by Penny Dee
I glanced at my father and then back at the man. As we neared, I could see he’d been beaten pretty badly. His head was hanging, and for a moment I wondered if he was unconscious. When he heard us walking toward him, he sat up straight and started to protest, which came out muffled because of the bandana shoved into his mouth.
“Do you know who this is?” my father asked me.
Terrified, I shook my head and struggled to swallow the knot of fear lodged in my throat.
My father grabbed the man by the hair and yanked his head back.
“This piece of shit is Miles Venables. You know who that is, boy?”
I nodded. Everyone at my school knew who he was. Once upon a time he was the school janitor. But that was before he raped Lily Reardon.
Lily was in my math class. Blonde and pretty, she was outgoing and friendly and popular with both the teachers and the entire student body. Three weeks earlier she was raped by Miles while walking home from cheer practice. He dragged her off the sidewalk and beat her unconscious with a rock. After raping her, he left her for dead in the scrub on the side of the road, her head caved in and barely alive. But she didn’t die, and Wilson Robertson, a kid on the football team, found her when he walked home after practice.
But Miles Venables got off due to some bullshit legal technicality that had something to do with the evidence and how it was obtained, and he was released from custody. Now he was free to roam the streets and prey on whomever his deviant mind chose.
The town always turned to the Kings of Mayhem for these types of situations. They looked at the Kings as the town’s guardians when the law failed them.
It had always been the way.
And the Kings never turned their back on their people.
My father would scare him out of town.
“Time to pop another cherry, Son,” my father said with a deep baritone laugh dripping with evil.
I looked at the man tied to the chair, his mouth gagged, his face bloody, and my father’s intentions became crystal clear. He wasn’t going to scare him. He was going to fucking kill him.
“No, Dad, please! Let the police take care of it.”
My father looked at me like I’d suggested he wear lipstick and a dress under his cut.
“The police?” He leaned in real close so I could see the seriousness in his eyes. “The police don’t do shit to scum like this. You’ve gotta learn if you want real justice in this world, you gotta deliver it yourself.”
He shoved the handle of the knife into my hands and fear ripped into me. He wasn’t going to kill him… he expected me to.
“No,” I rasped, barely able to get the word out. “Please. Don’t make me do it.”
My father grabbed me by the hair and painfully twisted my head so I had no choice but to look at Miles.
“Look at him. That piece of scum raped your classmate. Dragged her into the bushes and did what stinking pieces of filth do to a pretty girl when she tells him no.” He released my hair but shoved me forward, making me stumble. “Now you show him what the Kings of Mayhem think about that kind of behavior.”
“Please don’t make me do this,” I begged.
“You go on about your granddaddy being so damn righteous and justified, yet you do nothing to stand up for what he believed in.”
“He would never do this.”
My father leaned in real close. “He did do this. You think he let the man who raped his VP’s wife get away with it? No. He took him to an abandoned car lot and when his VP couldn’t do it, your granddaddy pulled out his revolver and planted a bullet right between his eyes.”
The revelation spun through me.
“You’re going to be a King one day, goddamn it. And you’re going to have the balls to be a good one. Now go over there and show this raping piece of shit what happens to scum who come into our town and rape.” Again, he shoved me forward until I was right behind Miles. We made eye contact. When he saw the knife in my hand, he started to struggle against his restraints, his pleas for mercy muffled by the filthy gag in his mouth.
I looked down at the knife in my hands and thought about Lily Reardon. She hadn’t been back to school since the attack, and people were saying she was struggling to cope with what had happened to her. “Her light has gone out,” her best friend told me. In that moment I thought about what she must’ve felt. The fear. The pain. The struggle. Those horrifying moments right before he drove the rock into her skull. My fingers itched around the knife handle. That thought alone made me place the blade against Miles’ throat.
Licking my lips, I struggled to swallow as panic raced through my veins.
He deserved to pay for his crimes, yet he was free because somewhere someone had gotten something wrong and he couldn’t be charged.
But I couldn’t do this. I was a teenager. I wasn’t a killer.
I dropped the knife and it clanged against the warehouse floor.
There was still a right way and wrong way to do things.
And this didn’t feel right.
With a growl, my father reached me in three long strides and shoved me out of the way. I fell to the ground, my wrist slamming against the concrete as I hit it with full force. Pain shot through me, and I squeezed my eyes shut—but not before I saw my father run the blade across Miles’ throat and a spurt of dark red blood hit the floor as the rapist died.
CASSIDY
Present
It was a noise, something unfamiliar that woke me. My eyes flicked open. It was dark. Middle of the night dark. I could barely see anything but the shadows around me. Across the room, the curtain danced in the gentle breeze coming off the river. It was silent. Unease began to tingle at the base of my spine as I held my breath and strained to hear in the darkness.
Then it came again. A cry in the night.
“No!”
It was a male voice.
“No, don’t. Please.”
I sat up.
“I don’t want to do it.”
It was Chance.
“There has to be another way.”
And he was having a nightmare.
I ripped off the covers and padded across my room to the hallway.
“Let the police take care of it.”
I pushed open his bedroom door and walked in. “Chance? Are you okay?” He was still asleep on his bed, the sheet pushed down around his narrow hips. His broad, muscular chest was shiny with sweat as he tossed his head side to side and continued to plead with someone in his nightmare.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I gently shook him. “Chance?”
With a rush, he lurched awake and sat up, his breathing heavy and fast. His eyes darted around the dark room before resting on me.
“Is everything alright?” he rasped.
“You were having a nightmare,” I explained.
“I was?” His brow furrowed and he struggled to swallow. He looked confused. Concerned. “Did I say anything?”
“You mentioned your dad then something about the police taking care of it.”
He frowned, his eyebrows drawn together as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t remember.”
Sitting this close to him, I could feel the heat of his naked torso radiating around me and smell his subtle scent. It was deep and masculine and fucking intoxicating. I licked my lips, feeling the need take up in me.
I knew I should leave. Go back to my room. But the way he was looking at me sent all types of crazy spiraling through me.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Maybe it was the lateness of the hour and the fuzziness of sleep still lingering on my brain.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
Or maybe it was the sight of that insanely chiseled chest and bare stomach thick with muscle.
“Are you sure?”
Or the knot of lust I felt every time I was in the same room as him.
Maybe it was all of the above that made me lean forward and graze his lips with my own.
The move took him by
surprise.
I felt him hesitate.
Felt his breath hitch in his chest.
Felt the violent thud of his pulse against his throat as I slid my hand up to his jaw.
My name fell from his lips but was stolen by me as I pressed another kiss to them. With one sweep of my tongue into his mouth, he moaned, and his lips moved with slight hesitation as he fought something inside him before surrendering completely.
He cupped my face between his giant hands and kissed me hard and deep, like a man starved. His lips were masterful and his tongue skillful in the way it danced with mine, taking the lead and making me see stars behind closed lids.
I reached for him, my hands sliding over the bulk of his broad shoulders and down his spectacular chest. I felt him flinch beneath my touch as my hands brushed over thick abdominal muscles. He groaned—a desperate, primal sound that made my skin tingle with lust and my body ache for more.
A throb took up between my thighs. A hot, achy pulse wanting to be filled. Stretched. A need to feel him stroke in and out of my body.
Rolling us, he covered me with his bulk, and I could feel his cock, stiff and big in his boxers, pressing into me. I shifted beneath him, welcoming the hard ridge between my legs, rubbing me in exactly the right place. His breathing came quick, and he groaned as I rocked against him. I was lost in a dizzying storm of sensations. The bulk of him on top of me. The heat of his breath on my skin. The kiss he seared into my lips. The friction of his hardness against my clit. I gasped again. I wanted him. All of him. I wanted him naked. I wanted to see and touch his cock. I wanted to feel the fullness of him as he thrust deeply and slowly into me.
I wanted him to make me forget.
Just. For. One. Night.
Engulfed in his heat, I moaned into his open mouth as his pelvis began to grind harder into me while his lips kissed a trail up my throat and along my jaw. I wrapped my legs around him, knowing I was only moments away from an earth-shattering orgasm.
Then, just like that, the heat was gone as Chance suddenly roared backward as if he was pulled away by some invisible entity. Goose bumps rippled across my skin where the coolness of the night invaded the warmth of where his body had been. He knelt backwards and looked alarmed.
No. He looked fucking mortified.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed, his chest heaving, his lips wet with my kiss.
He climbed off the bed, which only gave me a better view of the outline of his erection.
“For what?” I asked, confused, my clit aching at the sudden loss of friction, my orgasm abandoned.
“We can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
He ran the palm of his hand up the back of his neck. “It would be a mistake.”
His words stung like a slap to my cheek, and it was hard not to show it.
“Not to me.”
In the pale moonlight, I could make out every dip and groove of his impressive abdominals as he stood in front of me looking like he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life.
A slow realization began to trickle through my veins, and I climbed off the bed.
“Please don’t do this,” I said, unable to hide the chilliness in my voice. “Don’t pull away because of what happened to me.”
“Cassidy—”
“I’m not defined by what he did to me,” I cut him off. “Yes, he keeps me running. But he hasn’t taken away who I am. That’s one thing he can’t take away from me.”
“It’s not about that. It’s about keeping you safe.” His chest still rose and fell with heavy breaths. “And this isn’t keeping you safe.”
“It is about that. Now that you know what he did, you don’t want to touch me.”
One second we were facing each other in the dim light, my hands fisted at my side, my heart pounding with rejection. The next he was backing me up against the wall, caging my head in his big arms and pinning me there with his hard body, his eyes blazing into mine.
“I want to touch you more than anything in the whole fucking world. Do you understand me?” His hands came down to cup my face. “I want to kiss you more than I want fucking oxygen. I want to bury myself so deep inside you and make you cry out my name it makes me hard just thinking about it. But I won’t. Because if we’re up against what I think we’re up against, then I can’t afford the distraction. And you, California, are a big fucking distraction.”
He pulled away, taking the heat and hardness of his body with him. In the shadows he pulled on a T-shirt and sweatpants while I stood boneless and cold against the wall. Then, with his kiss still burning on my lips, I watched him walk out of the room and disappear into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
Feeling breathless, I went to my room and after an hour of tossing and turning, finally fell into a disturbed sleep.
CHANCE
I escaped to the fisherman’s cottage before Cassidy woke up. I called the prospects to come over and watch her while I was gone. Despite being safe out here, I wasn’t going to risk leaving her alone.
But I needed the alone time to put things in perspective. Needed to untangle the chaos in my head, and working on the fisherman’s cottage was a good way to loosen the knots in my mind and find the clarity I needed.
Working with my hands was a good distraction. It kept me from doing something rash, like climbing on my bike and riding to California to show one raping son of a bitch what real men thought about rapists.
When I thought about what he had—what he was—putting Cassidy through, I saw nothing but a white-hot fury. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to take all of this raging energy and punch it into his face until he stopped breathing.
But that wasn’t a possibility.
I also needed the distraction from my feelings for her. I thought I was able to control myself around her, keep her at a distance, but last night was just proof that I was losing that control.
And fuck, part of me wanted to lose control just so I could drink from those sweet lips and sink my cock deep into her luscious body.
Which was exactly what I shouldn’t want.
So I worked hard, hauling drywall off the back of my pickup and fixing it to the walls inside the cottage. Since the floorboards had been put down, things seemed to be coming together quickly inside. The rundown cottage was finally taking shape around me.
But at lunchtime, I put down my tools.
I had made up my mind.
All morning I had imagined all the unpleasant ways I was going to inflict revenge on Barrett for what he did to Cassidy. But they were just fantasies. Because there was only one way I could handle this.
I was going to put a club hit on Barrett.
Being a part of a club as big as the Kings of Mayhem, there were ways you were expected to handle things. In this case, going up to the son of a famous politician and shooting him in the face for what he did was not in the best interest in the club. If it was, believe me, I’d already be on my bike.
But taking the asshole out quietly was in the best interests of the entire fucking world.
It would also mean Cassidy would be free. No more running. No more looking over her shoulder.
So, my only option was a club hit.
Taking my truck, I drove to the clubhouse. But just as I pulled up and parked, my phone rang.
It was Wyatt in California. He rang every day at 12:30.
“Just letting you know your boy is still in town,” he said.
Wyatt was a few years older than me with a beard and a beer belly. Originally from Texas, he had a deep, western drawl. He and his two brothers ran a small private investigation business outside of their involvement with the Kings of Mayhem California chapter. His brothers used technology to find and track people, using things such as phone hacking and vehicle tracking, while Wyatt provided the eyes on the ground. He often boasted they could find anyone no matter how hard they tried not to be found.
“I’ll tell you, Barrett Silvermane is one kinky son of a bitch. Followed him to
Club Throb last night. Stayed for about three hours. Do you know what Club Throb is, Chance? It’s a fucking BDSM club. You know how I know that, Chance? It’s because when I agreed to this gig, you said I had to follow him into any bar, club, or public place he went to. Guess who now holds a five-hundred-dollar membership to fucking Club Throb. This very straight, very not-interested in men in gimp outfits with balls in their mouths getting fucked by a man in an executioner’s outfit man! Three hours, Chance. Three hours of all that and more. That was some eye-opening shit.” He sighed. “This guy doesn’t just like women. He digs the men too. I’m telling you, this guy is greedy.”
“I’ll reimburse you the membership costs.”
“Hell yes you will. But can you reimburse me those three fucking hours back? No, you can’t. That is some shit I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life.”
“Was it really that bad, Wyatt?”
To answer me, he hung up in my ear.
Wyatt wasn’t into that shit, but I knew him well enough to know he would’ve found it fascinating. Like a car wreck. Or a plane crash. No one actually liked those things, but fuck me it was hard to look away when they were happening.
Inside the clubhouse, I found Bull in a booth, talking with Red, our cook.
“I need to talk,” I said.
Going by my tone, he knew I meant right away. He took me into the room we used for chapel.
We were barely in the room before I said, “I want to put a club hit on someone.”
Surprise rippled across his face as he closed the door behind us.
“Who?”
“Barrett Silvermane.”
It took him a moment to recognize the name.
“You mean, the Barrett Silvermane? As in the son of Kerry Silvermane?” He took off his glasses. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“He’s a raping psychopath.”
Bull moved to the wooden cabinet across the room and poured two shots of Patron. Handing one to me, he downed the other one himself then moved to the head of the table and sat down.
“You’d better tell me the story. And don’t leave out any of the fucking details.”
