HIS BRANDED BRIDE: Steel Devils MC

by Sophia Gray

  We pulled into the driveway, and he pulled off into my yard. I could see right away that something wasn’t right with the house. The front door stood ajar. I had locked it when I came outside to meet Cole, and I had my keys in my pocket. As he stopped the bike, I tapped his shoulder and pointed at the house.

  He killed the engine and got off the bike. He pulled his helmet off and turned back to me.

  “Stay behind me. We need to take a look inside.”

  I got off and set my helmet on the back of the motorcycle, hurrying to follow him inside. He slowly pushed my front door open and stepped into the living room from the entryway. I came in right behind him, and I saw it before he said anything.

  The house was trashed. Someone had come in and ransacked the entire thing. It looked like they were looking for something. I didn’t know what there was to look for in my house.

  “Call the police. I’m going to check the rest of the house, make sure it’s clear,” Cole said in a low tone.

  As he walked deeper into the house, I grabbed my phone and headed back outside. Except I didn’t call the police. I called my ex.

  “Hello?” he groaned out.

  “Are you just waking up?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, I took a nap. What do you want, Lilah?” He had no problem making it clear he didn’t like hearing from me.

  The feeling was mutual.

  “Listen, Troy, Micah is sick. He’s at the nurse’s office up at the school,” I started.

  “Okay, why don’t you get him?” he snapped.

  “Because someone broke into my house, Troy.” I looked closely at the broken doorframe and the large dent in the front door. “They kicked in my front door and ransacked the house.”

  “Shit,” he said under his breath.

  “Yes, Troy, ‘shit’ is right,” I snapped, growing more impatient with him by the moment.

  “Look, I’m sorry about that.”

  “You’re sorry about that? What do you know about it?” I put my hand on my hip like he was right there with me.

  “It was someone I owe money to. He said he was going to do it, but I thought he was full of shit. Make sure everything is still there,” he said.

  “Yeah, I’ve got someone checking the house right now,” I told him, knowing full well that it was going to make him jealous. Even though we were divorced, he couldn’t stand the idea of someone else talking to me, male or female.[LC1]

  “Good,” he said, surprisingly enough. “You don’t need to be fooling around in there by yourself.”

  “Thanks for the advice. Are you going to go get Micah or not?”

  “Yeah, I’m getting in the car now. Hey, don’t call the cops or anything, okay? I’m going to handle this on my own. I’m heading out of town after I pick Micah up. I’ve got to get away for a little while – until everything calms down.” He said it like it was a fact I had to accept.

  “You’re bringing Micah to me first though, right?”

  “No, I’m taking him with me.”

  “You can’t do that, Troy. You know you can’t do that,” I warned.

  “He’ll be safe. We’ll both be safe. You need to get away from that house as well – keep yourself safe. I’ve got to go. I’ll be at the school in just a minute.”

  The line went dead just as Cole was walking back outside. I gripped my phone in my shaking hand and tried to blink back the tears. It wasn’t working. I was starting to cry.

  “The house is clear,” he said, walking up to me. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?” He put his hands on my upper arms – a gentle, soothing touch – and he bent down, so our eyes were level with each other.

  “He’s taking my son. He’s going to the school to get him, and he’s taking him away.”

  “Who’s taking him?” Cole asked.

  “Troy, my ex,” I said through chest-racking sobs.

  “Where is he taking him?”

  “I-I-I don’t know,” I stammered. “I have no clue.” I looked at him and shook my head in disbelief that any of this was even happening.

  What the hell? What’s going on?

  “Hey, it’s okay,” he said, pulling me close to him and wrapping me in an embrace. “We’ll figure it out, and we’ll get your son back.”

  I wanted to believe him.

  Chapter Six

  Cole

  “First thing you need to do is call the police,” I told her, holding her safe in my arms. It was instinct that grabbed her and held her against me to protect her. Regardless of whatever I thought about her, she needed someone to hold her at that moment, but she also needed someone to remind her of the right things to do to get through it.

  “But he said not to. He said he was going to handle it,” she argued.

  “How is he going to handle it if he’s running off with your son? Does he know who did this?” I asked her, my voice getting louder and more heated than I really wanted.

  She nodded. “He said it was one of his ‘business’ partners, someone he owes money. They were apparently trying to find something to pay off some of his debt.”[LC2]

  I raised an eyebrow. I wasn’t hearing that shit. They picked the wrong house and the wrong family.

  “You don’t owe them shit,” I blurted out. “His debt to them is not yours, especially now that you’re divorced.”

  She shrugged it off. “I get why they did it though.”

  “Yeah, I do, too, and it’s crap. I get it. You and Micah are still his family, so they hit you guys to get to him. But you’re out of it now. You’re divorced. Unless you had something to do with whatever dirt he was doing, you should be considered off-limits.” I wanted to say more, but talking was just making me angrier.

  “I appreciate the thought, but what do I do now?” she asked.

  “Call the cops. Give them any information you have when they show up. Let them see the house. If these guys are any good, it’ll take the police a while to find them, but they’ll know the cops are looking for them. Plus, it’ll give you leverage in case anything else happens,” I explained, urging her to do it even though he told her not to.

  Lilah backed away and pulled out her phone. I watched as she stood by herself and dialed 9-1-1. She talked to the person on the other end of the line for a moment, holding her fingers up to her mouth like she was trying to keep herself from biting her nails. After she hung up, she looked at me with fear and sadness in her green eyes.

  “Will you stay with me?” she asked. “At least until the police arrive. I’m sorry to drag you into this.”

  “No, it’s fine,” I told her. “I’ll stay as long as you need me to. I’m not going anywhere.”

  We sat down on the steps leading to her front door. She leaned her head on my shoulder, and I put an arm around her. We sat quietly. I knew she was thinking the worst for her kid. I wished I knew the right thing to say to make it easier for her, but I had no clue what she needed to hear.

  The police finally arrived. I stepped aside to let her talk to one of the officers while the other one surveyed the inside of the house. I watched her handle herself with the cops. The same woman who’d rested her head on my shoulder, afraid of what was going to happen to her son, stood and talked to the police like it was all just a matter of business.

  The officer who searched the house called me over as he walked outside. He recognized me from previous run-ins. We had talked many times before.

  “Saw,” he said, cutting his eyes toward his partner and Lilah, making sure they weren’t listening to us, “do you know anything?”

  I caught myself checking over my shoulder, too, as I answered, “All I know is she talked to her ex-husband, and he seemed to know something, but she didn’t really say either way. Other than that, I have no clue what happened here today.”

  “Good deal.” He patted my shoulder. “Keeping your nose clean. I like that. I’ll get with my partner and see what he was able to get from her,” he said, walking over to stand next to his partner.

  The three of
them talked a little longer before the officer who had been talking to Lilah from the start shook her hand and put his pad back in his pocket. He nodded at me while his partner started back towards the patrol car. When they got into their car, I stepped up and put an arm around her.

  “They said they’ll look into it. I told them about Troy taking Micah and that I didn’t know where he was taking him,” she said. “They said they’ll do what they can to find them both.” She pressed herself into my side, shrinking away from where she’d been talking with the officers.

  “Well, in the meantime, let’s get you somewhere safe,” I told her.

  “Where would that be? Where else am I supposed to stay?”

  “Look, you can come to the MC’s clubhouse and stay until this passes over. I’ll be there. You’ll be safe. There are always members and old ladies up there. Stuff like this never happens there.” I watched her face to see when the hesitation finally melted away. It was going to take more convincing, I could tell.

  “I don’t know.” She glanced at the house. “I know it’s not safe for me to stay here, in case they come back, but I feel like I need to be at the house. Can’t you stay with me here?”

  “If the people who broke into your house have your ex-husband running with your son for safety, no, I don’t want to be here if and when they come back,” I explained with a laugh. “You’ll be fine for a night or two at the clubhouse. It’s not permanent, I know, but it gives us time to figure out what to do next.”

  She hesitated a little longer, still looking into her wrecked house. I could see the wheels turning as she weighed her options. I didn’t really say any other options. We might have been able to get a hotel room instead of staying at the clubhouse, but we wouldn’t have been as safe.

  “Okay,” she finally said. Then, she turned to look at me, pleading with her eyes for me to help. “I need to grab a few things first,” she said, and I knew she was really asking me to help her grab what she needed for a few days at the clubhouse.

  “Lead the way. I’ll help,” I told her.

  We walked into the house, and she grabbed a tote bag from the closet in the entryway. I followed her through the house as she grabbed a few things from her bathroom. I sat on her bed while she went into her closet to pull out a couple of shirts and a pair of jeans.

  Without thinking about it, she went to her dresser and pulled out the drawer with her panties in it. She picked out a couple of pairs and held them up, presumably to judge whether or not they were what she really wanted to wear. I wondered what the mint green lace pair would look like on her and what it would feel like to run my hands over them before pulling them off. Our eyes met in the mirror, and she blushed, immediately folding them and stuffing them into the bag at her feet.

  She grabbed a couple of other things and discreetly stuffed them into the bag before I could see them. I didn’t say anything about what I saw, but I couldn’t help imagining what the lace panties I’d seen would have looked like on her with her pale skin peeking through the fabric.

  I caught myself wondering the same things about her I always wondered about women I wanted sexually. I wondered how she kept herself – shaved, trimmed, or all natural. I wanted to see her body. While she gathered whatever else she was grabbing from atop her dresser, I wondered what she would look like bent over with her jeans and panties on the floor. Her eyes watched me in the mirror like she could tell what I was thinking. I imagined those eyes staring at me while I stood behind her, pushing her against the side of the dresser with each thrust.

  I looked away and wiped the thoughts from my mind. I wanted her, but the time wasn’t right. I couldn’t take advantage of her by trying to get her in bed right now.

  “Okay, I think I’m ready,” she said, turning around with her bag in hand. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to follow you in my car,” she added. “I can’t give up my freedom like that. I have to be able to move around if I decide to.”

  I smiled. She was going to fit in just fine. “Yeah, definitely. Follow me straight to the clubhouse, so you don’t get lost.”

  “Don’t go flying, so I can’t keep up with you,” she retorted, raising an eyebrow.

  I nodded. “Nice. Come on.”

  We tried to close the front door as we were leaving, but the jam was broken. With the damage to the door where it had been kicked in, it wouldn’t close anyway. I tried rigging it, closing it a certain way, pulling it all the way, and a few other things to make it stay shut, but it wasn’t going to happen on its own.

  “Okay, you got a back door or side door?” I asked her.

  “Yeah, we can go out the back,” she answered.

  “Good. Let me get something to brace the door, and I’ll follow you out the back. That way we can lock your house up as much as possible instead of leaving it open,” I explained. I went into her dining room and grabbed one of the chairs at her table. It was the perfect height to brace the doorknob with it. I pulled on the door a few times, but it wouldn’t budge against the chair.

  “If they want in now, they’re going to have to try to break the door down again,” I told her. “Let’s just make their job a bit harder for them.” I pointed out the damage from the last time they’d kicked her door in.

  We went out the back. She locked the door and tried it, making sure it was locked. We walked around to the front of the house, where she climbed into her car, and I hopped on my motorcycle. I pulled out of the driveway with her behind me and led her to the clubhouse.

  We pulled up to the clubhouse, and she pulled over to park with the other cars off to the side while I pulled my bike up alongside the others parked in front of the open bay door. A few members were hanging out – drinking, watching TV, doing the same shit we did every day – and no one seemed to notice when I walked her into the building.

  “Can I get a shower?” Lilah asked when we got up to the third floor, where my room was. The rooms on the third floor were more permanent. While second-floor rooms shared a couple of community baths, like in an old dorm, the third-floor rooms had private baths. They were designed for people who stayed there pretty much every night. Since I spent most of my time at the shop anyway, I didn’t feel the need to have my own place.

  “Yeah, there’s a shower in my room,” I told her. “You can have a bath if you want.”

  I unlocked my door, and we walked in. She entered slowly, taking her time to look around. I closed and locked the door behind us.

  “The bathroom is behind that door,” I told her, pointing at the thin wooden door to the bathroom.

  “Thanks,” she said, putting her bag on the bed and walking in to start the water. “Where are your towels?”

  “In the closet in there.”

  “Found them. Thanks.”

  I heard the shower curtain pull back. A moment later, I heard it close. Her clothes were still in the bag on my bed. I knew she was probably going to want the bag when she got out. That gave me a chance to see her in a towel.

  That was when I noticed the bathroom door wasn’t all the way closed. I peeked in through the crack, and I could see her standing where the shower curtain didn’t close all the way. I shouldn’t have been looking. I knew it. But she’d positioned herself so perfectly for me to see her body, it was like she wanted me to look at her.

  Her body was so perfectly shaped. I could see the subtle curve of her back, running down to her tight little ass. I saw her perky pale breasts with her puffy pink nipples. I imagined cupping my hands perfectly around her and running my fingers across her peaks until they hardened. She never turned completely around, so I still didn’t know how the prize between her legs looked.

  I felt myself growing hard as I waited for her and watched her. She tilted her head back and let the water run down her hair. The striking red of her hair plus the porcelain white skin was almost too much to bear.

  I pulled off my shirt and lay back against the pillows, forcing myself to turn away. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see her, a
nd I tried to force from my mind all the thoughts of taking that little body and making it mine.

  Chapter Seven

  Lilah

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Micah. As the hot water rushed over my face and down my back, all I could think of every time I closed my eyes was Troy nabbing him from school and dragging him off somewhere with him. Who knew where they were going? Who knew how far they’d already gotten while I had waited at the house for the police and spent however long talking to them about what had happened?