There’s blood splattered all over the left side of his face.
But it’s him.
It’s my Jem.
He staring down at me like an angel. Funny because he always calls me that, but right now he’s my angel, my avenging angel. He sinks onto the mattress next to me, his Adam’s apple bobbing as his hands skim over my body, close but not touching—as if he’s afraid to.
“Fuck… Piper, can you hear me?”
I reach up with trembling fingers and rub over the scruff on his jaw. It scratches the tips but there’s a softness to the hair.
“You’re real…” I sound disbelieving.
He snags my hand and brings it to his mouth, kissing it. “Yeah, angel, I’m real.”
His voice is raw, like silk tearing over glass. He’s studying me as if he doesn’t know if he should touch me or leave me be. I take that decision for him. I struggle up onto my elbows, wincing at the pain and burrow into his chest, ignoring how much it hurts my body to do this. I need to feel him, I need to be touched by someone familiar. His arms immediately come around me and I seek his warmth.
“You came for me.” I cling to him like he’s my saviour because he is. He saved me from a fate I can’t even imagine. I don’t want to imagine.
“I’ll always come for you, angel, always,” he says into my hair. “There’s no me without you. I’m sorry I got here too late to stop that piece of shit.”
I shake my head against his chest. “No, Jem, you got here just in time.”
Chapter Thirty
Jem removes his kutte and jacket, tugs off his sweater and carefully pulls it over my head. It doesn’t cover as much of my body as I would like, but it covers enough. The sleeves pass my hands and I fist them up inside, relishing the warmth and loving being surrounded by his smell.
He redresses himself then lifts me carefully into his arms. I offer to walk, but he won’t entertain the idea. I don’t look at Smythe’s body as Jem carries me out of the room bride-style, my face burrowed against his neck. I’m exhausted, hurting and my adrenaline is crashing. I let myself relax into Jem’s hold, certain he’ll protect me.
“Angel, I’m so fucking sorry this happened to you.”
“It’s not your fault,” I whisper into his neck.
“I should have protected you. You’re mine.”
My heart skips a beat. Even after all this he still wants me?
“I’m yours?”
“Always, Pip, always.” I hear voices ahead and tense. “It’s okay. It’s just Weed and Adam.”
Sure enough, I hear Weed mutter, “Jesus, what did they fucking do to her?” as Adam says, “Shit.”
I must look as terrible as I feel.
Jem doesn’t answer Weed’s question. Instead, he asks, “The building’s clear?”
Clear?
What does that mean? Jem killed a man for me. Did the others kill Merrick’s men too?
Did they… kill everyone?
I should care, I should, but I don’t. They dragged me out of my home, hurt Cami, hurt me…
“Cami?”
“She’s fine,” Jem assures me. “She’s at the clubhouse. Clara patched her up.”
Relief fills me, overwhelming relief. It rolls through me like a tidal wave and I clutch him tightly as I let it flow over me, just grateful my best friend is alive and safe. “Thank God.”
Jem kisses my hair. “We need to get you home.”
“Fuck!”
I pull my head out of Jem’s neck and peer up to see Josh. My brother’s jaw is working, his Adam’s apple bouncing as he takes me in. The rage in his eyes is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Josh is usually fairly emotionless. He doesn’t wear anything outwardly, but right now, he looks homicidal.
In my overwrought, confused state, I think it’s because I’m gripping Jem like a limpet. I don’t consider the fact I look like I went ten rounds with a cement truck and lost. All I can think is that hanging off his Club brother’s neck like he’s my saviour is probably not the best way to come clean about our relationship, so I unfurl my fingers from Jem’s neck and try to pull away. I have no idea why, because I don’t think I can walk if I try. Jem isn’t going to let me go anyway. If anything, his hold on me tightens.
“He knows about us,” is all he says.
My stomach drops. This is not how I wanted Josh to find out. I wanted to sit him down, explain things. I didn’t expect to be covered in blood, battered, telling him about me and Jem after leaving a string of dead bodies in our wake.
“Oh.”
I glance back over to my brother and look for censure there, hate, anger—any reaction. I see disappointment beneath the concern. I take a shaky breath and glance away as my chest aches with a pain that has nothing to do with the beatings I’ve taken.
“Piper?” Josh’s voice draws my gaze and I swallow before I meet his eyes. He takes me in, his mouth pulled down, then he crosses the room, stopping in front of me and Jem. I feel Jem tense and I have the feeling my brother better choose his next words carefully, otherwise he might find Jem’s fist in his face. I prepare for whatever might happen next.
Josh’s hand scrubs over his face as he catalogues every bruise on my face. “Jesus, fuck. Look what they did to you.”
“I’m okay,” I tell him, grabbing his hand and squeezing it.
“Kid, you’re not okay. You’re not even in the same postcode as okay. They beat you black and blue, Pipe. You’re a mess.” Josh seems to lose his composure for a moment and it takes him a second to regain it. “They paid for what they did, know that.”
Ice fills my belly at the hardness of his voice. I’ve never heard my brother sound so detached before.
“We need to get Pip to a doctor,” Jem says quietly.
Josh snaps his eyes to him and I see the anger blaze. I tense without meaning to, and I feel Jem squeeze me, reassuring me maybe, that he’ll keep me safe. Not that I need protecting from my brother, right?
Josh looks over his shoulder to the other brothers. “We good to go?”
“Yeah, Foz and Ax are just doing a final sweep before the clean-up crew get here, but I think we’re good.”
Who the heck are Foz and Ax?
Jem kisses the side of my head. “We need to get you home.”
Josh growls under his breath, whether at Jem kissing me or at him saying we need to go home, I don’t know, but he mutters, “I’m going to get the car,” and takes off.
Jem watches him go before he glances down at me. “Come on, sweetheart, let’s get you out of here.”
He carries me outside and the cold air hits me like a freight train. Mixed with my adrenaline crashing, I can’t stop shaking as he gets me into the back of the car. Josh is sitting up front with Weed. Adam, and the other two men, who I assume are ‘Foz’ and ‘Ax’ mount their bikes. The latter two wear kuttes that have the Devil’s Dogs arced over the back, Manchester on the bottom. Jem climbs in the back with me and pulls me against him. A blanket is tucked around me and I start to feel heat seep back into my bones.
I snuggle into Jem, ignoring all my aches and pains, ignoring everything but the feel of my man’s thighs beneath my head and his fingers as they stroke over my neck.
Safe. I’m finally safe.
“Turn the heat up,” Jem orders Josh as the car starts up. “She’s freezing.”
Josh leans forward and turns the dials on the dashboard. He glances over his shoulder at me, his brow heavy as he takes in Jem holding me, but he doesn’t say anything. He just turns back to the windscreen.
Lulled by the engine and the movement of the car, I doze against Jem. I don’t know how long I’m in and out for, but Jem murmurs in my ear after a while, “Angel, I need you to wake up for me.”
I force my eyes open, seeing the orange glow of streetlights streaming through the windows of the car and the outline of buildings surrounding us. “Where are we?”
“The Devils’ clubhouse. Their doc’s going to take a look at you before we head back to Kingsley.”
I’m surprised we’re still in Manchester. I thought we were miles from the city, considering the lack of civilisation when I looked out the window of the factory. The back door of the four-by-four opens and Josh ducks down to look in.
“Leech is here already. He’s waiting inside.”
Jem nods. “Okay.” He glances down at me. “You need to sit up, Pip, so I can help you out of the car.”
Right. Slowly, I manoeuvre up, with both Josh and Jem helping me. It’s just as well, because scrunched up on the back seat for however long I was out for has not been kind to my ribs, and I’m stiff as hell. I can’t stop the moan of pain that escapes my mouth.
Josh growls under his breath. “Fucking shit heads.”
Gently, he and Jem help me out of the car. I wobble a little once I’m on solid ground, Josh steadying me while Jem climbs out of the vehicle and comes around the back to us.
The Devils’ clubhouse sits behind a large set of gates just off the main road. It’s deep in the centre of Manchester’s Northern Quarter, a stone’s throw from mine and Cami’s place. In fact, if it wasn’t for the high-rises surrounding us, I’d be able to see the building from here.
The clubhouse is different from the Lost Saxons, though. It’s an old three storey building, detached, with land on either side, but it’s surrounded by other properties. Behind the gates, it’s actually surprisingly screened from prying eyes.
There are rows of motorcycles parked up on a scrap of land at the side of the building and I can smell marijuana heavy in the air. I can also see a guy with his jeans down to his thighs, ploughing into a blonde woman against the wall in a darkened corner of the compound, his pale backside catching the security lights as he moves.
I snap my gaze back to my brother, not wanting to be caught gawking. I’m also not sure if I should say something to clear the huge elephant in the room—the fact I’m with Jem and we lied about it. Josh hasn’t broached the subject at all, not that I expect he would. There hasn’t really been a great time to bring it up between murdering people and running away from the scene of the crime.
“Josh?” I say his name quietly and he glances down at me. “I’m sorry.”
His jaw tightens then relaxes a little. “You’ve been through hell, Piper. I can’t even fathom what shit you’ve been through in the past three days, so I’m not going to get into this with you while you’re standing in front of me still bleeding, bruised, hurting.”
“But—”
“You need to go inside and let Leech look at your injuries,” he cuts me off before looking to Jem. “I’m going to call Prez and check in.”
Jem nods and watches as Josh takes off, heading for the clubhouse. Tears clog my throat and I feel Jem’s hand on the back of my neck. He rubs soothingly at my nape.
“He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“He’s only not disowning me because he feels sorry for me.”
“Angel, he’s pissed, but he’ll calm down. Come on,” Jem says quietly. “Inside, now.”
I glance around the compound, shivers running up my spine. “Are we safe here?”
“I wouldn’t bring you somewhere you weren’t, angel. The Devils are good people. They’re friends of the Club. Axel and Fozzie helped us recover you, and Leech—that’s the Devils’ doc—he’s going to take a look at your injuries before we hit the road back to Kingsley.”
Jem picks me up again, despite my protests I can walk, and carries me inside the building. This time, the blanket from the back of the car is wrapped around my lower half, maintaining some of my dignity.
Inside the clubhouse is more similar to the Saxons clubhouse, although it’s dirtier and there’s a lot more women wearing very little wandering around. Jem takes me to a room at the back of the clubhouse and when we enter there’s a large man with a shaved head, covered in tattoos, waiting inside for us.
The room is set up like a doctor’s clinic, with a bed, medical supplies and a chair in one corner. His kutte is draped over the back of the chair, the Devil’s Dog emblem staring back out at us.
“I’ve got everything ready,” he says to Jem, then addresses me. “I’m Leech. I’ll be your doctor for this evening.” He grins at me and I can’t help but smile back at him. The movement pulls on the split in my lip and I wince, my fingers moving to brush over the injury. He watches the movement, his eyes hard.
“I’m guessing you took care of the fuckers who did this?” Leech asks Jem, who just snorts.
“What do you think, Leechy?”
He makes a noise of approval in his throat. “Can you get on the bed, darlin’? We’ll have you patched up in no time.”
After a thorough examination, he concludes I have a couple of cracked ribs, a sprained wrist and a lot of bruising. He stitches up the wound to my head, which hurts so bad, but I grit my teeth the entire time, because I don’t want to cry in front of two burly bikers. When he asks me if I was sexually assaulted, Jem lets out a string of curses that make my ears heat. I squeeze his hand as I tell Leech I wasn’t.
Leech, it turns out, becomes my new best friend. He might be a biker doctor, but he also has access to some fantastic pharmaceuticals. I know I shouldn’t take drugs from strangers, especially not ones called ‘Leech’, but he’s a medical professional. So, I chug back those pills like they’re candy. Within ten minutes, I’m flying high.
Leech leaves me and Jem to it, and I doze for a bit, riding the wave. I’m not entirely sure what planet I’m on when I hear raised voices.
Confused, I glance around for Jem, but he’s no longer sitting at my bedside. Where’d he go?
“…keys to the front door as well?”
Josh.
His voice sounds clear on the other side of the door, and he clearly sounds pissed, considering how much sarcasm is dripping from his tone.
Oh boy…
“I don’t need a front door key,” Jem responds. “I’m never there when she’s not.”
“Are you looking to get matching bruises?” Josh fires back.
Matching bruises?
Jem did have a bruise on his face… I assumed he got that in the fray. Did my brother do that to him?
Oh my God, did Josh hit him because of me?
I want to get out of bed, open the door and tell them to knock it off, but the drugs are making my motor functions a little sluggish.
“No, but I want you to stop being a prick to Piper. She’s been through hell. She doesn’t need you to add to that.”
“I haven’t said shit to her.”
“Exactly, Wade. She was abducted, held for nearly three days by a bunch of psychopaths in that room. They beat her, hurt her, humiliated her. And you want to give her shit about a relationship with me? Really?”
“You lied to me! For months!” I can hear the pain in my brother’s voice and it makes my stomach ache. I want to go to him, to apologise. “If this hadn’t happened, if she hadn’t been taken, were you both just going to keep fucking lying to me?”
“We would have told you eventually, when we thought it was any of your fucking business to know.”
He doesn’t mention that we were planning on coming clean after the wedding. Jem’s purposely needling Josh, and I don’t like that he is.
“I just unravelled months of lies and deceit, dickhead. Months of it! Now I find out that my fucking sister and another brother—someone I thought was closer than blood to me—have been feeding me a line of shit.”
“I’m not sure why you’re so interested in my love life, Wade.”
Jem’s tone is that exasperating one, the one that says ‘I’m really bored of this conversation’. It riles almost everyone up—me included. I’m sure it’s annoying Josh. I want to smack him for being purposely irritating when he should be apologetic.
“Don’t be so obtuse. If you were shagging some random woman, I wouldn’t give a shit, Jem, but she’s my fucking sister. I told you she was off limits. I told you—all of you—to leave her
alone, and you just couldn’t help yourself, could you?”
This is getting out of hand. I can tell by the volume increase in their voices and by the words being tossed around. I throw back the blankets and swing my legs out of the bed. Leech, as well as being my saviour, also found me clean clothes to wear, so I’m in snuggly joggers and a tee with thick socks.
I stagger across the room, the drugs making me wobbly.
“Yeah, maybe if you hadn’t been such an unapproachable bastard, she wouldn’t have felt the need to shut down and hide the truth—”
I open the door just in time to see Jem’s kutte fisted in Josh’s meaty paws, his face dragged close to his. My brother has a couple of inches on Jem and he’s heavier than him, but Jem doesn’t look like he’s planning on backing down. He shoves Josh firmly in the chest and then both men erupt into a full-blown brawl. I stand, stunned, as Jem takes a hit to his left side before landing a punch to Josh’s gut.
What the…
“Stop…” I murmur, gripping the door frame as my body wavers. I’m still dizzy and the drugs are not helping either. “Stop, both of you.”
Jem takes a punch to the head and I lose it.
“Stop!”
Then Weed and Adam are suddenly there, between them, pulling them apart. Tears well in my eyes and I let them fall. I can’t do this. I can’t have them fighting about me.
“You want to know why she lied, you dumb bastard?” Jem growls, wiping blood from his face with the back of his hand, his breath ripping out in pants. Adam stands between him and Josh, but Jem doesn’t attempt to restart the fight. “Because she was scared of telling you about me and her.”
“Jem, don’t,” I whisper.
Josh wipes blood from a cut above his eye and I watch some of the anger bleed from his face as his eyes skitter to me before moving back to Jem. “Why in the fuck would she be scared of telling me?”
“Because she thought you’d walk away from her. Again.”
I see the confusion for a moment before his expression steels. “Why?”
“You really have to ask that? You practically threatened every one of us to leave her alone. You made her unattainable. You made her feel like she wasn’t good enough, that going there with a brother would be a fucking huge deal to you. You scared her into thinking that you’d turn your back on her, like you did before.” I watch my brother’s face pale a little before his shutters come down. I wish Jem would stop talking, but he’s not done, not yet. I also wish we didn’t have an audience.
Forbidden Rider: A Lost Saxons Novel #5 Page 35
