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Tarynn

M y name means something along the lines of rocky hill . Some people believe that a name prepares a child for the rest of their life. If that’s true, then my parents must have had a sense of humor. I’m not bold or strong. It’s like the equivalent of being called something that means brave when you’re afraid of everything.

Maybe it’s not so ironic. Even the tallest mountains can’t withstand constant erosion. They can be beaten down by wind and rain and by time itself, until they’re nothing at all.

“Raiden, look out!” The tall, gorgeous woman with the sleek leather dress and fringed suede jacket, wraps her hand around her husband’s arm and pulls him to the right. Ella is just in time to avoid him wearing the tray of drinks I’m carrying.

She doesn’t bark at me to watch where the fuck I’m going, though I’d deserve it for being up in my head, as per usual. All she does is treat me to a huge smile that makes her already gorgeous face that much more beautiful.

“How’re you doing tonight, Tarynn?”

“I’m fine. Thanks.” I shift the heavy tray so the drinks don’t go sliding around and tipping it one way or the other. I focus on her jacket. The tan suede is out of place in a sea of black. “I love your jacket. It looks vintage.”

“It is! I found it at this great little place downtown.”

“It was a score.” I don’t feel jealous. Mostly, it’s sadness that bubbles up, making my throat tight.

Even if I found something as gorgeous as that jacket, there’s no way my parents would ever let me wear something like that.

When I got this job at Patterson’s, I used up my quota of rebellion for the next decade with them.

This place might be a cute little diner by day, but it’s a crowded, sweaty, bar by night. Everyone in Hart knows that while Satan’s Angels don’t outright own the place, it’s as good as theirs.

Located on the edge of town, the place is busy because it’s the last stop at the end of the line before Hart turns into the highway that leads to Seattle. During the day, we get a lot of random traffic, people passing through and stopping in for a homecooked meal, but at night, unless they have some kind of club affiliation or friendship, most folks don’t come out this way.

At least Hart is small and it’s the only biker club the town has. There’s no need to worry about rival clubs coming in here and causing problems. The police don’t venture out this way either. Probably because most of them are in the club’s pocket.

As far as bikers go, they’re the typical rough lot on the exterior, but not so typical is the fact that they’re nice enough. They don’t grope any women but their own old ladies or the club hangarounds. They might be crass and gruff, but they’re never rude to any of the staff. They’ve never started a fight in here that I’ve ever seen, though I haven’t been working here long. They take their violence elsewhere, I suppose. Their president is a younger man, in his early thirties. Everyone says Tyrant is good shit, and so is their VP.

I’m currently looking at Raiden right now.

He slips an arm around Ella’s hips and tugs her into him, placing a kiss on her temple. She beams back at him, her red lipstick standing out against her flawless skin.

My goodness, with her towering height and bone structure, she’s astoundingly beautiful. A blonde bombshell in the flesh. I understand now why models exist. I can barely tear my eyes away from her perfection. Unlike most gorgeous women, she’s not vain. She’s incredibly nice.

“I think the jacket’s lovely,” Raiden tells her. “But I’d prefer it better on the floor.”

She shoves her fist into his side playfully. “Right here? You’d prefer that now, would you?”

His eyes practically cross, but when she smiles up at him coyly, he grins right back. The look they share is so syrupy and full of each other that it makes my face redden. A woman only looks at her man like that when she’s well and truly pleased in every way, and a man only looks at a woman like that in return when he’s completely obsessed.

Love seems too trivial a word for the bond these two have. It’s so palpable that it makes me feel my loneliness even more keenly than I normally do.

“I think it was called ‘Old Again’,” she says, tucking a strand of that honey blonde hair behind her ear. One giant silver hoop earring glistens in the dim lighting. It’s mostly pot lights and stained glass over pool tables once the sun sets, though the jukebox in the corner and the pinball machines on the far side of the bar provide flashes of light on and off.

“New and Old Again,” Raiden corrects with a grin. He tucks a finger under Ella’s jaw, tilting her face up, and kisses her. Not gently either. He dives in like he’s starved.

Finally, Ella bats him away halfheartedly, cheeks flushed prettily, eyes glistening. “Raiden! Don’t be rude.”

He grins sheepishly at me. “I apologize for my poor behavior, Tarynn Nightengale.” He suddenly spins Ella in a dance, dipping her down low, then grasping her hips and hiking her up with no effort at all.

She’s freaking tall, plus she’s wearing stiletto heeled black boots that make her legs look endless. She wraps them around his waist, giggling like she’s sixteen and not over thirty, which I know she happens to be, only because Patti said something jealously about Ella only getting better with age. ‘ It’s like when she hit thirty, the clock started counting down for her, but not the way it does for most women. She’s thirty-four, but then she’s thirty-three, and thirty-two. Ageless.’

“We’re going to have to leave for the night. Got a set of bikes out there, calling our names.”

“You better settle up first,” Ella protests, which makes Raiden dig his fingers into her perfect ass, kneading the leather of her dress.

My face gets hot, but not nearly as hot as the rest of me goes under my tight black tank top and my midi length denim skirt. It looks more grandma on me than epic, like Ella’s jacket does on her. The things these two give me go straight down to the toes of my red cowboy boots. Also not awesome or fashionable.

The way they’re looking at each other, it doesn’t take much imagination to envision how they’re going to end their night. Probably somewhere private, but I still imagine Raiden bending his breathtaking wife over his bike, hiking up that dress and sinking inside of her. Or her getting down on her knees, those scarlet lips parting for him to—

Holy. Shit.

Thank goodness they’re much too involved in each other to be able to read the expression and thoughts right off my face. I swear that being constantly under my parents’ control, forced into the good girl life of a minister’s daughter, actually makes one more depraved. Isn’t that true of any and all censorship? Deny someone something and they only want it more?

I can’t imagine what my dad would do if he ever found out that I read smutty romance books. Not anywhere that he could track. I’m careful to only read them online, and always delete my history on my phone. He knows the passcode, but he’s not technologically advanced enough to be able to do much more than a cursory once over of my apps every so often.

I’m in pre-med, but textbook biology doesn’t quite get a person hot the way watching it in real life does.

“The tab,” Ella repeats, grazing Raiden’s earlobe with her teeth.

My nipples tighten painfully under my bra. I’m glad that the old school rock music playing from the jukebox in the corner covers up the hiss of air that escapes between my teeth.

“It’s uh- yeah. A tab. Don’t worry about it. Someone else will settle up, or you can make good on it later,” I mumble.

“Thanks,” Ella responds, melting into Raiden’s strong arms. “Have a great night. Sorry about nearly spilling your tray and distracting you. If anyone gives you a hard time, you tell them that it’s all my fault.”

“Oh my gosh, no. It’s… nothing. Have a good night.”

She grins at me with the assured confidence of a woman who knows that she’s about to have a great night.

Raiden walks her straight out of there like he can’t wait another second more to be inside of her.

I know it’s twisted, but as I walk across the bar, ready to deliver my tray of drinks to the pool table at the far end, my insides clench. I feel buzzed, even though I’ve never taken a sip of alcohol before. I know that’s weird, given that I now work at a bar. I’m definitely too young for hot flashes, but I feel like I’m boiling in my skin.

I don’t just have bar shifts. I also get the diner. Patti Patterson, the woman who owns this place, runs the kitchen during the daytime, bartends at night, and has other superhuman talents that I probably don’t know about because she’s everywhere, all at once, was the one who assured my dad that nothing untoward would happen to me under her roof.

I applied here, got hired, and when I broke the news to him, he came charging down here to talk to Patti like I was fourteen and not twenty-four . Somehow, she ended up convincing him that things were all good.

He let me keep the job, but only because he’d been hounding me to get something over the summer. He said that I had too many free hours and they’d filled all the positions at the church, unlike all the years before, I wasn’t going to be able to work there as a summer student again. He didn’t want to be seen playing favorites with his daughter when other people needed work.

I’ve taken too long with these drinks, and I make sure to give the guys and their women at the pool table an extra-large smile. “Here we are. Sorry about the wait!” I set down the glasses or pass them into waiting hands. The men nod at me gruffly. A few give me token smiles of thanks.

Bullet owns the range on the other side of town. As usual, he’s standing beside a younger man named Smoke. They like to stick together, mostly so they can chat about guns. Pretty much whatever they’re doing, it’s always guns.

Pool. Guns.

Darts. Guns.

Football on the big screen TV. Guns.

Fight night. Guns.

Bullet is clean cut for a biker. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark beard, somewhere in his late thirties. He’s got a quiet, calm about him that at first surprised me because I’d thought that anyone who owned a range and talked about firearms nonstop must be gleefully violent.

He hands me a twenty, which I accept with a nod and a smile of thanks. It’s entirely for me because anyone with the club has a club tab. Whenever I get a tip, big or small, it never fails to make my face get pink. I blush far too easily—he hazards of being a redhead, though I like to call myself strawberry blonde. That’s just pride talking. There’s definitely not much blonde going on.

I grasp my tray and flit around the place, striding between pool tables, heading to the booths at the side, dodging well away from where darts are being thrown at the far side of the club. There are a few pinball machines that have a crowd gathered around them, and of course there’s the large group talking and shooting shit while eyeing up the football games on the big screen TVs.

I wipe down ledges, tables, and gather empty glasses. I pick up the discarded garbage from the beat up hardwood wherever I see it.

Once my brain is bursting full of orders, I head back to the bar and start rattling them off to Patti. She moves fast, years of bartending experience evident in her capable hands, the astoundingly fast flips of bottles, the way she never spills a drop out of those shot glasses she used for measuring.

Patti’s in her early thirties. She does everything around the place, even now that she doesn’t have to. A few years ago, the diner floundered when Patti’s now ex-husband cheated on her and skipped town. He stole a big chunk of their savings and fudged a bunch of crap on the diner’s books. Patti had no choice but to go to the one place who would give her a loan. I don’t mean the bank. They don’t like to lend to self-employed women with bad credit and scoundrel husbands. She went to the club. Tyrant, the club’s president, gave her the money. She’s told me that story before, but she’s never said more.

I suspect that the club has a stake in this bar. Part ownership.

You’d have to be deaf to live in Hart and not know that the club has their fingers in most of the regular pots. Tattoo shops, clubs, lounges—legit businesses to funnel the money that’s not so legit. The club might not be some folks’ first choice of town guardians, but that’s what they are. Legend has it, the club cleared out all the riff raff years ago and they haven’t allowed anyone else to move in.

Within a few minutes, she has more drinks ready than I can heap onto my tray. I pile them on by section, grabbing the first orders to take over to the booths.

“I’ll be back, Patti.”

She nods. “You doing okay out there?” She asks that every single night, multiple times. It’s just me and Chastity working tonight.

She’s another poor soul with a very ironic name. I won’t get into the details, but I’m not sure if there’s an available man in the whole of Hart that she hasn’t spent a night with. I’m not judging. Especially when most of the spare thoughts in my head trend towards fantasizing about just how I’d live my life if I’d been born to different parents, or had the courage to take control of my own life and steer my own destiny. Blah, blah, all that stuff that good, powerful poetry and timeless stories are made of.

I’m not one of those books.

My story is discipline and compliance. I’m not a rule breaker. I’m the one that breaks and bends. Always.

“I’m fine, Patti.” I smile to reassure her.

“With Sarah calling in because her son was sick, I’m worried about you two getting overworked and overwhelmed.”

“I’m not overwhelmed at all.” I glance over at the jukebox, where Chastity is chatting up a group of men who I believe are all prospects.

Patti is up on the lingo. If I don’t know someone when they come in, she does. She makes it her business to know everybody in Hart, or at least it feels that way. She explained to me that the club trains fresh blood every now and then. Usually younger guys, but they don’t have to be. They can be old as a worn in boot with plenty of dirt on the bottom. Her words, not mine.

She throws back her head, streaked blonde hair catching the light. She’s voluptuous to my stick thin. I have decent boobs, but not when compared to Chastity’s. She fills out her little ribbed blank tank with the Patterson’s logo splashed across the front. That’s the only thing we’re required to wear. The rest is up to us. She has a tiny bubblegum pink skirt on that pretty much shows her ass cheeks when she leans in any direction, her high heeled over the knee white boots making her look taller than she is.

“Chastity doesn’t look stressed.” I can’t say that she’s not working. Being flirty is part of the job when you work the night shift.

If anyone’s not doing their job properly, it’s me. I don’t try to be quiet and shy on purpose. I just naturally am.

Patti’s face suddenly blanks. An odd tension radiates from her. Patti is a kind woman, but she’s tough too. She’s got two boys who are a handful for their poor sitter. They live above the diner and their shouts and footsteps can often be heard crashing overhead. There’s nothing and no one she can’t handle.

A lone man walks through the front door, and I swear that I can feel the hairs stand up, one by one, at the back of my neck. He’s dressed entirely in black. He could be anyone in those worn and ripped black jeans, the tight black t-shirt that encases his long, muscular torso, but it’s the black leather vest, that sets him apart. He’s tall and jacked, in that streamlined athletic way that’s deceptively strong. He’s the kind of guy who you’d bet could run a race in record time, but you wouldn’t bet on being able to snap a man clean in half, yet his inked hands could probably crunch a spine good and proper.

His long black hair flows over his shoulders and down his back. He has a cold, granite face with cheekbones slashed high. A jagged scar runs down his left temple and extends over his jaw, down his neck, wrapping around his throat. It ends at the juncture of his neck, and honestly, I don’t know how on earth he’s alive with that kind of scarring right over the carotid artery. His obsidian eyes, like his attire, are so dark that they’re almost black, and are as intense as walking out into a starless night.

Crow.

It’s a very fitting name for a man who wears only black. You’d think that he’d give off goth vibes, but he doesn’t have that aura at all. Grim reaper is more like it.

My insides twist, but it’s not the same for Patti. Her stomach might be turning over, but her strained expression says that she’s clearly not feeling that same sinful flutter of butterfly wings beating against her ribs.

Crow’s vest, is decorated with various patches on the front, the most prominent being the one that says, enforcer , in blocky capital letters.

I manage to get my hormones in check for long enough to whip my tray off the bar’s ledge and hurry to deliver these drinks to the booths. Like a moth sucked straight into the twin beams of a car’s headlights, I keep an eye on Crow without being obvious.

I know that most people, even the guys from the club, give him a wide berth. When he comes here, he only ever stands against the wall, surveying things with those midnight eyes that seem to see everything.

I don’t think it’s dislike that keeps his little bubble in place. He’s just quiet and that’s unnerving. I search back through my memory of the past few weeks, but I can’t recall a single time I’ve ever heard him speak. If he’s going for lord of death vibes, he’s certainly achieved it. Maybe that’s what an enforcer is meant to be. Scary, so people don’t get out of line to begin with.

I notice that Chastity has broken away from her group. She’s strayed to the other side of the bar. It’s not her side. It’s mine. She’s chatting up the men at the pool tables, batting her eyelashes obnoxiously. The women over there are all club girls. I refuse to use the word whores, but they’re women who aren’t girlfriends or wives, but don’t mind doing things with the bikers. They go to their clubhouse too. I’ve heard filthy things from Chastity and Sarah about it. They’re younger than I am and find all of that quite thrilling.

To assume that I don’t, would be wrong.

Every single time I hear those stories, I come alive, lighting up inside in filthy, immoral ways.

I can never tell my parents that I don’t buy what my dad is selling. On the outside, I’m a good girl. An obedient daughter. On the inside, I’m pretty sure hell doesn’t exist, so I’m not worried about going there.

Chastity stays well away from the back of the bar, over by the windows and the door, although that’s her area and there are a few younger women hanging on two of the club’s menacing brothers. They’re twins, Grave and Decay. Their badass biker vibe attracts a whole lot of attention, but Crow, standing just behind them, is different.

His arms are crossed over his chest, muscles bulging beneath his heavy ink. He’s changed the dynamic in the bar just by stepping inside. It’s as though the volume of the crowd has been turned down, the music lowered, the temperature dropped. His aura screams, fuck off, I’m not friendly. He’s utterly menacing.

It’s entirely thrilling .

Flames lick over my skin, and as if he can feel me staring at him, his dark eyes lift and sweep across the bar, trying to locate whoever tipped off his senses. They sweep the area quickly. His body tenses, his muscles leaping as his arms tighten in that rigid pose.

I could look away. I could turn. I could still escape.

I don’t.