Chapter Nine
A t the insistence of his alarm, Mel pried his eyelids up and groaned at the punishing brightness.
Either his bedroom had been relocated to the surface of the sun while he’d slept, or he’d forgotten to close his curtains.
Slamming his eyes shut again, he flung an arm out, found his phone in the blankets, and slapped at it until it shut up.
Then he grabbed it and rolled to his side, crafted a shelter of his pillows, and opened his eyes again, now in the shade he’d created.
Three messages awaited him; one from Badger, one from Kellen, and—the reason he’d gone looking—one from Abigail.
With some persistent cajoling, he’d convinced her to try texting for casual conversation when they weren’t together.
Once she’d started, she’d taken to it readily, making little stories of her activities throughout the day.
He opened hers first, of course.
Morning, sunshine! I hope you slept great.
There’s a deer family munching the last of my
zinnias this morning—daddy, mamma, and two babies,
their spots just about gone. I’m sitting on the porch
with my coffee, watching them. So lovely and sweet.
I’ll be down to town by noon. Any special requests?
They’d been a couple for about a month, and every morning since he’d convinced her to text, she’d parked a little message for him to find when he woke. It was like getting a hug and a kiss to start each day off right.
He was looking forward to the time he might get a real hug and kiss to start his days, but they were moving slowly.
So far, being a couple looked a lot like being friends, with the addition of some flirting and physical affection when they were together, and these little messages each morning and in the evenings before she went to bed.
She popped up before dawn every day, but Mel gathered close every second of sleep he could get, so his alarm went off a couple hours later. A perk of being lead electrician at a construction company was that he no longer had to be at a job site at the crack of what-the-fuck.
In fact, there weren’t any jobs this week—they’d finished the main build of the new shopping center.
Only finish work and setup was left on that job, and the new tenants would manage a lot of that themselves over the remaining weeks before the Christmas-season grand opening.
As it was the end of October in Missouri and too late to start anything significant, SBC was more or less closed for the season, a little earlier than usual this year.
Like most of his brothers, Mel was delighted with the extra time off.
Money had been coming in at a steady clip for years and this shopping center was a particularly juicy payday, so an extra month off was no financial hardship.
He’d lately had a thought he might want to take an honest-to-God vacation.
Someplace like Mexico. Cabo or Acapulco, maybe. Would Abigail like something like that?
He'd love to see her on a warm beach, her blue eyes sparkling with ocean light, and a flashy pink flower in her gorgeous hair.
His cock sat straight up, wide awake, and he rolled to his back and rearranged his pillows to rest against them. His libido was a raging bull lately. He’d always been a sexual guy, but he hadn’t been chronically horny like this since high school.
He also hadn’t gone a full month without sex since high school.
He was ready, willing, and able to give Abigail every minute of patience she needed, but he’d be lying if he tried to pretend his brain wasn’t entirely dominated, awake or sleeping, by thoughts and images and dreams of finally getting his woman nekkid.
His woman . What a wild notion.
Grinning, he sent back a reply:
Good morning, beautiful.
Just peeled my lids up. Sounds like
a pretty day. Not as pretty as you.
All I need today is you—but if you
want to bring something sweet just
for me, I wouldn’t say no.
Though SBC work was slowing to a stop, he’d let his alarm wake him as usual all week because the Harvest Festival was coming up on the weekend, and this year they were doing the ‘First-Ever Full-Club Rally’ the same weekend.
Badger kept calling it the ‘First-Ever Full-Club Rally,’ like it was the official title, and Mel kept hearing it with scare quotes and sarcastic capitals because, first, it actually wasn’t the first time all three charters of the Horde had gotten together, and, second, it wasn’t a fucking rally.
To the first point, in addition to several multi-club fun runs, charity runs, rallies, and conventions, they’d all met up three times at Sturgis, and they’d met up in Tulsa for the Brazen Bulls’ fiftieth anniversary.
The Horde hadn’t done a party for their own fiftieth because that milestone had come around at a bad time. Isaac and Len had been inside, and the club and the town were still in recovery mode after the horror of the Santaveria years.
Maybe they’d do a ‘Diamond Anniversary’ thing for the seventy-fifth. Probably the women were already planning something.
This weekend wasn’t the first time all three charters had partied together, and, to the second point, it wasn’t a rally. Biker rallies had events. Biker events. This weekend was the Harvest Festival, and the only thing the Horde was adding to that was drunkenness.
Actually, no. The drunkenness was already included.
It was just a party, with more guests than usual.
It was true that this was the first time the Horde charters and only the Horde charters were getting together. But, again, selecting this particular weekend to do it made it about the Harvest Festival. The Missouri Horde was still running its booth, working security, doing all the usual shit.
Whatever. It was a party, and Mel loved to party. He didn’t know why it zapped him every time Badger said ‘First-Ever Full-Club Rally,’ but it sure was getting on his nerves.
He opened Badge’s text next.
Got a new TV for the Hall.
Need you to set it up today before
we start the festival shit
A new TV? They’d had a beautiful hundred-incher on the wall until Thumper and Dom had been horsing around and put the two-ball through it a couple weeks ago.
Badger had pitched a fit and insisted that, since a bunch of grown men couldn’t help but act like eight-year-olds, they wouldn’t be replacing the television.
Apparently he’d changed his mind. Probably wanted to show out for the other charters.
Mel sent back a quick reply: On it. Be there by 8
And there was Kellen’s text. He couldn’t think why Kell would reach out.
He wouldn’t say they were friends, exactly.
Kellen was an odd dude. He was the club secretary/treasurer, but Mel couldn’t imagine Kell calling him on that kind of business.
His dues were paid up—they were always paid up; he didn’t fuck around with paying what he owed.
Mel got along with almost everybody; unless someone was an absolute chronic asshole, or unless someone had done real damage to people who didn’t deserve it, he didn’t figure there was any good reason not to be decent to them.
Everybody had bad days and acted out sometimes, and you didn’t know what anybody else was going through. Why not give people a little room?
Kellen was ... yeah, kind of an asshole, in general.
But not in a confrontational way, where all he knew how to do was cause trouble.
Okay, sometimes he was that, too. But usually he was just .
.. a little off. Mel thought Kellen Frey’s biggest problem was that he wanted so fucking bad to be The Guy, the one who drew everybody’s attention, and he couldn’t manage it.
If he weren’t Horde, Mel would say he was a wannabe.
But he’d gotten what he wanted—he was Horde and had been for years. He was an officer, even. And still that shine wouldn’t stick. It made him hypersensitive and too quick to start a thing about it.
Mel felt kind of sorry for him. Thus, unless Kell was actively being a shit, Mel often tried to pull him into the group in some way. He was, after all, one of his brothers. Felt too much like a high school cafeteria to leave him on the outside looking in.
But they weren’t true friends. They didn’t hang out anywhere but the clubhouse, and they didn’t confide in each other.
Until Abigail, Mel didn’t confide in anyone.
But he had brothers he liked drinking with more than others, and talking about the Chiefs and the Royals—Thumper and Dom, in particular.
Those two he considered true friends, more than club brothers.
They didn’t often talk about deep shit, but they shared similar outlooks and senses of humor, and they always had a good time together.
He wouldn’t be surprised to get a text from them.
Kellen’s text read: Need to talk. Not in the clubhouse.
Mel stared at those few words for a long time. They set his Spidey senses tingling, but he wasn’t sure why. He and Kellen shared no secrets, so he couldn’t imagine Kell trying to pull him into any fuckery. But why not the clubhouse?
Whatever. He swiped the text away without answering. No doubt he’d see him in the Hall today, and he’d ask what the fuck then. If Kellen really didn’t want to talk in the clubhouse, he’d have to explain why. Either way, it couldn’t be any big deal.
He tossed the covers back—the room was surprisingly chilly; autumn really had settled in—and hurried to the bathroom for his shower and the first of his twice-daily wanks.
He was really looking forward to Abigail being ready for some whoopie.
Sweet talk and making out was awesome, but every day he liked her a little bit more, he was starting to have thoughts that included a word other than ‘like,’ and the challenge to his patience was becoming intense.
He’d always given guys shit for complaining about ‘blue balls’—like, bro, just fucking rub one out if you’re so horny you can’t stand it—but lately he was starting to relate.