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  “Rust,” Allison says. “Why Rust? What’s your real name?”

  “Rust is my real name,” I say. “And it’s my real name ’cause I’ve always liked the color red.”

  “Hmm.” She leans forward, studying me. “I’m not sure about that.”

  “Not sure? How’s that? You a mind reader now?”

  “No, I just spend a lot of time around people who have more going on under the surface than they care to let on.”

  I swallow: swallow back my past and my memories. Swallow away the image of my father clawing at his chest as the heart attack blew his life apart, swallow the phantom of my mother’s voice as she told me she’d found a new man, that she was pregnant, that she wanted to start afresh, as she told me point-blank that she would prefer if I found my own way. I was fifteen years old: old enough to go out into the world; old enough to leave her be. I saw her red eyes, saw the desperation in her face, and I also saw that she was doing this, in a warped way, out of love for my father. It hurt her too much, seeing me there, a constant reminder. But that didn’t change the fact she was moving on. And it did not change the fact that, after questioning her, I discovered that she’d been fucking this other man long before the heart attack took Dad, that in fact the reason he’d had the heart attack at all was that damned affair—

  I lean back, take a breath, and then smile, smiling away the memories. “Not me,” I say. “I’m about as simple as they come.”

  She watches me with those huge green eyes, eyes which look like two forests have been plucked from reality and pushed into her eye socket by some magic, eyes which remind me of nature and freshness. I think on that for a moment, think about how I never think shit like this about women, and then push it aside.

  “If you say so.” She licks her lips, nods, finishes another wine, leans back, nods again, smiles at me whilst tilting her head. “But somehow I don’t believe it,” she says at length.

  “You’re giving me that look again, Allison,” I say.

  “What look?” She flutters her eyelashes. Does she know what she’s doing? Does she know how sexy she looks right now?

  “The look like you’re imaginin’ all the things I could do for you.”

  “No, it’s just…” She blushes, and shakes her head. “Nothing.”

  “What is it?” I say. “Don’t be shy.”

  “It’s nothing,” she says, looking down at the table.

  “It’s clearly not nothing.” I laugh, holding my hands up. “Look, I promise you won’t offend my sensitive soul, alright?”

  She rolls her eyes. “It’s embarrassing.”

  “For me, or for you?”

  “For me.”

  I give an exaggerated shrug. “Then I don’t see how that’s my problem.”

  She rolls her eyes again. There’s something about that gesture, flirty and shy and sexy all at once, that is really getting to me. She tips her wine glass back, and then places it back down when she realizes she’s already drank it all. Then she leans forward, laying her chin on her interlocked fingers, giving me a look I reckon no man could return without feeling something stir inside him.

  “I read a lot of romance novels,” she says, “and you…well, you sort of remind me of some of the guys in them. Have you ever read any romance novels?”

  “Can’t say I’ve read much of anything,” I admit. “What are the guys like? Men called Rust without a shade of red on ’em?”

  She giggles. “No, they’re—you know, big, and strong, and assholes.”

  “Assholes? Who says I’m an asshole?”

  “You’ve barely taken your eyes off my chest since we came in here.”

  “Hey,” I say, “I was staring at your rack before we came in here. You’re gorgeous. That makes me observant, not an asshole.”

  She closes her eyes, and then opens them a few seconds later. “Can we get some fresh air?” she asks. “That wine is hitting me harder than I thought.”

  “Sure.”

  About a minute later, we’re walking in the afternoon sun down the street, past the bar, past an alleyway—It’s as we’re passing the alleyway that Allison turns to me, chest heaving, arms hanging at her sides and fingers tapping as though at an invisible keyboard. She looks at my face, and then over my body, and then throws herself at me, panting.

  I open my arms, catching her, and we do a sort of dance-walk into the alleyway, our lips pressing together.

  Chapter Four

  Allison

  The wine is burning in my chest, and the sun is burning into my skin, and the events of the past couple of hours are still burning into my mind, but all of this pales in comparison to Rust’s lips burning into my lips, his chest burning into my hands as I clutch at his leather. I blame it on the alcohol; I blame it on the romance novels; I blame it on the fear and adrenaline from having survived. We stumble backward, entangled, deep into the alleyway where he pushes my back up against the wall. I can feel his passion, hot, explosive, moving from him into me.

  I push my lips into his, hardly thinking about what I’m doing, just feeling the pleasure of it. His lips are clean-shaven, and moist, and a perfect fit for mine. He opens his mouth slightly, a tempting opening, and I thrust my tongue into him; perhaps overeager, for my tongue brushes his teeth. But that adds to the pleasure somehow, as though we are too horny to even wait for both our mouths to be open. He opens his mouth all the way and the tips of our tongues clash. Nerves buzz, sending electric jolts of pleasure down my tongue and around my mouth, a cocktail of pleasure moving around my head.

  I dig my fingernails into his leather jacket, wishing I could tear the jacket away and reveal the muscle beneath. I ride that thought, thinking what it would be like to rip the jacket off and show the bursting muscle beneath, the massive pectorals and the hard-packed abs. The kiss deepens as I think about it, and Rust reaches down and grabs my ass, one strong hand gripping me so hard I can envision my skin turning red. My whole body feels as though the skin is turning red: burning beneath the surface.

  I move my hands down his jacket, smoothing my hands over the leather, meaning to go down to the front of his jeans. My fingers have just moved to the coldness of his belt buckle when I realize what I’m doing.

  I am aggressively making out with a man, about to go further with a man, in public. Not only that, but I do not know this man. I only met this man a few hours ago. Sure, he saved me from those bikers, but that doesn’t mean I owe him anything. That doesn’t mean I should just throw away my reason, my sensibilities. I would never normally do this, but that is why it’s exciting, isn’t it? But just because it’s exciting, it doesn’t mean I should do it. What about the consequences?

  For a few more minutes, we kiss, but my hands do not stray further than his belt buckle, and soon I feel myself disconnecting from the situation, the physical sensations feeling as though they come from very far away. My inner voice of reason explains to me, in prissy yet reasonable tones, that this is a mistake. I do not know this man; we are outside. Somebody from work might see me, and then where will I be?

  My hand moves up to his leather again, but this time instead of clawing I lay my palm flat against him and push softly. He keeps kissing, moaning through our lips, and for another moment I sink back into the kiss. But then I lean back and push his chest again. “No,” I say, pulling away. “I don’t—no.”

  He pauses, watching me closely, but not stepping away just yet. His face is tinged slightly red, but nowhere near as red as mine feels. I get the sense that he’s looking at me to judge if I really mean it. Those black eyes are penetrating. I say: “I mean it, Rust. I’m going to call a cab.”

  He watches me for another moment, and then shrugs. “Alright, sweetheart.” He steps away.

  We stand apart in the alleyway. I glance around: overturned trash cans, spilling condoms and rotting banana peels and soda cans onto the concrete; grimy, graffiti-covered walls; a rat scurrying across the ground, tail whipping behind it. And I was about to have sex here�
�here, where, if you glance street-wise, you can see a few people walking to and fro at the mouth of the alleyway.

  “I’m going now,” I say, looking into Rust’s face, waiting for him to protest.

  That is what most men would do now, I’m sure. They’d try and persuade me to stay, try and reason me back into passion, not knowing that you can never use reason to make a woman feel that burning desire, even if she felt it moments before. But he doesn’t do that. He just watches me, that cocky smile on his lips, not appearing to care one way or the other.

  “Alright,” he says, after a long pause. “Do you want a ride, or—”

  “I’ll call a cab,” I say. I know that if I agree to a ride, I’ll be tempted to kiss him again, and in the confines of my car—or worse still, my apartment—I know where that kiss would lead. And even if it would be pleasurable, it would also be a mistake. I don’t know him, I’m not that sort of girl, I don’t owe him anything, it just doesn’t feel right…

  I stop, realizing I’m trying to convince myself, and then make for the mouth of the alleyway. Rust follows me a moment later, waiting as I call for the cab, and then stuffs his hands in the pocket of his leather and turns away. “I’ll see you around, Allison,” he says, that same knowing smile on his face.

  I nod, and then mutter, “See you around, Rust.”

  I watch him go, hands in his pockets, swaggering, a man without a care in the world. I wonder for a second if I made a mistake, but I tell myself I’m doing the right thing, that I’m too tipsy to make that decision right this second anyhow.

  Chapter Five

  Rust

  I turn around at the end of the street and watch as she climbs into the cab, still finding this experience a mixture of funny and blue-ball-inducing. There’s nothing quite like getting hot and heavy with a woman and then having her end it before it really gets going. Sure, that hasn’t happened to me since I was about fourteen, but I remember the feeling. The feeling like your balls are about to burst like overripe grapes. She climbs into the cab quickly, not glancing down the street, and so I turn away and head back toward my bike.

  The walk does me good, cooling me off a little, and by the time I reach my bike, I’m able to view the afternoon as more funny than anything else. I climb onto the bike and start the engine, revving it loud, and then head toward the clubhouse. It was damn fun, I’ve got to admit, even if it didn’t go further. She felt incredible in my arms, her lips were soft, her body was tight and bouncy. Best of all was the way she moaned as we kissed, almost as though she didn’t want to be moaning but couldn’t help herself. I’m sure I’ll be hearing those moans for a long time to come.

  Yeah, it was fun, but truth be told if she’s going to get my blood hot like that and then just take off, it’s probably for the best that we’re not going to see each other again. I like women, fuckin’ love them in fact, but I don’t like women who string men along. Malicious women. Women who try and do to men what my mother did to Dad, cheating on him, playing him, twisting him: killing him. Dammit. I push the thought far down, where it belongs. It’s odd, because I never normally think about it these days, having squashed it a long time ago. Maybe something about Allison …no, I kill that thought, too. Saving, talking, even getting close to a woman isn’t about to crack open my chest and spill all that shit out. No fuckin’ way.

  I get to the clubhouse, which sits on the outskirts of the city, a squat wide one-story building split into two parts: the dormitory wing and the bar wing. I head into the bar, past the pinned-up leather of the first Damned member, long before my time, and past dozens of framed photographs of other Damned members, the latest including me and the others, kneeling in the sun smiling like fools. The place is empty apart from a pledge standing behind the bar, rag in one hand and glass in the other, and Zeke, who sits in the corner, sipping whisky. I take a glass from the pledge and go and join him.

  Zeke is tall at six one, a couple of inches shorter than me, and he’s leaner. His face is open, welcoming, but it’s a chameleon face because it can change to vicious and terrifying or sincere and kind depending on his mood. His dusty blonde hair is tied in a ponytail, and his hands are covered in tribal tattoos. When I sit down next to him, he slides the bottle of whisky across the table.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask, pouring myself a glass.

  We sit in the corner, overlooking the bar, the pool table, the door which leads to Shackle’ office: the President’s office. And the long council table where we hold our meetings.

  “Business,” Zeke says. “Or at home, or out drinking. You and me have been put on the unpatched, so we’re holding off on the regular running for a while.”

  “Alright.”

  I think back to the days when Mouse was in charge. Mouse—who was six seven, a giant compared even with me—became my father when my own father went to the grave. He was a cheerful, life-loving man, a man who didn’t take the business side as serious as the fun side. But then Mouse stepped down and Shackle took over, and Shackle definitely sees the business as just that—business.

  “So our job is to fuck up the unpatched when we see them?”

  “Yeah,” Zeke replies. “And to investigate, all that shit.” He glances at me, and then offers a small smile. I like Zeke, probably like Zeke more than any other man in The Damned; he’s my friend, my partner, and ’cause he’s smaller and younger than me, I sometimes see him as a little brother. “Something happened while you were out, man.”

  “You a fuckin’ mind reader now?” I pour myself another whisky, and then drain it.

  “Nah, but I’ve been around you enough to know when something’s up.”

  “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, man,” I reply. “Are you Oprah now or something?”

  Zeke grins again, scratching the scar under his left eye: a triangular scar left by the heel of a mark’s boot a few years back. “I don’t give a shit one way or the other. I’m just saying.”

  We sit in silence for a while, drinking the whisky until both of us are tipsy, which takes a whole lot of whisky; the bottle is almost empty. I turn to Zeke and mutter: “I met a girl whilst I was out, on my way back from the protection job.”

  “No shit? Where’d you meet her? I thought that job was an old man and his wife …wait, you didn’t fuck the wife, did you?”

  “Why don’t you listen when I talk if you want to learn so goddamn much?” I laugh. “I said I met her on the way back. I was cruising and saw the unpatched, Trent and those pricks, looking like they were ready to tool up this girl. So I stopped them.”

  Zeke sits up. “You saw the unpatched?”

  I nod.

  “Well, fuck …how are they doing? They tough?”

  I shake my head. “I chased them off, no problem, and there were six of them. They’re green.”

  Zeke sits back. “I thought as much. So this girl, I guess you did the normal Rust routine.”

  “The fuck is the ‘Rust routine’?”

  “You know what I’m saying. You did your fuck and chuck routine.”

  Classic Zeke…he goes in for relationships, whereas I go in for quicker, hotter encounters. Zeke isn’t soft or anything like that. He just likes the longer experience of getting to know a woman and all that shit, something which has never appealed to me much.

  “No,” I say, after a moment of reflection, ’cause I know exactly what he’s thinking: why am I still talking about her if we didn’t have sex, when I would never talk about another woman I didn’t have sex with?

  Sure enough, he points that out. “I’ve never know you to talk about women much at all, really,” he adds. “There must be something special about this one.”

  “Special.” We look at each other for a few seconds, and then burst out laughing.

  “I’m serious, man,” Zeke says, holding his hand up for the pledge to bring another bottle of whisky over. He places it down, takes the empty bottle, and leaves us. As Zeke pours a drink, he says, “You have never, in all the too-long fuckin’ years I’
ve known you, talked to me about a woman beyond nodding at her and saying you think she’s sexy. What the fuck?”

  “You asked,” I snapped, taking the bottle and pouring myself a drink.

  Zeke holds his hands up. “Calm down,” he says. “I don’t want to have to tool you up.”

  “Ha, fucking, ha,” I reply. “I’d love to see that.”

  We both drink in silence for another few minutes, and then Zeke says, “Are you still thinking about this girl, then?”