by Jordan Marie
“Well my ass is glowing like your face, but I’m good,” Sacks answers.
“Roger that one,” chimes in Katie. “Torch and Briar must have both decided to punish the same way.”
“Apparently. Did yours tell you he had a special lotion to take away the sting after?”
Katie snorts. “He was too busy trying to get me to swallow his lotion.”
“You guys make it hard on a single woman to be around you,” Louise grumbles.
I laugh with the rest of them as I sit down at the table. Mattah immediately puts a bowl of soup in front of me with a glass of milk. She’s taken to mothering me from the minute I got here, but I don’t mind. I stir the potato soup and look over at her.
“Annie have Gabby?”
“Yeah, that girl is doing some serious grieving, but our Gabby is working her magic.”
“Any word on where Latch was stationed?” Katie asks.
“Afghanistan,” Sacks says, and we all stay quiet for a bit except for Mattah’s mumbles calling Latch a horse’s ass.
“What are we doing today?”
“Not much, I’d say.”
“Why’s that?” I ask, Candy.
“I’m guessing that the prospects posted at the door are for us.”
“Well, hell,” Katie grumbles.
“Men,” Sack’s agrees.
“This is why I dig chicks,” Louise adds. When we’re all silent for a bit, she growls. “Well hell, does this mean we aren’t going after the other guy?”
“Skull says they are handling it.”
“You’re okay with that?” Katie asks me, because she understands as the other girls wouldn’t.
“Well, I’m not saying it makes me completely happy, but he promised not to shut me out and, well…”
“And?” Candy prompts.
I give a heavy sigh. “I’m not about to get you girls hurt. Last time was much too close.”
“Screw that. We’re big girls, we can make our own decisions,” Candy says, and everyone is nodding in agreement.
“Bethie’s right. This is our fight, not yours. We need to be the ones to handle this.”
“The fuck you are,” Torch growls from the doorway.
I look up to find him and Skull standing there and neither one of them look happy. Shit.
“Skull…” I start, but he cuts me off.
“What did I tell you, querida?”
“If you’d just let me explain…”
“Explain what? That you’re ignoring my orders again?”
“Orders?” I squeak.
“Oh, shit,” Candy mumbles.
“Again, this is why I only deal with women,” Louise mutters, but I can’t pay attention to them right now because I’m busy staring at Skull. He seriously did not just say that.
“Orders,” he confirms.
“I’m not a damn dog, Skull. You don’t give me orders, thinking that’s the end of it.”
“I do about this. We had this out. I’ll deal with it and handle it and you will keep yourself safe. There will be no more secret girl power blitz attacks. Mierda! You girls have watched too many fucking movies. This is not the movies, and it sure ain’t fucking blanks they’ll be shooting at you! What the hell do you think you’re doing? It’s not been two days since you promised me you’d let me handle this. Where is your damn brain?”
My head goes back like he slapped me. Which really he did, just verbally. Where’s my brain? Right now, I have to ask the same question, but only because I’m wondering why in the hell I ever thought he and I could work things out.
I push away from the table, standing up without taking my eyes off of him. “If you had come in a little earlier, you would have heard me tell them that you were handling it, you horse’s ass!”
“Mi cielo,” he starts, but I stop him.
“Don’t you ‘mi cielo’ me! If we’re in a relationship, you aren’t going to give me orders and expect I’m so simpleminded that I’ll do it just for the chance to ride your cock!”
“Oh, shit,” Katie mumbles.
“Damn, I wish she hit for my side,” Louise says, and right now, I wish I did too; it has to be less complicated.
“You will not put yourself in danger, mujer!” he demands, his eyes dark and alive with energy. I shouldn’t be turned-on, but shit, I am.
“I wasn’t! But if I wanted to, I would! This fight belongs to me. The shit done to me and Katie was just that: done to us. Not you!”
“The fuck it wasn’t!” he growls.
“It wasn’t!” I insist.
“My life was just as fucked up, querida, and if I want to make sure that you don’t fucking disappear on me again, then you will follow my damned orders and stay in one fucking place! Christo! You would think you’d want to keep yourself safe for Gabby, if nothing else. Or did you forget our daughter?”
“Of course I didn’t!”
“Then why wouldn’t you do everything you could to make sure you’re safe so you can be there for her? For me?”
“Damn it, Skull.” My frustration is starting to ebb. I’m not even sure why I jumped on him so quick, except that with Skull, I seem to react first and think later. I realize he’s just worried about me. It’s just that I can’t take being another man’s prisoner, even if he’s doing it to protect me.
“If that’s not enough, querida, why can’t you take care of yourself for the child inside of you? Mierda! It shouldn’t be so hard to get you to think. I’m not…”
“I’m not pregnant!” I interrupt him, his words making something twist inside of me. My hand goes to my stomach.
“You fucking could be! Or don’t you remember begging me to fill your pussy up the other day?”
“Oh, shit,” Katie whispers.
I find the chair behind me and sit back down. We had sex without protection. We had sex without protection a lot. My hand goes to my stomach. I couldn’t be… could I?
“We didn’t use a condom,” I admit, holding my head down.
“Exactly,” Skull says, but he’s not yelling now. I can’t look at him; I’m busy staring at the floor.
“You haven’t been using a condom at all,” I whisper, trembling.
“I haven’t,” he states matter-of-factly.
That makes me drag my eyes back to him. He’s standing there giving nothing away, and I have to know. I keep my hand on my stomach, not looking away from him.
“You did it on purpose,” I whisper.
“Absolutely,” he states boldly.
“Oh, fuck.” This comes from Torch, but I don’t take my eyes off Skull.
“Why?”
“Because you’re mine. Your smile is mine. Your laughter is mine. Your motherfucking tears are mine, Beth. Your mouth is mine and your lips are mine. Your pussy is mine and the babies you give birth to are mine. They will always be mine and if I have to keep you knocked up from now until you’re eighty fucking years old so that you’re tied to me in every fucking way I can manage … then by God, mi cielo, I will. You’re not leaving me. You’re never leaving me.”
I’m trembling with everything inside of me now. There’s a lot to what he said. A lot.
“So you’re going to keep me knocked up so I never leave you?” I ask, my voice full of shock, but I doubt he can hear it because it’s barely above a murmur. I don’t have the energy to make it louder right now. There are too many emotions pushing through me.
“If I have to, then yes.”
I swallow, rubbing my lips back and forth against each other while I digest all of this. What do I say? How did I not realize the wounds my leaving him before had caused?
“You do realize I could leave, even if I was pregnant? I could leave if I had three kids or even thirteen,” I tell him, ignoring everyone around us but him.
“You will not leave me again, querida. Where you go, I will always follow.”
“Skull, you need to…”
“You will not leave me again, querida,” he says, and his voice is bru
tal, but there’s a hint of insecurity in it. His eyes are shining like liquid. My strong biker has tears in his eyes.
“I love you, Skull,” I tell him, trying to reassure him. I stand up to go to him, my legs trembling because of how enormous this whole situation has become. It feels monumental, but I need to fight through it. I need to make him see it.
“You will not leave me. You will not jeopardize yourself again, Beth,” he repeats, and I make it to him. We’re so close, we nearly touch, but not quite. I take him in. All of him. I reach out and bring my hand to the side of his face. I cup it, running the pad of my thumb over the groove by his lips.
“I’m not leaving you again, Skull.”
“Beth…”
“I’m not leaving you again,” I repeat. “I’m staying, and it’s not because of Gabby or because we have more children, Skull. It won’t matter. I’m staying because you belong to me. You’re mine. You’ve always been mine and this time, Skull, I’m free. Completely free.”
“Beth, you can’t…”
“I’m free and I choose you, mi mundo,” I tell him, because he is. He’s exactly that… my world.
“Beth,” he whispers, pulling me into him.
“Te amo. Eres mi mundo.”
His strong body trembles against me. His forehead pushes down against mine. His hands grasp along each side of my neck, his thumbs stroking up along my chin.
“Te amo. Eres mi mundo,” he repeats. I feel the vibration of those words into the soles of my feet. They’re a promise. His hands push into my ass and pulls me up his body. I wrap my legs around his waist and hold onto him, locking my hands at the back of his neck, my eyes never leaving him. I hear the others talking as he takes me back to our room, but I have no idea what they’re saying.
I don’t even care.
“How does it keep getting better each time?” Beth asks, her voice soft, her breath still ragged.
She’s got her head on my chest, and her fingers trail over my side. If I live to be a hundred and fifty, right here is where I would want to be. At her words, I smile. Fuck, I’ve been doing that nonstop since her declaration.
I love you. You’re my world.
Mierda! How could a man not smile when his woman tells him that? I take a breath because I need to talk to Beth. I know Torch will have already told Katie about Tucker and I don’t want Beth to think I’m keeping things from her.
“We need to talk, mi cielo.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head while keeping her face buried in my neck.
“Beth?”
“No, Skull. Things are too perfect right now, and whenever anyone says ‘we need to talk’ it’s never good. And right now, what we have is too amazing. I want to keep it longer. So, no.”
“What do you know of your mother?” I ask her.
She goes still in my arms and slowly pulls away to sit up in bed. She’s staring at my stomach.
“Why are you asking about my mother?”
“Are there things I don’t know, querida?”
She sighs. “Yes, but not because I was keeping it from you. It’s not that. It’s just… I didn’t find out until Redmond took me and Katie back to France.”
“Okay.”
“And honestly, Skull, since I’ve been back… we’ve been at each other’s throats, or…”
“Fucking our brains out?”
“I was going to say going at it like rabbits, but yeah,” she says, laughing weakly and finally looking at my face.
“It’s okay, mi cielo,” I tell her, knowing she’s worried that I might think she’s keeping more things from me.
“My whole life, you have to understand, we thought that Isabel and Redmond were our parents. We may not have liked the fact, but that’s what we believed. That’s all we knew.”
“But they weren’t?”
“Well, no… not really. When we got to France, grandfather would take great pleasure in telling us what a blight we were on the family. He kept saying we were weak, that we were too much like our mother, and how blood always tells…”
“He didn’t like your mother?”
“Well, that’s what we couldn’t figure out. Grandfather always seemed to adore Isabel, even after her and Redmond divorced and she married his brother, which personally upped the creepy factor for me. I mean, I know love is blind and all that, but that would be like me getting with Torch if something happened to Katie.”
“That will never fucking happen. You stay away from Torch.”
She rolls her eyes at me like I’m crazy—which admittedly I am. The thought of her being around any other man nearly destroys me.
“Please, Skull. He’s getting married to my sister. That’s just icky,” she says, scrunching up her face so fucking cutely, I can’t resist kissing her. I press my lips firmly against hers one more time.
“I get a little crazy thinking about anyone else near you, mi cielo.”
“I’m gathering that, but relax. You’ve ruined me for other men. If I didn’t go anywhere in the time we were apart, I sure as hell won’t now that I finally have you back.”
My hand is at the base of her neck and I squeeze once, smiling at the joy those words send through me before letting go so she can finish.
“We soon found out that while Redmond was married to Isabel, he had an affair with a girl that the family bought… God. The Donahues are involved in human trafficking,” she whispers. “They all deserve to die…”
I reach over and pull her up into my lap, hating that she looks so lost and alone in that moment. I used to feel guilt that I pursued Beth when she was so young. I’m not anymore. I was meant to find her on the street that day. I was meant to rescue her from this fucked up family and be here for her. I was meant to do all of the things Tucker failed to do when it came to her mother. Beth is my purpose. Mierda, she’s my reason for living…
She snuggles into me, turning so her arms and legs wrap around me. I move my hands over her back, trying to comfort her. “Keep going, mi cielo,” I whisper into her hair, hoping the heat of my body warms and reassures her.
“He got her pregnant and, normally, he would just have her and the child killed, but my grandfather’s brother made moves, and they wanted heirs to ensure they would maintain control of the family long after they were gone. I don’t understand, but that whole family’s so fucked up, Skull. It sounds like a bad movie. He made a deal with Isabel that if she raised us as her own, he would make sure she always kept the things she wanted…”
“Meaning?”
“The Donahue name, the jewelry, the furs… Isabel was nothing if not mercenary. Katie and I accepted that, even when we thought she was our mother.”
“What happened to your mother?” I ask her, pretty sure I already know.
“Redmond killed her, for daring to get pregnant,” she whispers. “Our mother died because of us, Skull.”
I’ve got my hand at her neck again, using my thumb to push the tears that fall from her eyes. There’s not many, just a couple that escape, but somehow that’s more heartbreaking for me to see. I squeeze my hand, forcing her head so she’ll look in my eyes when I speak.
“Your mother died because the Donahues are fucked in the head. They are evil men who have to die… and they will die, querida. Voy a matarlos.”
I will kill them, I tell her, and I will. Colin, Viper, whoever his spy is… all of them will die.
“Katie and I decided that, too. Matthew… he and Colin, really, they worked together to kill Redmond. They wanted control of the family, but they didn’t want to risk alienating my grandfather. So they made it appear like an accident. But Matthew let it slip one day when he was—”
“When he was what, querida?”
“With Redmond gone, Matthew and Colin convinced grandfather they could control the family and make sure everything ran smoothly. Soon, they began taking Redmond’s place.”
“Place in what?” I ask, but in my gut, I already know.
“Torturing us. With
Redmond, it was because we proved to be weak like our mother. With Colin and Matthew, they knew the truth about us.”
“Truth?”
“We weren’t Donahues. Redmond wasn’t our father. All this mess, Skull, and I’m not even a Donahue.”
“How did they know?”
“I’m not sure, or if they told us, I didn’t really listen. I was just relieved. But then… grandfather found out that Colin and Matthew had worked together to have Redmond killed.”
This whole story is giving me a headache. What had it done to Beth and Katie? How had they survived having their world continuously altered and out of their hands? Colin should die for that alone. I think about telling her I’m the one who did Redmond in. I will eventually, but for now, she just needs to get this story out, so I hold her and wait for her to continue. When she seems lost in her thoughts, I try and bring her back around.
“What happened?”
“He went crazy. He was so upset. He said he’d kill them for killing his son. He was shooting and waving a gun around. I thought Katie and I were going to die that day. I would have almost been glad for it, except I was carrying Gabby. I wanted to survive so she could live.”
Christo!
“Colin told grandfather he couldn’t kill them because his brother Dom would take over the family, as he had no heirs left,” she explains. “Grandfather said he would use Katie and me and the whelp I was carrying to ensure he had heirs…”
“Let me guess: that’s when your grandfather found out you weren’t really Donahues.”
“Yeah. Matthew delivered that news…”
“I wish we could kill him again.” She smiles weakly at my words and kisses my chest, as if to bring me comfort. “What happened next, querida? Let’s get it all out and we’ll never visit it again. It’ll be as dead as the ones who caused you this pain.”
“Grandfather gave up after that. He seemed broken. But the next day, he came in and he had been drinking… heavily. You could smell it on his breath. He centered his rage on Katie, I think, because she’s the one who told him who was responsible for Redmond’s death. He was choking her. He was going to kill her, Skull. I had to save her.”
“What did you do?”