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  STAY VERTICAL

  Book #2 in The Bare Bones MC series

  by Layla Wolfe

  Copyright 2014 © Layla Wolfe

  eBook Edition

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Cover art by Red Poppy Designs

  http://poppyartdesigns.com

  Bruno photographed by Yuri Arcurs

  Edited by Carol Adcock

  Dedication

  To Jan Bowles for taking this wild ride with Jeff. I miss him already, Jayla. There is no replacement on the face of this earth that will satisfy in quite the same way.

  To Vella Day for helping me navigate these cold, cruel waters.

  To Pat Caine and all the crew who used to jam it down the highway in their Harleys and Impalas with V8 engines while blasting Bachman Turner Overdrive. Speed, Doug, Butch, Al, Wayne, Duke and especially Dave Glasser, this one’s for you. Hang loose at Gladiator School. We’ll be there soon to pick you up. The Big Trip awaits.

  Publisher’s Note: This is Book #2 in the Bare Bones series. This book is a stand-alone and can be read out of order. However, it is advised to read THE BARE BONES first to get a complete picture of the club’s background, storylines, and setting.

  Publisher’s note: This is not your mother’s contemporary romance. Daring readers will encounter sexual assault, violence against women, general violence among men, consensual BDSM, and a HEA. It is not for the faint of heart. It’s a full length novel of 65,000 words with no cliffhanger. Recommended 18+ due to mature content.

  One two three four five six seven. All good sinners go to heaven.

  Peace Corps volunteer June Shellmound returns to Arizona to care for her dying mother. At the clubhouse of The Bare Bones motorcycle club, June is swept into the drama when half-breed Lytton Driving Hawk barges in and demands recognition as president Ford Illuminati’s half-brother.

  Hot enough to melt steel, Lytton has forged a life apart from the reservation as a brilliant chemist, living the high times at his pot farm in the mountains. Lytton is no fortunate son, though, and the mortal secrets Ford’s been hiding about their father drive the last nail into their brotherly coffin.

  Lytton turns his back on the Bare Bones and sweet bleeding heart June. Blinded by vengeance, Lytton becomes ruled by his own demons, raising hell alongside Ford’s mortal enemies, The Cutlasses. Alliances are torn apart within the club, loyalties are divided, and everyone’s true spirits are tested. When the dust clears, Lytton and June find themselves running for their lives just to…

  STAY VERTICAL

  STAY VERTICAL

  Book #2 in The Bare Bones MC series

  by Layla Wolfe

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Publisher’s Note

  One: June

  Two: Lytton

  Three: June

  Four: Lytton

  Five: June

  Six: Lytton

  Seven: June

  Eight: Lytton

  Nine: June

  Ten: Lytton

  Eleven: June

  Twelve: Lytton

  Thirteen: June

  Fourteen: Lytton

  Fifteen: Lytton

  Sixteen: June

  Epilogue: Lytton

  About The Author

  More Books from Layla Wolfe

  More Books from Karen Mercury

  CHAPTER ONE

  JUNE

  I saw a thousand fresh new beginnings in Africa—and ten thousand and one violent endings.

  There would be one more casualty soon—but not if I could help it. This one was within my power to prevent. This was America, and it was my mother who was about to die. If you can’t save your own mother, well, then, what’s the point of trying to help all those other faceless, nameless people?

  Having completed my original two year contract with the Peace Corps in Benin, I had returned home to Arizona only to discover I really didn’t fit into the modern, fast, flashy world. Returned Peace Corps volunteers, so they say, will always long for the crazy, unpredictable, haphazard and downright violent world of their adoptive country. They say we become accustomed to the nomadic, wild danger of third world countries, that we sort of begin to thrive on the menace and risk, like some kind of “flight or fight” reaction.

  I believe it. When I came back to Cottonwood after my first tour in West Africa, I was completely lost. I didn’t even bother staying with my mother Ingrid. We’d never been close. To be honest, she was pretty much a candidate for the next Mommy Dearest award. Because she suffered from some post-traumatic agoraphobia, she would never leave the house. Due to this, she never got a job. Well, children can’t get jobs. We had no food, no clothing, and Ingrid would scream the roof down if one of us three kids so much as flushed the toilet. The water bill, you know.

  So I spent most of my formative years staying at the houses of supportive friends. I thanked my lucky stars for them every day. Children are incapable of assigning blame to their parents. They turn it on themselves, believing themselves responsible for all predicaments. How can an unformed psyche look from the outside in and form a realization that “hey, my mother pretty well sucks”? It’s in our nature to trust our parents, to rely on them to do what’s right, to depend on them for nurturing.

  When that doesn’t happen, we think it’s all our fault, right? I’ve spent my entire life trying to fix people—to fix myself. Sometimes it actually works.

  Ingrid never admitted she was agoraphobic. We probably didn’t even know the word for it back then. She would just say how being around people stressed her out, but this didn’t stop her from dealing crystal out of our suburban mid-century style Cottonwood home. It was the only possible occupation for someone who refused to leave her house.

  So I stayed with friends who were better off than us—which is to say, everyone in Cottonwood—while my older sister Madison squeaked by, sleeping up in Coyote Buttes in the great outdoors, I guess. We weren’t terribly close. Nor was I close with my own twin Bobby, who just became like a dark, gothic character, hiding in his darkened bedroom. It must have been the height of mortification that we were too poor to afford internet. Bobby managed to steal a laptop somewhere, but we had no cable, so he couldn’t even play video games like any good juvenile delinquent. What can you do on a laptop with no Wi-Fi? Design spreadsheets?

  In retrospect, we should have banded together. We could have helped each other out by—I don’t know, by stealing food for each other. Instead, we sort of turned against each other. The few times Madison and I were home at the same time, we’d just bump each other with our shoulders while passing in the hallway, and yell at each other to get out of the bathroom.

  Because we both wore size ten shoes, once Madison must have stolen my ultra-cool hobnail boots that were as heavy as a mountain. Well, I found her wearing them and a knock-down ensued. That strong bitch wound up braining me time after time with a boot so hard I probably had the impression of the actual hobnails against my temple. Ingrid encouraged this sort of adolescent drama, yelling “Hit her harder!” from her seat on top of the dryer.

  Of course I knew that most families weren’t like ours. My friends all had normal parents. My BFF Emma Flantz, her mom was even still a housekeeper. A housekeeper, in today’s day and age, can you imagine that? She was perfectly satisfied to go to the gym, drive her kids around, and do her charity work. In fact, from this lofty angle over a decade later, I can actually see where Emma’s mom might’ve inspired me to do well, too. “Those who can, do.”

  I guess my friends were nerds too, not cooler-than-thou hipsters and delinquents like the friends of Madison and Bobby. I fell in with the science crowd at high school. We didn’t quite design yearbooks, but I
was definitely a mathlete, winning both the Whitney and the Stanfield awards in my junior year. I didn’t only stay with Emma. I knew that would put a stress on her family’s finances, but I had plenty of other friends willing to shelter me. Their parents knew I was a good tutor, and hey, let’s face it, we were nerds. I had standing invitations among all the mathletes to stay at their houses and help their children out.

  I felt sorry for Madison sometimes. She was a rough and tough chick who took pride in her steely exterior. She was also a slut, and I was envious of that, to tell the truth. I knew she was giving a pantload of blowjobs up there at her camping spot in Coyote Buttes. Word got around the school, but it didn’t tarnish her image. Instead, it elevated her in our dorkwad eyes. It even elevated my own status that my sister had allegedly swallowed ten guys’ swords all in a row one night while singing “Kumbaya” around her fire. Sure, she later straightened up to become an RN after running away to Flagstaff. But back then, she was the shining star of the pipe job in Cottonwood.

  At sixteen, I hadn’t even kissed a boy. I wasn’t even exactly sure what a hummer was. I mean, I wouldn’t say that I looked like a nerd. I had Madison’s shapely hourglass figure, maybe a bit on the “ample” or “curvy” side, but I attracted attention. And I had her same cherubic, innocent face with the little doll’s button eyes. My problem was, I really was innocent. I mean, at sixteen I still had a Jesse McCartney cellphone case. Madison and I were as different as arsenic and strychnine.

  Oh, sure, other dickweeds asked me out. These guys had been the recipients of swirlies and purple nurples since time immemorial. Their headgear and retainers had long been tossed onto the school’s roof. They took time out from their marching band and audio visual club meetings to ask me out, but I always said no. Seriously? Once I finally threw out my McCartney case, there wasn’t a live boy I was truly interested in. Once I finally started lusting for Jake Gyllenhaal, none of the guys on their way to the math Olympiads had the right sort of scruffy bed hair, lusty eyes, or something. They just didn’t cut it. The dorkwads left me cold.

  For a while I was afraid I might even be gay. I’d look at myself in the mirror with my bouncy, fat boobs held up like two bowling balls in a sling. My soft auburn hair framed my angelic face. None of the rug eaters I’d ever seen looked like me. And I did like Jake Gyllenhaal. So I was safe.

  But I felt sorry for Madison because she didn’t need to be so flinty and brittle, such a tough chick. I kept thinking if she wasn’t such a hard case, she would attract a different sort of boy, a boy who might value her instead of shoving his winky dink down her throat. Her type of boy spent his time riding motocross, making their own fireworks, and stealing cough syrup from CVS. However, what was her option? It was either the thugs from juvenile hall, or the guys on their way to a comic book signing. Surely there must be some middle ground. A boy who was manly and rugged, yet intelligent and sensitive. Until then, I was fine with my books and spreadsheets.

  There was one boy who stirred something in my deepest recesses. It was so forbidden I couldn’t even mention it to Emma, much less my sister Maddy. My neglectful mother Ingrid had somehow managed to attract a boyfriend who moved in with us. Cropper Illuminati was supposed to be a brilliant businessman, but he still came across as someone who had climbed into the gene pool when the lifeguard wasn’t looking. Maybe it was his low hairline and long swinging arms that made him look just a couple years more modern than Neanderthal Man.

  Cropper wore a black leather “cut,” which I guess stands for “a leather jacket with the sleeves cut off.” On the back he flew the colors of his motorcycle club, The Bare Bones, of which he was President. I was rarely home so I didn’t get to know his Neanderthal personality very well, but The Bare Bones allegedly comprised about ten successful companies between Cottonwood and Pure and Easy, their headquarters. Cropper definitely had an exciting, dangerous aura about him. Aside from their legit concerns such as an army surplus store, a live sex soundstage, and an indoor archery range, they were definitely involved in gun running.

  Anyway, on one of my visits I discovered that Cropper came with a sleek, dark, devilishly handsome son, Ford. When Ingrid told me there was a teenaged boy there, I’d just assumed he was a smaller, younger biker goon—a Cropper Jr. But the first time I ignorantly, literally, stumbled on Ford, he smashed every atom of preconceived notions like that right into smithereens.

  I was traipsing into the garage to see if there was any motor oil. Emma’s “check engine” light was on, and the dipstick said that no one had added oil since—well, since Cropper’s knuckles were dragging on the ground and he was clubbing women over the head. Which he still probably did, as far as I could tell. Anyway, in the dim half-light something in my peripheral vision moved just as I was reaching for the plastic bottle of oil. Gasping, I twirled to face the rat or raccoon.

  I squinted to make out the man’s silhouette. He straddled a workout bench lifting some kind of dumbbell. He was clad in those exquisitely tight boxer briefs that leave nothing to the imagination, but my innocent eyes took forever drinking in the sublime depth, the texture, the heavily corded lushness of his torso.

  I hadn’t even known such muscles existed, much less cared. Even in the dim light, I could see that his fawn-colored, creamy skin was more flawless than mine, as though he’d never had a zit in his life. His sublime hooked, Roman nose had a slight bump in the bridge, lending him a tough ambiance. He barely exhibited any exertion as he hefted what looked like a big old honking dumbbell, his silken eyebrows frowning with concentration, his bicep flexing with ripples that resonated deep inside my uterus.

  He must’ve heard me lumbering around like an idiot, but he barely flinched as I ogled him. No doubt he’s used to being admired. Every lift of the dumbbell tweaked a similar, tiny silver barbell that pierced one of his coppery pebbled nipples. I’m looking at a man’s nipple, and it’s turning me on. I was no damned rug eater.

  He had such a lush, silken mane of black hair my mouth actually started to water. My nostrils flared as they detected some faraway male pheromones. It was probably the first time in my dorky life I’d even been close to any masculine chemicals.

  I must have stood there so long that irritation finally flickered in his eyes. They looked heavily lined with smoke like a sultry Caravaggio study. I could see that he barely registered my presence. He was too cool to look at me, just froze. I was only a little girl, way too immature and unseasoned to be of any interest to him.

  “Yeah.” His voice was deep and resonant, too. A man’s voice, not a teenager’s. “You need something?”

  Oh boy, did I need something.

  I stupidly stammered something idiotic and stumbled my way out of there again. I was so overwhelmed by hormones, I didn’t even tell Emma what I’d seen. I just upended the oil bottle into her engine, and the juice between my thighs trickled just as viscously as I fidgeted on my feet.

  I was rattled beyond belief. That was the first time I remember feeling truly womanly and adult. The sudden rush of hormones that surged through me was new and frightening. I never turned back into the dull, blasé, uninterested girl I used to be. From then on, I was on the lookout night and day, but for real men, not boys.

  I didn’t find any in my crowd, and I threw myself into my studies with even more passion now. I channeled my sexual energies into work, scoring a scholarship to UC Berkeley. With a master’s in civil engineering under my belt, I devoted my twenties to selfless do-gooding, designing water irrigation schemes for African villages.

  Of course I found a few decent lovers along the way. A couple I even imagined I was in love with for short periods of time. But the volunteer life is a nomadic, haphazard one. With workers from all countries of the globe, we were like strangers in the night, bumping heads. We always said “keep in touch,” but we never did.

  I had re-upped once already by the time I figured out that something was wrong with my mother. I had served twenty-two months of a two year contract in the h
arsh, broiling desert of Northern Kenya. I lived in a wooden shack and shat into a hole in the ground. I slept under the stars at night with my ear against the still-warm sand, listening to the thumping dance of tribespeople’s bare feet. Up near the Sudanese border life was dangerous, with constant raids from bands of brutal, starving guerillas coming to take our dehydrated goats, our one bottle of Tusker beer.

  In a way, I see now that it was good training for the life I would lead when I returned to Arizona.

  I never would’ve figured out that Ingrid was even sick but for a chance phone call from an old family friend. Don was probably Ingrid’s last remaining real friend, the only person who ever went to her house. Especially now, as Don told me, she had even stopped dealing crystal.

  “I don’t think she’s well,” Don said.

  I squinted against the glare from the sheet of Lake Turkana. Red-skirted men spear-fished from filthy dhows. “She’s never been well. Can you be more specific?”

  Even halfway across the globe, I could hear Don sigh. “I think she’s physically ill, June. She’s lost a ton of weight and her skin’s yellow. She complains of a lot of stomach pain and she pukes everything she eats.”

  It was my turn to sigh. “Of course she hasn’t seen a doctor.”

  “Of course not. I tried to take her, but of course she wouldn’t leave the house. June, I’m serious. I wouldn’t be calling you in Africa if I didn’t think something was seriously wrong.”

  We could think of no one else who could twist Ingrid’s arm to visit a doctor. I somehow wound up agreeing to take a little sabbatical and go in person to see what was up.

  I knew from infrequent talks with my twin Bobby—called “Speed” now in his association with The Bare Bones motorcycle club—that Madison had given up her nurse’s job in Flagstaff and was living with Ford in Pure and Easy. Yes, that Ford, the obsession of my childish fantasies. My hard-as-nails sister Maddy had landed that wild stallion who had disturbed me so mightily in the garage. I don’t know what had gone on while I was busy tutoring nerds at Emma’s house, but somehow those two had hooked up, and it made sense. It actually made sense.