by Zoey Parker
This wasn’t going to be easy.
Chapter 3: ’Til Death Do Us Part
Olivia
I wanted to scream.
Luke was trying to calm me down, but I wasn’t having any of it. I kept my hands clamped over my ears, pretending desperately that he hadn’t just told me the news.
A wedding. Was he out of his mind?
But what was I going to do?
“Liv, sis, listen, please,” he begged me, tugging at my wrists. “You have to understand the point of all this.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the point!” I yelled at him. “I’m not a piece of meat to toss around!”
Luke sighed and ran a hand through what was left of his hair. A long scar ran from front to back, weaving a bald patch in his thicket of dark brown curls. He looked frustrated.
“Liv, will you please just listen to me?” he asked.
“I’m done listening!” I snapped back. “You’ve said it all already, and I don’t want to hear anything else you have to say. Leave me alone!”
Luke sighed again and stood to leave the room. Before he walked out, he placed a gentle hand on my head. I refused to look up at him.
“We’ll talk later, baby sis. I’m sorry about all this.”
The door clicked shut behind him.
I slumped back on the couch. This was a nightmare. I was barely twenty-two years old and I had no desire to get married. I had a whole world to explore, languages to learn, men to fall in love with. The last thing I needed was to be forcibly wed to some leather-clad scumbag who would just try to fuck me at his leisure and then leave me to rot alone.
Fuck that. I deserved better.
It wasn’t just the wedding itself that pissed me off. I didn’t like the way things were going down, either. Ever since our parents had vanished, Luke had acted like he owned me, like he was my mother and father and older brother, all rolled into one. He set curfews and blew his lid if I was ever late; told me who I could and couldn’t talk to, what I could and couldn’t wear.
I was sick of it. I was an adult now, and it was time I started making decisions for myself.
But the thought of a husband…I shuddered. That was a whole different ballgame. What would a husband be like? It wouldn’t be good, I was sure of that much. Especially not a biker husband. I’d seen the way Luke and his friends talked about girls, like we were just pussies attached to a body, to be thrown around and discarded once our time came. Marriage meant nothing to an Inked Angel—it couldn’t, right?
I was being plunged into the midst of some seriously hardcore men. It was a scary thought. Not only to be standing across from one—some grizzled, ugly, foreboding son of a bitch—and exchanging vows about “forever.” But then what came after that—that stomach-churning moment when the door swung shut and I was left alone with some anonymous monster in his bedroom as the sun dropped and his hands reached out to rip off whatever was left of my clothing…
I gulped. There was a strange tingle running up and down my thighs as I pictured the scene of my upcoming wedding night. It was mostly terror, but there was a vague edge of excitement mingled within it.
I fell asleep curled up into a ball on the couch, murmuring over and over to myself.
“No, I won’t do it. No, I won’t do it. No, I won’t do it…”
* * *
The dying sun withdrew its fingers from the horizon. Night stole over. The sound of the crowd had died away, although the deafening wedding music still had my ears ringing. There were so many thoughts churning through my head that I couldn’t make out a single one. It was just a roaring ocean of words and feelings. I wanted to do something—run away, scream—but I just couldn’t get past the thoughts. There was too much happening.
I looked across from me. There he stood—my husband. He was a giant, monstrous, nearly seven feet tall, with steel pierced through every square inch of skin that wasn’t already stained with a spiky tattoo. Slowly, he stripped off his leather jacket as he stepped towards me..
I stood my ground. To show fear would mean the end of me, so I made myself stare straight at him. But there was that edge of excitement, too. Part of me wanted this.
He tossed his jacket on the ground and took another step forward. His chest was rippling with tense muscles. A grinning skull shone from his right shoulder. It seemed to be laughing at me, letting me know that this had always been my fate.
I didn’t dare move an inch. My whole body was coursing with lightning, and that excitement, that sense of desire that I was trying so hard to suppress,kept growing. I felt it in the backs of my thighs and the tingle in my fingertips, but as my husband—my husband— drew closer and closer, close enough that I could smell his masculine odor rolling off him like an intoxicating tide, the tingle moved up my thighs, towards where they met, and I could feel the sticky wetness of want growing.
He walked with a cocky swagger. I could hear his breath now, too, whistling through his nostrils. One hand undid his belt and pulled it free of the loops. It clattered to the floor. Unbuttoned, unzipped, his pants began to slide down his hips, held up only by the rod of steel I could see bulging below the zipper.
And then he was in front of me. His hair was shaggy and gray. Scars swept over his face and neck. But beneath all that, there was a dark magnetism. The wetness between my legs recognized it as the thing that it wanted most, so that even though one dim corner of my mind was saying no, there was a deeper, more powerful force in me that knew only one word: yes.
The monster hadn’t said anything yet. I stood still in my wedding dress, the veil drifting around my face. He reached out and gently, gingerly, raised it over my head. My face was bared to the cool air in the bedroom. His hands dropped back by his sides.
I looked him straight in the eyes. His were boiling, so deep and so dark that you could almost lose yourself in them.
We stood still.
I didn’t know how long we stood there, looking at each other. It seemed this man was content just to stare at me and breathe, his chest rising and falling with the motion. I wasn’t scared anymore. All my emotions had paused at their height, like a roller coaster right before the first plunge. The air was riddled with tension.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his hand start to reach back up towards me. It took years, centuries even, to cross the distance between us, which by now was only a couple of inches. He brought it up, not touching my legs, not touching my hips, not touching my breasts, not touching the bare skin of my shoulders.
With one soft finger, he stroked the curve of my neck, from the hollow at the base up to where it met the corner of my jaw. Two fingers, moving along the same track, going over my downy skin. A third, back and forth, then he was sliding his palm along my neck.
With each successive finger, the tension ratcheted up a notch, as if the electricity was a function of how much of our skin was touching. When he laid his palm on me, I nearly jumped from the shock. Even without touching myself, I knew that my pussy was dripping wet. There was so much to fear in this man—he could easily break me, he would definitely break me.
But I wanted it.
And then the tension broke.
The massive hand that had been so tenderly stroking my exposed neck suddenly turned into a vice. He wrapped his palm around my throat and shoved me back into the wall. His free hand shot up underneath my dress and, before I knew what was happening, he had pushed one thick finger deep into my tight, wet pussy.
I let out a surprised gasp as he growled, “You are mine now.” He pushed one finger slowly in and out of me. Every point of contact screamed, Yes! as he worked his finger back and forth while his thumb stroked my clit.
“Mine, do you understand me?”
I didn’t know what to do. “Nod,” he commanded. “Acknowledge that you belong to me.”
I nodded furiously as lights began to dance in front of my eyes. I was already on the edge of coming. The tension was so much, its broken shards swimming through my veins and draw
ing ecstasy wherever they touched.
His frame was pressed up against mine, the thickening pressure of his cock leveraging against my inner thigh. I was equal parts terrified and desperate for him to fuck me. I wanted it., I needed to be taken.
He smiled, satisfied—for the moment. “Good,” he murmured. “Good.” He twisted his finger and stroked my clit once more.
I came.
* * *
I woke up with a start, sweaty and panting. I couldn’t believe the dream I’d just had. The man with the piercings, the darkness of the bedroom, his fingers playing inside me. I shook my head to clear the cobwebs. Wake up, I told myself. Wake the hell up.
Then I remembered everything that had happened before I fell asleep, and reality slammed back into me like a runaway train.
I couldn’t do it. There was just no way. My resolve settled into place, strong and solid in the pit of my stomach, and I stood up to go find Luke and tell him that there was no way I would go along with this insanity.
I padded across the carpeted floor towards the closed door that led to the kitchen. I laid my hand on the knob, but right as I was about to open it, I heard hushed voices from the other side. One of them seemed to be extremely agitated.
What was going on?
I pressed my ear against the door and tried to listen in.
“I just don’t like it,” someone said. “Too many things could go wrong.” I recognized the voice as Timber, my brother’s best friend and right-hand man.
“This is our best shot,” replied Luke. “Don’t we want the same things? For ourselves, and for the charter?”
“Yeah, of course, this is what we’ve always talked about. You know I’m with you, man.”
“Well, then, you can’t let me down now. It’s time to pull the trigger. Croak won’t know what hit him, and if everything goes according to plan, then he’ll die none the wiser. And that’ll put us exactly where we’ve always wanted to be—on top, where we belong.”
Timber sighed. I could hear him digging at the kitchen table with his pocket knife, a nervous habit he always took up when he was thinking deeply. “I just don’t trust Lobo,” he eventually said.
I could hear Luke taking a drag of his cigarette. I hated when he smoked inside. “Yeah, well, I don’t see too many other options, do you?” he said. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that kind of Confucius shit. You feel me?”
“I guess,” Timber answered. “But that motherfucker is crazy. I heard he scalped the son of a mayor right in front of the poor guy, just because they were trying to make him take a detour around town instead of running his drugs right down the main street.”
Luke dismissed the story with a snort. “Don’t let those crazy rumors get to your head, man. At the end of the day, he’s a businessman, just like the rest of us. He’ll listen to sense. This is as good an opportunity for him as it is for us. He’ll definitely stick to the script, just like we’ve got it planned.”
“How can you trust him for sure, though?”
“No one fucks with Luke Morris and lives to tell about it. I’m gonna go down as the greatest president this club has ever seen. I’m gonna get rid of those annoying Houston fuckers and that smarmy old shit Croak, and we’re gonna have free reign over every piece of the pie in the whole goddamn state of Texas. If that means tossing some crumbs to the Mexicans, then so be it—that’s the cost of doing business.”
My heart froze. Luke was plotting to turn on his own brothers? There was no way this would end well. I didn’t know much, but I knew that treachery only led to bloodshed.
“I don’t know, man,” Timber pondered. “I just don’t like getting in bed with that son of a bitch. And I don’t love the idea of crossing our brothers, either.”
“Brothers?” Luke snorted again. “The Houston guys aren’t our brothers. Those guys are a disgrace to the skull, a disgrace to Inked Angels everywhere. They’re better off dead.”
“Croak’s got some balls of steel, though, brother,” warned Timber. “This ain’t his first rodeo.”
“That’s why we’ve gotta pull the wool over his eyes. That’s what this whole goddamn wedding is for, man. We let Croak think that we’re making nice, then while he lets his guard down, we move Lobo and his boys across the border and get this whole new operation started up. Once it’s all in place, then boom, we let Croak take a nice little swim with some cinderblock flippers, we let whichever poor bastard succeeds him know that Austin runs this state, and voila—the future is here, ahead of schedule. The way we want it.”
Timber sighed again. I could feel Luke gloating even without seeing him. Now anger was glowing in the pit of my stomach like hot coals. I was nothing more than a pawn in his game, just a shiny bauble to be swapped around so he could get what he wanted. This was beyond sick, it was beyond slimy, it was…
My hand, tightening into a fist, accidentally budged the doorknob. Being as old as it was, the thing squeaked like a shrill bird. I froze.
“What was that?” Luke shot out. I heard a knife sing as it was drawn from a sheath. Before I could move, the door was yanked open from the other side, and I tumbled through, right into Luke’s arms.
“Jesus Christ, Olivia, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Luke yelled. “I almost fucking stabbed you! Are you out of your goddamn mind?”
I punched him in the chest blindly, over and over, swinging my arms until they were numb.
“You’re sick! You’re sick! You’re a fucking traitor!” I screamed.
Luke clamped a hand over my mouth and hissed in my ear. “Shut the fuck up before somebody hears you. We have no idea who might be listening.”
I sobbed into his chest. I didn’t mean anything to him. My own brother was willing to sell me on the open market to the highest bidder, like I was some cheap whore. This son of a bitch. It was all so unfair. My whole life, I had been commandeered, pushed to and fro against my will. All I wanted was to be my own person. I deserved that much at least.
Luke sat me down at the kitchen table. He put a cup of coffee in front of me and waited until I was done crying. When my sniffling eased, he put his hands of top of mine. I wanted to recoil, but I had no energy left to fight back.
“Olivia,” he began. “I know this isn’t what you wanted.”
“Ain’t that the fucking truth,” I said, too tired even to speak with the venom he deserved.
“But now that you’ve overheard everything, I might as well give you the full story. I owe you that much,” he said.
I looked at him through red-rimmed eyes. I could see that there was no turning back. This was what was going to happen, for better or worse. That much was obvious in the fierceness of his eyes and the lock of his jaw.
“We’ve waited a long time for an opportunity to get back on top,” he said to me. “This is it. The problem is there are some old-fashioned motherfuckers who think progress is the devil. They aren’t wrong, necessarily—except that progress is the Diablos, not the devil. It’s time for us to reach out to our real brothers, the ones willing to take some risks and make some real money. I’m doing this to take care of you, baby sis.”
Luke reached out and wiped a tear off my face. I was a mess of emotion. He was still my brother, after all. He’d cared for me, found money to help us scrape by, even when both our parents had left us alone. He’d done right by me my whole life. But this was so much to ask.
“All I need is for you to help buy me some time,” he continued. “With this marriage, I’ll be able to smooth things over with the Houston charter long enough for everything else to get set. As soon as that happens, you’ll never have to see that bastard excuse for a husband ever again. Just a few weeks, maybe a couple months. Then you’ll come back to us, to your family. To your brother.”
Just a few weeks.I could hold my own for a few weeks. I could fight off any sick fucker who wanted to take advantage of his “wife” when they were alone. I didn’t have to love the man, open up to him, or give him anything,
really. I just had to grin and bear it for the wedding day, then I could play defense until Luke came back to make everything right again. He’d taken care of me before, had taken care of me ever since I was five years old.
I loved him. He was family. How could I not?
I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I told him. “Okay, fine. I’ll do what you need.”
He smiled. “I knew you’d do the right thing, baby sister.” He leaned over and kissed me on the forehead.
So that was it. I was getting married. Everything would turn out okay…right?
* * *
Church bells ringing overhead. A white dress that went all the way to my ankles, catching the drafty breeze that slunk through the massive double doors and fluttered lazily. Far on the other end of the aisle, a man clad in a black and white tuxedo, waiting to claim me as his own.