by K. L. Savage
Maizey sniffles, rubbing her wet cheeks against Sarah’s jeans before turning her chubby cheeks to Knives. “You mean it?”
“I swear it.”
“Pinky promise,” she says, lifting her tiny finger in the air.
Knives lifts his pinky, which is so much bigger than hers, and locks it around her tiny one. “Pinky promise.”
“You gotta kiss it or it don’t matter,” she sniffles, waiting for Knives to give in to her demands.
He brings his face down and kisses his hand. The toothless smile beams across her face, and she does the same, plopping a wet kiss on their fingers. “I’m going to go dash Daddy’s office with happiness. I need my wand.” She runs to where her wand is on the ground, picks it up, and heads for the Church door.
“Oh, no. Maizey, sweetie, you can’t bother your dad when he is in the office,” Sarah calls out, but it’s too late.
Maizey is gone, and the roar of laughter coming from Church can be heard from the kitchen, followed by a high-pitched squeal.
“If you make my daughter cry again, Knives, I’ll kill you,” Sarah says as if she is having a normal conversation while she cuts the apples with calm, controlled slices.
“Yes ma’am,” Knives says, gulping.
“Knives! Get your ass back in here, right fucking now,” Reaper bellows from Church.
Not if Reaper kills him first.
“We really need to talk,” I tell Knives. “I’ll go tell Reaper.”
“No, I will,” he says. “We will talk, but my stance isn’t changing,” he says defiantly, leaving no room for argument.
If I know anything about us, there is always room for argument.
I bite my tongue until he leaves the room, and I lift my hands to strangle the air, pretending it’s his neck as I let out a frustrated growl. “He is so impossible. He won’t listen to me. He doesn’t understand that this needs to happen.”
“He cares about you, Mary. Think about if it wasn’t an issue, what would you think if he agreed with Reaper to put you in harm’s way?”
“How do you know it has to do with that?”
“Those walls aren’t as thick as Reaper likes to think. I can hear everything they talk about. Don’t tell him that, or he will soundproof it,” she winks.
I pull out a chair, plop down, and sigh. I don’t look away from the hallway, so I know when he is coming back. The longer we wait to talk about this, the more I calm down and realize Sarah is right. It could be worse. Knives could just not give a shit at all about me and let me be dangled as bait.
I’m lucky, I know, but what else is there to do? If they can’t find my dad in Vegas, we draw him out. I’m the best way to do that.
“I just want to help. I know the risk, and I know Knives has been through so much—”
“—Mary, all the guys have been through so much. These men, they are glued together by pure will alone. Everyone has their story. I don’t know much about Knives, but I know enough to know, he has lost so much. He finally has you, a new story, don’t you think he is afraid to see how it ends? Especially with what Seer said. He must be freaking out.”
It makes me think about all the ol’ ladies and what they have been through. I wish more of the girls were here right now. Juliette works with Tool, Joanna seems to need sleep all the time since she’s pregnant, Dawn just had a baby, Sunnie…well, I don’t know where Sunnie is, actually. All I know is that she isn’t here.
“I want him to trust me.”
Sarah puts the knife down and takes the seat next to me. “You think he doesn’t? It isn’t you that he doesn’t trust, Mary. It’s the world. It’s everyone else around us. It’s men like your father, men like the Groundskeeper, men like Maximo that make him realize he can never leave you alone or unprotected. After everything this club has been through in the last couple years, the only place trust exists is here.”
“Damn it!” Knives roars just before slamming the door, and the slam has my hand falling to my chest.
I exhale and rub my temples. “I know. I know, you’re right. I better go check on him. That doesn’t sound good.”
“It never does. Reaper probably called a vote.”
Which means if Knives is mad, Reaper voted in favor of what I wanted.
I steal an apple slice off the counter as I get up and bite into the juicy crisp. The flavor bursts across my tongue, but the Granny Smith apples that are usually sour are muted. It doesn’t taste the same when I know Knives is mad at me. Granny Smith apples are my favorite too. “I need to go check on him. I hate how upset he is,” I say, throwing the other half of the apple in my mouth as I walk away and head toward the man that has my heart.
But he is also a ticking time bomb. His fuse is becoming shorter and shorter until I’m worried the man I’ve come to know and love will be gone because of the circumstances around him. Knives has hidden how he really feels for far too long now, and now that his past is back, I doubt he will ever be able to hide how he feels again
“He has a lot going on. Everything he thought he knew, he didn’t know at all. Keep that in mind, okay? I’m sure he doesn’t know how to process it all.” Sarah gives me a warm smile. I appreciate it, but it does nothing to make me feel better.
I tuck my hands in my jacket pockets and give her the best smile I can and head toward the door; the light spilling in from outside shines from the crack.
I feel like I’m about to meet my maker walking toward the light. My dad used to preach that the light holds acceptance and peace, but I think he has it all wrong.
The same things that happen in the dark, happen in the light too. The only difference is that you can see what is happening rather than wonder.
I’ve never felt like I’ve hated Reaper before, but right now, it is debatable. I can’t believe they took a vote without me because he said I was too close to the issue. Too close? Too fucking close? What a joke. If that happened with Sarah, Reaper would have raised hell, but because he is Prez, he is able to do whatever he wants.
He has the best interest of the club at heart.
I have to keep telling myself that, even though I feel like no one is taking my heart into consideration. It sounds needy. It sounds like I’m a real fucking pussy when it comes to my feelings.
And maybe I am. I’ve kept them locked up for so long. I numbed myself, and it worked, for a very long time, until Mary happened.
Fucking Mary.
She reached inside me with her warmth and thawed my soul. Pandora’s Box has opened, and now my feelings are spilling out, and I can’t contain them. It’s like poison, completely killing who I used to be and changing me into this… I don’t even know what.
I don’t recognize who I am.
“Hey. I’ve been looking for you.”
“You found me.” I hang my head and stare at the ground. Even though it rained the other day, the desert is still cracked and dry, as if it hasn’t seen water in months.
When I left the clubhouse, I walked around toward the back where Skirt’s house used to be. I’m sitting on a stack of cinderblocks that are sitting in the middle of the lot. We are going to try and rebuild it soon. The supplies are slowly coming in. It would be easier if we owned a hardware store. The building process would speed up, and Skirt and his family can have their own space. But right now, the clubhouse is safer for them to live, considering we don’t really party anymore, and the whores aren’t there. If we want to drink, we go to Kings’ Club. And if we get too drunk, Tool has extra rooms in the back with cots where we can sleep it off.
I almost prefer it. I don’t miss the sluts. I miss Becks though, even though she wasn’t a whore. She was a damn good massage therapist. I could use a backrub right now.
Things at the clubhouse won’t be like this forever. Cut sluts come and go all the time, but when they return, the drama between them and the ol’ ladies will return, and with Mary’s attitude, I have no doubt she would kill one of them.
Not that I’d ever give her a reason
to. Ruthless Kings can be bastards, but we don’t cheat. Once we find our ol’ lady, no other pussy will do.
It’s a harsh way of putting it, but it’s true. It’s because no other woman makes us fucking feel or makes us weak like our ol’ ladies.
“Knives, I know you don’t want this to happen, and I understand why. I love you. If the tables were turned, I wouldn’t want you to do this either. You and the guys, you are always running into danger. Don’t you think that bothered me before? You might have driven me crazy, but I worried every time you walked out that door to take care of club business.”
“Yeah?” I ask, lifting a thick brow at her.
“Are you so surprised?”
“A little bit. You surprise me, that’s all.” I open my cut pocket and grab a star, but this one is different. It’s old, handmade, and a bit rusted.
“I remember when I met Reaper’s dad, and he said, ‘I have a son about your age.’ And Reaper is a few years older than me, but I think his dad was trying to make me feel better after everything that happened.” I’m not sure why I’m telling her this, it doesn’t make sense, but I feel like I have to. “His Sergeant at Arms, you don’t know him, he died a few years later, took the knives I had in my hand when I arrived at the clubhouse and made me this. They are sharp, so be careful.”
“These are the knives you defended yourself with the day you thought Mason died?”
“Yeah, these are it. It’s ugly, right? Not smooth and pretty like my other ones, but they are jagged, almost more threatening, since they have that knife feel.”
“Your name makes sense now,” she teases, nudging me in the shoulder.
“I want you to have it,” I tell her. I never thought it would be so emotional to give something to someone I love that was built because I missed someone I cared about.
“I can’t take this.”
“You need something to protect yourself. Please, if you’re going to do this, I need to know you’re okay.”
“You aren’t going to fight me?”
“I don’t have the energy to fight you, Hellraiser. I can’t go against Prez. He will kill me. Especially after I made Maizey cry.” I feel fucking terrible about that. I can’t believe I snapped at a little girl who was only trying to make me happy. “I don’t want this to happen. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you too, Mary. You’re everything I didn’t know I needed. After my family died, after Mason, I don’t have the heart to go through another loss.”
“Mason is back. You didn’t lose him,” she says, laying her hand on my knee. “Why won’t you see that?”
“Because I know eventually, I’ll lose him anyway. It’s easier to keep myself distant from him. You don’t know how much I struggled in the foster homes. You don’t know how much I wished I would have died in that car accident with my family. Mason made the little bit of love I had for life worth it.”
She lays her head on my shoulder, and the breeze takes the moment to sweep by. Her long hair dances, and the smell of her shampoo hits my face. It’s that cheap shit, Suave, but it smells so fucking good, like strawberries and cream. She could have the most expensive shampoo, and all she says is, “nothing makes my hair shine like this.”
Good, because I’d miss the scent of her.
We sit there not saying a word to one another, just enjoying the peace and the sun against my face and my girl by my side
That’s when it hits me.
It’s quiet. There isn’t a sound. It’s just the wind picking up dust and a few vultures overhead.
The silence isn’t bothering me, but it’s still speaking volumes. It’s still fucking loud.
And it’s saying what a lucky sonofabitch I am.
I wrap my arm around Mary, my biggest pain in the ass ever, and pick her up to set her on my lap. “Just don’t die, okay?”
“You deal with death every day,” she says, pressing her lips against my cheek.
“Yeah, but I can get over those deaths.” I close my eyes and relish in the feel of her red pouts against me, the softness of the plump flesh grazing against me. I know it won’t be the last time I feel her, I’ll make sure of that, but it feels like it.
With what Seer said, with the threat of her dad, it’s hard for me to stay positive.
“You saying you won’t be able to get over me, Thomas Underwood?”
I groan when she uses my full name. I haven’t been called that since I was fifteen. “Come here.” I turn her around so she can face me, the damn breeze taking another opportunity to blow her hair, so I catch it, holding it down so it doesn’t get tangled. I want a picture of her like this. It reminds me that we have no pictures together, and if we do, it’s with the rest of the club, and we are as far away as we can be from each other.
We always fought to stay away, but now we have to fight to stay together.
And one kiss changed everything.
“I’d never be able to get over you, Mary. You need to know that—”
“Knives…”
“Look at me.” I grip her chin in my hand and force her to. “I can get over a lot of things. I have and I always will, but not you. When all this is over, and you’re back right here where you’re meant to be—” I grab her ass for good measure, making sure she understands me, “—You’re going to be Mrs. Underwood.”
She gasps and then slaps me across the face. Mary covers her mouth with her hand, and water sparkles in her eyes.
“Ow, Hellraiser.” I lift my hand to my cheek and rub it.
Next, like the crazy ass woman she is, she smashes her lips against mine.
She’s going to give me whiplash from not being able to make up her damn mind and what she wants to do to me. She rears back and slaps me again, my cheek blazing and my cock hard. I fucking love it when she makes me insane. “It isn’t funny. Don’t joke like that. Plus, you know it’s too soon—”
“I’m not laughing, am I? I’m not kidding, and I don’t give a fuck if it is too soon. We live in Vegas. I’ll marry your ass on the strip, in front of Elvis and everybody. Tomorrow. I don’t give a fuck.”
“You’re serious?”
“Deadly.” It’s way too soon according to society and normal people standards, but fuck society. They have never done a damn thing for me anyway. There is one thing I have in a drawer in my room. It’s a plastic bag, pushed all the way in the back. It holds my parents’ wedding rings. They’re the only items I have from them. They’re all I have left of them.
Oddly enough, my dad’s ring fits me.
And I’m going to wear it.
Mom’s engagement ring was simple, a teardrop diamond on a rose gold band, but I can see Mary wearing it. It suits her. I’ve saved the rings all these years, not having the heart to part with them, and this is why.
“I could slap you again.”
“You better not unless you want to get bent over and fucked,” I say, my cheek still tingling from her palm.
“I’m sorry, I was shocked, and I had to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.”
“You usually pinch yourself if you think you’re dreaming, Hellraiser.”
“Yeah, but what fun would that be?”
There she goes, checking all my damn boxes and driving me mad. I smash my lips against hers, diving my tongue inside her hot mouth, and this time the kiss is sweeter. My beard rubs against her chin, and my palm slides down her throat, getting a semi-hard hold, so she doesn’t move.
I bring the kiss to an end and lay my forehead against hers, panting. “You going to marry me or what?”
“And if I say no?” She leans back, her lipstick smeared, so I bring my finger up and wipe it off from her chin. I like it when she’s all fucked up and messy because I know I did it.
“Too fucking bad. You’re going to marry me anyway. I was only asking to be nice.”
She tosses her back and falls back in my arms, laughing at my response. I slide my hand up her spine and make her come back to me, chest against chest. Her arms wrap around my neck, and h
er laugh finally dies down. “I guess I have no choice in the matter, do I?”
“Nope,” I state.
“Then marry me tonight.” She ups my ante, trying to see if I’m bluffing.
“Tonight it is, Hellraiser.”
No one will take my wife from me.
I’ll claw tooth and nail, peel flesh from bone if someone dares.
She’s my fucking Hellraiser, my Pandora’s Box of fucking emotions.
This wedding has to happen now because in the back of my mind, in eleven days, I might not have that opportunity.
Holy Crap. He asked me to marry him.
I think I said yes. I’m not sure. I wouldn’t say no. I’m just surprised. We have known each other for a while, but we have only been lovers for a few days. If my parents knew what I was up to—well—I guess that doesn’t matter, because they no longer matter.
This matters. Knives matters. The Ruthless Kings matter.
My home matters.
“We’re getting married!” Knives hollers as we walk through the door of the clubhouse, and everyone, I mean everyone, including the dogs, stare at us with open mouths. It’s comical.
And it’s making me nervous, because no one looks happy, but no one is mad.
Well, Reaper doesn’t look too thrilled.
Crickets.
This is awkward. I know it isn’t the best timing, but a little amount of support would go a long way right now. “Knives, maybe—”
“No,” he cuts me off and grips my hand tighter. “I’m marrying her, and I know all of you assholes think it’s a bad time, but what better time is there than right now? With all this fucking shit going on, all I want to be is happy. She makes me happy, and I want to live my fucking life before we do go after her father—”
“—Knives, we have a lot to plan. Getting married right now is not a good idea. Her father is here.”
“Exactly, he is here, and he isn’t going anywhere without her. If in eleven days something happens to her, I want to know I did everything I wanted with her.”
“Nothing is going to happen to her, Knives. We will make sure of it.”