Strip You Bare

by Maisey Yates

  “It was your father, Sarah. We killed your father.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, you didn’t. He died in the Quarter during Katrina. It was something to do with a fire, and the roof collapsed. And it was the hurricane.”

  “Surprise, baby,” he said, voice rough. “I’m the fucking hurricane.”

  Ice flooded her veins, replacing all the blood. All the warmth. All the Delacroix. There was nothing but desolation. Anger. Not hot, but frigid, destructive.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “We had gone to do a drop. Drugs. That’s what you’re family was into. That’s what we were into. Your dad didn’t want to pay. A fight broke out.”

  She closed her eyes, her pulse throbbing in her temples. “No. Stop.”

  “You need to hear this. You need to understand. You need to know the kind of man you think you love. What we did to your life.”

  “I don’t want to, Micah. Please.” She was begging now. She didn’t care.

  “It wasn’t a fire. I was fighting with him. Hand to hand. It was intense. But I knew what I was doing. He came at me. I shoved him over the balcony, down to the first floor. I broke his neck. I broke all of him. I know exactly what happened. I remember clearly what it looked like. Because I caused it. Because I did it. It wasn’t just the Deacons, Sarah. It was me.”

  It was all too much. Too big to be contained inside of her. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. And she couldn’t sit still for a moment longer.

  She jumped up off the barstool, closed the distance between them, pounding his chest with a closed fist. “Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this to me? To us? I finally found what I want, who I am. Why are you taking it away?”

  “I am not taking it away.” He grabbed hold of her wrists, holding them fast. She struggled against him, but her actions were useless. Feeble. “I am telling you the truth. Just like the stain on your family name, revealing it doesn’t make it so. It just makes it visible. This is what I am, and you have to know that. You have to understand what it means to be with me. You want to keep sleeping with the man who killed your father? There are daddy issues, and then there are daddy issues, sweetheart.”

  “Stop it,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  “You’re brave, Sarah, I’ll give you that. You’re still facing me, still fighting. But it doesn’t change what happened.”

  He started to relax his hold on her, and she took advantage of the situation, pulling her wrists out of his grasp, launching herself forward, hitting him again, beating against the solid wall of muscle that was Micah. A wall of muscle she could never defeat, never even hope to. And he just stood there and took it.

  “What are you,” she hissed, “a pussy? Or are you a biker?” She slapped him across the face as the words left her lips.

  He growled, grabbing hold of her arms, reversing their position, and pressing her against the wall. “You know full well what I am. But I’m not going to prove a point by hitting a woman.”

  “Are you saying you have limits? Are you telling me you have a moral compass? Because that’s what I’ve been trying to say this whole time, and you’ve been trying to talk me out of it. But the thing is you do have limits. You are a man. You have a soul.”

  “Sure, I have a soul. I’m still breathing, aren’t I? It doesn’t mean it’s one worth saving.”

  “But I love it already,” she said, the strength leaching out of her suddenly, leaving the weariness behind that she couldn’t combat. “I don’t need you changed. I don’t need you saved. I love you already. And I’ll leave all of it behind for you. Every last thing.”

  “No, Sarah,” he said, his voice growing rougher still.

  He was lying again.

  Not about her father—she believed that, and the revelation. It wasn’t something she could ignore, wasn’t something she could pretend didn’t matter. But at the same time, it didn’t erase her feelings for him. Not by half.

  He was flawed, this man, straight down to his bones. But he had given her more love and acceptance than anyone else in her life ever had. He had brought her pieces of herself that had been missing, pieces she hadn’t even known were gone. He had made her a version of herself she could never be in her old world. It had to be here. It had to be with him.

  “You can’t just . . . change everything I am and then walk away. You can’t.”

  “But I did.” He didn’t release his hold on her, didn’t lessen his grip. “Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation, you little idiot?”

  “That’s all I’ve had all my life. It doesn’t make you happy. Guess what, Micah? It doesn’t even make you safe. My grandfather had nothing but self-preservation, and he’s still dead. Not only that, he’s dead with no one to mourn his memory. I hate him. I hate him for deceiving me. You know I was already under no illusion that my father was a good man. When I found out about the Deacons owning the mansion, you know he was the first suspect in my head. It isn’t like you’ve destroyed some rose-garden vision I had of my family.”

  “But I am a killer.”

  “And I won’t let you use that to push me away. So, now what? If you walk out that door, Micah Carpenter, it will not be because I rejected you. It will be because you rejected this. Because you rejected us. Because you rejected yourself. You have to understand that. You have to admit it.”

  “I don’t think you could handle me, baby.”

  “Bullshit,” she said, lifting her chin, her heart pounding hard in her chest. “I can handle everything you throw at me. No matter what you think, I am one hundred percent biker bitch, and I can more than handle you. If you walk away, it’s because you’re the one who’s afraid. You haven’t scared me. You haven’t made me stop loving you. So, now what? Now that I’ve taken all your excuses away. What’s the problem?”

  “You shouldn’t—”

  “Maybe not. Maybe I shouldn’t love you, because of everything you’ve done. But who you’ve been in these past weeks with me far outweighs whoever you were ten years ago. Fifteen years ago. Twenty years ago. Who I’ve been these past few weeks far outweighs everything. So walk away. But know that it’s because you’re a coward. If you run from this, if you run from what we can have, then you aren’t the man I thought you were.”

  “And I’m not,” he said, letting go of her and taking a step back.

  “Okay, Prince,” she said, stepping away from him and moving back to the bar, taking a seat on the barstool. “You go back to San Francisco. I’m going to stay here.”

  “In the Priory?”

  “In the Priory. In the clubhouse. Blue is my cousin. Sophie is my cousin. My family is all here. Everyone else is dead.”

  “You understand you’re not going to be a member of the MC,” Micah said, his teeth clenched. “Women are property to the club. Some guy’s gonna put his patch on your back, and if he doesn’t, you’re just going to get used by everybody.”

  “I have a feeling Blue will make sure nothing happens to me that I don’t want to have happen.”

  “This is the liberation you’re looking for?”

  “I just think it might be the family I was looking for. The me I was looking for. If you ever decide the same, you’re welcome to come back.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He turned away, and her heart splintered. Everything was wrong. Everything was broken. And sure, Micah was a part of that, but he was also the only thing that made her feel right. The only thing that made her feel like herself. She loved him. And that transcended everything else. It was something she couldn’t explain, something that couldn’t be shaken. But it was sure as hell something that could break her.

  “I do love you, Prince. But until you realize that Prince is an all-right person to be? It’s best if you’re gone.”

  “You stay here with the filthy bikers. I’m going to go back to the life I made for myself.”

  “I guess that’s the problem. This,” she said, waving her hand, indicating the
Priory, “is a life that I’m making for myself. It’s that other life, the one that’s full of glitter, the one that’s full of people who tell you what to think, how to act, that’s the life that was created for me. The persona that was created for me. And I suppose you feel like that’s what this is for you. I guess maybe we can’t make that work.”

  “You’re romanticizing a world I worked really hard to escape,” he said, walking toward the door. “There’s nothing here for me.”

  “I think you’re condemning a past that scares you, because it’s more real than any other life you’ve lived. More than that penthouse in San Francisco. More than that life running drugs.” She took a deep breath. “You’re Prince. That’s who you are.”

  “I sure as hell hope not,” he said. And this time he did walk out. Leaving her there. Leaving her alone.

  But she didn’t feel alone, not really. She had these walls, so full of stories, so full of ghosts, they seemed to contain multitudes within them.

  Sophie chose that moment to walk back in from the storeroom. “He’s an asshole,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “He killed your father,” Sophie said.

  “I don’t think he had a choice.”

  Sophie frowned. “Yeah, if you can defend that, I know you’ve got it bad.”

  “I do. It’s just a shame he doesn’t.”

  One thing she was finding out was true. She didn’t curl in on herself and lay down to die when things went south. Debutante Sarah didn’t, and neither did this new Sarah, who wasn’t quite a biker bitch, in spite of what she’d said to Micah, but wasn’t quite the polished-society-miss she’d been, either. The strength, apparently, hadn’t been entirely false, and that was a welcome surprise.

  “You need any help around this place?” Sarah asked.

  Sophie shrugged, then picked up a rag from the surface of the bar, tossing it to her. “Sure.”

  Chapter 15

  “So, you’re leaving?”

  Ajax didn’t even turn when Micah entered the courtyard. It was early. He hadn’t gone back to the mansion last night. He’d dragged his sorry ass to the Hotel Monteleon, figuring he’d rather sleep with potential ghosts than encounter Sarah again.

  He wouldn’t have the resolve to turn her down again.

  “Yeah,” Micah responded. “I told you at the end I would. And you agreed to let me. No cutting tats off my back.”

  “Sure.”

  “And keep an eye on Sarah. She has it in her head she’s going to start associating with you assholes and . . . she’s not like Sophie, Ajax. She doesn’t know this world.”

  Then Ajax did turn. “She can make her own choices, right?”

  “She is,” he said. “If I made her choices, she’d be taking herself back to her place and going back to the business of planning luncheons, or whatever the hell she was doing when she wasn’t planning the Christmas party.”

  Ajax shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll look out for her. Got a lot of potential recruits sniffing around. Maybe one of them will be interested in taking on some property.”

  “Hell no,” Micah said, violently rejecting the idea. “That is not what I meant by protecting her.”

  “Is your patch on her back, Prince? I don’t think it is. You haven’t even worn your cut since you got here. She’s not your property. You’re not one of us. If you want to change that? Then you can have some say in what she does. But you’re leaving.”

  “I did what you asked. Are you really going to be a prick now?” Micah asked through clenched teeth.

  Ajax ignored his comment. “Tell me something, Prince.”

  “I might.”

  “What are you going to do when you run out of people to pretend to be? When you came to the Deacons, you were just a skinny little bitch running drugs. I remember that pretty well. Then you grew a bit, but you were never like the rest of us. You never dropped your guard. Never really joined in. And why? What the fuck is the point? Being part of the MC is about brotherhood. About freedom. But you never fully embraced either of those things. Then after Priest sent us away, you . . . do whatever it is you do. In a fucking suit. By choice. So what will you do next?”

  “There is no next,” Micah said. “That’s my life.”

  “Fuck, Prince, that’s depressing.”

  “There’s nothing depressing about my life, Ajax. I have a career. Money. I have everything I ever wanted. That’s why you all used to call me Prince, right? Because I wanted all the shiny shit I could get.”

  “And because you really were nothing but a skinny little bitch from the streets of the Quarter, and you demanded respect like you deserved it,” Ajax said, his voice hard. “So we, I, had no choice but to give it to you. I feel a lot less of it now.”

  “I won’t lose any sleep over that. You don’t want me here anyway. You’re starting over. I might mess it up again. Like I did the first time. What makes you think I won’t break all this apart again?”

  Ajax rubbed a hand over his chin. “It wasn’t just you, Prince. We were all there.”

  “So what? You didn’t push him over the balcony. I did.”

  “We all went in together. We all left together. We all got paid together. We got banished together. It was all of us. That’s the way this works. That’s the way a brotherhood works. And I get that you don’t understand that because I feel like you never really have.”

  Micah gritted his teeth. “I don’t,” he said. “You’re right about that.”

  “I spent a lot of years riding alone. Riding with your brothers beats it every time.”

  “Don’t go getting profound on me, Ajax. I’ll start thinking Sophie cut your balls off and stuck them in a whiskey bottle.”

  Ajax chuckled. “She does some pretty great things with my balls, but so far she hasn’t removed them from my body. Though, I wonder where yours are. I thought that it seemed like Sarah brought them back. Guess I was wrong.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about my balls.”

  “I don’t. Mostly.”

  “You don’t want me to stay,” Micah said. “I know you don’t.”

  Micah looked at Ajax, the man who had been an integral part of the only real family he’d ever had. Even though he’d felt like he was slightly on the outside, it had been the first place he’d found some manner of acceptance.

  Before he’d lost it again.

  If none of that had happened, he wondered what might have been. He wondered who he would be now . . .

  “If you’re looking for affirmation, you came to the wrong guy. Fuck right back off to San Francisco if you want. You want to hear this door will always be open for you? It won’t be. Shit moves on. You want to make a place for yourself? Make it. But the club . . . Sarah . . . it’ll all move on to some other bastard. Go home.”

  Ajax turned away and walked out of the courtyard, leaving Micah alone.

  Micah said nothing, ignoring the intense, cutting feeling that sliced deep into his chest. He didn’t turn back. He didn’t stop walking.

  For the second time in twenty-four hours he walked away from someone extending their hand.

  San Francisco would be easy. Wouldn’t be so exposing.

  It wasn’t the biker life he hated, not really. It was how exposed it made him feel. No one in the MC kept anything from each other. They called each other out when there was a problem, punched each other in the face, then fucked some bitches in front of each other in the clubhouse.

  It was a kind of lifestyle that required honesty.

  Honesty had never served him well.

  It cost too much.

  It hurt too much when, in the end, the inevitable rejection hit. It was better to walk away now. To put the suit back on. Put the mask back on.

  If he stayed here, he would have to drop it. Worse, he would have to be himself. And all he had ever accomplished was destruction.

  Micah was the mask. Prince was the man.

  He was better off with the ma
sk.

  He walked out of the courtyard, through the empty bar, and out onto the streets. They were abandoned in the pink-tinged hours of morning, the hours after the debauched revelers had gone to bed, before the tourists were up and about.

  He wouldn’t come back here. If he left now, he wasn’t coming back. He knew that as sure as he knew anything else. He walked farther away from the Priory, headed back to the hotel. It was a long walk, but he could use it.

  Maybe by the time he reached the hotel his head would be clear. Maybe by then he would have left the madness behind. The howling beast inside him that was clawing for release. Had been ever since he’d arrived.

  And for a while . . . with Sarah . . . he’d let it out. Unleashed the beast. Let it devour her. Let it devour them both.

  It had felt good. It had felt right. And for a while he’d imagined it could always be like that.

  But he was nothing more than a killer. And she deserved more.

  He walked into the hotel, moving quickly through the gleaming, marble lobby, barely giving the opulence a second look as he made his way to his room.

  He opened the closet, took his clothes out, and began shoving them into the suitcase. And that was when he saw it. His cut.

  He hadn’t put it on once since his return. Had taken it off ten years ago and only touched it again to place it in his suitcase and bring it with him here. He’d thought he might wear it. He hadn’t.

  Strange that he’d brought it. Strange he hadn’t gotten rid of it in the decade since he’d left. Just like the tattoos, it was telling.

  He’d never let go.

  He’d had one foot in real life. One foot in the biker life. The biker life deep inside him.

  Because it’s who you are.

  Who you are is wrong.

  She doesn’t think so.

  He picked up the vest and held it out, looking at the worn leather. He turned it, looking at the patch on the back.

  THE DEACONS OF BOURBON STREET, NEW ORLEANS, LA, a skull, a dead man, centered between the words.