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No more. I’m done. No more bars, no more fights, no more messing around with women whose names I can’t remember. No more.
He promised whatever god might still be listening to him—for the hundredth time.
Riker pulled open the medicine cabinet drawer and rifled through the cheap makeup, caked over tubes of toothpaste, and crumbled tissues until he found a bunch of over the counter drugs. He swallowed a half dozen ibuprofen and fought another wave of nausea as he dipped his head and drank from the faucet.
Then Riker staggered back across the hall and stood in the doorway for a moment looking at the scene before him. The woman who brought him home last night had turned over in her sleep and her skirt had risen. She was now splayed out with her legs parted and everything showing. Last night she had looked hot with her short denim skirt and big tits spilling over the top of a sexy black bustier.
But in the light of day, it was a whole different matter—she looked older than he initially thought. The tight lines around her mouth screamed disappointment at life and her face had the ravished look of an opioid addict. The woman was skinny to an unhealthy degree and the teeth that weren’t missing were rotted. To Riker’s profound disgust, thin razor marks ran across the tops of her thighs. He had just spent the night with a self-mutilating, decrepit junkie. Thank Christ he had passed out before he could fuck her.
Riker tagged his wallet and keys off the table and stumbled out into a dim hallway that smelled of shit, puke and despair.
About an hour later, Riker was back in his room in the club house doing damage control. After he washed the stink off in a steaming hot shower, he did a computer search of local and state police reports from just over the state line. There was nothing reported about a busted- up bar. Riker’s best guess was that the owner of the bar was either behind in his insurance payments or had a couple of strikes against him for serving under-aged. Whatever it was that stopped him from reporting the incident definitely worked in Riker’s favor.
Riker leaned against the wall of the garage and took a long pull on a cold beer as he watched the scene in front of him unfold. He shook his head and grinned.
Those two.
Reno and Claire were nuts.
Really… certifiably… crazy.
They fought like cats and dogs in heat.
Reno with his Irish temper and Claire…now she was a trip and a half. All sweetness and light, sugar wouldn’t melt in her mouth, she was that nice. Until her man got her riled…then watch out. She gave as good as she got and sometimes better.
Riker grinned deep and drew hard on his smoke as he watched Claire and Reno go out of their way to antagonize, tease and one up the other one. While their sparring words were antagonistic —she leaned and taunted, he deflected and jabbed, their eyes were telling a whole different story. The want in his, the invitation in hers…. damn. Those two were having sex right in front of him without even realizing it. But it was more than that. It was that other something. It was the way that Reno touched his woman, and the way that Claire responded to that touch.
The way that it should be.
And Riker knew that it wasn’t just Claire and Reno who had been lucky enough to have found that. Riker’s parents had loved and laughed and lived and fought together happily for forty years before his dad died. All his brothers and sisters were married with kids. And all of them were happier than a bunch of pigs in mud.
But somehow, that kind of happiness had escaped Riker. He knew that there were jokes around the clubhouse, and even amongst his own family, about his bedroom having a revolving door. Riker knew that they all thought that he didn’t get what it took to make a deep commitment.
He knew that they all thought that he didn’t understand the meaning of true love.
But they were wrong.
They were all wrong.
It wasn’t that Riker didn’t understand it, it was just that he couldn’t find it.
It was a couple of days later that Riker found himself knocking on the carved oak door of Prosper Worthington’s home.
Riker had been summoned to Prosper’s house, which every brother knows is a very big deal. In the five years he had been in the club, Riker had known only a handful of the brothers who had been called to the house and none of them ever talked about why.
Aside from that bar fight, Riker had been on his very best behavior since theincidentat the clubhouse. The night when he had invited Valentina Abruzzi and Gia Bonzini to a party at the compound was now legendary. The crowds, the smoke, the bright lights had triggered a PTSD episode in Valentina that the boys still talked about.
Since then, Riker had done his best to be a model club member. He had even backed off from dipping into the club pussy pool for a while. Over the years with the club, Riker had worked hard at proving himself to be a good earner, a loyal brother, and a solid member of the MC. In truth, he felt bad for what went down that night. He totally blamed himself for what had happened to Valentina. And he wasn’t real happy about how things had ended with Gia either. It was just all around bad mojo.
It had been a major fuck-up bringing Gianni’s kin on the compound, no doubt. And Riker had paid for that bad decision with a good old fashion beat down from the boss. While Riker had suffered a couple of busted ribs and a knee to the groin that made every man in the meeting room grimace and clutch their own nut sac, when it was done, it was done. Prosper had made it clear that he had considered the matter over, so Riker had no idea why he had been summoned now.
Prosper answered the door on the second knock. With a nod of greeting, he led the way into the living room. It was a large room with high windows covered in bullet proof glass. The living space was modern and upscale. In the center of the room was an enormous glassed- in gas fireplace whose flames shot out of a bed of black granite rock. A large leather couch and two recliners sat in front of a 75-inch 4KHD television set. The lighting was reset into the tray ceiling and there was an ebony lacquered buffet table sitting regally against the north facing wall.
There was an awkward moment of silence for Riker when Prosper gave him a look of contemplation, as if sizing him up.
Riker cleared his throat and got nervous all over again.What the hell was going on?
“You want something to drink?” Prosper asked him.
