Slater Portman was a Hound to his core. More than I probably was at times. I’d been born to be king. He’d chosen to be a prince.
“Slate,” I whispered, nudging him with my fist. “Slate!” I hissed again.
“Fckff,” he mumbled, like what he’d said was even a word.
“Wake up,” I urged him.
Slater winced, sucking in a sharp breath through his clenched teeth. “Go away.”
I blew all the air out of my cheeks and went straight for honesty. “Buddy, I need you. Please… wake up, or I’m about to go out and do something real stupid, something that none of y’all will ever forgive me for.”
His eyes flew open immediately, the call to my brother answered as he scanned the room quickly and then sat upright in one swift movement.
I was grateful he at least had boxer shorts on when the bed sheet fell from his body, exposing him completely before his eyes focused on mine.
“Drew?” He squinted.
“Yeah.” I sighed. Slater was another person I’d been avoiding. Along with Jedd, Deeks, Kenny, Tate, the whole damn family. “It’s me.”
He rubbed his eye like he was a giant of a kid, trying to clear his vision to see if I was really there.
“What’s wrong?” he asked me, calm yet urgent.
“I need you, brother.”
“Who are we killing?’
I huffed out a barely-there laugh. “No one.”
“Okay.” He moved to the end of the bed, letting his legs fall to the floor as his fists pushed into his mattress. “Then why the fuck are you waking me up at…” He glanced at his bedside clock. “Five in the fucking morning? Seriously?”
“Because I’m a bit of a fucking mess right now, and I need to talk to you.”
He gave me a small nod of understanding. “Give me two minutes to get dressed.”
“I’ll wait in the bar.”
I left him alone and moved out into the center of The Hut. I expected it to be empty. There was only one five o’clock in The Hounds’ day, after all, so when I saw Jedd sitting on a solitary stool, propping up the bar with a bottle of Jack Daniels and an almost empty tumbler in his hand, my footsteps faltered.
“Tucker,” he said without even glancing my way. His eyes were fixed firmly on the small remnants of liquid he was circling around his glass.
“The fuck are you doing awake?” I asked him, moving forward.
“Reminding myself I’m still alive.”
Five words shouldn’t have affected me so much. Harry’s absence wasn’t just something I noticed. It was all around us. There was a piece of the club missing, and I guessed none of us knew how to move on from that. I hadn’t been around long after Pete died. I took the coward’s way out, choosing to spend half a decade in solitude, selfishly healing from grief by taking random beatings, and randomly beating others, too. I had no idea how my brothers operated after death.
“How do you do that?” I asked him quietly as I moved to the other side of the bar—the place Harry loved to stand with a towel over his shoulder, sliding shot glasses up and down the overused mahogany counter.
“What?” Jedd asked, looking up at me through his thick, dark brows with his heavy, burdened eyes.
“How do you remind yourself you’re still alive?”
“I start by inhaling and exhaling.”
“Sounds easy.”
“Does it?” He arched a brow. “Feels like torture.”
“That I understand.”
Jedd blew out a breath through his nostrils, never taking his eyes away from mine. “Why are you up at this time?”
Right on cue, Slater walked into the bar, rubbing his bed hair and sliding his heavy, boot-laden feet across the wooden floor to meet us.
“We having a party?” he asked, sleep tainting his voice.
I reached behind me for two more tumblers and set them down in between my VP and me as Slater pulled up on a stool next to Jedd.
“This is more like rehab,” I told him dryly.
“Even more reason to hit the hard stuff,” Slater said through a sigh, resting his cheek on his fist and turning to look between Jedd and me. “Get ready, Jedd. Tucker woke me up and said he needed help.”
“He’s only weeks late,” Jedd responded.
I poured us all a drink, rested the bottle on the counter, and threw my Jack Daniels down my neck without even letting it touch the sides before slamming the glass back down on the bar and gasping. “I just fucked Ayda like she was some kind of whore,” I told them honestly.
Jedd froze, his glass resting on his bottom lip as he looked at me, wide-eyed. Slater choked on his drink.
“What?” Jedd asked quietly.
“I said… I just fucked my fiancée like she was some kind of Hound Whore, using her up for my benefit, even though I knew it hurt her. Worst thing is, at the time, I felt no remorse. Not until I saw her start to cry once it was over. She…” I sighed heavily. “She said she enjoyed it. I guess it’s the first time we’ve, you know…”
“Fucked since Harry died?” Slater winced, smacking his chest as the liquor ripped his throat out.
“That,” I said, pointing to my brother while looking at Jedd.
“And?” Jedd asked, scowling ever so slightly.
“And that’s when I knew I needed to speak to one of you. I’m losing myself, boys. I’m drifting. I can feel it. Its Pete, take two, in my head, only this time I can’t do what I did to survive his death. My automatic reaction is to find the biggest nuclear bomb I can, strap myself to it, light it up and set myself off into the sunset for a few years in a blaze of twisted glory. I spent almost five years in prison fucking up my head, fucking up my life, and fucking up this club. Even after that, I came out more damaged than I went in. I can’t… I can’t let myself go down that route again, and I’m telling you with all the honesty I am capable of, brothers, I’m hanging by a very thin thread. I want blood again. I can taste it. I’m literally swimming in it some nights.”
“Whose?” Slater asked, straightening his spine and clearing his throat.
“Anyone I can get my hands on.”
“Kids?” Jedd dared himself to ask.
“Fuck.” I scowled. “No.”
“Women?”
The cries of Jon Taylor’s wife rang in my ears, and I looked down at my empty glass and decided I needed to pour myself another one.
The silence was my answer.
As was the shot of liquor I threw down my neck.
“What do you want us to do, Drew?” Slater asked. His voice held no judgment, unlike my VP’s.
“Pull me back if you see me drifting too far left instead of right.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Then shoot me in the fucking leg, strap me to a chair, and keep me there for five years until I get over Harry’s death if that’s what you have to do.”
“Don’t tempt us,” Jedd muttered.
I watched him, really watched him, and for the first time in my life, I saw tiredness haunting my second-in-command’s eyes. I understood every part of it.
I was exhausted, too.
None of us had any idea where this life was going to take us, but each week, month, and year seemed to take us even further away from any kind of dream we had. Wherever there was light and happiness, taunting darkness soon followed.
“If Ayda can’t pull you back, how do you expect us to?” Slater asked quietly.
Locking my eyes on his, I said the one thing I needed these two men to hear. “‘Cause you’ll do what’s best for me, even if it means hurting every inch of my body if you have to. She loves me too much to be cruel. You guys have my permission to do whatever you have to do to keep me grounded. Even if it means you damn near killing me.” I stood tall and pushed my shoulders back. “Don’t let me hurt her again. Anyone but her.”
I didn’t need to say anything else. One didn’t know what I was doing. The other was scared he knew all too well.
So, I left, pushing my
gun down into the back of my jeans waistband, and pulling my cut down into place before I hopped down the steps of The Hut and straddled my bike.
Amid all the confusion of the love and grief cocktail that was my life, only one thing was crystal fucking clear: I needed the road.
I always needed the fucking road.
Chapter Five
AYDA
The moment I woke up, I reached out, and my hand touched the spot where Drew had been lying. His place was cold and abandoned, and even the dent in his pillow was long gone.
Rolling forward, I pushed my face into the pillow and breathed in deeply, reveling in that soapy masculine smell he’d left behind for me. The very smell that brought back every aching memory of the night before.
I hated myself for crying in front of him.
I hated myself for not holding myself together long enough to assure him that I was all right.
I hated myself for asking him to stay, even if I did enjoy those moments we’d just laid together.
Pushing up onto my hands and knees I let out an unwilling groan as my body, in its entirety, ached. Everything hurt. My joints were on fire, my vagina felt like it was suffering from blunt force trauma, and my limbs were useless noodles.
I smiled down at the pillow and started to laugh, spurring another set of groans as I forced myself to the edge of the bed. There was an odd sense of satisfaction in the stiffness of my body. There was a smirk on my lips every time I felt the pang of fresh bruises on my skin, and as I stood upright, I laughed in absolute wonder, because I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to walk without looking like I was pushing something out of my uterus.
No matter how much my flesh hurt, how much I ached, or how ridiculously sore I was, I felt more satisfied than I had in weeks. Drew and I had connected. It was some crazy, fucked up, violent level of communication, but it was there, and I had a physical representation of that connection. The only downside being that Drew was going to hate it.
When I finally managed to get to the bathroom and stand in front of a mirror, I stared at myself with wide eyes.
Shit.
Scratch that last thought, Drew was going to hate himself if he saw this. I didn’t have to have some great insight into his psyche to know that. Just one look at the bruises on my naked body and his voice echoed in my head. Jesus, my hips were the worst. They had little purple dots marring my flesh, then my ass had a streak of purpled-red down the cheek he’d slapped, and my thighs already had several different shades and sizes of bruises covering them. That pattern of random shapes and sizes continued to my chest and shoulders, my breasts, to places I hadn’t even known our bodies had touched.
Drew was going to hate it. Hate it, but I undeniably claimed it like a badge of honor.
The more I looked at the bruises, the more they brought back the memories, the touches, the breaths and groans of pleasure. I felt Drew between my legs, his hands gripping, his fingers digging into the flesh wherever he could reach… and I’d liked it. In some twisted way, he’d marked his territory, claimed ownership again. I felt that possessiveness in every bruise reflecting back at me.
Whatever confusion I’d had the night before was suddenly gone, and I embraced the new sudden clarity that made me smile at my mottled reflection. It was just rough sex. That’s all it was; rough, emotionally-charged sex that left me with these memories and a heart full of hope that he wasn’t completely gone. That a part of him still needed me.
The only question now was how the fuck was I going to hide some of these marks from the guys and Drew himself? How the hell was I going to put on my diner uniform and conceal some of the very obvious bruises that would peek out from the capped-sleeves and short skirt?
I had a couple of days until I had to worry about that, at least. For now, I just needed to vacate The Hut and find somewhere to lay low.
I knew just the place.
* * *
I cut the engine of the truck and stared at the bike parked outside of Autumn’s house.
Deeks was here.
He was usually a source of comfort, but as I looked down at my arms, I sighed out a heavy breath, grabbing one of Drew’s hoodies and pulling it on. It wasn’t too warm out, so they wouldn’t question why I was wearing it, but the weather was heating up swiftly, as it often did around this time of the year. I trusted both Deeks and Autumn, but I wasn’t in the mood to explain to one of my favorite people why I was covered in angry bruises. I’m sure Deeks was more than aware Drew and I had sex, I just felt weird having a neon sign that said Guess what I did last night radiating from my skin.
I climbed out and slipped my keys into my back pocket, amused by the fact that the damn sweater was almost to my knees. The soft and well-worn material still smelled like Drew, so I huddled deeper inside and skipped up the porch steps to knock on the screen door.
Deeks was the one who answered, his grey beard twitching at the corners as he saw me. A telltale sign that he was smiling.
“Autumn said you were heading up here,” he greeted in his usual welcoming tone.
“Needed some girl talk,” I responded as he pushed against the screen door in a silent invitation to enter.
I took the invitation and kissed him on the cheek as I passed, feeling calm and at peace as I entered Autumn’s home. The house was another one of those places where I felt at ease, and welcome. It was one of my favorite places to kick back and get drunk because there was no way I was going to make that much of an ass of myself in the middle of nowhere with an audience of two.
“Well, that’s my cue to get the hell out of here then,” he replied, chuffing out a laugh.
“You don’t have to.”
Deeks gripped the end of his beard and smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I think I lack the right qualifications to stay.”
“He means he has a dick,” Autumn said from the kitchen where the smell of coffee was slowly stealing all of my sense of focus.
“God damn, woman, I love it when you talk dirty.”
“Get the hell out of here,” she said, sticking her head out of the kitchen and blowing him a kiss. “Call me later, and I may give you some real food for thought.”
“Shit,” Deeks drew out the vowels of the word, sounding more Texan than I’d ever heard him. With a backward glance, he shook his head, grabbed his keys from the small table by the door and left without another word.
I watched him head across to his bike and swing his leg over the beast, his smile broad and his head still shaking in wonder. I loved being around the two of them so much. They didn’t have a conventional love. They weren’t even married, and by the looks of things, they probably wouldn’t bother now. They were happy and comfortable. This kind of lifestyle suited them just fine.
“Sugar?”
“Yeah?” I asked, looking up at Autumn. Her grey hair was in its usual braid and hanging over her shoulder. She looked happy. Happier than I’d seen her in a while.
Autumn held up her cookie jar and grinned. “I got your favorite. I figured this was coming.”
I smiled and headed toward her, allowing her to tuck me under her arm as she led us to the screen porch out the back.
“You want some bourbon in your coffee?” she asked once we were settled.
“Bourbon?”
“The look you’re wearing calls for ice cream or alcohol, and it’s too early for ice cream.”
I snorted out a laugh and started shaking my head. “No, it’s not bad really.”
Autumn didn’t say anything, she just looked at me, and I could feel the tears start to prickle once again. I was so tired of crying. I wasn’t sad or upset or weak or broken. I was confused and sometimes frustrated all to hell, but I could survive that. It was just hard to contain all of the shit sometimes, especially when I was with someone who didn’t mind so much when I let my guard down.
“Have you ever done something that surprised you?” I finally asked, my voice low and quiet.
“Now that’s a lo
aded question. You’re gonna have to give me some context here. I’ve been to jail twice in my life, and I was too drunk to remember either time.”
I laughed and wiped one of the stray tears after it had escaped before I explained what had happened the night before. The explanation wasn’t in great detail, and I didn’t get too graphic. I just told her the facts, including the fact that I’d enjoyed what had transpired.
By the time I’d finished, she had looked impressed, while I felt flustered.
“What kind of bruises we talking about?” she asked. “There are several different kinds… holy shit.”
The last part of her sentence had come out as I’d lifted the hem of the hoodie and shirt I was wearing under it. The bruises had darkened a bit more since I’d taken a shower that morning and they were looking a bit more substantial.
“You look like you’ve gone five rounds in an MMA ring.”
She prodded a bruise just above my hip bone and shook her head, her fingers then spreading to fit the profile of Drew’s hand.
“Was he trying to drill you to China?”
I pushed the material back into place and looked at her with a smile plastered on my lips.
“Stop.”
“Sorry.” She held her hands up in surrender.
“He’s gonna freak, isn’t he?”
Autumn tipped her head to the side, her lips pressed together in amusement. She didn’t have to say a word. It was all the confirmation I needed.
“I knew it.” I sighed.
“Men like Drew live a certain way, Ayda. They live hard, they all fight, they fuck, and every goddamn one of them makes it as hard as possible for us to love them. They’re ruled by their pride and obligation. They’re loyal to a fault, and they take penance in the form of flesh and blood, and we’re the ones stupid enough to fall for them. When they let you in like Drew let you in, you become something more to them. You become a beacon of hope, a symbol of humanity. For Drew, hurting you would be akin to blasphemy. You mean something to him, even when he doesn’t want you to.”
“So, he sees this, and he’s going to make excuses to distance himself from me even further?”
WITHOUT SHAME: Babylon MC Book 4 Page 5