by Zoey Parker
What was I doing? We’d accidentally stumbled across something that I never expected to find. Hell, I thought I was just scooping up the president’s daughter when she’d gotten herself into a spot of trouble. I never in a million years would have dreamed that we’d end naked and entangled on her bed so quickly. But that’s exactly what had happened, and now I had to deal with the consequences.
By which I meant run from them.
“I’m sorry,” I said, for what felt like the first time in my life. “But I have to go.” I stormed out before she could say another word.
# # #
The wind in my face as I rode home didn’t feel as comforting as it did earlier in the night. Now, it was like gritty daggers poking me in the eyes. I drove to my house, looked at the silent, darkened windows, and just kept on going. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that I was gonna be able to get anything resembling a restful night of shuteye. Not after all this mess. I decided to ride until a better idea hit me.
My thoughts were stupid and repetitive, the same two sides of an argument going back and forth like squawking birds.
I shouldn’t have done that.
Well, I did, so now what?
Cut and run. That’s the only reasonable option.
No, I know there’s something more to her. To both of us. I can’t just run from that.
I can and I will. The prez is gonna roast me. Shit, he might take my patch or strip me of my rank. He’d be justified.
Fuck Growler. That’s a problem for the morning. Right now, I need to go back to that girl and fix the mess I caused.
I can’t.
I have to.
I can’t.
I felt drained and amped up at the same time. My muscles were stringy, restless. My fingers were tap-dancing on the throttle anxiously. I’d never felt so unsettled in my life, but there wasn’t an easy solution at hand. Every avenue was riddled with potholes and dead ends. Either I pursue what I’d started or I run as fast as I can in the other direction. Neither one seemed appealing.
I decided I needed an outlet. I drove to the twenty-four-hour gym on the other side of town and parked my bike out front. The place was empty as I walked in. The glare overhead from the fluorescent light beams was exactly the kind of harshness I was looking for. I wanted to punish my body, to slam it with strain until my brain gave up on thinking.
Walking over to a bench press station, I loaded up the barbell with as much weight as I could get my hands on. I clambered onto the bench, pushed it overhead, then let it descend to my chest. Up, down, up, down, the weight flew. I channeled all of my pent-up rage and frustration into the effort. Die, thoughts, die. My chest was on fire. Every muscle fiber screamed for rest, but I kept pressing. Just a few more. Two more. One more.
I racked the weight and sat up. The pain had transformed into an all-consuming numbness. But my brain was as alive as ever, full of images.
Corinne, eyes fluttering behind half-closed eyelids as my tongue slid across her hips.
Corinne, thighs fallen apart, biting her lip and looking up at me so anxiously and sexily.
Corinne. Corinne. Everywhere I looked.
“Shut the fuck up,” I growled out loud. Another man had wandered in after me, and he gave me a sideways glance. I figured I must have looked like a maniac, talking to myself and lifting weights with an insane frenzy at four in the morning. Ah, well, fuck him. I probably did have a screw or two lose, but whatever, so did everyone else on this goddamn planet.
I told myself to just think about the bartender. She’d been a nice little dime. Easy enough and blissfully uncomplicated. Flirt, fuck, and leave. That was my preferred operating method. “Just picture her,” I muttered. I moved over to the squat rack and added plates until the bar was groaning. Stepping beneath it, I hoisted it onto my back and then bent at the knees until my quads were blazing. Stand, squat, repeat ad nauseam, until my legs were trembling just as desperately as my chest.
I kept moving around the gym, working each body part in turn, until I felt like a bowl of Jell-O. But no matter how hard I tried to concentrate on lifting the weight or focus on mental images of Carla in the storage closet, the same snapshots of Corinne tore across my mind’s eye. It was goddamn unstoppable. I was drowning in her.
I dropped a weight abruptly. This wasn’t working. I needed something more mentally challenging. Maybe someone at the clubhouse would have a bit of work that needed to be done. Running missions always tended to clear my mind. A collections run or a muscle job could be just the ticket to snap me back to the present moment. It was worth a shot, at the very least.
Drenched in sweat, I left the gym and got back on my bike. The sun was just starting to come up over the horizon. I went home to shower and change before heading to the Inked Angels headquarters.
I had my fingers crossed that I’d be able to avoid seeing Growler. I didn’t think I could handle that particular interaction at the moment. Motherfucker might smell the damn indiscretion on me. And if he did, there was no telling what he’d do.
Chapter 10
Corinne
As soon as Croak left, I fell into a wretched heap of tears. I wanted to stop them, but I didn’t feel like I was in control of my body anymore. The bastard had taken that with him. I couldn’t believe he’d just walked out like that. How could he? How could he do that to me? I beat my fists into the bedsheets, but I was sadder than I was angry. I felt so thin and worn out, like an old washcloth that was long past due to get thrown out.
At first, I was so certain that I’d sensed something special, something different between us. And I was so certain that he’d sensed it, too. It felt obvious in the way his eyes said so much to me and the way he teased, the way he moved, like every step had been determined already and we were just playing it out for the hell of it. I really thought he’d been different.
But he turned out to be a son of a bitch, just like my father had predicted every man on a bike would be. I had to admit that he’d warned me, all those years ago, and I’d gone ahead and dove in anyways. I thought it would be different with Croak.
But I was wrong.
My thoughts were spinning around and around like vultures over roadkill, but they weren’t getting me anywhere. I laid down and curled up with a pillow clutched between my arms for comfort. Eventually, my mind grew tired and let me drift into a restless sleep.
I woke up a few hours later. Gauging by the purplish light between the window blinds, it was right around dawn. I felt crusty. Maybe a shower would help to rinse away the memories and the bad feelings that clung to me.
I threw off the sheets and padded over to the bathroom. Closing the door behind me, I leaned across to twist the knobs of the shower. I cranked the hot to full blast. I wanted my skin to burn, or get as close to it as I could bear. The hotter, the better.
While I waited for the shower to heat up, I examined my face in the mirror. My neck was a mottled collection of bite marks, kisses, and the soft imprint of Croak’s fingertips. In fact, my whole body bore the signs of his touch. I was aching between the legs, but it was a welcome ache, a reminder of how mind-blowing the encounter had been.
I felt like my whole world had been knocked out of place. Everything I thought before was gone, replaced now by thoughts of Croak. All the questions I’d had about why boys couldn’t make me want them were vanished. I’d found what I was looking for — raw, primal need, the kind that made me say fuck the warnings and dive into him heedlessly. I’d been like an animal. So much hunger and need in me that I’d never even known was there. I’d told Croak to stay. I’d told Croak I wanted him. And he’d rewarded that with a mouth, fingertips, and a member that were pretty freaking close to magical. The memory of how hard I’d come still made me shiver.
I blinked hard. Steam was filling the room, blotting my face out in the mirror. I let out a sigh and stepped into the shower. The sizzling water took the edge off of my spiraling thoughts, but it couldn’t get rid of them completely. No matt
er how hard I tried to forget about him, Croak stayed rooted behind my eyelids.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
I washed my hair, then my face and body. After I had scrubbed as hard as I could at my skin, leaving it raw and red, I stood beneath the stream of water for a long time. I let it beat on my shoulders and back while the sound of it splashing filled my ears. It was like a meditation, where the only important thing was to think of anything but Croak. Funny how hard that turned out to be. I’d spent my whole life not thinking of him, but now that I’d started, I couldn’t envision a world where he wasn’t a constant. Such a sudden and unexpected turn of events. I wasn’t ready for this. How could I have been?
Eventually, the water stopped being comforting. I wrenched the knobs to the off position and stepped out. I took my time toweling the water from my body, then wrapped a towel around my chest and put my hair up in another.
A yawn ripped over me as I walked into my bedroom to get dressed. Despite having slept for a couple hours after Croak had gone, I didn’t feel rested at all. My sleep had been filled with half-formed dreams that didn’t make any sense.
I stepped into my closet and pulled on a pair of black panties and white denim shorts. I hooked a strapless black bra around my chest, then scrounged around for a t-shirt. I found a faded blue v-neck, which went over my head. Stripping the towel off of my hair, I coiled it up and dabbed at my wet locks as I walked back into my bedroom.
“Hello,” an unfamiliar voice said as I entered.
I screamed.
A man was standing in the doorway leading from my bedroom out into the main living area. He was of medium height and build, but a grotesque stoop made him look shorter and more menacing. His hair was cropped close. Large chunks of it were missing, showing ugly scabs and scars along his scalp instead. The wounds looked fresh, as if he’d hacked at his own head just before barging into my apartment.
He had on dirty jeans and a long sleeve shirt caked in dust. But scariest of all was the gleaming knife in his hand. That didn’t look dirty at all.
It looked ready to kill.
I backed up into the wall behind me. I wanted to look around for something I could use to defend myself, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off of the man. His face was twisted into an agonized leer. He looked like he was suffering tremendously, like whatever pain he was feeling had driven him crazy. Spit slithered down his chin from his slack jaw. Even from across the room, I could tell that the pupils of his eyes were dilated wide open.
“Who are you?” I asked in a trembling voice.
He gave me a somber tilt of the head. “My name is Ricardo. Your father and I are… business partners,” he offered with a shrug of his shoulders.
I immediately remembered what Croak had told me about the man named Ricardo. He’d lost his cool a little bit….
The man in front of me had done far more than lost his cool, however. He looked like he was high out of his mind on some substance that, whatever it was, should immediately be banned from being used by humans. Something was eating him up from the inside. Snot, dried blood, and powder were crusted around his nose, and with his free hand he kept scratching at himself.
“What do you want with me?” I said quietly. Ricardo was taking slow steps in my direction. He held the knife horizontally, aimed straight at my chest from where he stood a few yards away.
“We’re gonna take a little trip, yes, a field trip, yes, yes,” he said. His voice lurched high and low, from a deep rumble to a baby voice and back again, like there were different personalities fighting for control of his body. He was dangerously unstable. I felt my heart hammering in my chest. My legs were twitching with manic energy. I wanted to run, flee, to get as far away from this drug-crazed loon as I could.
“To where? Why?” As I talked, I slid my hand down the wall behind me so that he couldn’t see. My hair straightener was just an inch or two below my grasp. I pressed the button to turn it on and waited. Just get a little bit closer, you son of a bitch, I thought to myself.
“Your father is, yes, a bastard, yes” he snarled. “Taking my money, my money, how fucking dare he!” Saliva flew from his mouth and his hand squeezed at empty air. I bet he wished it was my dad’s throat. Even though he was pretending, his knuckles still turned white from the effort in his clenched fist.
“What do you want with me?” I asked again. “Tell me why you’re here.”
“I’m the one asking the questions, you cunt,” he roared. “I have the knife! I make the rules! Now shut the fuck up!” He sprang towards me with the knife outstretched on the final syllable. I ducked, grabbed the heated straightener, and clamped down on his free hand with the prongs. I heard a sizzle and smelled the rank stench of burning flesh.
Ricardo howled in pain. As he did, he brought the butt of the knife slamming into my temple where I crouched below and behind him. I couldn’t get out of the way in time. My vision went fuzzy, then dark.
He had me.
# # #
I woke up in the passenger seat of a moving car. It took a flew blinks to get my eyes working properly. When the focus adjusted, I saw that there were tall thickets of trees flashing by on either side of me. I looked to my left and saw Ricardo hunched over the wheel. He still had the long machete in his fist. The straightening iron had left an ugly, rectangular burn on the back of his knuckles. The skin there was bubbled and inflamed.
He glanced over and noticed that I was awake. A dull glaze had taken over his eyes. His jaw hung heavy, mouth wide open, as breath circulated noisily between his fat lips.
I tried to scream, but I realized I had a gag in my mouth. The most I could do was emit a hollow squeak.
“Shush,” he said distractedly. “No one can hear you. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
I thrashed side to side, but my hands and feet were both bound together with lengths of rope. I was stuck. No one could hear me. No one knew where I was. And the last man to see me wanted nothing to do with me ever again.
I fell still. It was no use struggling. Maybe a different tactic would work. I shifted my eyes to Ricardo and mustered all the most pitiful expression I’d ever pulled together. I willed a tiny tear out of the corner of my eye, feeling it slide down my cheek. Ricardo saw me staring at him and a low, grinding chuckle bubbled up from somewhere deep in his chest.
“You’re with me until the end, querida,” he growled. “You are the perfect little lamb.” He directed his eyes back onto the road and resumed ignoring me.
Lamb? What on earth was he talking about? The drugs were clearly eating away at his brain. He had settled down from the manic state he’d been in when he entered the room. Now, he was languid and calm, bordering on catatonic.
But as the seconds wore by, I noticed signs of life coming back into him. First, his fingers began pattering on the steering wheel. Then he started wriggling in his seat like he couldn’t find a comfortable position. Back and forth, back and forth, he writhed around, getting more frantic by the second.
His eyes lit up. I followed his gaze to see what he was looking at. A huge sign loomed on the side of the road. It was the entrance to the state park. This place was famous for a giant plateau that looked out over a big swathe of forest. It was called Devil’s Skillet. I swallowed hard. I used to associate that name with picnics and field trips, just innocent, happy memories. Now, I feared it was about to become something much, much worse.
I looked one more time at Ricardo. My face was pleading, begging. I moaned through the rag in my mouth, trying to form the words that would convince him to set me free.
He looked at me and smiled. His teeth were like rotting tombstones. They were yellowed, vile, on the verge of falling out of his mouth or crumbling to dust completely.
“I’m taking you up to the plateau, little girl,” he spat. “And I’m going to gut you like a fish. Only your blood will make things right again.”
Chapter 11
Croak
I frowned as I approached the club
house. It was just after dawn, and yet there were nearly two dozen bikes parked out front. What the hell was everyone doing here so damn early? As far as I knew, there wasn’t a party last night, so it couldn’t be that all the brothers had just gotten too drunk and rowdy to ride home. After all, a little buzz hadn’t stop us from hopping on our motorcycles any other time.
I ran through the possibilities in my head as I parked my bike and headed in, but nothing seemed to make sense. My phone was dead, so I didn’t know if someone had sent out a text about an emergency meeting or something like that. But, shit, most of the Angels hadn’t seen the sunrise in a long-ass time. It would take a real serious crisis to rattle those numbskulls out of bed.
The clubhouse was packed with Angels. Everyone looked tired as hell, with more yawns and bleary eyes than I could count. But underneath the exhaustion and the hangovers was a palpable sense of worry. I could’ve cut it with a knife, the tension in the air was so damn thick. In my experience, whispers in a place where men usually boomed and roared was never a good sign.