everyone," she said. "Hop on."
"One stop shopping?" I laughed.
"Yeah, they all live at a compound out in the desert."
I chuckled. “You’re kidding.” She stared at me blankly, like my joking was puzzlesome. "A what? Fiona, what the hell do you have me getting into," I asked, trepidation coloring my voice now.
"It's not what you think, don't worry," she said with a grin. "It's not a cult or anything. It'll make sense once you meet the guys."
"This doesn't sound right," I said. "Are you sure you're alright?"
“As rain,” she said, looking up at clear skies. “Now let’s go.”
I swung myself up onto the bike as she kicked it to life. The metal monster roared alive beneath me. Fiona eased on the throttle and we slid onto the blacktop.
With my arms holding onto Fiona for dear life, I could feel the difference this new life had made in her. The softness I’d known to rest beneath her ribs was gone, replaced with firm muscle and a confident, arresting posture.
I relaxed for the ride, trusting my friend and confident that if these wild desert men could be so good for her, then surely they couldn’t be so bad for me. Being a mail order bride had its perks.
It took us a good twenty minutes or more before we pulled off the highway down an unpaved road and up to a long, nondescript building. There were a half dozen bikes parked outside. As we rolled up and stopped beside the other rides a mountain of a man came lumbering out of the building.
“Holy shit, that guy’s huge,” I said without thinking.
Fiona laughed as she got off the bike and went over to him. “Yup! And he’s mine.” The giant man wrapped his enormous arm around her and pulled her in close. “Just wait until you meet the others!”
“I’m Marcus,” he said, extending a hand. I could barely shake his top two fingers. “You must be Jasmine.”
“Uh, yeah, that’s me.”
“Fiona’s told me a lot about you,” he said, his voice deep and strong, but friendly. “The boys are very excited to meet you.”
He put a hand on my shoulder and guided me inside. “Oh shit, wait,” shouted Fiona, but it was too late, I was already on my way through the door.
In the main room, lit brightly through the windows, I came face to face with a fear I didn’t know I had. Bears.
Five bears—giant, brown and snarling. They were wrestling with each other in the center of a clearing in the floor. When I walked though they all turned to look at me and growled.
“Oh fuck! Oh fuck!” I went bolting back outside. You might think this is when I began to run for my life and ended up surrounded by wolves. But nope. I ran back over to the bike and shouted at Fiona. “What the fucking fuck!”
Marcus looked down at her with a suspicious brow cocked. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”
She gritted her teeth, sucking the air between them and shrugging innocently. “I….guess I forgot.”
He rubbed his temples. “That’s really not the sort of thing you should be forgetting about.”
“I’m just used to it I guess.”
My heart was pounding and I was soaking my shirt through with sweat even though it was still cool in the early morning. “I swear to fucking god, Fiona, if this is a cult and you’re going to feed me to a bunch of bears, I swear to fucking god, I will…”
“Relax!” Fiona threw up her hands and started laughing. “It’s nothing like that. You’re not going to be fed to the bears.” She paused. If I’d known what was in that pause, I would have started running right then. “Well, not the way you’re thinking anyway.”
“Fiona, I swear to fuck, stop being cryptic and tell me what’s going on.”
She sighed. “Come here. Go back inside. I promise you they won’t hurt you.”
What convinced me to go back inside? Was it my trust of Fiona? Or did I just not care? Was I so bored? Well, no matter. I went in. The bears stood in a semicircle, staring down at me with liquid-gold eyes.
“Boys,” said Fiona, stepping