The Bare Bones (The Bare Bones MC) (2 page)

Couples would break away to make out and more, sort of a slutty version of “Seven Minutes in Heaven.” I was too petrified to actually go all the way because I had no birth control, but I did learn to give a pretty mean blowjob. More and more boys would pile into Chuck’s Toyota Echo once they heard of the joy that might be found up in Coyote Buttes.

I really relished the popularity, even though I knew it came from devaluing myself, my abundance of low self-esteem. At least I was popular. And some boys even took the time to
talk
to me. Some boys even brought me things, things they’d stolen from their sisters, so my wardrobe improved.

I had a few frightening run-ins when boys—men, more accurately, by that time—tried to beat me down, to force me into submission. Why are men so fucking determined to penetrate a girl? How is that any better than a kick-ass blowjob? So this, combined with my mad fight club skillz learned at the hands of my witchy mother, I could pretty much handle all potential comers. Once I had to cut a guy on the forearm with my Bowie knife. Most of my Coyote Buttes beaus were thugs of one type or another—homeless boys, thieves, boys who had been raised in Juvenile Hall or shuttled from one foster home to another. They smoked weed and they kicked ass, but no one got too violent with me where I couldn’t handle it.

When I was fifteen, during one of my trips home to raid the fridge, I noticed this thuggish boy sitting in the backyard reading a book. I had a radar for the bad boys.

Maybe it was the fact that I was unseen, but every tiny hair on my body stood up in excitement. I clung to the edge of the wall like Kilroy, only peeking my eyeballs around the corner.
Wow
. I was a connoisseur of boys, but this long-legged velvety stunner was a tall cool drink of water.

Slouching in a lawn chair with the reflection of the pool water under his strong chin, he was an immobile Roman statue concentrating on his book. His aquiline nose, his slightly parted, full lips, and his thick, glossy black hair gave him the look of a tempting demon, an incubus incarnated to rip the souls from men.

Or women, more accurately. Something stirred deep in the pit of my stomach as I watched this rare beauty. He barely seemed to breathe as I devoured him with my eyes. His rich dark skin practically shimmered in the veiled sunlight. I was lucky he was shirtless, and my mouth watered at the coppery coins of his nipples. He was too young for much chest hair, maybe a couple years older than me, but the beginnings of a nice oily pelt started between his well-formed pecs, leading the eye into a mouth-watering trail of dark hair down the center of his rippling abdomen, where it disappeared beneath his low-slung jeans.

Was he commando? His jeans were slung so low the expectation was to see the usual strip of male underwear. I blinked. Not possible. This man couldn’t be sitting in a stranger’s backyard, commando under his jeans. My practiced eye made out the arc of a well-hung cock reposing against his hip, but he obviously wasn’t reading porn.

At that young age he’d already been working out, had a couple of tats, and one of the luscious pennies of his nipples was pierced with a silver barbell. A scarred, abused life—just like mine. I felt an instant connection to Ford Illuminati.

Then, apropos of nothing at all because I know I hadn’t even moved, much less breathed, he snapped his head up to stare
directly at me
.

I gasped. How could he see me? He was outdoors in the bright light. I was indoors, unlit. A boy had given me an SLR camera so I knew that this beauty must be able to see in the dark if he was seeing me.

The book slowly lowered until it rested on his thigh. My heart literally stopped beating. I was so still I could feel my eyelids shivering.

Just the barest hint of a leonine grin lifted one corner of his mouth.

And that, as you asked, is the
real
beginning of my tale.

FORD

“I will go directly to her home, ring the bell, and walk in. Here I am, take me—or stab me to death. Stab the heart, stab the brains, stab the lungs, the kidneys, the viscera, the eyes, the ears. If only one organ be left alive you are doomed—doomed to be mine, forever, in this world and the next and all the worlds to come. I’m a desperado of love, a scalper, a slayer. I’m insatiable.” ~ Henry Miller

F
ord Illuminati could always tell when he was being watched. It was one of the many talents he’d honed over the years. Growing up in the outlaw lifestyle, the youngest fully patched member of the Bare Bones motorcycle club, Ford had developed all sorts of invaluable skills. He could shoot a smiley face pattern into a target with his nine millimeter Sig Sauer at thirty yards. He could squeeze a man larger than himself in a rear naked choke until he was unconscious. Once he’d dispatched a guy like that over a cliff with a boot to the ass.

He was a hustler who did what needed to be done. Already he was the club’s go-to explosives expert, skilled at building IEDs of all nature. His father had indulged his love of blowing shit up and it had already come in handy on a few nighttime runs for the club. Ford’s boiling Italian blood endowed him with the sort of quick-tempered but slow burn that made him a nasty customer to deal with, even at the age of seventeen.

He already had the right to wear a “Filthy Few” patch on his cut.

Now, once he became aware he was being watched, within a split second he discerned it was a female peering from behind that living room wall. His dad had told him that Ingrid had a couple of teenage daughters. Ford could only pray they were tolerable girls who didn’t blast ‘N Sync or Britney Spears. Fifteen and thirteen, Cropper told him were their ages. Old enough to moon over Lance Bass, but too young to realize he was gay.

Ford crooked his finger at the girl hiding in the living room. He could have some fun with this. If he could petrify the little teenyboppers with his bad boy biker persona, he might have a couple of instant slaves on his hands. Maybe his dad’s attempt to lean right by moving into the suburbs with Ingrid wouldn’t be such a bust, after all. He could have these girls worshiping the ground he walked on, cooking for him and washing his ride, just like the sweetbutts back at the clubhouse did.

She came over, eyes wide, face devoid of emotion, like a shy deer in the middle of the road just before you low-sided right into it.

His heart missed a beat.

This girl—no,
woman
—was exquisite.

Her wide, frightened eyes were frozen, the effect of having seen too much in her short years. Her little pert button nose was just a tad crooked, as though it’d been broken once or twice. Her lips, parted in apprehension, could have as easily been parted in lust.

But it was her body that knocked Ford out. This
had
to be Madison, the fifteen-year-old, but she already rocked the curves of a twentysomething. Impertinent, chubby boobs sat up nice and high and tight, displayed seductively in a push-up bra under a wifebeater T-shirt. Her softly streaked auburn hair, parted on one side, provided a curtain for her questioning eyes.

It was those titties that had Ford’s dick lengthening and expanding in his pants. Even two layers of fabric didn’t dull the insistent erection of her nipples, and they sat like bullets, demanding to be sucked. His horndog of a dad should’ve warned him what to expect. Now, for one of the first times in Ford’s life, he was speechless.

Fuck. As though I needed another fantasy to jack off to.

“Who are you?” she asked, cautiously.

Find your tongue, you shitbird.
“Ford.”
Did I just stutter? What a lame ass.
Standing, he extended a hand for her to shake. He was glad his tight boxer briefs kept his hard-on in check tightly against his hip, although his wallet and its chain dragged down his jeans waistband to nearly pube level.

All ideas of forcing this chick into a life of servitude went out the window. That was good enough for the sweetbutts, the Bone Lickers of the Bum Steer Bar and Grill, but within seconds Ford knew he would never subject this woman to that treatment.

She finally smiled when she shook his hand, her hot palm lingering against his. “Ford Corvette? Ford Fiesta? Oh no, not Ford Explorer.” Her smile was crooked, like the slash on a keyboard.

He’d heard them all before. “Actually, my road name’s Torino,” he admitted. “My brothers gave me that name when I went full-on outlaw. Because I’ve got style, they said.” It had never felt so embarrassing to admit that before. Usually, it was a bragging point.

When she stuck her fingers in her back cutoff pockets, her tits announced themselves even louder. She may as well not have been wearing a bra at all. Ford shifted uncomfortably in his boots. “What’s a road name? You don’t look like my mother’s usual customer.”

Customer?
Her mother’s a hooker?
Ingrid had struck Ford as being too old to be a hooker, and besides, why would Cropper shack up with a hooker? Ford had been under the impression that by moving them into Ingrid’s house in the suburbs of Cottonwood and away from the clubhouse in nearby Pure and Easy, they were giving the Bum Steer a certain legitimacy.

That normalcy didn’t exist when unshaven men wearing patched leather cuts were roaring in and out of the side alley at all hours of the day, throwing darts at each other’s heads, or twirling nunchuks like a bunch of fucking babies. Actually, just last week Ford had stumbled upon an enormous pair of adult diapers underneath the bar at the Bum Steer. No one had claimed them, but Ford knew that one brother—named Riker because he’d actually done time there—enjoyed adult baby role playing. Thank God the diapers were unused, but that was probably the straw that had broken Cropper’s back.

Cropper had told the rest of the brothers to find their own digs, too. “No more crashing at the Bum Steer. Or over at the fucking Triple Exposure,” he added, referring to the live sex streaming soundstage the club also owned. Cropper wanted to lend a la-de-da aura to that business, too. Cropper had some good directions for the club to go in. He was in the process of getting together a trucking company for which the good Italian name Illuminati was a natural. They called him Cropper because he was like a farmer—so fertile that every venture he touched just grew and bloomed.

“Excuse me? Customer for…”

Madison nodded with understanding. “For crystal.”

Ford could feel his very face falling at this crushing blow. He’d learned to loathe meth after seeing what it did to people. “She’s a dealer? Just great.” But this was Madison’s mother he was talking about, so Ford put a quick spin on it. “Must make for a lively atmosphere around here.”

“Oh, I’m hardly ever here. I live…elsewhere.”

Ford had heard that, although nobody had gone into much detail. Cropper had said, “The thirteen-year-old, you keep your fucking hands off her. She’s got a twin brother who I rarely see. The fifteen-year-old barely comes around, so you can take her room.” He had noted at the time that Cropper hadn’t warned him to leave the fifteen-year-old alone. Maybe because she was never there, he reasoned.

“Yeah, about that.” Ford put one boot on a low wall and lit a cigarette. Smoke drifted into his eyes and he squinted at the young woman. “My father, I guess he’s claimed your mom. We’re moving in. No one told you?”

Madison held her hand out for his cigarette. She didn’t inhale very deeply, and she too squinted. “Whatever. That’s typical. My mother can’t live on her own. Physically or mentally.”

“She handicapped? She seems okay to me.”

Madison snorted cynically. “Yeah. Handicapped. More on the mental side than the physical side. She’s afraid to leave the house, and we’re of no use because we can’t drive.” Madison leaned in confidentially. Her look of secrecy was adorable. “Little does she know. I made it to school often enough to complete driver’s training. Not that I have a car to drive, but I’ve got my permit anyway.”

Ford stood up straight. It suddenly didn’t seem to matter that there was a noticeable bulge in his jeans. Her glance had flickered to it, but she seemed used to such sights. “Really? I’ll take you on a run. You can sit on my pussy pad. Then I’ll teach you to ride.”

“Motorcycle, I take it?”

“Yeah. Ninety-eight Harley Softail. Screaming Eagle upgrades. Custom T-bars.”

“Ape hangers?”

Ford grinned. She knew her stuff. Ape hangers were illegal in Arizona. “You know it.”

She sniffed. “I think those look ridiculous.”

The flood of mortification that swept through Ford surprised him. He normally didn’t care what anyone thought, and he realized he’d been showing off for the little teenybopper. Besides, in his world, ape hanger handlebars were the bomb.

As was his habit, he swiftly covered up his shame with a show of swagger. He was already shirtless, a condition that hadn’t failed to catch her eye, so now he undid his custom “Bare Bones” belt buckle. The weight of his wallet, the chain that held it and his dagger in its sheath all assisted the jeans to quickly drop to his boots, so he yanked those off too. “Go for a swim,” he said coldly. He didn’t even step on the cigarette that he’d tossed to the cement—he was
that
cool.