Reaper Unleashed

by Michelle Woods

  “That’s where you’re wrong, baby. You do take orders from me and you’ll find that I don’t allow anyone to deviate far from the plan once I make it,” Reaper told her before leaning forward slightly, his eyes narrowed into dark slits of smoky grey.

  Glowering back at him with just as much fire, she snarled, “I don’t think so.”

  “You want to keep your job, then you’ll be doing what I want. I’m the boss and that means if you work for me, you do what I require you to and that’s that, baby,” he told her matter-of-factly. She wanted to throw a fit, to stand up and jump up and down in a display of childish rage. The only thing stopping her was Josh and the fact that she needed this job, at least for the moment.

  She was out of options unless she wanted to become her mother. Of course, that might be what he wanted, she thought in horror. That thought had her gritting out, “I’m not sleeping with you for credits, Reaper.”

  Her fury was filling her up, making her feel like she might burst into flames at a moment’s notice.

  “Do I look like I need to pay someone to sleep with me? I can get pussy anytime I want it, Sarah.” His jaw clenched and his fists balled on the table. The look he gave her was the same he’d used on her last night. It was cold, almost arctic.

  “Then what the hell do you want me to do?” she demanded, observing him warily as she waited for him to speak.

  “You’ll still come in to the club two nights a week to deal with the suppliers and handle the invoice filing, but I’ll do the books from now on. You will also start working here. I have a woman who cleans once a week, but now you’ll do that. You’ll also make meals and get the food and do shit like that.” Reaper nodded his head at the end of his speech.

  “Fine, but we don’t have to live here for me to do that, Reaper,” Sarah told him snidely as she grabbed a towel to wipe Josh’s hands and face.

  “Down, mama,” Josh demanded as she finished cleaning his hands.

  “The hell you don’t!” Reaper growled, his look dark and threatening.

  “Oh, don’t give me that look. It’s not going to work on me,” she told him, her scowl hot as she lifted Josh down from the highchair, holding him on her lap. He wiggled, trying to get down to run around, but she refused to let him.

  “Sarah, I am not going to ask again. I don’t want to deal with the kid getting in the way of you being here. If your focus is on getting back to him, then I won’t get what I want, a woman to take care of my house and feed me.” Sarah knew that he was coming up with any excuse for her to stay here.

  She had already figured out that he wanted her to stay here, but what she didn’t know was why. She looked at him, trying hard to figure him out. Reaper had always been hard for her to read because his emotions seemed locked behind a wall. It was frustrating. She’d learned to read people by their reactions to situations, but somehow he managed to hide most of what he felt.

  Over the last two weeks working at the strip club she had worked at figuring him. She was close, but some parts of his personality seemed so shielded that she wondered if he knew why he did things sometimes. She knew that he wanted her and it had nothing to do with feeding him or keeping his house clean. It was sexual. She felt it every time he touched her, but he was also playing a game. She just wasn’t sure if he knew he was doing it. She meant what she said, she wasn’t going to sleep with him for credits. She wasn’t a freaking hooker, after all.

  “Down!” Josh demanded again only louder.

  “Can you hold him while I drag the playpen out of the room for him to play in?” she asked. He shook his head.

  “Just let the kid down and prop the kitchen door open, he’ll be fine,” Reaper told her, waving into the other room.

  “Are you serious? There’s like thousands of credits worth of fancy art in there.” She waved her hand towards the living room, her mouth open in shock.

  “So? Most of it’s secured to the wall so it can’t fall on him. It’s fine.”

  “He could still break something, Reaper,” Sarah told him feeling exasperated.

  “So what? It’s just stuff. As long as the kid can’t hurt himself, I don’t care,” Reaper replied, getting up after downing the last sip of his coffee. He didn’t tell her that the kid had already broken the tree that was made of bronze and attached to the wall on the far side of the living room; it would only upset her. She was not used to stuff as expensive as the things he had littered all over the house.

  He’d been collecting for years, some from people they’d killed and others he’d bought. He liked art and he’d gotten shit from more than one person in the club over it. He liked having the best of things and he was sure some cracked up doctor would say that was a throwback to a time when he’d had next to nothing.

  It was also likely why finding out Sarah had so little to call her own had pissed him off so much. Last night it had only taken him one trip to the car to load it all up. He didn’t like that one damned bit. The kid needed stability and she’d been working so hard to give it to him. I mean, fuck, she’d walked into a biker bar and stripped for the owner. She wasn’t going anywhere. She had better get used to the idea because it wasn’t going to change. She belonged to him now.

  “You can’t be serious, Reaper, he’s two and he is liable to break something.”

  “Like I said it doesn’t matter. He likes the tree, but watch him around that one. It’s possible it could cut him if he grabs the thinner branches at the top. I’m having it moved tomorrow. I’d do it today, but I need help because it’s heavier than it looks. For now I need to get to the club. I’ve got shit to take care of. Laundry’s in the hamper in my bathroom and the guest bathroom needs to be cleaned. Those assholes who come over here always leave it a fucking mess.”

  Reaper would be talking to them about that too; she didn’t need to be cleaning up after those fucks. He’d make damned sure they didn’t leave any more messes for her to clean up. He would make them come over and clean the damned thing first, but he had to give her something to do. Otherwise she would catch on to the fact that this was all just a way to have her where he wanted her.

  “You’re not as smooth as you think, slick. We’ll stay for now, but I promise that we won’t be staying longer than it will take me to save up for a place that’s safe for me and Josh. That’s the only reason we’re staying here for now because I know that where we were wasn’t safe. So don’t think you’ve won,” she told him as she stomped out of the kitchen and set Josh on the blanket she’d spread out for him.

  He watched her from where he stood in the doorway of the kitchen, his eyes drawn to the shorts that clung to her tight little ass like a second skin. He wanted to follow after her and bite that sweet curve of flesh before he took her savagely against the nearest hard surface, the kid be damned, but he refrained. He was content for the moment that she’d agreed to stay. He knew she thought she’d be leaving in short order, but he wasn’t going to let that happen. She was his now.

  His eyes took in the way she sat on the floor with Josh. She laughed as the kid took her face in his hands and blew a raspberry on her cheek. Yep, they were his now and he’d make damned sure that they had what they needed from now on, starting with a damned bed for the boy. He was too old to be sleeping in that playpen.

  That highchair had to go too, damned thing was rickety. This morning when he’d tried to unfold it he thought he’d break it. Kid needed a proper chair, not that damned faulty piece of plastic. Those thoughts swirling in his head, he began to plan what they would need. He went to grab his guns before heading to the club, his mind already listing things that the boys needed to pick up for Sarah and Josh.

  Sarah scanned her palm and punched in the code to enter Reaper’s house. They’d been staying with him for over a week now and she was beginning to feel comfortable with the arrangement. Josh tugged on her jeans with his sticky hands. They’d gone out with Sammy today and gotten lunch and ice cream cones.

  His hands were sticky because Auntie Sam
had given him a lollipop to eat on the way home and he managed to get it all over himself. She stopped on the way home to get some groceries and the bags were the reason she hadn’t washed his hands yet. She pushed the door open and Josh rushed inside.

  “Eper…Eper,” he called looking around the room for ‘Eper.’ Sarah grinned. Reaper scowled for the first few days that Josh had called him that. Now, it didn’t even make him blink, he just responded.

  “Sweetie, he’s not here,” she told him, knowing that Reaper had already headed to the club. He came back around seven when she had dinner finished but he always left at four to go to the club. It was four thirty so he wasn’t here. She set the bags on the kitchen counter and grabbed a wipe, chasing Josh down and cleaning his hands.

  Reaper ate dinner with them every night and hung out for a bit, then headed back to the club till two.

  She was surprised to learn that he liked to schedule everything down to the last minute and didn’t like when things got rearranged. He would get that little frown line between his brows and scowl fiercely at whoever had messed with his schedule.

  It was kind of cute that he was actually as bothered by changes in his routine as Josh was and it made him just as cranky. The funny thing was it happened often because there was always some club business or another that seemed to drag him kicking and screaming out of his routine.

  “No Eper?” Josh said, his little face twisting into a scowl that suddenly reminded her of Reaper.

  Her baby had been becoming more and more like his favorite new friend over the last week, which was odd. Reaper didn’t seem to mind that her son followed him around and tried to do everything he did. When Reaper sat down at night on the couch to read or watch holo vids on the large screen attached to the wall, Josh would pull himself up into his lap and drive his car over the man like he was a race track. Reaper just ignored it and didn’t say a word.

  It was strange that such a tough no nonsense man like Reaper didn’t seem bothered by Josh hanging on him like he was a jungle gym. She’d worried the first few days about the art, but Reaper had only moved the risqué art and any pieces that he’d decided could hurt Josh. He had even taken down the three paintings in his bedroom. Sarah had told him that it wasn’t necessary to remove those, but he’d just shrugged and replied ‘No need to educate the boy on accident’. Sarah however suspected he had done it because when she had first seen them she had blushed bright red every time she saw him that first day. He’d had them stored at the club.

  The bronze tree that fascinated Josh almost as much as real ones did had stayed. It had been moved up a bit so that he couldn’t reach the thinner branches that Reaper had decided could hurt him. She suggested that they remove it completely and he’d just said no then walked away.

  She was sure that Josh would try to play with it and told him so, to which he’d replied ‘your point? The kid likes it. Leave it alone, Sarah.’ She decided after that to ‘leave it alone’ because how could she resist a man who didn’t care about something expensive getting broken because her son liked it.

  Sarah went back into the kitchen and began putting the groceries away. She kept one eye on Josh and one on her task, having propped the door open in the kitchen so she could see him. He played with the racetrack that had appeared yesterday morning. She had woken to find Josh not in his playpen again yesterday and had entered the living room to find him playing with his new toy.

  Reaper had a habit of making things just appear when she wasn’t looking. The racetrack yesterday, the new clothes for her and Josh the day before that and the car that had replaced the clunker she’d been driving. She would have refused that one if her car hadn’t disappeared at the same time. When she’d demanded he get it back he’d stared at her in silence as if he didn’t know what she was going on about.

  After yelling for over forty minutes without a response and no idea where her car was, she’d had little choice but to drive the sleek blue four-door sedan. She shook her head at the way the man had learned to maneuver her. She’d tried to put her foot down but he’d just wait until she wasn’t paying attention and suddenly things were just replaced. She finished with the groceries and turned to find another replacement. She shook her head as she walked over to the table.

  Josh’s highchair was gone and in its place was what looked to be a hand carved wooden chair with a built in stair leading up to a raised seat with a belt. It would be easy for Josh to climb into the chair by himself and it looked as if it had several sliding boards that could be removed as he got older to lower it. She felt tears sting her eyes. Reaper was so sweet. He’d done this not to impress her she knew but because he was a good man. He got mad when she thanked him for things that he’d deemed she and Josh needed and even madder when she’d told him to stop buying them things.

  “Trees, mama, trees,” Josh said, pulling on her hand.

  “What baby?” she asked, allowing him to tug her into the living room. He pulled her toward the bedroom they shared and she laughed.

  “Trees!” Josh said, tugging harder.

  She followed him expecting to be shown the trees outside but then she stopped, her breath catching. The room had been transformed into a forest. Trees were painted on one of the walls and a bed rested against it that had hundreds of trees carved into the wood. It was also low to the ground and covered in a woven blanket that had racecars on it. She would have to put a stop to this she realized; Reaper was doing too much. She’d have to pay him back for this, it had to have cost a fortune. She’d already decided that she’d have to save enough to pay for the car and now this too. It had to stop.

  Josh was jumping up and down on the bed caressing the trees. “Stop jumping on the bed, sweetie,” she told him, tugging on his arm.

  “Trees,” Josh told her as she dragged him off the bed.

  “Yes, trees,” she told him.

  Josh seemed to lose interest in the trees and zoomed out of the bedroom into the living room. Sarah followed him to see him racing his car around the track. Shaking her head at the short attention span of a two-year-old, she went to prepare dinner. She needed to think about how to approach the subject of her paying Reaper back for the bed and the car.

  Chapter 12

  Sarah set the casserole on the table and grabbed the biscuits off the tray, sliding them into the basket she’d bought today. Josh was driving his car around and around her feet making zooming noises when he suddenly stood and ran into the living room.

  “Eper, Eper,” she heard him say and smiled when a rich baritone answered. She couldn’t make out what they were saying but knew it was likely a silly conversation about Josh’s day. Josh had attacked Reaper every night when he got home and talked his ear off. Reaper tolerated it and when Josh would tell him all about the trees he’d seen that day, Reaper would ask him questions. Her favorite had been yesterday when he’d asked ‘uh-huh, and did the trees talk?’

  It always thrilled Josh and made him giggle and chatter like a magpie. Sarah grabbed a couple of glasses from the shelf and set them on the table next to the freshly made lemonade. Reaper appeared in the door of the kitchen with Josh on his shoulders.

  “Looks good,” he told her, only he wasn’t staring at the table, he was staring at her. Sarah blushed.

  “Thank you.” He walked over to Josh’s new chair, sitting him in the seat and buckling him in before taking the seat across from her. Josh grabbed the spoon in front of him and began to eat the casserole she’d dished out earlier to cool for him. Sarah scrutinized Reaper.

  “What?” he barked.

  “You can’t keep buying us things, Reaper.”

  “Not this again. I just got the kid a bed and a chair that isn’t going to fall apart,” Reaper muttered, scooping beef casserole onto his plate.

  “A bed that looks handmade and a chair that likely cost three of my paychecks, Reaper!” Sarah told him, exasperated with him.

  “The bed and the chair didn’t cost that much, Sarah.” Reaper lied through his
teeth because it had been a lot more than three paychecks for the bed alone. It was a hand carved ‘Tiny’ original and that meant it wasn’t inexpensive, but it did mean it wasn’t going to break if the kid got rough with it. He also worked into the contract that it had to be able to grow with the kid. That meant in a few years when he was older and taller he could have three inches added to the height to make it more comfortable for him.

  He knew he should be worried that everything he’d done since she’d moved in spoke of him keeping both her and Josh, but he wasn’t. He knew that he was keeping them, he was just a little surprised that he wasn’t thinking for right now, he was thinking of a lot longer. At first he’d fought it, trying to set an end date, thinking after he’d had her a few dozen times he would let her go. Only when he’d think of letting her go something inside him went unnaturally still and became savage.

  They were his and she damned well better get used to it. He hadn’t told her yet that she wasn’t going anywhere, ever, but she’d eventually figure it out. He took a bite and sighed in pleasure. Eating her food was almost as good as having her close enough to touch when he wanted to. Taking another bite, he watched her. He’d been forcing himself not to touch her all week. He didn’t want her to run. Now though he was almost burning up with the need he felt for her.

  She had insisted that she wasn’t going to be his whore and he wanted her to know that wasn’t how he viewed her. Only he was being eaten alive with the desire for her every damned day. He woke to the sight of her every morning and came home to eat with her every night. He also found himself standing in the doorway of their room watching her and Josh sleep. It made him feel like some kind of creepy stalker but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from assuring himself that they were close.