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WRAITH

W alking into the part-log, part-timber-framed clubhouse the following day is like being grappled in a bear hug. It’s by no means a fluffy, warm embrace. It’s loud, rough, and occasionally too much.

But tonight, it’s just what I need.

Atom’s father commissioned the build using his land on the Oakum Ridge Ranch and club funds over forty years ago. Its position means we have two layers of defense with outer and inner gates, and two concrete turrets out in the fields to view the road from two different vantage points.

The building has weathered and got a new roof last year. The interior was gutted five years ago for its growing needs, but some features we kept.

The wooden floor of the bar is old and uneven. A huge fire roars in the stone fireplace. And rock music blasts from the speakers that hang in the corners of the great room.

I see Atom—our burly enforcer, dressed in his usual plaid shirt—miss a ball on the pool table. Grudge, our vice president, whips the dollar bills stacked on the edge of the table with so much glee that I can see a fight happening between the two of them five seconds before Atom throws the first playful punch.

“Watch the fucking furniture,” Catfish, our treasurer, calls out. The man is all olive-toned skin and green eyes that cause all the club girls’ panties to drop on demand. The all-around attractive fucker got his road name after the police came looking for him as a prospect. Some bitch thought she’d been talking to him online and was his girlfriend or some shit. She’d been sending him cash to move to live with her in Frisco. As it turned out, some scammer had been playing her for a fool using pictures from Catfish’s social media profile.

After that, Camelot, the national head of the Outlaws at the time, dictated no members were allowed to have a social media footprint at all. The man’s dead now. Buried several feet under. King, his son, took over, but he hasn’t relaxed the rule at all. And his tech guy, Vex, issued a national procedure for all new members to minimize their online presence before they get their first patch.

A firm hand slaps across my back. “Good to have you back, brother.” Butcher, my president, is a good-looking silver fox of a fucker. The guy’s hair went gray when he was still in his twenties. The urban legend is it happened after his first kill for the club. The one where he earned his name.

Feels a bit like one of those drunken stories that got a little out of hand and rewrote history, but the reputation precedes him. He’s a leader who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty.

“Good to be home. Took care of that little problem we had in Cedar City on the ride back. Little punk didn’t know what the fuck hit him.”

We grow weed. Lots of it, if the truth be known. But sometimes our distribution network gets a little greedy. They start skimming. Or delay paying. Or worse, start using the product instead of selling it. That happens, we step in and remind them who they are dealing with.

“You get our cut?”

“Of a fashion. Took back some of our product, some cash, and a handful of weapons they had lying around. They’ll need to be sold on. Can’t keep them, given we don’t know what the fuck they used them for. They didn’t strike me as killers, but we’re only one bullet match from finding out they are.”

“Everything else good?” Butcher asks. He knows better than to speak Hallie’s and Lottie’s names.

“As it can be. One more down. I need a beer.”

“Be my pleasure to get you one of those.” Will, one of our prospects, stands behind the bar. The guy is country through and through. When he’s not wearing a helmet, he’s wearing a Stetson.

We’re close to patching the guy in. There was a skirmish with a local group fancying themselves as badasses when they tried to break into our growing facility. Will was instrumental in giving them a lesson in fucking around and finding out.

I’m certain the brother thinks his road name is gonna be Cowboy, but in Church, we already agreed that a man with the last name Bell can only be called one thing:

Taco.

Will grabs my usual before popping the top of the bottle. “Good ride?” he asks.

I nod and take the beer from him. Not everyone needs to know my fucking business. “Cheers.”

He grabs his half-drunk beer and taps the top of my bottle with it, and we drink as if Smoke, our road captain, and Dice, a guy who works in our garage, aren’t spit roasting Nola, one of the club girls, over the arm of the sofa.

I turn my back to the bar and lean against it, watching the show. There are many things I love about being a biker, but the freedom to create your own life and rules is hands down the biggest.

Which works for my voyeurism. I watch the way Nola’s tits swing as Dice rails into her. I love watching people fuck. Not sure there’s anything hotter than seeing the moment a person loses their edge. When you can see the strain of how badly they want to come. When they get lost in the feeling and sensation of a sexual act.

Giving or receiving.

Smoke throws his head back as he thrusts into Nola’s mouth. His knuckles are white where he grips her blunt pigtails. I can’t hear her choking over the loud rock music, but I imagine it.

I take in the way her eyes water, the way saliva drips in a long thread from her lips.

My dick stirs, and I glance around the room. Karlie and Isla are both here tonight. When Isla looks up, I wink at her, and it’s all the hint she needs to hurry over to me.

She’s wearing a low-cut black T-shirt and denim shorts that curve up the cheeks of her ass.

“You’re back,” she says, stepping between my feet.

“Miss me?” I ask.

“Always. Did you miss me?”

I didn’t think of her at all, so I don’t say anything.

Isla smiles, though it doesn’t hit her eyes. I notice, but it doesn’t bother me a bit. She knows exactly what the score is every time she sets foot in the clubhouse. “I’m going to pretend you answered yes to that.”

“You tell yourself whatever you want, if it helps you take my cock.”

She glances down at the bulge in my denim, then teasingly runs a long leopard-print nail over it. “Here?”

I’m many things when it comes to sex. But an exhibitionist is not one, for all I like watching others…

I spin her in my arms and watch my brothers with Nola. Isla grinds her ass against my dick. I spread my legs so she can get a little closer.

Cupping her, I place my fingers firmly over her clit but do nothing except apply pressure. There’s no stroking or circling or attempts to get into her shorts. It’s enough to tease, but not enough to give her an orgasm.

I’m greedy enough that I want it to stay between us. Don’t want any of my brothers knowing how I touch a woman or what I look like when I get off.

“Fuck,” Smoke grunts as his thrusts lose rhythm. “Yeah, suck it, Nola.”

Mascara runs in tracks down Nola’s face as cum spills over the edges of her lips.

Dice puts his fingers in her pussy as he continues to fuck her ass, but I focus on Nola’s face. Her mouth is open, her pants and moans getting louder. Her whole body tenses. She’s too unstable to lift a hand to wipe her mouth.

Cum and saliva hit the top of Smoke’s jeans, which he only pulled down far enough to free his cock.

Any second, she’s gonna come. I can feel the chase for completion. That momentary fleeting feeling of wholeness. And I feel the relief for her through my bones.

Smoke scoops up some of the spilled cum from his jeans and from her chin, then offers Nola his hand. “Lick it up before you come, sweetheart.”

“Fuck, stop stalling her,” Dice shouts.

Smoke laughs. “A bit of delayed gratification never hurt anyone.”

“Except my cock,” Dice says, as Nola frantically laps up Smoke’s cum from his hand.

She does as he says, but the orgasm sneaks through anyway.

“Smoke,” Nola gasps, even though it’s Dice fucking her ass and fingering her to the edge.

“Please, Wraith,” Isla says, her voice cutting through the picture being painted by my friends.

So absorbed in what was happening, I forgot about her.

Not needing to see any more, I grab Isla’s hand and my beer, then head to my nice corner room with windows on two sides—the privilege of my rank within the club.

When Hallie became my old lady, she asked if I could move the bed into the corner where the two windows met so that on a night as clear as it is tonight, she could see stars from whichever direction she was lying.

First thing I did after she died was move the bed to the opposite corner. I couldn’t be in that spot without thinking about her and the life we planned together while living here. Lying there was one giant reminder that we weren’t going to have it.

And yet, one night when I told Catfish about it and he offered to switch rooms with me, I couldn’t bring myself to swap. Sometimes grief is sticky. It clings to you like tar, and you just can’t get clean of it, no matter how much soap you use.

“How do you want me?” Isla asks when I close the door.

“Lose the shorts and whatever else you got underneath them.”

I free my dick from my jeans and roll a condom on while she does as I say.

She leaves the ankle boots with the heels on. I lead her to my desk, then place her leaning forward over it, one knee on the edge, opening her up to me.

Watching did the same for her as it did for me. It’s the main reason she’s one of the few club girls I’m sexually compatible with.

I don’t have to touch her too much to turn her on. We don’t need intimate foreplay.

It takes two thrusts to get balls deep into her, and I’m immediately reminded why a club girl is better than the palm of my hand.

“Wraith,” Isla cries out.

Pressed as deep inside her as I can get, I take a deep breath, then blow it out.

I can already feel her pussy clenching around me, desperate for release. Isla is a quick and easy lay, and I’m grateful I don’t have to go through the performance of lasting all night just to make her come.

I pull out, letting my thick cock and the apadravya piercing that passes through the head of my dick do the work for me.

“You feel so big, Wraith,” she says.

But I pay no attention to what she’s saying.

Instead, I’m fucking shell-shocked.

Because in my head, I’m not with Hallie like I usually am.

I’m with a black-haired girl.

And Raven is the name I mutter as I come.