Ride Angel Ride: A Biker Erotic Romance (Red Skulls MC)

This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons--living or dead--is entirely coincidental.

Ride Angel Ride copyright @ 2014 by Emily Stone. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

CHAPTER ONE

Mary Taylor
was switching on and off an old neon sign depicting the outline of Chief Pontiac. The sign was mounted on a wall opposite the manager’s desk… her father’s desk. And that twisted neon tube was the beginning of it all.

Atticus Taylor did not come to Las Vegas in the early 1970s with the idea of founding one of the most ruthless motorcycle gangs in Nevada. He had just wanted somewhere he could go to forget Vietnam and open a motorcycle repair shop. Atticus had always loved bikes and had a flair for making them purr– or growl–that was the envy of many. He knew that he could make a go of it in the right place, and just then the right place had seemed to be Vegas.

There wasn't a whole lot of financing when he got started, just a little GI money. There had been this abandoned car dealership up on the hill that had once been right on the highway. When they cut the new road through and lowered it, access became more difficult and the dealership moved closer to town. This was back in 1958, when the Pontiac emblem was still Chief Pontiac with his hair streaming behind him like a set of wings.

By 1970, the building had been in rough shape. The sign had faded away completely, but somehow the neon outline of the Chief still glowed in the night sky. The realtor’s sign near the base of the pole was also badly faded, and only one of the small spotlights on each side of the sign worked. The power to the realtor’s sign also powered the Chief each night, so his red outline had become something of a landmark. Most people had long forgotten who he was actually supposed to be, though, so locals would give directions like, “three miles past the red skull,” or, “two exits past the red skull.”

When Atticus had leased and then bought the buildings and the land around them, he had repainted the sign. Smart businessman that he was, he took advantage of the popular name and called his shop “The Red Skull Motorcycle Shop.” He filled in the red neon with a bright red skull with flames trailing back in the shape of the old chief’s wings. Old Chief Pontiac was moved to Attics’ office wall.

Word of Atticus’ skill had spread rapidly, and his business grew. He was approached by CJ Walsh, who was trying to get a custom shop started and needed space. Soon The Red Skull Motorcycle Shop and CJ’s Custom Bikes became a magnet for those who loved two or three wheels on the open road. When the time was right, Atticus bought the local Harley dealer and moved it to his location. After that, The Red Skull became
the
place for serious bikers to gather.

Somewhere along the line, the gathering became a club and the club became the Red Skulls. The Skulls also branched out into several different endeavors, many of them on the wrong side of the law. That was 40 years ago, and now there were Red Skull Motorcycle Shops and Red Skull Motorcycle Club branches in 11 states. A large Red Skull clubhouse now stood alongside the motorcycle shop and dealership.

Atticus Taylor himself was “retired.” In fact, he functioned more like the chairman of the board of a large business. He didn’t bother himself with day-to-day affairs, but had a lot of control over major decisions. After stepping down, he had appointed Wild Bill as head of the Vegas club, and when Bill had gotten himself killed in a dispute with some rival clubs, Atticus had appointed Garrison Sloane to succeed him.

Sloane was something of a wildcard, and Mary was never sure how to read him. He was very different from Wild Bill and her dad, but Gary had Atticus’ complete respect and confidence. Garrison ran club business on a daily basis and could usually be found at the clubhouse. He was young and more than handsome, and Mary had thought about trying to get something going with him, but he seemed to be infatuated with someone named Sarah, who owned a bar way out in the desert.

Mary took over management of the repair shop when her dad had stepped into the background. It wasn’t exactly nepotism, though. She had more than inherited his feel for motors and his love of bikes. She hadn’t exactly cut her teeth on socket wrenches, but she was using them properly by the time she was eight, and could take apart an engine and put it back on the road in perfect tune by the time she was ten.

Mary flipped the switch for the neon sign on and off, on and off, as she looked around the shop. She loved her work. She loved the bikes. She even loved most of the club members– most of the time. What she didn’t love was how they treated her.

Yes, they respected her as shop manager. Yes, they took her suggestions seriously and obeyed her orders. But they treated her like a like a ten-year-old girl, not like a woman. Or maybe they treated her like a woman that had to be protected from everything and everybody. Either way, it made her feel like a little girl with a hundred nannies watching over her.

Maybe they were afraid of her father. He had always been overly protective of her. She was his only child, born late in life to him and her mother. She could never remember her mother not being sick. Then, when she was seven, mom was gone.

Dad had always kept her close after that. As she got older, he had a way of suddenly appearing in that shiny custom bike that C.J. had made for him whenever one of her male classmates happened to stop by. One look from those cold, steel-blue eyes looking out from above that white mustache and goatee, and the boy would never return. Then that boy would tell other boys, and they would tell others, until eventually all the boys at school had parted as she walked down the hallways, as if she were a leper. She even ended up going to the prom alone.

After she had graduated from high school, once or twice one of the club members had tried to approach her, but as soon as her dad found out, they would always back off, and she knew why. She had once watched her father corner a young man who had become friendly with her and tell him sternly, “You touch my baby girl and I’ll change your status to momma.” He got up real close into the young man’s face and said coldly, “and I’ll do the operation myself.”

She snapped the switch to the off position and said out loud to herself, “I could walk out into the middle of the shop naked and no one would even notice... or at least they wouldn’t do anything.” She let out a deep sigh, and then she cocked her head as she heard an approaching bike that sounded off– not badly sick, but ailing. She rose out of the chair and headed out into the shop.

CHAPTER TWO

The bike was a brand-new Harley Davidson Ultra Limited with Texas plates. The engine wasn’t exactly missing, but it didn’t sound right. There was an odd sound, perhaps in the exhaust. The rider was a very handsome young Hispanic.

She greeted him as he rolled up to the entrance. “Sounds like you’ve got a sick bike.”

He answered, “It’s more or less OK on the open road, but something’s wrong with the acceleration and it starts losing power on long hills. You got a mechanic that can check it out?”

“You’re looking at her,” she tried not to react to the look of shock and surprise on his face.

“I don’t want just anybody touching my new ride,” he said, “I got her just before this trip for long-distance runs and I want her treated right.”

“If you want to read my Harley certifications, they’re on the wall of my office. I’m Mary Taylor, the shop manager.”

“At’s girl?” he said, with an even greater look of surprise.

Mary was somewhat surprised as well. Very few people ever called her father “At.” Doing so usually meant the person knew him very well... or didn’t know him at all.

He reached out his hand. “I’m Roger Martinez, President of the Dallas chapter. I came up a little early for the chapter president’s meeting. My friends call me Speedy. If you’re At’s girl, I guess I can trust you with my bike.”

As he turned to take something from the cargo bin behind the momma seat, Mary saw the red skull and flames on the back of his jacket. Circled above the emblem was “The Red Skulls.” Beneath in a straight line it said, “Dallas.”

“What do you think’s wrong?” he asked. “You got any woman’s intuition?”

Mary just laughed and replied, “Have to look at it first. Let’s see what the computer says is wrong.”

“That’s why I was hoping for a woman’s intuition,” he responded with a laugh. “I’ve stopped at three other dealerships along the way but all they could tell me was that their computers said that everything’s working like it should be aside from a slight loss of compression on the right side. They took the plugs out and scoped it, but the rings look good, the walls look good, the valves look good, everything looks good. But after I’m on the road for a while, when I kick it in the ass, it doesn’t respond like it should.”

“Let’s still see what the computer says,” she answered, “but the sound tells me it’s a valve. Didn’t any of these places listen to it?” She paused, looking at the engine, and said, “Hell with it. We’ll skip the computer. Let me get my ears.”

She walked back inside and came back a moment later with a stethoscope around her neck. “Going to listen to my heartbeat?” Roger asked. “Watching you walk around in those tight jeans has it up a little.”

Mary found herself almost blushing. Did he really say that? Was he flirting with her?

She held up the stethoscope and explained, “In the old days, daddy would stick a screwdriver against the block and put his ear against the handle. He bought me this because he didn’t think sticking a screwdriver in my ear looked ladylike.”

“Oh, I think you’d always look ladylike. Or a likeable lady, at the very least.”

Mary thought to herself,
He really is flirting with me. He definitely doesn’t know daddy very well... or doesn’t know him at all.

The stethoscope had a long probe sticking out from its center. Mary touched the point of the probe against the side of the right cylinder. Then she looked up at Roger and said, “Start it up and rev it.”

Roger did so, and Mary glowered with anger. “Not only did they not listen to your bike,” she spit out, “they didn’t read the damn service bulletins. You’ve got a dead spring.”

“A what?” he exclaimed.

“These new 103’s run hotter than a bitch in heat,” she explained. “The old-style valve springs can’t handle the heat and a couple of the old ones somehow got mixed into a production run a while back. They sent out a bulletin on it. The spring softens under the heat and gets deformed. Then the valve doesn’t seal completely. It gets worse with heat and acceleration.”

“So what do I do?” he asked.

Mary signaled for him to kill the engine. “I can put in a new spring in about an hour, be done by three, four at the latest. But you really should have the heads replaced– both of them, in case the valves or valve seats have been compromised. After I put in the spring, we should probably take it out on the road and stress it to see if the other springs are good.”

“‘We’? That sounds interesting.”

Mary was thinking exactly that herself, but she couldn’t just say, “I would love to go out and ride with you because you aren’t afraid of me or the club.” Instead she said, “That way I can listen to the engine when it’s really hot and see if any of the other springs are getting deformed. Or, we could spend two days waiting for new heads to come in from Milwaukee and another two days taking the engine apart and rebuilding it.”

As they pushed the bike toward the shop, one of the mechanics came out to meet them. “I’ll take this one,” Mary said.

“You sure?” he answered.

“Dead valve spring,” she responded, “I’ll pressurize the cylinder and replace the spring. Shouldn’t even have to take off the gas tank if I’m lucky. One hour, tops. Then we’ll road test it.”

The mechanic raised his eyebrows and looked over at Roger, but said nothing.

A half-hour later, Mary set the valve spring taken from Roger’s bike on the workbench next to the new one she had gotten from the parts department. Roger’s spring was significantly shorter than the new one. “It shrinks even more under heat,” she explained.

“Mine shrinks with cold,” Roger said with a grin, “and it looks like size does matter.”

“The problem is,” countered Mary, “this little guy couldn’t get it up and the valve didn’t close tight. Tightness makes a difference, too.”

Roger laughed and Mary laughed with him. Neither of them saw the mechanic in the next bay walk over and make a phone call.

True to Mary’s word, one hour later, the Ultra was sitting back in front of the shop with the engine purring. Mary had her stethoscope pressed against the side of the cylinder head and was smiling. The odd noise was gone. “I don’t think the valve burned or scored the seat,” she said, “but I would still demand they replace the heads when you get back to Dallas. We’ll send the bill to the factory and they should send you a letter of acknowledgment.”

“What about my test drive?” Roger asked, cocking his head. “Are we still going out to see how hot she gets when I push her hard?” He gave Mary a huge grin.

Mary answered, “Let me put somebody in charge while I’m gone. Then we’ll ride.”