by Lane Hart
“So then why…”
“Why did Leroy slaughter them?” Abel finishes. “Hold on to your fucking seat, because here comes the ugliest part.”
I nod to reassure him that I’m ready.
“Your man Dubois and his crew had all…been with Rita. Apparently, they would force themselves on her and the other girls at the strip club, whether they wanted them or not.”
“You don’t mean… No. That’s…no. Dubois wouldn’t do that, and his men wouldn’t either.”
“Yes, they did.” Abel’s words are clipped in warning for me not to argue about it. “Rita wouldn’t lie about that sort of thing. They raped her.”
I slap my hand over my mouth as that horrible word, horrible act, seeps into my skin, right down to my soul. “You’re serious…”
“Don’t make me call the woman on her honeymoon and ask her to relive that shit. Trust me here, Selina. Nolan wanted to kill them all, but Leroy did all the dirty work for him, leaving only one person who could be held responsible – the manager at the strip club. He knew what was going on, and he let the Rebel Henchmen have at the girls working for him to knock off some of what he owed the MC for protection.”
“Jesus,” I whisper as I consider all this new information.
“I’m sorry you had to find out from me what a piece of shit he was.”
I think back to all the nights with Dubois. No, they weren’t sweet or romantic in the least, but they were consensual. But some nights, I would be pretty drunk, too drunk to complain or even notice what he was doing to me. That was on me, though, right? I shouldn’t have drunk so much.
Or was it more than that?
Would he have stopped if I told him to?
“He never…I mean, I always wanted him,” I explain to Abel. “But now, I can’t help but wonder what he would’ve done if I had said no.”
“You didn’t know him, Selina, not as much as you think you did. He let you come around when he wanted to fuck, but that was it, right? No late-night deep conversations or breakfast in bed? He didn’t ever take you out to dinner or movies, did he?”
I shake my head, unable to speak just yet.
“He was using you.”
I wet my lips. “Maybe I was using him too. I didn’t have a home. He gave me a place to stay.”
“Then you’re lucky he never pressed you to give him more than you wanted.”
“I guess I am.” Pushing those dark thoughts aside, I ask him, “What happened to Leroy?”
“Why does it matter?” Abel snaps.
“Because he killed seven men!” I exclaim. “He’s crazy and dangerous.”
“You don’t have to worry about him hurting anyone else. That’s all I can tell you.”
Abel
God, I’m a fucking idiot.
If the guys found out about the shit I’ve gotten myself into while thinking with my dick and not my head, they would all beat my ass.
Selina wasn’t just screwing one of the Rebel Henchmen. She was fucking the goddamn president.
I get that she had questions, but I couldn’t tell her about how Nolan killed Leroy. I wish I could trust her with the truth, but I can’t. She’s made that perfectly fucking clear.
Wanting answers has to be the reason she showed up in town with all her shit in a truck.
“Abel, I know your upset with me, but could you just talk to me…” Selina begs as she goes to her knees in front of my spread legs. “You’ve been silently stewing for like an hour!”
“Is the truck his?”
She nods.
“I just…I feel like such a fucking fool,” I tell her as I get to my feet and start toward the front door. I don’t even know where I’m going; I just need to get the hell out of here.
When I shove my hand into my front jean pocket to grab the key to my bike, my fingers wrap around something else – something heavier and something else smooth like satin.
Cory’s watch and the blue garter from the wedding.
For some stupid reason, I keep moving both to clean jeans along with my wallet and keys.
No, I know why I did it…
“I need some air,” I tell Selina as a plan starts to form in my head. A stupid one at that.
“You’re leaving?” she asks as she scrambles to her feet to hurry to the door. I open it before she gets in front of it to block me from walking out. “Where are you going?”
“There’s some shit I have to do.”
“You won’t tell me? And I can’t come with you?” she asks through sniffles. Great, she’s crying, but I can’t even look at her beautiful face right now.
“No, you can’t.”
“You’re mad and you’re running away from me, aren’t you?”
“I’m not running! This is my house. I’ll have to come back eventually.” Hugo will have to come home one of these days too. “I just need some fucking air!”
I jog down the porch steps now in a hurry to follow this through.
“When will you be back?” Selina calls out. “Please, Abel. Don’t go. Stay!”
“Don’t wait up” is my response to her before I pull my helmet on.
“Abel, I’m sorry! Don’t leave. At least…at least tell me where you’ll be.”
That request has me laughing.
“Just because we’re playing house doesn’t mean you get to know where I am every second of the goddamn day!” I shout at her, unable to keep my cool a second longer. “We’re not together, we’re just fucking, right? I can see and do whoever I want, just like you can!”
“So, you don’t care if I go to the clubhouse and fool around with the other Savage Kings while you’re gone?”
Fuck. I don’t know if she’s serious or if she’s just trying to make me jealous. At the same time, I think she’s hoping to figure out where I’m headed when the truth is I don’t even know that. Nothing is certain yet. Right? Or is my mind already made up?
I put my helmet on and turn back to her. Selina’s arms are wrapped around her waist, hugging herself. What little I know about her is she doesn’t like going to bed alone at night, and I may not be back before the sun comes up.
“Just stick to the single Kings – Marcus, Leo, the prospects,” I tell her. “In fact, I bet Jake and Lucas could use a pick-me-up.”
Her jaw drops in disbelief that I gave her a free pass. I don’t say anything else, just climb up on my bike.
What did she expect? The night we first hooked up, she was with me and another man.
At least now she knows I don’t care what she does, and she has no right to make me feel guilty if I fuck around on her either.
Slamming my face shield down, I crank the grumbly engine to keep from hearing anything else she has to say.
Chapter Seventeen
Cory
“You’re out of hot water,” the growly, six-five, two-hundred-and-eighty-pound mammoth says when he comes out of my adjoining bathroom with nothing but a white towel barely wrapped around his hips. The fabric looks like a washcloth on him when in all actuality, it’s a beach towel.
“I ought to charge you more for that,” I tell him as I take another long hit on the joint between my thumb and finger. I’m finally feeling somewhat relaxed and sated as I lounge in my bed still naked, one arm thrown behind my head. Only half of my body is covered by the bedsheets since I’m still damp and sticky from exertion or from rubbing up on his sweaty ass, not sure which, and I’m desperate for a hot shower. Guess it’ll have to be a cold one.
Hayworth Henshaw is a defensive end for our university’s football team. In fact, he’s probably going to go pro and be a first-round draft pick in the spring. I made an exception to my rule of never screwing anyone bigger than me because his family’s pockets run deep. They own real estate all up and down the East Coast, multimillion-dollar beach houses. And their golden boy son secretly loves to get fucked. Once he goes pro, well, the cost of me being discreet is going to go way the fuck up, especially if I have to fly cross-country to gi
ve him what he’s so desperate for.
I have to pop a little blue pill just to get it up for the ugly, pudgy son of a bitch, and then it takes forever to finally bust a nut inside him. No way I’m going to all the trouble without getting a little relief of my own, though. Still, his huffing and wheezing under me as he comes in about ten seconds isn’t exactly conducive to getting myself off.
Instead of the big bastard, I closed my eyes and pretended it was the sexy as hell biker I was fucking instead. The tall, tan, ripped one with intense green eyes set in a gorgeous face. I would give anything to pop Abel’s cherry as he begged for more. That’s how I finally came, thinking about his tattooed back and the curve of his tight, muscular ass that I still remember in detail even days after that hot night at the hotel with him and Selina. Honestly, as horny as he looked for what he had been denying himself for so long, I thought the biker boy would’ve called me by now. Guess I was wrong about him.
“How much to put you on your stomach and fuck you right now?” Hayworth asks as he comes over to the side of the bed and rubs his enormous mitt up my leg, making my tree-trunk-sized thigh look like a twig in comparison.
“Never gonna happen, buddy,” I say as I swat his hand away. Our hour is up, and it’s all I can do to let him touch me when it’s not.
“Come on, Cory. Throw out any amount. You know I’m good for the money.”
“No.”
That’s the problem – there’s no amount I can say that he would refuse. And yes, I need the money for an extra semester of tuition, but not bad enough to let him rip me apart.
“You’re being un-fucking-reasonable,” Hayworth grumbles as he pulls a pair of athletic shorts up his legs since I guess he couldn’t find boxers in XXXL.
“It’s my asshole. I can be as unreasonable about what I let happen to it as I want,” I respond as I catch a flash of his dangling junk before he works the shorts all the way up. “Your enormous sausage isn’t coming anywhere near it.”
He grins down at me. “Why not? It feels so fucking good.”
I take another hit and blow the smoke out slowly from my lips. “I don’t bottom. Ever. But there are plenty of men who enjoy a little pain with pleasure and might let you fuck them for free.”
“You know I can’t do that! Someone could run their mouth and fucking ruin me!” he shouts.
“Just get dressed and go. And keep your voice down before everyone in the building hears you,” I remind him. It’s bad enough I have to pay my roommate, Kenny, a hundred bucks an hour when Hayworth is here so he won’t come out of his bedroom. If the big fucker thinks for a second that my roommate knows who he is and what we do, he would probably kill him.
I’m so sick and fucking tired of being used, giving men what they’ve been dreaming of when none of them give a shit about what I want. But I guess that’s why they pay me and not the other way around.
“See you Friday night?” Hayworth asks as he finishes getting dressed. “Got a game Saturday, so that’s out.”
“We’ll see,” I tell him.
“Yeah, we will,” he says with an evil grin as he comes over to the bed. After tossing down a stack of cash, he grabs me painfully through the covers. “Bye, sexy.”
“Fuck you!” I shout as I curl into the fetal position, clutching my aching balls as he walks to the locked bedroom door, still chuckling. “That’s why you won’t ever get inside of me!”
“One of these days you’ll change your mind,” he announces confidently before he finally leaves.
I’m still relearning how to breathe through the pain when there’s a knock on my open bedroom door.
“You okay, man?” Kenny asks from the doorway. “I just heard the beast leave.”
“Yeah, I will be,” I grumble as the pain begins to fade.
“Why do you put up with his shit?”
I lift the stack of bills he left next to me and hold them up to show him. “He pays me three times what anyone else pays. The ugly asshole is a gold mine.”
“Until he decides to choke you out,” Kenny replies with a heavy sigh. He removes his backward Wildcats ball cap to smooth his shaggy black hair back, then puts the cap back on. “Whatever. I’m ordering Chinese food. You want some?”
“Food would be good as soon as I wash that dirty bastard off me,” I agree.
“Your usual – orange chicken?”
“Yeah, thanks,” I tell him.
“Any more visitors coming by tonight, or are you done…hosting men for the day?” he asks.
“I am so done,” I mutter. “I keep my schedule clear for several days after Hayworth.”
“No shit,” Kenny says with a bark of laughter. “I’ll go call in the food.”
As soon as he’s gone, I roll out of bed to go jump in the shower, scrubbing myself raw with a brand-new loofah since Hayworth probably used mine.
Dick.
Maybe I should cut ties now instead of following him when he goes pro, no matter how good the money would be. I don’t think it’s worth it.
In fact, after graduation, I’m going to tell him we’re done once and for all, before he talks me into doing something I don’t want to do.
Chapter Eighteen
Abel
What I’m doing is worse than stupid. It’s pathetic. I even hate myself a little for blowing off Selina, climbing on my bike, and taking the highway all the way down to Smithfield, Georgia.
It’s just that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him and the night in the hotel room, no matter how hard I try.
The son of a bitch made it too easy to find him too. One quick social media search was all it took to get the name of his college. Then another search for an address. And I’m not even a little bit surprised that the apartment is in Rita’s name.
Cory owes his sister and Nolan. In fact, after what he did to Nolan, I shouldn’t even think about him for a second.
I wish my brain was as easy to turn on and off as a light switch, but it’s not.
Parking my bike in the lot away from the other cars, I take off my helmet and run my palm over my head. There’s no hair to worry about fixing since I keep mine short enough so that it’s not an issue. Nope, I’m just delaying the inevitable. I didn’t come all this way to turn around and go back to Selina, did I?
No. Fuck that. I’m still pissed at her for lying to me. In a way, I think I came here to punish her.
Besides, there’s something I have to do before I leave.
Reaching into my jean pocket, I pull out the thick silver Cartier watch with its Roman numerals, the one I stole from Cory’s hotel bathroom. It was a fucked-up thing to do, I know. I told myself it looked expensive, and sure enough, a search online showed these things go for about five grand apiece. I was going to pawn it and then buy Rita and Nolan one hell of a wedding gift.
Now, here I am, bringing it back to him like a pussy.
If the other Savage Kings found out, they would all give me so much hell. But they won’t ever know I was here, so it doesn’t matter.
Before I back out, I get off my bike and march up to the front door of the complex that’s propped open – a great security measure in place. Then I take the elevator up to the third floor, avoiding looking at my own reflection in all the mirrors around me.
With a ding, the elevator doors slide open, and then there’s nothing but a few more steps left to get to apartment 3-C.
My heart is racing like I just downed a few pots of coffee when I lift my knuckles and knock.
I can hear the footsteps on the other side approaching, and then a masculine voice shouts, “Hot guy in leather! Is he yours too?”
I can’t hear the response, only the click of the dead bolt turning before the door opens and I’m face-to-face with a tall, skinny guy in baggy clothes and a backward baseball cap on his head.
“Sup?” he asks me with a jerk of his chin.
Is he Cory’s roommate or…something else?
I start to bail, to say I have the wrong apar
tment. But I man up and ask, “Is Cory here?”
“Who is it?” Cory’s voice says from somewhere in the apartment before his head appears over the lanky guy’s shoulder. Seeing me, he grins. “Oh. You.”
There’s not even a hint of surprise on his face, though. Nope, just his usual smugness as if he always knew I would act like a stalker and track his ass down.
“I, ah, was on my way out. See ya,” the other man explains before he slips past me and heads for the still-open elevator to hop on.
“Roommate?” I ask.
“None of your business” is Cory’s response before he slaps his right hand against the doorframe at chest height, blocking me from coming inside. The move causes a whiff of his rich, clean scent to hit me like a boulder, followed by the hot cinnamon flavor of the gum he’s currently chomping on.
How hard is it to answer one fucking question? Asshole. It’s hard to be pissed at him, though, when he’s not wearing anything but white jogging pants and a sleeveless black tee that shows off his thick, corded biceps that are bigger than mine. The dark color of the shirt makes his flawless ivory skin and muscles look like they’re carved from marble. Fucker must lift weights all the damn time to look like he does.
“What are you doing here, Abel?” he asks.
“You, ah, left this in the hotel room,” I say as I hold up the watch by the band.
Cory takes it from me without breaking eye contact. I brace myself for him to call me out for stealing it since he probably noticed it was missing before he left. Something that expensive you don’t toss down and forget. “You could’ve mailed it.”
“Something that expensive? What if it got lost?” I ask.
“That’s why they have shipping insurance,” he responds, still not budging from the door. Guess he’s not going to invite me in or make this easier on me after I drove all the way down here. Screw that.
“Fuck you,” I grit out through clenched teeth before I start for the elevator. It’ll probably take forever to get back up here since his…whatever is on it.