Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(3)

Cruising wasn’t what the kids were after, and it didn’t take long for them to tire of the easy pace. When the rider on the green bike held up a gloved thumb and then waved, Rad returned both gestures, and the two crotch rockets surged forward with the high-pitched racket of bumblebees on steroids.

Rad cringed. That was his number-one reason for hating sport bikes. They had no throat at all. When he opened the throttle, he wanted a roar, a rumble, something that would make a civilian quiver in fear, thinking a beast was on his tail, ready to eat him, not swat at his neck, expecting to be stung by a bug.

Not long after his young Kawa bees had flown off, another bike pulled into the lane beside Rad’s. As always, he took note. A little Harley sportster with a silver tank. The rider was wearing full gear, even an armored jacket, and a solid black full-face helmet. But Rad could tell it was a chick—that ass, sheathed in black riding leather, was a work of art. Jesus on a biscuit.

Ascertaining that she was solo, he slowed up just enough to get her a bit more forward and then settled in to appreciate the view.

Since he’d slowed, Griffin pulled up at his flank and waved at him, checking in. Rad gave him a thumbs up. He was great. He was building up a nice picture in his head of what that ass might look like naked and rocking on his cock.

Then the hot ass on the little Harley turned that black face shield and pointed it right at him. He could see nothing—f*ck, for all he knew, it was a dude with a feminine shape in there, not that he was going to let that thought stomp around on his fantasy—but still he felt sure that it was a she, that she was fully aware that he’d been checking her out, and that she was letting him know she knew.

She faced forward again and opened her throttle, pulling up ahead, lane splitting and putting some distance between her and the Bulls.

They were within an hour of Tulsa, though. The afternoon was getting old, the shadows were long, and traffic was thickening up. Lane splitting was illegal and drew unwanted attention, so most riders resisted the urge. On straightaways, he could still glimpse the Kawa bees. Hot Ass wasn’t getting far.

He entertained the thought he might follow her a ways, if she pulled off before the Bulls did. He was curious what was under that helmet and that armored jacket.

Letting his mind play around with that thought, Rad settled in for the last leg of this long ride.



oOo



Fifteen minutes later, all thoughts of how that ass might feel in his hands were gone.

Rad saw it all happen.

The road lay before him like a ribbon, rising just enough to clear the view, like standing at the bottom of an amphitheater and looking up into the seats. About a mile ahead, maybe a little less, with the last of the sun glinting off their cladding, he could still make out the bright green and red flashes of the Kawa pair, heading up the rise of the road.

Hot Ass had almost caught up to them; she was about three or four cars behind.

A f*ckwit in some kind of cage—Rad could name most bikes at some distance, but cages these days all looked the same to him—was starting to get ragey in the thickening traffic on this spring Sunday evening. Rad had seen him do the move drivers did where they shoved themselves into a space barely as long as their cage, then tailgated until they could shove themselves in front of a vehicle in the next lane, like that video game with the frog. That was dangerous shit, especially for bikers, because there was no way the * driving like that was paying attention to anything but the slimmest hint that there was room in the next lane. If that.

Noting that driver make that f*cked-up move three times in succession, Rad had his antennae up. The road was still full of bikers, but the traffic had broken them up some. Few drivers understood that it was bad form to break into a riding formation. They figured if the bikes weren’t all grouped in a knot, they could slide in.

They could, technically. There might be room, technically. But they shouldn’t. They should let the bikes keep together. The best kind of drivers would slow down or pull over, in fact. But pretty much the only drivers who did that were also riders.

If you rode, you knew it was up to you to look out for your own head. Nobody else was going to bother.

Rad had just about enough time to wish there were a way to send a warning up ahead, because those kids on the sport bikes were riding too comfortably, like they believed that everybody on the road with them understood that they had a right to be there.

He wasn’t surprised, therefore, when the rager shoved his cage into the lane and took both Kawas out.

What happened next, however, shocked the shit out of him.

The green Kawa went airborne, its riders flying pell-mell, and the red bike laid down, spinning wildly backward, into traffic. Rad didn’t see either rider part from the bike, but they must have.

The rager’s cage spun forward and stopped facing the median.

“Don’t do it, jackoff,” Rad muttered as he quickly, instinctively maneuvered out of the way of the continuing crash.

He pulled to the shoulder, sensing every bike around him doing the same, and brought his Dyna into the median as the chain reaction went on. Trained to pay attention to his surroundings, he listened and watched. He lost count at ten collisions—they were overlapping each other too much to distinguish—but they were nowhere near done.

The wrecks up at the front were bad—fatally bad. He had every expectation that he’d get up there and find the young bikers in mangled pieces. As the reaction rippled down the line, it finally petered out at fender benders not far ahead of where he and the rest of the Bulls—and another twenty or so patches from other clubs—had come to rest in the median.