Welcome to the Dark Side: Chapter 12

I liked my girls a lotta ways.

I liked thin, plump, thick with muscles or soft with curves.

Liked blonde, brunette or red, anything in-between but a little more partial to light, the mostly fake kinda blonde women found in a bottle. They reminded me of the biker babe posters I’d first jerked off to as a kid. Still any woman with some gumption no matter her looks or stylin’ would do.

As I said, I liked my girls a lotta ways and I liked takin’ her a lot more ways than that.

They only thing I did not like was young ones.

Seen enough old bikers stick their wick in fresh honey to know it didn’t lead to good things. Plus, I had a teenage daughter who didn’t need to catch wind of me fuckin’ a girl closer to her age than mine.

Then came Louise Lafayette.

The mayor’s daughter.

Same age as my youngest fuckin’ kid.

And the fuck of it was, I’d never wanted anyone more than I wanted her.

Which explained why I was sittin’ in The Lotus, a piece of shit titty bar on the outskirts of Entrance that most of my brothers and I couldn’t be bothered to go to because the dancers were decent but the décor had more stains than even bikers were comfortable with and that was sayin’ something.

I was there ’cause of the girl I’d known most of her life who had somehow turned into a woman, and a fuckin’ fine one at that. I’d watched her all night, wonderin’ at first if she knew it was me sitting at the back booth ’cause she was makin’ an art of avoiding my eyes and the last time I’d seen her, I’d brow-beaten her pretty bad. Wanted to get my point across, get her set on the straight an’ narrow, only looking back I’d been too harsh. Despite my reputation, I wasn’t a harsh guy, at least not with my family and definitely not my kids, yet I’d been fuckin’ brutal to Lou that night. I’d sat on that for a few weeks, wonderin’ why and when I’d come up to the answer, I wished to God I hadn’t tried to figure it out. The answer was simple as fuck. I’d been angry and surprised that the little girl I’d been writing to for years—too many years—was a kid anymore.

Even drunk as fuck and rank as shit, Louise Lafayette took my fuckin’ breath away.

It mighta been all that pale hair that mussed up in sexy disarray all around that heart-shaped face. I wanted to drive my hands into it, fist it tight and bring that phenomenal bee-stung mouth to mine. Wonderin’ what she tasted like had been drivin’ me crazy for months. In my dirtiest fantasies, she tasted like cherry lollipops, the kind she’d liked as a kid.

I was sick. Sick with lust for a girl nineteen years younger than me and morally sick because of it.

So, if I’d been too hard on her it was to take my mind off the way her out-fuckin’-rageous curves felt against my body when I’d hauled her into my arms. It’d been ’cause of the fury I felt at some dumbass preppy fuck touching her while she was outta her mind with drink. It’d been ’cause I’d forced myself to stay away so she could live a good life, the kind of life a girl with a soul as beautiful as hers should live. And I’d seen her throwin’ it away.

Problem was, as harsh as I’d been, Lou didn’t seem to give a fuck.

I’d started watchin’ her again. Not creepy, you get me, but just a casual eye. Have one of my brothers do a drive by her house, get my son, King, to keep watch of her at school where she seemed to excel—no surprise, she’d always been a smart girl—and keep an ear turned towards my H.R.’s chatter on the off chance I caught a hint of Lou’s name.

So, I’d learned Lou led a double life. My kids reported Louise Lafayette was a good girl who did her homework and hung with those religious “angel” bitches I’d once told her to charm. My boys told me different. They told me about Loulou Fox who wore next to nothin’ and worked at the shitty titty bar off Highway 99.

The temptation was too fuckin’ great. It seemed that the sweet kid in the frilly white church dress with the bows in her hair had grown into a rebel, a woman not content unless she was livin’ hard and livin’ free.

I couldn’t say I was surprised. I couldn’t say I didn’t have a hand in nurturin’ that in her but now I could see it’d always been there, just waitin’ to take over.

With or without me, Loulou Lafayette was going over to the dark side.

And I’d decided I’d be the welcoming committee.

So there I was sittin’ in a booth in The Lotus, makin’ out with one of the dancers so when Lou finally got her head outta her ass and realized I was there, she’d know I wasn’t there for romance or fuckin’ flowers.

I was there to teach her right and proper how to live the kind life she was barrelin’ toward without gettin’ herself pimped up, drugged down or washed out. She was givin’ in to the devil on her shoulder and I was bound and fuckin’ determined to be the voice of Satan.

There would be no hearts, not even any fucking.

Louise was a seventeen-year-old daughter of the bastard who’d been makin’ my life a livin’ hell for years.

She was the definition of off-fuckin’-limits even for a man like me who didn’t go in for rules.

As solid as I was on the point, it still rocked me like a sucker punch to the gut when she finally turned those massive blue eyes to mine, our gaze connecting like two mechanical parts meant to work in sync.

Fuck me, she was a wet dream come to life.

Then the hurt came.

It washed over her features like acid, contorting her features until she was as close to ugly as she could ever become.

I felt that pain in my chest. Had to fight the instinct to punch myself in the face ’cause that’s what I woulda done to any other motherfucker that put that look on her face.

Instead, I hammered that final nail in the coffin of her childish dreams with a ruthless bang.

I winked at her.

Just like I had when she’d come to visit me that first time in the hospital.

I fuckin’ winked at her and her acid washed face crumpled into ash, skin pale, features lax.

Fuck me but I ruined her with that wink.

Remorse burned through me and I nearly gagged into the bitch whose mouth I was eatin’ at.

“You okay, baby?” she purred into my ear.

I didn’t take my eyes off Lou even as she jerked outta her misery and turned away from me to talk to the old-timers sitting at her bar. She said somethin’ real quick then hustled out of sight.

“Done with you, sugar. Go wax a pole or somethin’,” I told the dancer, gently but firmly shoving ’er off my lap.

She blinked at me but she was a dancer, she knew how it was, and she strolled off without givin’ me lip.

I was grateful. It was hard to tell if I wanted to rage at someone, beat ’em senseless to get rid of all the guilt under my skin or burst into fuckin’ tears like a twelve-year-old chick.

“Z,” my brother Bat called out as he rounded the booth. “Let’s roll out, brother. Nova’s got a party goin’ with those biker models back at the compound.”

I nodded at my now-warm glass of bourbon and tipped it back. The burn settled me some so I could look up at Bat without lookin’ like a pussy.

“Wow, what the hell’s up with you?” Bat asked.

Damn the perceptive bastard.

“Nothin’,” I said as I made to get up from the booth.

“Nothin’ my pasty white ass,” Bat snorted as he sat down, blocking my exit. “Tell me what’s got you lookin’ so fucked. Last time, it was Farrah O.D.ing again.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t fuckin’ mention that bitch’s name. Haven’t seen her in three years an’ another fifty wouldn’t be long enough.”

“Z, brother, you know I won’t push if you gotta keep it down but there are some serious ghosts in your eyes and fuck knows, I gotta sense what that looks like.”

My mouth twisted in a grimaced smirk because if anyone knew pain, it was Bat. He’d served in the military for fifteen years before being honourably discharged after the rest of his battalion was killed in action durin’ an air raid in Iraq. He’d been my best friend before he’d been my brother and I knew better than to keep shit from him ’cause he was a fuckin’ hound dog at sniffin’ it out. I’d kept ’im outta Lou-surveillance duties for exactly that fuckin’ reason.

Still, he knew enough of the story to get me when I said, “Lou’s here.”

“The fuck?”

“You heard me.”

“Please tell me that isn’t why we bought this shithole?”

I glared at him. He may have been my brother, but no one questioned me, especially about the betterment of fuckin’ club. “King had a point about diversifying our investments. We got the garages, the trucking company, the tat shop, Eugene’s bar and now a titty bar. They’re cash cows and it’ll keep the boys happy, they got a place closer than Vancouver to go to get some quality pieces.”

“The only thing of quality here is your little church mouse,” Bat argued.

“We bring in Maja and she’ll get ’em sorted,” I said, referring to my VP Buck’s old lady. She’d worked at a titty bar over in Calgary for years before hookin’ up with Buck and she was a class act, just what this place needed.

That and about thirty gallons of bleach.

“It may be a good investment, I get you wouldn’t do bad by the club, Z, but this is about way more than that. This is about the fuckin’ girl.”

“Watch your fuckin’ tone, brother,” I growled, my fingers flexing around my empty rocks glass.

I needed to work out this sick fuckin’ feeling. A bag at the gym, a warm pussy in my bed and a couple hours of physical therapy with both ought to do it.

“You want someone to bow and scrape to the almighty Zeus Garro, go to one of the fuckin’ prospects or get some pussy ’cause I’ve been tellin’ it to you straight for twenty-five years and I’m gonna keep right on doin’ it ’til you drive us both into an early grave.”

He stared at me dead in the fuckin’ eye, serious as shit.

I threw my head back and laughed because he was the only man still walkin’ on this earth that would throw back at me like that.

“Fine, you fuck. It’s about the girl too,” I conceded.

Just then, the girl in question came striding back into the bar, walking amidst the now empty tables picking up used glassware and empty bottles. My throat ran dry at the sight of those curvy long legs in those tiny little black shorts, the thick wedge of deep brown skin between the low rise of the hem and the edge of her thin, white crop top. Couldn’t tell if she was wearing a bra but it was clear she’d gone outside to recuperate from her shock ’cause her hard little nipples were clear from across the room where I sat watching her.

I licked my lips at the thought of those sweet tips between my teeth.

She’d like it rough, I thought. My Lou was a spitfire and I knew she’d give as good as she got in the sack.

.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

I’d practically raised this girl from the time she was seven years old. I could tell myself ’til I was blue in the face that I hadn’t actually her grow, that she’d been a little girl one moment and a grown woman—a damn fine woman—the next, but it was still seriously fucked up.

It was even more seriously fucked because I didn’t care. I wanted her. I wanted her worse than I’d ever wanted anythin’ in my life, even my first Harley that I’d saved for startin’ when I was eight years old and first saw a bike in one of my uncle’s car magazines. I didn’t care that she was a little girl. If I was being honest, it was hot as fuck that she was so young, so fresh, like a blank wall in front of a graffiti artist, I wanted to stripe her in paint, draw her up in anarchy.

I wanted to be the one to fuck her that first time, her blood on my cock and her cries in my mouth as I claimed her.

The only problem as I saw it was this.

I’d keep her.

Knew myself well enough to know the truth. I was a monster, sure as shit. Violence was second-nature to me. Greed was an instinct I didn’t care to curb. Lawlessness was my code and brotherhood was my anthem.

I didn’t believe in rules ’cept the ones I decided to make for others.

And for the last twenty years of my life, my religion had been two-fold. The Fallen and my kids.

At one point, I’d lumped Lou into “my kids”.

I was realizin’ I needed to un-lump her quick or I’d be a seriously sick bastard.

But where did that leave her?

I tugged at my beard as I watched her hips sway between the tables, as she laughed at a guy who tossed her an empty bottle, as I thought about how good it would feel to throttle that guy with my bare hands and feel his life leave ’im under my fingers.

“You’re so fucked,” Bat said, shakin’ his head. “The only thing keepin’ you away from her was knowin’ us brothers had an eye on her, now it’s not enough. You’ve seen her, watched her too long. You’re a predator if ever I fuckin’ saw one, Z, you ain’t the kinda man to sit back and deny himself his kill.”

I was about to agree with him. To say “fuck it”, storm up to Lou, haul ’er over my shoulder and take her to the nearest wall so I could pin her like a pretty little butterfly and have my ruthless way with her.

“Fuck, Zeus,” Blackjack called gruffly, swinging through the doors with Nova, Lab-Rat and Priest at his back. “Fuck man, the warehouse on Jackson is on fucking fire.”

The warehouse on Jackson. One of the thirteen warehouses we used to stockpile our shipments of prime grade marijuana.

“Fuck,” I cursed at the same time as Bat.

But I wasn’t just cursin’ about the potential loss of near thirty Gs of weed.

I was cursin’ because Blackjack had just reminded me of the biggest reason to stay away from Lou.

She’d been through enough in her short life already. She didn’t need a man-slaughtering, drug-pushing outlaw dragging her into the depths of depravity. She was better off in the shallow end, playing at wicked and lookin’ like a treat doin’ it.

I’d stay away, mostly. There was no way I was leavin’ her to her own devices, not when she was operating on the fringes of my world, but I’d guard her like I’d always done.

No contact.

Strictly as a watchman.

No emotion.

Only calculation.

No sex.

Not one fuckin’ kiss.

No even thinkin’ about it.

Even as I swore it to myself, I caught sight of her bendin’ over a stool to pick up something from the floor and noted the perfect ripe peach shape of that ass, thought about my cock wedge between each cheek, weeping against her skin as I came all over it and marked her as mine.

And I knew I was fucked.