Vipers Run

by Stephanie Tyler

  Even so, as soon as she turned fifteen, Cage got her out, thanks to a boarding school in Florida where Preacher pulled some strings. Marielle had gone willingly and she’d been in Florida ever since.

  But lately, she’d been worried about him, had been threatening to come back. Especially when she heard about his near-death experience.

  He blinked and he wasn’t smelling the smoke anymore, wasn’t in that front yard or the juvenile detention center. He was with Calla and she was hugging him.

  When she pulled back, she asked, “Was any part of it good? Because why go to another MC?”

  “Where else was I going to go, Calla? Foster care?” He paused. “This is a violent, addictive lifestyle. I was born into it, yes, but it’s also in my blood. In here.”

  He hated telling her this shit. The look of horror in her eyes was something he wanted to wipe away, not watch grow stronger.

  But he pressed on. Because if there was one important thing he learned in the Army, it was that letting someone know who they were up against and why made for a more effective soldier—and ultimately, a more effective mission.

  “The Heathens are in fucking ruins. Just like my family,” he started. “The money they’re bringing in should be enough to make everything good. But it’s brought in nothing but ruin.”

  “The drugs.”

  “You think he’d know—no, you’d think he’d care.”

  “So your father and your brother, they don’t do the drugs.”

  “No, they’re smart in that regard. Most of the brotherhood doesn’t. In fact, if you’re caught doing drugs as a Heathen member, you’re out. But they don’t give a shit about their women. They keep them clean while they’re breeding, but that’s about it.”

  “Breeding?”

  He shrugged. “S’what they call it, babe. Not saying it’s pretty, or that I agree. If I agreed, I’d still be a Heathen. And what I went through to get out and get in Vipers? That wasn’t pretty either.”

  “And no one stops them?”

  “They don’t sell the meth in their own town, so everyone thinks they’re wonderful. Took that trick from Preach. Difference is, we don’t sell drugs at all.”

  “Guns?”

  “We ship them out of the country,” he said.

  “So they’re trying to push meth into Skulls?”

  “Among other things. They’ve got a prostitution ring.”

  “So they drug the women, then pimp them out. I hate them.”

  “Emotions will get you every time.”

  “In this case, I consider them a bonus.”

  He tapped on his heart. “Preacher gave me a second lease on life.”

  From childhood, his few good memories centered on the bikes and the open road, anything and everything that happened away from the clubhouse.

  MCs fucked you up good. But they were what he knew, and he was damned well and determined to believe in Preacher’s Vipers. Because Preacher had saved the Vipers from a fate similar to the Heathens, had shoved the Vipers out from under the weight of drugs and shifted them toward the equally dangerous gunrunning.

  But gunrunning wasn’t destroying families from the ground up, not in the all-pervasive way drugs were. A mother with a gun could protect her baby; a mother on meth could not.

  “Where’s your sister now?” Calla asked.

  “She’s still in Florida. But she wants to come back.”

  “And?”

  “And I won’t let her. No one knows where she is except me, Preach and Tals. And Tenn, of course. I need it to stay that way.”

  “She’s mad at you for that.”

  “I think she’s beginning to hate me,” he admitted, careful not to let Calla see how much that shit broke his heart. “My family—what’s left of them—would destroy her. My mom . . . by the end, she was all fucking strung out. She wasn’t herself anymore. And my sisters were scared of her, but they needed her so much. I tried, but it wasn’t the same.”

  He stopped before his voice broke. Calla was staring at him, her hand on his arm, rubbing the ink there, tracing the symbols there. And when he was able to talk again, he told her, “We might be above the law here at times . . . but we don’t pull that drug shit. I will never let that into my town.”

  He paused, then told her part of the answer she’d been looking for. “I got out of the Army. Took the trip back here. That same night I came back to Vipers, they had a big welcome-home party for me.” He didn’t want to go there, but he did. “Heathens crashed it. They heard I was home and they wanted to fuck things up. Two of our guys died. Because of me. And the next day, two high school kids OD’d on meth, sold to them by the same Heathens who crashed the party.”

  The Heathens were taunting him, basically telling him, You love your town so much, we’ll destroy it.

  She looked so sad as she said, “So after all that . . .”

  “I left. Didn’t say anything. Packed up some shit and took off. Let it be known I was going rogue. Heathens could hunt me down.”

  “You were hoping they’d follow you and leave Vipers alone.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But why is Preacher so mad?”

  “You’ve got to get permission to go rogue. If he’d known what I was planning, I wouldn’t have gotten it.” He took a deep breath and continued. “The number I gave you . . . it’s to a locked safety-deposit box. There are recordings in there that could take down my father and Troy. I was going to turn them over to the DA for their RICO case. If I could take it back, I would.”

  “I know. I can’t unmemorize it any more than I could erase you from my mind. And I don’t want that.”

  The Heathens left him hollowed out inside, and both Vipers and the Army had slowly filled the void, but they’d also made him a more efficient street criminal.

  They’d also given him Calla. Calla, who touched the scars on his neck. She’d been there with him when he’d come back from the dead. Now it was up to him to help her bury her ghosts, no matter what it took.

  Chapter 23

  After Cage and I went back up to the apartment, the now too familiar separation between us

  began. The closeness we’d regained with the

  reveal of his bike art—and the way we’d communicated—was still there when we got into bed. But I’d remained fully dressed in sweats and didn’t push anything, although he wrapped himself around me while we slept.

  I’d say the lack of sexual willingness was my fault, that he was simply giving me space, but of course I assumed he didn’t want to touch me because of the pictures.

  The next day we both hung around the apartment, under the weight of Ned’s death. We didn’t hear anything from Officer Flores, although I swore my heart skipped a beat every time the phone rang or someone knocked on the door. But it was just the guys checking on us, bringing us food.

  By nightfall, I’d snuggled into the couch to watch a movie, not wanting to go back into the bedroom. Cage was downstairs for a while and I heard him moving back and forth, but I didn’t think anything of it.

  Finally, he sat down next to me and put my feet in his lap. He rubbed them a little, the massage making me groan a little.

  “That’s nice,” I told him.

  “I’d do anything to make you feel good, babe. Anything for you—you know that.”

  We weren’t talking about massages any longer. “I know, Cage. You keep your promises. But I don’t want you to do anything that will stay on your conscience.”

  “Trust me, nothing I’ve got planned will make me lose a second of sleep.”

  It wouldn’t for me either, and maybe I wasn’t supposed to think like that, but I did. Because lately, especially after staying at Tenn’s, I couldn’t help but think how many other girls Jeffrey had done this to, because I couldn’t have been the only special one he’d “chosen.” Anyone tha
t sick didn’t simply stop after one.

  But I didn’t want to think about Jeffrey now. He’d taken up too much of my life at this point.

  “We’re going to figure it all out, Calla. But I care more about driving him from your mind, your heart, than I do about wiping him out right now. You’re more important.”

  “You’ve gone a long way toward doing that already.”

  “Yeah, but I haven’t gone far enough.”

  My belly fluttered a little with nerves, but I didn’t say anything, waiting on him to elaborate, but all he asked was, “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Wait here, then.” He went into the bedroom and called me in about ten minutes later. He’d obviously put some thought and planning into it. There was a clean drop cloth draped over the bed. A camera. A video camera. Paints and brushes.

  I looked between him and the setup.

  “I’ve thought a lot about this. I’ve always known that art of any kind can heal.”

  “Tenn thinks so too.” I hadn’t been surprised by the porn he’d been watching.

  “Yeah, Tenn got me thinking,” he admitted. “You ready to help me create something new?”

  “More than.”

  “Good. All you need to do is get out of your clothes and lay down on your right side. I’ll do everything else.” As he spoke, he was opening the paints. I slid down the sweats and my underwear, and then my sweatshirt. My T-shirt was thin, and I wasn’t wearing a bra.

  He turned to look at me, then moved closer, skimmed his hands along my bare hips and then up my sides, taking the fabric with it. When he pulled it over my head, he looked down at my naked body, murmured, “Beautiful,” and kissed my shoulder.

  Then he picked me up and placed me on the bed. “Curl up.”

  Curl up, like I’d been in those pictures. In that moment, I understood exactly what he was going to do, and warmth filled me to the point I was sure I’d cry and ruin everything.

  But I wouldn’t, because doing this would heal me. It would heal us. So I laid down with my head on my arm, my legs pulled up a little. He arranged me a little and after he put the video camera on the tripod, I understood why. The angle wouldn’t let the camera see anything more than simple bare skin, but it would capture the entire transformation. I would be covered by my pose, by his body and, finally, by the paints.

  “Just relax,” he told me, then grabbed a brush and began to mix the paints while I watched his back. When he turned to me, he was intent on his mission. I kept my eyes focused on Cage’s face. This was different, like being reborn, and I didn’t want to go back to that dark place in my memory.

  The tickle of the brush on my hip bone put my nerve endings into overdrive, but I kept still. I bit my bottom lip to stifle the giggle, then realized I didn’t have to. This was about regaining my happiness, owning my memories and making new ones.

  He grinned, his eyes flickering up to meet mine for half a second before concentrating on me, in much the same way I’d seen him focusing on his bike. To be put in that same all-important category was important, on so many levels.

  While he worked the brush on my hip, his hand drifted to my sex. I gasped softly as his fingers slid between my folds, the sensation of his rough hands and the tickle of the brush leaving me wanting to beg. But I didn’t have to, because he fingered me to an orgasm quickly—it wrenched out of me as if to say, Finally. Reminding me that I was still okay, that Cage wasn’t defining me by what Jeffrey Harris did to me. Reminding me that, really, I was the only one who could hold myself in that cage.

  He bent his head between my legs and he licked me to another quick orgasm. He kissed his way along the back of my thighs, and then he fully concentrated on the painting.

  I was fully relaxed, sleepy from the orgasms. As Cage’s vision began to grow in scope along my side and thigh, I was amazed. He was decorating me like a sleek, strong, roaring bike, built to slice through the bullshit and handle whatever the world gave me. I was steel wrapped in all the pretty, and no one could mess with me. I’d always felt like that around Cage, but more so now.

  My body was streaked with a mixture of blue and silver paints, gradations of gorgeous, purposeful streaks that snaked up my side and grazed the underside of my breast. The brush hit every place I’d been drawn on, erasing those scars that no one but I could see and putting something entirely more beautiful in their place. He’d drawn something on me that I wanted to remember forever. He took pictures then—Polaroids—and showed me. The pose was the same but the look on my face was different. And I wasn’t alone, because Cage’s work was there, protecting me.

  “I want this to be permanent.”

  He smiled. “It might be more fun if I can paint you anyway I want. Anytime I want.” And then he turned the camera off and he took his clothes off. He didn’t ask, and I was glad—I didn’t want to be treated like some gentle thing anymore. I wanted him to take what he wanted, the way he’d done since we’d met. I planned on doing the same.

  He came up behind me—I was still on my side and he entered me, holding up my thigh so he could fill me completely. “Mine,” he said. “You’ve been mine since I called you, and nothing’s going to change that.”

  I shuddered through another orgasm at his words, contracting around his cock and making his groan join mine in stereo. I was vaguely aware that I shivered, that he was taking me into the bathroom.

  Boneless in the tub, leaning back against him, his erection throbbing as it rubbed between my ass cheeks as he patiently washed whatever paint hadn’t come off on its own. He’d let the water out a few times, running the handheld over me so I wouldn’t get cold as he replaced the old water with new, clean water. And still, the blue and silver swirled in the water around me, as lazy as his motions.

  “Thank you,” I murmured.

  “Your trusting me means everything, Calla. You have to know that.”

  I did. Because he’d made me a part of his art, part of him, and he’d transformed the most painful memory of my life into something amazing.

  * * *

  He helped Calla out of the tub, dried her off, got her into the bed after moving the paint-splattered drop cloth.

  His hand had trembled a little when he’d first dipped the thin brush into the paint. He’d composed himself, had to because he’d known how important this was. He’d known it needed to be so fucking perfect.

  He’d erased the past and covered it with the promise of the future.

  There was so much he’d bottled up, never really letting it out, because there was something inside he always wanted to keep hidden. With Calla, there was a great deal already exposed.

  Calla moved then, began to kiss her way down his neck, then his shoulders, giving special attention to the scarred one, her breath catching when she saw his back.

  “Survivor,” she murmured as she ran her fingertips over the areas that still ached at odd times. The doc had told him that skin pulled as it healed, knitting up to become stronger.

  He didn’t think he was any stronger than he’d been, because how strong could one person get? He didn’t want to become a machine.

  He shuddered under her touch. When she put her mouth to the ragged scars and kissed them, he barely held it together. And then she went back up and did the same thing to the unscarred side.

  “You’re not going to have this freedom for too much longer, baby, so enjoy it while you can.”

  “You were more compliant in front of the camera.”

  “I’m never compliant.”

  “I said more, not completely.” She traced his nipple with her tongue. “Besides, I like you this way.”

  While she writhed lazily against him, his hands dragged over her body, rough to her smooth. She moaned as the pad of his thumb found her clit. As she anchored him against the mattress, he watched her face contort with pleasure. He
wanted to consume her, loved watching her breath hitch, loved being wrecked by her.

  Afterward, they lay tangled in the dark, her hair splayed over his scars, and he knew he loved her. As if she’d read his mind, she hugged him a little harder.

  Chapter 24

  Cage had cocooned me away for days while we waited for more news about Ned. As his next of kin, I was responsible for his body, but the coroner wasn’t releasing it yet.

  I still hadn’t called my father to tell him. I was pretty sure he’d heard the news by now, but since we’d had a father-daughter relationship that centered on not talking, I was thinking that getting in touch with him might look suspicious.

  Even though I wasn’t guilty.

  Tonight, Cage was going someplace with Preacher. And I agreed to stay put, with Rocco watching out for me, just in case Flores decided to pull something. But while Cage was getting ready, his phone rang, and he came out of the bathroom, half dressed, saying, “No, I don’t think so.”

  He glanced at me and I frowned. “Hang on.” He put his hand over the phone. “The tattoo shop needs a hand tonight. But if you’re not up for it . . .”

  “I’d even tattoo if that would help you.”

  “You just want out.”

  “If you were here, no.”

  He smiled. “I know you’re going stir-crazy.” He spoke into the phone. “Rocco will bring her in. Give her half an hour.”

  He hung up. Pulled his shirt on and grabbed for his cut while pocketing his phone. “Gotta run, babe. I can pick you up from the shop or Rocco can bring you back here. Up to you.”

  “Okay.” Being with Rocco was easiest, I guessed, because Flores would hesitate to pull anything when I was with my lawyer. All in all, things were quieting down and I was hoping—praying—that this would all go away.

  Cage had been checking my e-mails too, and he’d said there had been nothing new coming through. I hadn’t been able to look at the old account, so I’d given him all the info and opened a brand-new one.