by Debra Kayn
He slipped on his MC vest and tilted his head. His balls pulsed in pleasure. She had no idea he wanted her enough he'd risk going back to prison to have her.
"Because I want you and I take what I want," he said. "I've never lied to you about what kind of man I am."
"I'll leave the second I find a way to get out of here."
He smiled. "No, you won't."
"I promise, I will."
He shook his head and walked backward toward the door. "If that was true, you would've turned your back on me, and you didn't. You were willing to die to keep me safe, even when you thought I still sat inside the state pen. So, maybe you should ask yourself why you'd do that for a bad man you'd never met in person."
He left her in the bedroom without locking the door. He gambled on her not going anywhere, because he'd stripped everything away from her. She had the truth, and she'd accept him. The same way she finally accepted him in her letters.
Chapter Eleven
The men's voices outside came through the open bedroom window. Christina lifted the pen from the paper and gazed outside. She couldn't see anyone from this side of the house, but she knew Cam and the Moroad MC members were close.
The last two days, Christina only went out of the room to shower, use the bathroom, and join Cam and Jeremy for meals in the kitchen. She refused to do more than answer when spoken to and took care of herself. The rest of the time, she spent sitting on the bed near the barred window.
She reread her resignation letter. The last line blurred, and she blinked the moisture out of her vision. She had no real say in anything. To keep her sanity, she'd reread every single letter Cam had sent her from prison at least ten times to try to figure out what he wanted with her and if he'd lied. The only conclusion she came up with was he'd told the truth.
He'd killed others, and he held no guilt. His real life compared to the lawless life he'd shown her through his writing seemed so similar to each other now. She was shocked that she hadn't noticed before that prisoner #18794 and Cam were the same person.
Though for how many times she'd tried to find something in the letters to use against him, she came up empty. She knew how he thought, how he lived, and how he protected himself.
"Hey, Cam...are we on for tonight?" a male voice yelled, taking her out of her musings.
She waited for Cam's reply, but nothing came through the window. The Moroad members who came to the house never bothered her, but she'd learned to fear them. She'd watched them kill a man without any hesitation as if taking someone's life took as much energy as bringing the sacks of groceries into the kitchen.
She folded the piece of paper with her resignation on it, slipped the official document inside the envelope Cam supplied her with, and walked through the house. On the porch, she looked around the yard for Cam and found him near the trailer, working on Jeremy's motorcycle.
Concentrating on his work, Cam wasn't aware of her approach. She stood a few feet behind him and Jeremy and waited until he finished what he was doing.
"Classics are tricky. Every time you shut the engine off, you have to flip the lever to the right. That's the off position. You leave it on or turn it to the left, which is your reserve, your bike will piss gas. When that happens, you're going to find yourself stuck." Cam unscrewed a cap, looked inside the hole on the side of the engine, and replaced the top. "Stache is going to take you on a job tonight."
"To do what?" Jeremy wiped his greasy hands off on a rag.
Cam stood with his back toward Christina. "Right now, that's all you need to know. Make sure you have the pistol I gave you and an extra magazine. Keep your head, and you'll be okay."
"But I don't have a motorcycle license yet?" Jeremy frowned. "There's no tag on the bike."
"Do you have a driver's license?" Cam wiped his hands off on the seat of his jeans.
Jeremy nodded. "Yeah, but I've never used it after Driver's Ed, because I've never had a car."
"Give it to Willy, he'll get you an endorsement and put a plate on the bike for you before you head out. You'll be covered, just use your head and follow what the other men do. Be smart."
His rough, thick fingers slid over the denim at his hip. Christina's gaze followed the movement. The worn jeans pulled against Cam's ass and she inhaled swiftly, caught off guard by the titillating view of the man she'd fantasized about for over two years.
Cam turned around. She met his gaze. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. His eyes roamed over her, settling on her mouth. She worked her lips, trying to remember what she'd come out here to tell him.
"Take a break, kid," Cam said.
She grabbed Jeremy's exit as a distraction and escaped the intensity of Cam's gaze. It seemed like lately, anytime she was in the same area as him, he focused on her. Only lately had she started reacting to him differently, knowing who he really was. Her response to him angered her. She couldn't forget he'd purposely kidnapped her and ripped away her freedom. The freedom he struggled to keep his whole life.
It was hard to wrap her head around the fact that Cam was the same prisoner who'd inadvertently saved her when she desperately reached out to understand where she stood between good and bad. She'd latched on to him, his strength, his conviction, and admired him for going on with his life, despite spending years in prison and feeling no guilt.
Now he ripped everything she'd gained away from her, and she had to depend on him. She wobbled between embracing him to find that strength he possessed and letting him kill her, because that seemed easier.
"Christina?"
She turned back to him. "I hate being here."
"Why?" He tossed the rag and stepped closer.
"Because it's not my choice," she whispered. "I was a different person when I was writing you. I've lost the strength I found to move on..."
"You can have it all and more." He reached behind him and pulled his wallet out of his pocket. "You once told me that you feel powerless to control your own life, and the one time you felt the strongest was when you had thoughts of murdering the man responsible for your parents' deaths, because that gave you focus and something to reach for. You can have that strength here. You have me, a club, and people to protect you."
"God." She pressed her hand against her stomach. "No, please don't do this to me."
"That power is yours. I want you to find a way to hold on to the strength that's inside of you, to accept what I'm giving you. Don't you think every abused child, every spouse whose lost their loved one at the hands of someone else wishes they could kill the person that ruined their whole life? You had no one, and you fucking survived on your own. You're not alone anymore."
He took her hand and placed a driver's license in her palm. She stared down at a picture of her face. She read the name. Christina Penny.
"This is fake," she pushed her hand into his to give it back.
He shook his head. "Not any more. Be who you want to be, and you liked being Christina Penny more than Christina Nickelson."
She kept the card and walked away, changed her mind, and returned to him. "Is that what you do? You kill people, change your name, and then pretend it didn't happen? Because it happens. That man your...your men killed is gone. They killed him. They can't take it back."
"Every man I've killed or I've ordered to have killed has deserved it. The same way your parents' murderer deserves to pay." He lowered his head, hovering mere inches from her. "That man you witnessed a couple of weeks ago had to pay for what he'd done. He owed a debt, and death was his payment."
"No, it was your punishment to hand out." She swallowed hard. "When you get tired of whatever you're planning to do with me, you'll kill me. You won't care. You won't regret it. It's the same thing."
Cam hooked his thumbs in his front pockets and studied her. He'd wiped all emotions off his face. She shook her head, because the same way his lifestyle disgusted her, she understood what he was saying and wanted to believe him. God, she wanted to believe what he said was true.
&nb
sp; Because if it wasn't, and he lied, that meant good people would always suffer. The bad people would continue to ruin good people's lives.
But she wouldn't allow herself to lose herself, not the way he described it. She walked away, shoving her new license in her back pocket. None of these changes meant anything when she had no future.
Inside the house, she remembered her purpose of going outside. She slapped the resignation paper on the coffee table where he could find it later, and went into her room. Cam might as well put her in prison, because she refused to cooperate anymore.
She paced the room. Twelve steps forward, twelve steps back. On her fourth lap, the third step by the dresser creaked and she stopped. Cam knew too much about her, and she only knew what he'd allowed her to know. She opened the top dresser drawer, searching for anything that would give her insight to what he planned.
A half dozen T-shirts lay folded beside a package of socks in a ripped plastic bag. He hadn't even gone through twelve brand new pairs since his release from prison, and it dawned on her that she had no idea when he'd been released. Sometime between two months ago when he stepped up and claimed Jeremy as his son and ten months ago when he'd last written her.
When had he figured out she was Jeremy's social worker? She slammed the dresser drawer. Unless fate had a bad sense of humor and Cam was meant to be in her life. There were too many coincidences.
Frantic, she opened each drawer, pushing clothing aside, slamming empty drawers, and coming up with no answers. She hurried over to the closet and checked the pockets of his coats, tipped over the extra pair of boots, and finally spotted a box high on the shelf. Using a hanger, she worked the box to the edge and caught it before it hit the floor.
Unwilling to take the time to carry Cam's personal belongings to the bed, she sat down on the floor inside the closet and opened the box. Her heart raced at all the documents. She picked up an identification card and read it. Curtis Holcomb. She picked up another one. Jerry Turner. She looked through them all, and each ID had a different name with Cam's profile picture. She shifted and dug the new driver's license he'd given her out of her pocket and compared them to the others. They all looked authentic.
She put her new card in Cam's collection. He'd gotten rid of her car, and she had no use for a fake identification. The only people she ever saw were members of Moroad MC. Cam's bull shit about her being who she wanted wasn't possible. While she kept to herself in town, others knew her by Christina Nickelson.
She couldn't erase twenty-six years of her life.
"Hey." Jeremy knocked on her open door. "Cam said to tell you to come out and meet the Moroad women."
She replaced the lid, stood, and tossed the box onto the shelf. "Who are they?"
Irritation tightened the skin on her forehead. She rubbed her eyebrow until she relaxed enough to face Jeremy.
"They're cool, Ms. Nickelson." Jeremy shrugged. "The women only come around when there's a party. One of my jobs will be taking them to work at Silver Girls and driving, I mean riding, them home when Cam says I can start taking passengers on my motorcycle."
Her skin crawled imaging the women around Cam. Had the women known him longer than her? A chill swept through her, and she rubbed her bare arms. Why did she suddenly want to shout that she'd known Cam for over two years?
"Fine," she said. "You might as well call me Christina, too. We're not exactly on a formal basis anymore, seeing how we both live in the same house now."
Maybe if Jeremy could see her as a victim, he'd think of her more as a confidant and trust her more.
"Fleek." He grinned.
She tilted her head. "What?"
He laughed. "You know...cool."
"Oh." She shook her head. "Okay then...fleek."
Jeremy grinned. "We better hurry if Cam wants you out there before the women start dancing. You won't want to miss it."
What did Cam want her to do, witness the women hanging on him? Did he think she'd participate in an orgy? She glanced out the window, the sun already setting on the peak of the mountain. It'd be dark soon. She'd already spent all day writing the damn resignation letter. Cam obviously wasn't done degrading her more.
Chapter Twelve
On his second and last beer of the night, Cam leaned against the porch railing, enjoying the brisk night air, the music, the freedom of relaxing. Every member of the Moroad MC on the outside attended the party. The women entertained, dancing barefooted in the grass and only taking a break to grab a beer for the men or to slip off into the shadows to have sex or put a cock in their mouth. Life's sweet pleasures happened all around him, and yet he'd put a stop to it all if he could fast forward his progress with Christina.
He checked his throwaway phone. There were two more hours until he had to make a run. He glanced over at Christina, wondering if she could sense the tension in the men tonight. Every member risked his freedom. Even those in the background would feel the damage if something went wrong.
Christina held her untouched beer down at her side and listened in on the conversation going on between Katie and Johnson, one of the members he'd been watching carefully for signs of betrayal. Johnson's cousin made the foolish choice to involve Katie and one of the Bantorus MC women when he broke away from his prison work crew. Thankfully, Bantorus MC contacted him before the sheriff, and he'd buried the man and got rid of the problem.
Cam tipped back his beer and tossed the empty bottle to the side of the porch.
Halfway to Christina, he realized where he'd gone wrong with her. In her letters, she'd confided that she feared accepting an abnormal lifestyle, because it was easier to blame someone else for her desire to hurt the man that'd caused her so much pain. She internalized every thought that entered her head, and he suspected she was blaming herself for finding herself in his care. She longed for a normal life, two parents, a job, a marriage. Instead, she wavered on accepting the life viciously handed to her.
Christina turned and sucked in her breath at finding him beside her. He leaned down. "Is your head okay?"
"Yes." She held up her beer. "I'm not really drinking. I don't even like beer, but I got tired of telling everyone no when they offered a drink to me."
He took the bottle from her and drank half of it down. "Are the women treating you good?"
She nodded and looked away.
"Hey." He put his hand on her back, pulling her into the V of his legs. "No one is going to hurt you as long as you're with me."
She remained stiff and closed off. He hooked his finger through the back loop of her jeans and held her against him. She could step away if she tried, but she stayed.
Katie hurried away to join the other women dancing and Johnson took in Christina's position in front of him and caught Cam's gaze. "Can I speak with you?"
He lifted his chin. "You can speak in front of my woman."
Christina pressed into him more and glanced up at him before fiddling nervously with the edge of her shirt. He moved his hand up her back and sprawled his fingers, feeling her warmth.
"State patrol's running heavy along I-90. They have the dog with them. I heard talk they're watching for a load of hash coming through from Washington." Johnson paused and continued when Cam nodded for him to continue. "What do you think of letting the kid take one for the club tonight and riding away as the decoy with me?"
"He's ready. Just make sure you have his back. I want him home tonight." Cam held Christina in place when she shifted away. "Double check the lever on his motorcycle before he leaves. He keeps forgetting to switch the damn thing. I don't want him running out of gas or stalling out."
"Got it." Johnson glanced back down at Christina and raised his brows. "We'll talk tomorrow then?"
"Yeah, man. Tomorrow," Cam said and watched Johnson walk away.
Alone with Christina, he waited for her to talk. He didn't have long to wait.
"What kind of job are you sending Jeremy out on?"
"Club business." He turned her, planting his hands on her
hips.
Her stomach pressed against his hardness. She froze against him, though he could feel her heart pounding against him.
She lifted her chin. "I'd like to go inside the house."
"Just so you know, none of my crimes ever involved rape." He slowed his own breathing.
"I'm tired. I'd like to go inside," she said.
It took everything he had not to take more than she was willing to give him. She kept to herself, and he suspected all her experience came from the time she was eighteen years old and younger. She'd never dealt with her adult needs or acted on them.
"Not yet," he said.
"I don't know what you want from me," she mumbled.
"Right now, I just want to hold you." He inhaled deeply. "I want you to feel me and get used to my touch, because I plan on touching you more."
Her eyebrows pinched together and her lips pursed. He smiled over her head. The puzzled expression amused him.
He could take any of the women here tonight, and they'd know exactly what he wanted. On the other hand, Christina waffled between worrying about when he'd rape her or kill her, and when she wasn't thinking, she watched him with curiosity. He could almost feel what she was thinking. It bothered her to believe he had feelings for her. Guilt over depending on him put her in a bad mood. She'd buried her needs deep inside of her, but he'd make sure she found them again.
Half-rack, a Moroad member, short on personality and long on fighting skills, weaved a slow walk toward Cam. Cam's fingers slid underneath the back of Christina's shirt while Half-rack's approach distracted her.
"Job's all done." Half-rack leaned forward, the stench of body odor strong. "I waited around like you said and the two women in the office bull shitted about having to take on the extra work until they found someone to hire part time. Then I waited around to see if anyone went to her old apartment like you said to do. Nobody is questioning her disappearance or why she up and left."
"Good," Cam said. "Lay off the beer for the rest of the night. I want you out on the road with Graham to watch the rest of us."