Bash (Diablo Disciples MC #6)

THREE

Charlotte

Some shifts in the ER department were better than others.

But it only took her friend, Porter, to utter those cursed words. “It’s quiet today.” And from there, the day had gone to hell and back several times over, with people streaming through the doors needing help with one affliction after another. From the flu to a half-severed leg.

Lottie was exhausted, and it showed as her coffee went untouched, too tired to drag it forward to take sips. Yawning until her jaw cracked, she slumped her head in her hand, letting her eyes drift closed for a second.

“I could kick you in the balls.” Lottie’s other friend told Porter. Toni was the loudest and most honest of the three of their work friends’ group, brutally so. With the way Porter and she bickered, anyone would assume they were hot for each other, but Porter was gay and very taken. And Toni’s preference for men was usually unavailable pricks.

“I said I was sorry. What more do you want from me?” He sighed tiredly.

“A pound of flesh,” announced Toni. “And for people not to stick objects up their buttholes and blame it on an oopsie.” All three dissolved into laughter. “You can get me a muffin, and I might lessen your sentence.”

“You’re all heart,” Porter got up from the table and turned his eyes on Lottie. “What do you want, babe?”

“Nothing for me. I’m too tired to eat.” He strode off to the cafeteria display counter.

Working the late shift always messed with her body. It was only six p.m., their ‘lunchtime,’ and she still had hours before home time. Lottie would give anything to leave early and curl up on the couch after the longest hot shower. Ice cream would feature heavily in those plans.

“Hey, I was thinking.” Started Toni, who sounded more awake than Lottie felt. That never boded well if Toni was having ideas and Lottie braced for the inevitable shenanigans. The last time she had a thought, they ended up in New Mexico for the weekend, and Lottie got sick from food poisoning. Good times.

“This weekend.” The weekend couldn’t come soon enough for Lottie, who planned to catch up on neglected housework and get some much-needed rest. “We should put on our sexiest underwear, go dancing, and scoop up a few men.”

Lottie groaned. “After the week from hell, my ass isn’t fit to go dancing.”

“Come on, Lottie! We need to let loose before we’re old bitches and have tits down to our kneecaps. Go dancing with me, it’ll be fun. Maybe that’ll be when you meet someone to rock your headboard.” Toni, who worked in the same department, wiggled her eyebrows.

Lottie resisted the urge to sigh. She’d heard it all before. She had no idea why Toni was so obsessed with getting Lottie some action, but her nagging was getting old.

“You get laid.”

“I will. But you need it more.”

Lottie wasn’t interested in being the focal point of any conversation that centered on her sex life, non-existent as it was. It was private.

At that, Porter returned, bringing an apple muffin for Toni. “What are we talking about?”

“I’m trying to get Lottie into meeting men this weekend. She’s being boring again by refusing.”

It was hard not to take offense and feel hurt coursing through her breastbone at that character assassination. She was plenty fun when she wanted to be. Considering how busy she was with work and how expensive it was to step outside the house these days, she didn’t prioritize being social as much as Toni did.

“Stop harassing her.” Scolded Porter, and she smiled her gratitude. Porter was such a good guy. “If you girls want a quieter weekend, you can join game night.”

“With all the gays?”

“It’s four couples.” He answered Toni. Porter and his adorable barista boyfriend were game night masters.

“Thanks, but I’ll pass. You boring stiffs can keep the yawn-fest games while I live for the three of us,” Toni announced.

“You can be a real bitch, you know that?” said Porter with a smile. He hardly ever got mad at Toni’s remarks, but he always made sure she took responsibility for what she said.

“Someone has to balance out you two old maids.”

Lottie felt relieved when her break ended, allowing her to escape Toni’s scrutiny. She had so few close friendships. Acquaintances and work colleagues, sure, but very few she wanted to hang out with.

After using the restroom and washing her hands, she returned to the floor in the ER. Lottie couldn’t help but think about what Toni had said.

Was she boring? Probably, but she liked who she was and what she’d built around her. Who said hooking up with strangers every weekend was the benchmark for fun, anyway? Given the choice, she would opt for a good adult coloring book and a new pack of crayons.

Approaching the gateway to hell, aka the ER department, Lottie swiped her security card and heard the noise as she pulled open the door.

Toni might not be correct, yet Lottie wished she could be more like her friend and speak her mind. Especially when people thought it was cool to step all over her feelings or give unwanted advice about her life. It was only ever after the fact she could think of the perfect comeback, but by then, it was too late.

For someone so self-assured in her career, you’d assume she’d be more outspoken elsewhere, but conflict brought Lottie out in hives. Her neurodivergent brain didn’t work that way, and she’d avoid conflict at all costs. Unless faced with burly bikers who got rowdy, she’d been quick to put them in their place. Whenever wasted people ended up in the ER, Lottie was the go-to person.

Work Lottie was a force to be reckoned with.

It was all the other versions of Lottie that needed work.

And according to her closest friend, that Lottie was boring and needed a few dicks to make her interesting.

She sighed and brushed it off as she powered through the rest of her shift, dealing with sickness, two traffic accidents, and an overcrowded department.

When she drove home, she greeted the aloof cat, who only stared at her from behind the couch. One day, Prince would love her. She was determined to earn that cat’s devotion if it was the last thing she did.

Tiredness won, and after a shower and a few crackers, she crawled into her queen-sized bed with the blue flowery bedspread and let the soft mattress envelop her sore muscles. Working the late shift was worse than a vigorous spin class.

As she found a comfortable spot in bed, she used the remote to switch on the wall-mounted TV, then lowered the volume. She hardly paid attention to it at night, but she needed the background noise, or her brain wouldn’t let her sleep. If the apocalypse occurred or she ended up on a deserted island, her genuine concern was how she would sleep without white noise.

When she was a kid, people called her weird so much that she believed it for a while. Nowadays, they call it neurodivergent, which meant Lottie’s brain worked differently, but she’s still totally normal.

She hyper-fixated on things or she was indifferent.

While she loathed being overwhelmed by noise or tasks, she relied on continuous stimulation to manage her racing thoughts. It was a nonstop struggle to adjust the levels correctly.

As the TV din played a crime investigative show, she slowed her breathing and snuggled half her face into the soft pillow.

It was maladaptive dreaming time. For a grown-up, she shouldn’t enjoy daydreaming as much as she did. If Toni knew she enjoyed imagining scenarios before falling asleep, she would think she was odd. Things became chaotic, and she had to reset everything. As the narrator, you’d think they’d go wherever she wanted, but nope.

Tonight, however, Lottie softly hummed and remembered where she left off in her imaginary world yesterday, placing her hand under her chin.

Until about a year ago, she would daydream about random people or celebs. She used them as props to tell stories about living it up, globetrotting, and being loaded.

Then he entered her world and blew her mind with made-up adventures and new daydreams, all about emotions. It wasn’t even that Lottie would weave a romantic plotline for herself. It just never came up. In her dreams, she was successful, popular, wealthy, and confident. But never the love interest.

She should hate him for controlling this part of her, but that would mean he knew all about it. This was Lottie’s secret indulgence.

Lottie was steadfast about what she wanted to achieve from a young age.

First, it was to leave home at eighteen, almost to the day of her birthday. After her mom died from a long illness, ten-year-old Lottie and her younger sister were left with a loafer father, bouncing from job to job, who couldn’t get his shit together. Lottie had to become an adult too early.

She’d worked her butt off to get through college and nursing school. She found pride in her job despite its demanding nature. Her achievements included owning a house, having savings, and a small group of close friends.

But nowhere on that goals list had she ever prioritized a relationship.

While other teens were figuring out who they were into and crushing on people, Lottie wasn’t interested. She never developed feelings for actors or pop stars. She’d never masturbated over a school crush or felt belly flutters if a boy held her hand.

She dated because she felt she had to fit in and not be seen as weird.

But those feelings were never there.

It hadn’t been a worry. She never saw herself as odd or messed up. She didn’t ask therapists for answers.

Despite taking a psychology class, Lottie couldn’t comprehend her lack of sex drive, given the absence of depression or anxiety. She had no history of sexual trauma and wasn’t afraid of close relationships, if it ever happened.

The need for one never came up, so it wasn’t something she strived for.

The last date Lottie went on—again, because she was trying to appease being peer-pressured by Toni’s insistence she needed to date—turned out to be a big fat waste of her time.

Even self-pleasure wasn’t much of a curiosity to her, so it saved a bunch on the sex toys’ budget, mainly because she didn’t even own one toy.

But then something happened, and since then, her maladaptive daydreams have centered on only one man. For a woman who put little stock in sexual desire, she sure was a fast learner, at least in her head.

Behind her flickering eyelids, as Lottie felt her muscles relax one after the other and her breathing shallow, she imagined a pair of the bluest eyes staring back at her. A smile was playing on soft lips, surrounded by a clipped goatee. There was temptation in that smile.

And his voice. It curled her toes beneath the sheets when she brought it to mind. If chocolate could talk, it would sound just like that. His voice was so smooth and captivating that every woman wanted to hear him speak a little longer.

There was no need to make up fake conversations when she’d had many with him already, so all Lottie had to do was press replay.

Whenever he saw her in a rush at work, he would bring her a coffee and muffins to make her smile. When she was half-asleep, she kept thinking about all the times he asked her out - first casually, then more seriously. She remembered how his voice got deeper, more rugged, and how determined he looked when he held her gaze.

But there was no need to talk about dating. Not when this imaginative Bash helped her onto the back seat of his rumbling motorcycle. The beast of a machine felt like a purring tiger as Lottie latched onto his trim waist. His physique was solid and lean, and he stood at a satisfying height of six foot three.

Every inch of Bash, the established Diablo Disciples biker, was attractive. If she found anyone’s body perfect, it would be his. It was obvious he took care of himself without being conceited. Even though he was thirteen years older, he was the hottest person she had ever seen. And within the safety of her mind, Lottie could indulge in something new pulsing through her veins, goose-bumping her skin and making her breath pause each time those eyes turned her way. Anything with him was possible in her dreams, but she repeatedly went back to this scene when she was free, riding his motorcycle. It always ended the same way, with her caught in a biker’s arms, and a mouth made purely from sin and bad intentions, pressed to the dip in her neck as he told her how he’d keep her forever.

Of course, it was a fantasy , not something Lottie would indulge in.

She wouldn’t.

Nope .

She wouldn’t know how to date a man like him.

Gangs were notorious, and she’d brushed up against a terrible gang in the past and had no desire to repeat it. If nothing disrupted her monotonous world, she would be as happy as a chunky tortoise feasting on arugula.

Fantasy was safe and sensible.

Going out with a man who had dangerous connections would be the most foolish choice she could make.

It would be like jumping from the toaster right into the air fryer. Or, however, that saying went. And Lottie wasn’t bacon.

Her sister was knee-deep in a gang, and Lottie couldn’t think of a worse life to lead.

Bash hadn’t given her bad vibes, but she knew when to listen to her instincts.

She was also the world’s oldest virgin. Maybe that fact had a little to do with her caution.

People talked about how bikers were bed hoppers. Once he knew that uninteresting fact, there was no way Bash would still pursue her.

A virgin — who was in no rush to change that status — and a wild biker did not mix.

She was not ready for a Kama Sutra show-and-tell just yet.

And she figured if that ever changed, she’d need someone just as average. Bash’s sexual allure would burn her down to the bones.

However, that didn’t stop her from fantasizing about kissing the too-hot-to-handle biker.