Page 32 of Absinthe Dreams
“You’re officially considered afriend to the club,” he said. “I don’t think I need to explain what that means, do I?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No, I take your meaning perfectly, and thank you,” she replied.
“Don’t mention it,” he said with a look, and she smiled.
Her smile made one appear on my face. She was smart and shrewd – I liked that about her. In fact, the more I learned about her, the more I found there wasn’t anything in hernotto like.
Let’s hope the trend continues,I thought.
“Hate to cut things short,” I said. “But we really do gotta go. I wanna be in before dark.”
“Understood,” Hex said. “Holler if there’s trouble.”
“Will do,” I said.
Genesis followed me over to the bike and picked up her helmet.
“Any questions?” I asked.
“Not right this minute,” she answered.
“You good with freeway speeds?” I asked.
“Left lane is for crime, and we better be doing some crime,” she said with a wink.
“Fuck yeah, you’re a girl after my own heart.” I straddled the front of my bike and put on my helmet while she got on behind me. Axeman hit the switch to raise the garage door, and Cypress got on his bike a few up from mine. We always tried to ride in twos if we could help it, and he was ready to head on home.
We hit the streets, and when we reached the on-ramp to head where we were going, I gave Cy a signal that I had every intention of giving the woman on the back of my bike the thrill she asked for. He gave me a wide, toothy grin and gave a nod and a chin thrust to both acknowledge and to say he would follow my lead.
I punched it, twisting down on the throttle, the bike lurching forward like a rocket between my knees, and relished the thrill of Genesis’s knees tightening around my hips and her arms tightening around my waist. She pressed tight to my back and whooped a sound of pure unadulterated joy, even as the wind ripped the sound from her lips and carried it back off behind us.
I cut through traffic with precision, hit the left lane, and did what she’d asked, hitting it and moving with the quickness ten, fifteen, and twenty above the posted speed limit. I caught a flash in my rearview mirror, sunlight bouncing off the chrome on Cypress’s bike as he caught up with us.
Goddamn it was freeing.
When it was just you, the bike, the road, and a sweet thing holding on to you? Life didn’t get any better than this.
The coffee and bennies didn’t hang on for very long, and sometime before the bayou house, I felt my stomach rumble. I figured if I were ready for lunch, it might be past time for Genesis to have something to eat. I wasn’t worried about Cypress – that motherfucker wasalwayshungry.
We stopped at this swampy dive bar that was a popular stop for the lot of us when we went to and from the swamp.Gator Baitwas a place that we’d all been at one time or another. I knewLaCroix brought Alina from time to time, and Saint and Col had stopped the day Vel had landed on our doorstep looking for her brother, Louie.
When I carefully pulled off the road and down into the gravel lot, Cypress followed suit without complaint. He dug the joint. It had down-home Cajun country cooking done right. If you didn’t come for the gumbo or the jambalaya, the dirty rice, shrimp and grits, or the po’boys were just as nice.
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’d stopped here to grab a couple of po’ boys to take home for lunch the next day.
“Woo-ee! Good call, there, brother. I’m starvin’!”
“You’re always starving,” I said with a laugh. “Figured you wouldn’t mind stopping here.”
“Not going to lie, I would never stop here in a million years if I were by myself, which just tells me that it’s probably one of those places that’s outta this world,” Gen said, getting off the bike behind me.
“You ain’t wrong, cher. This here has about the best fried gator there is, second only to my mama’s.”
“He’s a gator hunter, so that’s sayin’ something,” I explained, getting up.
We went inside, slipping off sunglasses just inside the door so we could see in the gloom. Even then, it took a second for the eyes to adjust.
“Go on an’ find yourselves a seat, now!” Dory called as she swept past with a try for a table of hard-working boys.
