by Lane Hart
“Coming!” I respond to him. Then, to Evelyn, I give her a kiss on the cheek and tell her, “Sorry he woke you. Go back to sleep.”
“Is everything okay?” She struggles to sit up before her arms cooperate, not bothering to cover her naked breasts, which is great because I’ve seen them, touched them, devoured them enough by now that I consider them mine.
“Everything’s fine,” I promise her. And it will be soon.
I quickly pull on the last pair of jeans I wore, the closest t-shirt within my reach, and of course my leather cut from the closet, before shoving my feet into my boots.
“I’ll be right back. Don’t move,” I tell Evelyn.
Grabbing my phone, I shoot off a quick text while jogging up the stairs to the bar. As soon as I step through the door, I can hear the swarm of bumblebees, not Harleys but crotch rockets.
Pussies.
Torin comes through the locked door next, asking, “Is that the Dirty Aces?”
“Yep,” Reece tells him as he watches the live surveillance video on his phone. The same one I’ve monitored hundreds of times during the nights. “Looks like…six of them.”
“Who all is here at the Asylum?” I ask just as my phone dings with a response that my trap is set.
“Just us three,” Torin answers.
“Ian’s on his way from across the street,” Reece informs us. “The rest of the guys should be here in five, except for Dalton and Sax, who are more than half an hour away.”
“Are the fuckers armed?” Torin asks while pulling out his gun and checking the full clip before slamming it back into place.
“I can’t tell. But based on our intel and all the illegal shit they’re into, I would be more surprised if they’re not,” Reece grumbles.
Fuck.
I never wanted to put the Kings in danger. That’s why I tell Torin and Reece, “Let me go out alone.”
“No fucking way,” Torin scoffs. “We’re not scared of a bunch of dickheads on modified dirt bikes.”
There’s an obvious prejudice between those who ride Harleys and those who ride…anything else.
“Shit. There’s Ian. We need to go before he gets himself locked up again,” Reece says. Torin is the first one out the door with me following and Reece bringing up the rear.
I can’t help but feel like they’re trying to coddle me, like they think I need to be protected. Maybe I do, but it still stings that I can’t handle my beef with the Aces on my own.
The three of us spread out, facing the bikes parked in a row while Ian strolls right down the fucking center with balls of steel, daring them to start shit, before he joins us.
After revving and throwing some gravel in our lot, they finally kill the engines on their bikes. Climbing off, they remove their helmets, and two guys stand directly in front of Lowell to block him from trying to lunge for me.
“You piece of shit!” he screams, red-faced and outraged. I understand the feeling since that’s how I’ve felt for the past two years, knowing Evelyn was with him, especially after he would send me videos of the two of them screwing.
“What can we do for you boys today?” Torin asks with his arms crossed over his chest. I’m pretty sure the word ‘boys’ was an intentional insult on his part.
Lowell points a finger at me while still trying to break free from his guys. “That motherfucker right there is dead!”
“Who? Him?” Reece asks with a jab of his thumb in my direction. “What the fuck do you want with Cedric?”
“He’s going to fucking hurt for sending me this shit!” Lowell pulls out his phone and, since he has no respect at all for Evelyn, presses play on the video I sent with the volume turned up enough for everyone to hear her moans.
“You’re pissed he sent you porn?” Ian asks with a chuckle.
“He fucked my wife!” the dumb motherfucker roars, sending a group of seagulls screeching off of the roof of the bar.
To that, Torin, Reece and Ian all shoot me a side-eyed look. One that asks a single, annoyed question – seriously, man?
I guess I forgot to mention that part to them when I was telling them about Evelyn.
Whoops.
Still, Torin turns his attention back to the Aces and says, “Sounds like she was having a good time. And she’s begging for more, so she’s obviously not there against her will.”
“I don’t give a fuck what she liked! She’s my wife, and I will burn this entire city down if you don’t give her back to me!”
“Evelyn made her choice, and it wasn’t you,” I tell him. “It was never you, but she was desperate and needed your help. That’s the only fucking reason she ever let you touch her.”
“I’m going to gut you!” he yells at me. “Give her back to me! Now, you little pussy!”
“Maybe you should keep watching that video to learn a few things about Ev’s pussy. You never knew how to get her off, you selfish bastard,” I reply.
That turns out to be the last straw that breaks the jackass’s back.
He breaks free from his buddies, but I’m ready for him. It took Reece months to teach me to fight, even though I was an eager student. I shift my hips and slightly bend my knees, dropping into a stance I had hammered into me until it’s automatic. Timing it perfectly, I haul back my arm and nail him with an upper cut to his chin before he lays a finger on me. The way he flies backward, even coming off his feet, is comical, like some slow motion shot from a superhero movie.
Once he lands on his ass, it takes him several seconds to recover before he can stagger to his feet again. When he comes at me again, still dazed, I hit him with a right cross that sends him spinning back to the ground. The hard-headed bastard stumbles to his feet and lunges at me again, getting a knee in the face for his persistence. I get in a few more hits before his friends try and intervene or maybe help him out, just as the sound of sirens draw our attention to the sheriff’s car that squeals into the Savage Asylum parking lot, blocking most of our one and only entrance.
Jade, our sheriff and Torin and Chase’s stepsister, gets out of the driver side in her brown uniform and aviator glasses over her eyes while a big man in the same uniform jumps out of the passenger seat. Both have their guns out and aimed.
“Is there a problem here, gentlemen?” Jade asks as she circles around the Aces and comes to a stop on the side of the Kings while her partner stays positioned at the back of the group.
“You pussies called your little sheriff bitch?” Lowell shouts and then spits blood at our feet. “How fucking weak. You should be fucking embarrassed!”
“Lowell Rogers? Is that you?” Jade asks. “You’re wanted in Carteret County on a long list of charges including breaking and entering and kidnapping.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he scoffs.
“Do the rest of you want to stick around long enough for me to run your records or search your bikes?” she asks.
When no one moves an inch, Jade tells her deputy, “Wyatt, search the bikes.”
“Ah, fuck this shit. You’re in over your head here, Lo,” one of the guys with long, wavy brown hair says before he swaggers back to his bike and puts on his helmet. The other four men quickly follow suit, leaving Lowell alone as his buddies peel out of the parking lot, weaving around the sheriff’s car to hit the road.
“That makes our job easier,” Jade says. “Just search his bike.”
Wyatt puts his gun back in his holster and then walks over to the red Suzuki Hayabusa. The key is still in the ignition, which he uses to unlock and lift the seat. He pulls out a clear plastic bag full of a variety of pills and holds it up. “Looks like he’s running an illegal pharmacy out of his crotch rocket.”
“Turn around and put your hands behind your back,” Jade orders Lowell.
He eyes her with her gun and the four of us for several silent moments, before he finally shakes his head and turns around. “Fuck you, assholes. You’re gonna pay for this, especially you, motherfucker!”
&n
bsp; “You have the right to remain silent, and I suggest you do so,” Jade tells him.
“Evelyn is married to this dipshit?” Torin asks once the handcuffs slap around Lowell’s wrists and Jade leads the deflated man to the back of her car.
“Yes, but only because he agreed to help pay her mother’s medical bills,” I explain. “He’s an abusive asshole.”
“Maybe we should’ve put a bullet in him instead,” Reece grumbles.
“Want me to ask Jade to hold up?” Ian offers.
“No, we can’t ask her to watch us kill a man in front of her,” Torin mutters. “He’ll rot in jail. The Aces obviously care about their own self-preservation more than him, so they probably won’t try any sort of retaliation.”
The three men then glare directly at me for so long, I figure they’re about to ask for their cut back and boot my ass out.
Instead, Reece and Torin finally break into a chuckle as Ian grins while shaking his head at me.
“What you did was pretty bad ass, kid,” Reece says. I’m back to “kid” now that it’s just our group within earshot.
“You sent him the video of you fucking his wife? I’m honestly surprised you’re still alive,” Torin says as he clasps my shoulder.
“I probably should’ve mentioned that part at the table, right?”
“Doesn’t change anything,” Ian huffs. “Those assholes aren’t shit.”
“The Dirty Aces are just the bastards who didn’t want the Ace of Spades to completely die out after we burned them down. And do you know why we burned them down?” Torin asks me.
“No. That was before I started prospecting.”
“They were in business with the man who killed my wife and my unborn son.”
“Oh, shit,” I mutter. I didn’t know Torin was married before Lexi.
“Did they deserve it?” Torin asks. “Who the fuck knows? I wasn’t in the right state of mind at the time and was only out for revenge. It’s a slippery slope, and that dickhead Lowell may not be much different from me, so you better hope he stays in lock up for a long fucking time.”
“Even when he gets out, you and your girl will need to be damn careful,” Reece tells me. “Cynthia and I know all about the dangers of abusive exes when they finally get released. All that bastard is going to do is think about getting her back and killing you every day of his sentence.”
“If he comes after her again, I’ll kill him,” I say simply.
Today, sending him to jail, will be the last courtesy I give Lowell. If he’s stupid enough to keep coming, I’ll have no choice but to put him down once and for all.
A few years ago, I would’ve never been able to take someone else’s life.
But now? Now, after prospecting with the Savage Kings, I know that sometimes the right thing to do means crossing a few ethical boundaries. But those lines are well worth crossing to save the people you love.
Evelyn and Rita have been through enough shit over the years. I’ll be damned if I let that asshole hurt Ev again.
Chapter Fourteen
Evelyn
“What’s going on?” I ask Cedric when he walks back into his apartment. My head is throbbing, and the room is spinning when I sit up in his bed.
“Just handling a little business,” he says.
“What business?” I ask. He doesn’t answer, probably because he doesn’t want to lie to me.
Oh shit, I think, shuddering with realization. “Lowell? Did he find me?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“He showed up here? Does he know where my mom is?” I ask in a panic.
“No, god no. Your mom is safe. I’ve got cameras all over her apartment building, and I’ll get an alert if any motion is detected.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Cedric answers. “And, ah, Lowell probably tracked you using your phone. But that’s exactly what I wanted him to do. The video you sent was just icing on the cake. There’s no way he would’ve missed the club tattoo on my back.”
“Wait, what video?” I ask in confusion.
“The video we made yesterday morning,” he responds and then stares at me as if I’m supposed to know what that is. “Seriously, Ev? How could you forget about that hot as hell video of us fucking?” he asks with a puff of laughter.
“You sent Lowell a video of us fucking?” I say in disbelief.
“It was your idea. Remember?” Cedric asks.
“No.”
“I told you about all the videos he sent of you and him together and you said, ‘let’s give him a taste of his own medicine.’ That was after you told me that he used to screw around with girls in front of you all the time and it would be nice payback.”
That is true, Lowell did make me watch him with other women, but I don’t remember Cedric and I making a video. And I only barely remember us having sex before this morning.
“You don’t remember,” Cedric says, his face falling. “How do you not remember what we did yesterday? Especially since you initiated it, waking me up by licking my stomach.”
“I did?”
“Yeah, you did. Grab your phone and you’ll see,” he says, so I reach over to the bedside table and bring up my camera app. Sure enough, the last video takes place in Cedric’s room, positioned right at the foot of the bed. And he’s already in bed when I climb back in, so I must have been the one who set up the phone to record.
“Now do you remember?” he asks.
“Oh, right, yeah, of course. It had just slipped my mind for a moment. God, I must have been exhausted.”
“What’s going on with you, Ev?” Cedric asks, grabbing either side of my face to look at me. He stares at my eyes and says, “Your pupils are dilated, and you did forget. I could see it on your face. You were pissed and didn’t remember what we did just yesterday.”
“I’m just horny after watching what we did,” I lie. “And I do remember now.”
He lets me go and then looks over at my purse hanging on the back of his doorknob and then back to me. “Did you take something? Evelyn, did you?” he demands. When I don’t respond, he jumps up and goes over, grabbing up my purse and riffling through it. Of course, it doesn’t take long for him to find the baggie.
He holds it up in the air and asks, “What the fuck are these?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly.
“Bullshit, Ev. Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m serious, Cedric. I-I don’t know what those pills are. If I had to guess, probably a mixture of oxy and, um, ecstasy, but I don’t know for sure.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Cedric mutters when he comes over and sits down on the bed, still holding the baggie and my purse. “How long have you been taking this sort of nasty shit?”
Jerking the bag from his hand, I tell him, “No! You do not get to judge me! You have no fucking idea how hard living with Lowell was, day and night, him using me like a sex doll whenever he wanted. No, scratch that. Some men probably treat sex dolls better. He degraded me and controlled every second of my life!”
“I’m sorry, Ev,” he mutters. “So damn sorry. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through the last few years, and I wouldn’t want to even if I could. But that mess? You think your mom is bad off, just wait and see what happens to your kidneys and the rest of your organs if you don’t stop taking that shit.”
“I know that!” I tell him. “And this is it, what’s left in the bag. I can’t stop cold turkey, or I’ll feel like I’m dying. Believe me, I know. If Lowell really wanted to be a dick to me, he would cut me off. Just let me finish the bag, and then I’m done.”
“I don’t like it,” Cedric says.
“I don’t either. You know I never would’ve touched these kinds of pills before…before I met Lowell. When he didn’t like how I ‘was acting,’ he would feed them to me. He started doing it constantly, until I couldn’t get through the day without them.”
“Promise me, Ev. After these are gone, you’re done.”
“I pro
mise,” I reply. The silence in the room says that neither of us quite believe my bullshit. So I try and change the subject. “What happened with Lowell?”
“He was so fucking pissed I thought his head was going to explode. Oh, and I kicked his ass,” Cedric informs me with a grin. “Felt good to hurt him like he once hurt me. And then the sheriff arrested him, and his buddies ran off.”
“So, he’s in jail?” I ask.
“He is. Hopefully for a long time. But you don’t have to worry about him finding your mother or getting to you.”
“Good. That’s good,” I agree.
Chapter Fifteen
Cedric
It only takes another few days for me to see an obvious pattern forming.
Every morning Evelyn is hot and horny, wanting nothing to eat or drink, just sex and more sex. Then, she passes out cold, not sleeping, but something even deeper for hours and hours.
And it’s not like she’s wide awake at night or anything. She sleeps from lunchtime to around sunrise before the cycle starts again.
Not to mention the fact that she doesn’t seem to recall any details about what we do in our trysts the next day, making me think that this is how she endured her time with Lowell, how she was able to let him have her body without her having to be mentally present.
It makes me angry and sad. In a way, I almost wish she had feelings for Lowell, that she loved him despite the fact that he was a dick so that she wouldn’t have had to be drugged up to endure him.
And god, now I feel like an idiot for enjoying her insatiability when it’s not even her who wants me but the effects of the pills she’s been popping. I’m no better than her jackass husband.
While Ev’s in one of her deep comas, I go through her purse and find the plastic bag that has just two yellow pills left. Even though I feel bad about snooping, I keep digging around to make sure she doesn’t have any more stashes. Thankfully, she doesn’t.