One Step Too Close - Coffin Nails MC Louisiana (Gay Biker Stepbrother Romance) (Sex & Mayhem Book 6) (4 page)

Ryder frowned. “That’s a
weird word choice.”

“Is it?” Jed glanced up
at him from beneath his blond eyebrows.

“Yeah, but I
straightened things out with her. A nice dinner should do the trick, but you
know how that works anyway,” said Ryder with a small smile.

Jed opened his lips, but
then closed them without a word and continued his exercise. His knuckles were
still bruised from the fight, and he slouched far too much. Ryder kneeled next
to him and pulled on Jed’s shoulders, correcting his posture for the exercise.
The soft skin tensed under his touch, and he quickly said, “We don’t want any
injuries.”

Jed straightened up, but
only quickened the pace at which he was rowing. “You always know everything
better, don’t you?”

“What does that mean?”
asked Ryder, sitting cross-legged at Jed’s side. His gaze followed the tensing
and relaxing of Jed’s pecs as he moved even quicker than before.

There was a bloodied
knife tattooed under Jed’s rib, in the same place where Ryder had been stabbed
when he was in jail. Jed had said he’d done it to feel the shadow of Ryder’s
pain and take it off him. It was an unexpected thing to hear from someone as nonspiritual
as Jed.

“It means you had no
right to go and turn yourself in,” Jed said, with his breath more ragged by the
second. He was overexerting himself, and Ryder squeezed his forearm to make him
stop. It wasn’t fostering a conversation either. For that he needed Jed’s
undivided attention.

“No? I’m your older
brother, and I’m not gonna let you fuck up your life because of something this
stupid.”

Jed stopped rowing and
for a moment just sat there panting as a few drops of sweat slid down his
stomach. “It wasn’t your choice to make,” he finally said and got up abruptly.
Ryder was right there next to him in a second, in case he was jelly-legged
after the intense exercise. The scent of fresh, masculine sweat stabbed Ryder’s
nostrils and made his own knees a bit too soft. He looked away from the
droplets of moisture on Jed’s back.

“No? What was I supposed
to do? Let them arrest you for battery? On probation?” Ryder grabbed Jed’s jaw
and made him look up. The stubble scratched his fingers.

“It was my fault. So now
you’re at risk. I
could
go to jail. You’ve been, Dad’s been, and you’re
both fine. You gotta do what you gotta do!” Jed pulled out of Ryder’s grip, and
stormed off to the locker rooms with his muscular back tense.

Ryder followed him with
anger humming at the pit of his chest. “It’s not an award to score,” he
growled, walking into the shower room, which was all white tiles and simple
showerheads, without any dividers or curtains. “We need all of our manpower,
and I will not be losing you. Maybe just fucking think before you act next
time.”

Jed frowned at him and
hung his towel on a hook. “Fucker was disrespectful to a Nail. He was lucky to
get out of it with a broken leg and nose.”

When Jed walked past
Ryder, he accidentally brushed him with his shoulder, triggering a warmth that
trailed all over Ryder’s body. He took a deep breath. He only needed to remind
himself that Jed was his brother, and it would be fine. Everyone struggled in
those situations, in proximity of beautiful bodies they shouldn’t want to
touch, but just like most people, Ryder had enough self-control to limit his true
interest to the right gender. Girls were lovely. Soft, their bodies so
different than his own, interested in things Ryder never paid attention to.
With men, the camaraderie was much closer, so no wonder that he sometimes found
himself breaking boundaries, even if just in thought.

Ryder sighed, lowering
his eyes when Jed pulled off his jogging bottoms. “You shouldn’t have gone in
the first place. You had no sensation in your hand minutes before that race,
and I’m not letting you kill yourself.”

Jed turned the water on,
and Ryder tried not to think about the way Jed’s tan buttocks clenched when the
cold stream hit his body. He was lucky no one had access to his brain, or he’d
never finish explaining himself. He’d first truly noticed the dimples in Jed’s
buttocks at nineteen, when they went skinny dipping with a group of friends.
Everyone else went right in, but Jed got thigh-deep, kept complaining about the
cold, and clenched his goosebump-covered ass. Ryder had to go over and give him
a gulp of tequila for Jed to finally take the plunge.

“I was bored. I wanted
to do something fun. Racing gets me all pumped up.” He actually grinned back at
Ryder, as if this was a happy subject.

Ryder swallowed hard and
looked up at Jed’s face, now sprayed by warm water. “And that’s what I get.
Trouble with my woman, and having to deal with cops. And as for Ripper’s
attack? He might have had it coming considering what he eats and how much he
smokes, but what happened didn’t help either.”

Jed turned around and
spread his arms. “Oh, so now Ripper’s stroke is my fault too? Maybe you should
have stayed put at your party, and not dragged him over like I was some damsel
in distress needing saving.”

Ryder shook his head.
“He came because he was worried about you, you dumbass. Try acting like an
adult for once!”

Jed began quickly
soaping himself up. “You don’t let me! You’re always there, up in my business!”
He took a deep breath and looked back at Ryder with streams of water dripping
down his face. “I mean… It’s cool that you’re around, just… I want a brother
not a cop.”

Ryder slapped the wall
as anger pulsed through his veins. “What was I supposed to do? Stay at the club
and let you hurt yourself, like your damn girlfriend did?”

“What? What’s it got to
do with Dana? Did she say something weird to you?” Jed’s bright blue eyes were
on Ryder, drilling him to the wall and only confirming that there had to be
something off about Jed’s relationship with Dana.

“No, she just fucking
played a game on her phone while you went off to race. Anyone else’s woman
would have been at their side. What’s up with that bitch?”

Jed let out a long
breath and turned his back on Ryder again, presenting the club tattoo they both
had done on the same night. They had prospected together, and got patched in
together.
Coffin Nails MC
, and underneath—a demon nailing itself inside
a coffin, and their turf—
Louisiana
.

Ryder exhaled, startled
by Jed’s silence. He switched off the water and touched Jed’s wet skin. “What’s
up?”

Jed flinched back so
quickly, his wet hair slapped Ryder in the face. “It’s nothing. Just some girl
bullshit. We had a fight.”

Ryder stepped closer and
pulled on Jed’s arm so they would face one another. Those eyes were so blue,
but recently there had been a strange dark undertone to them, and Ryder needed
to know the truth behind it. “You’ve been different since you and her got
together.”

Jed was tense like a
bull before slaughter, and Ryder couldn’t work out why. There was something he
was missing, and it ate at his gut that Jed kept something trapped inside. “You
know how it is. You live with someone and they piss you off sometimes, but you
still wanna be with them, so you push through the shit times.”

Ryder rubbed his face.
He couldn’t believe Jed would actually feel so strongly for a bitch as cold as
Dana. “Maybe you shouldn’t. You weren’t like this with neither Carla nor Yumi.”

Jed grabbed his towel
and wrapped it around his hips. “And you’re doing it again. Telling me what I
should do. She’s not your girlfriend, she’s mine.”

“I’m just trying to help,”
Ryder said, pulling away his hands and wiping off the moisture on his black
shirt. “She doesn’t seem to make you happy.”

“Maybe nothing makes me
happy right now, so it’s not her fault, huh?” Jed raised his voice. “You can’t
always get what you want, so you make do with what you’ve got.”

That was a warning sign
if Ryder ever saw one. “What did you get yourself into? You know you can tell
me.”

“Why do you always
assume that I did something stupid?” Jed hissed at him and walked off to the
locker room, leaving Ryder staring at the wet tiles.

It seemed that there was
no way for him to get to the bottom of things at the moment. “Fine, we don’t
need to talk. Suit yourself!” he called out after a few seconds, and got
answered by a slamming door.

Jed

Jed couldn’t find his
cell phone as he roamed around the mobile home where he lived with the worst
fake-girlfriend anyone ever had.

“Dana? You seen my
phone?” he yelled, more frustrated by the second. He didn’t have time to waste
on the day of Ryder’s trial. They hadn’t spoken much in the week leading up to
it, and now Jed regretted it. He was pretty sure Ryder would get a mild
sentence, but what if the judge was some spiteful cunt out for biker blood?
Just the thought of not being able to see Ryder, of not being around him, had
Jed’s guts twisting into an angry tangle.

“Dana!” he yelled again,
pushing a stack of magazines to the floor. The house was uncomfortably small
for the two of them, with a moldy wall in the kitchen, and Jed’s bed in the
living room, but Jed was pretty sure the house would be too small for him and
Dana even if it were a mansion with twenty bedrooms and a pool. The narrow
corridors and thin walls of the living room were like a trap that would
eventually squeeze the life out of Jed.

“Stop yapping,” she
said, without moving out of the bedroom where she was watching a real-crime
show that always made her laugh in the most inappropriate moments. “I don’t
care about your phone. You must have lost it when you got drunk yesterday.”

“Just fucking call my
phone! Why is this such a big deal?” He turned around and smashed his fist into
the wall in frustration. He was never getting to see Ryder before the trial at
this pace.

Dana looked at him from
the stack of pillows where she lay in just her lacy panties, tits out in the
air. “Stop bothering me. Maybe if you got a job and quit getting intoxicated,
our lives would be much better,” she said, as if she deserved anything from
him.

The bitch wasted
electricity on keeping a portable radiator in her room, because she couldn’t be
bothered to wear a sweater.

“Maybe
you
should
get a job? Ever thought of that?” Jed gritted his teeth and pulled his hair
back into a bun so it would stop getting in the way. He kneeled on the floor
and pushed away Dana’s shoes to look under the couch. The blackmail material
made him her slave, and he hated every second of washing up her dishes and
doing her laundry.

“I have a job, and
you’re it. I’m making the best of the pathetic clay I have here,” she said with
a smile to her voice. “Spare yourself the trouble. Your phone’s not here,
unless you came over to leave it.”

Jed got up and came up
to her bed. “If I don’t reach Ryder on time because you hid my phone in some
pathetic attempt of third-grader sabotage, there will be hell to pay.”

Dana raised her gaze at
him. “You’re accusing me of that only because that’s the kind of stuff you do.
You know, mixing whites with reds on purpose, and all that.”

Jed looked at her with
rising urge to kill and maim. Ending up with a set of pink T-shirts had not
marked a good day for him. “Maybe you should be doing the laundry then.”

“Maybe you should be
doing Ryder’s laundry to show him what a good wife you could be to him,” said
Dana without blinking. “You do have a nice ass. Even I can see that.”

Jed stilled, and his
face burned up with the hellfire he’d end up in if he ever made a move on
Ryder. “He’s my brother, you lazy cunt.”

“You’d still suck his
dick if he asked.”

Jed swallowed, getting a
tingle of arousal even thinking about going down to his knees in front of
Ryder. Unbuckling his belt, pulling out that big dick, already stiff for him
and ready to pump his throat. Jed tried to avoid those thoughts, embarrassed of
imagining himself, a Coffin Nails patch on his knees in front of any guy… but
with Ryder it was different. Ryder would never hurt or humiliate him.

Even without wanting to,
he knew Ryder’s cock well. He knew of the tiny scars that remained of the
Jacob’s ladder piercings Ryder got rid of after getting together with Jess, the
shiny row of steel hoops on Ryder’s sac, the one bow-shaped barbell remaining
at the base of the dick, under the neatly trimmed pubes. It had a big head,
with a pronounced ridge that Jed would die to caress with his tongue, thick
veins, and a girth many men would be envious of.

The piercings were
physical proof of Ryder’s wild side that seemed to be a bit dimmed lately by
Ryder acting like a tight-ass. But Jed knew it was there, and that Ryder was
willing to let go in the right circumstances.

“I wouldn’t suck my
brother’s dick, you pervert. I’m not into sucking dicks. Period.” He huffed,
knowing he took too long to answer.

Dana laughed. “That
makes me want to take you to one of those clubs with glory holes. I promise I
wouldn’t be recording.” The guitar solo of his cell phone ringtone called out
to Jed from the side of the living room, and Dana looked up at him. “See? You
didn’t need my help.”

It was for the better.
He didn’t want to argue with her any longer, because she always found a way to
turn it into a gay thing. As if she could sense just how uncomfortable it made
him and fed on every second of his torment. Maybe he was in hell already?

Jed ran over to the
living room and found his phone under a fallen box of cereal. “Hey! What is
it?”

“Where the hell are
you?” asked Mikey, who was clearly eager to execute his new power as the club
enforcer, though with him being close to Ryder, Jed suspected there was also a
fair amount of true anger behind the call.

“I’m coming! I was just
leaving the house,” he said and ran out the door, ready to mount his bike. He
needed to get a move on it if he wanted to talk to Ryder alone.

“Don’t be late,” said
Mikey and disconnected.

It was showering
outside, but Jed ignored it and chose not to go back for the leather jacket. A
bit of cold and rain never killed anyone. Jed hopped on his Harley and sped off
on the slippery road. They were to escort Ryder to the trial, so he needed his
‘official’ bike for that. He couldn’t get over the guilt of Ryder being in this
position in the first place. It was Jed who should be going on trial for being
a dumbass, not Ryder. The club needed Ryder, especially now with Ripper in the
hospital. But at this point, Jed admitting the truth would only get Ryder into
more trouble with the police.

Thankfully, the trailer
park where he lived was close to the clubhouse, and he soon arrived at the
entrance, running inside at top speed. When he entered, all the patched members
looked up from their seats, and he could sense their disapproval on his skin.
Someone was taking the blame for his crime, and he couldn’t even be there on
time for the drive to court.

Ryder’s face was oddly
blank when he looked at Jed. “Why are you dressed like this?” he asked, already
getting up.

Jed looked down to his
soaked clothes, and back up at Dad’s frown. “I— It’s raining.”

Dark snorted and shook
his head. The guy was nicknamed like that as short for ‘the Dark One’, because
of his long black hair and ever-present dark circles under the eyes. Jed had
told a few young hangarounds that Dark was a vampire, and he was pretty sure
they believed it for a while.

“What’s so funny?” asked
Grease, looking outside. His usually fluffy hair was just as flat as Jed’s.

Wolver rolled his eyes
and zipped up his leather jacket. “Oh, just shut up, Prospect. Let’s go.”

Ryder also closed his
jacket and walked past Jed without a word.

No…

Jed opened his lips and
wanted to tell Ryder about the phone. That he was looking for it for half an
hour, that he would have arrived earlier, but his voice was stuck in his throat
as he watched Ryder step out into the rain and put on his helmet.

Bert pushed Jed out with
a friendly pat and followed Ryder’s example, mounting his sleek chopper. The
cold droplets were sprinkling Jed’s scalp as he too got on his ride, with a
heart much heavier than he expected. He pulled on his helmet, and was second to
last one in the cavalry on bikes charging down the road. Somehow, in the rain,
most of them wearing black, it seemed like they were going to a funeral. A bad
feeling settled in Jed’s stomach, and he wished he could be behind Ryder not
Dark, who had black fumes coming out of his bike like he was on a road to hell.
Jed pulled a bandana over the lower half of his face. Even in this grim
defilade, he was a part of something bigger, something he could understand,
something he could call family. He couldn’t imagine ever feeling this way about
a bunch of fags in some LA nightclub.

Jed knew the court
building like any of his brothers. They’d all been here to see one of their
long-time members, Shooter, escorted to prison where he would spend the rest of
his life. And while there was no way for Ryder to disappear out of Jed’s life
over this, walking him into the courtroom did feel like a somber good-bye. The
room itself, not too big, with panels of fake wood lining the walls, felt much
more homely than the representative, grand courtrooms from the movies. But when
Ryder got into the defendant’s seat, with the whole brotherhood left behind,
Jed still felt like they were deserting him.

He was grateful Jess
wasn’t here, though he supposed it was Ryder who’d asked her to stay home. She
was nothing like Dana and would stand by her man till the end. No wonder Ryder
was suspicious of Jed’s fake relationship.

Vice, the racer over
whom Ryder got into this position, was well enough to come into court, and
unsurprisingly, he went with the version of events Wolver had given him, which
made Jed feel better, even though he didn’t want to see the fucker ever again.
That’s what happened when hangarounds got in over their heads. Being friendly
was one thing, being disrespectful quite another. Jed had earned the patch on
his back with pain and blood, and he wouldn’t have no fucker forget he was a
Coffin Nail.

There was disbelief when
the judge passed her verdict, and Ryder couldn’t keep his face still as two
officers came over to cuff him for the transport into jail.

“Three months?” Jed said
and got up before he could think. “This is bullshit!” He ran over to the
railing before the officers approached and pulled on Ryder’s arm to turn him
around. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispered, looking straight into Ryder’s gray
eyes.

“Order!” yelled the
judge and knocked her gavel against the desk, but all Jed could see was Ryder’s
face, slightly paler than usual.

He smiled, and it
stressed every masculine line on his face, including the scar on his chin.
“I’ll be fine. Be good to Jess, okay?” he asked as he was escorted toward the
small door at the back of the courtroom.

Jed bent over the
railing and tried to grab Ryder’s jacket, but it was impossible. Wouldn’t he
even get to quickly hug him? Say good-bye? “I’m sorry!” he yelled once more,
with his eyes stinging. He grabbed onto the railing and slid down to his knees.
Sure, it wasn’t a twenty-year sentence, but it was his fault. And he didn’t
even spend the last week with Ryder, instead too focused on himself. He hit the
railing with his forehead so hard he could hear bells ringing. There was so
much violence he wanted to unleash on the world. He should be the one spending
the next three months in jail.

Someone pulled on his
clothes and forced him to his feet. “Get a grip,” hissed Wolver as he dug his
fingers into Jed’s flesh.

Jed looked toward the
door in time to see Ryder grin at him again, as if it were all an elaborate
prank on his part.