Beyond the Cut

by Sarah Castille

  Although Dawn had opened his eyes to the possibility some situations just couldn’t be controlled, he couldn’t accept that there were times he wouldn’t be able to protect the people he cared about. He wouldn’t let her suffer the same fate as his mother. Not when he had the strength and resources to ensure it would never happen. Not even if it meant turning his back on the club. And in the boardroom the other day, he’d almost been there.

  Jagger thudded his beer bottle on a wooden table to quiet the room, and the DJ turned down Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.” The DJ was crap but he owed the Sinners money and what better way for him to work off his debt than to DJ at Riders, one of several bars the Sinners owned, operated, and laundered money through in Conundrum. At least Riders looked like a biker bar: worn wooden tables, posters of girls, bikes, and girls on bikes pinned to the walls, beer bottle sculptures in the alcoves, dim lighting, and a central dance floor that gave the brothers a good view of the girls. And of course, it smelled like stale beer and leather.

  Cade grimaced when Jagger cleared his throat. He wasn’t up for this at all. Pretending to have a relationship had been a lot easier when they were just having a good time. But now he felt open, raw, totally and utterly exposed. Not a comfortable feeling.

  He shot back his whiskey, swallowing the smooth, bitter liquid in one gulp. Time to back off, regain perspective. This relationship wasn’t real and he had to stop thinking of it that way.

  Arianne put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, quieting the room. She winked at Jagger and his face softened. Secret joke that wasn’t much of a secret. Arianne had saved Jagger’s life with that whistle not so long ago.

  “As you all know,” Jagger shouted. “Cade has an announcement for us.” Jagger looked over at Cade and winked. Club tradition said that when a brother took an old lady, he had to make a formal declaration to the club. Usually the brothers brought it up in church, but Jagger wanted the word to get out. The Brethren had to believe it was true, and what better way than to invite a bunch of support clubs and support wannabes, splash the cash, and send them out to spread the word that the “Sinner of Sinners” had finally been tamed.

  Now he had to make a damn speech when all he really wanted was to get on his bike and ride until he ran out of gas.

  After refilling his glass from a bottle on the bar, he searched the crowd and spotted Dawn deep in conversation with Tanya. She looked up and met his gaze, her expression wary. Mustering all the charm he’d relied on to woo women into his bed, he smiled and held out a hand, indicating for her to join him.

  “Finally found a woman who lit my fire,” he said, raising his bottle. “Sweet, sassy, and sexy and a bit of a sinner like all of us. She may look soft, but she’s got a core of steel. Sweet butts, dry your eyes. She’s got my heart, my wings, my protection, and my patch. I’m taking Dawn as my old lady and if anyone has a problem with that, I’ll shoot them between the fucking eyes.”

  Everyone cheered. Dawn gave a cool smile and, after a nudge from Tanya, joined him in the center of the room, her fuck-me stilettos tapping lightly on the wooden floor. Her gold dress shimmered in the light, hugging every curve of her beautiful body, and her hair fell in soft golden curls past her shoulders. Damn. Why did she have to dress like that? He was hard just looking at her. Every damn brother in the room would be panting after her …

  But they couldn’t touch. Dawn belonged to him now and no one touched a biker’s old lady.

  Mine. He felt no small amount of satisfaction when he took the new cut from Jagger and slid it over her shoulders. Dawn spun around to show off the PROPERTY OF CADE patch on the back: the skull and stars in the center and his personal rocker on top, and Cade thought he might burst from pride. His cut. His woman. A more beautiful sight he had never seen.

  Too bad it wasn’t real.

  After the cheers died down, he clasped Dawn’s hand and wove his way through the crowded bar, forcing a smile as he endured the congratulations, handshakes, and pats on the back, counting the minutes until they could be free.

  “Hey Cade.” One of the few non-board-members who knew about the ruse, Arianne greeted him warmly when he reached the bar. “Nice speech. All I got from Jagger was a cut wrapped up in brown paper with PROPERTY OF JAGGER written on the back and suddenly I was his old lady.”

  “That’s ’cause you were his old lady the second he laid eyes on you. Just took you both a while to realize it.” That and Jagger almost dying in a ditch after rescuing Arianne from her Black Jack family.

  “Never seen anyone scowl so much about getting hitched.” Jagger leaned against the bar beside him after Arianne took Dawn to meet her new family. “People are starting to talk. Totally defeats the purpose of what you were trying to do here. Go dance with her, kiss her, make out—something to make it seem legit. Or are you having second thoughts?”

  “She’s not fully on board with the plan. Took a lot of convincing.” He finished his beer in one swallow. “I get that she had a bad experience with the Brethren. And Mad Dog … every time I think about him, my blood fucking boils, but we’re not them, and I’m not him. Why can’t she see the difference?”

  A shadow crossed Jagger’s face and he glanced over at Arianne and Dawn. “She’s fought hard to get away from the Brethren and make a life for herself, so it’s gonna be hard for her to trust us or give up her independence. You can’t run around swinging your club. I know about strong women, brother. You need a subtle touch.”

  Subtle. Sure. He could do subtle.

  Cade pushed his way through the sea of brothers, parting the group of women now crowded around Dawn with a scowl.

  “Thought it was time I had a dance with the old lady.” He held out his hand, his heart pounding as if he were sixteen and back in high school wondering if the girl with the biggest tits in middle school would shoot him down. He’d always had a thing for big tits, and Dawn … damn she looked fine.

  Dawn paled and for a moment he thought she’d refuse him, but she rallied and took his hand. “Of course. Can’t let the old man dance alone.”

  He led her to the dance floor where a few brothers and their girls were making out on the pretext of dancing, but that was because the DJ was playing some shit boy-band pop crap. Cade caught the loser’s eye and shouted. “Put on some real music or I’ll rip off your balls.”

  “Nice.” Dawn put her hands around Cade’s neck. “Our first dance and you threaten to rip off the DJ’s balls. If I had any illusions about being back in the biker world, they have now been well and truly dispelled.”

  “My woman doesn’t dance to shit music,” he muttered. God she smelled good, like the flowers his mothers had planted every spring, no matter how disparaging his father was about her choices.

  “Sounds like your woman now has to dance to the Forest Rangers’ ‘House of the Rising Sun.’” Dawn snorted a laugh after the DJ changed the tune. “Why do civilians think every bike gang is like the ones on TV?”

  “’Cause if they knew what we were really like, we’d all be locked up for our own protection.”

  Her hips swayed gently to the music and he slid his hands around her waist, pulling her close, molding her soft, lush body to his own.

  “You watch biker shows on TV?”

  Dawn’s face flushed a delightful pink. “Yeah, I like them, although they’re so far removed from reality sometimes I laugh the whole way through. I also like watching boxing and MMA, and…” Her voice trailed off.

  His interest piqued, Cade gave her a nudge. “She gives me a hard time, but she likes her violence. What else?”

  “Survival shows. Whenever I’m feeling down or having regrets about the past, I watch survival shows and think about how I’m a survivor and how hard I fought to get where I am.”

  “Damn right you should.” His heart warmed with pride. “And you’re still fighting, but now you got me by your side.”

  She sighed and melted against him. And then everything changed. All his anger and tension, even the
pain in his back, just faded away. She just felt so … right—perfect—like they were meant to be together and the world had gotten in the way.

  “We never danced before,” she said softly. Her breath was sweet, citrusy, and he was tempted to lick that sugar from her lips, but uncertainty held him back.

  “We never did a whole lot of anything before except fuck.” Exactly what he wanted to do now. And afterward, maybe they could talk, or do what couples did, although never having really been part of a couple, he didn’t know what that would be. Watch TV? Go for a ride? Fuck some more?

  “Maybe that’s ’cause that’s all we’re good for together.”

  That gave him pause. Yes, he enjoyed sex with Dawn, but he genuinely liked her. She was smart, sweet, sensitive, and funny. She had more grit and determination than anyone he’d met, working three jobs, putting up with Shelly-Ann, never giving up hope she’d get her girls back. He wanted to spend more time with her, but she was always running away.

  “Well, we gotta have something together, because now you’re wearing my cut and there’s no turning back.” He brushed his fingers through her beautiful long, blond hair. They had that in common. But Dawn was soft, where he was hard. Curved where he was straight. Sweet where he was bitter.

  “If you’d told me three weeks ago I’d be in a biker bar, dancing with a biker and wearing a cut, I’d never have believed you. This was the last thing I ever thought I wanted. Me. A biker’s old lady again.”

  His old lady. He liked the sound of it. He liked watching the words on her lips, tumbling over the silky softness and into his heart. Three weeks ago, sitting in his booth at Peelers with Delilah in his lap, he never would have believed he’d have an old lady. “Say it again.”

  She licked her lips, and the sight of her little pink tongue made him hard.

  “Old lady.”

  “My old lady. Say it.”

  Dawn studied him for a minute, considering. “Yours.” She leaned up and kissed him and he lost the last threads of his control.

  His fingers convulsed, digging into her flesh, pulling her hips against his until he could feel the softness of her belly against the hard length of his cock. He didn’t know if she was teasing or torturing or where this was going to go, but right now, if he didn’t get her out of here, Jagger was going to get more of a show than he had bargained for.

  “Let’s go.” He pulled away just as the DJ spun Preacher Stone’s “Not Today.”

  “I want to dance.” Dawn slid her arms over his shoulders, dropping her hands to his back. Cade winced and bit back a hiss.

  She stilled and dropped her arms. “Does it still hurt?”

  “No. It’s fine.” He couldn’t feel the pain except when she touched him, overshadowed as it was by the pain down below.

  Dawn pressed her lips together. “Doc Hegel is here. If there’s something wrong, he can fix it.”

  “The only fixing I need involves you, me, and a bed.”

  “Cade, honey.” She slid her arms around his hips and then cupped his ass, just as he had done to her, little fingers digging into his flesh as she ground her hips against his painfully hard shaft. “Don’t you want to have sex on the night you got hitched?”

  Arousal pounded through his veins, a thunder so loud he couldn’t think straight. Or was it Van Halen’s “Everybody Wants Some” coming through the speakers? Seemed like everyone was getting some except him. Unable to get words past the lump in his throat, he grunted.

  “I bought something special for my first night as your old lady.” She pressed a soft kiss to his throat. “Under my dress. You can have a little taste.”

  He smoothed his hand over the curve of her hip, skimming his fingers along the bottom of her dress, his mouth watering in delicious anticipation. But it wasn’t the promise of what lay beneath her golden dress that tightened his throat; it was the fact that she’d bought something for him. For tonight. To celebrate being his old lady. As if it was real. “I thought you were pissed at me.”

  “I am.” She licked her lips. “Using sex to get your way is not on. But I’m willing to forgive you and give you your present if…”

  “If what?”

  The music segued into Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” and she swayed to the beat.

  “If you show me your back.”

  * * *

  “The wounds are infected. You need to go to a hospital.” Dawn grimaced as she patted an antiseptic cloth over the angry red streaks marring the Sinner’s Tribe tattoo on Cade’s back. Although she tried to stay calm, her voice wavered. His back was in worse shape than she’d thought, the cuts obscuring most of the tattoo and forming wheals on his back. Jimmy must have used a rusty knife or coated it with something before he went out. She’d seen him do it before and it had sickened her then as it sickened her now. There was no honor in poison or tainted blades, but then Jimmy was far from an honorable man.

  “No hospital.” He shifted in the chair, his elbow hitting the desk with a loud thunk. Riders’ manager had let them use his office, a small, windowless room with faux-wood paneling, a cheap metal desk, and a credenza covered in papers and empty beer bottles; it smelled almost as bad as Cade’s room before she tidied it up the night after the fire, worried she might suffocate in her sleep.

  “Well, then let me go get Doc Hegel. He’s on call tonight so he hasn’t had anything to drink.”

  “Fine. I’ll give you this one ’cause I want that present and I want it soon.”

  She found Doc Hegel by the bar. A solidly built redhead with a small goatee and a big stomach, he helped club members with injuries that would ordinarily draw police attention at a hospital, and in return he had been granted nomad status at the club. No voting rights, but he was allowed to ride and participate in most club functions, save for church meetings.

  “What he did to your tat is unforgivable,” Hegel said as he tended to Cade’s back. “And because of the infection, you’ll have scars. It will never be the same.”

  “I know.” Cade looked up to where Dawn perched on the desk. She saw more than anger in the depths of his eyes. Pain. Confusion. Betrayal. She understood why the Sinners hadn’t avenged Cade right away, but it had clearly affected him deeply.

  Hegel gave Cade a shot of antibiotic, and instructions about caring for and dressing the wound, and then Dawn walked him to the door.

  “Do you think he knows how bad it is?” he said quietly.

  Dawn looked back over her shoulder. “They defiled it the second they touched it. Doesn’t get worse than that.”

  “Are you going to be okay?” Dawn asked after Doc Hegel left to rejoin the party.

  “Yeah. A few cuts aren’t gonna slow me down.”

  “Even if they’re here?” She placed her hand over his heart. Cade jerked back and her hand fell. What had she been thinking? After Doc Hegel’s treatment he was probably hurting. “Sorry.”

  Cade clasped her hand and brought it back to his chest. “I like your hands on me. It was just what you said … like you knew what I was feeling.”

  Heat sparked between them and she wondered if he knew what she was feeling. She liked her hands on Cade. Maybe too much. She liked everything about him, from his loyalty to his possessiveness, from his gentleness to his ferocity. And he was right about Jimmy. She couldn’t take him on alone when he came part and parcel with the Devil’s Brethren. Would it really be so bad to accept the Sinners’ help?

  And afterward? What would happen when they both had their justice? Already, she couldn’t imagine not having him around, feeling his arms around her, watching him laugh with her girls, lying with him in bed at night knowing she was totally and utterly safe.

  A dangerous place to be for a woman who had sworn off bikers for life.

  Standing in his arms right now was also a dangerous place to be. Especially with the weapon straining against his fly. She had plans for that weapon and they involved the white lace corset, garters, and panties she’d bought for the occasion.

&n
bsp; Time to focus on now, and worry about the future later.

  Weapons shouldn’t be wasted.

  THIRTEEN

  I will do without question what has to be done for honor, for loyalty, and for my brothers.

  SINNER’S TRIBE CREED

  He couldn’t stop himself. Even though his back burned, it was nothing compared with the pain of keeping his desire at bay. He had to have her. And it had to be now.

  “You made me a promise. Now I intend to collect.” His arms snaked around her and he crushed her to his chest, trapping her hand between them. He could hold her forever. A balm for his soul.

  “Here? Wouldn’t you rather go somewhere … private?” Her head tipped back and he leaned down and kissed her. Soft lips. Sweet kiss. She tasted of the bourbon she’d sipped from his glass, smooth and rich, and he licked the stickiness from her lips. Dawn melted against him and his cock throbbed, pressed against his fly, blindingly painful, as if he’d been wanting her forever.

  Maybe he had.

  “Can’t wait. I’ll do you here, then I’ll take you home and fuck you there, too.”

  “Does this mean you aren’t angry at me anymore for twisting your arm to see Doc Hegel?” She reached up with her free hand, tangling her fingers through his hair, pulling him down. Her soft moan cranked him higher and he thrust his tongue in her mouth and devoured her, leaving no inch untouched.

  “I could never be angry with you, although you seem to have picked up the old lady attitude pretty damn fast.”

  “Good to hear.” She dragged his hand up her thigh, pulling up her dress until the tops of her stockings were visible, complete with their little elastics. “Because I bought this for you.”

  “White lace.” Cade breathed out his appreciation. “I would have picked white for you if I bought it myself. So beautiful against your skin. Like an angel.”

  He yanked her dress up higher, revealing her garter belt and the thin strip of matching lace panties. “A naughty angel.”

  Cade traced his finger along the edge of her garter belt. God, he loved the lingerie women wore. Light and filmy, smooth and sexy, lace and leather, and ribbons that he wanted to pull, unwrapping the treasures just visible beneath. Did women have any idea what it did to a man to get a peek at something he shouldn’t see?