by K. J. Dahlen
Deke squatted down to her level. “Go on.”
Cassie shook her head. Fresh tears ran down her face. “When I told him Flynn sold his daughter for his next fix, he didn’t believe me. He said Flynn would never do drugs. He came here looking for Cassie Ryan, but he didn’t know I was his brother’s kid. He said what I told him didn’t jive with what he’d heard happened that night. He said he was going to check things out and that if what I said was the truth, he’d never come back but if I lied, I’d never see the bullet coming.”
Deke gathered her to him. “I’ll hunt him down and take him out. He won’t get close to you anymore.”
Cassie inhaled his scent and was calmed by his closeness. Then she pushed away from his embrace. Looking straight into his eyes she whispered, “I hope for his sake he finds the truth. Flynn was no good and he created havoc everywhere he went. Donny needs to know what his brother turned out to be without him around and what he did. He said what I told him didn’t jive with what Fang told him.”
Deke growled. “Fang wasn’t close enough to what happened to know what was going on. He was outside the warehouse that night. He might have seen what happened but he didn’t hear firsthand what was said.” He got to his feet and assisted her to hers. “Come on you need to rest.”
Cassie walked slowly back to her bed.
Peaches, Iceman and Paige were waiting for them. As she crawled into bed and Deke covered her with the blankets, Peaches came over to the side of her bed and asked, “Are you okay?”
Cassie glanced up at her friend and noticed the tears in her eyes. Reaching out to her, she smiled. “I’m fine. This…” She motioned to her arm. “…was a warning. Donny didn’t like what I said about Flynn. Apparently, someone told him I betrayed Flynn but not the reason why. I don’t know if he believed what I told him about his brother or not.” She peeked around to find Iceman’s eyes watching her. “Your man Fang told him about what he’d seen the night Flynn was discovered. I don’t think Donny was happy with the truth.”
“Did you tell him about me?” Peaches wanted to know. “Is he coming after me next?”
Cassie reached up and pulled Peaches toward her. “I would never put you in harm’s way. I claimed Flynn as my father but I never told him about Paige either. I told Donny about what Flynn did but I didn’t tell him your name.”
Peaches burst into tears. “I’m sorry, I’m just so scared. I know you would never betray me.” Wiping her eyes, “I’m just not used to all of this yet. All our lives it was just the two of us, now I have a father and a grandfather and…” Turning her head, she smiled at Iceman before she turned back to Cassie. “Now, I have Iceman too. Not to mention I have a baby growing inside me.” She placed her hand on her stomach. “I know it’s selfish but I don’t want to lose what I have right now. I have my family back and I want to keep it.”
Cassie smiled and held her hand. “It isn’t selfish to want all of that. It’s what we both wanted all our lives. I would never take that away from you. Nor would I allow anyone else to take it away either.”
Peaches leaned forward until her forehead pressed on Cassie’s. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for taking care of me all my life. I never would have survived on my own.”
“We survived together and we always will,” Cassie whispered back. “It’s still you and me against the world.”
Peaches giggled softly. “No it’s you, me, Iceman, Deke, Calderone and Leon, not to mention your babies and mine against the world. And that’s not counting Paige, Max, Peggy, Deacon and the rest of both MC’s and all of the guys at Redemption House.”
Cassie threw back her head and laughed out loud. “I guess our world has expanded.”
“Yes, it has.” Peaches beamed. “Ain’t it great? We have a family again!”
Cassie smiled but didn’t say anything. She turned her head to watch Deke.
He was staring at her and frowning slightly.
Again, she felt him pulling away from her but she didn’t know how to stop the feeling she was losing him. Her babies kicked inside her and she rubbed her big belly.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Later that night after everything had settled down, Cassie was feeling lonely. Everyone else had gone home and her house was silent again. She laid there in the dark alone. She didn’t know where Deke was only that he wasn’t beside her in their bed. He hadn’t been for several days.
She rubbed her big belly and tried to hold back her tears. She didn’t know when Deke became so important to her but he had. Now, it seemed like she was losing him and she couldn’t bear it. All her life she had been alone then for a brief few months, she had something with him that made her feel alive. At least he had given her one thing, he’d given her the babies. She knew she would never really be alone again, even if her life had changed.
Demon jumped up on the bed and laid his huge body next to hers. Her fingers buried deep in his long hair. “Oh Demon, what am I gonna do without him?” she whispered. “I love him so much.”
The shadows moved and Deke knelt beside the bed. Taking her hand in his he whispered, “He loves you too, you know. I’m not going anywhere.”
Cassie turned tear filled eyes toward him. “I thought you didn’t want me anymore. I thought I was losing you.”
Deke smiled. “Not gonna happen, lady. At least not in this lifetime.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve just felt like you were pulling away. I’ve lived my whole life alone and I guess I never expected a happy ever after.”
Deke chuckled. “I can’t be near you without wanting to make love to you and we can’t do that at the moment.”
Cassie grinned. “We may not be able to make love but there are other ways to satisfy certain urges.”
Deke raised his eyebrow. “Doc said no excitement for the next two weeks.”
“Yeah, well look how far that went?” Cassie snorted. “I feel fine, the babies are fine.” She hesitated then whispered, “I need you so much, now and forever. I think I’ve been waiting for you my whole life and now, I don’t want to live without you in it.”
Deke couldn’t help himself. He crawled into bed and held her for a moment then his lips found hers.
Cassie felt him harden against her belly and she groaned. She couldn’t help herself, she wanted what only he could give her. She ripped open his shirt and pressed kisses down his neck and on his wide chest. She suckled his hard nipples and she could feel his heart beating in his chest. The rhythm was increasing and she kissed down his belly and nuzzled his jeans where his cock was, hard and throbbing.
Her fingers fumbled with his belt and she pushed his clothing aside. Her hand slipped under his boxers and reached for his hardness. Pushing the cloth barrier of his boxers down, her lips closed around him. As she tasted his pre cum she felt him grow harder inside her mouth.
Groaning, she swallowed and heard him moan. She felt his hands at the back of her head and he lifted his hips to her mouth. His cock hit the back of her throat. She could smell his musky scent and she wanted more. She wanted him to give her everything he had. Her fingers wrapped around his cock and she began an age long rhythm. She moved her hips in time to his and before long, she felt him explode in her mouth. Swallowing his load, she felt herself rubbing her body on his. His knee found her sweet spot and she let go, awash in desire.
Deke hauled her body up and his lips pressed to hers. His tongue pushed into her mouth and dueled with hers. Desire renewed in both of them and Deke had to break away. “We can’t, as much as we both want it, we can’t.”
Cassie groaned and hid her face in his neck. “I know.”
Deke pulled her close to him and held her tight until his heart slowed down and he felt the calm engulf him. “Please don’t think I don’t love you or that I’m pulling away from you. From the moment I saw you at the club, I wanted you and over time that want became so much more.”
Cassie bit her lower lip. “But I’m badly damaged, Deke a
nd what you think you know of me isn’t all the bad there is.”
“Honey, we’ve all done things growing up that we wish we’d done differently. You didn’t have a choice in what happened to you, you never did. But you did what you had to do to survive.” He brushed the hair away from her eyes. “You aren’t damaged, maybe a little scuffed up, but not really damaged.”
Cassie closed her eyes for a moment. “How can you say that?” she whispered. “You’ve seen my scars…you know what Robbie did to me and what he would have done if he’d been able to.”
“Yeah, I see your scars but inside your heart, you aren’t bitter about what life has done to you. You cared enough about other people to make your dreams of a safe home like Redemption House a reality. You kept Peaches alive when you could have left her on her own. Damaged people are people like Janelle Walden, people who don’t care what they do, or what harm they cause others. That’s not you. You are stronger than anyone I know, strong enough to overcome whatever happened in your past.”
Cassie felt a tightening in her throat. “I’m not so sure I’ve overcome all my past. I deal by pushing it out of my mind. Sometimes, I worry about my past coming back to haunt me. There’s so much more in my past that nobody knows yet, things I’ve done I don’t talk about, not with anyone. Things even Peaches doesn’t know about.”
“That’s okay.” Deke hugged her closer. “You aren’t alone anymore and your past can’t hurt you if you don’t let it. Turn those bad memories into something good.”
“How do I do that?” Cassie scrunched her nose.
Deke settled in and reached up to snap the light off. There in the darkness, he shared a bad memory of his own with her. “When Sam took me away from my mother I was pissed. While she wasn’t the best mother, she was all I ever knew up until then. I didn’t know Sam at all. Then Gator took me under his wing and taught me what I needed to know. He became more than just a mentor to me and I’m closer to him than I am to my father. One night, Sam got drunk and came home yelling and screaming at me. He told me I showed him no respect and that was gonna change then and there. I was fourteen years old and at the time I hated being with him. He beat the hell out me that night. I thought he was gonna kill me. Every time he knocked me down, I thought about staying down but I was too stubborn to let him win the game and I kept getting up. He knocked me down again and again and every time, I got back up.”
Cassie tightened her embrace around him and let out a sad sigh.
“Then the last time he hit me, I stayed down. He knocked me out and I was in bad shape. Sam finally went to bed. I woke up a few hours later in so much pain I could barely move. I could her Sam snoring and I knew I was safe at least for a while. Each time my heart beat, the pain inside me grew stronger and stronger and I felt the hate for my father growing until the pain went away. I knew in my mind what I had to do but my heart wouldn’t accept it.”
“What were you planning?” Cassie whispered.
“I was going to kill Sam. I blamed him for everything bad that ever happened to me. I couldn’t take the pain anymore. I was lonely and I was tired of being scared all the time. Scared that every time I saw him…he would end up killing me. I got to my feet and grabbed a knife and I went after Sam. I didn’t think about what would happen to me if I did it, I couldn’t see any other way to survive. I got all the way to his room with the knife in my hand and bloodlust in my heart. I stood over his bed and looked down at him.” Deke’s voice lowered to a whisper. “I wanted so badly to plunge that knife into his chest and end my pain.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Deke barked out a short laugh. “Someone grabbed me from behind and dragged me out of there. When he threw me into the dirt, I looked up at him and saw Gator standing there. He was glaring at me like he didn’t know who I was. I yelled at him wanting to know what the hell he was doing.”
Cassie was quiet and waited there in the dark for him to finish the story.
“Gator asked me if I wanted to die. He told me that if I killed Sam, the rest of the club would kill me and they wouldn’t make it pleasant. He told me they would hunt me down like a rat or I could let it go. That I was almost grown and I could get out of there and have the life I wanted someday soon.” Deke shifted. “I wanted out of there and away from Sam then and there but Gator told me to bide my time. To learn what I could from Sam and to start acting like a man I wanted to become. That if I killed Sam in his sleep, I would never be the man he knew I could be, the man I was meant to be.”
“Is that what you did?”
“Yeah I did, but I wanted Sam to suffer too. When he woke up the next day, I still had the knife in my hands and I told him if he ever hit me again, I’d end his life. He wouldn’t know when or where but I would find a way to kill him….” Deke hesitated then went on, “He must have seen I was serious because he never hit me again. I stayed there another three years and the day I turned seventeen…I left him. I left Maine behind me in my rear view mirror and as soon as I could no longer see the border, I felt a release so strong it damn near crushed me. Gator and Reva came with me and when we finally got to Troy, I could breathe again. I found a motorcycle club that I liked and we’ve been here ever since.”
“But that wasn’t so bad,” Cassie replied.
“For me it was,” Deke admitted. “For me that was the turning point I faced. I hated my father enough to end his life that night and if Gator hadn’t shown up, I would have. I would have shoved that knife deep into a sleeping man’s chest and I would have lost my own soul if I had done it that way.”
“And is it still hard for you to see him?”
Deke nodded. “I no longer hate him like I did when I was a kid, but that doesn’t mean I want him in my life either. When I left Maine, I left him behind and started over. But I did follow Gator’s advice. I did learn from Sam how to belong to a MC. I watched and learned how he treated people and how I would have done things differently. I lost any respect I had for him but I did learn how life was with him.”
“So, you and Gator have been together for a long time then?”
“Yeah, we have been.” Deke smiled in the dark. “He’s more of a father to me than Sam ever was and as long as I live, he and Reva have a home with me.”
“That’s the same way I feel about Peaches.” Cassie sighed. “We’ve been through so much together and the night we took her back to her dad was the happiest I’ve ever seen her. That’s what I always wanted for her because she had family that cared. My family died when Flynn murdered my Mom. When I saw Flynn in that warehouse, I didn’t feel anything for him. Not love or hate, or even pity. I just felt nothing. He’d killed any feelings I had when he took me to Janelle’s and walked away with that damn four hundred dollars in his hand.”
“What about when you knew Calderone wanted him dead?” Deke asked. “Did that mean anything to you?”
“No, it really didn’t, Cassie admitted. “Flynn was already dead to me and when he threatened me that night, I found I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. I hadn’t been for some time. I told Calderone the truth and the fear I saw in Flynn’s eyes almost made me happy. I felt that same fear every day when I lived with Janelle. Maybe that makes me a bad person but I knew Flynn was going to feel the pain I’d lived with and I prayed that Calderone would let him live long enough to suffer at least for a little while. I wanted Flynn to know the pain I had lived with from day to day, just for a little while.” Cassie closed her eyes and whispered, “Does that make me a bad person?”
“No, that makes you human.” Deke kissed her forehead. “Now, it’s time to go to sleep.”
Cassie snuggled closer and closed her eyes. She could hear the beat of his heart and feel the heat from his body and it made her feel safe. Before she dropped off the sleep, she had to ask one more question, “Do you know what Gator’s real name is?”
Deke chuckled. “Yeah but if I tell you, you have to promise never to say it.”
“I promise.�
��
“His real name is Aaron Willis,” Deke whispered. “Don’t ever tell him I told you or he’ll skin me alive.”
“I won’t.” Cassie smiled in the dark. “I won’t.”
~* * * *~
The next few days passed quickly and once again, Cassie found herself bored to tears with her confinement. The fourth day after her run in with Donny, Peaches came in to tell her she had visitors. Boston Detectives Lance Sullivan and Victor Shroder were waiting to talk to her.
Cassie insisted on getting up and going to the kitchen to talk to them. Peaches helped her get dressed and as she sat down at the kitchen table, she found herself wondering what they wanted. Paige, Peaches and Peggy were there as well. “What can I do for you?” she asked as she stared at Lance Sullivan.
Lance glanced at his partner then looked at Cassie. “We shared the evidence you gave us and wrapped up most of Janelle’s kiddy ring. We were able to find and return over three hundred kids to their families. They will all need counselling for a long time but I’m confident they will get better. But we were unable to find only a handful of the kids listed in her books.
“New York has a Special Victims Unit and one of their officers, Seth Kyle, has a suspect he thinks is involved in this ring,” Victor added. “Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the evidence he needs to stop this creep. We were hoping you would be able to tell us if you ever saw him around Janelle’s house.”
Cassie shrugged. “I can try but when people came to see her, we were always locked in our rooms.”
“It’s worth a try,” Lance told her as he opened a file and pushed it across the table.
Cassie looked at the photo in the file.
The photo was of a well dressed man. His hair was dark blonde and he had the oddest eyes she’d ever seen. They were a pale blue with a rim of dark blue. They made his eyes unique. In the photo, his eyes looked cold. His eyebrows were drawn together as if he scowled a lot. His lips were thin almost as if he were hard pressed to smile. His chin was squared off and had a deep dimple and his nose was long and slightly hooked. Overall, his face seemed to suggest he wasn’t a happy man.
