Road Refugees (A Motorcycle Club Romance) Read online

  ROAD REFUGEES

  THE BARE BONES MC #10

  Life is too short for traffic.

  Townshend Spiro is a wounded warrior whose service dog brings him back into contact with the world. He quit his idle, pointless, plastered ways that began after a decorated ten-year stint in the army. One too many close brushes with death have riddled him with PTSD—he treats it with the bottle. He’s rescued by service dog Linus, and they go on the road to discover themselves. What the two pals find will change their lives forever.

  Escaping in a drugged trance from her sex slave wife existence in a Mormon sect, Heaven Larrimore is desperate and terrified. But it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire when she passes out in the highway and is swept up by Byron Riddlesberger, a truly sick fuck from a rival club. Townshend busts in to save the day, spiriting Heaven away on his Harley.

  Their paths have converged—both are refugees from the rowdy road. A magical mushroom farm owned by The Bare Bones MC is their safe haven, but soon enough they’re back on the righteous path to redemption. Riddlesberger has met his match in the powerful couple, now that their love has bound them against evil.

  Publisher’s Note: This book is not for the faint of heart. It contains scenes of graphic sex, illegal doings, consensual bondage and discipline, puppy millers, and violence in general. It’s a full-length novel of 65,000 words. There are no cheating or cliffhangers, and there are HEAs for all.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  ©Layla Wolfe 2021

  Cover Photography by V. Anandhakrishnas

  Cover Art by OliviaPro Designs

  Edited by Crissy Sutcliffe

  Formatted by Siobhan Muir

  DEDICATION

  “If there is anything godlike about God, it is that. He dared to imagine everything.”

  ~ Henry Miller

  Well I left my happy home to see what I could find out

  I left my folk and friends with the aim to clear my mind out

  Well I hit the rowdy road and many kinds I met there

  And many stories told me of the way to get there

  So on and on I go, the seconds tick the time out

  So much left to know, and I'm on the road to find out

  In the end I'll know, but on the way, I wonder

  Through descending snow and through the frost and thunder

  I listen to the wind come howl telling me I have to hurry

  I listen to the robin's song saying not to worry

  ~ On the Road to Find Out, Cat Stevens

  And to

  Colleen Ksanda and Steve Miller

  For helping me recall “The Big Trip”

  Chapter One

  Heaven

  I woke up next to a dog.

  My brain quickly gauged exactly how drunk I was. Not drunk enough.

  I couldn’t sleep any more though, so I raised my torso like a lumbering giant. Chip gave me side-eye without moving a muscle. I scrunched his soft ear in my palm. He appeared to smile, wrapping his paw around my wrist to hold me there.

  “Good boy, Chip,” I said softly, not wanting to draw attention to myself. Was he protecting me? “Very good boy.”

  I kissed his floppy ear, inhaling his dog scent. The silkiness of his blond fur made my cheek tingle.

  Eventually I had to stand. A bruise bloomed on my right shoulder that I didn’t dare touch. I ran my fingers through my hair to untangle it. I’d been sleeping on the floor of a glassed-in porch with the sun blazing down on me, leaving my face hot, probably blotchy. I knew when I reached up that something had snapped in my shoulder. Bicep tendon again? Rotator cuff?

  Good God in an evil world.

  I already knew the brandy bottle would be empty, but I picked it up and shook it anyway. It was the last bottle I’d succeeded in secreting away from other greedy hands—Cornucopia had a plethora of those—so I knew I’d have to go down to the pantry to get another. Good thing our shapeless gunnysack dresses with huge pockets enabled me to hide the booze easily. Maybe then I could drift off into the ozone again.

  Weaving down the hallway like a rider on a lurching train, I bounced off every wall of the stairwell until I was on the ground floor, Chip following, one uncertain step at a time. The babble of my sister-wives waxed as I neared the kitchen. There were four of us. The loudest and oldest was Brighten, sealed to Orson when she was fourteen.

  “Little Dallin came home from school today,” said Brighten, chopping something on a board. I was just passing by on my way through to the pantry, but I had to hear the whole stupid story anyway.

  “What did he learn?” asked Tabitha, the youngest wife. When she’d sealed to our family, I thought she would take a lot of pressure off me. No. She hadn’t.

  “Well, he said he was learning about the book of Norman. I asked him who Norman was. ‘He’s some dead guy, but we have to read this book he wrote.’”

  Doubling over, the three squealed with delight. This didn’t stop them from casting me dirty looks as I sallied by. They knew what I was up to. I didn’t try to hide it anymore.

  I stuffed the brandy bottle into my big pocket and left the pantry. The women were cooking beef stroganoff—again—and the tangy scent made my stomach churn. I picked up a strip of raw beef from the counter to drop in Chip’s mouth. He was prancing and tap dancing for it.

  “Steak!” I proclaimed. I was teaching Chip our words in my spare time. I swore he knew about two hundred by now. I taught the Golden Retriever to play volleyball with the kids. He bopped it with his nose, sailing two feet off the ground. Of course, I didn’t have much spare time usually. A husband must be happy, so I knew how to make mayonnaise, take dead rats from the attic, and fold in Orson’s sheet corners. I held up my end, halfway blitzed the entire time. “Don’t make it so good,” I told Tabitha. “Men will eat anything. Pigs.” I gained a bit of spine, too, when around the girls.

  Brighten caught and held my eye. My sister-wives didn’t condemn me because I didn’t help out—I did help out. I cared for Orson’s horse that was big enough to be sired by a dinosaur. I cared for the chickens, picky eaters who needed sanitized soil. Today, Sunday I believed, we did precisely as much work as other days but felt conflicted about it because it was a day of rest. We began our day at four and ended it at eight by turning off the stove and the lamps.

  No, my sister-wives condemned me just because I drank too much.

  For me, drinking was a way to numb myself to the scary parts of Orson. And one never knew when he’d be popping up out of the woodwork, and I mean that literally. You could be walking down a hallway and he’d pop out of a closet and grab you. Or even with the chickens, he’d leap from a coop, taking you right there. We had a difficult time getting medication on the compound, so I couldn’t use “mother’s little helpers” all day long. There was never a good time to be sober.

  “What?” I said to Brighten, injecting the word with apathy.

  “Are you going back upstairs? Or out to the stables? Because we need you at dinner. Orson has an announcement.”

  The sour cream Tabitha folded into the meat strips made me want to puke. “Okay. Can I go upstairs for ten mi
nutes?”

  “Sure. I know Orson used you again today. Not to lecture, but your idea of anesthetizing yourself is just going to make things worse.”

  “I know.” I didn’t know, really. Had I seen any bad side effects? Sure, I passed out in strange places. But that was the entire point. “Okay. Ten minutes. Something’s wrong with my shoulder.” It pinged with a stab whenever I looked down, which was the preferred position for dealing with Orson.

  “I know,” said Brighten. “Doctor Higbee will be around Tuesday.”

  “Right.” What was the use with Higbee, when he offered no x-rays? He might give you some opiates, then not return for another six months. During which time you wanted more opiates. “I’ll be right back.”

  Strangely, when I went back upstairs, Chip followed me, not staying by the food. It cheered my heart to see him there, obedient to me as I was supposed to be to Orson. So I talked to him. “You’re a good boy, Chip. I love you.” I was pretty sure he knew what “I love you” meant. I was twenty-eight, sealed to a man, a “polyg,” yet I was engaged in the deepest, most extraordinary relationship with a dog.

  Reaching the sunroom, I swiftly unscrewed the bottle cap. Where is my glass? How could I have fallen asleep on the floor without my glass? I took a few swigs straight from the bottle and looked at Chip. “Chipper Chip. You’re a little mangled, right? Well, so am I. I understand. He can break me, but never destroy me.”

  After such a valiant speech, I felt a little sheepish about heading back for the door to find a glass. “How did you get to be so good, Chip? Why are you such a good b—”

  Splat. I was nose-deep in Orson’s repugnant chest.

  Twice in one day? Why me? Why not Tabitha? Should I have been cooking? Was that it? He didn’t want to take Tabitha away from cooking. Oh, good God in an evil world. He grabbed on and wrenched my bad shoulder.

  “Need one of these?” He shoved a squat glass in my face. Without waiting for a reply, he pushed me back into the sunroom. Orson Ream was a high priest, the owner of two construction outfits, and had the requisite three wives to obtain the highest level of heaven. He had wanted his third to be a teenager—our Prophet decreed he’d had a revelation telling him so. But the mother refused, and fled with the girl to a nearby town, Avalanche, a place discussed in code language because it seemed to offer hope to the downtrodden.

  Grabbing the bottle, Orson glugged a good three fingers’ worth of booze into the glass. With a sneer he reached inside his vest pocket. I knew what he was going for. Chloral hydrate. A “Mickey Finn” they used to call them. He glopped another blob of the tangerine syrup into the brandy.

  “Heh.” Yes, he said that aloud! “Here’s your cocktail, my servant. Drink up.”

  “The whole thing?” That was too much even for me.

  “The whole thing. Your tolerance is up. It takes more and more to turn you into Nurse Judy.”

  Orson liked Nurse Judy. I only discovered I played her when I came to one night and found a stethoscope and a speculum on the ground. He admitted it with a chuckle and told me Nurse Judy “sure likes her pelvic exams.” I was so sore I bled all night onto my sheets. When Doctor Higbee arrived two weeks later, I needed surgery to correct the problems.

  Now? I no longer cared what happened to me.

  For the umpteenth time, I gulped the fiery liquid. My eyes watered and the pit of my stomach resisted when it hit, but I got it all down. The sooner I turned into Judy the better.

  To pass the time, I asked, “What is the announcement you’re to make at dinner?”

  Chip was trying to get in between us. Orson might be a wife beater, nasty to the core and mean as a wolverine, but he did love his dogs. He patted Chip’s ears.

  “Oh. That.” Orson migrated to the windows. The setting sun cast a golden glow over his silhouette, almost a religious sign I was glad he didn’t see. People said he looked like Steve Buscemi, the actor. I thought Buscemi was much too good a person to make that comparison. “I’m to take a fifth wife.”

  My heart leaped with hope. A new wife! Maybe Orson would fixate on a new servant!

  But just as swiftly as this thought flitted through my mind, it left. Orson often said I was the one true wife who “pleasured” him with God’s approval. My sister-wives even agreed that he singled me out, though I was no longer the youngest. When Tabitha arrived, my hope rose. Now I knew better. Tabitha just spit out child after child, while I remained barren. Perhaps that’s what Orson liked about me.

  “Oh.” I proclaimed dully. “That will be nice to have more help around the house. Can I get help with the chickens?”

  Orson turned to me with that fixated, determined look. “We shall see. Nurse Judy, would you like Doctor Ream to give you an exam?”

  “Why, yes,” I said woodenly. I took deep breaths to hurry the medicine along its course. “Doctor Ream is the most thorough doctor around.”

  He approached me, slapping a silvery thing into his palm with relish. The hypnotic effects of the chloral hydrate disabled me from clearly seeing what the implement was. Yes. My head swam as though ocean waves washed through it. That stuff worked fast. I wanted to sit on the chaise, but I knew he’d want me on the floor, which was covered with a painful wicker rug. My, we are resourceful people. I sure wish I was with the chickens right now.

  “Yes,” hissed Orson, backing me up against the wall. His breath oozed the repulsive vodka I loathed so much. Forgoing all fanfare, he lifted my voluminous skirts with one hand. He crunched the thick fabric into his fist and slicked a few fingers across my gash, ensuring I wasn’t wearing any underwear. “Ooh. Nurse Judy must’ve been expecting me. You’re so wet.”

  Was I? Was I wet? Why? He must’ve been lying, but it was becoming difficult to tell fact from fiction. “Yes. Just thinking about you made me that way.” Could he never tell how apathetic I was? Didn’t it matter to his fantasy? When I squeezed my eyes shut, a shimmering world of colors awaited me. Oh, yes. Maybe I should steal the Mickey Finn bottle and do this all the time.

  I gasped when Orson shoved my bad shoulder, forcing me around to face the wall. He cried, “But I want it sunny side up today!” And unceremoniously shoved the dry metallic thing up my back door.

  The searing pain wrenched me from my fantasy. I wanted nothing more than to black out, to become Nurse Judy again. Where was she when I needed her? Chip whined on the edges of my awareness. Did he object to my treatment, or did he think it normal by now? Orson groped my bosom through the cloth.

  “Oh, yeah!” he trilled. And he tore at the apron covering my chest. “Big boobies! What a great rack. Doctor Ream wants to give Nurse Judy an enema!”

  How many of those aprons had I repaired? Why didn’t I just sew a flap that could be buttoned? It wasn’t that difficult to replace a few buttons.

  I had memories of the outside, of growing up in St. George. I hadn’t been sent to Cornucopia until I was eighteen. My brother Arkie and I would play with remote control dune buggies out in the sand. Later on, I would date boys. We were of a strict Mormon vein, and when I appeared, sobbing and pregnant? That was too much. So, after the cleansing of the baby, I was sent to Orson Ream.

  You know, sometimes we try so hard to hear the voice in the tornado that we don’t see the sun in the east. We sit here waiting for a message, while all around us the world has been magically remade.

  That is what I was doing while Orson Ream, well, reamed me with that metal object and made blasphemous cries. One thought sliced into my brain, like the rising sun.

  I’m going to find Arkie.

  I’m going to find Arkie.

  I’m leaving here and finding Arkie.

  I’ll sneak out of here and find Arkie.

  Then the scorching pain in my anus reached its apex. That’s when I must’ve blacked out. Turned into Nurse Judy.

  The last thing I felt was Chip licking my knee.

  Chapter Two

  Townshend

  I came to, looking at Slappy Lomax’s ass.

>   I couldn’t tell if I was in bed, which way was up, which way down. It took me several panic-stricken moments of flailing my limbs until I oriented myself in the room.

  My living room. The floor.

  Slappy’s butt wasn’t moving. He must’ve racked out too. What the fuck time was it? My watch told me three, but day or night? I always kept my blinds closed.

  Groaning like a dying horse, I raised myself off the floor. As in a corny anti-drug movie from middle school, three or four empty bottles of rum were strewn over the grimy wall-to-wall carpet. One tumbler still held a couple fingers’ worth of booze, so I grabbed that and gulped.

  I’d been drinking too much for far too long to ever become properly drunk anymore.

  Slappy’s torso was draped artistically over a sculpture of a horse with a human head I’d picked up in Damascus. Wasn’t it uncomfortable, the guy’s headdress stabbing Slappy in the ribs?

  Am I all out of rum?

  This possibility made me anxious, gave me the energy to drag myself to my feet. Just like overseas, I hauled my ruined back and pounding skull through twenty-hour days with the assistance of ibuprofen. I managed to sleep, dreamless, for four. Death isn’t some statistic. It creeps up on you, slicing away at your neck. In Syria, I worked myself into a coma. Because I was an excellent shot, the Syrians had me performing as sort of a firing squad.

  Now? I surfed on YouTube, leaving my dark condo only for more booze.

  I saw by the paused video that Slappy and I had been blasting Avenged Sevenfold. I knew from the dirty looks my neighbors always gave me that playing heavy metal was a common incident. Sometimes it was paused on Slipknot, Bullet for My Valentine, or Metallica.

  My stomach growled. Fucknuts.

  Staggering into the kitchen, I shielded my face from the glaring sun blazing in the window above the sink. A normal tenant would’ve had several different and lovely views of a snow-dusted Pike’s Peak in blinding 3D. Not me. It reminded me of Fort Carson. Who the fuck forgot to lower those blinds? I guess it’s three in the afternoon.