Felon: The Hellions MC Page 12

  Apparently, The Hellions had practically run the city prior to losing Rogue to prison. After Rogue went away, they had all but crumbled under the weight of police scrutiny, allowing other criminal organizations to rise in their place. A couple of the larger ones were faceless and finely tuned so that they were hard to crack.

  I began to wonder if Rogue hadn’t been telling the truth when he claimed someone had set him up to take the fall for the murder of the pawn shop owner. It appeared he never said who it was, and if he had, that information never made it out to the press.

  “What do you think, Violet?” I asked myself. I sat and stared blankly at my computer screen. I had looked at so many different articles and interpretations of what had happened that I didn’t know what to think anymore.

  It was obvious that my brother’s opinion of Rogue was pretty much spot-on. Looking at his reputation alone, he was a lowlife. He came across as just another street thug biker who was trying to make a less than honest living through crime.

  Rogue had found himself jailed for petty crimes a few times early on in his career. It seemed like he had run into trouble every time he tried to make a buck, but after The Hellions came into the picture, he had obviously figured out how to keep himself out of trouble. It didn’t help that no one knew what he was up to, but he made it so that no one could really peg anything on him legally, apparently.

  The one thing missing from the story I pieced together about his MC, though, was murder. There were no tales of murder in the articles and blogs I read while researching Rogue and The Hellions. There was only one murder, and Rogue had claimed that someone else committed it and set him up, though he had never provided a name.

  I wanted to know who that had been, even if it was just someone Rogue had imagined. It was hard to imagine that a criminal organization as large and successful as The Hellions had managed to make it to their level without getting any blood on their hands, but I also didn’t know a whole lot about that world. I didn’t know what it took to do what Rogue and his men did day in and day out.

  I closed my laptop and got up from my couch.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said aloud as I walked out of the room. I needed to move around. I needed to get out of the apartment, but first I needed a shower.

  My eyes felt dry and swollen after all the crying from that morning. My head hurt from being stopped up after crying so much. It felt like I was recovering from a cold or the flu, or even from a night out on the town. A shower would do me good.

  I stood in front of the bathroom mirror after starting the shower, while I waited for it to heat up. As steam slowly filled the room, I looked at my reflection. I looked different, like something was missing. Sure, I had lost my virginity to Rogue, but it looked like he had taken something else along with it in my reflection.

  I turned and looked at myself from the side. From the neck down, my body still looked the same. My eyes ran down over my whole body. From the neck down, it was like nothing special or out of the ordinary had happened to me at all.

  My face, however, told a completely different story. All of my worry, my pain, and my stress rested heavily in my face. The corners of my lips sagged. My eyes drooped. My cheeks seemed to sag, even though they were thin and there was no possible way for them to do it.

  There was a light that had gone out behind my eyes. That was what I was seeing, what I was noticing in the mirror.

  I sighed and climbed behind my shower curtain. The warm water rushed over my body, soothing all of my tired, aching muscles. I closed my eyes and imagined that the warmth came from Rogue’s gentle hands running over my body. I could feel his thumbs digging into my shoulders. Then he moved his fingers and thumbs down along my back.

  I gasped and leaned against the tile wall while the water hit my back. I imagined him grabbing my hips and pulling me back against him. My body ached to have him inside me again, to know that feeling again of being filled by his long, thick manhood.

  I craved him. It was as though I had starved my body for all these years, and now that it knew what it had been missing, it demanded more of it immediately. I didn’t know if it was okay to want someone who had fucked me and then fucked me over the way Rogue had, and I didn’t care.

  I ran a hand down over my stomach as the shower water traced its way down the front of my body. I slid a finger between the folds between my legs. I was still tender from the night before, but as soon as my fingertip brushed over my skin, I shook with the thrill of my own touch.

  I closed my eyes and pressed my face against the wall while I slid two thin fingers inside myself, imagining that they were Rogue’s massive cock. I gripped myself, running my fingers along the front inside wall and pressing my palm against my clit. I worked myself slowly like that, dreaming of Rogue taking me from behind in the shower and pushing himself deep inside of me.

  My body shivered as I ran my fingers back and forth across myself. It was wrong to want him, but I couldn’t help it. The man I knew was not the man I had read about in those articles and blogs. The man I had come to know as Rogue was gentle, at least with me. There was no way he was just using me as a way to get back at anyone.

  I slid my wet fingers out of myself and ran them up between my folds to the swollen nub of pleasure at the top of my slit. I flicked my fingertip across my clit and bit my bottom lip as pleasure roared through my body.

  I whimpered against my pursed lips and closed eyes as I quickly ran my finger back and forth, up and down, driving my ecstasy to its crescendo before letting myself erupt. My knees nearly collapsed underneath me in the shower as my whole body started shaking. I gasped against the wall and panted under the rushing water.

  “Fuck,” I called out alone, leaning against the tiles to hold myself up.

  I couldn’t accept that our first time was going to be our last time together. I couldn’t accept that I would never sleep with Rogue again. I couldn’t accept that he would have done to me what he did.

  As my body relaxed and came down from ecstasy, I washed so I could get ready for work. After work, I was going to drive over to his MC’s headquarters. He hadn’t invited me there yet, but I was determined to get to the bottom of this. I needed to know exactly why he had run out on me this morning and why my brother insisted that this was about him instead of about me.

  No, it was about me, too. I was the one he had slept with. I was the one who had gone out on dates with him. Regardless of what Titus wanted to believe, I was the one who had been fucked over by Rogue.

  And I wasn’t about to let him off the hook.

  Chapter 17

  Rogue

  Unable to get Violet off my mind, I decided to cut out of Hellions HQ for a while. I went down to Andy’s to grab a drink and see if the same bartender from the other night was working again.

  I walked into the dimly lit bar from the warm, bright daylight outside and had to squint my eyes while they adjusted to the drastic difference in light. I could only make out the bar at first, a beacon in the darkness of the rest of the room.

  I slid onto a stool right in front, making it obvious I wasn’t interested in hiding from anyone. If Titus and his men were around, they certainly would have seen me, but I didn’t care anymore. I was ready to get it all over with. There were only a few other men sitting at the bar. No one was talking. No one looked up from their drinks. The TV over the bar played the news on mute with captions on in case anyone decided to watch it. Other than that, music played lowly in the background. It wasn’t overpowering yet, but I knew in a few short hours, they would crank the volume to encourage people to drink more.

  “Hey, boss,” the bartender said.

  “Why do you call me that?” I asked him, figuring business was slow enough that we could actually engage in a conversation this time.

  “I don’t know,” he said with a laugh. “It just feels right, you know?” He poured me a glass of whiskey with ice and set it on the bar with my credit card from the other night.

  “Oh
, hey, how did it go with those ladies the other night?” I asked him.

  “They were very thankful for the drinks, and one of them dropped off her name and number for me to give you when I returned your card.” He produced a napkin with a name and number written on it in what looked like dark red lipstick.

  “Sandra.”

  “Yeah, she said give her a call.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” I told him, holding my glass up and nodding.

  “Yes, sir,” he agreed, laughing.

  I folded the napkin and put it in my pocket for later. I sat forward on the stool while the bartender wiped down a few glasses.

  “What’s your name?” I asked him.

  “Randy.” Randy offered me his hand to shake.

  “Rogue,” I told him, “though I’m sure you already know my real name from the card.”

  “Right,” he said. He went back to wiping down glasses.

  “Hey, I’m the president of The Hellions. You know, we’re right down the street in the old firehouse,” I started.

  “Yeah, I think we talked about that before,” he said absently.

  “Well, shit, before we get too deep, is anyone around?” I asked.

  “No. Titus and his goons haven’t been back in since that night. I think they’re up to something,” he said plainly, as if Titus was just common knowledge around here.

  “They’re always up to something,” I told him, and he laughed, agreeing with me. “I was wondering if we could talk business, then,” I added.

  That got his attention. He put down the glass he’d been cleaning and through the towel over his shoulder. He leaned on the bar to make our conversation as private as it could have been.

  “What did you have in mind?” he asked in a way that let me know exactly what he was thinking, and we were on the same page.

  “We’re expanding,” I told him. “You seem like you’ve been around for a while, so you probably know that I was out of the picture for a few years.”

  “Yeah, I remember all that,” Randy said.

  “I’m sure you can guess things didn’t go well for the MC while I was out of the picture,” I continued.

  “No, I would imagine not, but I remember seeing some of what went down while you were gone.” He laughed.

  It occurred to me that he sure did know a lot for someone who wasn’t actually involved with us, but that could have been because he was part of the life. He worked in a bar where guys like Titus came to handle business. He would have known more than the average bartender, for sure.

  “Yeah, it was pretty ugly while I was gone, but I’m trying to get The Hellions back to where we were before I went away, and I could use some guys who know the ins and outs of the business. And who ride,” I said, finally getting to the point.

  “If you’re offering, yes, I’d be interested,” Randy told me.

  “Good deal, brother. We’ve got a job coming up this weekend. After that, I’ll be back by to talk to you some more.” I finished my whiskey and put the glass back down on the bar. Talking business wasn’t getting my mind off of Violet. It was all I could do to focus on our conversation.

  Yeah, we had a job coming up, a bust. We were going to take down the older brother of the girl who was haunting my thoughts. I needed a way to clear my mind before I went in distracted and got myself and my men killed. I had allowed something that was just part of the job to get the best of me, and now I needed to get her off my mind.

  If Randy knew anything about what was coming up, he didn’t let on. Then again, he wouldn’t have given anything away anyway. He was good, but he wasn’t like those guys back at HQ. Randy knew what he knew because of who he was, not because of who his boss was. I hoped my guys were doing a good job of weeding those made men out for me back at the old firehouse.

  I got up from the bar and pulled the number out of my pocket.

  “Thanks again,” I told Randy as I walked outside, back into the blinding sunlight. I put my shades back on and slid onto my bike.

  Before firing her up, I unfolded the napkin and pulled out my phone. I hesitated. I had already done enough damage to Violet. If I decided to go through with what I was about to do, there would be no turning back. There would be no way to reconcile with Violet after sleeping with another woman.

  Then again, that wasn’t necessarily the worst idea I’d ever had. Trying to date her seriously would have created a major conflict of interest since her brother was one of our biggest rivals and would probably continue to remain so even after being taken down if we didn’t kill him. Killing him would definitely put her out of my reach, so I rationalized that it was probably a good idea to go ahead and cut her loose.

  I dialed Sandra’s number on my phone and waited for her to answer.

  “Hello?” a groggy voice came through the phone. I remembered days like that, waking up after lunch after a long night of drinking and not being able to get it completely together right away.

  I imagined she was probably still lying in bed, her thin body tangled in the sheets. I imagined her subtle curves with ink and piercings in all the right places, just waiting on someone to join her and make the previous night’s party worth it.

  I didn’t know which one of the three from the other night that Sandra was, but it didn’t matter really. Either one of them would have been fine. They each looked like a good time waiting to happen.

  “Is this Sandra?” I said.

  “Yeah,” she croaked. “Who’s calling? And what fucking time is it?” she barked.

  “It’s sometime after lunch,” I told her. “And it’s the guy from the bar the other night, the one who paid for your drinks.”

  “Oh, it’s you!” Her voice cleared up immediately. I imagined her sitting up in bed and trying to open her eyes.

  “Yeah, where are you?” I asked.

  “I’m in bed. What does it sound like?” she snapped.

  “Sounds like you need some company,” I answered.

  “You think so, huh? So, what, you’re just going to come by and get in my pants, huh? Just like that?” I liked her feisty attitude already.

  The possibility of getting some help from her to get Violet off my mind made my jeans fit a little tighter. I reached down and adjusted my jeans, letting my growing desire slide down my leg.

  “I’m not worried about your pants, dear,” I told her. “Not that I think you’re wearing any to begin with. But there is something else I’d like to get into.”

  “Tell you what, you bring me something for this hangover, and you can have anything you want, baby,” she said, and then she proceeded to tell me her address.

  Sandra had a studio apartment a couple of blocks over from Andy’s. I stopped by the street vendor down in front of her building and grabbed her a thick sausage-dog and a soda. I took the food up the elevator with me to her apartment.

  As hard as I was getting, I was nervous, too. I started to question whether or not I thought I could go through with this. But then she answered her door.

  I stood looking at the one of the dark-haired beauties from the other night. She had hair as black as night. She was tall and thin. She answered the door in an old torn t-shirt and black panties. She wasn’t playing around. She meant what she said when she told me I could have anything I wanted if I brought her food, apparently.

  “Thank you,” she said, relieved, when she saw the food in my hands.

  She pulled her chipped black nails away from the door and walked back into her large studio apartment. There was a couch and TV at one end, a bed at the other end in the windows overlooking the street below, a kitchen tucked in the corner, and a bathroom that was little more than a stall large enough to hold the sink, toilet, and tub.

  She ran a hand through her tousled hair as she sank down into her old couch. She held her hands up to me for the food as I approached her.

  “Nice place,” I said, looking around at the artwork hanging everywhere.

  “Thanks,” she said with a mouthful of her f
ood. She grabbed her drink and washed it down.

  I guessed this was the difference between the women I normally went after and the woman I couldn’t get off my mind. There was a kind of comfort in meeting someone like Sandra. She had invited me into her apartment without so much as screening who I was to make sure I wasn’t going to rob or kill her. The first time I saw her outside the bar, she greeted me half dressed, half awake, and hungover from another night of drinking and partying.

  With Violet, there was a sense of decorum. She never would have allowed me to see her this way, not that I imagined she wound up like this very often. Women like Sandra didn’t linger in my thoughts. I would see them, maybe even fuck them, and move on. There was something very sensual in the lifestyle people like her lived, but there didn’t seem to be any real ambition in it. There was no thought of tomorrow, next week, five years down the line, or anything like that. While that was attractive, it wasn’t reliable or sustainable.