Tattooed Love

by Simone Elise

  I ran after Jax, pulling the gun out of the back of my jeans.

  Jax was a good few feet ahead of me. Our feet echoed through the alley, and I could hear Jax curse out loud.

  He came to a sudden halt, and I practically ran into his back. I looked around and my stomach dropped. There Amber was, on the ground, leaning against the wall, her head in her hands.

  She was breathing heavily. Jax kneeled down beside her; I had never seen him so gentle towards a girl before. It’s not like he was violent or anything; he usually just didn’t care enough.

  The rest of the boys came up shortly behind me. I moved back slightly so they could look around me.

  “Amber,” Jax said, trying to get her to look up, but part of me didn’t want to see the damage they had done to her.

  Slowly, she pulled her head up, and I was relieved when I saw her face clear of blood. Only tears streaked her cheeks.

  Though the pain was clear in her eyes; what had they done?

  I found myself grinding my teeth again; we should have been here sooner. I knelt down to face her, and pushed Jax slightly to the side. I ignored the daggers he shot me.

  Amber was my sister.

  “Can you walk?” I lowered my voice to her as I attempted to hide my rage. When we found these guys, they would be dead; and that wasn’t a figure of speech.

  “Yes,” she muttered through broken tears. I had never seen Amber cry. Sure, we had seen her fake tears, but these tears were real. My blood boiled because I knew they were tears of pain. And it was our entire fault.

  I pushed my gun into the band of my jeans and pulled my t-shirt over it. I wrapped an arm around her back and pulled her body up with mine.

  She stumbled into my chest and a dull wave of sobs emanated from her. Her legs were weak under her, and I held her body up against mine.

  I exchanged a look with Troy; what had happened here? Amber slowly pulled away from me. Looking down at her pale face, I saw it wince in pain.

  My t-shirt clung to my body, slightly damp from her tears. I broke eye contact with her long enough to look down at my shirt, and I saw it covered in deep, crimson stains. Blood stains.

  Worried, I glanced at Amber. Her black t-shirt didn’t show any signs of blood, but it did look damp up close.

  Amber’s knees buckled, and she stumbled backwards, but, before I could reach her, Jax swept her up in his arms, lifting her off the floor.

  “We should get her a hospital,” he said firmly, and I saw the desperation in his eyes. He was just as angry as me, and he truly cared for her.

  “Has she been shot?” Tyler asked worried, staring at the blood that soaked my top.

  “I don’t know,” I frowned, voice filled with concern.

  “I can’t go to the hospital,” she whimpered. I had never heard pain in my sister’s voice and it took a knife through my heart. The bastards would be dead when we found them, and I knew the boys were thinking the same as me.

  “You need to go to the hospital,” Jax snapped back, the anger clear in his voice. “You don’t have a choice.”

  “Take me home, you guys will have to deal with this.” Her voice was wavering as she fought to stay awake. “The police will get involved, when they see all this. You… we can’t go…” her eyelids were fluttering closed.

  “See what?” Adam frowned. “She’s about to pass out.”

  But Adam was wrong. She had already passed out; her body limp in Jax’s arms.

  “What should we do?” Tyler asked. “She looks bad.”

  “We don’t even know what they have done. What if they rap…?”

  “Don’t say it,” Jax snapped with venom in his voice.

  “We take her home,” I spoke up, cutting into the conversation. “It’s what she asked us to do.”

  Troy nodded his head, keeping his jaw clenched. “Fine. Tyler, go figure out a car. We can’t take her back on the bikes. Adam, you go with Tyler, and keep pressure on her stomach. We will work out the rest when we are home. I’ll call the club, get some of the guys to ride the other bikes home and clean up the Hummer.”

  We all nodded our heads.

  “I will stay with Amber. Adam you can ride back,” Jax said, Amber’s limp body in his arms.

  Nobody questioned his wanting to stay with Amber; right now we had to get her home. I would bring it up with him later. I didn’t like the unhealthy attraction he seemed to have to my sister because, when it came down to it, Jax was more dangerous than all of us put together.

  Chapter 13

  Cole

  “Where should we put her?” Tyler snapped, holding the front door open for Jax. Clearly, their ride in together had not gone well.

  “Kitchen?” Adam frowned. “We don’t even know what the problem is yet, or how bad it is.”

  Jax didn’t wait for our discussion to continue; instead, he walked clean past us with Amber in his arms, and headed in the direction of the kitchen.

  Jax was acting like she was his. I had never seen him protective of a female, but, right now, he was protective of Amber.

  Biting my tongue, I followed him. Jax put his back to the door and gently swung it open. Using more force than needed, I slammed my fist against the other door to open. This only caused a shooting pain up my arm; my injuries from yesterday, still taking a toll on my body.

  Adam spread out a few clean towels across the stainless steel bench and then Jax lowered Amber’s body onto them. It really bugged me, the way he was being so gentle with her; he never looked at a woman the way he kept looking at Amber.

  Grabbing a pair of scissors from the counter, I shouldered Jax out of the way. I ignored his tight posture and his glare. Reaching for the hem of Amber’s top, I waited for Jax to remove the jumper he was holding to her stomach. “Move it,” I snapped at him.

  Troy and Tyler stormed in; Tyler holding the case Amber had used a few weeks ago on me. When Tyler placed the case on the bench next to me, Jax finally decided to pull the jumper away. As soon as he did, blood began to spurt from her wound and stain the white towel underneath her.

  Slowly, I cut the fabric up the middle and then along the base of her bra; leaving the fabric covering her chest. Dropping the scissors to my side, I slowly peeled the fabric from her body, which was now stuck to her stomach because of the blood. I peeled away the other side as well, frowning until her entire midriff was exposed. I let out a gruff of rage, and my brothers joined me.

  “They’re dead!” Troy spat, bringing a fist down on the bench. “They’re FU-”

  “ENOUGH!” I yelled at him. Amber was bleeding out right now; we could deal with the threats and killing later. “Get me the threads and needles.”

  My eyes drifted to the large wound on Amber’s stomach. Two lines ran from each hip bone and then met in the middle of her abdomen, to make an arrow, pointing up. To most people, this wound wouldn’t have been symbolic, but to us, it immediately spelt ‘enemy’.

  The mark of a warring bikie group, it was the biggest form of insult, to mark someone with this; especially when their blood and loyalty lay elsewhere. Exhaling sharply, I realized this was going to scar, and for the rest of Amber’s life, she would be marked with their sign.

  “Move,” Jax hissed at me, “I’ll do it.” He reached for the needle in my hand. I turned to glare at him and narrowed my eyes.

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Cole, give me the needle. You can’t sew for shit. I’m covered with scars to prove it.” He snapped at me.

  Curling my free hand into a fist, I retorted, “You never sew.”

  “Yeah, because I don’t give a shit if you guys are covered in scars.”

  “But you care if Amber is?” I arched an eyebrow to make my point.

  “Cole, just give him the needle.” Troy snapped. “If Jax can do a better job, then let him. We don’t want to make Amber’s scar any worse than it needs to be.”

  Grumbling, I handed him the needle and stepped back. I never said I was the master of
sewing; it’s just that I was usually the one who got stuck with the job.

  I watched as Jax took in Amber’s cold, limp body, before he exhaled sharply and began to thread the needle through her skin. Adam was on the opposite side of the bench, holding a towel on the wound and moving it down as Jax sewed.

  Crossing my arms, I watched how delicately he was threading the needle through her. Jackson Johnston, the leader of Satan’s Sons, the Head MC, had a crush on my sister.

  I had to suppress the growl growing inside me and clenched my fists, stopping myself from charging at him and slamming him across the kitchen, away from her. If he thought we were going to let him be with her, he had another thing coming.

  We were here to get her back on track, not to hook her up with our bikies’ leader MC. I scoffed, inviting glares from Troy and Tyler. The other two were too focused on Amber to care about anything else.

  I took Amber in. Sleeping with his brother was one thing, but Amber was never getting close to Jax, and he definitely was not getting in her pants, I decided. Jax is a good guy sure, and one of my closest friends. That’s why I wouldn’t stop or think twice before cutting his penis off to keep him away from my sister.

  Because I knew him, and knew what he was capable of.

  ***

  “Is he still in there?” Tyler whispered to me, as I rolled my eyes.

  “Go in if you are interested,” I shot back, lighting up a cigarette outside Amber’s door. I didn’t give a toss about what dad thought about smoking in the house right now.

  “You will set the alarms off again,” Adam said, frowning at my cigarette. I gave him a ‘shut the hell up’ look.

  I pulled my phone out. It was nearly three in the morning! It took Jax over an hour to sew her up. When he was done, he had carried her up to her bedroom, which had been hours ago.

  I glanced at the closed door. He had another thing coming if he believed we would just leave him in there with her.

  I had watched him take his time sew her up. I had seen the protection in his eyes, as well as something else - something I had never seen in his eyes.

  And I had known Jax for a long time. So it was fair to say I knew most of his expressions. But the expression on his face as he sewed Amber up – well, it was new.

  Turning around, I pushed the door open. The room was in darkness, and then my eyes adjusted. Jax was sitting in a chair he had pulled up to Amber’s bed side. Sitting there with his arms crossed, his eyes were narrowed as I strolled into the room.

  Adam and Tyler were on my tail, like scared puppies or something. Walking to Amber’s balcony door, I cracked it open, tossed the cigarette to the ground, and then stomped on it. Closing the door behind me, I walked back to Amber’s bed. Her face was pale, and if it wasn’t for the slow rising and falling of her chest, she could pass for a corpse.

  Tyler kneeled at the opposite side of the bed from Jax, and took Amber’s hand in his.

  “What are we going to do?” He whispered, stroking the back of Amber’s hand.

  “We do nothing,” Jax grunted. “I’ll take care of it. It’s my fault.”

  “Your fault?” I arched an eyebrow.

  Jax didn’t look at me; he just kept his eyes on Amber. “They saw me with her at the mall. Clearly, they made a connection between the two of us, and after what we did the other night, Amber got serviced with my payback.”

  “That was a club vote,” I pointed out. “We all made that choice.”

  “And we will all be dealing with this,” Adam huffed. “She’s our sister Jax. Our flesh and blood has taken the hit. This is personal.”

  Running my hand through my short hair, I took a deep breath. “He’s right. We all deal with this together. As a club.”

  “Amber has been scarred because of us. She is probably going to wear that mark for the rest of her life,” Troy piped in from the door. I hadn’t even noticed him come in. I watched him step out of the shadows. “She has been marked; we all know what that means for her.”

  My lips tightened as I attempted to suppress the rage within. “So what do we do?” I spoke up to the room.

  “We take a club vote, pull the boys in.” Troy said firmly “Then decide on payback.”

  “There won’t be payback.”

  I snapped my head around to look at Jax, and stared in disbelief. He was kidding right? Us Shields wouldn’t just sit back and take this; not when one of our family had been hurt.

  “We show a united front. Call all MC’s and pull in our alliances. I’m declaring a war.” Jax’s voice echoed around the room.

  War. A full bloody bikie war? Over this?

  “Over this?” I choked out, not meaning to speak out loud. “Why?”

  “It’s been coming for a while. I had chosen to ignore the threat but The Pythons have been invading our runs, stealing business from us. It’s time they were dealt with.”

  Jax was high up enough to declare a war, and all brothering clubs would have to follow his orders.

  Everything Jax had just said was the truth, but we wanted to call this what it really was. Jax was ticked off because someone he cared about had got hurt because, for the first time, Jax actually had someone to care about, and, as luck would have it, it was our sister.

  Chapter 14

  Cole

  “This doesn’t make sense,” I hissed at Troy as he closed his bedroom door and we were finally alone. “You and I both know what this means for the club.”

  “We can’t challenge Jax,” Troy said, as he ran a hand through his hair. He pulled out a cigarette. “He’s got a thing for Amber.”

  “You’re telling me,” I scoffed, crossing my arms. “We need to send her away or something. Get her away from him.”

  “Like Amber will do anything we say,” Troy shot at me, giving me a pointed look as he lit his cigarette. “We will just have to monitor this. Hook him up with someone else, in front of Amber. Show her he’s bad news.”

  “Bad news! Is that what you call him?” I arched an eyebrow. “He’s the most powerful man in bikie history, because of his family, and he’s only bloody 18! He’s only going to get more powerful as he gets older.”

  “Jax is never faithful to women; it’s not in his blood,” He responded, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth. “We don’t have to worry about it too much; he will stuff it up on his own.”

  I settled into an armchair. “Amber’s going to be sick when she wakes up. That scar is going to ruin her life.”

  “I have never seen one cut in before; usually they just tattoo it.” Troy frowned. “But they obviously didn’t have time for that.”

  “She has the scar of The Pythons on her stomach and the tattoo of the HellBound on her shoulder. It’s fair to say she’s a marked woman,” I scoffed, running both hands over my head. “We stuffed up, Troy. We shouldn’t have left her here.”

  “How were we meant to know, Cole?” Troy put his cigarette out on his bedside table. “We didn’t know she would get involved with a gang member. When I checked in with dad, he said she was fine.”

  “I didn’t even recognize her,” I muttered, recalling back to the night I had actually forgotten what my sister looked like. “If I’d recognized her back then, all this could have been avoided.” That one night, where Amber approached me and I didn’t even fucking realize it was her. If I could turn back time and I hadn’t lost contract with my sister, I would have known then - that she was getting into a lifestyle I wanted her to never have a part of.

  “Well, we will stop it from getting any worse. We’re here now. We can’t change the past.”

  “We go on about family,” I looked Troy square in the eye. “We respect the brotherhood, we are loyal members. We pledge that family means everything but we turned our backs on our own sister to build our own charter. Now we are one of the strongest charters. Hell, we’ve got bloody Jackson Johnston riding with us. But, at what cost? Amber lays scarred and we failed to protect her.”

  “What do you want me to sa
y, Cole,” Troy huffed. “Business came before her? We know that was how it was. We chose the charter. We can’t change that.”

  Staring each other in the eye, we both remained silent.

  “If an all-out war is declared, we won’t be able to keep an eye on Amber,” I thought out loud.

  “I know,” Troy shot back at me. “But it is blood in, blood out. We can’t turn our back on our brothers, or on the brotherhood. We ride, we die. You know that.”

  “So Amber fends for herself?”

  “Not while Jax has this thing for her,” Troy pointed out, “And we will just have to keep a close eye on her; the four of us. We can work it out.”

  “One day at a time then,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes with the back of my palms. I was beginning to feel my lack of sleep catching up with me, especially now.

  “Get some sleep,” Troy said as he pulled his boots off. “While you can.”

  Nodding my head, I pulled myself up from the chair. Sleep sounded good. I could return to worrying in the morning.

  ***

  Amber

  Every breath I took hurt. As my lungs opened for air, my stomach clenched in pain. My eyes fluttered open; it was the dead of the night. I noticed the empty arm chair next to my side of the bed.

  One of my brothers must be skipping watch. My teeth slammed together as I twisted to my side. I heard my door open, and I quickly closed my eyes. I wasn’t up to speaking to anyone. I would just break down in tears.

  The armchair creaked as a body slumped into it. I felt guilty; whoever it was should go get some sleep. I heard him exhale softly; he was clearly tired. I heard the muffled vibration of a phone, and he cursed under his breath before I heard him pull it out of his pocket. I kept my breathing shallow, knowing if I inhaled too deeply, I would end up screaming in pain.

  “What?” he half whispered, half barked into the phone.