Stay Vertical (The Bare Bones MC #2)(3)
“Yeah.” His voice was deep and resonant, too. A man’s voice, not a teenager’s. “You need something?”
Oh boy, did I need something.
I stupidly stammered something idiotic and stumbled my way out of there again. I was so overwhelmed by hormones, I didn’t even tell Emma what I’d seen. I just upended the oil bottle into her engine, and the juice between my thighs trickled just as viscously as I fidgeted on my feet.
I was rattled beyond belief. That was the first time I remember feeling truly womanly and adult. The sudden rush of hormones that surged through me was new and frightening. I never turned back into the dull, blasé, uninterested girl I used to be. From then on, I was on the lookout night and day, but for real men, not boys.
I didn’t find any in my crowd, and I threw myself into my studies with even more passion now. I channeled my sexual energies into work, scoring a scholarship to UC Berkeley. With a master’s in civil engineering under my belt, I devoted my twenties to selfless do-gooding, designing water irrigation schemes for African villages.
Of course I found a few decent lovers along the way. A couple I even imagined I was in love with for short periods of time. But the volunteer life is a nomadic, haphazard one. With workers from all countries of the globe, we were like strangers in the night, bumping heads. We always said “keep in touch,” but we never did.
I had re-upped once already by the time I figured out that something was wrong with my mother. I had served twenty-two months of a two year contract in the harsh, broiling desert of Northern Kenya. I lived in a wooden shack and shat into a hole in the ground. I slept under the stars at night with my ear against the still-warm sand, listening to the thumping dance of tribespeople’s bare feet. Up near the Sudanese border life was dangerous, with constant raids from bands of brutal, starving guerillas coming to take our dehydrated goats, our one bottle of Tusker beer.
In a way, I see now that it was good training for the life I would lead when I returned to Arizona.
I never would’ve figured out that Ingrid was even sick but for a chance phone call from an old family friend. Don was probably Ingrid’s last remaining real friend, the only person who ever went to her house. Especially now, as Don told me, she had even stopped dealing crystal.
“I don’t think she’s well,” Don said.
I squinted against the glare from the sheet of Lake Turkana. Red-skirted men spear-fished from filthy dhows. “She’s never been well. Can you be more specific?”
Even halfway across the globe, I could hear Don sigh. “I think she’s physically ill, June. She’s lost a ton of weight and her skin’s yellow. She complains of a lot of stomach pain and she pukes everything she eats.”
It was my turn to sigh. “Of course she hasn’t seen a doctor.”
“Of course not. I tried to take her, but of course she wouldn’t leave the house. June, I’m serious. I wouldn’t be calling you in Africa if I didn’t think something was seriously wrong.”
We could think of no one else who could twist Ingrid’s arm to visit a doctor. I somehow wound up agreeing to take a little sabbatical and go in person to see what was up.
I knew from infrequent talks with my twin Bobby—called “Speed” now in his association with The Bare Bones motorcycle club—that Madison had given up her nurse’s job in Flagstaff and was living with Ford in Pure and Easy. Yes, that Ford, the obsession of my childish fantasies. My hard-as-nails sister Maddy had landed that wild stallion who had disturbed me so mightily in the garage. I don’t know what had gone on while I was busy tutoring nerds at Emma’s house, but somehow those two had hooked up, and it made sense. It actually made sense.
Cropper had died last year and Ford was now President of The Bare Bones, running Illuminati Trucking out of an old airplane hangar on some mesa. Maddy had a new nurse’s job in Pure and Easy. Madison and Speed were much closer physically to Ingrid as the crow flies, but there was even less of a chance they would go check in on her. At least I spoke with Ingrid once a year or so out of some warped sense of obligation. I guess I couldn’t bear the thought that Ingrid would die in her rickety, leaky mid-century modern home, and the mailman would smell her a month later.
Ingrid had never done the tiniest little thing for me. She had ignored and neglected me, never asking me the smallest question about how my life was going. I basically raised myself with no help from her. Why was I ending my service with the Peace Corps, dropping everything I knew and loved about Africa, to go and help her?
Because no one else would.
CHAPTER TWO
LYTTON
Lytton slammed his hips against the woman’s ass. He was buried so deeply inside of her he feared he might explode already, and that wasn’t very good Dominant behavior. A good Dom used all the tools at his command to control his own orgasm—Lytton never particularly cared about the orgasm of his partner.
It was the most exquisite cock and ball torture when he made his slave snap the two-part leather studded cock ring around his penis. It wrapped below the balls and squeezed them prominently, while the second ring constricted the cock at the base. Lytton knew that everyone admired the way his long, thick phallus jutted from the cock ring, and he usually made them pleasure him orally until he couldn’t stand it any longer.
Today, that tongue-lashing had been much shorter than usual. For some reason Lytton was ultra-sensitive today—maybe the strange high-pressure front moving into the Happy Jack area. A cold air mass was pushing down from Alaska, and that always made him jumpy and reactionary to every slight stimulation.