Engage (Disciples' Daughters Book 3)

by Drew Elyse

  It wasn’t like I had much to go back to. Mom had moved us to Olympia, Washington when I was too little to remember. It was where I’d grown up. I’d gone to college up in Seattle and ended up staying there afterward. I’d gotten a degree in Business Administration because I’d thought it would be useful and had no idea what to study, but ended up working part-time at a local gym and part-time as a bartender. It wasn’t a long-term arrangement, but it paid my rent and kept me fed. Aside from that, I was just drifting.

  Did I want to go back to drifting?

  “Ember, you okay?” Cami called.

  Alright, maybe in the middle of a trip to the mall wasn’t the time to sort all that stuff out in my head.

  “Fine. I think we’ve seen everything. I’ll find someone to open up a fitting room,” I answered.

  “Yay! Dress up!” Emmy cheered.

  Seriously, she was flipping adorable.

  Half an hour later, we were in another store, repeating the process, when Cami asked, apropos of nothing, “So, what do you think of the boys?”

  “The boys?”

  “The Disciples,” she explained.

  What did I even say to that?

  “They’re great. Rough around the edges, obviously, but I worked at a fighter gym and a bar that wasn’t a stranger to rough guys. Not to mention, you know, Dad. They don’t faze me.” That sounded pretty good.

  “What was up with Jager the other day?”

  I froze, my hand locking into a fist around the romper I was checking out on the rack.

  “What?” I wheezed.

  “The other day, with Daz. Jager seemed pretty intense, even for him. He doesn’t usually step into things like that,” she hedged.

  “I have no idea,” I told her, and I meant it.

  “Is there something…” she trailed off, but it was impossible to miss her meaning.

  “No.” There wasn’t. I mean, he was hotter than sin and could probably have me begging just by saying the word, but there was still nothing there. I was pretty sure he found me to be a nuisance for the club.

  “Really?” Cami pressed.

  “Really.”

  Shrugging, she went back to perusing the racks while I forced my hand to relax around the now-wrinkled romper and move like I was a normal, functioning person.

  Cami had no idea how much asking about Jager affected me. I’d been thinking about him nonstop. Well, I’d tried to stop, but the alternative to thinking about him was thinking about a host of things I wanted in my head far less. So, Jager it was.

  The other night, when I ran into him in the hall, I could swear he was going to make a move. Or, maybe not. Maybe moves weren’t his style at all. I got the distinct feeling Jager was more about demands. This feeling didn’t help my attraction. I happened to be quite fond of demands.

  Not that I knew this from experience. I’d never been with a man who took control. Still, I knew what I fantasized about. On those long bouts of not finding a man who seemed worth letting into my bed, when my creativity dried up and I turned to porn for inspiration, I knew there were always certain things that got my attention.

  Bondage, for example.

  “What about Ace?” Cami queried.

  Shit. File bondage and any prospect of doing that with Jager under another thing I shouldn’t be thinking about while shopping with the girls.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s cute,” she said.

  “Are you trying to play Disciple matchmaker?”

  “What?” Cami evaded. Ash laughed.

  Cami deflected the attention by holding up a cobalt blue bodycon dress. “This would look amazing on you.”

  The dress was hot. Like, really hot. It wasn’t necessarily my go-to style, but none of the clothes I was buying were. The clothes I really loved weren’t the kind you could always get easily at a mall. They required shopping online at specialty shops or hitting up higher end resale places. Still, I could rock that dress. There was just one issue.

  “Where would I wear it?”

  “Fight night,” she said immediately.

  “Fight night?”

  “Friday,” Ash answered. “The club hosts fights from time to time. People bet. It’s a whole thing.”

  “And you’re supposed to dress like you’re going out clubbing?” I clarified.

  “Not necessarily,” Ash replied.

  “Things are a little different for us,” Cami countered. “Gauge and Sketch don’t really want us drawing extra attention.”

  “Sketch doesn’t even want me going, he just doesn’t really want to leave me at home either,” Ash amended.

  “So, you guys will be wearing…?”

  “Jeans,” Ash answered.

  “Probably shorts, but that depends on how long before we have to leave Gauge sees me. And our property cuts. Absolutely.”

  “So, since I don’t belong to any of the guys, I dress up?”

  Ash had her eyes on Cami. Cami had her eyes on me, and answered, “You don’t have to, but you can. There are going to be a lot of guys there, the club and people from town. Maybe you’ll meet someone.”

  Seriously. What was with her trying to set me up?

  “Is my being single offensive to you in some way?” I teased.

  “Of course not. But that doesn’t mean you have to be either,” she shot back.

  She handed me the dress and walked a few feet away to look at another display.

  I turned my attention to Ash. “What am I missing?”

  She bit the inside of her lip in indecision before saying, “I think we’re all just hoping you find a reason to settle here. We like you. We love Roadrunner and know he likes having you close. And, honestly, we’re worried about you. What happened…” she let that hang for a moment because neither of us wanted to talk about it. “The guys can keep you safe here.”

  My eyes moved to the cobalt fabric on my arm. “And the dress?”

  “Cami and I both came back here for different reasons,” she explained, “but we stayed for the same one: our men. The right guy gives you roots. If you find him here,” she shrugged to indicate the unsaid maybe you’ll stay.

  I didn’t tell her I was thinking I might stay either way. I just studied the dress like it might have some answers.

  “You should know,” Ash spoke again, “Jager is fighting on Friday. He always does. He’s undefeated. That’s how the guys make most of their money, on people who make the mistake of betting against him.”

  I didn’t know what to do with that, but the way she went back to perusing and talking to Emmy told me she didn’t expect anything. I didn’t really know what to do with any of it. Staying, dating, fight night, Seattle, Hoffman, the club—it was all just a jumbled mess in my head. Like the practiced hand I was becoming at it, I shoved everything into the increasingly crowded back of my mind.

  I was hanging clothes and arranging them into the closet of what had become my room at the clubhouse. Shockingly, the clubhouse had a top of the line washer and dryer squirreled away. I had to guess it was the myriad of slutty girls using it and keeping the little laundry room stocked. I couldn’t even picture the guys doing so themselves.

  The dozen bags’ worth of shopping I’d done—which did include, though I asked myself why a thousand times, the dress—were all clean and ready to be worn. So, despite the fact that I was avoiding dealing with pretty much everything, at least I had clothes. I was counting it as a victory.

  A knock came at my cracked door, followed by Dad stepping through. He was around a lot, usually spending most of his time with me, or me hanging out in his office at the shop while he worked. Some people might get tired of it, but I wasn’t one of them. I’d always loved my Dad. Mom and I had a rocky relationship—to put it lightly—and now I found it was best to distance myself as much as possible. I’d never had that problem with Dad.

  “How’s my girl?” he asked.

  “Okay,” I answered.

  He eyed the two shirts I still nee
ded to hang. “You get what you needed?”

  “All set. I have your change in the purse on the dresser,” I told him. Clothes weren’t all I’d had to buy. I had nothing. The purse was one of the first purchases, along with a wallet, so I wouldn’t be pulling loose bills from my pocket all day.

  “Keep it. In case you need anything else. Whatever.”

  I didn’t argue because I knew better. “Okay, Daddy-o.”

  While I finished hanging and sorting, I told him about my day with the girls and he told me about a ‘72 Camaro that had been brought in to the shop for a total facelift. When my task was done, I sat on the bed next to him, leaning into his side like I always did.

  “Need to get you a TV in here,” he said.

  “You don’t have to. I’m fine going into the lounge.”

  “You say that until the guys give you shit and take over when you’re watching something. Or until you walk out there to Daz watching porn.”

  “Right there for anyone to see?”

  “Fucker keeps it in his pants, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t turn that shit on.”

  Jeez.

  “Okay, maybe a TV then. I’d like to avoid that.”

  “Good call, Ber-bear.”

  After a moment, I decided it was time to address something I’d been thinking about a lot over the last few days. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything,” he answered right away.

  “Why did you keep me away from the club? Everyone’s been so welcoming. And Cami and Ash said they were raised by all the guys. Why wasn’t I?”

  “Figured this’d come up,” he sighed. “Look, I never wanted to say shit about it before ‘cause I didn’t want it to be a problem,” he started, but didn’t finished. I figured out where he was going.

  “It was Mom. She’s the reason. It’s why we moved to Olympia, isn’t it?”

  He sighed, knowing exactly how easily Mom made me blow up. “Ember…”

  I jumped to my feet, pacing around the room. “Why? Why would she do that? Why take me away and make it so I only had two people to make up my whole family when I could have had all this?”

  “Look, baby girl, back when you were born, the club wasn’t the same as it is now. We were into shit…” He ran a hand through his hair, yanking at the ends in frustration. “Fuck. I didn’t want to get into this. Back then, we were involved in a lot of shit, all of it illegal, some of it fucking dangerous. It was not a great time for the club as a whole. We’ve gotten free of that. We’re not exactly a bunch of upstanding citizens, but we’re a fuck of a lot better now than we were. When that shit was going down, when brothers were getting hurt, getting locked up, getting killed, I understood where your mother was coming from. She didn’t want that for you. Then, I had to be here while my baby girl was three hours away. I had to watch Cami and Ash grow up here with the club, the two of them never being touched by any of the bad shit we dealt with. I tried—for years, I tried—to convince your mother you could be a part of this in a good way.

  “She wouldn’t have it. When I started to push, she threatened to go to court, fight to get my custody taken away, to limit how much I could see you. Didn’t matter what kind of money I threw at that, there was no way for me to win that fight. I’ve got a record, and not just one stint inside. You know that. I’m a known member of an MC with a long history of involvement in shit no judge would want a kid around. I could have gotten the best lawyers out there, but she still would have destroyed me in court.”

  I wasn’t pacing anymore. I was frozen to the spot at hearing what Mom had done to him. It was hard to breathe knowing it. “She threatened to keep you away from me?” I whispered in horror.

  “She thought she was protecting you,” he offered, but even he didn’t really accept that as an excuse.

  “By keeping you from me?” I started to yell. “How the fuck would that have been good for me? How the fuck was missing out on having a bunch of men who would have treated me like family and done whatever they had to to keep me safe protecting me?”

  “Ember…” Dad got to his feet, coming toward me.

  “No. She’s so unbelievable. I wanted to be here! I like it here. I want to stay,” I ranted.

  Dad grabbed my arms. “You want to stay?”

  His disbelieving voice drew my focus back to the room and I looked up at eyes that matched mine. “I want to stay,” I repeated.

  Then, I wasn’t looking at anything because he yanked me into his arms. “You want to stay,” he said gruffly above my head, “then you fuckin’ stay. I want nothing fuckin’ more than for you to stay.”

  Well, there it was. It was decided.

  I was staying.

  I felt like an idiot.

  Or, really, I looked like an idiot.

  It was Friday. Fight night. Dad tried to talk me out of coming, but I didn’t know why. He just said it “wasn’t the place” for me. When I asked what that meant, he’d just shaken his head and walked away.

  Whatever.

  It had only come up once more when he made me swear I’d stick close to one of the brothers at all times. I figured I would do it just to humor him. He’d given me the keys to a loaner car they had for the shop, told me how to get there, and taken off about two hours before I needed to follow.

  I drove Cami over too, since Gauge was also going early. He met us as soon as we arrived, giving me my first Disciple to attach myself to.

  Now, we were inside. The inside in question was the basement of a gym. From the brief glance as we walked through, I knew immediately it was a fighter’s gym. I’d worked in one that wasn’t much different. From the looks of things, their focus was on boxing or MMA, maybe both. The basement was finished, but barely, and as we went down the stairs, a taped off circle meant to be the boundary for the fights came into view.

  It seemed to me the basement of a gym that trained people to fight was not the best place to hold an underground fighting ring.

  “Isn’t having this here a little…” it took me a second to find the right word, “obvious?” I asked Gauge.

  He looked at me, smirked a little, then answered, “Only need to avoid that if the cops are looking to shut you down. Seein’ as we’ve got several of Hoffman’s finest in the crowd tonight, doesn’t much matter if it’s obvious.”

  Oh, well then. That settled that.

  The place was packed and we were still early. Mostly, the crowd was made up of men. A lot of them looked like the Disciples—big, burly, lots of tattoos, and facial hair. There were plenty in cuts, not all of which bore the Disciples’ insignia. Some of the men looked more like clean-cut, suburban types, but they were less in number. I wondered if they—or some of them, at least—were cops.

  Then, there were the women.

  A few women, like Cami, were dressed simply in jeans—or, in Cami’s case, shorts, something Gauge had given her a displeased look for when we arrived. Some wore property cuts like hers, but all were right at the side of a man whose body language clearly said she was not to be fucked with.

  The rest were scantily clad in the most extreme sense of the phrase. Most of what they were wearing could scarcely by deemed as clothing. Little crop tops, the tiniest of daisy dukes, and miniskirts so short, ass cheeks were actually visible. Seriously, I had underwear with more coverage, and I wasn’t talking granny panties. There were also girls wandering around with nothing but bikini tops covering their chests—and to call it “covering” was a stretch.

  I looked hot, I wasn’t going to deny that. The dress was a perfect fit, meaning it was skintight. It was short, though by comparison, it probably looked matronly since it actually came down at least five inches below my ass. It had thin straps and a V-neck I’d thought was pretty low before I’d gotten there. My hair was straight down; it was the only thing I had the supplies to do. I’d gotten makeup on our epic shopping spree and had finally broken the stuff open. To me, dress and heels meant makeup, every time.

  So, I was feeling good about
how I looked, until I walked in. Now, I felt ridiculous.

  I pinched Cami’s arm.

  “Ow. What the hell?” she cried.

  Pinching wasn’t a good call. Cami’s response had Gauge swinging around, ready to fuck someone up for messing with his wife. Oops.

  “Sorry. My bad,” I told him right away, hands up.

  He backed off, muttering, “Sorry, Ember.”

  “What the hell was that?” Cami demanded.

  “Why would you tell me to wear this? I look like a freak. I should have just worn normal clothes like you.”

  “I’m dressed like this so I don’t turn heads. You’re single. You should be getting attention,” she explained.

  “You’re insane. A, I don’t want attention. B, I’m hardly going to get it with all the nearly naked chicks wandering around,” I pointed out.

  “Leaving something a mystery does more with these guys,” she stated firmly. “They get the slut look all the time. It gets boring.”

  I somehow doubted men ever found half-naked, stacked, skinny women boring to look at.

  Cami’s eyes moved around the room, then fixed right over my shoulder.

  “Oh man,” she muttered. “You might say you don’t want attention, but you’re definitely getting it.”

  I turned just as Jager stepped close and wrapped a hand around my bicep. He was shirtless. Like nothing at all on top, not even his cut. Just his huge, muscled, tattooed chest. I feared I might start drooling.

  “I’ve got her,” Jager rumbled to Gauge, who gave him a chin lift in response.

  Then, we were on the move. Jager pulled me through the crowd, which parted without hesitation for him. I was practically jogging to keep up, giving all my attention to not tripping in my heels.

  At the back of the huge space everyone was standing around in, he pulled open a door, charged through, slammed it behind us, and backed me against it in complete darkness. Before I could say anything, he hit a switch to turn on the single bulb above us. It seemed like a janitor’s closet, but I didn’t have a chance to get a look since Jager was right in front of me. He pressed in until my back was flush to the unyielding door and my front was tight to his even more solid body.