“Do I look stupid to you?” the woman barked. She pulled out a knife and stepped forward, pressing the tip of it into my chest. I could have taken it from her in a second, but to what end? For what reason? There was no way I’d find my way out of that place, and then I’d be dead just like Drag. So I stayed perfectly still, looking down at the beautiful and deadly abomination in front of me.
“Because what if she isn’t satisfied? She liked Drag, right? Maybe make sure she likes his replacement before cooking up a batch of taco meat from him,” I gritted out crudely.
I felt a trickle of blood slide down my chest, but I held her gaze and bided my time while she made her decision.
“Think how pissed she’ll be if you kill him before she’s decided she’s finished with him,” I added on desperately.
“Fine,” she relented, her eyes narrowing. She glanced at Drag. “We’ll be back for you.”
I turned to look at him, watching him smirk and grab his crotch. “I’ll be waiting, darlin’.”
The three women headed back toward the door, the first two leaving. The third one stood looking back at me Drag, a smile on her face, while Drag lit another cigarette.
“I look forward to it,” she said, her voice smooth like butter.
“Me too,” he chuckled.
“I’ll take that as the first taste,” she laughed, nodding to where Drag was still holding his crotch.
“I’m hungry now, Diana,” one of the women said to her.
“We have others, come.” And then she turned and closed the door.
We listened to their footsteps moving away from us, and when I could no longer hear them I turned back to Drag.
“We haven’t got long,” I said.
“Me and my cock thank you for your service, brother,” he chuckled. “Only one way that bitch is eating my cock, and it’s still going to be attached when she does it, that’s for damn sure.”
“Well mine isn’t quite as grateful,” I replied. “So let’s find a way to get the hell out of here before it’s too late, please.”
I listened at the door, waiting for the silence to descend outside. Drag came forward again and I worked my magic on the lock once more, popping it open in a couple of seconds.
“You got magic fingers?” he snorted on a laugh.
I turned my hand over, showing him the small silver tool in my hand. I slid it back into my pocket without another word and cracked the door open. I checked both ways, not seeing anyone coming, and I looked back at Drag. “Coast’s clear.”
He pulled the door open wider and looked out with me. He frowned, his gaze staying left for a little while longer before he pointed. “I’ve been down there.” He looked back to the right. “But that’s unknown territory.”
“Does that lead the way out?” I asked hopefully. It was futile though, because if there was one thing I’d learned it was that where my life was concerned, nothing was ever simple.
“Nope. Aife’s bedroom,” he chuckled. “You’ll get to know that place real intimately soon enough.”
“Great, well, let’s try and delay that, please.”
He chuckled again. “There’s weapon stores that way too.” He turned back to me. “I’m thinking, one of us needs to stay here while the other goes to find the way out.”
I arched an eyebrow at him and he smirked.
“I’ve been in here before, remember?”
“Yeah, and I know there’s no way you’re coming back for me if you find the exit,” I sniped.
“Now what makes you say that?” he replied, giving me a slow grin. “I’m deeply offended by that thought.”
I raised my hand. “Lowly sex slave, apparently.” Then I pointed at him. “Dinner. It’s not rocket science.”
He chuckled. “If I find the way out, I’ll be back, one way or another. And if I don’t…well, a life of servitude ain’t so bad, brother. At least you ain’t gonna be eaten.”
He started to move out of the room and I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back. He swung back with a punch and it hit me in the cheek, making me see stars. I swung back and we both stumbled away from the open doorway as we grappled at one another, hitting out without the sense to check our surroundings.
Drag was younger than me, and though I’d had a hard life, I had no doubt that his had been harder. He fought hard, dirty, and like his life depended upon it. Mainly because it did. We were both breathless and sweaty, and blood trickled from my lip and from his nose by the time we were done. He stood on one side of the room and I stood on the other, panting and glaring at each other.
“You done?” I growled out, and he laughed.
“I’m just warmin’ up.”
“You’re going to get us both killed, asshole. Let’s just work together!”
The light in the hallway outside the door flickered, a breeze coming from somewhere. Drag swiped at the blood that dropped from his nose and onto his top lip and he grinned, his lips stained red.
“I told you: I don’t follow, I lead.”
I spat out a mouthful of blood. “Well you need to learn quick, because those crazy bitches are going to come back and kill us both.”
His smile faltered momentarily before he fixed it back in place. I wondered if it was too late to get through to him, to make him work as a team so we could both survive that nightmare. Because we could if I could get him onside. Of that I was certain.
Because there was one major thing that was different between the Savages and the candy store.
This time I was prepared. At least mentally.
And this time I’d kill myself before they did it.
There was no way I was going out the way Ricky did.
I was going out fighting to the bitter end, or I was getting the hell out of there.
Chapter Eleven
Nina
I woke up to the kiss of the sun on my skin and Shooter’s woody scent wrapped around me. I kept my eyes closed for several minutes, basking in the normality of the situation. Because it felt like it had been a long time since I’d had a taste of normal. So long, in fact, that I couldn’t remember when that had been, no matter how hard I racked my brain. But that, right there…It felt normal.
Shooter’s arm tightened around me and he pulled me closer, his chest rumbling in approval as he felt his skin on mine. The clubhouse was silent outside our door, and I wondered what had been decided the night before after the partying had died down and the men had caught each other up on the years they had missed. The tension in the air had died away the more alcohol had been drunk and memories revisited, and I wondered if perhaps it could be a turning point for both clubs. I hoped so. I’d seen something new in Shooter when he’d been sitting with his men—a calmness that hadn’t been there before. And when he’d looked at me, he’d looked like a man that had finally put all the pieces of the puzzle back together.
I wasn’t used to hanging back and letting other people make my decisions, controlling my fate like I didn’t have a say in any of it. Yet there was also something nice about it all, if I were being honest. I felt safe, protected, and a strange form of relief that it wasn’t on me if it all failed. I’d spent so long being strong and growing into this person, that I didn’t recognize myself anymore. It was nice to stop for a moment and take a breath.
“You awake?” Shooter asked, his voice rumbling through his chest. I didn’t reply but he squeezed me tighter and chuckled. “Yeah, you are.”
I opened my eyes, my gaze falling on the black-and-white photos that adorned his walls. Images of men and women long since dead. Memories of moments captured long before the outbreak and before any of us knew that the end was coming. It was a bittersweet haunting of time left behind but not forgotten.
I turned in Shooter’s arms and looked at him. His blue eyes felt deeper than an ocean, and they wrapped me in their cool embrace as he leaned down and took my mouth with his. I didn’t want to kiss him back, and perhaps I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t wanted to hold onto that
perfect moment for a little longer. To cling to that normality. But I did. So I kissed him back, our tongues dancing over each other’s as his arms tightened around me even more.
His hands moved to my hair, holding me hostage as he tipped my neck up and peppered it with kisses, his mouth moving over my bruised and broken body like it was made of glass. He leaned down over me, our bodies so close yet still not connected. The sunlight stroked the tense muscles of his shoulders and arms and I wrapped myself around him, wanting to be closer to him and everything he stood for, at least for just that one moment.
He leaned down and took my mouth again, kissing me harder as he nudged my legs apart with his knee and I complied, more than ready to give myself over to him again. His chest rumbled as he nudged between my legs and I gasped into his mouth, desperate for him, for this.
A sharp knocking came at the door and Shooter froze, his forehead pressed to mine and his eyes closed.
“Prez?”
“Yeah?” he yelled back, sounding pissed off.
I couldn’t blame him; I felt the same way.
“Butcher wants a meeting ASAP.”
“Motherfucker,” Shooter mumbled, opening his eyes. “I’ll be there in ten.”
I gasped when Shooter started to move his hips, but then the knocking came at the door once again.
“What?” Shooter yelled even louder, throwing back the covers and climbing out of bed. I grabbed for them as he stormed toward the door, covering myself just in time as he threw the door open and a sheepish Max stood. “What the fuck? You can’t give your president ten fucking minutes to be with his old lady, Max?”
Max’s gaze darted to me and I rolled over and covered my face in embarrassment like my parents had just walked in on us. “Sorry, Prez, it’s just Butcher’s already in the chapel calling a meeting. Thought you’d be none too happy ’bout that.”
“That motherfucker! I’m on my way!” Shooter yelled, slamming the door closed on Max.
I uncovered my face as Shooter moved around the room, dragging on his jeans and T-shirt before pulling on his cut. He looked over at me, pausing to take me in, his pupils dilating with longing. He leaned over the bed and grabbed my ankle before dragging me down to the edge of the bed, and I squealed and laughed like I was seventeen years old without a care in the world.
He reached under the covers and grabbed my ass, squeezing it roughly and sucking in his bottom lip again. “This ain’t over,” he said with a grin. “We’re finishing what we started.”
“Go to your meeting,” I laughed. “I’ll be out in a minute. I want to know how we’re doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“How we’re going o kill the Savages. I want to know the plan.”
His face turned serious and he nodded. “I don’t want you there when this goes down.”
I rolled my eyes at him and he scowled.
“I’m serious, Nina.”
“So am I,” I snapped, all good mood forgotten about.
“Nina,” he growled, stalking toward me.
“Shooter,” I bit out, narrowing my eyes. I pulled the covers tight around my body and held his stare. “Go to your meeting before Butcher takes over this whole thing. I need to get dressed.”
Shooter glared down at me but I glared right back, more than ready to take him on if need be. I was tired of his bullshit orders. He may have been attractive, but that didn’t mean I was going to let him push me around and treat me like a little princess in a tower, that needed protecting. Those days were over. That woman was long gone. It was nice to take a trip down memory lane for an hour, but the hard Nina was more than ready to kick ass now.
Shooter finally shook his head at me and left the room, and I lay in the middle of his bed—naked, barring the thin sheet—feeling pissed off. I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to shake the feeling off. It wasn’t the time for that. Lives were on the line and I needed to focus. We all needed to focus. I stared around Shooter’s room, wondering what would happen that day. Would we save Mikey? And then what? What happened when Mikey and I finally found our paths crossing again? Would he be going his way with O’Donnell and I going mine with Shooter? And what about Drag? What would happen when he was back in charge? It was a shame Butcher couldn’t have been the president of the Rejects; he seemed less insane than Drag.
I snorted on a dry laugh. When the hell did “less insane” become a good leadership quality?
I scooted off the bed and found my clothes, dressing quickly before heading into the bathroom. There was some crusty toothpaste at the bottom of a screwed-up tube and I forced some out and ran it around my teeth to get rid of the bad taste in my mouth. Looking up into the mirror, I saw the face of a women forever changed and half-tortured by what the world had done to her. I dragged my hands through my hair, pulling it back off my face and into a bun at the top of my head, but all it did was accentuate the thinness of my neck and the bruises on my skin—not to mention the thin red line that cut up from the corner of my mouth, curtesy of Fallon.
It wasn’t often that you got to look at yourself in that world. The days of staring endlessly into a mirror pruning yourself were over, and I realized then as I looked at myself—or the version of myself that stared back with haunted eyes—that I didn’t recognize myself anymore. I didn’t know who she was, and that scared me more than anything.
“Ughh, what-the-fuck-ever,” I grumbled to myself, and walked away. I put my boots on, strapped my machete into its sheath, and stared down at the leather cut that Shooter had given to me. I considered not wearing it anymore, but he was probably right and that it was for my safety to wear it, so I picked it up, slid it on and headed out into the main clubhouse.
Outside it was starting to get busy, bikers—both Rejects and Highwaymen—and women all starting to wake up and get themselves ready for the day. I stopped by the doorway and watched them all for a moment, seeing how it could have and would have all been, back in the day. That day was different from the day before, and the men seemed more at ease with each other—barring Scar from the Rejects, who was sitting on one of the sofas, a semi-naked woman on his lap and a beer in hand even at that early hour, while he stared daggers at an oblivious Highlander.
That spells trouble, I thought worryingly. Clearly not everyone was ready to kiss and make up. Balls saw me and started to make his way over and I sighed heavily, wondering whether he was going to start giving me shit for taking Gunner and Amara’s side.
He stopped next to me and leaned against the wall, following my gaze to Scar. “He won’t do nothing without the say-so from Butcher.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yep. If it’s one thing I know about Scar, it’s that he’s a stickler for the rules. If the prez says leave it, he’ll leave it.”
I nodded, still not feeling happy about the situation. Things changed, people even more so, and looking at Scar then, it seemed highly likely that he wasn’t the same man that Balls had once known. Plus, there was the whole “he’s a psychopath” thing.
“Gunner woke up,” Balls said, interrupting my thoughts. “Thought you should know.”
I turned to him, my eyes searching his face for any sign of malice but finding none. He didn’t look annoyed or unhappy about the situation; if anything he looked a little guilty about the whole thing. Good, he should have. The whole mess was his fault.
“He okay?” I asked, trying to seem blasé about the whole thing.
“Yeah, he will be if infection don’t take ahold of him. He’s got some healing to do, though,” he replied. “Seems like what you did for him likely saved his life.” He chewed on one of his dirty fingernails and I resisted the urge to slap his hand away from his mouth.
I nodded an okay, relief filling my chest. “Glad I could help.”
Balls pursed his lips. “I feel like that mess was probably my fault.”
I snorted out a laugh. “Ya think?”
He dragged a hand through his messy hair. “No need to b
e such a bitch about it.”
I straight-up laughed, attracting the attention of several people. “You don’t know me very well, do you?” I smirked. “‘Bitch’ is my middle name.” I winked and Balls smirked back.
“Why do I believe you?” he smarted.
I smirked at him. “So what happens now?”
Balls shrugged. “That’s up to Shooter. I think things are gonna start changing, though.”
“For the better?”
He shrugged again. “I hate change, so probably not,” he replied. “But as long as the Highwaymen come out on top, I’m down for helping to make whatever needs to happen happen.” He cocked an eyebrow at me and walked away.
I guessed that was the end of that conversation then.
I followed him with my eyes as he headed outside and then I moved over to the long row of tables where food was being laid out. I was hungry, my stomach rumbling loudly, and I grabbed a plate and started piling food on it as I moved down the line.
“Excuse me.” A couple of the Rejects women squeezed next to me to pile another tray of mashed potatoes onto the table and I spooned a steaming pile of it on my plate to go along with the other rationed food.
I moved away and headed to a quiet corner to eat in peace and observe everything. It didn’t take long for my peace to evaporate as O’Donnell filled a plate and headed my way.
“You mind?” she asked.
“Do I have a choice?”
She spooned potatoes into her mouth and swallowed without chewing. “We always have a choice. Sometimes we just don’t choose well is all.”
“Well, aren’t you the wise one today?” I bit out, my hunger disappearing. I spooned the food in regardless. I’d be stupid not to eat my fill while I could. You never knew when your next meal was coming or what it could consist of. So no matter how much I wanted to walk away, head held high and food uneaten, I didn’t. Self-preservation was a bitch.
We ate in mutual silence, both of our gazes moving between our plates and the group of bikers who seemed oblivious to the day’s work ahead of them. I wondered whether they believed the Rejects about the Savages. That perhaps they didn’t think they were as bad as they had made out. I did, though. And so did Shooter. We had both seen the fear and relief on O’Donnell and Butcher’s faces when we had met them out on the road. That sort of fear you couldn’t fake. It was real and tangible. I had tasted that fear myself many times and now I recognized it.
The Dead Saga (Book 6): Odium VI Page 10
