Not that anything in this world would make me regret that choice. I was even glad he had changed his mind about leaving the club. These were his people. Even if he said he only needed me, I loved the way he was with them.
“Fuck this,” Creed growled after a minute went by with nothing other than the sound of tires squealing off into the distance. Keeping his gun held loosely at his side, he slowly approached the door. I had to lean out around Texas to try and see what was happening as Creed threw the door open all in a rush and stepped back, gun aimed. But from my angle, all I could see was the side of his back, rising and falling with each steady breath. Then he put the gun down. “Is this a fucking joke?”
He reached through the door and pulled, sending a small figure stumbling to its knees in the middle of the floor. Sylvia and Tanner stepped out onto the porch, heads swiveling while everyone else circled around the newcomer. Texas stepped closer now that the immediate threat of danger was over, allowing me a better look.
On closer inspection, the figure on its hands and knees had to be a girl judging by the curves revealed by her ripped and dirty, black leggings. Her Star Wars t-shirt had ridden up, showing the palest skin I’ve ever seen but I only paid it a small bit of attention. Nothing seemed as important as the reason why her wrists and ankles were zip tied together. Or why there was a dark hood covering her face.
“Everything’s clear,” Tanner said as he came back inside, Sylvia following in behind him and closing the door. Both of their guns had disappeared and soon so did all the rest. “But somebody sure left in a hurry.”
“Then who the hell is this?” Creed asked roughly. Was I the only one who noticed how intensely he was looking at the mystery girl’s shape? He crouched down beside her when no one answered. “You got a name?”
Her head turned towards the sound of his voice and a muffled noise came from beneath the hood. Creed wasn’t exactly known for his patience, so I wasn’t surprised when he reached out and yanked the hood from her face in one, rough jerk. What did surprise me was the way he sucked in a sharp breath as the mystery hostage was fully revealed.
Curly, flame-red, shoulder length hair in obvious disarray from whatever she’d gone through framed a face I could only call dainty. Or maybe delicate. The impression of vulnerability only made worse by the cloth gag covering her mouth and the wide green eyes circling the room. With her pale skin, she looked like a red-haired Snow White lost in the forest. Except no one would consider the Sinners to be friendly dwarves. The brutish and tanned Creed least of all. And I really didn’t like the way his eyes were devouring her. I told Texas as much, hushing my voice as much as possible as I stood on tiptoe to reach his ear.
“I know, Lizzy,” he whispered back, finding my hand and linking our fingers. “Can’t say I like the way this is looking either.”
Creed moved closer to her and her gaze settled on him, emotions flickering through her eyes faster than I could keep track of. The fear there told me she was smart, at least. The attraction, there and masked in an instant said not so smart after all. Then again, who was I to judge?
When he reached out, she flinched, which only served to piss him off. He cursed under his breath and pulled the gag from her mouth none too gently. Her skin paled even more at the violence coming off him in waves and I stepped around Texas, paying no attention to his protests as I crouched down next to them. “Ignore him,” I said, getting her to focus on me. “He’s a bit of a jerk.”
Creed grunted and stood, towering over us and I felt Texas right beside him.
The girl licked dry lips and took a deep breath. “I’m guessing he’s Creed?” She said in a voice rusty from disuse.
It was the wrong thing to say.
No guns came out that time, but it was a close thing. The Sinners went from watchful to a scary sort of readiness in the time it took his name to leave her mouth. She put on a brave front by not actually cowering, but she went paler than she already was to the point I thought she might faint.
“Can y’all give us some space?” I snapped. “I really don’t think a girl that’s five foot nothing and currently tied up is here to take on your fearless leader.” They all shuffled a few steps back, still looking wary, and I figured that was as much as I was going to get.
I gave mystery girl my full attention again, offering what I hoped was a gentle, reassuring smile and she gave me a small one in return. “My name’s Lizzy.” I hiked a thumb over my shoulder. “The dirty blonde caveman-”
“Your caveman.”
I rolled my eyes. “My caveman’s name is Texas.” My nose wrinkled as I glanced up at Creed who had the stillness of the predator. “You obviously know of this jerk and we can do the rest of the introductions later. Who are you? What happened?”
She sighed so deep and long that it made me weary then she took in all of us in again before settling on Creed. In a soft voice full of defeat, she said, “I’m Caitlin. My brother, Samuel, has offered me up to pay his debt.”
That meant nothing to me, or to almost everybody else in the room. But it meant something to Texas and Creed because they both turned into statues. I looked up at them, but they were in the middle of a silent conversation.
“Uhhh…” Rain stepped close to them. “Mind filling the rest of us in.”
Texas scooped me up, tucking me into his body. “This ain’t gonna be good, angel. I’ll tell you that now.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
Creed spoke to all of us, but he only had eyes for Caitlin. “Three of us started this club when there was nothing in this spot but dirt. Nothing to our names but the promise that we would always look out for each other. It was just me, Texas, and Samuel. I didn’t know his lies ran this deep. Never knew he had a fucking sister.”
“Who is Samuel?”
I didn’t catch who asked and it didn’t matter. Only Creed’s answer did. “That was his old name. The one he couldn’t wait to get rid of. The rest of you know him as Rebel.”
My mouth fell open as the pieces clicked together. Texas was right. This wasn’t going to be good. Not good at all.
But we were together and nothing that came our way would change that.
THE END
Author’s Note
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you thought about Claimed by a Sinner. If you have a few moments to leave a review, it would be greatly appreciated. I hope you enjoyed meeting the Sinners. Keep reading for chapter one of Owned by a Sinner.
CHAPTER One - Caitlin
48 hours ago
The front door of the bar chimed open and I lifted my head from the glass I was scrubbing, a sunny smile on my face for whoever was coming in. A smile that withered and died by pieces as I recognized the devil striding across the hardwoods towards me, green eyes empty and measuring. My fingers trembled as I put the glass down and I briefly considered running for the kitchen, grabbing Bubba’s attention and dashing out the back door to my car.
There was no love lost between the two of them and I knew Bubba would cover for me, even stall if he had to. Even though that scenario would end with him bleeding in the parking lot. But what would be the point of setting that in motion? The devil would find me. He always did. And he was already pulling out a barstool and folding his tall frame onto it so my escape would hardly be inconspicuous.
The devil looked me over, a calculating appraisal that started at my shoulder length red hair twisted up into a bun and traced over my Star Wars shirt and pale, bare arms before coming back to my eyes when the countertop blocked the rest of me from sight. There was nothing sexual in that look, for which I was grateful. But the fact that he looked at me like I was property instead of a person sure didn’t make it much better.
His lips curled up into a charming grin as I watched him quietly, even though no emotion managed to reach his eyes. Then the devil spoke, voice low and cheerful. “How’s it going, sis?”
When I was a little girl, I used to dream of being part of a real family. In thos
e dreams, my dad was a mild-mannered accountant with ridiculous coke bottle glasses and floppy hair that always fell in his eyes. My mom was an elegant and gorgeous Southern Belle who loved him despite his odd quirks and cooked an extravagant dinner every Sunday after church. My brother was the dashing gentleman of the town who helped old ladies across the street and was set on marrying his childhood sweetheart.
As far as crafting fantasies go, I had to admit that I had done a pretty damn good job with that one. Back in those early days, it had been so strong that when I retreated to it, I could smell the ink my dad's study. Taste the blueberry cobbler mom made for dessert. Feel their warm affection and approval.
Too bad the whole thing was a fat fucking lie.
On his good days, dad was simply an emotionally abusive piece of shit with a permanent, yellow stain to his teeth and a knack for making a person feel like less than dirt. On the bad ones, when he'd had too much to drink for even his Irish blood to handle, and he returned to the trailer with his face red as his hair, well...he turned into a whole different kind of asshole that liked to throw his fists around.
Mom was absent for the worst of it, mentally at least, which I suppose was a twisted sort of blessing, at least for her. Why care about the rantings and ravings of a madman when you could shoot poison into your veins or throw it down your throat and disappear into Lala Land until it was time for the next dose? And that's exactly what she did, all the way up until it inevitably killed her.
Then there was the devil himself. My brother, Samuel. Older than me by a few years, he was dashing, there was truth to that. He also had enough charm to fill a stadium. And at one point he was my knight in shining armor, even more so on the day he had saved me from our dad. I had the scar from the bullet beneath my shoulder to prove it and for a while, we were inseparable. The Keane siblings shaking our fists at the world and daring it to come for us. And come for us it did. First, in the form of the system finally deciding they gave a shit and splitting us up into separate homes. Second, in the form of two years without contact. Two years where my brother seemed to drop off the face of the planet.
Then, even another state away, I started hearing things.
My new foster parents were good people. As a matter of fact, James and Diana came oddly close to the family I had crafted for myself. But I was used to the low lives by then. The degenerates. The people that society considered to be worth no more than the trash they trampled beneath their feet. And hanging around with them, I was able to catch all the gossip about three hot headed, teenage bikers coming onto the scene and making a name for themselves.
I heard all about the viciousness of Creed, so full of violence and wrath that before long people only whispered his name. Robbery, murder, torture, apparently there was nothing in his wheelhouse that he considered too far.
Texas was his opposite but no less dangerous for it. With Creed, you might get a chance to fight your death, futile as it may be. But Texas had no qualms about looking through a scope and taking out his opposition from five hundred yards.
Then there was Rebel, and my ears always perked up to listen in when people talked about the smooth talking, charmer with green eyes and flame red hair to match the temper that rarely saw the light of day. He never got his own hands dirty, or at least he was never caught. The third founding member of the Seven Sinners was perfectly content to hit people where it really hurt. Their pockets. There was hardly even a takeover when the Sinners decided to fully claim Oakdale and the surrounding areas as their turf, everyone else was simply becoming too poor to operate.
I was sixteen by the time Samuel blew back into my life with a purring, black motorcycle underneath him and a leather jacket with Rebel sewn into the breast. My excitement lasted about as long as it took to realize the smiles on his face hardly ever made it to his eyes but by then it was too late. The money was coming into the account he helped me open and from then on, no matter what move I made, I always pictured him looking down at my life like a chess player and I was another piece to be relocated.
There may have been a time where I could’ve gotten out. But that would’ve meant leaving my brother. And despite what he turned into, a too large part of me would always see the boy who held me in his arms and promised everything would be okay.
I sighed loudly, shaking off the memories before grabbing another dirty glass and scrubbing at it like my life depended on it. Maybe it did. “What can I do for you, Sam?” I winced as the name he’d discarded left my mouth, a side effect of my stroll down memory lane.
My whole body tensed, fingers squeaking on the glass as I waited for his outburst. The fact that he only shrugged made me dread what might be coming next instead. “Oh, come on,” he chided gently, adjusting the brim of his baseball cap. “Maybe I just wanted to come visit my sister, see how things were going. Make sure being in the bar business is treatin’ her right.”
I held back my first response. Which would’ve been I’m not in the bar business. You are. My name’s only on the deed so people never look too close at what you’re doing. That would’ve gone over about as well as throwing a wolf into a hen house.
Instead, I settled for, “I’m surprised you had time to make it out this way, I thought with the Sinners growing they had you traveling all over.”
His brow furrowed slightly, pain flashing across his eyes so quickly I might have imagined it. “We’ve actually had a bit of a falling out.”
My fingers paused on the glass as I gave him my full attention. “Run that by me again?” I must’ve heard him wrong. If there was anything that managed to get through the persona that was Rebel and down into the Sam I remembered, it was his friendship with Creed and Texas. Whenever he told me of their latest exploits, either of a gang they got the better of or a new piece of real estate they acquired, there was real pride in his voice and a genuine smile on his face. They were thicker than thieves. They didn’t fall out.
Rebel looked around the bar, nodding at a few of the regulars milling around by the jukebox, smiling and shooting a little two finger salute at the cluster of girls on the far side of the bar who had been sneaking glances this way since he walked in. They giggled amongst themselves and I rolled my eyes. At least they were still topped off on fruity umbrella drinks. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the way those damn things tasted but I still hated making them.
Satisfied that he didn’t have an audience in easy earshot, Rebel brought his focus back to me, any emotion from a moment ago shuttering behind a cold mask that he wore when no one was observing him. “I’ve been stealing from the club, almost since the beginning.”
“You did what?!” I screeched, slamming the clean glass down on the counter so hard I was surprised it didn’t shatter.
“Lower your voice.”
“Screw you,” I hissed, balancing on the bar as I leaned into his face. “What the hell were you thinking?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked but he didn’t respond otherwise. I knew why, even if I didn’t really know why. Two years of his life were completely unaccounted for. I knew deep down there was a reason my brother had turned into this hard, cold thing that only cared for money, but I didn’t know what it was. The only people that might’ve known him during that time were Creed and Texas, but Rebel had been adamant from day one that they were never supposed to know I existed.
“It doesn’t matter what I was thinking,” he told me easily, like it really was no big deal. “What matters is that they know. I got comfortable and brought in this weasel because he was easy to maneuver but he was even more of an idiot than I expected.”
He shook his head as if the thought of making such a mistake physically pained him. “I knew that when he was found in an alley with a hole perfectly placed between his eyes that Tex had gotten to him. Since then I’ve been laying low, trying to keep my head down.”
I snorted. “Is that what the hat is for,” I flicked the brim, ignoring his scowl. “You have to know that makes for a completely shitty disguise.” And
it really did. Despite his personality, my brother was a beautiful man and a hat couldn’t hide that, just ask the still chirping co-eds at the other end of the bar. He was tall, pale and leanly muscled with the jawline of a leading man and bright, emerald eyes. Walking around in a potato sack wouldn’t garner him any less attention.
Rebel shrugged, wide shoulders lifting his leather jacket. “I’ll take the miniscule difference a hat might make when the other option is being strapped to a table at Creed’s mercy.”
My whole body chilled as I suddenly realized just how serious this was.
He observed the goosebumps on my arms and nodded, “Now you’re gettin’ it. Texas has been on my trail like a bloodhound and the fact that he’s not obviously sniffing around anymore is...worrisome.”
I chewed on my lip, letting my brain process. “Can’t you just pay them back?”
Rebel blinked at me slowly. “I’ve told you what kind of men we are. Even if I had that kind of cash on hand, which I don’t, do you really think it would matter? Please tell me you aren’t that damn stupid, sis.”
“Fuck you,” I spat. “I haven’t exactly had time to come up with a plan. I just don’t want to see you in a box.”
He laughed as if I said something funny, eyes sliding to the group of women as they started to filter out before settling back on me. “It’s cute that you think there would be enough left to put in a box after they got their hands on me.”
I let my anger fall away, knowing it wouldn’t do me any good. I put my hand on top of his where it rested on the bar and I did my best to ignore what it did to my heart when he didn’t pull away. “How can you be so flippant about this? They’re your best friends. Y’all have been through everything together.”
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