"If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of the compound. Part of being a good member is knowing when you should lean on one of your brothers, Maze."
I noticed movement from behind Repo and reached for the Maglite beside my body, lifting it by the light end to strike with the heavy side if need be. But then Duke came into view, holding up his hands palms-out. I felt my eyes lowering at him in accusation and he shrugged a shoulder. "Sorry, Ace. There's no way you should be out here when you couldn't even get out of your bunk. It's not a chick thing. If it was any of the guys, I'd have gone to Repo too." Somehow I doubted that and I felt my eyes rolling at him. "So fucking stubborn," Duke said, shaking his head, but smiling like he approved as he reached down, snagged the Maglite, and moved off to do his rounds.
"Come on, honey," Repo said, slipping an arm across my back and moving to bring us both to our feet. To my absolute horror, I had to give him almost all of my weight, my own body completely giving up on me.
Now, I was pretty sure I made it to the back door to the compound.
I say 'pretty sure' because I remember seeing the back door. And then all I saw was the back of my eyelids.
The next time I woke up, I was in a bed.
There wasn't much I noticed aside from the fact that my ears were so clogged that I could barely hear anything, my sinuses were painful they were so full, my throat felt like I swallowed acid, everything hurt from the neck down, and I was both a ball of sweat and so cold that my teeth were chattering.
But I did notice this one other thing. The bed I was in, it wasn't my own.
The room itself was not mine.
I knew this because my room was a cold, damp, dark basement that always smelled like laundry detergent and men's feet. This room, while windowless like the rest of the compound, wasn't cold, damp, or dark. The walls had black and white wallpaper of a foggy forest, making it seem cozy and relaxing. There was a white dresser with a giant television across from the bed I was in and a door to the side where I could make out a shower stall. The bed itself was huge and covered in white sheets and a fluffy white comforter which I was tucked tightly into... and had dampened with my sweat.
As I was looking around with curious eyes, the door to the hall opened and in walked Repo with a tray in his hands. His eyes landed on me and he gave me a tight smile as he skirted around the bed and put the tray down near my shoulders as he sat down by my hip. His hand moved out, pressing into my sweaty forehead and I wanted to swat him away, but my arms were trapped under the blankets and it was too cold to pull them out. "Heya honey," he said, shaking his head slightly. "Still burning up. Open," he said, reaching for two pills off the tray along with the glass of orange juice and bringing them to my lips. "Come on, Maze," he begged quietly, tiredly, as if maybe not-so-conscious me had been giving him trouble. I opened my mouth and the pills slipped inside as his hand went behind my neck to angle my head up so he could bring the juice to my lips. Swallowing felt awful, but I knew better than to try to refuse medicine that might help. "How ya feeling?"
I made a whimpering sound as he placed the glass back on the tray and pulled out a thermometer. "Open up," he demanded, slipping it beneath my tongue and I closed my mouth around it. "You've been sleeping for almost sixteen hours," he told me as we listened to the thermometer bleep out the passing seconds. I felt my eyes bug and he shook his head. "Relax. Reign was in here. He's not mad you're out of commission for a while," he said, pulling out the thermometer and cursing. "Fuck," he growled, tossing it on the tray and suddenly reaching for the comforter and ripping it off me.
"Cold," I cried out, trying to grab it and cover myself up again with achy arms.
"I know honey," he said, reaching for me and hauling me off the bed against his chest. He stood, taking me with him, as he went into the bathroom. He turned on the light with his shoulder, revealing an average-sized bathroom that boasted a simple vanity, the shower stall I had mentioned earlier, the pre-requisite toilet, and a soaking tub. Before I could even ask what he was doing, he sat down on the bath platform, reached out to turn on the water, then sat me beside him. His hands went to the hem of my tee and before I could register his intention, he pulled it up and off me. My mind may have been a little sluggish, but I was present enough to squeal and reach up to cover my bra. "Sorry, Maze. No room for modesty. We need to get this fever down," he said, his hands going to my button and zip and making short work of them.
"Repo..." I said, my head shaking at him as I felt a mortified blush creep up on my cheeks. Not only was it bad enough that I was being stripped by my boss, but I had on a hideous cream-colored bra and my panties totally had little red and pink hearts all over them.
Seeing the blush, his face softened as he stood, kicking off his shoes, reaching for his shirt and discarding it. "Let's even it up then, yeah?" he asked as he went for his button and zip, then stepped out of his pant legs, leaving him in a pair of dark blue boxer briefs. He leaned down, his arm going around my back and picking me up a couple inches so he could drag my pants down. My breath caught at the contact, my eyes going to his face as the flip-flop feeling moved through my belly. Hearing my indrawn breath, his eyes found mine as his fingers dragged the material down my thighs. He took a deep, slow breath and looked deliberately away.
The next thing I knew, I was in the tub, Repo holding me down as I fought to get back out of the too-hot water.
"I know," he said as one of his arms crushed into my hipbones and the other pressed in hard to my ribcage. It was so hot that the water was already enveloping the entire bathroom in steam. "Jesus Christ," he grumbled and I turned my head to look up at him, finding sweat beading up on his forehead. I watched, as if not attached to the traitorous appendage, as my arm rose slowly, rubbing the sweat away, leaving a trail of the hot bath water in its wake. Repo's hand closed around my wrist, holding it aloft for a second as his eyes pierced into me, before slowly lowering it back into the water. "You gotta sweat out this fever," he explained to fill the awkward silence.
"You don't need to be here."
"You're too fucking stubborn to be trusted to stay in the tub by yourself," he said, sounding amused as his arms lessened up their pressure.
I took as deep a breath as my stuffy nose would allow, closing my eyes and trying to force myself to relax. "I feel awful," I admitted and Repo's hand moved up and down my side gently, soothingly.
"I know, honey."
"You shouldn't call me that," I said, feeling sleep start to tug at my brain again.
"I know that too," he said, exhaling slowly as his hand settled high on the side of my thigh, his fingers grazing the material of my panties that covered my ass.
The last thing I was conscious of thinking before I fell asleep again was that it felt nice to be close to him.
Five
Repo
She wasn't just sick. When Duke and Renny said she wasn't feeling well, I figured she just had a cold or something. But finding her passed out in the yard, then dealing with her fever dreams for fifteen troubling hours afterward, I realized she wasn't just under the weather, she was seriously fucking sick.
I was trying to hold her down in bed when the door to my room opened and Reign walked in, his dark brows furrowed as he took in the scene. "Heard she was sick," he explained, shutting the door. "Should we call someone?" he asked as he moved closer to the bed as Maze cried out in her sleep.
"If it doesn't break soon, yeah. This is fucking insane," I said, my stomach tied in a knot as I felt the skin of her arms underneath my palms. It was hot, almost to the point where it felt uncomfortable to touch.
"Any of the others sick?" he asked, meaning the probates.
"No, but none of the others have had their schedules fucked with as much as she has. She had to have been bone tired. Her immune system didn't stand a chance after being stuck out in that thunderstorm the night before last."
"It's not your fault, Repo," Reign said, drawing my attention. He
was right, but he was also wrong. Technically, it was his fucking fault. But I couldn't say that. Hell, I felt guilty for even thinking it. But it was also my fault because I had been the one to change up her schedule, to deprive her of sleep, to send her out in a torrential, freezing cold downpour that lasted almost the whole duration of her shift. As if something in my gaze gave me away, Reign's lips twisted up slightly. "Yeah, I know it's my fault," he said, shrugging his shoulders.
"She's not quitting," I said, looking down at her as she writhed against my hold. "Can't have gotten more than six or seven hours of sleep all week and she's shown no signs of giving in."
Reign sighed. "Yeah, I know."
"Is it really that important that she fails out?" I asked, my voice a little quiet at questioning him at all.
"Have you seen the way Fox corners her when he catches her alone?" Reign asked, knowing I had, knowing very little slipped past me. "And the way Moose is constantly on her case? You see the way the old timers ogle her?" He paused, shaking his head as he looked at his feet. "I'm not saying that I can guarantee the safety of my brothers, Repo. That's not the life we live. Some of us get hurt. Some of us get killed. That's the choice we make when we join. But I can give my men some comfort that they are safe from one another under this roof. I can't give that to Maze. Much as I'd like to think that all my men are good and have a moral compass and would never cross that line, I can't fuckin' promise that. We all have darkness and fuck if I know if some of the old timers hadn't done some awful shit under my father's leadership. Especially to women who, we all know, those men didn't exactly place a high value on. I know for a fact that more than one or two of the club bitches got roughed up back in the day. I know she's not a clubwhore and I know that she seems at least somewhat capable of taking care of her shit, Repo, but fact of the matter is... she's smaller, she's not as strong, and she is out numbered. I could try to lay down the law and threaten the men, but that would be problematic..."
"Because you're choosing a probate over patched members," I guessed.
"That, yeah, and because even that isn't a guarantee. They get drunk, they get mean and stupid. Something could happen. And while there would be fuckin' repercussions, swift and fuckin' permanent, it wouldn't take away the damage. I can't have that shit on my conscience, Repo. Neither can you. She doesn't belong here. The sooner she sees that, sees that we aren't doing it to be assholes, but for her best interest, the better."
And, again, I saw his point.
There was no denying the logic there.
The old ladies, they were protected out of a need to respect your brothers. No one would so much as look at Summer, Lo, or Janie sideways for fear of getting their eyes gouged out by their men.
Maze didn't have that kind of protection.
If someone got a couple too many in them, got turned down by one of the bitches, or were the sick kind of fucks who liked a fight, liked to take what wasn't freely offered, Reign was right... there was no way to promise that couldn't happen. And while there would be consequences, he was also right about it not taking away the damage. Maze would be left to have to deal with what happened.
I could see that Reign wished he had the ability to trust all his men implicitly. And while he did trust the ones he had appointed himself: Cash, Wolf, myself, and about three or four of the other guys... there was nothing he could do about the other men, the ones who had been around when he was still biting ankles. He couldn't kick them out because of something they might be capable of. And because he couldn't do that, he couldn't tell Maze she was as safe as any of the other men.
It wasn't right.
It was unfair.
It sucked.
But it was how things were.
"Get her better," Reign broke into my thoughts. "Then get her out. The sooner, the better."
With that, Reign left me alone with Maze.
Every few hours, I got her conscious enough to shove some fever reducers and pain medicine in her before she passed back out again. She didn't eat. She barely drank. And by the time I opened that door on the sixteenth hour, I was seriously worried I'd have to wrap her up and drag her to the hospital to get some fluids in her. But I walked in to find her on the bed, somewhat alert, and I felt a weight slide slightly away.
Her fever was still around one-oh-four so I dragged her to the bathroom and got her in the tub. Tired, weak, sore, and miserable, her defenses she wore as a impenetrable shield slipped away. Once she was done fighting me in the water, she curled up on her side, her hand holding onto mine as she passed out. She slept peacefully for half an hour as I tried to drain water and refill with hotter water three times over until her skin stopped feeling like you could fry an egg on it. But even after that, I stayed there with her for another twenty minutes, stroking my hand up her side or through her long purple hair.
See, the problem was, I fucking liked Maze.
It was easy in my lifestyle, our lifestyle, to start to view women as nothing more than pieces of ass. For men like me who spent the majority of their time at the clubhouse, most of the women we came into contact with were clubwhores, biker groupies, women who just wanted to fuck a bad boy. And while, in recent years, the arrival of Lo and Janie and their own brand of gender-bending badassery, they weren't around nearly enough to make a big change in everyones' ways of thinking.
Having Maze around constantly as she slaved around the compound on next to no sleep and did whatever one of the members asked her to do, which included: getting drink refills, cooking dinner, cleaning sheets, scrubbing floors, changing television stations, scrubbing bikes, and fetching fucking darts, and doing so without so much as a whimper of complaint, it was easy to be reminded how sexy it was to have a strong woman around.
Being obedient, however, did not mean she was meek. Far from it. I couldn't walk past the group of probates without overhearing her saying some smartass, well-crafted rib to one of the men, doing so mostly in good-nature toward Duke and Renny, dismissively toward Fox, and maliciously toward Moose. And while she was extremely careful to never be disrespectful to patched members, there was an air of defiance, of quiet rebellion. Hell, I'd even heard her address a demand from Reign himself with a sharp tongue but a huge, fake ass smile that made it impossible to call her out on her behavior.
And despite her staying far away from any of the physical altercations between the members and her fellow probates, I'd once caught her screwing around with Renny in the yard one night and damn if she didn't best him twice.
Whoever Maze was, whatever her background, there was one thing that was clear: Maze had some kind of training. And it wasn't just a self-defense class at a local fire station. It wasn't all solar plexis, instep, nose, and groin. Renny had moved to grab her from behind and in the space of a blink, he was over her shoulder and on the ground. She anticipated his advance before he even moved. She blocked, deflected, then advanced herself. And she did it with a sort of practiced ease that made me wonder if maybe she grew up with some kind of martial arts.
It was a fucking shame she had to go, because to be perfectly honest, she would have taken a patch over Fox or Moose by a long, long shot.
Duke had a place because Duke had some secrets. He had some information we very much valued. He had led the kind of life that meant he had absolutely no childhood, every moment of his time on Earth being about hard work, fights, blood, money, business, and evading police.
Renny got a place because, while he was young and maybe a bit too laid-back for a typical biker, he was whip-smart. He hadn't had a normal upbringing by any accounts. On the surface, there was nothing even mildly criminal about his parents. In fact, they were both really renowned psychologists back in Maine where he was from. Which likely explained his ability to read people fast and accurately. But some dark, twisted, awful shit went on in his house and when he was seventeen, he ran away, found himself in Navesink Bank, fell into a rough crowd, found out about The Henchmen, and wanted in. We had all been
ready to dismiss him until he had been at the compound for about a week. After that, well, it was clear he was on a fast track for a patch.
Maze was a wild card. When we ran her name, not much came up but some brief employment history at a few bike shops and bars. She had no record and no social media. We didn't know shit about her.
I sighed as I shifted her up and out of the water, cradling her against my chest and making water pool all across the bathroom as I walked to get a towel. She woke up enough to lean against the counter so I could dry her off. I grabbed a tee, slipping it over her head then reaching up under and pulling off her wet bra and panties, saving her vanity. She probably wouldn't remember the whole encounter, but that wasn't the point. Seeing some unconscious girl's tits seemed creepy as fuck, no matter how sick she was. No matter how much I may have been wondering about said tits in private.
As I reached around her to dry her dripping hair, she leaned forward, resting her head against my chest and nuzzling into my neck, making a low, contented sound in her throat. I paused slightly in the drying of her hair, looking at my reflection in the mirror and seeing the confusion in my own eyes. Confusion because as I felt her snuggle into me, there was a strange warm sensation spreading across my chest that felt comforting, right.
"Fuck," I said, shaking my head and focusing back on my task.
So, yeah, Maze was fucking hot. There was no denying it. She was tall and fit with those great hips, thighs, and an ass a man would kill for. She had incredibly long and soft hair. Her lips were just begging you to taste them.
It was shallow of me, but the second I saw her, I wanted in. Meaning, inside. Her. And every day that followed, watching her step up to the plate, never waver in her tasks, and doing so with a lifted chin and a smile (or alternately, a giant 'fuck you' on her forehead), yeah it only made the attraction grow.
Aside from doling out jobs and riding her ass about doing or redoing some task, I spent very little time with her. Actually, I spent less time with her than I did the other probates. I'd shoot pool with Renny or let Duke lend a hand with my cars. I even bullshitted with Moose and Fox on occasion. I didn't do any of that with Maze. Part of that was because I knew that being close to her was dangerous. It would be an unnecessary temptation. It was also because she avoided me almost as a rule. Even when she was around me, she seemed to shut down. While I'd seen her laughing and joking about with Renny or having seemingly serious conversations with Duke, when I was around, she shut her mouth and only spoke when spoken to. And even then, her answers were clipped.
Repo (The Henchmen MC Book 4) Page 5
