by Alexa Rynn
And then the first blow came.
Straight across Clause’s head and blood fell to the carpet.
I’d seen a guy knocked out before, punched hard in the face. But not like this. Never like this. You would think seeing people murdered in front of me would prepare me for this scene but it didn’t.
At least when you shoot someone it’s fast.
This started slow and I could tell that it was going to end just as slow.
They started by taking turns digging their boots into his body, each stomp going harder and harder into his flesh. Lance was the leader, ordering them around about what to do and when to do it.
Each time Clause cried out he laughed.
I held myself together the best I could, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry but when it neared the end I couldn’t hold back any longer. “NO!” I screamed out over and over again.
Lance came close to me and grabbed me by the back of my head. He brought his lips toward his and kissed me hard on the lips. He brought his fingers up and pried them between my lips, forcing them open and sticking his tongue inside. He tasted like smoke and stale burgers, the smell alone made me want to lunge up the contents of my stomach.
I tried to push him off me, but he pushed my hands behind my back.
When he finally pulled away a second later he grinned, giving me one last lick across my face. “Damn, slut, you taste fucking good.” He pecked at my lips. “We’re going to have some fun tonight.”
“Fuck you!” I screamed, pounding my fists against his chest.
“Oh, you will,” he said. “Trust me.” He pulled on a fist full of my hair and cracked my head back around the floor on the other side of the room where Clause was getting his body smashed into the carpet. “HARDER!” He yelled. “KICK HIM HARDER!”
I could hear some of his bones cracking loudly.
“Stop! Please! He’s had enough! He’s had enough!”
“Look at all that blood,” Lance said. “You see it? And do you hear that? Do you hear him whimpering like the little bitch he is?” He pushed my head toward Clause harder, causing my eyes to pop out of my head more. “That’s your fault,” he hissed. “You did that to him.”
Tears filled my eyes.
“How does that make you feel? To know that because he defended you it’s going to cost him his life?” He let go of my head a little and threw his head back, laughing loudly. “Stop,” he called out. “Stop.”
The brothers came to a holt, listening to their commander and chief.
Lance dragged me over to Clause. His body was covered with blood; I could barely even make out his face. He let out a few low moans, probably some of the last things he would ever say. My heart stung, Lance was right, this was all my fault. I was the one who’d made the dumb decision to come here in the first place. What had I thought would happen?
I was such an idiot.
The more I thought I was growing up, the more I stayed the same.
“Now, since this is your fault, you’re going to be the one to finish him off,” Lance whispered in my ear. “I want you to be the one who gives him the last blow, the last person he’s going to see before he goes to hell is you. The last thing he’s going to hear is the sound of your voice as he takes his last breath, the woman who ended his life.” Lance sounded happy, he was taking pleasure in watching me cry, taking satisfaction in blaming this whole thing on me.
I forged out of Lance’s grasp and threw myself down next to Clause’s body, running my hands all over his fucked up face. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I whispered over and over again. I was getting his blood all over me but I didn’t care, I was too upset to care about anything other than him.
Hours before he had been my least favorite of Green Grove’s members and now, now I just wanted him to be okay because the truth was none of the other brothers who had been watching me over the past few weeks would have done what he had. None of them would have stood up to Lance like that, none of them would have gotten him out of here and off of me. No, they would have looked the other way. They would have let him have his way with me.
Lance grabbed me and yanked me back up toward my feet. “Okay, okay, that’s enough with the dramatics, girl.” He shook my body back and forth like a plastic toy. “Let’s just get on with it.” He padded my leg hard. “Step on him right here,” he said pointing to the center of his own forehead as an example. “As hard as you can until I tell you to stop.”
I shook my head. “I can’t, I can’t. I won’t.”
Lance kissed me again. “You can do it, baby, and you will. And then,” he whispered, pressing his hand hard into the small of my back and running it up and down the skin inside of my shirt. “Then we’re going to go over to that bed and you’re going to give me the ride of my life.” He backed away and waved his hands around the room in a circle. “AND THEN YOU'RE GOING TO GIVE MY FRIENDS HERE THE RIDE OF THEIR LIVES ONE BY ONE!” He screamed out loudly.
Cheers and hollers erupted all over the room.
“WHAT DO YOU SAY, BOYS, YOU WANT TO RUN A TRAIN ON OUR NEW LITTLE FRIEND HERE?” Lance moved closer to me and tore my shirt down the middle, revealing my bra and shoving his hand over one of my boobs. “I PROMISE YOU THEY’RE REAL!”
Hoots and hollers rang out around me.
“Yeah, Lance! Let’s nail the slut!”
“Take that bra off!”
“Show us her pussy!”
“Look at the fucking slut enjoying this!”
Lance laughed the harder I tried to fight and gave me another deep kiss; this one was really wet and hungry. He was getting worse, more aggressive, he wanted me and he wanted me more than he had before.
“I promise you she tastes as sweet as pineapple,” he said to the others when he pulled away from me. “But first thing is first.” He shoved me toward Clause again. “Do what the fuck I told you to do and finish the pussy off.”
I looked down at Clause whimpering and knew right away I couldn’t do it. There was no way I was going to let them think that any part of this was okay with me. I’d rather die myself than help them kill someone who had only been kind to me. I didn’t care what they did to me, nothing could be worse than the pain I was feeling by being away from Cutter anyway.
I spun away from Clause’s body and spit directly in Lance’s face and then made a run for the door. I actually made it all the way there but the handle was locked when I tried to jiggle it open. The only way to open it was with a key, a key that I didn’t have.
I tried to kick it open but only managed to get a few blows out before Lance had his paws on me again, dragging me backward and throwing my body down on the floor hard.
He dug my spit out of his eye and looked down at me, chuckling. “Oh, you’re going to wish you didn’t do that.” He motioned for his brothers to move forward, closing in on me. “Whoever makes the bitch cry the loudest gets a special reward at the end.”
And then the beating began.
Chapter Four
CUTTER
Grace’s little sister sat at the bar, a diet coke and a bowl of peanuts in front of her. She kept turning the straw paper over in her hands over and over again. Half of the time she was sneaking glances at me, curious about the man who her sister belonged to. The other half of the time, she was sneaking glances at Ace; curious about the man she couldn’t seem to get out of her head. Not that he seemed to notice.
“So,” she said slowly, picking up a peanut then setting it back down a second later. “You and my sister are like… a couple or something like that?” She looked me up and down with an unsure expression on her face.
I didn’t really blame her for being skeptical; I wasn’t exactly looking my best these days. I ran my hands over the untrimmed stubble on my face and half smiled. “Yeah, or something like that.”
She glanced around the bar, taking it all in. “And these people are all your… your… your biker army?” She practically choked on her words, her nerves taking over for
a final time.
Ace chuckled from the other side of me and Alexis turned red.
She was definitely Grace’s sister.
“These are my brothers,” I corrected her.
“Right, but you’re like their leader?”
I shifted the way I did every time anyone brought up my status in the club. It wasn’t something that you were supposed to willingly talk about with any outsiders. Especially ones who were as innocent as Grace’s sister.
“Yeah,” Blaze said. “He is.” He put his hand on my shoulder, coming to my rescue the way he always did when something happened that I might get uncomfortable or lose my cool about.
Krusher huffed. “Well, he’s not all of our leaders.”
“And not all of you are my brothers,” I growled back.
Krusher laughed, unoffended as always.
“Then you have to help me!” Alexis cried, tugging on my arm. “You have to help me find my sister! I think the police have taken her away and locked her up!”
Suddenly, she was brave and wild, jumping off her stool and tugging at me like I was the big brother she had never had. “Please, Cutter, something is really wrong with her, I know it.” Tears started filling up her eyes. “She’s in danger, I can feel it!”
I glanced at Blaze and Ace for a little help.
“I can feel it, too!” Heather cried out before either of them had a chance to react. “I’ve been feeling it for weeks just like you have!” My little sister said to Grace’s. “What we need to do is take matters into our own hands, hold a protest down at the police station! We’ll see how long they want to keep her once the local news gets involved.”
Oh, for fucks sake.
Alexis’s eyes grew wide. “You really think that’s necessary?”
“Of course, it isn’t necessary!” I told her. Great, just what I needed, another little sister that Heather was able to get just as worked up about nonsense as she was. “A little help here?” I asked, glancing at Blaze.
“On it,” Blaze said, picking Heather up by her elbows and pushing her toward the back door, the way he always did whenever she put her nose in our business and started talking nonsense about things she knew nothing about.
“Alexis,” I said, pulling her attention away from my insane little sister. “I really appreciate the fact that you were willing to come down here and talk to me. Trust me, I do, I know that couldn’t have been an easy decision to make. But, the thing is that I don’t think your sister wants to be found. She’s shut off all communication with the outside world.” I looked away from her eyes, the eyes that reminded me too much of Grace.
“That’s one of the reasons I know something is wrong!” Alexis grabbed a hold of my sleeve again. “She wouldn’t do that, she would have at least said goodbye! I know her! It’s always just been me and her ever since… well, since I could remember.”
I picked up a random bottle of beer and started drinking, suddenly feeling more miserable than before. Like I didn’t feel like a big enough piece of shit as it was. Now, I had to worry about breaking up her family, too. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
I could feel Ace tense up beside me in disapproval.
Krusher let out a low whistle and looked away.
“What?” I snapped at them, taking another swig of my beer. “What do you want me to do? I’m the damn reason she took off in the first place. Nothing I can do can help her.” Who the hell were they to judge me, anyway? They knew nothing about what the fuck I was feeling right now.
Or what I had been feeling for weeks.
“But you aren’t!” Alexis pleaded. “I don’t know what went wrong with the two of you but I know that if Grace was trying to let go of something she would come home to do it, she wouldn’t just go off on her own.”
I shook my head. “That was before she met me.” I looked down at her huge eyes, begging me for help, any kind of help. “I changed the way she looked at things. I changed the way she looked at the world.” I ran my fingers back and forth over my throbbing temple. “Like I said, I can’t help you. Please, just…” I trailed off. “Just go away.”
“Won’t you even try?” Alexis whispered. “I’m sorry, it’s just, everything is such a mess at home. My mom barely sleeps she’s so worried, and that cop keeps showing up, demanding to know where Grace is. He won’t stop and it’s just, it’s making everything worse. I know that I’m just some kid to you, but please, can’t you even try?”
I could feel Blaze next to me, having handled Grace. And suddenly I was very aware of all three of their sets of eyes on me, studying my every move and twitch. Blaze, Ace, and somehow Krusher were trying to be my voice of reason.
“Of course, he will try,” Ace said from next to me, sitting up.
“Yeah,” Blaze nodded. “Someone told me a long time ago that if you can still try then it’s never really over.” He nudged his shoulder into mine, using my own words of advice against me.
“Great!” Alexis squealed. “Thank you!”
“No!” I said forcefully. “NO!” I glared at Blaze. “I said no! GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!” I growled at her, not caring anymore that she was Grace’s sister because the truth was having her here just added to my pain. The cops didn’t have Grace, that didn’t even make any sense. And neither did anyone else. Grace was gone because she wanted to be. That was something that I had to deal with, and the sooner her sister started to deal with it, too, the better off she would be.
Alexis sighed. “Fine! I’ll go, but I’m telling you that I need your help and if you care about my sister at all then that should mean something to you.” She placed a small white card on the bar. “This is my number, I’ll be in church this afternoon, but you can call me anytime after three.”
Ace chuckled at her church comment.
It had been a long time since Ace believed in anything.
I was starting to feel the same way.
“Please,” Alexis said one last time before she turned around and walked out of the door. I listened to her footsteps leave the building and closed my eyes, imagining how Grace would react if she had known her sister had come to me for help and I’d turned her away.
My brothers and Krusher were silent, all of them probably thinking the same things that I was. I could live without Grace but I would be a nightmare and if there was a chance, even a little one, that she still wanted me the way I wanted her then didn’t I have to fight for it?
I didn’t care about the dumb deal she’d made with my father, I didn’t care that he was an asshole who manipulated everyone around him to get whatever the hell he wanted. I would protect Grace until the very last breath if it came down to it.
“Anyone feel like going to pay a visit to a douchebag cop?” I sighed.
Ace grinned. “Hell yeah.”
“That a boy!” Blaze said, shoving me in the shoulder the way he always did when he was proud of me. “I knew you’d come around!” He ruffled my already messy hair like I was his little brother who’d just hit his first home run. Or gotten a taste of his first pussy.
“I’m in,” Krusher said, dropping the bag of chips he’d starting to munch on. “Causing some bodily harm to cops is my favorite kind of bodily harm to cause.” He grinned with a newfound glisten in his eye.
Blaze and Ace glared at me.
“Sure,” I shrugged. “I mean, you can do whatever you want, right?” I got up from my spot at the bar and grabbed my leather jacket off the stool next to me, swinging it over my shoulders. “You’re the one who’s in charge around here, Krusher, what with all the secrets you keep.”
“Great!” Krusher said, ignoring the digs about my twin. “Let’s get moving then! Where I come from we spend less time talking about the shit we do and actually do it!” He grabbed his own jacket and headed toward the front door like he was the one calling the shots.
I rolled my eyes and vowed to deal with him once and for all once I figured this shit out with Grace. Blaze huffed and puffed next to me, complaining. I thre
w my hand over his shoulder the same way he had done to me only seconds before and grinned. “That a boy!”
“Real cute,” he mumbled.
Twenty minutes later we were in front of the cops house that had been hanging around Grace’s house looking for her and bothering her family. I’d had his address since the first day he stopped over but I was under the impression that it had been an isolated incident, one that involved him leaving them alone for good after. It was a scare tactic cops used sometimes, showing up somewhere one time just so that they could scare someone into thinking they were in trouble and find out what they knew.
I swung the front door open and threw my legs down onto the pavement, I wasn’t in the mood to drag this bullshit out, I was too pissed off for that. I took each step toward the front of his house like I was on my way to an execution that I’d been waiting years to see and I couldn’t be a fraction of a second late.
“This seems well planned out,” Blaze said from next to me.
Ace laughed. “Yeah, not our best home invasion.”
“Plan?” Krusher asked. “What plan? The plan is that we pound down the door, get in there, and beat the shit out of this pig.” He scoffed. “There’s no plan they say.”
Blaze sighed. “I’m so glad Krusher acts like he’s part of our crew now.”
“For real,” Ace said. “Don’t you have your own band of brothers you should be taking care of?” He dodged past Krusher so that he’d be the last one through the door.
All three of them sounded like echoes to me, like distant voices somewhere playing in the back of my mind. “Can all of you shut the hell up so that we can get this over with?”
I dodged up the front porch and kicked in the door as hard as I could. The side of the wood cracked loudly and the door caved in easily. I drew my gun and entered the front hallway forcefully.
A few children and a woman were in the living room, they started screaming and running in all different directions when they saw me. “Ace,” I demanded. “Do something with the kids.”
“On it,” Ace said, taking off after them.
I heard footsteps flying around rapidly above us and motioned for Blaze to follow me, Krusher followed even though I didn’t motion for him to do shit. I took the steps up two at a time, not wanting to waste any time. The longer I took to get up there, the more chance there was that he would find and pull his weapon. Or put a call into his family in blue.