Outcasts (Badlands Book 3)

by Natalie Bennett

  maybe I’d miraculously hand him his ass, but then still have to deal with his posse on the other side of the door—or, I could steel my spine and take it.

  There was really only one logical route to go: throwing the battle but still holding out for winning the war.

  With a sharp jerk of my chin, I stormed past him and went back to the bed.

  I refused to look at him as I laid flat on my back and spread my legs, willing him to just get it over with.

  Ma told me being with a man never lasted very long. She’d been trying to prep me for the marriage I didn’t want. I’m sure she never imagined her advice would be used for something like this.

  It didn’t take Vitus long to make a move. The sound of his belt jingling had my hands balling into fists by my sides. I focused on the paint peeling off the ceiling, squeezing my eyes shut when the bed dipped.

  Everything inside me resented this, made me hate myself a little more.

  I flinched when he placed a hand on my knee.

  ”It’s alright,” he cooed, settling between my legs. “I don’t need any more Vitus Jrs. running around. Noah told me you’re on the pill, though if I had you to breed I can’t say I’d complain. I’m clean, by the way.” He laughed a little, and my stomach pitched.

  This asshole just said ‘breed’. I’d never heard any man say that before, and I could wager I knew some damn shitty men. The Savages didn’t even do such a thing.

  It was a knockout right to the face when I realized the devil and his unholy family had more morals than common men.

  There was a brief moment when nothing happened, but then I felt the bareness of firm pectorals.

  Something rattled in my chest as my brain screamed at me to do something and stop this from happening.

  Smashing my lips into a firm line, I tried to swallow the sob rising up, leaving some garbled sound to slip out in its place.

  “Shh, it’s okay,” he soothed, running a thumb over my hairline. I wanted him to stop sayin that. This was not okay. It would never be okay. I was never going to be okay.

  A second later, he was pushing inside me, forcing his cock in past the dryness.

  He continued to whisper his meaningless reassurances in my ear. I lay there, feeling his unwanted caress, wishing like hell I was back in that pretty cage with the golden bars.

  I felt his length plunging in and out of me, hearing his every little groan. He told me I was beautiful, and suddenly, I had never felt uglier.

  When the first tear slipped free, my soul cracked. When my body began reacting to what he was doing, it cracked a bit more.

  Breathin became a struggle. I was giving another part of me away to someone who would never in a thousand different lifetimes deserve it.

  When he touched his lips on mine, my eyes flew open.

  “No,” I choked out.

  “Don’t be like that.” He tried again, and this time, I turned my face.

  His responding laugh was like nails on a chalkboard assaulting my eardrums.

  I thought what happened next would be as bad as it could get—when he slid his hand down between us and began touchin a part of me not even Noah bothered with.

  “Stop,” I demanded, shoving at his arm. He ignored me, pinning a forearm across my chest and picking up his pace.

  “Feels good, don’t it?” he taunted, thrusting harder.

  I ignored that.

  My body thought it did; my mind though it was the worst form of torture I could go through. I focused on his right bicep, where the same V tattoo the other man had was inked. I’d come many times from my own fingers to know what was happening inside me.

  There was the familiar tightening in my lower stomach, the pressure slowly building.

  I willed it away, thinking every demented thought I could. I dragged the memory of Cali drilling into a man’s dick to the forefront of my mind.

  I thought of the precise way the cannibals had used a crowbar to break my uncle’s ribcage apart right in front of me.

  The distraction worked. It didn’t take Vitus long to finish; I held onto those minutes like a lifeline. When he finally buried himself one last time, coming with a vomit-inducing moan, I forced his cock out of me before it had stopped twitching.

  He hopped up with a smile I wanted to punch off.

  “Damn, look at this.” He grabbed his softening dick and thumbed off some of my body’s obvious betrayal. Without warning he reached out and wiped it down the side of my face, laughing when I knocked his hand away.

  I pulled my dirty slip back down and diverted my gaze to my toes as he tucked himself away.

  “Well, I can’t say you’re the best I’ve ever had. I’m not really into corpses, but the others might be.”

  I jack-knifed into a standing position so fast, he took a cautionary step away from me. “What do you mean the others?”

  As he pulled his shirt back over his head and let it fall into place, I already knew the answer. Why did I think it would end with him? I was an idiot.

  Without giving any indication I was about to bolt, I darted towards the bathroom, paying no mind to the semen slowly sliding down my inner thigh.

  There was a flimsy lock on the door. I knew in the recess of my mind that the move was illogical and did nothing but buy me maybe a few minutes. I went for it anyway.

  He didn’t try to stop me. I made it inside, slammed the door, and slid the deadbolt into place.

  A creak sounded, followed by footsteps, and I knew his family had filed back into the room.

  “Where the fuck she go?”

  “She locked herself away. I didn’t have to force her. She willingly let me between them legs. I told her one of you was next. I don’t think she likes ya’ll as much as she did me,” Vitus joked.

  He made me sound like a whore. I sort of felt like one too. In my head, I hadn’t willingly given him a damn thing. But that wasn’t true, was it?

  “Get her outta there,” the man named Vance ordered. I assumed that directive was given to Noah.

  “Petals?” his soft voice called out to me not a minute later.

  My heart crashed against its cavity. I’d been terrified plenty of times, but never like this. My eyes darted all around the room, stopping on the toilet.

  The whole pre-conceived notion I’d had of throwing a battle to win the war seemed so naively childish then.

  I didn’t have a chance of winning anything, so why not go down swinging?

  “Petals, open the door,” Noah tried again.

  “My name isn’t fuckin Petals!” I lifted the top piece off the water tank and curled my fingers around the rim. Scampering backward, I made my way to the furthest corner and slid down the wall.

  I brought my knees to my chest and watched the door. Adrenaline had my clenched hands shaking around the chunk of porcelain. Too many voices began murmuring at once for me to understand what it was they were saying.

  They ceased abruptly. A millisecond later, the lock hit the dull tiled floor, and the weak wooden door blasted into the wall. I rose to my feet as Hawke barreled into the room.

  He came straight for me, taking notice of the toilet lid a breath too late. I swung with everything I had, connecting with his dome.

  “Sonofabitch!” He clutched the side of his head and stumbled sideways.

  Vance was right behind him, and I wasn’t lucky a second time. I swung at him with a heaving growl spilling from my lungs. He dodged it, grabbing hold of the lid and easily pulling it from my hands after a four-second struggle.

  I wasn’t expecting him to return the favor. When the lid hit the side of my forehead, pain had my mind going blank long enough for him to grab me by the legs and drag my shock-slackened body almost clear out of the bathroom the second I hit the floor.

  Noah was yelling now, and someone else was yelling right back. Whatever they were saying was of no interest to me.

  I somehow managed to grab hold of the door frame in a pathetic attempt to get away from Vance.


  “Let go!” I struggled to break free by kicking him as best I could.

  “You little bitch,” a recovered Hawk spat down at me, slamming his booted heel right where four of my fingers were resting, making me let go of the doorframe.

  Pain seemed to be radiating from everywhere. Something wet was running down the side of my face, and I could feel throbbing in my left hand. I felt like a rose being trampled on the ground. Vance carelessly dragged me the rest of the way into the bedroom.

  I was lifted up by my middle and dropped face-first back onto the bed, kept there by Vance pressing my face into the mattress.

  I tried my best, tried with my whole heart and every ounce of fight I had within me to stop them from destroying who I was.

  In the end, that’s exactly what they did. Each of them participated. Vance went first, forcing his cock inside me just like his son had less than twenty minutes ago.

  He was much rougher. The grip he had on my hair seemed to tighten with his every thrust, setting my scalp aflame.

  I wish I could say I made it hard for him to enjoy himself, but truthfully, I wasn’t any kind of match for him—or his family.

  I thought it couldn’t get worse, but I was wrong. Vance lifted me by the throat like I was nothin but a dirty dishrag. He lined himself up with my virgin ass as Rex took the front. They entered me after some sick countdown, both brutally unforgiving. The skin around the rim of my ass shredded, and blood leaked between my cheeks.

  I felt as if a pole of flaming iron was searing me in two. I screamed and begged for them to stop, suffocating on my sobs.

  My body wanted to turn in on itself but, even there, it hurt too badly.

  I couldn’t tell how long they passed me around like a chip bowl at a party, each of them taking however much they wanted.

  In the end, it was Noah who gave me the water that led me to pass out.

  He probably thought he was giving me some form of peace, but his help came after a round too many.

  Everything changed for me that night. The cracks in my soul became too wide. There was nothing left to hold onto.

  Chapter Four

  I tossed the last body into the pit, and signaled for it to be lit up.

  One of the acolytes shuffled forward and dumped kerosene up and down the deep, lengthy ditch. Another followed, casually dropping matches, keeping his black hooded robe clear of the flames that instantly erupted.

  The man I’d just tossed in blinked up at me, his eyes wide. He tried to lift his head off the broken legs he’d partially landed on, but didn’t have the strength.

  He couldn’t do anything but let the fire slowly eat him alive, thanks to Cobra crushing his vocal cords.

  Leaving the acolytes to it, I made my way back inside the house, stomping my boots on the welcome mat my sister had demanded be put down. The last thing I wanted to hear was Cali’s mouth because I tracked dirt across her immaculate hardwood.

  The open floor plan gave me a clear view of Romero standing in the kitchen. I glanced at the contents of the blender he was emptying into a glass as I made my way to the sink. “Milkshake?” I guessed, turning the faucet on with my elbow.

  “Always fucking milkshakes. Oh, let me correct myself—always vanilla fucking milkshakes.”

  I smirked to myself in amusement. Ever since Bryson, Cali’s personal guard, left to help guard Luca’s skin farm, Romero was on full-time Cali duty.

  “She’s like a fucking bear. All she does is sleep, eat, and chafe my dick—in that order.

  “And I’m not complaining about the first or last one, but she’s been talking to me like she’s lost her motherfucking mind.”

  I shook my head. “Could have gone my whole life without hearing that bit about your dick. It’s just hormones.”

  “Well, fuck hormones,” he retorted before wordlessly passing me the dirty blender on his way to the fridge.

  I rinsed it out and loaded it into the dishwasher. When I was finished, I leaned against the granite countertop and continued watching him.

  “And what is that supposed to be?”

  He ignored me at first, like he always tended to do. When I continued to stare, he sat down the foil packet with little chocolate chunks in it and stared back at me with eyes so fucking dark it almost looked like he didn’t have any.

  “This is a glass. Inside this glass is a vanilla goat milk shake.

  “On top of that is puffy white shit, and on top of that is expensive ass chocolate. Any other questions Grimm?”

  “Nope,” I grinned. Fucking with him was one of the many highlights of my day—second after killing a few motherfuckers. “Just wondering if my baby sister still had your balls in the palm of her hand.”

  “You know, now that you mention it, I’ll be balls deep inside your baby sister’s sweet, perfect fucking pussy here—as soon as she’s done with this drink.” He lifted the glass up and a smug ass grin took over his face, matching the one now wiped clean off mine.

  “You leaving soon?” he asked, changing the subject as he went over to a cabinet.

  “Uh huh.”

  “Come tell Cali bye, and I’ll walk you out,” he more demanded of me than told me, grabbing a straw before making his way out of the kitchen.

  That’s how it worked, and I had no issues with it. I willingly and loyally did the devil’s bidding. I was one of his few confidants.

  It was the devil I found a brother in, who gave me a purpose, a home, and a family.

  I stood in the kitchen a few seconds longer, prepping to say goodbye to the sister I felt I’d just gotten back. I didn’t do feely emotional, and she’d turned into a hormonal typhoon as of late. She’d always been a bit manically childish—not her fault—but shit was at a def-con level so getting outta here for a few days sounded like a mini vacation.

  Even though we weren’t that close in the beginning, I couldn’t see life without her crazy ass. She fit right in with our eighty degrees of fucked upness. She made my closest friend slightly human again.

  It was something I’d been wondering if I’d royally fucked up for myself, by failing the only woman who’d made a lasting impression on me in every way that mattered.

  “Damn, Grimmy, you set yourself up for that one,” Cobra laughed, interrupting my self-reflecting, waltzing around the corner with a little blonde who was damn near dragging her feet. By the fussed up strands of his red hair, it was obvious what they’d been doing.

  “I take it from the lack of crocodile tears she isn’t aware of what’s coming next?”

  “Oh, nah, I’m gonna her take to the play room. Thirsty.” He shrugged and pulled out a water-bottle, shaking it at me to emphasize his point.

  The blonde looked my direction for explanation, no doubt wondering what the play room was and why it would make her wish she’d never set foot in this house.

  She wasn’t going to get one—not from me. I didn’t give a shit how badly he was going to torture her.

  She’d put herself in this situation; they all did. It was all about being fucked by a Savage.

  Now Romero was permanently out of the running, it left three potential candidates close enough to him to count as bragging rights for spreading their legs for someone at the top of our hierarchy.

  They never took into account that they wouldn’t live long enough to tell anyone. Shit had only gotten worse after it was known Cali had a ring on her finger.

  Things were finally dying back down to normal now. Maybe they realized she was a little worse off in the head than we were. That took some fucking effort.

  “Go get her settled, I’m heading out.”

  I left him with those parting words and made my way to the second level.

  One of the large double doors leading into their bedroom was cracked. Knowing that was done for my benefit only, I walked in without knocking.

  The shit I felt seeing my sister on Rome’s lap as he cupped her round bump was foreign to me. Fuck, it was foreign for him.

  I could admit I was
happy—maybe even as far as excited—to have a niece or nephew sooner than later. Love and all the other bullshit didn’t mean much to me, but I wasn’t numb to everything.

  Someone important was missing though, someone who should have been around for all this maternal motherly shit Cali was going through.

  “It’s D-day!” Her bold blue eyes met my brown ones and she beamed at me, sitting her half-empty glass on the nightstand, right by the pexi-glass casing that held the head of Romero’s piece of shit of a father, David. There was a giant book of baby names resting on top of it.

  “I’m about to take off.”

  “Well, where are your bags? Do you have food? Are you sure you—”

  “I know where I’m going, and the sooner I leave, the sooner she’ll be back.” I wasn’t going to mention who the fuck knew what shape Arlen was in. I didn’t even want to think about it myself.

  It took me twice as long as it should have to track her ass down to an exact location. The last bit of information wasn’t something I would be sharing with my sister, whose childhood was full of the same type of bullshit. Me and Romero had agreed on that without argument.

  I would let him know when I got to her, and he could handle the rest. I would be doing enough damage control when everything else we were keeping from her came to light.

  She stood up and made her way towards me, looking as tiny as she always had, with exception of the bulge slightly lifting her black dress. Looking at the two of us, no one would ever suspect we were related. With the same dad, different moms, we were night and day.

  She was white as snow—damn near an albino, her hair only a few shades darker. My hair was dark and my tan skin was covered in various tattoos, whereas she only had the inverted cross that marked her as a Savage.

  I knew she was as much of a hugger as I was, so what her intention was for getting so close to me, I didn’t know.

  “You better be back soon then, or I’m coming to get you, and I don’t care what the asshole behind me has to say about it.”

  “We both know your ass isn’t going anywhere unless I fucking say so. You keep trying me and I’ll tie you to the bed again,” Romero cut in, coming up behind her.