Chapter One

Danny

 

 

 

 

It wasn't the first time I walked out of my room to find six naked women shaking their tits in the common room. Hell, it wasn't the first time this month. Or even this week.

Growing up in an MC had long since removed the shock of seeing women stripped bare in public.

I was only about eleven the first time I walked out to see two of my club uncles doing an Eiffel Tower with one of the clubwhores.

Life had been a consistent battle of trying to force these rough and tumble types of men to respect me while also needing to simultaneously accept the exploitation of the clubwhores.

It made me a hypocrite, sure, but there was also nothing I could do about it.

Besides, it wasn't like the women were forced to be clubwhores. Some chicks just liked to get down and dirty with a bunch of bikers. Sometimes many at the same time. Who was I to judge?

That was feminism at its core, wasn't it?

You do you, I do me.

"Shanny got her tits pierced," Dutch said, holding out a bottle of beer he'd taken from the fridge behind our vintage bar that the guys had haphazardly renovated with wood they'd stolen from a construction site, despite the fact that we could afford to buy some ourselves without a problem. They had to get their kicks somewhere, I guess.

"I see that," I agreed, popping off the cap as I looked over at the short, stacked blond who was shaking her giant boobs in the faces of two of the guys, her nipples hardened and sporting some shiny new surgical steel barbells.

Shanny was a flashy sort of chick. I imagined once the piercings healed, she'd find some getup that would connect her tit piercings to her navel piercing. Hell, she might even figure out how to incorporate her hood piercing as well. If nothing else, she'd get some loud—and arguably tasteless—matching jewelry to tie it all together.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"Of her nipple piercings?" I asked, shooting a look at my Sergeant At Arms.

He was, objectively, a good-looking guy. I think that, after so many years working side-by-side with someone, and sometimes needing to remind them that having a pussy didn't mean he got to toss some disrespect my way made it harder for me to see him the way any woman might see any man. But he was attractive. Tall, fit, with dark brown hair and a matching scruffy beard, covered in tats, and with somewhat off-puttingly bright blue eyes.

"Yeah," Dutch said, nodding.

"I imagine it hurt," I said, shrugging.

"But you don't, you know, like them?"

"If she likes them, I like them," I said, starting to catch on.

"No, I mean, do you..."

"If you want to ask me if I eat pussy, Dutch, just ask me," I suggested, shooting him a bored look.

"Alright. Well, do you eat pussy?"

"No."

"Well, you get why I ask."

"Actually, why don't you explain to me why you asked?" I suggested, tone cool.

"It's just that you never bring anyone home."

Right.

Home.

To an old bar turned clubhouse full of outlaw bikers.

That wouldn't be a mood killer or anything.

Though, to be clear, the bar was badass. There had been a lot of choices in Navesink Bank for buildings I could have chosen. Objectively, all the others might have been more logical choices. Big warehouses or even an abandoned little strip mall. Places that would have had a lot more space for spreading out.

But when I'd seen the bar, I knew it was the only clear choice. First, because bikers belonged in bars. Second, because I figured, as we established ourselves more, we could revamp the bar, and open it up as a legitimate business. I'd bought it with its—insanely expensive—liquor license, which was hard to come by in the area. It ate through pretty much all my savings, but the gun running business was thriving. I'd needed to live on a tight budget for almost a year, just so I could continue to pay the guys what I owed them, but my coffers were slowly but surely filling back up.

And, eventually, if we opened the bar, we'd be rolling in it, while also being able to wash our illegally obtained money.

There were only a couple bars in town. One was at the back of a liquor store, and catered to old men and just about no one else. Then there was Chaz's which was the main town bar. It also happened to be owned by the Mallick family who used it—among a dozen other businesses—to wash the money they earned from loan sharking.

The competition was low.

And if we could offer something different than they did, we could really have something going for us.

I hadn't shared that plan with my men yet. I'd learned long ago to play my cards close to my vest. Not because I didn't trust my men, or because I required their approval. But one thing I learned about men, it was they were every bit as fucking chatty as women. Which meant they would spend the next year or two hatching plans for the bar before I even had any plans to open it. By the time I got around to putting things into the works, they would all have opinions, and would be all butt-hurt when I didn't go with their ideas.

It was easier to let them go on believing it was just a really neat clubhouse.

The other reason the bar was a good choice for the club was the fact that there were apartments above. Sure, they were shoeboxes, but there were six of them. And the guys didn't mind squeezing in together. For no other reason but to avoid having the cost of an apartment in the area. So they were all shacked up about five to each of the six apartments.

And I went ahead and set myself up in the basement.

Were the cinder block walls and cement floors glamorous? No. But it was private. It gave me space and silence to be able to think. The perk was that tapping into the water and plumbing hadn't been too rough, so I'd had some of the guys drop me in a private bathroom. Because sharing a bathroom with my men was, quite simply, unacceptable. I was pretty sure they didn't know how a toilet brush worked. I wasn't a neat freak by any stretch of the term, but there were just some spaces that had to be kept clean. Like your bed. And your bathroom.

So, yeah, while I did have my own private space with a walkout, Dutch was right. I never brought anyone home.

Part of that was because no man would walk into the clubhouse and not imagine I'd fucked at least half of my men. Which was a surefire way to create a dead dick. Especially if they happened to catch Grandpa naked, since the bastard had nine inches of intimidation to boast about.

It had a lot more to do with psychology than that.

See, I'd learned really early on that most men saw sex as something that was done to women, instead of something done with them.

So bringing a man back to the clubhouse, back to my room, would have them thinking that I was getting something done to me, rather than having mutual fun with a man. Which, in a messed up and mostly subconscious way, would make them see me differently than their fellow men who did the fucking.

Maybe it was me thinking about it too much.

But the one time one of the mother club's men had seen me with a man, he'd done nothing but rib me relentlessly about it for months while he went on and fucked a new clubwhore each night.

So I didn't let my men see me bring home men. Or even go home with them. I did let them see me flirt and then shoot down men because they could see that as a power move. But, in a twisted, patriarchal way, me fucking made me lose power, while they gained it by doing the same thing.

My sex life was private.

Though, admittedly, it had been practically nonexistent for a long time now.

What can I say? Building a new chapter was hard fucking work. I barely had time to sleep and get a decent workout in, let alone go out, find some guy, and go a couple rounds.

"I don't have time to bring anyone home, Dutch," I said, taking a long sip of my beer. "Unlike all you fucking slackers, I have shit to do."

"You're here now," Dutch said, shrugging.

"Only a man would think that my five-minute break is long enough to get even halfway satisfying sex," I told him, pushing off the bar. "Way to call yourself out for your shitty sex game," I added, moving away from him.

I'd say that being a president had hardened me. But the truth was, being a little girl raised in a club had done that. You didn't get the luxury of having emotions. Not the soft and gushy kind, and definitely not any with tears. And not even the hot and fiery sort with angry words either. See, women didn't get to be emotional without being called hysterical.

So I did the only thing I could do that solidified my power.

I got colder than them.

I was the first and last to strike out with sharp teeth and lethal venom.

That was how you got to come out on top.

That was how you got a group of men to fall in line.

See, they didn't know what to do with you when they couldn't get a rise out of you. I made it my goal in life never to let them see that happen.

"Not enjoying Shanny's new tit piercings?" I asked, dropping down at a table with Grandpa. Who wasn't my grandfather, of course. It was his road name. Mostly because his son, Pops, was in the club. As was his grandson, Junior.

Grandpa was a silver fox if I'd ever seen one. Tall, fit, inked, with sexy salt and pepper hair, and the mystery and wisdom that came with his fifty-five years.

There was a family resemblance with his son, Pops, who, at thirty-six, was a black-haired version of his father. And Junior, at just barely eighteen was a somewhat scrawnier version of both of them with far less ink. But he was working on that.

When I'd finally earned the right to open my chapter, Grandpa had been my first choice to bring with me. He probably would have been more at home in the mother chapter with more men his age around, but we'd always had a bond, which I'd exploited to bring him with me. And with Grandpa came Pops and Junior. Which I wasn't mad about either.

See, Grandpa had been a sort of father or uncle figure to me as a kid. He'd been the one to remember when I had field trips or needed money for the book fair. He was the one patching me up when I fell off my bike. And fetching me from parties where I'd gotten shit-faced. He was the closest thing to an actual friend I had, since I knew his love and respect for me wasn't conditional.

"They're nice tits," Grandpa said, shrugging. "But you get to be my age, you've seen a fuckuva lot of nice tits. I'd be more impressed if they came along with an interesting personality. No offense to Shanny, but..."

Grandpa was always the tactful sort.

Me, not so much.

"Has a head full of cotton?" I supplied.

"She's a nice girl," he said. "But she's like a magpie if you try to talk to her. Always getting distracted by shiny things."

"That's... not an unfair assessment," I agreed since I'd once been talking to her about whether she could bring her girlfriend over or not and she'd literally squealed and run off to pick up some random piece of crappy jewelry someone had lost on the sidewalk.

"How're things?" he asked me, pinning me with his light brown eyes. "You look like you haven't been sleeping again."

Grandpa hadn't wanted to sign on with any official title. Save that for the young and hungry guys was what he'd told me. But he liked to act as a sort of advisor or sounding board, having been around much longer than me, and been through the best and worst that being a one-percent biker had to offer. Including a stint in jail just after he'd knocked up Pops's mother—a local clubwhore that had raised him until Grandpa got out of jail, then dropped him right back on his doorstep to be raised in the club.

"Things are okay," I told him, nodding for emphasis when he raised a brow at me. "We stole our business from the Henchmen. They doubled down on what we hadn't gotten our fingers on yet, so there isn't a lot of upward mobility at the moment. But we have good contacts bringing us in-demand guns. Which should help us get our name out a little more in the area, get us more business. As it stands now, though, we are good. Salaries are being met and bills are paid."

"What about you?" Grandpa asked, giving me a long look. "Are you getting paid? Don't think I didn't notice all that cheap ramen spiced up with hot sauce you were eating for months."

"Hey, don't forget the ninety-nine-cent freezer pizzas," I said, shooting him a smirk. "No, I'm getting paid again now too. And I'm even socking some money away for a rainy day. We're doing alright. We all know how it works when a new chapter opens up," I reminded him.

Sometimes it was slim pickings for a while.

We were Vultures, after all.

Always picking off the remains.

Sometimes, you had to learn to deal with an empty stomach for a while. But it was still easier than trying to set up something from scratch every time.

"Good. That's good. You know what I'm thinking? A smart leader might look at all of this," he said, waving his beer around at the room, "and see a lot of potential."

"Yes," I said, taking a swig of my drink. "A smart leader would do just that," I agreed. "They might even have a whole plan in the works."

"Without the unwanted input of twenty-something half-drunk men."

"Exactly," I agreed.

"That's good. You're doing good," he told me. "I know no one tells you that, and how important it is to hear it once in a while."

"I appreciate it," I said, feeling the uncharacteristic sting at the back of my eyes. I mean, I wasn't a robot. I cried. But I did it in private and silence, making sure there were never any traces of it afterward. That said, crying had always come after a lot of pain or frustration.

But hearing Grandpa give me some praise after the hardest phase in my life where I'd suffered, by necessity, in silence? Yeah, it was making me feel a little sappy.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," I grumbled as Ransom reached out, grabbed Shanny, and dropped her down on her knees between his thighs.

Sure, public blowjobs were nothing new around the clubhouse, but they weren't exactly my favorite thing to witness either. Especially because I knew, eventually, Shanny would move on down the line to suck off several of the guys. How she didn't get lockjaw was completely beyond me.

"You heading out?" Grandpa asked, knowing the routine. I was always down for a party. But the orgy-type situations were where I tapped out. I mean, how could you still look your men in the eye after you knew what kinds of faces they made when they orgasmed?

I couldn't.

So I didn't put myself in those situations.

"Yeah," I said, nodding.

"Chaz's?"

"Only thing open this late unless I want to wander the aisles of Walmart again." Which I didn't.

"Be safe."

"Will do," I agreed, giving him a smile before heading out the door.

The stickiest part of summer was behind us. And good riddance. The temps were still spiking during the day, but the nights were taking on that slight coolness that hinted at fall weather. And I was ready for it. I secretly had an affinity for pumpkin spice flavoring in my coffee, even if I refused to admit that to my men. I was ready for jackets and crunchy leaves and comfort foods after a gruelingly hot summer where we lost power four times.

I don't know if you've ever spent time with twenty-something sweaty men and no air conditioning. But I have. And let me tell you, as bad as you might be imagining it to be, it was worse. Infinitely worse. I sometimes still feel like I can smell those days and nights, and get immediately queasy.

Deciding to take advantage of the nice weather, I left my bike parked in the back lot, and took off on foot instead.

Word was, this was the shitty side of town.

When we'd moved in, it had been controlled by a ragtag group that had the audacity to call itself a gang, despite barely-there central leadership and more of its members getting locked up than on the streets at any given time.

We'd unintentionally had a hand in the decimation of that particular gang, but by the looks of random groups hanging on street corners and front stoops, it wouldn't be long until someone else flexed hard enough to actually create another criminal empire.

That said, I wasn't the kind of woman who spooked easily.

It wasn't that I was immune from fear of assault, especially of the sexual variety, but I never went anywhere without at least half a dozen weapons stashed somewhere on my person.

Besides, when we'd finally been ready to show ourselves to the area, we made it very clear that I was the president, and to fuck with me, it meant you fucked with the whole club.

Most of the men around the area were afraid to even look at me for too long.

Still, I was on high alert as I walked, double-checking shadows and pausing at strange noises.

I didn't think I was in immediate danger from any of the local organizations. Though, to be clear, there were a lot of them, and it was hard to keep track. But the local mafia family, the Grassis, tended to mind their own business. As did the loan sharking Mallicks. Then there was the other new guys on the block. The Alcazar Cartel, led by the almost alarmingly good-looking Andres Alcazar. I'd run into him picking up groceries once, and the smooth bastard had come up behind me, and casually murmured Hey, lil' mama, you're sexier than I was told. The fuck's up with that?

Now, I was generally of the mindset that no one should be calling a woman who was not his mother any variation of ma or mama, but, well, when that man said it, I swear it was practically panty-melting.

And I had to admit, it had been a stroke to my ego that he even knew who I was. I was new in town, and new in my position. It felt good not to have it questioned, just accepted. Then again, unlike your typical MCs, the cartels had a long history of having respected and ruthless female leadership. So, coming from that world, Andres—or "A" as most people called him—hadn't blinked an eye at my position.

But then, of course, for all the "minding our own business" type organizations in town, there was the fucking Henchmen.

Okay, alright, fine.

Did I steal their business and have their president kidnapped?

Yes, yes I did.

But they had their panties in a fucking bunch about it.

In my opinion, it had been a rather tame takeover, all things considered. We could have taken them out. We had the numbers to do it, even if we had to call in the sister and mother chapters to carry it out.

Yeah, Reign got a little roughed up in the process. But that hadn't been our doing. We'd outsourced the kidnapping, and those idiots got carried away. I'd killed their so-called leader for them as a show of good faith.

That wasn't good enough for them, though.

They were the perpetual thorn in my ass.

I mean, the paranoid bastards still had men staked out on the roof across the street from our clubhouse, day in and day out.

It was wearing on my men. Which meant they kept starting shit with the Henchmen—mostly the younger, second-generation ones—when they came across them in bars or restaurants or even at the damn beach.

It was exhausting.

Theywere exhausting.

Why was it so hard to accept that they got spanked, and move on?

But, no, they had to be babies about it.

Sore losers, all of them.

Though none of them rubbed me the wrong way quite like...

"Oh, son of a bitch," I grumbled as my thoughts aligned with my reality as I moved into Chaz's, and nearly ran right into the asshole himself.

Fallon.

The president-in-training.

A man whose attractiveness only made him all the more irritating.

He was a younger version of his father—tall, dark, handsome, cocky, tattooed. But he had his mother's blue eyes.

"Nice to see you too, Danny," Fallon said, shooting that wicked smirk at me.

"Ugh. Don't you have a curfew to abide by?" I asked, holding a finger up at the bartender, who knew me well enough at this point to know it was either a beer or vodka, and that I wouldn't bitch either way.

"Shouldn't you be surrounded by your flying monkeys?" he shot back, tipping up his beer.

I did not watch him swallow.

That would be too weird.

"Is your old man around?" I asked, taking my vodka, glad the bartender was good at reading the room because a beer just wasn't going to cut it. "Isn't he worried about you being out here without your training wheels on?"

"Are you always such a smartass, or do you reserve it all for me?"

"Don't flatter yourself," I said, annoyed that I didn't have a better comeback. "I save my best for my equals," I added, a little more satisfied with that. Especially when Fallon's eyes blazed. He didn't exactly have a poker face, and I enjoyed it way more than I should that I could get a rise out of him.

I was riding that high for a good solid hour after walking away from him.

Long enough to feel the vodka kicking in, and the stress lifting from my shoulders.

With a slight buzz coursing through me, I paid my tab, glad to see all the Henchmen guys had moved on, and made my way out front, ready for the walk home that suddenly felt a lot longer than the walk to the bar.

"Too badass to be worried about walking around drunk this time of night?" the last voice I wanted to hear asked just as I rounded the next corner away from the bar.

"Jesus Christ. Stalker, much?" I griped, shooting him a nasty look over where he was standing next to his bike.

"Don't flatter yourself," he said, throwing my words from earlier back at me. "My bike crapped out on me," he admitted, shaking his head at it.

"It is paralyzed at the idea of having you touch it," I said, shrugging. "I can't blame it."

We were just snapping at each other.

Like usual.

Everything was normal.

You know, until the bullets rang out.