Intelligent or not, the bitch clearly doesn’t know what she’s doing with that weapon. Her hands shake the way my granddad’s used to, but he had Parkinson’s. Hers isn’t from a disorder. She’s scared, and a gun in the hands of a scared bitch, one that clearly doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing, could end up costing one of us our lives. Still, she’s got guts. Not cowering. Not backing down.
Slowly, I raise my hands above my head. She needs to think she’s the one in control right now. “Don’t shoot. This is my place.” Using only one finger, I point to the patch on my cut that has my name. “I’m not here to hurt you, just here to check on things.”
“Then why haven’t I seen you here before?” she asks a damn good question, using the barrel of the gun, she motions over to the chair kitty-corner to the sofa. “Sit. You don’t, you lose your balls.” The woman tips the gun down from my head to point directly at my dick. Jesus Christ. I’d rather be dead than lose that.
“I’m going,” I answer calmly, walking slowly over to the chair and sit down. “See, nothing to fear here.”
“Put your hands down. Keep ‘em on the arms of the chair.”
Right. It sucks that she’s got a gun trained on me because the woman’s got good survival instincts, and it’s pretty damn hot. I just hope Blood or Hannah calls so I can prove my identity and get back to the business of fixing this place up. The sooner she gets this Charlie’s Angels bullshit out of her system, the better off I’ll be. Just because it’s hot doesn’t mean I’m not over it. As I’m about to ask her name again, I’m cut off by a whoosh and something hard cracks against the back of my head. Everything goes black.
The next thing I know I’m lying on the bed in the cabin, a melting pack of frozen peas acting like a pillow behind my head. My eyes are kind of fuzzy, but it looks like two women whose faces I haven’t seen before, and then there’s Blood and Hannah over in the kitchen area unloading grocery bags.
“Up, brother,” Blood says. “You got a video consultation with Caitlin. She needs to check that Bam-Bam there didn’t knock something lose.” I look around trying to discern what the hell he’s talking about. My head swims and just that motion makes me dizzy. But my eyes land back on the two women I don’t know. One, the brunette, looks concerned, whereas the blonde’s face screams, ‘I did it. I’m sorry.’
“Bam-Bam?” I ask, pointing to the blonde. If my head wasn’t so messed up, I’d assume she’s pretty, but that designation will have to wait until I’m feeling better, in order to fully take her in. Though I do notice her ghostly pale blue eyes because they’re straight-up haunted. Whatever those eyes have seen, it was big and it was bad. I’m with her on that one.
“She was scared,” the brunette starts in on me. “If you’d lived her life, you’d go after an intruder with a frying pan, too.”
“I wasn’t—wait, a frying pan?” Fuck, no wonder I hurt so bad. “The cast iron monster?” I ask.
Tears begin falling down the blonde’s face. I don’t have the patience for tears.
“You made her cry,” the brunette says.
Not having any of it, I speak over her to the blonde. “Good choice. I did identify myself, but you don’t know me. Protect yourself first.”
“You’re not mad at me?” she asks in this barely there, timid voice.
Looking pointedly at the brunette, I answer her. “Fuck no. You did what you had to do. Can’t fault you for that.”
The brunette opens her mouth, lets it hang open for a couple seconds, then closes it without making a sound. Hannah walks over to me. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she switches out the peas for frozen corn.
“Vlad,” she says. “That’s my friend Nicola.” Smokin’ hot brunette has a sexy name, too. Hell yeah. Hannah’s not finished. She points to the blonde. “Bam-Bam there is Greer.”
“I’ll be fine, sweetheart,” I say to the poor kid cowering and shamefaced as far from me as she can get in the room. She can’t be more than twenty-one. Life has not been good to her. “Got a head hard as a rock.”
She nods, doing this combination sniffle laugh thing. A phone rings, coming from Blood’s side of the cabin. He walks it over to me. “Here. It’s Caitlin.”
I take the phone for our video chat. She has me hold the phone up close to my face in order for her to get a good look at my eyes. She asks me about pain. Yes. Dizziness? Not since I came to. Nausea? Nope. Not at all. At the end of her check list she tells me that she’s pretty sure I have a mild concussion and can have extra strength Tylenol as needed for the pain. That I’m supposed to rest, but I should have someone keeping an eye on me for tonight to make sure my condition doesn’t deteriorate. If it does, I’m supposed to get to the hospital.
Yada, yada, yada…
I’ll be fine. I don’t need a fucking babysitter.
“You sure you don’t need to check him out in person?” Hannah asks.
“That would be optimal, but I’m assuming you aren’t going to get his stubborn ass here and I’m worried about too many Lords heading up to the cabin,” Caitlin answers.
“I’m not stubborn,” I protest.
Blood laughs. “The women had him tied up to a chair, his ankles and wrists bound with torn bedsheets, when we got here. His head was slumped forward. I thought the bastard was dead.”
“Fuck you all,” I reply. “No, Caity, I’m not coming to you. I’ll be fine. If I’m not fine, I’ll go to the hospital. But I think I need to sleep for a little while, so I better get back to the clubhouse.”
“You can’t drive,” Caitlin orders.
“Then how am I supposed to get home?” I ask snidely, itching for a fight on this point.
“Blood and I can take you. We’ve got the Jeep,” Hannah says. I know she thinks she’s helping, but I’m not riding in the back of her Jeep.
“Thanks, Han, but I’ve got my bike here. Can’t leave it.”
“Then you’ll stay here for a while,” Nicola says, stepping closer to me with her hands on her hips. I roll my eyes, immediately wishing I hadn’t. That shit hurts.
“I’m not staying in the house that estrogen built any longer than I have to.”
“You’ll survive,” she shoots back. “Quit being such a baby.”
The woman’s got a mouth on her. Fuck me if I don’t close my eyes, smiling.
6
Nicola
“We need to get going,” Blood says. “You gonna be all right with this knucklehead?” He points to Vlad sleeping on the one bed. The man is too beautiful for words. Like what gives him the right to be that incredibly hot while unconscious? It’s been my experience that incredibly hot men are nothing but trouble. I bet a whole lot of women have found trouble with him and his thick, dark hair, stubbled chin and massive biceps. If you like that sort of thing, which clearly, I don’t, because again, beautiful men are T.R.O.U.B.L.E.—trouble.
Still, we are the reason he has a concussion, and in his own house. “Yeah.” I realize I’ve been staring hard at the man and force myself to snap out of his beautiful-biker-tractor-beam to look back at Blood and Hannah, feeling my cheeks heat and hoping they hadn’t caught on to my staring. “We’ll be fine. I sort of feel responsible for him now.”
“Remember to call if you need anything,” says Hannah as she moves toward the door.
“Yes, Mom,” I tease, walking behind her to lock up after they leave. Then it’s me and Greer and an unconscious man on the bed. Right. At least they brought us books to read. My favorite kind—the naughty kind with lots of dirty talk and booty spanking. Though before I get down to the business of smut, I need to rustle us up some dinner.
Blood and Han hooked us up with some good stuff. Greer and I decide on tacos—because tacos. We’re not communists. No, I take that back. I bet even communists love tacos. We’re an efficient team as we chop, slice, and sauté our way to a delicious meal, the smell of which must’ve roused big, bad biker sleepy-pants in the bed because out of nowhere we hear, “Tacos?” croaked in a distinctly
male voice. And neither Greer nor I have a male voice.
“Feel good enough to eat?” I ask, making the mistake of looking at him and his totally disarming, panty-dropping smile. His hair is a little mussed, and with the way he stares longingly at the taco spread we’ve got going on the counter, it gives him this little boy quality which I find crazy heartwarming. He’s like a puppy waiting to be fed scraps from the table with the longing in those dark eyes.
“Fuck yeah.” He claps his hands together. “Let’s do this.” Okay, so he’s a puppy that says ‘fuck.’
He sits up in the bed while I make a plate up for him, walking it over with a bottle of iced tea. Caitlin didn’t say so, but I’m not sure concussed people are supposed to drink alcohol. He raises an eyebrow at me, but he takes it with a smirk and head nod.
“You know, I was thinking…” Vlad takes a huge bite of his food. “Oh, holy hell, you can cook.”
I smile at the compliment. “What were you thinking?”
He chews and let me just say, total mouth porn watching him do it. I never wanted to be ground beef and a flour tortilla so badly in my life before. But he’s injured. I shouldn’t be objectifying him like this. “You need a phone, a way to get a hold of me if you need anything.”
“I have one. Blood bought it for us when we were on the road.”
“You got my number?”
“No,” I answer. “Just the Lords’. He bought it before Han called you. Then I guess too much went down. We never thought about it.”
“Fair enough. Give it to me.” I walk over to where I left the burner sitting on the cupboard in the kitchen, grabbing a plate of tacos for myself before bringing it to him.
“Here.”
Our fingers brush as he takes it from my hand and holy shit. My heartrate spikes into overdrive. Though he’s typing an awful lot for just one number. When he finishes typing, instead of giving it back, he calls me over, patting the bed for me to sit next to him.
“You got my number, but I also gave you numbers of men you can trust.”
Greer sucks in a harsh breath and we both turn to look at her. The way she did it, I was afraid she was choking on her food for a second there.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Vlad says. “They won’t be coming around, but if there’s an emergency and you can’t get me, these’re good men.”
“Are they bikers?” Greer asks.
“All I know are bikers, but they’d never hurt a woman. That I promise. Blood and Hannah know ‘em, too.”
“How do you know the Lords? Last I heard the name Horde, it wasn’t out of friendship,” I ask as I move back over to a more appropriate spot to eat.
“Truth. I’m not sure how much to tell you, but with all the shit going on now, you’ve got a right to know.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It is. Our president took the Horde down a dirty path. Guns. Drugs. Women.”
“Women?” I shout, then bite my lip.
“I’m sorry to say, but yeah. I never participated in that shit. Ever. You have to know that. Rage didn’t tell the club about all his dealings, so I had no idea what the fuck he was up to until Frankie, Brighton, and the babies got nabbed under his orders.”
“Frankie and Brighton? Aren’t they Lords’ old ladies?”
“Yes. That’s how stupid a fucker Rage is. I helped ‘em out. That was the beginning. Then, when Han got taken, I followed a small caravan of Lords’ women who were on the hunt for her and tried to keep ‘em out of trouble.”
“How’d that work out? I know Hannah.”
He chuckles under his breath. “Got shot. Gut wound.”
What the...? When a man chuckles, you don’t expect the words to follow to be ‘got shot.’ “Oh my god, you got shot? Are you okay? It wasn’t that long ago.”
“Takes more than that to keep me down. But since I never opened up to the club about what happened, our president didn’t totally trust me. He gave me a job. Kidnap Caitlin and bring her low. Every brother in the club was supposed to have a go.”
I think I stop breathing.
“Since that shit wasn’t happening, I talked to Duke, then I talked to the brothers I trust. Let’s just say the Horde recently fell under new management.”
“So the old president—Rage? He’s gone now?”
“Not in charge, but not dead and not in lock-up.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, not able to take another bite of my mouth-watering meal.
He flicks his wrists, like his answers mean nothing, but the words again don’t match up. “It means I turn up dead one day, no one’ll be too shocked and they won’t have to look too far to find out who did it.”
“How can you be so dismissive about it?”
“Can’t really do anything aside from defend myself if he tries shit. Can’t hunt him down with you two here, now can I? You’re in my cabin, you’re my responsibility.” And I know I’ve pushed him too hard when he stands from the bed to walk his plate to the sink, then returns to grab his boots.
“Listen,” he says, sliding the boots on his feet and avoiding eye contact. “I’m heading out now. Stay inside, lock the door, and call me if you need anything. Okay?”
“Okay,” I reply because what choice do I have?
“I’ll stop by tomorrow. Telling you now so we don’t have a repeat of Bam-Bam and her crack-shot with a frying pan. You still got the gun?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Keep it next to you at all times.” Then he leaves. Just leaves. Walks right out the front door without even a wave for us over his shoulder. I lock the door behind him then Greer and I clean up from dinner, but I’m too wiped to read now. We crash.
Vlad’s answers don’t sit well. What if he gets hurt because of us?
7
Vlad
Making it back to the compound from the cabin turns out to be a bitch of a thing to accomplish with my eyes continuously going fuzzy, causing me to see things not in the road and nearly miss ones that are.
I need a drink and to pass out in my bed. That’s what I planned, anyway, until I climb off my bike and step inside the clubhouse, where Roughneck verbally leaps on me.
“Where you been, man?” he barks at me.
“Sorry, Dad. I forgot to check in. Please don’t ground me—the fuck you care where I’ve been?”
“There’s shit to get done. Decisions to be made and our fearless leader disappears.”
“Step your ass back, man. I’m not your fearless leader. We did this together. Need me to hold your hand?”
“Man, fuck off.” He shoves my shoulder and I don’t have it in me to fight right now. I’m starting to feel lightheaded again.
Thank Christ Sarge sees us talking and steps to my side. “You don’t look so hot, brother.”
“Don’t feel hot. I need my bed.”
“What the hell happened?” he asks while helping me to a stool at the bar.
“Bitch clocked me in the head with a cast iron frying pan. Caitlin says I have a concussion.”
“Wait—why’d a bitch knock you with a pan and why were you in Thornbriar?”
I look at Lil’ Boy, the prospect behind the bar. “Give me a whiskey. Then I need pain meds and to sleep this fucking headache off.”
Lil’ Boy reaches for a glass, but Sarge stops him before he pours me my first drop. “No.” Shaking his head at both Lil’ Boy and me, he changes my order. “Bottle of water. No alcohol with a concussion, man. Now tell me what happened.”
“Not out here. Let’s talk in my room.”
As we start for the hallway to the brothers’ rooms, we catch the eye of Reap mid-lap-dance from one of the pussies, I’m sure, hoping to have him get her off after it’s over. I don’t know what he sees other than me shaking my head several times to clear the fuzz, but he shoves her off to jog over to us.
“Brother,” he says. “Someone worked you over?”
“We’re talking in his room,” Sarge says to get us moving again. Reaper k
eeps to my other side in case Sarge needs reinforcements to keep me standing and before we reach my room, I have to fish my keys from my pocket. Shit, this concussion fucking hurts. It’s not my first, but it’s sure as hell the worst.
Reap unlocks the door for me and I shove off Sarge to stumble into the room and throw myself onto the bed, immediately pulling a pillow over my eyes. “This fucking sucks,” I mumble.
“I’ll bet,” Reap says, laughing at my pain. “Now what the hell happened? Who do I got to kill?”
“Not killing anyone. It was my fault, she—”
“She?” Reaper asks. “Your legendary dick failing to impress the ladies?” Both my brothers chuckle at my expense. I can’t lie, if it were one of them, I’d be laughing my ass off.
“Shut it. Blood and Hannah called me about a week ago. They pulled a rescue. Some bitches Hannah knows from when she was kidnapped. They needed a safe place. I put ‘em up.”
“Where?” Sarge asks.
“I got this property. Don’t get there much, so I forget I have it, then they called and I remembered. I went there today to check they had shit, but the women weren’t exactly expecting me. They never met me and aren’t exactly trusting of men. I went inside, not thinking about any of that, and one of the bitches took a cast iron skillet to the back of my head.”
“Don’t have to tell you it’s a bad time to be mixing yourself up in that shit,” Reaper says. He shuts the door to lean against it.
“Then don’t tell me. I know the timing sucks, but those fucking women need my help. I turn my back on them, what the fuck did we take out half the club for? I draw the line at men hurting women. Maybe it means I’m getting soft. So be it. You all want my cut, you’ll have to kill me for it. Otherwise, get off my fucking back.”
Devil's Advocate: Vlad (The Bedlam Horde MC Book 1) Page 6