by Khloe Wren
It was actually not that easy to stab into the heart if you didn’t know what you were doing. She’d most likely hit a rib and not get very far at all. As much as I wanted to be the one to end her enemy for her, I couldn’t deny her this. But I intended to help her, guide her so it was over as quickly as possible for her.
I looked up into the frightened gaze of Allen Jovan. “If we had more time, I’d tie you down to die slowly from that gut wound. But we don’t have that kinda time, so you get the fast end you don’t deserve.”
Veronica moved our hands, getting ready to drop the blade. I shifted it, whispering in her ear when she tried to fight my control over the weapon. “Need to go between the ribs, little dove.”
With a small nod, she allowed me to shift the aim. She pushed a little, but hesitated when blood welled around the tip of the sharp knife. She shook her head, her muscles tensing. I was about to pull her away when he spoke up.
“You can’t do it. Because you know you’re mine, you can’t kill your master.”
With a growl, she pushed her weight forward against the hilt, as I put some muscle behind it too, making sure the blade sank deep enough to pierce the heart. With wide eyes he gasped before going limp. Tank released him and stood, while I shifted Veronica so she was against my chest, then stood and went to the couch to sit with her. Her body shook and her tears wet my neck but she was silent.
“It’s over, little dove. You did it. Saved yourself.”
“Ah, fuck.”
I turned to see what had Bank cursing. The doctor lay on the carpet, his chest covered in blood. Bank was kneeling at his side, fingers to his throat.
“Oh, no. No!”
Veronica fled from my lap and ran over to them, tearing at the shirt to locate the wound just as Scout and Viper came striding into the room. One look and Scout lifted his phone, punching a button before putting it to his ear.
“Need you in Allen’s office, man down with a chest wound.”
Then he hung up and took in the rest of the room. “What a fucking mess.”
Viper nodded from where he stood beside him. “Tank, Riff, get me everything out of that safe and yank the hard drive out of his computer. I want everything this fucker had of worth before we torch this place.”
I caught Veronica’s body tense as she worked on the doctor and looked over to see her glance toward the couch. I moved over to grab the jewelry box.
“Don’t worry, Veronica, your parents’ jewelry is all yours. No one’s gonna try to take that from you.”
Viper turned toward Veronica, his stern face softening some. “I’m only interested in information, honey. Everything else is all yours.”
I thought I saw tears well but she looked back down to her patient before I could be certain.
What a fucking night.
Veronica
After Donna and Keys had loaded up Dr. Maestro and sped off to hospital in the club’s ambulance, Blade carried me out through the front of the house to a van Bank had just rolled up in. Blade sat with me, but after a few minutes his tension was driving me nuts.
“I’ll be fine. Go help so we can get out of here.”
He took my face between his palms and stared directly into my eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay? He didn’t hurt you before I got to you?”
I lifted my own blood-stained hand to stroke down his face, scraping my nails through his short beard.
“You arrived in time, stop worrying. And I’m more than okay. It’s over. My uncle is gone and can’t ever hurt me again. Blade, I’m free. Truly free.”
He smiled gently before leaning in and brushing kiss after kiss over my mouth, being gentle against the healing split.
“Fuck, I love you, Veronica. So much. Lock the doors and if anyone not wearing a cut comes up to you, get the gun from the glove compartment and shoot them. Okay?”
I gave him a nod. “Got it.”
After hitting the locks, I watched him stride back into the house that had been my hell for so long. Leaning my head against the headrest, I watched as various men came in and out, carrying bodies inside or boxes out. They hadn’t been kidding about wanting everything from my uncle’s office. I hoped they didn’t intend to continue my uncle’s blackmail tactics but honestly, I didn’t have enough energy to worry about that right now.
Guilt over Dr. Maestro was riding me hard. He hadn’t looked good when they’d whisked him away. He’d been standing by the window, trying to see what was going on out there when my uncle had come in. He’d barely turned toward the door when he’d been shot. My uncle gave no warning. There was no reason to shoot the doctor, he wasn’t a threat at all. Then Blade came storming in, and with everything that happened I’d forgotten about him until Bank found him. How could I have forgotten he was there and injured? I was such a shitty nurse. I prayed he survived. That he had a chance to live a decent life after what he’d been put through due to no fault of his own these past weeks.
A flood of men leaving the house had me sitting up straighter. They all headed to bikes that were parked around the driveway, except for Blade and Bank, who were coming toward me. I flipped the locks and opened the door, slipping onto the ground as Blade got to me. A hint of smoke hit my nose and I looked from him to the house, seeing the red glow in a few of the windows.
“C’mon, sweetheart. Time to get out of here before the authorities get called in about the fire.”
I nodded but couldn’t look away from the sight of everything my uncle had coveted going up in flames. I didn’t fight Blade when he lifted me and got into the van, settling me on his lap. I kept my face toward the fire, still unable to look away. Blade’s hand stroked over my head, his fingers combing through my messy curls.
“Love the curls, darlin’.”
He buried his face in against them and my heart lightened at the reminder of him wanting to see my hair in its natural state. I liked that Blade loved them, because I loved my curls too, and had missed letting them do their thing over the years.
A smile crept over my face as it sunk in that my uncle was really gone—dead, and soon to be little more than ash. He couldn’t control my life anymore, unless I allowed him to. And I refused to give him that much power, especially now he was gone.
“So, Veronica, you gonna go back to being Victoria now?”
I looked away from my uncle’s home, closing the door in my mind on everything he’d ever said or done to me, and faced Bank.
“Victoria died a long time ago. I’m Veronica now.”
Bank smiled with a nod as he kept driving. Blade guided my head to rest on his chest and I shifted until I had the leather shoved aside so my ear was against the thin shirt over his warm skin. I tucked my hand underneath the material, resting my palm over his left pectoral, his heartbeat soothing me like it always had, and I let my mind empty as the van took me away from my past and into my future.
I woke when Blade shifted out of the vehicle with me still in his arms. With a yawn, I wrapped one arm around his neck while I rubbed my eyes with the other hand before I looked around to see where we were.
“We’re at the Satan’s Cowboys’ clubhouse. We’ll stay here till morning then head back to Bridgewater.”
“Okay.”
I thought about telling him I could walk, but honestly, it felt too good in his arms to want to end it just yet. And considering I still didn’t have any shoes, I was sure he’d refuse to put me down anyway. My mother’s jewelry box was resting against my tummy, and I picked it up so it wouldn’t fall.
“Blade!”
He stopped and I turned to see Mac coming toward us with a bag. “Donna brought a bag of stuff for Veronica.” He held it open so I could set the box in, before he closed it and handed it over to me.
“Thank you.”
The club was something else. Everyone was so nice. “Head up to the room you had before, get cleaned up. Again. And try to catch some sleep. We’ll head home as soon as everyone’s awake in the morning.”
“Thanks, brother. For
everything.”
Mac reached out and gripped Blade’s shoulder. They stared into each other’s eyes, sharing some deep moment I didn’t fully comprehend.
“Welcome to club life, Blade. We take care of our own here. Always.” He released his hold and turned to face me. “I’m glad we got to you in time, Veronica. You’ll be safe here. No one you don’t want to see will get anywhere near you, okay?”
I nodded, unsure what to say. Before it got any more awkward, Blade shifted his grip on me and strode off toward a staircase and took me up to a small but clean room.
“This place used to be a hotel. It’s a good set-up. You hungry at all, or do you just want a shower and lie down?”
Once the door was shut, he lowered my feet to the floor. I placed the bag on the top of the chest of drawers before I turned back to Blade. He watched me warily, like he was waiting for me to fall apart.
“You came for me. Set me free.”
He winced and looked away from me. “It was my fault you got taken in the first place. Your uncle wouldn’t have found you if Elita’s man hadn’t grabbed you.”
Now we were here in this room, locked away from the rest of the world, I was feeling giddy with my freedom. My uncle was dead. I wasn’t going to allow Blade to tear that away from either of us. I stepped up to him, sliding my palms up his chest, under his cut to push it from his shoulders. He shrugged out of it and tossed the leather on the chair by the door.
“You listening to me, Veronica? All this—” he circled a finger between us, “is because of me. Elita found out what you mean to me and used you to inflict pain on me.”
I nodded then leaned in to kiss his lips lightly. “Yep. Then my uncle saw the news report of me being kidnapped and came after me.”
His arms wrapped around me. They felt like steel bands holding me to him, as though he were scared if he released me, I’d fly away. Silly man. Now I was finally free to live my life, the last thing I wanted was to leave the best thing that had happened to me in years.
“How can you even look at me?”
His deep voice was rough and filled with pain. He honestly was taking on all the guilt over what had happened.
“I like looking at you. You really are quite pretty.”
He growled and shook his head before staring into my gaze. “Stop joking, Veronica. This is fucking serious—”
I pressed two fingers over his mouth.
“I know it is, Blade. Trust me, I fully understand how serious this whole fucked-up mess has been. You didn’t hand me over to Elita, nor did you call in my uncle. That’s on them, not you. It was their choice to come after me. You’re no more to blame than I am. If I hadn’t hidden away in Bridgewater, none of this would have happened either. Is it therefore my fault that I brought my uncle into your world? Handed Elita a way to hurt you?”
“That’s just plain stupid. It was never your fault that a fucking lunatic pedophile came after you and forced you to go into hiding.”
I shifted to cup his cheeks in my palms, ignoring the blood and dirt that stained them. “Nor was it yours. Please, don’t let misplaced guilt steal our future from us. I’m free, Blade. For the first time in my life, I’m free to live however I want.”
“Darlin’, that’s kinda what has me scared right now. You can go anywhere, do anything… why the fuck would you want to stay in small town Texas with a scarred-up ex-mobster-turned-biker like me?”
I smiled at him. His showing me his vulnerable side was even more endearing than him storming into my uncle’s stronghold like a warrior of old to rescue me.
“I like Bridgewater. I have friends there, my home. Memories of a man who showed me what it was to love.” I ran a palm down his arm, over the button up shirt he wore that covered his nearly healed burns. “Blade, my beautifully broken prince, we all have scars. Some are visible to the eye, some not. But we all have them.” I went for his buttons, undoing them as quickly as I could. “Scars mean we survived. They show the world how strong we are. Trust me, Blade, I have no issue at all with any of your scars, other than the fact it hurts me that you were injured that severely in the first place. And the whole ex-mobster-now-biker thing? That just means my man is a badass who has the connections to save my hide from any shit that might find me. Again, not something I have an issue with. My uncle might be gone, but who knows what the future will bring?”
With an impatient growl, he ripped his shirt off, popping the final buttons across the room, before he reached for my hips and pulled me flush against him. “Doesn’t matter what it brings, little dove. No one will ever get near enough to hurt you again.” He lifted a hand to bury it in my curls, using his grip to tilt my face up to his. “You’re mine. I honestly never thought I’d have a woman of my own. That dream died when I was sixteen. But here you are. I tried to resist you, to not fall, but I couldn’t help it. You’re just too fucking perfect.” He paused and his gaze switched between my eyes and my mouth twice before he lowered his mouth to mine, kissing me with so much emotion, my heart skipped a beat. Even the sting from the cut to my lower lip didn’t take away from the moment. I rested my palms on his ribs, letting his heat soak into me as I leaned into his embrace.
He lifted away from me for a moment.
“Fuck, Veronica. You understand that you’re it for me, don’t you? I love you and can’t fucking breathe without you. Say you’ll stay with me, be mine always.”
He kissed me again before I could get a word out. By the time he let me up for air again I was panting and could barely remember my own name, let alone his question.
“You gonna answer me, my little dove?”
“Ah, what was the question again?”
My voice was husky with my arousal and I wriggled against his body, enjoying the feel of his hard muscles against me, even with the barrier of clothes. His laugh was dark and sent tingles down my spine. He wrapped his hands around my hips and lifted me. My legs wrapped around his waist automatically and he moved toward a door that I guessed would be a bathroom.
“I asked if you’d be mine for always. Be my old lady? Wear my property patch?”
I thought back to the party I’d been to at the Charon clubhouse. The women I’d met who’d been wearing cuts that had declared them as property of their men.
“I’m still not sure about the whole ‘old lady’ and ‘property’ thing.”
Now in the bathroom, he set me back on my feet and started to undress me.
“You said you were fine with a biker and that brings with it some fun stuff like new labels. Like I said earlier, a biker’s old lady is his one and only. A woman so precious and important to him that he wants to declare it to club and the world. You saw what the other old ladies were wearing at the party, yeah?”
I nodded, “Their cuts, but the women had property of written on the back, not Charon MC. I’ll never be someone’s property, not ever again.”
For the most part my uncle had treated me as though I were a prized possession, not a person.
Blade cut his hand through the air, as though he could physically stop my thoughts from going where they were. “It’s not like that with the club. You’ve seen how the Charon women are, at the party, at the bar. How Donna behaves at work. The women in the club are never treated like objects. It’s just a label, gorgeous.” He chuckled. “Actually, I imagine the old ladies would put their men on their asses pretty damn quickly if they even attempted to treat them that way. It’s a respect thing.”
He kneeled before me to help remove my pants and shoes, and looking down at him, my heart skipped a beat again. I really wasn’t sure about being called an old lady at thirty two, or being labeled property after all my uncle had put me through, but Blade had never treated me with anything other than respect. And he was right, I’d witnessed how the club men treated their women at the bar over the years, and at the club party the other week. I’d never seen any of the women be mistreated or disrespected.
Even now, when I knew he was on edge and still r
iding high from my rescue, he was carefully, gently stripping me, before standing remove the rest of his own clothes. I turned and flipped on the shower, letting the water warm as I watched my man stripping down to his delicious skin. Every dip and rise of muscle was beautiful and made my fingers itch to touch them all.
Without another word, he prowled toward me while I backed under the warm spray. His gaze roamed my body along with his hands, heating me up as he cleaned away the day’s traumas. He took extra time on my wrists, the grazes from Elita’s cuffs only just beginning to heal. The water was tinged red as it ran over us, rinsing all the blood and guilt down the drain and away from us forever. By the time he flipped the tap off, we were both panting. My body was alive and humming, needing more of Blade.
Blade
Veronica was naked and as she dried herself from our shower, she kept a come-fuck-me gaze on me. I wasn’t strong enough to resist that much temptation. Not that I was planning on even attempting to. We’d washed away all the shit from our pasts in that shower, and now the future lay open and clean, waiting for us to write the rest of our story. Tossing my own towel aside, I stepped over and wrapped my arms around her, lifting her against me. Her slick pussy rubbed over the underside of my cock and had me groaning as I carried her out of the bathroom. Two steps through the door and I was already too far gone to wait any longer. With my palms cupping her ass, I lifted her up until my cock was lined up with her slick heat. I took one of her tight little nipples in my mouth and sucked on it as I lowered her down over my length. Her fingers dug into my shoulders and the sparks of pain had my cock twitching within her heat.
“Fuck, ba— love.”
Dammit, I’d nearly slipped up and called her baby. I didn’t want anything to ruin this moment, and throwing her back into her past would be a sure mood killer. Before she could say anything or think about what I nearly said, I pulled her all the way down my length. That had her face level with mine so I could cover her lips with my own, kissing her deeply for a few moments before I tore my mouth from hers and spun us around, pressing her back against the wall so I could get the leverage I needed to fuck her as hard as my body and mind were demanding I take her.
