Page 45 of Mile High With the Bikers
Condoms disposed of, we collapse there for a small eternity before I dredge up the strength to groan. God, that was wild. Eventually I curl up into a little ball, absolutely fucked out. “Can we sleep here tonight? I don't think my legs work anymore.”
“You okay?” Shrapnel wraps himself around me as the big spoon, holding me close while my body settles down. “That got a little intense.”
I give them a weak thumbs up.
Shrapnel chuckles into my hair and Bull pats my shoulder. Diesel stretches out beside us, his foot absently touching mine and maintaining a little bit of connection. I don't know if I've ever felt so comfortable and protected, with big muscled bodies all around me.
I’ve spent my life trying to fill the emptiness with achievements, but they are what’s slowly filling the cold spaces inside, and the looming knowledge that this is just a temporary situation terrifies me, because now that I know what I’m missing, it’s going to hurt even more to lose it.
23
RORY
“Just pick up the phone.”I listen to the ring tone as I pace back and forth in the room they assigned me but I hardly ever seem to use.
Dad hasn't made contact since the demonstration. It didn’t bother me at first. When he’s focused on something it’s not uncommon for him to ignore everything else. Saving bandwidth, he says.
I don't really want to talk to him. He’s going to want to know how things are going, and to chastise me for changing the demonstration target, but I don’t like not knowing what’s happening. Does he suspect that I haven’t been totally honest with him? If he knows that I’ve hardwired Hermes to need my laptopandthe little dongle I created in order to function, he would be furious. Still, if I had to guess, it would take three or four days for the others in the lab to figure out how I did it, and then maybe another day to bypass my changes.
I always knew it wasn’t a permanent solution, but I didn’t account for Dad simply dropping off the face of the earth in the middle of everything.
A notification pops up. A follow-up from the Watchsmart recruiter, wanting to set up a time to chat about exciting opportunities. I delete it. There’s enough excitement in my life at the moment.
There’s a knock on my door, and when I open it, I find a girl about my age looking back. She has long, honey blonde hair and a friendly face. “Hi! You’re Rory, right?”
I nod.
“I figured, but it seemed polite not to assume,” she says with a laugh. “I’m Mila. We heard that the guys had someone locked away over here and got curious. Come on.”
“Um, I’m not supposed to wander around.”
She laughs. “I get it, but don’t worry, we won’t leave the walls. We’re meeting at Alessa’s and she’s in one of the houses right next door.
“Who’s we?” I ask, following her out.
“Me and the other old ladies. We have a club of our own, sorta. This place can get a little testosterone heavy, you know? So we made the Harem Brunch Club and get together every week or so.”
The what?
After hearing Cherry and the others talk about the old ladies, I’m too fascinated to resist following her out. It’s not that I didn’t notice the houses before, but I didn’t think too much about them until Mila brings me outside and we walk up right over the lawn and up to a small, two story house next to the main building. There’s a well-used swing set between the first two houses, and a small trampoline.
Kids live here?
That feels more shocking to me than almost anything else I’ve seen.
The front doors slams open, expelling a girl and a boy that are probably eight? Ten? Something like that. The boy yells something that I don't catch, and then the girl frowns and clenches her little fists. “That's fucking dumb!” she yells back. A little boy, not old enough to be school age, peeks out curiously from inside.
“Izzy, language!” A pretty woman in her late twenties opens the door and glares at the kids. She has thick black hair and an olive complexion. “Oh! You found her!”
Mila nods. “The brute squad has her penned up in one of the spare rooms. Alessa, this is Rory, Rory, Alessa.”
Alessa smiles. “I’m sure they mean well, they usually do. Do you have time to hang out? We have way too much food as usual, and everyone is dying for the latest gossip.” Her smile turns into a conspiratorial grin. “You can tell us about how things are going with your guys, and I promise you won’t find a better place to ask the really messy questions you might have.”
“She’s right. It’s really hard to find people on the outside who have any idea what it’s like to juggle that many men in the house, let alone when they’re bikers.” Mila leans in. “I swear, some people get so judgy when you bring up having a date night for four. It’s not like I’m asking them for advice on where to buy l-u-b-e in bulk.” She spells it out in a whisper, trying to keep small ears from hearing.
Alessa laughs. “Come on in. We don't bite.”
Before I know it, I’m being pulled into her house. It looks comfortably lived in, with a roomy kitchen and a living room that has enough couch space to seat a football team. Stairs lead up to the second floor, and down to the basement, littered with building blocks, like it's been booby trapped to keep the adults out. There's already a tray of little pastries on the coffee table.
