BBW ROMANCE: BWWM Romance: A Cowboy’s Southern Comfort (Military Cowboy Pregnancy Romance) (Interracial Army Contemporary Fantasy Romance Short Stories) (60 page)

The women leaned against the post holding up the roof covering the patio, altering their weight from one foot to the other in their stiletto boots. These girls who arrived in tiny skirts and clingy tops didn’t belong to any biker, though by god were they trying.

A collection of more established women, covered in their own patches, sat by the fire quietly watching the men roar over bike specs and turf disputes. Even in these small ways, the hierarchy was very clear. You could quickly determine someone’s rank based on how many patches they had sewn to their jacket, each symbol a different meaning. Scarlett had been wearing tight black jeans and an oversized leather jacket.

Her hair was in an artfully untidy fishtail braid around her shoulder which she twisted in her finger as she surveyed the scene. The sun had set and the sky was filled with enormous swathes of pink and orange, each person cast in its warm earthy glow. Scarlett was bored.

The beer in this bar was shit and Candy was at home asleep so she had no-one to hang out with. She couldn’t be bothered trying to make conversation with either set of women this and then men wouldn’t take kindly to her inserting herself into their discussion.

Scarlett slipped around the side of the bar quietly. It was on a road a little outside of town and now that it was dusk in the distance she could see foxes skittering around further out. She pulled her keys out of her pocket and put them in the ignition of her V Star Classic, copious chrome glinting in the last light of the evening.

It wasn’t exactly as nice as the Harley she’d had before, but that had come to a rather unfortunate end in north Texas when Nick had pissed off some drunk biker and in return he had smashed it up beyond repair. She had initially wanted to call Nick out for his part in the whole debacle but quickly thought better of it, holding her tongue was part of the deal if she wanted to be with the leader of the gang.

She had put on her best beauty queen smile and brushed it off as if it was nothing, hoping that he at least noticed the steeliness of her gaze.

She took off at a steady pace, she wasn’t much for riding after a drink but figured the roads were quiet. The air smelled like smoke and clay making her feel relaxed and at home. The rumbling of the engine and the crunching of the wheels against the gravel along the road interspersed with the growing buzz of conversation.

It was another biker bar, smaller and quieter than the one she had just left. The outside of the bar was painted a deep violet and covered in graffiti, its windows mostly blacked out. She pulled in and switched off the engine, shoving her jacket into her saddlebags. Straightening out her t-shirt and fixing her makeup in the side mirror, she took a deep breath before calmly entering the door.

In her head she expected the bar to draw to a tense silence – what on earth was the girlfriend of a high ranking Death Rider doing in a Tornado bar? But it didn’t, the hum of conversation and clinking glasses continued. No-one knew her here yet. They probably thought she was just some new girl trying to work her way into hooking up with some gang member.

She ordered a whiskey and coke at the bar, the coarse taste of the other beer still lingering at the back of her throat. Sitting on a stool watching a TV presenter silently and enthusiastically describe some baseball result, she felt anonymous for the first time in months. No one to impress or cater to, no man’s ego to cater to, it was nice to just be able have a drink in peace.

That was until a tall, tanned man sidled up beside her and bought her next drink, and the one after that. He was wiry and almost thin, but upon closer inspection it was clear he was well muscled and had been in his fair share of fistfights.

A thin, white scar threaded its way down his jaw where it met a web of complex tattoos of the underlying skeletal structure. His aquiline features, high cheekbones and piercing green eyes made him look almost androgynous but in a mysterious, exotic way. He spoke in an unusual, clipped way when he spoke at all, but mostly they just sat together, Scarlett making most of the conversation.

She wasn’t sure if she had ever had such a long talk with anyone since she joined Death Riders, Nick included. It emerged he was from a Russian family, second generation, who he hadn’t seen in years. Scarlett told him she hadn’t seen hers in years either, but left out the part where they were the friendly Middle American sort.

They discussed their favourite bikes and places, where they were going next. Spike spoke to her like an equal, like he genuinely valued her opinions on these things. His open, gleaming smile made her perhaps impulsive with how much she told him, but by the end of the night they were kissing behind the bar, his fingers worked into her hair which had come loose.

As the bar started to empty out, he broke the kiss, which initially she took to mean that it was also time to go home with him. After several whiskey and cokes, she wasn’t thinking about Nick anymore, just this beautiful, thoughtful man. Consequences didn’t matter now.

‘So how much of this place have you seen?’ he said

‘Oh not a lot, only been here a couple days and I’ll probably be gone in a few more’

‘Well maybe I can do something about that’ he smiled, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

He walked over to his bike and gestured that she found hers too.

‘Follow me, I’ve a surprise for you’

They wove their wave along the winding empty roads, the night becoming increasingly cold under the cloudless sky. The moon made everything seem silvery and strange. The sounds of their engines was the only noise for miles.

Finally, Spike pulled in. An expanse of ramshackle houses spread out before them, overshadowed by a towering, gaudy ‘WELCOME TO’ sign that the name of the city had fallen off of. In between the houses there were shops that still looked like they had wares in them, a tiny broken down bar and some abandoned cars.

‘Nobody’s lived here for about 50 years, but it looks like they all just left overnight’ Spike said ‘I could never find out why they left, everything from stories of poisoned water to some sort of 50s cold war scare’

The moonlight made the town look like the remains of a dream after someone wakes up, everything was eerie and seemed almost like a negative of itself. The yellow 1950s sign, the fading posters with figures that were now barely distinguishable. Spike had been right, Scarlett was fascinated.

Ghost towns were always something she had loved, but her parents had always thought it was a weird interest for a girl and refused to entertain any of her suggested fieldtrips.

These abandoned places sent her imagination wild conjuring the lives of people who lived here, what made them leave, what might have made them stay.

The stars shone clear as glinting needlepoints in the sky, clearly visible now that they were well outside even the dim lights of the small town they were passing through.

‘Thought you might like it,’ Spike said, smiling at Scarlett’s clear wonderment ‘Come here, there’s something here you’ll like.’

Following him through the winding rows of houses, they came to a water tower. Climbing to the top was more arduous than Scarlett had expected, particularly in relatively high heels. At the top you could see for miles and miles, all the way out to the mountains rising violet out of the horizon, haloed in indigo.

‘It’s beautiful’ she said.

Spike nodded ‘I’m glad you like it’

He placed his arms round her waist, wrapping his fingers round the barrier. Kissing Spike was unlike any kiss she had ever shared before, not with Nick nor with anyone else.

Chapter Three

The weeks carried on this way, furtively meeting when Nick was too drunk or distracted to notice, which these days was often. She would leave him in the Death Riders’ Bar, deep in conversation with another biker about whichever deal was in the works that he couldn’t possibly make her privy too.

She found herself driven by a certain vengefulness. It wasn’t as if she could blame Nick, his disregard for her was part and parcel of being involved with a gang leader but the more she saw how kind Spike could be, the angrier she got at him.

Each time he brushed her off or flirted with Candy, she found herself again thinking of when she would next see Spike, where he would take her. She found herself less and less enamoured with the prospect of being Nick’s girlfriend and the accompanying political sway over all the other women. They felt more and more distant from her, more part of a world she was only half a part of.

At the same time, she felt she was only half a part of Spike’s world too. He certainly was leader of his own gang and what was to say if she was one of them that he would treat her any different. Scarlett was operating in somewhat of a limbo, between two gangs and neither.

It might have been limbo, but at least it was her limbo. At least it was a place where she could speak openly, without the pressure of not embarrassing Nick or one of his friends or some other political faux pas. Being with Spike was like mountain air in comparison to the choking smog of the Death Riders.

Scarlett knew that it couldn’t possibly last, this secret dream life that they had created for one another. They couldn’t keep exploring ghost towns and glittering salt deposits or hiding their patched jackets to meet out of town.

Not only was it impractical in the short run, it became impossible when Nick told her that the problems with The Tornados had been resolved, some sort of compromise over boundaries of where each gang could sell.

‘So are we leaving right away? You seemed to be having so much fun here, surely we could stay till the end of summer before taking on San Antonio’

‘Scarlett you know the guys and I are bored here, it's a small town, there’s only so long we can spend in the same bar not to mention that the bikers based here are sick of sharing the space’

‘But a few more weeks?’

He cut her off. She should have known better than to push it. Nick's face turned stony, his eyes narrowing as he rubbed his hand over his shaved scalp

‘Are you suggesting you know how to run this gang better than I do? Because I’d love to hear that story Scarlett’, he snarled, squaring up to her.

He was a big guy, broad and tall. It wasn’t even his stature that made people afraid of Nick, it was this manic energy that seemed to vibrate through him, ready to take a bite out of someone at any moment. Scarlett felt her spine arching backwards to get away from them, trying not to stumble or make eye contact.

She was getting arrogant, she thought, he could already feel that she was getting ahead of herself. She apologized, faltering into a simpering flirtation. Within moments she found herself on his lap, kissing him as his hands moved along her waist. He had already forgotten her insolence. Scarlett had already disappeared for him behind the vagaries of that energy she and everyone else spent their time trying to outpace.

She was uncomfortable with how easily she slipped into it, how easy it was to become Nick’s girl again, to respond to him exactly how he wanted. In some sense, it was comfortingly familiar, being a version of herself that was recognized by others rather than another Scarlett that she had left behind so many years ago who had her own thoughts and feelings.

The wheedling of some guitar solo from some half famous 80s group undercut the sound of their breathing and the vague murmur of conversation from outside. The motel room was hot and airless, smelt like cigarette smoke and stale liquor. Her leggings were wet look leather and Nick’s fingers left marks on their surface and her hair fell in blonde pools around his shoulders.

She could say she hated him all she wanted, but in these moments she couldn’t help but feel like she was the only woman in the world for him. More than that, he knew a version of herself that she had created and worked on, rather than this version of herself who she feared maybe just wanted the novelty of someone new.

That night they spent together, ending up back in the Death Rider bar. Nick kept Candy at a distance, drawing Scarlett close whenever he could. He spoke to her as much as he spoke to the other bikers, even if she still couldn’t contribute in conversations about where the gang was moving to.

She knew if she pushed too hard they would start asking questions and she was afraid she wouldn’t have answers for them. She tried to ignore her phone, but it was impossible. She couldn’t bear the thought of Spike thinking that she had changed her mind and not even bothered to tell him.

Pretending the notifications were from a game, she disappeared into the bathroom to text him that she was spending the night at the Death Riders Bar because they had questioned where she had been these past couple weeks. He didn’t respond.

Her heart felt twisted in her chest all night and so she took it out on the new girls, criticizing their outfits and whispering to the other more established women. Her body language became more confident, almost a swagger, the more she settled back into her role as head of the women.

She was meaner, quicker and louder. This person felt safer, they were less likely to ask questions if they were afraid of her. Nick might never notice that she disappeared half way through most evenings, but she knew the women better.

They noticed everything, and she needed to knock them back into place if she wanted to have any time to figure out what she was going to do. Her thoughts drifted back and forth between the nuanced back and forth between the women and Spikes green eyes, her face cupped in his strong hands.