TRIGGER: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel Read online

  Well, I get it, and I’ll let you go. Since that’s what you want.

  For what it’s worth, I still love you.

  But I’m sure I’ll get over that. Someday.

  • - Cass

  Cass –

  You’re right. You’ll get over me. You better. You deserve a good life, and I can’t give you one. Don’t reply to this. You won’t get a reply back.

  We’re both moving on. And you’re moving forward.

  • - Trigger

  End of Part 1.

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  Flip the page to start Part 2.

  Part Two:

  Ten Years Later

  Trigger

  “You sure you’re okay with this?” Reign asked, squinting at me across the desk in his office. I nodded, my hands behind my head.

  “Whatever you need bud,” I said. “Besides, what’s good for you is good for me, ain’t it?”

  “That’s the idea,” Reign said with a smile. “You ever done anything like this before, though? Thrown a fight? Ain’t as easy as it looks.”

  I shrugged.

  “Well, no, I never thrown a fight before, but I sure as hell have lost my share,” I said. “Got the scars to prove it, too.”

  “I’ll bet,” Reign said, now bringing his hands to his chin and looking at me thoughtfully. “To be right honest, I don’t know a damn thing about it, either. You’re our champ, never had fighting in our wheelhouse before. I gotta see…why don’t you go talk to Knicker? He used to fight before. Too old now, but he did a lot of basement rings and shit. He might know.”

  I cringed inwardly. I liked Knicker just fine – but I didn’t like having to ask anyone for help with anything. Much happier just to look it up online, or wing it when the time came. But I realized this wasn’t something that I should just wing – winning fights was easy, losing them on purpose? That could be hella hard. You couldn’t be too obvious about it or it would blow the whole deal.

  “Anyway, you got a month to figure out how to do it,” Reign said, looking down at his desk and shuffling some papers. He looked like a damn manager at a restaurant, except for his cut and tattoos and the scars on his own fists, of course. I thought I’d go out of my damn mind in his position. I’m all action, too dumb for crunching numbers and making deals. I’m your hired gun, your fists in the ring, the guy who’ll run headfirst into the firefight. Leave the paper pushing for the smart guys and gimme a shot, a bump, and a guy who needs a good beating.

  “Right-O, boss,” I said, rapping my knuckles against the desk as I stood up and made for the door. Just as I pushed it open, Gabriella appeared, looking haggard and gently bouncing her and Reign’s little boy, who was fussing up a storm. I gave her my best good-guy smile and pinched the kid’s cheek, but beat it pretty fast after that. Another thing I didn’t have any interest in: wives and kids. Gave me the shivers just thinking about it.

  I had a sweet little piece waiting for me in my room behind the motel. Probably still sleeping; it was early yet, my little meeting with Reign having started at seven, before Endo even opened up the kitchen or Honey came around to look at last night’s take. The strong desert sunlight came in bleary through the dusty windows. Sparkling, lazy dust motes danced in the air, and I had to remind myself it was all just dead flesh and sand. I could get all sappy in dim rooms like this sometimes. Reminded me of a time I’d gone to great lengths to forget. Another morning…

  But that had been ten years ago. Ten long years, most spent in minimum security lock-up at Riker’s Island. I’d been transferred to Utah – of all places – my last two years, due to overcrowding. I’d been offered legal assistance fighting the transfer; I was a good prisoner, for the most part, did what was told, and I guess they thought it wouldn’t be fair to my friends and family if they couldn’t visit me anymore.

  Little did they know, I had no friends and no family and the transfer was an answer to all my prayers. New York was not kind to anyone, least of all ex-cons with no money and nowhere to go. And I didn’t underestimate the lingering bad blood that prowled the streets of Brooklyn, looking for revenge for Steel’s death.

  Or, more accurately, his murder.

  Funny thing about prison. You can get away with shit you don’t think you should be able to get away with – as long as the shit you’re doing makes the guards happy. I was fucked from the moment I entered that shithole. I couldn’t rightly join up with the Blacks or the Latinos or the Asians, and the Whites? I never seen a worse group of skinheads, hillbillies, and regular old jackasses. My type of guy – bikers – weren’t too keen on me, either. My reputation had preceded me, it seemed. So I was alone, for the most part, which made me an easy target.

  Or, at least, it made me seem like an easy target.

  But wouldn’t you know it – turns out, I was a damn good fighter. Or, at least, a fast learning. I got my ass handed to me more times than I care to remember that first year. The second year, though, I started coming out on top once in a while. By the time I’d been in for five years, I wasn’t someone you wanted to mess with, and the only guys who tried to jump me were fresh meat who didn’t know better.

  I sure as hell wasn’t making any friends, but I was keeping my nose unbroken and my asshole virgin. That sounds like a joke, but it’s not. Some guys get in touch with their feminine side, you could say. Some are forced to get in touch with their feminine side. Me? I was kicking and screaming and busting heads every time anyone looked at me like I was edible.

  You’d think all that fighting would end up with me getting sent to max, or having extra years tacked on. But guards like a good cage match as much as any of your pay-per-view subscribers, and somehow a few of them took a shine to me. I understand it was a betting matter at one point or another. Made me kinda sick, you know, that these fucks who were supposed to keep us from getting knocked around so much our brains turned to mush were actually having fun watching us grind each other into the ground.

  Then again, I managed to get off early on good behavior. And I had a whole new set of marketable life skills. So who am I to complain?

  I’d come to the Black Smokes by way of a fellow inmate in Utah, who recommended me to talk to a man named Reign in a place called Ditcher’s Valley. All you could see of Utah from the exercise yard was wide stretching desert. Hot and hazy even in mid-winter. When I got out, I don’t know what I expected. Maybe I expected the earth to unfold for me, freedom to come in the sight of rolling, lush mountains.

  But it was all the same. Every highway I went down, all the same. I could have gone back to New York, I guess. Or further West, to California. But to be frank, I was tired, when I got out, and the idea of travelling anywhere made my head hurt.

  So I packed up what little I owned and hitched out to the Valley. It was easy to find headquarters; it was a one-horse town if I ever saw one. And just like the fellow told me, I found a sympathetic ear in Honey. She was hard-hearted and looked at me through slitted eyes, sure, but at the end of the day she gave me a room. And at the end of the week, she let me sweep up after the bar closed down. And when Reign finally saw me, saw the signs of fighting etched on my hands and face like flags, he took an interest.

  “We don’t take in many new members,” he’d said. “And you’ll sure have to prove your loyalty. That could take a while. But to be honest, I’m looking for someone who can fight. I got a guy down in Reno who does underground boxing. Real dirty shit. Looks like you might have some experience in that.”

  A year later, I’d won enough fights and done enough grunt work to gain that trust. It felt strange – after all those years – to fall right back into the same life that had led to my incarceration in the first place. But things worked differently in the Black Smokes. Reign and his right-hand man, Endo, and even Ho
ney, were smart as whips, all of them. Smarter than Steel by a country mile, for sure. They stayed away from the kind of shit that gets you real time, kept their business as legit as possible. It was more like a family than a club, really.

  With only about a hundred members, the club ran things small but tight. And they were known, in a good way. In the sort of way that made people think twice about messing with them, despite their small numbers. Having a patch with the Black Smokes was like being member of a VIP club. And out there in the desert, there wasn’t much competition for the good runs; they mostly dealt in hustling immigrants across the border, security for those who needed it, shit that kinda made you feel good doing it.

  The strangest thing was trying my damndest never to mention my life in Brooklyn. I didn’t figure my membership was irrevocable – and if there was one thing that could get you kicked out of a good club, it’d be a history of killing your club President. And lying about it. But things worked differently in the Black Smokes. They didn’t have anything to do with the old New York clubs, probably wouldn’t even have known what I was talking about if I tried to tell them who I used to work for.

  Which was all right with me, trust me. Last thing on earth I wanted to do was relive any of that. I was happy getting by with the Black Smokes; they were good guys, they took me for who I was, never tried to make me do shit I didn’t want to do, or act like they were better than people. It was a far cry from listening to Steel wax poetic about worthless immigrants, or the racism that pervaded every inch of prison. These, I felt, might really be my people.

  And the seemingly endless stream of pretty little girls who were willing to hop into your bed at the drop of a hat (or helmet)? One hell of a perk.

  I thought of this as I left the dusty bar behind; Endo was just coming across the long parking lot, looking a bit worse for the wear. His woman was about to pop one out, too, and he had been getting in all the late nights at the bar he could before getting tied down to a crib. Somehow, though, he was still insufferably excited about the little rugrat-to-be. He and Reign said shit like, “it’s different when you love ‘em,” like I didn’t know what love was…

  Well, hell, did I? I’d only ever had Cass, and we’d just been kids. Barely even old enough to pass for 21 at the gas station (and sure as hell not legally allowed to buy any of that booze). What could we have known about love?

  All I knew was that there was a tiny, sore spot in my heart that ached when I thought of her. And those letters. I never could bring myself to throw those letters away. As though keeping them meant she might still be out there, might still have a little love for me in that big heart of hers. But she was probably happy, hitched to some investment banker or stock broker, maybe with a few kids of her own, or living with her sister in Chicago…

  I had to push the fantasy from my head as I unlocked the door to my apartment. This girl was a snorer. I could hear her from the hallway. Though, to be fair, that wasn’t saying much; my apartment was tiny, even by New York standards. I kind of liked it that way. Spend eight years in lock up, you get used to living tiny. I didn’t own much in the way of material goods, didn’t need much space. Felt almost homey, living in a cage.

  I lingered for a moment in the doorway to the bedroom, watching the covers rise and fall. Strands of auburn hair lay across my pillow, barely poking out of the top of the blanket. I’d jacked the AC up to combat the heat. I tried to remember anything about the girl; I knew her name, she’d said, was Bella. Or Belle. Or Beau. Or something southern like that. She liked Long Island Iced Teas. I’d only had to buy her one before she’d dragged me back to the bathroom and started unzipping me.

  I felt a little bad. She surely thought – or at least hoped – that I might ask her to stick around, might be her boyfriend or some shit. But I knew that was never gonna happen, and I think at some level, so did she. They all did, never raised too much fuss when you gave them a kiss and rushed them out the door so you could deal with your hangover. Barely ever even asked for a number.

  Crossing the room, I wasn’t too keen on getting back into bed. Once I’m up, I’m up. Maybe I’ll make some breakfast, I thought vaguely, knowing I’d do no such thing. If you were trying to give a girl like this the wrong idea, there was no better way to do it than with pancakes and screwdrivers. I guess my presence in the room woke her up even before I sat down on the mattress, because the covers stirred and two skinny hands emerged from the top, stretching out, accompanied by a muffled squeak. Cute, I thought.

  “Morning, sunshine,” I said, pulling back the covers. The redhead laughed and tried to pull them back up.

  “Too early,” she mumbled, eyes shut tight. Her face was just fine, her smudged make-up giving her that smoky look all the girls die to get. But those thoughts of Cass that morning only made me think she’d look better without gunk all over her face. In fact, as I lowered myself to sit beside her, I couldn’t imagine letting her give me a repeat performance, though it’d been the one thing I looked forward to when I woke up that morning.

  “Early bird gets the worm,” I said, hoping I could inspire myself to action. I snaked a hand beneath the covers and found her body, warm and soft, naked. She moaned, still covered with the blanket, as my fingers found her breasts and teased one nipple slightly.

  “You’re nasty,” she said, finally releasing her grip on the comforter and sliding it down to reveal herself. She was thin, too thin for my liking, but she had a magnificent rack. As I dipped my head down, taking one nipple in my mouth while moving my hand to tease the other, I tried to lose myself in her scent, in her uniqueness, tried to chase those thoughts of Cass away.

  The girl’s body writhed under my mouth, her hands falling to my hair and raking across my scalp. I eyed her from my lower vantage point; her lips were pursed together tight, her neck craned backwards. I let my free hand travel downwards; she was clean shaven, and her body jerked violently as my finger dipped between her folds and across her clit.

  “Trigger,” she moaned, my name candy from her lips, and I felt my cock stirring slightly. Only slightly, though. This was going to require the big guns, if I was going to perform and successfully rid my mind of painful memories.

  I kissed down her torso, long and lean, lingering over her belly button until she giggled. Lower still, I let my tongue slip between her lips, my finger dropping to slip into her wetness. She moaned again, her hands buried in my hair, and her face lifted to look down at me, lips parted, eyes squinted in an expression that could have been pain.

  My tongue rolled over her clit, which almost throbbed in my mouth, as I slipped a second finger into her wet pussy. She was ready for me, impossibly wet, her thighs first spreading then closing around my neck as her body shuddered. I hummed slightly and heard her coo in appreciation, then flicked upwards sharply, causing her hips to jump.

  “You’re so fucking good,” she cried out as her fingers clung more desperately to my scalp. My fingers inside her curled, pulling forward slightly, looking for that place inside her that would drive her over the edge. Nothing was surer to get me ready to fuck than feeling a woman’s climax, her juices spilling over my fingers.

  When, finally, I found the soft space inside her that I knew to be her G-spot, I lowered my teeth slightly so that they just grazed her clit and pressed down hard. She shot straight up in bed, her thighs tightening to a death grip around my neck, and cried out loud enough to wake the dead.

  All of a sudden, my hand was drenched, her pussy contracting around my fingers as I pulsed them inside her once more, her clit rigid and nearly buzzing with pleasure as I lapped at it, sucking it between my lips, letting her body shudder and buck under my touch.

  “Oh, God, Trigger, fuck,” she moaned as she fell back against the sheets, sweat gleaming now on her chest, breasts heaving with labored breath. I smiled as I pulled away, but it was a forced smile; somehow, my cock was still stubbornly limp, and even when I pulled my fingers away and felt her wetness trickling down my palm, I couldn’t su
mmon the desire needed to properly fuck her. God dammit Cass, I thought, crawling up to join the buxom girl laying on the bed. After all these years…

  Before my head even hit the pillow, I could feel the girl’s hands tugging desperately at the zipper of my pants. Her hand, dry and somewhat clammy, closed around my limp cock, and she looked up at me with a sort of desperate smile.

  “You should get a medal or something,” she murmured, her hand pumping lightly. I could feel my blood pumping, but the more I watched her overly-made-up eyes, staring up at me expectantly, the more I felt like there was nothing in the world I wanted less than to see her head bobbing up and down on my cock. That would surely be the next step; but what good would it do? Even if the poor thing did manage to get me hard, did manage to make me come, what would the point be? I just wasn’t feeling it. Gingerly, I laid my hand over hers and pulled it away.

  “Sorry, baby, just ain’t into it this morning,” I said. Her smile immediately folded into a deep frown, a wrinkle appearing between her brows.