Chapter 6 - Ares

6

Ares

The regular Saturday night party is raging in the clubhouse bar. I can hear the noise from upstairs where I’m tucked away in my cramped little room.

“You okay, baby?”

The girl blinks up at me from between my knees. Her hand keeps working my cock and it feels good — really fucking good — but I’m still on edge. Distracted.

“Did I tell you to stop?”

She rolls her eyes and ducks her head again, taking my dick deep in her warm, wet mouth. I grope for the bottle of tequila and a growl rises in me when I realize it’s empty. The girl whose name I can’t remember (Addie? Annie?) thinks my groan over my empty bottle is for her and she eagerly sucks me harder, her cheeks hollowing out.

Fuck, I’m gonna have to go downstairs now, something I don’t want to do. Wastelander parties are a good time, but Griff is pissed about our two prospects in lock-up, along with the simmering pot of shit brewing between the Wastelanders and our rivals, the Rolling Jackals, and I don’t want to deal with him.

Or anyone, for that matter.

Tingling pressure builds inside me and I close my eyes, focusing on the feeling. This chick isn’t getting me there on her own, so I tangle my fist in her hair and buck my hips until my cock jams down the back of her throat. She coughs around me, choking, and the feeling hums up my shaft and into my balls. It’s the degradation, using her, that really gets me off, and luckily she’s on board.

“Fuck… Gonna come,” I grunt. “You’re gonna swallow, right?”

She blinks away mascara-tears and nods.

My climax is sharp and unsatisfying, but the chick does as she’s told and keeps sucking until I pull her off. She grins and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Can I use your bathroom?”

“Whatever. Don’t touch my fucking toothbrush.”

She stands and adjusts her mini skirt. A moment later, the bathroom door clicks shut.

As I tuck my softening dick away and zip up my jeans, I catch sight of my knuckles. Jagged white scars criss-cross the skin, a reminder of every punch thrown, every jaw shattered under my fists. I stretch out my hands and feel my joints pop.

Booze. That’s what I need.

***

The brothers make space for me as I stride towards the long wooden bar that runs the length of the room. Even if they didn’t know me by reputation, the officer patch on my cut tells them that I’m higher up the food chain than them, so they’d better stay the fuck out of my way.

“Hey, Ares. What can I getcha?”

Sadie’s a sweetheart. Nobody will ever hear me say that, but she is. Bright and bubbly, with a wicked smile, and an ass that looks amazing in those little cut-off shorts she always wears. If she wasn’t already claimed by Reaper, I would’ve considered making her mine.

Reaper, the guy who had the enforcer title before me, stepped back from the club for awhile to raise his kid niece, but now that she’s not so much a kid anymore (and dating one of the other brothers, I’ve heard), Griff took him back. Made us ‘co-enforcers’, like this is some after-school debate team instead of a fucking biker gang.

I’m… fine with it.

I think.

There’s a part of me that just wishes Reaper would take it all; the bullets, the blood, the pain. I think maybe I’ve had my fill. But I can’t walk away. I owe this club too much.

“Tequila,” I tell her. Sadie reaches for a shot glass and I shake my head. “The bottle’s fine.”

She just nods, but I see the little tic that sends her eyebrow arching up.

“You got something to say, Sadie?”

“Me? No,” she replies as she thunks the bottle onto the bar. I pop the top and take a swig, suddenly feeling calmer as the liquid burns a line of fire down my throat.

“Just that Bear’s had to put in a special order ‘cause of you.”

“I’m flattered.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

She props her elbows on the bar and leans forward. She probably doesn’t mean to give me an eyeful of her tits, but she does anyway.

“You okay, Ares?”

“I don’t need you to be my therapist. I only want two things from you, Sadie, and you already served me a fucking drink, so…”

I lift my eyebrows and she lurches back, her cheeks burning pink. I can tell I’ve flustered her. Made her uncomfortable.

“You’re lucky I know you’re not this much of an asshole when you’re sober, Ares, otherwise I’d get Reaper to kick your ass.”

“I’d like to see him try.”

I grin, but it’s forced. The neck of the bottle gripped in my hand, I turn away and lean against the bar top.

The guys are rowdy tonight, but there’s an undercurrent of something else that’s seeping in from all sides. It feels like a brewing storm. Like something’s coming.

Even being not-quite-sober, I scan the room for trouble. For brothers who might take their disagreements a little too far. Who might grab one of the girls a little too hard.

“Fuck Sheriff Jackson,” Razor shouts suddenly. The big bearded dude takes a long drag of his joint and passes it across the table. “Pulled over for expired registration? Fuck that. He knew those boys were Wastelanders — that’s why he went after ‘em.”

His buddies grumble and nod in agreement.

“It’s ‘cause of the shit that went down with the Rolling Jackals,” Razor continues. “Giving up our territory and our contacts. Jackson wants payback.”

I set my bottle back on the bar with a thunk. The club is still dealing with the fallout from what went down a few months back — the kidnapping of Reaper’s niece by our rivals, the Rolling Jackals. To get her back, Griff gave them some of our territory and our list of dirty cops. Sheriff Jackson may not have been on the list, but he should’ve been right at he top. Bastard is as dirty as they come, only instead of accepting Wastelander pay-offs, he tries every little trick in the book to take us down.

“You know how far Jackson will go for a little payback, don’t you, Ares?”

I meet Razor’s slimy grin with a snarl. In a flash, I pick up his friend’s glass and slam it against Razor’s head, shattering it and sending bloody chunks of glass spraying.

The room goes quiet. Everyone’s watching me. Watching the carnage I cause without even trying. Razor wipes blood from his face. He wants to take a swing, I can see it in his dark eyes as he glares at me though the pain.

And then he looks away.

“Who wants a shot?” Bear yells into the quiet. The grizzled old bartender holds up a bottle of whiskey. The room explodes with cheers and then everything returns to normal.

I can’t do this. I can’t be here.

I turn to go, to head back to my room and shut all of this out.

But then I see her.

She’s here .

I blink. Hard. Am I that drunk that even the mention of what Sheriff Jackson did to me can conjure her out of thin air? I wait for her to turn to vapor, to disappear like a ghost or a figment of my boozed-up brain — but she remains.

Real. She’s real.

Delaney Jackson is here, and I wish to God she wasn’t.

She stands just inside the front door, an old backpack slung over one shoulder. Her jeans are baggy, almost falling off her hips, and she’s wearing a dark hoodie despite the heat.

It’s not like I haven’t seen her around town. She’s always working at Rodney’s gas station, or furiously pedalling her bike like she’s got somewhere to be. I think she’s the reason the yard at Gran’s place isn’t just a patch of weeds and dirt.

But none of that answers the question: what is she doing here ?

Like she’s made up her mind about something, Delaney charges forward. She weaves through the crowd of leather-clad bikers, most of which don’t pay her much attention. I don’t think she sees me, or maybe she doesn’t recognize me, because she brushes right by and approaches Rev. The lanky, black-haired biker blinks up at her, a bottle of beer in his hand. His tattooed throat bobs as he takes a long swallow, never taking his eyes off her.

“Who’s in charge around here?”

Rev wasn’t expecting that. He sputters his gulp of beer in surprise. Wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You wanna speak to a manager, honey? Ask us to keep the noise down?”

The guys around him laugh. Delaney’s eyes turn to steel. I’ve seen that look on her before, but she’s perfected it over the years.

She swings off her backpack and unzips it. “No,” she says casually. “I want to return something that belongs to you guys.”

Two hard blocks of plastic-wrapped white powder hit the table top.

Rev’s laughter dies. As does that of the guys around him. The chilled silence spreads until the entire bar is, once again, completely quiet. Only this time, it’s not because of me and my fucking temper. It’s because the Sheriff’s daughter just dumped our seized cocaine shipment right into our laps.