Consume Me Read online

  “Good. You technically begin right now, except for your routines you are on. We’ll split up the hours between the two of us so one of us is here most of the time. The guys are accustomed to locking shit up so that’s not a problem. You have any questions?”

  “Who’s gonna take my spot in the lineup?” That will really mess the schedule up and after doing it for a while, I know what a pain in the ass it is when one of the girls calls in sick. Switching that shit on the fly isn’t pretty sometimes.

  “I’m not sure yet. One of the ol’ ladies has expressed some interest in dancing, but I’m not sure about that yet. Seems like a problem waiting to happen. I have a list of several women who want to strip, but they mostly want the cock that comes with the club, so you’ll help me with that shit. If they want to be a flat out club momma that’s their business, but if they work here, the rest of it is on the side.”

  “Got it.” I’ve never understood why some women choose to sleep with all the guys and never get tired of it, but it isn’t my place to judge. I never want to have that part of the club, I only want to have a life and now I’ll be able to do just that. This may work out.

  I rise from my chair. “I’ll get busy.”

  “I wanted to ask ya something.” Princess’s words stop me dead. This can’t be good. “What’s going on with you and Tug?”

  “Nothing. Not a damn thing.” I think to this morning, lying so close to him and listening to his heart beat, the scent of leather and sexy man all around me. I shiver. Lies, all damn lies. Damn.

  “Keep telling yourself that one. Those Ravage men don’t give up that easily.” His statement about following my rules flows through my mind. She is definitely right about that one.

  “I’m learning that, but it’s not happening,” I protest, but even to me it’s flat.

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  I know that Princess only wants to help, but right now, I don’t know what’s going on. My thoughts are in a big blender filled of mixed-up-ness and I really can’t formulate the words for it. “Nope, gotta get busy.”

  “Sure thing, Taryn. Let me know if you need anything.” The way that name rolls off of her tongue gags me. It’s not a bad name, just not the one I was given and she damn well knows it.

  “You got it, Harlow,” I tease and she chuckles as I leave her office, lucky she really doesn’t know my past.

  “Watch the bikes,” Dagger orders as I get off of my custom Wide Glide Harley perfect for a guy with long legs like me. It’s sleek black with shiny chrome. I love this fucking bike. The brothers stroll into the bar where they are meeting Ransom. At least I have Buzz with me. One thing with being a prospect is no job is too small and right now, our eyes are on the bikes. Scanning the area, I realize there are several eyes on us, but none that appear to have the balls to come closer. That could of course change in the blink of an eye.

  Pops said the meeting with Ransom shouldn’t be long and wanted Buzz and I to ride along, leaving Breaker at the clubhouse. We don’t ask, just do. I’ll be damn happy though when we start going to church so I can find out everything that is going on. I hate being left in the dark about shit. While I know this is part of it, every fiber of my being wants to protect. It’s the years of training and something I can’t shut off.

  “So, you and Blaze, huh?” Buzz asks, lighting a cigarette, but keeping an eye on everything around us carefully. One thing about Buzz is I trust him with my life, no question. That man is a fucking machine and anyone who doubts it is a dumb fuck. Fighting side-by-side for your life on little sleep and food, can force you to trust someone fully. Buzz, I trust fully and completely.

  I haven’t seen her for two days, haven’t even made it to X. Shit’s been crazy in Ravage with Casey and Shaina recovering and GT being at Casey’s side. I’m happy GT got his head out of his ass for that one. She’s something else. I won’t lie and say at one point I didn’t want to hit it with her, because I did. Any man with a dick would want to fuck her. But I knew from the very beginning that she only had eyes for GT, everyone else was invisible. I never had a shot and for some ungodly reason, I am cool with that. Now, Blaze, I’m not cool with just being a friend.

  Lately, I haven’t had time to breathe much less take time to go to X, but I will and soon. Hopefully, tonight.

  “Nothing to tell.” I shrug, plucking the pack of smokes out of my rag. I’ve been trying to quit these damn things for the past few months. But I’ve been smoking since I was a teen and quitting isn’t as easy as people think. Not to mention everyone around me lights up and when you have a beer it’s nice to have a smoke in your hand. I have to say, I’ve been doing pretty good in my quest, only smoking about a half a pack a day. I light the stick hanging out of my mouth and breathe in deep, the nicotine flowing into my lungs. I instantly remember why I wanted to quit as a small chest pain attacks. Shit. I shake it off.

  “Not like you, brother. Since when do you chase after a woman?” I pause for a minute. My first instinct is to punch him in the jaw for his smartass comment, but then I think. Is that what I’m doing, chasing after her? Nah. I’m sure as shit not a fucking puppy dog. She’s a hot piece with a brain. I call it persistence.

  “I ain’t chasing shit.”

  Following the brothers in our pack, Buzz and I bring up the rear, keeping eyes behind us and to the side and in front, never know who’s lurking. Pops and Becs ride front, Dagger, Rhys, Cruz and Zeb behind them, us in back. We were due to the clubhouse about an hour ago to help GT and Casey get moved into their home. The meeting with Ransom took much longer than anyone anticipated and it’s eating at me that I have no fucking clue what was said. The guys came out with stoic faces, not giving anything away. These fuckers are hard as shit to read, which is a good thing.

  Pulling up to the clubhouse, boxes are lined up by the front door. While we know that GT isn’t really moving out, Casey brought a lot of shit with her while she stayed here and apparently, she has more shit that needs to be moved.

  Two of the new guys, Derek who is some sort of intellectual genius and Ethan who is fast as shit on his feet are loading things into the awaiting van. Those two have been hang-arounds at the club for the last couple months. Mostly they stay in the background of Ravage and work in the garage. It’s my guess though they’ll be prospecting soon. They seem to have the itch, but only time will tell. I like them, have no problems with them. Buzz checked them out when they first started coming around and so far they are clean. Derek is Zeb’s nephew and he brought them around, even vouched for them which is enough for Pops so it’s enough for me. Not saying that all of us aren’t keeping our eyes on them, because we are like fucking hawks. But so far they haven’t given at least me any indication they aren’t here for the right reasons.

  After seven trips from here to there, everything is in GT and Casey’s place and my ass is dog tired.

  I’d thought about going over to X, but it’s not happening. At least not without a shower and a little bit of rest. Following Buzz and Breaker into our three-bedroom apartment, the cool air rushes over me. Moving in this heat sucks ass. Thank God for the coolness of beer.

  I strip, shower and change, joining the guys out in the living room or what one would call a living room. The room is stark white, and we have two mix matched couches, one red and one blue with some type of pattern on it, and a recliner. The large flat screen is the focal point of the room with a leftover coffee table from the last tenants littered with beer bottles in the middle between the three pieces of furniture. The walls are blank except for the nail holes also left by the previous tenant.

  When we rented the place, we were only trying to find somewhere close to Ravage that had rooms to sleep in and that’s exactly what we found. We didn’t need anything more considering we are either at the club, garage or runs.

  All three of us had different ways of making money before joining up with Ravage and now get a check from the shop, which lately isn’t much, but it’s enough to get by. It is just anoth
er reason for us to become brothers. Paid runs. Or so I’ve heard. That would be nice to get in on the cut.

  “Here.” Buzz holds out a beer to me as we sit: me on the blue couch, Buzz on the red and Breaker in the recliner, all kicking our feet up. Buzz flips through the TV as I drink my beer, my muscles relaxing.

  Buzz settles on a football game that was probably played weeks ago. Before joining the service, I watched that shit religiously. Now, I can’t even tell you who ranks where or who’s on what team. None of it was important to me after coming back to the US. A lot of things didn’t seem important, really the only things that did before Ravage were my mom and sister. My mom could barely look at me. That shit hurt. My sister was only sixteen or seventeen at the time and she went into post-traumatic stress after it happened. I tried comforting her, but everything I tried made her worse. Everything I fucking did, I did to protect them and when they seemed almost scared of me, it pushed me over the edge.

  That’s why I joined the Army. Luckily, my father’s death was ruled self-defense or who knows what my life would have turned up like.

  When I got out, I tried to go home to Mom’s for a bit. My sister had gotten better, but fear was in her eyes. Each time I came in the room, she would shy away from me like I’d hurt her or something. My mother wouldn’t talk much. I needed out. That is why I called Buzz.

  I’m damn glad I did.

  “So, you think the T-Darts are done now? I know the boys wiped out most of them, but you think the ones left will come back?” Breaker asks, cutting off my thoughts. Guess we do know more than ‘nothing.’

  “Who knows? The fuckers that are left are few. If one of them wants to start it back up and run the show, they know they’ll have to deal with Ravage so let ‘em.” Only a pack of fucking morons would come after us now, knowing we wiped out their leader and most of the crew that was with him. That was all their own damn fault though. They kidnapped Casey and Shaina. We’ll find out soon enough if the ones that are left are smart or stupid.

  “I think we should blow all their shit up just for the fun of it. I tagged their two buildings and they’d be easy to do.” Buzz takes a pull from his beer, not removing his eyes off of the TV while he talks. “Those fuckers messed with my shit. I want them fucking gone.”

  A few weeks ago, this asshole Paine from the T-Darts started messing with our shit. They had someone cut into our computer system when we were going to blow up a warehouse that was housing Rabbit and his guys. Rabbit killed Diamond, our President at the time, and this was payback, destroying them. Instead, Paine broke into our computer, talked a lot of shit and killed everyone in the warehouse. Paine was fucking nuts. He’s also the motherfucker that kidnapped Casey and Shaina, Diamond’s daughter. He chained them up to a ceiling and violated them. But he has been eliminated.

  “You’re gonna have to let that shit go, ya know? The guys took out Paine, you can’t bring him back and then kill him again.”

  “His tech guy is still out there and I know where.” he says nonchalantly like the news isn’t fucking huge and a break that Ravage has been dying to get their hands on. We all knew that Paine had to have a tech person, but didn’t know who it was and Buzz has been itching to find him. Guess he hit the mark.

  I cut sharply to Buzz. “What the fuck? You tell the guys?”

  “Not yet. Just found him late last night while doing a search, knew Pops was meeting with Ransom and we had to move GT” He turns briefly to me then back to the TV as if this is another day at the office, which in turn it is, but still. “He’s young, twenty-three. Apparently a computer genius.” He grumbles the words out and it probably killed him to say them. Knowing that this guy is the one who broke into Buzz’s full-proof computer software system has had Buzz in kill mode since it happened. No one shows him up. Ever. “He works for a software company up in Alta designing shit for them.”

  “How do you know it’s him?” Honest question because come on, I have no fucking clue when it comes to computers and shit. Give me a gun and target, I’m there.

  “Search after fucking search. Traced IP addresses that led me around the fucking country and back several times. But I didn’t give up. He landed in my lap.” Buzz’s tone is calm and collected, which means he’s planning. He’s probably been planning for a while now, but this ups the ante.

  “Got family?” I ask. Shit, the guys have to know this, like fucking yesterday. We need to scope this guy out and find out everything he knows about Ravage. It doesn’t take a tech genius to know that if someone could hack into a video feed, they can tap into books, money, accounts… you name it they can do it.

  “Mom and Dad divorced, talks to both of them, sister married with three kids, girlfriend is a secretary. Lives alone in his house. Can’t tell yet if he’s a T-Dart or just someone they hired. Doesn’t matter to me though. I want him eliminated.” The last words out of Buzz’s mouth were ground out, almost as if he had to physically spit them out.

  Buzz left a lot of his emotion in Iraq, hell, maybe even before he got to Iraq. He has it for those he cares about, but the ones that cross him hell hath no fury. We get along well in that area too.

  “We need to call Pops.” I check the time. 11:37 p.m. “He needs to know now.”

  “Yeah,” he groans and sits up on the couch with his cell. The volume on the TV is cut down, I’m assuming by Breaker as Buzz is dialing.

  “It’s Buzz. Got some shit on the techy who hacked into my system.” I listen to the one-sided conversation, watching Buzz for clues, but he gives nothing away.

  “Got family, but lives alone.”

  “Alta.” Nothing.

  “Yeah.”

  “Nine?” Not even a tick of his jaw.

  “We’ll be there.” He switches off the phone and tosses it to the cushion of the couch. “Meeting at nine. All of us there.”

  “He pissed?” Breaker asks.

  “No more than normal.” Buzz lies on the couch and puts his feet up. “I’m sure he’ll want more information on the guy. I’ll give him everything I have electronically, but we’ll have to go to Alta and get some shit together.”

  I figured as much. No big deal. One thing the three of us are good at is staking places out and not getting caught. Even though Breaker was in a different unit than us, he still learned the same principles and it kept all us alive for a long time. “Fine. I’m going over to Blaze’s.” I get up from the couch and grab my boots.

  Buzz and Breaker exchange a simultaneous look. What it is who the fuck knows, who cares.

  “Later,” Buzz and Breaker say at the same time. When they’re not thinking too much, they do that a lot. Answer at the same time. Normally, it’s only when they are both relaxed enough to let it happen. Some kind of twin voodoo or something that I ignore.

  I leave with only one thing on my mind. Blaze.

  Pulling up to X, I see cars are parked everywhere, must be a full crowd tonight. I park my bike and stroll in. Travis, one of the bouncers, stands at the door and I give him a chin lift. I breeze into the place, people line up three maybe four deep at the bar and all the tables are taken. It is standing room only. Ace spots me, holds up a beer, and I charge through the people to take it from him.

  “Blaze due up?” I ask as he’s trying to pour a thousand drinks at once.

  “Five minutes she goes on,” he says and leaves.

  I stride toward the stage, people moving, giving me a wide berth. The table I usually sit in has two guys in business suits sitting there smiling, like they’ve never seen a tit before in their lives, which sucks for them considering they both have wedding rings on their fingers.

  I stand in front of their table; their eyes follow up to meet mine. I cross my arms over my chest. “Move!” I bark with authority.

  They gape at each other and scurry to get out of their chairs. I sit down and rest my feet on the other chair. Do I know there are people standing that want to sit? Fuck yeah. Are they sitting next to me? Hell no.

  The girl in f
ront of me has decent tits, but she’s so fucking thin her bones peek through her skin. I hate that shit. I like curves. Better yet, I like Blaze’s curves.

  A hand grips my shoulder and I turn quickly, ready to fuck someone up. Princess. I settle. “Gonna let me sit?” she asks, pointing to the chair my feet are on. I slowly remove them one boot at a time. She rolls her eyes and plops her ass in it. “You know you’re taking up space and these people pay,” she jokes.

  Princess is an animal in and of herself. Not only is she the President’s daughter, she is also Cruz’s girl. Princess is in this life full on. She did time in jail for a crime she didn’t commit. Went through shit and came out of it sitting across from me, smiling.

  I shrug.

  “You here to see Blaze?”

  I should say that’s a stupid fucking question, but instead of talking, I nod and take a pull from the beer in my hand.

  Princess gets closer to me so I can hear her since the music is thumping so loud. “She said yes by the way. She’s gonna take over.”

  “Good.” That’s real good. I don’t want all these fuckers gawking at her. The word mine rings in my ears.

  The lights go dark, the music blares, and Blaze takes the stage. First, the light only points to blood red, fuck-me heels. Shit. My dick jerks, all attention on her. The light trails up her long legs, hitting the V covered in red lace and silk. Fuck me. The light continues up, illuminating her bare stomach, and then up further still to reveal a red lace and leather halter-top that ties around her neck, her huge tits already almost spilling out. Then the light focuses on her face, perfection. Her hips begin their torturous and erotic sway to the music.

  Her eyes meet mine as if she knew exactly where I was in the room, and she winks, giving me a soft smile. I fucking love that I get the real one. This time I wink back and her lips part. Her eyes widen and she falters a step. Good, new thing—catch her off guard.

  Blaze adds more hip thrusts in her routine, driving the crowd wild. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a man running. How in the fuck he’s doing it in a crush of people I don’t know. I rise as the man leaps up on stage, arms extended out, and grabs Blaze around the chest and falls with her to the other side of the stage.