OWNED: Satan’s Kin MC

by Lust, April

  I can barely breathe and all I can think about is going home to Natalia. Maybe we’ll die together and meet in the underworld. At long last, her demon makeup will suit her. Maybe I’ll be incarnated as the ferryman that transports souls from the living world to the dead. Even though it sounds like fun, I know I can’t die tonight. There’s no way I’ll be able to protect her from Abram if I’m six feet under, not to mention that I don’t even know what the others will do to her. I told them to protect her at all costs, but she’s still got the rest of her life to live out. She can’t just stay cooped up in the warehouse for the rest of her life.

  I’m so focused on my fear that I can barely stand. My arms and legs are made of jelly, and my back is sore from the blow. I’m about to black out, I can feel it, and right before I do, a bullet clips me in the side, sending me down again.

  The next few minutes are a mixture of shouting, elbowing, and banging. I have no idea what’s going on. All I know is that my sides are splitting with pain. I want to tell the others to call an ambulance, but I can barely get the words out.

  “You’re going to be fine buddy,” I hear Doc saying in my ear.

  I nod and close my eyes, falling into a strange dream in which Natalia and I are dancing together on the stage. She’s a lot more talented than I am, and continues to lift her legs up at ninety-degree angles. The stage we’re on is made entirely out of bricks. Natalia doesn’t seem to mind how hard it feels on her feet, but it prevents me from moving around properly. In the dream, I’m a doll with a large spiral sticking out of my side. It needs to be twisted over and over again just to get me moving. But every time Natalia touches it, my body explodes in pain. I want to be there for her, to catch her when she dips low, but my strange ragdoll body prevents it.

  A few seconds later, one of my men shakes me awake. “Boss,” he grunts in my ear. “We’re home. We got you, man. You’re gonna be fine.”

  “How the hell did we get here?” I mumble. It hurts too much to open my eyes. I just have to trust that my guys have me now, and that I’m safe.

  “We brought you home on the bike,” Doc says in a quiet voice. I can tell the situation’s bad by the way he’s talking. Doc’s almost never this soft-spoken. “You were beaten up pretty bad back there. Abram’s gonna pay for what he did.”

  “No one died, right?” I’m almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “No one died. We’re all here in once piece.”

  “Where’s Natalia? I need Natalia.”

  “Uh, boss? You feelin’ okay?” A second later I feel Doc’s hand on my forehead.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. “I just…” I trailed off, not wanting to tell them the truth. “I need her to fix me up. She’ll know what to do.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Doc said. “We’ll bring you to her room.”

  The others help me to my feet and they drag me towards the bathroom so the dancer can sew me up. I’m not sure she even knows anything about sutures, but I have to at least try.

  Chapter 7 Natalia

  The first thing I hear when I wake up is the sound of motorcycles roaring outside. Metal slams against metal.

  I wince, rubbing my eyes as I struggle to sit up in bed. It’s dark outside, and I can see through the small window in my room that the sky is the color of slate that tells me it’s snowing. I realize I’m still wearing Beast’s clothes, and there’s something comforting about that, almost like he’s watching over me. I would never admit that to him or anyone else for that matter.

  The sound of rushed footsteps strikes fear in my heart. It’s probably just Beast and his boys, but didn’t he say this was dangerous? Didn’t he warn me about the dangers lurking outside of the warehouse?

  I climb out bed before walking to the door and pulling it open. “Oh my God,” I said softly. “What the hell is that?”

  One of Beast’s men, Doc, is standing there with his fingers wrapped around Beast’s brawny arm. “Thank fuck you’re awake,” Doc mutters. He gestures down towards Beast. “We’ve really gotta do something about him. He’s bad – fading in and out the whole goddamned way home.”

  “Is he dying?” I say in shock. There is so much blood.

  “No, no,” he repeats. “He was grazed by a bullet. He should be fine, but he needs to be patched up.”

  Before I can ask Doc what to do, he disappear.

  Beast blinks. “Natalia…” The sound is barely a whisper, barely above a grunt.

  As I drag Beast across the floor of my room, blood smears on the floor behind us. His face is covered in bruises and there’s a wound gushing blood in his side.

  “Natalia…”

  I cringe at the sound of his voice; it is so weak and fragile. “I’m here,” I say quickly. “I’m here, and you’re going to be just fine, Beast. What happened? You should really go to a hospital,” I add, desperate to fill the blank silence of my room with lively chatter.

  “No hospitals,” Beast croaks. “It’s a gun wound…the hospital needs to contact the police for gun wounds.” His eyelids flutter closed and I wince. A large, ugly bruise is spreading across his cheek, and I know he’s going to look like hell in the morning. If he makes it.

  I shake my head. “You’re an idiot,” I say softly. “There’s only so much I can do here, you know. What would you if something really bad had happens, huh?”

  Beast doesn’t answer. I take a deep breath, then storm out of my room and down the hall. The blood was pounding in my ears as I pushed my way into Beast’s room and grab the brown bottle of peroxide along with a few wads of toilet paper.

  When I get back to the room, I dump my “supplies” on the bed and glance over at Beast. He’d woken up since I’d left, but at the sight of me, his lids flicker closed once more. “We need to get you cleaned up,” I say, pointing towards his wound. “Can’t have that open and festering!” Trying to keep my voice cheerful is really fucking difficult – like dancing Coppelia on a broken toe. But I know I can’t let Beast know how worried I am about him.

  “You’re gonna need more than that,” Beast mutters. “Probably a needle and thread, too.”

  I stare at him. “You’re joking,” I said warily.

  Beast shakes his head. “It’s pretty deep,” he says with a hint of a smirk.

  “Oh my God, Beast!” I shriek. Turning around, I run back towards the bathroom. Beast calls something out after me, but I don’t hear him. All I can think about is getting the materials to him as quickly as possible. Digging through the cabinet a second time, I finally find a small plastic first aid kit with ointment, gauze, and little bandages.

  The other room is silent. The only sound I can hear is my own heartbeat and the sound of plastic rattling against plastic. My hands are shaking uncontrollably. I’ve never had a problem with blood, but this is different. This is Beast. He’s my captor, the man who pressed a gun to my back and kept me a prisoner here. Why should I help him? I’ve always been compassionate, though I fear it will be my downfall.

  I hear a scraping noise coming from the door frame. Turning around I see Beast is slumped on the ground, his hand covered entirely in bright red.

  “You really shouldn’t be moving so much,” I say. “How did you get over here?”

  “Crawled,” he says weakly.

  “All right, well can you manage to sit on the edge of the tub? It will be easier for me to work with your wound in the light. And tell me what happened, so I know you’re conscious.”

  Beast smirks. I can tell he isn’t going to spill the details – he’s too busy wasting his energy, trying to look like a tough guy. When Beast actually opens his mouth, I’m shocked. He proceeds to tell me that when they got to the bar, they were jumped. It was a setup—they’d heard through the grapevine that the bar was having a deal on drinks but it had been a rumor started by Abram’s men. Though no one was killed, a bunch of them were hurt pretty badly. Beast was punched in the face and a few times in the chest but the real damage was to his stomach. He’d been grazed by a bullet and nee
ded some stitches; it didn’t help that the fall had bruised his ribs and tore open his old stomach wound. He won’t be able to do any more fighting in this condition, unless he wants to die.

  Throughout this whole explanation, the only thing I can think about was the fact that I have to be the one to sew him up. Of course he kidnaps himself a girl, gaining an amateur nurse in the process. I’ve gotten quite good with a needle and thread over the years. Each time my parents purchased a new pair of toe shoes I needed to rip out the bottoms to sew them back together. Every pair of pale pink shoes I purchased had to go through this process. I’ve also had to sew up my own wounds before.

  The needle and thread I’m using are actual sutures that I’ve used on my heels on multiple occasions. When I first started ballet, my feet were torn to ribbons from all the hard work. My parents helped me out the first few times, but after a while they seemed to stop caring. My mother told me pain was necessary, and if I wanted to be a beautiful ballerina, I would need to suffer through the wounds. She was right, in a sense. I suffered through it and came out the other end a star. Only to find myself kidnapped and tending to the wounds of a criminal.

  If there’s anyone to do the job, it’s me. The only question is: do I want to take this leap? Can I actually make myself go through with this?

  “Where did it hit you?” I can’t look at Beast, can’t bear to watch his lips begin to form the answer. My hands are shaking as I reach over and gently probe the wounded flesh of Beast’s muscular body.

  He slowly takes his hand away from his stomach, revealing a darkened patch of fabric. I can feel his eyes boring into the top of my head but I can’t look at him. Not when we’re so close. The fabric is soaked and sticking to his skin. There is a lot of blood. I peel it away from his body, using nail scissors to cut off a square near his wound. The second his skin is exposed I see tanned abs and tattoos wrapping around his sides. I have to sit on my free hand, so I don’t reach out and touch him in a way a nurse would not touch a patient.

  The bullet only grazed him, leaving a fairly shallow wound. It’s a deep cut, though, and needs to be patched up accordingly. Each time he moves he’s going to open the wound unless he’s careful.

  “This is going to hurt,” I say quietly as I clean the wound with hydrogen peroxide.

  He doesn’t make a sound. But I see him bite the inside of his cheek to stifle any sounds. Through gritted teeth, I start sewing up the bullet wound. Beast doesn’t flinch as the needle pierces his skin, but he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. I move quickly to try to minimize his pain, but he doesn’t move or give any sign that it hurts.

  “I’m just about finished,” I say as I tie the final knot.

  Beast finally opens his eyes and turns to me. His gaze is dark and brooding. He looks at me like I’ve never been looked at before. I desperately want to lean in and kiss him, to run my fingers along the lines of his jaw. The air around me becomes hazy and thick with passion. Outside, it’s sleeting beads of ice that rattle against the windows of the warehouse. I’m daydreaming about flying down the streets of Manhattan with the neon lights reflecting off our backs. I’ll be his partner in crime, a woman he can come home to, someone he can count on. Suddenly I’m forgetting about the fact that I’m supposed to be a prima ballerina. I no longer care about my future unless Beast is in it.

  Everything about this man makes me feel like I’m under water.

  I’m dabbing at his body with gauze, but I’m staring in his eyes. My lips part ever so slightly and this must be a sign, for he leans in close, pausing right before me. We stare at each other for only a few seconds, but it feels like years pass by. I notice the cut on his nose is healing, but his left cheek is swollen and pink. Tomorrow it will be a yellow and purple bruise the color of a graffiti eggplant. It wouldn’t matter if his whole body was covered in scrapes and bruises, I’d still think he was the most attractive man. As I’m getting lost in his eyes, I forget that we’re about to kiss, and when our lips finally meet, my breath is taken away.

  He tastes sweet, a mixture of alcohol and vanilla-flavored cigars. I drop the safety scissors and sutures onto the floor, climbing onto his lap and straddling him. He groans, either out of pain or pleasure—maybe both. He wraps his arms around my waist protectively, rubbing up and down with his hands. We’re kissing and touching, and I can feel he’s become hard beneath my legs.

  There’s a soft knocking at the door; three raps and a pause before Doc announces his presence. “You folks okay in there? He hasn’t bled to death, has he?” he chuckled, but I can hear the concern in Doc’s voice, which makes me wonder just how often Beast got himself hurt. While he’d tried to pass it off as a normal thing, right now I have a feeling something awful must have happened back at that bar.

  “We’re fine, Doc,” Beast manages to say, but winces as he shifts under me. He looks at me, daring me to contradict him.

  I look at him and smirk. To my surprise, he returns the expression.

  I lean close to Beast’s body pressing my breasts into his chest and rubbing my pelvis into his erection. “I still hate you,” I whisper into his ear.

  Beast chuckles, tickling my skin with his warm breath. “You’re a bad liar, Natalia.”

  I don’t know what to say. Yeah, he’s right. I’m a bad liar. But right now, I’m too hypnotized to move.

  “There’s someone after you,” Beast says with his eyes to the ground.

  “What?” I frown. Beast’s words were so quiet that I wasn’t even sure if I’d heard him correctly.

  “I said there’s someone after you. His name’s Abram. He’s an infamous crime boss, and he knows who you are and what you do for a living. I kidnapped you to keep you safe.”

  “Oh, my God. Why? Why is he after me?”

  “I’m not sure,” he says as he bites his lower lip and looks away from me. He’s got information he’s keeping from me, but I’m not sure if I want to know.

  I can feel my body start to shake as I process what Beast’s just told me. “Are they trying to kill me?”

  After what feels like an hour, he shakes his head. “No,” Beast said softly. “Maybe not kill you, at least not on purpose. But this isn’t the kind of guy you want hanging around, either. Bad things happen to those close to him”

  “Is that why I’m here?” A lightbulb goes off in my head. “This is the guy you’re trying to lure? This is why you’re using me as bait?”

  “Yes, But I’m not going to let him hurt you. You have to trust me. Do you?”

  I shook my head. The truth was, I didn’t trust Beast at all. Part of me wanted to – the same part of me that had wanted to rip his clothes off. But the other part of me remembers the life I had before, the life as the star ballerina of New York City. And Beast took that away from me the moment he kidnapped me on the street.

  Beast sighs. He stands up and walks weakly over to the door with his hand gripping his side. Glancing back over his shoulder, he says, “Thanks for this. I doubt any of the guys could’ve done a better job.” He points to his sutured wound.

  And just like that I’m watching him walk away from me again. What is it going to take to get him to stay for just a little while longer?

  The sleet has turned to snow, and it’s collecting in thick pillows outside the window. From my vantage point in the doorway, I see him striding across the great room towards the dining room. A few of his men are in there talking about plans and trying to figure out how to capture the crime boss. I’ve never been the subject of a situation like this before. It feels like I was plucked out of my old life only to be tossed into a world of rough men, drugs, and lies.

  After Beast leaves, I’m restless. I’m more than halfway through Moby Dick , which I’m in no mood for, and picking up Jane Austen just doesn’t seem as appealing as she was in high school. I want to sneer at her portrait on the back of the cheap paperback and remind her she doesn’t know anything about men and the way modern relationships work. I can’t help snorting, thinking ab
out how Lizzie Bennett would react to Mr. Darcy kidnapping her and bringing her to a dingy warehouse. Somehow, I’m willing to bet she wouldn’t be patching up his wounds with a smile.

  I don’t feel like staying in my room. Anything has to be better, even going out in front of the other bikers and sitting down for a while on one of those awful couches. Squaring my shoulders back, I start walking down the hall and into the living room.

  “Whoops, you’ve got company,” one of the guys says.

  “Nice,” I said sarcastically, turning on my heel.

  Beast’s leaning up against the wall with a smirk on his face. He looks completely normal like he’s already forgotten about our kiss.