by M. N. Forgy
“Oh shit, what happened?”
“Someone snipped the straps to her heel and her ankle went sideways,” Ariel informs her.
“Girl, that was Valley. Bet money!” Bad Bunny points at me with the hand holding the underwear. She’s probably right, Valley did this to get back at me. She’s the only one that knows the code to my locker because she gave it to me when I started.
Removing my hand from my ankle, it’s already purple and looks oddly shaped. I broke it for sure. Shit.
“I’ll drive you to the hospital, babe, here, let me help you up,” Ariel offers, coming behind me and pulling me up from under the armpits. I try to balance myself, making sure to keep the weight on my left foot.
“I say we go find Valley,” Persia offers, standing next to Bad Bunny with her arms crossed.
“It’s fine guys, let it go. She’s gone now.” I try and make peace, do the right thing like a house mom would do. Ariel helps me all the way out to her red convertible. She opens the passenger door for me, and I slip in making sure not to move my right foot any more than I have to.
With every passing second, the pain gets worse and I internally want to find Valley and beat her ass with my broken shoe.
That bitch.
We finally arrive at the hospital and Ariel goes to get me a wheelchair, rushing it over to her car.
“Thanks, babe.” I slowly slip from the car and into the chair. She shuts the car door and pushes me up the handicap ramp and into the hospital.
Instantly all eyes are on us, disgust and disgrace pulling at their faces. Ariel takes me to the front desk and the nurse sneers at me, her eyes falling to my chest before glancing back at her computer.
I pull the opening to my suit as closed as I can but the booby tape has it stuck in place.
“I think I broke my ankle,” I tell her, feeling a little embarrassed by how I’m dressed, I mean, everyone is staring at us.
“Keep looking, grandpa, I’ll charge ya!” Ariel snaps at a man sitting in a waiting chair behind us. Her voice holding no shame or anger.
The nurse hands me a clipboard and tells me to wait until my name is called, so Ariel takes me away from the desk and next to a set of chairs.
I write my name and birthday and look up. Everyone is still staring.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” I ask, pen still in my hand.
“Them staring? Nope. You get used to it,” she says matter of fact, her eyes reading the caption on the TV in the corner of the room. “Besides, this is what I do, I look good so people will stare, that’s the point.”
I bite my bottom lip in thought, not thinking about it that way. I felt like trash walking in here and showing so much skin but they’re just looking at me like they are because I’m brave enough to show skin to this degree. I’m a misfit and people will stare in awe, and some will gawk in disgust. Either way, I gotta own it.
Whatever. I look down and fill the remainder of the form out.
North
Pulling into the strip club, I spot Aspen’s car and park next to it. I run my hand through my hair and start toward the club. Today is her first day opening up and getting the girls ready and I’m excited to see how she did. The front doors open and Star comes waltzing out with her huge tits about to fall out of her glittery top, her face pulled into a grimace. Her hair blowing into her face from the night breeze, she keeps opening her mouth to speak but has to pull hair from her lipstick.
“Baby, Aspen is at the hospital with Ariel.”
I stop and tilt my head to the side.
“What do you mean? What happened?”
“She broke her ankle, someone snipped the straps on her shoes.”
Turning around, I run to my motorcycle and nearly lay it over trying to get out of the parking lot.
I pull up to the hospital and go inside and have the lady at the front desk look her up.
“Oh, that woman.” She sneers, and my jaw tics.
“What’s that mean?” She shakes her head and tells me the floor and room number. Backing away, I glare at her, not liking her tone when she found Aspen in the system. I’ll come back to this, I need to find Aspen first. Walking down the hall, I find the elevators and go to the third floor, and room six. Aspen is laying in a hospital bed with a bright light above shining down on her, the pant leg on her white bodysuit is pulled up past her knee with a wrap around her ankle, and Ariel is sitting in a chair playing on her phone.
“Hey,” I mutter, pushing the ugly blue and purple curtain aside.
Aspen sits up, her beautiful eyes looking excited to see me. My eyes travel up her legs and body, she looks good in that outfit, sexy but classy.
Grabbing the rolling stool the doctor usually sits on, I roll over to her side of the bed.
“What happened, baby?” I mutter, pulling the wrap up to look her ankle over.
“I broke it,” she states, not giving me anything else.
“Did you fall? Get jumped? I need more information than that!” My voice harsh. I don’t mean to be a prick, but I’m fucking worried about her.
“You mean Valley broke it,” Ariel cuts in, and my eyes snap to hers.
“What do you mean?”
“The only person that had her locker combination was Valley, and the straps on her heels were snipped so when she walked her ankle would snap,” Ariel says it all in one breath, her head bobbing to the side with attitude. Aspen looks to me and shrugs.
“I don’t know who did it, but someone did.” Her voice is soft, and I uncontrollably bounce my knee. Valley did this. When I told her she could be a waitress or find another job, she was hostile, she even slapped the fuck out of me. I shouldn’t have left her alone to clean her shit out of her locker, I knew better.
“It was Valley,” I mutter, my teeth gritting.
“Well, I’m pretty sure Persia and Bad Bunny are out to find her, so you don’t have to worry about whooping her ass,” Ariel informs me, and I just lower my head and shake it. These women can be ruthless.
“So what’s the doctor say?” I change the subject.
“I have to have a cast, just waiting to get rolled up and casted,” Aspen says, pushing herself up. I’d tell Ariel to head back to the club, but I rode here on my motorcycle, Aspen can’t be on that with a broken ankle.
Grabbing Aspen’s hand, I kiss it and I hear Ariel gasp. My reputation for not kissing must be passed around the club more than I’d thought.
“She’s not going to get away with this,” I promise her, and her eyes flash.
“Don’t. It’s done.” She waves her hand like she’s over it and just wants to move forward.
I nod, agreeing with her.
But I’m not. If Persia and Bad Bunny didn’t follow through with their threat and find Valley, I’m going to make sure Valley pays for what she did in some way or another.
Thirteen
Aspen
North makes Ariel take me to his house, and when North pulls up minutes later, my mouth drops. He said he’d go get Halle, I wasn’t thinking about him putting her on his motorcycle. The thunderous machine echoes through our community and when he cuts the engine, my eardrums still vibrate. He helps the helmet off of Halle, who is smiling at me with the biggest grin I’ve ever seen. North grabs her around the middle of her body to help her down.
“Momma, I went really fast!” she says with excitement, and my eyes snap to him.
“You took her on the motorcycle?” I wobble on my crutches, my ankle starting to hurt.
“She was fine.” He shrugs, taking off his own helmet.
“She’s too small, or could have fallen—” Before I can finish my rant, he picks me up causing me to drop the crutches to the ground. Holding me like a bride, I totally forgot what I was yelling at him about.
“Thanks Ariel!” he shouts over his shoulder heading to his front door.
“Mom, what happened to your foot?” Halle turns her head sideways and up as he walks, trying to observe my foot.
“I, um�
�� I fell at work.”
“Yep, so I’m going to take Momma to bed, and you’re going to crash on the couch watching TV as late as you want tonight,” North tells Halle who starts jumping up and down with her hands in the air. He passes by the couch, which Halle plops down on making herself at home. Considering the late hour, she’ll pass out before too long. North takes us to the bedroom and slowly sets me on the mattress. I spread out, taking in the softness of his blankets.
“Mmm, I love your bed.” I moan, using my hands to push my back up to the headboard.
“I love having you in my bed.” He raises a brow before climbing onto the mattress on all fours. My mouth parts and suddenly my ankle doesn’t hurt anymore.
Grabbing me by the chin, he kisses me once, then twice before deepening it. His tongue taking over my mouth and his hand slipping into the deep V of my suit.
I loll my head back needing to take a breath and his mouth skids down my neck before he stops at my tit.
“My teeth marks are fading,” he observes. I glance down, pushing the material to the side.
“It is,” I whisper, not really liking that it’s fading either.
His cold blue eyes look up at me and I silently nod, giving him permission to bite me again.
Kissing the flesh tenderly, he suddenly bites down, and my back straightens, my clit pulsing with desire. It hurts, but fuck, it feels so good to have him mark me. I love it and never want it to fade.
He kisses the soreness, his other hand slipping under my top and kneading my other tit. I wiggle, needing him now.
“I don’t want you in my life, Aspen.”
I hold my breath, his words sucking the air from my lungs.
“I need you in my life,” he confesses and I let out that breath I was holding and would never release if he hadn’t finished that sentence.
He slowly pulls me underneath him and has sex with me in the dead of silence all night. The weight of his body my security, the taste of his mouth in mine, I never want it to end. Halle fell asleep on the couch with a bag of Cheeto’s watching TV all night until climbing in the bed with the rising sun asking for breakfast. The smile on her face, and North trying to hide from the early hour a moment of all of us waking up was surreal and a moment I never want to forget.
“If you stop jumping on the bed I’ll buy you pancakes.” North tries to bargin with Halle.
Sitting up in bed, my hair falling into my face my eyes meet with North’s.
“Looks like I have a family that needs feeding, huh?” he grumbles, pulling a pillow away from his face.
“Your family.” I make sure and emphasis how Halle and I our his now, and he better take good care of us.
“My family,” he repeats, smiling at Halle going on about all the shows she watched the night before. You can tell the word seems foreign to him, but the gleam in his eyes tells me he’s happy to finally say it without heartache.
North
Three Weeks Later
At the park with Halle, I throw the basketball and it slips into the net with ease. The sun is setting, and frogs are getting louder in a creek nearby as night falls. This basketball court is hidden from the park by overgrown trees, so it’s just us. The sound of kids laughing at the park faint and far.
“Now you try,” I instruct her, pointing toward the hoop.
She chases the ball, her pigtails bouncing with every step. The dress she’s wearing shows off her scraped up knees and the crayon Band-Aid on her leg. She’s unlike any kid I’ve seen before. She positions her legs just like I taught her, her eyes looking up at the basket with determination, and her tongue peeking out the corner of her mouth.
She throws it with all her might, and makes it.
“See, I told you!” I laugh. “You have this, you don’t need my help anymore,” I tell her.
Ball under one arm, and a hand on her hip she glares at me.
“Do you love my mom?”
My face falls, and I look to the basketball hoop.
“Um, that’s a tough one,” I reply. Thoughts of Aspen and I slamming into my head all at once, I find myself at a complete loss of words. Aspen and I haven’t even labeled ourselves as boyfriend or girlfriend.
“No it’s not. In fairytales the man would defeat a dragon for the woman he loves, he’d kiss her lips when she was dead. Would you do that for my mom?”
Kicking at the loose rocks of the concrete, I think about that question for a second. I feel as if I already beat a dragon as I killed Kace, and as for kissing a dead woman? I feel as if that one is backward.
“Does it count if the woman kisses a dead man?” Because I felt dead and alone until the day I kissed Aspen, her purity slipped into my own, bringing a spark of life I didn’t know I was missing.
She smiles and nods. “Definitely!”
“Well by the definition of Disney, I guess so,” I finally answer her, and she giggles, throwing the ball at me.
“Now, enough talk about love, more talk about whooping your ass in basketball, huh?”
She chases me, and I toss the ball into the basket.
I don’t know how I went from such a cold miserable bastard into a man loving a stripper with a child, but it happened and I’ll never let either of those girls out of my life. Even for just an hour of either of them out of my presence, I suddenly feel isolated and bitter.
Every good King needs a woman standing behind them, it just so happens I have a queen and little sassy ass princess who likes to play basketball, that stands behind my throne, and I’d kill anyone that disrespects my girls.
Epilogue
Aspen
Two months later
Sitting on the bench in between all the brothers of the Kings of Carnage, I listen to North and Bouncer fight over a thing of popcorn, making me shake my head. Bad Bunny who is sitting in front of me with some of the other girls from the strip club glances over her shoulder.
“She’s number thirteen, right?”
“Yeah.”
I’m so glad they came, Halle is going to be so excited to see everyone here for her.
Halle comes running out onto the court and all the guys start roaring for her, the girls clapping and whistling. The entire gym looks this way and I can’t help the grin that spreads across my face. This is our family, Halle’s family.
Bad Bunny told me that all the girls bashed the shit out of Valley’s Mercedes the night my ankle broke. North didn’t even ask them to do it, they wanted to. I cried to know that I meant that much to them in such a short amount of time. I’ve known people way longer that wouldn’t have lifted a finger if I told them what happened.
The game starts and Halle is passed the ball, Chaos stands and yells for her to make the shot. I stand scared to death she might miss the shot, but she doesn’t she makes it and scores one for the team.
I look to North, giddy as fuck.
“That’s my girl! Get ‘em!” North hollers, throwing his fist in the air. He still doesn’t like kids, but he says Halle isn’t a kid. She’s his little human.
Halle looks at us to make sure we saw the shot and runs into another player, knocking them on the ground.
“Fowl!” A referee whistles and my heart falls as all the brothers start hollering at the referee, telling him what they think of him.
“Guys, it’s okay!” I try to calm them down before we get kicked out, but they are pissed.
“No, it was clearly an accident, that guy is a fucking tool!” Bouncer shouts, not caring about who can hear him.
I laugh and sit down on the bench.
Ariel looks over her shoulder, smiling.
“If you thought you were going to bring The Kings of Carnage somewhere and there not be chaos, you were mistaken, sweetheart!”
She’s right, but this is the kind of life I want for me and my daughter. I want her to toe the line of what’s right and wrong because I lived a life following the rules set out for me until I was out on my own, it wasn’t until then that I finally lived. Besides, w
ho is powerful enough to hold such a position to judge a person’s actions of bad or good?
Because in the end, we only get one life, baby, and I can tell you from experience that it’s better to live it in the spotlight than in the pit looking up.
THE END
Note From The Author
If you made this far, THANK YOU! This book was so much fun to write. I LOVE Aspen and North so much! This entire series came to me one night when I was looking through one of my MC series. How I write each character and try and have a different set of mind, and personality. Then I thought, what if I had a different author write a different character for a series. They would be so different! Some broody, some nice, some assholes, but in the end they would all have a different voice and told in a different tone. Collaborating with different authors was a challenge as it was a reward. We all came together giving tips, and inspiration when needed and became closer because of it. With that being said, I hope you read all six books and enjoy each of them!
Xoxo
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Also by M.N. Forgy
Devils Dust MC series
What Doesn't Destroy Us Links (Devil's Dust Book 1)
The Scars That Define Us (Devil's Dust Book 2)
The Fear That Divides Us (Devil's Dust Book 3)
The Lies Between Us (Devil's Dust Book 4)
What Might Kill Us (Devil's Dust Book 5)