Outlaw's Ride: An MC Romance by Carter Steele (books recommended by bts .txt) 📕

“What do you want from me?” I wrote.

“The truth.” Wreck’s brown eyes narrowed on me. “You aren’t like the rest of the girls in Patrick’s stable. Why is that?”

When I didn’t make a move to write anything his expression shifted to that of disappointment. I wasn’t trying to play hard to get or even be misleading. There were just some things I couldn’t tell anyone.

“Ok, Whore, if I’m your client then you have to do what I want.” Wreck replied through a sigh, realizing I wasn’t going to answer the questions he wanted. “And I want you to draw. A picture in every room. Just for me.”

Every room? I cocked my head inquisitively.

“Oh, you thought this was all there was?” Wreck looked around at the impressive man-made jungle and smirked. “We’re just getting started. Wait’ll you see the penguins.”

5

Wreck

That girl…

Dusk was falling when I watched Sarah run back into the laundromat. We got back to the motel on time but Patrick apparently came back early for the pick up so I dropped her off instead. Sarah had been very anxious about that when we found out she missed her ride. I did my best to console her, but it didn't look like it worked. Whatever arrangement she had with Patrick scared the hell out of her. I asked several times for her to tell me what was going on, but she pointed back to a comment in her notepad that just read, I'm fine.

She looked back at me only once, just as she was about to disappear behind the front door. Her hair swished at the motion covering most of her face, except her beautiful, brown eyes. They were fierce and sharp and not all the eyes of any whore I’d ever seen.

There was something so interesting and incredibly out of place about her. I didn’t know what was going on, but I would find out.

She was all I thought about on the ride back to the motel, and when I parked next to all the other bikes I paused a moment and took her sketch pad out from my saddlebags. She thanked me for it, but said she couldn’t keep it. When I asked her why Sarah only gave me one of her infuriating non-answers, saying she just couldn’t.

“You’re alive.” Dreamer muted the TV when I got back into our shared room. He was recently showered, and lying shirtless on the bed listening to the TV while scrolling his phone. “You’ve been gone so long I figured the girl must’ve sucked the life out you.”

“You know how it goes, bro.” I kicked my boots off and crashed on the bed, feeling drained in an altogether different way. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

“Amen to that.” Dreamer made his way to the mini-fridge and grabbed us two beers.

I opened the sketch book and slowly flipped through each of Sarah’s pictures. It was one thing to see the finished product but to watch her actually draw it was something else entirely. Her focus and skill was intoxicating. It was like watching a sexy singer perform and I was the only one in the audience.

When I reached for my beer Dreamer pulled it back, holding it for ransom while he looked over the sketchbook in my lap.

“Since when did you take up drawing?” Dreamer asked, cocking his head to get a better look.

“It’s not mine.”

“Yeah no shit,” he replied sharply, cracking a smile. “You can barely write your own fucking name.”

I gave him a flat look then snatched the beer out of his hand.

“What’s going on?” he asked looking back up at me. Dreamer was a bloodhound. Once he got on the trail of something he was relentless. “You’ve been distracted lately.”

I closed the sketchpad and took a long swig from the can wishing I had something harder to drink.

“What’s your read on Patrick?”

“Garden-variety megalomaniac wannabe.” Dreamer shrugged. “Nothing we haven’t seen before.”

“Something’s going on with the way he runs shit.”

“You mean he’s not an upstanding citizen whose laundromat most definitively isn’t a front for an illegal prostitution ring?” Dreamer feigned surprise, going so far as to gasp out loud. “You, sir, must be mistaken!”

“You’re such an asshole, you know that?” I snorted

“Part of my charm.” Dreamer bowed slightly, then finished his beer and belched loudly. “Now get your hairy white ass up and ready. We’re rolling out in twenty.”

“Fuck that. You and Buck have a great time—”

“Club business,” Dreamer cut in, all the mirth drained from his face.

“What club business?” I asked. There wasn’t anything planned that I knew of. It’d be crazy to go cause some more trouble so soon after setting the two gangs on each other. If you made too much noise too often the wrong people would start to notice. Normally we’d take the night off after a job.

Dreamer filled me in on a last minute job at the laundromat. Patrick was meeting with a local big shot about a potential partnership. Offense, defense whatever, it was all the same to us. He needed some big bastards to stand around and look mean.

And all I could think about was getting the chance to see Sarah again.

We rolled up about an hour later to Patrick bitching about how we were late. Dunkin put a hand on Patrick’s shoulder and reminded him that we weren’t his pets. Squeezing tighter Dunkin leaned in and in a low voice told him in no uncertain words that if he ever attempted this last minute bullshit again we’d leave his ass twisting in the wind.

Patrick was taller than our pres, but that didn’t matter. At a little over five and a half feet, clean-shaven and with not a lot of meat on his bones Dunkin didn’t look like much at a glance. Looks could be deceiving, though, because one look into his steely eyes and you’d know you had the attention of a cold-blooded killer. Dunkin was the only guy I knew that