Hard Rider Read online

  Only seconds after entering the diner, she felt the presence of that giant hunk again—Ram—and smelled the characteristic scent he sported. It was masculine and heated, a heavy musk that made her think of long open roads and wild, sensational nights of hard loving.

  She had almost just caught the eye of the waitress behind the counter when, moments after sensing his nearness, Ram gathered her under one arm and swept her to the far end of the counter, speaking in a low voice.

  “I would really appreciate your help with something here.”

  June didn’t know quite how to react at first. His arms were thick and heavy with muscle, and that heavy scent filled her entire head. Like asphalt and oil, like fire and stone.

  “Look,” said June. “I don’t even know you, so why don’t you take your hands off me?”

  Ram smiled, disarming. “Right, yeah. How’s that?”

  It was, she had to admit, not quite as nice. His arms felt good around her. But that much touching when she barely knew him was strictly out of the question. She wasn’t some cardboard model to be carted around.

  June looked at him suspiciously. She could see his vest now—a biker’s vest for certain. He was in a motorcycle club, she just couldn’t make out which one.

  Her father had rallied against bikers his entire career. It was, perhaps even more than her burgeoning attraction for Ram, that particular fact that made June hear the man out.

  “What do you want?”

  “I need you to pretend to be my girl for a little bit.”

  “Your girl?” June smirked. “Are you in high school?”

  “It’s important, all right?” He indicated slightly with his head. “My father is over there. He’s sort of…overbearing. You know the type?”

  June did. She nodded.

  “Okay. So you’d really be helping me out just to pretend to be my girl. Just for a little bit. I’ll make it up to you, all right?”

  “Make it up to me?”

  “Sure. Name your price. Anything. Just…do this for me. Please.”

  There were a dozen reasons—good reasons—to say no. To shove something in his face, to toss water all over him for pulling her so roughly to one side of the diner. A dozen reasons to leave him to the lions and let him work out whatever he wanted on his own.

  But something—whether it was the spark in his eye, the thick shape of his muscled frame under his shirt, the heady scent he emanated, or something else entirely, made her ignore all those reasons.

  “Okay,” she said. “Why not?”

  June didn’t live dangerously. She was a liberal arts student. That meant a lot of studying and a lot of writing. It meant cautiously examining every new angle that her professors and work presented to her, savoring each detail and poring over every last action until she knew—in sum—that it was perfect.

  So as she walked to the corner of the bar, with Ram’s hand suddenly wrapped possessively around her waist, she tried very hard to both convince herself to run and to quell every thought convincing her to run.

  Every man that Ram led her toward was bearded, muscled, and looked like some kind of killer. The sort that played horrible men on television and movies. She tried to chide herself for stereotyping them, but that didn’t replace the cold fear in her stomach as their gaze slipped up and down her body.

  They were covered in ink, each one. Skulls on necks, gravestones on their shoulders, wild primal animals shifting and grappling across their forearms and biceps.

  Ram’s tattoos had the most effect on her—that string of skulls down his arm, the ink so clear and hot against the dense muscles just beneath his suntanned skin. Those affected her different than the others did—she found herself pulled toward them instead of repulsed.

  Again, she thought of her father’s face, learning of the news of her sitting with such men, and her resolve hardened.

  “So,” said Ram. “This is my old lady, June. June, these are my brothers.” He pointed them out. “Mikhail. Cattleprod. Rowdy. And Howitzer.”

  That struck a chord with June. “Old lady.” That was a specific term, one that she was loosely familiar with. The best she understood it, though, meant that she was not just pretending to be his girl…but his property.

  Claimed by him.

  The thought sent a hot shiver down her spine.

  She tried to remain cool. “Your brothers?”

  Howitzer was clearly related to Ram somehow. Maybe an uncle, maybe even his father.

  “We’re in a motorcycle club together,” said the one closest to her, Mikhail. “Remember, June?”

  “Right,” said June, trying to hide her surprise at Mikhail’s apparent cooperation in this plan.

  If Ram was surprised by what Mikhail said, he hid it well.

  Everything about the biker life was entirely divorced from her existence. Her father had made sure of it. He hadn’t wanted her to go to Austin for college—hadn’t wanted her to go to college at all, in fact—but he regularly cited one good part of it as being that she wasn’t around all the bikers in Marlowe.

  Late in teenagerdom, around sixteen, June started her rebellion against her parent’s oppressive, helicopter ways. She smoked cigarettes for a little while before kicking the habit some years back. She went vegetarian, and then vegan, quickly abandoning both prospects in Austin when the available food choices were too delicious to pass up. She wore tight skirts and loose blouses, dated a guy from the chess club—all things her parents hated.

  But still she carried several of their prejudices, their bad habits, their wrong ideas. Up until a year ago she was certain that only criminals regularly used public transportation. Her friends had laughed at her for a good thirty minutes when they found that out.

  It wasn’t that she was trying to be stupid, it was just that there were so many assumptions held by everyone that it was easy to have her own and not have them caught up by reality. Her one saving grace was that when she found out she was wrong about such things, she was happy to correct herself.

  And so, these hard men, smiling gently at her now, didn’t strike her as all that bad. Her father could have easily been wrong about them too.

  “You knew about her?” Rowdy asked Mikhail.

  “Sure,” said Mikhail, smiling low at Ram. “Ram and I don’t keep secrets from one another. No matter how big. Do we?”

  Ram gave him back the same smile. “No, Mikhail. We don’t. That’s right.”

  “How long have you been together?” asked Howitzer.

  “Four months,” said June, at the same time Ram said, “Six months.”

  They exchanged a glance. June reddened. “Four to six months, something like that.”

  When they sat down, Ram had put his arm around June. He tightened his grip there now. June felt warmth blossoming in her chest, a blush that felt uncontrollable. A small gratitude took hold of her that she had worn a t-shirt with a high neckline; usually, her blushes crept up from her breasts up around her neck.

  Without realizing it, her hand had fallen in Ram’s lap, near one knee. The combination of this strange conversation and his sex appeal had her with her hand sliding up and down the inside of his thigh.

  Now that she noticed it, she did not stop. She was supposed to be his girl, wasn’t she?

  If she was his girl, she’d never stop touching him.

  And if she was old lady…she might never stop doing a whole lot more.

  “How did you meet?”

  “In Austin,” June blurted, unable to stop her tongue. “I saw his bike and just, you know, had to introduce myself.”

  “The call of the hog,” said Cattleprod with a knowing nod. “Swings the gate open wide for the sows every time.”

  Mikhail turned and called to the waitress, asking for a refill on his coffee.

  The bikers kept talking, but June’s eyes went wide. She was sure her skin had gone pale. No doubt someone walking by would comment that she had seen ghosts, that there was a whole gaggle of horses galloping on her grav
e.

  Because for the first time, she saw what was on the back of Mikhail’s vest—what surely was on the back of all their vests, these men she had decided to associate with.

  An insignia. A flaming background emblazoned with a heavy chained wrecking ball. And underneath, the name of their crew.

  The Wrecking Crew.

  These were Wrecking Crew she was sitting with. She might not have known much about bikers, she knew nothing about cars, and she knew all kinds of wrong information about the dangers of living inside a big city. But she definitely knew for a fact who the Wrecking Crew were—an outlaw biker gang.

  And they were killers. Every last one.

  Chapter 5

  Something had shaken June, Ram wasn’t sure what. But she shut up like a clam shortly after the little sit-down started, and would only answer in a monosyllabic monotone from then on.

  Her hand stayed on his leg, though, stroking still. It was near his cock and he had a hard time focusing on what Howitzer was saying.

  A hard time—that was an understatement. This fine piece of woman was near to him, pressing on him, and his cock strained underneath the table, pushing against his pants, yearning to reach the soft tips of her fingers.

  Ram wanted her and that was for damn sure. Half of his mind was occupied with figuring out how to get himself in the club’s good graces again—preferably by putting Beretta in the ground in a public way—but the other half was steadily being taken up entirely with the best way to bed this hot new babe.

  His brothers filed out and Ram stayed at the table with June, his arm still wrapped tight and possessive around her shoulders. His father left him with a warning—the vote would be within the week, so don’t get used to any sort of good life.

  Then, Mikhail gave him a wink—the two of them would have a talk later. Mikhail would support his little lie, but only for so long, and only so long as it didn’t endanger any brothers.

  “What was that about?” he asked her. “Your clamming up?”

  “What was that about? Are you kidding? What was that about? You pull me in and ask me to be your girl, your old lady, and you’re in the fucking Wrecking Crew?”

  Ram shrugged. “I thought you knew.”

  “Why would I know that? Who knows that? It’s a ridiculous thing to know!” June huffed, standing up and gathering her purse. “Look, just…don’t involve me with you anymore, okay? Bad enough that you’ll have to tell them we broke up now, or something. I don’t want any trouble from them because of that, okay?”

  She walked out of the diner, clearly not wanting to hear any response. He followed her out just as she started to come back in.

  “I need their phone,” she said. “I forgot mine. Do you mind?”

  Ram blocked the door

  She was really done with him, he realized. And that was no good for him. He needed her. Howitzer and the others may have been hard-as-nails, but they all knew the changing power that women held over men.

  A settled-down Ram was a Ram they could live with. He saw their moods shift while she was at the table, the gears turning in their heads.

  Ram was Howitzer’s boy. Ram had led the Crew through more scrapes than they had any right to live through. And sure, he had started a lot of trouble for the Wrecking Crew, but he had also ended a lot of trouble for them. And once they did a little thinking, he knew they’d realize that if it weren’t for him, they wouldn’t have half the territory—or the business—that they did now.

  And he needed them. No way in hell would he get close enough to off Beretta without the Wrecking Crew hard at his back. He needed their support to get his way.

  And it was June who was the one who had changed their minds. June, with her good girl look. June, with her beautiful angel face and her sweet edges. She softened the perception of Ram just by being next to him.

  She could keep him in the brotherhood—and by god, Ram needed that. The brotherhood was everything he had. Every way that he could think of to finally land his revenge.

  Just a bonus that she was the sweetest, finest looking girl he’d ever laid eyes on this side of the Rio Grande.

  “I’ll fix your car,” he said.

  “What?” she frowned. “No. You’ve done enough. Move aside.”

  “I’ll fix your car,” he said again, doubling up his bulk in the doorway, “and I’ll give you a ride home. I’ve got a tow rig and everything in the bed of my truck back in Marlowe. I can swing back by here later today and pull it all the way to my shop.”

  “You own a car shop?”

  “Yeah,” he shrugged. “Or, I mean, that Rowdy guy? His son owns one. So I as good as own it. I can put whatever I want there for however long I need. It’s no big deal. So let me take care of it for you. Let me take care of you.”

  She crossed her arms, thinking. The two of them stepped back over to the scorched husk of her car without saying anything.

  “You know anything about cars?”

  “Not really,” she admitted.

  “Okay. Well, you’re gonna need a new radiator. When you replace the radiator in a car like this, you’ve got to—how many miles you have on it?”

  “Just under two hundred thousand.”

  “Damn, girl. All right, yeah. You’ve got to replace a few gaskets and valves, that sort of thing. All the tubing. It looks like the fire might have damaged some other stuff too. The carburetor shouldn’t be that color, and the side of your engine there looks like hell. When was the last time you took it in?”

  “For like, an oil change?”

  “For anything.”

  “I don’t know. I bought it two years ago. So…” she shrugged. “Two years ago.”

  “Christ.” He shook his head, smiling. “You let me do this for free, you’re doing yourself a favor, honestly. Unless you have five grand just sitting around.”

  She looked shocked. “Five grand?”

  “Or so.”

  “That’s as much as a new car!” She stammered. “O-or a new used car. You know what I mean.”

  Ram smiled. She was hot when she was surprised, her lips parting just so, her cheeks flashing red. She was hot when she was everything, most likely. He wanted to feel her pressing against his body again, wanted to pull that ass of hers against his heavy cock and let her feel what a real man could offer her.

  “You have five grand for another car?”

  “I don’t have five grand to save my life.”

  “Well,” he spread his hands. “There’s one way you won’t need it.”

  She kicked the bumper of her car, but her heart wasn’t in it. He could see the acquiescence approaching on her face—what he was saying was making too much sense to her.

  “But,” he said, “you have to do one thing for me.”

  Realization sparked in her eyes as she understood his play.

  “You want me to keep pretending to be your old lady.”

  Smart girl.

  Chapter 6

  Of course, June had to agree. He was being reasonable and smart, and if there was one thing that was more infuriating about an attractive man than any other, it was when he was making sense.

  They drove into Marlowe with June riding behind Ram, her arms wrapped tight around his muscular torso for her very first motorcycle ride.

  The one problem with how much “sense” Ram made, though, was that it rested on her still pretending to be his old lady.

  His property.

  His claimed woman.

  It was hard to juggle which would be worse—associating with a biker gang for a little while, (“no more than say, a couple of weeks,” he promised), or asking her family (and therefore, her father) for help.

  Ram’s bike was impressive, and it was making the choice much, much easier. Like, crazy easy. Like, so easy that June was feeling easy, and having her waves of guilt and regret steadily eroded under a constant sexual cavalcade of thrumming motor thunder and the sheer tactical pleasure of holding tight to Ram’s impossibly hard body.


  The bike was black and chrome, its engine a heavy metal monstrosity that looked like it belonged in a horror movie about bikes that ate innocent young women alive. She found it inherently exciting as a result, which she supposed was the point.

  She had to ride behind Ram, of course, with her hands throttled around his midsection. His shirt was thin and so it was nothing to feel the heavy layers of clearly chiseled abs underneath. She knew he must be enjoying it, must have felt dozens of women hold him like this. It was clear he knew what the effects of his body were on the opposite sex—and doubly so because his masculine prowess had thus far steamrolled over her.

  It made her feel somewhat guilty, again—she prided herself on her intellect, her personality—but at the same time Ram was a beacon of sexual force in the world. A titan of male power, clearly attracted to her and openly advertising for her to touch him, hold him, be close to him.

  She hadn’t experienced anything like that before. Rationalizations hit her—it was fine to be caught up in the moment, at least for a while. Enjoy him and this.

  It certainly wouldn’t last.

  A certain part of June was jealous of him, in fact. Sex for her had a rather lengthy vetting process, one that involved a dead certainty of love, affection, and commitment.

  The thought of a life like his—where affection was easy and sex was part of the way of life—both called to her and repulsed her. She wanted it to be that easy, and yet, she wanted still for every sexual encounter she had to be romantic, steamy, and loaded with passionate attraction that stretched beyond just the physical.

  All these thoughts about sex and attraction, and all the touching she was doing of his washboard torso, in conjunction with the heavy vibrations rhythmically sliding between her legs, put her entire body in a state of arousal that was almost unbearable.

  She only hoped that he couldn’t hear the soft unconscious moans that rose up from her mouth every few minutes when the pressure from the vibrations grew too much to keep inside. It was almost dead certain, though, that with a man like him, even if he didn’t hear her, he knew her moans were happening.