So, I’d had to walk away from my mom, my dad, my brother and sisters, cousins, friends, girlfriend… everything. And, honestly, my family was more than happy to send me away. I’d drawn way too much attention to our little off-the-grid sect.
The events leading up to my having to move, and then the move itself, hardened me, and the only person I’ve really let myself care about since is Angelica, and when I lost her, when I no longer had a reason to see her every day, or even every week, another piece of me broke inside. I went from seeing her every day, sometimes hours a day if we were workin’ on her car, to getting a glimpse of her now and then.
I’d grown close to my MC brothers, of course, but that was different. It was about loyalty and brotherhood, knowing we had each other’s backs. It wasn’t a substitute for a close friendship with someone who’d burrowed beneath your skin until you could smell her even when she wasn’t around.
I pulled my bike into the motel parking lot and went inside, and my stomach turned over as I smelled what Slick had meant by wrong.
The girl was wolf, but she’d been beaten down until she was more dog than wolf. She smelled so wrong my stomach turned.
“I’m Bash,” I told her. “Follow me to my office. Do you want something to drink?”
She shook her head instead of answering, her eyes turned down and away, darting all over the place, terrified she’d make eye contact with someone.
I sat on the sofa in my office, and waved towards a chair for her to sit in. I stuck my legs out, leaned back, and sprawled. The girl was terrified, and I had no idea how to make her at ease, so I tried to look as relaxed as I could.
I don’t think it worked.
“You got a name, doll?”
It took her three tries to speak, but she finally managed to get out, “Teresa.”
“You running from someone, Teresa?”
“I need a job, Mister Bash, Sir. I haven’t been in town long, but I know what this place is, know what you are. I’m not good at much, and can’t get a job where I’ll show up on the grid, anyway. Please, Mister Bash, I’ll work hard.”
“You whored before?”
“Not like this, Sir.”
“Date of birth?”
The date she rattled off put her a few months shy of nineteen. We’d need to verify age and identity at some point, but I didn’t smell deceit and she hadn’t had to think before answering.
She was staring at my feet and I could smell her terror, her desire to roll over and show me her belly. I softened my voice and said, “There are some things I need to know, and if you can’t tell me, I can’t help you. I need to you take a deep breath and find some strength, Teresa. First, I need your real first name. I’ll keep calling you Teresa, and will only share your name with the club president and VP, but I gotta know.”
“Serenity.”
“Okay, Teresa. Very good. Next, are you Pack?”
She nodded, and I asked, “Did you take the oath as an adult, take on the full binding, or were you only brought in as a child?”
“Full binding, but I made a deal with a vampire to help me break it. The link’s still there, but it’s weak, and I’m over a thousand miles from home, which the vampire stressed over and over was important.”
“How long were you with the vampire?”
“Three months.”
“He still have a claim?”
She shook her head. “No, he said after three months he’d break it, and he did.”
And he’d likely fucked her multiple times a day, and drunk her nearly dry.
“Okay, here’s the deal. Rolling Thunder isn’t a Pack. We’re a bunch of lone wolves. We’re friendly with the local Pack, however, and we don’t do anything to rock the boat. I’ll have to let the local Alpha know about you, if we hire you.”
She jerked and shook her head, and the room was suddenly awash in the stench of her terror. It was all I could do to keep from gagging.
“Randall’s good people, and he’s Alpha of several states, not just the local Chattanooga Pack. He treats his people good.”
“I need a job, Mister Bash. Please.”
I sighed, and tried to keep my voice gentle as I told her, “You can’t just roll on your back and show your cunt, Teresa. Good whores have to be entertainers, they have to quickly figure out if the john wants to lay there and let the girl do all the work, or whether he wants to be the one on top, pounding away. You have to be aggressive with some johns, submissive with others. I have a few primarily submissive girls, but none as much as you, and I worry the customers would eat you up and spit you out.”
She grew smaller as I talked, and I asked, “Do you know what a glory hole is?”
She shook her head, and I explained, “It’s a thin wall with a hole in it, the right height for a cock to fit through. A girl is on the other side and she blows the guy. They never see each other, never talk.”
By all rights, I should’ve ordered her to blow me then, before I offered her the job, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“I can start you there, talk about moving you up to more later. I won’t send you to the lab for bloodwork, since you’re a wolf, but if anyone ever asks, you had bloodwork done before we hired you. We’ll fabricate it for your file, so don’t worry about getting caught in a lie.”
She gave a small nod and I asked, “Where are you staying?”
“Under a bridge for now, until I can find a job.”
“We have a few rooms that didn’t get renovated. I’ll get you a key card for one, and you can stay there tonight. We’ll get you started working tomorrow night. Slick will explain the rest.”
The two rooms still in their original condition had seventies furniture and bedspreads, ugly avocado green carpet, and cheesy pictures on the wall. When LEO came trying to bust us, we rented them a hideous hotel room for the night. If a john wanted a girl, he had to tell us exactly what he was payin’ for — pussy, ass, mouth, kink, or whatever combination he wanted. LEO couldn’t do that, and so far we’d skated above all the charges they’d thrown at us. However, if she’d been living on the streets, she’d appreciate having a roof, bed, shower, and toilet.
She followed me out, I gave her the keycard, let Slick know she’d work the glory hole the next night, and I retreated to my office. Slick’s here because he has the whole nurturing thing down pat. He grew up with lots of sisters. He knows how to calm females. I know how to either fuck ’em or scare ’em, and neither skill was gonna be any help with this one.
I started to call Randall, but it was late and it could wait until tomorrow. Besides, I needed to talk to Duke before I called his brother.
With a sigh, I texted Duke.
Not an emergency, got an issue I need to talk to you about. I can find you now, or talk to you at the compound in the morning. Your call, but we’ll probably need to pull your brother in.
I was getting on my bike when my phone buzzed in my pocket.
I’m at Brain’s house. If you can get here in an hour, stop by.
I revved the engine on my bike and took off toward Brain and Harmony’s horse farm.
The original driveway had taken you by the barn first, and then the house. It was still there, as that’s how she brought in her students, and the people who boarded their horse. However, with so many bikers — and wolves — coming to the house, Brain had put in a second driveway going straight to the house and staying far from the barns. And, as for the barns, there were now two, and the horses were segregated into “freaked out by wolves in human skin” and “wolves can feed us apples, too.”
I had no idea how a computer hacker had turned into someone who enjoyed being outside with horses all day, but there was no doubt Harmony was thriving in her new business.
Brain let me in the front door, and Harmony stood to give me a hug, asking, “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, just need to make the guys aware of a few things. You get your new horse in okay?”
“He’s magnificent.” She
pulled back from the hug, her eyes dancing. She didn’t have her contact in to hide her multi-colored eye, and my heart warmed as I realized I was one of the few people who got to see her as she was. It hadn’t always been that way.
“He’s huge, and will probably eat me out of house and home, but he wasn’t afraid of Brain, even at first. I mean, he was a little cautious, but I got the feeling he’d just trample his ass if Brain got out of line.”
She grinned at Brain, who told me, “He let me ride him after only about ten minutes of talking to him. Pretty sure he’s gonna be my horse, and I’m gonna have to work out a deal with my Buttercup to give him to me.”
Duke stood and walked to the front door, telling Gen, “Got some business to talk about. We’ll be outside a little while. If you want to get a little more tipsy while I’m gone, feel free.”
We walked out towards the woods, and when we were far enough from the house the women couldn’t hear, Duke asked, “The guy come back to get his driver’s license?”
I nodded. “Yeah, situation’s cleared up, and I got word he told the lab tech he’d taken a fall down his apparently steep driveway, so he’s staying quiet about the beat down.” I hadn’t doubted he would, but I knew Duke would appreciate the follow up.
“So what’s up?” asked Brain as we stopped just inside the woods.
I told them about the she-wolf, and ended my explanation with, “She’s broken. Her human spirit and her wolf soul. Wouldn’t be surprised if she hasn’t been abused and hurt her whole life. I couldn’t even bring myself to audition her with a blowjob — my wolf wanted to strike out and put her out of her misery.”
“What time’s she supposed to be back tomorrow night?”
Damn, I wished I didn’t have to admit to the soft spot in my heart. “I gave her a room key for one of the rooms we haven’t remodeled.”
Duke lifted an eyebrow at me, considering, but then his eyes went hard, cold. “The way I see it, we have four options. We bring her to Randall’s attention and hope he swoops in and gets her out of our hair, we see if Abbott is interested in adding to his flock, we put her with Bran since he’s got a thing for the formerly abused, or we take her on ourselves and see if we can turn her into a respectable whore.”
“Politically,” said Brain, “we should give Randall first option. Financially, we’ll get the most out of her with Bran’s finder fee because it sounds like she’ll be a high maintenance employee.”
“I want to meet her before we make a decision,” Duke said. He looked to me, his eyes calculating. “Gen and I are staying here tonight, instead of bunking at the compound. We’ll leave Brain here to keep them safe, and you and I’ll go pay your girl a visit.”
“She isn’t my girl. My wolf is disgusted by her.”
“And yet, she’s gonna give you a blowjob tonight, so we can see if she has promise.”
Duke had been against the MC getting into the whoring business. I’d been for it, as had some of my brothers, and he’d let us start it out experimentally, and then had put the whole thing on my shoulders. He stayed out of it, usually, unless we needed him for muscle. And, he disagreed with my policy of auditioning the girls.
And yet, he saw that I’d wussed out by not auditioning this one, and was going to insist on it. He was right, so I couldn’t argue the point. Still kinda pissed me off, though.
He was halfway back to the house when I finally pulled my thoughts together enough to say, “Duke, brother. What gives? Talk to me.”
He looked at Brain, back to me, and then turned back towards the house.
“He may change his mind when he meets her,” Brain explained, “but he’s gonna want a claim on her before he brings his brother in. Your scent in her because you make her swallow will do the job.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Let him help you keep your wolf from hurting her. Stay in your human head, and remember she came to us and made herself a club asset. If we take her on and her old pack finds her — if Randall doesn’t know about it up front then he’ll have to take her old Alpha’s side. If he’s read in from the beginning and she’s truly been abused, he’ll be on our side.”
Because if we made her ours, we’d have to protect her from her old Alpha if he showed up, and that would be an epic clusterfuck. Rolling Thunder tried hard to stay out of Pack politics, and I was beginning to think handing her off to Bran and collecting his substantial finder’s fee might be our best option.
I listened, and couldn’t hear voices from inside the house, so I turned to Brain and told him, “I took Angelica to Savage Gulf, ran with her, stayed in wolf form until morning. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but she wanted to head too close to a trail, and I was trying to head her in another direction, and we got into a scuffle that ended in sex.”
He stared at me, saying nothing, and I clarified. “In wolf form. Changed.”
“Ya’ll talk about it?” Brain was asking questions, gathering data before he decided on his reaction.
“She said if we didn’t talk about it we could pretend it didn’t happen.”
“You gonna let her get away with that?”
I shook my head. “No, and I let her know as much. She asked for some time to figure out how she feels about it.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“No idea.”
“You want her? Gonna claim her? Cause if you start something you’ll have to deal with Bud. Coming on the heels of her fucking the DA, he might just be happy she’s looking to the family, but if you end it with her? He might end you.”
Brain wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t already considered. Bottom line, though, was I wasn’t interested in a relationship.
“I’m happy for you and Duke, but I’d be miserable with one woman the rest of my life, and Angelica isn’t the type of woman you cheat on and live to tell the tale.”
He chuckled. “Got that right. Glad you told me. You gonna tell anyone else?”
I nodded. “Dawg knows. Not planning on takin’ it beyond the two of you, though.”
He lifted his chin and looked toward the house, then back to me. “Another issue you need a heads up on. Gonna discuss it in church next week. When you belted Kat, I noted one of the new human prospects was sick to his stomach over it. Not pissed, just disgusted and nauseated. I did a background on him before we brought him in as prospect, but I dug deeper after his reaction. Connection didn’t show up before because the last names are different and there’s no legal ties I can find — parents were never married and there was never a child support order — but he’s the son of one of the men who gang raped Julie.”
We’d come close to killing those men, we’d beat them so bad.
“So, why’s he with us? And who is it?”
Brain shook his head. “Sullivan, and I don’t know. He’s either wantin’ payback, or he thought we were the good guys and wanted to join us. If that’s the case, Kat’s punishment may have changed his mind. Either way, need to be extra careful around him until we figure it out.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Bash
I expected Duke to just open the door with his master keycard and walk in, but he knocked on the door and introduced himself.
She just stared at us, mute, and I said, “Doll, this is where you invite us in, so we can talk.”
She took a quick sidestep, and I smelled her fear and anxiety, but I followed Duke in as if I didn’t. She’d come to us, she needed money, she was in trouble, and help doesn’t come free.
To her credit, she was offering to work. She wasn’t asking for handouts, and she’d been appreciative of the room. Not appreciative enough to blow me without my having to ask, but she was so submissive I wasn’t sure she was capable of taking the initiative. We could actually make use of that because some johns wanted her type — terrified and super submissive. However, we’d have to keep a super close eye on her to keep her safe, and it might be more trouble than it was worth. The glory holes, though, could work for her.
Duke sat in the ugly assed seventies chair and said, “Take your clothes off, girl. Need to inspect the merchandise.”
The stench of terror filled the room and he said, “Not the sexiest smell in the world.” He leaned forward and his eyes softened a little. “I’m married, and I don’t screw around. You want to work for us, we need to know what you’re offering. Bash usually handles interviews and auditions, but since you come from a Pack, he got me involved before he did anything.”
The last part wasn’t entirely true, but true enough to explain why he was here. She looked at me, hurt in her eyes. “This why you gave me the room?”
I shook my head. “Wanted you off the streets. Had no idea Duke would want to handle this tonight. Do as he says, doll. We don’t intend to hurt you.”
She looked at me a few seconds and I smelled some of her fear leave.
I chuckled and told her, “I have this personal problem. I scare people, even when I don’t mean to. Most of the time, I could give a rat’s ass, but times like this, when I don’t want to scare you, it’s a pain in the ass. So, I gotta ask, what did I just say right? You aren’t as scared.”
“You didn’t promise not to hurt me. You just said you didn’t intend to. I’ve been lied to a lot, by people who meant it when they said they wouldn’t hurt me, but changed their mind ten minutes later and…” She trailed off, looked down, and answered my original question. “By not making the empty promise saying you won’t hurt me, but instead saying it isn’t your intention, you showed me you’re different.”
I grinned. “So, not likely to help me keep from scaring other people. You need help getting your clothes off?”
She shook her head and pulled her tee over her head, then took her tank top off, showing a sports bra under it. She pushed her jeans off her hips without unbuttoning or unzipping them, and I realized this likely meant she’d lost a lot of weight since running away from her Pack.
She stood before us in black panties and a grey sports bra, her muscles and bones presenting sharp edges in her malnourished state.
Bash, Volume I (Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Club Book 3) Page 14