by Cat Porter
Game on.
This was the second time she had spent a few days with Butler. The first was when she had taken off with him at the cemetery two weeks ago, which had shocked the shit out of me. She hadn’t shed one tear at the funeral. Her face had been an unreadable mask. On Grace it was bizarre.
That beautiful face was usually so expressive, a combination of girlish innocence and seriousness that I found damned irresistible. But at the funeral it was blank, as if she had bled out. It only got worse at the cemetery. She had been in her own world. Boner had called out to her when she took off. Nothing. I had moved towards her, and she had jumped away from me as if I was some kind of freak she had to escape. She bolted and got on the back of Butler’s bike. That gouged me deep. She was hurting, and I could do nothing to help her.
I checked my watch. Over half an hour had passed since Butler and Grace had entered the store. Time to move.
The men were on their own in the repair and parts shop. I now stood in a thick forest of leather jackets against a back wall on the other end of the store and waited for her. My hands smoothed over the thick, fresh leather. I inhaled that epic scent. The display racks were high at this end and full of bulky merchandise that provided good cover. I took a few steps back into the leather jungle and waited.
Four teenage girls rifled through a rack of tank tops in the women’s section, and there was Grace going through the rack with kid’s t-shirts on the other side. She plucked one hanger off the rack, checked the tag, looked over the design on the front, then the back, then the front again, and put it back on the rack. She did that same exact thing three times over until she held onto two t-shirts in her hand. Jesus. She began moving towards the leather jackets. Towards me.
She stopped just a couple of yards from me. I pushed my sunglasses up on my head and pressed my lips together.
“Hey,” I said. My heart tripped.
Her face was pale, and she had dark circles under her eyes. Her lips seemed taut, thinner. Her opaque eyes, more grey brown than green, darted around us.
“I don’t have much time. He’s clingy.”
My jaw clenched. “Yeah, I noticed.”
She tilted her head at me. “You noticed?” Her voice was brittle.
“Every time you come up here, I’m here, too.”
“Right.” Her face darkened. “Hope it’s been entertaining for you.”
It’s been total shit, baby.
My lips sealed into a firm line.
Grace adjusted the sunglasses on her head with a quick flick of her fingers. “I noticed someone at their clubhouse last week. From our trip to Montana.” Her fingers absently stroked the long thick sleeve of a brown leather jacket that hung in front of her.
“A Demon Seed?”
“Yeah.” She blinked up at me then returned her attention to the jacket. “He was one of the guys who brought me into the warehouse where Vig was waiting for me. He looked like a Demon Seed recruit at the time, but the other night he wasn’t wearing a cut at all. Thought that was strange. I would have said something sooner, but I wasn’t sure it was him the first time I saw him. He’s in and out of the clubhouse pretty regularly. I’ve been trying hard not to pay him any attention, just be in a Butler tizzy all the time.” She rolled her eyes. “But I know it’s him.”
Oh God, her voice was flat, the richness gone from it. I swallowed hard. “Got a name?”
She didn’t look at me. Her eyes darted everywhere, on her boots, the jackets, price tags, the way out of our hidden corner. Everywhere except at me.
“Crank.”
“Anything else?” I asked. I took a few more steps back closer to another line of jackets against the wall. She followed me casually. A finger pushed back a lock of stray hair.
Baby, look at me. Please, give me that much, just once.
“I get the impression most of the crew doesn’t really fall in behind Butler, especially Creeper,” Grace whispered, her eyes finally on me. “I can’t say I blame them, he’s high almost all the time. Too much coke and plenty of weed. Then he throws in the booze at night and it becomes a three-ring circus.” Her face tensed momentarily, and my eyes narrowed over her.
“He can’t be making many good decisions like this,” she said and let out a huff. “Creeper seems to be the one watching over the henhouse.”
“Grace…”
“Crank brings him the coke. I checked out the package when he was asleep. There was a message that Canada was on for Thursday and to expect a text. He finally got the text yesterday. When he fell asleep last night I went into his phone and found it. It was from Vig. Butler and his boys are bringing in a truck from Canada and switching it out here, then bringing the goods to Montana for him.”
“This Thursday?”
“Yeah. Must be a big payoff. Butler, Creeper, and Tail were all smiles and happy feet last night after the text came in.”
She stepped forward, took a tiny crumpled ball of paper from her front jeans pocket and stuffed it in the front pocket of my jeans, her green brown eyes glued to mine.
“I wrote down the coordinates for the location of the switch out for you,” she whispered.
Her fingertips barely brushed the top of my thigh, but it was electric. My cock twitched in my jeans. The sweet minty green scent of her shampoo drifted over me. Our first night together came crashing in on my memory. The breath caught in my chest and pinched there.
She frowned and took a step back. “Butler’s going to hang on to it for one night, then make the delivery into Montana the day after.” Her gaze slid back to the jackets hanging high over us against the wall.
I wanted to pull her in my arms, stroke her back until she relaxed into me. But that was a fucking fantasy right here in the middle of the store with Butler and his boys under the same roof. Anyway, that was done with, she wouldn’t want that from me anymore, would she?
Not after you sold her out, let her fall into the snake pit.
Maybe she and Butler had rekindled their long lost fucking fire? I could barely think about that without my skin crawling and a red rage whipping through me. But, no, I didn’t think so. No way. She didn’t look too happy. In fact, she didn’t look happy at all.
“Grace, how are you holding up?” I asked.
“It is what it is,” came the unexpected reply in that almost unrecognizable, flat voice.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what that meant. The thought of Grace in the middle of a club brewing its own poison led by a dick off his rocker who thinks he’s got her in the bag was making me come unhinged.
“When are you coming home?” I said through my clamped jaw. My eyes scanned the clothing section for any movement through my lookout gap. Those teenage girls were onto another rack comparing handbags and yacking on their cell phones. A saleswoman opened the sunglass case and took out several for a waiting customer. Two older pot-bellied bikers and their Old Ladies checked out the stand with the rain gear. Grace blinked up at me. Her hands twisted the t-shirts on their tiny hangers.
“Tomorrow. I called Boner to come pick me up.”
“Look, I’m here, I can come.”
“No, not you,” she said and averted her gaze once again.
She might as well have ripped a knife through my gut.
Grace always seemed to drink in my eyes, like she was absorbing some sort of secret from them that only she understood. Our gazes always lingered, but now she avoided my eyes as if she didn’t need to look at me, as if it was a chore to be with me. Like she did at the cemetery.
Look at me, Grace!
I tried to swallow past the cement blocks in my throat. The tension in the air between us was suddenly as thick as tar.
“Those for Jake?” I pointed to the t-shirts crumpled in her hands.
Grace nodded. “Got to go.”
Shit, she barely spoke in full sentences. She turned away. My stomach twisted. She was leaving again. Leaving me. Going back on that asshole’s bike. What the hell was I going to offer her now,
what could I say? I had no fucking idea, I only knew I couldn’t let her go like this. My hand flew out and grabbed hers.
“Grace…”
She spun back to me, her eyes blazing down at our hands, her face tight. She jerked against my grasp.
“You don’t get to do this. Not now,” she said on a hiss. “Now we’re all about what’s good for the club. You made sure of that, right? And so did I.”
And there it was. I winced.
“Let me go,” she said under her breath.
Can’t let you go.
I released her hand and at the same time she snapped hers back. Her handbag went flying off her arm, its contents spilled onto the floor.
“Shit!” Grace scowled and got on her knees. She tossed tubes of lip balm, a pack of tissues, keys, pens, cell phone and a whole lot of other girl crap back into her bag.
My eyes zeroed in on a brown prescription bottle. I picked it up. It was half-full of pills. I scanned the label. Anti-depressant meds. A recent prescription filled at a pharmacy in Rapid City.
“You taking these?” I asked.
Her weary eyes cut to mine, her body visibly stiffened. She plucked a hairbrush and a small round mirror off the floor and shoved them into her big black suede handbag. “It’s none of your business.”
“I’ve been to war, Grace. I know all about post-traumatic stress and anxiety. You need the relief?” Goddammit, she looked like she could use it.
Shit.
We had put her in harm’s way. Now all her old buttons were being pushed once more, and maybe new ones were being created. How was she really holding up under the strain? She was vulnerable, way too vulnerable. But my Grace was strong. She had to be. She had Jake now. She had me—
Fuck.
She plucked the prescription bottle from my hand and shoved it in her bag. “For the past fifteen years, off and on when needed.”
“You’re not mixing them with coke or anything else are you?”
Her head remained bent over the floor. She zipped her bag closed.
“Grace?”
Her eyes came up to mine. They were hard and cold. They weren’t filled with any sort of emotion, unlike that deep wash of luminous grey-green suede they transformed into when I moved inside her, her pink mouth gasping for air, her small hands clutching my back…
“What’s it to you?”
Fucking everything.
“Baby…”
“We done here?”
That tight, cold tone pricked at my skin. I sank back on my haunches and gritted my teeth.
Grace leaned into me. “This has been such fun,” she whispered. The snide tone in her voice left a trail of acid in my ears. It drained right down into the twisted muscle that thudded against my ribs. She took off, her stride long, her back stiff. My palms dug into to my forehead. I squeezed my eyes shut against the burn.
Yeah, that’s what locked down looks like.
“Is that it for today ma’am?” the cashier’s voice rang out.
“That’s all,” came Grace’s taut, rigid voice.
And that’s what locked down sounds like.
Dig’s eyes were ready to burst. “What the fuck?” he growled, his body still.
“What the hell did I do, brother?” Butler shouted.
Jump shook his head. “You are such a goddamn idiot.”
“Cause I looked at his woman?” Butler asked. “Shit, man! She’s around, we talk, I look. So does everybody else. What do you want from me?”
“You don’t just look. You watch her all the time,” Dig said. “Think I didn’t notice when we camped out last weekend? You think I’m some kinda moron with my head up my ass?”
I froze. He knew. Oh my God.
“But today you touched her. Nobody touches what’s mine. Nobody touches my Old Lady.”
I opened my mouth to explain, but I clamped it shut again. This was between the brothers. And it was a long time coming.
Half an hour before I had been organizing the shed, perched on a tall metal ladder to place three rusty Double Eagle Motor Oil cans on the highest shelf on the wall. Wreck had found the vintage cans in Wyoming and had brought them home the night before. I hadn’t opened the ladder wide enough though, and it seesawed under me. Butler held onto the ladder as I clambered down, but he slid one arm around my back and one under my knees, lifted me in his arms and pulled me close. Too close.
“Butler, let me down. Come on.”
Butler only laughed and swung me around.
“Please put me down.”
Wreck, Dig, and Boner had walked in just then, and all hell broke loose.
“Aw, man, Come on! Wasn’t anything!” Butler shrugged his shoulders and flashed a slight grin. “Shit, brother, you used to share all the time.”
I scowled. Wreck shook his head and let out a groan. “Wrong thing to say, asswipe.”
“True colors,” Boner said. “You show ‘em time and time again, boy. Just can’t help your fucking self, can you?”
Dig’s burning grip on my wrist tightened.
“She’s my Old Lady. You keep your fucking dick in your pants or I’m gonna have to do it for you,” said Dig. “You watch her like an alligator waiting to pounce on his next meal. She’s mine, goddammit!” Dig smacked my ass where my new tattoo of his wildflower with our initials entwined in the leaves had just been inked the day before. I jerked and hissed in air. The skin was still sensitive.
“She’s got my mark on her,” said Dig. “I’m the one in her day and night. Not you, not ever.”
“I wouldn’t fuck your Old Lady, man. You’re my brother. That shit just isn’t done.”
“But you still wanna get as close as you can, don’t you?” said Wreck. “You just keep pushing at her, keep pushing.” He leaned into Butler and pointed at me. “And that girl’s too nice to tell you to fuck off.”
“I don’t think he got the message, Dig,” said Boner. “He always thinks he can get away with this shit time and time again.” My gaze darted to him. His eyes were that unusual cold green color.
“Got to agree with Boner there,” Wreck said. He pulled me out of Dig’s grasp and tucked me behind his body. I finally let out the breath I’d been holding onto.
“You hear that, motherfucker?” asked Dig.
A muscle in Butler’s jaw tensed. His mouth fell open, and he shook his head at his brothers. “Look, I’m sorry—I…”
Dig’s eyes flashed. “Sorry, huh?”
Wreck unstuck my hands from his arms and pushed me back, motioning me with a jerk of his chin to get in the clubhouse. I retreated into the doorway, but I watched. I couldn’t not watch. My stomach scrunched up.
“Ah, but you’re not feeling me, bro,” Dig said. “You need a lesson.”
“C’mon, Dig!” Butler’s hand tugged through his long blonde locks of hair pulling it away from the twisted features of his handsome face. He swung his hands up. “C’mon man, no harm done. I swear, won’t happen again!”
Dig pulled out his knife from his left boot.
“Bro!” Butler said.
An hour later Butler sucked on a bottle of bourbon in the clubhouse with ice packs on his face. His body was spread out on the bar top like a rag doll while Wreck, who had been a medic in the army, bent over him and sewed up deep gashes over his chest, middle and thighs. His groans reached Dig’s room where I sat on the floor against our bed with my knees curled up to my chest. Dig had taken off on his bike to let off steam. He’d be back soon though.
I waited.
The door banged open and slammed shut. My body shuddered. There were streaks and splatters of blood across his shirt and down his jeans, red smudges on his neck and hands. He ripped off his leather jacket and dumped it on the floor. His face was full of thunder.
“Baby?” I whispered from my patch of humility on the floor.
“Clothes off.”
“Dig…”
“Now!”
Under his iron glare I teetered up on my feet and pulled m
y shirt up off my head, peeled out of my cutoff shorts, unclasped my bra and tugged down my panties. Dig charged towards me and wrapped his hands around my neck and kissed me hard. His one hand slid down to my tattooed ass cheek, and he smacked it. I bit down on my lip. His fingers dug into my stinging flesh.
“Ow!”
His hand clasped my jaw in a tight grip close to his face. I grit my teeth.
“Never let anyone, not anyone, take advantage of you. Ever. You call it like it is. You don’t have to be nice to everybody.”
I held his fierce gaze.
“You like Butler?” he asked. “You want him? Huh? You want to fuck him?”
“I only want you.”
“Did you like having his eyes on you? Did it turn you on?” His eyes glittered. “What is it? You curious? You’ve only been with me, you bored already?”
My eyes stung. “You know me better than that.”
His head tilted slightly, his fingers gripped my jaw even tighter. “Do you like him?”
Dig would know if I bent the truth. It so wasn’t worth bending, ever. We both expected nothing less than honesty from each other.
Even if it stung.
“He’s… I’m attracted to him.”
Dig’s eyes tightened over my face. He took in air through his nose.
“But I don’t want his hands on me, his mouth on me,” I said. “I don’t want him inside me.”
I reached behind me and put my hand over his on my tattoo. “Your mark means everything to me. You’re everything to me, Dig. I wouldn’t throw away what we have for… I love you.”
His hand pushed mine aside, slid from my rear up to my breast and squeezed. I clenched my teeth against the sharp pain. Our breaths were choppy. My gaze met his hard, glassy one.
“Yeah? You sure about that?”
“What about that bottle blonde that keeps showing up at every damn event lately?” I asked. “She hangs on you at every party, brings you drinks. And you keep smiling at her, talking to her. Last week, you let her touch you. I saw it.”