by Nia Farrell
Forcing her feet to move, Rose came to stand before him.
A tattooed arm reached out. Two fingers hooked in the waistband of her jeans and pulled her into place between his booted feet. He leaned forward slightly and inhaled deeply, breathing in the light honeysuckle scent of her skin.
“Take your blouse off,” he rumbled.
Rose took a shaky breath and lifted trembling fingers to her buttons, slipping them free, one by one. Her blouse fell open, revealing her black lace bra. Shrugging her shirt off her shoulders, she let it slide down her arms to pool at her feet.
Reaper’s eyes grew hooded. His body responded. Reaching, he adjusted the half-hard cock tenting the front of his jeans.
“The bra,” he growled. “Show me those tits.”
Rose closed her eyes and reached for her front clasp, but froze with her fingers on it. “I…can’t…,” she whispered, her voice fracturing, her face flooding with color. “Damn it.” She cursed the single tear that escaped from the corner of her eye and wet her face. “I’ve never…”
“Jesus Christ.” He exhaled the words on a heated breath. “You’re telling me, you’ve never….”
She cracked open her eyes and forced herself to meet his, full of skepticism. “Never,” she croaked.
He narrowed the bead of his gaze and shot her a warning look. “You lie to me, and you’ll pay in spades. Drop your pants. Drop ‘em!” he barked when she moved too slowly for his liking.
Her eyes stung. Goddamn tears. Refusing to shed them, she blinked them away, jerked her brass button from its hole, and slid down the zipper. Hooking her thumbs in her waistband, she worked her jeans past her hips to her knees.
Reaper angled his head, appreciatively eyeing the scrap of black lace that matched her bra. Tracing the top of her panties with his fingertips, he grabbed her ass cheek with one hand and shoved his other hand deep down inside them. Calloused fingers slid over her clean-shaven mound and cupped her sex. Parting her folds with his middle finger, he put the tip inside.
Rose’s breath hissed between her teeth when he shoved it deeper. She winced at the pinch.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned.” He pulled out his finger and released his grip on her ass. “What the hell, princess? I come here, expecting a woman to warm my bed and I get a green-as-grass girl. Fuck that shit. Mojo!” He yelled at the door.
His sergeant opened it tentatively.
“Pick a crew for the cage and send ‘em to town for another party favor. A dirty girl, this time, not a fucking Angel. Find someone who knows what the hell she’s doing and looks like she can handle us.”
The door closed again.
“As for you,” he said. “I think I’m gonna save you for my son. Sig’s gone on club business. When he gets back, you’ll be his welcome-home-fucking-job-well-done present. A special treat to make up for the shit he’s dealing with right now. I don’t have the taste or the time for virgins, but he’s gonna love breaking you in. Pull up your jeans, for Christ’s sake. Jesus!”
Relieved beyond belief, Rose shuffled back a step and did as ordered, zipping and buttoning her fly. She was safe, for a little while longer. However long it took for Sig to return.
Sawyer “Sig” Rhodes was vice president of the Demons and his father’s heir apparent. His road name came from his weapon of choice.
It was hers, too.
Fuck. She couldn’t think like that. He was the enemy. Even if he turned out to be a just-as-handsome younger version of his dad, he was still the Blackwater Demon who’d pop her cherry…unless the Angels found her first.
“You’ll be getting a roommate tonight. Word of warning—don’t think you can help her. Party favors don’t last long with these boys. A day or two, maybe three, if her insides are made of steel. The Demons ride hard, on the streets and between the sheets. Just keep your mouth shut, mind your own business, and leave us to ours…otherwise I might just change my mind and break you in after all. Fuck that mouth, that cunt, and that ass of yours. Just guessing, I’d say Mojo would like a piece of that, too. We could make it a threesome. Think you’d like that, princess? Mojo drilling your ass while I pound your pussy?”
Rose managed to school her features, but she couldn’t hide the distress in her eyes.
“No?” Reaper smirked. “Remember what I said. Now get back downstairs. Stay there, and stay quiet.”
Rose kept quiet, not because he’d told her to, but because she was straining her ears, listening to the Demons upstairs, hoping to hear something that could be used against them once she’d gotten the fuck out of here. Her family would find her. They had to. Thoughts of what would happen if they didn’t were too much to bear.
It was well after dark before the cage came back, pulling up to the house amidst cat calls, whoops, and hollers. A female voice, pleading. The men cutting cards for turns. Furniture moving. Thuds, bumps, spanks, slaps. Begging. Laughing. Crying. Lots of crying before someone called, “Ready for Round Two!”
They went three rounds before they gave her a rest. Tank slung her naked, bleeding body over his shoulder, carried her downstairs, and dumped her on the empty cot. Her mouth was swollen from being face fucked. Her nose and eyes were red from crying. There was semen everywhere—on her skin, in her long, blonde hair, running from her pussy and leaking from her anus, tinted red with blood.
She was so ill-used that Rose didn’t recognize her until she opened her eyes, saw Rose, and pushed herself to sit up just so she could look down her nose at her. The Demons had taken Krissy Castellari. Prissy Krissy. Prom queen, cheerleader, Miss Little Italy, and the bane of her high school existence.
Reaper had warned Rose to keep quiet. He warned her against trying to help. But when Krissy’s lavender Liz Taylor eyes filled with tears, and she looked like she was going into shock, Rose pulled the bath sheet from beneath her mattress. Sitting beside Krissy, she wrapped it around her, and held her until the shaking stopped and the color returned to her face.
“Help me,” she whispered. “They’re animals. They—they….” A sob escaped. She bit her fist to muffle it. “There’s too many. I can’t—”
“How many?” Rose asked her gently. “Think. Please. If there’s a chance to escape, I need to know what we’re dealing with. When I got here, there were four, but more came in today.”
Krissy heard the word escape and struggled to remember what she only wanted to forget. “There were twenty downstairs. Another—” she added numbers in her head “—twelve upstairs. Thirty-two, I think. They’re animals,” she hissed. “The things they made me do….”
She shuddered, accepting the backrub that Rose gave her…until she realized that Rose was clean and dressed. Krissy stiffened and pushed herself away, putting space between them. Rose stood up and stepped away. No fucking way was she going to sit with that judgmental bitch.
“My turn’s coming,” she told her before Krissy could ask. “They’re saving me for the Vice President. As soon as he’s here, I’ll be up there, too. Meanwhile, we do what it takes to survive. My family’s been looking for me since Monday night. They’re gonna find us. It’s only a matter of time.”
And it was only a matter of time before they came for Krissy again. They were going to use her like a fuck toy until she was broken. From the shape she was in, Rose knew that they liked to play rough. By the time Snake got his turn, she’d be as good as dead.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Krissy looked wildly around the basement, but there was nowhere to hide, no way to delay the inevitable. Prissy Krissy never wanted anything to do with her in school. Now she was begging Rose to save her. How could she, when she couldn’t save herself?
It took two of them to drag her away. Unable to watch, Rose focused on the basement window, good for little more than a patch of light when it was daytime. She stared at it, and blinked when she saw the brilliant blue eyes of her brother’s best friend, Michael O’Flaherty. Only for a moment, then he was gone.
She said nothing to Krissy when they b
rought her back, but she clung to the memory like a lifeline, holding onto the first glimmer of hope she’d had since being taken.
Chapter Four
Four hours earlier…
Michael’s cell vibrated, momentarily distracting him from the lips that were wrapped around his cock. No one but important clients and close personal friends had this number—which was exactly why he was carrying this phone instead of his other one.
“Sorry, sweetheart. Gotta get this.”
When Gretchen, his submissive friend with benefits, started to ease away, he fisted her hair and got her back on task.
“O’Flaherty speaking.”
“Mr. O’Flaherty. My boss, Giovanni Visconti, needs to see you at once. There’s a black Mercedes parked in front of your house. You have five minutes to get in it, starting now.”
Fuck.
Michael tossed his phone on the sofa cushion beside him, thrust his second hand into Gretchen’s hair, and drove in deep. A few more pumps, and he shot his load into her warm, wet mouth.
She swallowed every drop.
“Good girl,” he hummed. “Sorry I can’t return the favor right now. Gotta go. Emergency call. The car’s already here. You can leave when I do, or let yourself out.”
“Christ, Michael!” Gretchen sat back on her heels and pouted. Not a good look on her—and he was getting tired of seeing it. She couldn’t seem to grasp that this was his life. Days interrupted and evenings cut short for work. It was hardly the first time, and it sure as fuck wouldn’t be the last.
Michael slid to the side and stood up. “Suit yourself. Gotta go.”
She was in the bathroom with her bullet vibrator when he left. She still had his security code to lock up behind her. Gretchen had taken care of his cat when he had to be gone, right up until the end.
Shaking off the sadness, he approached the tall, dark man standing beside the Mercedes and climbed into the back seat behind the driver.
He wasn’t alone.
“Mr. O’Flaherty. Giovanni Visconti.”
Visconti sat in the shadows until the car pulled out. Street lights flashed as they passed them, revealing an older, distinguished looking man with graying hair, a short salt-and-pepper beard, and pale blue eyes that reminded him of an Alpha wolf. Appropriate, for the man rumored to be Mafia and the head of the local family.
“What can I help you with, Mr. Visconti?”
“We have a problem.”
And a big one, if he was needing Michael’s help.
“The head of my security was found dead tonight behind a biker bar. The girl he was with has been taken. Krissy Castellari. My niece,” he said, his voice betraying the first sign of emotion. Anger, and worry. “Krissy doesn’t know it, but there’s a tracking device in the bracelet that I gave her for her high school graduation last year. It looks like her late date deactivated it before they went out, and no one knows how to get it back online. I need her found. Soon. This gang she was seen with…Blackwater Demons…don’t like witnesses.”
Fuck.
If she wasn’t already dead, she was likely wishing she was. Chances were, his fate would be the same, if he didn’t come through for Visconti.
Michael was ushered into a palatial home on the outskirts of town, the centerpiece of a fenced property with patrolled perimeters and an impressive security system in place. Visconti led him straight to his inner sanctum, the bank of networked computers that hid one more secret than they should.
Krissy Castellari’s tracking number.
Michael sat down and went to work. None of Visconti’s men knew shit about passwords and hacking. Thank fuck that he did. It took some doing, but within an hour, he had pinpointed her location. A few phone calls later, Mr. Visconti told him that it was a safehouse owned by the Blackwater Demons MC.
The man had done his homework before contacting him. He knew that Michael was in Marine RECON. He figured he could extract her. Michael managed to convince him that enlisting the aid of their rivals, the Avenging Angels MC, might be his best hope for bringing her out alive. Right now, there were too many unknowns. Numbers. Weapons. Logistics—who was where in the house. He needed to scout it out. Once he knew what they were dealing with, he would call him from the field.
Depending on what he found, it might be after he talked to the Vice President of the Avenging Angels, Luke “Mad Dog” McLanahan, his best friend since grade school and his brother in arms.
Michael parked off road and walked a mile in. It was two AM, and there wasn’t a bike in sight near the two-story farmhouse. Just guessing, he’d say that they were parked in the machine shed out back.
A basement window glowed feebly in the dark. He focused his binoculars on it, hoping like hell that Krissy was down there.
She was, but she wasn’t alone. They had Mad Dog’s little sister Rose, too. Son of a bitch.
The girls’ heads snapped at the same time. They were hearing something. Three Demons came down the stairs. Two of them dragged Krissy away. When Rose turned her head toward the window he was watching, the hopelessness on her face was wrenching.
Damn it all to hell.
He knew he shouldn’t, but he risked it anyway. Crawling to the house, he came close enough to the small pane of glass that she fucking saw him. Only for a moment, but she knew that she’d been found. Now if they could just get them both the hell out of there….
Michael ran the mile back to his SUV, making certain that he wasn’t followed after counting sets of wheels in the shed. One van and twenty-five bikes. Just guessing, there were twenty-six to thirty-five Demons holed up in the house with Krissy Castellari as their evening’s entertainment.
At least, he hoped it was only Krissy. He couldn’t stand to think of their dirty hands on Rose McLanahan. Thank fuck, for whatever reason, Reaper Rhodes was letting her stay in the basement with her clothes on, instead of dragging her naked upstairs.
Unlike Krissy.
Visconti was not going to be happy.
With no sounds of pursuit, he unlocked his driver’s door and climbed in, locking it behind him before starting the engine. His superior night vision enabled him to drive without lights, until he reached the paved road where he would need them. Stopping just short of it, he put one phone on Bluetooth in his car and dialed Mad Dog, saving his other cell for Visconti, to put on speakerphone, if needed.
“Crash?” Mad Dog growled. “What the fuck, man? Are you drunk or just living dangerously? Do you fucking know what time it is?”
“Yes, I fucking know. And you know I wouldn’t call you this fucking time of night without a goddamn reason. If you’re missing a sister, I know where she is.”
Silence. Then, “Richie! Richie! Goddamn it, get Papa Bear. Now!” Flying feet and a heavy breath. “Where the fuck is she? And you’d better not say the fuck at your place, or you’ll be eating your own dick.”
“Hey! I’d never do that to a bro. Listen, and listen good, because more than Rose’s life is at stake here. She and another girl are being held in the Blackwater Demons’ safehouse, on what used to be a farmstead. There’s a van and twenty-five bikes parked in the machine shed out back. The girls are being held in the basement, when the other one isn’t upstairs. Rose seemed okay when I saw her. Worried, but she looked normal, wearing a summer blouse and jeans that fit. But we need to move, and fast, to extract them while it’s still dark. There’s a boarded-up coal chute that’s big enough to fit through. It’s an older house, without a single egress window in the basement. It’s the coal chute or stairs. Coming for them that way means taking out anyone in between. Oh, and one other thing. We’ve got to work with the second girl’s uncle, Giovanni Visconti.”
“God damn it.” Mad Dog growled beneath his breath. “You know as well as I do, having two commands is the surest way to fuck up an operation. You tell Visconti, we’ll get out his girl, but he’s got to give us the free rein to do it.”
“Did you hear that, Mr. Visconti? We’ll get her out, but you and your men need
to sit tight and let us work. Are we agreed?”
Michael had dialed him when he was talking to Mad Dog about Rose. He didn’t want Visconti to hear about Krissy and insist on rushing things. He’d know soon enough.
Visconti didn’t like it—obviously—but in the end, he saw the wisdom in letting Michael and the Avenging Angels handle it. They had the manpower, the firepower, and the tools needed to do the job.
Just ahead of four AM, the cavalry rode in. Four vans, dozens of bikes, and an arsenal to outfit most of the Avenging Angels’ sixty-six members, plus a handful of prospects, and Michael, who was an associate, not a member but a person of interest where the law was concerned. Fortunately for the Angels, the Blackwater Demons kept most of the attention focused their way, letting the Angels fly under the radar.
Until tonight.
Tonight, they were going into enemy territory, armed and prepared to use deadly force, if that’s what it took. Michael hoped not. He prayed not. But it would take a miracle for his entry to go undetected. He was going to have to pry away the boards from the coal chute, make his way into the basement undetected by the Demons and without the girls panicking, and help them out. Rose, he wasn’t worried about. He didn’t know if Krissy could even walk.
Mad Dog was his partner in the covert operation. If they were discovered, or the alarm sounded, the Angels would cover them, laying down enough fire to keep the Demons holed up inside—and their attention focused outside, not on their captives below.
Fortunately for Michael and Mad Dog, the boards had some rot to them and had lost their grip on half of the nails. One by one, the two men gently pried off the boards and set them aside, until the opening had been cleared.
Their plan called for Mad Dog to wait outside and pull out the girls when Michael boosted them up. Michael went feet-first through the opening and lowered himself to the floor. Listening, and hearing only quiet keening, he tiptoed to the door of the small corner room and peeked out into the basement.