Road Refugees (A Motorcycle Club Romance) Read online

  He really looked on his last legs and I said, “I don’t know if he’s going to make it, Heaven.”

  She stuck out her lower lip. “I’ll carry him then.”

  “I’ll do it,” offered Slappy. “I’m done with mapping.”

  I said, “Then let’s get the fuck out of here. We got enough.”

  Slappy took the risk of standing to take the dog in his arms. Heaven and I stood but ducked low until we were behind the big dog barn, out of sight of the main house.

  I said quietly, “We should haul ass back to our rides. Slappy, can you take the dog in your truck? I have towels in my sidecar. I just don’t think it’d be as smooth of a ride as your truck.”

  “Roger that,” said Slappy. “I’m on it.”

  I frowned. “Stop sounding like Wolf Glaser.”

  “Let’s go,” said Heaven.

  But no sooner had she touched my arm than some guy stepped out from behind the barn. We all gasped with surprise but relaxed a bit when we saw it wasn’t Riddlesberger or Stomach. Just some skinny weedy guy with slicked-back greasy grey hair topped by one of those embarrassing tweed driving caps.

  He spoke from the side of his mouth like me, but the impression was that he was being confidential. “You want to know about the guy in the septic tank?”

  “Um,” I said, “No. Not really.” I was just taking a guess. I didn’t really want to know.

  He continued, “He was a co-worker of Byron Riddlesberger. For a price, I’ll tell you where they’ve moved the dogs deeper into the woods, down the hill.”

  The three of us looked at each other. It was me who reached into my wallet and handed him a twenty. “Who are you?” I asked, before letting him snatch the bill.

  “Name is Darcy Bard. I own this place.” He was more candid now, rolling up the bill and sticking it in his pocket.

  Heaven fumed. “How can you allow this sort of torture to go on under your watch?”

  Darcy Bard jutted out his jaw, looking up at Heaven. “Everything has its price, dearie.”

  “Speaking of,” said Slappy, “where are these other kennels down in the woods?”

  Mr. Bard became very serious. “If you look up the perimeters of my property, you’ll see they placed them as far down this hill as possible, right above a seasonal creek so they can occasionally hand water to the poor dogs. Not often enough for my liking, if you want to know. I don’t think God smiles upon this sort of thing, no sir. Especially not when it comes to putting bodies into septic tanks. Man, that thing smells.”

  Now I did want to know about the septic tank, but Heaven ploughed ahead. “God is going to punish you as well!” I’d never heard her ranting any Cornucopia stuff, but it sure did serve her purpose now. “Maybe you don’t actively have a hand in this, but being the owner and allowing it to go on . . . That’s a sin!”

  Darcy shrugged. “I help with cleaning the cages.”

  Open-mouthed, Heaven looked to us for help. “Cages? The only way to redeem yourself, Mr. Bard, is by rescuing all these animals to a proper dog rescue organization!”

  He took a new tack now, squinting at Heaven. “When you say God, you talking existential being or anthropomorphic deity?”

  “Oh!” Heaven growled in astonishment. She pointed. “This man is just as culpable—”

  A screen door over by the main house slammed shut. “Bard!” yelled someone.

  “Riddlesberger,” I told my accomplices. Fumbling with my wallet, I handed Bard another twenty. “Don’t let him see us. We’re about to leave. Go that way.”

  We dashed back the way we’d come, not taking the path we’d created by low crawling but smashing directly through some knee-high weeds.

  Darcy Bard’s last query was, “Do you want to know why all hip-hop music sounds the same? As musical styles increase in popularity, they also become more generic.”

  I waved my arm to shoo him behind the barn, and I was almost too late. I caught a glimpse of that major shitbird Riddlesberger looking for the property owner. As I squatted and peered through the grass, for the first time I noted Riddlesberger had ink on his bicep that said “Kill me, I’ve never died before” with a bullet hole beneath it.

  “I’d be mighty obliged,” I muttered, and hauled ass behind my friends.

  The last thing I heard Riddlesberger yell was, “Who you talking to?”

  “I was talking to myself. You know how I like to do that.”

  “Am I gonna have to give you a twenty to get you to tell me who it was?”

  “As you know, Riddlesberger, everything has its price . . . “

  Chapter Seventeen

  Heaven

  “Here you go, boys.”

  I set the scorpion bowl of rum, vodka, and gin before the two men. Crybaby was there at the cabin picking up more shrooms to sell, and Slappy was taking a break from gate-building with Town. Town didn’t want to partake of the sweet and boozy concoction, so he kept building.

  “I learned to make this in Cornucopia,” I told them, taking a seat myself.

  “Ooo,” said Slappy, his eyes shining as he grabbed one of the three straws. “It’s almost like you should set this appetizer on fire.”

  Crybaby was already sucking on his straw. “That would burn the pineapple.”

  Slappy popped a cherry into his mouth. “And the cherries.”

  I sipped through my own straw. After a month of abstinence, I was methodically drinking a bit to see if I got carried away. So far, I hadn’t. I did not buy a new flask after tossing the old one in the recycle bin. But I knew what a tightrope I walked. As Dick Passwater had lectured, I had taken a few magical mushroom trips with the precise intent to stop drinking. At last I saw drinking as irrelevant to my larger life’s path, since many other things had become so much more important. I saw myself as a tiny golem critter, crouching and drinking, just filling myself with poison.

  It was a dynamic and gross hallucination that I can still see to this day. Suddenly, I lost the comfort of careless drinking and began to really see it as a detriment. I could no longer just look to the next twenty-four hours, nor did I need a crutch to endure the agony. The agony was gone. It was back in Utah. Now I wanted to be fully aware for the fun, entertainment, hard work, and joy of living in the cabin with the men.

  I asked, “When is this Santiago Slayer guy arriving?” He was a flamboyantly polite hitman who was currently acting in soaps. I’d seen a couple episodes on Town’s computer. Santiago played a suave hotel owner, always hitting on women.

  Crybaby said, “Well, the last train roof he jumped on out of Mexico City wound up going to the Yucatán instead of Nogales.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Slappy. “I heard that. He only realized it when coconuts bonked him in the head and woke him up.”

  “Oh!” I said, disappointed I wouldn’t meet him. “Then who is to take out Byron Riddlesberger?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Crybaby, munching on a pineapple chunk. “We’re in control. I gave your intel to Ford and they’re going to make a big raid. Take out that assclown Riddlesberger.”

  “And that scrotum Stomach,” I added. I knew we were talking about “burying” people, but damn. I couldn’t stop obsessing over what the Friends of Distinction did for a living. Being taken out by the Bare Bones seemed a small price to pay for the havoc they’d wrought. And that odd Darcy Bard fellow? I had a feeling he was telling the truth about a body in a septic tank. “I hope they don’t wait too long.”

  “It’s pretty imminent,” said Crybaby. “They decided to go ahead without Bobo Segrist.”

  I frowned. “Oh, is he still by the border harassing immigrants?”

  “No. The sheriff arrested him so he could get a motorcycle club endorsement, and Bobo’s stuck partying with the guy at the Lion’s Club in Nogales.”

  I harrumphed. “Well. I better go dry our washing.”

  Mickey Finn followed me to the laundry room where I got a giant basket of clean, damp clothes from the washing machine. Nowadays she w
alked while peering from side to side as though waiting for someone to jump out at her. But she was straightening out, standing taller. She seemed to be expressing pure love when she rolled in the grass or ran in the yard with the others. Her fur was filling in the bare spots, becoming lusher, like a proper Leonberger.

  I was standing a bit away from the house where I’d strung a clothesline between two pines, the clothes billowing and flapping, when Town approached. He knew better than to scare me, so he rustled some bushes and called out.

  “Hey beautiful!”

  As I was pinning a man’s T-shirt to the line, I craned my neck, grinning from ear to ear. How was it possible for one person to bring another such joy? Just the vision of his gorgeous thick, black hair shining in the sun, his lopsided grin, his built chest and “guns” as sweetbutts called men’s arms, Town always made me forget my chore. “Hey, handsome.” I quickly finished pinning the shirt so I could turn and embrace him, but he was quicker.

  “Don’t move.”

  I gasped as he approached me from behind. A month ago this predicament would’ve given me a heart attack, but I trusted Town. The warm slab of his body was plastered to my back as he unclipped two clothespins from the line. My willpower against this man just dragged around my feet like dropped undies. I leaned a little back into him, my hands falling to my sides.

  “I’ve been thinking about this,” he murmured as he dragged the clips up my belly under my T-shirt, exposing the shelf of my tits. “You have massive orgasms. I’m thinking if I deny you the pleasure, your climaxes will be even stronger.”

  “Oh, no!” I cried, smiling. “I don’t think I could bear them any stronger.”

  “Should we find out?”

  “Ah!” I yelped when he clipped a nipple through the thin fabric of my sports bra.

  His hand now freed, he walked his fingers like Mister Rogers down my abdomen. He distracted me from this journey by clipping the other clothespin over the other nipple. The mixture of pain and pleasure shot straight down to my clit, seemingly the destination for his meandering fingers.

  I didn’t protest. I was just sighing like a wind through the sails.

  “You blow my mind, my angel,” he whispered. He right hand gathered up the hem of my skirt while his left toyed with the pin clamped over my nipple. Every time he diddled with it, a straight shot of lust and some new, weird sort of thrilling spasm arrowed down my inner channel. The walls of my gash fluttered with this strange sensation when his fingers slid inside my undies and stroked the slick knob of my clit. I was learning the correct, modern terms for things. I gasped, my hands jerking up so I could clench onto his powerful forearm, maybe slow down the torture of my breasts. Or maybe not. I was highly conflicted about how I should feel.

  He continued, his words seeming to emanate from the ozone. “You’ve come through so much, and now you can open yourself up and trust me. I love you, my angel. I’ll protect you above all from now until the afterlife.”

  “I love you,” I murmured, thrusting my hips to encourage his hand.

  But he wasn’t falling for it. What sort of machinery had he used in the army that he knew how to simultaneously manipulate two such separate and distinct areas? He was lathering up my clit with a professional polish—or so I imagined, never having been given an orgasm by an actual man’s hand before. At the same time, his deft fingers jiggled the clothespin clamped on my nipple just so.

  The ecstasy built rapidly until I was on the very lip of the crescendo.

  And he pulled back.

  Unsnapping the clip, the intense darts of bliss to my button slowed. I was left hovering on the cliff, gasping.

  “Town!” I cried, banging my skull against his shoulder.

  “That’s right,” he whispered warmly, as though this was the best situation ever—for him, maybe. “Take it down, angel. Take it down a notch.”

  “Why?” I trilled, probably loud enough for the men back at the table to hear. Then that thought excited me. The sudden concept of orgasming in public made me grasp Town’s forearm and wring it like a chicken’s neck. “Finish me! Finish me off!”

  He chuckled. He sure enjoyed being the one in control! “Not so fast, little angel.” He swiped the wooden tip of the pin against my stiff nipple but didn’t clamp it. And his fingers now meandered over my clit, which seemed to expand, reaching for his touch. I shuddered my hips, but nothing helped. Town was in control and would brook no nonsense! Once again, I was at the mercy of a man!

  “Town! You’re driving me crazy, and not in a good way!”

  He nibbled on my earlobe. That supplanted the nipple touch, sort of. I jumped and gasped. “Don’t be in such a rush. Good things take time.”

  “No they don’t! Believe me! I’ve done this a thousand times!”

  “I’ll bet you have.” Showing mercy, Town replaced the clothespin, snorting hot breath in my ear, sending a barrage of icy chills down my back and arms, raising a shimmering of little bumps on my butt.

  I was so grateful I hissed, “Yes!” Then I realized this was what he wanted. Dominant men wanted you dependent on them. Oh, what the fuck. Who cares? I’m mush in his hands. Literally.

  He brought it up a step. His fingers worried my clitoris, forcing me to gasp, dance, and jerk, while he jiggled the pin. I slid down the front of his torso, clinging to his forearm. I grinned like a grinch as he bowed his chest to accommodate me. I knew it must’ve hurt his back standing like that, but I didn’t give an inch, and soon we were slipping onto the ground in a heap, his fingers doing their best work yet.

  The crisis was unexpected.

  It always came on me like that, on a sudden. Post haste I turned into a stiff candy cane, fingernails boring cuts into Town’s arm. He must’ve known because I caught my breath and held it, shimmying like a live wire. Contractions rolled down my inner channel, clutching at my female organs. It wasn’t just my vagina that came. It was my uterus, bladder, ovaries. Blissful muscles gripped and released me over and over and over.

  “Don’t stop,” I tried to say, but nothing came out.

  Town filled in for me. “That’s it, my angel. Don’t stop. Keep going. That’s right. Cap’n Spiro’s going to give you a good climax. God, you’re one sexy woman. You just ooze sex. Your big titties are just begging to be sucked on.”

  Oh no. And that’s just what he did!

  Slipping my boob out of my sports bra, he bent and bit that nipple between his teeth!

  Gosh, did I jump! I finally cried out. With a giant intake of breath, I yelled, “Stop!”

  He mumbled something, but my tit was in his mouth and both his hands were occupied. My vise-like fingers were able to detach his grip on the clothespin, and I threw the thing far, far away. When I scrambled onto my knees I was face to face with my lover, having succeeded in severing his being from mine. I panted, still coming, uterus fluttering in the throes of my peak.

  My eyeballs lolled in my skull as I shoved him flat onto the ground with the heel of my hand. “You . . . bastard.”

  And he was laughing! He was grinning like an impish boy, laughing at my predicament! He threaded his fingers behind his skull and held himself up so he could laugh at me! To top it all off, he released one hand and sucked on the finger.

  “Mm,” he said. “Delicious.”

  Furiously I undid his belt buckle. Even through the thick denim his long, thick penis pulsated. I’d never sucked on him, but I had plenty of experience at it, and I knew I could “deep throat” him any day of the week.

  Sure enough, as I released his big limb in my fist, he started sounding less arrogant. “Heaven,” he said, “are you sure about this? I don’t want you doing anything you don’t feel like.”

  “Oh, I feel like it, all right,” I stated, and swallowed him whole.

  His entire body stiffened as mine had. I yanked his jeans below his knees and gulped that beautiful penis. For the first time in my entire life, I wanted to. For the first time, I knew what other women felt when they wanted to
pleasure a man. Those few tiny spurts of jism told me he was primed, and for the first time, I guzzled it.

  It was warm, and salty, and tasted just like Town—my lover.

  Remembering that he was my lover spurred me on. I gripped his cock as I sucked, my thumb stroking the thick, meaty channel that runs the underside of a man’s member. My free hand massaged his pubic bone, the juicy layer of fat that narrowed into the great root of his penis. Occasionally, as he’d done to me, my thumb would sweep down and diddle his ballsac. This made him slap his palms flat onto the pine needles, grabbing huge handfuls of the aromatic stuff.

  His hips shuddered as mine had.

  When I started groaning, that’s about when Town was headed assuredly for climax. I knew that the moans vibrating deep in a man’s spine gave a guarantee of a swift orgasm.

  And, for the first time ever, I couldn’t wait to gobble down his jizz.

  I was having a new kind of climax myself now, eyeballing his gorgeous pectorals, toned from years of lifting weights. He clutched the soil like some kind of buff he-man, every tendon and ligament standing out in sharp relief. When I took a split second break to slobber on my index finger, it was Town’s turn to cry out hoarsely.

  “Don’t stop!”

  I quickly swallowed his length again. With the addition of my slimy finger sliding up his hole, my sexy gold-hearted hunk was set to blast his load against my tonsils.

  Until Linus and Mickey Finn decided to join in the rumble.

  They flung themselves at us. I never heard or saw them coming. I looked up in time to see Linus’ back legs skating across the sinewy plane of Town’s abdominals. The two rollicking dogs immediately began their push to circle back and again attack us with their fur and noses.

  I don’t think they hurt Town—there were later no scratches across his beautiful abs—but I immediately withdrew my hands and mouth from his person and sat bolt upright, angling my torso so I would catch the brunt of the fluffy assault. It was just instinct. Town was vulnerable, and it was my job to protect the meek.

  We saw them coming this time. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Town shouted.