The Nomad Series-Collectors Edition

by Janine Infante Bosco

  My eyes dart to Deuce and I watch as he roughly drives his fingers through his hair. I wonder if he realizes he’s in love with her. I wonder if he knows the girl sitting here, sharing her grief, giving me her pain, I wonder if our Cowboy knows she’s his heart.

  “I don’t remember much about the ride. How long it was or who was driving. All I remember is being dragged out by my ankles. Then everything fades to black and I don’t know if it’s because I was drugged or because I blocked it out of my head.” She lets her words trail off.

  I find myself leaning forward, enthralled by her. She’s got me hooked, not on her words, not on the story, but on the strength and courage raging in her eyes.

  “I woke up in a filthy warehouse, naked and chained to three other girls just like me,” she cries and I reach into my leather vest to pull out a handkerchief. Handing her the last thing Victor Pastore ever gave me, she takes it and I lift my eyes back to Cobra. Satan’s deadliest soldier is breaking, his walls are crumbling at his sister’s torment and tears fill his eyes.

  “It was a long time before anyone came for us. Yankovich left us down there to rot for what seemed like days. Freezing, hungry and exhausted, we were weak and out of our minds. At least that’s what I remember thinking. When the door opened and the men walked in, I could barely lift my head, but he forced us to crawl on our hands and knees. Then he lined us up…I have to stop now for a moment,” she tells me as her lower lip quivers.

  “You do what you gotta do, sweetheart,” I tell her.

  Then I do what I got to do too. I lift the bottle to my lips, chug it straight down and play another verse in my head. My maker calls, the rancid bitch screams, begging to come out and play.

  “One by one, he made us get on our knees,” she whispers.

  Startling Ally, Cobra slams his fist against the back of the couch as the tears fall from his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he grates.

  Without turning to face him, she reaches for her brother’s hand and continues.

  “You can guess what happened then, can’t you?”

  I nod.

  “Okay,” she murmurs, looking up at her brother. “Do you want to step outside?”

  He shakes his head and she nods before glancing over at Deuce then back at me.

  “That was the first time,” she reveals. “I lost count over how many times I was raped, but it wasn’t always Yankovich. Sometimes it was the men who wanted to test-drive the product before they bought it. Other times it was his employees and a few times it was his brother.”

  “Igor?”

  “I don’t remember his name.”

  Pausing for a beat, she glances down at her hands before she continues.

  “I learned to block it out. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream and I didn’t beg for help. I laid there and let them do whatever they wanted to do because I didn’t know any better. One girl did though, she managed to escape.”

  My eyes narrow as I stare at her in shock.

  “Do you remember her name?”

  “No, but I’d recognize her if I saw her. At one point, he used us to traffic drugs, those were the only times we left the warehouse. He’d fill these little balloons with drugs and force us to swallow them then he’d put us on some sort of boat. One time, the balloon burst inside of me before he could transport us. Chaos ensued and as a butcher cut me open the girl ran.”

  “Excuse me,” Cobra finally chokes as he releases Ally’s hand and wipes his tears. Turning around, he steps out of the room and Ally drops her head into her hands and sobs. Deuce is quick on his feet and takes a seat on the arm of the chair.

  “I’m okay,” she cries.

  “We can stop,” I remind her.

  “No!” she says, pulling back her hands. “I don’t want to do this again.”

  Her cries become the instruments.

  It’s a cold and broken hallelujah.

  Moments pass before she finds the strength to continue.

  “After she got away one of the other girls tried to get away too but Yankovich caught her and he killed her right in front of me and Sara.”

  “Sara?” I ask.

  “She and I were the only two left and then after she was sold it was just me.”

  “Do you know who—” I stop because it sounds wrong to say bought. “Do you know who she left with?”

  “No,” she says with a shake of her head. “He just took her one day and chained me to the radiator. I never saw her after that. For a long while I was the only one left. There were no new girls, just me,” she says, wiping away her tears as she lifts her gaze back to me. “That’s when things get fuzzy for me and all I remember after that is Yankovich bringing me to Rush.”

  “Rush didn’t come to the warehouse?”

  “No, Yankovich took me to him.”

  “Did you ever see Yankovich after that?” I ask.

  “Once,” she says before she pauses and fights to remember. “I remember them arguing,” she reveals. “I remember Rush telling him he couldn’t take me back.”

  She opens her eyes.

  “I remember that because that’s when I started to believe Rush was my savior.”

  “Is there anything else you remember after that? Did Yankovich bow down?”

  “He told him he could only keep me if he made it worth his while, but I don’t know how he did. I never saw him after that…until today.”

  Leaning back in the chair, I stare at Ally and for a moment I wonder about her parents. I wonder if they knew when they died that they raised such a fascinating creature. Then I think about my own children. I think about Jack and how it felt to lose him. He had only been two years old but I knew he was special, I knew he was too good, too pure for this world. I wonder if that’s what Ally’s parents thought when they lost her.

  Then I lift my eyes to the heavens above and I vow with everything I am and everything I’ll be to take care of what they lost. I will take care of their daughter, like she’s my own and hope they may return the favor and take care of my boy.

  That they look after him.

  “Are we done?” Deuce asks, drawing my attention back to them.

  “Does any of that help you?” Ally asks when I meet her gaze.

  Leaning forward, I reach across the coffee table and take her hands in mine.

  She glances at our joined hands and watches as I lace our fingers together.

  “Do you like music?” I ask, watching as she slowly brings her eyes back to mine.

  “A little bit,” she whispers.

  “There’s a song I want you to listen to one day,” I tell her and as I expected, she looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.

  Devilishly, I smile.

  Crazy, I am definitely crazy.

  But that’s okay.

  Because it takes a certain breed of mentally deranged to capture a psychopath.

  I’m the breed.

  I’m the mentally ill man who is going to create his own hallelujah.

  I’m going to bring this motherfucker to his knees.

  And I’m going to do it because of this girl right here.

  I’m going to do it for her.

  “You told me I was property of Parrish,” she says.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I didn’t know what that meant,” she admits.

  “Do you know now?”

  “I think I do.”

  And just like that the blue-eyed beauty throws me and draws out the hallelujah.

  Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

  -Thirty-eight-

  DEUCE

  When you know death—the sound, the scent and the face of it—when you know those things, you can never truly escape.

  Like any other trauma, it’s hard to forget.

  It’s impossible to overcome.

  Foolishly, I forgot about my own demons and took on Ally’s, letting her grief consume me, never thinking I’d be the one screaming in the middle of the night. For as long as she’s been here with me,
it has been Ally’s torture that sounds off these walls, not mine.

  Blinking, I glance around the room expecting to find blood splattered across the walls and the men who took Chelsea’s life standing over me. Instead of her lifeless body I find Ally beside me all wide-eyed and scared.

  Licking my lips, I swipe my hands over my face and fight for clarity. The struggle is too much, the memories too real. Gunshots continue to fire off inside my head, drowning out whatever Ally mutters beside me. My heart pounds against my chest as Chelsea’s eyes flash against the darkness, haunting me as her voice rings in my ears begging me to save her.

  “Deuce!” Ally shouts, taking my face in her hands. “Look at me,” she orders, forcing my head still. “Do you see me?”

  I do.

  I see her bright blue eyes wide with fear and it fucking wrecks me. The girl was able to retell the nightmare she lived for twelve years without looking half as frightened as she looks now and it’s because of me.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. Reaching up, I wrap my hands around her wrists and drag her hands away from my face. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” I tell her as I wipe my brow across my arm and draw out a heavy sigh.

  “You didn’t,” she lies as her nostrils flare and she licks her lips nervously.

  “You need to practice your poker face,” I say, my voice sounding strained to my own ears.

  “Chelsea,” she says softly, catching me off guard.

  Hearing Ally say her name fucks with me. Maybe it’s because Chelsea is my past, her life and her death are my secrets, something I never planned on sharing with another soul. Or maybe it’s the woman sitting next to me. Maybe it’s knowing that she’s gotten to me, that parts of Ally have somehow welded the broken pieces and filled the emptiness Chelsea’s death left behind. Maybe it’s the fearful truth that I feel so deeply for Ally. Am I as drawn to her as I was to Chelsea?

  The realization is too much for me and my first instinct is to withdraw. Knowing that makes me a hypocrite and fucking contradicts everything I’ve been encouraging Ally to do herself. Pushing the sheets off my body, I throw my legs over the side of the bed and drop my head into my hands.

  “I’m sorry,” she says from behind me. “It’s just…you screamed her name,” she stutters. “You don’t have to tell me. You never pushed me to reveal something I wasn’t ready to reveal.”

  Isn’t that some shit.

  No, I didn’t push her. In truth, no one did and still she trusted me. She trusted her brother and Jack to listen to her as she shared her torture with us and when it became too much she didn’t shut down. She didn’t withdraw. She took a moment to gather her bearings and then continued. She talked and talked until everyone was emotionally drained.

  Her.

  Cobra.

  Me.

  Jack.

  Now here I am being a coward, a fucking pussy. If she could share her pain, how the fuck couldn’t I share mine.

  “I loved her,” I whisper. Once so true, the words now sound more like a doubt than a declaration.

  “Okay,” Ally replies.

  “Or I thought I did,” I amend. “How fucked is that? Something I thought I was so sure of now suddenly feels uncertain.”

  “I don’t know what that feels like,” she confesses. “I’ve never been in love. Infatuation? Yes. Love, not so much.”

  Her words spark my interest and I glance over my shoulder at her.

  “What’s it like, infatuation?”

  “Well, I think it’s an act of desperation,” she admits, leaning against the headboard. “What’s love like?”

  It should be easy to describe what love is if you’ve experienced it. The definition should automatically roll off your tongue like a breath escapes your lungs. Yet, I struggle and instead of describing what I had with Chelsea, I find myself explaining the kind of love I want to experience. That ride or die type of love.

  “It’s fire,” I say hoarsely. “It’s finding the one person in the world meant to ride alongside you until the end. It’s knowing there is no one else you’d rather be with when the flames of hell call you home. It’s beautiful fucking fire you never want to escape.”

  As the words leave me, I know for certain Chelsea and I didn’t have that. I may have thought we did, made myself believe the lie, but in the end, I didn’t lay down in the flames with her. I watched them drag her limp body out of the room and helped dig her grave. I may have killed King and told myself it was an act of vengeance, but I can’t be sure I didn’t do it just to ease my conscience.

  Taking Chelsea from King wasn’t an act of love. Hell, it wasn’t meant to be anything more than a quick fuck and a means to stick it to him. But she had this lost way about her and I gravitated toward that shit.

  I blame my need to fix the broken on my mother. If that cunt had of loved my father and I more than she loved her drugs; then maybe I wouldn’t have tried to make Chelsea choose me over her own habit.

  That doesn’t matter though, because somewhere along the way I gave up on conquering her love. Being with Chelsea became comfortable, convenient even, and I was hooked on the power of having her and what it gave me over King. My mistake, my poor fucking judgement cost that woman her life.

  It should’ve been me.

  If I loved her, if she was my fire, I wouldn’t have turned the dirt over her body, I would have jumped into that grave with her.

  “I want that,” Ally whispers automatically, drawing me away from the past. “That do or die love.”

  “Yeah,” I rasp, nodding my head. “Who doesn’t?”

  “I’ll never leave your side, my dear Clyde. I’ll ride until we die,” she murmurs, reciting Bonnie Parker. Her words punch me in the gut and make me yearn for them to be true. In a perfect world, doom isn’t headed our way. In a perfect world, we ride to the end of the line.

  Until the end of time.

  “Any man would be lucky to have you by his side,” I tell her.

  “Any man?” she asks innocently. Pushing the sheets to the side, she tucks her legs under her. Crawling across the bed, she drapes her arms around my shoulders. Closing my eyes, unable to suppress the need to feel her, I reach up and cover her hands with mine.

  “Any man,” I confirm.

  “What about you?”

  “My luck ran out a long time ago,” I say as her hands slowly travel down my chest.

  “You still have that one match,” she reminds me, dropping her lips to the side of my neck. “One match is all it takes to make fire, right?”

  “Ally, I need you to stop,” I warn, as she sucks softly on my neck. I need her to stop before I let myself believe the lie.

  Before I let myself believe I can overcome this mess.

  But damn!

  Her mouth feels so good…so fucking good. I try to stop myself from wondering how it might feel to have that sweet fucking mouth wrapped around my cock.

  “Because I’m not her?”

  That’s exactly the reason.

  Ally isn’t Chelsea, she’s the last fucking match in the book.

  Now I don’t want to hang onto that match as a reminder of my mistakes.

  I want to strike it.

  I want to watch the flames fly.

  I want to create fire.

  I want Ally.

  I want her so fucking bad I can taste it. I can taste her, that greedy little pussy, so fucking sweet, so goddamn good. Everything about her, so fucking good. Perfect.

  “I can make you forget,” she stammers as her lips glide over my bare shoulder.

  “What if I don’t want to forget?” I bite back, my jaw clenching as I grasp for control. Reaching down, I brush away her hands from my abdomen and twist around to stare at her.

  My blue-eyed Bonnie.

  My broken beauty, but she isn’t really all that broken, is she?

  To the world she’s Alexandria, the girl who was lost and now found.

  To me she’s the girl standing at the end of the line.

&nb
sp; She’s my Ally.

  “What if I want to feel?” I say, watching as she smacks her lips together. “What if I want to feel you wrapped around me? If I told you I wanted to bury myself deep inside you and feel you come apart, what would you say?”

  Sitting on my lap, she wraps her legs around me and leans her forehead against mine as she plays with the ends of my hair.

  “Don’t you already feel me?” she whispers, laying her hand over my chest. “Don’t you feel me here?”

  Yeah, I do.

  I feel her.

  And I want her to feel me there too.

  With need burning through me, I lift my hands to her face and take her lips gently with mine. For the first time in my life, I want to savor it all. I never want to forget. I want to die remembering…

  Every kiss.

  Every touch.

  Every flick of my tongue.

  Every moan.

  Every jerk of her hips.

  Every drop of her release.

  Her mouth parts and her tongue slides over mine, striking that last match, making that last bout of fire. The one that will light my soul up. Threading my fingers through her hair, I pull her head back and force those eyes to meet mine.

  “I feel ya, Ally,” I murmur, letting go of her hair. My hands glide down her back to her ass and I grip it hard, yanking her closer, making her grind that sweet little cunt over my cock. My t-shirt rides up her thighs as she braces her hands on my shoulders and jerks her hips.

  Nice and slow.

  Teasing us both.

  Gliding that slick heaven over my hard hell.

  “I want you to feel me everywhere,” she breathes as she continues to rub her pussy all over my cock. Dropping her hands from my shoulders she leans back and reaches for the hem of the shirt lifting it slightly as she casts her eyes downward and watches herself move over my cock. She never takes it inside of her, she just keeps rubbing on it, coating it with her arousal.

  Dying, I shove her hands away and peel the shirt over her head. If she’s not going to let me sink into her just yet then I’m going to fuck the shit out of her tits. Freeing them, I reach up and pinch her nipples.