Ravage (Book 1) Read online

  “There’s no need to be an asshole about it.”

  “I think you need to take a look in the mirror. You’re the one acting fuckin’ crazy.”

  “Don’t call me crazy.”

  “Don’t act crazy, then.”

  She folds her arms. “I think you should leave. I don’t want you here. What? Don’t look at me like that! I think you should leave. What’s the problem? You got your payment for helping me out with Charles, didn’t you? You got yours. You took what you wanted.”

  “From where I was standing, both of us were getting what we wanted. Unless you’re the best actress in Cali.”

  “Maybe I am. How would you know? You don’t even know me.”

  I walk around the partition and stand over her, looking down. “Maybe I’d like to get to know you.”

  “Well, maybe I wouldn’t.” She takes a step back.

  It’s like she’s a completely different woman from last night. I try not to take any offense at it, try not to feel upset or angry, try to remind myself that I’ve snuck out plenty of times before. But right now reason isn’t in the driver’s seat. I’m hurt, is the truth of it. The feeling of rejection isn’t exactly pretty. But I can’t show her that. Men like me never can. I hold my hands up as a sign of defeat. “If that’s how you feel. I just want you to know that you’re acting crazy right now, really bat-shit. I don’t know what it is. You weren’t too drunk. I know that for a fact. You were tipsy, sure, but I was tipsy too. I don’t know what the fuck it is.”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything,” she says. “We’re strangers, and I’d like you to leave.”

  “Fine.” I feign a casual shrug, when really what I want to do is grab the mug from the draining board and smash it against the wall, kick the oven until the glass shatters, put a hole in the wall. But I keep that inside. Outside, I try and seem calm. “But let me tell you something. You didn’t fake it last night. I know that for sure.”

  She bites her lip, seems about to say something, and then bites her lip harder and points at the door.

  “Fine. See you around, princess.”

  I shrug on my leather and make for the door.

  She follows me, standing at the threshold. “Do not call me princess!” she shouts after me, and then slams it closed.

  Walking down the stairs, I clench and unclench my fists, my temples pulsing, my jaw aching from where my teeth are clenched. The fucking rejection hurts, hurts bad, and I can’t stop thinking about what an asshole I was in the kitchen, thinking she’d get up and smile at me and ask me to make her a mug, and we’d watch TV or get breakfast and maybe I’d drive her to work if she felt too hungover. What a fucking prick.

  That just proves it, I guess. Men like me can’t hang around for the morning after. Men like me can’t expose ourselves, even for something as seemingly harmless as coffee. I feel like I’ve been punched in the chest, and everything is worse because I feel melodramatic on top of it. I want to stop feeling this way.

  “Whatever,” I say, closing down my emotions like I do on a job. “Fuck it.”

  I just won’t think about her, or what just happened. I’ll just let it grow smaller in the rear-view. The water-snake will soon evaporate in my mind; a few club girls will help the process along.

  I take a cab back to my bike. I’ve climbed on when my cell rings. Absurdly, I think it might be Cora for a second, but then I remember that we didn’t even exchange numbers.

  “Your father is getting worse!” Mom cries down the phone. “Your father is getting worse and his only son is not even at the hospital! What sort of family is this, Logan? What sort of son are you?”

  “Fuck’s sake, Ma. You just called me. What’d you expect me to do, sit at his bedside all damn day and night? You know as well as I do that he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want to be seen as weak. He doesn’t even want to seem human. I bet if he wasn’t so drugged up, he wouldn’t even let me come by at all.”

  “You might be right,” Mom says. “Maybe you are. But I want you here anyway. Okay?”

  “Okay, Ma.”

  I hang up and ride down to the hospital, stopping on the way to grab a burger and a shake. Dad’s sitting up when I walk into his room, Mom holding a straw to his lips. He sucks weakly, dribbling. That’s the worst part about this whole mess, or at least one of the worst parts. The dribbling, like he’s a child, like he isn’t the president of the Demon Riders.

  I take the seat opposite Mom. “You all right, old man?”

  He grins weakly. “Fine,” he whispers in his too-soft voice. “I just wanted to tell you, son ...” His eyes close, and then open wide. He’s trying to stay awake but his body is fighting him. “I need to tell you ...”

  He falls asleep. Mom dabs at his chin and lowers his bed with the switch.

  “The doctor thinks it might be the end of this month, maybe next.”

  “Shit,” I mutter.

  “Shit is right,” Mom agrees. She wipes a tear from her eye. “Where were you? With some girl, I bet.”

  I think about telling her, laying the whole thing out (without the sordid details) and seeing if she can make sense of Cora’s behavior. But if I do that she’ll only want me to go back and try and make things right with her, which I know won’t work. And even if it would, I’m not about to start groveling.

  “I was with Spider. We were getting shitfaced.”

  Mom rolls her eyes but doesn’t ask any questions.

  Chapter Eight

  Cora

  I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, trying to convince myself that I was too drunk last night and that’s why I slept with him. I want to be able to lay the blame elsewhere. I want to be able to look into my eyes and see somebody who’s not responsible for letting my defenses crumble so easily. But the truth is last night was as much my fault as his, maybe more, because I’m the one who invited him back here. I lean closer to the mirror and try to convince myself that I didn’t seem like a crazy person when I screamed at him to leave, and that fails, too. In the end I stop trying to convince myself of anything and just go about getting ready for my shift at the dentist’s office.

  Getting ready for me means painting over the rune tattoo on my hand with foundation, trying to make the coverup as seamless as possible, getting dressed, and then wrapping the light red scarf around my throat to hide my snake tattoo. All through this—and as I shower and apply my makeup—my mind drifts to Logan. It drifts to how it felt to be bent over, completely vulnerable to him, and how it felt to have his cock slide deep, deeper, deepest ... And then I shut my mind to it, or try to. All I succeed in is stowing the feelings far back in my mind where they are quieter, at least.

  I make myself some coffee and can’t help but think about what went through my mind when I saw him drinking from his mug. At first I felt a warm and homey feeling. It was almost like we were a couple. Part of me wanted to join him and wrap my arms around him and place my cheek against his back, feel the power of him and then ask if he wanted to hang out later after work. Part of me wanted to drag him into the living room and strip him naked, just to get another look at him. Part of me wanted to fall to my knees and blow him right there. Or go for a walk, or anything. But then I remembered who I am and my promise to myself. In the Viking Age, oaths meant everything because they didn’t write anything down. They had lawspeakers who remembered all their laws. That was what I intended my promise to be: an unbreakable oath. And so my mind moved from fantasy to trying to scrape back some of my willpower.

  I sip my coffee, watching the clock to make sure I leave in time.

  I might have overreacted, but at the same time, what was the alternative? I need to focus on my singing, on trying to make something of my life. Getting into a serious relationship kills that, doesn’t it? But then, nobody said I had to get into a serious relationship. So if it isn’t going to be serious, what’s the point?

  “Circles and circles,” I mutter, washing my mug. “My thoughts are the World Serpent, biting their
own tail, going around and around. I need to distract myself. And I need to stop talking to myself.”

  I wonder, not for the first time, if my neighbors think I’m a madwoman because I talk to myself so often.

  I leave for work with the feeling that I made a mistake with Logan, and yet with the feeling that I did exactly the right thing. It’s an odd mixture and I don’t know quite how to handle it. As I start my car and the engine thrums, I think about the thrum of a motorbike, and then my mind does somersaults and all at once I’m sitting on top of him and his body is a powerful engine, his metal cock thrumming inside of me, driving me to crazier and crazier heights of pleasure. I think about scratching fingernails down a sheet-rock chest, watching blood bead and then licking it up between solid pectorals. I think about—I kill the thoughts as best I can, because even if part of me regrets sending him away, it’s done now and in the end it’ll be the right decision. I have to remember who—what—I am. I am an ex-rich girl, a self-exile, a friendless wanderer whose songs sometimes make men want to fuck them. That is all.

  I get to work and say my friendliest hello to Mr. Jones, the dentist who I assist for most of my shifts. He’s a redhaired man with a thick red moustache and coils of red hair on his forearms, just about covering his freckles, though they poke through here and there. He wears a silver wedding band so I know he’s married, but that doesn’t stop his eyes from sometimes straying to my chest. I wear a high-cut shirt, and I haven’t got bazookas down there anyhow, but he still finds something to look at. It’s one of those petty things I put up with because I need this job; I’m aware they could easily replace me at any moment.

  I clean the equipment and pass it to him and smile and fake-laugh at the bad jokes of the nervous patients, and then it’s lunchtime and I retreat to the breakroom. I want to take off the scarf around my throat. The AC is on but it seems intent on blasting warm hair half the time, to test our patience. I tug at the scarf but I don’t dare remove it, especially when Cecilia comes strutting in. She’s the look-at-me-type, red high heels, low-cut shirt flashing a red bra, tights with a ladder up one side which must be purposeful since it’s always there, and always with a new loud hairdo. She pouts at me with her bright red lipstick and marches over.

  “Hey, doll,” she says.

  “What’s up, Cecilia?” I reply.

  “What’s up.” She drops next to me and takes out her fat-free sugar-free all-natural yogurt, unwraps her pink novelty spoon with pictures of flowers on, and starts eating in tiny mouthfuls. “You sound like a man when you say that.”

  “I know. Do you know how I know? Because every time I say it you tell me. How’s reception today?”

  “Answering calls, making calls, booking appointments. Reception’s reception. Did I tell you?”

  I’ll never understand why Cecilia latched onto me when I first started working here. The only thing I can figure out is that we’re around the same age, but apart from that we couldn’t be more different. I barely talk to her; she always catches me in the breakroom. Maybe if I didn’t have that rule about friendships, something would blossom between us.

  “Tell me what?”

  She leans in and whispers, “I’m getting a boob job!” Then she just stares at me for a long time. “Well?”

  Oh, right.

  “Congratulations!” I squeal.

  She places her hand on her chest and soaks it up. “Thank you, thank you. What about you? What’s on your mind?”

  What’s on my mind? All morning I’ve been thinking about Logan, and when I haven’t been thinking about Logan I’ve been thinking about how I have to find another gig to replace the one at The Devil, and then I started wondering if I need to move to LA where there are more opportunities for singers, where maybe I could get spotted by someone and scooped up out of obscurity. And then I began to think about what that really meant, becoming a rock star, and I had one of my customary panicked moments when I don’t even know if that’s what I want anymore. I don’t know if I can be bothered to deal with this shit, these petty tyrannies of married men staring at my chest even when I give them no reason to. And then I felt guilty, because I shouldn’t be allowed to forgo the petty tyrannies of my life just because my dad was rich. But then I reasoned that I didn’t choose to be born to a rich family, no more than poor people choose to be born to theirs. And then—

  “Hun,” Cecilia says. “Are you okay? You look a little funny. What’s gotten into you? You’re all red.”

  “It’s just so hot in here,” I mutter.

  “Isn’t it?” she squeaks, as if it’s a revelation. “I came in this morning and I thought—yeah, it’s just—I thought: why is it so hot?”

  I’m spared further explanation when Ryan walks in. He’s a classic twenty-something skater type, with those ten-inch stretching earrings and tattoos all up his arm. He looks like a teenager to me, but he’s the boss’s dad so he’s allowed to stick around. He swaggers over to Cecilia, completely ignoring me, and talks at her breasts. “Wanna come to dinner with me?”

  Cecilia reacts as though these are the words of her finally-found Romeo, flutters her eyelashes, and replies, “Yeah, sure.”

  He walks away, and that’s that.

  For the rest of the day I can’t get that exchange out of my head. Can it really be that simple? Can you really just talk to each other like that, and then have it be fine? It’s never been like that for me. Ever since I was a girl and I had my first awkward conversation with a boy, it’s never been like that. I never dreamed it could be. For me it’s always been forcing words out, trying to navigate the swamp of social humiliation. For me it’s always been a tightrope-walking act, with an abyss of caring too much on one side and an abyss of not caring too much on the other, the result being that I end up not doing much of anything, and the relationship—if it ever is a relationship—fizzles out like a faulty fuse.

  “Except with Logan,” I whisper on the way home. “With Logan ... oh, shit ... with Logan, it was different. I was comfortable. I don’t even know him. I don’t even have his number. I have to be strong now. Come on, Cora Ash. What is Cora Ash? Why did you make her? Because she’s strong. Cora Ash is strong!”

  I stop screaming at myself in the rearview mirror when I spot a couple of kids in the backseat of a car the next lane over, giggling and pointing at the crazy lady.

  Chapter Nine

  Logan

  Weeks pass and the asshole summer starts to give way to autumn, which is still hot but doesn’t make a man want to ride to Antarctica. I spend my time with the club, taking over my dad’s role since he can’t do anything no more. I kill two men and put about three others in the hospital. They’re members of the mafia who’ve been moving in on this town for a little while, starting a couple of years after the Demon Riders moved here. They’re messing with our gun shipments and trying to sling heroin to the kids around here, which is a bad move since the cops only ignore us ’cause we steer clear of the hard shit.

  I try not to think about Cora Ash. Every so often she’ll pop into my head and I’ll turn away from her, burying her under a mound of other thoughts, hoping and praying that one day soon she’ll leave forever. It can get damn tiring, having a woman in my head all the time, whispering in my sleep. I even find jerking off difficult. I can’t watch porn, and I can’t even think about any other woman. Whenever I start, my mind turns to her, to that water-snake twitching, her punk hair falling around her snake tattoo as she bounces up and down on my prick. So I mostly leave off it for a while. I don’t touch any club girls, either. Hell, I’d be a priest if it wasn’t for the murder and the whisky.

  I get shitfaced more than is healthy, but then I guess getting shitfaced is never healthy. I don’t smoke too much, because of Dad’s dribbling. If cancer is going to get me, let it be liver cancer. I’m not going out like my father, with a rattling chest. Mostly the weeks are a waiting game: waiting for Dad to croak, which he’s going to do any day now. The doctor just says it’s a matter of time. The
old man isn’t on drugs anymore except for pain meds. They’re just making him as comfortable as possible. That’s how the doc put it, but then, can a person ever be comfortable if they’re facing down eternal nothingness?

  I’m in the clubhouse; I slug a whisky. My thoughts are turning dark and there isn’t much I can do about it. Dad’s dying and I sit here, middle of the day, getting tipsy and then drunk and then sobering up again while my men are out sorting my business. I look at the photographs on the walls: all the men, and Dad in the middle of many of them. I just can’t believe that that giant bear of a man is the same husk in the hospital bed. It doesn’t make sense. I didn’t know folks could just waste away like that, not folks like Pa, not folks who seem to be made of something other than flesh.

  I’m not surprised when I get the call. I’m not even surprised by the deadened pain in Mom’s voice.

  “Can you come by the hospital?” she says, sounding oddly calm. I wonder if she’s taken a sedative. “It’s nearly time. He’s lucid, Logan. He wants to speak with you.”

  “All right.”

  I don’t expect much as I climb onto my bike. He’s said he wanted to speak to me dozens of times over the past few weeks, and every time he can barely form a sentence. It’s pathetic, in a way, that big strong bastard sitting there, hardly able to talk. I often wonder what the old Dad’d make of it. I know what he’d do; he’d take a twelve-gauge and blow the husk’s head off. He was a tough piece of work. He’d never have let himself turn into this, but cancer doesn’t give a man much say. I feel guilty for these thoughts. I shouldn’t think of my father like this. But it’s hard not to when I remember a man made of metal with his hand on my throat, telling me to stop fooling around and be a man. That was when I was a kid and I started smoking dope, and the man gave me the push I needed to finally be able to look at myself in the mirror and see someone worth respecting, or at least someone worth fearing.