by Malcom, Anne
It didn’t matter who Troy wanted to fuck in that moment.
It mattered that he spoke at all when the entire club was silenced by the reality of what was happening. Which rule did they break? Did they let a rat breathe? Or did they harm a woman of a patched member?
“We do what we need to,” Jagger said as Hansen opened his mouth, unable to let the guilt for condemning Caroline to fall on Hansen’s shoulders. He’d take that shit on. He’d do what needed to be done. But it’d haunt him. And Jagger was already haunted. It was on him.
“What the fuck does that mean, we do what we need to?” Claw demanded, slamming his hands down on the table. The same hands that had circled around Caroline’s throat not twelve hours ago. The same hands that would’ve kept squeezing, that would’ve ended her fucking life if he hadn’t ripped him off her.
The mere thought of it had Jagger needing to take out his piece and put a bullet in the fucker’s brain. His brother’s brain. At the table.
That’s how turned upside down he was.
What Caroline was doing to him.
And she was obviously doing something to Claw too, if he was ready to protect her, hours after he’d been intent on burying her.
Jagger met his eyes. “You know what the fuck it means,” he said.
“You’re fucking crazy,” Claw hissed.
“He’s not fucking crazy,” Swiss put in, voice cold. “He’s doing right by the club.”
“No, he’s not,” Claw said carefully, accusing Jagger with his eyes.
“You know that what’s right for the club sometimes doesn’t line up with what’s right in any other way. It’s how this club survives. It’s how we survive. I’ll do it myself,” he said, bile filling his mouth as he spoke.
He wasn’t sure if it was because he was lying or telling the truth.
How far had he really gone?
Hansen stared at him after his words. The entire table silenced.
He’d never received such a look from his best friend turned president, it was as if Hansen didn’t recognize him. Or maybe he was just recognizing him for the man he was tired of pretending he wasn’t.
“She’s your...”
“Past,” he finished for Hansen and tried to convince himself.
Hansen gave him a hard look. “While she’s here in the present, she’s the club’s problem now. We can’t let this stand. I won’t. Not with everything going on.”
Ugliness hung in the air. Ugliness had hung for a while. Since the clubhouse turned into a fucking crypt for almost the entire chapter.
Ordinarily, a case like this would’ve been clear cut. The club took care of it with a single bullet and a deep unmarked grave.
They weren’t pausing because she was a woman.
Men didn’t like it, fuck, most of the club abhorred violence against women. Innocent women. They treated women the same as men when they became their enemies. Women could be just as dangerous as men.
More so.
“I won’t let it stand, either,” Hansen said. “Nor will I handle this how we would with a rat. Because this situation is unique. And I don’t have a problem killing a woman who’s guilty in our eyes, but I don’t think she is guilty of trying to damage the club.”
Swiss slammed his hand down on the table. “She’s a fuckin’ reporter,” he hissed. “That’s one step down from a pig.”
Hansen regarded him coolly. “And I’m your president, and I’m saying that we’re not killing her. Because I don’t think she deserves to die. Anyone want to challenge me on that?” He looked around the table before he locked eyes with Jagger.
Jagger knew his best friend was doing this for a number of reasons. Because he was telling the truth and he didn’t think she was guilty enough to die. He also knew that he was saving Jagger having to take up arms against his brothers who tried to lay a hand on Caroline.
Because Hansen knew him.
He knew the words before were nothing but empty air.
Jagger knew it too. He would kill every last one of his brothers in arms, in everything but blood if they tried to lay a hand on her.
“Obviously we’re not gonna kill her,” Claw piped in after a long silence. “She’s not only too pretty to kill, but a good distraction. So what the fuck are we gonna do with her?”
Hansen looked around the table once more. “She wants a story. We’ll give her a story.” He paused. “But first, we needa make sure she knows her punishment for thinkin’ about betraying the club. And maybe she’ll think twice about doin’ it again. Because no matter who she is, to anyone, we don’t give second chances.”
Jagger met Hansen’s eyes. Waited until he got the nods of approval from the men around the table. Then he stood as soon as the gavel slammed down. Walked out of the room, calmly. Purposefully.
Then he went and vomited in the bathroom.
He was a man that had seen a lot, done even worse. None of it made him sick.
But the fucking thought of Caroline dying at the hands of his club, it was enough to shed the lining from his fuckin’ guts.
Chapter Six
Caroline
I was staring at the door.
I’d been awake since just after sunrise, after a long and thankfully dreamless sleep. But reality didn’t hesitate to punch me in the face the second I opened my eyes. I was in Liam’s room.
Liam was alive.
Three words kept bouncing around my head over and over.
As I got up, made the bed, doing my best to replicate the military corners, as I finger brushed my teeth, splashed water on my face, the words followed me.
I stared at myself in the mirror.
My skin was sallow. I was always pale. Ever since I was a kid.
I blinked, looking no longer at the woman of the present, but the girl of the past. With blonde ringlets and innocent eyes.
Somehow, despite the fact my brother and sister had a scattering of freckles covering their bodies, I didn’t have a single one. Not growing up at least. Not when I was with him. That would change. Once the harsh sun, the harsh life brought them out. But when Liam knew me, my skin had always been clear, white, with peachy undertones.
Peaches.
His hands were everywhere. They were fire, alighting my entire body with his touch, awakening something inside me I thought didn’t exist outside of romance novels. A hunger clawed at my throat, on the insides of my thighs. For him.
“Liam,” I gasped, coming up for air, our mouths still brushing.
His eyes were wild with need. With carnal desire. For me. “Fuck, Caroline. You’re so fucking beautiful.” He lifted himself up, tracing his eyes up and down my almost naked body.
I wanted to flinch underneath his gaze. He’d seen me in bikinis before. But this was different. My cotton lace trimmed panties and white bra weren’t exactly sexy. But then again, I hadn’t planned on my parents being away for the night and having my siblings absent so Liam could come over.
I hadn’t counted on being so nervous. So terrified that I wouldn’t be enough for him.
But his gaze, the pure reverence and worship in it told me I was enough. It filled me up.
His hand traced along the edge of my bra, above my thundering heartbeat. And then down.
I let out a gasp as he brushed my panties.
His eyes met mine. “You’re perfection,” he growled. “You’re peaches and cream.”
His hand went inside my panties.
“You’re my Peaches.”
I hadn’t even realized I’d smashed the mirror until the glass shattered around me, falling into the sink, scattering onto the no doubt bleached floor.
I stared down at it emptily, then to the object I’d used to smash the glass. A soap dispenser. At least I hadn’t used my fist.
It clattered as I dropped it into the sink.
I walked back into the bedroom. I didn’t avoid the broken glass in my bare feet, but it didn’t cut me. Maybe I was already cut up, shredded enough, there wasn’t any un
harmed skin for it to slice.
I stared at the orderly room. I started with the oak set of drawers to my left.
I wanted to rip his carefully ordered life apart. Just like he’d ripped me apart.
* * *
I was standing in the middle of the room when the lock on the outside of the door rattled.
I was standing because there was nowhere to sit. In addition to ripping off all the sheets and pillowcases, I’d done my best to overturn the mattress. The frame was too heavy to move. Though I might not have been physically as strong as the stranger in the cut with the scar and muscles, my hurt found solace in fury, and fury worked well to give me strength.
An empty kind of strength.
Because I might have been able to ruin his bedroom, tear apart his drawers and smash his mirrors, but he could ruin me just by opening the door. My strength waned and disappeared as his eyes locked on mine.
He gazed around the room, eyes empty, gaze flat. No anger, not even surprise. Just...nothing. Could this really be him? Could he really regard me with that flat gaze after what happened? After what we were?
“It help?” he asked finally, nodding his head to the room.
I bit my lip until I tasted blood. Took a breath. Steeled myself from the sudden and almost unbearable need to run across his ruined and foreign possessions and into the familiar embrace of his arms. My blood cried out for it with a desperation I could barely survive.
I needed him.
It didn’t matter if he was Jagger. If he was a member of the Sons of Templar MC. That there was ink all over his body I didn’t recognize. A scar ripping across his face evidence of a pain I was ignorant of.
It only mattered that somewhere in there, was Liam. And he was alive.
I even lifted my foot in preparation to launch myself off. Then something caught up with me. Sense. Fury. Hurt.
I placed my foot back down. “What do you think, Liam?” I whispered.
His face wasn’t empty anymore, confronted with the brokenness of my tone. Of what I guessed my face looked like. Everything hard about him melted. His body physically sagged as if ten thousand pounds had just been dropped on his back.
He lifted his motorcycle boot. “Peaches.” The word was a plea.
It unraveled me.
Somehow my backbone kept me together. I folded my arms. “Has the club decided on what you’ll do with me? I have a life to get back to. If you’re not going to kill me, that is.”
Could he kill me?
I couldn’t think about that. Because I wasn’t sure if I’d survive the answer. The truth.
His expression shifted and the weight left. Or maybe he got better at hiding the fact he carried it around. “You’re not getting back to anywhere,” he all but growled. He looked around again. “I’ll get a prospect in. Clean this shit up.”
“You think it’s that easy?” I hissed at him.
He clenched his fists at his sides. “Nothing about this shit is easy, Caroline. Nothing about the past fourteen years has been fucking easy.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, I bet it’s been so fucking hard for you. Here drinking whisky, fucking whores, and living outside the law, being free.”
He was across the room before I could blink, wood crunching beneath his boots as he crushed parts of his dresser. He didn’t touch me. He didn’t need to. Every inch of him was pressed into the air, inches from me.
“I’ve been a lot of fucking things for the past fourteen years, Caroline,” he rasped, never taking his eyes from me, stealing the breath from my lungs. “Only thing I haven’t been is free.”
He let the words hang between us, a dare for me to do more. To ask more. His chest was heavy with exertion, the veins in his neck pulsating as if he were practicing some sort of epic restraint.
My eyes traced the puckered marks of the scar that dominated the face I once used to know so well. Pain lanced down the exact same spot on my own as agony speared through me with the knowledge of something tearing at his skin like that. Of him having to recover from that without me.
But then again, he made me recover from scars worse than that.
You just couldn’t see them.
I sucked in a visible breath and stepped back purposefully, as if the mere foot of distance did something to insulate me against him. The grave hadn’t insulated me against him.
He rolled his shoulders back, resting his hand on his belt. “I’ll arrange for that prospect to come in here, clean it up.”
“If the club is going to keep me prisoner here, I’m not staying in this room,” I declared, searching for some leverage in this situation, some control. And I couldn’t stay in this room. Even though it was devoid of personality, it showed nothing of the boy I used to love. That was the point. Its very emptiness would swallow me whole.
Something flickered in his eyes. “You don’t have a choice in the matter.”
I sank my fingernails into the skin of my palms. I itched to argue. I sensed it wouldn’t help. The man in front of me was likely hardened to arguments, to pleading. I was aware I needed to be thankful for the fact I was alive at all. If that’s what this was.
“Then don’t send a prospect, I can clean this up myself. I’ve had practice.” It was petty, but I felt petty.
Though there was no victory in his visible flinch.
This war had no victors.
He nodded once. “I’ll get you something to eat. Coffee. I assume you take it the same.”
I sank my fingertips in harder. There was something intimate about someone knowing the mundane things about you. I wanted it to have changed. But though many things about me had changed, what felt like my entire genetic makeup, the way I took my coffee had not.
“Don’t bother,” I snapped. “I won’t eat or drink anything you give me.”
Again, another stupid move. I didn’t gain anything from going on some stupid hunger strike. If anything, I needed to keep my physical strength up if the opportunity to escape presented itself.
Not that it would.
There was no escaping this. Even if I did find a way out of this highly secure compound.
Liam’s jaw hardened. “You’re fuckin’ eating,” he clipped.
“You’re going to force it down my throat?” I challenged.
His eyes seemed black. “If need be. I won’t have you fucking with your health over this.”
“Your concern is touching.”
He flinched again.
There wasn’t victory in that one either.
“Just eat the fucking food, Caroline.”
I jutted my chin up and didn’t reply.
He ran his eyes over me, they softened at the edges, and I was reminded of that reverent way he’d gazed at me the day he’d taken my virginity, and every day after that. And every day before that, for that matter.
It hurt more than anything I’d experienced, that soft gaze from a dead man.
Then it was gone.
He turned around, began to walk away from me, leaving me in the ruins he’d created.
“I need something,” I said to his back.
He stopped. Paused. Sighed. And then he turned. “You’re not really in a position to make requests.”
I folded my arms and narrowed my eyes at him.
He met my gaze long enough for it to get uncomfortable, for the past to fill the room up until we were up to our necks, about to drown in it.
He sighed again.
“What do you want?”
“Red lipstick,” I replied, licking my lips. I pretended I didn’t notice the way his eyes followed the motion and the way his jaw tightened. “Any one at a pinch, but if you’ve got...a woman who knows her way around beauty counters at a department store, then Chanel, shade Pirate.”
I didn’t think this new Liam—no, Jagger—had an emotional range past fury, frustration, and indifference, but I managed to add shock to the list with my request.
He blinked rapidly. “Lipstick?” he repeated.
I n
odded once.
His face shut down and his eyes went glacial. “You think you’re gonna be able to fuck your way outta here, you’re wrong.”
My spine straightened. “I’m not planning on fucking my way out.” I spat the ugly word at him wishing it was a bullet.
All soft and fond thoughts I had for him, for Liam were gone. This wasn’t a soft and kind boy. This was a hard and crude man.
“That’s how you were plannin’ on getting in,” he countered, venom in his voice. “And unfortunately for you, sweetheart, the only person you’re gonna be seeing from now on is me, and I can tell you for sure you’re not fucking your way anywhere.”
Then he stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
* * *
Jagger
He was contemplating his empty whisky glass when Macy came in.
He’d sent a prospect to his room with food, coffee, how she liked it, black with four sugars. Four fucking sugars.
He kissed her and she tasted of coffee and Caroline. “Don’t get how you drink that shit.” He nodded to her pitch-black mug that was sweeter than sin. “Plus, you don’t need anything to make you sweeter than you already are.” He kissed her again, slipping his tongue inside. She responded instantly, melting against him. His dick hardened. “Fuck,” he murmured against her mouth, meeting her lazy and hungry eyes. “Maybe I can get down with the taste of coffee that sweet. Only if I’m tasting it on you at the same time.”
Coffee.
He hadn’t been able to drink fucking coffee for almost fifteen years because it reminded him of her.
Whisky worked better anyway.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Caroline Hargrave was in the clubhouse?” Macy demanded, hands on her small hips.
It was still amazing to him that she’d had her second baby almost two months ago. Bitches didn’t tend to bounce back that quickly. Not that he expected them to. Nine months growing a child was a fucking lot for a body to go through. Women were tougher than men for that alone.
Macy was tougher than she looked, five foot nothing, a buck twenty soaking wet.
She’d been spending a lot of time at home with their newborn, and toddler, not around the club as much. He thought it might’ve been because the club was one big crypt and Macy couldn’t face the death there. It was hard for him to sit in a fucking room where most of his family had been murdered. He didn’t blame Macy one bit for staying at their warm home full of memories that weren’t stained with blood, with children that gave her hope. Jagger knew Hansen wanted to be right there with her, but this was not a time to play happy families.
