It made me ugly.
It made me forget about work.
Forgetting about work made me lose my paycheck.
And without a paycheck, well, how the hell was I going to pay Dr. Mitchell those five-hundred dollars for my next script?
By the time I was out, I was a full day into withdrawal- sick, in pain all over, clawing at my skin, going slowly insane it felt. I had never felt anything like it before, not even close. I was so sick that it didn't even occur to me that my back didn't hurt anymore. Not even a little twinge of pain. Nothing.
But it was too late.
I was a full-blown addict.
It was that easy, that effortless, that unintentional.
As it so often was.
And the withdrawal, it stole my pride, my dignity, my normal everyday personality. It had me driving over to Dr. Mitchell's office, having to pull over to throw up twice, sending me in there completely sweating through my wrinkled, two day old clothes.
There was no one at the desk and I would later find it was because the girl with the greasy hair and bugging eyes had overdosed in her bathtub, leaving her to drown and not be found until three days later when the neighbor complained about a smell.
A glamorous life addicts led.
With almost always a tragic end.
But I thought nothing of it as I stood there shaking on screaming legs, calling into the back until Dr. Mitchell walked out, eyes raking over me, a smile that I didn't recognize as evil on his lips.
"I'll prescribe you," he said, nodding, making relief course like a wave through my body, enough to numb the withdrawal symptoms for a blissful moment. "In exchange for you working here."
There was really no choice.
I needed to not feel so bad.
By whatever means necessary.
At that point, if he asked me to drop to my knees for a hit, I might have been low enough to do it. As much as that made my newly- sober stomach turn sour just even thinking it.
"You were paid off the books," he said oddly, making me shake out of the memories that were so vivid I realized my hands were curled into fists and my heart was pounding.
"What?"
"I had Reeve call in Janie and Alex to look into you so we could try to find you. They didn't find any current work."
"Yeah, they ah... paid me under the table, minus the cost for my refills."
He nodded at that, not judging - understanding. His hand moved up, gently touching the space next to my eye. "Why would they do this though?"
"Because in working for them, I learned their secrets."
Lazarus' eyes went guarded; his body tensed and, had I not been so close to him, I might not have noticed the shift. As it was, there was no mistaking it. He was trying to steel himself so he didn't make any outward reaction to the answer to his upcoming question.
"What was their secret?"
"That Mitchell wasn't just a pill mill," I plowed on, knowing it was best to just get it all out there. "It was an operation. Chris was the one to scout out new clients, get them comfortable with casual pill use, making sure no one actually got addicted so they had no actual fear of doing so." It had worked so, so well on me. It didn't even phase me when Mitchell gave me the scripts because I knew that I had handled the ones from Chris so well.
"He gave you a false sense of security."
"Exactly. And then from there, you were sent to Sunny, his brother. Who worked with you, gave you some progress. And then when everyone thought they were finally, finally on the road to recovery, he would... well, he would purposely hurt you worse and then declare that therapy wasn't the answer and send you to Mitchell. From there, well, there was no hope for you. You were in so much pain that all you could think of was getting out of it."
The silence after I finished talking was sharp and painful to my ears, unable to figure out what he was thinking, what he thought of the situation, of me.
"And because you worked for them and know all this, you're a threat not only to their medical licenses, but their freedom. The law is coming down hard on pill mills the past couple of years." He paused, finger stroking underneath my black eye slightly again. "Which one did this?"
"Sunny," I supplied automatically. "He's the one used to causing people pain."
His jaw tensed again at that, so much so that I could hear his teeth grind for a long minute before he got control again and relaxed it.
"Just so we're clear here," he said when he was calm again. "You understand that whatever bullshit plan you might have had about going back to them so I didn't get involved..."
"Lazarus, they aren't your prob..."
"They put hands on what was mine," he cut me off. "That makes this my problem. And seeing this damage, sweetheart, yeah... it doesn't make it a problem. I'm going to be fucking happy to get my hands on them- show them what its like to raise their hands to someone who knows how to fucking fight back."
"Lazarus, I don't want anything to happen to..."
"Know something Reeve reminded me of this morning?" he asked, but went on without a response. "He reminded me that I'm part of a brotherhood now. It won't be three against one. Your problems might be my problems now. But my problems are Henchmen problems. So don't be going and worrying about me."
What was there to say?
Try as I might, I couldn't find the right words.
So I stopped trying.
I pushed my legs up over his and scooted into his side, resting my face against his chest and taking a deep breath, breathing him in, letting him fill me up, filling up the hollows I had allowed to form when I walked out of his apartment and, I thought, his life, a couple hours before.
His arms didn't even hesitate in going around me, squeezing me tight.
"I wore a helmet," he told the top of my head, planting a kiss there. "But on the way back, I'm pretty sure I was pushing eighty-five. You scared the shit out of me, Bethany."
It was an almost unfamiliar realization- to know someone cared enough about you to worry.
It felt like ages since I had that.
It had been about three years for me- before my mom got really sick.
And it was somehow completely different when it came from a source that wasn't a parent- someone who kind-of had to love and care about you.
It was a whole other kind of warm and swirling sensation inside to realize someone didn't need to care about you, but chose to.
"I get this is new here, Bethany. And I get that the circumstances surrounding it aren't traditional so maybe you're second guessing this. But you need to factor in that I am not a traditional kind of guy either."
A cage-fighting, ex-heroin using, current outlaw biker who was involved with arms dealing.
Yeah, that was pretty damn non-traditional, I had to admit.
"And I'm willing to accept that maybe you won't be fully comfortable trusting your feelings with regard to me until you've been clean long enough to know that A- I don't have some goddamn Florence Nightingale syndrome, B- you don't have some Stockholm crap, and C- your feelings have nothing to do with the withdrawal. But I am not going anywhere. I get this is high risk. I get that there is a real chance for ups and downs here and not some bullshit 'why can't you take out the goddamn trash' kind of issues, the real kind."
Like relapse.
Like the fight back toward sobriety.
Like his illegal professions and friends.
Like literally anything could happen at any moment that would put our relationship to the test.
Or end it.
That was true.
"I guess what I am saying here is- do you have any idea how rare it is in life to find a soul that is cut up in all the same ways as your own? I think when you find that person who can understand everything you have been through because they have been through it as well, you need to hold onto them. You need to try to make it work. It will be worth all the struggles and all the progressions and regressions. You're worth that, Bethany. Whether you believe that about
yourself or not."
Somehow, someday, someway, I wanted to be as good as he thought I was. I wanted to deserve him.
It was my new mission in life.
"Okay?" His arms gave me a squeeze- tight, reassuring.
"Okay," I agreed, smiling against his chest.
"Now," he said, his tone a lot less serious suddenly. "I do recall something about you wearing clothes so that I could peel them off of you."
My belly fluttered. My sex tightened. And the smile threatened to split my face.
"You know, I do have a vague recollection of something to that effect."
"Vague recollection, huh?" His tone was amused as his hands slid down my back, sinking into my hips and pulling me to straddle him. "Well, we will have to see what we can do about refreshing your memory then, won't we?" He smiled at me, his eyes heated, his fingers sinking into my ass.
"That might be for the best," I agreed gravely, making him throw his head back and laugh.
"Don't change," he demanded a second before he sealed his lips over mine, a smile still in place, making me smile back before the moment turned more heated, before my body realized that, while it had only been a day and a half, my body had missed him.
His lips teased mine- unhurried, explorative, sweet.
But the hands on my ass were firm, possessive, borderline bruising.
My breasts felt heavy, my heart beneath a pounding bass beat.
But then his lips ripped from mine. A whimper escaped my lips as his hand moved to frame my face. "Look at me for a minute," he demanded, tone sweet but firm.
My eyelids fluttered open, feeling weighted.
"This bastard," he went on as soon as I was looking at him, "did he hurt you anywhere else?" My lips parted to answer, but before I could even try, he pushed on. "I don't want to hurt you."
"No. He, ah, I was running for the door and he slammed me against it then he pulled me by my hair and then did this," I explained, touching my fingers to my bruised throat, knowing the external damage showed just about one one-hundredth of how much it hurt on the inside.
"So no hair pulling for a while," he said with a nod.
"I, well, I like the hair pulling." My cheeks went a little pink at that admission, but I didn't want him going on thinking I was somehow traumatized by the experience and he could never pull my hair in the throws of things again.
"I know you do, sweetheart, but your scalp can't be feeling too great right about now so no hair pulling for a while, not forever."
Well.
Yeah, that made sense.
"I can live with that."
His eyes went all melty at that; his smile warm.
"In fact, I think it is about time you show me exactly how you like being fucked," he informed me, grabbing my butt harder and moving to stand with me wrapped around him.
"I think you've been doing a pretty good job so far," I told him as he moved out toward my hall, past my dated but very clean bathroom, and into the doorway of my bedroom.
Where he froze.
My face over his shoulder, I couldn't see what it was he was looking at. True, my room wasn't that much to look at, but it wasn't hideous or anything. I hadn't painted the walls in there either but I had some framed art in bold colors and a nice off-white tufted headboard on my queen sized bed with nice fluffy white sheets and a gray and white swirly comforter. It was a bit minimalist, but not enough so to cause a man to stop short at seeing it.
Confused, I pushed back so I could look in his face, brows drawn together to find him looking over my shoulder for a long moment, his eyes sad and far away. When they shifted to me, I was pretty sure I saw genuine hurt in their depths.
"You were just going to leave me?"
The luggage and boxes.
They were on my bed.
My belly sank at the idea of how he must have seen that- like I didn't care, like it was easy to walk away, like I not only didn't trust him to handle the truth, but also didn't think he was 'strong' or 'manly' enough to handle it for me.
It was none of those things.
I did care. I cared so much that every single item I put into the luggage or a box sent a stabbing pain through my heart. It wasn't easy. It was the hardest decision I had ever made. I had wanted to run back to his apartment a million times. I had wanted to grab the phone and call him and lay it all out on the line. I wanted to share the burden.
But the larger part of me didn't feel deserving of that slack.
"You don't understand."
His hands loosened on me, sliding down my thighs to pull them from around his lower back. My heart sank as my feet hit the floor.
"I don't," he agreed, nodding tightly. There was a mask down over his features, blocking out what was real, what I knew was beneath- betrayal, pain. He moved past me, taking the suitcase and boxes and putting them on the ground, sitting off the edge of my bed, patting the spot next to him. And, helpless to do anything else, I moved to him and sat down. "So explain it to me."
My shoulders hunched forward, my elbows going to my knees. My hair, while short, provided a small curtain from his penetrating gaze.
"I just... I don't deserve all this." My tone was helpless, hollow.
"All what?"
Of course he was going to make me spell it out. He wasn't the type of man who wanted things gift wrapped with a shiny red bow. He wanted to know all the ugly buried deep inside the box.
And, really, there was only one way to describe it.
"You."
There was a heavy silence that wrapped itself around me like a blanket made of unbreathable fabric, suffocating me.
"You think you don't deserve me."
It wasn't a question. But I answered anyway.
"Nothing I have done has..."
"Stop." His voice was a bark, loud enough to make me jump and turn to look at him, surprised to find anger there.
Anger?
"You can't be fucking serious right now."
"Lazarus, the night we met, I was..."
"In a bad spot. Jesus fucking Christ. Since the fuck when did it become normal to judge someone by their low moments? We all have them. Those moments aren't what make us. What makes us is what we do after, how we raise ourselves up. Yeah, you were an addict and you're going to be in recovery for the rest of your life. So what? So was I, so am I. That isn't who you are. Who you are is the girl with a shitty father who has a hard time trusting men or believing they see worth in you. Who you are is a woman who dropped everything to care for her sick mother when everyone else washed their hands of her. Who you are is someone who got fucked over by some really goddamn awful people. You weren't some loser junkie, sweetheart. You got caught in a really common, ever-growing trap."
The tears stung at the backs of my eyes, making me almost painfully aware how much they must show for him- shining in my eyes, letting him know just how much that meant to me.
"I know I don't know all of you yet, but I plan to if you would let down those shields and show it all to me. But what I have seen so far, sweetheart? Fucking beautiful. Every little bit. And I have obviously been slacking if I haven't shown you that is exactly how I feel, what I see when I look at you. My fucking mistake. And I plan to remedy it. But first," he said, smile going a little wicked, taking some of the heaviness out of the moment, "I believe at least one of us should be completely naked by now."
"Lazarus..."
"That sounds like a volunteer, right?" he asked the invisible audience in the room before reaching out, grabbing my shirt and yanking up until my arms went straight in the air and he pulled it off of me, making sure to bunch the material up as he passed my face so he didn't touch my eye.
He wasted no time as his hands slid down my sides, snagging the waistband of my pants and panties and dragging downward, exposing me completely. His fingertips whispered up and down the sides of my thighs- a chaste contact that nevertheless sent shockwaves of desire through my system, making my breasts get heavy, my nipples harden almost painful
ly, and my sex tighten.
His hands grabbed my knees and pushed them open, holding them flat against the mattress as he dropped to his knees before me, pulling me forward slightly toward his waiting mouth.
My back arched as my air hissed out of me, the contact of his tongue on my clit in whisper-soft circles making a shot of need shoot from the contact and up my spine.
"Oh my God." My voice was strange- airy and high-pitched, barely even familiar to my own ears as my hand sifted into his hair and held him to me.
His hand moved between, pressing two fingers inside and thrusting lazily as he worked me with his tongue- seeming intent on driving me up slowly, torturing me until I couldn't take it anymore, and only then giving me relief.
"Lazarus, please," I whimpered, my hips moving up to meet his ministrations shamelessly.
"Mhmm," he murmured against my clit, the vibration such a strange and wholly welcome sensation that the muscles of my inner thighs shook with pleasure.
But not an orgasm.
Because he wasn't going to allow me to have one.
Yet.
His tongue left me as he kissed up the triangle above my sex, my belly, between my breasts. His lips sucked one of my hardened peaks into its warm depths as his fingers picked up the pace of their thrusting, as he hinted at something I just knew he wasn't going to give to me until he was buried deep.
He moved across my chest, torturing my other nipple for a long moment before he was running kisses up the side of my neck then tracing the edge of my earlobe with his tongue before sealing his lips over mine- taking it hard and deep and full of promise until every inch of me felt alive from it.
Then his fingers slowly slid out of me, the absence making me feel illogically incomplete as he pressed up and back, knees against the edge of the bed as he reached behind himself and dragged his shirt forward and off.
I was sure I would never get used to seeing him like that- bare, beautiful and flawed. He was muscular, sure. But unlike the countless pictures of shirtless men in fitness magazines and the bodies at the gym or beaches- all interchangeable, lovely but generic, he held his uniqueness on his skin, in his scars, in the flawless imperfections that made him who he was.
Lazarus (The Henchmen MC Book 7) Page 17