FEELS LIKE THE FIRST TIME Read online

  I reached in my pocket, pulled out a Bic pen, and pushed the barrel of the pen into the round key opening. After a few seconds, the lock turned freely. “Good to go,” I said. “Open the door. We’ll take Oceanside back toward the freeway and meet at the shop.”

  He grabbed the handle of the garage door. “Sounds good.”

  I raised my leg over the seat, sat down, and started rolling the motorcycle toward the closed garage door. The sight of the door leading into the house swinging open made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  Someone shouted from just inside the house. “What in the fuck!?”

  It wasn’t the Savage’s president, Whip, but the guy could have easily passed for his brother. I kept my eyes locked on him while trying to get off the bike, and soon decided it must have been Whip’s brother.

  “Motherfuckers,” he grunted as he turned and ran inside the house.

  Pee Bee’s eyes met mine and instantly went wide. There was now a risk if we attempted to leave – the man inside the house may return with a gun before we got away. I realized the risks associated with breaking into the home, but I had zero desire to get shot in the back. With little time to think, and even less to react, I swept the kickstand down and steadied the bike.

  Pee Bee shot past me and ran into the house after the retreating man.

  It seemed like a fool’s move, but it was probably our best bet. Without as much as a second’s thought, I followed right behind him. As I rounded the corner to the living area, I heard the unmistakable sound of fists hitting flesh.

  “What were you gonna do with that?” I heard Pee Bee shout. “You a fuckin’ baseball player?”

  With his legs in the living room, and his upper body concealed by the doorframe of what I suspected was the bedroom, Whip’s look-alike was on his back. A baseball bat lay beside him on the floor, and Pee Bee sat on his chest, pounding him without mercy, one fist at a time.

  As no one was coming to the beating victim’s rescue, I immediately assumed the small home was empty – short of the guy getting pummeled by Pee Bee. My experience in the military, however, taught me that assumptions could get a man killed.

  I quickly searched the home, found it empty, and walked back to the living room. When I returned, the man on the floor appeared to be unconscious, and Pee Bee still straddled him while digging through his backpack.

  “Come on, let’s beat feet,” I said.

  “Hold up,” he responded.

  He pulled a roll of duct tape from the bag. “This ought to work.”

  I chuckled. “For what?”

  “Taping him up.”

  “What the fuck for?”

  He stood up glared at me as if I were an idiot. “So the dumb fucker doesn’t call the cops or whatever.”

  I nodded and stepped toward him. “Let’s make it quick.”

  While I held the man’s legs above the floor, he taped his ankles together with about a dozen wraps of tape. After tearing the tape in two, he then taped the man’s arms to his torso with an equal amount of tape.

  He swung the toe of his boot into the side of the man’s head. “Pick up his head.”

  I laughed to myself and lifted his head from the floor by his neck. He began to moan; a sign he was obviously regaining consciousness.

  Pee Bee kicked him in the side of the head again, hard.

  “God damn.” I chuckled.

  “Fucker came at me with a ball bat, Crip. Fuck this dude.”

  “I’m with ya,” I said. “Just make it quick.”

  From his forehead to his chin, he wrapped the man’s head in duct tape, making it one solid ball of grey tape. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but it would definitely be effective in keeping him from talking.

  While Pee Bee placed the remaining portion of tape back into the backpack, the man started to thrash around. I realized in the rush that Pee Bee hadn’t taken time to leave any air holes in his handiwork.

  I motioned toward our flopping victim. “Fucker’s suffocating.”

  Pee bee sighed. “How long’s it take for a guy to, you know, run out of…” he paused and shouldered his backpack again.

  “Oxygen?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a nod. “Oxygen.”

  “Maybe a minute or so?” I shrugged. “Something like that. Give or take.”

  The man continued to thrash about, flopping like his life depended on it.

  “Maybe we ought to poke some breathing holes in that tape, huh?”

  “Unless we’re tryin’ to kill him,” I responded.

  “Still got that pen?”

  “Where’s yours?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno.”

  I pressed my hands to my pockets, realized I didn’t have my pen, and then remembered it was still in the key switch of the Softail in the garage. “It’s in the fuckin’ garage. Be right back.”

  I sauntered to the garage, retrieved the pen, and returned. Pee Bee was standing over the man with his arms crossed, staring down at him.

  He nodded toward the motionless body and shrugged. “He quit.”

  “Quit what?”

  He pressed the sole of his boot into the man’s hips, pushing him across the floor a few inches. “Moving.”

  “How long’s it been?”

  He narrowed his eyes and stared back at me. “How long’s what been?”

  I knelt down, poked two holes in the tape where I expected his nostrils to be, and waited. “Since he fuckin’ moved.”

  He shrugged. “I dunno. Fucker was floppin’ when you went to get the pen, then he just stopped.”

  I took his pulse.

  Nothing.

  I sighed. “Fucker’s dead.”

  He returned a stare of disbelief. “Are you kiddin’ me?”

  “Nope.” I shook my head and stood up. “Dead as fuck.”

  The plan was to steal the two motorcycles as payback for what Satan’s Savages had done. I was a firm believer in an eye for an eye. A theft on their part deserved a theft in return. Murder wasn’t out of the question, but it definitely wasn’t something I had planned on when Stretch dropped us off.

  I cleared my throat. “Gonna call Stretch and have him drive around to the block west of here. The way we came in. We’re gonna toss this prick in the back of the truck and haul him to the shop.”

  “Why don’t we just leave him here?”

  “His dead ass is proof we committed murder. If we take him, it might be a couple of days before Whip calls it in, and even then, it’ll just be a missing person report. See if you can find his cell phone, we’ll take it, too. And we’ll need to wipe this place down, anywhere and anything we touched.”

  “Got it.”

  “And we’re leaving the bikes,” I said.

  “What the fuck for?” he snapped. “We need some get back for what these bastards did.”

  “If we take ‘em now, it’ll sure look to Whip like it was the work of the Fuckers. If we take the dead guy and leave the bikes, Whip ain’t gonna suspect shit. And I think killin’ Whip’s brother is enough get back for stealin’ a bike.”

  He nodded. “Good call.”

  I grabbed a hand towel from the bathroom and wiped down the bikes, door handles, the garage door, and the bathroom. After convincing ourselves the entire place was free of our fingerprints, I pocketed the dead man’s cell phone and grabbed the baseball bat.

  “Ain’t no sense in draggin’ his dumb ass. We’ll get caught for sure,” Pee Bee said. “I’ll just carry the fucker.”

  We only had to go a hundred yards, but carrying a dead body wasn’t as easy as one might think. My experiences in combat taught me that the dead and wounded were more difficult to carry than someone who was alive and well.

  With minimal effort, Pee Bee hoisted the dead body over his shoulders. “Lead the way.”

  Using my shirt to keep from leaving fingerprints, I opened the back door. “Through this yard, then through that yard. Stretch is parked in the street. Ready?”

 
He nodded.

  Without incident, we rushed through the two yards, and up to the side of Stretch’s truck. I checked over each shoulder. “Toss him in the back.”

  “Open the door,” Pee Bee demanded. “I’m puttin’ him in front with us. It’ll look like he’s drunk.”

  “Toss his ass in the fuckin’ back,” I growled.

  He shifted the dead body on his shoulders and glared back at me. “We get caught with him in the back, we’re fucked. Open the fuckin’ door.”

  “You two fuckers need to get in here, or we’re all gonna get got,” Stretch warned. “Hurry the fuck up.”

  “Toss his ass in the back,” I demanded.

  “Sure thing, Boss.” He sighed, rolled his shoulders forward, and ducked his head. The dead body rolled over the top of him and dropped into the back of the truck with a thud. “We get busted, it’s on you, Crip.”

  I pulled the truck door open and motioned toward the inside of the cab. “We ain’t getting’ busted, I’m sick of arguing about it. Get in the fuckin’ truck.”

  After a short glare, he got in.

  With the dead body in the bed of the truck, we rode to the shop in silence. Strangely, I wasn’t concerned with murder charges, Whip’s dead brother, or disposing of the body. My focus was elsewhere.

  The girl from the bar with the tight little pussy and the mile-long attitude was on my mind, and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I was looking forward to seeing her again.

  There probably wasn’t a handful of girls that would show up at the clubhouse of an outlaw motorcycle club – even if they were invited. Considering the events of our first meeting, Peyton, the newspaper reporter, probably shouldn’t show up.

  Her mouth and her attitude, however, told me she was an adventurous little bitch.

  And I planned on finding out just how daring she could be.

  Chapter 3

  Peyton

  I had run through many of the possibilities of what might happen when I arrived at the clubhouse – at least all of them that I could think of. Visions of Nick Navarro shoving his hand down my shorts while his MC brethren watched seemed to come to mind as being the most probable of options.

  Camden was right, I was adventurous. Allowing Navarro to finger me in the bar wasn’t something I would describe as typical of my behavior, though. After it was all over and I was driving home, I decided I was simply lost in the moment. Navarro’s eyes were hypnotic, and with them focused on me while he was carefully tickling my g-spot, saying no wasn’t even an option.

  Truth be known, the guy could probably commit murder, and as long as he batted his insanely sexy blue eyes at the jury, they’d acquit him.

  I drove around the corner, recognized the clubhouse from my Google Earth search, and slowly rolled up to the opened gate. An old warehouse that could easily pass for being abandoned was beyond the fence. In front of it, one lone motorcycle sat.

  With a bare metal gas tank that was covered in rust, no front fender, and a blue and white whip dangling from one of the handlebars, it appeared to be no different than the clubhouse – abandoned.

  The garage doors to the building were wide open, revealing a shop filled with miscellaneous motorcycle parts, some unidentifiable equipment, a blue steel drum, and an old refrigerator.

  The early evening sunshine provided me with a false sense of security. Had it been dark, I probably would have turned around and left. But it wasn’t. And I didn’t.

  Eager for another glimpse of Navarro’s eyes – and an explanation of who he was – I pulled past the gate, parked beside the abandoned motorcycle, and got out of my Jeep. I tried to absorb as much of my surroundings as possible.

  “Jeep huh? Figured you for a--”

  I turned toward the gravelly voice. “Hyundai?”

  He stood just beyond the open garage door, his thumbs resting inside the front pockets of his well-worn jeans. The wife beater and leather vest that he wore provided little cover, leaving his multi-colored tattoos – and his bulging biceps – in full view of my anxious eyes.

  He nodded. “Something like that.”

  I wanted to understand more about Navarro, the brotherhood, and what attracted each of them to be in an outlaw motorcycle club. He was standing no more than ten feet from me, but it seemed that he was miles away. Having already experienced it, I preferred the face-to-face scenario we shared at the bar. I wanted to feel his breath on my lips and smell his adrenaline-infused sweat.

  I pushed my hands into the pockets of my shorts and twisted my hips nervously. “So where do you want to do it?”

  “Where?” He glanced around the parking lot and chuckled. “Personally, I prefer doing it out in the open. I’m kind of an outdoorsy fucker.”

  I rolled my eyes and grinned, although I fully realized my question set me up for his response. The thought of him bending me over the abandoned motorcycle made me tingle all over, but as much as I hated to, I fully realized I needed to try and keep our little meeting professional. At least for now.

  “I meant the interview,” I said.

  “No you didn’t.” He raised his right hand to his chin and rubbed the growth of his beard between his thumb and forefinger as he eyed me. “You knew what you were saying had a double meaning. You did it on purpose.”

  I forced a laugh. It didn’t sound very genuine. “For what benefit?”

  He stepped closer. “You want my opinion?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, reporter, I think you want me to finger that little puss of yours again.”

  I stared back at him. My legs went weak at the thought of it. “Oh really?” I asked with a note of sarcasm in my voice.

  He nodded sharply in response.

  He was right, but I wasn’t going to admit it. I fought against my tightening throat and eventually swallowed enough saliva to allow me to respond. “Why do you say that?”

  “The last time you saw me you were wearing shorts. I stuck my finger in your tight little twat and you liked it.” He took a few steps toward me, then tilted his head to the side slightly. “If you didn’t like it, you’d have worn jeans today. But you didn’t. You wore shorts. Again.”

  He was now about three feet from me. I felt like the temperature had risen twenty degrees. I attempted to pry my eyes away from his, but found doing so impossible. “So, because I uhhm. Because I wore shorts, I want you to uhhm. I want you to touch me?”

  He nodded again. This time, his mouth was twisted into a smirk.

  “It’s summer, and we’re in San Diego,” I said. “Everyone wears shorts.”

  He took a step back and folded his arms in front of his chest. “Tell you what, little girl. If you promise to tell me the truth, and I mean always, I’ll agree to an interview. How’s that?”

  I couldn’t believe it. It was exactly what I hoped for, but in no way what I expected at least not so soon. “Sounds great,” I blurted.

  He extended his hand. “So, we got a deal?”

  I wondered just what type of handshake he had planned. The pull me close bro hug, the soul brother web of the thumb bump with a hand-twist, or maybe slapping the palms together and then pounding knuckles? I reached for his hand slowly, not sure of what to do.

  He gripped my hand in his and shook it in a conventional, gentlemanly manner.

  He released my hand and shot me a serious look. “So, were you working the other day? At the bar?”

  It seemed like an odd question. I answered nonetheless. “Yeah.”

  “And now?”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Why?”

  He shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and cocked an eyebrow. “Not counting today and yesterday, when was the last time you wore shorts to work? Before you answer, remember, you made a deal with the devil.”

  I recalled no such deal. “A deal with the devil?”

  “Yeah. Remember? We shook on it. And, sooner or later you’ll figure it out, but I’m the devil himself,” he said, his voice filled with pride.

/>   “The devil, huh? Interesting. As far as the shorts go.” I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Take a fuckin’ guess.”

  “Never?”

  He coughed out a laugh. “That’s what I thought.”

  “You got me,” I said, twisting my hips teasingly. “I wore the shorts because I liked what you did to me the other day.”

  He nodded as if he’d made the only point he intended to. “So, you going to take notes?”

  I found his prompt changing of the topic from sexual to business abrupt and odd. I was left to wonder if he liked what we shared in the bar as much as I did. After convincing myself he was doing nothing more than playing a game with me, I responded. “I’d like to record our conversations. Are you okay with that?”

  He pulled his hands from his pockets. “I prefer it,” he said. “Leaves less for you to fuck up.”

  I noticed the fingernail on his left index finger was black. I made a mental note to ask about it later. “I don’t fuck up.”

  “We’ll see about that.” He turned toward the open garage. “Follow me.”

  I rushed to the Jeep, grabbed my purse, and fought to catch up with him. Although I expected him to take me to an office or secret meeting room in a remote corner of the clubhouse, he sauntered up to a workbench at the far wall. With minimal effort, he hopped up onto it and sat down.

  He motioned to a steel drum that was sitting beside him, kicking the top of it with the heel of his boot. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  The drum looked new and was remarkably clean. While wondering if it was commonplace for bikers to use steel drums for stools, I sat down and looked around the garage. “We’re uhhm. We’re going to do it here?”

  “What’d you expect? Starbucks and some of those crunchy little chocolate biscuits? Yeah, we’re doin’ it here.”

  I reached into my purse, pulled out my digital recorder, and held it between us.

  He nodded once.

  The interview began.

  And Nicholas Crip Navarro came to life.

  Chapter 4

  Nick

  She sat on the drum with her legs crossed and her forearm draped over her bare thigh. She was a gorgeous little bitch, and keeping my hands off of her went against the grain of my very existence.