ONE MORE RIDE Read online

  Beth leaned across the table, brushing a strand of Hank's brown hair out of his face and touching his cheek softly. “You don't look like a mess to me. And I don't want to stay away from you. I want to be right here with you. I want to be whatever you need me to be, whatever will make you feel strong and good and happy again.”

  Hank shook his head. “But what about tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow will be tomorrow, no matter what we do. So tonight, we may as well do what we want.” Before Hank could open his mouth to protest, Beth leaned in even closer, her lips inches away from his. “By the way, the stalls in the ladies' room are big. And there's a lock on the door.”

  Hank thought for a moment and nodded slowly. He took her hand and they stood, heading for the bathroom at the back of the bar.

  Once the door closed behind them, Hank pushed Beth up against it, his hands and mouth all over her before she even had a chance to reach behind her and turn the lock. He was everywhere at once, surrounding her like a living whirlwind, and the scent of his sweat and aftershave and whiskey combined into a perfume that made her dizzy with desire.

  She felt an ember of triumph burning fiercely within her chest as she wrapped her arms around his body, giving in to him completely. He did want her. In this moment, he was as hungry for her as she was for him. The rational part of her mind worried about whether he'd feel the same afterward, but she shoved it away impatiently. This was no time for doubts or expectations, no time for anything except lust and surrender.

  He was finally hers. There was only here, now, the two of them in this bathroom, and if the whole world ended afterward, she wouldn't care.

  Beth slid her hands under Hank's t-shirt, her palms exploring the taut muscles of his back and shoulders. He kissed her lips roughly, his tongue reaching out for hers until they touched with a sweetness that was both smooth and sandpapery at once.

  “I've wanted you for so long,” she whispered.

  His warm breath tingled on her lips. “I know.”

  Hank's calloused hands pushed Beth's shirt up, and he fondled her breasts as he kept kissing her, his thumbs rubbing her nipples until they were so hard they hurt. She pressed her pelvis against his as tightly as she could until the sharp edges of her belt buckle dug into her belly.

  A moment later he was undoing the buckle and unzipping her cutoffs, and then his fingers slid down the front of her panties, massaging her clit. The sudden sensation traveled straight to the pit of her stomach, igniting it like a lightning bolt hitting a tree.

  “Oh my God,” she moaned, her breath catching in her throat. “That feels...”

  “Tell me how it feels,” Hank murmured, his lips caressing the side of her neck.

  Beth inhaled, trying to snatch words from the jumble of images and sensations inside her. But they slid through her fingers, leaving her with nothing but raw passion that defied description.

  Hank's fingertips pressed harder, more insistently, slipping inside of Beth and pushing against her G-spot until she felt like she might faint. God, it seemed like he knew just how she needed to be touched.

  “Tell me,” he hissed, “or I'll stop.”

  “Please don't stop,” she begged between gasps.

  “Then tell me. Now.”

  “It... feels...” She swallowed hard, desperately trying to put how she felt into words. “It's like...a volcano inside me, erupting...like lava's about to come spilling out of me...”

  “Good,” Hank growled, his teeth gently nipping at her earlobe. He pressed inside of her more insistently, and her body felt like it was turning to water from the waist down. “Let it spill out. I want to feel it.”

  Beth let out a cry as she climaxed, her juices pouring out into Hank's hand as she spasmed helplessly against the bathroom door.

  Before she knew what she was doing, she sank to her knees in front of him, gasping and trembling as she fumbled with his belt. She saw the bulge in the front of his jeans and kissed it, letting her hot breath soak through the denim. Then she unzipped his fly and reached in, freeing his stiff, quivering cock. She stroked it, looking at it longingly. She'd imagined what it might look like a hundred times, and now that her mouth was inches away from it, it was even more beautiful than she'd pictured.

  She felt Hank's hand on the back of her head and looked up at him. His eyes blazed down at her with desire, and he nodded once, almost imperceptibly.

  Beth parted her lips and took Hank in her mouth, relishing his pulsing warmth against her tongue. He let out a long moan, his fingers gently pulling her hair. She enveloped his cock as deeply as she could until it pressed against the back of her throat. Her hands wrapped around the base of his shaft, working it, squeezing it. She breathed through her nose, his musk filling her nostrils.

  His cock continued to grow inside her mouth, and just when she felt like she couldn't take any more, his hand released the back of her head and she heard him say, “Get up.”

  Beth stood, her knees shaking slightly. Part of her still couldn't believe that after all this time—after years of repressed wanting and private fantasies—she was finally here with him, feeling him, tasting him. She knew she should feel guilty for coaxing him into the bathroom with her while he was mourning. But instead, all she could feel was the quenching of a long thirst, as though she'd finally found an oasis after wandering a parched and pitiless desert.

  Before she had a chance to embrace Hank again, he said, “Turn around and put your hands on the door.”

  Beth turned, laying her palms against the uneven white paint of the door. Hank's hands closed over hers tightly, holding them in place as his chest pressed against her back. She barely had a chance to savor the firmness of his pecs and abs against her body before he plunged inside her, taking her from behind. Hard.

  Her warm cheek pressed against the cool surface of the door as she let a long, loud, ragged moan escape her lips. He kept her pinned to the door as he thrust into her, his shaft sliding against the wet, tender strip of skin just behind her pussy. From this angle, his cock slammed against her G-spot with each new push forward, making her delirious with ecstasy. She could feel his breath on her shoulders and the back of her neck.

  They were locked together like animals in heat, grunting and growling and gasping as their hips moved in rhythm with each other. Her wrists ached as his hands clamped around them, and then his voice filled her ear, crying out sharply as he filled her up with a hot gush. He twitched and thrust against her for a few more delicious seconds before releasing her hands and withdrawing.

  Beth turned around to face him, sighing happily. She was pleased to find a sheepish grin tugging at his lips.

  “Feel better?” she asked.

  “Yeah, actually. Thanks.”

  “You don't have to thank me. Believe me, the pleasure was all mine.”

  He grinned, running his fingers through his hair. “So what happens now?”

  She shrugged. “Now I figure we go out, have another drink or two, and see where the night takes us. Sound good?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It really does.”

  Chapter 3

  Hank

  As they left the bathroom together, Hank tried to stay calm, but unsettling thoughts kept buzzing through his drunken haze like persistent wasps.

  Why had he done this?

  Not just for the sex, surely—he'd had plenty of opportunities to get laid over the past year to distract him from his grief, and he'd ignored all of them. Did he have feelings for Beth? She'd been hanging around the club for so long he'd started to see her as a piece of furniture instead of the sexy woman she clearly was. So why did her sudden attraction to him make him feel like someone had reached inside of him and flipped on a light that had been dark for so long?

  Was it because she bore a passing resemblance to Elena? Had he been so weak and liquored-up that some part of him decided to just tilt his head, squint, and pretend he was with her again for a few more precious moments?

  If so, then acting on those
desires made him feel like a piece of shit, especially where Beth was concerned. True, she was playing it loose and casual tonight with her whole smiling, let's-just-have-a-drink-and-see-what-happens act, but what if an act was all it was? He'd known lots of girls who pretended they were “cool with whatever” until the next morning, when suddenly they were full of expectations and demands and accusations. Before he'd gotten married, Hank had been good at blowing those girls off.

  But Bib's niece? How would that go? How pissed would the club president be if Hank treated Beth like some party girl he could fuck and forget?

  And anyway, what the hell kind of way was this to observe the one-year anniversary of the death of his wife and kid? What kind of selfish asshole treasures the memories of his loved ones by polishing off a bottle of cheap whiskey and banging some girl in a public toilet?

  Beth was pulling Hank back toward their table for another drink, but in that moment, Hank decided he didn't want any more booze or sex tonight. Neither one would be good for him in his current condition. They'd only make his tortured mind thrash around more painfully, like an animal caught in a snare.

  Sleep was what he needed, and lots of it. Maybe, once he'd had enough rest, he could re-evaluate his feelings related to Beth. Maybe there was something there worth exploring after all, as long as he didn't keep drinking tonight until he fucked it all up.

  But as they passed the corner of the bar, Hank overheard some yahoo in blue jeans and a denim shirt talking loudly with an overweight slob with a filthy beard and a trucker hat.

  “...so the kid starts whinin', right?” the yahoo said. “'Daddy, I wanna stay up! Daddy, my favorite show is on TV! Daddy, just five more minutes an' I'll go up to bed!'”

  The trucker giggled. “What'd you do?”

  “I marched right on over to 'im an' smacked his li'l face, that's what I did! Told 'im he'll go up to bed when I goddamn fuckin' say so, an' not a minute later.” The yahoo guffawed. “You shoulda seen it, man. He's got this big red hand print on his cheek, an' he's snufflin', with all kindsa tears an' snot runnin' down. My wife starts tellin' me I gotta calm down, an' I'm like, 'Bitch, I don't gotta do shit. Now get the fuck outta my face before you get a taste of what I gave the brat.'”

  Beth's mouth was inches from Hank's ear, but her voice seemed to come from miles away. “Hank? You okay?”

  A red haze filled his vision until the entire bar seemed soaked in blood. His hands were balled into fists so tight they ached, and his teeth were clenched so hard that the muscles of his jaw were twitching.

  He'd lost his adoring wife. He'd lost his beautiful child. He'd never see them again, ever, no matter how much he hurt or how hard he wanted. Every year of the rest of his life stretched out ahead of him bleakly, each of them nothing but a grim promise that the two people he'd loved most in the world would never come back to him.

  And this cocksucker had a wife and child, and here he was, bragging about beating them and making them cry.

  “Hank?” Beth was looking directly into his eyes now, but it seemed like Hank had x-ray vision—all he could see was past her, through her, as he stared at the yahoo's doughy face and baggy eyes. The veins of Hank's face and neck were pulsing so hotly that he felt like his head might erupt into flames.

  The yahoo noticed that Hank was staring at him and sneered. “You got a problem, faggot? Or are you just memorizin' my face to jerk off to later?”

  In a split-second, the yahoo was on the floor of the bar, on his back amid the sawdust and peanut shells as Hank's fists crashed against his face. Hank couldn't actually remember lunging at the asshole, but he didn't care. He just kept punching and roaring incoherent curses, even as Beth and the Warriors tried to drag him away.

  The yahoo gibbered and begged, as blood and tears rolled down his cheeks. His nose was crunched into the middle of his face. He was spitting out broken teeth between punches, and his jaw was hanging and misshapen, with several shattered bones protruding from the flesh.

  Another punch, and a bone in the yahoo's cheek cracked. He stopped struggling and went limp.

  Another punch, and another, and another. A whirlwind of brutal rage, unstoppable, until the combined efforts of all of the bikers succeeded in pulling him off the yahoo's prone body. Hank kept struggling and howling with anger until blue lights flickered through the bar's windows and the cops came in to cuff him.

  After that night, Hank was enveloped by a numbing gray cloud of mindless drudgery that lasted for months.

  There were weeks spent in holding cells at the county jail, staring at the concrete walls and wordlessly consuming trays of bland food. There were endless interviews with cops and lawyers, and forms to fill out and initial in triplicate. There were handcuffs, and a shuffling trip onto a bus which took him to the courthouse, where he spent less than half a day in a courtroom listening to witnesses tell the story of the beating. To Hank, it sounded like something that someone else had done, not him. The yahoo's jaw was wired shut, so he couldn't testify himself—he just sat at the back of the courtroom, glaring.

  Then more handcuffs, and another bus trip to the jail. Then a bus trip back to the courthouse the next day to hear the judge pronounce his sentence: Two years at the Bluebonnet Correctional Facility. Then handcuffs again, and more forms to sign, and another bus.

  But before any of that, Hank curled up on a cot in the jailhouse holding cell—with the yahoo's blood still under his fingernails, and Beth's intoxicating scent still clinging to his clothes—and finally slept.

  Chapter 4

  Beth

  Two weeks after watching Hank almost beat someone to death, Beth still felt haunted by it. She hadn't known what direction the evening would go in after taking him into the bathroom with her, but she certainly hadn't expected to see him fly into a frenzy and pummel a man mercilessly just twenty minutes later.

  Beth had seen her share of bar fights—she spent most of her free time with the Carnage Warriors, and they hadn't exactly earned that name based on their skills in bake-offs and quilting bees. But she'd never seen such a savage and uncontrolled display before, and she knew that if the other bikers hadn't pulled Hank off, he'd have killed the man for sure.

  She knew she should be frightened of Hank after seeing him like that, but the worst part was, it had made her feelings for him even stronger. She'd heard the conversation at the bar, and she understood the rage that had driven Hank to tear the man apart. She knew how horrible he must have felt, listening to someone talk about abusing their family on the anniversary of the night he'd lost his own.

  The way he'd looked right through her before attacking the man had made her heart hurt for him. He'd been able to forget his grief, just for a few precious minutes. And then it had all come charging back at him when his defenses were down.

  Part of her even felt responsible for what had happened. If she hadn't taken him to the bathroom, maybe he'd have gone home and slept it off instead. Or maybe he'd have stayed at his table, out of earshot from the men at the bar. Maybe, in trying to relieve his suffering, she'd only succeeded in making him more sad and confused and angry.

  But no. Instead, she'd been too busy trying to scratch the itch she'd had for him since she'd first met him. And just when she'd finally done it—just when she'd finally felt real happiness, after suffering in silence for so many years—he was taken away from her to face a serious aggravated assault charge.

  She'd wanted to visit Hank at the county jail, but Bib had strictly ordered her not to. She was afraid that Bib blamed her for all of this somehow.

  And today, on her day off from the deli counter, Bib had called her and told her to come meet him at Tucker's Garage—the Warriors' unofficial club house. She agreed to see him, but as she hung up, she worried about what awaited her.

  Would he yell at her? Accuse her of fucking with Hank's head and depriving the MC of one of its most valuable members? He'd encouraged her that night, but Bib's moods could be mercurial. Who knew what he was thinking and feeling
now?

  She walked into the cavernous garage, surrounded by the sounds of engines, power tools, and curses from frustrated mechanics. Bib saw her and immediately waved her into the back office. She followed him in, and he shut the door behind her.

  “So first of all, how are you holding up?” he asked softly. “Still shaken up by the thing at the bar?”

  His concern caught her off guard. “Yes, actually.”

  Bib nodded. “I can't imagine how rough that must've been for you, hon. You finally get a little taste of happiness, and then you have to watch...that. You probably think I'm a real peckerwood for telling you not to visit Hank at the jailhouse, too. Do you still have feelings for him?”

  Again, Beth found herself surprised by the question. “Uh-huh.”

  “You want to see him again? Show your support for him through all this?”