20. Deacon
DEACON
“Dallas!” Char exclaimed.
“Number two,” Gauge muttered next to me.
I chuckled as Dallas’s voice barreled down the steps. “Fucking hell, Char. Goddamn it.”
“He always is one to show off,” I said as I pushed off the brick wall.
It didn’t take long for Dallas to emerge and lock the door behind him. Gauge and I stood there, just staring up at him. Just waiting for him to turn around and see us.
And when he did, that cheeky little grin fell right off his face.
“Have a good time?” I asked.
Dallas lumbered down the steps. “Shut the fuck up.”
“Should’ve told her that,” Gauge said.
I barked with laughter as Dallas rolled his eyes. “Let’s get back to the clubhouse. I’m starving.”
I patted him on the back as he walked by. “I bet you are.”
Dallas shot me a look, but I saw the satiated look behind his eye.
“You’re gonna fuck her again, aren’t you?” Gauge asked.
“As many times as she’ll let me,” Dallas said.
Gauge didn’t say anything to that. He just moved toward his bike, and I watched him go. And then it was just me and Dallas, standing there in the dark alleyway with the sound of the bar dying down behind us.
“You know it’s not just you,” I said.
Dallas turned to look at me. He didn’t say anything right away, which meant he already knew what I was talking about and was deciding how he felt about it.
“I know,” he said finally.
“Gauge, too.”
He exhaled through his nose. “Yeah. I know that too.”
I studied his face in the dark. “You got a problem with it?”
Dallas looked at me for a long moment. Then he looked back toward the staircase that led up to her apartment. Then back at me. “No,” he said. “Do you?”
I thought about the sounds she made. The way she had looked at me with my hand around her throat. The way she stood her ground against all three of us like she was born to do it. “No,” I said.
Dallas nodded once. “Then, I guess we know where we stand.”
Neither of us said anything else. We didn’t need to. That was the thing about men like us — we didn’t need a goddamn ceremony to understand one another. We just needed the truth said out loud once, and then we could move the hell on.
I slowly started toward our bikes. “Find anything out while you were up there?”
Dallas fell in line beside me to my right. “They’re trying to figure out what we’re really doing here. We need to keep the three of them close.”
I kicked up the kickstand on my bike. “Well, you’ve got Char covered.”
Gauge tossed his leg over his bike. “I’ll take DeShawn. I think I’m the only one that hasn’t pissed him the fuck off yet.”
I nodded. “That leaves Mary Jane for me.”
I expected Dallas to say something, but all he did was strike up the engine of his bike.
Gauge followed suit, so I did the same, but if he thought we were done talking about shit, he was wrong.
I was of half a mind to let them run their little racket.
See how far they were willing to dig their hole before realizing they had dug out their trap for us.
But, as our engines roared, filling up the night air around us, I fell back into that lazy relaxation that the vibration of my motorcycle in between my legs always gave me.
Better than any woman I’d ever been with, that was for certain.
“All right,” I said before I revved my engine, “let’s ride!”
We kicked up sand and dust as we blazed a trail back to the clubhouse.
With the desert road stretched out for miles in front of us and cacti lining the sides of the road, I breathed in the California air that hadn’t yet been putrefied by its big city air.
I filled my lungs as my bike soared forward.
I moved with its bends and curves, shifting my weight as necessary while the crescent moon hung high over our heads.
The stars were out in full force. Not a cloud in the sky to cover them from us as their soft glow guided our pathway back to our sanctuary.
And as we turned off the road to head out into the desert, I found myself jealous of Dallas.
Even I had to admit that Char’s sounds had been…
succulent. She had curves in all the right places that my hands wanted to sink their way into.
She’d get the ride of her life with me, that much was for certain.
Dallas was a two-pump chump. Women who were used to the bare minimum thought he was the shit, and he used that to his advantage every chance that he got. But, me? I could go all night.
Hour after hour.
Orgasm after orgasm.
Rock hard after rock hard.
No woman had ever satiated me. No woman had ever come close.
But, that didn’t mean it wasn’t fun.
And boy, I’d have some serious fun with Char tied up in my bedroom.
Maybe I’d make her my new focus. My new challenge.
Something to fill the empty spaces of my mind while we turned over this bar and made it the space we needed it to be.
That was step one, at least. Show this community that we could take something they loved and turn it into something better.
After that, it was simply a matter of earning their trust.
Then, we could start using that damned bar to clean all of the hot money we still had stored away in the clubhouse.
Fucking hell, I hope this bar isn’t a mistake.
Bottle Grounds was supposed to be a surefire thing.
We poured weeks of our time into it before even approaching the inside of the fucking establishment, and yet all it had done was bring us more heartache than it was worth.
I didn’t let my thoughts run away with me, though.
Dad had, wonderfully enough, passed that overthinking shit to me, and it really got in the way sometimes.
But, everything melted away the second the shadowed outline of our clubhouse came into view.
“Home, sweet home,” I murmured.
With the wind whipping through my hair, I picked up the pace. Seventy. Eighty. Ninety miles an hour. I careened my way up to the side of the house, drifting into my parking space before coming to a grinding halt.
Only for the rest of our guys to pour out the front door.
“How’d it go!?”
“How’s the sound system?”
“Dallas said there was something about a coup in the bar?”
“You guys need some more people fired?”
But, I simply held up my hand and silenced the masses.
“Church,” I said as Gauge and Dallas came roaring up to the clubhouse.
“Really left us back there in the dirt, huh?” Gauge asked.
“I take it we’re having church?” Dallas asked.
I nodded as my presence parted my men like the Red Sea. “Church. Everyone. Now.”
I walked into the clubhouse and set my sights on the back hallway.
I charged through the corridors, my boots thudding against the tan carpeted floor.
Why the fuck we ever decided to put carpet down in the middle of the fucking desert was beyond me.
I didn’t care, though. I didn’t care about anything except figuring out how to proceed forward.
So, I flipped open the hidden panel at the end of the hallway and punched in a code.
Before the wall in front of me hissed open.
I stepped off to the side and counted heads as everyone funneled into the hidden room. They all migrated to their seats, and I listened to the wood of the chairs groan with every man that dropped into them. And when they were all seated, I slipped inside.
“All right,” I said as I slammed my hand against the black button on the wall.
The panel hissed back into place, locking us away from the rest of the world.
“You guys want to know how it went tonight?” I asked as I faced my men.
All of them shouted various versions of ‘hell, yeah.’ But, little did they know I was about to spoil their party.
“Well,” I said as I placed my hands into the top of the table in front of us, “no one came into the bar tonight, that’s how well it went. And I have a feeling it’s because someone around town had bad-mouthed us.”
The guys looked around at one another before Rat spoke up. “Uh, this a theory you got goin’? Or, you got proof?”
I shook my head. “Just a working theory right now, but my gut’s telling me that if that’s the case? Either Miss Lilly is running her fucking mouth off somewhere, or that bitch waitress we fired is already talking shit around town.”
“What did you fire her for?” Mace asked.
“Does it matter?” I quipped.
“Yep,” Baitfish said plainly.
Dallas snickered. “She spoke out of turn and Deac here wanted to assert his dominance.”
Mace waved his hand in the air. “Well, there you have it.”
“Can’t be pissing people off like that on day one,” Rat said.
“I’m with him,” Baitfish said as he thumbed toward Rat.
“This was supposed to be a surefire thing, though. Right?” Plug asked. “I mean, things seemed okay when I was installing the sound system earlier.”
“Because you were too busy staring down M.J.,” I said flatly.
“Who’s M.J.?” Baitfish asked.
I groaned as I stood and cracked my neck. “Yes, Plug, this is a sure thing. It’s still a sure thing.”
“You sure about that?” Plug asked.
I shot him a look. “I told you it was a sure thing, and I still mean that. It’s just going to take a bit of work upfront to make this happen.”
Baitfish stood. “Look, the only reason why we agreed to pay so much money for that place is because you assured us this was a sure thing. We’re going to make money on our first night. Big grand opening. That’s what you said. And then you tell us that no one comes in?”
I stared him down. “There an actual question in there somewhere.”
“I’ve got one,” Mace said as he stood as well. “If it’s not a sure thing now, how are we going to make it that way?”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “If you sit down and shut the fuck up, I can get there. But I can’t if you guys are poking holes into theories we’ve already tossed out the goddamn window. Now, sit.”
Both of the men did as I asked, and I was glad that they did so.
I’d hate to make an example out of them when I wanted to do nothing but fucking sleep.