A Lone Stranger

By Layla Wolfe

Ride on. Ride on.
HARTE: After a world-changing run-in with the guy I thought was my father, I went on the road to find myself. I patched over to The Bent Zealots MC, an out-and-proud club on the Colorado River. A cock virgin, I raced to experience all I could, eagerly sniffing every nook and cranny, a whole new existence offered up by Grindr. But when Ormond Tangier was assaulted by a rival club, I quickly got down to brass tacks, to show my new brothers I was all business.

Too bad that business involves Bond Blackburn, jailbird brother of our Prez, Turk. That guy is so far in denial he’s practically Egyptian. But he even he can’t deny what I saw with my own eyes at the gay club. Sure, I was on my knees paying homage to a Daddy Dom, but Bond can’t pretend he wasn’t getting some oral praise as well. And now they’re telling me I have to work with this hypocrite?

BOND: This club is a fucking joke. How’s a man supposed to make a new start after the joint? First, my own brother forced me to prospect. I’m supposed to labor in a noxious sweatshop making product for their pot dispensary. And I have to sneak downtown if I want some halfway decent head, because I don’t even want my gay so-called brothers knowing about my shameful hobby.

Now we’re reaching out to the cops to even the score with those Hellfire Nuts who abused Ormond. And that delicious Harte Saxonberg is getting my goat, so by-the-book, such a bleeding heart. I just want to strangle him—or fuck him.

HARTE: I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. Bond Blackburn kisses me, then punches me. Fucks me, then ignores me. He’s got me so upside-down I’ve lost the clarity I had a week ago when I rode west. Ride west, young man. I could be a steam train if I could just lay down my tracks. But the only name I’m calling out is that sexy convict’s.
Ride on. Ride on.

Publisher’s warning: This book is not for the faint of heart. It contains scenes of gay sex, public play, exhibitionism, transsexual issues, illegal doings, vaguely legal marijuana operations, and violence against men. It’s a full-length novel of 60,000 words rated 18+ due to possible triggers. There are no cheating or cliffhangers, and HEAs for all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Layla Wolfe
• Release date: Feb 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370911165

Layla Wolfe

Layla Wolfe is a wannabe biker's Old Lady who is satisfied with a leather jacket, one bad-ass pink camo compound bow, and a vicarious outlaw lifestyle.Layla has published 25+ erotic romance titles under the name Karen Mercury.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

HARTE

I left my assistant at the gem show and went to see my dad in prison.

The show was in Phoenix anyway, so it wasn’t like I went out of my way. I would never have gone out of my way for such a scumsucking piece of shit as Leo Saxonberg. But I needed answers. I’d gone with Dust Bunny on a journey of self-discovery or some such shit, taking minerals and fine gems to various rock shows throughout the southwest. At first, it was fun, immersing myself in a new world of scientific people. I mean, hell. I was a construction worker. Suddenly I was discussing, or trying to discuss, such things as specific gravity, streak, and cleavage.

I know, sounds sexy, but it was seriously interesting, and just what I needed after the traumatic events of the last couple of months. It was distracting being around all that bling and money, and Dust Bunny was patient and helpful, teaching me about a biz I hadn’t even known I wanted to learn.

But I found myself thinking about my dad—Leo, I mean—and it went something like this:

DUST BUNNY: Hey, check out this rock.

ME: Yeah, nice rock.

DB: Notice the lustrous streak. Admire the rutile in the twinning.

ME: I need to pee.

One second I was selling a flat of purple fluorite from Illinois, thinking about having a hot dog, and the next I was in the U.S. Marshals office, Phoenix District, Sandra Day O’Connor Courthouse. I barely knew how I got there, aside from my Harley Softail being between my legs, my lid on my head. The sun was baking me like a pig in a blanket inside my leathers, but suddenly I was striding so purposefully up the front steps I barely remembered to remove my brain bucket. The guard probably thought I was a crazed bomber coming to break out my fellow crazed motorcycle club members, but I didn’t know at the time that a couple of our Hellfire Nuts rivals were being held there on RICO charges. RICO sure seemed to be going around lately. No wonder I was frisked so thoroughly.

But I got in, and the nice lady at the front desk who I’d talked to a week ago brought me to the same wide open conference room lined with windows. A week ago, I’d thought that was a weird place to allow a rat in the Witness Protection Program to hang out. Leo Saxonberg was a major flight risk, but they probably knew he didn’t have any friends left to smuggle him any weapons. There was virtually no one in the entire country who’d be willing to take him in if he ran, including my mom. In fact, the guard should’ve been on the lookout for Leo’s many enemies who wanted to storm the building just to blow the shit out of the former Bare Bones MC Prez.

I know I wanted to. I was grinding my teeth so heavily by the time they led the asshole in, my jaw fucking hurt. There was some major oedipal shit we needed to get out in the open. I needed to air my soul in a bad way.

His stupid face was all lit up, like I’d come to ask him for a lollipop. Harte, my boy! You just made my day. Like I’d come there to find out where he kept the pancake syrup.

We need a sit-down. I spoke firmly, as though I’d been rehearsing this all week, which I probably had been, subconsciously, since our last confrontation. Our last run-in had been very brief and explosive, so not much had been accomplished. I said darkly, There’s a lot of internal heat as a result of what you’ve done.

Leo held a hand out. I know, I know. I apologized for that last week. I never meant to hurt you in any way, Harte.

I exploded, You turned in your own brothers! I’d been there all of thirty seconds, and I was already blowing a gasket. The burly guard standing with hands folded in front of his crotch was already reaching for his Taser. You were sending them up the river, secretly recording our chapel, ratting them out just to get out of your own RICO beef! There’s nothing lower than that. I was so boiling with rage, I could barely see. I looked at the guy I’d thought was my father through a thin crimson layer of cellophane.

He stepped closer so he could talk more quietly, as though the feds didn’t already know all the damning evidence he’d seen fit to spill. I was up against a wall, Harte. A sickening wave rolled through my stomach just to hear him call me my given name. Who’d come up with that name? My mother or him? I’d been doubting my very existence, my very foundation. They came to me with this deal on the table. I’d be stupid not to take it. I’d of gone away for life. What good would that do for the club? For you?

I slammed my fist on the shiny conference table. That guard was at the ready with his gun of electrified darts. I tried to keep my voice to a dull roar. "You sent half our fucking club to the joint, you motherfucker. How’s that supposed to preserve the club?"

Collateral damage, Harte! It was the price I had to pay for my freedom.

My eyeballs felt like they were bleeding. My fist was still firmly glued to the table. I sounded like the gatekeeper of hell. "Yeah. Look at your freedom now. You’re going to be running a Subway sandwich shop in Milwaukee for the rest of your life, afraid to even mention Arizona or motorcycles or gun-running or any of the things that used to define your lousy, miserable, feeble life."

I was so fueled by rage I had to tear myself away from the table and go look out the wall of windows. Breathing heavily, I crossed my arms across my chest like a vise, hoping to squeeze some of the anger away. Would I ever get over this fucking betrayal? My club, my life, my own father, everything I’d held as sacred had been crushed to the ground, stomped into a billion smithereens. And the man responsible for this mindless fuckery was standing right here like an emcee in a game show. It was the price I had to pay for my freedom. My fucking ass.

If you go down, you go down alone. That was the credo I’d always been taught by this backstabbing turncoat, no less. But you don’t take half your club down with you—good men, men who worked hard for their families, men who’d trusted implicitly in you. Sure, Leo would’ve done Buck Rogers time in a federal joint, but he’d be doing so with honor. His backpack would tell his noble life’s story, that he’d gone down with honor, not in flames like a fucking stool pigeon from hell.

Harte! I’m not going to Illinois. I’m going to—

Watch it! said the guard, and thumb-punched something on his cell.

I glanced back out the window. "I don’t want to know where you’re going, dad. I spat the last word like it was the spunk of a child molester. I just came here to find out about Lulu." Although she’d done nothing wrong, I’d suddenly taken to calling my mother Lulu in my mind. I just needed distance from the whole clusterfuck, I really did.

Don’t bring your mom into this, son, he said warningly. She had nothing to do with this.

I spun to face him. "She had everything to do with it, dad! She sure as shit wasn’t thinking beyond her own fucked-up narrow-minded narcissistic pleasure when she spread her legs for my fucking uncle!" Wait. Make that my fucking dad.

Leo walked gingerly around the side of the table. He moved like he’d been beaten, or ass-raped, but I knew that wasn’t possible. Did guys get fudge-packed while in WITSEC? She never ‘spread her legs’ for Sax, if that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t know what she told you last week when you came to visit, but it was all strictly scientific. Above the boards, by the books. She did it to beget me a son.

I was incredulous. ‘Beget me a son’? Now he was spewing biblical insanities to justify some whack shit that had gone down twenty-six years ago? "You’re trying to cover up for the fact that Lulu was a fucking slut, a fucking pass-around, before I was even born. You couldn’t have kids, so you told her to spread her legs for the customer most likely to produce an heir that looked remotely like you!"

He definitely winced now as he leaned on the table. Good. I was glad someone had given him a baloney colonic. It’s what should have happened a long time ago. Then none of this bullshit would’ve gone down and lives would’ve been spared. Good fathers would still be with their families. My MC would still be intact. We’d be going on runs together, the Laughlin run, the Two Guns run, riding around the meteor crater and sleeping in the desert without sleeping bags, half our bodies in the dying embers of a campfire.

Son. Harte. You have to believe me when I tell you, for the sake of your own sanity. Lulu never ‘spread her legs’ for anyone other than me. You have to fucking hear me. It was strictly a medical procedure in the doctor’s office.

I snorted. "You’re trying to tell me Uncle Sax walked into a fucking doctor’s office and jizzed into a paper cup while reading a copy of Big Boobs. I’m not buying it. And stop fucking calling me ‘son,’ you fucking double crosser. You don’t have a son. I’m Sax’s son, for whatever good that does."

Around then was when I noticed the dried blood on his upper arm. He was just wearing a very loose white T-shirt, the sort I’d never known him to wear in real life. Back then—the life I’d thought was real, anyway—he’d always sported a tight black affair, the kind show-offy built guys like me wear. Maybe this was some anonymous attire the feds had given him, a way to start creating his new identity as a Chipotle hash slinger in South Beach, Florida. Seriously? He’d rather have that life? He’d rather ring up boxes of Summer’s Eve and Ding Dongs at a Target in Bangor than dance on the blacktop a few times or sit in the hole until his time ran out? Realistically, with his gun and drug charges, he would’ve done fifteen years max.

He set his jaw. You’ll always be my son, Harte. I know my motivations seem questionable, looking back on it now. But I wanted a son so badly, to carry on our family name, and who better to donate to that cause than my own brother? A new, bitter cast came over his face. Though now I’m not getting a grandchild anyway, unless you adopt some African orphan with his heart on the outside of his chest. Only the Hollywood assholes get the blonde, white babies.

What? What the fuck was he referring to? Why the fuck would I adopt—?

Oh. Holy shit.

Again, it was like I was outside of my body. Floating up by the ceiling looking down on the scene. It was even lit cheesily with fluorescence, like a high school play.

I must’ve taken two long strides, because suddenly Leo’s asshole T-shirt was crushed in my fist. "You complete and utter dirtbag. You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore. Everything you’ve ever counseled me to do is out the window now. Your douchebag opinion is worthless. You don’t get to put your fucking pinheaded, narrow-minded opinions all over my life anymore. I don’t listen to narrow-minded backstabbers, and I don’t listen to you."

He didn’t back down. Not one shred of fear showed in his lifeless eyes. Listen, you ingrate. You don’t know what I’ve done for you, to save you. I never nominated you as Veep to keep you out of it.

I rattled him around. His stupid head rolled around like a dashboard bobble head. "Yeah, because you knew what was coming. You knew what was coming because you created it."

The door swung open and two hip agents busted in with their hands on their holstered pieces.

Leo snarled like a caged leopard, his eyes two pieces of black obsidian. To his credit, he didn’t shy away from me. I was a good foot taller and much wider than him—maybe I took after my real dad, after all—but he didn’t back away one inch, not even when the feds started putting their hands all over me, muttering shit like, okay, now, and back down, back down.

You don’t know what I’ve done for you! he roared.

He let the agents peel me off him. He stumbled back a step, at the same time ripping that Hanes shirt off over his head.

What? Had he truly gone mad? Had he been pretending to be a level-headed paterfamilias, a godfather to a well-established and respected club? In just one short week, had the stress of turning against everyone he loved finally gotten to him? The agents even gasped, their hands frozen on my arms.

Leo waved the T-shirt like a flag. Which it was. A fucking surrender flag. He’d given up a long time ago. Yeah! That’s right! You see what they did to me? You wondered why they kept me in this fucking office building instead of sending me to Austin, Texas to work a printing press?

"Sean…" an agent said in a warning tone.

Sean must’ve been Leo’s new name at the Austin job, but I barely took note of that until much later. When he pivoted around on one foot, I was graced with the sight of a patchwork of tiny scabs peppering his entire back. Someone had mangled his backpack, his beautiful Bare Bones MC artwork that had been created decades ago by a gifted artist. The stylized Incan skull and ribcage was disfigured and maimed, the ink burned off by a removal laser. The entire thing was a gory mess of bloody, distorted etching. It made my innards quiver, thinking of someone daring to touch their pen to our colors like that. But it was something we would’ve done if we had ever caught Leo Saxonberg, anyway.

We needed to do that for obvious reasons, said the male agent, stepping back from me. He wore those aviator shades, a tie, and square-toed boots, as though determined to advertise his occupation.

"Obvious, I spat, my eyes so narrow I could barely see through them. Listen, you scumbag. I have no sympathy for you. I don’t even want to carry the Saxonberg name anymore. Whether I adopt some disabled baby from Mali is no fucking concern of yours. Thanks to you our club is torn in half, we’re missing half our members, and we’re going through a heat wave thanks to your fed alliance with your buddies here."

We agreed to back off on our joint RICO investigation of your club once he went into custody, said the female agent, who was dressed identically.

"That was part of our bargain!" blurted Leo.

"Don’t do us any fucking favors, you fucking rat. Brothers don’t turn on each other. I’m the same person I was a month ago wearing the same cut. But you? I don’t know who you are. I’ve never even met you."

And with this grand flourish, I turned on my heel and stalked proudly from the room.

That was the last time I saw the man who’d raised me, by the way. My mother went reluctantly—with extreme prejudice—to Austin with him, maybe because they gave her no choice. I’ve been able to see her a couple of times with massive amounts of pre-arranged and top secret machinations but I no longer blame her one shred for anything that went down. She was just Leo’s puppet on a string and I could hardly fault her for that.

But as I stalked out of the Sandra Day O’Connor Courthouse, my life had never been in such disarray. Everything was up in the air. My real father, Sax, had taken over as Prez of our shattered chapter in Flagstaff. I hadn’t confronted him yet with what I knew about his paternity. I was too whack, too stunned, like a war-torn soldier with PTSD. I’d told Sax I’d be back from hawking his gem wares throughout the southwest, and we’d talk then. Or some other such nebulous bullshit. I was going to hold my mud until the time was right to confront my real father. I wasn’t going to run spilling the beans like Leo Saxonberg.

I knew I’d be going off to find myself. I had no clue, though, that I’d be so nauseated at what I discovered.

When I saw my Softail parked, the lone scoot among miles of square, vanilla cages, my loneliness sank in. I didn’t want to return to my chapter in Flag. But I also didn’t feel like riding around with Dust Bunny in his chase vehicle full of rocks. I’d done enough of that. I’d blown the cobwebs from my soul the past two weeks. I wanted something new to sink my teeth into. Something to distract me from the soul-crushing news I’d received at the hands of my stepfather.

So I called Dayton Navarro.

Of course. What else was a man to do? You call upon your loved ones for encouragement and support when the chips are down. Right?

Harte, Dayton said warily. That should’ve been my first indication something was off. Right off the bat, he had this guardedness in his voice, as though someone else was in the room eavesdropping, although I don’t think anyone was. Not that I know of.

I just saw Leo.

I expected some astonished exclamation of empathy, I guess. Something along the lines of You’re fucking kidding! or Wow! What did he say?

Instead all I got was, And?

I soldiered on. Got to give myself credit for that. I gave him a condensed version of the entire encounter, during which he uttered mm hm and banged around with tools on his bike.

His silence must have frustrated me. Suddenly I found myself uttering, "Listen. I don’t want to return to Flag. Take a run down here. We’ll continue on through Nogales and into Mexico. Stuff ourselves on cabeza tacos and birria and pound some rank tequila. What do you say?"

Huh?

Had he really just said huh? I was expressing a desire to run away, to fade off the surface of the planet as we knew it, and all he could say was huh?

He obviously hadn’t heard me correctly. Let’s vanish, Dayton. Let’s go under the radar down in beaner land. We’ve got contacts there, Ruben Ochoa’s men in Sonora, the Marins, Carmine Rojas’s men in Sinaloa, the fucking Joneses.

We’re in Carmine Rojas’s crosshairs.

What? Why? Last I heard, we were selling him Russian ladies.

Not us directly. But his people have a major beef with Turk Blackburn of our mother chapter.

Turk? He splintered to form The Bent Zealots over near Lake Havasu City.

That he did. He also single-handedly brought down Rojas’s operations up and down the Colorado River, which is why the Zealots are thriving over there. Don’t you ever listen in chapel?

I had heard something about how Turk and his husband Lock had buried several key players down along the river, thus ensuring the foothold of the new MC. He’d taken over the