by Wilde, Kati
“But did I blow it? I did not, motherfucker.”
“Yeah, well—we oughta called you Nearly instead of Stone.” Crash looks to me as I remove his blood pressure cuff, checking the numbers on the digital readout. His voice hardens. “And he’s one of the best men I know, Cherry. A good man. So you take care of him, yeah?”
I pull in a painful breath. “I’ll try.”
“All right.”
“Yeah, and Crash is full of shit.” With a lazy smile that the scarring on his face pulls crooked, Stone holds his arm so I have to step closer to remove his cuff. “To him, all a good man has to be is loyal to his club. To stand up for his brothers. By that definition, I might be a good man. But if you go by any other definition of good, I’m a real bad man.”
Crash laughs. “Yeah, right. You saved a fucking flea-bitten stray, brother. And if you’re trying to flirt with Cherry, you gotta go good. She’s not into the bad boys.”
“Shit. That true?”
“I’m not into anyone right now, good or bad.” I can’t afford to be.
“No?” His teeth scrape over the bottom of that lazy smile and he leans in, voice low and gruff near my ear. “Funny. One thing I remember real clear is how eager you were to take my cock, right there on that bar stool. That was no lie. You were so fucking hot and ready for me.”
My breath shudders. “Maybe.”
“Step back from the nurse!”
“Ain’t no maybe about it. And sometime soon, I’m gonna get my mouth on that hot and ready pussy. Gonna suck on your little clit until you’re grinding that wet cunt all over my face and chasing your come. Is it a good man or a bad man who does that to a woman?”
What kind of man can do this to a woman? He didn’t even touch me and I’m hot and aching, my skin no longer feeling the tight cold but shivering with the thrilling image he just put into my head.
“Look sharp, brother.”
At Handlebar’s warning, Stone steps back. His burning gaze still holds mine. “Which one?”
“Both,” I tell him breathlessly. “Good and bad.”
“I’ll take that.” His crooked grin sends another shiver running all over my skin, and I hide my flush by lowering my face and scribbling numbers onto the charts.
This is the last cardio session of the day, so I return to the barn when the fighters do—though I’m not allowed to walk with them, but slightly behind. Still I hear Stone ask Crash, “What the fuck did you mean, you’re already a dead man?”
Their voices go low after that. Not so that I don’t overhear—because Crash already told me about his tumor—but so the guards don’t. I watch with an aching throat as Handlebar’s back and shoulders stiffen up, as he shakes his head. As if trying to deny what Crash is telling Stone.
And I know what Crash is saying. That there’s no help for him, here or anywhere else. But Handlebar’s convinced that his friend can be saved if they can just get out of here. If they can get to a real doctor.
Crash has told me that he’s been to those real doctors. And Handlebar has told me that they were all quacks who didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about.
I suspect they’re both right. That there’s not much Crash can do about the tumor. But that he also needs to get the fuck out of here.
And I… Well, maybe I’ve stopped hoping.
But I can’t stop trying.
* * *
I could never do more than one or two pull-ups in gym class. And I want to believe that sheer grit will let me pull myself up and through the bars over my stall, but that doesn’t happen. So I switch strategies, hanging from one bar and swinging my legs until I can hook my feet on the next. When I finally manage to contort and squeeze my way through the gap, I lie across the steel rods, panting as quietly as I can, the muscles in my shoulders and arms burning.
I’m on the same side of the aisle as the control booth, so I could crawl over all of the stalls and make my way there. But tonight, I only shuffle silently to the next stall—Matt’s.
Then I don’t know what to do. I can’t risk making noise to wake him up. Crash is in the stall across the aisle and he’d never expose me to the guards, but he might wonder why I made so much effort to talk with Hatchet, a white supremacist who claims his only use for females is between their legs.
And too many undercover agents have already been outed and killed while trying to take down the Cage. So I can’t ever expose my brother.
Who’s…looking up at me. I don’t know if he was already awake or just felt me staring down at him, but I can see the gleam of his eyes through the dark—then the gleam of his sudden grin.
He can do a pull-up. Easily, and using only one arm. A show-off move that makes me huff out a little laugh when he lifts himself up so his head isn’t far from mine. In truth, there’s nothing remarkable about his being able to do that. Not here, where these guys often exercise in their stalls like this.
Except it’s utterly remarkable that he’s doing it, and I’m here to see him. My stifled laugh becomes a stifled sob when he reaches up with his free hand to hug me as best he can. It’s the first time in three months we’ve been able to really touch or show affection, and I can’t stop my tears, can’t stop myself from clinging to his arm.
His voice is thick as he whispers, “How you doing, sis?”
I can’t answer. But my tears are raining all over his head, so he has to know.
He lowers and pulls himself up again, keeping up the pretense of exercising. This time when he comes up, he says, “You’re like a ninja up there. How’d you think of this?”
My throat tightens unbearably. “It’s how Tusk got Lissa into his stall.”
“Aw, fuck.” His fingers hook my dangling hair behind my ear. “I’m so sorry. I liked her, too.”
I fight to swallow the tears that start up again. Because there’s more that needs to be done. “The control booth doesn’t have bars on top. If the guard leaves for the bathroom or something, I can open the stall doors.”
Slowly Matt nods, but doesn’t answer right away. Instead he takes his time, lowering and raising himself through five reps before coming back up. “You’d have to go over these other stalls.”
Over Flack, Airbag, Abyss, and Handlebar. I’d be safe with three. Flack…I don’t know. He can be pushy and scary. Not like Tusk. But not a good guy, either.
But maybe the promise of freedom would bring out the nice in him. “If they saw me, I could simply tell them what I was doing.”
Nodding again, he doesn’t say anything but performs a few more reps while wearing his thinking face. Finally he comes up and says, “After what went down with Bravo, the guards are going to be on their best behavior for a while—and won’t leave that station unmanned. It’ll probably be a few weeks before they get careless again.”
We don’t have a few weeks. “The next fight is in ten days.”
“And I’ll make it through again.”
By tearing out a piece of his own soul. Because ‘making it through’ means killing his opponent. I know how it affects him. I know how it affects most of these guys, though some are better than others at hiding it.
My brother’s good at hiding it from everyone else. But he can’t hide it from me.
“Matt,” I whisper.
“I know.” His eyes close, his expression tormented. “But what’s the alternative—you jump the guard in the control booth? You spend every night risking yourself by crawling over all these stalls and hoping no one notices, praying a guard has to take a piss so bad he doesn’t call in the other one to cover him? We have to wait for them to get careless.”
“What about a distraction? Something that brings the guard out of the control booth?”
His gaze sharpens. “You got any ideas?”
I shake my head.
“I’ll think on that one. Chances are, protocol is they don’t leave the booth unmanned if there’s an emergency or a commotion caused by one of the fighters. Instead at least one will lock himself up
tight inside.”
So it can’t be an emergency. “What if…they’re sick? Like what if it’s not piss that they can’t hold. What if they both have the shits?”
Matt pushes his fist against his mouth to stifle his laugh. For a long minute he simply hangs from the bar, shaking. Then he lifts himself again. “They’d have to get sick after the shift started, or else they just get someone else to cover.”
“So maybe dose the coffee in the kitchen.”
“Good thinking. Can you get access to a laxative?”
“I should be able to. But…” Oh no. “I have to wait until Doc comes again.”
And that will likely be on same day as the next fight in the Cage. Which means the first chance to use the laxatives will be after that fight.
Matt must see my dismay, because he pulls himself up close. “Hey, hey. I’ll get through. And this is better, trust me. Gives us time to plan, to work out the angles. Who’ll be on duty, what they drink, how you’ll dose them. We rush, we make mistakes—and we might only get one shot at this. So we’ll take it slow. Okay?”
Though the thought of waiting through another bout in the Cage is terrifying, I nod. “Okay.”
“All right. Now you better get back. And practice climbing up here, sure—but stay above your own stall and keep the Spider-Man shit to a minimum. The first rule of being a superhero is keeping that mask on.”
“Tell that to Iron Man.”
“Get a suit of armor and I’ll change my tune. Because the first rule of being my sister is that you stay alive. No matter what. All right?”
“You, too.” My vision blurs again. “And I love you.”
“Love you, too.” And even here, he’s my big brother. “Now get your ass to bed.”
8
Stone
You know your life’s in the shitter when you look forward to a five-mile run simply because there’s nothing else to do. And because it’s one of the few times each day you see the girl you’re working on.
Not talking to her much, though.
I fucked that up by pushing in and touching her on the first day. Since then, the guards hover close to Cherry while we’re outside. They don’t stop me from talking to Handlebar and Crash, but unless it’s regarding run times and pulse rates, Cherry doesn’t say much. If she does, the guards shut it down. Same goes for the morning rounds. That drill sergeant stays right on her ass.
The fucking music they’re always blasting through the barn doesn’t help, either. That’s another reason to look forward to the track. Because that’s some goddamn torture right there.
Not Elton. He wouldn’t be my choice—give me T-Pain any day—but that shit’s catchy as hell. And that’s the problem. It gets into your brain, lulls you in with familiarity and repetition, until you’re singing along in your head.
And if you’re singing along in your head? Then you’re not thinking of other shit. Like how to break out of this fucking place.
If the music’s catchy enough and the volume’s high enough, then you can’t tune it out or ignore it. You also can’t hold conversations, except by talking loud enough for everyone to hear. Then when the lights go out and the music goes off, the silence is so golden, you just fucking wallow in it. All that sudden quiet also makes you believe that every sound is louder than it really is. So you don’t risk making any noise, such as whispering to the man in the next stall and planning an escape.
It’s all straight out of a ‘how to keep dangerous prisoners docile’ playbook. So I don’t know who the hell Papa is, but either he’s got experience with prisons, or he’s got some smart fuckers working for him. Because they aren’t just relying on steel bars and stun guns and greenhorn guards to keep us in. They went for the psychological shit, too.
Lucky for me, the training the Marine Corp put me through in case I ended up imprisoned in a terrorist camp taught me about that shit. And ways to combat it, to keep focused.
Cherry’s good for that. Picturing her smiling at me—not the bright toothy smile she wears here, but the sweetly nervous one from the tavern. The one that said she was in trouble and maybe a hard ride on my dick would help her out. Then I’ll think of the softness of her lips, the heat. The way she didn’t seem to know what to do with a man who was kissing her, and her little shuddering breath when she figured it out.
I don’t even care that it was an act. That’s a damn fine memory to focus on.
The rest of the time, I’m picturing what Gunner must be doing now. I’ve been gone four days. The first day, maybe he spent a couple of hours thinking I was in bed with Cherry somewhere. But after I missed our flight home, he’d have spent the rest of the day tearing apart the town where that biker rally was held. First searching for Cherry. Then realizing what happened.
I won a rally fight. Then I was gone. Just like every other bastard who ended up in the Cage.
That’s when shit would have kicked into high gear. A hell of a lot of clubs were represented at that rally and he’d have started looking at every one—including the Iron Blood. As soon as Gunner gets a bead on them, maybe a few days more will pass where he’s gathering intel and searching for this compound.
At home, other parts will be in motion. First one will be setting up protection for my sister, my parents—because the Hellfire Riders know threatening family is how the fuckers who run the Cage roll. The club would do this for any brother, but they’d do it for my sister and parents even if I weren’t a member. My sister, Anna, slings drinks at the bar the Prez owns and is best friends with his woman. The Hellfire Riders also just folded in a smaller club to our ranks, and the man who used to be the Steel Titan’s president is someone who’s practically an uncle to me—and longtime friends with my mom and dad. So if these fuckers somehow figure out who I am, my family will be looked after.
Knowing that is what makes these days pass as easily as they do. Sure, I’m focusing. I’m not letting any of this shit get to my head. But I can only do that because I’m certain Anna and my parents are safe.
Because I’m something of an anomaly among bikers. I mean, shit—we all love our families. Some more than others. But a whole lot of bikers join up with a club because they’re looking to belong to something. They’re looking to build another family. Because the one they’ve got isn’t quite right. They don’t fit or some shit. A bunch of them don’t come from real happy homes.
I do. My family’s fucking amazing. My mom, my dad, my sister—I love the shit out of all of them. And know they love me right back.
So I’m not looking for family. I’ve found some in the club, true. Gunner’s closer to me than a true brother. The Prez, Zoomie. They’re right in there. The other brothers—I’d kill for any one of them, too. It’s a family that grew on me but it wasn’t why I joined up.
Nah. I joined up because I can get shit done.
That’s why the military was a damn good fit, too. I could take care of shit. Then once I was out of the service… I needed the same thing.
My mom—who is real good at reading people—figured I’d go into law enforcement. And I saw the appeal. But I also saw how often my hands would be tied. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Too much power goes to a fucker’s head.
Other times, it’s just bullshit. Like when the local chapter of the Eighty-Eight Henchmen were after my sister’s friend Jenny. Our local sheriff’s a good guy. But there wasn’t a damn thing he could do until the Eighty-Eight did something to Jenny first. By then, his help would have come too late.
So the Hellfire Riders took care of the Eighty-Eight. By the time we’d finished, half were dead and the rest were on the run.
That’s what I fucking love about the club—we take care of our own. No matter what it costs. If something needs doing, we get that shit done. And as the club’s enforcer, I’m right at the forefront of the doing. So it suits me real well.
Sitting in a cell doesn’t suit me as well. But I trust that Gunner and the others are getting shit done. So that gets me through this.
So do Handlebar and Crash. Those fuckers are my brothers from a different mother, too. First our Force Recon unit. Then the Bedlam Butchers. We aren’t members of the same club, but I’d lay down my life for them.
And then there’s Cherry. Six in the morning, the Rocket Man starts burning out his fuse over the speakers, and out of her stall she comes—looking like the angel Handlebar said she was. A sweet, sexy angel whose bright smile and cheery voice make all this shit a little more bearable.
It’s a damn good thing these assholes don’t know much about me and where all my soft spots are. Because it’s not just my family they could threaten. It doesn’t even matter that what happened between Cherry and me in the tavern was faked, that she was just dangling bait. I’m a sucker for a girl in trouble. So all they’d have to do is threaten to put a bruise on her, and I’d be in the Cage so fast their heads would spin.
Hell, if they brought a dog in here and aimed a gun at its head, I’d hold out for maybe half a second.
Probably not even that long.
Lucky for me—and for Cherry—the guards here must figure my interest in her is just careless flirtation to pass the time. And it is a way to pass the time, true. But I still can’t remember if I fucked her before I passed out on whatever she slipped into my drink. Can’t remember if I got up in that hot little cunt—or if I got my mouth on more than her lips. Christ knows, eating her pussy would have been the first thing I did. I was craving a taste from the moment I saw her. While talking to Gunner—and while she must have been spiking my drink—all I could think about was spreading her thighs and making her come on my tongue. But whatever happened after that…I don’t know. I’ve only had a few flashes of her throwing a wig and of her looking up at me, those soft lips trembling.
I still want a taste. But next time, there won’t be any roofies involved. And I’m sure as hell not going to forget everything I do to her.
She won’t forget it, either. Because she didn’t fake everything when I was kissing her. I’m certain of that. Just like I’m certain she won’t fake a thing when I’m with her again.