where we can see 'em,” I growled, locking my eyes on his wrists.

“Whoa!” The snake looked like he was about to shit. He listened, though, and that was all that mattered. “Can I
help
you guys? I'm real sorry, I don't recognize your patches...you're not with the Deadhands, are you?”