Captive Ride(22)
No matter how much Annie Bloom’s supermodel body and peach fresh face cranks my engine, it’s not worth losing my family over.
Across the room, Easy looks at me as if I’m the saddest sap alive. I respond with a glare and crossed arms.
Back when we were deployed and even when we first moved to Fortune, it was easy finding girls to fuck but at the age of twenty-nine, I’m not interested in only a single night or even a series of them. Seeing Judge with his woman and even Wrecker hooking up with his stepsister is creating a strange discontent. I want more but that’s about as useful as wishing that the Bandits would leave before midnight.
There ain’t more to be had here. Not with Easy and not with Miss Annie. Resolutely I shut down those wants. I’m fine with my hand and if I need a body there’s always one willing to open her legs for me here at the club.
My future is mapped out for me. I belong here with the Death Lords MC.
My brothers are enough.
They have to be.
Chapter Two
Annie
“Turn away from the sinful desires, say no to the temptations of the flesh, seek God’s blessings in all things. Turn to the light, say yes to spiritual unity, and the rewards of the Lord will be plentiful.” My father’s deep voice is overloud in our small dining room. His oratory is suited for a bigger space, one even larger than the Fortune Methodist Church provides.
My eyes surreptitiously take in the time. It’s half past nine. It’s half past forever, actually. This is the fourth take of Father’s Sunday sermon. By the time the morning service rolls around, I’ll have listened to it at least three more times. Usually I can recite the whole sermon myself by Saturday evening.
I wonder what normal twenty-three-year-old women are doing on Friday night. Do they hang around together and watch television? Or are they at the bars in sparkling tops and too-short skirts flirting with men covered in tattoos and leather? Or maybe they’re having sex with their boyfriends. Anyone of those scenarios is better than what I do on Friday night or Saturday for that matter.
I’m not as innocent as everyone thinks I am. I’ve not only read books but taken advantage of the filterless Internet available on a couple of the library computers. There are pictures of positions I’d never even considered possible but the ones that I kept returning to were the images of one woman pleasured by two men.
Behind my bedroom door, I fantasize about multiple hands running over my body, multiple mouths kissing my skin. I want those multiples to belong to the two bikers that saw me home after out of town strangers vandalized my boss, Pippa’s, car.
Those two acted like one unit. They communicated with long looks and jerks of their head. When I asked Pippa about it, she gave me a worried look and said that they enjoyed doing everything together. It was a broad hint and maybe she thought I wouldn't get it but I did.
“Annie!” Father’s terse tone jerks me out of my fantasy. I try hard not to flush but that’s a losing proposition. My cheeks heat up in a predictable fashion.
Frowning, he reaches over to a stack of pamphlets and pulls one out. “I want you to attend this tomorrow.”
The half sheet of blue paper announces that the Fortune Knitting Club will be meeting at the Brew Ha Ha for its weekly get together. I swallow my groan of dismay. It’s as if he read my mind and purposely chose the activity as opposite from the bikers as possible. Actually that isn’t true because if he had read my mind, he’d take his cane and lash me with it. Father is a big believer in the proverb that a saved rod is a spoilt child.
When I was younger, he spanked me with a paddle that had the scripture carved into the wood. Between getting my mouth washed out with soap and my butt burned with the paddle, I learned not to stray too far from the path my parents had set for me. Before Mom left, it had been easier but when I was around fourteen she’d had enough of being the preacher’s wife and left us. She lives in Seattle in a writer’s colony. I think she may be a lesbian although I’m not entirely sure, but Father rails about the sins of homosexuality with special fervor.
Father forbade contact. The one time I thought about disobeying him, he had a literal heart attack. The doctors told me to keep his stress down or the next one would kill him. Father told me that not taking care of him would send me to hell. There’s so much that’s going to send me to hell. My reading choices, the pervy online pictures, the men who parade themselves bare naked in my imagination.
But I still can’t find myself turning my back on Father. He’s been the one parent who stuck with me and while he’s not super affectionate, I know he loves me. I can’t abandon him and frankly I don’t have many marketable skills.