“I thought you came to us because your mother was going to sell you to some slave traders and Dustin the old prez found out about it. He said that he’d saved you from a drug deal gone bad and then again from a mother who was trying to trade you for dope.” Joe rattled off the facts of her mother’s treachery in front of everyone.
Emma hadn’t known that. “Are you saying that Dustin had my mother killed?” This man was full of bombs today and she felt each one like a physical punch. How had all this been going on and she not even know it?
“Don’t you think it’s odd that she was shot while you both huddled in the corner and only she was killed?” Joe didn’t look smug, he actually looked at her as if he’d just come to the realization she didn’t know the reason she had been brought here.
She hadn’t really thought about it when the men had come in and her mother was terrified. When the woman who was the opposite of touchy feely pulled her in for a hug Emma was just so happy to be held in her mother’s arms. She didn’t even mind the stench of her unwashed skin and the odor of desperation that her mother always wore like a shroud. She’d thought she was trying to save her although it felt like she was more exposed than her. Never did she think her mother was trying to sell her off and felt more naive that she’d ever had. The time she’d spent in agony that her mother, her one and only relative, was gone seemed tarnished and sullied.
“I guess I didn’t really think about it.” Her voice was barely heard in the room that had now quieted from the grumbling but was far from silent.
“Dustin McKinney brought you in here because he knew what it was like to be done dirty by your flesh and blood. It would be a shame if you took something our brother did, like bring you here when you had no where to go and no family to call your own, and turn on us with the enemy.”
Emma didn’t know what to say about that. The bottom of her world had just been taken away and she felt like she was in free fall. Her only family had tried to sell her out and these people who she thought were just like family looked like they could kill her where she stood. So maybe family wasn’t what she thought it was.
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you. My story has been the same for the last few weeks but still you bring me in here to question me.” She had to think about what was going on with her and her life. Maybe she had the wrong thoughts about family and maybe she shouldn’t be looking to be a part of one.
“Getting back to Miss Marlene… since she’s the one you text the most we thought we’d like to meet her. We sent her a text and you asked her for help. We will see what comes of that.”
Emma nodded but what felt like a lead ball of fear was heavy in her stomach. They had picked the right one and if what they were saying was true, Rafe had been texted and they’d made it seem like she was in danger. Her only solace is that she doubted that he would come for her. As hard as it was to feel like he wasn’t going to be able to protect her and wouldn’t come to her when she called it would be better if he didn’t because they wanted to see him dead.
“I’d like to see her again.” It was all Emma could say, because even as her mind swirled and twirled she knew there was nothing she could do about any of this. She couldn’t warn him and she couldn’t save herself. Whatever would be…would be. That’s what Miss Marlene would say all the time and that was the truest thing in the world right now.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Where the hell was everyone? Rafe pulled into town and it seemed like everyone had taken a vacation. It wasn’t that early in the morning so everyone wasn’t asleep. The club house was quiet but the door was open. It took him a second to decide to go in, but he was armed and his internal alarms hadn’t gone off yet. He walked through the front door and thought he heard something back by the bar on the other side of the large room.
Suddenly Tim ‘Fire power’ Owens stood up from behind the counter. It took him a minute to put together what his eyes were telling him it appeared because the overly friendly man stood there with a frown on his face. Suddenly his face lit up like it normally did when he saw someone he knew.
“Well hot damn, if it isn’t Rafe ‘The Lucky One’. Where the hell have you been hanging out?” Tim must have finally recognized him and the smile was back in place.
“It’s a long story, my man, but I’m back and now I’m wondering why it’s so dead here.” Rafe wanted some answers about what had been happening and what was going on in the club he was supposed to help run.
“It was a late night because we finally got the guns to sell to the Haitians but when we got there it seemed there was a problem with the Reapers. They’ve been everywhere we’ve been and they’re looking for you. Mean and nasty group of men but they’re saying you killed one of theirs and they want blood. We’ve had fights here and there but they’ve fucked up one of our big sells now so after the botched delivery and a knock down drag out fight we came back here to figure out how to get those bitches back.” Tim seemed quite lively with his conversation but he knew there was some pain and anger behind his words.
Rafe hadn’t ever seen Tim this worked up about anything, but it must have been serious since he was.
“They say you were with one of their club girls Emma and you were both in cahoots. Planning and plotting to off her old man who was also one of their big financial people. I think that’s why they’re trying to fuck up our money, because theirs has hit the shitter.”
“Is that what they’re saying?” Rafe wanted to talk to Aaron, the president of the Mountain Tribesmen, before he gave information to Tim. It was just a chain of command thing because he liked Tim and wanted to set him at ease that his friend wasn’t the one that had stirred up this pot of shit but that wasn’t exactly true.
Tim just nodded and looked like he was waiting for a full confession but gave up after a few seconds when he realized that wasn’t going to be coming any time soon.
“There’s that room in the back hall that’s empty if you wanted to shower and change. You look like hell. I don’t know where you were but it must have been a good drive away.”
“Thanks, Tim.” Rafe walked off to get cleaned up and maybe a bit of rest. It was funny that a few hours ago he felt like he’d had so much sleep he’d be awake for days and now with all the thoughts of Emma needing help and the Reapers starting shit with his crew he was drained.
It was his idea to have a couple of rooms for people who either couldn’t go home looking like they’d been in a bar fight or covered with some substance they didn’t want to take to their home. There were extra clothes in all the rooms that weren’t bedrooms and this room had a bathroom in it. A quick shower and sleep would be the best for him right now. Then with a clear head he could talk to Aaron about what had happened and also find Fat J who had better been able to come up with a plan because he needed it like yesterday.
Lying in the creaky twin bed felt good after his shave and shower. He was almost a new man. Now if he could just get some sleep and complete the rest of his plan he would consider today a great day. As his body started to relax he couldn’t get his slightly swelling cock to agree that it was time to settle down and fall asleep.
With Emma on his mind so much it wasn’t long before his mind started to stray to her soft, wet, warm mouth and juicy pussy. The thought definitely didn’t help his semi chub in fact it made him grow to a full on woody. Damn it. He’d have to take care of that if he wanted to get some shut eye. It’s not like he hadn’t done it since he’d left but with just the thought of Emma being nearby made him randier than a teenager after his first fuck.
He slept naked and thought it best to just quickly take care of himself, but as soon as he took his cock in his palm he decided he wanted to stroke it slow like Emma liked to do. Damn that girl was good with his cock. She had many speeds and he’d liked when she used each and every one of them. Sometimes he swore she was trying to get him to make noise or tell her to hurry the hell up but each time he waited patiently to see what she wanted to do. As long as he came it didn
’t matter to him if she wanted to use her mouth, her hand, her pussy or any combination of the three. His hand was nowhere near as soft as hers was but he could use his imagination. Unfortunately, when he thought of her with his imagination it made a slow leisurely pace hard to stick to. He wanted to thrust hard into her pussy or wrap his fingers in her hair and slide his cock in and out of the wetness.
Stroking up and down a bit more quickly he could almost see her looking up at him evaluating if she should do it harder and faster or if she should slow down. His balls were bouncing with the speed of his stroke because he couldn’t seem to calm down and then they seemed to draw up a bit. This was going to be a messy one, because he had gotten off a few times while he was on the run but it wasn’t the same. Maybe because he didn’t like being on the run, or maybe because he wanted to come with Emma. Either way it wasn’t as good so he didn’t do it as often as he could have.
He spread his legs apart and thought about Emma’s full soft tits and how that hard nipple felt in his mouth. That was enough to get him to squirt and spurt all over his chest and he swore he heard Emma’s name come across his lips at the first signs of eruption. After he’d choked all of his seed out of his monster he was really ready to sleep. He picked up his towel and cleaned himself off before throwing it on the floor. His last thought was that there had to be a way to make this right and for this to end the way he wanted it to. With him and Emma together and everyone else off their back.
CHAPTER THIRTY
There had to be a way to let Rafe know that they were trying to set him up, but Emma didn’t know what she could do. One thing was she was tired of being a victim. These fuck heads were going to let her go or kill her. Shit, she’d been here for over two weeks and if this was how they planned to get her to comply to their wishes, they were going to have to think again. She’d been playing nice until they talked about getting Rafe to walk into their trap. Now it’s time to lay down the law.
She walked outside to the concrete jungle that was the place everyone parked their bikes and found Fat J driving up. Emma had always thought it funny that the man who was friends with all these bikers drove a car. He was a very large man so maybe balance was an issue. Regardless of any of that she was happy to see him. She knew that he was a friend of Rafe’s even though she didn’t think that was common knowledge.
He drove up and parked near her and she walked over to the car. She stood there until he rolled down the window.
“Can I get in?” she said with a smile to his stonily straight face.
Fat J looked like he was considering his options and didn’t answer very quickly. She was beginning to think he was going to say no, but he nodded his head once. She walked to the other side of the car, opened the door and slid into the passenger seat.
She turned toward him as he rolled up his window. It was freezing cold in his car but she’d have to deal with it if she wanted this conversation. “Look, I know we don’t have a lot of time but when I saw you with Rafe at the restaurant a few weeks ago it looked like you were friends. Is that true?”
His eyes squinted up just a little and she wondered if she’d gone to far. Whether she had or not he was her only chance and she was going to take it.
“If you have something to tell me then do it without qualifiers. We both have information about the other that could be detrimental to our well being. I don’t like questions like that. What do you want?”
How he could sound matter of fact without sounding rude she didn’t know, but this must be the way he spoke and he was right. They both had information that could hurt the other party so that should lead to some trust between them, but the way he talked it wasn’t likely.
“Joe has used my cell phone to text Rafe and tell him that I need help. I just wanted to have someone let him know that they are planning something for him. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about was helping me get to Rafe.”
She saw his eyes light up just a bit. This man was very hard to read but she wasn’t going to waste time thinking about why that was or why he seemed happy about what she was saying, but he turned a little more towards her. It was almost like he was getting into the conversation now.
“When you say helping you get to Rafe… what do you mean by that?” Fat J looked as if he was measuring every word and gesture like there would be a test later.
“I want to meet with him to see if he wants to get out of this town with me. We’d talked about it briefly but then we were interrupted by some of the Reaper boys so he had to leave and I was taken away and brought here.” She wasn’t getting much from him in terms of how he was responding to her questions or answers.
“What if he doesn’t want to skip town with you?”
She blew out a breath and took a second to think about it. “Then that’s unfortunate but I have to leave. If he doesn’t want to get out of town then I’ll have to leave without him. I can’t stay here like a prisoner while they wait for him to show up. It’s been over two weeks and I’m just hoping he remembers I’m here.”
“He remembers and it’s hard for him to stay away. I’ve been the one to encourage that. It’s for the safety and protection of both of you. I talked to Joe and from the way it sounds you’ve been pretty well taken care of. Would you agree with that?” Fat J’s tone had changed so he must have moved out of the interrogation mode and on to a new one.
“Have I been fed and clothed and given supplies to live? Yes, but do I have a life? No. I live like a prisoner, a well cared for prisoner, but one who has been ostracized from everything and everyone. No one talks to me and there are times some of the guys look like they want to cause me physical or sexual harm, but nothing has been done…yet.” Emma didn’t think she’d said that much in the last few weeks at one time and damn if it didn’t feel good to get what you wanted to say out into the open.
“I actually came here to see you. Most of the guys are at the shooting range but Joe asked me to see if I could get any information out of you.”
She must have looked worried because he quickly said, “Don’t worry. I was coming over here to talk to you about something else.”
The breath that blew out of her mouth was from deep within because she thought she had let her loose lips sink her ship for good.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“I’ve heard what they plan to do with Rafe ,and I was going to tell him it was a set up, but I’m not sure if that’s just not what they want me to tell him. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about is that Rafe wanted me to come up with a plan to get both of you out of here and with all of this going on it may just work to our favor.” Fat J was a brilliant man and she could almost see his mind working.
“How is that?” she asked, feeling the cold but warming up from the inside because Rafe was on the same wave length as she was. He wanted them to be together and he wanted to get the hell out of this town too.
“I think if we set something up for the time that they’ve planned something we could use it to make your escape.”
“Okay. I don’t really know if that’s going to work. I may not be there and they're not telling me anything about what’s going on.” Emma wanted to give him all of the truth because she knew he was the only one who was on Team Emma & Rafe, but she wasn’t privy to much information at all.
“How much do you weigh? Not the number you tell your friends but the number that’s on the scale in the morning. This is important.”
She couldn’t see how her weight was important but she wasn’t planning on lying about it anyway. “I weigh 180 pounds give or take. I haven’t weighed myself in a while but that’s what it was last I checked and I don’t think I’ve put on or taken off much since then.”
Fat J eyed her up and down like he could get her measurements from the outline of her body through her clothes, but he didn’t say anything more about it and then nodded his head.
“I’m not going to tell you much about the plan that I’ve come up with because you
can’t get caught with information if you don’t know it and although you have a big stake in this I don’t know you very well.” He watched her while he spoke like he was waiting for the fireworks, but he was right, he didn’t know her well because there would be none coming from her.
“If you have a plan and you think it will work I don’t care if you tell me or not. Thanks for your help.” She looked him in the eye and wanted him to see she was serious.
The stony faced man actually chuckled. “I can see why Rafe is so taken with you. All I want you to know is this… when you see Rafe act like you don’t know him. I know that most of the ladies have seen him before and that’s fine if you looking like you’ve seen him but try not to look joyous. If you can do that all will be well.”
“I can do that.” Emma didn’t know how she was going to make that work but if this man said it was needed then she would do it.
“Now I need to walk with you into the club and we should have lunch. The club house is wired for visual but not audio so no one can hear what you’re saying, but I’d rather not talk any more about this.”
The Don's Baby: A Bad Boy Romance Page 40