Vicious Heart (Desert Kings MC #2)

12. Riley

twelve

Riley

“Look, it’s not a big deal. We’ve all got futures to think about. Nobody here needs some random photo of him or her with a joint showing up on Veronica’s Insta. You want to leave? Cool, grab your phone on the way out. No one is forcing you to stay.” His name was Lance. He was bigger than the annoying Chad, more forceful, with wide set angry eyes.

There was another guy who flanked him. His entire round face was red with…what, I wasn’t sure. But paired with the smushed nose, he looked like an angry pig. Maybe it was the Molly, but every one of them had facial features that seemed comical and exaggerated.

Blinking my eyes closed tight a few times, I shook away the unsettling feeling.

Cam and his crew were dangerous. You’d be more likely to see their faces on mugshots than college yearbooks. But Lance, Chad, and this crew presented a different kind of danger. This was the sort of party where years later, some bored housewife would be up late listening to a soothing narrator tell her how Kenna and Riley used to light up rooms.

Every inch of me screamed I should run, but I couldn’t leave her. I’d never be able to live with that sort of guilt.

He’s coming .

Lance was right. I could leave. In fact, I was pretty sure he wanted me to. The drugs made everything around me seem like each movement was swimming through flashing sound waves. The bass boomed out of speakers and flowed in incandescent greens all over Pig-face. Even still, I was probably the only woman here who saw what was really happening.

I wasn’t leaving Kenna.

“Fine.” I fired off one last text and tossed my phone into the basket. But not before I saw the read icon pop up next to it. I’d never had as much faith in a person as I did in Cam right then. He’d be here. Even Preacher couldn’t stop him.

Kenna tugged on my hand, one of her fairy wings bent sideways, her eyes dilated, and her lipstick smudged. “Ry! The cute guy from the car?” She glanced back at a too pretty, fresh faced guy with Pig-Face and Lance in a little circle, talking. “His name is Kylar—such a stupid name.” She giggled again. “But he went to school with me and Ghost. He hates him. Like serious, seething hatred. I’m gonna sneak off and make out with him. It’ll get back to Ghost, piss him off epically.”

My heart slammed against my ribcage and I went cold, uneasy. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Chad had joined Pig-Face’s little pow-wow.

She screwed up her face, like she was debating what she was about to say, then relaxed with a resolute jut of her chin. “I get it. You aren’t the same as me or Dylan. But we’ve been through shit. I got this; it’ll be fine. Relax…it’s a fucking party.”

Her half-broken fairy wings bounced, never to take flight, all the way to Kylar and Lance. There were whispers between them, all snickering as they elbowed each other and gestured with their red plastic cups.

The sinking feeling in my stomach turned sour, sick, and dropped all the way down like putrid lead.

Chad and another guy followed Kylar and Kenna up the stairs.

My quick dash to get to her was so frantic, I stumbled on the bottom step. But I could only watch in helpless, sickening horror as the three guys entered a bedroom with Kenna and shut the door. I may not have grown up with bikers, but I knew predators and a bad situation when I saw them.

“Easy, there.” Lance swooped in, helping me to my feet and tugging me off the bottom step. “Where ya going? Party’s down here, darlin’.”

Only one man called me that.

From Lance’s drunken mouth it sounded sickening and made my skin crawl.

“I need to talk to my friend.” I side stepped him and would have made it, had the Molly not made my legs shaky and unsteady. He grabbed my shoulders and shoved me back, before stepping in between me and that bedroom.

“Nah, we aren’t going to do that. Let’s get you a drink.”

“Fuck off.” I ran at him, shoving him in the stomach before jumping onto the bottom step. This time, I made it up a few stairs before the drugs left me unbalanced, clutching at the chipped and cracked handrail. Lance pounced, jerking me by a foot. My elbows cracked against the steps as I fell. The pain was jarring, running up my arms and ringing in my ears.

Then he jerked me to my feet by my neck.

I fought against him, flailing and slapping, until he squeezed my throat. The goofy, cheesy smile was gone. His eyes narrow and mean as he stole my breath. I flailed, imagining I looked much the same as Ghost when Puck had him.

Except no one was pulling on Lance’s hands, forcing him to let go. I gagged, my vision blurring in and out.

“Your little bitch friend knows what she wants, so mind your fucking business.”

He squeezed tighter and everything began to fade to black. The music was loud. The only thing I could make out was the loud bass that would have drowned out any scream I could make, even if he let go.

He must have realized what he was doing and dropped me to the floor, looming over me with nasty a sneer.

Lance was talking, but whatever he said was swallowed up by the racing hope of my heart. I’d felt this before. The walls were vibrating, the floor humming beneath my fingers. Not from the music, but in the way the clubhouse did when more than a handful of bikes pulled in.

Laughing, I struggled to my feet as Lance peered around, bewildered. No doubt he thought I was nuts.

One large bang at the front door, and the partying young people closest to the door scattered. Then another bang before the door flew off the hinges, slamming forward onto the ground narrowly missing a chubby guy double fisting beer.

I couldn’t tell if he’d sloshed the beer on his crotch or pissed himself when confronted with more than six feet of muscled biker with tattoos all the way up his throat.

“Party’s here!” Jester shouted in the doorway with such manic excitement everyone heard it, regardless of the noise. Black pistol in hand, he shot into the floor with a wood splintering boom. People screamed, guys hit the floor, several girls on the couch huddled together.

It must have seemed like something out of a horror film for them. Someone slid around him and jerked the cord out of the giant speakers. The bald guy I hadn’t met but had been with Cam at Desert Lights.

“Nuh-uh, playboy, sit your punk ass down.” Jester waved the gun at the buff football player type that was giving obvious thought to charging him.

And then there was Cam with a stream of leather clad Desert Kings filing in the door behind him.

“Where?” he asked me. Everything was so quiet now.

“Upstairs, room to the right.” Puck, Merc, and several others charged up the steps.

“Hey, you can’t just do that. Who the fuck do you think you are?” Lance tried to jump in the way, but Puck shoved him away with the same ease he’d tossed Ghost around with.

Lance stumbled down the last two stairs and fell on his ass at my feet. Oh, how the roles had changed.

I had the satisfaction of watching Cam hover over him, face hard and menacing. “We can and we fucking will.” He pulled his pistol, pointing it right at Lance’s face.

Funny, he pissed himself too. The rancid scent of urine made me cough.

“And you’ll shut the fuck up. Got it?” Cam’s eyes were wide and feral.

“Yeah.” The douchebag wasn’t so mean now.

Around the room, Jester was putting guys on their knees in the center. “Don’t be scared ladies, I promise this time…we’re the good guys.”

When one girl grinned at him, he winked. “Unless you like it bad, sweetheart.”

“Bottom of the house is clear.” Dekes walked back into the room, leading a trio of frat boys in their undies and a pretty girl with braids from the back hallway. She looked—completely lost and afraid.

My heart thundered harder. How dare they, all of these bastards.

A brief glimpse of just how bad Jester could be flashed in his eyes when he saw the young woman. I turned away when he smashed one guy to the ground with one swing of the butt of the pistol.

Grunts, and the smash of skin on skin, echoed in the quiet space as he beat all three of them.

When I looked up, the bald biker was wrapping a throw blanket around the woman’s shoulders before leading her to an empty place on the couch.

The tenderness seemed strange and out of place amidst such violence.

The scuffle upstairs grew louder more brutal with thumps and crashes as Lance frantically cast his eyes between where Cam held him at gunpoint and the top of the stairs.

Then Puck came thundering down, a bundle wrapped in a dark blanket in his arms.

“Kenna,” I whispered.

“I’m getting her out of here,” Puck stated simply to Cam before stalking out. No one else came downstairs. I didn’t feel the slightest bit sorry for the assholes up there with Merc and the others. They deserved whatever they got.

Then Cam turned to me. “You okay?”

I brushed two fingertips across my throat, the skin still stung. “Yeah.”

He tilted his head and looked closer, and my insides went cold.