by A. E. Fisher
Ash’s head tilted up to look at the brunette. As she set her bottle on the bar, the girl continued to spout random, possessive shit I’d heard several times before. I didn’t think Ash had been doing anything other than checking out every nook and cranny of this clubhouse, but instead of stepping in to stop it, I found myself inclined to remain in my seat, curious as to how it would turn out. I was also aware of a few nearby brothers glancing in my direction, waiting for a signal.
“Moon is my old man. Only I get to touch him,” Moon’s old lady snipped, just as I noted Moon stepping into the room, spotting his woman, and rolling his eyes before heading toward them. “Why the fuck are you even wearing sunglasses inside? Trying to hide your perving? How about we see what happens when I take them off.” The girl lunged for Ash’s face, and I saw Ash’s body rise out of her stool.
I didn’t know what the deal with the sunglasses was, but I was more than sure that it was a sensitive topic, considering not even Anna asked her to take them off. I figured Ash was going to flip, and with my leg aching, I knew if she did, it wouldn’t be good.
My mind flashed back to the house. I had noticed one of Charon’s men passed out in the corner, the glass from the window all the way around him, and knew a girl of her size should never have been able to take a man down like that. Not without some dirty tricks.
Shit.
I shoved out of my chair, ignoring the pang of pain in my leg, as Ash grasped the girl's shirt and…
...kissed her.
Ash held the girl tight against her, her lips pressed to hers, her tongue delving into her mouth for a whole forty seconds before pulling back, leaving the other girl gasping for air. “Keep talking like that,” Ash purred, “and you’ll make me jealous.”
Ash let go, and the girl stumbled back, her face bright red and lips swollen. Even Moon stood gobsmacked a few feet away as the girl got her bearings.
Speechless, she just stared at Ash for a long few seconds before she let out a loud huff, flipped her hair, and turned back to Moon, who was throwing a shit-eating grin at his old lady, earning him a hiss.
“Told you not to start shit in here, Monica.” Moon’s face changed as he growled at her, and just as she was about to argue with him, he grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her outside.
My eyes turned back to the room to see that they had all gone back to their business.
All except one.
Lamb’s head was lifted over the girl’s on his lap, his eyes completely focused on Ash.
Ash, no doubt aware of her new attention, spun on her stool, showing her back to Lamb, and sucked back on her whiskey.
Shit.
My memory of Anna doing a similar thing to Mallory had my annoyance growing as I made my way toward Ash, trying to shove what she just did out of my mind.
My towering body still dwarfed Ash, despite her extra inches of both the long length of her body and the height of the stool. At the intrusive shadow appearing over her drink, Ash poured herself another one into a shot glass provided by Pipe, who took over Lamb’s position at the bar, and downed it.
“Where’s Anna?” I grumbled, not interested in making conversation. As far as I was concerned, I couldn’t get my bearings with this girl, which made her unpredictable. And unpredictable meant distrust in my books.
Ash tilted her head in my direction, opening her mouth as if she was about to answer. Instead, she took another shot and ignored me.
A growl was out of my mouth before I could stop it, annoyance itching on my skin. I noticed Lamb appear at the bar. He overtook Pipe’s position and came over to our side just as Ash set down her shot and reached for the whiskey bottle. It was gone before she could grab it, Lamb sliding it underneath the counter.
“Where is she?” I growled, her distraction now gone.
She reached down to her bag, ignoring me again, and took out another bottle of whiskey, filling up her shot glass.
“For fuck’s sake,” I snapped. Finally losing my patience, I took the whiskey bottle from her hand and slammed it down on the counter. “Tell me where my woman is.”
Ash, at long fucking last, turned to me, a small smirk on her lips. “Your woman?” she sneered.
“Yes. My goddamn woman,” I hissed, my hand tight around the bottle. I wasn’t sure why I was getting so heated up, but fuck, this girl just got on my nerves.
“Don’t know her,” Ash said, turning her head away.
“For fuck’s sake,” I snapped. “That’s fucking it. Tell me where she is now, or I swear to God—”
“Swear to God, what?” Ash retorted, stepping down from her stool to go toe to toe with me. “You always get this angry when someone tells you no?”
“What?”
“You gonna get angry like this when Anna tells you no one day? ’Cause she will,” Ash pushed, her toes lifting her higher into my face. “You going to swear to God at her, too, huh? You going to get mad? You going to hurt her like you want to do me?”
“No!” I hissed. “Of course, I fucking wouldn’t. Anna’s my woman. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to fucking protect her, even it meant giving my life for hers. She’s the most precious thing I got; there ain’t no way I’d hurt her. Are you fucking crazy?” I went to move forward, but a hand across my chest stopped me.
My head spun to Lamb leaning across the bar, ready to tell him to get his hand fucking off me as I told this bitch what was what, until I realized he wasn’t looking at me but Ash.
Ash stood quietly, back on flat feet, her shaded eyes pointed up at me, chewing on her lower lip.
“You were done?” Lamb asked her, and it was at that moment I realized what she had been doing.
She’d been testing me. Again. Testing to see if I was good enough for Anna. For her best friend.
I also realized that all this time, when I said I didn’t grasp Anna and Ash’s relationship, that wasn’t true. I acted like I had been awaiting judgment on it, but deep down I had really been thinking of Ash using Anna’s selfless protectiveness.
But it was this moment, now, that I realized Ash and Anna’s relationship was a lot stronger and a lot more intense than I had first thought.
Ash was willing to challenge a huge man like me who towered her by over a foot and outweighed her by almost four times her mass for Anna.
Jolted by the revelation, I barely heard Ash as she pointed to the glass doors and said, “Outside.” Her voice was a conflict of emotion, something telling me that despite revealing where Anna was, she wanted to stop me.
I cast her one more look, watching as she went back to her whiskey, overshadowed by Lamb, before I turned toward the door and headed straight out of it.
I found Anna lying on her back on top of one of the picnic tables, admiring the clear early winter sky.
I patted Mint on the shoulder, sending him back inside to where it was warm, and headed over to my woman.
When Anna noticed my approach, she tilted her head in my direction, waiting until I was standing over her, looking down at where her blonde hair was fanned over the wooden bench. Her baby blue eyes were muted in the dark light, and she was wrapped up in her thick property jacket. Then she started speaking. “That’s Orion,” she said, pointing up into the sky. I didn’t look up, instead taking in her face, the light smile on her lips, and the rare gentle expression, eyes glittering as she continued to move her hand around, pointing in different directions in the sky, naming each constellation. “Canis Major, Canis Minor, Gemini, Taurus...” Her hand dropped down onto her chest, her eyes still flickering between each one. “In July 2005, Ash and I were in college. We drove as far as we could from home for the hell of it and ended up in this field in the middle of Derby, looking up at the stars as she googled what each one was on her phone.”
She then sat up, the wood creaking under her sudden movement as she hopped off, her feet touching the grass, the heels digging into the softer mud ever so slightly. “March 2008, we were at this beach in Cornwall, and there was this surf
er there who was getting a bit too handsy with her, so I ended up hitting him with his surfboard, but it was one of those cheap tacky ones, and it split over his head. And when he complained to me to pay for it, back before I knew where to hit for knockouts, Ash just kicked him in the balls and we had to leg it as fast as we could. Do you know how hard it is to run on sand?” Anna laughed, the noise filling my ears, one of the most pleasant sounds I’d heard from her outside the bedroom.
She spun around on the grass, this lighthearted version of her bathing in the starlight as she practically glowed in front of me.
Until she didn’t.
“April 2012.” She stopped spinning, her hands dropping to her side. The gentleness of her expression soured into a painful wrinkle between the bridge of her nose, the saddened frown of her red lips, and the dropping of her eyes into the grass. “Ash went missing.”
“Missing?” I repeated, watching as Anna’s face shut down, the emotion drawing back as a cold, calm voice entered the chilled air.
“You wanted to know Ash’s connection to the Rothwells?” Anna asked me, the question rhetorical. “She’s the daughter they never wanted.”
I felt my chest lurch as the words hit my ears. “Daughter?” I repeated, my eyes wide as Anna nodded.
“They were never a family, not really. They wanted a daughter for show. For their perfect political family, to keep up their ruse. And for a long time, she was like that. When I met her, she was like this little porcelain doll. She didn’t laugh or smile unless she was told to. She was a puppet on a string. Soulless. I couldn’t leave her alone, and bit by bit she began to break out of her shell, started doing things she wanted to. She became a real person. And that’s where it all went wrong. For every disobedience, every embarrassment and shameful behavior, she was... punished.”
“Punished? What do you mean, punished?” I hissed, feeling a burn in my chest, which I saw reflected in Anna’s eyes.
“Abused, beaten, tortured. Call it whatever the fuck you like,” Anna spat, her lip snarling, bearing her white fangs. “It went on for years and years until I’d finally had enough. I managed to convince her to leave. We were going to run where they couldn’t reach us.
“We were supposed to meet up at Manchester Airport. We were going to get out of there once and for all. Get Ash away from her family and their abuse. When it got to an hour past the meeting time, I knew something was wrong.” Anna’s hands clenched at her sides, her top lip curling against her teeth. “I got to her home and was banging on their doors, demanding I see her, but they kept me out, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t even bring myself to care about the danger; I searched all their hideouts, their meeting places, properties they owned, but there wasn’t a single trace of her. It wasn’t until three days later that I got the phone call...”
Anna paused, her lip quivering as she fought to take in a slow, deep breath, a shaky one expelled in return.
“It was Ash.” She shuddered. “I was so relieved and so happy just to hear her voice, to know she was alive.
“But that wasn’t all she had to say.” The single bit of emotion that had crept forward in Anna’s recount of events vanished, steel walls slamming up harder and stronger than I’d ever seen them before as she stood back, her blue eyes dead and icy, meeting mine straight on, empty of any affection I was used to seeing there.
“Ash had been tied to a chair for three days, beaten, tortured, and you name it. It was Rothwell’s demon wife who had her, having volunteered to be the one to put Ash in her place. I don’t know how, but she had managed to get her ties free and grab a cell phone from one of the men who guarded her. She dialed me first, and I came straight away, but I arrived a moment too late.”
Anna shook her head at me, her hand gesturing to the ground, emotion beginning to creep into those blue eyes of hers as her voice tightened around the words. “Ash just sat there, next to her body, blood soaked into her clothes. There was a knife sticking out of the bitch’s chest like she had been fucking staked, and Ash was looking into the distance, quiet. When she heard me stop in front of her, she turned to me so slowly, blood running down her cheeks, eyes bloodshot. She was blind, Wolf. And then she turned and looked at me, and she asked, ‘Is she dead?’ She couldn’t see. She wasn’t sure. I told her she didn’t, but she just started to cry. She knew she killed her.
“The knife went straight through the bone in her chest, the sternum cracking under the force and the blade wedging straight into her heart. She must have heard it. And heard when she finally stopped screaming.”
She stood there silent, her eyes still holding mine, as if daring me to punish her, to accuse her, to challenge her part. But I didn’t. I was silent for a long time, waiting for the walls to give just a little, and when they did, the cold ridge of her face relaxing ever so slightly, I finally asked what I’d wanted to know all along.
“What did you do?”
“What else could I do?” Anna said softly. “I got her out of the country. I knew some people who exported abused zoo animals, and they helped me get her out and overseas. I stayed behind. They had nothing to pin on me, and when it was all over, I got out as well.
“We traveled around for a while. I got her some medicine and even managed a few black-market surgeries for cornea transplants. The damage to her skin healed, but her eyes weren’t the same. She can’t handle bright light, nor can she see very well, but she was doing better... physically. Mentally... she wasn’t the same person after what happened to her. It’s as if she’s not all there anymore, not interested, not... living. I find myself so scared of letting go of her because I’m so scared she won’t come back.”
Anna let out a shaky breath then, the emotion clogging her voice as she tried her best to breathe through it, but the sight of my strong, beautiful, and so perfect woman fighting through the pain devastated me. I knew I should sit still, let her continue, but I just couldn’t fight the instinct that had my body dragging hers against mine before I could even think.
She didn’t fight me; instead, her hands clung to my back, to the leather cut hanging on my shoulders, as she quietly breathed me in, holding me with her face buried in my chest.
Nothing was said, nothing needed to be. I felt no shame in holding my woman. No shame in knowing that she wasn’t as strong as I thought she was. And that was okay with me. Ash was obviously something precious to her, and to have had that thing hurt in a way that I could see had shredded her, only made me want to hold her closer.
“I’ve got to protect her, Wolf.” Anna’s voice didn’t hesitate, didn’t crack. Not anymore. Now it was bold, it was steeled, and it had a hint of the darkness I knew she held tight to her when she spoke. “I didn’t protect her then, but now, here, I absolutely will protect her, and I will send to hell anyone who harms her.”
That was my woman.
After that, I found myself walking into the clubhouse, Anna tucked under my arm, her head lolling into my warmth, and considering she hadn’t bitten my arm off for the possessive gesture, I figured she was too tired to give a shit.
My leg ached, but I ignored it as we stepped into the crowded room. My eyes instantly sought her out above the heads, and thankful to her height, I spotted Ash still sitting at the bar, her eyes looking deep into her half-full glass, her expression contrastingly sober.
She spotted me walking in, and her eyes met mine above the crowd.
She looked to Anna, who hadn’t noticed her, her eyes focused solely on the hallway door that led to our room on the other side, before they came back to mine. It took less than a second for her eyes to switch from wide to conflicted as she took in my expression. She could tell I knew.
I also knew why she had given me a hard time at the bar, and why she had looked like she wanted to stop me from going out there.
I knew all of that, but there was one thing I didn’t know. Something I had to know.
I pressed a kiss to the crown of Anna’s hair, making her grumbled drows
ily. “Go to bed. I’ll be there soon.”
She looked up in surprise, her eyes jumping up and then across the room to where Ash was sitting at the bar, looking at us. Her jaw tensed, and I could tell she wanted to stop me or say something. But instead, she just gave me a tug on my cut and said, “Go easy on her.” And with that, she turned and walked through the crowd, parting it like the sea as the sound of her boots gave warning to anyone in her path.
As I made my way through the crowd, Ash looked me dead in the eye before snatching her bottle off the side of the bar and making her way to the front door. She slipped, almost unnoticed, through the crowd as I struggled to keep track of her. I only spotted her again once she was at the door and made my way after her.
I caught eyes with Lamb as I passed the bar where Ash had been, and his eyes leaped from the door to me. His look was stern but cautious as he flickered his eyes back to the door and then to me again, passing me a warning or a look of concern? I didn’t know.
As the cool air hit my skin for the second time that night, I found Ash on one of the steel drums outside the door, her boots on a ridge on the side, letting them stay propped up, despite their unordinary length for a girl her size as she took a swig of the whiskey bottle.
“Ask your questions,” Ash said, her voice apathetic compared to the grouchy bitchiness of all the other times I’d talked to her.
I found it just as irritating, but considering her background, I also understood it.
“Why did you come?”
The question was simple enough, though it might have seemed vague. But from the way her eyes flashed, and by the way her hand gripped the neck of the bottle, she understood my meaning. And when she answered, I wasn’t surprised.
“I’m done,” she said on a deep and heavy sigh.
“Done?”
“Yeah, done,” she repeated, bringing the whiskey bottle to her lips, her feet dropping limply down onto the side of the barrel, the metal chiming at the contact with her boots. “Just done.”
“What about Anna?”
“What about Anna?” Ash grumbled. “Anna has her life here now, someone to protect her, to look after her. She looks... happy. And if she was willing to tell you everything, then she must trust you.”