by Raven Dark
Now and again the guys glance at her and then at me. They’re all asking the same silent question. I have her, I’ve trapped her, but now what?
I don’t know, and that pisses me off. I’m not an impulsive man. Yet I’d taken her into that room purely on impulse.
Need to think about where I’m going to take this, but first, she needs to understand what’s what.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” I tell her, grabbing her curls in my fist. “You don’t leave my side or speak to anyone outside the MC without permission. Try to escape or breathe a word to anyone, and I will kill you. Understand?”
Her eyes snap to mine, and all the color leaves her face. Her throat works hard.
“I understand,” she grumbles.
Dislike for me drips from every word.
“Good. You’re not a stupid thief. That’ll keep you safe.”
We reach the back door, and the two of them are still going at it. More thumping, more groans, and another scream from Pip’s girl.
Striker snickers. Fuck, he’s such a ten year old boy sometimes.
Beside me, Arson gives me a broad smile and wiggles his eyebrows.
I shake my fucking head.
“You’re the one who told him to go fuck his girl,” Arson reminds me.
He’s right I did, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stand around and wait for a horny prospect to get his rocks off when we need to get gone.
“Kid!” I bellow, knowing I’ll break the mood. “Haul ass!”
There’s a jingle of a belt and murmured voices from Pip and Monica before he comes down the hall with a cheesy-ass smile on his face. A red-faced Monica follows behind, straightening her wrinkled skirt.
“Hi, Spidy.” She waves at me. Then she gives Stephanie an arctic glare.
I nod and glance at Stephanie. She averts her eyes from Monica’s, guilt playing across her face.
“I’m going to stay with Monica, all right, guys?” Pip asks. “I’ll see you at the clubhouse later.”
“No.” I push open the door and step out, pulling the little thief with me by the wrist. “Diesel’s birthday party has already been going for a few hours. You’re supposed to be there, Prospect.”
Outside, Stephanie’s head swivels as she looks at the street at the end of the alley. Looking for a way to get herself out of this.
Except I notice that her face is pale with fear, and something tells me it isn’t of me. Either way, she looks on the verge of bolting. I tighten my grip on her and move my cut aside so she sees the gun on my hip.
She relaxes in my grasp. From fear or defeat?
Pip gives Monica a shrug and then a long, wet kiss. They clasp hands for too long before Pip joins us outside.
Monica holds open the door. “Have fun, sticky fingers,” she tells Stephanie with a wide, vengeful smile.
I snort.
Stephanie mashes her lips together and cocks her head, as if accepting a slap in the face. The sadness pouring off her is palpable, but it appeases the MC Gods that command I restore the Outlaws’ honor.
It appeases them for now, but they are fucking hungry, greedy gods who require constant sources of pain. I will be the one to give them that sustenance.
“Monica, get her clothes,” I tell her.
She looks irritated, probably at having to do anything that benefits the woman who tried to steal her night’s wages, but she disappears inside. She’s been a club girl long enough to know not to push her luck with a guy like me.
It baffles me how women can be every bit as cruel as men. Meaner, sometimes. In the club, the men do the fighting and dirty work when dealing with other clubs, people whose attitudes need adjusting. But piss any one of the club girls or old ladies off, and they’re every bit as dangerous to cross. The men are just more direct about it.
A minute later, Monica returns with Stephanie’s bag. Stephanie reaches for it, but I snatch it away before she can grab it.
“Can I change my clothes, please?” She jerks on the back of her skirt.
“No.” I look at her heels. “You got better footwear than that?”
“Sneakers,” she says. “In the bag.”
I open the bag, dig out the sneakers and hand them to her. Her socks are tucked inside them. “Get those on.” Then I toss the bag to the prospect, and he ties it to the back of his bike.
Stephanie drops her shoulders. I can see it in those eyes, she knows she’s not going anywhere.
Monica gives her an evil smile and lets the door close. Stephanie pulls off her shoes and tugs her socks and sneakers on.
“Come here,” I say, pulling her over to my bike while the other guys mount up. I take her shoes and hand them to Pip, who tosses them into her bag.
She jerks on my hand, eyeing the motorcycle warily. “You want me to get on that thing?”
“Scared, Little Thief?”
Irritation flashes in her eyes at the name I’ve given her. The hatred that simmers there makes my cock raging hard.
The first time I have her on her knees, I’m making sure I call her that while her mouth is around my cock.
“Yes,” she says, as if she realizes there’s no point in lying.
She’s right. There isn’t.
I take my helmet off my handlebars and thrust it into her hands. “You’ll get used to it.”
She only stares at the helmet, her face clouding with worry. Worry and something that looks like guilt.
An irritating need to take care of her tugs at me. Fuck. I quash it down and take her chin between my thumb and fingers, getting in her face.
“If you’re going to resist me on everything, your time with me will be a lot less enjoyable for you. Obedience keeps you alive. Understand?”
Stephanie tenses. She looks away, eyes fixated on some point in the distance. Her arms drop to her sides.
“Yes, sir,” she mumbles.
I can barely hear the words.
What the fuck was that? Has she finally decided that there’s no way out and given up on fighting me?
Her compliance should be a good thing, but I’m disappointed. I like the fight in her. I shouldn’t, but I do.
Wanting that mouthy spark in her to return, I release her chin and say, “Riding a motorcycle with a guy is like sex.” I put the helmet on her head and do up the chinstrap. “Just relax and let me do all the work.”
My words must be enough to reignite the fire in her, because she stares at me with huge eyes and her cheeks turn scarlet, as if the analogy has made her feel more afraid—and more guilty—about riding, not less.
“Does everything have to be about sex with you...bikers?”
Her tone isn’t as forceful as it was when I carried her to that party room, though.
I chuckle and help her on, but privately, curiosity spikes, hearing her say the word biker as if it’s unfamiliar on her tongue. Didn’t think there was anyone in the world who doesn’t know what we are. I put it aside to mull over later.
“What do I do now?” she asks, settling on the seat and sounding lost.
I reach behind and find her hands, tugging her arms around my waist. “Hold onto me like this.”
She tenses and I deliberately set her palms on my stomach, holding them there. She jolts as if contact with my skin has electrocuted her. That makes me smile and hold her hands tighter.
She’s trembling. I get a thrill at the thought that it’s more than just being on my bike that scares her.
“If you don’t hold on tight, you’ll end up on the pavement, and I’m not slowing down to baby you.”
She grumbles something that sounds like “Why me?” Her arms tighten and she lets her cheek fall against my back. Then she says something else and I think I catch the word “demon.”
“What was that?” I say, turning my head with a grin.
“Nothing,” she says in a sulky voice.
I smirk and lift her hand, nipping her finger with my teeth. A gasp leaves her, and she makes an angry noise in her thr
oat that makes me rock hard.
I wait for her to settle into place again, and then start the bike. The roar of the engine drowns out whatever she says into my back, but I can tell it was an insult of some sort.
She’ll pay for it later, whatever it was.
The boys, who have been waiting for me, start their bikes, and we ride out of the alley, headed toward the clubhouse.
If she thinks I’m hard to deal with now, wait until we get back to the clubhouse. I can’t wait to show her what her body can do in the hands of a monster like me.
We ride fast and hard for twenty minutes, headed north of downtown Vegas until Striker pulls up alongside and gives me the signal that we need to stop.
I cock my head at him, impatient to get to the clubhouse, but he gives the signal again, so I nod. Then I signal the others behind me, indicating we’ll pull over when we get to the gas station up ahead. None of these men are pussies. They wouldn’t stop from getting where they’re going unless they had to.
We’ve hit a long stretch of road that cuts through miles of flat, arid desert toward Diamondback, a hole-in-the-wall town near Coyote Springs. That gas station is the only one out here until we reach the clubhouse, another twenty minutes away at the north end of town.
The hot wind whips at my face, but I hardly notice. My attention keeps drifting to the woman whose small, soft frame is pressed against me.
Her knees squeeze hard against my thighs. I have to tamp down the image of her wrapping her legs around me in my bed while I pound into her.
Those arms of hers clutch my waist in a death-grip, as if she’s trying to do some crude version of the Heimlich. Would she hold me that tight while I ride her?
Fuck, I hope so.
She hates me. I can’t wait to feel her nails dig into my back while I bite into her shoulder and lose myself inside her.
My cock jerks violently.
She has her cheek pressed against my back. The heat would make the black leather of my cut uncomfortable, but if it is, I can’t tell. I can feel her vibrating almost as much as the bike. She’s terrified.
Is she more scared of me, or that she’s riding on the back of a motorcycle?
An irritating urge tries to weasel me in to giving her some shelter from the wind besides that skimpy server girl’s uniform. To give her water to drink, and food, since I have no idea when she last had either.
Worse, I want to give her some reassurance that I won’t let her go flying off the bike into a ditch, or get us into an accident. I was practically born on a bike, I want to tell her, I know what I’m doing.
Fuck. I’m not supposed to care if she’s comfortable, if she’s hot, hungry or thirsty. I have to stop my brain from going into this fucked up protective mode that kicks in around her.
The girl is a fucking thief. She’ll be dealt with like one.
I pull up to the station, but I don’t need gas, so I park and wait while Pip and Arson top up their tanks.
When I glance over my shoulder, she’s looking everywhere at once. Taking in the empty, dry road that stretches in both directions, the flat, inhospitable desert landscape. The lack of cars on the road, and in the lot.
She’s looking for a way to escape again.
Even after multiple warnings, and even with me being armed, she’s always looking for a way out.
I’ll have to break her of that. By the time I’m through with her, she won’t think, won’t breathe without knowing that it’s because I allow it.
“What was your problem anyway?” I ask Striker beside me as I dismount.
“Need gas. And I gotta drain the lizard.” He swings off his own ride.
“Why didn’t you go before we left?”
He shrugs and heads for the station doors. “When you gotta, you gotta.”
I growl and shake my head.
“You gotta piss?” I ask her as I pull her helmet off. Her hair is damp, slicked to her forehead and neck.
She nods.
I help her off, but before she starts toward the station entrance, I grab her elbow and head for the doors with her. She’ll have to get the key to the bathroom from inside.
She looks up at me with those big brown, innocent eyes, so full of uncertainty. Chick’s life is in my hands, and she damned well knows it.
“You don’t go anywhere without me,” I tell her.
“Are you going to stand over me while I do my business, too?”
“Keep shooting your mouth off like that and I’ll find a better use for it, Wildcat.”
Her brows shoot up so high that I’m surprised they don’t fly off. She’s always looking at me as if everything I say and do is a shock to her. It’s great.
“Please stop calling me that,” she mutters.
“Would you rather I called you “Thief?”
Her lips press together. “I hate you, you know.”
“Good.” I run by fingers up her nape, enjoying the angry way she tosses her head. “It’ll make it more exciting.”
She gives me a questioning look. She can’t be that naïve, can she?
I have Pip go in and get the keys for me and then I take her to the door to the john. Once the door is unlocked, she starts in, but I yank her back out.
“Not so fast.” I go in first, taking a look around. The bathroom has only one window, a slit that’s too small to squeeze through even for her, and no doors.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Making sure you can’t give me the slip.” I step back out and wait for her to go in.
She drops her shoulders. She doesn’t meet my gaze, her eyes on my throat. “So that’s how it’s going to be?” You’re going to watch everything I do, every place I go?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to try to run.”
“And I should trust you why?”
Her eyes shoot up to mine then. For half a second, she searches them. As if looking for compassion, some hope she can latch onto. Then she tears her eyes away and deflates, looking lost again.
What does she see when she looks at me?
“Spider, what are you going to do to me? You can’t keep me locked up for the rest of my life. Are you going to kill me?”
“Make it fast,” I tell her without answering her questions. I shut the door before she can reply.
I hear her muttering in agitation inside and smile.
“What are you going to do with her anyway?” Striker asks, coming to stand beside me.
I take out a pack of smokes and light up. “Haven’t decided yet.”
If I’m rational about this and leave my raging hard dick out of it, I can’t keep her. She’s a complication, and I can’t afford complications in my life.
After what I’ve done to her, letting her go is not an option. Regardless of her promise not to say anything, I wasn’t patched in yesterday. She’ll run to the cops the minute I’m gone.
Which leaves only one option left.
That solution shouldn’t bother me. As the Sergeant At Arms for the Outlaws, I’m used to doing some of the club’s dirtiest work. I’ve kept the club armed with the best weapons for seven years. I deal with the worst scum in the world, men who aren’t afraid of death, or making their living off it. So why do my fists clench when I realize I might have to kill her?
“Aren’t you the one who always says women are a liability?” Striker asks quietly, pulling me out of my thoughts.
Always asking the hard questions, the fucker.
“You think too much. Go jerk Pip’s chain or something.”
Striker claps me on the back with a knowing smile and walks off.
Asshole.
I thump on the door. “Hurry it up in there.”
She grumbles something I can’t make out. Then I hear a faint tinkling of breaking glass.
My senses go on high alert.
A second later, the door opens. There’s a bulge inside her sock.
“Sorry I took so long.” But the smile she gives me looks as fake
as a painted whore, and her voice trembles.
I grab her wrist and yank her outside, then shove her back against the wall, pinning her between it and my frame.
She gives a started gasp, her eyes huge. I put my hands on the wall to either side of her head and get in her face.
“What…what are you doing—”
I press into her, letting the trembling in her body fuel the need that burns up my insides. Slowly, I bend down and pull the sharp shard of mirror glass from inside her sock.
Her head drops back against the wall.
Putting one hand beside her head, I hold the shard of glass up in front of her eyes.
“I can’t decide if this makes you brave, or just stupid.”
Her grabbing that glass suggests she isn’t as ignorant as she was when I first saw her. However unfamiliar she is with bikers. she’s figured out that we’re dangerous.
She closes her eyes and says nothing. Waiting to see what I’ll do.
“Open your eyes.”
She does, but she averts them. That is starting to piss me off, and I don’t know why.
I hold the shard closer to her face, and she meets my gaze. “Do you know how to use this?”
Again, silence.
“Do you know how to kill a man?”
She presses her lips together as if willing herself not to speak. There’s a terrific strength in that silence. It’s almost warlike. Except this is the same woman who demanded to know where I was taking her right after I threatened to shoot her. If I scare her enough, she’ll shatter. If I push her hard enough, she’ll lose control.
I grab her hand and close it around the shard, putting the glass to my throat, right at my jugular.
“Can you kill me?” I ask her.
She doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. Her hand stays where it is, but it’s shaking. It’s a useless grip that could only cause harm if I’m not paying attention.
After a second, her grip on the shard goes slack. I take the glass from her and toss it away.
Then I slip my hand around her throat.
Her eyes snap to mine, and they’re filled with panic.
There she is. There’s the soft spot.
