Ryder (Phoenix MC #1)

One

S omeone was slapping at my face, and I groaned, moving my head to try and escape. The world seemed to tilt and sway with the small movement.

“Wake up, brother.” What the fuck. I shoved his hand away, and cursed at him. I was beyond uncomfortable, and why did my bed feel like concrete?

“Will you wake the fuck up?” I heard a voice bark out. Reacher. My Club President. Fuck . I squinted the second I groggily opened my eyes. I felt strange, like I’d been knocked out. My head felt woozy. Had I been in a fight?

“What the fuck did you get up to, brother? You’re a mess.”

I rubbed at my eyes, wondering why there were six bikers standing around me, all smirking. They weren’t too tall, as I’d first imagined, because I was on the ground. No wonder it was fucking uncomfortable .

I swallowed, my throat dry and raw. I felt like I’d been on a bender for two days, and forgotten my own name. I blinked slowly as my eyes started to focus properly. What the fuck had happened, and where the hell was I?

“Ryder, brother.” Someone crouched beside me; Stitch, my VP. “What happened to you?”

I stared at him blearily. “Where am I?”

He glanced up at Reacher, a concerned frown on his face when he looked back at me.

“Clubhouse. Where were you all night?”

I rubbed at my face. Stubble. Last night? What the fuck.

“What day is it?”

Reacher cursed. “Get him inside.” I felt people hoisting me up, and then they were carrying me inside, into the blessed dimness of the clubhouse. How the fuck did I get here? Or was I always here? Were they messing with me?

They shoved me down on one of the leather sofas, and I groaned, my stomach roiling dangerously.

“Jesus.”

“I’ll get Doc,” Stitch muttered, leaving me alone with Reacher, and a few other brothers.

“You must have been wasted, man,” I heard one of them mutter, followed by low chuckles.

“Went off with that MILF, didn’t he?” Another said; Jacko, it sounded like. I turned to look at him, needing someone to fill in the fucking blanks for me.

“What MILF?”

“Fucking hell… what did you take?”

Reacher suddenly barked at them all to fuck off, and I watched my brothers dissipate, as he leaned over me, lowering his voice.

“First things first, put your junk away, and then we’ll talk.” I stared at him for a moment, trying to absorb his words. My brain was fuzzy. Cloudy. Nothing made sense. I wasn’t even sure any of this was real.

He pointed at my lap, and I glanced down. My leather jeans were undone, and my cock was showing.

“Fucking hell.” I moved to put myself away, zipping up carefully.

“Prospect? Get him some water,” Reacher barked at one of the kids. I don’t know who. I mean, I could barely focus on what was happening as it was.

“Pres, how the fuck did I get here?”

He crouched in front of me, his beardy face looking concerned now, rather than the usual mixture of pissed and stressed, with a side of cranky.

“Brother, what do you remember?”

I rubbed my face again, trying to wake myself up some more, my stomach churning again at all the unknowns.

“I… did I go out?”

He groaned. “Ryder, you went to some bars last night with the boys. Do you remember that?”

I stared back at him, still fighting the grogginess I’d woken with.

“I did?”

More faces were peering at me again; Doc, and Stitch.

“Get out of the way, you two,” Doc barked, moving close enough to shine a fucking torch, or some equally agonising shit in my eyes, while I cursed and shoved him away.

“Hold him still. I need to check him over.”

Reacher and Stitch held my arms, while he came at me with that thing again. After that, he checked my pulse. Checked my neck, for god only knows what. He just kept saying hmmm.

“This is how you found him?”

“Apart from his junk hanging out for all to see, yeah.”

Doc frowned down at me, but he was still speaking over me instead of to me.

“Well, he’s clearly coming down, or up, from something. I’d say he was doped up with god only knows what. Ryder… what’s the last thing you remember?”

“What? Fuck knows. Apparently I went to some bars, or something.”

“No. What do you remember? I didn’t ask what these dipshits have already told you!”

I groaned, squeezing my eyes closed to shut out everything and everyone in the room.

“I don’t fucking know, okay? I don’t remember the bars. I don’t remember anything. I just woke up here.”

“He was out cold, in the yard,” Reacher muttered, turning to yell at one of the prospects again.

“Get Ice out of bed. I want him checking all the footage from outside last night. If someone dumped him here, I want to know who, and I want to know now. Go .”

I stared at them blankly. “Someone drugged me?”

My stomach was roiling again, yeah, something was definitely disagreeing with my body.

“Someone dumped you here, drugged, and… half undressed…” Jesus . My pants were undone. What the fuck did they do to me?

That roiling in my stomach became a torrent of explosive vomiting, and my brothers barely made it out of the way, before I was on my hands and knees on the wooden floor, throwing up like I’d taken it up as a fucking sport.

“Jesus. Get the prospects in to clear this up,” Reacher muttered to someone.

Then I was being lifted again, and dragged out of the room. I must have passed out. I was in the, well, what we call ‘the infirmary’, when I woke up.

“Brother, I’ve got you on an IV. Just keep still for now. You’ve been in and out of it for a while.”

I stared at the doc as he came over to stand by the side of the bed.

“What happened to me?”

He frowned. “No idea, kid, but we’re gonna find that out. And I’m pretty sure the Pres is gonna want to make an example of them. Nobody fucks with the club, you know?”

That much was true, but of all of the thirty odd members of this club, why me? What the hell had I done to someone, to make them want to do whatever the hell was done to me?

Doc cleared his throat. “You don’t remember anything at all?”

I shook my head. “Did they do stuff to me?”

He groaned, looking like he really didn’t want to say what was on his mind, and now I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it anyway.

“What you threw up… I think I caught a glimpse of part of a little blue pill.”

“I don’t do drugs. You know that. If I was dosed, it’s because some fucker did it to me.”

“Yeah, I know that. But I’m talking Viagra.”

“I don’t fucking need that either. Ask the club girls.”

He smirked, glancing at the IV he’d set up, tweaking something on it. The tubes going into my hand itched, but I did my best to leave them alone.

“So I had sex? Or… uh…”

“If someone gave you Viagra, they wanted you up… well, you know. That would suggest you were the one doing the fucking, if that helps at all.”

“This is insanity. What you’re talking about is completely fucking insane. If I left with some bird, like they said, I wouldn’t need pills to get hard so I could fuck her. I’ve never had a problem with that.”

My chest was itching, and I felt overheated. Itchy. Wrong .

I scratched at my skin through my t-shirt. Doc had eased my cut off, and it was on the seat beside the gurney. It’s not a bed, not really. It was a biker clubhouse infirmary, so it just had the bare essentials.

“Stop tearing at yourself like that,” Doc said suddenly, grabbing my arm, and stopping me from scratching at my chest.

He pushed my arms aside, and rolled the t-shirt up.

“ Fucking hell .”

“What? What is it?” He was shaking his head in disgust.

“Some bitch clawed you up pretty good. I want to clean these up. She drew blood.”

What the fuck? Doc cut the t-shirt off, since the lazy bastard didn’t want to have to redo my IV. Jesus. There were massive claw marks down my chest. It looked like she’d done it over and over again. Now, I normally don’t mind nails on me when I’m fucking a woman, but the more we looked at this, the more it looked like something really fucked up had happened.

“I did a blood test. You know, to check for known chemicals.”

“Roofies, you mean?”

Doc closed his eyes briefly. “GHB. You must have been given a spiked drink. You don’t remember?”

“What do you think? Hey, what were you checking my neck for before?”

He blinked. “Needle marks. If the blood test had been clear, I’d have checked you all over.”

“So you’re telling me that someone slipped me a fucking date rape drug, and… and then what… raped me? Can men even be raped? I mean, apart from the obvious?”

I felt sick again. How the fuck had this happened? Who the hell had thought they could take advantage of a member of our club like this? Was it a rival club? Local mob? Someone we didn’t even know we’d ended up on the radar of?

Doc was fiddling with the IV again instead of answering me.

“Will you just look at me?” I snapped, because the cagey bastard was clearly holding back.

He sighed. “Ryder, I don’t know what to say. If you were a woman, I’d say that, without a doubt, you’d been raped. You’re a man, so, you know, like you say, you’d expect the obvious, and I’m sure you’d have told me if you felt wrong back there… that means that someone knowingly slipped you a drug to make you pliant, and then they slipped you another, to get your cock standing for them.”

“You can’t tell if I actually had sex, though…”

“Not really. I mean, I can take a look, if you want…”

“No! I’ll… I’ll look. I don’t want this getting out, Doc. You can’t tell the others.”

“If someone attacked a member of this club, you know I need to tell the Pres and the VP. That’s how this shit works.”

“Jesus Christ. This is ridiculous. I can’t have been raped . This… this doesn’t happen.” I wrenched those tubes out of my hand, cursing out at the pain, and shoved the doc aside, when he tried to stop me.

“ Don’t fucking touch me . Let me out of here.”

He backed up and let me leave, because what fucking choice did he have? I went straight from the infirmary to my room, locking the door, and heading for my freezer, where I removed the vodka and opened the painfully cold bottle, pouring a half glass.

I stared at it for a moment. Should I even drink with whatever they’d doped me up with? Who the fuck cares at this point? I gulped the icy drink down in a few large gulps, and leaned on the counter, my breaths gasping out, as my body reacted to the cold alcohol.

“Fucking hell.”

I looked at my chest again, at those bloody streaks on my skin. They still itched. I made my way to my shower, kicking my boots off, and sliding out of my leather jeans. I hadn’t worn underwear, so I slid my socks off and then I stood for a moment, looking in the mirror in the bathroom.

It wasn’t full length, but I could see my chest, and it looked like I’d been attacked by a wild animal. Jesus . I turned to check my back. No marks, other than my tats. I took a breath and looked down, finally focusing on my cock. It was soft, of course, but… there was something .

Lipstick? Yeah, fucking lipstick near the base of my cock. A strange plum colour. I rubbed at it. Definitely lipstick. Well, that confirmed it. I’d definitely been with someone. I just couldn’t remember a damn thing.

I felt around down there, and everything felt intact. No injuries. Did I want to check my ass? Was I that sure nobody had fucked me? Did I want to know? My back hadn’t been scratched like my chest. That was a good sign, right? I couldn’t bring myself to feel around back there, so I took solace in the fact that it didn’t hurt.

Raped? No. Bikers don’t get raped . I stood under the water for ages. Letting it rain down on me, wishing it could clear my head. Bring my memory back. Make me understand. When I closed my eyes, and tried to think back to last night, there was just nothing. Not even snatches of memory. Just nothing. What the fuck had happened to me?