by Lydia Pax
Beretta had heard enough. He grabbed her by the throat, pushing her down on the cot.
“The second I want to fuck you, that’s what happens. Make no mistake. The only thing stopping me is me. You don’t get a say in it. None at all.”
There was fear in her eyes. Stark, hot, and realized. Fear, yes—but desire, too. He could see it, the flash on her face when he grabbed her throat. She liked that kind of manhandling—he remembered she did. He hadn't recalled until just that point, until right before touching her like that.
It went straight to the core of her. The first time he'd done it, in a shadowy apartment in Marlowe, she'd moaned his name all night long.
Lucky for him.
It was an empty threat. He’d never actually forced anyone; never come close. Frankly, he just didn't need to—women came to him whenever he wanted.
But she had to believe that he could, that he would, or else she’d keep arguing with him and then Ace would kill her for sure. Sometimes—only sometimes—the ends justified the means. And if he had to play this role for her to believe him, for her to cooperate, then he’d do it.
He’d be the bastard, he’d have a hard-on the whole time, he wouldn’t fuck her no matter how bad he wanted to, and then he’d send her back out into the wild once everything smoothed over. He wouldn't even ask her why she left him in the first place. That was the right thing to do.
Keeping her alive was the right thing to do.
“You’re a monster,” she choked out.
He released his grip on her throat and slid back. “That’s right. I’m a fucking monster. But I’m all you have.”
This was the right thing to do, he told himself again.
He wasn’t doing it because of how much she reminded him of all his mistakes with Madeline. Not because of how much he resented the way she had ended things with him months ago. Not because he wanted a shot at redemption. Not because in the middle of all the violence and killing and shitty dealings of his life, he wanted the chance to save at least one person.
No. It wasn’t selfish. It was the right thing to do.
“Fine,” she spat. “But touch me like that again, and I’m going to do everything I can to rip your balls off.”
Fire in this one. That was what had drawn him to her originally. That was good. Maybe she’d make it. Maybe he wouldn’t have to do all the work for her.
“Whatever,” he said, sliding down onto the bed. “You sleep on the floor, then.”
Chapter 8
She woke up on the floor, sore and confused. For a moment she thought she had drunk too much the night before and passed out in the living room. She’d done that from time to time shortly after everything exploded with Randall, and then again when she hated herself for ending the wild fling with Beretta, though it had been awhile.
There was a time when having a few hard drinks was what it took to calm her. With therapy and a lot of meditation, she’d gotten better.
Reality suspended above her like a tight roper, walking along the fragile surface of her semi-conscious mind. As she woke more, then, reality crashed and the half-dreams evaporated.
She was not at home.
She had not had a drink the night before.
She had not passed out somewhere in her living room.
Indeed, instead of anything as benignly embarrassing as all of that, she was caught as a hostage to a biker gang. And what was worse—she was now the old lady of the worst of the lot.
Was he really the worst of the lot, this Beretta? He was certainly the one who had gotten her into this mess, and that made him bad enough in her book. He was trying to keep her alive, so points back there, but if it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t even have been there in the first place.
What made her even more furious about all of it was how fucking hot he was. How hot he still was after completely disrupting her life. She could remember so much about him...
His cock, sliding up my thighs, right over my pussy. Hands like hot steel on my breasts, my nipples erect, waiting. Every breath like a miracle, his hand sliding up to wrap around my throat...
That made this situation all the more unfair. Oh, no, she couldn’t find a strong, tough, no-nonsense motherfucker like him chilling out at the county fair or strolling through the mall. Couldn’t get picked up by him at a club or run into him randomly on the highway when her car broke down.
No, this fucking hunk who had a body that made her body's center turn into a total supernova had to kidnap her.
Bad enough that she'd already had him once and convinced herself that she was better off without him. Now he was back to twist her head into even more knots.
Helen was no stranger to fantasies—to fantasizing. Certainly she’d allowed herself in the past to be taken away on little trips to pleasant dreamscapes where there was no pain, no hurt, only pleasure and sensation and taboo.
So, falling for a kidnapper? Being taken by someone huge, strong, handsome, who didn't even comprehend the word “no?” Shit yeah, that was up there on the fantasy list. Especially with the way that Beretta had grabbed her last night—taken her by the throat...she was sure he saw her desire flashing for him in that instant, and she hated him for it.
She hated him for knowing what that did to her, being grabbed like that—hated him for using it against her.
The real life was no fantasy. There was no turning it off. No guarantee she could just walk out alive.
This was all brought home as Beretta poked her in the back with his boot.
“Time to get up,” he said. “You awake?”
She slid up onto her forearms, wishing for a change of clothes. For a shower. Every part of her felt dirty.
“You remember what we decided, right?”
As she stood up, she nodded, stretching and yawning. “Old lady. I got it.”
Above her, he was a monolith of muscle and bone. It was easy to imagine rubbing her hands over the surface of his inked torso again. She remembered him more and more as time went on. Hair in all the right places, leading down from a thick patch on his chest to his crotch below. Unbidden, the thought of his cock arrived at the front door of her mind's eye.
She knew it was huge. Knew how it had filled her up like no one before or since.
She turned away, feeling herself blush. What a stupid thing to think.
“That means you don’t talk back,” he said. “You don’t question me in front of the others. You don’t question them. In fact, the less you do, the better. Is that clear?”
She gritted her teeth. “Yes.”
Instructions. Following instructions from a stupid man too stubborn to know how stupid he was.
That brought back up a bilious set of memories from Randall.
Goddamn, you talk too much.
Wear this. You’ll look pretty on my arm.
Who the fuck said you could go out with them, huh? Answer me, girl!
For almost all her life she'd wanted to grow up to be a biker's girl. Then she took up with a man she thought had been tough and strong in Randall, and he had just been an insecure bully.
Then she met Beretta—who she thought had been exactly the kind of tough and strong she'd wanted her whole life. But his strength scared her; his furious passion, the ease with which he burned away all her resistance. It had terrified her the way she had come to depend on him in such a short amount of time after Randall had abused her trust so completely.
And so she had left him.
“Good,” he said. “Well. Freshen up how you want. There’s some stuff there.” He pointed to a small pile. “I’ll take you around to a place I know and you can wash off, later on. For now there’s that sink on the far end of the warehouse. You come join us when you’re ready.”
At least Beretta was nicer to look at than Randall had been. Far and away nicer, and Randall wasn't exactly ugly. She had counted herself so damn lucky for a time when her affair with Beretta began. And while Beretta was cruel now, even heartless, there was something abou
t it that seemed put-on.
With Randall, every time she suffered from those indignities, those little abuses, it had felt more like a revelation of what was powering through his sick core inside.
Beretta was too direct to have secrets. Not for long, anyway.
I’m a man of my word, Helen. You’ll see.
So, there was that, at least.
That’s right. I’m a fucking monster. But I’m all you have.
And that, too.
She sighed and walked to the other end of the warehouse for the sink. It was still as dirty as the day before, covered in old rust, particles of steel flaking away like dirt off a stone. Again, she checked the door—just in case. But it was still chained shut.
The outlaws had the entrances and exits pretty well controlled. For a moment, she felt almost flattered that they had taken the trouble just for her. Then she remembered that it had probably always been that way because they needed to keep the Copperheads out.
There was not a whole lot she knew about this gang war that they had going on. She hadn't lived in Stockland long enough, moving from Marlowe just half a year before. The Copperheads had been in Stockland for several years, maybe close to ten. At first, they had only been a nuisance. If they killed someone, it was just someone else in their game—someone dealing, someone stealing.
Lately, though, over the past two or three years, the Copperheads had grown bolder. Their meth traffic had gotten bigger and bigger, and no one seemed to be able to do anything about it. Corruption in the police department was the biggest shared, unspoken secret in the town.
It didn’t take a lot to keep a man on a cop’s salary quiet, especially in a small city like Stockland, so far outside and away from the rest of civilization.
Stockland was located deep in West Texas. Far from the border, but not so far that there was no opportunity to traffic drugs back and forth across it. Far enough, instead, for the Copperheads not to be at war with any gangs down south of the border.
Helen wasn’t an expert, no. She just read the papers. The rest, she could put together on her own from overhearing conversations between gangbangers and outlaws and the like during her shifts.
They spoke in broken, jerry-rigged versions of Spanish and English; hard to follow, but once you got the cadence down, you could understand everything they said even if maybe you missed a word here and there.
She returned to Beretta and the rest, putting on her best meek face. They stood in the small area around the office. The concrete was strangely damp. There were plastic lawn chairs arranged in a circle, like men had been conspiring there earlier. Above them, a lamp swung like someone had hit it. They were all quiet, and Ace was pacing and fuming.
“You’re his old lady, is that right?”
Helen looked up at Beretta. She assumed that was the thing to do.
Beretta waved his hand. “Answer the man.”
“That’s right,” she said.
“Fuck you.” Ace shook his head. “Fuck both of you.”
“I’d like to say again that having a nurse around is fine by me,” said Locke. “I know my vote doesn’t count, just putting it out there.”
“Tell her what happens,” said Tank, his voice gravelly and deep. “Tell her what happens, and then let’s move on. We’ve got a war to win.”
Ace knelt down in front of Helen. He patted the nearby plastic lawn chair and she sat down. She had to at least act obedient for the time being.
“Okay, listen. I don’t give a fuck if you like this or not, but here’s how it is. You and I both know that this old lady thing is bullshit. But Tank is right. I got too much shit to take care of to deal with Beretta going mutinous.” He chuckled. “Or, more mutinous than he already is. So, things you need to know. First of all, your mouth? Keep it the fuck shut. No one here wants to hear you. You'll be seen and not heard, all right?”
He was the man with the gun, so he made the rules. She nodded.
“Good. Second, then. You turn your back on us? You turn us in? You sell us out? That can go only a few ways. None of them go good for you. You already know what’ll happen if we catch you. But that’s not what you’re thinking. You’re thinking of what happens if all of them wipe out all of us.
“Best case scenario, you're thinking? You get away and you tell the cops. I bet you know the cops are crooked here. So they tell the Copperheads, who then come and murder us all. Then you think you’re safe. But you’re not. Because we got friends all over this state. They’ll come here. They’ll look for the truth. And the first thing they’ll do once they learn it is to take you out. Not to mention,” he spat to one side, “Copperheads’ll probably kill you as soon as look at you. They don’t like snitches on anybody’s side.”
“I’m no snitch,” she said. “I just want...”
...to live my life.
But she couldn’t say that. Couldn’t betray the game with Beretta already.
“...I just want to make Beretta happy.”
Ace harrumphed and stood up. “You better work on your lies, then. Doesn't take an x-ray to see through that bullshit.”
Chapter 9
It felt good to ride again. By mid-morning, the five of them—Tank, Locke, Ace, Beretta, and Helen—were out on the road and headed toward the new lab where Gallows had set himself up. The air outside was cool, though it would warm up later. Clouds gathered in the distance and it looked maybe like rain.
After the night’s rest, Beretta still felt sore in his side. Helen had told him he’d be healing for weeks. He wasn’t sure if they had that long. Taking their time wasn't an advantage the Wrecking Crew had.
They took three bikes and a van, with Locke driving the van and leaving his bike behind at the warehouse. They thought that Gallows might want to transport something back to town, and so wanted to be prepared. Beretta—always planning—had stuffed the van with all of Helen's medical supplies.
He had just pissed off Rattler and the Copperheads something mighty, after all, and so didn't want to be caught out in the open without some way to patch himself or the others up.
Beretta rode with Helen's arms wrapped tight around his torso. This close touching revved his engine more than pressing the accelerator ever could. Her hands maneuvered carefully to avoid the wound in his side, but it didn't matter—his torso was a structure, and pushing in one part meant that the rest of the parts moved as well. Though she squeezed tight enough to hurt, he wasn't going to say anything about it. He could put up with the hurt to feel her on him.
As good as it felt to have a ride, to feel the wind ripping at his face, it felt even better to have her arms wrapped around him again. More than he wanted to admit.
Beretta had been forced to get a new bike over the past year, after his was stolen during the war with the Wrecking Crew. He got a new model Evolution engine, its handlebars chopped high and with a long shotgun-style exhaust powering out the back.
They rode fast. The landscape blew by. The lab that Gallows set up had to be far away from the rest of the population. There was too much smell to keep it close to the neighborhoods and urban districts of Stockland, and they had no way to hide such a facility in the city.
So, Gallows had found a place up in the hill country surrounding Stockland. It was out of the way and hard to get to, which was both in its favor and against it. Difficult for passers-by to happen across or for police to spot. But difficult also to reach in a hurry, and difficult to resupply. It was the safest play they had, but that didn’t make it any easier riding up hills on a motorcycle.
Gallows was a meticulous man. In his previous life he’d been a crewman on a submarine. For him, working in a meth lab for weeks at a time to produce a product was nothing compared to sitting underwater for six months at a time in a nuclear vessel. He was a good choice for a cook, and Beretta was glad they had him to put to work. Without some influx of cash, this mission in Stockland was going to go south sooner than later.
Gallows completed their cast of outcasts, a sh
orter man with a bald head and thick dark beard. He wasn't wanted in Marlowe any more than the rest of them. Or rather, that was the problem—he was wanted in Marlowe.
He'd had a tough run of robberies, getting identified and nearly caught in five of his past six. Keeping him close was an excuse to bring heat down on the Crew, and Howitzer wouldn't stand for it.
The Wrecking Crew in Stockland wasn't much to look at. A soldier with a gambling problem; a traitor with a sobriety problem; a scoundrel with a woman problem; a fighter with a scoundrel problem; and a fugitive on the run. They were as piecemeal as it got.
They made it to the cabin about a quarter to noon. None of them had eaten much for breakfast—they had some hard bread in the warehouse, but that was it—and they were all hungry and irritable. The cook house was more of a shack; it didn’t look to have more than one room to it. Its windows were painted black, and the only thing younger than twenty years old on it was the new ventilation system that Gallows had installed.
That by itself had cost them five thousand dollars; supplies for the rest of the cook and the property set them back the rest of their nest egg when they moved in. Only Ace knew the total tally.
This had been expected; but all the same, it was time to start making money. As they turned their bikes off, a soft hush fell over the woods. It was too quiet, too suddenly, for Beretta’s liking. The sun fell harshly on the rocky hill. Squirrels chased each other over a boulder in the distance, and birds chirped loudly, hopping from tree to tree.
Ace stepped off his bike and called out. “Gallows! Hey, Gallows!”
His voice echoed across the rocks, but no one answered. Ace cast a suspicious look at the shack and then at the other outlaws.
“He might be sleeping,” said Locke.
“Get your piece out and let’s see,” said Beretta.
Whatever Gallows was doing, sleeping was unlikely. He wasn’t the sort to sleep through five bikes revving through the woodsy trail he was living on top of. As a fugitive, you had to have a light touch when it came to shut-eye.