Looking around, I realize I’m the only person sitting on the couch so I naturally stand. A dark figure in the corner of my eye causes me to glance over and I spot Zorro leaning up against a wall, standing back in the shadows like he always does.
His deep hazel eyes meet mine and we’re both caught in a moment of disbelief. Why? I’m not sure. Though, it happens so often. I find my eyes always searching for his in a crowded room, and sometimes, I even find my hands yearning to touch his skin.
My relationship with Zorro is . . . nothing.
We’re nothing.
We’re two adults who share lingering moments, two people who know there’s something underneath the surface, but we’ve never acted on it. Well, that’s a lie. We acted on it one time—one night to be exact.
Since then, we’ve barely touched . . . and yet I find him in my bed every night, or I’m crawling into his. Nothing happens but knowing he’s next to me causes relief to flood through my veins.
Since Halloween I’ve been plagued with horrible nightmares, remembering so much of what happened. Almost every night it plays in my mind on repeat, like a broken record. Something that’ll surely drive me crazy if I don’t get a grip on it.
I break our staring match and walk over to the club’s Christmas tree. It’s something we all had a part in putting up. At about seven feet high and five feet wide, it’s massive. White, gold, and emerald green ornaments line the tree branches and a white and black plaid material is draped around it. One glance and anyone would be able to tell Ashley picked the colors. She’s a bit of a meticulous woman, always paying attention to the details.
The entire club is decked out in the same emerald green color, with white and gold accents throughout. The only dash of red I see is on the unopened presents beneath the tree. I find myself looking closer at the transparent globes with the snowflake like sparkle. Taking one in my hand, I tilt it upward and see this isn’t any Christmas decoration. It’s a traditional globe, but within it is a photograph of Zane, Fist, Ashley, and Kade. There’s another woman in the photograph, which must be their mother who’s been deceased for a long time.
Taking a step to the right, I grab the next globe and see Tex, Dracus, Bolt, and Roxy. In the photograph with them is Kat, Jordyn, and Nova. I continue looking over the globes, seeing family photographs of the club members and then I see candid shots. Photographs that must’ve been taken at a party or something.
But my eyes fall on a photograph of myself, my head dipped back in laughter at what I’m sure was a reaction to a joke. “I snapped that one,” Zorro’s deep voice speaks from beside me.
I continue looking at the photograph, loving how carefree I look. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this woman had no problems. I’d say she didn’t even have a worry in the world. It’s almost like looking at a completely different version of myself.
Turning to my left, “Here I thought Octavia was the resident photographer.”
Zorro smiles lightly. “Yeah, well, don’t let the others know. I need to keep some of my talents hidden. You know, in case we need them.”
I nod. “Mhm, I’m sure you’re itching for a photographer assistant’s job with Octavia for the Vixens.”
He holds a finger over his lips in a ‘shh’ motion, causing me to laugh lightly.
“I think you should take a look under the tree, young lady,” Zorro states, catching me a bit off guard.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
Kneeling down under the tree, I scan through the boxes of presents until I see a gold plaid pattern. There’s a small sticker that has my name on it, so I pick it up and rise. “This one?”
“That would be it.” God. I feel so silly now. I didn’t get Zorro anything . . . but he and I never said we were getting each other gifts. “Don’t worry if you didn’t get me anything. Your presence has been enough.”
I’m caught in his words, or maybe I’m caught in those glowing hazel eyes of his. “Zorro.”
“No, Ruby. I mean it. I . . . I’m a bit of a sourpuss in case you haven’t heard, but you make things a bit lighter around here for me. More joyful maybe? So, I wanted to get you a present to thank you for the joy you bring into my life.”
Since I don’t know what to say, I peel back the wrapping paper until I see a medium sized white box. There’s tape on all four sides so I peel those back as well, revealing gold tissue paper, and then I finally get to the core. It’s another smaller box, so I pull off the lid and shock jolts through me.
This is beautiful, and it’s way too much. “Zorro, I . . . I don’t know what to s—”
“In my culture turquoise is known not only for its protection, but to bring good fortune. My people believe it to be the stone of the gods, and while I might not be the best man when it comes to tradition, I felt this was something I should give to you, to remind you of your strength and to tell you that you always have my protection.” Zorro completely interrupts me, but his words hit me right in the heart. “But, anyway, I have something else in there for you too.”
I put the lid on top of the turquoise ring, shocked he even got me something as beautiful as this and dig through the tissue paper. Like the box, it’s wrapped well and I tear at the tape. What lays in my hand causes me to laugh.
“It’s in case the turquoise doesn’t work.” Zorro chuckles.
In my hands rests a kitty cat keychain with sharpened ears. The eyes have two holes big enough for my fingers to fit through, and I see he’s given me something I can use for self-defense and something meaningful to him.
Wetness pools behind my eyes as the realization hits me. Zorro went out of his way to show me I’m special to him, and I’ve been holding feelings back from this man for far too long. Even this past fall I knew I had a crush on him. Hell, I’ve known the way I feel about him for ages . . . but I’ve always been too afraid to act on it.
I don’t want to be his club brothers’ little sister. I want to be the woman he’s genuinely interested in. “Thank you so much. I love them. I love them both,” I mutter, sucking my lips between my teeth I stare in awe at the items I hold. I blink rapidly to fight back the tears, but one slides right on by.
A calloused finger wipes the stray tear away, and he smiles lightly. Zorro takes a step closer to me until his chest is pressing against mine and meets his lips to my forehead. Clearing his throat, he whispers what he has to me many times. “Te mostraré la pasión que te mereces mí dulce niña.”
Again, he promises to show me passion, but this time he calls me his sweet girl. He pulls his lips away from my forehead and walks away, reverting back to the shadows he’s so fond of. Leaving me breathless and my heart aching for more. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to control myself.
Chapter Three
It feels like coming home, after being gone far too long, the way I gravitate to the good in you . . .
~ Butterflies Rising
Zorro
Christmas Night . . .
Coffee mugs filled with eggnog clink in the background as some of the guys and their ladies get toasted off their asses tonight. I sit on the bottom of the stairwell, sipping on my tequila, enjoying the happiness radiating off of everyone’s faces.
Bama, one of the new prospects, comes and takes a seat beside me. His road name is a token to the state he comes from, but he doesn’t look like a dude from Alabama. Instead, he looks like one of those rich kids who grew up in Malibu and began surfing when they were five. With golden blond hair and a smile that causes some of the Vixens to blush, I know he’ll make it far here in the club.
“You havin’ a good time here tonight?” I ask him. Since he’s one of the newer guys, I’m tryin’ to make sure I’m a bit more personable to them. Zane gets on me all the time for bein’ too quiet and scarin’ people off. Hell, Octavia too. It’s not like I can help it though. Fuck, Frost tells me I remind her of Dmitri from the Skulls Renegade MC. Silent and broody. That’s what she’s always saying.
; Bama nods with a slight smile. The kid can’t be more than twenty-one if I had a guess. “Yeah, way different than back home. But it’s nice.”
He isn’t fooling me. The kid is all smiles but there’s something about him that makes me worried. Zane mentioned the reason he didn’t patch into our friends at the Sons of Gods MC, had something to do with his home. It reeks of shit, nasty, burnin’ out in the sun shit. I’d like to think the guy isn’t here to fuck us over, but I’m bettin’ that’s why Zane had him patch in here as a prospect. To keep him under close watch.
“I grew up in a trailer park on the rough side of the tracks. It was normal when I was a kid, but, as I aged, I saw how screwed up it really was. We were lucky if we even had a tree when I was small, and here . . . lemme say it’s just amazing how everyone comes together like this. Blood or no blood. This is the way Christmas should be.”
I might be judging the guy too harshly. The way he speaks says a lot about him, his positivity and all that shit. This is where yet again he reminds me of those California gurus who drink kale juice and have morning meditations.
“Grew up on the really rough parts, eh?” I ask, taking a swig of my tequila.
Bama combs his fingers through his curly hair. “Yeah, I mean it wasn’t the worst, but it really wasn’t the best either. My mom was one of those who’d rather spend the Christmas cash on whatever the fad was at the time, usually in the way of injecting it into her veins. And my dad . . . that guy’s an entirely different story. Big, brawler type who never gave a damn about his kids except when it suited him. You know?” The more he speaks, the more I get the feeling this kid has never had a real sense of family. Maybe he’s come here to get out from under Alabama’s shadow, whatever that might be, and find his true family.
“Bama, wanna dance with me?” Bambi, one of the Vixens, comes strutting up in a fully decked out pink ensemble.
He chuckles and nods. “How could I ever say no to a pretty girl like you?”
Within a moment he’s on his feet and is extending his hand out to Bambi, and they walk off toward the center of the room where the rest of the group is. But I’m not paying too much attention to what the rest of ‘em are doin’ when a flash of straight blonde hair comes into my view.
Ruby comes walking over and takes a seat on the same step as me. Her leg is maybe an inch or two away from mine and I notice the way she slowly closes the distance between us, until they both touch.
“Thank you for the gifts, Zorro. They were very thoughtful.”
“Santiago,” I tell her, speaking my name given at birth for the first time in many, many years. Ruby’s pale blue eyes meet my own and I watch as the realization of what I’ve told her sinks in. A delicate smile pulls at the corner of her lips.
“Wow. You’re really working the Latin part, huh?”
“Mhm, and I haven’t even told you how I got my road name,” I joke, though there is a bit of seriousness behind it.
“The movie?” Ruby comments, but more as a question.
I shake my head, “No, the movie came years later. My mother, she was eh . . . a very dramatic woman. She loved her telenovelas, and her novels. She had original copies of almost every Johnston McCulley novel, the man who was the first to write about a bandit who dressed in all black and was infamous for slashing the letter ‘Z’ into things.”
“I had no idea it was based off of a novel.”
“The classics always are, and in saying that, the books are always better than the movies.”
“Mhm, Fifty Shades of Grey taught me that.” Ruby snickers, gnawing on the edge of her lip as she does so. It takes me a minute to catch her joke, but I give it to her.
“As a child my mother would call me her little fox, and thus it’s how my road name came to be. It seemed fitting, to honor her in such a way.”
Ruby’s brows furrow, “Honor?”
“My mother passed away when I was barely an adult. She was held at gunpoint and killed by a group of Narcos at her store back in Mexico. She was closing up for the night and they were being chased by the federales. They held her at gunpoint and tried to use her as a hostage, and my mother,” I shake my head, even now hating how she needed to act so foolishly, “she stabbed one of them with a box knife. He shot her on the spot as retaliation.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ruby speaks with genuineness in her tone and I spot her hand coming to my knee, trying to offer me a bit of comfort.
“It’s okay, sweet girl. My wounds have been cauterized for many years now. But, you haven’t told me about your mother. I only ever hear of your father.”
Immediately she rolls her eyes and leans her elbows back on the step behind us. “Because my brothers and I find the need to complain about the sly dog constantly. He’s a man who’s ‘going to change’, ‘going to make things right’, ‘will turn his life around’, but he never does. He only wants to convince himself of it. Our moms are tight though. They had to be when the man who knocked them all up could never be dependable for anything. It’s a weird idea, but I didn’t call my mom, just mom. I have four lovely ladies in my life and I won’t ever take them for granted. Hell, I know they love me just as much as my mom did.”
“It’s nice to hear about the unique family you have. I knew Axel and Grim were your half-brothers, but I assumed they shared the same mother.”
Ruby immediately shakes her head. “Nope, just the same daddy. But, thank you for introducing yourself to me, Santiago.” She tries to speak with an accent but butchers it completely. Yet here I sit, smirking at a woman I should be pushing away.
But I can’t.
I haven’t been able to stop lookin’ at her since last Christmas, which happened to be the very first time I ever laid my eyes on her.
“I figured it was about time, considering everything.”
“Everything?” she questions, raising a brow.
“I’ve slept with you. You sleep in my bed, or vice versa almost every night. It’s about time we get to know one another on a more personal level, don’t you think?”
Excitement flashes across her eyes as she nods curtly. “I’d . . . I’d really like that.”
I lean back against the step and take my hand to brush away a stray few hairs, but really, I’m only using it as a way to touch her. I take in every bit of her that I can, from her thin but long eyebrows, to the way she has the smallest kink in her nose. “Good, Ruby Braxton. I’m Santiago Medina.”
“It’s lovely to meet you, Santiago Medina.”
The slightest flush of pink crosses her cheeks, and I slide my thumb across her eyebrow, just needing the excuse to touch her again. Downing the rest of my drink, I set my glass on the other side of me. “What do you say we head upstairs? It’s getting pretty late anyway.”
She gives a curt nod and we both rise. Taking her hand in mine, I lead her up the stairwell and we head straight for my room. Once the door is shut behind us, I lock it and watch as she heads over to the window and looks out onto the Monroe’s massive property.
“Have I told you this is my first white Christmas?” she asks, turning back to face me.
“No, you didn’t,” I admit, walking up closer to her, I wrap an arm around her waist and stare directly into her eyes. I want to see the excitement that flashes in them, the way they light up like the kids do on Christmas morning. A somber expression crosses her face out of nowhere, almost right after the moment I’ve touched her. Did I do something wrong? Have I upset her in some manner?
“I . . . I need to tell you something, something I should’ve told you weeks ago.” She licks her lips and avoids making eye contact with me.
When a woman says something like this it’s never good, and usually whatever follows has something to do with a pregnancy. Fuck if I’m ready for that shit. I’ll be turning forty-one this year and I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for a miniature version of myself. But if you ask the guys they’d say I look like I’m in my early-fifties. Stress will do that to you, dry you out and make you lo
ok old as dirt.
“Whatever it is, you can tell me,” I speak calmly, even though I’m not calm on the inside.
Ruby blinks rapidly and opens her mouth like she’s going to speak but stops. This process happens over and over again.
I lead her over to the bed and sit her down, squeeze her shoulder lightly and speak. “Whatever it is, I’ll be here. Alright? There isn’t any rush. Breathe and take your time with it.”
“It’s better if I spit it out,” she rambles off.
I don’t react, just wait for her to find the courage to tell me whatever’s running around in that mind of hers.
“Remember the night I came to you? The night I . . . the night we . . .” The way she gets frazzled when she speaks about when I took her virginity is adorable.
“Yes, I remember it very clearly.” She was emotional, really emotional. More emotional than any woman I’d fucked before, but she told me what she wanted and I gave it to her. But, I treated her so much different than the rest. I caressed her skin like she was a goddess, left chaste kisses from the nape of her neck all the way down to her inner thigh, and so much more. I didn’t treat Ruby like some used up whore. That was the first night I realized what type of attraction I had to her, how it wasn’t something surface level, but something so much more.
She sucks in a deep breath and looks straight into my eyes. “On Halloween I was attacked on campus. I was—I was raped. Not vaginally, but . . . but in other ways. It’s . . . it’s how I got the bruises. They . . . they beat me with rocks, kicked me, used their hands, and whatever else they could find.” I didn’t ask her about the bruises because it wasn’t any of my business at the time, but I was curious. If I’m being honest, I was more than curious. I wanted to demand she tell me how she got them, but I had no right. Even now, I don’t have the right . . . but fuck, I don’t give a damn.
My hands shake on the bed and I clench my jaw as her words truly sink in. I’ve known about this because her brothers told us. I must’ve known about it for a month now . . . but I wasn’t going to bring it up to her. Ruby didn’t need to know her brothers were making her attack club business, but they did. It’s why I went off to Stonewall University a little bit ago, but it was practically useless. No one said shit. They knew we were outsiders and damn sure treated us like it. I think I’m one of a few people who know. Obviously, Zane knows everything that happens here, and then Axel and Grim.
Zorro (Reapers MC Book 16) Page 3