My father was evil and if anyone judged me by his actions, then I would have never been saved, and I wouldn’t have been welcomed by this club with open arms. I would have been killed, whored, sold, whatever it is that is done to these women who are not worthy.
Without a word, he turns away from me and stomps off. I watch as he heads straight for Dragon. I don’t understand his anger, and I really don’t understand it being directed at Maci the way that it is, then seemingly at me too.
Dragon happens to be standing with his gorgeous wife at his side and Bones directly in front of him chatting. I can tell it’s Bones from behind, he’s become a permanent fixture around here the past week. I’ve gotten used to him and truth be told, I kind of like him. I can see why Maci would fall for him, he’s not only handsome he’s charming, too.
I think about following behind Dylan, but decide against it. Whatever they talk about, even if it concerns Maci, what it doesn’t do is concern me. I have zero say in anything that goes on in this club at all. Not even when it comes to myself and especially when it comes to other women—all in all, I know my place.
I watch them talk. Dragon’s wife doesn’t leave, so either she’s privy to club business, or like me, she knows her place and keeps her nose out of anything that involves men talking. Flicking my gaze to the side, I watch Maci.
She’s leaning against a banquet table, her fingers curled around the edge and gripping it for dear life. She looks terrified and I don’t blame her. She has no protection at all in this place, just Bones putting in a good word for her if he decides.
There’s a sharp whistle and my head jerks as I look for the source. It’s Dragon. He’s looking directly at Maci. He lifts his hand and makes a come-hither motion with two fingers. Maci pushes off of the table, I watch the food jiggle, but none of it falls.
The whole thing is playing out like a movie. She makes her way over to him, false confidence in every shaky step that she takes. I don’t know her well, but I feel like I’ve picked up on a few things this past week.
I know that she’s terrified.
I know that she won’t show that terror.
I know that she’ll accept whatever her fate is—quietly.
I know that she is strong.
Sinking my teeth into my bottom lip, I continue to watch, waiting to see what is going to happen. I take one hesitant step forward, but because I’m weak, I don’t go any farther. I stay frozen in my spot while the men talk.
Maci’s head dips and she looks at her feet. There’s a moment of what looks like everyone talking at the same time, judging by the way their arms are all moving around. She doesn’t even twitch, but then she lifts her head and her hand at the same time.
The men stop talking and I take that opportunity to move closer to them. I get just close enough to hear what’s going on.
“So you’re telling me that you can’t just let me go? I can’t be free to live my life? I’m not my dad,” Maci shouts.
Dragon shakes his head once, but I watch as his wife wraps her fingers around his bicep and squeezes. Her eyes are wide as she stares at Maci and I know she wants to say something, but she doesn’t. She definitely knows her place.
Dragon clears his throat. “If you don’t want to be here, there is one other place I can send you,” he says, but he sounds very hesitant even giving her the option. “If they’ll take you.”
“Anything,” Maci whispers.
“You can go to New York. We’re friends with some men there. They run a gambling house, amongst other things. I can’t promise that you won’t have to spread for your lodging.”
I don’t make a sound. I don’t even gasp. Sex. It’s what makes the world go round and I know it’s the most common currency for a woman. It will never go out of style and it will always get you through life, even if it isn’t the most desired way of doing things.
“New York?” she asks. “I’ve never been anywhere except California and here,” she breathes.
Dragon arches a brow. “I can’t promise you an easy life, babe. Your dad fucked you. But nobody there knows what he did. I won’t tell them either. They usually don’t force women to sell their bodies, but I can’t make any promises on that.”
Maci doesn’t say anything and I wonder what the hell she’s waiting for. It sounds like a dream, especially for her situation. There is only one choice here, whoring, nothing else. At least in New York, it sounds like she may have more options.
“I’ll do it.”
I let out the breath that I wasn’t even trying to hold. Dylan turns his head, just realizing that I’m standing near him. He lets out a grunt, his eyes finding mine and he holds my gaze with his. I almost gasp at what I see, his anger, his hard look is completely gone.
JAGUAR
I didn’t want Maci to stay. Not that anything happened with her, it doesn’t have to do with sex, it has to do with that part of my life. It’s over. It’s done and I’m not going to allow anything else to hold me the fuck back. And since I am the one who kidnapped her and delivered her to the Donkey Punchers, then I hand-delivered her to the Beasts.
Guilt.
Just the sight of her fills me with it, again. As if seeing Eagle and Della, knowing what I did to both of them isn’t enough, there’s Maci and the reminder that I ripped her from her home and delivered her to the fucking devil himself.
It’s not about me, I know that it’s not, however, I can’t handle all three of them here. All three of them being reminders of the fucked-up shit that I’ve done. Even if she’s far worse than where she would have been had I not taken her, selfishly, I can’t see her every day.
Dragon calls out my name and I jerk my head to the side to look over at him. I’ve been staring at Pammy, but I’m not seeing her, not right now. I can only think of Maci, of the life that I put her in, the positions I’ve put her in, and the guilt that I feel about it all.
“Got church before the party. Want you nearby, wait in the bar?”
He’s asking, but he’s not at all. He’s telling me. Dragon whistles and the men all kiss their women before they walk away from them and head inside. I start to follow behind them, but then stop.
Turning to Pamela, I look over at her, this time I actually see her. She chews on the inside of her cheek as she shifts from side to side. Lifting my hand, I wrap my fingers around the side of her neck, squeezing gently.
“See you soon, Sunny,” I murmur.
Her eyes meet mine and she smiles. “Yeah,” she breathes.
Sliding my thumb along her bottom lip, I follow the move with my eyes, wanting nothing more than to kiss those lips with mine. Then I want those lips wrapped around my cock while she looks up at me with her big eyes.
I fucking want it all.
A week away felt like torture.
“Stay with the women, I’ll be back soon.”
Dipping my chin, I touch my mouth to hers. “Okay,” she sighs against my lips.
Taking a step back, I release her and turn around before I walk away. What I don’t do is look back. If I look back, I’ll want to take her right here in the desert sand, in front of everyone. I would give no fucks, the brothers wouldn’t either, but I know that she would be embarrassed as shit.
I want her, all of the time. Every fucking minute of every goddamn day and the need is ten times worse when she’s in view. When I reach the door of the bar, only then do I turn around to look at her.
She’s standing next to Maci, but they aren’t talking. Her eyes are trained and focused on me. Lifting my hand, I give her a two-fingered wave and she lifts her hand, wiggling her fingers to wave back at me.
Lifting my chin in her direction, I turn back toward the door and tug it open before slipping inside. This moment, this church session is the second most important one of my life. The most important was them deciding whether or not I lived or died.
This decides if I can stay or not, if I can raise a family in the Beasts, if I will ever truly make any headway on becoming a membe
r again. If they vote against me, I won’t be able to stay. Which means I’ll be an outcast.
They could kill me if they wanted to.
This club is for life, I can’t just walk away because I feel like it, but I also can’t have a wife and a family with no income.
Standing against the wall, I let my head fall back and I close my eyes as they talk. I can’t hear them, and it’s all for the better. I don’t need to know what they’re talking about, I just need to know the income.
“They votin’ on some serious shit,” Bones announces.
Lifting my head, I open my eyes and look across the room at him. He’s a few feet away from me, his gaze trained on me, a beer firmly held in his hand.
“My life,” I say, shrugging a shoulder.
His lips curve up into a grin. “Yeah, been there.”
I watch him for a moment, and he unashamedly does the same to me. “They let you live. Didn’t think they would.”
I remember Karma. He didn’t survive. Fucked Mamba up, fucked a lot of people up, but he was a traitor too. I’m sure that the situations are different, but it doesn’t matter. A traitor is a traitor, and I probably should have been put down.
“Me either.”
He dips his chin, his eyes focused on mine, connected and not moving. “Forgiveness is a motherfucker. They let you live, eventually they’ll forgive you, but I can tell by looking into your eyes. You regret it, you live with that guilt, and you’ll never forgive yourself.”
“I won’t,” I agree.
“So in the end, you’ll suffer more inside your own head than they could ever make you.”
“Yeah.”
The door opens and Gator sticks his head out, calling me inside. Gator jerks his chin for me to go ahead, and I dip my own before I turn from him. Stopping, I look back at him.
“That shit with Maci, you bringin’ her back?” I ask.
He shakes his head a couple of times. “Keeping her, doing what I wanted to do with her. Knowing the guilt it would cause me, not something I could live with again.”
“You wanted her?” I ask, surprised because as far as I know, Bones doesn’t fuck around on his wife.
He clears his throat but doesn’t confirm or deny my words. Instead, he smirks before he turns around and walks away.
Omission.
He wanted to keep her. Can’t blame him, she’s fucking gorgeous. Turning back to Gator, I clear my head of Maci, Bones, and even of Pamela. I need to be in the moment for what is about to befall me.
Chapter Thirty-One
PAMELA
Unable to concentrate on anything at all, I walk over to the largest group of women, hoping that I’ll be able to zone out in the bigger crowd, rather than a smaller group. It doesn’t work though. Instead, I’m met with smiles, and questions—so many questions.
Presley reaches out for me, wrapping her hand in mine and squeezes my fingers with her own. Turning to her, she smiles down at me. My eyes scan her body and I shake my head, unsure that I’ve ever really looked at her before. She looks so soccer-mom.
“You don’t look like a biker chick at all,” I point out.
She smiles. “I wasn’t before I met Silver and I didn’t change who I was for him, not really.”
“None of the women really look like biker chicks, well maybe except for Trista.”
“That’s because Tris was a biker baby,” Avah announces. “She was born here, raised with these men, by these men.”
I don’t know if I could tell them how I was raised. I’m sure they all know enough about me to know a little bit about that part of me, so I decide to just smile.
Always smile.
I have no desire to get into it, to go into detail about how I was raised, about my father. Who my mother is and what happened. I don’t think that Pinkie wants the world to know the details and I’m okay with that.
Honestly, I want to forget the first eighteen years of my life. I make a deal with myself, I’m going to do just that, I’m going to forget the first eighteen years of my life. They don’t exist. I wasn’t born until I rode through the gates of the Savage Beast clubhouse.
“Shit, that was fast, I hope that doesn’t mean it was bad,” a voice hisses behind me.
Vaguely, it sounds like Della, but I don’t look back to see if it was her. My focus is on the door of the clubhouse, the door where men are walking out in a single file line and headed straight for the food tables.
Presley is still holding my hand. The only reason I know is because she squeezes my fingers before she whispers. “Everything is going to be okay, babe.”
I wish that I could believe her. I want everything to be okay, I really do, but I can hardly breathe as I wait for the actual answer. I just don’t know what to expect, not from this group of men, not from this situation.
I keep watching, waiting for Dylan to make his way out of the building, but he doesn’t appear. Unable to stop my feet from moving, Presley lets go of me and I walk toward the clubhouse, toward that open door. I want to run, but I don’t. I keep hoping that he’s going to walk out of the doorway any second, but he doesn’t.
Walking into the bar, I glance around, but I don’t see him. Dylan is nowhere to be seen. My legs are shaky with each step that I take toward the open door to the conference room, the door where I know they hold church, the room that I know Dylan is sitting somewhere in.
I stand right outside of the door, hesitating to go inside. At the Donkey Punchers if a woman even attempted to cross the threshold she would be beaten, then sexually used for days before she was allowed to either go home with her Old Man, or be thrown down in the basement for a while to think about her transgressions.
“You can come inside,” Dylan’s deep voice calls out.
Pressing my lips together, I take a step into the room, a shiver rolling down my spine at the seemingly bold move, well bold to me. Dylan is sitting in a chair, his elbows on the table and his fingers pressed together in front of his lips.
“Dylan?” I ask, keeping my voice only above a whisper.
He drops his hands on the table as he sits back in the chair. Shifting his head to the side, he looks over at me, his eyes finding mine immediately. I can’t tell if he’s sad, angry, or what he’s thinking.
“Talk to me,” I beg.
He stands, turning around to lean against the table. “C’mere,” he demands.
I go to him, without hesitation, without thinking. My feet carry me straight toward him and between his spread thighs until my body is almost pressed against his. Tilting my head back slightly, I look into his eyes and I wait for what he’s going to say. I can’t read him, I can’t tell and I brace myself for terrible news, just in case.
“They’re going to pay me,” he rasps.
I gasp, lifting my hand to my parted lips. I blink a few times, trying to keep tears from forming and falling down my cheeks. I fail. The tears fall as I look into his eyes, unsure that this moment is real.
“Won’t be a member for a while, but it’s on the table again. They’re going to start giving me more and more responsibilities and duties, continue to keep an eye on me, on us.”
“Us?” I ask.
He chuckles. “You’re Riot’s kid. They won’t let you just live free and easy, babe. They been keeping a pulse on you this whole time. No cell phones, no outside contact. Which means no outside job for you. But you’re also Pinkie’s kid, which means you’re family.”
I gasp. “You knew?”
He shakes his head. “Only found out a few days ago. On the trip.”
Licking my lips, I nod my head. “Me too. She felt comfortable, she felt safe, but I didn’t know why. I do now and I’m glad.”
He nods his head. “Good. This is going to be good for us, this is where you were meant to be, Sunny.”
“What about a place to live? Are they going to keep me locked up inside of the clubhouse?” I ask, switching the topic slightly.
I now understand the expression on his face
. This is what he wanted for him, but this is not going to be any kind of life for us.
“Dragon said I could leave if I wanted. He said I could go off and go to school, that I could leave this all behind me. Why are things changing now?”
I try to take a step backward, the beginning of a mission to find Dragon, but Dylan doesn’t let me. He wraps his fingers around my hips, holding me in place.
Dylan tugs me close to him again, his lips touching the center of my chest. His lips travel up my neck, stopping just below my earlobe. He nibbles me there, then lifts his head to look up into my eyes.
“Things changed when you stayed with me, Sunny. They have to be able to trust both of us. I’ve chosen the wrong women in the past. I let myself be manipulated. They need to be able to trust you too.”
I hate it. I hate that his past dictates my future. Closing my eyes, I let out a breath and attempt to calm down, not only for myself, but for Dylan too. This is his fault, but it isn’t, all at the same time. There’s no reason to get upset about things that we simply just cannot change.
“The Sinister Skulls have a modular home that they put outside of the clubhouse. Dragon asked if he did the same setup, if that would be good for us? We’d have our own space, but we’d still be close enough that they could watch us and know without a doubt that we aren’t doing anything shady.”
“A modular?” I ask.
His lips curve up into a grin. “It’d be new, not as nice as the barndominiums the others have, but maybe one day we can upgrade, or move into town?”
Licking my lips, I nod my head once. I think about having a little home, modular or not, to raise this baby in. A real crib, a bed, furniture, television, and a kitchen to cook in. I think about all of those things. Things that I’ve never really had before, things that we’ll be giving our children and I nod my head.
“Yeah,” I say. “I would really like that.”
Without another word, he leans down, grabbing ahold of my ass with his hands and stands up. I let out a squeal, but he ignores me. He carries me straight toward our bedroom and my heart starts to race faster with each step that he takes.
UnCage me (Savage Beast MC Book 8) Page 23