25. 1980s
She was a sight, and Jason’s eyes, after more than a thousand miles, were sore.
Black leather top with ties down the front, short leather skirt, knee-high boots, dishwater-blond hair a shaggy mess around her head. It was fun just showing up and seeing what kind of trouble Billy was in when he got there.
Today she was shooting darts.
Every pair of boots in Not Your Oasis were huddled around Billy taking aim at the apple in the mouth of the poor bastard pinned to the dartboard by a dart stuck through the meat of his earlobe.
“Hold still,” Billy warned. “Unless you want another hole in your head?”
A heavy hand gripped Jason’s shoulder. Billy’s dad, a lug of a man called Bear, said the next time Jason showed his face at the official watering hole of the Desert Demons Motorcycle Club, they needed to have a talk. Talking to the club president usually ended in shattered teeth and a broken jaw.
Jason’s heart skipped a beat but—thank fucking Christ—he didn’t actually flinch. And thank fucking Christ the hand on his shoulder wasn’t Bear’s.
“Curly,” Jason yelled over the eruption of disappointed groans. Billy’s next dart landed square in the center of the apple, which would’ve been cause for celebration anywhere else.
“Jay,” Curly said, removing his hand.
“The big man here?” Jason asked.
Curly’s shoulders lifted with a laugh Jason couldn’t hear, and he nodded to Billy, her tongue between her lips as she lined up another dart. “What do you think?”
Though there was more than one prospect with unwanted piercings, Bear didn’t sanction hazing that riled the members if his daughter was in the center of the action.
“I think I’m glad I’m not that asshole.”
Jason held his breath as Billy fired again. The dart took a chunk off the side of the apple and scraped the prospect’s cheek, before lodging in the wall behind him.
“Keep up your vanishing act, Kid, and you will be,” Curly said. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called out to the prospect, “Stop being such a pussy.”
The prospect’s eyes rolled up into his head and he fell in a pile of blood and leather on the floor. A chorus of jeers split Jason’s ears, and a pair of low-level Demons took the prospect by the arms and hauled him to his feet. The apple was still stuck between his teeth.
“That’s better,” Billy crooned, adjusting her stance for another throw. A thug Jason knew as Berto, whose left forearm was shiny with the fresh ink of a demon’s-head tattoo, stepped behind Billy with a blindfold.
“Shit,” Curly muttered. He grabbed a nearby member and gave him instructions in his ear. The member nodded at his VP and muscled his way through the crowd to pull Berto aside.
“You’re up,” Curly said, clamping his hand around Jason’s neck and shoving him into the fray. “Get her out of there before she takes out his eye.”
“You got it.”
Jason adjusted his jacket and maneuvered through split knuckles and partially inked demon tattoos to the spot Berto vacated, getting an unobstructed view of Billy’s backside, her hip knocked back, ass popping out in black leather.
He put his hand on her waist in the gap between that shameless skirt and the sleeveless top he was minutes from ripping open. She tensed and the dart flew wide right, landing in the shoulder of the Demon holding the unconscious Demon-hopeful on his feet.
Jason ignored the startled shouts across the room and put his lips to Billy’s ear.
“Gotta watch your aim, honey,” he said in a gravelly voice he knew raked through her flesh. Her chest dropped on a sigh and she stiffened.
“What makes you think I missed?” she asked, her own voice smooth as black velvet from the mouth he wanted on his cock.
“You always did like drawing blood.”
Jason heard her hum of catlike satisfaction and knew she was smiling.
“You have a death wish?”
“Billy, I’ll let you pierce my cock if it means you’ll put your hands on it right fucking now.”
She spun and reached up to lift the blindfold.
“Keep it,” he said, entwining his fingers in the ties of her shirt and hauling her through a crowd of howling Demons, who reluctantly parted to let them pass.