“You’re cocky, and you run this club. I honor that and the rules that made up this club. But we are a brotherhood, and you have forgotten that,” I told him.
“The Ladies should leave,” Rex stated.
“No, they fucking stay. I’m not going anywhere,” Jasmin hissed.
“Old Lady doesn’t put you over me. Samuel, check your woman before she gets out of hand,” Rex said.
“Fuck you, Rex. Don’t start with me,” Samuel argued.
“I’m not. But you and I both know you’ve let her have more of a leash than she has deserved. Calling for The Gauntlet is your right, not hers. The only reason it’s still on the table now is because you agreed. Are we less than your Old Lady now? Did the bylaws change?”
I didn’t give him a chance to respond. “No, they haven’t. I would have known about them. And The Gauntlet we will revisit. What is your issue, Samuel? That’s what I want to know. Why does this keep going year after year? You helped me win the Sergeant vote. I protect our members. I retaliate against anyone who even thinks of hurting us. Before Melody came along, your antagonizing stuck to ribbing. Now, blatant disrespect from you and your Old Lady is common place. What do you want from me?”
“You going to let him talk to you like that? This little shit who only stuck with us because he was useful? Tell him how it is, baby,” Jasmin said.
Melody turned toward Samuel. “Who’s the President here, exactly? Seems like she’s running the show.”
And that was what they never would have. Jasmin led Samuel around by the balls and she was too fucking stupid to do it with class. I wanted a woman with fight, who knew how to give up control when I needed it and could take it when she stood behind me. Jasmin would never hold a candle to the woman in my arms.
“This meeting is over. But you know what? Melody, you will run The Gauntlet or we go back the original choice on the fucking table, and I’m all for you saying no,” Samuel sneered.
“Not possible,” I argued.
“And you,” he said, turning on me and ignoring what I said. “You think you mean shit to me? You don’t deserve a fucking Old Lady, you never did. Hell, you didn’t deserve to be one of us. I let you because it fucking pleased me the way you ran around trying too hard to make us happy. I laughed at you as a kid when they fucked you up, and I fucked my woman hard, turned on by your pathetic inroads to trying to be trustworthy.”
Samuel turned to Melody. “You want to know why he’s a fucking worthless pig?”
“That’s too far, Samuel. This isn’t the sort of business for the Ladies to hear, and you’re rehashing shit that should have been over. It’s done,” Rex argued.
“Let him talk, Rex. You’ve had a hard-on for Jack anyway, protecting him ever since his daddy left. You can lose, too,” Sloane said.
“You play that game, let’s go there. We can vote on my removal now for all I care.”
“Shut up, Rex. This isn’t about you. You’ve served this club well, and my father wanted you at my side. You’ll stay there,” Samuel said. “But Jack? He’s another story. You’ve got a decision to make, Melody, but before you do, I want you to know just the sort of man you’re holding on to. I’m not the bad guy here.”
“Samuel,” I growled.
“Too late, Jack. You started this, I’m going to finish it.”
15
Melody
Jack tremble under me as his nails dug into my jeans hard enough to prick the skin underneath. I knew by the morning I’d be covered in bruises, but I didn’t try to relax his hold. No, I held him to me, provided my support. I’d never seen the meeting room before tonight, but the black walls, overstuffed recliner-like seats each biker sat in, and hard Cherrywood table suffocated me. Each item was a statement of power, strength, and control.
Flashes of darkness behind a blindfold ripped through my mind, but I tamped it down. Behind Samuel, who sat at the head of the table with Jasmin on his lap, a metal relief of DE’s colors hung on thick hooks. The snake’s sharp fangs glistened in the light. Black, beady eyes bore into my soul and dared me to make one wrong step.
My throat went dry and I swallowed to moisten it.
How had Jack survived so long among them?
Samuel leaned forward over Jasmin’s body and glared at me. He didn’t care that he would inflict more pain on Jack by spilling this story. He didn’t give a shit that Jack vibrated with anger and the need for violence. Jack’s locked thighs under my ass twitched as my heartbeat thudded.
Part of me wanted Samuel to tell me, to lay it all on the table. I needed to know what had happened to Jack. Understand what made him the way he was and how I could help him. But another part of me feared what it would mean for us. If I knew his secret, would he believe I would turn my back? I didn’t want to step into our bedroom tonight to a cold man with fear forcing his hand to break apart the fragile beginnings of what we could be.
And I realized that was exactly what Samuel hoped.
He wanted me to walk away, to crush Jack. This was never about me. If I died, Jack would feel it. If I knew his past, he’d be humiliated. If I walked away, then Samuel got to destroy me, and Jack would go back to being the perfect soldier. And he may never fight his leash again. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming. The club was supposed to be about coming together, loving each other, and the ride. About fucking the system and living by their own codes. But for Samuel it was all a game. The members were pawns for his enjoyment. He made me sick.
“My father, Collin, used to be President, you know? He and his Vice President, Garret, planned this club when they were in their teens. They barely had money for the bikes they rode, but they knew what they wanted to do. Vietnam changed a lot of people. Soldiers came back home to hatred, and heroes were forgotten. My father didn’t want that to happen, not to the brothers he’d fought with. So they made DE,” Samuel started.
“Rex came on the team later, about ten years after the charter team, but he was accepted as one of the old school, the council, so to speak. Anyway, some of them got married, popped out a few kids young and shit. One boy, the Vice President’s son, we grew up together.”
I knew before he said it that the boy he talked about was Jack.
“The club welcomed us, and there were whispers we’d run the place together. The two of us didn’t care. We wanted to ride our bikes faster, push harder, and fuck as many women as we could. We were young teens, and that’s all that mattered. Then I became Road Captain, to start teaching me the ropes, and things between us changed. I couldn’t be around as much anymore, and Garret always seemed agitated. He didn’t want Jack around me as often.”
He sighed and looked over at Jack. “Then the cops came. I was just sixteen when they took my father. Jack’s, too, and we fought like hell. Ended up in the jail cells right beside them. Club bailed us out the next day, but you know who didn’t come home? My father. Yeah, Garret came back, saying things were going to work and he’d have to leave for a while. Asked Jack to go, but Jack wouldn’t leave. They had a lot of talks in private, those two, but I didn’t believe Jack or his father would turn on me. Not until the trial. Two years later, Garret was State’s Witness, only he wasn’t called Garret anymore. He’d changed his name, moved away, and left his son behind. When we asked Jack about what he knew, he didn’t tell us a thing. Wouldn’t snitch on his old man. He knew something, and he held it away from us. My best friend, the one who’d fought with me. He knew what was coming and didn’t help me or my father. My dad got life, I took over the club, and Jack got punishment. It was that or death. No one betrays us like that.”
“I didn’t know a thing,” Jack said. “You just didn’t listen to me.”
“All those fucking conversations in private and you want me to believe you didn’t know? Hell, you knew where your dad was those two years and never told us.”
“You would have killed him, and the shit didn’t add up,” Jack said.
Samuel slammed to his feet, throwing Jasm
in off his lap. “You fucking cocksucker, he needed to die. My father is gone. Died in a fucking jail cell in that first year. That wasn’t a suicide. Someone had him killed, and it was your piece-of-shit father. You know why I keep you around? Because one day I’m going to find him and gut him like the pig he is.”
Chaos exploded as Jack leapt to his feet. He did it so fast, I fell to the table. I hissed when my hipbone banged the edge but I got between Jack and Samuel.
“Enough,” Rex yelled. “That ain’t how we do shit here, Sam. We never have.”
“I don’t give a shit!” Samuel yelled. Sloane’s arms bulged as he held him back. Jack stood still but his eyes were alive. His fingers twitched, and I laced mine with his, trying to distract him.
“Choose your battles,” I whispered, hoping he’d hear me. We wouldn’t make it out alive if he started fighting now. Rex might have helped, but his wife was present and he’d try to get her out first. No one else knew what was happening, and outside this room, the other bikers would answer Samuel’s call on reflex.
I needed to distract them.
I turned against Jack and pressed my butt against him. “Hey, Sam? I’ll run The Gauntlet.”
Everyone froze. Samuel blinked at me before he laughed. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Does it matter?” I asked. “You told me the story, it doesn’t change a thing. I’m willing to do anything to be Jack’s Old Lady, and if it takes doing that, I’m fine with it.”
Jack wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me tight to him.
“Tomorrow night then,” Samuel said. “If she doesn’t put out, then both of you are gone.”
“Samuel—”
“Rex, I’ve had just about enough of you. I’m done with it. Take it or leave it, Jack.”
“My girl says she can do it, then she will.”
“You don’t even know what you agreed to!” Jack yelled as soon as we got in the room. He paced back and forth, his boots clomping on the floor with each step. He ripped his leather off and tossed on the floor before he spun on me.
“Do you know what they want you to do?” He stalked to me and gripped my face in his hot hands. “They want me to fuck you.”
“You do that quite well already.”
“In front of them. In front of everyone, right in the middle of that fucking bar. And you agreed. If you can’t do it, we are done for.”
I blinked up at him. At first I couldn’t comprehend his words. “What?”
His air soughed out of him as he backpedaled. “Fuck. Me. Publicly.”
I swallowed as he ripped of his shirt and tossed it to the side. His muscles worked, bunching and flexing as he ran his fingers through his hair. His gaze darted back and forth to me. They wanted me to show my ass in front of everyone. I didn’t understand how that would prove a thing.
“That is crazy. What does that do for them?”
“Humiliates us, that’s what it does. Puts us on display. It’s an old fucking rule he’s pulling out of his ass, and you accepted the challenge. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
With me? He wondered what was wrong with me? “Nothing, you ungrateful ass. I did it for you! I didn’t care what it was because he tried to strip you in there. I’m sorry, that’s your father, but who cares what he did when it came to you? All these years, and he’s holding that against you? You came to save me, and you didn’t throw me away after Fix.”
The room went silent.
Jack shook his head, ignoring what I’d said. “It doesn’t make sense to you, and I get it, but we grew up with this, Melody. We didn’t know how else to live, and when my father turned on them, it rocked Samuel to the core. And I did know where my father was those two years before the trial. He kept trying to get me to go with him, but I just couldn’t leave Samuel behind, not after what my father did.”
“You stayed because you thought you owed him?”
Jack didn’t answer me, but he didn’t have to. I read it in the way he averted his gaze.
“Shit hit the fan. Samuel knew me better than anyone, and he couldn’t let it go that I would hold something back from him.”
“So he beat you?” Were we in the Stone Age?
“They all did. I thought there was something still there between Samuel and me when he didn’t put me to death. He could have. Ousting from the club isn’t about walking away clean and living your life in another state. Once you belong to the Diamond Eaters, you always do. He let me live, and I was thankful to accept punishment. Lashes for every year my father ran the organization with his father and lied to them.”
“And the burns?”
“For the years I’d known Samuel.”
“And the tattoos?”
“For me, so I never forgot the rules I broke, and I let them beat it in, until my blood ran with the words.”
Jack slammed the door of the bathroom in my face, and I let him go as I sank on the bed. I still didn’t understand it all. The words made sense—they lined up, and my brain understood them—but I couldn’t get why anyone would love anything so much they’d take that. Then I thought of Jack, and my heart swelled. Every day he worked, he atoned for both his and his father’s sins. He smiled and laughed, befriended, and protected, and yet, a part of him held himself on the outside. Rex loved Jack. I didn’t doubt it. He just didn’t want to trust it. And he wouldn’t now, not after Fix.
They’d all had a hand in his punishment, and it had broken him as much as it bound him.
These were the men who’d raised him, the family he loved, and he bled to prove it. No, I’d been asked to give a part of myself. Could I do it, even for him? The bed cushioned my body and I leaned over to bury my face in Jack’s pillow. His earthy musk filled my nose. His touch electrified me, pushed me, broke me down and rebuilt me into something else. I didn’t even know who I was anymore.
Just a short time ago, I walked the streets, looking for a vicious fuck against brick walls in open streets. I didn’t care if anyone saw me or if they thought I was a whore. It made me feel alive, strong, and in control. I demanded those men to service me, to worship my body, and hurt me just like I needed. I made the choice. No amount of fighting or running would save me from Jack. It wouldn’t. And I didn’t want to. What I needed was for the man in that shower—the one who feared I would turn away, who let them walk all over him because he wanted their acceptance and forgiveness—to stomp on them until they begged him for mercy.
I could deal with making love to him in public.
What I couldn’t deal with was him giving in and not fighting back.
16
Jack
The water pelted my skin as I closed my eyes and let it wash over me. I focused on the beads as they raced down my chest, meeting with others, and dripped off my body. In my head I counted each one, focused on the monotony to calm me. Samuel flayed my old wounds open with practiced ease, and I’d given in to the old taunts, all because Melody had heard it. I knew better than to do that shit. Samuel would keep on hitting if I let him.
Fourteen years. Fourteen years I’d dealt with this shit, all because I still loved the boy Samuel had once been. Because I cherished the club my father had built. And because I believed I could be redeemed. But nothing would soothe Samuel, save the death of both my father and me, and I thought that even after then, he’d still have anger buried in his heart. His father would never come home from jail, and he’d never have a chance at a relationship, to earn his father’s respect.
Instead, he systematically ridiculed, undermined, and disrespected the rules his father had built, only because he knew there were others who had nowhere to go, who wouldn’t leave the organization behind without dying. Soon, Samuel would ruin the relationship with the originals in the club, and the new blood coming in wouldn’t reflect any of the old teachings. I refused to let a group like that free on Chicago’s streets. The Diamond Eaters were dangerous, hard-partying, and in the underworld, but we protected our own, and our presence had dec
reased the crime rate in the city over the years. I didn’t want to let that go.
The bathroom door creaked open, and I turned my head toward it. I wasn’t ready to see her, so I kept my eyes closed. Not yet. I didn’t want to face her when she told me she couldn’t do this. Somewhere between taking her to keep my name clean and making her my Old Lady, Melody had become necessary. To breathe, to function, to fucking think. I curled my fists at my sides. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this. We had an agreement to survive the shit storm together, but the way my heart quaked and my mind scattered when she touched me made this more. More than fun in bed, more than captive and captor.
It made us something I didn’t want to recognize, something I couldn’t ignore.
“I’ve got one condition after we do this,” she said.
A condition? I opened my eyes slowly. She stood there, naked and waiting. I swallowed and nodded my head. If that’s all she had, I’d meet it.
“Once I’m your Old Lady, you do everything you can to get rid of that little ingrate, his girl, and that kissass Sloane.”
She stood tall, her hands balled into fists on her hips, her hair wild around her shoulders. Her breasts swayed as she breathed, and her flat stomach heaved. Fuck, I’d never wanted a woman like I wanted her. My stomach bottomed out as my cock thickened.
“Do you hear me, Jack? I don’t ever want them to hurt you again, and they don’t deserve to run this club. Your father made a mistake, that isn’t your fault. Yeah, you didn’t tell Samuel where your father was, but you didn’t leave with him, either. You showed loyalty, in your own way, to both of them. I’m sorry his father died. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy, but that doesn’t mean he can act out like a child for the rest of his life. You take them out, and I’m yours, in every way you want me, right on that bar top.”
Going Under Page 11