Well, she couldn’t stay here, that was for sure. She walked to the edge of the street and looked both ways. She saw more lights in one direction than the other, so that was where she headed.
Surely she could find a motel, and, for once, she actually had some money.
She clutched her bag even more tightly against herself as she crossed in front of dark alleys. It was almost two o’clock in the morning, and she was alone.
This was bad.
By now, she’d figured she’d walked over half a mile. She had been counting on finding an all-night diner or something by now, somewhere lit up and safe, or at least safer.
“Hey, bitch, how much?” she heard a man’s voice slur.
“No,” she said immediately. “I’m not a whore.”
“What the fuck else are you doing out here, then?” he asked. He was young and drunk and strong, she saw, when he stepped into the light.
She was in so much trouble.
Before she could scream, he was on her, pinning her painfully to a brick wall and covering her mouth with his own. His questing hand found her breast under her shirt and squeezed hard as she struggled.
She wrenched her face away and took in a lungful of air to yell for someone, anyone to help her, but before she could, the asshole grabbed her by the hair and yanked her around the corner of the building into an alley in one motion, throwing her onto the ground and knocking the breath out of her.
Her head hit the concrete and her eyes crossed with pain.
She tried to cross her legs too hard to be undone, but the man was as strong as he looked, and he easily pulled them apart.
He was struggling to pull her jeans down as she screamed when someone kicked him off of her.
Tears ran down Allie’s face as she zipped her jeans back up and stood, putting her back against the brick wall and staring.
The man who had, maybe, rescued her was sturdy and blond, with hard eyes and an easy smile.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he said to the man who’d try to rape Allie, and the other guy seemed to vanish.
“Sweetheart, you shouldn’t be out here by yourself,” the blond said. “Lemme buy you some dinner.”
She stared at him.
No way was she going to just disappear with him.
He grinned at her.
“Hey, I’ll head to the diner, you follow me as far as you feel safe. You don’t gotta be right up on my ass, you can get a good head start,” he said.
Allie cautiously followed the blond, who, true to his word, stuck to well-lit streets and never even looked back to see if she was following.
A surge of hope rose in her chest when she saw the diner.
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DANIEL
The man strolled along under the flickering streetlights, smiling to himself. He always kept an eye on the bus station, but a girl this pretty and fresh hadn’t showed up in a long time.
He made a mental note to give Jeremy an extra few bucks, he played his part like a champion.
This was the tricky part.
The girl was following him, so he was still in the game, but this was where he could lose her.
With that face and those legs, she’d make him a lot of money if he could just convince her that he was the savior she had dreamed of all her life.
By the time she figured out Jeremy worked for him, well, she’d be in too deep.
He thought about her perky little ass and his cock twitched. He needed to try her out as soon as possible. He usually kept his hands off the merchandise, but every man had a type, and he fucking loved redheads.
He’d carefully steered her to a diner in the right part of town. If she’d kept walking straight, she’d have found a decent hotel in just a few blocks, and he’d have lost her.
When he reached the diner, he held the door open for her.
Gotta be a gentleman, he reminded himself lazily. Gotta be good to her. For now.
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ALLIE
Stepping through the door the stranger held for her into the bright diner made every muscle in Allie’s body relax.
There was an old man at one table, a guy about her age behind the counter, a few waitresses… witnesses. People.
She took a table right up front, and the stranger sat across from her.
“My name’s Daniel,” he said. “Nice to meet you, sweetheart.”
Allie was starving, her bruise from her father was throbbing, new bruises from the attack Daniel had saved her from were forming. She was achy and exhausted and near tears.
The food put down in front of her was hot and fresh and pretty much as good as anything she’d ever eaten.
Daniel had been really interested in her, asking her about where she was from, exclaiming over her drawings.
“Maybe you’ll have to give me a nice little tat,” he said, grinning at her again, and she found herself smiling back and agreeing.
She was fed, and relaxed.
Warm, drowsy, content.
Half of her was really charmed by this man, and she realized she wanted him to like her, to trust her and think she was special.
Half of her was wary as hell.
He’d shown up so perfectly.
“What were you doing out so late?” she asked without preamble.
He blinked at her, and shrugged.
“I couldn’t sleep. I live nearby, was out for a walk to clear my head. I’m a night owl, you know?” he asked.
She nodded.
It made sense, it did… but there was a flash of something in his eyes. A flash that reminded her of Snake, of her father, of men she’d met who didn’t like to be challenged.
She was sick to death of men like that.
“Well, thanks,” she said. “I guess I’ve gotta go pretty soon.”
With a small smile, she tapped her empty plate.
“Want to come back, stay with me?” he asked. His smile seemed genuine now, but she couldn’t quite trust it. She couldn’t quite trust him.
“No, man,” she said. “I really appreciate it, but I’ve gotta stand on my own two feet. I’ll see you around.”
She stood up and went to pay the waitress for her share of the meal.
“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Daniel said. “I told you I’d take you out, and I always keep my word.”
He tossed a few bills onto the table.
“It’s not safe here,” he said. “Lemme walk you to a motel.”
Allie couldn’t figure out any way to refuse him without spending hours waiting for dawn huddled in a booth.
She looked torn.
When the waitress stopped by, a woman in her forties, Allie caught her eye.
“Uh, ma’am?” she asked. “What motel would you recommend nearby? Cheap?”
The woman looked from Daniel to Allie and back again.
“I’m due for a break,” she said. “There’s a place five minutes away that’s pretty good. I’ll drive you there. You look done in.”
Before Allie could thank the woman, Daniel moved to protest. He gave the woman a hard stare.
“The girl’s exhausted, I’ll take her to the Motel 6,” the waitress said. “Just give her your number, you’ll see her again.”
The man seemed to decide that he needed to bow out gracefully.
Allie wound up at a local motel, not the chain the woman had mentioned, with a lecture about staying away from men like Daniel.
The woman followed her in to get her room and told the clerk to knock a little off the rate.
“Yes, Momma,” the guy behind the desk said.
“And put her somewhere up close to here, with the streetlight,” the waitress snapped. “I’ve gotta get back to work.”
“Yes, Momma,” the guy repeated.
He grinned at Allie.
“Fifty bucks a night, cash,” he said. She handed over a hundred bucks, and he handed her a room key.
>
Safely in the room, with the door locked and deadbolted, the dresser and the heavy TV holding it shut, Allie tried to calm down and rest.
After pacing for half an hour, she finally fell into an exhausted sleep in the locked bathroom, curled up on the floor with a towel for a pillow.
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JESSE
The young man stared at the girl’s retreating figure with a grin. If his momma knew what he was thinking about her, she’d have boxed his ears with a newspaper.
Not that that had ever stopped him before...
He watched the lights of his mother's car fade into the distance. He'd offered, a few times, to buy her a better one, but she'd told him no. She said that she wasn't going to try to stop him, make him go straight, but she sure as hell wasn't going to act like it was okay.
So, his mother drove an old crackerjack box on wheels while his bike alone cost over ten grand.
He hated that, but he hated even more that she wouldn't let him give her a nice little stipend, enough that she didn't have to work the night shift any more.
It would have been a bit of a squeeze for him, but not too bad, and if he wanted to he could always work a little more.
He sighed, and turned back to the desk.
Something about the girl she'd brought in had captivated him. Not just that fine ass encased in jeans - something about her face. Her eyes.
She looked so sad, so frightened.
It had made him want to pull her into her arms, stroke that flaming red hair, whisper that everything was going to be all right.
It made him want to protect her.
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ALLIE
After a night of restless sleep, Allie crept out of her motel room at ten in the morning. She'd agonized for a while about whether it was riskier to leave the money in the motel where it might get stolen, or take it with her where it might get stolen.
With half of her money in her wallet and half hidden in the dresser, she headed downtown, carrying her sketchbook, pencils sticking out of the pocket of her dirty jeans.
Now that it was light out, she could find the popular areas easily. It wasn't far.
She chose a spot by a cafe that looked popular, and sat on a low brick wall, watching the people go by, making them come alive on her page with quick movements.
A little girl passing tugged on her mother's hand and pointed at Allie, who grinned back at her.
"I'll draw your picture if your mother lets me," she said.
The mother eyed her, cheerful and tolerant.
"How much?" she asked.
"Five bucks," Allie said.
The woman nodded, and Allie went to work.
"What's your favorite color?" she asked, when she was almost finished.
"Pink!" the girl said, so loudly that it made other people walking by stare.
The little girl's joy with the sketch of her as a princess, shaded with one of the few colored pencils Allie had brought was the best advertising she could have gotten.
More parents stopped by with their children as the line formed. Eventually, she closed her sketchbook as the last kid walked away.
She'd made a little over sixty bucks in a few hours.
Not too bad at all.
"How much to draw me?" a guy's voice asked. She knew she'd heard it before, and she turned to see the hotel desk clerk.
"Free," she said with a grin. "Hold still."
He obeyed, striking a ridiculous pose, lips out, muscles flexed.
She eyed him, getting down a few of her favorite parts of the ridiculous way he looked.
"Lovely," she said at last, showing him a caricature she'd sketched on the back of another sheet. He reached out for it and she yanked her book back with a grin.
"Free to sketch," she said. "If you want to keep it, you have to pay."
"That's how they getcha," he said, nodding solemnly. "My name’s Jesse. You new in town?"
She nodded.
"Had lunch yet?"
"I haven't even had breakfast," she confessed.
"Come on, man, you've gotta have breakfast," he said. "What the hell would you do without breakfast?
She wavered, and then relented when he offered to sit with her at the cafe she’d been in front of.
He bought her a scone and a coffee, and she devoured them.
Might be nice, if I kept getting all my meals paid for, she thought, before scolding herself. If she did that, eventually someone would want more than she wanted to give.
She had to be careful.
“Will you thank your mother for me?” she asked, after a pleasant hour in his company.
“Sure thing,” he said. “Why’d she bring you? Didn’t get a chance to ask.”
Allie winced.
“I got off the bus in the middle of the night,” she said. “A guy showed me to a diner, wanted to walk me to a hotel… Your mother didn’t seem to like that idea.”
“Damn right,” Jesse said. “Some of the pimps around here watch the station, try and find pretty girls to… uh. To hire.”
The redheaded girl shivered, thinking of the man’s hands on her last night, and changed the subject.
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DANIEL
Fuck, he hated busybody waitresses.
The blond man paced back and forth in his bedroom, not looking at his bed. He wasn’t wearing a stitch.
Couldn’t take girls to Kay’s Waffles any more, had to find somewhere new, because one middle-aged bitch couldn’t keep her nose out of his business.
That girl would have been goddamn perfect, too.
He took a moment to think of her on her knees, naked, mouth open and ready for him.
Breaking a new girl in was the best part of this shitty job, and he hadn’t had a redhead, a fresh one, in so long.
He stopped and turned abruptly, marching over to the bed.
“Suck me,” he ordered the girl on the bed.
Her eyes had been following him with fear, and she moved over to where he stood so quickly that she knocked a pillow off the bed.
The girl was flinching even before the blow struck.
As she shook herself and got to work, he shut his eyes and pictured the pretty redhead.
If she stayed in town, he would have her.
He would have her.
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ALLIE
It didn’t take Allie long to get settled in to a routine.
She knew she should probably find an apartment if she was going to stick around in this city, but the motel was fairly clean and cheap and she was having decent luck at earning her fifty bucks a day from her drawing of the tourists.
The families with kids, in particular, seemed to tip well if she made their kids happy - and drawings of themselves as princesses and superheroes always made their kids happy.
When she wasn’t drawing, she bought cheap meals at the coffee shop or the diner, or stopped at the grocery store for bread, cheese, peanut butter… she’d never eaten that well in her life.
She wasn’t saving up any money, but it was warm, she had a place to sleep, all the food she could eat, and new art supplies.
Life was pretty damn good.
Sure, she sometimes woke up in a cold sweat from nightmares where she was shoved against walls, pinned to the ground, stripped, groped, humiliated… but not many nights, and she was no stranger to nightmares.
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Allie put the finishing color - yellow, this time - on a princess dress and handed it to the little girl, who spun in a circle and clutched it to herself, she was so happy.
The parents paid her in cash with grateful smiles and she put her sketchbook in her bag, carefully looking around anywhere but at the clock on the next building.
Justice: Night Horses MC Page 2
