Rider: An MC Club Alpha Male Romance (5 page)

Doug allowed himself a tiny smile as he repeated the term.

“Of course,” I replied.

“And you’ll need to live with him, to maintain the illusion that you two are in a relationship.”

“What? I need to live with this slob?” I exclaimed.

“Listen, I’m not excited about it either…” Fang grumbled.

“Sorry, am I going to cramp your cool bachelor pad style?”

“Yeah, that’s right. You’re cramping my style already,” Fang spat back. I could tell this was going to be fun.

We went over a few final details: how and when to contact Doug, what kinds of handlers would be keeping an eye on us, and what kinds of evidence I was going to be documenting and how.

Still, in the back of my mind, I was steaming and stewing. I couldn’t believe this—couldn’t believe that I had agreed to this, to living with a former addict and a biker to boot. And we had to pretend to be… To be lovers.

Did that mean we had to have sex?

The thought excited me and made me sick at the same time, and then the fact that it did excite me made me sick all over again. I couldn’t imagine Fang touching me, holding me, making love to me…

In fact, I couldn’t imagine any man doing that. Any man except Fred. No. Don’t think about that.

But it was too late. I was remembering how Fred touched me, the feeling of him inside of me and on top of me, how I felt so full when he was deep inside of my flesh, how I loved the way he sighed and groaned and grunted as we made love… Fang could never replace that.

And he didn’t have to. I didn’t care. There wouldn’t be any feelings here and this was just a job, a mission. What did I care if we had sex? If it made the mission more successful…

But did I just want it? Was I just telling myself that to keep myself from feeling guilty about wanting this jerk of a biker sitting in from of me, this bad boy who looked like a sad, misunderstood punk Adonis?

“That should finish everything up,” Doug said, ending the meeting. “So, unless there’s anything else…”

There wasn’t. He began to pack up his computer and his files. I stood and Fang did too, our eyes meeting awkwardly.

“So, uh, I guess I’m going with you,” I said lamely.

“That’s right,” Fang replied, his voice stiff, his eyes suddenly unable to meet my own.

“I’ll have someone come by and pick up your car, Claire,” Doug cut in. I gave him my keys and followed Fang out to his bike.

And goddamn, what a bike.

I’m not a car girl. I’ve never been impressed with fancy sports cars or muscle cars or anything like that. I have, however, always had a soft spot in my heart for motorcycles. Not that I ever had any desire to ride one, but they just seem so sleek, so beautiful and deadly… And the idea of something nice and warm vibrating between my legs always did sound pretty tempting.

But here was a huge metal beast unlike anything I’d ever seen before. It was long and narrow, with a low seat, and thus a low profile—probably to reduce drag. The fenders over the front and black tires were painted white with flames on them, while the fuselage had the same design, along with black writing in Arabic.

“What does that say?” I asked, jerking my finger at the writing. Fang tossed me a helmet, which I caught unsteadily.

“Salaam. It means ‘peace.’”

“That’s an odd motto for a biker gang.”

“It’s not our motto. It’s mine. That’s what I’m looking for,” Fang said, not making eye contact with me.

“Aren’t you wearing a helmet?” I said, changing the subject as Doug waved at us before getting into his old BMW.

“I don’t like helmets. And I only have one.”

“Helmets are safe.”

“Motorcycle clubs don’t ride safe,” he said, obviously getting tired of answering my questions.

He climbed onto the bike and I followed him, sitting behind him, my legs splayed open on the tiny back seat of the machine. I wrapped my arms uncertainly around his waist while my legs gripped the sides of the bike. I was wearing jeans and I suddenly wondered if they were be torn about by the fierce, powerful wheels of this finely tuned machine.

And then suddenly, it roared to life. I leaned in close, pressing my face to Fang’s back, inhaling his scent—a potent combination of sweat, cigarette smoke, gasoline, and the leather of his jacket. It was…

Intoxicating. Goddamn it.

Off we went. I let out a little shriek that was totally uncharacteristic of me and I felt myself flush for having cried out, hoping against hope that maybe the helmet would have muffled the noise and Fang wouldn’t have noticed. But I felt him snort and I knew he had.

We were going fast. I’m sure if I had been in a car, I wouldn’t have felt so terrified but being so exposed to the air rushing past me was an incredible thrill and one that I would have to get used to. As Fang weaved effortlessly in and out of traffic on the way to the highway, I found myself squeezing him tight, feeling his strong body encased in his leather jacket, his patches and pins rubbing against my forearms.

We pulled onto the highway and up the entry ramp, racing faster and faster as we merged with traffic, the dull orange lights gleaming and glittering by overhead as we soared down the road. I let out another little shriek as Fang pulled around a huge truck, hugging it tight, as tightly as I was hugging him, and then cut in front of it.

“Don’t go so fast!” I squealed into his ear.

“This is how fast I always go!” he roared back over the rushing of the wind cutting past us. And then, as if to emphasize that, as if to demonstrate that he could go even faster, he sped up.

I must have been about to break his ribs but I didn’t much care—if he insisted on driving like a maniac, then I was going to crush his diaphragm like a maniac. The bike careened from one end of the road to the other as we hit one of those patches of traffic that mysteriously crops up around Miami sometimes in the late evening.

The traffic didn’t slow us down one bit though, or if it did, it was so minor that you couldn’t even notice it. We simply slid in and out of lanes, cutting in front of cars and then in front of others, drifting and flying, practically gliding, until we were in front of the traffic and could see the cause—a single lane, brought on by an accident.

An accident caused by a motorcycle, it seemed, as we darted by.

I wanted to ask Fang what he thought about that but I knew it would just piss him off. Instead, I hugged him closer, laying my head on his shoulder and trying my best to relax as we roared into our new life together—a life that we would share for the next few months, at least.

Another ten minutes and we got off the highway, sliding down a ramp as effortlessly as we had merged originally. We were in a neighborhood I didn’t recognize. A poor neighborhood, mostly Caribbean, with as many boarded up buildings as regular, in-use buildings.

“This is my ‘hood,” Fang muttered over the dying roar of the bike as we stopped at a red light. “It’s well with-in Damned territory, so I get a good discount on my rent.”

“Extortion?” I asked.

“Sure, that’s one word for it,” he said with a grim chuckle. The light turned and off we raced down the street. An endless series of bodegas, ethnic hair salons, dollar stores, and tattoo shops later, we ended up at a surprisingly decent looking building—a three-flat with a backyard and a big driveway that Fang pulled into.

“Home sweet home,” he said with a sigh as he heaved himself off his bike. He was agile and light on his feet, I could tell, but he also had pain when he moved—he just worked through it.

I wasn’t sure how I knew that, but it was apparent to me. Maybe because it was something that so many of Fred’s friends from the service had after years of being wounded, of being wounded and then continuing on, continuing their battles, whether in the field or back in the civilian world.

A world that could be just as brutal and ruthless and uncaring as the mountains of Afghanistan or the sands of Iraq.

Fang unlocked the door and we entered his first floor place. It was, indeed, the consummate bachelor pad: a moth-eaten futon dominated the small living room, with a TV and an Xbox directly in front of it. No table.

Was I seriously going to live here for the next few months?

I must have given Fang a desperate, disgusted look, because he scowled.

“Fuck, I knew this wasn’t going to work…” he growled, throwing my helmet down on the couch.

“No… No, it’s fine,” I said, reluctantly, putting my things down.

“Come with me—I’ll show you where you’re going to sleep.”

I followed Fang into the next room (I was honestly surprised it had more than just a living room) where a twin bed greeted me, pressed up against the wall with a little night stand beside it.

On the other side of the room was a bookshelf, absolutely stuffed. So. Fang was a reader.

And not just the usual stuff. The classics. Thucydides. Herodotus. The Illiad. He was a veteran, after all—I wondered if he found something particularly stirring in those old books, those old tales of war and battle? Maybe, just maybe… There was more to Fang than what met the eye.

And then, he also had children’s books: chapter books, picture books, Harry Potter. This was one hell of a weird mix of reading material. Maybe those other books—the old ones, the heavy classics—maybe that was all stuff he hoped to be able to read someday. Hell, for all I knew, he could be barely literate, just holding onto a bunch of books that he thought he might, someday, be able to get through.

But what could be in those books that he wanted to read? It could be that he found, best expressed in those ancient texts, the things he had experienced overseas, fighting alongside other soldiers, other warriors.

The things that Fred had experienced.

“So,” Fang said from where he stood in the doorway. “I’m out of toilet paper, so I’m just going to leave a roll of paper towels on the bathroom counter. Hope that’s okay.”

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t exactly a refined warrior poet.

Still, as I turned to follow him into the kitchen, I couldn’t help but find myself watching his every movement, the way his shoulders and muscles moved beneath his jacket. He stripped it off, revealing his bare arms—he wore a tight wife beater that seemed to be a size or two too small for him.

“You’ve got a lot of tattoos,” I murmured. “Did you get all of those in the service?”

“Some,” he said with a shrug.

On one arm was a Japanese warrior, a samurai, but with a skull for a head—a zombie warrior, skin stripped off, posed with a sword ready to strike. It was beautifully done, a rippling masterpiece of tightly wound art that hugged his muscles.

The other arm depicted a carp—what the Japanese call koi—riding up splashing waves, seeming to disappear into the water, only to reappear as a dragon on his shoulder, snaking around to his collar bone.

I couldn’t help myself. I reached out to touch the koi. He looked at me hard, with a serious gleam in his eyes.

“Didn’t anyone ever teach you any manners?” he snarled. I withdrew my hand but he grabbed it and forced it to his shoulder.

I felt his tight, tense muscle, barely contained within his warm flesh. But I also felt…

“Scars,” he said, simply. “I got that one done after I came back. To hide the scars.”

“You’re probably tired of hearing people thank you for your service.”

“No one thanks me for my service. No one thanks any of the Damned—we’re all the rejects, the misfits. The ones who got chewed up and spit out. The ones you’d rather forget about.”