The city behind the wall was the only protection that people had from the lawless world outside of it. Only while they hid in their ivory tower the world outside had reset itself. It was no longer lawless and it was now ruled by another Law: An outlaw’s law. Bikers living outside the wall had created their own set of rules, ones that were made and enforced by gangs of bikers who weren’t about to let anyone change the world they now ruled.

In the year 2175, the world was well on its way to being disease free. Technology had advanced and society was soon to be ruled by the upper class. Only Mother Nature had another plan.

When the government discovered that the world would lose more than half its land mass to the ocean from a massive tidal wave, they built the city behind the wall. It took them three months and only the rich, the privileged, and their servants were allowed to retreat behind it.

At four thousand feet high and two thousand feet wide, the wall was able to take the relentless pounding of the ocean that would slam against it. When the wave came, those unable to escape behind it fought to survive.

The world outside the wall became lawless and dangerous. As the years passed, the city behind the wall was ruled by the upper class, the Hillies. The Hillies kept the lower Slum class subdued with fear, and crimes were punished by forcing the accused into the lawless world outside the wall.

Outside the wall life flourished again and people forgot about the horror they’d lived through before the Outlaws took over. Now their only fear was the constant fighting for dominance between rival gangs and they all prayed that the bad guys didn’t win the fight.

Chapter 1

Reaper Colson walked into the Blue Bird pushing his phone into the pocket of his pants. He winked at Candy when she smiled at him as she swung around the pole, her bottle blonde hair wild, and her breasts shaking with the movement. The men in the front row threw credits on the stage. She stood, walking to the edge to grab some young guy’s shirt to pull him close while he stuck credits in her G-string.

Reaper walked back to his table in the corner of the bar, sitting down with a sigh. This was a shitty night. He hadn’t even gotten to sit in peace for more than a minute when Bull stood next to him.

“Boss, we got a problem,” Bull said and Reaper wanted to shoot him. He was fucking tired. He’d just gotten back from a meet with a man about the three girls those fucking Headhunters had taken from two towns over when Death Rider had called to tell him about Burner. Between the fifteen-year-old girl who’d been in the group that had been nabbed and the news that Burner, who was like his younger brother or his adopted son maybe, had been beaten by T-Bone, he was in a foul mood.

It wasn’t that Travis “T-Bone” Hoyt, a Red Devil, had beaten his brother for no reason. He’d done it to save Burner’s life. Burner was undercover with the Headhunters MC trying to stop the kidnappings. Travis went after a woman who was being kept at the compound, which was a hideout for the Headhunters. Burner had helped Travis get her out, but it had cost him. His brother had been beaten and now he was under the care of the fucking Headhunters. Who knew what the fuck they’d do. They might not even get him help. Those bastards were bad news.

Reaper and his club, the Blue Bandits MC, had been trying to stop those assholes for over a year now. Fuck, if they didn’t get this shit under control the whole fucking club was going to be in the shitter. Reaper smacked his head into the back of the booth wanting to rip something apart. A throbbing started in his temples.

He was so fucking tired of this bullshit. Being a part of the Blue Bandits was sometimes a pain in the fucking ass. He’d been a vice president for the club for over ten years. Death Rider was their president but their territory was so large that they’d had to spread out. They had split the area and Reaper had become a president in a way rather than a vice about four years ago when they’d expanded the territory.

He ran the south region and Death ran the north. They had both picked strong men to be their second in command and were for the most part a solid club. Then the fucking Headhunters had started stealing women to sell to the Cut Throat MC last year. It was a fucking nightmare. They’d been unable to break it up because the operation was too spread out.

Over the past year the compound and the den had been raided several times. They had rescued women who would likely never be the same, they’d stopped shipments of women, prevented them from kidnapping others, and they still hadn’t managed to break up the group. Likely because they had a fucking spy, a sorry bastard who thought he could betray the Blue Bandits and get away with it. That motherfucker was going to die screaming when they finally found him.

Reaper looked coldly at Bull who was still waiting for him to respond. “What the fuck is it now, Bull?”

“Hooper’s back. He went in to see Trina and he’s getting violent again,” Bull told him.

Reaper ran a hand down his face, feeling the scrape of his stubble. Fuck, he needed a shave. Why the fuck Bull was telling him instead of shooting Hooper, he had no idea. He stared at Bull with a bored expression.

“And?” Reaper asked, wondering why the fuck he’d come in here to ask him what to do instead of just handling it. This level of incompetence was pissing him off. He’d warned Hooper the last time he’d roughed Trina up that he’d kill him if he did it again. Bull should have walked into the room, shot the man, and then dealt with the body. Instead he was standing in front of Reaper.

“I thought you’d want to handle it,” Bull said, looking unsure for a moment.

“Why? You’re capable.” Reaper glared at Bull.

“I thought you’d want to because she’s, umm—okay, right, I’ll go take care of it,” Bull said when Reaper pointed his gun at his face.

Jesus, why did all these assholes have to be so fucking clueless? Reaper put his gun on the table, his hand still resting on the hard metal, and laid his head back rubbing at the bridge of his nose. His eyes burned and his temples throbbed in time to his pulse. The pounding music that was pouring from the speakers wasn’t helping.

“Reaper, you want a whiskey?” Casey, his newest waitress, asked.

“Yeah, and find Lock,” Reaper told her opening his eyes. He smiled at her cute little black skirt that flirted with the fishnet stockings that ended at mid thigh with little white bows before taking in the lace see-through top she wore. Damn, that girl had some style. He was suddenly feeling a bit less stressed as he watched her perky tits. She grinned before turning to walk to the bar.

He watched her skirt slide up a bit revealing her tight, bare ass cheeks. His dick twitched and he thought about taking her into the back for a bit of play, but quickly tossed that thought away. He wasn’t in the mood.

Leaning back into the booth, he heard them announce Kitty. She came out on stage to the classic jazz tune she always stripped to. Reaper watched her prance around taking off her clothes and throwing them to the crowd.

“Here’s your drink, Reaper. Need anything else?” Casey asked, leaning forward to put her tits in his face. He leaned forward, kissing the tips.

“Nah, I’m good. Just find Lock,” he told her when he pulled back, lifting the drink to his lips.

“Damn, I was really hoping you’d need something else,” Casey told him smiling coyly.

“Sorry, sweetheart, not tonight,” Reaper told her. She shrugged and flounced away. He leaned back again closing his eyes, startled a few minutes later when Lock spoke next to him.

“What’s up, boss?” Lock asked.

“I’m going to head home early tonight,” he told him, seeing Lock raise a brow at his words.

“Something up?” Lock asked.

“Nah, just another headache.” Reaper shrugged. “People are fucking annoying me and we both know that never ends well for anyone.”

“Ah, the shit with Trina?”

“Among other things. I just need a break.”

“Sure thing, boss. I’ll let you know if anything happens I can’t handle. Go home and sleep it off or better yet, take someone home and fuck it off,” Lock said with a chuckle.

Reaper rose, nodding at him before he walked out of the Blue Bird. He was getting too old for this shit. He was just outside the back door almost to his bike when Candy walked out carrying her bag and wearing a skin-tight white tube dress.

“Hey, Reaper,” she said in her breathy voice. He knew she was interested in going home with him but he still wasn’t in the mood for sex tonight. Again he realized he was getting too old for this shit. He’d loved all the booze and free pussy when he’d been a much younger man, but now he was just tired of the stupid shit he put up with on a nightly basis.

He could base his operation out of the tattoo parlor that was half a mile from here but he didn’t know if that was what he wanted either. He’d been at the Blue Bird since he was twenty and the idea that he’d have to settle into a new place at this point was frustrating. He was thirty, and this place caused more problems than he liked, but the free pussy and the booze were still nice when he was in the mood. But tonight wasn’t one of those nights; his head was pounding and his bullshit meter was full.

“Night, Candy,” he said, not bothering to stop even though the bottle blonde called out to him again. He climbed on his bike and headed home. What the hell was going on with him over the last week he didn’t know. He’d been acting like a fucking stick in the mud.

Twenty minutes later he rode his bike into the garage at his place. The automatic door closed behind him, locking down as he climbed off his hog. A blistering pain started pounding between his eyes and he wanted to throw something or kill it, whatever worked. The pain had started a few months ago after someone had hit him from behind with a baseball bat when he’d broken up a fight at the Bird. He’d taken the fucker down before he’d passed out and these migraines were the result.

He’d gone to the city to see if they could do something about them at that fancy hospital they had. The doctor told him that there wasn’t much that could be done other than some medication he’d given Reaper. Reaper didn’t take the meds much because they made him sleep like the fucking dead and when you were the vice prez of an MC, you needed to be on point at all times. That meant he ended up just dealing with the pain most of the time.

Nights like tonight, when he was frustrated and worried about something, he felt like his head was going to explode and he had to get out of the club. The lights and the music, as well as the rowdy men and the girls who wanted his attention, drove him nuts. Even so, he fucking hated that he was home on a Saturday night at one am. It’d been years since he’d headed home this early prior to the blow he’d received; lately, not so much.

Reaper walked up the stairs headed to his loft. He scanned his hand with the palm scanner and entered the code into the key pad. He moaned a bit and for a second he felt dizzy. Fuck, they were getting worse, not better. He needed to do something about his stress levels. The doctor in the city had told him stress was the trigger. He’d told Reaper to eliminate stressful situations from his life. Reaper snorted; yeah, right. That wasn’t going to be easy with the bullshit he had to handle for the club almost nightly.

Reaper went into the kitchen grabbing a bottle of aspirin. It didn’t really touch the pain but at least it helped some. He headed into the living room, hitting the security button on the keypad that rested by the naked statue of Venus.

He heard the shutters rolling down over the windows and the door with relief as he moved towards his room and the bed that called to him, ready to pass out for a few hours of rest. Entering his room, moving past the painting of two women twined around each other with bare bodies and large tits, he stripped. Dumping out four of the aspirin, he swallowed them before heading into the bathroom for a shower.

Feeling the hot water pour over his head, Reaper leaned into the wall and thought of Burner. He was worried about the beating Death had told him about. Although he understood why Travis had beaten him, he wasn’t too happy that Travis had needed to. He was, however, glad that Travis had apparently gotten the girl back with Burner’s help and would earn his cut. He’d always liked Travis, even offered to let him be a part of the Bandits, and he was glad the other man was doing well.

Reaper let the water soothe his tight muscles. After another few minutes Reaper turned the water off. Getting out of the shower, he grabbed a towel. He looked at himself in the mirror seeing the grim lines in his face. He was getting fucking old. He’d turned down not one offer but two tonight from beautiful women. There had been a time when he would have taken them both up on their offers and then taken a different woman or two home with him.

Those had been his wild days when he was young and horny. Not that he wasn’t horny, he was, just not as horny as he was three years ago. He’d found in the past two years he’d become a bit more selective. He had screwed both Candy and Casey in the past, Candy several times in fact and Casey had given him a blow job two days ago. Tonight, with the news about Burner, he wasn’t in the mood to play nice and a night with Reaper had certain expectations. He took good care of his fuck buddies.

He supposed age was making him less likely to be led around by his dick. Well, most of the time he wasn’t led around by his dick. He snorted, thinking of Casey’s audition a month ago for the waitress job. After she’d made it more than clear that she was willing to fuck him to get the job, he’d screwed her in the private room because seeing her in the skimpy outfit she’d worn had made him hard.

He didn’t know what was wrong with him tonight other than age. It was really the only thing that had changed. Leaning forward looking at his grim face in the mirror, he rubbed his jaw, feeling the stubble. His black hair fell to his shoulders in thick chunks after his shower. His grey eyes looked faded and full of regret. He wasn’t dealing with this shit well. Not any of it.

He stared at the tattoo on his right shoulder for a moment. He’d gotten it when he was sixteen to honor his brother. He let his hand fall away from his face. Fuck, he needed to shave, but his head chose that moment to give a particularly violent throb. Deciding that he’d shave in the morning, he headed to bed.

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