Wild Nights (Hell's Highway MC) (15 page)

I took a seat on a bench and did a little bit of people watching as I waited for Tessa to pull up in her black BMW SUV. Sure enough, twenty minutes later, she pulled up into the pickup lane.

I climbed in as fast as I could, all smiles. I couldn’t believe I was finally home and with someone I could trust.

“Thank you so much,” I said. “The last couple days have been nothing but a nightmare.”

“You know you have to tell me everything, right?” She said as she looked over her shoulder then pulled back out onto the main road. “I’m not letting you out of my car until you tell me exactly what the fuck happened. You don’t just disappear like that on us. And a typed note? What the fuck.”

Tessa had already started her lecturing, but I just sat there and took it. I deserved it. I deserved it all. She was right. I fucked up. I was an idiot for getting involved with someone like Blaze.

I explained everything to her, leaving out not one single detail. If anything happened to me, I wanted someone else to have all the facts. She sat in utter silence, or maybe it was sheer disgust, while I rambled on about the sweet things he said and the insane things he did. I’m quite sure she was appalled the entire time, but I kept going and she didn’t stop me.

“I need you to take me to my mom’s house,” I said. “My spare keys are there.”

She took the exit towards my mom’s side of town as I continued rattling off about the Hellfire president and the nice ladies who took care of me the night before. She pulled onto my mom’s street, and to my surprise, my mom’s car was sitting in the driveway.

“Oh,” I said. “I figured she’d still be at work at this hour.”

“You don’t want to talk to your mom?” Tessa asked, confused.

“It’s not that,” I said. “Well, sort of. She’s going to ask why I need my keys, and knowing her she’ll get me to spill everything. I’d rather she not know that anything happened.”

“Um, too late,” Tessa said coyly. “We sort of contacted her after we got your weird note. We had to find out if she’d heard from you lately.”

“What did you tell her?” I asked.

“Just that you left a note about an impromptu vacation and to cancel all your appointments until further notice,” she said. “And we sort of told her you met a guy in Tulsa last weekend. We figured you probably ran off with him.”

“Shit, Tessa,” I said as I huffed and slid back against the black, leather seats. “What do I tell her now?”

“Tell her the truth,” she said.

“I don’t feel like getting a lecture from her,” I said. “Already got one from you.”

“I don’t know what to say then,” Tessa said.

I glanced up at the house to see my mom running out from the front door. She looked like she’d been crying, and she ran towards Tessa’s car.

I climbed out, reluctantly, and walked towards her. She immediately wrapped her arms around me and held me tight.

“Molly,” she said as tears streamed down her face. “I was so worried about you.”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said.

She waved to Tessa, as if to thank her for bringing her baby back home, and wrapped her arm around my shoulder as we walked inside the house. My mom’s house smelled like apple pie and cinnamon potpourri, as cliché as it was, and it felt just like home. Coming home had never felt so good before now.

She escorted me to the sitting room, which was never a good sign, and took a seat on the sofa next to me. This was where we always had all of our important talks.

“Molly,” she said as she grabbed my hands and held them in hers. Her green eyes, which were identical to mine, stared deeply at me. “Tell me what happened.”

“What have you heard?” I asked. I had to be careful with her. She was a clever old fox.

“Never mind that,” she said. “Start from the beginning. Tell me everything.”

She wanted to psychoanalyze the situation of course. I was used to it. It was her nature as a psychologist. I couldn’t blame her for it.

“Last weekend, in Tulsa,” I began. “I met this gorgeous guy. I just wanted to have a little fun. Things started out fine, then he sort of became obsessed with me.”

My mom clutched her hand over her chest and squeezed her eyes.

“I’ve warned you about those guys, Molly,” she said as she shook her head. “Continue.”

“I didn’t even tell him my last name, but he somehow tracked me down here,” I said. “He took me out for dinner and was super sweet. Said all the right things. The next thing I know, he kidnaps me and I’m riding in the back of his truck, heading back to Tulsa.”

My mom covered her mouth with her hand and stood up. She began to pace the room, which wasn’t a good sign. My mom rarely lost her cool. She was trained to stay calm. This was bad.

“We have to alert the authorities,” she said as she pulled her cell phone from her pocket.

“No!” I yelled out. “We can’t.”

“And why not?” she asked with angry eyes. “Kidnapping is a felony! He could’ve hurt you or killed you or sold you. You don’t know what people like that are capable of, Molly.”

“Mom,” I said. “Sit down. Calm down.”

She took a seat next to me on the sofa once again and stared into my eyes with pursed lips.

“I know it seems insane,” I said. “But trust me. He’s never going to mess with me again.”

“How do you know that though?” she asked. I could tell she didn’t believe me. “People like that will go to great lengths to get what they want.”

I explained to her about R.J. and the motorcycle gang and all of that, but I could tell she still wasn’t buying it.

“What do you want me to do?” I said. “I can’t turn him in. He’ll rat out R.J. and then I’ll really have no protection. Without his hope of getting into the gang, he’s got nothing preventing him from messing with me.”

“Ugh,” my mom grunted. “I guess you have a point.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I can stay with you for a while,” I said.

Her face lit up like a Christmas tree. My stepdad had died a few years ago, and although my mom was proud of me for being so young and on my own and independent, I knew she was also very lonely. I was her only child, and I was her pride and joy.

“Would you?” she asked. “It would make me feel better knowing you were here with me.”

With my mom being a clinical psychologist, her home was rigged with the best security system money could buy. Not to mention nosy neighbors. She’d had a couple incidents in the past with clients tracking her down and talking her, so she took every precaution known to man to prevent it from happening again. I knew she’d feel better knowing I was home with her.

“I’ve thought about it,” I said. “And I’m going to sell my townhouse. I just don’t feel safe there anymore.”

“I think that’s a brilliant idea,” she said with a nod. “I’ll call Aunt Gwen and have her bring over a listing contract as soon as possible.”

My aunt was one of the best real estate agents in all of greater St. Louis. I knew she’d sell my house and sell it fast.

“Can you take me over to my place now?” I asked. “You have my spare keys. I have nothing.”

“Of course,” my mom said as she sprouted to a standing position. She walked into the kitchen to grab her things, and we headed outside to her car.

I didn’t want to walk into my townhouse alone, and ultimately I was glad to have her there with me. I didn’t feel safe there. My once sacred space was now tainted with bad memories and the ghost of my week with Blaze. I knew I couldn’t sleep there even if I tried, and I refused to lay in the bed where Blaze fucked, drugged, and then kidnapped me.

“You doing okay, honey?” my mom asked as she rubbed my back.

“Yeah,” I said, though it probably wasn’t too convincing.

“Oh, God,” I heard my mom shriek as she walked to the other room.

“What?! What is it?!” I called out as I chased after her.

“Whose boots are these?” she asked. The look on her face was sheer horror as we both stared at a pair of men’s motorcycle boots that were resting by the back door.

“Blaze’s,” I said. My heart pounded as I immediately wondered if he was hiding somewhere in my townhouse.

“Let’s get out of here and call the police,” my mom said as she jerked my arm.

As much as I didn’t want to, I knew we had no choice. He could’ve been hiding in my basement or lurking in a closet somewhere, and I refused to be the one to find that out. I decided to just tell them that I’d been on vacation for a couple days and came back to a possible intrusion.

We sat outside in my mom’s car with the doors locked tight, each taking in our surroundings. The police showed up in a few short minutes and a few of them did a sweep of my entire place. It took them a couple of hours, so I knew they were thorough.

“There’s nothing here, ma’am,” one officer said to me. “Maybe someone came and left while you were gone?”

Knowing Blaze and how psychotic he was, he probably intentionally left his boots there. He probably wanted to spook me if I ever made it back home, or he wanted to leave some sort of reminder or personal stamp.

The police waited patiently as I gathered up all of my belongings and my cat and loaded them up into my mom’s car. I was getting the hell out of there and never looking back. My aunt could sell it as cheap as she wanted, as long as I broke even. I just wanted away from there.

I set up a post office box at the post office so that there wouldn’t be a traceable address to me, and living with my mom turned out to be a really nice change for me. It was nice coming home and not being alone all night. She even made supper several nights a week. It wasn’t like having a boyfriend, obviously, but it took away some of that aching loneliness that made me fall victim to Blaze.

Every once in a while, I’d think about R.J. I kept his number tucked away in a safe place, just in case. He had saved my life, and I hoped that someday I’d get to see him again. I wondered if he ever thought of me too. He said I reminded him of someone he once loved. Guys like him were special, but I knew I could never get involved ever again with a biker gang or a bad boy. I can’t trust myself around them. Not at all.

BONUS!

Please enjoy this preview of the MC romance novel RIDING FREE by Ellery Stark and Blakeley Wilde!

Available now!

Copyright 2014

Ellery Stark and Blakeley Wilde

All Rights Reserved

DISCLAIMER

The characters and events portrayed in this book are purely a work of fiction and used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

MATURE CONTENT

This short story contains sexually explicit material and is intended for persons over the age of 18 only. By downloading and viewing this book, you are stating that you are of legal age. All of the characters involved in the sexual situations of this story are intended to be at least 18 years old or older, whether they are described as such or not.

About a quarter of a mile from my house on the outside of our tiny, little one-horse town, was a bar called the Handle Bar. It had a cheesy name, a cheesy painted block exterior, and a faded, burned out sign that was easily approaching thirty years old. It mostly catered to truckers, bikers, and the random local drunk. Any night of the week there would be an excessive amount of motorcycles, mostly Harleys, lined up in the parking lot along with a handful of semi-trucks parked out back.

Our little rinky-dink town was located just north of I-80 surrounded by miles and miles of corn fields on either side, so we were a great resting stop for bikers who needed to wet their whistle or truckers who needed to take a break or grab a bite to eat.

Across the street from the Handle Bar was a seedy little motel called the Starlight Inn. It was a popular party spot for teenagers and sometimes the bikers would rent out a couple rooms to continue their late night drinking fests long after the Handle Bar had closed...I should know because I worked there.

About once a week, a particular motorcycle gang would come through and rent some rooms for a night. It was almost like clockwork. Every other Saturday I’d hear them pull up and park their bikes. Their rock solid bodies were encased in miles of black leather, chaps, fringe, sunglasses, and skull caps. The youngest one, Jake, would usually come in and pay for the rooms in cash.

I always got flustered around Jake. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. He was at least 6’2’’ with dark, grown out hair and eyes bluer than the ocean. When he smiled, he revealed the most perfect dimples I’d ever seen. The moment he walked in the door, my heart fluttered. When I’d reach to take the cash from his hand, my hands would always be trembling. Jake noticed, but he never did say a word about it. Perhaps he was used to having that affect on girls.

The back of Jake’s leather jacket said “Sons of San Pedro”, and I knew they were a long ways from home. I had heard once that Jake was next in line to be the president of the biker gang. I tried doing a little internet research on them one day but couldn’t find much except for a couple articles from some little California newspaper. It didn’t have anything good to say about them that was for sure. It seemed they were suspected of trafficking drugs and other shady business dealings, but nothing could ever be pinned on them.

Jake seemed so nice. The fact that he was so sweet and kind and handsome made it hard for me to believe he had anything to do with the shady practices of his gang, so I refused to believe it. He casually mentioned once that his dad was the president of the biker gang. I assumed that was how he got involved. Maybe he didn’t have a choice?

Sometimes when I was bored, I’d fantasize about leaving this two-bit town and riding away on the back of Jake’s hog. I imagined traveling from state to state by his side, seeing the sights, trying new foods, taking in the beautiful scenery as the hum of the motorcycle vibrated beneath us. Some girls wanted to be rescued by a knight in shining armor and whisked away on the back of a beautiful white horse. Jake was all I wanted. I’d let him rescue me any day of the week. If he ever asked me to leave with him, I wouldn’t give it a second thought.