Obviously Saint isn’t listening, because the cutest little growl I’ve heard coming from a woman erupts from her throat.
“Do not make me call, Bubba, Saint, because I will if I have to. And I’m warning you, if he has to drag his humongous ass down here to do my bidding he will lose his mind.”
“Are you fucking serious right now? What’s the big fucking deal, Alysia? Yeah, I kicked his ass. Yeah, I put his ass in the back of the van, drove him here and sat him down so we can have a nice, little man-to-man conversation about poaching what isn’t his, but what I don’t get is why the fuck you care so much.”
There’s some scuffing of feet, shifting of bodies, then Saint yelps,
“What the fuck! Don’t kick me you little hellcat, or you’ll be sitting your ass on a chair next to that asshole in there.”
“Don’t threaten me, dickhead. You got what was coming to you for being a big jerk. Now, are you going to make me get my phone out and call Bubba, or are you going to be reasonable about this?” She makes a small, purring hum in the back of her throat, the sound going directly to my cock. Yeah, I know, fucked in the head right?
What kind of man thinks about how a woman he’s never met, who he’s only heard speak for the last five minutes, would sound if she was underneath him using that sexy voice to call out his name while he made her come, over and over again for him? Me, that’s who. Yep, I am justifiably, certifiably, in-fucking-sane. But that doesn’t change the fact I think her sexy voice crying out my name in ecstasy might just be the hottest thing ever.
“Fuck me, really. You’re not gonna let this go are you?” Saint sounds exasperated with her, but his tone has softened somewhat so I know he’s not going to hurt her, which strangely helps me to settle down and start working on regulating my breathing again.
“Nope, not in the giving mood today, big man. So, what do you say?” She asks hopefully.
“Fuck, fine. I’m going in to talk to the bastard first, then I recommend you get him the fuck out of my sight before I change my mind.”
“Thanks, brother. I mean it, yeah? I owe you one.” Glock rasps. The heavy steel door creaks open letting in the daylight and bringing with it a slice of heaven. Tilting my head and using my good eye to size her up, I almost laugh out loud at what I see.
She is tiny, ridiculously tiny. Maybe five-foot, five-foot-one at a stretch, she has waist length black hair with what looks to be a tinge of blue running through the silky strands. Her frame might be petite but her body’s toned, and she’s got curves in all the right place. Gorgeous, luscious curves that make a man’s mouth water. Ones that would have him promising anything and everything to run his tongue, hands and cock over every inch of her. I can’t see the color of her eyes from here or in this light, but I imagine they are blue or maybe green.
Shaking my head, I brace myself as Saint rips the tape off my mouth roughly. I don’t say a word, but shit, that hurts like a bitch. The sprite leaning against the wall near the door claps her hands together making my head snap up in her direction immediately.
“Times a wasting, so chop, chop. Talk, threaten, and promise pain and suffering the likes he’s never felt or heard of before so we can get the hell out of here. This place give off a serious horror movie vibe, and it’s creeping me the fuck out.”
All three of us burst out laughing at her description of what I can only guess is one of the many MC safe houses. Well, that and her impatience. Throwing her hands in the air, Alysia walks over until her toes are only an inch away from mine and crouches down. Looking over her shoulder at Saint she spits,
“Do I have to do everything myself?” With a carry on hand gesture the prick barely contains another chuckle at the serious look plastered on her stunning face.
When her eyes meet mine I see them flare with something hot before she effectively locks it down and turns them blank. Sizing me up like a bug under a microscope, she seems happy with what she’s learned from her quick assessment of me and addresses me directly saying,
“Okay, handsome prisoner man, here’s the deal. You aren’t to look at, talk to, contact, see, or be within a hundred feet of the caveman’s wife. If you do any of those things he’s going to hang, draw, and quarter you, do some seriously inhumane things to your junk. Yada, yada, blah, blah, blah. Is that about right, big man?” Saint nods curtly, his eyes boring into mine without uttering a word. “Now, you handsome. Did you understand all that?”
Blinking rapidly it takes me a second to realize she’s talking to me not Glock.
“Yeah, I got it,” I reply softly. If it wasn’t her asking you can bet your ass I wouldn’t have answered so nicely.
She gives me a blinding white smile, which has my heart rate picking back up again, and this time it has nothing to do with panic or fear. This time it’s all her.
“Right. Now we’ve got that sorted I’m going to get you out of here and somewhere safe while your friend over there,” she says gesturing to Glock, “holds that one there back from tearing you apart. So, what do you say, handsome, want to go for a drive?”
Is she fucking kidding? Of course I want to go for a drive, and not just because I want to get the fuck out of here. I think me being set free actually takes a back seat to me wanting to go wherever she wants to take me right now. And that right there is a scary fucking thought.
“Yeah, yeah I would.”
Saint tosses her something saying,
“We’re even now, Alysia. That was your marker, yeah?”
Muttering to herself she cuts the cable ties binding my wrists, and then shocks the shit out of me by ripping her shirt off over her head. Holy shit, the woman is fucking stacked. Gently holding my forearms, Alysia places my hands in my lap and looks at my wrists with a pained grimace. She uses the scissors Saint threw her to cut her shirt into long strips, wrapping them around my jagged, torn, self-inflicted wounds to stop the bleeding.
I bend forward an inch or two so that I’m less than three inches from her beautiful face and whisper,
“Thank you.”
Her swift intake of breath tell me she heard me, but she doesn’t offer me anything else in the way of a response. Standing up she goes to grip my bicep, but I gently shake her off not wanting to look any more pathetic than I already do. Using the chair for support, I test that my legs will hold my weight and internally sigh when I find they do. We make our way to the door, Alysia walking in front of me, but she stops just shy of the hall to turn and say,
“That was my marker, Saint.”
It isn’t until we’re in her car, if you can call it that, it’s more like a beast of a 1968 Dodge Charger, that I ask,
“Why’d you do it? Why’d you save a worthless asshole like me?”
Taking her eyes off the road briefly she looks at me intently. After a long pause, one that has me thinking she’s not going to answer me, what she says next starts to mend the broken, shattered pieces of my heart back together again.
“Because everyone is worth saving, Robert. Even men like you who don’t see themselves as worth it deserve a second chance.”
The way she says my name has goose flesh covering every inch of my skin and my mouth going dry. There’s something about the way she says Robert that’s familiar, like I’ve heard it before. Memories hazy and foreign come flooding to the forefront of my mind, teasing me, staying just outside of my reach. They aren’t sharp enough for me to make sense of. Not until one in particular sticks and takes hold. One memory clear enough to bring my mind to a shuddering halt positions itself front and center for my viewing pleasure.
“Alysia. My Alysia?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Alysia
Imaginary – Evanescence
Hearing the man I’d fallen in love with when he was only a boy say my name is enough to have me wanting to burst into tears. If I was still the old me I would have. I would have broken down in his arms and let him comfort me, but I’m not that girl anymore. I’m a strong, independent, kickass woman now, and I refuse to bre
ak at something as simple as the sound of his voice. But, oh how I’ve missed his voice. I’ve missed everything about him, but his voice probably most of all. The rich velvet tenor of it. The way his rolls his R’s just slightly. And the way everything out of his mouth sounds like sex incarnate. I could listen to him talk for hours about the most mundane things if he’d just keep talking.
Let me tell you a story, don’t worry it’s not a long one. You don’t need many details, or longwinded explanations of our history to understand why I loved this man with all the passion a fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen-year old girl could. We had such a simple beginning, it’s just a shame I have the feeling our ending won’t be quite as easy.
I met Robert during the start of our sophomore year of high school. He was the epitome of the gorgeous baseball star, popular, and funny. People adored and looked up to him, and he was handsome, so handsome. Sounds like any other high school jock, right? That’s where you’re wrong. Robert wasn’t like any of the other guys he hung out with or called his friends, far from it. There was something darker about him. Something lurking behind his beautiful blue eyes that ate away at his very soul. He was great at hiding it, brilliant really, but from the second I’d laid eyes on him I knew. I saw through all the false arrogance and ego straight to the heart of the man trying to hide his pain.
It didn’t hurt that I was the only sister of seven brothers, four older and three younger. I saw the way they covered their pain at losing our dad, and while Robert’s pain was deeper, darker, and more frightening it didn’t mean I couldn’t see it for what it was. And what is was scared the shit out of me. But me being me, stubborn, curious, and way too determined for my own good, decided I wanted to know the man beneath the mask, so I set about doing just that. Getting to know Robert and his demons.
We had nothing in common which made it hard to spend time with him, but I didn’t let that deter me though. I continued to make myself known to him in any way I could, and albeit my brothers to this point had been the bane of my existence and I’d have preferred to smoother them in their sleep most nights, they came in handy when it came to getting closer to Robert.
Brookes, my oldest brother had graduated two years before I started high school and Brandt the year before, but that still left Finn and Landen both baseball players to use in order to get close to Robert. Macon was still a year off starting high school, and Adrian and Liam were behind him, so they’d be of no use to me. And yes, as wrong as it was to see my brothers as useful pawns in my game, I did regardless of the consequences I’d get if they found out about my ulterior motives.
My brothers were over protective to the nth degree. Huge, hulking, pains in my ass to be precise. But as much as they pissed me off, stopped me from having a normal life filled with dating, going out with friends, and having the freedoms most girls my age would have, I loved them fiercely and still do. They haven’t changed over the years, if anything they’ve gotten worse, but aside from threatening to kick their asses on a daily basis, changing their passwords to their computers to random embarrassing things that broadcast across the office network when they log in, and sabotaging their many dates, I love them all the same.
But I digress. It took me six months, numerous, what I thought were sneaky attempts at getting closer to him for me to have a breakthrough in operation get-to-know-Robert. What started out as an ordinary Thursday ended up being the best day of my life!
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, my blood heated, and the tingling awareness I only got when Robert was around grew. Hot breath on my neck made me jump, but I stayed in my seat holding my breath waiting to see what he would do. It took effort on my part not to turn around and look at him, but I dug deep and remained still.
“Why are you following me around everywhere? What the hell do you want?” He demanded using the voice I’d grown to love.
Hmm, I suppose I did look a little like a stalker, but whatever. I wanted to know this boy and I wasn’t above using everything in my power to make that happen. Craning my neck and turning I saw immediately that there was only an inch between us. He was so close that I could reach out and touch him if I wanted to. But again, I didn’t. Instead I looked into his beautiful blue eyes filled with pain and replied,
“I want to be your friend.”
It was a simple answer, and one I don’t think he was expecting. His body jerked solid and he stared back at me saying nothing. It took him a full minute or two, but when he let what I said sink in he graced me with the most stunning smile I had ever, or would ever see.
“You want to be friends? With me? Why?” There was a hint of amusement in his tone, but the seriousness he was famous for was there too. Like I said, his eyes were expressive, they gave everything away.
“Because you need one.” And that was all it took. That was the first day I ever heard him laugh, really laugh. It wouldn’t be the last and I’d cherish every time he did, but I’d never forget the first time I made his eyes light with something other than pain and suffering.
From that moment on we became inseparable. My brothers didn’t like it at first, but when they got to know him, Rob, as we now knew him, became part of our large, crazy family, and with him came Thomas.
Thomas was quieter, broodier, but in saying that, he was a lot more laid back than Rob outwardly. Thomas preferred to stay quiet and watch from the sidelines, he wasn’t as outgoing as Rob, which wasn’t a bad thing because I’d learned that Rob being extroverted was only another coping mechanism for whatever he was going through. Thomas was sweet, caring, and kind, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out something was going on at home and these two boys were being made to suffer. I didn’t know what it was, but I damn sure intended to find out.
Over the years that followed I fell more in love with Rob than I’d ever thought possible. He may have acted like another big brother toward me for the most part, but that didn’t stop the feelings I’d come to have from growing. What was initially only curiosity and the offer of friendship, quickly grew into an all-encompassing love affair. It was one-sided seeing as I never told him how I felt, but in saying that, he’d have to be blind not to have noticed. And one thing Rob wasn’t was blind. He saw everything. He was the master at seeming uninterested when what he was really doing was listening and watching intently to everything that happened around him.
I figured when we became friends, when he felt accepted as part of the family that he’d open up. That Rob would confide in me and tell me his secrets. I couldn’t have been more wrong. He did just the opposite. He locked down everything. His emotions, his pain, his experiences that had nothing to do with school, baseball, or his friends, he shut it all down and threw away the key. I didn’t understand it and it hurt to imagine him suffering inside when I would have happily given him all the help and support he needed. It hurt so much I could almost physically feel his struggle to contain his demons. Thomas took me aside one day and tried to explain, but all that did was leave me with more questions.
Rob, Thomas, and I were fifteen. It was the summer after we started our sophomore year, the year Thomas went mysteriously missing, and things had gotten even more complicated of late. I was practically wearing my heart on my sleeve when it came to Rob now, and he was pulling further and further away. He was doing everything in his power to put distance between us at the same time as remaining friends. It was a dance I was used to, but that didn’t make it burn any less. Rob had started dating, and when I say dating I mean screwing anything with a pulse. The fact was, Rob didn’t date. He took girls out, spent time with them, but he didn’t date. They were around for a week at most before he gave them the flick and it was after one of his non-dates, where I saw him going at it with a girl in the backseat of a friend’s car that Thomas took me aside to try and ease the heartbreak I was sure was written all over my face.
Pulling me around the side of the house, (we were at a pool party at a friends’ house at the time), Thomas put his hands on my shoulders and stare
d at me. Shaking his head sadly he squeezed my shoulders and placed a soft kiss to the top of my head.
“You’ve gotta stop this, Alysia. He’s not in a good place right now, and he can’t give you what a girl like you needs. I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to give you that.”
It was then I went to defend myself, but Thomas swiftly cut me off before I could say a word.
“No, don’t. Don’t say it’s not true, because as much as you want it to be different it’s not. Rob’s not the guy you’ve made him out to be in your head, babe. He’s got demons you wouldn’t have the first clue about fighting chasing him. He can’t be what you want him to be, and you’ve gotta accept that or you’re going to lose him.”
Searching his face I saw how much it hurt him to break my young heart, but I saw something else too. I saw the pain he felt for his foster brother. I saw the sadness in his eyes when he spoke of what was chasing Rob, and I saw, finally I saw whatever was chasing Rob was chasing him too.
Why I’d never noticed before is beyond me. Probably because I was so caught up in my feelings for Rob, but seeing the haunted look Thomas was wearing I made him a promise. One I’d later prove I was more than capable of keeping.
“Okay, Thomas, I’ll try and let him go.” The intense agony I felt at saying those words burned through me like wildfire, but I held back my tears and squared my shoulders promising myself I wouldn’t cry in front of him. “But you have to promise me something.”
Forged: A Devil's Spawn MC Novel Page 21