Chapter 3
3
Scorpio
The cemetery was fine. No hard to digest flashbacks, only regular memories. All told, I have more good memories of Honey than I do bad ones. Even though she was a sidewalk hooker with a very unhealthy love of drugs, alcohol, and bad men. But she taught me how to survive on the streets and she gave me a pretty good example of who I don’t want to grow up to be. Plus, all her stories about her glory days with Satan’s Spawn MC, the club my dad was the sarge at… it all kinda made me feel like I had a family. Until she died when I was fourteen and I had no one.
At her gravesite—just a plain grey stone marker surrounded by thousands of identical ones—Joker went on and on about how we wouldn’t know anything about our fathers if it wasn’t for her, how she was a saint, how we should have her dug up and given her a proper grave.
I mostly just enjoyed the breeze rustling the trees all around and thought about how peaceful the place was. Honey didn’t have a lot of peace in life. I figured she has it now.
After the cemetery, Joker and I went our separate ways, agreeing to meet up again on the way back to Cali. Or in Cali, if it comes to it. He’s eyeballs deep in Mission Eden, which is what he calls the seduction and planned abduction of the daughter of the man who is the root reason why neither of us have a family and why we only got to hear about them from a whore.
He’s in Phase One of the mission—the seduction—which involves chatting with her online and reading all her favorite books because she’s a horrible bookworm. For his part, he’s regaling her with pictures and videos from his cross-country motorcycle ride to make her crave adventure. I had to take a bunch of those pictures of him, in most of which he wanted to be shirtless, and I’m ready to be done with that part of this trip too.
I wonder how long it’s gonna take him to fall in love with her for real… the way he’s going about this, I’d say not much longer. She’s a hottie and a total nerd… exactly his type. I told him to be careful. He got mad. And I’m glad to be alone on the open road now.
It takes me as far as Mandy’s Rest Stop, an out-of-the-way haven for outlaws on some lake in rural Illinois. It’s made up of about ten wooden cabins right on the lake, a bar that only serves beer and bourbon and doesn’t have any kind of entertainment other than what you bring with you.
Joker and I found this place when we were fleeing Chicago after killing the owners of that house under the train tracks. The Fosters. A fitting name for those two monsters.
Back then, Mandy herself was still alive to run the place and she let us winter here in exchange for doing odd jobs around the place. Our stay here was healing. And I’m in need of some healing again after the trip to Chicago and all the shit it brought up for me.
Now that her son runs the place, it’s missing a woman’s touch. But the bar’s deck that stretches out into the lake is still as sturdy, peaceful and empty as ever. Lounging on it under the vast midnight sky feels like I’m floating on a raft in the middle of the lake and it’s exactly what I needed tonight. That and the bottle of Jack I brought with me. I have a couple more back at my cabin. But I might just spend the night out here. It’s nice to be out in nature, under the clear sky, watching the stars after the filth and heat of the city.
Now if just that rowdy bunch of bikers in the bar behind me would decide to call it a night and I could have the deck to myself… that’d be just perfect.
And just as I think it, they get even louder, cat calls and wolf whistles invading my peace. The woman who wandered into the testosterone overloaded sausage party in there better be ready to get fucked like she’d never been fucked, if the loudest of them are to be believed. I wouldn’t believe them. They were falling down drunk when I got here four hours ago and they sound even drunker now.
“I just want to have a drink in peace,” she tells them. She’s being much too reasonable. And sober.
They don’t like the sound of that. Suddenly, she’s everything from a cock tease and stone-cold ice queen, to a butch dyke that just needs a good hard cock to show her the light.
And I’d tend to agree with all of the above.
She can be all of that. But she’s also the hottest and most intriguing woman I’ve ever met and if she’s getting any cock tonight, it’ll be mine. Not that I’ll get that lucky. I never have before.
I take the last swig from my bottle and get up, my muscles stiff from sitting on the hard planks for so long. But they warm up nicely as I spot Karma at the very edge of the counter inside the bar, the guys in there swarming around her like hyenas, the picture complete with the mad gleam in their beady eyes.
She’s got eyes only for them so she doesn’t see me standing out on the deck. Wary eyes. Not scared, just vigilant. Assessing her surroundings, figuring out her best next move. I like this excuse of getting to look at her. She seems somehow taller than she used to be, her skin-tight leather riding jacket beautifully outlining the top part of her hourglass shape. And the light grey skinny jeans tucked into riding boots take care of the rest. Her long blonde hair is only braided on one side today and cascades down her back in a way that would make any fairytale princess jealous. Her gorgeous heart-shaped face would too.
But she’s no princess, unless she’s the ice kind, and most of her creamy skin under that riding get-up is covered in tattoos—beautiful pictures that I’d love to spend days checking out from up close. Or licking. Or both. She never fails to make my dick at least half hard and it’s no different tonight.
The hyenas have her trapped now, her back to the wall, her escape cut off by the counter on one side and the swarming pack on the other. I better go in.
“Time to back off now, guys,” I say loudly to be heard over the incessant string of their foulmouthed promises to her. “She’s here for me.”
The glance she casts me is almost pure gratitude and it makes me a little weak in the knees. Most of the time when I say shit like this to her, she shoots me down with everything she’s got.
I just hope me showing up like this as her knight in shining armor will be enough to change that from now on. There’s six of the hyenas and only the two of us. I’ve seen her fight and she can hold her own, but I’ve had too much to drink already tonight so the odds of us winning this fight aren’t great.
“And who are you?” one of the hyenas asks.
He’s a towering sort of guy, with a black and white bandana hiding his receding hairline and a nose that’s been broken a few times. His eyes are pure hate as he gazes at me. Some of the others have noticed the cut I’m wearing, the one that clearly says The Lost Sons MC above the skull with a joker hat and a pair of guns. The image was Joker’s idea and I let him have it although I still say a scorpion would make for great club colors too.
“I’m the guy who’s gonna make a necklace of your teeth if you don’t back the fuck off,” I say and glance at the others. “That goes for all of you.”
I’ve got my big ass knife in one hand and my nine mil in the other. It’s best to go full-on crazy when you’re outnumbered like this. I learned that a long time ago. Maybe it was Honey who first suggested it. Either way, I’m not sure it’s working tonight.
The big guy takes a step towards me, but one of his buddies pulls him back.
“Let it go. Don’t wanna mess with Joker. And I’m pretty sure this one’s his main bitch,” he says loud enough for everyone to hear.
I could take offense at that, but then this would only escalate. They’re not sporting any club colors, but they seem to be together, they’re all made up of mainly muscle and look like they’ve taken a bunch of punches and bullets and lived to tell about it.
And me, I’m what they see as a tipsy blond and blue-eyed pretty boy who likes to work out way too much, and who bit off more than he can chew. A bitch, in other words, as the other one already pointed out. I’m not, but it is six against two, and tough as she is, Karma is a woman. If I’m not careful here, she might not be the only one getting straightened out by a hard cock tonight. Funny how things just keep coming round full circle on this trip. The first time I came here I was seventeen and real worried about getting raped by the guys staying here. Didn’t happen then. And it won’t now.
They’re all bulkier than me, even if not taller. But I’ve taken down my share of guys just like this. I also fucked my share of them. Not that any of these seem to be looking for that kind of fun. And tipsy or not, I’m more than ready to let the bullets fly. My aim’s usually pretty good even when I’m drunk.
“Yeah, let’s not fight. I’d rather not mess up Mandy’s lovely bar,” I say. “She loved this place so much.”
Mention of Mandy seems to have hit a soft spot for at least three of them, but mostly they’re still looking at me like they want to throw my dead body in the lake. Mandy wouldn’t like that either. She liked me a lot.
Karma’s the one that breaks the tense stare-off. She peels off the bar and walks to me and entwines her arm with mine. “Sorry guys, but it’s true. I am taken. He’s my man.”
Funny how her touch together with those words, delivered in a sultry voice that’s nothing like the one she uses to shoot me down normally, makes me believe she’s telling them the truth. Maybe I am drunker than I thought.
They curse and grumble about how the both of us need to be taught a lesson. But no one’s in a hurry to deliver that lesson anymore. So I put away my knife, but I keep my gun out.
“I think we better retreat to my cabin,” I tell Karma, and put way more innuendo into the words than she did. Her fingers tense on my arm, sending a nice jolt of fire straight to my cock.
“Yeah,” she says in the sultry voice and actually stands on her toes to give me a peck on the cheek. Her arm on mine was already way more than I’ve ever gotten from her. And her lips on my skin… that just about made me jizz my pants. I’ve been trying to get a kiss from her for a long time. Lost all hope it would ever come.
But the spell is broken as soon as we’re out to the bar and she releases me so completely it kinda makes me think that maybe what just happened was just a part of my drunken delirium.
“Thanks, I guess,” she says. “But?—"
“Let me guess, you could’ve handled them on your own,” I say, maybe a little too hotly.
She actually smiles, her whole face gleaming in the moonlight. “I was gonna say we better not sleep tonight, because they didn’t seem all that happy at this outcome.”
I finally put my gun away. “Yeah, it could’ve gone better. But my cabin’s got a nice deck too… not as nice as the big one, but it’s got a better view of the rest of the camp. We’ll see them coming a mile away.”
She nods and I put my arm around her shoulders, because it was nice touching her and I want to do it some more. I’m more than a little surprised that she doesn’t shrug out of the loose embrace. Instead, she lets me lead her into the darkness.
If I didn’t know her better, I’d be thinking I was finally gonna get lucky tonight after years of trying to get into her pants. But no drunken delirium is deep enough to make me believe that false hope.