“Hey, everyone’s got their things, right?” Wreck laughed, closing the collection and sliding it back under the bunk.
“So what’s your thing?” I signed, my mouth pulled slightly to one side.
“Besides Stevie Ray Vaughan and a growing love for the Baltimore foodie scene?” Wreck deflected, but when he saw I wouldn’t be brushed off he continued. “The rest of the guys would probably say my thing is over-complicating an easy plan. What can I say? I’m a sucker for lost causes, doomed romances and the broken-hearted.”
“Is that so?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “Which of those am I?”
“I think you're all three,” he said, the mirth drained from him like sand through loose fingers. “It’s my turn to ask you a question. What happened to you? Really?”
I sighed sitting back down on the couch. It was a hard thing to relive, but it also felt weirdly good to have someone take an interest. Maybe it was the quality of my uncaring clientele or that the other girls were too afraid to ask questions, but ever since I started working for Patrick not one person had ever actually asked me what happened. Wreck grabbed me a bottle of water and poured water in a ceramic mug for himself then sat next to me and patiently waited for me to gather myself enough to start.
“When I was fifteen one of my friends, Jen, and I started working for Patrick to make extra money. Jen, who was a few years older than me, had a car and drove us to the laundromat after school to clean part time for minimum wage. When I figured out the whole laundromat thing was a front for a prostitution business I started gathering evidence to use against him. My father always taught me that if I saw something wrong and did nothing then I was just as guilty as those doing it.” My hands slowed and became sluggish when I mentioned my father. He had his flaws but he was a good man. It was such cruel irony that a man like Patrick would take his place in my family after he was gone.
“Your dad seems like a good man,” Wreck added.
“He was.” I managed a weak smile. Wreck frowned at my use of the past tense. “He was in the army when his Humvee drove over an IED. They did their best, but...”
“Yeah.” Wreck exhaled putting a hand on my shoulder and rubbing it compassionately. He could tell it was a hard thing to talk about and didn't pressure me to go into it.
“Unfortunately what I didn't realize was that some of the local cops were also Patrick's clients when I went to file the report. I was so stupid!” I had to take a moment to unclench my fists. It was the biggest and dumbest mistake of my life, and had eaten me up since the moment it all happened. Why didn't I go to a non local precinct or the state troopers? Hell I could've even reached out to the Feds. I should've known better!
“A few days later Jen and I were pulled over by the police coming home from another friend's house. Patrick was with them. The cops were his clients and knew what would happen to them if word got out about what they were up to. Patrick strangled her in front of me while the cops held me down.”
An audible crack drew my attention. Wreck had been squeezing the ceramic mug so tightly that it broke. It didn’t shatter or anything dramatic, just a stressed induced crack that ran up the side. It was only when I looked at it did he realize what had happened.
“Sorry.” Wreck placed the now broken mug on the ground, cracked his neck to either side and asked me to continue.
“When Jen was unconscious Patrick turned his hateful gaze to me. He told me that my friend was collateral damage and that this was all my fault for going to the police. His eyes were wild in rage that someone had the audacity to try to ruin him. I knew that I was next, but to my surprise Patrick then gave me a choice. Apparently he’d done his homework on me the past several days and found out that I was high honors in both math and business. His offer was to help him run the business or die right then and there, yes or no. I was terrified. So I made the only real choice I had.
“Then he put his hands around my throat anyways and I thought that was going to be the end. When I woke up my voice was gone. And I had these.” I tugged down my scarf revealing the old scars. “The last word I ever heard myself say out loud was 'Yes'.”
When I lowered my head the floodgates opened and tears streamed down my cheeks at reliving the memory. I choked up signing the last sentence.
Wreck held me close for what felt a long time after that while I cried into his big arms. He didn't say anything. There was nothing to say. He just kept me safe and let me work through the pain. My body had been naked in front of men so many times, but never my soul.
“You don't have to continue if it's too hard,” Wreck said when I started signing again.
I shook my head, wiping my tears with my palms. No, I needed this. I had come too far to stop. This might be the only chance I’d ever get to tell someone what really happened to me. It didn’t matter how hard it was, I needed to keep going.
“The cops crashed my friend's car and burned it with her in it. They claimed we both died in a drunk driving accident,” I started again after several deep breaths. It struck me that Jen had now been dead for longer than I'd known her while she was alive.
“I didn't realize it at the time, but my punishment for trying to turn him in didn't stop at watching my friend die or losing my voice. I worked for him now fixing his books, and keeping both businesses running. I was a part of this world. In the eyes of the law I’m a criminal. To protect myself I have to protect the man who owns me, the man who stole away my whole life.
“When he feels extra cruel or just wants to remind me how things work he makes me turn tricks with the rest of his whores. The only real time off I get is when I get raped or beaten up too badly. He lets me take a few days to heal up, at least enough to go back to work.
“Every day I wonder if today will be the day he kills me,” I signed. I started signing the next part but immediately stopped. I didn’t have the courage to admit that every day I wanted him to do it a little bit more.
Wreck had leveled his steady gaze on the far wall, the hate in his eyes nearly burning a hole in the reinforced metal sides. We sat in silence next to one another absorbing the full weight of the moment- me telling the story and him having heard it.
“I’m going to kill him,” Wreck said. It wasn’t a loud proclamation, if anything his voice was quiet and thoughtful. It was the absolute certainness and flat intensity of the words that made me shiver. It was as if Wreck was a knife who was matter-of-factly explaining how deep he was going to cut.
“Thank you,” he said, taking my hand. All the rage had washed from his severe features leaving only softening empathy. “I know how hard that must’ve been to get out into the open. You’re very brave, Sarah.”
“I don’t feel very brave. I feel like the world’s biggest coward.” I stifled a sob, but he caught my chin with a finger and raised my eyes to his.
“I don’t know a single other person that could’ve gone through what you’ve been through.”
“Why?” I asked, abruptly changing the subject to a question that’s burned away like a candle in my mind for almost as long as I’d known Wreck. “Why have you shown me so much kindness?”
“I know you, Sarah. I think I’ve known the kind of person you are all the way back to the moment I met you. That night when I went looking for you upstairs in the laundromat and you basically rang the alarm on me telling me you never wanted to see me again. You signed something at me right before I left. I had no idea what the hell it was at the time, but now that I know a few things about the language I figured it out. You said, ‘I’m not worth it.’” Wreck’s calloused hand cradled the side of my face. It was so warm and accepting that I couldn’t help but nuzzle into it a little. “The things I've done for my MC...”
Wreck's closed his eyes, the pain of past failures or maybe even past victories clearly haunted him.
“You say you're not worth any kindness? Well none of us are,” he said after a sharp breath, eyes still closed. Wreck blinked the focus back into his eyes and leveled a sym
pathetic gaze on me. “But that sure as hell don't mean we don't need it. And if the rest of the world won't give it to us, then it's on you and me to give a damn about each other.”
My chest and face had begun heating up as I told my story and now hearing him say that to me they were near scalding. The wave of sorrow and resignation over my past had bled into the awe of being so heard and accepted by a man who had nothing to gain by caring about me.
So many bubbling emotions ran through me when I finally looked back into his eyes. A thousand pounds lifted from me. It was like I'd spent years trapped under a car slowly being crushed to death and here he comes and lifts it off so I could finally get out. Had it not been for his ruggedly strong form engulfing me there on the couch in the middle of his clubhouse trailer I might have just floated away. My hands tried to speak just to fill the empty space, but my mind didn’t know what to say. It was funny. For never being able to speak I was rarely at a loss for words.
Until now. With him.
After nearly half a dozen false starts I let my heart take over and pushed my lips into his. The walls that had kept us apart these few weeks had crumbled down around us as we urgently explored each other tongues. What started as ginger touches melted into more with the abandon of a forbidden couple whose time together was quickly running out. If all we had was this moment we’d make the most of it.
Wreck slid a hand around my back and guided me off our slightly awkward perch on the couch, neither of us breaking the hungry, urgent kissing. Several blind, meandering steps bumped us against the large wooden table in the center of the room.
My legs quivered with the intensity of his lips as they worked their way down my jawline to my neck. I let his strength hold me up while he unbuttoned my blouse and tore off his shirt and vest. The slight chill in the air washed over me sending goosebumps across my exposed flesh only to burn away at his hot, searching touch. Yearning for more, I pushed myself harder against him.
I'd wanted this so badly for so long.
But it was so much more than just lust. Everything felt so laid bare, so honest. All my hesitance and insecurity was gone.
Suddenly he pulled away. Wreck’s chest rose and fell in great heaves, his eyes narrowed and for a moment I thought I’d done something wrong.
“You're not my whore. You know that right?” he asked, taking my shoulders in his strong hands. Whatever he and Patrick had talked about when I stopped taking other clients must have been weighing on Wreck. I could see him struggle to control himself. The fire in his eyes wanted to tear my clothes off and take me. But he somehow, if only temporarily, showed restraint and let me go. After a deep breath he leaned back against the table and squeezed the edge of the wood so he wouldn't be tempted to touch me. “I don't want Jezebel. I want Sarah.”
I swallowed hard.
Patrick named me Jezebel right before offering me up to one of the cops that pulled us over. It was the same night they killed my friend after I regained consciousness and realized I lost my voice. It was the first time I'd ever had sex. I was fifteen.
A wave of self consciousness crushed me like a vice. I was twenty-three years old now and Sarah was still a virgin. It suddenly felt like what we were about to do carried much more weight. I almost felt shy because of it. Wreck wasn’t my customer. I didn't have to do anything I didn't want to.
Now that I could choose, did I really want to do this?
I took a long moment to myself and weeded through all the conflicting thoughts and emotions. Wreck was a good man and for some crazy reason he actually cared about me. I'd never met anyone like him and I probably never would.
Was this what love was?
The realization nearly made me laugh. I smiled wide and snorted air out in lieu of a laugh. Oh my God. I had fallen in love. Real love. And I was too stupid or blind to notice.
“Yes, I know. With you I'll always be Sarah,” I signed in reply. That sense of warmth radiated from my heart like a newborn star. I let my fingers drag lightly down his face, almost as if to convince the rest of me that he was real, that whatever this was was also real. It took seeing how he looked at me to feel like I deserved this.
Why couldn't I dare to dream? Why couldn't I have my own knight in shining armor, even if that armor was just a leather vest with the words Devil Kings printed across it.
“Will you be my Stewart?” I batted my eyes innocently.
“Fuck no!” Wreck roared, his beard bristling with laughter as he swept me up in a big hug. There was also some dark comfort in knowing that my biker warrior could kick the crap out of anyone else's prince charming. “Now where were we?”
I felt a calming sense of ease in having finally made my decision, the first one that was truly mine since I was fifteen. I was never going to be a good girl. That simply wasn't how my story was going to end. I chose Wreck, and everything he was and was going to do.
And to hell with whatever may come of it.
“I believe you were going to fuck my brains out,” I mouthed the words, getting closer and closer until my lips brushed against his.
It took him a second to piece together my words whispered noiselessly across his skin, but when he did his lips creased and I could more feel than hear a guttural moan like the flaring of a great hearth deep within his chest. The chains holding him back from me all this time had shattered. He pressed forward and kissed me with wild, unfettered passion. A thrilling spark ran through me knowing I'd unleashed him.
I'd also unleashed myself.
We tore at each other’s clothes in fits between labored breathing reprieves from kissing. The cool air nipped against my suddenly bare thighs, and licked up the front of my panties. He smoothly unclasped my bra, sliding the straps off my shoulders and leaving me naked to the waist except for my scarf. Wreck drank in my shock-induced smile as he crouched to one knee and wrapped his arms around me. His muscles flexed as his strong arms sat me down onto the table. The watery-blue tinted tattoos on his bare arms and chest rippled with promises of how he would take me.
“Put that back on,” I signed, pointing to his leather vest.
“You sure?” he asked, hoisting up the heavy leather in one arm, his bicep bulging.
“We are who we are,” I replied with a soft smile. “You accept me for what I've become—”
“And you accept me for what I will always choose to be...” Wreck grunted solemnly to himself then looked at me and snorted. “We really are perfect for each other.”
“Two broken, discarded toys,” I signed, breaking into a breathy laugh.
“My batteries are full.” Wreck flashed me a grin as he slid on his vest. “I can go all night.”
“My Energizer bunny,” I signed, then curled my fingers at him, beckoning him closer. I leaned forward but he palmed my stomach and pushed me back. Knowing he was in control and that I was along for the ride triggered a shiver through my whole body which was immediately quenched by smoldering heat radiating deep from my core. The warmth turned into an inferno when I felt his lips, then teeth dragging across my ribs. My ragged exhale was a poor substitution for the moan that ripped through me.
Then his mouth went lower.
“I've been dreaming about eating your wet pussy,” Wreck said, looking back up at me with a devil in his eyes. He knelt fully in front of me then took down my panties.
My legs felt like they might collapse. In all my years under Patrick’s forced service never once had a man gone down on me. Up until this very moment it never even crossed my mind that that sort of thing ever happened for women. I always thought that head was a guy thing. A one way street.
Oh, how wrong I was.
Hot and flexible, his tongue slowly explored my pussy. Running circles around my clit before focusing on it, his pulsing pressure surged through me in waves until my body wriggled against him. His hands squeezed my ass and pulled my pussy even closer to him and the hint of teeth on my lower lips made my vision blur.
God I couldn’t take much more of this!
“I’m willing to bet you’ve never had this before.” His voice was poured caramel and I could feel his smile because we both knew what he was doing to me. When he slipped his tongue back inside of me and started spelling my name I lost it. I came twice before he let me pull away from his iron grip.
I crashed back against the window, panting breathlessly. It was all I could do to keep the body tremors from making my legs give out.
Wreck stood before me like a heavy metal statue of David. My useless legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him into me. The bulge in his jeans pushed against my thigh, sending little earthquakes through my pussy. I had to bite my lip to stay somewhat in control. I wanted his cock so bad it hurt. I wanted him more than I’d wanted anything in a long, long time. Fuck, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this horny!
I let my legs drop and shot up. After tearing his pants down and him kicking them off I curled my fingertips around the elastic waistband of his boxers then looked up at him. His stare in return was hypnotic. His lungs sucking in great breaths like bellows fueling the furnace of his barely contained lust.
This was my chance. It was the eye of the storm before he took me how he wanted.
Sliding the fabric down his long shaft and over his swollen head, his hard cock bounced up. I slid onto the floor, kneeling before him on the pile of clothes at our feet. He flexed making his cock pulse as I wrapped my hands around it. My hands had never looked so small before.
On instinct, I took as much as of him into my mouth as I could. Usually guys liked head right away. I forced out all the nagging comparisons between Wreck and my other clients, and was determined to live in the moment. I was going to be here with him and that was all.
Thinking I was uncomfortable Wreck started to pull away, but I squeezed his cock tight and stopped him. I scowled at him, mouthing the words, “This is mine,” before diving back in. The whole time I blew him the only time we broke eye contact was when I brought him to the edge and his head rolled back. Whenever I felt he was close I pulled back and slowed down, dragging things out.
Outlaw's Ride: An MC Romance Page 13
