“Okay,” the bartender said with a long sigh. “My name is Jess, if you need anything.”
“She doesn’t need to know your name!” one of the first men said, coming over. He was bald, had a long black beard, multiple neck tattoos, and so much hair on his arm that he could have passed for a gorilla. “But she does need to know mine. Call me Parker.”
“Parker,” I said.
I could literally not describe the smile on his face in any way other than profoundly disturbing. It was the kind of face that someone who relished being a menace got when he saw an opportunity to strike, and I didn’t mean the kind of menace who pulled harmless, cartoonish pranks.
“Yeah, and I’m Rick,” said the other one, seating himself on the other side of me.
It was not lost on me that I was trapped.
Or, I told myself, I could just play the two off of each other and see what happened. That was part of having fun, right? Just letting guys compete for me?
You’re out of your fucking mind, girl. You let one poor paycheck and one rejection turn you into this kind of a whore?
“Rick,” I repeated. “Parker and Rick. It is nice to meet you two.”
“Oh, you haven’t even gotten to the nice part yet,” Rick said. “Where are you from, pretty lady? We don’t get a lot of new faces in this part of town.”
“And we love new faces,” Parker said, literally licking his lips.
Maybe I did step a little too far out of my comfort zone.
“I grew up here. I just moved back a few days ago.”
“Holy shit!” Parker said, slapping the table. “Lucius! Would you believe this shit! There’s a girl here who moved back here! It’s like she has no fucking idea!”
No fucking idea what?
I turned my head to see the man who was smoking a cigar in the back let out a short laugh before resuming his cigar puffing.
“Well, you’ve come into quite the bar,” Rick said. “I don’t know what Springsville was like growing up, but it’s a lot more adventurous and dangerous now.”
“Oh, horrible,” Parker said.
It was like I wasn’t even able to say anything. The two of these guys were just going to bounce words off of each other, not allowing me to get a word in at all.
“You need protection in a place like this,” Rick said. “It would be a damn shame. You want to come back to our clubhouse?”
“Your clubhouse?” I said, just barely getting the words in before Parker would have said something.
“You really don’t have any idea, do you?” Parker said. “That’s astounding. Usually, people have some idea. I’m genuinely shocked.”
“Speak for yourself, ya dummy,” Rick said. “Not like we’re the Blood Knights.”
The name seemed to make Parker fume because, for once, he wasn’t saying a word in response. I watched the whole thing with fascination. Was the Blood Knights another group? Like the Black Reapers?
I thought of asking these two about that, but such a question seemed more likely to provoke an angry response than anything else.
“Fuck ‘em,” Parker finally said. “In any case, we’re not here to bore you with club details. We’re here to thrill you with what happens at the clubhouse.”
“You’ll have fun unlike any type of fun you’ve ever had,” Rick said, his eyes narrowing to an uncomfortable degree. “It’ll give you experiences you only dreamed of before.”
And then Rick put his hand on my thigh, and I didn’t mean by my knee. I may have been meaning to have fun, but that didn’t mean I was just willing to jump into bed with the first guy that touched me.
“And the best part,” Parker said as he came up on the other side of me, leaning dangerously close. “Is that you can have fun with more than one of us.”
That was where I drew the line.
