by A. Zavarelli
Using my pocketknife, I cut the tie that held her wrist against the gear shift and then secured a new one with both wrists in front of her. When I finished, I propped her back up in the seat and buckled her in. That should have been the end of it, but instead, my fingers drifted up to her face, pinching her chin between them.
“It would be in your best interest not to fight me anymore, or you’re going to carve a long, hard road for yourself.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Despite her bravado, her eyes betrayed her nerves. Birdie could never admit she was capable of being vulnerable, but right now she was. It was the most beautiful thing about her.
“You’re coming to stay with me at the compound. It’s the only way to keep you out of trouble.”
“No way.” She shook her head. “Gypsy just had the baby. She needs me—”
“Gypsy asked me to bring you here.”
My words hit her like a bucket of ice water, dousing the fire that always burned so brightly in her eyes. I hadn’t told her to hurt her. I’d told her so she’d accept her situation for what it was, but it had hurt her all the same. Betrayal sliced across her features, darkening her eyes and pinching her lips together.
“She sent me away?” The words left her lips in a whisper, and I had the urge to touch her again, but in an entirely different way. I wanted to comfort her, though I knew it was a dangerous want to have. This wasn’t me. I didn’t let myself form emotional attachments. I couldn’t be anything for Birdie. Nothing more than a warden and a firm hand. Retracting my palm, I shoved it into my pocket and took a step back.
“It’s in your best interest,” I answered. “She just wants you to be safe.”
ACE THUNDERED DOWN THE HIGHWAY, his posture as rigid as his personality. Every so often, I snuck a glance at him, shooting beams of hate straight for his head. He just up and decided that I was coming to live with him, and that was it. There was no discussion, no debate. It was his way, and there was no other highway.
As miles of desert tundra flew by outside the window, I still didn’t want to believe that Gypsy had done this. My sister hadn’t just told this man to take me off her hands and lock me away like a prisoner. But when I swallowed past the lump in my throat, I knew it must be true. She couldn’t accept that I was capable of looking out for myself. It hadn’t been that long ago that she’d learned Detective Taylor was looking for me. Everything shifted after that. I saw the terror in her eyes, and now I understood this was her misguided attempt to protect me. It didn’t matter that I was legitimately trying to clean up my act because she couldn’t trust me to stay out of trouble. But then again, why would she?
I’d done a lot of screwing up in the past. Choices that inevitably ended in her bartering with Lucian for our freedom. By some miracle, that situation turned out for the best, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t still sorry about it. When I considered the things Gypsy had given up for me over the years, it filled me with shame. For as long as I could remember, she’d tried to protect me. I loved my sister fiercely, but right now, I couldn’t accept what she had done. It hurt too much.
Ace flipped on his blinker and turned onto a dusty dirt road leading farther into the desert. It occurred to me then that maybe what he said wasn’t true at all. Maybe he was just bringing me out here to kill me. The thought amused me more than anything because it was wildly imaginative. Ace was a lot of things, but a killer wasn’t one of them. He was annoying and rude and condescending, and together we were about as volatile as fire and gasoline. It left me to wonder what he could possibly get out of this deal, considering he’d probably say the same about me.
I studied his profile in the fading afternoon sun, noting the creases around his eyes from years on the road. At thirty-two, he was a lot older than me. Twelve years, to be exact. I only knew because I asked him once, and he must have been in a giving mood because he actually answered.
He wasn’t the type of guy you’d normally fuck with, but for some reason, it was all I ever wanted to do. I liked to provoke him. And after today, I’d be feeling the consequences of that on my bare ass for quite some time. I shifted in my seat, squeezing my thighs together as I remembered the feeling of his weight pressed against my body and specifically, his hard cock. He seemed almost embarrassed by the whole situation, but then he had no qualms yanking down my shorts and exposing me to him.
I couldn’t help but wonder what went through his thoughts when he saw me like that. There was an annoying little voice inside me that wanted to understand the inner workings of his mind. I wanted his secrets. His vulnerabilities. And for the first time in my life, it wasn’t even because I wanted to exploit them. I just wanted to collect them and keep them for myself. A silly notion made sillier by the fact that he had just taken me and hauled me off into the middle of the desert. Who knew how long he’d make me stay here.
“What is this place?” I asked as the giant adobe walls came into view. He’d called it a compound, but this was a fortress.
“It’s my club. This is where I live.” His reply was terse as he focused his attention on the keypad, punching in a code that opened the gate.
Inside, it looked like something out of an old western film. Houses dotted the landscape far and wide, and I didn’t know how big the property was, but it stretched farther than I could see. In the center was a giant structure that I assumed from the bikes parked out front must have been the clubhouse. Ace drove right by the building, veering off onto another road that took us farther into the mysterious community. I was taking it all in when his gravelly voice intercepted my thoughts.
“You should probably know it’s pointless to tell anyone your sob story about being here against your will. If you try to run, they’ll turn you right back around and send you home to me.”
Home to me.
For some reason, those were the words that echoed louder than the others. I was going to live with Ace. I’d be sleeping and eating and breathing in the same space as him. A ball of nerves formed in my stomach as a million new questions sprang to mind. Where would he keep me? What would I do all day out here in the middle of fucking nowhere?
Another wave of nausea hit me as I processed what was happening for a second time. It was real now. He’d stripped me of my freedom. He’d hauled me off to a prison in the desert where I had no say in anything.
“I’m not staying here,” I told him as he pulled into the drive of a stucco house. It was of medium size, a neutral, unassuming color, and I knew it must be his.
Ace didn’t say a word in response to my protest. He simply got out of the truck and walked around, hoisting me out and propping me upright on the pavement.
“Are you going to behave?” He arched a brow at me in question. “Or do I need to haul you into the house myself?”
In my head, I was already scheming up an escape plan, and it must have shown. Instead of waiting for an answer, he wrapped a lodgepole of an arm around my waist and heaved me over his shoulder.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” The words bobbed from my lips as my head dipped up and down in time to his steps.
“The first thing you should know about me is that I don’t have a lot of patience for the games you like to play. If I have any doubts about your intentions, I will take away your freedoms so fast your head will spin. Don’t test me, Birdie.”
He uttered the words all growly like, and instead of listening to the threat like I should have been, I was squeezing my thighs together. There was something about that gravelly voice that was like crack to me. I could only imagine what it would be like to hear him whispering his threats and demands in my ear while he was splitting me wide open with his thick cock.
The thought sent a chill through me. I hadn’t thought about a man that way in… well ever. It had never happened before. I’d been with men, but not of my choosing or my own free will. And since then, I’d been content in my belief that I didn’t need that type of relationship with anyone. But now a firestorm of thoughts and fee
lings were crashing through my mind like I was a hormonal tween at a boy band concert.
Ace swung open the front door and carried me inside the space where his boots echoed off the stone floor. The place was surprisingly clean and well furnished. He actually lived here. I could tell by the mixture of lemon-scented cleaner mingling with traces of leather and a scent distinctly Ace.
“You can put me down now.” I wiggled in his grasp, but he kept moving, hauling me over to the sofa and plunking me down onto a cushion with all the delicacy of a bull in a china shop.
I glared up at him and held out my wrists, waiting for him to free me from my plastic prison. But he shook his head. “I gotta go grab your shit.”
My shit?
The knife in my back wedged a little deeper as his broad shoulders disappeared out of the doorframe and returned with luggage I recognized right away. Those shiny pink suitcases belonged to me. They had been in my closet at the apartment I used to share with Gypsy. And now they were here. She really did send me away.
Tears blurred my vision, but I didn’t let them fall. I’d never let anyone see me cry, but certainly not this oaf who was currently eyeballing me like I was a stray pet he wasn’t quite sure what to do with. He disappeared down the hall, dispersing of the luggage before he returned for more outside. And so the process went on. Meanwhile, I attempted to escape my binds, only to dig them deeper into my skin.
“You might not want to do that.” Ace gave me the side-eye as he finally shut the front door. “They aren’t the most forgiving.”
“Then let me out of them,” I demanded.
He crossed his arms and stared at me. “Say please, and I’ll think about it.”
My eyes narrowed, but it did nothing to sway him. He was actually serious.
“You want me to ask you politely?” I smiled. “Fine, please quit being a fucking asshole and—”
Calmly, he strode toward me. There wasn’t anything particularly scary about his eyes or his mood. It was just the devil in all his details that got to me. He was a beast of a man. Giant paws for hands. Forearms sculpted from hard labor. Boots that echoed off the floor like shotgun blasts. I liked to push him. When he got angry with me earlier, it made me feel vindicated that I could get to him. But now he was as Zen as he ever was, and this part of him… the quiet, brooding hulk of a man hovering over me… this part frightened me.
When he bent toward me, I squeezed my eyes shut, but as it turned out, it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t touch me. Instead, I heard him snatch something off the couch beside me, and I realized it was my purse. My eyes flew open again, this time to find him rummaging through my private things until he pulled out my iPhone and looked straight at me.
“What are you—”
My heart skittered into a frantic rhythm as he walked into the open kitchen and retrieved a glass from the cupboard. Without emotion, he filled the glass from the tap, and then unceremoniously dumped my phone into a watery grave.
“What the hell are you doing?” My arms protested against the plastic binds as I forced myself up from the couch. “I need that phone.”
The restraints around my ankles thwarted my efforts to hop into the kitchen, and instead, I flopped forward without grace, my knees bouncing off the tile floor before I toppled over into a heap.
“Son of a bitch!” I hissed.
Before I could process what was happening, Ace was kneeling beside me, shaking his head. “You are too impulsive. Do you ever just think things through?”
His scolding had little effect on me, not when my knees felt like they’d been hit with a jackhammer. Once again, he heaved me up onto the sofa, instructing me to stay put while he disappeared down the hall. As if I was going to try to go anywhere now.
A visual inspection confirmed that my knees were already starting to bruise. There was a small scrape on the right leg, and my ankles stung from the force of the plastic that had jarred against my skin during the impact.
When Ace returned, he had a handful of first-aid supplies with him, and despite his cool demeanor, he looked concerned as he set them on the coffee table. He glanced at my knees and walked back into the kitchen, retrieving a bag of frozen peas.
“It’s just a scratch,” I murmured resentfully as he sat beside me. His brow marred with concern as he gently dabbed at the scrape on my knee with a peroxide-soaked cotton ball. Nobody had ever taken care of me this way since Gypsy had tried to teach me how to ride a bike. But this was different. Ace was surprisingly gentle even as his calloused fingers scraped over my skin, examining the swelling. I shivered, and the pain became a distant memory as endorphins flooded my system. I felt him everywhere. His touch produced a physical reaction in me that defied logic. It was pure chemistry, and it stirred the very marrow of my bones.
I wondered if he felt it too when he looked up at me and our eyes locked. For a split second, his hand stilled on my thigh, and his thumb skated across the flesh there, producing another shockwave in my body. Goose bumps broke out along my skin, and my fingernails dug into my palms as his eyes darkened with a primal satisfaction he couldn’t hide. But just as quickly as I’d witnessed it, he tore his gaze away and obliterated the moment with a wall of silence.
Once he seemed satisfied with his own examination, he applied a bandage to the raw skin and carefully propped my legs up onto the coffee table.
“Keep this on here for a few minutes.” He draped the bag of frozen vegetables over my knees. “It will help with the swelling.”
I nodded, and he retrieved the pocketknife from his jeans, moving to cut the plastic ties from my ankles. But after he separated them, he frowned, observing the bloody marks left behind from the fall. The muscles in his forearm flexed as his fingers traced over the sensitive skin of my ankle, and when he spoke, his voice was rougher than I’d ever heard it. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t know what to say. I could hardly even breathe. So I just watched him apply the same care he’d shown before as he tended to my ankles, coating the cuts with antibacterial ointment and bandaging them up. He seemed like he was in another world, lost inside his own head, and I wondered what he was thinking about when he paused to stare at the faint smudge of blood against my skin.
At that moment, I could relate to him. I didn’t know a thing about his past, but I recognized that look. He was recalling something from his darkest memories. Something awful. And more than anything, I wanted to know what that was.
When Ace snapped out of it and stood, his expression darkened as his eyes moved over me again. I didn’t know what to expect when he bent toward me, but instinct had my adrenal system in overdrive, preparing for a fight. Only nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.
“What happened here?” he growled as his fingers grazed the side of my neck. It was bruised from Joe, and although I’d done a fair job hiding it with makeup, it was obvious it had either melted or come off during our scuffle.
“Nothing,” I forced out. There was no way in hell I was going to tell Ace about any of that. The thought burned me with shame.
His fingers twitched as they curled into a fist at his side. I had a feeling he was envisioning himself pummeling whoever did this to me right about now, and stupidly, I liked that idea far too much. If only life were that easy. Joe was my problem, and I only hoped my parting threat would make him think twice about seeking Gypsy or me out again.
“You’re fucking done with that shit,” Ace announced. “No more cons. No more bullshit. Do you understand?”
A humorless laugh forced itself from my lips. Of course, he would think that I’d brought this on myself. He probably even thought I deserved it for stealing from idiots who just wanted to use me and throw me away.
“It’s cute how you think you can control my life.” I smiled up at him. “Let’s see how long that lasts.”
The tension never left his face as he walked into the kitchen and threw my ruined phone into the garbage as if to drive his point home. I expected more of a fight fro
m him, and I was a little disappointed when he didn’t give me one.
“You hungry?” he bit out.
“No.” I leaned back into the cushion and studied him. “Why did you do that to my phone?”
“You were being a brat.”
I wanted to protest. I needed that phone to stay in contact with Gypsy. Except Gypsy had abandoned me to the wolf. She was the reason I was here in the first place. So what would I even say to her? No, I didn’t think I had anything to say to her right now. But Trouble was a different story. She would get worried if she didn’t hear from me. If she couldn’t track my location or check in, she’d probably start to freak. And what about her rent and food? What would happen to her if I was gone?
Worry gnawed at me, and Ace seemed to sense it, but he didn’t ask me about it. Instead, he cut the ties from my wrist and handed me the remote.
“Watch some television and don’t try anything stupid. I’m making dinner.”
BIRDIE WAS SUBDUED AS SHE picked through her salad, eating only the croutons. I wasn’t sure what to expect from her next, and that set me on edge. I liked my routine, and so far, she’d managed to disrupt every part of my day.
“Do you have any wine?” she asked, eyeballing the glass of water beside her.
“Eat your salad.” I pointed at her plate with my fork. “Or have some more chicken if you want.”
Instead, she shoved her plate away and leaned back, staring off into nothing. I didn’t like the idea of her going hungry, and I made it clear when I shoved her plate back in front of her.
“Just take a few more bites.” I’d meant for it to sound authoritative, but my voice cracked, and Birdie didn’t miss it. “There are people in this world who don’t have the luxury of eating. Be happy that you do.”
Guilt settled into her face, and she took a couple more bites to appease me before she stopped again. I’d let her have that one for now. She didn’t need to know I was keeping score. Besides, she’d already punished herself enough for the both of us. Her body looked like she’d been to hell and back, and it triggered urges I hadn’t felt in years. Her wounds weighed heavy on my mind, but I didn’t let on how much it bothered me to see her this way.