Born Sinner: Blood Ravens MC

by Vivian Gray

  I nod, but that’s not good enough for him.

  “I need to hear you say it, Maria.”

  “Yes,” I murmur.

  “What’s that?” he asks, now being a bit obnoxiously belligerent.

  “Yes, Blade, I understand.”

  “That’s good. I’m glad you understand. Because so long as we understand each other, this will be a breeze.”

  I clear my throat, ready to make one more request. “Blade?” I ask timidly. “Is – is there any way I can get these… um… these handcuffs off? I promise I’m not going anywhere.”

  He scoffs. “Promises ain’t worth shit from an Espinoza woman,” he tells me, rolling his eyes almost like a sarcastic teenager. “No, I’m afraid the cuffs stay on. The last thing I need is for you figuring out a way out of here and getting me into trouble. You’re going to stay right there.”

  “But… but what if I need to pee?”

  “Do you need to pee now?” he responds.

  “No.”

  “Good. I’ll be back in a little while to check on you, and if you need to pee then, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

  “What if I need to pee before then?”

  “I don’t know – wet the fucking bed for all I care,” he says, exasperated. “Just hold it, for Christ’s sake. I’ll be back in an hour or so. You should be able to hold it until then.”

  I slump down on the bed, exhausted from what has been the most terrifying day of my life. This is just the icing on the cake. It’s awful. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go. I have nowhere to go. I’m just stuck. And all because I made the terrible choice to leave my father’s house – a house that I couldn’t stand to be in.

  Talk about your damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenarios.

  Blade leaves, locking the door behind him, and I start to cry again. So that’s Blade. That’s Carmen’s ex. I can hardly believe that she dated this… this monster. I know her quickie marriage to Blake Cartwright was a dumb thing to do, but that seems to pale in comparison to her having actually been with this guy.

  I mean, what could she have possibly seen in him? What possible redeeming qualities did a guy like this have? What kind of animal would keep a young woman locked in his dungeon of a basement, naked and handcuffed to a bed?

  Still, I would be lying if I said I didn’t see anything redeemable in him. For one, he might have had me naked and cuffed, but so far, he hadn’t used that to his… advantage. He was clearly very serious – and very passionate – about wanting my consent before touching me. From a guy like him, that was almost touching and sweet. If I hadn’t been the victim of a kidnapping, I might honestly have found it hot. There’s definitely something sexy about a guy who has a healthy respect for his woman.

  “His woman.” What the fuck? What am I thinking? I’m not his woman, I’m his victim! This son of a bitch has me locked away like some princess in a castle. I’m raging with fury now, realizing that he’s got me right where he wants me, and even if he hasn’t taken liberties with me yet, he could at any moment.

  And yet…

  There’s something undeniably sexy about him. Maybe it’s his bulging biceps or his enormous hands. Maybe it’s the deep, almost sad pools of brown that are his eyes. Maybe it’s his cut jawline or his large, strong hands that put a hole in the wall. How could it be that I’m both horrified by this man and, in some ways, turned on by him?

  Dammit!

  I wonder if he’ll ever trust me enough to take me up on divulging secrets about Dad’s business. That’s the thing I’m afraid of – I could tell him plenty. Stuff that Dad doesn’t know I know. Stuff that I’m pretty sure the Blood Ravens could use. Hell, anybody really could use it. I don’t want my father to get his head blown off, but it wouldn’t be the absolute worst thing in the world if he were to get taken down a few pegs.

  Blade was right about one thing: Dad and his goons had gotten too big for their britches. They were starting fights where they didn’t need to, and for what? Why would Dad’s people have jumped Blade in the first place? Simply because he was a Blood Raven? There had to be more to it than that.

  Or did there? One thing I had learned about my father in all the years I’d been around his “business” was that he was a few bricks short of a psychopath. Oh, I presumed he cared about Carmen and me, but other than that, there was nothing more important to him than business. Hell, he might have put the business over the two of us. Carmen knew that – which I’m certain is why she left.

  I wonder why she broke it off with Blade. Maybe he was too close to the same lifestyle as Dad. Maybe she was just dating him to get back at Dad for being such a bastard. Or maybe she had really liked this Blake guy. Whatever the case, she had clearly left an impact on the poor guy.

  Wait, what am I saying? Poor guy? The guy is apparently as imbalanced as my own father, and here I am, pitying him? Am I going crazy? What the actual fuck is wrong with me?

  I look to the door, hoping that Blade will come in, interrupt my thoughts, and give me something to do. Of course, he doesn’t. That’s when the fantasies begin. I realize how hot it would be if he just burst through the door and without a word ravished me, taking me to him, putting his enormous hands all over my body, over my skin, over my breasts, feeling him radiating heat as he pushed into me.

  It is one of the more erotic fantasies I’ve ever had, and I can’t even do anything about it, being all tied up here – though, in fairness, this makes it just a little bit hotter.

  I bite my lip and smile to myself. In the midst of all this, I’m horny as fuck. Probably comes from being naked and tied up. But dammit, in spite of everything, including my abject terror, I realize that I have a soft spot for this vicious animal who has me locked away in the dungeon. It’s almost like a sickness.

  And I don’t want to be cured.

  Chapter Five

  Blade

  When I was with Carmen Espinoza, everything was different. I was different. But she was something special – sexy, but special. She always came off as being wholly innocent, and she never once sassed me back or made me question myself.

  It was entirely different with her little sister, the one currently tied up in my basement, handcuffed to a cheap bed frame I’d gotten from the department store. First of all, this girl is just as hot as Carmen was – in fact, she might just be hotter. She’s got tits on her that look like two perfect globes on her chest, and her eyes are brighter and wider than Carmen’s.

  But she’s also got some sass, some bite, to her speech. She might be terrified of the situation I’ve put her into, but she doesn’t really seem afraid of me, in particular. In fact, even when I put my hand through that wall in the basement – and goddammit, I’m going to have to fix that once this is all over – she still seemed more afraid of being naked and vulnerable than of me. That’s a first – I’m used to striking fear into the hearts of, well, just about everybody I meet.

  I wonder, is it possible these two are from the same parents? Carmen was such a good girl – before she ran off anyway. I had to convince her, cajole her, almost trick her into having sex with me. And even then, she was into it, but it was always like she was holding something back from me.

  It’s exactly the opposite with her sister. I mean, I haven’t fucked Maria, at least not yet, but I can tell that, whatever she is, she isn’t holding anything back from me. She is entirely self-possessed – she knows who she is and what she wants. She tried negotiating with me even though she had to know there was no way I was going to trust her.

  Now, she’s going to just have to get used to the idea that she’s my prisoner, but there’s something I could tell about her, something in her eyes that made me think that a part of her, just a little bit, didn’t mind it – or, at the very least, wasn’t in all that much of a hurry to get back to her old man’s place.

  Did he mistreat her? I had meant to ask her why she was on the road so late at night when we picked her up, but I had forgott
en. I’m pretty convinced at this point that she doesn’t have a boyfriend, so I doubt that’s why she was out of the house. So all signs point to her having had some kind of fight with her father. What had it been about? Why were they fighting?

  I was almost desperate to know, but that had to wait. It was time for a club meeting.

  Crusher and the boys are already waiting for me by the time I get to HQ.

  “What’s going on, fellas?” I ask, in pretty good spirits all things considered. “I’m not late, am I?”

  Crusher shakes his head. “Naw, Blade,” he says, slapping me on the back, “we know you’ve got some… special cargo you’re holding on to.”

  “Been having fun have we, you dirty dog?” echoes Slime, one of the ugliest and baddest motherfuckers in the whole club.

  “Cut the shit, Slime,” I tell him. “You know full well how I feel about that kind of bullshit.”

  “What kind of bullshit?” Slime has this innocent look on his face, even though he’s talking about taking liberties with the prisoner who’s currently sitting in my house. “Come on, man, we all get to take a taste when we bring work home. That’s the whole reason you bring work home in the first place!” He guffaws at this, a big, burly laugh that makes me want to vomit.

  “Just back the fuck off, okay, Slime?” I’m in no mood to play his disgusting, despicable games. The guy’s a scumbag, and I wouldn’t put it past him to put himself out to the highest bidder. We’ve had breaks in our ranks before, after all.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you, Blade?” he asks. “First of all, nice way of talking to your VP. Second, you’re kind of sounding like a little bit of a fucking pussy. You all pussified, Blade? Is that it? Don’t like girls anymore? Because that Maria Espinoza is one hot little piece of ass – ain’t she, boys?”

  The guys all let up a cheer that nauseates me even further.

  But Crusher calls us to attention, saying, “All right, boys, that’s fucking enough! Now. We got some club business to attend to.”

  He proceeds to start listing off assignments. He wants the guys casing Juan Espinoza’s house to make sure he hasn’t figured out that we’re the ones who took his daughter. We’re already in something of a cold war with the Espinozas; the last thing we need is for this cold war to heat up. At least, not until we’re ready.

  Crusher doles out assignments. Slime and Hammer are on HQ duty, so they hang back with me.

  Crusher then begins his debrief of me by starting, “So, how are things going with the bitch? She feeling good?” He’s not asking about her feelings at all, but rather whether or not I’ve touched her.

  I tell him, “She’s fine. Stripped her down, cuffed her to the bed in my basement, fed her a sandwich. You know, the usual.”

  “Does she know you?”

  Momentarily caught off guard by the sheer idiocy of the question, I finally answer, “I – of course she fucking knows who I am, boss! She knows I went out with her sister. So we’d better play this real careful, or else I’m going to be seriously fucked.”

  “You leave any marks on the merchandise yet?” Slime laughs, trading high fives with Hammer.

  “Slime, shut the fuck up,” Crusher commands him. Then, turning to me, Crusher asks, “So, have you? Taken a free sample, I mean.”

  “No!” I exclaim, waving my hands in front of me wildly, like the fucking ninny Slime was making me out to be earlier. I try my best to modulate my tone before continuing, “No, boss, I don’t go in for that kind of shit. You know that.”

  “Well, that may be, but I don’t want this bitch getting too comfortable. Don’t forget, Blade, she’s an Espinoza. She’s part of the same family that cut you and would’ve killed a lesser man than you. So don’t be afraid to put the fucking fear of God into her, you get me?”

  “I get you, boss,” I say compliantly.

  “Good. Now, get gone. Go check on the bitch. See if you can get any info about her old man out of her.”

  “She offered to help us if we let her go.”

  “Was it legit?”

  I shrug. “I have no idea. I told her we wouldn’t trust her just yet. But I think she and her old man aren’t getting along. So we may have an opportunity here. Let’s not squander it, yeah?”

  Crusher spins on his heel and faces me, his bloodshot eyes wide and intense. “What do you mean, an ‘opportunity’?”

  “If I’m right,” I explain, “and I think I am, I think she had a fight with her old man, boss. That’s what she was doing out on the street, at that truck stop where we found her. Look, it’s the only plausible explanation for what a little cartel princess was doing out of her house that late. She’s a smart girl; she should know better. So either she was sneaking around, or she was running away. And if she had been sneaking around, she wouldn’t have stopped for a soda and a candy bar, which is what she had in her hands when we picked her up.”

  “Well look at this,” Slime teases, “we got fuckin’ Sherlock goddamn Holmes here pickin’ up on the mysteries! Oh, oh, Mr. Holmes, can you solve my fuckin’ mystery?”

  “Slime, back the fuck up, I’m warning you,” I say menacingly.

  “Relax, Blade,” Crusher insists. “Look, if you think you can drive a wedge between her and the old man, all the better. I’m all for it. But what I really want is for you to be scaring this little lady. Do you understand me?”

  “Is this coming from you, or from Slime?” I sneer.

  I don’t like being handled, and it sure as hell feels like I’m being handled by Crusher right now – and, worse, by Slime. If Crusher wants to handle me, that’s his business – he’s the boss, and he gets to do what he wants to do. But Slime, well, he may be the VP, but he’s a real son of a bitch. I don’t like the thought that he’s whispering in Crusher’s ear about me.

  “What is with you today, Blade?” Slime demands. “Why are you acting like such a little puss?”

  “I’m not, man,” I reply, trying to reign it in a little bit. “I’m just… I’m tired, man. Been up for twenty hours now. I’m beat. And I still gotta get back to my house and babysit the bitch, you know?”

  “Whatever the case,” Crusher interrupts, “you have a job to do. Do you hear me? I want the fear of God put into that girl. And that fear of God has to come from you. She should be terrified of you. You’re not there to play house, you got me?”

  “I got you, boss,” I say curtly.

  “All right then. Now get out of here. I got too much fuckin’ work to do.”

  I start to head toward the door when Slime catches up with me.

  “Seems like we may need to have a bit of a talk, Blade,” he says in his sneering, nasal voice that always sounds like he’s talking through his nose. Probably put too much shit up his nose, which is why he talks that way now. “I know you think I’m out to get you, but I swear to God, that just isn’t true. I’m here to help you, man.”

  “What the fuck makes you think I need any help?” I demand, irritated.

  Slime flashes an ingratiating smile. “It seems like you may be having a… er… a problem with your guest.”

  “She’s been fine,” I snap. “What makes you think I’m having some kind of problem with her?”

  “Oh, I don’t think she has been the problem.” He snorts. “I’m thinking you are having the problem, you see?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I grit my teeth so that I don’t lash out at him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my house before the girl pisses the bed.”

  “See? That’s what I’m talking about,” Slime says, stepping in my way to prevent me from leaving.

  “Step back, Slime,” I warn him.

  “Sorry, my man,” he says innocently, tapping the sides of my kutte almost playfully. “I wasn’t trying to start anything. Just want to give you a little friendly advice: don’t be afraid to get a little rough with the little lady, okay?”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I grunt out.

  “Y
ou’d best do that. Because if you don’t step up to the table – if you can’t, for some reason, or if you’re unable to – I’m going to have to take over… keeping an eye on her for you.”

  I scowl. “That sounds like a threat.”

  “Don’t think of it that way,” he says in his friendliest voice possible, though it’s clear the bastard is full of shit. “Think of it as guidance. I’m like your fairy fuckin’ godmother, giving you the chance to go to the ball. You’re going places in this club, Blade. You could be president someday. I’m not kidding. But you can’t go all soft because this bitch looks like your ex. You need to stand strong. And that means not just scaring her. That means doing what we all do with our, you know, ‘guests’. It’s time for you to man up, you get me?”