Devil's Ride (Royal Bastards MC Tonopah, NV #3) - Nikki Landis Page 0,10

provided a decent night of tips. I’d learned to tend bar years ago from Black-Eye Sue. She still came around from time to time, but the old broad was far beyond her prime. Didn’t matter to me. I loved her crazy and wild personality.

She was the one who was working when I wandered in one afternoon nearly eight years prior. I was fresh out of high school and starting college. The bills were stacking up and my loans were already growing far too high. I needed a job and fast. She must have gone soft in her older years because she took me under her wing, showed me the basics, and became one of my closest friends. Last year she died of breast cancer. Hit me hard. I still couldn’t speak of her to most people. Only those here at the bar understood what her loss meant.

Suraya was pulling down chairs and making sure the tables were clean as I entered. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail as she swished her ass to the beat of a rock song. A tight black tank top was stretched across her chest and molded to the curves of her breasts. I wore the same sleezy uniform top in a t-shirt style. The bar’s logo was plastered across our tits in white, drawing the eye exactly where the owner wanted. He was a shrewd businessman.

“What’s up, sexy?” I asked, slapping her on the rump as I caught her off guard.

“Jesus!” she shrieked with a laugh. “You’re scared me.”

“Just keeping you on your toes!” I announced, slipping around her to stock the bar and make sure everything else was ready for our shift.

We opened up a couple of minutes early out of boredom and welcomed in the regulars. News and sports played on the few big screen televisions anchored above in different placements. The largest one was above the bar and to the left. I turned down the volume and shook my head at Suraya as the news coverage spoke about more bloodshed in Tonopah and a few missing girls. It wasn’t something either of us wanted to hear while working.

Suraya was from Palmdale, California. She left everything behind to start a new life on her own in Nevada. For a time, she wanted to be a showgirl. Didn’t work out and it wasn’t because she wasn’t pretty or thin enough. Girl looked like a runway model.

I’d grown close to her over the last year. Sort of kindred spirits. Broken souls tended to latch onto one another. Both of us found love in the wrong places. We were attracted to bad boys. It was an ongoing joke between us.

Suraya ticked her head toward the doorway. “I think your next mistake just walked in the door.”

“Huh? What are you talking about, crazy?” I made a face at her and then glanced up.

Six-foot-five-inches of handsome, dangerous, and bad boy walked in and headed toward an empty booth. He wasn’t alone but the other guy completely escaped my notice. Couldn’t describe him if my life depended on it because all my focus was on the dark beard, leather jacker, and hypnotizing eyes of the biker from my dreams.

Literally, I dreamed about this guy since I was ten years old.

Sounded stupid but it was the truth. I never forgot the wounded young man my parents hit with a car over a decade earlier. Something about him was different. It was obvious back then and still true now.

He had a dark presence that lured me in, but it was the sexy smile and the way he carried himself that was the real turn on. Confidence oozed from his pores. He knew how to command a room and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if every woman in the vicinity wanted just one hour of all that testosterone pumping between their thighs.

A man like that was one in a thousand if not more.

“Trish?”

I turned to Suraya, hating to tear my gaze away from Mr. Sex-on-a-stick. “Yeah?”

“Honey, you stare any harder at that biker and you’re gonna spill something on yourself.”

She was right. I already nearly overflowed the beer I was pouring.

Handing over the drink, I barely noticed when the customer said thanks and winked in my direction.

“He’s hot as fuck,” I whispered, sighing softly. “And nothing but trouble. I knew that as a ten-year-old girl and I’m sure it’s still true.”

Her jaw dropped. “He’s the one? The biker you dream about?”

I nodded. “Yep. Which is why