His to Protect: Midnight Riders MC Page 3

  She was my biggest fan, coming to the gigs I managed to book in local coffee shops and bars. Even though she wasn’t old enough to drink, I would sneak her in with me, and she would cheer her head off after every song. She became my mascot, almost. People expected to see the pretty little blonde girl with the big blue eyes and a huge smile when they came to see me play. I was never the best, but she always cheered as though I was.

  How could I not love her? How could I not want to bring her home safe?

  What could have happened to her? Had she seen something she wasn’t supposed to see? Maybe the club was mixed up in something dangerous, something nobody could know about. In my mind, I saw a backroom meeting—maybe in the very room Cole had dragged me into. The door was open a crack. Sara had innocently walked up to the door, overhearing what was happening inside. She had gasped, or made some other noise, cluing the guys in on her presence. They’d needed to get rid of her before she told anybody what she’d heard. I closed my eyes, whimpering.

  I couldn’t keep torturing myself like this. These scenarios were only breaking my heart. I’d been having them more and more often lately. Now that I’d gotten a first-hand look at the inside of that awful bar, the visions would be even more realistic. Now, when I lay awake at night imagining what had happened to Sara, I’d be able to smell the smoke and the spilled liquor. I would see the tables and chairs, the photos on the walls of different motorcycles. My torture would be that much more vivid.

  I had to put a stop to this, either by finding Sara soon or by finding out exactly what had led to her disappearance. Then, if I found that she was dead, I could, at least, know what I was in for as I searched for her body.

  I stared at the front door to the bar. The music and rowdiness hadn’t died down a bit in the time since I’d left—if anything, it was louder. What the hell did they have to be so happy about? If I was a criminal, possibly a murderer, would I be living it up in some seedy roadhouse? It was like they didn’t have consciences.

  I sat back, my eyes on the door. Waiting for Cole to show his face again. Planning my next steps. I had to find some way to get through to him, to show him how important it was to me that I find my sister. If he had a shred of humanity left in him, he’d have no choice but to open up and at least give me some measure of peace.

  This was what I told myself. I needed something to believe in.

  He had struck me as hard, callous. Maybe that was the front he put up in front of the club members. Maybe he was a nice person in private.

  I needed to believe that, too.

  Chapter 4

  Cole

  She would be back. There was no way she could react the way she had and not come back. If not for more of me, then for more information. As sexy as she was, I hoped I never saw her again. It could only mean trouble.

  The club had a way of dealing with trouble. Even though I didn’t know this girl I didn’t want it to come to that. I thought back and could remember the people we’d punished or otherwise silenced over the years. There had been a lot of them. Too many to count. I’d been there for some of them. It wasn’t pretty. I didn’t want her to go through the same thing.

  I couldn’t remember her sister very well, but I hoped somebody hadn’t decided she was trouble. It would be a shame for such a pretty girl to go out like that.

  I got myself together in the back room before going back out to the bar. As soon as they saw me in the doorway, my guys cheered and stomped. I held up my hands, pretending to feel modest, making them cheer louder. I wasn’t sure what they thought we’d done, but they probably thought I fucked her, or at least made her suck me off. I figured I’d let them think what they wanted. It only added to my legend.

  Most of what people said about me was true. My favorite hobby was sex, end of story. When I saw a woman I wanted, I took her. I’d fucked every woman in the bar that night at one time or another, sometimes two at the same time. I rode my bike hard and my women harder, and just about as often. It was who I was, and I liked myself the way I was. The club was the perfect place for me to be myself. These guys thought it was something to be proud of.

  Rusty was already pouring a round of drinks by the time I walked up to the bar. I took a glass, raising it to the rest of the guys. They all came to get one of their own—there were a dozen guys there, patches and prospects. I looked out over them. They were my guys. I was their leader. It was a good feeling a moments like this.

  “To the meanest son of a bitch in town, and the Midnight Riders!” The guys cheered Rusty’s toast before tossing back their liquor. A few of them patted me on the back. We laughed over how I’d shut the little bitch down. I stayed quiet when they asked me what I did to her. They had imaginations. And my image wouldn’t be helped if I admitted I hadn’t done anything worse than kissing her and grabbing her ass. They might have thought I was losing my touch.

  Even when we were all laughing, I couldn’t stop thinking about the missing girl. Sara, her name was. I remembered her better than I’d let on. She looked just like the girl who came in looking for her, except younger. She was dating Skull…at least, she was when I last saw her.

  Skull was my best friend. We met on the first day of grade school. Both of us were from shitty homes, with parents who didn’t care about us. We were each other’s family. I would ride into hell for him, and I knew he would for me.

  We were like brothers, and we had shared everything over the years. Now he was my vice president and second-in-command. Our bond was tighter than anything else in my life. There was no way I would betray him, even when I knew he was wrong. Most of the time I could convince him to change his mind before he got into serious trouble, and he did the same thing for me when I lost my temper.

  Now I heard that Sara had vanished. I’d noticed she wasn’t showing her face around here, but I thought she and Skull had broken up. She wasn’t a part of the club. She just hung out here because she was dating Skull. Some of the girls, like most of the ones there that night, were permanent fixtures at the bar and the clubhouse. They served us, serviced us. Anything to be part of the action. It was sad when you took a minute to think about it.

  Ever since that last day I saw Sara, when I rode over to Skull’s and saw her leaving, I knew there was a problem. She had looked like she’d been crying, which I hated to see a woman do. At first, I had wanted to ignore her—it was none of my business if the two of them were having trouble. Personal shit was personal, even though Skull was my closest friend. But she had seen me and walked over to the bike. She was a sweet girl. I remembered how she’d tried to smile even though she’d looked like shit. They had been fighting. It was obvious. But she had tried as hard as she could to pretend everything was okay. We’d stood in front of the house talking for a few minutes. I guessed that was where these so-called witnesses were getting their stories. They needed to mind their own business.

  Sara wasn’t the first girl who had trouble with Skull over the years. I remembered not being surprised at the time that she’d looked so upset. Just another one of his fuck-ups, I had thought. Skull never had a lot of luck with women. When we were kids, like in high school, he used to go through girlfriends almost as fast as I did. Only I didn’t bother calling them my girlfriends. I’d fuck ’em and chuck ’em. Skull actually tried to date women, for real. But it never went well.

  He would blame the girl every time it went south. She was crazy. She wanted too much from him. She was jealous or controlling. She was a prude.

  But after a little while, it hit me: it couldn’t always be the other person’s fault. By the time we were seventeen and he’d gone through something like three dozen girlfriends, I figured the problem was with him. He was the only constant in all of these relationships where things had gone to hell for one reason or another. I couldn’t tell him how I felt about it, though. Guys didn’t talk about things like that, especially not guys like us. It would be weird. Besides, he wouldn’t have listened to me.

  So it didn’t surprise me wh
en I saw how hurt Sara looked. Not physically hurt—I wouldn’t let Skull get away with that, friend or no friend. I had no time for guys who hit women. It wasn’t fair to them when they couldn’t defend themselves. Sara was just as tiny as her sister, maybe smaller. Five feet three, at the most. I’d have kicked the shit out of Skull if it looked like he was beating her.

  When she stopped coming around, I told myself it was for the best—for her, anyway. Skull wasn’t the kind of guy who should be permanently fixed up with a woman. I’d never understood why he kept trying to go for a relationship. Me, I just wanted a good time. It would have been smart if he would come around and start thinking the way I did.

  I thought Sara had left him, and I’d pushed her out of my head. She was hardly there, anyway. It wasn’t hard. But then Skull started falling apart. He was still falling apart now.

  I had to wonder, sitting at the bar with the guys, if he hadn’t done something to her. Maybe he got mad and lost his mind for a minute. It happened all the time. Crimes of passion or whatever they were called. But at the end of the day, it wasn’t my problem. I couldn’t get involved. If he did hurt her or even kill her, it wouldn’t look good to the cops if I was involved somehow. And if Skull did kill her, and if he admitted it to me, I’d be pulled in somehow.

  Just then, Skull walked in. He’d been MIA lately, showing up now and then. And when he did, he looked like shit. Just like he did right now. He was a mess. Unshaven, dark circles under his eyes. His clothes looked like he’d been wearing them for days. It didn’t take a genius to see something was wrong. But even though he’d been getting worse and worse since Sara left, he wouldn’t admit what was happening. At first, I had assumed he was upset over their breakup and taking it a little harder than he usually did. Now that the sister had come in looking for her, I was having second thoughts.

  “Hey, man,” he grumbled, sliding onto a stool next to me. Rusty poured him a drink. I watched as he threw it back. He signaled for more.

  “Hey, yourself. Where you been? Could have used you earlier today. A bunch of the guys went on a run, almost fucked it up.”

  “How?”

  “They almost got the order wrong. You’re always the one who keeps an eye out for shit like that. What happened?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You should have been here to make sure it didn’t. That could have cost us a lot.” I was trying to get through to him, even to get a reaction other than indifference. It was like talking to a wall.

  “I’m sorry, okay? I’ve had a lot of shit going on.” He stayed quiet and stared into his glass.

  “Why don’t you try telling me about your shit? Maybe I can help.”

  “You can’t help me,” he mumbled so quietly I almost didn’t hear him over the music and laughter around us.

  “Since when? Listen to me,” I looked around to make sure nobody was listening, “I need you right now. We’re a team. If you fuck up, it looks bad for both of us.”

  “I won’t do it again. Okay?” He looked at me, and I could have sworn I was looking at a stranger. There was no friendship. He looked hard and cold. For a minute, I almost wondered if he was working with another club against me. No, that was impossible. I’d known him my whole life.

  He got up to sit near the stage, where two of our girls were dancing. I watched him. What was happening to us? The last thing I needed was to look weak in front of these guys. I made it a point to smile like everything was okay. There were eyes watching me closely, everywhere. I hated to have a paranoid thought like that, but it was true. I couldn’t get away from the feeling that I was being watched all the time for the first sign of weakness so somebody else could jump into my seat.

  Skull and I had been part of the club for most of our lives. Neither of us had family ties, and we needed to feel like we belonged somewhere. And the club just seemed so cool. It still did. I still loved it. It was the only place I’d ever felt like I fit in. I didn’t fit in at school. My teachers hated me, the kids called me white trash. Skull was the only person I had in those days. Then we found the club. We found a family.

  Only now that I was at the head, life was a lot more complicated. Why did I ever want to be in control? The idea of being president of the club was exciting on the outside. Being in power, keeping us strong, leading us to the future. If I knew then what I knew now…I shook my head at myself, laughing. In those days, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. When Nails made it known to the rest of the club that he wanted me to take his place, I was on top of the world. What a stupid, naïve kid I was back then.

  These were my friends all around me. I sat down at one of the tables, and right away the girl who had been on my lap when that little blonde first came in sat back down. She was giggling, rubbing herself on me. I could have this every night of my life, and it was a great feeling. Only I wondered if it was real. Back before I was president, I didn’t have to ask myself if the girl actually wanted to be with me because she wanted to or because she wanted to be with the head of the club. I didn’t ask myself if the guys around me were laughing at my joke because they thought it was funny or because they thought they had to. And I never had to worry about who was trying to get me out of power.

  That was the worst, and it was why I couldn’t let Skull be the weak link. I knew there had to be at least one or two members who wanted to see me get knocked down so they could take my place. I had to show them I was strong, that the club was strong. Screw-ups like this morning couldn’t happen again.

  That was why I couldn’t have anything to do with Sara’s disappearance. That was all we would need, to have the cops look at us more closely. We had a sort of unspoken agreement with the police in this town. As long as we weren’t burning shit down or causing too much trouble for the people who lived there, we were left mostly on our own.

  If that little blonde, whose name I wished I’d gotten, didn’t stop poking her nose in where it didn’t belong, we could all be in a lot of trouble. The police would come around, start asking questions. They might find out about club business, and we’d all end up in jail. The rest of the club would kick me out of my seat for sure. While I wasn’t as thrilled to be president as I used to think I would be, I didn’t want to lose my role, either.

  There was Skull, acting like nothing was wrong. Drinking harder than I’d ever seen, laughing louder than he usually did. Was I covering up for him by ignoring what might have happened to that girl? She was only eighteen. Practically a kid. Her sister obviously cared a lot about what had happened to make her vanish. It didn’t matter, though. I had to think about the club. I just hoped my best friend and second-in-command hadn’t done something that could get us all in big trouble.

  “You okay, baby?” The girl on my lap was rubbing up on me, trying to get me off. I nodded my head. I had been too distracted to notice what she was doing.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s been a long day.” She looked disappointed. Why not? I fucked her before. She knew how good it was and wanted more. They all wanted more. I ran my hand over her hair and remembered how pretty that blonde’s hair was. This girl’s hair was rough and dry, like she used too much product in it.

  “I’m going home,” I said to the guys.

  “Gotta rest up after all that action,” one of them said. The rest laughed hard.

  I let them believe what they wanted while I finished my drink and walked out the door. All of a sudden, I needed a little peace and quiet.

  Chapter 5

  Alena

  By the time the front door swung open, I’d dozed off a bit. My plan had been to sit in the parking lot, waiting Cole out. Only he had taken a while. I’d been so tired after all that emotion, and bored half to death. Eventually, I fell into a light slumber.

  In my almost-dream, while I was floating between being awake and being fully asleep, I replayed, ad nauseam, the confrontation between Cole and me. At first, I’d been scared half witless. Then I’d been so turned on I didn’t know what to
do with myself. When he kissed me, I couldn’t keep struggling. Every bit of my body wanted to give into him. It felt right. Somehow, I felt like it was what I was supposed to do. I had responded to him so strongly, my nipples tightening so hard they hurt, a rush of warmth spreading between my legs. I remembered how it felt, how much I had wanted to give control over to him and let him do whatever he wanted to with my body. I knew he could make me scream if he tried.

  I jumped, startled by the sound of the screen door slamming shut. I shook myself, the last bits of my fantasy fading away. There he was, leaving the bar. I knew that massive build, the cocky walk, even when he didn’t think anyone was watching him.

  Hatred boiled in my veins. What right did a nasty, evil person like him have to walk around free when a good, sweet girl like my sister was…wherever she was? He could come and go as he pleased, have a drink at the bar, get his bulge rubbed while he watched a girl dance for him, then hop on his bike and go to the next place. Wherever he wanted to be, he could be.