Midnight Desire: A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 1 Read online

  “You uppity little bitch,” he snarled, and stood up on the other side of the counter. “Think you’re hot shit? You’re ugly as fuck, you stupid – ”

  And then he called me the See You Next Tuesday word.

  I spun around, about to douse him with 150 degree liquid, job or no job –

  But King Leonidas was already there.

  I hadn’t seen him walk up, but as soon as I turned around, he was standing behind the trucker.

  He didn’t put a hand on the Neanderthal, but his presence was overpowering. Like the Grim Reaper had suddenly decided to make an appearance.

  “That’s it, friend. Time to go,” he said.

  Damn, that voice.

  Low, rumbling, powerful. Authority personified.

  The voice of a king.

  Sexy as hell.

  The trucker turned in surprise, then scowled in contempt. He was a good hundred pounds heavier, if an inch or two shorter. “Get the fuck outta my face, asswipe.”

  The entire diner went quiet. I mean, silent. A pin drop would have sounded like a crowbar on china.

  Over at the booth, the blond mechanic got up from his seat.

  Leonidas put up a hand without looking behind him. Be cool.

  The blond guy stood but didn’t move from his spot… though he focused on the trucker like a Secret Service agent watching a jittery meth head at a presidential rally.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” I said aloud. My voice was calm, though adrenaline was pumping through my veins.

  “No trouble, miss,” the king said, though he didn’t take his eyes off the trucker. “But nobody disrespects a lady like that in my presence.”

  Okay, I’m a modern woman, with modern sensibilities. I don’t think anybody’s ever called me a lady unless they were twelve years old or younger. And then it was, Hey lady, you dropped somethin’!

  Half of me – the feminist half – was like, Don’t call me ‘lady,’ and I can take care of myself.

  The other half was like, Swoon!

  The king took no notice. He just stood there, expressionless, staring at the trucker. Without looking, he pulled a fat wad of bills wrapped in a rubber band out of his pocket, stripped off two twenties, and set them on the counter.

  “There,” he said, cool as ice. “You’re all paid for. Time to move on.”

  “Fuck you, jack,” the trucker spat. “I’ll leave when I wanna fuckin’ leave.”

  “You’ll leave now,” the king said, and put one hand on the trucker’s arm.

  That did it.

  The trucker reared his arm back and swung –

  The king sidestepped easily and punched the trucker right in his oversized gut.

  Mr. Neanderthal doubled over. From the way his eyes bugged out, it seemed like his eggs over easy were about to come up.

  But that wasn’t the end of it. Oh no.

  The tattooed king grabbed the trucker by his greasy hair, spun him around, and SLAMMED his head down on the counter – once, twice, three times.

  BAM, BAM, BAM!

  Dude’s baseball cap came off in his plate of eggs.

  The king grabbed the hat, wrenched the trucker around, and frog-marched him out of the diner’s front door. As a final send-off, Leonidas kicked the trucker right in the ass and sent him sprawling onto the asphalt parking lot. For good measure, he flicked the eggy baseball cap on top of the trucker’s body.

  “Don’t come back,” the king ordered, then turned around and headed inside to raucous applause from everyone inside – except me and the blond Viking.

  Leonidas nodded to the diners, accepting their show of approval but tacitly letting them know Show’s over. Everybody turned back to their bacon and eggs, their mood much improved.

  He walked over to the counter, grabbed a couple of napkins out of the dispenser, and wiped his hands like he’d touched something distasteful. Which he had.

  “Thank you,” I said coolly. “But I could have handled it.”

  He looked up at me and grinned. The crinkle at the corner of his eyes – the slight smirk in his lips – the twinkle of those baby blues –

  Damn if it didn’t make me weak-kneed.

  “I’m sure you could have,” he said, not mocking me, just agreeing.

  “You overpaid,” I said, sliding his two twenties towards him across the counter.

  “Keep it,” he said, still smiling merrily, and turned to the door. By now the stone-faced blond guy had walked up.

  “It’s too much,” I called after him.

  “Not for having to put up with assholes,” he said, throwing me one last smile over his shoulder –

  And a wink.

  My heart skipped a beat.

  And then he and his right-hand man were gone.

  As they walked across the parking lot, the trucker scrabbled away from them across the asphalt like a rat afraid of a wolf.

  I watched them go, waaaay more turned on than was appropriate.

  “Damn, honey,” sassy 50-year-old Vera said at my elbow. “When life goes handin’ you chocolate, don’t go makin’ lemonade.”

  I frowned at her. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means, when Jack Pollari steps up like a white knight, don’t go throwin’ it back in his face.”

  “Who the hell’s Jack Pollari?” I asked.

  Another waitress named Rose shook her head as she walked past. “Dumb as a thumb.”

  I scowled at the comment and looked back at Vera. “What was that all about?”

  Vera sighed. “The guy who just stepped up for you was Jack Pollari.”

  “So?”

  Vera leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “So he’s probably the most powerful man in this town.”

  I did a double-take at the two figures crossing the street. They were walking towards a parking lot and one-story building filled with mechanic’s bays. All around the parking lot was a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Not coincidentally, the sign out front said “Pollari’s Body Shop.”

  “That guy?” I scoffed. “That guy’s a mechanic.”

  Vera’s lowered voice dropped to a whisper. “That guy’s the head of the Midnight Riders motorcycle gang, and you’d be wise not to cross him.”

  Holy shit.

  Jackpot.

  Fate – or maybe Ali, lending a helping hand – had put me in exactly the right place at the right time.

  Now all I had to do was figure out how to use it to my advantage.

  7

  Jack

  As Kade and I walked back from Charlie’s Diner, I couldn’t get that brunette out of my mind.

  She’d been a hot little number. Tall, lithe, firm where it was good and soft where it was better. Great ass, better rack. Even her waitress uniform hadn’t been able to hide that.

  Loved her hair. It looked long and thick, but she’d worn it pinned up on top of her head, exposing that gorgeous neck.

  And her face… Jesus. Perfect. Beautiful grey eyes, long lashes, pouty lips. Minimal makeup, which is how I like ‘em. I see too many chicks – Seven Veils girls and the bimbos hanging out at the Roadhouse – tarted up like streetwalkers.

  Sloane was like that. Wore her makeup like a battle mask.

  Thank God I didn’t have to see it anymore. Or at least not often.

  Me, give me a natural beauty any day.

  Specifically, a natural beauty like that brunette.

  But what I liked even more was her sass. She’d been eyeing me on the down-low the entire time I was in the joint, which I liked. But whereas most women would have fallen all over themselves when I laid down the law on the trucker, she was cool and distant.

  Thank you. But I could have handled it.

  The most interesting thing about her?

  I believed she could have.

  More than that, I liked that she hadn’t kowtowed to me. No deference at all.

  Which led me to believe that she was new in town and hadn’t heard about me yet.

 
I was sure one of the waitresses was schooling her even now.

  Which would make our next meeting even more interesting.

  I was hoping she wouldn’t change a single bit.

  Kade interrupted my thoughts. “You’re not thinking about that chick, are you?”

  I grinned at him. “So what if I am?”

  Kade just sighed and shook his head. Like he was an old, old man who had seen too much foolishness from youngsters, but knew better than to try to interfere. Which was hilarious, since he was almost ten years younger than me.

  Lots of people see Kade from the outside and totally read him wrong. Most think he’s cold as a stone, totally devoid of feeling. The chicks don’t seem to mind too much since he looks like a pretty boy fashion model, and most of ‘em seem to take his apparent lack of interest as a challenge.

  What they don’t see is what’s buried beneath the surface: unbending loyalty. Razor-sharp smarts. And astounding courage in the face of overwhelming odds – especially when something’s violated his sense of right and wrong.

  He’s an old soul. One who made peace with his own mortality a long time ago, and having done that, fears nothing.

  Buried even deeper than that, though, is a lava-hot vein of emotion – sleeping at the moment, but liable to turn into a volcano with the right provocation.

  Assholes who provoke him live to regret it.

  I like doing it just for the hell of it, though.

  “You should get yourself an old lady, Kade. Settle down, have a bunch of blond-haired babies just as stoic as you.”

  “Hm,” was all he replied before he was back onto business. “What about that other issue?”

  ‘That other issue’ was the thing we’d been discussing right before the greasy trucker decided to go to 11 on the asshole meter.

  Louis Shaw was the Vice President of the Midnight Riders – my second-in-command, though in name only. Kade was my real right-hand man. As the Sergeant-At-Arms, I depended on Kade to get his hands dirty in those situations where I couldn’t.

  Lou didn’t particularly like that. At 41, he was older than me, and sported a kind of friendly antagonism about being passed over as President. He’d been the Sergeant-At-Arms under the former regime, and was far more inclined towards the old-timers’ views on what constituted acceptable forms of revenue for the club.

  After the old guard had been swept away – either gunned down by cops or opposing gangs, or sent to the Federal penitentiary – I’d seen the writing on the wall. I was an upstart three years ago when I’d campaigned on getting us out of the illegal bullshit the club had been steeped in for the last two decades. But I persuaded 51% of the Riders and won. In the three years since, I’d made good on my promises: we got out of gun running, we were out of hard drugs like meth and heroin, and we’d cleaned up our act in virtually every other regard. Except for weed – which had already been legalized for recreational use in Washington state and Colorado, and was on the verge of becoming entirely kosher in California. We were poised to capitalize when it did.

  Other than that, we were 99% legit.

  Okay, maybe 95% legit. But we’re bikers, not angels.

  Lou, on the other hand, preferred the bad old days when we were 95% outlaws. He’d pushed back against my changes, but eventually went along with it – not because he was on board, but because he was smart. He knew which way the wind was blowing. Didn’t mean he wasn’t ready to tack back in the opposite direction the instant it shifted, though.

  He was a charming son of a bitch, I’ll give him that. And a hell of an actor. He’d smile to your face and give you a hug while he figured out the best place to stab you. Lou’s enemies didn’t always know they were on his shit list – not until the knife was in their back, anyway.

  Sometimes it was years between getting on that list and getting shivved. Lou was a patient man, and that list was very, very long.

  I had an inkling I was one of the names on it.

  “Lou’s up to something, no question,” I said to Kade. “Keep it on the down-low, but start digging when and where you can.”

  “What do you think it might be?”

  “I don’t want to speculate. It might be nothing – but knowing Lou, it’ll look like nothing on the surface, but there’ll be a chamber of horrors underneath.”

  “Hm,” was all Kade replied.

  “And be careful. If there’s any doubt in your mind when you’re digging for info, back off. I don’t want word getting back to him.”

  “He wouldn’t do anything to me,” Kade said, a little too matter-of-factly for my tastes.

  “Not out in the open. But if you think Lou wouldn’t pull strings behind the scenes to get your throat cut in a dark alley, you got another thing comin’.”

  “Hm.”

  “Not a word to anyone else about this,” I warned, though it was entirely unnecessary. If there was a tighter-lipped man in Richards than Kade, I’d never met him.

  He nodded, then slipped off to the mechanic’s bay while I went into the office to start the day.

  But the brunette?

  She was still on my mind.

  8

  She was still on my mind when she walked into my office that afternoon.

  “Boss?” Drew said from the doorway as my back was turned. Drew was in the MC, one of the newer members. Enthusiastic soldier, mediocre mechanic.

  “What,” I muttered as I wrestled with the tax numbers to give the accountant. That was one thing to be said for being an outlaw: not having to deal with fuckin’ Uncle Sam. When you sold ten grand in drugs, your tax bracket was exactly zero, and FICA didn’t even come into the equation.

  “There’s a girl here says she knows you.”

  “I’m a woman, not a girl,” said a cool, familiar voice.

  I turned around, my mood suddenly improving 1000%.

  “Yes you are,” I grinned as soon as I saw her there. She was out of her waitress’ get-up and wearing tight jeans and a black halter top. Her long hair was finally unpinned, and swept down her shoulders and halfway down her back.

  Damn.

  “Thanks, Drew,” I said, dismissing him. He gave the brunette the stink-eye as he left. She ignored him completely.

  “So,” I continued. “To what do I owe this pleasure, Ms. – ?”

  “Fiona,” she said, the barest trace of a smile on her lips. “Fiona Christensen.”

  I got up from my seat and extended a hand. “Jack Pollari.”

  She took it. Her grip was firm, especially for a woman – but her skin was smooth. Soft.

  I held onto her for longer than she probably would have liked.

  Or maybe she liked it plenty. She was a little hard to read.

  “You haven’t been a waitress long,” I remarked.

  She frowned. “What?”

  “Your hands. They’re soft.”

  She pulled away from me, as though I’d unnerved her.

  I shouldn’t have said anything. Could’ve held onto her hand longer.

  “You’re observant,” she remarked.

  “I just look that way.”

  She frowned again, like she was puzzled.

  “‘Observant’?... ‘Look that way’?” I explained.

  Her frown smoothed out, and she rolled her eyes. “That was one of the lamest jokes I’ve heard in awhile.”

  I liked that. Liked that she didn’t laugh just to appease me.

  Plenty of other women would have.

  “Guilty as charged,” I grinned. “Any joke you’ve got to explain is a bad one.”

  “Unless the audience is stupid. Although that wasn’t the case here,” she said with another cool smile.

  “I concur. So… what can I do you for, Ms. Christensen?”

  “Fiona.”

  “Fiona,” I said, liking the way it felt on my tongue. I was pretty sure I’d like the way she’d feel on my tongue, too.

  “I just wanted to say thank you again. For earlier. I feel like I wasn’t… appropriate
ly grateful.”

  “Well… you could’ve handled it, right?” I grinned.

  She smiled back. This time her expression was warmer. “I could have. But thank you for what you did.”

  “My pleasure. So, new in town, new to being a waitress… what’s your story?”

  “Not much of one. Failed actress, left LA, now I’m here.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  She shrugged. “It happens.”

  “I suppose it does. Cut-throat business, Hollywood.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Let me be the first to welcome you to Richards. Or, if I’m not the first, then the second or third.”

  “You’re the first,” she said, with another one of those smiles that I felt below the belt. In a very pleasant sort of way.

  “I’m afraid we’re a step or two down from Los Angeles in the glamour department.”

  “You more than make up for it in cost of living.”

  “True.”

  She gave me a playful look. “So much for glamour. What about the excitement department?”

  “We’ve got that in spades, if you know where to look.”

  “Ah. And you know where to look for that, do you?”

  “I am where to look for that, Fiona.”

  We stayed like that for a few seconds, staring into each other’s eyes – until she looked away, slightly embarrassed.

  I decided to make it easy on her, so I asked, “So what’s the plan?”

  She furrowed her brow the slightest. “…the plan?”

  “Not to disparage your current employment, but smart as you are, I can’t imagine you moved 200 miles just to become a waitress at a greasy spoon joint.”

  She hesitated for a second, then said, “I tried to get a job at the Seven Veils.”

  My interest immediately plummeted.

  Besides being hot, she’d been so smart – so interesting. And here she was just another dumbass like all the rest.

  “Well,” I said, giving her a look from her waist to her tits, “I can’t see why they turned you down. You look more than qualified.”

  “I don’t strip,” she said coldly, all friendliness gone. “I was looking for a waitressing job.”

  I raised my eyes back up to hers. I was officially semi-interested again. “Really? Why?”