Storm by Aria Ray

Chapter Eight

Storm

It was Monday morning. I was up and ready to go to Church as soon as the alarm would have rung.

Today, the alarm didn’t wake me. I was already awake. In fact, it didn’t feel like I had slept at all. I couldn’t get to sleep after Zoe called me last night. I couldn’t forget the way she sounded on the phone. Vulnerable and scared.

Once again, I experienced something I didn’t recognize; an urge to protect her and keep her safe.

I got out of bed and went to the bathroom for a shower.

I was fuckin’ pissed off.

I was pissed with myself for acting like this. Like she had some kind of power and control over me. I had never allowed a woman to become a liability to me. As President of the Dark Slayers, I had responsibilities. I led by example. If I allowed a chick from the outside to control my life and make me weak, what kind of example would I be setting for the rest of the club?

I jerked open the shower door, and stomped in. I wanted to wash her off me. But as soon as the hot steam of the shower hit my body, I was thinking about how warm and welcoming her body had felt when she was pressed against me on my bike.

How warm and welcoming was her pussy?

Fuck.

She looked all small and naïve, like she had no clue how to take care of herself. Like she was lost amongst us and afraid of us—but she wasn’t.

She’d proven that when she put Amber in her place.

Neither Amber nor any of the other chicks were going to mess with her.

And that made my cock throb hard.

I stood under the shower with one hand on the glass wall, while my other hand stroked my cock.

I pictured Zoe with her long hair, wet while she stood beside me in the shower. Her tiny waist in my hands. My mouth on the milky softness of her neck and then down to her perfect tits.

I wanted to pin her to this glass wall, then thrust myself inside her with her legs wrapped around me. I wanted to hear her moan while I moved inside her, took possession of her.

My hand moved faster on my cock, and I growled with frustration.

I wanted her.

I wanted to fuck her.

I wanted to know her.

Then I came like a bomb going off. I cursed under my breath while her face haunted my imagination. Those big blue-grey eyes looking up at me. A smile just lingering there on her lips, but not quite fully formed.

I cursed louder when I was done.

This wasn’t the first time I’d jerked off to the fantasy of a chick. But this was the first time I knew it meant trouble.

I turned up for Church at the clubhouse only because I had no other choice. I was President. I was required to be there. Besides, we had some pretty serious shit on our hands that needed to be looked at.

What I really wanted to do was stay in that shower, fantasizing about Zoe all day, instead of facing reality.

But once I got to the clubhouse, I was glad to be there. It was the perfect distraction, the perfect reminder of how this was where I belonged.

It was a sunny day, and we were holding Church outdoors in the big garden at the back of the clubhouse.

The families of club members were usually included on Church days, so all the kids were there, too. The wives were in charge of the food and drinks. Mostly the men were at the main table.

Amethyst was the only female amongst us. She had earned her place here after years of running the bar and being as intrinsic a member of the club as any of the men were.

“Do we have anything to report on the routine security nights?” I asked.

Everyone had a burger in their hands, while I had a beer in mine. It felt like a day to stay drunk.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Breaker responded as he looked through the scraps of paper in front of him. He usually kept track of the teams who went out to the gigs and kept up the business.

“Well except that some motherfuckers tried selling shrooms to some kids at the Mondo Concert.” It was Grit, and when he spoke, we all turned to him.

“You were there?” Breaker asked, looking furiously through the notes he’d gathered.

“I didn’t put it in the log because I didn’t know if we needed a paper trail of that. I just wanted to tell you all in person.”

“Who were they?” I asked.

Grit shrugged. “They were gone before we knew this happened. The kids got searched and we found the drug purchase on them. They couldn’t give us a solid description of the guys who sold it to them.”

I clenched my jaws in frustration. This was against the rules. Selling drugs to kids was a dangerous and amoral game that we didn’t indulge in. This was part of the MC rules around here.

“We need to find out who is responsible for this. The rules have been broken and someone has to pay for it,” I said.

Grit and Breaker nodded and suggested they’d look into it. I had a feeling they weren’t going to get to the bottom of this very soon. I was going to let them play at it for a few days, and then I’d have to take matters into my own hands.

As Grit spoke, a club girl who brought over a tray of beers brushed up against him. She made it very clear that she did it on purpose when she turned to look at him. Her tits were hanging out of her skimpy top.

I didn’t recognize half these girls because I wasn’t interested in any of them, so there was a chance she was new here.

“You want something?” Grit asked her, his expression bored. Her cheeks flushed before she made a hasty excuse and slunk away.

For Grit to unzip his pants, it would take more than that. It just made the rest of us chuckle.

“I mean, I would do her. She not good enough for you?” Teeny’s resentful voice broke the good humor in the air.

I was surprised to find that he was still pissed off. Maybe Amber had refused to spread her legs for him and now he was just resentful towards all of us.

Grit turned to him, too, and for a moment I thought he was going to sucker punch him across the table, but he didn’t. Grit never did anything when you were expecting it from him.

“No, she isn’t. But you can have my scraps,” he replied, which made everyone else laugh even louder.

Teeny’s face turned bright purple. He deserved every bit of it.

Hacker, who was in a wheelchair, cut through the noise. “You should really charge money for those verbal assaults. I wouldn’t mind paying for some lessons since I can’t kick ass with my legs.”

Grit shook his head while we all continued chuckling. Amethyst slapped Hacker on the back while Grit barely acknowledged the comeback. He didn’t recognize his own comedic strength.

When Hacker’s kid came running up to him and wrapped her arms around her daddy’s neck, we all quieted down and watched them for a moment. How the fuck did he land a family like that? And that question wasn’t directed at the fact that he was in a wheelchair. None of us gave a shit about that.

I was just amazed that one of us had managed to find domestic bliss while the rest of us had perished in that department. We hadn’t even come close.

Angel, his wife, came up to pull their daughter away.

“Daddy’s working, honey, he’ll play with you later, okay?” Angel said sweetly. Hacker covered his daughter’s face with kisses, and I could see Amethyst almost melt into a puddle beside him.

Even I had to admit it was sweet. Almost made me wish I wanted different things.

But I didn’t.

That could never be me.

Once Angel had pulled the kid away, I put my beer down on the table and clapped my hands together.

“Okay, the rest of you buzz off. Officers remain at the table only.”

They grabbed their food and drinks and then stood up to go. We had private matters to discuss. Matters I couldn’t risk leaving our walls.

I waited until the prospects and lower ranking members had left before I turned to the others. Breaker was staring at me expectantly. He hadn’t been sleeping at night since his son disappeared and seeing Hacker with his kid probably didn’t do him any favors either.

“One of us is still missing. What do we have on Daniel’s disappearance?” I asked.

The jokes were over, and it was time to get down to business.

“I’m tracking down all the places Daniel was last seen. Ideally, I would like to have a visual map of his whereabouts in the last days before he disappeared,” Hacker spoke up.

“And once you have that map done, I can gather the troops and start checking those places out,” Rider added.

“It isn’t much, but it’s all we have right now,” Grit said, turning to Breaker, who was deathly silent. He wasn’t going to say it, but it wasn’t good enough. We weren’t really any closer to tracking down his son. We still had no leads.

“And we’re going to stumble onto something. Something’s gotta give,” I said.

“We’ve also been in talks with the family of Alison Leigh,” Breaker blurted, almost like he was stumbling out of a daze. We hadn’t discussed this. I wasn’t aware we were going to discuss Alison’s case, but it was too late to have that talk now. Breaker was already making it public information. At least we were only amongst trustworthy friends.

“Who the fuck is Alison Leigh?” Grit asked.

I pulled my phone out. Zoe had sent me photographs of Alison. Two pictures that were sent to the family by the people who claimed to have kidnapped her. She also sent me a picture of a happy smiling Alison, before all this happened.

I passed my phone over to Grit. He stared at the screen for several suspended seconds before passing it to Hacker so he could look too.

“What happened to her? What’s going on?” Grit asked. He had to clear his throat, I noticed. The photographs of Alison had affected him.

“She disappeared recently, too, and it’s most likely connected to Daniel’s disappearance. The pattern fits,” I said.

Breaker had grown silent again. He had nothing more to add now. He just wanted his son back.

My phone was returned to me. I slipped it in my pocket.

“So, we’ve been hired to find her too?” Hacker asked. I eyed Breaker because he’d almost jeopardized our whole plan. He wasn’t even looking at me. He was lost in his own world.

“Yeah, we don’t have any leads on her, either, except that a group has been sending ransom notes and those photographs to the family. This is the first time they’ve made contact with the family of those who’ve disappeared,” I answered.

“So, what’s special about the Leigh family?” Rider asked.

“I don’t know, but maybe we should find out. All I know is that they’re rich.”

The others talked amongst themselves, discussing the map Hacker was coming up with, while I let my mind fill with thoughts about Zoe again.

These guys would lose their fuckin’ minds if and when they found out who my new woman really was.

∞∞∞

I had some updates for Zoe, but I didn’t want to give them to her over the phone. When I texted her to meet me at a Mexican restaurant I frequented, she responded almost instantly.

I didn’t want to get my hopes up—that she had been eagerly waiting for me to reach out to her—but I was sure she wasn’t. She had better things to do.

She showed up at the restaurant an hour later, dressed in a tight pair of low hanging jeans and one of the tops I’d picked out for her. The neckline plunged low, and her cleavage looked deep. For a girl who was as petite as her, it was amazing how her curves blossomed in these clothes. Even more amazing was how I could keep my hands off those curves.

“What do you have for me?” she asked when we settled in our seats.

So, this was how she planned to play this out. She’d responded to my text quickly, and now she’d have me believe it was out of desperation for information. Like it had nothing to do with me. Usually, this would mean nothing to me. Now, the fact that she was acting like she wasn’t interested in me just pissed me off. But I swallowed my anger.

“Some of my guys said they discovered some dealers selling drugs to kids at a concert recently,” I began.

Zoe stared at me, confused. She had no idea where I was going with this.

“So, I got my guys to look into any other instances of drugs being distributed among kids. Specifically in the groups where disappearances have been reported.”

Zoe sat back in her chair and weaved her fingers through her hair.

“And what did they find?”

“There’s some underground ring at the college.”

“My sister’s college?”

“Most of the kids who disappeared in the past two years went there, too.”

Zoe nodded. She knew that already. She’d already made the connection. It was the common factor in the disappearances.

“So, you think Alison got tangled up in the drug ring?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if the drug ring is connected to the disappearances in any way. For now, it’s the first hint of a lead we’ve had.”

“What now?”

“We wait for more information.”

She picked up the menu and stared at it blankly.

“I’m not hungry. I can’t eat.”

“But we’re here now so you should order something.”

“How can I eat while my sister’s out there… I mean, you saw those photographs, didn’t you?”

Tears filled Zoe’s eyes. I wanted to pull her into my arms. How did she do this to me? How did she make me feel like I needed to fix the world for her?

“Yes, but it’s not your fault. You’re doing whatever you can for her. We all are. What use is there in punishing yourself?”

She stared at me with red eyes as she struggled against the tears.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive myself if something happens to her. My mom and dad already blame me for not taking up the offer in those ransom notes. They think I’m risking Alison’s life, and they might be right.”

“No, you’re doing the right thing by resisting it. You can’t give in to them. Not until you have the full picture,” I said.

Zoe wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and then pointed at the menu.

“That’s what I’ll have. A big ass burrito,” she said.

“My mom is just a mess,” she said, after she’d taken the first messy bite of her burrito. One of the reasons why I came to this place so often was because it was a value for the money. The burrito in Zoe’s hand was almost as big as her head.

She had no idea how adorable she looked as she tried to eat it. The damn thing fell everywhere. She couldn’t even get her mouth open that wide. And all I was picturing was her plump pink lips framing my cock.

“It can’t be easy for a parent to go through this. I can see what it’s doing to Breaker, and he didn’t even know his kid very well.”

Zoe took several sips of her milkshake. I had to look away as her lips formed around the straw.

“It’s not just Alison’s disappearance, but my dad… Well, they’re in the middle of a messy divorce, and she’s just lost. She can’t handle it, and I don’t know how to help her.”

I said nothing. I didn’t even know what it was like to grow up around parents. Around functioning parents.

“Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is that finding Alison could save Mom’s life. I’m not just fighting for my sister’s life but my mother’s, too.”

We stared at each other while her lips trembled. I could see how she was struggling to stay strong, but inside, she was cracking. The confident, bubbly, strong-willed woman who starred in her popular vlogs had turned into someone who was constantly looking over her shoulder.

“We’re going to find her,” I reassured her. Maybe I thought that if I repeated it enough times, I would actually start believing it, too.

We finished our food and walked out of the restaurant. We were both parked in the carpark at the back. We went there together. She was walking close beside me, so I reached for her hand.

It startled her at first. She stared down at our hands, as our fingers entwined. I thought she would pull away, but she didn’t. When we got to her car, I pulled her close for a kiss. But I didn’t kiss her lips this time. I left a warm lingering kiss on her cheek.

I had never kissed a woman like this before. I had never made it this personal. Zoe, I suspected, needed it. Maybe it would help her in some way.

Zoe opened her mouth to say something, but then changed her mind.

Apparently, she had nothing to say.

Whatever was going on between us didn’t seem as important as her sister missing, or as her mother falling apart.

“Goodbye, Storm. Thanks for dinner,” she said before she quickly stepped into her car. Then she was gone.

Once again, I was left staring after her.