The pain exploded through my nose and as blood bubbled and fell, I’d felt a weird buzzing in my brain as dots sparkled before my eyes.
The next thing I’d known, I was being hauled into this room.
It was dark, dirty, and Aaron kept saying things that scared me.
He was muttering to himself as he paced back and forth. I didn’t have to see to know that was what he was doing. His motions were jerky, erratic, and the squeaky floorboards beneath his feet creaked every time he moved. It was like a horrible language I was starting to understand.
“Gillipollas think they’re fucking kings. They ain’t. I’ll show them—”
“—I’ll make them pay. Those hijos de puta—”
“—bastards need to be shown they messed with the wrong Sanchez—”
He kept repeating that, over and over and over, until I thought I was going to go mad from hearing it.
I didn’t know what my daddies had done to make Aaron hate them, but I knew I was being punished for something he was blaming them for.
Did it make me mad?
Yeah. It did. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was a good girl. I tried never to get into trouble, tried to always stick to the rules because Daddy Ryan had asked me to. When he went to heaven, he’d whispered to be a good girl because my momma needed me to be that. And I listened.
I always listened.
Even to things I wasn’t supposed to hear.
But even though I’d been a good girl, I was being punished. It wasn’t fair. But then, life wasn’t, was it? My Daddy Ryan had died when I was little, and he’d left me and Momma to be all alone until she’d brought us home where my other daddies lived. Then my baby sister, the one that had never left Momma’s belly, had gone to heaven too.
I didn’t like heaven. I didn’t understand why it kept taking the people I loved from me, but I had a feeling I was going to come face-to-face with it, because I knew, no matter what Aaron had said during that phone call to Daddy Wolfe, he wasn’t going to let me live.
My hands were tied to the chair I was sitting on, my feet too. They kept getting pins and needles, and when I tried to wriggle them, my wrists and ankles rubbed against the rope. I could smell blood, could feel the ache of the rope’s kiss on my skin, and now it was starting to itch.
But the worst thing of all, worse than having no food and no sleep, the aching body and the bleeding wrists and ankles, was that he never let me up.
Never let me move.
Even now, though he hadn’t let me have anything to drink, I needed to pee. So bad. So, so bad. But there was no point in holding it. Not really. I’d already had to do this several times, and the smell of pee was making me feel sick. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew he’d slap me again if I asked, but God, I needed to—
“Baby, not long now.”
Everything inside me tensed at that voice.
A voice I hadn’t heard since forever.
My dry mouth seemed to dry out even more as I processed the fact I could hear Daddy Ryan.
In my head.
It was wonderful to hear his voice, wonderful, but I was so scared because I knew he was in heaven.
And his words…
Did that mean I was going there too?
Not long until what?
I didn’t know how to answer him, how to speak with him, but maybe knowing wasn’t important, because he answered, No, baby. You’re not coming to see me. Not yet. And not for a long time. Just stay strong.
Don’t leave me! I cried, certain he was about to leave, about to abandon me again.
Never. I promise.
Why are you only talking to me now?
It was harder to get to you.
Why?
I don’t know. He sounded sad. Time?
Time? What did he mean by that?
I didn’t understand, but I didn’t need to. I just needed to know he was there. With me. That I wasn’t alone. That one of my most favorite people in the whole world was there with me.
I love you, baby. You’ve been so good. So brave. So strong.
Daddy?
Yes, sweetheart.
I need to pee. So bad.
You do what you need to, baby. His voice changed, deepened. I knew what that meant, had heard Daddy Wolfe go from amused to angry in the blink of an eye. Never at me or Momma, but usually at my brothers.
Like that time Seamus had decided to climb onto the clubhouse roof. He’d been amused until my momma had come out, seen him, then dropped to her knees and started sobbing. Daddy Flame had hushed her, even as Daddy Wolfe, seeing her distress, had screamed at Seamus to stay put, not to move ‘a goddamn motherfucking inch.’
My daddies swore a lot.
I was used to it.
Shame filled me as I allowed my bladder to release. It hurt. That was how long I’d been holding it. It burned so badly, but there was also a sweet relief. It felt so wrong. I hadn’t wet myself since I was a little girl, and to do this now? When Daddy was there? I bowed my head, utterly miserable, not just from where I was and who had captured me, but because I had wet myself like a three-year-old.
The floorboards creaked and I tensed, knowing full well what that meant.
Aaron was capable of a stillness that went on for so long, it creeped me out. Maybe he was sleeping in those long stretches of time where there was no sound, but I heard no change in his breathing. Nothing that told me he’d begun to rest.
Mostly, he was all over the place with his movements, and the floorboards told me where he was, if he was close or far.
Now?
He was close.
My heart began to pound as terror flooded me.
“Dirty bitch,” he howled as he tugged the blindfold down to my chin so he could glower at me. “I just stepped in it!”
My mouth quivered as I stared up at him. The only reason my eyes didn’t ache was because it was so dark in here, so dark that there was barely any difference between having my eyes covered up and exposed.
When his fist came again, I screamed as the pain hit me. He’d already hurt my nose twice, but this time?
My scream was a mixture of my terror, bewilderment, and agony, and when I released it, it was like that was the trigger for my salvation.
Even as tears flooded my eyes, making my vision blurry, I saw him. He came through the window, rolling through it like some kind of ninja from one of those stupid cartoons Jamie liked watching.
One second, Ink was rolling onto the ground, and the next? He was there. With barely any squeaking from the floorboards, he was behind Aaron, holding a gun to the temple of the boy I’d known so long ago and now didn’t know at all.
His gaze cut to mine, and he whispered, “Ama, close your eyes and don’t listen.”
I couldn’t move my hands to my ears to hide from the noise, but I closed my eyes and hummed, knowing what he was about to do, knowing but uncaring.
Guns were everywhere. We made them on the compound. Daddy Flame was going to teach me how to use one when I was old enough, and I knew what they could do. Had seen Jamie’s dad, Rodeo, come back, his arm bleeding from the hole a bullet had made in it.
When I heard the blast, I knew what it was, and flinched.
Aaron didn’t even moan.
Didn’t make a sound.
Hands suddenly cupped my chin. “Ama, open your eyes. You’re safe now.”
As I caught his gaze with mine, I took a deep breath. The stench around me made itself known and my cheeks blossomed with embarrassed heat, but mostly, I just wanted to be what he said.
Safe.
“Ama!”
My daddies!
I whipped my head around, catching sight of Daddies Flame and Dagger barreling through the door they’d kicked in, with Daddy Wolfe and Axe right behind them. The second they all saw me, they froze, then their faces turned rigid with fury as they glowered at the crumpled form at my feet.
“Daddy Dagger,” I whimpered, needing him to get me out of here. He a
lways had a knife. That was why he had his name. “Please!”
He tensed at my cry, then dragged his attention to me.
You’ll be home soon, baby girl. I’m always going to be here when you need me.
As Daddy Ryan disappeared from my mind, Daddy Dagger cut me loose. When his boots scuffed in my pee, and his fingers connected with my bloody, wet wrists, I froze inside.
“It’s okay, Ama,” Ink rasped, and even though nothing was, I sent him a shaky smile filled with my gratitude.
He’d saved me and I’d never forget that.
Not for as long as I lived.
14
Ama
How could someone be so handsome?
I often stared at Saint and wondered how it was humanly possible. His face was like something Michelangelo himself couldn’t recreate in marble, but his features were somehow chiseled from that same stone—his jaw was hard and square, leading to a chin that had one of those little dents in the middle.
His nose was firm, Roman, and it flared out slightly when he was mad. It was flattened at the base, making his upper lip curve when he was amused.
His eyes could narrow into slits that burned with heat when his brown orbs gleamed with outrage, but were capable of such warmth they made molten chocolate look cold.
His hair was black. Coal black. I sometimes wondered how he’d look when he was older. Would he go salt and pepper? Would that black be overtaken by a pure silver? I didn’t know, and hoped he would be in my life still so I’d find out. He was twenty-four and I was eighteen. There was a long time to pass between now and that point where he’d be turning gray, but I was fanciful by nature. Some might call me stupid, like Lora-Beth from my senior year did, but I wasn’t. I just saw things a little differently than most.
Maybe that was why I often found myself studying the minutiae and not the bigger picture.
Very few people would probably call Saint handsome. But I thought he was beautiful. Each individual feature was a gift from God, and yet, when put together, I knew what most people saw—a predator.
I didn’t mind that though. I’d been around predators all my life, and even though someone like me could have been their prey, I was the creature they protected. The creature they’d lay down their lives to keep safe.
That was what happened when you were the only daughter of an MC Prez, his VP, Enforcer, and Treasurer. Yup. I had four dads, five counting the one who’d died when I was little. Not biologically, but that had never mattered. Just as it had never mattered that my two brothers, Matty and Seamus, were obviously Flame’s sons—the clue was in their shockingly red hair.
Paternity wasn’t what mattered in my family. Never had, never would. Not because my momma couldn’t keep it in her pants and had baby daddies running around, but because they were all together.
Together together.
Their relationship had always fascinated me, and although I’d been teased about it at school—somewhat miserably—I’d always been able to shove it aside because I’d never seen a dynamic like it.
My friends, both girls and boys, came from single parent families, with divorced marriages and bitter regrets littering their background.
Me?
I was forged from love and had been raised in it.
Funny how that worked. How we’d had Welfare around so many times to check up on us, to make sure things were copacetic at the clubhouse when we had the best family around.
“You’re staring.”
My lips curved. “I’m supposed to be. How can I draw you if I don’t?”
Saint sighed and pressed his forearm to his eyes. I’d seen those brown orbs filled with rage and such passion. I wanted him to show me both, wanted him to burn me with his need for me. Rage or need, I’d accept either.
Keys, to his left and jingling the keyring in his hand, grumbled, “Hurry up, Ama.”
My nose wrinkled. “You can’t hurry greatness.”
“Can’t we? We have to go on a run tonight. You gonna be done sometime this month?” he teased, and though I laughed, deep inside I hid my unease.
I hated runs.
For as long as I’d lived here, the Hell’s Rebels’ MC had been smuggling guns and cigarettes across state lines. Each time, there was the risk that an MC brother wouldn’t come home or, if he did, it might be in a body bag.
Now Keys was a prospect, he’d been accepted just before we’d graduated high school, so he got to go along for the ride.
Of course, he loved it.
It was an excuse to be on the back of his bike for hours on end. But me? I was always scared they’d never come back.
Two of the men I loved most—aside from my daddies—were going on tonight’s run. The thought of being here, without them, was enough to make me want to puke, but they believed I’d been doing well recently, and I didn’t want to disappoint them. Didn’t want them to worry about me. If they did, maybe they’d stop concentrating, and that could get them killed.
I didn’t know what went down on a run, aside from way too much gas being used to carry illegal goods across the States—carbon footprints didn’t matter to the MC—but I knew they were in danger until they came back to me.
That was what I had to focus on—their return.
Releasing a breath, I began sketching Keys. Both boys were the sons of lifers—brothers who’d be in it for life. Until death.
Lawrence, AKA Saint, was the son of Wheels, the MC’s Road Captain. He was in charge of all the runs, both the organizing and the security. Wheels was training Saint to take his place one day, a prospect that pretty much petrified me.
Keys was Rodeo’s boy—the Sergeant-at-Arms was currently serving his fourth year of a seven-year-stretch, but was due for parole in the next two months. Jamie was beyond stoked, and I couldn’t blame him—I missed Rodeo almost as much as Keys did.
I’d been raised with both men, had seen them morph from zit-faced teenagers to handsome guys, and still, somehow, they saw me as a girl.
That I wanted them both was a given. I was my mother’s daughter, after all, and had been raised in the kind of relationship I wanted to have for my own, that I needed to have to feel safe, but both guys were stubbornly refusing to see things my way.
They weren’t the only ones.
Ink was just as bad.
He was the club’s Secretary and he managed the tattoo parlor the MC owned.
I’d loved all three since before I even knew what love was. To me, these three epitomized everything that was brave and loyal.
Was it any wonder I fantasized about having more with them? Personally, I considered it a very normal response to being around three such fine specimens of manhood. If they didn’t get me hot and bothered, I’d truly consider myself beyond hope—that was how delicious they were.
Keys broke into my thoughts when he clucked his tongue. “You said you weren’t sketching me.”
When I saw he’d leaned up onto his elbow and was staring at my pad, I grabbed it and hauled it into my chest. “No peeking,” I grumbled. “You know the rules.”
“Yeah, and you do too. You’re not supposed to sneak sketch.”
My lips curved at his reprimand, a reminder of the last time I’d drawn him, and I reached for the tumbler of water I’d brought out with me. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“You didn’t have to draw it!” he retorted, cutting Saint a furtive glance before glowering at me when he saw Saint was smirking up at the sky, his eyes closed as he listened to us bicker.
“It was there! What was I supposed to do?”
“Fuck’s sake, Saint, back me up on this or next it will be your cock on that pad.”
I snickered. “It’s your fault,” I repeated. “You shouldn’t have had a boner.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You shouldn’t have been looking.”
Both men lived in their jeans and cuts, but there was a lake on the clubhouse property, one that we often went to once the weather grew warm. Last week, he’d changed
into a pair of loose-fitting surf shorts, and I’d just happened to see the tip peeping over the waistband.
How the hell was I supposed to not draw that?
Especially when it was leaking pre-cum onto divoted abs that I wanted to lick.
I’d fantasized about that, too, that night.
But he’d undoubtedly been watching one of the sweetbutts. Hell, in my one piece, I was nothing in comparison to some of the clubwhores—and no, that wasn’t me being mean even though, sometimes, I really wanted to be. Especially since I knew both my guys had lost their V-cards to sweetbutts. Clubwhore was the title of a woman who lived at the clubhouse for free, and who paid for her living costs on her back.
Still, I’d drawn him, laying out, the sun on his face as it was then and now, and the one-eyed snake glaring at me hungrily.
My mouth grew wet at the thought, as well as other parts of my body.
“That’s why I never take my jeans off,” Saint rumbled, before yawning. “You can never be caught off guard that way. You know what she’s like, Keys, obsessed with drawing us. No excuse in being caught off guard. It’s every man for himself where Ama’s concerned.”
I knew Keys wanted to whine, so I grinned at him, and murmured, “Don’t worry, Jamie, I won’t look down there again if you don’t want me to.”
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t call me Jamie.”
“Oops, slip of the tongue.”
He grunted, and I smirked down at my sketchpad as I drew him, furious features and all.
He was just as beautiful as Saint, even if he was—in his own words—a mutt. He had blue eyes, olive skin, and hair that was neither brown nor blond but somewhere in between. His mom was Mexican, and she’d been Rodeo’s old lady before she’d died.
That was why Rodeo was in jail.
He’d gone mad when he’d lost Luisa. Beat up the doctor who’d misdiagnosed her and was serving time for aggravated assault.
I bit my tongue at the memory, and even though I’d just been teasing him, I reached over and pressed my hand to his cheek. He was my age, but he looked older. His beard was grown out, and the stubble rasped against my hand as I flexed my fingers over the golden silk of his skin that spoke of his momma’s Mexican heritage.
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