I was running inside, throwing my tiny little kid body on my bed and giggling. But then someone else entered, one of the boys that was ripping off my sister’s clothes in the other room, my brother. He closed the door behind him as he began to unbuckle his belt buckle.
I blinked again, and the memory flashed.
It was pitch black, and I was under the covers, but I wasn’t alone. He had come to my bed again, and he wouldn’t stop touching me. The bedroom door opened, the light from the hallway cracking through the darkness. My mother stood there in the doorway, her silhouette contrasted against the light, reminding me of the picture of Jesus she had over the dining room table. She walked over to me. To us. She went to pull the covers up over my body, but she stopped. She pulled my white cotton panties back up. Kissed us both goodnight. And left me there. Without a word. I watched her walk out of the room.
I shook my head, bewildered.
“I was only six years old, he was sixteen…” I murmured, feeling my blood turn cold with disgust.
“I have to get out of here,” I said to the empty room. I turned to run away, quickly walking back down the short hallway, away from the memories. The woman was still talking, the shrill twang of her voice cutting right through me.
As I rounded the corner, I saw him.
This was my brother. One of them.
But he wasn’t a boy anymore. He was a man now.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
His voice was smeared with hatred, the words slithering out of his mouth. He was clearly not happy to see me.
I began backing out of the house, running into a table and knocking it over, its contents spilling to the floor around my feet.
“This was a mistake,” I mumbled, stumbling backwards, as the woman stood between us, yelling at the man to shut up. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“Damn right, you shouldn’t have come, you fucking bitch! I spent ten years behind bars because of your lies!”
“Shut up!” the woman yelled again, beginning to cry.
“You shut up!” he said to her, towering menacingly over her. My eyes darted from one to the other, and saw everything.
It was pathetic. Sad. All these years, and she was still under his thumb. The mother who would do anything for her son. The mother who would let him destroy her life, and everyone else’s lives, even her other children, while she did nothing but stand by and cower to his every demand.
I shook my head, reaching the front door and barreling through it. She reached out, trying to grab my arm to stop me, but I shrugged her off.
“Please don’t go, baby, please! I haven’t seen you in so long!” She was crying harder now. But again, I didn’t care. I had absolutely no feelings towards her at all.
I knew everything I needed to know.
Most importantly, I remembered why I left.
And now, with all my might, I wished I hadn’t fucking remembered any of this.
I ran back to Ryder’s bike, and I was thankful to see he had already started it up. He handed me my helmet, and I put it on quickly while he questioned me.
“You okay?”
“No. Get me the fuck out of here. Fast.”
“You got it, babe. Hold on tight.”
We roared off away from the house and I did just as he said, as tightly as I could with my trembling hands, and I cried all the way back to the clubhouse.
My heart broke with disappointment. There were no happy memories to remember. Except the ones with my Dad, and he was dead.
Now I knew all this awful bullshit, and I still didn’t know where the fuck I belonged.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ryder
She looked like she had seen a ghost when she ran out of that house. I had heard a man yelling, and I was just about to hop off the bike when she ran out the door. Instead, I started it and handed her helmet to her.
When we got back to the clubhouse, she told me everything. It took all my willpower not to climb back on my bike right then and take care of that ‘family’ of hers. I made a mental note of where they lived. So much time had passed, a few more days wouldn’t hurt.
Right now, Sam needed my full attention. We lay on my bed, her head resting on my chest as tears streamed down her face. I let her talk, not saying a word, just gently stroking her hair, and drawing on more and more inner strength with every word that spilled out of her mouth.
She had had it bad. The youngest of four children, she was born to a promiscuous, young mother and a hard-working father who had aspirations of being a country singer. Married at fourteen, her mother was pregnant at sixteen, and the three kids after that just tied her down even more. She found fun wherever she could, and that usually meant between the legs of a new cowboy every week.
If it weren’t for Sam’s semi-responsible father, they wouldn’t have eaten. Left to fend for themselves, the kids learned how to survive by watching the adults around them.
Her two older brothers turned into two evil predators. The only available prey was Sam and her sister.
When her sister ran away when she turned fourteen, getting married just like her mother, Sam was nine, and she was left to fend them off all alone. The torture doubled for her.
Sam escaped when she was eighteen. And a year later she turned them in. They got a sentence of ten years each. Her mother stood by them the whole time, and she herself got no jail time at all.
“Babe, I am so fucking sorry that happened to you,” I whispered, pulling her closer into my chest. I wanted to erase everything from her memory now. She had worked so hard to remember something, and she had been so goddamned brave to go there, and to be faced with that kind of shit? Fuck that.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“So, tell me this,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Oh,” she said, as if she had thought about it for the first time herself. “Grace. Grace Faith Taylor.”
“Grace, huh? I like that.”
“I like Sam better. Grace doesn’t feel right,” she said, shaking her head. Her eyes were haunted, and it killed me to see her look so disturbed.
“Sam it is then,” I said, kissing her forehead.
“So, what then?” I asked. She had been telling me the whole story for an hour now, and I wanted to know the rest. We still hadn’t touched on why she was in the woods that night.
“Good question,” she said. I felt her body tense up, and I looked down at her.
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t remember anything after the trial. Nothing else is coming back. I still don’t know the most important part. I know where I came from. But where do I belong?”
***
“I researched everything. I got quite a bit of information,” Riot said, later that night. Sam had fallen asleep crying in my arms.
I was determined to help her as much as I could. We had enough information now to figure out who she was, so I untangled myself from her and sought out Riot. I told him everything I knew.
As soon as he Googled her name, everything she told me came up. News articles, booking records, interviews. Grace Taylor had been one brave teenager. She was nineteen when she faced her abusers in court. The fact that she was hoping to send her two brothers to prison was perfect material for the slimy journalists that did their best to print every disgusting detail.
By the time Riot and I were finished reading, I wanted to throw up. And once again, I wanted to kill for Sam.
“Fuck, that’s some fucked up shit she went through, boss,” Riot said. He was one of my favorite brothers, and I was glad he was sitting here with me.
“I know. Fucking horrific,” I replied.
“Alright, let’s keep going,” I said. “What became of Grace Taylor?”
Riot kept searching, his eyebrows drawing together in frustration.
“Well, that’s just weird,” he said, peering at the screen as he continued to type furiously. “I’m not finding anything.”
“What d
o you mean?”
“Well, exactly that, boss. It’s like she disappeared after the trial. No record of her anywhere. What did she say she did?”
“She doesn’t remember,” I replied.
“Oh, fuck. Wow. Um. Well, all right, she can’t have just disappeared. I’ll keep looking.”
“Thanks, Riot, I owe ya buddy,” I said, patting him on the back. “I’m going to go for a walk.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Grace
My flailing body jerked me awake. My eyes opened in the darkness as I took in my surroundings.
I took a deep breath.
I was in Ryder’s bed. I was safe.
But everything was not okay.
The dream rushed back, and my breath left my body once more as all the memories it brought back with it came into focus. Now that I had opened the box on my past, everything came rushing back to me now.
The trial. Changing my name. Leaving town, leaving everything and everyone behind as I started a new life. My job, my life’s work, all the girls and women I had saved so far from monsters - monsters like a man named Dice.
Dice. That was what the dream had been about. I had relived that whole evening leading up to the attack.
His name was Dice, he was also known as Snake Eyes. And I don’t know how, but he apparently figured out that I was an undercover cop, and not a potential prostitute for him to pimp out to his dozens of eagerly waiting Johns. I had been working towards that day for months, working undercover as a prostitute, each day getting closer and earning the trust of the biggest pimp in Portland.
But Dice wasn’t your regular pimp. He went out of his way to provide a custom experience for his clients. He got to know them. He knew their likes, their dislikes, and most importantly, their kinks. He catered to every desire, every fetish. If that meant providing an underage girl, he was not opposed to that.
But I was.
We had followed him, studied him, learned everything we could before we started this mission. Judd and Dawn, my two partners, had followed Dice for weeks before I finally introduced myself to him. Slowly, he warmed up to me. I presented myself to him as an independent woman, playing just hard enough to get to keep him interested, resisting his well-played charms and making him work for it before giving in. It worked perfectly.
Or, so we thought. That night was the first time we had been alone together, and we were supposed to be going back to his place. I was hoping like hell the excuses I had in place to avoid fucking him would work, but it turned out he had other things in mind.
I knew I was in trouble when he turned his El Camino off Highway 26 outside of Portland and headed down the secluded, rural Route 6. My heart began racing when I realized we weren't headed toward Seaside, where he said he had a house near the beach.
I was comforted by the fact that Judd and Dawn were following my every move by the GPS that was sewn into my purse. Perhaps, I thought, Dice was just taking the scenic route. But when he pulled over at a lookout, grabbed my purse from between my legs and threw it out the window, all in about five seconds time, I gasped as I watched my one thread of safety plummet down into the rushing creek below.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“Shut up,” he said, offering nothing more than that as he pulled the car back onto the road. After a few miles, we entered the Tillamook National Forest area. Huge pine trees lined the two-lane road. His high speed and the dangerous, hair-pin curves we were flying around, kept me glued to my seat.
I had nothing now. No gun, no phone, no GPS. Nothing but my brain and my body to get me out of this situation. I watched Dice’s every move, his jaw tight, his eyes intently staring ahead, his willing smile of the last few weeks replaced by pure rage.
I’m going to have to fight him, I thought. Unless Judd and Dawn were right behind us, ready to save me. Most likely, they were still hanging back, trying not to be seen, and wondering why Dice and I were just sitting on the side of the road. They might not figure out something was wrong for quite a while.
But none of that happened. If only it had.
Dice pulled off onto an old logging road, following the curve of the road until we were completely hidden from view from anyone or anything.
“Get out,” he demanded.
I had been debating my next move for a while now, and as soon as he opened his door, I was out of the car and running as fast as I could. Which wasn’t very fast, considering the tight denim skirt I was wearing. I had ditched the stilettos in the car. But he gained on me easily and quickly - his long legs enabling him to cover a lot more ground than my short ones allowed.
He grabbed me by the waist, flinging me to the ground. I kicked at his shins, his groin, but he jumped away quickly, my legs flailing in the air, missing him completely. He reached down, grabbed me by my hair, and began punching me until I fell to the ground in a heap of weakened limbs, the adrenaline having drained my body of any fight that I might have left.
He towered over me, his voice muttering obscenities as he began to unbuckle his leather belt.
“You fucking cunt! You think I’m stupid? You underestimated me, whore! You think a pimp like me doesn’t have friends on the inside? You think all your cop friends are clean as a fucking whistle? You think they aren’t the worst of all? Yeah, little piggie, I know things you would shit your pants to know about. You got sold out, bitch. And now, you’re mine.”
I groaned as I gathered all my strength to raise myself up and focus my eyes on him once again.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, the taste of blood stinging my tongue.
“Because, you dumb bitch. You aren’t gonna live long enough to repeat it,” he snarled. He stood in the dirt road, his headlights shining on us both. His white, pleated slacks were gathered around his ankles, his thick, muscular legs pale white under the moonlight. He had a tattoo on his left calf. It was a black snake that wound all the way up towards his knee.
My hands found the ground, and I began to push against it, slowly rising to my knees. If I could just get my hands on him, I thought.
His evil laughter rang in my ears as I spat blood onto the dirt beside him.
“Oh, you’re a fighter?” he snarled. “That’s adorable.”
He pulled his pants up quickly as I made it to my feet and began stumbling towards him. I saw his knee raising before I could stop myself, and he kicked me right in the stomach this time. Hard. So hard, I flew five feet behind me, my head slamming against a boulder on the side of the road.
I had been sure he was going to kill me.
But he didn’t.
Because of Ryder.
Now, it all made sense.
“I’m a cop…” I whispered to the empty room.
Ryder’s face was all I could see. My new outlaw lover was not going to be pleased. I was not pleased.
I was in love with him. I knew that now. And there was no way we could ever be together.
For the second time that day, I desperately wished I couldn’t remember anything at all.
***
When Ryder came back in, I was sitting up in bed, my hair twirling around my fingers as I stared off into the darkness.
“You’re awake?” he asked, turning on the lamp beside his bed. “It’s so dark in here.”
“I’ve had enough light for one day,” I said.
He sat on the bed, and pulled me close to him. He kissed my forehead gently, and I leaned into him.
“Yeah, I just want to forget everything for a while,” I said. I knew I should tell him what I remembered, but it felt so fucking good to be in his arms, and he had pulled me into them so easily, so naturally, that once again I felt like I had known him forever.
I was stricken by the unfairness of it all. Why did I have to go back to that life? Why couldn’t I stay here and enjoy some pleasure and comfort for once? My life as a cop was a lonely existence. I didn’t have a life outside of my job. And even when I was at work, I was constantly reminded of my
past. I couldn’t escape it.
Here, with Ryder? There was an escape, there was pleasure.
And love.
At least on my end.
Fuck. Who was I kidding? I had to remind myself that Ryder had a life too. A life before me. A life I had no part of. And once he found out who I really was, I knew he’d be kicking me out as fast as he could.
I sighed against him, and we sank onto the bed together.
His mouth found mine, and I kissed him back hard.
I wanted to escape. Just one more night. Just a few more hours with Ryder, and then I would tell him, and I would go back to my life. But for now, I wanted him to look at me just one last time like he accepted me. As a woman. Not a cop. I knew that look would be gone in the morning.
He pulled away gently and began to speak softly to me.
“Babe, I gotta tell you something. I can’t hold this back any longer,” he said. His hands were on my face, and I detected just a slight tremor in his fingertips.
“What is it?” I whispered, wishing he would just stop talking. I wanted to just get lost in his arms, to forget everything. When he was making love to me, I thought of nothing but him, and the delicious way our bodies moved together, the intense pleasure that coursed through me when I was wrapped around him. I wanted to think about that.
“It’s important, listen,” he said, his tone growing serious. I met his gaze and saw such rawness there that it took my breath away.
“When I found you that night, I wasn’t thinking. I just saw that man standing over you and I did what I needed to do to keep you safe,” he voice was low and deep as he continued. “I brought you here because I knew Doc would take care of you. I could have left you there for someone else to find, but I didn’t know when or if that would happen. I never expected all of this to happen, Sam,” he said. “I figured you’d wake up and be gone and that would be it.”
RAW: THE ULTIMATE MC COLLECTION Page 10