She could feel the cool breeze and smell the salt air. Looking over his shoulder, straight ahead, the ocean was a deep blue with white waves rushing toward rocks and then folding over the top of them. The sight was beautiful. They drove through an open, wide rolling gate surrounded by an extremely high fence that could turn a large lovely piece of property overlooking the sea into a fortress in seconds.
There was an enormous building looming up just ahead and Absinthe rode straight to it. The parking lot was paved. There was a narrow sidewalk in front of the building, but on the side was a long, wide field of flowers with several fire pits, large outdoor barbecues, benches and picnic tables. She could see it would be easy to have outdoor parties there for a sizable crowd.
Absinthe put her hand on his shoulder and she climbed off the bike. This time her legs weren’t shaky. They hadn’t ridden hundreds of miles as they had the first time. She removed the helmet and started to take off the jacket, but he was already off the Harley and he took her hand before she could. Two men came out of the building to greet them.
“Fatei, Hitch, keep a good lookout. If anyone from any other club gets close, warn us and shut everything down. The bar’s already been warned. Preacher’s closing early for the night.” Absinthe switched his grip from her hand to the nape of her neck. “Scarlet’s been threatened by the Venomous club and it looks as if that club won’t be the only one.”
Fatei nodded and Hitch looked grim. Both men avoided looking too long at her. She caught their quick glance and then they were moving away.
“Fatei is about to become a full member and he’s earned it. He went to the same school Gavriil attended. Most of the others were moved from one school to the other. A few were even brought briefly to our school, but it was more of a threat than anything else. Fatei’s tough and he’s loyal. Our club is really for those of us that have nowhere to go. We don’t fit anywhere and we never are going to. That’s the bottom line with me, Scarlet.”
Absinthe stopped at the door to the clubhouse, turning to face her, one hand on the doorknob, the other on the nape of her neck. “I’m fucked up. I always will be. There aren’t any cures for us. When I ask you to trust me, that’s exactly what I need from you. I’ll give you everything I am, but I’ll expect everything from you. I won’t accept less. Before you make your decision, you need to know things about me and determine whether or not you can live with them. I want honesty between us. I’m doing my best here, but I’m not getting anything back from you.”
He was right. She was protecting herself, feeling like the woman who’d retreated behind the mask she’d created for herself. She was hiding there again, terrified, afraid of believing anyone could really love her. The moment her faith in him had been tested, she’d failed. She knew it would happen again and again.
“Before you open that door and we go any further, Absinthe, you have to know that I want to be with you more than anything in the world. I came to you with that intention. You think you’re fucked up, but you don’t hold the corner on that market. I am too. I have issues as well and, sadly, I’m not certain I’ll get over them no matter how much I want to. And I do, for you, for me, so we can be together.”
“No matter what, whether you accept me or not, our club is going to protect you, Scarlet. We’re not letting you face Holden or any of the MCs he sends after you.”
Scarlet’s heart skipped a beat. “Just how much do you know about Holden and me?”
TEN
Absinthe pushed the door open and waved Scarlet inside. Someone had already turned on the gas fireplace and the logs were burning low, sending heat through the cavernous room. At one time, the building had originally been a paymaster’s building. Turning it into their clubhouse had been a labor of love. Master, Keys, Player and Maestro were all woodworkers in their way, builders and craftsmen. Aside from loving instruments and all things music, they had an affinity for building things.
The four members of Torpedo Ink had taken on the older, run-down properties the club had acquired and, one by one, began to rebuild them, most from the ground up. Together they formed a construction company, although they rarely took a job outside of the club because they were busy restoring Caspar into the beautiful little village it once was.
The common room was a favorite of Absinthe’s not only because was there a tremendous amount of space, even when they were throwing parties, but because the design fit with the actual layout of the outside landscape. The long sweeping bar was curved, the top made of a gleaming oak. Bar stools were comfortable and inviting, but not as comfortable as the furniture Lana had chosen for the room.
Lana had asked him what, if anything, she had a talent for. She might think she wasn’t good at anything, but it wasn’t so. Anya could look at the bar and immediately notice all the things that would help Preacher improve it. She could shave steps off the work areas, make the drinks faster and more efficiently, just by the placement of the alcohol. She did the same with the tables and chairs and where the dance floor was located in relation to where customers purchased drinks, but she didn’t know the first thing about seating.
Lana knew how to make everyone comfortable seated in those chairs. She knew the exact tables and chairs that would look perfect in the bar. Or the clubhouse. Or Alena’s restaurant. Between Anya’s eye for the details of making things work easier for Alena and Lana’s eye for comfort and beauty, and Alena’s for food, the restaurant was a huge success, the bar as well, and all of them felt right at home in the clubhouse.
He indicated one of the armchairs across from the fireplace for Scarlet to sit and glanced up at the camera before tapping his finger on the table next to it. Just walking through the entrance they’d been scanned for any recording devices. It was imperative that they were always careful. Scarlet had weapons on her, but hopefully she hadn’t come prepared to record any conversation between them.
Soft music flooded the room in answer. She was clean. Absinthe took the chair at an angle from her, very close. He wanted to see her face, but if necessary, be able to run his fingers over her pulse.
“I told you about how we lived in those harsh conditions as children and what those fuckers did to us every damn day. We had to find a way to survive, Scarlet. You may as well know one of the worst things I’ve done. We began to target them. First the worst of them. The ones that liked to kill and do it especially painfully. Some of us would crawl through the vents together. One or two would be on lookout. I would make the suggestion to look the other way or not to see. Either Demyan or I would sacrifice ourselves, whoever was in the best shape, and let the fucker have us until the others were in place. Then we’d make the suggestion to look the other way, to not see, and either Reaper, Savage, Maestro or Keys would come out of the vent and slit their throat. At the same time, Mechanic would disrupt the security cameras, looping them, so no one would ever see any of us with our chosen victim.”
Silence stretched between them. He didn’t speak again. He knew she had killed on behalf of her family. She’d taken her revenge, or what she may have considered justice for her sister, yet she just stared at him with her vivid green eyes. There was no judgment in them, no shock, just a strange kind of disbelief.
Scarlet eventually shook her head, frowning. “Absinthe. You were just little kids. Children. All of you, right?”
He nodded. “I was barely five years old the first time I went with them. It was scary, but we all did our part. It was the only way. We knew they were going to kill us. So many were already dead. Not everyone could know. They would tell. Sorbacov would bribe some of the kids with good food and candy, pretend he would let them out or tell them he would let their younger sisters or brothers go home. He wouldn’t, but he’d lie, and you’d want it so desperately that some believed him.”
“You didn’t?”
“Even then, I could hear lies.”
“Who planned these attacks out?”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t me. I have brothers who are brilliant strate
gists. I can do things, but I wouldn’t have thought of that particular solution, not in time anyway. At least I don’t think so.”
He wasn’t about to incriminate anyone else any further. Even if she told someone a preposterous tale about his fellow club members murdering their pedophile captors, who would believe her? He’d given her enough truth about who he was. Either she was going to give him something of herself back, or she wasn’t.
Scarlet sighed. “I’m not a saint no matter what you might think. There’s a reason Holden wants the Venomous club to bring me to him alive. He has a reason to hate me. I dated his son, Robert Jr., in college. I was very young, only seventeen and in my second year. Emotionally, I may have been even younger, I don’t know. I certainly looked at the world through rose-colored glasses.”
He reached out and took her hand, rubbing it between his to give her courage.
“I don’t know why I have this weird thing about sex, but I just don’t get aroused unless a man is telling me what to do.”
Her gaze jumped to his face. He felt the leap in her pulse. Her heart accelerated. Color rose under her skin.
“I mean I really like it.”
There was more to it, even more than Code had gotten from the testimony from the court trial, but then her idiot college boyfriend probably didn’t really know the first thing about what she’d tried to tell him she needed. She’d been brave to ask him for what she wanted, but the little pissant, privileged Holden Jr., had been too immature to realize he’d been looking at a treasure. Absinthe remained silent when he wanted to reassure her there was nothing wrong with asking for what you wanted in the bedroom.
She bit her lip hard and then looked down at his hand on hers. “We went to this party. It was very crowded and he seemed off, so I was very nervous and uncomfortable. I kept waiting for him to reassure me, but he didn’t.”
She had good instincts, he noted. She would have been fine with the party and the crowded conditions if her man had taken care of her, but he had been too busy thinking about what he was about to do. Absinthe wished the fucker was still alive so he could have his own “talk” with him.
“Robert gave me a drink and kept kissing me, but it didn’t do anything for me. I just couldn’t relax, and I wanted to go home.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Yes. That made him angry. He took me upstairs and told me to get undressed and lay on the bed. He was going to tie me up. I didn’t like the way I felt. I was half-in and half-out of it. I told him that. The next thing I knew his friends had come into the room. I’d made it clear I didn’t want anyone else to touch me. He had other ideas and so did they. At that point I realized he must have given me some kind of drug.”
There was a note in her voice that alerted him to something more, something he didn’t like. Guilt? Shame? The emotions were twisted together, difficult to pull apart and look at. There was something else he couldn’t put his finger on yet. He could “see” the images if he chose, but he wasn’t going to rip them out of her mind.
He stroked her inner wrist over her wild pulse. “Breathe with me, Scarlet.” He kept his voice low, soft, pushing the command gently into the path between them. “You’re safe with me. Just breathe with me.”
He caught glimpses of men’s faces coming at her. A man with a knife, his face ugly that she dared to defy him.
“I shouldn’t have fought them. I shouldn’t have. It was wrong of me. I never should have done it.”
Unexpectedly she pulled her wrist away from him and began rubbing her hands up and down over the faint white scars where the defensive wounds were.
“Scarlet, their intention was to rape you.”
“I should have just let them. If I let them, my sister would still be alive. So would my parents. They all blamed me for what happened. I blame me. I just should have let them do it. If I hadn’t told Robert what I was like in the first place …” There was loathing in her voice, as if she thought her need to have a man lead her in the bedroom was to blame for Robert Jr. bringing in his friends. “He wouldn’t have thought he could get away with it.”
“Scarlet.” Absinthe kept his voice gentle. She was slipping away from him, moving back in time, flashing back to that moment when someone had told her about her family. The emotions pouring off her were all too raw and real. “People aren’t thinking clearly those first few terrible moments of grief. Your parents just saw their daughter, that was all they could see, nothing else could come into their minds. Sorrow has a way of narrowing vision. You know that. You’re allowing that child, that seventeen-year-old devastated girl, to think for you with those same intense grieving emotions. I can hear the sorrow in your voice. That grief isn’t ten years old. It’s today. This moment.”
He took her wrists and she resisted him, pulling back. He released her instantly.
“Scarlet. Look at me.” He used his voice again, but only a whisper of command, threading it through the natural velvet brush of his tone she was already susceptible to. He waited, knowing the order would push and push until she couldn’t stop herself from obeying him.
She raised her eyes to his and blinked several times, clearing her vision. He reached for her arms again, taking his time, letting her see he was going to take both wrists. He did so, turning her arms over to inspect the damage the knife had done when she defended herself. Any doctor, any law enforcement officer would have been able to see that she had been attacked. The scars were from classic defense wounds and some of them had been deep. She’d needed stitches.
“Scarlet, every person has the right to defend themselves.”
“I’m strong. Priscilla wasn’t. She was always so gentle and kind. She didn’t understand meanness or why or how people could be ugly. She wouldn’t have known what someone like Robert and his friends wanted from her. They were getting back at me. Robert would never have considered going after her if I had just cooperated with him. But I took the knife away and that humiliated him. Then I wouldn’t be afraid when his father wanted me to. The moment I saw Robert’s smirk in court, I knew it wasn’t over, but I never thought, for one moment, that he would go after Priscilla.”
Her gaze started to shift from his. Absinthe shook his head. “Baby, keep looking at me. You were seventeen years old. You had no way of knowing those little fuckers were going to go after your sister. They didn’t even know about her. At that time, there was only you and them and he was threatening you with a knife, he’d drugged you and you’d made it clear you didn’t want any part of any of them at that point. Believe me, every member in this club understands what it is like to say no and say it clearly. To fight back and mean it.”
He brushed at the hair sliding over her face with gentle fingers. “You aren’t alone in fighting this battle anymore.”
“You don’t understand how powerful Holden Sr. is, Absinthe. He’ll kill you. He’ll put out a contract on you and every single person you love. Your brothers and sisters. Your club. He’ll do it. He’ll do it because he hates me that much.” She lowered her voice to a thread of sound and leaned into him. “I killed them. He knows I did. He can’t prove it, but he knows I did. I’m not going to let him kill you or people you love to get to me. I can disappear. I know how. I’ve got people I can go to.”
A hot flame licked at his gut. “Like Adrik Orlov? Because you’re not going to him. You’re staying with me.”
She went very still, and he didn’t care that the anger and suspicion began to build in her eyes.
“That’s right, now we’re at the you’re-going-to-be-pissed part. I told you that you would be. You were scared. In the library, you were always careful to check the exits and the windows all the time. I watched you, the same way you watched me. You were afraid someone was looking for you. I thought maybe an ex-husband or ex-boyfriend was hunting you. A stalker. That would fit. I kept thinking you’d tell me yourself, but you didn’t. You carried weapons, you were trained in self-defense and I could see you knew what you were doing. Things di
dn’t add up.”
She remained silent, just watching him; the suspicion was still there and that kept the flames burning low in his belly. She should have just a little faith in him after all he’d told her about himself and his brothers. He’d put a lot of trust in her.
“The other night when I asked you out, you lied to me. I couldn’t tell what you were lying about, but something was wrong, and I was afraid for you. I hung around and followed you, thinking you might be making a run for it, or that you were trying to deal with whoever it was that was looking for you on your own.”
Scarlet started to speak, swallowed what she was going to say and then shook her head. Her eyes lost some of their misgiving. She shook her head a second time. “I haven’t had that, Absinthe. I don’t know what to do with you. I should be upset that I didn’t know you were following me. My survival depends on spotting a tail. But the fact that you cared enough to actually follow after me is rather wonderful.”
That wasn’t what he expected her to say and it sent the flames in his belly rolling into something else altogether. He glanced around the clubhouse. While they were talking, a few others had drifted in, knowing a threat was hanging over Scarlet’s head. The members of the Venomous club had made that clear. They wouldn’t attempt to take her from the clubhouse, not with only half a dozen members, and certainly not when they knew they were intruding on Diamondback territory. They wouldn’t want to start an allout war. It was going to be interesting to see what move they would make next.
“I hope you keep thinking I’m wonderful when I tell you that I followed you back to your house and Lana and I sat up on the hillside overlooking the property just to make certain no one disturbed you. She’s damn good with a sniper rifle.”
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