by Raven Dark
The scent of her fear is sweet, and I inhale it, running the tip of my nose along the side of her neck. She tenses, and I wait, my fingers tight, leaving her suspended in that moment between hope and fear before I slowly slip my hand under her skirt.
Her breathing stills.
My fingers slide inside her panties, cupping her ass and grinding her into me. There’s a sharp inhale when my cock rubs against her pussy. I pat the rest of her down, running my palm over each of her breasts, her back, like I’m frisking her.
Half of the places my hands are going she couldn’t hide a weapon without risking cutting herself, but I like having my hands on her. Like letting her know every inch of her is mine to do with as I please.
“Are you going to kill me?” she rasps, desperate.
I still don’t know, but I’m not going to tell her that. “Not yet.”
Her pupils dilate until they turn her dark eyes black.
With my fingers on her nape, I paint her plump, pink mouth with the pad of my thumb, watching her lips part in response. A growl escapes me at the sight of it. “Fuck. I want your mouth around my cock right now.”
Her chest rises and falls fast. My little thief shakes her head jerkily, but I can see something else in her eyes. Curiosity.
Resisting the urge to shove her to her knees and fill her mouth right there, I slide my palm inside her panties and squeeze her ass cheek hard. She whimpers. I rest my hand on her throat again and push her head up against the wall.
“Don’t even think of getting your hands on a weapon again.” I tongue her earlobe into my mouth and bite it, loving the soft, helpless cry she lets out. “If you do, I’ll skull fuck you until you choke, and then I’ll put you in the ground.”
She jolts. When I look at her, her face is bloodless.
She gets me, and for that split second, I know what she sees in me. She sees the demon. The monster.
She says nothing to me as we mount up, and she won’t look at me, at least not when she thinks I can see. I catch her snatching glances at me, though, her face pale, her hands shaking.
She really thinks I’m going to kill her.
Fuck, I should.
I should, but I’m not going to.
This Outlaw isn’t done with his Little Thief.
(End chapter here.)
4
Heartless
Skull fuck?
The words Spider used bounce around in my head, alien and leaving me unbalanced, so that I hardly notice the hot wind whipping at us as we ride through the desert.
I might not be the most experienced girl when it comes to sex, but I can work out what the phrase means. The images it conjures up make my stomach knot. I can’t imagine anyone in the Colony saying anything like that.
And I haven’t forgotten the rest of what he said.
He said if I got my hands on a weapon again, he’d skull fuck me and then he’d put me in the ground.
He’d kill me.
The thought makes my blood turn to ice. It should be enough to strangle any arousal I feel, but it isn’t. My sex still tightens when I think about what he’ll do to me when we get where we’re going.
Lord, what is wrong with me?
The need to get away from him claws at me, but there’s nowhere to go with the motorcycle tearing down the road like this. I can’t let go of him, so my arms tighten around his waist in reflex, and I swallow my own fear, burying my face in his back.
The smell of him, masculine and spicy, coupled with the scent of the well-worn leather of his vest and the exhaust from his bike invades my senses, making it impossible to shut out the awareness of him.
He’s everywhere. In my head, in my blood, under my skin.
There’s so much going through my head right now, I can hardly think straight.
Where is he taking me? What will he do to me when we get there? How long will he keep me with him? And what will happen when he’s done with me? Will he kill me then?
I almost wish I’d never left the Colony.
Almost.
Well, there’s nothing I can do about it right now, so I might as well learn all I can and wait for an opportunity to get away.
That’s how Sarah escaped His Holy Peace. She didn’t just take off without a plan, without thinking it through. She waited and watched for the right time to make her move. And weeks later, I’d done the same thing. I got out of the Colony. I will get out of this, too. Somehow.
He said he’d kill me if I tried to escape, and that thought leaves me cold, but if my time in the Colony has taught me one thing it’s that I can’t just let things happen. As Sarah would have said, I have to change them. Have to save myself. Otherwise, it’s over. Not only will I never be able to find Sarah, wherever she is. Even if Spider doesn’t take my life, I won’t really be living.
I’ll be a puppet. A machine. A…what did Deacon Harmon call them? A robot. If I let Spider take over my life, I’ll just exist, moving through the days without anything to live for. I’ll be exactly what I was in the Colony.
I shut out the thought of what lies ahead of me, but that only leaves my thoughts to dwell on Spider. The man who’ll take everything I care about from me if I let him.
My captor.
The leather of that vest he’s wearing is surprisingly soft against my cheek. I can feel the layers of powerful muscles in his back tense when he steers the bike, which he seems to do with an effortlessness that makes it seem as if it’s an extension of him. His body feels huge against mine, all power and muscle.
Everything about Spider screams of sex and masculinity. It’s like he was built for sin.
He would be fascinating if he didn’t scare me so much.
My thoughts are such a jumbled mess that I have no idea how much time passes before he finally stops the motorcycle. I lift my head. When I see where Spider’s taken me, my worries only mount.
We’ve stopped in front of an old, two-story building, what looks like a tavern with bedrooms above it. A few of the upper floor windows glow with light. A sign hangs above the first floor. It bears the same symbol that’s on the back of the men’s vests, with the name Casper’s, in the same flaming cursive. It looks like a bar, but no normal establishment would ever allow what’s going on out front of it.
Everywhere I look, there are motorcycles. They’re parked out front and at the sides of the building, rows of them, giving the place a rough, dangerous feel. Men talk and laugh amongst themselves, standing around or sitting astride the beasts, drinks in hand. A few of the men are in the middle of a brawl, punching each other. Women sashay between the gathered men or sit on their laps. Some of the couples grind against each other with a shocking openness. I swallow, averting my eyes, feeling every bit as off balance here as I do at the strip club.
The bikes have barely stopped and the men have hardly shut off their engines when Pip, Arson, Striker and Reaper swing off and make their way up to the doors, shaking Spider’s shoulders or clapping him on the back as they pass.
Spider dismounts lazily and cups my chin, pushing it up. He’s watching me with amusement. He likes that I’m uncomfortable.
“What is this place?” I ask him quietly.
He pulls the chinstrap open on the helmet and takes it off my head. “Home.”
“You live here?”
“Off the bike.”
I glance at the building and don’t move.
He grabs my waist and lifts me off the motorcycle. I cry out in surprise, but he ignores it and sets me on my feet. “You gonna walk, or do I have to carry you again?”
I have no desire to be manhandled by him in front of everyone here.
“I’ll walk,” I answer too quickly.
His hand shackles my wrist. Spider makes his way through the crowd toward the steps to the place.
There’s no point in trying to get away. Even if Spider let go of me, any one of these men would catch me before I got two steps. There are bikers everywhere, and all around the place, nothing but more
flat, hot desert.
All eyes are on us as Spider weaves through the crowd, some of the men looking me up and down with surprise, others with hungry approval.
Were I at the strip club, those stares would have made me feel dirty, ready to crawl out of my skin. From these rough and grizzled men, those stares still scare me, but for a whole different reason. Every one of these men looks as if they’re cut from the same cloth as Spider, the image of rough, lethal, criminals built for violence and sex and death.
Their stares make me feel…endangered.
That guilt I’ve come to know so well makes a home deep in my chest. Once again, I’ve managed to end up somewhere I shouldn’t be. I catch myself shrinking away, closer to Spider.
My captor pulls me into his side with an arm around my neck. It’s not a friendly hold. It’s iron-hard and crushing, trapping me against him. Most of the men stop staring and go back to their booze, back to their roughhousing and their women.
“Relax,” he growls in my ear. “No one will touch you if they know you’re mine.”
Why doesn’t that make me feel better?
When we step inside Casper’s, it’s like stepping into a whole other world.
The lower floor is a tavern, but it looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. There’s a set of three huge flat-screen TV’s on the back wall, giving the place a brightly lit, flashy look that reminds me of the Las Vegas Strip. Scantily-clad women sit on the laps of men or move between them with trays of booze as if it’s nothing.
My eyes travel up to the ceiling and I gasp.
No less than eight motorcycles hang suspended from the ceiling on thick chains three or four feet above us. Instinctively, I try to back up toward the door, half expecting one of those chains to break and send a bike crashing down on us.
“Spider…”
He follows my eyes and smiles, patting my hip. “Take it easy. They won’t fall. Those chains could hold up an elephant, and the bikes have been up there for years.”
I try not to look at the bikes above my head, but that only puts what else is in the room front and center.
Several men lounge on the couches in front of the screens. There’s a pornographic movie playing out on the middle screen, the image of a woman being plowed into by two guys taking up half the wall. Of all things, there is a woman lying across two of the men on the couches with her tongue in one of their mouths.
Then she dips her head and takes him into her mouth, bobbing her head while he grips her hair and groans.
My jaw drops. If I’d thought the strip club was a den of sin, this place is worse.
I avert my gaze, but it doesn’t do any good.
Other men sit playing cards at the tables placed around the room, piles of money sitting between them. But one of the bikers also has a woman up against the wall with her legs around his waist while he thrusts slowly in and out of her.
This whole place seems designed to allow the most savage side of men to be unleashed with abandon.
“Oh, dear Lord,” I squeak. “It’s like Sodom and Gamora in here.”
Spider chuckles darkly. “Told you, Wildcat. We aren’t shy about fucking our women.”
He nips my ear, and his beard tickles my skin.
Heat licks between my legs, and I squirm. His voice is like fire in my veins.
The men we rode back with are already making themselves at home. Pip talks to a girl behind the bar while she pulls him a beer. Arson is lounging with some other men on the couches. Over near one of the tables, Striker hoists one of the women over his shoulder. She whoops in surprise and he carries her off to a room at the back while men at a nearby table, Reaper among them, whistle and cheer him on.
“I don’t want to be here, Spider.” I push at his chest.
His hand grips my nape as he crushes me to him. He buries his nose in my hair, inhaling deeply. “You should have thought of that before you put your hot little hands on our money.”
He turns to a man with a thick black beard at a table near him. “Where’s Diesel, Mort? Where’s the party?”
Mort accepts a mug of ale from a passing server girl. “Thanks, darling.” His eyes veer to me for a half a second before he answers Spider. “There’s been a complication. He and Snake went with Prez to deal with it. The party’s been put off until tomorrow.”
Spider frowns, as if he’s wondering what kind of complication Mort is talking about. Judging by the way Mort looked at me before he answered, he’s avoided going into detail because I’m there. Spider gives a nod, and I get the feeling some sort of understanding has passed between them.
Then Mort’s gaze takes me in, and the corners of his mouth go up. “She yours, Spidy?”
“Every inch of her.” Spider runs his fingers through my curls, running the tip of his nose along the side of my neck.
“Nice. This the little thief we’ve all been hearing about?”
My stomach clenches.
“It is. Monica been shooting her mouth off?”
“Oh yeah. She couldn’t wait to blab to the club girls, and now they’re all talking. Dee’s heard all about it. She intends to have a word with your girl when she comes back.”
Oh, no. Dee.
“Well, she’s going to have to wait. I have things for this wildcat to do first.”
Mort chuckles.
Spider continues toward the back of the room with me, clapping men on the back and giving brotherly handshakes as he passes.
“Nice one, Spidy,” one of the men says, jerking his chin at me with a friendly smile for him. His thick hair is all grey, and he has a patch over one eye. “How much did you have to pay her to come home with you?”
“Spider laughs. “Fuck you, Cap.”
When we reach the couches, one of the men comes over from a billiard table. His long blond hair is pulled back at his nape.
“So this is your new toy,” he says to Spider, looking me over hungrily.
“Back the fuck up, Whistler.” Spider growls, keeping me tucked close to his side. “This one’s not gonna be another notch on your fucking belt.”
Whistler’s hard green eyes and the cleft in his chin remind me of Deacon Harman. He looks a lot like him, except he’s thinner and has a nose ring.
“Enjoy.” Whistler raises his hands with a humorless smile. He walks backward toward his billiards game, his eyes on me. “Prepare for a lot of mind fuckery with that one, girlie.”
I swallow. What does that mean?
I’m not sure I like Whistler very much. Then again, I’m not sure I like any of the guys here much, considering the way all of them are rubbernecking and drinking me in.
“Come on, Wildcat, before one of these horny fuckers decides to try and drag you off.” Spider pulls me into a hall off to the side of the barroom.
After a few steps, he scoops me up easily into his arms and strides down the hall without missing a beat. I gasp, throwing my arms around his neck, startled.
“Why do you have to carry me everywhere, Spider? It’s not like I’d get far if I tried to run.”
It’s true. At the end of the hall is the only door that looks like it might lead outside, and it has a glowing exit sign above it. It looks like a security door, and it might have an alarm that will go off the minute I try to open it. There are no windows, only doors that, by the sounds of things, lead to bedrooms.
Laughter drifts out of some of the rooms, moans out of one, and squeals out of another. There’d be nowhere to go.
I hear a loud slap from one room and then a cry that could as easily be in pleasure as pain. The sound makes me flinch. I hate that I clutch Spider’s neck tighter in response.
“No point in taking chances.” Spider sets me down in front of a door, but his hands linger on my hips. “Or maybe I just like having my hands on you,” he rumbles in my ear.
I shiver, and it bugs me that the shiver isn’t entirely from fear.
He digs out his keys and unlocks the door, then pushes me inside and flicks on the
light.
There isn’t much in the room except a dresser pushed up against one wall, a computer sitting on a desk in a corner, a bathroom off to the side, and a huge bed that dominates the space.
I’m in Spider’s bedroom.
Trepidation tightens my muscles. Heat suffusing my cheeks, I tear my eyes from the bed, turning toward the door, though I don’t know why I bother when there’s no way he’d let me get close to it.
Spider shuts the door and the click of the lock sounds absurdly loud in my ears. He turns down the room’s light until it’s a soft glow.
He towers over me, a dark and dangerous figure, as unyielding as ever.
Feeling small and trapped, I struggle for something to say, anything to deflect from the fear pounding through me. Nothing comes to mind, so I drop my shoulders and look away, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole.
Spider touches me under the chin. I jerk my eyes up to him, but they only make it as far as his sandy blond beard. The idea of meeting his eyes is almost physically painful, and not just because of that whole submissive thing the Colony instilled into me.
“Still think you’re not going to try to run?” he rasps as he walks past me.
“What would be the point?” I turn, keeping my eyes on his back as he ambles toward the dresser. The door behind me seems tantalizingly close, yet too far away.
Tossing his keys on the dresser, he takes a cell phone out of his pocket and sets it beside his keys. Then he takes his gun out of its holster and sets that down, too.
My eyes fixate on the gun.
The question he’d asked me when he’d found that glass on me at the gas station looms. Could I kill him? He might take my life. Could I take his first?
A cold sweat breaks out on my skin. I couldn’t, and I hate myself for it.
Feeling Spider’s eyes on me, I force my gaze to meet his.
He nods to the firearm. “You think you can grab my piece before I put it to your head, Wildcat?”
The blood floods out of my face. There’s nothing in his expression or his voice that suggests he’s bluffing. In fact, I can see the challenge in his eyes as he crosses his arms and watches me, standing immobilized near the door.
