by Skyla Madi
Shaking, I lift my torso and pull my legs underneath me, wincing at the fire that rips through my tired bones. Jorge exhales and lowers his phone. Without a glance over his shoulder, he stuffs it into his pocket.
“I really wish things were different, Yasmine,” he says, looking up at the ceiling. I force myself to stand up and I straighten my arms, holding the gun outstretched and pointed directly at the back of his skull. “If you had—”
I pull back the hammer and it clicks loudly into place. Jorge freezes.
“Don’t be stupid. You shoot that gun and this whole building goes up.”
I shuffle forward, then shuffle backward off to the left where the front door remains unlocked. Jorge slowly turns to face me and pins me with a softened stare.
“Eight people are currently staying at this motel. One a family—mom, dad, and three little babies.”
My eyelids flutter at his lies. They’ve always manipulated my good morals and used my humanity against me. They’ve always abused my big heart. Not this time. I know for a fact eight of the twelve rooms are being refurbished due to asbestos. At this very moment, the only people in this building are me, Jorge, and the motel owner, but I’m not sparing a thought for that child-sex offending pig. Getting rid of him would be doing the town a favor.
I back up, keeping a firm hold on my handgun and I reach behind me to open the front door. Cool air rushes in as I back out onto the ripped welcome mat. Jorge steps forward, his eyes darting to either side of where I stand as he tries to decide what he’s going to do. Nausea turns my stomach and scratches at my throat. I aim my gun off to the side, pointed at a dirty pan I used to make soup the night I went to the clubhouse. I stride backward, giving myself as much space as possible.
“Yasmine!” Jorge runs at me, his heavy stomps causing the room to tremble. “Don’t!”
I part my lips with an exhale as the urge to vomit rises and I shoot the pot. I don’t have time to turn or run. The flames eat up the room quicker than I can blink, and they explode out the door and the windows, blowing me off my feet. The ground falls away from me and glass whips through my skin like tiny diamond bullets. Where I hit the ground, I don’t know, but it’s hot and sharp and the shrapnel that rains down on me burns like lava.
That’s enough. I’ve done enough.
I let out one last exhale, then succumb to the darkness pulling me under by my ankles.
SIX
J U D G E
“I need you, Damon. Help me and I’ll be forever in your debt,” Yasmine pleaded, her sweet breath blowing over my ear. “I’ll do anything, be anything.”
It’d been a long time since I believed words spoken by a pretty female tongue. I wanted to believe her, but I’d been burned in the worst possible way too many times before. She couldn’t use her God-given beauty to manipulate me. The only reason she was here was because she wanted something from me.
“I don’t believe you.”
Yasmine cupped my jaw in her soft hands and guided my head back to hers. I flicked my gaze over her face as our noses gently grazed. My eyebrows draw closer. It felt genuine, the way she touched me. Yasmine blinked, enrapturing me with her long lashes and pretty, dark irises, and something changes in her posture. She leans harder against me and holds me tighter with her thighs. Hot blood begins to travel south and pool between my legs, stirring my cock. I wanted to kiss her, to crush my mouth to hers and rip her clothes from her body. I wanted her naked—no—needed her naked, and on me. I licked my lower lip and eased my mouth closer, encouraging her to give me what I want.
“Go on,” I demanded when I really wanted to beg. Please, please kiss me with those gorgeous lips. “Fucking kiss me.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Liar.” I snatched her long, thick hair in my hand and yanked her head back, exposing her throat. It was one of my favorite parts of a woman’s body. It was an easy part to please, an easy part to punish. “I’ll give you what you want, and you can say I took it, if it’ll ease your guilt.”
I lowered my head and pressed my nose to her collar bone, deciding if I wanted to kiss and lick her, or nip and suck. She did barrel in here uninvited, then called me out in front of my men…so I should punish her. Show her who’s boss.
But…
I pushed my tongue out and touched it to her throat. Her breath hitched, sending shockwaves of pleasure down my spine. The girl on my lap was too pretty to punish. I licked her along the column of her throat and planted a soft kiss on her jaw. Then I eased her head forward until our eyes locked. Yasmine’s chest rose and fell with shallow breaths and her wide eyes were now hooded and lusty. She tightened her grip on my face and crushed her mouth to mine. It caught me off guard. I was never caught off guard and never let a woman take a kiss from me like she deserved it. I gave them if I wanted to give them. No bitch in this club had the balls to steal one from me and the gasps from clubwhores hiding in the shadows of the room confirmed my thoughts.
But…in the moment, I was powerless against Yasmine. I pushed my tongue inside her sweet mouth. I devoured her. I gripped her bare hips and ground her against me. I hadn’t dry humped since I was twelve, but here I was, wanting to get a girl off with my jeans. And she was sexy in a way none of the women at the club were. I couldn’t explain it. I moved my hands low to cup her ass. I grabbed her bare cheeks in my hands and forced her harder against me. I groaned as I felt the warmth from her pussy through my jeans and on the tips of my fingers. Then, I broke the kiss and pushed Yasmine back enough to take her in. The LED lights in the room brightened to a blue and…my attention fell to her exposed breasts and flat, naked stomach. She was naked.
She wasn’t naked before…
I touched the space under her ribs, where her body curved in, and I slid my hands north until my thumbs touched the underside of her breasts. Minnie was perfect—untouched by the club, by this way of life. She had no tattoos, no scars, no silicone trapped under her smooth, soft skin. She let her long, dark hair down and it tumbled over her breasts, covering the nipple and tickling my forearms.
“Damon, please,” she whispered, placing her hands on top of mine. “Please.”
“Please, what?” I asked as she peeled my hands from her and placed them on the chair’s thick armrests. “What do you want?”
“You. I need you.”
Yasmine cupped her breasts and I watched excess, pliable flesh spill from her slender fingers. They needed bigger hands. I tried to lift mine to show her, but all I got was a twitch from my middle finger. What the hell?
“I need you,” she repeated, moving her hips against me. “I need you so bad.”
I tried to grab, to squeeze her soft flesh, but I couldn’t move my damn hands. She turned me on so bad and I wanted to touch her more than I’ve wanted to touch any woman, but I couldn’t. Releasing one breast, Yasmine slid her pretty hand south over her taut stomach to the mound of her pussy, covering the thin, maintained strip of hair that teased me.
“Touch me,” she sighed, pressing her fingers inside her creases.
“I can’t touch you.” I flexed my hips again, wanting to be closer, needing to be closer. “I can’t touch you.”
Her eyelids flutter as a shiver rippled over her body. She continued to move, to grind, to moan, as she brought herself closer to her orgasm. I didn’t know which part of her deserved my attention more, so I flickered it everywhere. Her eyes, her mouth, her throat. Her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. Fuck.
Yasmine grabbed my face again and her quick breath skittered across my cheeks. I stilled as she grazed her index finger along my lower lip.
“You look like you want to taste me,” she murmured, pleasure flashing in her eyes. “Do you?”
I kept my stare on hers as I flicked my tongue out and touched it to the tip of her finger. Her full lips parted, and she slipped her finger into my mouth. I salivated the second her taste hit my tongue. I groaned and closed my mouth around her finger. She tasted good—better than good. She taste
d like everything I was missing.
Yasmine replaced her finger with her tongue and kissed me deeply, hungrily. I got lost in it, lost in the way it felt, in the way it made my heart beat into my ribs, and the way it turned my blood to lava. I fell deep into her, into her passion, that I didn’t notice her moving my hand between her legs until I felt her slick arousal coat my fingers. Oh, god, she’s wet.
“Yes,” I groaned, breaking the kiss. “Fucking hell.”
I never allowed a woman to be in control of me, not ever, but since I literally had no control over my own body, I allowed her to do whatever she wanted with me. She sat on my hand and flexed her hips, smiling wickedly.
“Your fingers are so much thicker than mine,” she said, positioning my finger at her tight entrance. I pushed up as she sank down on it with a shuddering moan and it caught her by surprise. She fell forward and pressed her chest to mine. “Jesus, Damon.”
All I could do was hold my finger inside her and desperately wish it were my cock instead. Yasmine tilted her head back, giving me access to her slender throat and I ran with it. I kissed, sucked, and bit her flesh until she was a quivering mess, until she was begging me to make her come. A loud moan seeped out between her lips and turned my blood to hellfire.
“Judge,” she bit out, then buried her head in the space between my shoulder and my neck as her body went rigid and her muscles trembled.
I dropped my head back against the headrest and focused hard on not ruining my jeans as the feel of her contracting around my finger propelled me to the edge of ecstasy, to the edge of madness. Her body shook, her thighs clenched me sporadically, until she couldn’t bear to move against me anymore. I shut my eyes, willing my body to calm with hers even though I was still worked up beyond belief. Yasmine’s panting breath warmed my shoulder and dampened my shirt, but I didn’t mind…
…until the panting turned to sobbing and the fabric of my shirt became thoroughly soaked.
I frowned. “Minnie?”
She spoke, but her words were muffled by my shoulder.
“What?”
She pulled back and I shouted at the sight of her, at the blood seeping from her scalp and rolling down her face. Her gently tanned skin was red, and black, and gushing. I tried to recoil. I couldn’t.
“He’s dead” she cried, baring her white teeth. “Because of you!”
“Me?” I pulled my hand free and gawked at the blood that spread down my forearm and dripped onto my jeans. I tried to stand up, tried to push away, but my limbs were useless. She was an anchor on my lap and I had no way of getting her off. “What the fuck?”
A banging thundered in the distance, the sound of a heavy fist colliding with wood, and my world wavered, pulling me out of my chair, away from Yasmine the psycho, and into nothingness. My eyelids fluttered, and I felt my bed mattress beneath me. Recollection of where I was floated into my consciousness. I was in my room, alone.
A nightmare? Thank God for that.
When my heartrate settled, I let myself drift off again.
“Prez!” Casino shouted though my door and rapped his knuckles on the wood. “Prez, wake up! There’s something you need to see.”
I groaned and rolled onto my back. I blinked into the dark, my room lit only by the light that seeped under the door since I kept the skylight closed. My naked chest was clammy with sweat, my cock still hard and tenting my sweatpants.
Bang. Bang. Bang. “Prez?”
“All right,” I shouted, running a hand over my face to pinch the bridge of my nose. With my other hand, I adjust the waistband of my pants, easing the pressure on my length. “Better be good.”
I peered at the alarm clock on my bedside table. 2:00 A.M. Nothing good happened around here at this time of the morning. A few scenarios ran through my head and none of them were pleasant.
I switched on my bedside lamp and squinted into the lit room. Yawning, I sat up and threw my legs over the edge of the bed, planting them on the carpet. I let my eyes fall shut as I bent to pick up my t-shirt from its crumpled heap on the floor. I pull it on, slip into my boots, and leave the room. In the hall, Casino waited for me, dressed in full colors, which meant he was about to ride out.
I frowned at him. “What’s the problem?”
“I’ll show you.”
I followed him through the clubhouse. The place was quiet tonight. A few alcoholic members lingered in the main hall, whining and spending time with the clubwhores. They shouted their hellos to me, but I walked right on past. Casino didn’t need to say anything as we stepped out the front door. I saw it on the horizon, the smoke and flames as they billowed high in the sky. It was coming from town and we were miles away, our clubhouse situated at the very end of Burning Road.
I peered at the men who waited just outside the doors of the clubhouse. Seven of them in total—Creed, Amani, Hawk, Ayr, Casino, Modo, and Cyrus. There had to be a reason they were standing here, waiting for me to give the orders.
“Am I missing something?” I asked, un-fucking-impressed. “You woke me up because there’s a fire in town? Are we the goddamn fire brigade?”
Creed stepped forward. “Judge—”
“Is it one of our warehouses?”
He shook his head.
“One of our rackets?”
He shook his head again. Why was he here anyway? He spent most nights in his home, snuggled up to Blondie. Getting him out here after nine p.m. for a job was like pulling teeth. Unless they were fighting.
“No?” I glanced between them once more, making sure they knew how pissed they made me. I turned away. “I’m going back to bed. Anyone wakes me for something this stupid again, there’ll be consequences.”
“Could be Twisted Sons, Prez,” Amani called after me, and I paused, turning my head.
“We chased the last ones out of the area,” I said.
“They’re like cockroaches, you know that. They always come back.”
She had a point. I rubbed my tongue along the roof of my mouth, in thought. It was better to be safe than sorry. If another club was messing around on our territory, without our permission, then we needed to act on it before word got out that we weren’t protecting what was ours.
Exhaling, I turned around. “Creed, Hawk, Amani. Go for a ride.” I looked at the others. “You four stay here. No need to wake the neighborhood over something that might not concern us.”
Creed, Hawk, and Amani marched toward the drive, where their bikes lined the curb. That was when I saw it, a small figure making its way down the drive.
“Who’s on sentry?” I asked Armi, squinting to work out who the hell it was.
“Stoic.”
A whistle sounded in the distance, Stoic’s whistle, but he was slack on his timing. We should’ve known the second the intruder crossed the gate’s threshold. I’d be on his ass about that later. I whistled back, acknowledging I heard him, and Armi strolled up beside me, lifting his sniper rifle. He cursed as he peered down the scope.
“It’s a woman,” he said. “It’s—”
“Better not be,” I grumbled, knowing exactly whose name was going to fall from his lips.
I held out my hand and Armi placed his rifle in my palm. I lifted the heavy gun to my face and peered down the scope. It was blurry, so I adjusted the sharpness, twisting until the picture was clear. Under the drive spotlights, I looked at the intruder’s bare, slender feet. They were black and bloodied. I dragged my sights up a pair of dirty, ripped jeans. Her tank top fared no better. My pulse increased as Yasmine stumbled down the drive, her long, brunette hair no longer in a ponytail but frayed and frizzy around her filthy face. It was clear where she’d come from. The explanation for why she looked so beaten down billowed high on my left. I continued to watch through Armi’s scope. Creed and Hawk approached her, and she collapsed to her hands and knees on the gravelly ground at their feet.
“What the fuck…” Casino swore as I handed my rifle back to Armi. “What’s this bitch’s deal?”
Creed and Hawk made no move to help Yasmine. They simply stood there, looking down at her as she barely held her weight on her shaking arms. Creed glanced over his shoulder at me and flicked his head. I started forward and stormed up the drive.
“Want me to drop her back in town?” Hawk asked and Creed cut his eyes at me.
He didn’t think that was a good idea, but what was I supposed to do? This was a clubhouse, not a shelter or a hospital. I clenched my teeth together. If I helped her, I was involved. If I left her for dead, her ex-husband might even send chocolates. She said herself that none of us were good men, so why start now?
I peered down at Yasmine, who sobbed and lowered her head to rest on her forearm. Blood seeped from her skin and stained her scorched clothes. She reached out and touched my boot with her small hand, sending a pang of guilt through my chest. I crouched and caught her chin with my finger. She winced as I lifted her head and made her look at me. Her full lips were busted at the corner, her cheek swollen, her eye bruised. Anger spilled through my veins at the sight of her. What kind of animal would do this to a woman?
“I give up,” she whispered, her breathing turned labored and painful. “Kill me. Just kill me.”
That should be the end of it. I should have one of the men take her body and dump it somewhere else…but fuck.
“Wake Harlei,” I ordered, not caring who was the one who did it. “Help her prep the surgery.”
Amani and Hawk left, leaving Creed and I alone with Yasmine. I released her chin and her head fell like a stone.
“We’ll help her with her injuries, not with her problem,” I told him, glancing over at the smoke that continued to plume. “When she’s better, she’s on her own.”
Creed frowned. “You think she’s come from the explosion? That it’s got something to do with her?”
I looked at the ash that clung to the fabric of her clothes and dirtied her skin. Creed shifted his weight and pinned me with an accusatory look. He was good at doing that.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
