Kristen Ashley - Motorcycle Man

To Barbara Hunter Mahan

My aunt, my role model and my most avid reader.

She’s an aunt who’s interested in everything you do, supports every decision you make, wants nothing but your happiness and gives love without conditions.

She’s a woman who calls ‘em as she sees ‘em, does what she likes and likes what she does, says what’s on her mind and if you can’t hack the honesty that’s your problem.

She’s the first woman I’d chose to shop with and she’s the only woman I’d want to get kidnapped with.

Love you, Aunt Barb.

To Chas for again having my back.

“Babe, you awake?” he called, his warm hand moving down my spine, taking the sheet with it, making my skin tingle and coming to rest just above my bottom.

I smiled.

I had done it. I finally had done it. I found him. He was right there in bed with me and it wasn’t the tequila talking. I had way too much but not too much that I didn’t know he was it.

He was the one. This motorcycle man in bed with me was the man of my dreams.

I never would have guessed it would be a man like him but I knew it was. I knew it the minute I saw him across the forecourt, through the sea of people, all of them laughing, drinking, shouting, dancing, eating, necking or fighting. It wasn’t my scene but Eloise had invited me, told me I needed to become a member of the family, so I went. This was going to be my new life, I’d made that decision and I had to embrace it. So I did.

He saw me too and it was my motorcycle man who sought me out. Then he plied me with tequila but he didn’t need to. I was his the minute he sauntered through the crush to get to me, his eyes never leaving mine, his lips surrounded by that kickass goatee curved into a sexy grin. When he’d made it to me, he’d said, “Hey,” in a deep, gravelly voice and that was it.

Then we shot tequila, talked a bit and laughed a lot.

An hour later, he took my hand and guided me to a room in the motorcycle club’s compound and now, several hours later, I was naked in bed with him having been given so many orgasms I lost count and I knew he was it. He was the shadowy-faced man I’d been daydreaming about since I could remember. And it wasn’t the orgasms, it was him making me laugh a lot, drink a lot and feel so unbelievably, fantastically alive while the party raged around us.

This man called Tack loved life and knew how to live it to its fullest. And I knew, as crazy as it sounded, that I was going to live my life to its fullest by his side.

I was on my belly in bed, my arms crossed on the pillow, my cheek resting on them, my head turned away from him. I turned my head his way and looked up at him.

Dark, longish, somewhat unruly, definitely sexy hair with a hint of gray interspersed in it. Blue eyes with pale lines radiating from the sides that I knew, I just knew, came from laughing. A dark goatee around his mouth, the bit at his chin overlong in a biker way that was too cool for words. Fantastic tattoos slithering up his defined arms, broad shoulders and muscled neck along with one on his ripped chest and a big one on his back. The rest of his body hard and strong, I knew because with great relish I’d acquainted myself with every centimeter.

Beautiful. Perfect. Not my type and I never would have thought a man like him, a biker guy, a motorcycle man, rough and ready for anything, would be my type. But now that I found the man of my dreams, I knew he was perfect.

“I’m awake,” I whispered and a whisper was all I could manage. My throat was clogged with joy and excitement. I’d been waiting for him forever and here he was.

I knew when I’d jumped off the roller coaster that had been my life, I was doing the right thing and here he was. Living, breathing, gorgeous, tattooed, gravelly-voiced, great with his hands, mouth and other parts of his anatomy proof that I was absolutely right.

His hand left my skin to smack my ass lightly before he said, “Time to get to your own bed, darlin’.”

I blinked but the rest of my body froze.

He moved.

He exited the bed, grabbed his jeans and yanked them on. Then he sauntered to a door off the room, not even so much as glancing back as he said, “Leave your number and close the door on your way out, would you, Red?”

Then he disappeared behind the door and shut it behind him.

It was ten to eight when I held my breath and turned off Broadway into the wide, cement-covered drive that took me around the big warehouse auto supply store that was part of Ride’s operation. I made it to the forecourt of the three bay garage that was the other part of Ride’s operation.

I studied the mammoth garage as I approached.

Ride Custom Cars and Bikes, my new place of employment, was world famous. Movie stars and Saudi Arabian sheiks bought cars and bikes from them. Their cars and bikes had been in magazines and they were commissioned for movies. Everyone in Denver knew about them. Hell, everyone in Colorado knew about them and I was pretty sure most everyone in the United States too. I was pretty sure of this because I knew not that first thing about custom cars and bikes. In fact, I knew nothing about non-custom cars and bikes, but I still knew about Ride.

I also knew the Chaos Motorcycle Club owned the garage and four auto supply stores, this one in Denver, one in Boulder, another in Colorado Springs and the last one that just opened in Fort Collins. I knew the Chaos Motorcycle Club too. They were famous because of Ride and because many of their rough and ready looking members had been photographed with their custom bikes and cars.

I also knew them because I’d partied with them.

And that day I was starting as the new office manager of the garage.

And that day was only one, single day after I’d been laid by Tack, the president of Chaos Motorcycle Club and, essentially, my boss.

And lastly, that day was only one single day and one single night after Tack had slam, bam, thank you ma’am’ed me.

“God,” I whispered to my windshield as I parked in front and just beside the steps that led up to the door next to the triple bays of the garage, a door with a sign over it that said, “Office”, “I’m such a stupid, stupid, idiot.”

But I wasn’t an idiot. No, I was a slut.

I didn’t know how to cope with being a slut. I’d never been one before. I did not jump into bed with men I barely knew. I did not have flights of fancy where I thought they were beautiful, perfect, motorcycle man daydreams come to life and therefore did tequila shots with them and then had hours of wild, crazy, delicious, fantastic sex with them.

That was not me at all.

I was not the kind of person who lived life like Tack did. I was thirty-five and I had lived a careful, quiet, risk-free life. I weighed decisions. I measured pros versus cons. I wrote lists. I made plans. I organized. I thought ahead. I never took one step where I wasn’t absolutely certain where my foot would land. And if I found myself in a situation that was unsure, I exited said situation, pronto.

Until two months ago when I looked at my life and the toxic people in it and I knew I had to get out.

So I got out. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t measure the pros and cons. I didn’t organize my exit strategy. I didn’t think ahead. When I’d had the epiphany and realized where I was, how dangerous it was, how unhealthy it was, I had no idea where I’d land when I jumped off the ride that was my life. I just straightened from my desk chair at work, grabbed my personal belongings, shoved them in a box and walked out. I didn’t even tell my boss I was going. I just went.

And I didn’t go back.

For the next two months I bought the paper every Wednesday and opened it to the want ads section. On each page of the want ads, I closed my eyes and pointed. If I was qualified for the job my finger touched, I applied for it.

That was the extent of my plan.

My best friend Lanie thought I was nuts. I couldn’t say she was wrong. I had no idea what I was doing, why I was doing it, where I was going and what would happen once I got there.

All I knew was that I had to do it.

So I was.

Now I was here and here was where I decided I needed to be. I’d spent all day the day before trying to figure out if I should show for my new job or not. I’d screwed everything up, literally, and I hadn’t even started the job yet. I didn’t want to see Tack. I never wanted to see him again. The very thought was so humiliating, I felt my skin burning and I had that very thought nearly constantly since I slid out of his bed, dressed and, mortified, slithered out of his room.

But I had been out of work for two months. I had a nest egg but I also had a mortgage. I had to find employment. I had to start my life again. Whatever I was supposed to be doing, I had to do it. Whatever I needed to find, I had to find it.

There was no going back now. I’d jumped out of the roller coaster at the top of the crest, just before it took the plunge and I was falling.

I had to land sometime and it was here that I was going to land.