by Rider, P. J.
Steel Love
A BBW Motorcycle Club Romance by
P.J. Rider
Copyright © 2015 P.J. Rider.
All rights reserved.
Cover stock image used under license from depositphotos. Image is © fxquadro. Cover design © 2015, P.J. Rider.
All characters appearing on the cover for this work are models, and are not associated with the production of this book, nor do they endorse it or its contents in any way.
Cover fonts used under license. Sail © 2011 LatinoType Limitada. Downcome © Eduardo Recife at misprinted type. Century Gothic © Monotype.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
This is an explicit work of erotic romance, and is intended for adult audiences, only. All characters portrayed are adults.
Prologue
The first few times Reef hit Maggie he cried, and promised it would never happen again. He would be nice for a few months, lavishing her with gifts and attention. It would last just long enough for her to relax and feel comfortable again before his façade would crumble.
Maggie would wonder at his ability to keep that side of himself hidden long enough for her to fall in love and marry him. Reef promised her the world and she was convinced he would deliver. All those places she visited in her mind that her body ached to be. Reef would lie in bed with her at night and describe all the places they would go together. The adventures they would have. He was such a sweet talker, and she believed every red lie that slipped from his honey lips.
Eighteen months into the marriage Maggie made her first attempt to leave after a particularly gruesome fight. She could see the dark shadow start in the corners and make its way across his iris until his eyes were nearly black with unchecked rage. Reef reached out to grab her while she was trying to walk out the door and ripped a good chunk of hair from her head. She watched that rage building as she begged him to understand that she couldn’t stay anymore.
Maggie woke on the floor of the kitchen her left eye swollen shut and lower lip split. When she was able to pull herself off the floor Maggie found her grandmother’s antique armoire lying on its side blocking the back door. She shuffled into the front room and found Reef lying asleep on the threshold of the front door. She was contemplating going out a window when Reef woke with a start as though his internal alarm was set to the sound of Maggie’s thoughts.
When Reef saw Maggie watching him he didn’t speak, but everything she needed to know was there in his eyes. They held a look of death that crouched like a tiger, hiding in the dark, stalking its prey. Maggie quietly turned toward the stairs, made her way up to their room, cleaned the blood from her face, and lay down in the bed too exhausted to think beyond the moment.
The next time she tried to leave, Reef’s anger and control reached an all-time high. Without Maggie’s knowledge he put a tracking device on her car. He found her within two hours. Reef pulled up beside her at the gas station, and dragged Maggie by the hair to his car.
That night he beat Maggie so badly she didn’t wake until the next day. He made her promise to never try leaving again, and had her car towed back to the house where he promptly put it up for sale. He calmly explained that she couldn’t be trusted with transportation right now, but if she was a good girl she might get a car again someday.
After that Maggie played it safe. She squirrelled away change and spare dollars until she had a little over a thousand hidden in a flat cardboard box taped beneath the dresser. It took her three years to get it all together just waiting for the right moment. She nearly blew the whole thing when her Dad called to tell her he had finally gone to the doctor about those pains. Apparently it wasn’t good news.
Reef stood staring at Maggie while she spoke to her father. He could see the dread and love in her face and when she hung up the phone and explained the situation he didn’t speak. He turned to set down his drink and when he turned back his fist was in the air.
That night she didn’t wake up. Maggie supposed he was terrified she would die and escape him forever. Reef called 911 and reported a break in and his wife lying bloody and beaten on the floor. Honey lips. That’s what Reef had. Lies sounded so damn sweet coming from those lips. The police never doubted his story. They barely questioned her beyond wanting to know the description of her attackers.
Reef stood next to the bed while they asked their questions, holding her hand, and stroking a finger across her palm. Maggie could do nothing but shake her head and cry. The police assumed she was too upset to speak about it and mumbled something about coming back later. She couldn’t lie, but couldn’t tell the truth either.
Maggie’s father visited her in the hospital. Sheer luck had him arriving 10 minutes after Reef stepped out to grab some food. Before Reef left he sat beside her for an hour complaining that he was starving. Since Maggie’s accident no one was home to cook for him. That’s how he referred to her hospital stay. Her accident. Apparently he thought it was her fault. Her fault she was in the hospital. Her fault she wasn’t there to cook for him. She wondered at the punishments he would think up when the bill from the hospital arrived.
When her father walked into the room he stopped dead at the sight of her. Maggie took one look at him, pale and twenty pounds lighter, and burst into tears. She told him everything then. She confessed the years of abuse. Reef telling the police she had been attacked by burglars. Her attempts to escape, and his promising to kill her if she ever truly left him. Her father looked terrified, and Maggie worried he would die of a broken heart right there. She explained to him that he needed to leave before Reef came back. It would only make things harder for her if her father were here.
He sat on the edge of her bed holding the same hand Reef had stroked while the police questioned her. He gripped her hand tighter then she’d thought him capable in his current state, looked into her eyes, and made her promise she would leave. He made her promise that she would sneak out of the house as soon as she was home and never look back. Maggie confided to her father about the hidden money and clothes, and that she was waiting for the right moment. Her father’s simple response was, “My darling, if this isn’t the right moment, I don’t know what is.”
Before he left he told Maggie he would pay for an open bus ticket in her name to use whenever she was ready. All she needed to do was call him and let him know she was on her way and he would pick her up. He said her old room was waiting for her whenever she was ready. Maggie cried herself to sleep after he left.
When she woke Reef sat where her father had on the edge of the bed, staring at her. He had the strangest look on his face and Maggie had a fleeting moment of panic that somehow he had found out about her dad being there. Maybe one of the nurses told him? Neither of them spoke. Reef just sat and watched her. In that moment it was clear to Maggie if she didn’t leave soon he would not stop the next time. He would kill her.
Two nights after they returned home from the hospital she baked two small chocolate tortes with 200 mg of Benadryl in one. She lay in the bed, submissive and available, while he fucked her for the last time. When he finished he rolled to the side and immediately passed out. Maggie waited an hour to make sure he was fully asleep before slipping out of bed. Earlier while Reef was in the shower she pulled the money from under the dresser and the gym bag with a week’s worth of clothes from the top shelf of the kitchen pantry. She’d hidden it all under a bush on the side of the house praying to God Reef wouldn’t see it.
When she was sure he was passed out and wouldn’t wake, she snuck out the front door in her nightgown and changed into the clothes
hidden on the side of the house. The late hour led her to assume that everyone in their quiet neighborhood would be asleep, but if someone wasn’t she was sure they were getting quite a show. When she was dressed Maggie left her nighty in the dirt and jogged down the street.
She pulled the pre-paid phone from the bag, dialed the taxi cab number she had memorized, and scheduled a pick up a mile down the road. Reef routinely looked through her cell phone convinced he would find calls or texts from hundreds of men she was screwing while he was at work. Maggie bought the pre-paid phone months before and hid it in the bag with her clothes. The one Reef paid for was left behind.
When the cab arrived at the designated spot the driver took one look at Maggie and asked if he was taking her to the hospital. She told him no, she’d already seen enough of that place for one lifetime, but if he could please take her to the bus station she’d appreciate it. He paused a moment looking her over and then nodded his head in understanding.
Chapter 1
MAGGIE
…Three Months Later
Maggie stood on the porch of her father’s home and stared out at the rain. Her fingers reached up to push at the place where the last of her bruises had finally healed. Touching the spot reminded her of how, as a child, Maggie would poke her tongue into the empty socket of a recently lost tooth. The pain was a distinct and clear reminder of what she’d suffered through. Proof of an experience. Even though her bruises were all faded just touching the places where Reef had hurt her was enough to make the memories come flooding back. She still couldn’t look in the mirror most days without cringing in expectation of seeing a swollen disfigured face.
It was now a full three months since Maggie had walked out of her husband’s home. In her mind it was never their home, always his home. It was three months since she’d gotten the call from her father that he was dying, two weeks since he had taken his last breath, and seventy-two hours since she watched his casket lower into the ground.
Maggie never was one to put much energy into the dead. Once a person is gone they’re gone. It isn’t their body that you mourn. When Maggie died she would have them take her out to sea, weigh her down, and toss her over. Let the fish eat her remains. Let her bones become a home for plankton and coral. Maggie didn’t want a grave where people would feel obligated to visit and cry over her.
Maggie wondered if this lack of emotion regarding the deceased was left over trauma from losing her mother when she was ten. She remembered crying for weeks after her mother’s funeral. Her father would come into her room at night, hold her hand, smooth her hair away from her face, and sing old Irish lullabies until she finally fell asleep dehydrated and exhausted from grief. In the mornings she would wake up with a headache.
Maggie supposed one could only go so many mornings with a migraine at that age before you started to equate the bone rattling misery and tears with this intense physical pain. Maybe that had been the catalyst to help her move past her emotional pain. Maybe it had also been what caused her to disconnect from death in general. She had no desire to ever feel that way again.
Maggie felt her phone vibrate in her pocket for what must have been the hundredth time that day. Her voice-mail had long ago reached its capacity with unchecked messages, all from the same number. No one could call her husband lazy in pursuit of his goals. When he wanted something he was relentless. How many messages did it take to fill a voicemail anyway?
Maggie breathed in deeply as she reached into her pocket and blindly pushed the button to ignore the call. She’d only answered his call once since leaving his house. The tone in his voice more than his words was enough to remind her why Maggie could never go back. His words were simple, “Come Home.” And her answer, along with the act of disconnecting the call, was enough to seal her fate, “No.”
How the hell had he gotten her number anyway? She thought those prepaid throwaway phones were untraceable. She must have made a mistake. She couldn’t remember if she’d paid for it with cash or her debit card. She seriously hoped she wouldn’t be so stupid as to pay with her card, but at the time she had been so lost and afraid who knows what she really did. Either way Reef had gotten a hold of the number. It had taken a few weeks, but he did eventually find it and call her. And he hadn’t stopped calling since. She considered getting a new phone, but it almost felt like a bit of a warning system. If the calls ever stopped she would be really worried.
The night Maggie left felt like taking history's worst walk of shame. Sneaking through the dark house heart pounding eyes wide. She left with a single bag slung over her shoulder, filled with a few articles of clothing and small amount of money. That along with her ID and cell phone was all Maggie could take.
The five-hour bus ride to the town she grew up in was both the best and worst experience of her life. Constantly watching out the window. So sure that any minute she would see that dark grey coupe pulling up alongside the bus. But the coupe never showed and every mile that passed with no sign of that car was another year of weight that lifted off her shoulders. A culmination of five years of marriage flayed from her bones left her feeling naked and free.
Standing on her parent’s front porch now Maggie remembered that weightless feeling as she stepped off the bus and onto the streets of her hometown. The town that fostered, what she’d always believed to be, a strong independent feminist woman. A woman she didn’t recognize in the mirror these days. But that wouldn’t last forever. Soon Maggie would see her again, and walking away from Reef that night was the start of her transformation back. Back to the girl who would have rather slit her own throat then allow a man to lay a hand on her in anything but love and reverence.
Her eyes scanned the street out front for the third time. She developed the habit in the last three months of keeping watch. She hadn’t slept for nearly forty-eight hours when she first arrived. Maggie would sit either at the window in her old room on the second floor with her father sleeping down the hall, on the couch in the front parlor, or here on the porch in one of the old rocking chairs. She would sit for hours at a time, her eyes moving back and forth, seeking out that four-door coupe with the blond hair in the driver’s seat.
She stood there scanning the street out front when she noticed the motorcycle three houses down. She hadn’t spotted it before, maybe a parked car had blocked it, but now Maggie began to realize that not only was there a motorcycle parked in front of Mr. Jacob’s house but there was a man sitting on the bike as well.
A bulky figure hunched over, wearing black leather, with a shaggy crop of dark hair, and shadowed eyes above a beard that looked to be the product of a few months growth. His body seemed tight as a spring, and he held himself like he was flexing the muscles of his back. His arms stretched out ahead of him, hands gripping the handlebars like a lifeline.
Maggie contemplated the strangeness of a person sitting out in the rain when she realized that the figure on the bike was actually watching her. A chill ran down her spine as their eyes locked.
She wasn’t sure how much time passed with them staring at each other but she jumped when the sound of the bike starting echoed through the neighborhood bouncing off houses and slamming into her ears. The bike moved down the street heading toward her parent’s home. The rider watched her as he sped past until finally turning a corner and moving out of site.
Shit… Had Reef hired someone to spy on her? Was that it? Never in a million years would Maggie believe Reef would bring anyone else into this. He wouldn’t want anyone to know he couldn’t keep control of her. Wouldn’t want anyone to believe they didn’t exist in a perfect bubble where he was the man of the hour and Maggie was his trophy wife draped beautifully over his arm, ever ready, ever willing, ever at attention for the slightest direction from him.
Maggie took one last look down the street in the direction the motorcycle had gone, the goose flesh of her arms slowly dissipating. Everything would be ok. Maggie had to keep repeating it in her mind. Mantras to calm her nerves a
nd straighten her spine; everything would be ok, and no one would ever hurt her again.
She walked into the house rubbing her arms after standing on the cold wet windy porch and took note of the leaves that had snuck through the door before she could shut them out. She purposefully left the wet leaves at the threshold of the parlor as she moved toward the back of the house. Part of her rehabilitation was leaving a mess for a while before cleaning it up. It wasn’t that she wanted to live in a dirty house. She just enjoyed the freedom of not giving a damn. How long had she lived in fear of a smudge that could summon a slap in the blink of an eye?
Maggie moved into the kitchen inhaling the sense memory of her mother standing at the island whisking something sweet in a bowl. Her mother had been a big woman with thick muscled hips and thighs, a soft belly, and full breasts. Maggie got her pale skin and dark curly corkscrew hair from her father’s Irish roots, but her body came from mom. She was slightly taller and her breasts were definitely bigger than her mother’s had been but all in all her body was a spitting image of mom’s.
The kitchen was dressed in cream and pale greens. The 1950’s retro fridge, stove, and oven were a buttery yellow color. Maggie’s mother, Anna Quirke, had always loved vintage furniture and the kitchen remake had been her father’s anniversary present to her the year before she passed. Anna had been a fabulous cook, but the only time she baked was when she was sad or stressed out. Once Maggie figured that out it became less and less of a happy treat and more of a bad omen.
As Maggie got older her mother’s baking habits waned. She supposed it had to do with her dad taking the job at the local library when she was 5. She was never exactly clear about what it was he’d done before he started work at the library but it had kept him away from home often and kept her mother in a constant state of baking frenzy. Thankfully her dad figured it out and came home.