Wet Leather: Adults Only Motorcycle Club Romance: Roadrunners MC Page 6

  “How did you end up with a charmer like him?”

  Tori rolled on her side so that she was facing the pillows between them.

  “We were at the same college,” she started. “I was doing a psychology course and he was studying computer sciences. We met on a night out at a club. We were both a bit worse for wear, but got on and became friendly. It led on from there to a relationship and we moved in together when we finished our studies.”

  “How long has he been showing his love with his fists?” Patch asked.

  “He was always the confident, assertive type,” Tori answered. “To be honest, it was one of the things I liked about him at first, but he’s grown to think he is something better than the rest of the world in recent months. He tells everyone he’s been in the army and has taken to wearing camouflage and army surplus gear as if that somehow proves it, but it’s all just pretence. The nearest he’s been to the armed forces is playing a character in a computer game.”

  “Fucking prick,” Patch muttered and Tori wasn’t about to argue with the comment.

  “He was determined to bulk up,” she went on. “So he bought all the equipment to make a fitness room in our apartment, but he never really possessed the commitment to make it work. It meant he tried steroids and other stimulants as a way of getting into the training, but the drugs only made him more aggressive, and that’s when the abuse turned to violence.”

  “Why didn’t you just walk away?” Patch asked.

  “That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, I guess,” she said quietly. “At first it’s the thought that I could change him and the familiarity of being with him after a couple of years together. Then it’s the fear of what he would do if I left him. When he put the gun to my head the other night, I genuinely thought he was going to end my life.”

  “Sounds like a psycho,” Patch commented.

  “Matt always thought a lot of himself, but the drugs he takes makes it worse and gives him an overwhelming superiority complex, so I guess calling him a psycho isn’t far off the mark these days. He certainly acts like it and thinks he’s invincible when he’s on them, which is most days now.”

  “Fucking crazy,” Patch commented almost to himself then said no more.

  There was silence in the room as they both became lost in their own thoughts. The minutes slowly ticked past and Tori could eventually hear the even breathing of the man next to her in the bed.

  “Are you still awake?” she asked, but got no reply.

  She guessed he was either asleep or just didn’t want to talk any more, and she let out a sigh as her mind went over the events of the last couple of days. Her life was now changed forever and she was never going to be with Matt again, but the potential consequences of that didn’t bear thinking about. She wanted him to just leave her alone, but knew the chances were that he wouldn’t. That scared her, so she tried to put thoughts of it out of her mind and focus on what she could actually do to get away from him.

  Minutes turned to hours as she went through the options, but none of them made any real sense. Every idea she came up with ended with the prospect of Matt finding her and… well, she didn’t really want to think about what would happen if he did. The threats he made the night she left home for good weren’t idle, and she was sure he was more than crazy enough to follow through on them. That was especially true when he was high on drugs, and she’d seen for herself in recent months how often that happened.

  The silence in the room was eventually broken by the quiet murmuring of Patch. It made her wonder if he was awake and speaking to her, so she rolled on her side then stretched a hand out to squash down the pillow that was blocking her view of him. He was facing away from her and she couldn’t see his face. Her brow furrowed and she was about to turn away when she heard the faint sound of his voice once more.

  “Did you say something?” she asked.

  There was no response and she guessed he must be dreaming, so she rolled over to the wall then closed her eyes. It didn’t block out the low sound of his muttering as it continued over the next few minutes, but she couldn’t really make out what he was saying and tried her best to just ignore it. When it didn’t stop, she moved to look at him once more and saw he was now facing towards her. His expression appeared pained and she suspected that the dreams running through his head were troubling him.

  It made her wonder if she should wake him up, but after a few seconds of mulling it over she decided it was a bad idea and dropped her head to the pillow in an attempt to relax. That became increasingly difficult to do over the next few minutes as the sound of his voice grew louder, and she became concerned when she looked again to see his head rolling from side to side.

  She could make out the words he was saying now, and his talk of injuries, blood and clamping torn veins was as unsettling for her as it seemed to be for him. It was clear that his dreams were turning to nightmares and she heard his breathing becoming labored as his agitation grew worse. His arms began to flail as if he was fighting something off, and she was startled as he let out a shout for a nurse. She sat up to move closer to him, but was unsure of what to do and still hesitated to wake him up.

  “We’re losing him…” Patch let out in a voice that cracked and the covers slid off his torso to show he was bathed in sweat.

  The panic erupted in her mind as his unrest became more serious, and she started to get scared when his words turned to anguished cries. The covers were thrown off them both as he kicked his legs and she knew she needed to do something as the disturbance of the nightmare made his limbs thrash around.

  “Patch,” she said in a loud voice, but it got her no response.

  She said his name louder and tried to reach to his shoulder to shake him, but his arm cracked against hers to knock it away. The flare of pain made her grimace, but she didn’t stop. Getting to her knees, she waited for a chance to lean in and shook him firmly as she shouted his name. Their heads almost cracked together when he sat up with his eyes wide open and his torso was rigid for a few seconds before he let out a sigh and started to shake.

  “You were having a nightmare,” she told him.

  He closed his eyes and brought a hand to his face. There was only silence in the room as he tried to get his breathing under control, but it did nothing to stop the shakes afflicting his body and she could see he was distressed by the experience.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled when he threw his head down on the pillow.

  “You don’t have to be,” she replied. “Everyone has nightmares.”

  It was obvious to her that what Patch just suffered was more than an average nightmare, and she could tell that he was struggling to deal with it. Her instinct to help kicked in and she knew she couldn’t just sit and watch his anguish. Moving across the bed, she lay down beside him and pulled the covers over their bodies. She then slipped a hand under his neck and encouraged him to put his head on her chest. His trembling was all too apparent as they lay close together and she stoked a hand on his hair to help him calm down.

  “It’s OK,” she let out soothingly. “It was just a dream.”

  Her assumption was that macho pride would make him unwilling to talk about what just happened, but the comfort she was giving him seemed to loosen his tongue.

  “It happens too often,” he said.

  “Is it flashbacks to your army days?” she asked.

  “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is the label they put on it, I think,” he replied.

  “Have you gone to a doctor about it?” Tori asked.

  Patch shook his head as she continued to brush her fingers gently through his hair.

  “What can they do?” he let out. “They can’t take away the memories that haunt me. They’re something I’ll never forget.”

  “They might be able to help,” she went on.

  He ignored her comment as he went on.

  “It’s the people I didn’t save that stick in my mind,” he replied in a tired voice.

  “I heard
you talking about injuries, blood and clamping veins during the nightmare,” she told him.

  “I saw too much of that,” he said. “Being a medic kept me away from much of the frontline fighting, but I saw the terrible results of it. I saw it all too graphically. Bombs and bullets can do some serious damage to the human body, but it’s amazing what people can survive. The trouble was that in too many cases it was impossible to do much for the wounded, and that feeling of not being able to help was hellish. All you could give them was painkillers and comfort, but you could see in their eyes that they knew they were going to die. I can still see their faces in my dreams.”

  “I’m sure you did your best for everyone that came to you,” Tori said.

  “I did,” Patch replied. “But there were occasions when it wasn’t enough.”

  “That’s not your fault.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “But it doesn’t make it any easier to bear.”

  His breathing became more even as she continued to cradle his head on her chest and the trembling of his body slowly faded as he got control of himself.

  “Is that why you left the army?” she asked.

  “It got too much for me on my last tour,” he replied. “I came home from it and quit.”

  “You said you still treated patients though,” Tori pointed out.

  “I’m the one with the skills in the organization to do that,” he told her.

  Her brow furrowed at the cryptic comment and she couldn’t stop herself asking.

  “What organization?”

  “When I got out of the army, I didn’t really know what I was going to do,” he answered. “I certainly didn’t have a plan and drifted around for a while as I tried to reintroduce myself to a life that was less regimented. It wasn’t easy.”

  “Don’t you have friends and family that could have helped?”

  “Not really,” Patch replied. “The army became my family at a young age and most of my friends were still in it when I quit.”

  “That’s not so good,” she said and let out a sigh. “What about your parents?”

  “I was a rebellious teenager,” he said and let out a humorless laugh. “They couldn’t cope with it, so they kicked me out and we’ve never really made up. Not that it particularly bothered me, but it can be a lonely life when there’s no one there to care about you.”

  “So what did you do?” Tori asked.

  “Not a lot for a while,” he answered. “I went from place to place looking for a purpose, but never really settled, and it was only when an old service buddy of mine tracked me down that I found a replacement for the army.”

  “Which was?” she encouraged him.

  “Carl McCallister is the guy’s name,” Patch carried on. “We served together on my first tour in Afghanistan. He got injured and invalided out, which was no bad thing considering the numbers that didn’t make it home at all. He now goes by the nickname of Crash that he got from driving the crash truck for the Roadrunners.”

  Tori recognized the name and her hand stopped moving as she took in the relevance of the comment. She now knew what organization Patch was talking about.

  “You’re part of the Roadrunners biker gang?” she let out slowly and her voice became more incredulous with each word.

  “The training I received as an army medic gave me a skill set that was useful to them,” he told her. “Crash knew that when he got in touch, and I’m now part of a small crew that includes him and a guy called Andy ‘Six’ Carter.”

  “Six?” she queried.

  “You don’t want to know,” he replied. “The medical equipment I keep here is because I deal with any injuries sustained by the gang members.”

  “Fucking hell,” Tori let out without thinking and her muscles tensed as she considered the implications of what she was being told.

  Patch was aware of her sudden bout of apprehension.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Despite what you may have read in the papers, we’re not crazed animals on the rampage.”

  Tori let out a nervous laugh, but she resumed brushing her fingers through Patch’s hair. He wasn’t complaining about the attention she was giving him, and he even snuggled closer to her to just enjoy it. The memory of the nightmare seemed to be fading and there was silence as they each lost themselves to their own thoughts.

  It seemed unbelievable that she was lying almost naked in the bed of the Roadrunner that saved her life and cradling his head on her chest to ease the terrors of his nightmares. Even more amazing was that she was getting comfortable with it and the tension she experienced when he first told her what it was he now did slowly drained away. After a while she could hear Patch’s even breathing and the soothing stroking of her hand seemed to have sent him to sleep.

  Tori was wide awake though as the idea flashed through her mind, and she couldn’t believe she was considering it. She’d spent the last few hours thinking about what she was going to do to get away from Matt and survive. All she could come up with was that her situation was desperate, but the information she just listened to brought her the merest glimmer of hope.

  As she glanced down at Patch’s now peaceful face, she wondered if the help she needed had been lying right next to her in the darkness all along.

  Chapter 7

  Adrian Bryant stepped inside his office in the gloomy light of an overcast dawn and grimaced when he swung the door shut. The loud sound of it closing made the pounding ache in his head all the worse and he closed his eyes as he remained standing where he was for a second or two. He let out a slow breath as he then continued walking across the room to drop in the chair at his desk.

  When he opened the drawer, he saw the small bottle of whisky he kept there and his face contorted. It was the effects of too much alcohol that was the cause of his present condition, so he ignored the bottle to rummage around until he found the small container of headache pills. The half-full cup of cold coffee on his desk was the only liquid close to hand, so he used it to help get a couple of pills down. Leaning forward, he rested his forehead on the desk and waited for the drugs to take the edge off his hangover.

  “Shouldn’t have gone out,” he said under his breath, but a smile still flashed across his face when he thought of the events of the last few hours.

  He hadn’t been completely straight with Matt Mosswood when he said that he’d start searching for Tori Sanders right away. There were other tasks he actually needed to complete that day, and not long after his newest client left the office he followed him out of the door. The work took longer than expected and it was around eight in the evening when he eventually finished.

  His intention had been to return to the office right away to get started with his new job, but the flashing neon sign of the bar his black Pontiac was parked close to caught his attention. With one hundred and fifty dollars burning a hole in his pocket, he decided he would enjoy a few drinks. It was a fatal mistake, although it was his weakness for something other than alcohol that ended his working day.

  The pretty girl that sat on the next stool to him smiled when he glanced in her direction and she accepted his offer of a drink straight away. One glass led to more, and when his hand on the bare skin of her thigh didn’t elicit a protest, he suspected that he might be in for an eventful night. It was her that made the suggestion they take their drinking somewhere more private, and Adrian bought a bottle of Jack Daniels before they made the short walk to her nearby apartment.

  She found a couple of shot glasses once they were inside the place, but it wasn’t long before drinking turned to kissing. The alcohol-fueled encounter quickly ran out of control when the girl stripped down to her underwear and grabbed the bottle to step across to the door of the lounge. Adrian was ripping his clothes off as he followed and he got into an untidy bedroom to find that the girl didn’t just bring the Jack Daniels to drink in the conventional way. He looked down to see a pair of panties on the floor and couldn’t resist reaching down to pick them up as he watched her movin
g across the room.

  When she lay down on the bed, she dribbled some of the alcohol in her belly button and he stared with wide open eyes as the trickles spilled down her body to run between her thighs. The invitation of her legs spreading apart was something he wasn’t about to pass up, and his tongue swept over her panties as the flow of liquid continued to soak the material. He followed the wet trails up her naked skin and was then treated to the sight of her removing her bra then wetting her breasts. It was another offer for him to enjoy her body, and he’d never been more eager to suck on stiff nipples in his life.

  The best was yet to come. When the girl made him stand at the side of the bed then got down to her knees in front of him, he knew he was about to experience something new. As soon as she dragged his underwear down, she held the bottle right on the tip of his erect length and he shuddered as the liquor soaked his hot, hard flesh. The way she went after it was something special, and he guessed it wasn’t her first time giving a blowjob as she easily swallowed his full length and expertly worked her tongue around to get the alcohol. She continued wetting and sucking his cock until it was driving him crazy and his grip tightened in her hair. The pain of it seemed to excite rather than annoy her.