Hulk’s Troublemaker (Pagan Souls of Cherokee MC #7)

Chapter 1

Another night at Soul’s Striptease, SS, my club’s strip joint.

Yeah, it was cliché that bikers owned a strip joint, but that was as far as the stereotype went.

If people came here thinking we forced women to dance for us, sell drugs, or prostitute themselves, they were in for a rude awakening.

And usually that awakening happened with fists driving the point home.

I lost count of how many times in a month some dumbass came in and tried to get loud and obnoxious with the staff. Or they tried to touch the waitresses, bartenders, or dancers. Or the best was when they approached one of our people to ask for drugs or sex with someone.

In truth, managing Soul’s Striptease for my club was an ideal job for me.

It wasn’t because I loved to see women get mostly naked.

I’d long ago become immune to any of the dancers, causing me to get sprung over their bodies.

Probably because I saw them as sisters. Women I needed to protect, not fuck.

That’s not to say no one had tried to entice me.

They had many times, but I didn’t mess with our people.

Employees were strictly off the menu for casual sex.

It wasn’t an official bylaw, but it was an unspoken agreement.

Now, if we met an employee who we wanted to do more than have as a fuck toy, then that changed things.

However, none of them had ever made me want that.

Sure, I was a healthy, horny man on the cusp of forty next year.

I had sex, and it was often, or it had been.

When I wanted to get laid, I stuck to the hang-around women who came to our clubhouse to party with us.

We used to have club bunnies, but we voted a while ago to let them go.

With so many of us beginning to settle down and have families, there was no longer a need to keep women we half supported to be exclusively there to have sex with us.

Plus, it lessened the unease the old ladies felt seeing women their old men had fucked.

It wasn’t like we didn’t have enough candidates between the hang arounds and even women out in town who we might meet at our bar, Pagan’s Watering Hole, or even at the damn grocery store.

There was no shortage of women who wanted to be with bikers.

They loved the outlaw vibe, the tats, and the supposedly wild lifestyle we led.

For many, it was taboo and therefore attractive to be able to say they slept with a biker.

What made working at SS ideal for me was that I was the MC’s enforcer.

I was there to ensure that everything went smoothly and that everyone in the club, as well as anyone associated with it, including our businesses and employees, was protected.

With the kind of jackasses we got in SS, I got to feed my enforcer side way more than I would at any of our other businesses, or even in general.

The days of us being an outlaw MC, always finding trouble, and being in danger, were gone.

We were a legit club, or mostly legit. We still took out the trash and issued warnings when we deemed them necessary.

While all the club brothers had a hand in that, it was still my main job.

I was the one who consistently got his hands dirty.

Anyone hearing that would automatically think I was a sadist who got off on inflicting pain and suffering on others.

That was partially true. I did like to make individuals who were responsible for harming those who were innocent suffer and hurt.

Nothing tripped my trigger to want to beat or kill someone like finding out someone honest and decent had been harmed in some way.

Or they were in danger. Then, my sadistic side came out to play.

I had no desire in ordinary life or in my personal life to be a sadist. I was an alpha kinda guy, with a dominant nature, but I wasn’t into making some woman be my doormat who agreed with everything I said and did everything I demanded. Talk about fucking boring.

I wanted women like what my lucky club brothers had.

The lucky ones had an old lady they loved and adored, who felt the same way about them.

However, their women weren’t soft and total submissives.

They had backbones of varying degrees, each matching the needs of the brother they were with.

I’d been on the lookout for someone like that.

I wanted to have an old lady, a wife in the biker world, and kids.

Unfortunately, anyone who wanted to be with me either only wanted me for the sex, security, and money I offered, plus a lovely house, or they didn’t want kids.

Others, I couldn’t trust not to fuck around behind my back.

Infidelity was a big no for my club and me.

We didn’t expect only the old ladies or men to remain faithful.

It applied to us brothers. If you wanted to fuck around on your old lady or old man, then you didn’t love them and shouldn’t be with them. That was our motto.

Outsiders would be shocked by this thinking.

Additionally, we didn’t limit ourselves to being with only a woman.

If a member was bisexual or even gay, we couldn’t care less.

We chose not to discriminate based on sexual preference or the color of your skin, who you prayed to, or any of that bullshit.

Yes, there were plenty of clubs that did that.

If someone wanted to be bigoted, they could join those clubs.

Anything to do with discrimination was a trigger for me.

A big part of it was due to being Black myself.

I’d endured my share of racism solely due to that.

It wasn’t right, but it happened across the country and around the world.

Was it as bad as it had been decades ago?

It depended on where you were. In some states and areas, it was fully alive and well.

I’d grown up defending myself against those out to hurt me purely because of the color of my skin.

I learned to be deadly and to have eyes in the back of my head.

When I was first approached by Dare, our VP, to prospect for the club twenty years ago, I’d been naturally suspicious.

What would an all-White motorcycle club want with a Black man?

Sure, they were into illegal shit. Everyone knew it, even if no one proved it.

Were they asking me so they could pin shit on me if they were caught?

Did they have something darker planned for me? I’d turned him down.

However, Dare hadn’t given up. He kept asking me to prospect and asking why I kept refusing.

There was money to be made, and he thought I had the right personality for the club life.

I already rode a motorcycle, so that was a plus and a requirement.

Finally, I broke down and confessed my suspicions to him.

He’d been stunned. Dare assured me that wasn’t the case and then left. I figured that would be the end of it.

Dare came back a week later. He asked me to go around with him, saying he had people he wanted to introduce me to.

I was cautious, but something made me agree.

Of course, I went armed. He never asked if I was.

That was when I found out there was more to the Pagan Souls MC than just being outlaw bikers.

They helped people in need. I was introduced to some of them, and they weren’t only White.

The thing that finally convinced me was when I was taken to meet Agony, the club’s president and founder.

I discovered he was half Cherokee. His grandmother, Tanamara, also known as Tana, who had raised him and was now cared for by Agony, was a full-blooded Cherokee.

Agony and Tana knew what it was to face prejudice themselves.

It was Tana sitting me down to a meal she’d cooked for the entire club and watching how she fussed over everyone, including me, that made me give in and say yes.

I never regretted it a day in the past twenty years.

I’d do anything for that woman. We all would.

She was the grandmother of the whole club, not just Agony.

Tana was an inspiration to find someone to claim as my own and build a family with.

Her husband had been her true love. She mourns him to this day, even though he died when her son, Agony’s dad, was fifteen, from a logging accident.

That woman had more than her share of heartbreak, with the loss of her husband, then the deaths of her only child and his wife when Agony was five years old.

Their car slid into an iced-over pond, drowning them.

Despite all the pain, she remained a loving person and had no regrets.

A woman like Tana was what many of us aspired to find—someone with her type of inner strength and caring nature.

Someone who would protect her family with everything she had.

The club was all bachelors until Agony fell for Eliana, when she tried to help Tana with her arthritis.

Dare was next when he met Joli, a cousin of a Pagan in the Oconee, Georgia chapter.

Next came Knight. His lady wasn’t the mother of his first child, Cara.

That woman was a skanky bitch. No, he ended up with Natalya, who treated Cara as her own—then Twisted found not only Zari but also her niece and nephew, whom she was raising.

He had an instant family that was expanding.

Mace had been after Twisted. He met Jessamy in the most unexpected place.

The last to find his old lady was Bones.

That was just over a year ago. Blythe had stumbled onto the compound, beaten and bleeding, one night.

One look and Bones was a goner. All of them had met their ladies in unexpected ways.

I often wondered if I’d be the same. Or was I not destined to have that kind of special someone? God, I hoped that wasn’t the case.