by Zoe Hill
My family has been a mess for as long as I can remember, so I’ve always been intrigued by the way other families interact. If Chester and Poppy are any indication, the Tennyson’s are the type of family who’d fight to the death for each other. That’s strange on its own. It’s even weirder in a motorcycle club that traffics women and kids with enough efficiency to catch the Coalition’s attention.
Ill-gotten power usually breeds contempt and challenges, not closeness. Poppy is an NYPD detective, after all. She’s either insanely oblivious to her family’s criminal activities or an expert at turning a blind eye. That I can relate to since my brother has proven more than proficient at fooling me into believing that he was above the criminal activities our family demands to feather the Coalition’s nest, and although I’m protective of Stirling, I’ve never felt the same ride or die attitude from him. He’s always been number one—the one who needs protecting—and he’s never gone up against anyone to save me.
Maybe alcohol is the great leveler. The Tennyson’s are drunk as hell. Could be that they hate each other when they’re sober. I have no real experience with drinking to excess and I’ve never seen Stirling inebriated. The one and only time I got drunk was as a fifteen-year-old boarding student playing a game of Truth or Dare. I thought I was having a great night and that getting intoxicated was the answer to my inability to be touched. That hope had popped like an overinflated balloon after I’d accepted a dare to kiss Emily McFadden in the broom closet.
That innocuous encounter had ended with me screaming the dorm down because she slid her hand along my neck as she leaned in to kiss me. Caught in a flashback to him touching me like that, I’d lashed out at her, then both of us had been carted away in an ambulance. Emily was accompanied by a sympathetic school administrator while I’d been attended to by a police officer. When my family had arrived at the hospital, Stirling had screamed at me for embarrassing him again. My mother was too busy sobbing to say anything, but it was Dad’s silent judgment that had ruined me.
I guess all wasn’t lost, though. My conviction for assault had come with an order for six months inpatient therapy. At the end of my program, I finally had a diagnosis for my issues.
Severe Haphephobia. Four years after my uncle was accused of sexually assaulting another child and the Coalition sent him underground to escape punishment, my parents were forced to face the cold, hard fact that I’d been telling the truth about him raping me between the ages of seven and eleven.
I’d expected vindication. What I’d received had been banishment to Hell. A month after my release from the institution, my formal education was ended because I was expelled for beating down one of the jocks at my new school after he called me a fag. The Coalition’s solution to my issues was to order my training as an assassin to commence.
Three years later, several weeks after my father amputated the top of my trigger finger for attempting to run away, I put a bullet between the eyes of the then-head executioner for the Coalition. And so, began my current tenure. Fourteen years later, I remain their best weapon and my issues are safely hidden from public view. Stirling hasn’t been embarrassed ever since, but Mom still weeps, and my father continues to hate me for my weakness.
“You’re pretty, but you’re also rude.” Poppy interrupts my walk down Nightmare Lane with her slurred compliment turned insult. She wobbles on her feet. “I said… my name is Poppy. What’s yours?”
Poppy might think that I’m pretty, but that title best suits her. I’d thought she was beautiful from across the bar, but up close, she’s exquisite. Everything about her is tooth-achingly sweet, yet there’s an edge that pushes her from saccharine to alluringly lethal. From the top of her curly, strawberry-blonde hair, down her subtle curves and leather covered legs, to the tips of her biker boot clad feet, she’s a contradiction. Her hazel-brown eyes telegraph how drunk she is while the looseness in her stride is at odds with the defensive hunch to her slim shoulders.
She’s a five-foot tall water sprite with a dangerous gleam in her glassy eyes.
“I’m Spenser,” I reply before I can stop myself.
I don’t have time to mentally chastise myself for giving my real name because she stumbles closer to me. Gripping the empty water glass in my hand, I hold my breath while I frantically feel behind me with my other hand for an escape route. There’s nothing behind me but a solid wall.
I can count the number of bars I’ve stepped foot into without backup on one finger.
That makes three fuck ups tonight.
One, allowing her to approach me in the first place. Two and three, being here on my own and backing myself into a corner. Literally.
Poppy stops before she touches me. Instead, she curls her finger in a come-hither motion. Enticed into acting without thinking, I stoop down, and she whispers, “Do you fuck, Spenser?”
Even if I wanted to respond, I couldn’t. The feeling of her warm, beer infused breath rushing over the side of my face has paralyzed me. It’s like I’ve been brushed with the finest, softest silk, and I cannot comprehend why the initial licks of flames I was bracing for haven’t started to burn through me yet.
Rifling through my carefully curated memories of the good times before the flames infected my interactions, I pull free the memory of the last time I was touched without my skin burning.
It was after Sunday School with my best friends.
When I try to picture mine and Stirling’s friends, my mind shuts down.
As infuriating as it is to have lost so much of my life to the darkness of my mind, I try not to get upset. My therapist taught me that pushing too hard will force the memory deeper. Allowing my brain to do its job and protect me from the worst of the trauma is almost as hard to accept as the reason for the dissociation I suffer.
“I don’t really like to fuck unless I’m drunk,” Poppy admits. The deep pain coating her confession cuts through my angry musing. Her tone matches my own agony and hearing it tightens the vice that holds my memories in check. “No one hurts me as much as he did, and then I feel dirty when they’re nice to me because I crave the pain—”
“Fucking hell, Poppy.” A bear of a man wraps his hand around her upper arm and drags her away from me. “We’re over here, shitting ourselves that you’ve been taken, and the whole time you’ve wandered off to chat up some fucker in a suit.”
There’s a growl in my voice when I take hold of her other arm. “Keep your hands off her.”
The shock that skitters through me when I throw down the gauntlet is matched by the widening of Poppy’s eyes. She leans away from the newcomer to pat my chest. Instinctively, I hiss, stopping abruptly when I realize that her touch still isn’t affecting me.
Disbelief ripples through as I lean closer to her, and the burning doesn’t flare up.
“It’s all right, Spense,” Poppy slurs her apology. “This is my ex-fiancé. He gets a bit territorial when he knows I’m about to go off the rails.”
She droops in the bear’s grip and the movement pushes her hand harder against me. When the flames don’t ignite in the hand that’s holding her arm or where she’s touching my chest, I gingerly place my palm on the back of Poppy’s fingers. That direct contact causes a low hum to erupt beneath my skin. I can only feel it when I concentrate hard. It’s reminiscent of putting your tongue on the end of a battery.
A mild electrical buzz, tingly but not necessarily unpleasant.
Confusion hits me fast when I take hold of her hand and place it against my cheek. Poppy cups my face and rubs my stubble with her thumb. The breath I was holding rushes out of me when the buzz doesn’t increase.
What the hell is going on?
“I’m sorry, Seb,” Poppy says, turning her attention to her ex. The look he gives her exposes every ounce of longing he feels. I don’t think he’s as much of an ex as she believes. When Poppy looks back at me, he hits me with a glare vicious enough to strip muscle from bone. Weighing my options, I take in the Samaritan’s Soldiers MC patch that si
ts proudly on the left side of his black leather vest, then decide not to retort. He’s nothing to me right now. I’m here to watch Poppy and her best friend.
His time will come once I’ve dispensed of the two detectives.
Poppy continues her apology fest. “I’m sorry for you, too, Spense. I was gonna ask you to fuck me hard in the alley, but now Seb’s here… he won’t let anyone but him do it.”
The bear now known as Seb growls. When she giggles at his reaction, it makes me chuckle. I use our mutual mirth to disguise my subtle tug to bring her closer to me. She comes willingly, tucking herself under my arm as I whisper-shout over the music, “While I appreciate the offer, that was never on the cards. You see, I don’t fuck, Poppy. Never have, probably never will.”
She bursts into peals of laughter at the truth I just laid bare.
I suppose it does sound like a joke when you really think about it.
I can kill someone without blinking, yet I wouldn’t be able to purposely get my dick hard enough to fuck a beautiful woman like her if my life depended upon it.
When Seb tries to drag her away from me, her laughter kicks up, and she wriggles the hand I’m holding captive to pat my cheek. “I like you. You’re funny.”
“Let’s go.” Seb roughly jerks her out of my reach, then lifts her until her thighs are wrapped tight around his waist. Without a protest, Poppy settles into his embrace. Seeming to forget that I’m watching, she tugs at his hair and kisses his lips. Over the top of her head, Seb searches my face for something, then his expression softens, and he pulls his mouth from hers to say, “Look. She’s not a whore. Her oldest brother was killed a few days ago and it’s brought some of her issues to the surface. You seem like a nice kind of guy… if you see her around town, just pretend you’ve never met her. I doubt she’ll even remember you tomorrow.”
His pronouncement has two effects on me. At first, a sense of kinship surges through me when he dismisses her obvious pain as issues, and then I’m left confused. How can Oliver Tennyson be dead already? I arrived in town two days ago, and I’ve been watching their compound nonstop ever since. No one left until tonight when they snuck out to this bar with their trio of bodyguards surrounding them.
Something doesn’t add up right now.
My left hand begins to flare with suspicion.
This smells like Coalition interference to me.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I venture in a voice filled with as much sympathy as I can manufacture. “Was it sudden?”
Poppy twists in Seb’s arms to glare at me. “Only if you call being murdered by an absolute monster sudden.”
Before I can reply, she points at the table they claimed as their own shortly after their arrival. “Take me back to Bella. I need another drink. This suit wearing prick is pissing me off.”
Seb shoots me a victorious smirk. “Sure thing, flower girl.”
He cups her ass with both hands and makes a scene out of juggling her back into place on his hips. As he walks off with Poppy in his arms, I clench the empty glass in my hand, uncertain why seeing his hands all over her is pissing me off so much, but unable to get my temper under control either.
The glass bursts in my grasp and the shattered pieces clatter to the floor.
A nearby bartender gasps. The noise snaps me back into my head, and the stinging in my palm makes me hiss. There’s a diagonal cut across my left hand. It’s semi-deep and probably needs something to hold it together. I wrap a napkin around my palm and cradle my hand to my chest.
“I’m okay,” I growl, when the bartender moves out from her spot and tries to grab my wrist so she can inspect my damage.
Despite my hostility, she reaches for me and her fingertips graze the underside of my forearm before I can dodge her grasp. My nostrils flare as the unmistakable flames begin to lick at my skin. I snarl at her, viciously, “Back. The. Fuck. Off. I said I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry… sir,” she calls after me as I turn and stride away. “You’re bleeding. Please, let me help you.”
I pretend that I can’t hear her and leave out of the nearest exit. My mind is spinning too fast to chant numbers while a scorching desire to touch Poppy Tennyson is taunting me. After my response to the bartender, I’m beginning to think that I imagined my lack of reaction to her. I haven’t been able to stand being touched since the first time I admitted out loud what was being done to me less than twenty-four hours after I played for the last time with my friends on the beach. Being with mine and Stirling’s best friends and seeing their normal lives devoid of the influence of the Coalition had driven home how wrong Harrison was treating me.
It had made me determined to tell the truth, and end the torture, once and for all.
Thinking my parents would believe me without question, their reaction to my stuttered confession before bed had broken something in my brain that I haven’t been able to fix ever since.
I must be wrong. Poppy isn’t some random aberration. I’m just losing my mind because I know I’m so close to finishing Harrison. I’m positive that if I touched her again, she’d make my skin flare with the unmistakable burn, just like everyone else does.
Outside, the cold air revives me a little, but I keep walking until I get to the driver’s side of my Bentley Mulsanne just to be on the safe side. My car is my refuge. I wouldn’t usually bring my own vehicle on a job, however, this isn’t an ordinary job, and since it could take months to uncover what the two women inside the bar have learned about the Coalition, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to bring something familiar with me.
Leaning against my car, I concentrate on my breathing for a few minutes, then inspect my hand. The cut has stopped bleeding and it isn’t as bad as I first thought. I’m a quick healer, so all it needs is a quick clean and a bandage. The safe house Dad organized for me to use as a base is fully stocked. Once I’m sure the Tennyson’s and their entourage have turned in for the night, I’ll head back there and sort out my wound.
“Oh, yes. Yes. Like that.” The whispered screams of a woman in ecstasy break through the night. “Harder. Bite me.”
I wander across the road to the mouth of the alley that runs down the side of the pub. Part of me already knows who I’ll find, yet my mouth drops open with disbelief when I spot Poppy and her ex rutting like a pair of wild animals against the concrete wall of the building opposite the bar.
“I said harder,” Poppy orders. She looks up at the man thrusting into her. “Either bite me or fuck off. I’m never going to come if you continue to pussyfoot around like this.”
He grunts his disagreement a moment before Poppy flips their positions, so Seb’s back is against the wall and jams a pistol under his chin. Glaring straight into his face, she flicks off the safety then slides her hand down his body to fist his exposed cock. She works him up and down, slowly, tauntingly, until Seb is bucking his hips and groaning.
When it sounds like he’s on the verge of climax, she lets go of his dick and snarls, “We do this my way… or I’ll go and find the prick in the suit and get him to do it to me. You begged for this, Seb… now deliver.”
“You’re so fucked, flower girl,” Seb growls. He disarms her at the same time as he pushes Poppy face first against the concrete wall. “It’s time to show you exactly who you’ve been teasing all these years.”
After pressing himself against her ass a few times, Seb turns Poppy to face him. He uses his body weight to pin her in place while he rips her shirt down the middle. The tattered material hangs from her arms and dangles around her waist. Poppy’s red bra hides her tits from view, although I can see the pale swell of her flesh above the lace cups in the pulsing light from the windows in the second story.
When Seb uses the muzzle of the pistol to nudge her legs open as far as they can spread with her lace-up leather pants caught at her knees, I narrow my eyes and clench my fists. I know Poppy asked for this, but it doesn’t sit right with me.
I should stop him.
I don’t know if I sh
ould involve myself in this mess.
Before I can decide whether to act, Seb uses his grip on Poppy’s head to bend her forward over an empty beer keg and our eyes lock. Once he’s covered his length with latex, he holds the gun at the base of her neck, and he shoves his cock roughly inside her.
Poppy’s eyes widen, then she tilts her head back and runs her tongue over her top teeth. My mouth opens when she lifts her top lip in a crude smirk and moans. Melding with the shadows, I bite back my own groan when Seb jerks her body back violently.
“God, yes,” Poppy cries out as he thrusts into her front behind again. Eyes on mine, she makes it clear that she is speaking to me when she says, “Don’t stop. Stay with me.”
Seb nips at her neck, then bites down viciously her bared shoulder. Poppy makes a sound that is half purr, half moan of delight. A shudder of pleasure surges my body and settles in my lower gut. I see his fingers flex around her waist when he pulls her ass to him and pumps his cock into her like a piston. My length swells in my pants until I’m fully hard. Every time Poppy grunts from his thrusts, her eyes widen further, and my dick twitches. A warmth invades my groin. It’s a foreign sensation that I cannot bring myself to name.
I also don’t want to admit that I like it.
Closing my eyes, I grit my teeth and try to ride out the waves of heat that flow through me as the sounds of the couple fucking become louder and more aggressive.
“Choke me,” Poppy groans. She’s panting hard. “Don’t be a pussy. Do it.”
I reopen my eyes in time to see Seb let go of Poppy’s hair and drop his hand to her neck. He pinches the sides of her throat with his beefy fingers and she makes a choking sound. The noise hits me straight in the dick. I can’t take it any longer. I need to do something about the ache that’s taken hold of my cock. With my eyes glued to Poppy’s, I shove my uninjured hand down the front of my trousers and cup my pulsing erection. When she tracks the movement of my hand, she licks her lips. A throaty moan erupts from her pouty mouth as I stroke my length up and down.