Black Dogs Motorcycle Club: Full Series Box Set (27 page)

As her third orgasm
approached, Will let his own finally erupt. He practically roared as his hips
slapped against her ass just before he came, then pulled out and yanked off his
rubber in time to shoot his load in warm streams across the skin of her back
and ass.

The dancer collapsed in
the chair, exhausted and sensitive from her multiple orgasms. Something on her
face said she wasn’t happy about the come on her back, but Will didn’t give a
fuck. Instead he offered her his cock, wet with her juices, to clean off. He’d
made a good choice and found a girl who was as dirty as he was, smiling as she
accepted by wrapping her mouth around him and sucking him clean.

Without another word, Will
gathered his pants up and straightened his cut. He didn’t wait for her to get
dressed or clean herself up. He could hear the sound of her voice trailing him
as he left the private rooms and headed back out to the main stage, eager to
see which girl was next.

~ THREE ~

As she towel-dried the last of the pint glasses that
morning, Eva said to Charlie, “Bartending isn’t so hard. Do people really go to
school to learn this?”

Charlie scoffed a little.
He took the glass from her and nested it carefully among the rest in the
cupboard. “What we’re doing isn’t exactly bartending. No one’s asked for
anything more complicated than a Jack and Coke in this place.”

“I suppose you’re right,”
said Eva as she let her gaze wander over the few barflies posted up this early
in the day. Uncle Owen had given them a heads-up about the regular drunks, the
ones for whom there was no AA or miracle redemption left. Aside from feeling
great sympathy, Eva didn’t mind them. They kept to themselves.

Charlie stood up and
closed the sliding cabinet door. He looked down at the paper checklist sitting
on the bar and crossed one off the list. “All right, I’m going to trim that oak
behind the house that’s starting to pull up the rain gutters. Can you hold the
place down for a little while?”

Eva gave a look out to the
silent room. “I think I can manage.”

Charlie smiled and clapped
a soft palm on the side of her face before he shoved the checklist in his front
pocket and headed out the back door of the bar. Eva finished cleaning up the
bar surface and threw her towel in the laundry pile in the back room. She spied
the cordless phone hanging on the wall from the corner of her eye and yanked it
off.

As she walked back around
to the bar, Eva punched in the number for her best friend, Laura. She glanced
at her watch with the phone to her ear, hoping she wasn’t calling too early on
a Saturday morning.

“Hello?” From behind
Laura’s voice, Eva could hear the sound of sizzling and some indiscernible song
playing from her kitchen counter MP3 player.

“I can’t believe you’re
actually home and awake on a Saturday morning. Fruitless night at Donatella’s?”
Eva smirked, leaning on the bar.

Laura’s laugh instantly
lightened Eva’s mood. “I suppose that depends on how you define
‘fruitless.’ ”

“You skank.”

“I miss you. Why did you
have to bail to that stupid little place?” Laura whined.

Eva sighed and stared out
at the quiet room. One of the barflies hiccupped with his whole body, making
her curl her nose in disgust. “I haven’t even been gone a week.”

“It already feels weird,
though. How is everything?”

“Also weird. The place
isn’t bad, though. It’s on the edge of a really lovely forest, you wouldn’t
believe how quiet it gets.”

Laura snorted. “Great, so
now I have to worry about you getting eaten by a bear, or some shit, like
you’re a cavewoman.”

Eva laughed. “This is
rural America, Laura. I didn’t get dropped in the vast Siberian wilderness.
Have you ever even been outside of Silverton?”

“Sure, to other civilized
places, like New York or Seattle. Not to some Podunk village like Horlong where
everyone’s a meth head or a diner waitress.”

“Howlett.”

“Whatever, it’s crossed
off my map.”

Eva shook her head,
smiling even as her heart ached with homesickness. “Well, you’ll be even
more
delighted to know that the bar I’m running is a dive.”

Laura gasped. “Jesus, Eva!
I swear, I don’t know what’s gotten into you.”

“What’s that supposed to
mean?” said Eva as she dug a nail at some imperfection in the bar’s glossy
surface.

“Come off it, you know
what I’m talking about. Eva-three-years-ago would have never agreed to just up
and leave the city with her meathead brother to go run a dive bar in the middle
of nowhere.”

“Yeah, well,
Eva-three-years-ago was a much dumber woman.”

The sound of cooking
abruptly ceased. Laura’s voice came louder. “You’re not trying to run from
things, are you? From your pain? You know that won’t work.”

“No,” said Eva
immediately. She had already had this conversation with herself countless dark
nights, lying in bed, staring at the city’s light reflections on her ceiling.
“I really just needed a change, Laura. I felt like I had rolled into a ditch I
couldn’t crawl out of. Living with Charlie helped stabilize my life after I
left Rick. But now that I’m stable, I need something else.”

Laura went quiet a moment.
Then she said, “What is it you think you’re going to find in Howlett?”

Eva shrugged, even though
her friend couldn’t see it. “Nothing. Myself. I don’t know. I’m not really
looking for anything. I just… needed to not be there, in that city.”

Laura sighed. “I blame
your books, filling your big, sweet brain with all these wild ideas about
adventure and excitement. What you really need is some good old-fashioned
dick.”

Eva laughed and flushed
red, scanning the bar’s few tenants in embarrassment, as if they could hear
Laura in her ear. “Are you saying I can’t have both?”

“Honey, who among us is so
fortunate?”

Eva giggled. “Judging by
my clientele so far, I’m not going to get either.”

“Why don’t ya pull on your
boots and spurs and rustle you up a young stallion over at the local saloon?”
said Laura in her best country accent—which was, in fact, a terrible country
accent. Eva tried to keep her laughter down, covering her mouth as she rocked
on a stool behind the bar. One of the barflies gave a fleeting side glance at
her.

“I can see you’ve watched
a lot of westerns in your time,” said Eva.

“Even a shit place like
Howlett has to have a place to meet guys. Christ, what else is there to even do
out there?”

Eva slipped out her own
country accent. “Well, first we get up at the crack of dawn to castrate the
bulls and clean the outhouse…”

“Ugh, I’ve already lost
you.” Eva could hear the smile in Laura’s voice. “I’m just saying, if you’re
out there for adventure, you should really go for it. You’ve had, like, a
single one-night stand since you left Rick. You’re a young, hot, brainiac. Stop
depriving the world of your sexiness.”

Eva began to reply as the
front door of Swashbuckler’s opened, creaking. Sunlight swamped in. Two men
with broad shoulders stood in the doorway for just a moment before they stepped
inside and let the door swing shut behind them. Both had sharp, attractive
Latino features and expensive leather jackets. The man on the right had his
long, crow-black hair circled up in a bun at the top of his head in a style
that struck Eva as out of place. That hipster look was popular in the cities. She
immediately had a flash of instinct that these men were not locals.

Laura had been talking in
her ear, but Eva heard none of it. She couldn’t tear her eyes off the two men
at the door as she said, “Sorry, Laura, I’m going to have to call you back…”

“Man, you’re really going
to lengths to avoid this talk, sweet cheeks.”

The two Latino men scanned
the room silently before their eyes settled on Eva. She felt something sick and
urgent shoot up her spine and to the hairs on the back of her neck. “It’s not
that. We’ll talk later, I’ve just… got some customers.” They stared at her now.
She could feel their gaze despite their sunglasses.

Laura didn’t seem to
notice the tension in Eva’s voice. “Okay, honey. Call me this evening, I’m
staying in tonight.”

“Will do,” said Eva. She
dropped the phone from her ear and ended the call.

For a few tense seconds,
the three of them just looked at each other from across the room. Eva had this
strange urge to do
something
, even though she had no idea what that
would be. Instead, she stood stiff like a deer in headlights until the men took
their sunglasses off and moseyed slowly up to the bar. Eva came up to meet
them.

The one with the bun on
his head smiled at her when he approached, but the smile didn’t reach up to his
eyes. “
Hola, señorita.
”

“Good morning, gentlemen,”
said Eva. The other man with the close-cropped black hair stood behind his
compatriot, silent. “What can I get you?”

The man with the bun
smiled, a genuine one this time. “
Ai
, it’s a little early for us to be
drinking, I think.”

Eva frowned. “Some coffee,
then? I can put on a pot.”

“No, miss,” he shook his
head and leaned onto the counter with his arms stretched out in a pose that
made Eva think of the way Jesus looked in Da Vinci’s
Last Supper.
“We are
here for business. I need to speak to your husband.”

It had been a long time
since anyone asked for Eva’s husband, but even still, thinking of Rick made her
sick to her stomach. It must have shown on her face; the man with the bun
amended his request. “Or your father, perhaps?”

Eva said, “I’m sorry, is
this your way of asking to speak to the owner of this bar?”

“Yes. We have business to
conduct with the owner.”

Eva had to stop herself
from rolling her eyes. Instead, she just looked up at the ceiling for a few
brief seconds and took a breath. “You’re speaking with her.”
For all intents
and purposes, anyway.

The man turned back to
exchange a glance with his compatriot. There was nothing subtle or friendly
about it. “Is that a fact?”

Eva felt a growing anxiety
in her stomach, and it made her impatient, made her tongue sharp. Rick had
always punished her for it, but no matter how hard she tried to quiet it, it
was just who she was. “Must not be very important business, if you couldn’t be
bothered to find out who runs things.”

Darkness crossed the face
of the man with the bun, a darkness Eva recognized. But it passed quickly and
without comment. Soon his fake smile had returned, teeth polished and shining
white. “On the contrary, it is
very
important business. And this is the
first I have heard of a woman’s involvement here.”

“Recent development,” said
Eva, cocking her head. “So, what is it I can do for you?”

The man watched her for a
few seconds. She could almost hear the gears in his mind turning as he tried to
decide what to do with this new information. He stood up and removed his arms
from the counter. In a slow, deliberate walk, he moved down the length of the bar.
Like an accompanying musician, his partner headed slowly toward the front door,
standing in front of it like a human shield.

Blocking the exit
, said some deep part of
Eva’s mind.
Or do I just read too many books?

Her chest felt tight as
she watched the man with the bun move around the bar, past where customers were
allowed to go. He came around it without hesitation and walked straight toward
her. Aside from hopping over the bar itself, Eva had nowhere to run. She froze
as he approached her.

He stopped in front of
her, standing almost a head taller than she was and staring down at her with
dark brown eyes. Dead eyes.

“The only thing you can do
for me…
señorita
… is what all other women can do for me.” He took one of
his hands and ran it down the pale skin of her left arm, exposed by the
sundress she wore. Eva felt shocked at his touch but didn’t recoil. She stared
at him with anger in her eyes, frozen. “So unless that is what you are
offering…”

“It is not,” said Eva
through gritted teeth.

The man smiled at her
discomfort and moved his hand up to trace her clenched jawline. “Then you can
deliver a message for me to the real owner. You tell him Ramirez will be back
to speak with him very soon about a business arrangement, and I would find it
unspeakably rude if he does not show his face a second time.”