“I would never hurt you, and I would destroy anyone who did, remember that.”
“Won’t you always be here to remind me?”
“I’ll always have my eye on you, that I can promise.” Marie and Henri had club connections on the East Coast. I wasn’t joking about keeping an eye on her. My brothers in America would make sure she was always safe.
“Did something get lost in translation? That’s a strange thing to say.”
“I’m just hungry, and I know you are too,” I sat up, and pulled the rolling cart close to our bed. “Up, I’m going to feed you breakfast in bed.”
Chapter Twelve – Callie
Clement propped up my pillows and true to his word, fed me. I was certainly capable of cutting up my food and carrying the fork to my mouth, but all the same I was touched by his tender, paternalistic care for me. I felt like I was going to have to turn in my feminist card.
“What are we going to do today? Should we take a walk through the Luxembourg Gardens? It’s just down the road.” I knew I sounded like the worst kind of tourist, but I was a tourist. I had only been in Paris for a month.
“You seem to have forgotten we’re still in fugitive status.” He laughed and leaned down to kiss me, “You’re going back to your dorm, and I would imagine the police will be waiting for you there. You’ll tell them what you need to tell them, and I’ll go back to my life in Les Halles.”
“What do you mean, back to your life in Les Halles?” My bliss from being with him, even in the dangerous circumstances, had clouded my mind. I really didn’t understand what he meant.
“This is the end for us.” He took my hand in his and looked away, “We don’t have a future.”
“What?” I sat up in the bed, and guided his face back in my direction with all the strength of my hand, “Are you serious? You have sex with me, you take my virginity? I’m Catholic, I was waiting for the right man… And you were him. Tell me this is a joke.”
“You are mine, whether we could be together or not. Nobody else could—
“Nobody else? What is wrong with you? I make the choices for my life, not you. I don’t need you to protect me, from what I don’t even understand… My choice is you. I gave myself to you—
He tried to take my hand in his again, I swatted it away, “I’m in a biker gang,” He spoke very slowly, and with an unexpected coldness, “I live my life on the edges of society, and that’s the way it’s going to stay. I don’t have a choice. It’s what I know and what I love.”
“You love the life more than you love me?”
“It’s who I am… And I’m not going to drag you into it.” He ran his finger across my cheek, and for the briefest of moments his eyes looked tearful, “Go back to your rich girl life in America, stay true to your faith.”
“Well, let’s see… My rich girl life? I won’t argue that… My faith? My faith is in my heart, not the rules of the church.”
“Would you have said that yesterday?” He barked at me, frightening me.
“No,” I sensed I had lost an argument that I didn’t really understand.
“I’ve already corrupted you.” He stood up and put his clothes back on.
“By corruption do you mean, treating me like a conquest, another notch on your biker belt? I would agree with that.” I yelled.
“You know that’s not true.” He hitched the leather bag over his shoulder.
“I don’t know that’s not true. I don’t understand your point of view. I know you feel for me, the way I feel for you.”
“I watched my mother live a life she wasn’t built to live. It killed her. I’m not going to let that happen to you.” He leaned down to kiss me.
I slapped his face.
“I deserved that,” He stood his full height, rubbed his cheek, and turned towards the door, “Goodbye, Callie.”
“I could just tell the police everything. I know your club name. I know your name. I know you live in Les Halles.” I jumped up out of the bed and wrapped the coverlet across me, ready to chase him into the hallway, and across the city if that’s what I had to do.
“You do what you need to do.” His hand was on the doorknob, and my heart felt like it was breaking into pieces.
“I’ll do it—
“No you won’t,” He turned back to me as he opened the door, “As I am branded to you, you are branded to me. It’s an unbreakable bound.”
“I’m going to call the police right now,” I tearfully picked up the bedside phone.
He left, and I fell down upon the bed in a heap of never ending tears.
Chapter Thirteen - Clement
I thundered down the hallway and nearly broke the wall pounding on the elevator. The door open to a group of frightened German tourists. I nodded my head quickly to them, letting them know that although I was filled with rage, I was not in fact dangerous to them.
The mother held her child close to her as she nodded back to me. I wanted to reassure her further, terrorizing tourists wasn’t my thing. The superiority of my adopted French culture was important to me. Scaring people was a whole different thing.
The doors opened to the lobby, I pounded across the terrazzo floors, my heavy motorcycle boots leaving streaks of black behind me. The glass front door was my enemy, and it was lucky for the hotel that I didn’t shatter it for all eternity.
Out onto the empty street across from the Luxembourg Gardens, I didn’t need to worry about my anger anymore. I tore apart a lone newspaper stand, kicking it, breaking the glass.
It was satisfying, but it wasn’t going to help me get over Callie. I shook myself off and howled into the empty lane. How could someone I had known for less than twenty-four hours be the center of my life, the one I had been waiting for without ever knowing.
I had never looked for anyone, never wanted anyone. Women fell into my arms, the perfect compliment to my dangerous life. My lifestyle of crime was what got me going. Better than sex as far as I had been concerned.
But all that was over now. I knew that Callie would linger inside me for longer than my life. I wasn’t stupid about it though. I knew it would lessen over the years, that she would become the one I compared others to, and that the others would fall short. I knew I would function.
But for the immediate future Callie’s heart would beat alongside mine. I didn’t need that shit in my life. So I did what any reasonable man in my position would do, I took my anger out on a highborn French college student who pulled up to the curb beside on a Ducati that he could barely handle.
One swat of my hand across his head and he was on the ground crying like the baby he was. I hopped on, giving him my best sneer, and drove off to Les Halles. Tears from the wind or thoughts of Callie streamed down my face.
I don’t need to know the cause.
…
I pulled around the back of the bar in Les Halles, and pushed the motorcycle into the shipping container we stored all of our hot bikes in and went through the back door. The bar was empty.
I was relieved. I went to the bar and poured myself a shot of Absinthe. Callie would be the only heartbreak of my life, of that I was sure. The drama of Absinthe felt appropriate.
“Clement, Clement, you’re back— Marie threw open the front door of the bar and ran to me, arms open wide. She wasn’t much older than me but she treated me like a son.
Her father was the original leader of our club. She had grown up around hard core semi-violent and illegal activity. She was running shit by the time she was fifteen.
And she was hot as fuck. And she had been a genius wonder-kid. And she belonged to Henri. And Henri let everyone know. He would kill for her. And he would love doing it.
“Marie,” I held the glass up to her as if toasting as she teetered her way towards me. The heels of her boots had been adjusted to stiletto heels. It was beauty in motion to watch her walk… anywhere really.
“Absinthe, Clement?” She tilted her head and her brightened into a hyperawareness. You couldn’t slip anythin
g past Marie. “Surely an American beer is better to celebrate a cross country race home?” She laughed, but I knew she was serious.
“The girl…” I refilled my glass. She knocked it off the bar. Her swift and brutal style kept us in line, commanded our respect. She was 5.2 without her miracle heels, barely 5.7 in them.
Believe me, she had learned early on how to control a room full of men. Beauty in motion, like I said before. But you know what? Her majesty, her strength suddenly paled before me.
Callie’s saucy gentleness, her confidence in her ideals… the swell of her breasts, if I’m going to be honest, left the great Marie in the dust as far as I was concerned.
This is sounding like I had horny love feelings for Marie. Not true, but she had always been the feminine ideal for me before. Before Callie.
I briefly wondered for a moment how long my thoughts would begin with before Callie, or after Callie.
“Clement, love now?” She shook her long dark hair and laughed a real laugh, “What a time for you to fall… The Spaniards? Have you forgotten about them? Because I assure you they’ve haven’t forgotten about you, or us.”
“Are they gunning for us?” I tried to raise myself up to my former fierceness, but it felt weak. I was never weak. I am strength. I am pure French style. I am Clement. “Are they in Paris?”
“They would have a death wish to come into Paris…” She patted her jacket. She wore a gun snuggly across her chest. As far as I knew she had never shot it. She left the dirty work for Henri, but I sensed she would love to shoot it off, preferably into flesh. Not to kill, just to do strong bodily damage.
Marie was cool as fuck.
“Or be dumb as shit…” I looked around the bar for something else to drink, something that wouldn’t offend Marie.
“Probably both,” She placed her hand on my shoulder and led me away from the bar, back towards the spacious, and what I always thought of as luxurious office. “You need rest Clement. Your eyes… they look swollen, war torn. Was the cause the girl or the run?”
“The run, the run,” I nodded my head up and down. As much I genuinely liked Marie and trusted her, it wasn’t in me to breakdown in front of her, or anyone in the club.
She opened the door, and waved me towards the silken lounge, “You have an hour Clement. Rest and then we talk… Henri said he had under control, but…”
“Henri, where is he?” I asked as I collapsed onto Marie’s pillow strewn lounge.
“Meeting one of the Spaniards in Monmarte.”
“What?” I shot up from the sofa, “Tell me where. He went alone? Fuck. I need to be his back up.”
“Clemente, it is fine. Lay down. One on one, promises were made. The meeting is safe. What happens after, I do not know… One hour, rest for one hour.” She turned off the light and closed the door, leaving me with my thoughts of Callie.
I was blown away that anything could take prominence in my head over Vengeance L’Enfers as I closed my eyes and fell into a deep sleep.
Chapter Fourteen – Callie
I forced myself to stop crying. Tears weren’t going to get me anywhere. Action was needed. I jumped up from the bed and put my clothes back on.
I wished I were wearing anything other than jeans and a sweatshirt as I ran to the door. France was filled with beautiful, stylish women. I looked like the worst kind of college tourist.
I reminded myself of Clément’s words. We were branded together forever. Nothing could tear us apart beyond his paternalistic need to protect me from his dangerous lifestyle.
Truthfully, his lifestyle wasn’t something I would want for myself, but I was sure between the two of us, we could figure something out. Our love was worth it. Maybe the close call with the Spaniards would force him to reconsider? Nobody knows what the future holds.
“Clement, Clement— I called out as I ran out of the hotel and onto the street.
I turned toward the revving engine of a motorcycle turning the corner into the Luxembourg Gardens. I didn’t know the area well, but I was sure there was a Metro station at the park. I ran.
“Callie Amberson?” An arm reached out and stopped me as I was about to descend the steps into the station.
“No,” I looked up at the man restraining me. A policeman with a sour expression on his face.
“Non?” He laughed in a way I didn’t like and waved his hand towards the newsstand. My face on the cover of the local newspapers stared back at me.
My boundless unstoppable love energy deflated, and I slumped. There wasn’t a way out of this, and besides I was sure my parents would be deathly worried about me. And, even more importantly, I had to make sure they weren’t looking for Clement.
“Oui, Je suis Callie Amberson,” I said as he led me to the police car.
…
My arrival at the police station threw the entire office into complete pandemonium. French, they spoke it to me in a rapid fire way I couldn’t even begin to decipher. I held my hands up and tried in my limited way to let them know I barely spoke the language.
A tall police woman strode through the crowd, placed a protective arm around me and led me into a small room in the back of the offices. I took deep breaths as I sat down in the chair, willing myself to calm down. I knew I needed to deal with this, but my mind and heart were already halfway to Les Halles.
“Mademoiselle Amberson, we’ve been looking for you, our whole country has been looking for you,” she said in a thickly accented English, “We thought you had been kidnapped, but you seem fine.” She eyed me up and down in a way that made me feel she knew everything that had happened to me.
“Kidnapped?” I asked a bit more shrilly than an honest person would have asked, “Why would you think that? I’ve just come back from a music festival in Barcelona.”
“Yes, we know. We’ve spoken with your friends. They said you disappeared. They’re quite worried about you, also your family—
“My family— I shot out of the chair, “I need to call them, let them know I’m okay.”
“Sit Down, Callie,” She ordered, “We called them as soon Officer Anselme radioed in that he had found you frantically running to the Metro Station in Luxembourg. May I ask where you were going, and how you ended up there?”
“I don’t understand,” Believe me, I understood, but I needed time to organize the lie of the century in my head. I needed to find Clemente. Time was moving slowly.
“Callie,” She tilted her head and looked at me with a look only French woman seem to know how to give. The look told me untruths would not be tolerated.
Any other time in my life I would have melted into sobs and confessed all. My love for Clemente kept me strong. Even the regal French cannot compete with a love like mine.
“I’m so embarrassed,” I buried my head in my hands, “I’m Catholic, you know? I would never want my parents to find out… At the music festival… drugs… I’ve never done them before,” I forced tears to fall from my eyes, “We took ecstasy… I met an English guy… I don’t remember much. We took the train back to Paris, and when the train stopped and we wandered off. We woke up a few hours ago in a field.”
“A field? Where exactly?”
“I don’t know. The guy, Peter was his name, freaked out and said he had to get back to his friends in Barcelona. We found the highway and he waved down a truck. The truck just dropped me off in St. Germain. I was trying to get back to the Sorbonne when the police officer found me.”
“Yes, the officer…” I heard her leaning closer to me, “He said that at first you denied you were Callie Amberson.”
“The ecstasy, it’s left me so confused… And I don’t speak French.”
“I see Callie,” She cleared her throat and seemed to move back into her seat, “There’s a report of a carjacking outside of Forest de Fontainebleau. The driver doesn’t remember much beyond a girl and a boy in their late teens, early twenties.”
“You think I carjacked—
“No, I don’t, but perhaps the
man you were with—
“No, he waved down a truck,” I lifted my head to reveal my tearstain eyes, and forced myself to look as innocent as possible.
“We’ll need to speak with him Callie. Do you have his name? Where he was staying?”
“I only know his name was Peter. I’m so embarrassed— I let out a loud cry. My heart pounded with the lies I was telling. I didn’t know how I would ever be able to go back to confession again.
“Okay, Callie, I understand,” She reached out and ran her hand down my arm to comfort me. “Why don’t you call your parents and go back to your dorm, get some rest. We can talk about this tomorrow when you’re feeling better.”
“You’re not arresting me?” I said through my tears that suddenly felt real.
“We do not arrest girls who have been led astray,” She looked sadly at me. I could only imagine what she was thinking about my imaginary ecstasy countryside romp with the imaginary English boy. “But I will need to speak to you tomorrow, Okay?” She stood up, signaling our meeting was over.
I had never exerted such control over myself before in my life. All I wanted to do was bolt from the office and find my Clemente. I stepped slowly out the door, as if I were tired from my journey.
“You may call your parents from the phone in reception.” She instructed me.
“Oh yes, thank you…” Time was moving so slowly.
With great control I managed to stop at the reception and ask to use the phone. The call with my parents went about as well as you expect. They wanted to fly out and bring me home. Somehow I managed to talk them out of it.
Out on the street, I ran.
Chapter Fifteen – Clemente
A gun whipping across the side of my head woke me up. I rolled off the sofa and bounced up into a fighting stance. Arm thrust out, I knocked the gun out of the man’s hand.
It wasn’t enough.
I turned to see the three Spanish goons in the doorway, guns pointed right at me. I put my hands up, but kept myself aware for any sign of weakness or distraction from the Spanish crew.
Savage - Clemente's Last Run: A Biker Romance Page 4
