Fighter: The Devil's Highwaymen Nomads #4

by Claire C. Riley

  Fighter didn’t even stick around to make sure I was okay before jumping back in the truck and heading back to the club without a second look. I wasn’t hurt. It wasn’t like I expected him to give a damn about me. Why would I? I had just been another potential notch in his bedpost. Another woman whose face he’d forget soon enough. He was helping me because I was forcing him too—at least for the time being—and that was the best I could hope for.

  Still, being around him was…nice. He made me feel safe. Which was ridiculous, given that he’d initially kidnapped me. But there it was. Right now, the only person I felt truly safe around was my kidnapper. It was all kinds of messed up.

  Charlie had been still dressing her little girl when Fighter and I had arrived, so she left me in the lounge with my coffee and my thoughts while she attempted to change the girl’s diaper. I looked around, seeing family pictures of Rider, Charlie, and the little girl all smiling. I picked one up of all three of them sitting together on a park bench. Rider looked so different—like he was at peace, the pretense of the big bad biker slipping away long enough for the photo to be taken. I didn’t have anything like that of me and my daddy. After Mom left, he had burned all the family photos of us together. I had no idea where she was or what she looked like. I’d never have such normalcy, I realized with sudden grief.

  “That was the man I fell in love with,” Charlie said, coming back into the room. She placed her kid on the floor at our feet and began to pick up some of the toys and attempt to play with them. “All six foot three of moody masculinity, that’s my man, apart from when he’s with us. Then he’s like a cuddly teddy bear, ready to do anything for his girls—wash our hair, feed us ice cream, read to us in bed.”

  I smiled, wishing I had something to say to that, but there was nothing. I had no way of understanding any of that. My daddy had never read me a bedtime story or washed my hair. The club women did all that.

  “That’s nice,” I said, putting the picture back down, feeling ridiculous for using the word nice.

  “It’s more than nice, it’s something that every child and every woman should have.”

  “I suppose.” I chewed the inside of my cheek. “How did you two meet?”

  “We have sort of an unconventional love story.” Charlie grinned. “I’d seen Rider hanging around the bar I worked at—The Laughing Moose. Watched him take off with a new girl every night, sometimes twice a night. After a week I decided I wanted him. All of him. I wasn’t going to end up as some skank that he fucked and left, though. So one night I drove to his clubhouse, walked right up to him, and told him I was his old lady and that was that.”

  I stared at her open-mouthed. “And he was okay with that?”

  “Hell no,” she laughed, “but I took him into a bedroom and we locked the door. We stayed in there for so long that when I came out I was walking like John Wayne and his balls were shriveled up like prunes.” She laughed proudly.

  I laughed back, and it felt so damn good. “And then he was okay with it?”

  Charlie shook her head. “God, no. He still fought me at every turn. But what a man wants and what he needs are two very different things. He wanted his freedom to fuck any woman he saw. But what he needed was me. And every time I thought he was thinking of straying, I’d remind him of that fact.”

  I smiled and she laughed.

  “Pussies are magical things, darlin’,” she teased. “There’s nothing that our pussies can’t get us if we want it enough.”

  I continued to laugh, feeling my cheeks flush. I never blushed, and yet there I was blushing bright red as a complete stranger talked about her magical pussy. I shook my head and smiled, staring down at my coffee. I yawned, realizing how tired I was. Bone tired. The sort of tired that made you feel sick and shaky. Maybe it was the adrenaline of the last twenty-four hours finally wearing off. So much had happened in such a short span of time. I’d gone from living in a bubble that my daddy had created for me, to being kidnapped, to finding my way back home, losing Scratch, and realizing that my daddy would do anything to save face.

  I realized with sudden clarity that this was it. There was no going back now.

  I was strangely okay with it all. Glad to be out of it, in some ways. Though I had no doubts that it was going to be as easy as it seemed. No one walked away from my daddy or his club without consequences.

  “You going to be okay?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “You sure?”

  I nodded again. “I’m Penny Benite, daughter of Razuuk Benite. He may have washed his hands off me for good, and I may be glad about that, but that doesn’t stop his blood from running through my veins,” I said firmly. “I just need to figure out my next move.”

  Charlie smiled. “You were made for this life, you know that.”

  I smiled and cocked my head. “I don’t know about that.”

  “Not many women can handle this life. It’s dark, brutal, and our men need one hundred percent of us at all times. I see that in you—the toughness, the softness, and everything in between.” She picked up both of our mugs and carried them to the kitchen sink. “No wonder you made an impression on him.”

  I didn’t ask who she meant; I already knew who she was talking about. But she was wrong—about me and about him. Fighter didn’t give a damn about me. The only thing he cared about was his club and following orders.

  “Come on, monkey, let’s let Miss Penny here take a nap.” Charlie plucked Macy off the floor and headed out of the room, giving me a few blissful moments to gather my thoughts and dig deep to find some strength. When she returned, she handed me a blanket. “You’ll feel better when you’ve slept. Things will seem better, clearer.”

  I nodded, though I wasn’t sure that I agreed with her. I honestly wasn’t sure if things would ever be better again. It felt like the whole world was against me—danger at every turn. The bikers I was running from. The ones that had taken me in the first place and were now sheltering me from my own family. And now this woman. This amazing, marvelous woman who’d taken me into her home with no questions asked.

  Everything was screwed up, broken, and I was the most broken of all.

  I may have been Penny Benite, but right then I felt like a stranger.

  *

  After the couple of days I’d had, it was no wonder I was exhausted. When I woke up, I was alone and uncomfortable on a sun lounger by the pool in the back yard. Charlie had let me sleep for an hour or two on the sofa until she’d needed to clean, and then I’d ended up outside in the sun. I’d curled up on my side and dragged the blanket over my head and slept like the dead.

  I stretched and sat up, looking around for Charlie before kicking off my shoes and following the sound of music into the house. The back of the house opened up onto a large kitchen, with black granite work surfaces and gray cupboards. Even the tiles were black glass. It should have been dark and dingy, yet it oozed classy, badass bitch. I liked her even more.

  “Hey there, sleeping beauty,” Charlie called as she came into the kitchen with Macy on her hip. “Hungry?”

  “Yeah,” I answered. I hadn’t even thought about food until she’d mentioned it, but now that I was thinking about it I felt starved, and my stomach gurgled in agreement.

  She laughed and headed to the large refrigerator before pulling the doors open.

  It was filled with food of every color, shape, and size, and my mouth began to salivate in appreciation.

  “Okay, we’ve got ham and cheese, salad, steaks. Macy here likes mac and cheese just like her daddy, don’t you little monkey?” she cooed, bouncing the little girl on her hip. “I can’t stand the stuff, but whatever.”

  Charlie fixed us mac and cheese and some burgers, and we ate in silence at the kitchen table. I wondered briefly if maybe she’d poisoned my food. I mean, if she thought I was a threat to her old man or her club, why wouldn’t she? I had no doubt that the Viper women would have in a heartbeat. But then I doubted Charlie would poison som
eone who was sitting opposite her kid.

  I helped to feed Macy when Charlie went to answer the phone, and everything felt so strange. So normal. I was on the run, scared out of my mind, my best friend was dead and I had nothing to my name, and yet there I was eating burgers and feeding a stranger’s baby mac and cheese. A stranger my kidnapper had left me with.

  I thought about Fighter, recalling his face, his touch, his scent, and his words to me in the truck. Did he like me? Was that even a possibility? And if it was, did I like him back? I shouldn’t; it was all kinds of crazy messed up. But then, that was life. And really, what had he actually done other than starve me for a few days and give me the best orgasms of my life?

  I couldn’t exactly complain about the spanking, or the way his tongue had brought me to oblivion. And then, right when he should have killed me, he’d let me walk away. I had thought I’d hated him so much, but I’d done nothing but fantasize about him since.

  ‘Go on, get out of here.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Just get fucking gone before I change my mind,’ he’d growled.

  But he’d still held my in place against the wall, his body pressed against mine and his nose in my hair like he couldn’t get himself to let go of me. To let me walk away from this nightmare, from him.

  ‘I won’t say anything to anyone, I promise,’ I’d sobbed.

  I didn’t even know why I was crying. Fear, terror, the loss of something so pure it had embedded itself in my soul.

  ‘I’ll find you if you do,’ he replied, but there was no conviction in his tone. ‘I’ll cut out your tongue and feed it to my dog and then I’ll wrap my hands around your throat and break your neck.’

  His words were threatening. The way he trapped me with his body was threatening. Everything about his was threatening. Yet I leaned back against him, baring my throat to him. I groaned when his teeth nipped at it.

  This was wrong.

  He was wrong.

  I was so fucking wrong.

  He nipped my again, his grip tightening on my arms, his hard length pressing against me. I arched back against him, my breaths coming quicker. I wanted him to touch me, defile me. I wanted him to hurt me. Spank me, and then sooth the pain with his tongue.

  I was seriously fucked up.

  And then he was gone so suddenly I almost fell over.

  The door slammed behind him and his heavy footsteps thundered down the stairs and out of the house.

  I needed to keep everything in perspective. This wasn’t going to end up as some bullshit kidnapper syndrome where I fell in love with him. I didn’t know a damn thing about him other than he had fingers sent from heaven and a tongue that the Devil must have personally given to him to tease and seduce women. My thighs clenched at the memory of his head between my legs.

  Macy babbled, startling me out of my dirty thoughts, and I blushed, flustered at myself.

  Charlie came back into the room as I spooned another mouthful of macaroni into Macy’s mouth. The kid had made a mess of herself while I’d been daydreaming, but Charlie just laughed.

  “So, Rider said you need to stay here, for today at least. He’s still working on a plan for what to do with you.” She began gathering the dishes and placing them in the sink, and I used a cloth to wipe Macy’s face and hands.

  When I was done, she came and picked Macy up and smiled down at me. “It’s going to be all right. Trust Rider. He’s a good man.”

  Would it be? All right? I very much doubted it. Scratch was proof of that, yet I had to hold on to some small ounce of hope that maybe things would work out okay eventually.

  “Thanks for this,” I said, standing up. “You didn’t have to help me. I appreciate it so much.”

  Charlie turned to face me, her kohl-lined eyes looking me up and down. “First off, yes I did. There’s only one person in this world that I answer to, and that’s my old man—and even then not always. But I trust Rider, always have and always will, and Rider said to take you in and look after you, so that’s what I’m doing. And secondly”—she pulled a carton of apple juice from the refrigerator for Macy—“he told me the deal your daddy had going on you, and that shit isn’t okay. Us women need to stick together. So either way you look at it, I did have to help you.” She winked and I smiled. “Also don’t ever tell him that I said I answer to him,” she laughed.

  I’d never really had friends—not real ones anyway. My friends had always been sweetbutts or the other bikers’ old ladies, but they were just as controlled as I was. Forced to be my friend by their men and my daddy, forced to take me out dancing and hang with me. It was all a ruse, I realized. Everything I’d ever known was fake. My entire life was built on lies.

  “You okay?” Charlie asked, and I nodded and swiped at my eyes. “How about you grab a shower and then we go for a dip in the pool with the monkey here?” she said.

  “I don’t have a bathing suit,” I said, my voice shaking. “I don’t have anything.”

  I looked up at her, my eyes wide. Fuck, I was going to cry and that was the last thing I wanted.

  I was tough.

  I was a Benite.

  I was Penny “take-no-shit-from-anyone” Benite.

  And yet my chin was trembling and my eyes were filling with salty tears.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not normally this weak.” I swiped at my eyes again.

  “Penny, that’s some bullshit that men say to keep their own emotions in check, and look what emotional cripples they are,” she laughed. “It’s not weak to cry, it’s strong. To admit that things are hard, to let your body accept that realization and get its relief? That’s strong. So you cry if you need to, and then you follow me into my bedroom and borrow one of my suits, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, my voice a whisper as I tried to contain my tears for a few seconds more.

  She turned and left the room and I stared after her, finally letting the tears run down my face as I let everything in: Scratch’s death, losing my entire life, the fear of the unknown, but mostly the fear of my father’s wrath. And when I was done, I went after Charlie and borrowed one of her swimming suits, feeling stronger than I had before.

  I may have lost everything and everyone. But the funny thing about rock bottom was that there was only one way to go after you hit it.

  ~ 24 ~

  Fighter

  I cut the engine and stepped off my bike, hanging my helmet off the handlebars, and dragged my hands through my hair. It had been a long fucking day and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and fall asleep. That was a lie. But I wasn’t ready to admit what I really wanted to do yet—even to myself.

  But sleep was for the innocent and I was far from it. Rider said he had a plan to get the club, Penny, and me out of the shit, and I had to trust him on that. Battle and Quinn would be back in town that night, and the hope that we could all move on like none of the bullshit between our club and the Vipers, or the Burning Eights and Battle, had gone down was still burning fierce. Maybe it was stupidity, maybe it was hope. Either way, since meeting Penny I’d had a lot more hope than I cared to admit.

  Gauge had come with us, and he’d sobered up enough to be thinking with a clear head. He still wasn’t happy about the Penny situation, but he got it. He understood. Penny could have thrown our club, and me, under the bus to save herself, but she didn’t. Still wasn’t sure why, but that sort of loyalty deserved our respect, and with our respect came our protection, whether he liked it or not. We just needed to make sure shit was squared up before Hardy found out and sent us all to ground.

  Rider threw his cigarette away and stomped on it. “Come on—Charlie said she’s made dinner and she fuckin’ hates it when I’m late for dinner.”

  We headed into the house, passing through the kitchen and following the music and the smell of meat cooking on the barbeque in the back yard. Rider’s home was fit for a fucking king and queen. He’d spent a lot of money getting it like that, and it showed. He had a large pool in the back yard and it had b
een landscaped to look like a tropical paradise. The inside of the kitchen was all granite countertops, glass tiles, and solid wood floors throughout. Charlie kept that shit looking good at all times. He’d done good to find a woman like her. Or maybe it was her that had found him. Either way, they were good for each other. Both wild as all hell, but they grounded one another.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” she yelled as we stepped outside.

  I pulled my shades from my cut and slipped them on, the hot Georgia sun burning down even at six o’clock.

  “I told you dinner would be ready at five thirty, not six.”

  “Your bitch has got that crazy spark in her eye again, Rider,” Gauge warned.

  “Baby,” Rider pleaded, his arms out.

  “Don’t ‘baby’ me,” she snapped.

  Gauge snickered and grabbed two beers from the cooler by the sun loungers. I looked around for Penny, but didn’t see her right away.

  “Come on, baby, don’t be like that. Shit’s going down at the club. Hardy’s looking for blood. Brother’s fucking hungover to shit and moody motherfuckers are everywhere. I just want to come home to my woman and my kid, eat my food, and drink a beer. Maybe even have my-fine ass woman riding my face later.”

  Charlie stalked toward Rider, crazy flashing in her eyes like a warning sign. She was wearing a skimpy bathing suit that showed off her fine-as-fuck figure, her hair in a bun on top of her head and a full face of makeup on. Her lips pulled up in a smile as she got closer to Rider, and both Gauge and I stepped away from him.

  Charlie was a fucking great old lady, but she was also crazy as fuck.

  “You’re tired, darlin’?” she cooed, coming closer to him.

  “I am,” he grunted, looking uncomfortable.

  “Hungry?” she pressed, her arms wrapping around him. She nestled into his neck and he groaned.

  I lifted an eyebrow at Gauge and he raised his drink and smirked.

  “Fuckin’ starved,” Rider grunted as Charlie reached down and cupped his cock.