Devil's Mark

by Megan Crane

  A casual observer might think she was on a mission to ruin her life.

  They’d be right. Her father’s arrest had changed everything. It had ripped away all those lies she’d spent her life calling truths. It had exposed all the ugliness beneath the charade she’d invested so much time in performing. And there was no pretending any longer that her life wasn’t just one more of the lies he’d told her that she’d set about acting as if she believed.

  No more.

  She might not know how to go about crafting the life she really wanted when she’d spent so much of the one she’d had already beneath her father’s thumb, but she did know this—she’d felt gloriously free exactly two times, ever, and they’d both been tonight.

  Once on the back of his bike. And the other when he’d kissed her.

  Holly stopped thinking. What had thinking ever done for her except keep her in the same box playing the same game of pretend—where she had nothing to look forward to but ending up like her mother, sprawled out in the master bedroom of a plantation house in a bayou town, shut down and blissed out and gone as if she’d never been?

  The very idea made her stomach hurt. She leaned close to Uptown instead, pressing against his arm like she belonged there and more, had spent a whole lot of time in that very same position, soaking him in. And then she lifted her mouth and she kissed him.

  He let her.

  She fit her lips to his, learning the contours of that ridiculous, remarkable mouth that had haunted her for years. She could feel him toying with her, his lips curving as if he was still smiling at her explorations. He didn’t let her go deeper. He didn’t let her get intense. He just played with her while she got madder and more desperate, hot and wet and cranky, and then he pulled away.

  She heard the little noise she made. As mournful as it was pissed.

  And he was definitely smiling then, though it felt indulgent rather than mocking. She told herself that was something.

  “That tasted like a proposition and you’re right, it was crass as fuck,” he said against her mouth. And maybe he was mocking and indulgent at once. One big, hard hand smoothed its way down the length of her hair, and it said something about her that she found that as comforting as she did stirring. He laughed, like he knew that, too. Like he knew everything even before she did. Like he was a bomb all right, and he’d already started detonating, whether she was ready for him or not. “I got to tell you, princess. I’m fucking shocked.”

  —

  Uptown really was shocked, but not at pretty Holly Chambless who tasted like sweet, ripe strawberries and who was going to kill him with her artless, innocent, seeking kisses. If he didn’t lose his shit and sink into her first.

  He was shocked at himself because he didn’t do it, here and now and with no finesse whatsoever.

  Uptown wasn’t a biker who lived outside the law because he was big on impulse control. If he wanted something, he took it. It made life clean and easy, most of the time. It tended to clear up any confusion.

  He told himself it was the fact Holly was a pawn in a bigger game that was keeping him from tugging off her jeans and settling himself nice and tight between her smooth thighs, then thrusting on home. He told himself he was being strategic, saving that virgin pussy for a time when taking it could do the most damage to her douchebag father.

  But he had the sinking, unwelcome notion that he’d actually been telling the truth when he’d said he wasn’t going to make her come for the first time out here like hundreds of desperate, horny teenagers had been doing as long as anyone could remember. As if he thought she was too special for that. Or as if he wanted her to be special, which was even worse, when his favorite hobby was fucking as many groupies as he could handle in any given evening and going back for more after a beer or two. Uptown liked pussy, and a lot of it. He liked improbable positions and he liked getting creative, because it was always, always fun. It was always good. He’d never liked to put a lid on his sex drive, no matter what that lid was. No old lady for him. No possessive crap, no psycho exes, no clinging and whiny girls to ruin an evening with their shit. None of that crap for him. Quantity made quality, in his opinion.

  He’d never wanted one woman badly enough that no one else could scratch that itch. He’d never really believed it was even possible to be that discerning when pussy, after all, was still pussy no matter whose legs it was between. It had been bad enough before. Getting close to Holly had made the Shreveport bitches unattractive. Now he’d tasted her. He’d wanted to drown himself in her eager mouth, then teach her how to take him there, then repeat the learning experience with his aching cock deep in her hot, wet, untried cunt—but not here.

  He wanted to take his time. He wanted to get his lips and his tongue on every inch of her sweet little body until he knew how her skin tasted everywhere, how her pussy smelled when she was creamy and ripe, how her come felt in his mouth. He wanted to make it so good that sweet little Holly Chambless was as much of an addict as her mother and his, a sickness that only he could ever cure.

  He refused to examine that possessive bullshit. Inside of him, taking him over and making crazy fucking thoughts like that seem perfectly normal and reasonable. He couldn’t let himself think about any of it, because he knew it wouldn’t lead anywhere good.

  “Killian,” she whispered, and he didn’t correct her, not when her lips were damp from his and he could see her tits poking at him from beneath her shirt. Not when she was squirming where she sat, like she’d kill someone for something hard between her legs to ease that ache.

  He didn’t correct her.

  And that was fucking chilling. He’d earned his name. Uptown was who he was. Killian was a weak kid who’d died the day he’d joined the Devil’s Keepers and made himself a man.

  Uptown let go of her before he could make this mess any worse. Then he rolled to his feet before he really did forget himself and what he wanted from this. From her. No matter how tight her ass was and how much he wanted to get his hands all over it.

  His mother was an addict and had been for a long time. Pretty, funny Michelle Chenier was gone and in her place was the zombie bitch who’d killed her. The empty husk of a woman who stole, lied, fucked, and whatever else to get her next fix. But Uptown still remembered who she’d been before she’d graduated from occasional, recreational user who partied sometimes but always took care of her son into the lost cause she was now.

  He remembered what she’d been like, back when he was young and it was just the two of them. She’d been barely seventeen when she’d had him and she’d always treated him more like a small friend than her child. He remembered those days. They’d been broke, sure, but his grandfather had helped out while he’d been alive and life had been sweet enough despite the things it lacked. But then his grandfather had died and everything had changed. And Uptown remembered exactly who’d kicked her down this road she couldn’t get off.

  More than that, he could remember exactly what the mayor sounded like when he was fucking Uptown’s mother’s face. Like a dirty, disgusting pig, grunting while she choked there on her knees and then thanked him afterward. Anything she had to do to get that little plastic baggie he would toss at her like she was the trash, not him.

  Oh yeah. Some shit was burned into his head and Uptown figured it always would be—but the good news was, he had a new plan for handling that.

  Drugs were going to kill his mama one of these days, but not fast enough. Not before she burned out every last shred of humanity inside of her, scrambled her brain and destroyed her body. Uptown couldn’t save his mother. He’d tried. God knows, he’d tried. He’d spent a good ten years doing everything he could, first as a desperate teenager and later as a Devil’s Keeper with all the money and influence the patch on his back commanded, and it didn’t make any difference. He couldn’t reach the girl she’d been. He couldn’t access that funny, sweet mother he remembered. He couldn’t bring her back, or relive the years both of them had lost to her habit, or change an
y of the things they’d both lived through.

  He’d mourned his mother for years. Especially when he had to roust her off his front step or refuse to give her the money she’d long ago stopped pretending was for food or rent. When he had to decide whether or not to bail her out of jail for soliciting or buying or both. When he had to do any of the grim, terrible shit no one should have to do for someone they’d once loved. Much less his own fucking mother. He couldn’t do anything about that. He couldn’t make any of it go away. He couldn’t make it better.

  But he could make the asshole who’d given her heroin the first time, then kept her supplied with the shit so she wouldn’t complain about the sick things he did to her in a trailer with her young son present, pay.

  Pay and pay and pay.

  And it didn’t matter what his cock was trying to tell him now. Holly Chambless was the key to ruining Benny Chambless’s charade of a life and Uptown knew it.

  “You don’t look shocked,” Holly said, making him realize he’d gone off into his head for who knew how long. “You look like you’re leaving.”

  She was still sitting there like a wet dream, her hair down around her shoulders, her nipples like beads beneath her tank top, and her endlessly long legs swinging over the side of the railroad bridge. Uptown bet he could throw a stone and hit twenty horny fuckers who’d woken up sticky to an image just like this one while Holly was in high school, very clearly not the type of girl who followed a boy to a place like this and let him get his hands all over her.

  He didn’t say anything, because he wasn’t entirely sure what might come out of his mouth and Uptown definitely didn’t like the sensation. He reached down and slid his hands beneath her arms, then hoisted her up, grinning when she let out a little sound of surprise. He set her on her own two feet, then took her hand again the way he had on the way out here.

  There were so many things he wasn’t letting himself think about too much. The way her soft gaze met his, then dropped, while her fingers curled around his and held tight. The way she moved when he did without complaint, picking her way across the old bridge with a certain grace that made his pulse slam through his cock again and again, like it was trying to teach him a lesson. Or remind him why he didn’t do restraint.

  She was too pretty. That had always been true. For years he’d comforted himself with the knowledge that she was likely a snotty little bitch, but as far as he could tell, she wasn’t. She was funny. She was a little lost, maybe, but Uptown didn’t know many people who weren’t at some point or another, and none of them had grown up with Benny in their faces. She was doing okay, all things considered. He’d been a little lost himself until he’d committed to the club.

  He’d expected to want to fuck her. He had a dick, after all, and she had that ass. He hadn’t imagined it would be any kind of hardship.

  But it had never crossed his mind that he might like her.

  Uptown didn’t want to think about that, either.

  So he didn’t. He put her on the back of his bike and he took her for a ride. They crisscrossed the parish until the sun came up. Holly clung to his back and there was nothing but the thick, sweet air and the road beneath them, spooling out forever. Riding was the closest Uptown ever came to praying, and even that seemed a little bit better than usual with her thighs gripping his hips, her arms wrapped tight around his middle, and her chin tucked on his shoulder.

  It felt less like a prayer out there, bathed in warm gold as the sunlight chased the night away, and more like the answer to one.

  And when he finally swung back around and took her home, he roared up the long-ass drive that led to the graceful old plantation house. The historic old house was pure white and gleaming in the morning sun, and Uptown had never felt dirtier or more like the unwanted bastard he was. His filthy outlaw feet had certainly never crossed Benny’s exalted threshold in his lifetime despite the many times the asshole mayor had invited himself into that ratty old trailer and more than that, right on into Uptown’s mother besides.

  Just go into the other room, his mother would whisper, her expression that mix of despair and excitement it always was when the mayor’s shiny Caddy would roll up outside. Uptown knew what that meant. The woman she was losing to the drugs wanted to stop, wanted to tell Benny to go away, wanted to climb on up out of that pit. But the addict wanted whatever he brought her, no matter what he’d make her do to get it.

  You don’t need to do this, he’d argue sometimes, but she’d shush him.

  You’re too young to understand, she’d say.

  But that was the trouble, of course. No one stayed a kid too long with an addict for a single parent. He hadn’t had that option. Ever.

  Maybe he revved his engine extra loud as he roared toward the half-circle in front of the house, bursting with colorful flowers and the kind of class a swamp rat like Uptown would never have and had long since convinced himself he didn’t want. Maybe he wanted to send a message that this time around, Benny should think about hiding in a fucking closet when he pulled up.

  But the mayor had never been too smart. Because when Uptown finally made it up to the wide veranda that wrapped around the whole first floor of the house, Benny was waiting there on the front step, out in the open, like he had nothing to fear.

  With a shotgun in his hand.

  Chapter 6

  At first Holly thought she was seeing things.

  There was something particularly exhilarating about roaring up the long, stately drive toward the old plantation house her daddy loved so much, the motorcycle between her legs and Uptown in front of her, all part of a thrilling gesture of joyous disrespect toward her entire dutiful childhood. Her childhood and her good-girl persona and the whole life she’d led up until she’d come home from college, still trying to convince herself her daddy was the good, upstanding, moral man he’d always insisted he was.

  Holly had wanted to believe him. She’d needed to believe him. Her mother was a lost cause and absent even when she was awake and upright and in the same room, which meant her daddy was all she had. She’d been determined to believe he was the man he’d always claimed he was, no matter what evidence she might have tripped over to the contrary.

  Now she clung to the tough, hard biker who made the massive motorcycle purr so easily beneath him, unable to stop grinning madly and maybe even a little goofily. Uptown had never claimed to be a saint. Quite the opposite. And Holly felt unfettered. Set free. She felt as if she was suddenly catapulting hot and wild and a little bit reckless toward an entirely different sort of future. Or at least, this morning, with him, it felt as if a bright and gleaming future was possible and more than that, would be a whole lot more exciting than the one she’d always expected she’d have.

  She saw the figure on the wide, pristine front porch, always carefully staged to look perfect in any potential photographs. Between the soft white pillars, the carefully placed rocking chairs, and the cozy porch swing bedecked with colorful pillows, the veranda looked like a slice of sweetly welcoming Americana. It looked like the epitome of southern gentility. It looked like Benny Chambless and his frail wife and pretty daughter must spend the cooler Louisiana evenings—assuming such things existed—sitting out on that porch with sweet tea at the ready, content and happy smiles on their faces, and a little desultory conversation while the heat of the day eased off into the sweet warmth of the bayou nights.

  The truth, of course, was that Holly had never sat out on that porch in her life, much less to while away a congenial evening with her parents, who she’d never seen be anything like congenial to each other in all her days. Daddy growled orders. Mama stumbled into walls and passed out in her chair at dinner on the few occasions she bothered to get out of bed.

  The veranda was a lie.

  Her first thought when she saw that there really was a person standing very still on the front step—that she wasn’t seeing things, after all—was that it had to be one of the people from the mayor’s office, who were forever charging
back and forth between the town hall and her father’s study. Although not as much since she’d been home this time as throughout her childhood. And not usually this early in the morning.

  But as Uptown drew closer to the house Holly saw, with a horrifying drop of her stomach, that it was not just some kind of panicked mirage brought on by kissing a man she’d run from when she was sixteen. It was her father standing there. Waiting.

  She didn’t realize until the bike came to a stop and Uptown slammed his booted foot to the ground that she was digging her nails into him, through the soft material of the T-shirt covering his ridged abdomen. So hard her fingers cramped—but she didn’t let go. She couldn’t.

  Uptown cut off his engine. The silence was a living thing then, and Holly’s ears seemed to fill in the noise on their own, an anxious roaring that made her more than a little light-headed.

  She stared up at her father, aware of too many things at once. The faint suggestion of a possible breeze, tickling at the ends of her hair but otherwise not amounting to much. The sounds of early summer all around them, from the birds to the insects to the sound of lawn mowers in the distance. The faint creak of the porch swing as it moved on its own. Her father’s familiar, broad form, frozen stock-still with what was very clearly sheer fury. He was emanating outrage from the steps like a lighthouse blazing through a thick storm and Holly felt it like a hand wrapped tight around her throat.