by Zoey Marcel
“I’ll clean up the room and bring the regular lube,” Diego offered. “Just get her clean and massaged in the showers and I’ll join you when I’m done here.”
“Thanks. Slick and I will be waiting.”
Aw! I’m slick now. He actually named me. Diego said Greyson has never given a woman a pet name before, but he just did with me. Does he love me?
“I guess I should thank you for solving that dilemma for me,” Greyson told her as they stepped into the hall together.
“What dilemma, Sir?”
“I’ve been beating my head against a wall trying to find the perfect pet name for you. Baby is too common and some of the other ones just aren’t me, or they sound like a woman talking to a dog.” He rubbed her back and laid his head against her while he carried her down the hall. “Slick is perfect.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “I agree, Sir.”
She held her breath when that rebel tear got away from her and pinged onto his neck. He stopped walking. She knew some sadists got off on seeing someone cry, but he didn’t strike her as the type. Hopefully he didn’t find her weepy joy childish or too sappy.
“You all right?”
He made her look at him. She felt small and open, but she wanted to be real with him. “I’m just happy, Sir.”
He gave her a toothy smile. “Well, you make me really happy.”
Her eyes misted. Hopefully that happiness extended beyond the bedroom for him. “I’m glad you like me, Sir.”
His tone lowered to something as transparent as the way she felt. “I like you a lot, Melanie.”
She smiled and snuggled against him when he didn’t kiss her. In time he probably would, but at least progress was being made. His mouth had said he liked her, but his eyes said he loved her.
Chapter Eight
Saul Finch sat tapping his fingernails nervously, thinking, trying not to. Thinking was no good. Thinking led to flashbacks, and flashbacks forced him to remember, feel. Those things led to suffering that waged a war in his chest and played a brutal tug-o’-war on the weary muscle with its ability to fossilize his ticker and in the next breath crack the protective barrier until he bled out.
He fidgeted, trying not to cringe when the preacher spoke to him. His voice wasn’t alone today. The stalker’s voice came with it, followed by the sinister vocals of the devil. Then their voices spoke to him out of their usual order and it was anybody’s guess as to which motherfucker would open his mouth next. It was a perfect trifecta of hell the way they spoke in succession and taunted his inability to destroy them. They all said different things, confusing him.
Then they stopped contradicting each other and did something that turned his stomach to crushed gravel and left him chilled to his fingertips. They started to say the same thing. Their voices united to torment him, hurt him.
“Remember,” they said.
“Shut up,” he ground out.
They didn’t shut up. His knuckles turned white and the veins in his hand became prominent. He started to hallucinate.
Fuck those institution nut jobs. He wasn’t seeing mirage shit. This was real.
A trio of identical vapors took on human form and then merged into one clear, very physical being. He would know that man anywhere. The bald, rough and tumble biker had those same dark eyes with that unmistakable devious glint. His strong arms sported numerous tattoos and all he wore were dark, heavy boots, black leather pants, and a matching vest that hung open shamelessly to showcase a wall of hefty muscle covered in hair. He had hirsute forearms and silver-studded black leather bands around his thick wrists.
The memory inducing scent of him filled the air. A smoky, tobacco infused nightmare made enticing with the heady call of virile male and dark leather. Not the softer leather pull of cowboy chaps or broken-in saddles that was a part of Greyson’s essence. There was no wholesome redemption in this biker’s damning fragrance. His odor was harder, darker, like the tight leathers he wore. Against his will, that leather with smoke aroma got under Saul’s skin and made him remember.
The male stood there eying him with a slight tilt in those perverted lips framed in by his brown mustache, goatee, and chinstrap.
Saul shook his head. “You’re dead. I killed you.”
The other man jeered at him. “A black sort of irony, isn’t it? I took your innocence and you took my life. It’s almost romantic.”
Saul quaked with horror. “You’re not real.”
“Then why are you so afraid?” the apparition murmured darkly.
Saul did his best to mask his fright. “You can’t hurt me anymore.”
The biker’s lips curved sideways in a predatory half grin. “I’m hurting you now.”
Saul shivered. “You’re a figment of my imagination.”
“No. I’m here with you.” The muscular brute stalked toward him. “You need to take more risks and get yourself killed. I’ve been waiting for you…in hell.”
Saul shuddered. “I don’t believe in hell.”
The leather-clad gangster brushed his fingertips over Saul’s cheek and whispered “You will.”
Saul flew to his feet and went for the gun in his holster.
“Is that your answer for everything—violence?” the man scoffed.
“You’re one to talk. Get the hell away from me.”
“She couldn’t heal you, could she, Saul? You tried so hard with her, didn’t you?”
Saul sat and bristled, feeling his enemy’s eyes on him as the being paced with unnerving nonchalance around the room.
“She was so good, so pure and lovely. I bet you ached for her in every way a man could possibly ache for a woman. I heard that lost little boy inside you crying out in despair. ‘Save me.’” The fucker sneered. “I told you no one could save you. You saw yourself in her.”
“You don’t know shit about me.”
“I know everything about you. I made you.”
“I’m not your goddamned puppet!”
“Like hell you’re not. You can’t even remember anything before me. What does that tell you?”
“Tells me I need a time machine and a condom.”
The brutish hulk jeered at this. “I see the wheels in your head turning. You’re trying to remember your childhood, wondering if there was ever a time when you were happy. I told you, Saul, nothing matters before me and nothing will ever be the same after me. I’m your alpha and omega.”
“Shut up and go ride your hog.” Saul turned in his seat to put the man out of his sight.
“It’s not that easy, Saul. You don’t get to shut me out. I’m a part of you now.”
“Don’t ever say my name again, you son of a bitch.”
The behemoth muscle freak laughed at him. “You want to say my name?”
His jaw flexed and his eyes set in a warning he couldn’t gather the courage to execute with direct eye contact.
“You were the only thing that was ever completely mine. I like that. Even after what you did to me, my voice still haunts you down to your soul.”
Saul blocked the hand that reached for him and glared up at his opponent. “Put your hands on me again and see what happens.”
Dark eyes threatened him with the coldness of night. Their effect stuck to him like tar and summoned the dormant hatred when the bastard grabbed a fistful of Saul’s hair and forced his head back.
“You didn’t have a happy childhood, you dumb fuck. That’s why you ran away from home before you turned eighteen.” The pungent stench of whiskey blew hot on his face. “I gave you a new life.”
“You ruined my life.” Relief embraced him when the man let go of him and straightened up again.
“That’s what’s known as ingratitude.” The biker smiled and set a bottle of whiskey on the table and then sat down in the chair opposite him at the little round table against the wall. “You couldn’t love Melanie the way you wanted to because you don’t know what love is or even how to love.” He clutched the bottle with a heartless smirk. “They w
ere right about you. You’ll never be capable of loving.”
“Like you’re the expert.”
Saul’s tormentor exhaled in satisfaction after his long, indulgent gulps of liquor. “Any luck? Did you hear the voices before me? Were they nice to you before I made them black and ugly? Or maybe there were no voices before me. Maybe I’m the one who put them in your head. I was always good at putting things in you.”
Saul flew to his feet and drew his gun with lightning speed, pointing it with deadly intent at his adversary. “Shut your fucking mouth!”
The remorseless fuck mocked him with his silent stare and slowly pushed the bottle toward him. Saul grabbed the bottle and took an angry swig. The man smiled when he set the bottle back down with a careless thump on the table, jostling the amber spirits.
His enemy lifted his hand off the table to reveal a tiny mouse. “We can keep playing this game, Saul, but it always ends the same, doesn’t it?”
Saul felt sick inside when the male raised his other hand off the table to disclose a black cat with sadistic eyes. The feline hissed at the mouse, but his paw came down on the frantic rodent’s tail before he could escape.
“Cats are such bastards, aren’t they? Instead of showing compassion by killing their prey immediately, they fuck with them, laugh at their weakness as they torture them until their struggling little toy finally wants what the cat has in store for them. Remind you of someone?”
He shivered. “That’s real fair, ass-wipe. The mouse is a lot smaller than the cat. If it was a rat, the cat wouldn’t be so lucky.”
The fiendish brute trapped him with his powerful, troubling gaze. “If it was a rat, the cat would be bigger.”
Saul shot at the cat, striking it dead. The mouse was alive but damaged.
“What should we do? Heal the poor fuck, or put it out of its misery?”
“It’s not real.” Saul averted his eyes, trying not to sympathize with the rodent’s suffering.
“Then if it’s not real that means you’re just talking to yourself and they were right about you.”
Saul threw him a dirty look, pleased the mouse was gone. “You brainwashed me so I wouldn’t remember anything before I met you.”
The monster snorted. “Really, Saul? How did I do it? What proof do you have?”
“I don’t know! You know what you did, damn you.” Saul grabbed his head, fighting to remember. “You did things to me. Mind control, food and sleep deprivation, drugs, beatings—what the fuck didn’t you do?”
An evil smile bypassed the biker’s lips and went straight for his obsidian eyes. “How do you know you don’t just tell yourself that to convince yourself that this isn’t all just a big hallucination? How do you know that you’re not the monster in all of this?”
“I’m not a fucking monster.” Saul paced aimlessly with the gun by his side. He wasn’t going anywhere, but he had to get away from here. There was no place he could go, nowhere that would let him escape the demons of his past and the haunts in his mind.
“Or maybe it’s all in your head. Maybe you’re still at the loony bin and this conversation isn’t real.”
“Fuck you.”
“Greyson was stronger than you. His mind didn’t break. He didn’t hear your voice in his head.”
Saul tensed and a shadow fell over him. He stopped walking and stared into space. “He will.”
“That why you hate him and want him—because he’s stronger than you?”
“Get out of my head.”
“You have a dark side, Saul, and I have a tender side. Come sit on my lap and I’ll show you.”
He winced with his back to the man and shook his head. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“So would you. We’re more alike than you’re willing to admit. That’s why you hate me—because I made you just like me. You didn’t realize it until you hurt Greyson. You’re not a victim. You’re a monster. Face it. I’ve won, Sage.”
“Don’t…call me that.” Saul squeezed his eyes shut and then spun around and opened fire.
The muscled biker transformed into a sleek panther and leaped through the air in a launching pounce. His heavy body slammed into Saul, throwing him off balance and knocking the wind out of him when he hit the floor.
The black cat growled savagely at him and wouldn’t let him up. “You were pawed by a housecat before. We will meet again, and when we do I’m gonna maul you like a fucking panther. Reflect for a moment on your worst memory. That’s your heaven, Saul. That’s as good as it gets.”
Saul cringed and shook his head rapidly.
“Don’t you shake your head at me. My imagination is a lot darker than yours. The next time I get my hands on you there’s gonna be hell to pay.”
“Please go away,” he pleaded.
“Now, Sage, you know what it does to me when you beg. When we meet again in the afterlife, I’m gonna devour you.”
“There’s no afterlife.”
“Keep telling yourself that. The cat always wins, and this time the cat is bigger. Know why? Because you’re not that timid little mouse anymore. You’re a dirty fucking rat and now I’m a real predator to match the strength you think you have.”
The panther shifted his weight with a deadly look in his eyes, similar to the haunting, soulless hunger he’d seen in lions’ eyes on TV just before they closed in on their prey.
“The cat always wins. Say it.” When Saul didn’t, the dark wildcat added, “Say what I told you to say or I’ll shift back and play with you.”
Saul’s stomach got hollow. “The cat always wins.”
The panther purred and licked his cheek, making him taste bile. “Good little rat.”
He clamped his eyes shut. “You’re not real. They said I imagined everything. Maybe I did.”
Coughing like an oversized cat, the ebony feline hacked up something and spat it onto Saul’s chest. He felt lightheaded and cold with nausea when he saw a patch lying there. Picking it up, he examined it and gaped in shock when he read the words “Filthy Wanderers MC” on the patch.
The panther’s midnight gaze devoured him. “Keep it. It was real, Sage.”
Saul felt hollow inside, devastated. Air rushed through his nose and pierced his lungs with its cool provision when the big cat got off of him and then disappeared into thin air. The menacing panther was gone, but the patch he’d left behind wasn’t. Saul stared at the piece and began to quiver. When the deadening layer of numbness wore off, he curled up into the fetal position and cried.
* * * *
The showers were open with optional curtains in one area for privacy. Greyson didn’t use them. He shucked his clothing and then set her under the therapeutic hot spray after he turned the water on. Mellie’s legs muscles felt tight with exertion, and it was all she could do not to blubber in appreciation when he reached into the bag and handed her a cold water bottle.
“Thank you, Sir.”
Usually she felt caffeinated with energy after a sexy romp with any of her men, but there were times when they worked her over so thoroughly she felt exhausted afterward. It was a good kind of tired, though, like when she used to fall asleep at her grandparents’ house as a child whenever her parents got to gabbing with them late into the night. Even now she had the warm, cozy sense of security and home. She lacked the ability to sleep wherever if she didn’t know her surroundings very well, but even this public shower with Greyson felt like a safe place to fall asleep because she was with him.
“Is the water too hot or too cold?”
It was cute how he threw the word cold in there when balmy steam rose up around them.
“No. It’s perfect.” She forgot to call him Sir but was too wiped out to correct herself.
He didn’t bother to either. Squirting some soap into his hands and acting like your average Joe the way he was didn’t detract from the butterflies in her stomach. They were quieter, possibly napping, but they stirred softly in their sleep when she looked at him for just a little too long.
She set the water bottle on the built in ledge when he started to soap her up. At times his hands were relaxing as they massaged her. Certain erogenous zones on her body weren’t going for the relaxing factor when he put his hands there. Evidently she was hardwired to want wild monkey sex anytime the hands of a hardworking man groped her inner thighs.
His jewel-toned gaze flickered up from her legs, radiating with discreet wickedness. “So tense. If you don’t relax, I’m gonna have to touch you somewhere that helps you calm down.”
She flinched and moaned softly for him when he brushed the backs of his fingers down her mons. The shaved flesh screamed in oversensitivity, but they both knew her pussy liked it.
His cock looked fat and happy the way it bloated with instinct. She squirted some shower gel into her palm and then rubbed it into a fragrant lather.
He smiled. “I’m not the one who got dirty.”
She peeked down at his erection and then gave him a sassy smirk. “You look dirty to me.”
He grinned and continued to smooth soap all over her back while she stood facing him. “You think you can make me clean?”
“I don’t know. I might just make it worse.”
He chortled and moved his soapy hands down to her buttocks. She groaned in approval as he squished her fleshy cheeks in his hands and spread them apart to maneuver the suds into her crack as well.
“Have you always looked this good?” she asked while rubbing the shower gel all over his brawny chest and abs.
He snorted. “You’ve got blinders on. I used to look a hell of a lot better in my youth. Jake and Emmett didn’t have anything on my muscle. You get old and busy and start to fall apart.”
Was he a blind idiot?
“What are you talking about? You look amazing. If I looked half as good as you I’d walk around flexing all the time.”
He laughed. “Thanks. I don’t look bad for my age, I guess, but I don’t have a six-pack anymore unless I’m going through a season where I have the extra time to train.”