by Zoey Parker
Cain lowered himself down onto the stool. “Sorry. I was just...”
“Pissed and angry and trying to get a rise out of me. I know.” Missy reached over for the shampoo bottle. As she did, she felt her eyes tug toward the parted edges of the towel, trying to get a look at what was behind them. She chided herself again.
“Try not to get any in my eyes, all right?” Cain said as Missy started to rub the shampoo into his long hair.
“Damn, you just keep ruining my fun,” she replied. As she massaged the gel into his locks, her fingertips pressed into his scalp, massaging it. “Nice hair, by the way. Wish mine had these kinds of waves.”
Cain snorted disdainfully. “Chicks have been saying that to me my whole life. But if they did have hair like this, they'd hate it. It sticks out in every direction when I wake up, and getting it to lay back down again is a bitch.”
“Every direction, huh?” Missy pulled the shampooed strands of hair gently, sculpting it so it looked like it was protruding from Cain's head in spikes like a hedgehog’s. “Like that?”
“Just do my hair, okay?” Cain grunted. “Don't play with it.”
“Oh, come on!” Missy giggled, mashing the sticky strands together and forming a ridge along the top of Cain's head. “What about like this, huh? Don't tell me you've never thought about having a mohawk.”
“Ugh, knock it off,” Cain said. “What are you, four years old?” But hidden just under his annoyance, Missy was sure she could hear the vaguest hint of a laugh.
“You're just so angry all the time!” Missy laughed, forming Cain's hair into a pair of horns. “What makes you so full of rage? Could it be...Satan?”
Cain's laughter bubbled to the surface in spite of him. “Stop! That's not funny!”
“It was a little funny,” Missy said, rinsing the shampoo out of his hair.
“Okay, fine, maybe just a little,” Cain admitted grudgingly. “So are you done?”
“Nope, still got the conditioner.”
“You don't have to do that,” Cain said dismissively. “I don't even really use it.”
“Oh?” she asked. “Then why do you have a bottle of it next to the shampoo, and why is two-thirds of it gone? Have you been drinking it?”
“No, but...”
“Then shut up and let me finish, big guy,” Missy chided, taking the bottle of conditioner from the hanging rack under the shower head. “This won't take long.”
Missy worked the conditioner into Cain's hair. As she did, she found herself rubbing his scalp again, massaging it slowly and deliberately. Her fingers worked in smooth circles, and she realized she was bringing them lower, lower, until she was kneading Cain's temples.
Suddenly, she remembered that he'd been kicked in the head multiple times. “Does this hurt?” she asked.
“No, it's fine,” Cain said quietly.
Missy's hands kept working slowly, sensually, burying themselves in Cain's hair. Missy felt a series of tingles ripple through her body, from the nape of her neck to somewhere just below her waist. She told herself that the conditioner was certainly rubbed in thoroughly enough, and that it was time to stop touching him.
But she couldn't.
Instead, her fingers ventured below his hair, caressing the nape of his neck. She pressed a little harder, working the muscles carefully and feeling them loosen at her touch. A faint groan escaped Cain's lips, and she was sure that what she heard in it was pleasure, not pain.
The tingling in her body intensified, like a chain reaction blossoming through her.
The towel around Cain's waist shifted slightly, and Missy felt her eyes yanked down toward it before she could stop herself.
A sizeable bulge had appeared along Cain's left leg. He had an erection.
Missy's hands paused for a moment, and she heard a growl of annoyance escape Cain's lips. He pulled himself to his feet quickly with a snarl of pain, almost knocking Missy backward in the process. She knocked over the conditioner and it hit the floor, spilling out creamy liquid.
“I told you I didn't want any fucking conditioner!” Cain screamed. “Now get out of here and let me finish.” Below the anger in his voice, Missy heard a quaver of something that sounded like embarrassment.
“Fine,” Missy answered in a thin voice. All of the breath had suddenly left her body. “Leave the conditioner, I'll clean it up later...”
“Just fucking go!”
Missy ran out, slamming the door behind her. Her heart was thumping in her chest, and the moisture in the bathroom had given her skin a thin sheen of perspiration. She went to the kitchen and finished the dishes, listening for more curses from Cain.
There weren't any. Just silence.
Chapter 14
Cain
Cain ran his head under the shower spray for a long time, trying to use one hand to vigorously rub out the conditioner. When he'd done his best, he shut off the water and carefully stepped out, making sure to avoid the pearly white puddle on the floor. The way it looked under the yellowed light of the bathroom reminded him of semen, and he felt a fresh surge of anger. His erection was still pointing like an accusing finger, and its steady throb traveled deep into the pit of his stomach.
Goddamn it, why had she massaged his head like that? So…sensually. Hadn't he acted shitty enough to her to make sure she didn't get any fucking ideas?
Cain never had any trouble satisfying his libido when he needed to. There were always plenty of pretty, friendly, uncomplicated girls willing to drop their panties for a night or two and explore their wild sides with a biker like him. He always made sure it never went past that, though. He never wanted to have a real relationship—nothing that could drift toward commitment or marriage, nothing that could even come within spitting distance of words like “love” or “trust.”
He knew why he lived this way, and he was comfortable enough with himself to accept it. He'd spent three years in a juvenile detention center from ages 14 to 17, and while he was there, his court-appointed shrink had gravely expressed her worries that Cain would never be able to “normalize” when in a real relationship, due to “the unfortunate failings of his parental figures” and his “deep-seated phobias based on the poor example they'd set for him.”
Like many bikers, Cain didn't much truck with shrinks and their gibberish. But in this case, he figured she'd pretty well hit the nail on the head.
Cain's father had worked nights as a security guard. Whenever he was home, he was almost always drunk and in a foul temper. Cain didn't necessarily blame him for being sloshed and furious all the time. He could see that his father hated everything about his life—every bad choice he'd made that had led to unwanted kids, an unhappy marriage, a lousy house he couldn't stand living in, and a low-paying job he loathed. Cain reckoned that if he fucked his life up flatter than hammered shit like his old man had, he'd want to spend every waking moment in a booze-soaked haze too, lashing out at anyone within arm's reach.
So he watched, dead-eyed, as his father routinely heaped verbal and physical abuse on his mother. And when Cain got old enough and it was his turn to endure the curses, threats, and smacks, he quietly accepted them.
He didn't feel sorry for his mother, even though he knew he probably should—she had tricked his father into marriage by going off her birth control without saying anything, then surprising him with an unplanned and unwelcome pregnancy. And he didn't feel sorry for himself either, though the anti-abuse posters and public service announcements at his school clearly wanted him to. He mostly felt sorry for his dad, knowing that no amount of yelling or hitting would ever really chip away at the avalanche of anger and self-pity he was buried under.
But on Cain's fourteenth birthday, his father had gotten even drunker than usual and decided to take out his rage on Cain's 5-year-old sister Jill, smacking her in the mouth for interrupting him. Cain went to the garage, picked up a wrench, carried it back to the kitchen, and swung it at his father's head as hard as he could. The heavy tool struck his fath
er squarely in the temple, and he spent the next week and a half in a coma before quietly dying.
Cain was sent to the Hepplewhite Juvenile Correctional Facility. His mother and sister wrote to him many times, but he threw their letters away without reading them. As far as he was concerned, that part of his life was over.
While he was at Hepplewhite, Cain realized that he felt more comfortable in that environment than he had in his own home. The rules were simple. He found that he had an instinctive knowledge of when to stand up and when to back down, when to demand respect and when to show it.
There were plenty of boys there who were older and tougher, but Cain had an aptitude for entering their circles seamlessly, earning their trust and protection. He didn't drink much or do drugs—again, he had no intention of repeating his father's mistakes—but he had no problem helping his new friends smuggle these things in and sell them to the other kids.
During a brief riot his first year there, Cain saved one of the gang leaders from being shanked by a rival, breaking the attacker's jaw in three places and blinding him in one eye. The guards never found out who did it, but from that point forward, Cain was considered one of the most hardcore kids in juvie.
Cain heard about the Blood Eagles from the nephew of one of their members, who he shared a cell with. Every night, he'd listen to stories of hijacking, drug running, wild parties, long rides under a wide-open sky, and other adventures, and he resolved to join them as soon as he got out of Hepplewhite. When he turned 17 and his sentence was up, he set off to make his dream come true.
His cellmate had told him that no one could join the MC without a bike, so he stole his first one. Technically, he stole two—the first had been a canary-yellow Kawasaki, and the Eagles had laughed him out of the clubhouse when he showed up with it, telling him to “steal something American next time.” That night, Cain ditched the noisy Japanese bike, boosted a sleek black Boss Hoss from a roadhouse parking lot, and returned to the Lost Knife defiantly.
Within a year, he was a fully-patched member. Nine years later, he was celebrating his new role as the Eagles' VP when he saw Missy haul Marian out of an overturned port-a-john and beat her like a gong.
Cain had admired that, and it had even given him quite a few lustful thoughts that night which had made it difficult for him to focus on the hot, willing girls who were throwing themselves at him. He'd briefly considered walking over to Missy and tossing a flirt or two her way. But the most he could offer her would be a night or two of no-strings fun, and indulging in something so cheap and tawdry with the sister of the MC's president seemed like something that could lead to trouble later on.
He knew Hunter wouldn't have a problem with Missy dating one of the Eagles—in fact, it seemed like this was what he hoped for, to keep her around the club even more—but he was pretty sure that hope didn't extend to letting MC members pass her around casually like some kind of fuck toy, so he kept his distance.
And now here they both were, trapped in a tiny house together for a week. And yes, feeling her hands on his head and neck had been amazing.
But then he'd felt himself get hard, and suddenly, he was filled with rage as he realized that he had never felt more powerless or less sexy in his entire life.
He'd wanted to stand up and wrap his arms around Missy and shove her up against the bathroom wall and take her, roughly, over and over again. But he knew he couldn't even get up without feeling like there were rusty knives sliding into him between his ribs, and with one arm trapped inside a cast, he wouldn't be holding or shoving anyone anytime soon.
Even when he'd been in juvie, even when he'd served four years in prison, he'd never felt truly helpless before. He'd never needed anything from anyone since the day the wrench connected with the side of his father's head. He'd gone through life secure in the knowledge that the only person he'd ever really need to rely on would be himself. Some people might have found that idea lonely, but he'd found it deeply comforting. He knew where he stood.
And now he could barely stand at all without someone's help.
Cain stepped into his jeans, then slowly bent over to pull them up his legs, cursing and hissing the entire way. With one hand, he clumsily zipped the fly and fastened the button. He hadn't bothered toweling off, and the legs of the jeans stuck to his damp skin.
For a long moment, he looked at his t-shirt, crumpled up into a ball in the corner of the bathroom. It seemed to be mocking him and he kicked at it. Fuck it. It was crusted with blood anyway.
Before he opened the bathroom door, he took one last look at the conditioner on the floor before speaking his general housekeeping mantra out loud: “Screw it, I'll get to it tomorrow.” The idea of bending down again to clean the puddle made his sides hurt even more.
Cain turned the doorknob and peered out, silently preparing for another ugly exchange with Missy. But he didn't see or hear her. He looked at the kitchen and saw that the dishes had been cleaned, and were drying on the counter on top of a dish towel.
He ventured down the hall and saw that the door to the only bedroom was closed. He never used the room since he generally fell asleep on the couch. There was no bed in it and he wondered how Missy would sleep.
Well, that's her fucking problem, he thought morosely. If she wants a bed, she can go home or sleep in a goddamn hotel for all I care. I didn't ask her to be here.
Cain hobbled to the living room, switched the TV on, and lowered himself onto the couch. On the screen, an excited British man was demonstrating a vegetable-chopping tool while the studio audience nodded and clapped. Cain uncapped his medications, dry-swallowed the pills, and waited until the pain released its grip on his body and his eyelids felt heavy.
A few minutes later, he was snoring gently and dreaming of the punishment he'd dole out to his attackers when he caught up to them.
Chapter 15
Missy
After Cain kicked Missy out of the bathroom, she finished washing the dishes, fuming quietly.
Fine, Cain was in a lot of pain and embarrassed that he needed to rely on someone. She got it. She'd tried to be understanding and unflappable in the face of his temperamental outbursts, hoping that would snuff the fuse of his anger quickly and allow him to accept her assistance more easily.
But all of his bluster and machismo was rapidly becoming ridiculous. And if he didn't start dealing with her more maturely—and soon—she wasn't sure how she could be expected to take care of him or prevent him from injuring himself by ignoring the doctor's orders.
“Stupid male pride,” Missy muttered darkly under her breath. Cain, Hunter, her father, all of them. Swinging through the world from vine to vine and pounding their chests for dominance without caring what it did to the hapless women who had to clean up the swathe of debris they left behind. All that posturing alpha bullshit, and where did it get them?
Dead, usually. Or at least so banged-up they couldn't even feed or bathe themselves.
But there never seemed to be a shortage of women who'd stand by and enable them. As a child, she'd often wondered why her mother had accepted this. Tonight, she bitterly hated herself for occupying the same role. Worst of all, she hated finally knowing how it had come to this, as it must have for her mother—by wanting what was best for someone even when they didn't want it for themselves, and by frankly not knowing what the hell else to do with her life.
She couldn't decide which was more humiliating.
While Missy's father had been off riding around with his friends—or serving a series of stretches in prison—her mother her done her best to make sure that Missy's grades were decent. She'd wanted her daughter to get more out of life than she had.
And to her credit, Missy really had tried hard in school. But she'd hated P.E., math and science had bored her senseless, she'd never gotten into reading that much, the kids in drama class had seemed self-absorbed and silly, and she'd never felt creative enough to write anything worthwhile in English. When a high school guidance counselor had asked Missy
what she wanted to do with her life, she honestly couldn't give him an answer. There was no career that seemed like something Missy could do for the rest of her life without going insane from tedium.
So she'd allowed life to carry her forward like a surfer on a wave, and now she found herself 24 years old, unfulfilled, and cleaning up after well-meaning but oblivious motorheads just like her mother had.
Missy finished cleaning the final plate in the sink, then drained the water and wiped her hands. She decided that when Cain got out of the bathroom, she didn't feel like being around for his rotten attitude. She'd had enough for one evening. If he wanted to be left alone so badly, he could spend the rest of the night taking care of himself, and maybe he'd have a slightly less hostile tone the next morning.