golden retrievers have teeth, too.
1025 Words
Luke:
I couldn’t get her out of my damn head.
She walked in like a thunderstorm dressed in leather and gasoline. And I sat there like a fool, a front-row seat to a show I had no business watching—but couldn’t tear my eyes from.
SIREN-13.
That plate was burned into my brain like it had been branded there. Could’ve recited it in my sleep. Could’ve drawn it from memory. Hell, probably already had in the margins of my damn notepad. The kind of thing a rookie did. Not me.
But she wasn’t just a plate number.
She was heat and smoke and eyes that didn’t blink.
A walking warning label.
And I’d never wanted to ignore one more in my life.
We got back to the precinct in the early afternoon. Sun still high, city still angry. Rodriguez peeled off toward the vending machine like it owed him something, muttering about needing caffeine.
I told him I had paperwork.
Only half a lie. The parking ticket I was supposed to write up was still sitting in my cruiser’s glove box, curled and stained from too many refills of shitty coffee. It could wait. She couldn’t.
I sat down at my desk, boots heavy on the linoleum, chair groaning beneath me like it knew something I didn’t. I fired up the terminal. Old beast wheezed and flickered like it hated being asked to work. Same hum around me as always—phones, radios, someone in the back losing their s**t over the printer jam. White noise. Forgettable.
But my heart was too loud for any of it to register.
I opened the DMV database. Cursor blinking. Waiting.
I hesitated.
Not because I was scared. Because I wasn’t supposed to want this much to know.
I typed it in.
SIREN-13.
Enter.
There she was.
Alexandra 'Alex' Donovan.
29.
Address tied to a converted garage on the edge of town—half biker hangout, half war zone. No current job listed. No license suspensions.
Affiliation flagged: suspected member of the Siren's Syndicates.
Bingo.
I scrolled. Assault. Disturbing the peace. Resisting arrest. All dropped. Charges that never stuck. Someone with friends—or someone who knew how to keep blood off her hands.
No convictions.
Not clean—but not dirty enough to touch.
And her photo...
Jesus Christ.
She wasn’t smiling. Of course not. Her jaw was set like stone, lips a s***h of defiance, hair wild around her face like a lioness caught mid-prowl. Same ring on eyebrow—glinting in the DMV light like a secret dare.
I leaned back, rubbing my jaw.
She looked like she’d spit on rules just to watch them dissolve.
And I wanted to know how she got that way.
Why she wore defiance like perfume.
How someone could carry that kind of energy and not burn the world down.
She wasn’t like the women I knew. She didn’t preen. Didn’t posture. She existed like a loaded gun—holstered, but always ready.
I clicked through to the MC’s case file.
The Siren's Syndicates were a myth until a couple years ago. Some precincts still treated them like urban legends—like biker folklore. But not me. I saw them in flesh and chrome and red f*****g lipstick.
Women like her didn’t follow rules.
They wrote new ones in blood.
Bar brawls. Chop shop fires. Smuggling rumors. Drugs? Maybe. Weapons? More likely. No ties to the cartel. Too messy. These girls ran their own s**t. All-female MC. No patch-sharing. No men. Just women who lived by their own creed.
Whispers of vigilante work, but nothing ever proven. A handful of victims with broken jaws and no comment.
I couldn’t pin her down. That’s what messing with me.
I’d spent my whole career profiling people. Putting them in boxes. Addict. Abuser. Victim. Liar.
But her?
She didn’t fit any box.
She was the damn box.
And it was locked tight with a warning: Try me.
My phone buzzed.
I didn’t answer.
I clicked through the notes. Nothing solid. Just theories and heat and missed chances. She’d slipped through fingers before—mine wouldn’t be any different unless I played this smart.
“You working overtime, Jennings?”
Rodriguez’s voice broke my focus.
I flipped the screen off. Too fast. Rookie move.
“Just finishing the report,” I muttered.
He cracked open his soda. “Sure. Looked like a DMV file.”
I shrugged. “Needed to confirm a plate. Diner thing.”
He didn’t push.
He knew the rules. What you don’t ask, you don’t have to lie about.
But my brain was still back at that diner, still hearing the gravel under her boots, still seeing the way she leaned on that bike like it was part of her spine. Confident. Controlled. Chaotic.
The kind of woman who'd ruin you—and you’d thank her for it.
Rodriguez started rambling again about Alyssa and some voodoo candle bullshit. I nodded along, but I wasn’t listening.
All I could think about was Alex Donovan and how she looked at me like I wasn’t dangerous.
Like she was.
And she was right.
Because deep down, I wasn’t the monster in this town.
But I was about to walk straight into one.
Later that night, I couldn’t sleep.
Golden retriever soul, my ass. Yeah, I smiled easy. Helped old ladies cross the street. Didn’t like my eggs runny or my whiskey smoky. I was the guy your mom hoped you brought home. The good one.
But even golden retrievers have teeth.
And something about her made mine ache to get a taste.
I lay in bed, one arm flung over my eyes, the other still curled around my phone. That photo of her still burned behind my lids.
I wanted more than her name. I wanted her story.
Her scars.
Her soft spots—if she even had any.
And yeah, God help me, I wanted every inch of her body, too.
Tomorrow I’d drive past that address.
Just once.
Call it professional curiosity.
But I already knew better.
It wasn’t professional.
And it wasn’t going to be just once.
- Writer
