Rogue (Dead Man's Ink #2)

by Callie Hart

  Sliding myself forward, she sucks in a sharp breath when the head of my dick is pressing against her pussy. She seems a little hesitant, so I use it to rub up and down over her clit, over the opening of her pussy. She locks up when I move back a little, toward her ass, so I change direction and focus on the areas she seems okay with. When she starts angling her hips up every time I slide myself over her pussy, I know she’s ready.

  I take no prisoners. I’m not rough enough to hurt her, to cause her any kind of pain whatsoever, but her eyelids snap open when I thrust myself inside her, all the way, balls deep. “Oh…shit,” she hisses.

  “You have such a dirty mouth.” I fold myself over her, not paying any attention to the stabbing pain that sings through me, and take hold of her breasts through the t-shirt she’s wearing. No bra underneath. Perfect. Her tits are soft and full, pliable under my hands. She may not do it willingly but her back curves away from the couch, lifting her chest, offering herself to me. I don’t need telling twice. I grab the hem of the t-shirt and yank it upwards, revealing her incredible body. Her nipples are tight already, turned a dark pink, flushed with blood. She moans breathlessly when I take her right breast in my hand, palming it roughly. At the same time, I take her other nipple into my mouth and I carefully squeeze it between my teeth.

  I’ve remained very still inside her, enjoying the intense reactions she has every time I shift ever so slightly, but now I start to move again, drawing myself all the way out of her before driving myself back in, slowly but firmly.

  “Oh…ohmygod.” Avoiding my half healed side, she hooks her left leg around me, pulling me closer to her as I thrust, and the extra force is enough to drive me fucking crazy.

  I can’t stop now. Even if I did split my stitches, I would have to make her come before I could stop this. I need to feel her body seizing up tight. I need to hear the sound of her breath quickening. I need to watch her expression change as the tidal wave of pleasure slams into her.

  I’m desperate for all of that to happen, but I’m also a major fucking tease, too. I bring her so close to climax, having to stave off coming myself at least three times before I can’t take it anymore.

  It sounds like her screams are being ripped out of her throat by force as I slam myself into her over and over again, rolling her clit with my thumb at the same time as I fuck her. I rarely come at the same time as a woman—I’m always far too intent on watching the whole thing play out—but this time I don’t have a choice. She opens her eyes at the last second, dark chocolate irises locked right on me, and she whispers my name, my real name, and I’m screwed.

  I come with her, our bodies both tense and gripped in ecstasy for what feels like minutes but can only really be seconds, and then we’re melting together. I rest my forehead against her collarbone, panting, trying to clear my vision of the small starburst of color exploding like fireworks.

  “So…is Cade going to be claiming ownership of your bike by morning?” Sophia says softly. She strokes her hand up and down over the skin of my back, oblivious to the fact that she’s practically making my eyes roll back in my head.

  “The fucker isn’t getting that bike for a long time yet,” I tell her. “Not until we get to do that at least three or four more times.”

  She laughs quietly, and it’s a fucking remarkable sound.

  SIX

  SOPHIA

  My body aches. Burns, in fact. I want to lie still, to sleep forever, or at least another few hours anyway, but I can’t. An incessant pounding on the cabin door wakes me before dawn, though the loud hammering doesn’t wake Rebel. Seems he can sleep though just about anything. Unsurprising, given how late he stayed up last night, how much morphine he had in his system and how energetic he’d been when he’d pinned me to the couch and fucked me. I’d had to spot him as he weaved his way back across the other side of the cabin, and then he’d pulled me into his bed, refusing to let me go back to sleep on my own. I feel hung over as I disentangle myself from his arms and get up, pulling my t-shirt down to cover my bare legs.

  “Rebel? Rebel, man, open up!” a gruff voice hisses. I can tell by the sharp tone of the male voice on the other side of the door that it’s Cade, and that he’s also super pissed. “Rebel, open the fucking door.”

  “All right, already,” I hiss back. Despite the low light coming from a lamp on the other side of the room, I still manage to stub my toe as I hurry across the room to get the door. My foot is throbbing and my heart is beating out of my chest when I open up, glaring at the two dark figures lurking on the porch. Not just Cade, then—Carnie, too.

  “Is he okay?” Cade asks briskly.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I think so,” I reply. “He’s out cold.” Carnie gives me a none too subtle once over, his eyes raking over my bare legs, and it’s with a considerable horror that I realize I’m not even wearing any underwear. He can’t see anything, but I still suddenly feel very naked. Cade gives Carnie a pointed look, clearing his throat, at which point the other man looks away, eyes to the sky.

  “We need to come in,” Cade tells me. “It’s important.”

  “I gathered, since you were trying to knock the damn door down.” I pluck at the t-shirt, trying to pull it down some more as I move aside to let them in. I close the door behind them and Cade beelines straight for the bed where Rebel is still passed out on his back, a very thin sheet barely covering his naked form. Cade clears his throat, scratching at his jaw. He seems to think about how to proceed before grabbing hold of his friend and shaking him hard enough to make his head bounce off the pillow.

  Rebel is instantly awake, eyes wide, fist pulling back as he readies to punch Cade. “What the fuck?” he snaps.

  “No time for pleasantries,” Cade says. “Can you walk?”

  Rebel inhales, pulling a deep breath into his lungs. He glances between the three of us, and then nods, resting his hand over his injured side. “I might be able to if you quit shaking the shit out of me, man. What’s going on?”

  “We got a problem,” Carnie says softly. “A big one. You need to see.”

  Cade grunts. “You need help getting dressed?”

  Rebel shakes his head. “Give me a beat. I’ll be out in a second.”

  Cade and Carnie leave without saying another word, both of them wearing grim, frightening expressions on their faces. I’ve never seen either of them look so angry. Cade’s always polite with me, well mostly, anyway, and yet it’s like he doesn’t even see me as he exits the cabin. I don’t know why, but a sense of intense foreboding settles over me. Something really awful has happened. Something beyond comprehension. Something I probably don’t want to know about. A wave of panic sings through my veins—panic not for myself, but for Rebel. He’s nowhere near fully recovered, and knowing his luck he’s probably about to be shoved head-first into a really dangerous situation again.

  Slowly, he heaves himself into a sitting position, pressing his hand into his side, wincing in pain. His beautiful body is in bad shape, black and blue, his bruises visible even against the complex, dark background of his extensive tattoos.

  “Are you sure you should be moving about?” I ask. “Shouldn’t you be resting for a couple more days at least before you head off on some wild goose chase in the early hours of the morning?”

  “If Cade comes in here looking like he just did, it means something important requires my attention. He wouldn’t ask me to come if it wasn’t entirely necessary. So yeah, I have to go.”

  “Couldn’t he just tell you what the hell has happened?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Sophia, Cade is not that wordy. He’s more of a show than a tell guy.” He winks, groaning as he carefully gets to his feet. I want to give him more morphine, but I get he still has a huge supply of the drug coursing through his circulatory system. More at this point could kill him. Dad used to tell me about that all the time—people who overdose on painkillers, both unintentionally and intentionally, and slip away without even so much as a by-your-leave. It happens so
easily. They’re dangerous things, painkillers. And highly addictive to boot.

  “You feel like passing me a pair of jeans?” Rebel jerks his head toward his closet, brow furrowed in pain. “I think you’ll get there quicker than me.”

  I open up the door to his closet to find the most immaculately organized walk-in I’ve ever seen. T-shirts, shirts, belts, shoes—everything is placed and folded just so. Puts my room back on campus to shame. I like to think of my room as organized chaos, but the truth is it’s actually just chaos. I grab a pair of jeans, boxers and a t-shirt for him, and then I watch as he fights his way into his clothes. I’m about to ask him if he needs me to help him at one point but he holds his hand up as soon as I take a step toward him. The look he shoots me could freeze over hell. Eventually, after a good ten minutes of swearing under his breath, he’s fully dressed. I can tell the effort has cost him a lot, though. His face is pale, his forehead lightly speckled with sweat, and he doesn’t seem that steady on his feet.

  “Are you coming?” Cade calls through the closed door.

  “Jesus wept, man! I have a fucking hole in my side,” Rebel yells back. He starts to cross the room and I quickly snatch up my own jeans, kicking them on in record time.

  Rebel gives me a curious look, arching an eyebrow at me. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “With you.”

  “No, you’re staying here.”

  “Funny, because I was sure you told me a couple of hours ago I could have free roam of the place if I wanted. Did I imagine that?” It takes me a second to realize my hands are on my hips, my own eyebrows raised in challenge. He’d better not take that back. He promised me I wouldn’t be cooped up in here any longer. If he reneges on our deal, it won’t matter what awful problem Cade and Carnie want to show him right now. He’ll have a much bigger problem on his hands: me.

  Rebel narrows his eyes. “I’m not saying you should stay here for the fun of it, Soph. It’s for your own good.”

  “I’m an adult. How about you let me make my own decisions for once, huh?”

  He stares at me a second longer before rolling his eyes. “Okay, fine. But remember, whatever happens, this was your call.”

  I drop my hands from my hips, trying to hide my surprise. “Great. Thank you.”

  Outside, Cade takes one look at me and shakes his head. “You won’t want her seeing this, man.”

  Rebel casts a look at me over his shoulder, a guarded look in his pale blue eyes. “She’s an adult, Cade. She can make her own decisions, apparently.”

  ******

  A hundred meters from the compound gate, a lone tree stands by the side of the dirt road, silhouetted against the rising sun. From the moment we leave the gate, making slow progress as Rebel hobbles after Cade and Carnie, I can see that something’s not right. It’s not until we’re much, much closer that I catch sight of the reason why Cade seems to be so agitated though.

  A body.

  A body hangs from the tree, upside down, suspended by one foot. The other leg hangs at an awkward angle. The foot which should be at the end of that leg is missing. The hands which should be at the ends of the arms hanging freely below are also missing. And the head… the head is gone, too. Blood mottles the naked flesh, covering the torso, the buttocks, the legs…

  The rope, looped around the thick bough of the tree, creaks as the body spins, facing us, revealing that it’s the body of a woman. There’s what looks like a scrap of blood stained paper stuck to her body, black writing typed across it, but I don’t see what it says. I drop to my knees instead, and vomit into the red dirt beneath me.

  “Jesus. A gift, from Los Oscuros? What the fuck is wrong with this guy?” Rebel hisses. From where I’m bent over double on the ground, I can see that his hands are shaking. I lock onto that sight, willing myself not to look up at the poor woman hanging from the tree, at the awful things that have happened to her. Rebel’s hands shake and shake and shake. And the woman’s hands are…are just gone.

  Cade grunts. “And what the fuck is up with their choice of font, too?”

  “Yeah.” Carnie spits on the ground. “Really says a lot about your intentions. I mean, how are you meant to take someone seriously when the message they send you is printed in motherfucking comic sans?”

  “You cut their body into small pieces. That’s how you take them seriously. Hector’s fucking with us,” Rebel says softly. They continue to talk, but my ears are ringing. I can’t focus on the subdued conversation that takes place over me, but I can feel the tension pouring off the three men. I can literally taste their rage. I throw up again, screwing my eyes shut, unable to breathe.

  Oh my god. I can’t… I can’t… I can’t…

  “Bron,” Cade says. “Her name’s Bron. She’s Keeler’s girl. I recognize the tattoo.” I make the mistake of looking up, then. I see the small tattoo of a rose on the inside of her right forearm, just above her wrist. The bloody stump where her arm terminates is still dripping blood. I heave again, though nothing comes up this time.

  “Fuck.” Rebel sinks to his knees beside me, his face now completely ashen, devoid of all color. He reaches for me, pulling me to him, though he doesn’t really look at me. He’s staring at the piece of mutilated flesh hanging from the tree like a slaughtered cow. Slowly, he strokes a hand absently over my hair, the cool blue of his eyes hardening, darkening somehow, turning steely and cold. “Sick motherfucker,” he whispers. “That sick, evil motherfucker picked her off because she wasn’t inside the compound.”

  Cade laces his fingers behind the back of his head, turning away from the woman. He squints into the distance, out into the desert, his mouth pulling down at both sides in a grimace. “Yeah. Yeah, looks that way.”

  “Does Keeler know?”

  Carnie kicks at the dirt, shaking his head. “No. No one else knows. I found her this morning when I came back from town. I went straight to Cade.”

  “Good. You did the right thing. I—fuck. God knows how we’re gonna break this to everyone.” Rebel sounds composed but his voice is utterly empty. I cry in his arms while he strokes my hair, wishing I hadn’t been so damned stubborn. If I’d just let him have his way, I wouldn’t have the image of Keeler’s dead girlfriend burned into my memory. This isn’t something that will ever go away. This isn’t something I’ll ever forget about. This is something that will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.

  “They’re gonna want blood,” Cade says.

  Rebel’s chin rests on the crown of my head, and for some reason the intimacy of the action calms me a little. “I know,” he says. “And they’ll get it. We just have to make sure we go about this the right way. He’s trying to bait us. Trying to provoke us. If we’re angry when we go after him, we won’t be thinking straight. We get sloppy, we make mistakes. This has to be contained.”

  “I hear you. But this woman had a foot, both her hands and her fucking head chopped off, Rebel. I’d like to see how you’re gonna contain that.”

  SEVEN

  REBEL

  Turns out Keeler spent the night away from the compound, visiting his sister in Cedar Crest. At the moment he’s one of our primary tattoo artists at Dead Man’s Ink, though. Today is his day to cover the shop, so Cade and I ride into town and to wait for him. We cut Bron’s body down and drive her back to the compound first, of course, hiding her out of sight, where the other guys won’t find her before we have chance to tell Keeler. Cade and I sit in the shop in silence, me bleeding through my stitches, staring at the walls, neither of us knowing what to say to one another. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen fucked up shit. Afghanistan was a savage place. The things we saw there… That was the first time I really understood, really knew the evil man was capable of committing against his fellow man. Nothing will ever be more brutal than the atrocities we saw there. But this is different. This is here, on our fucking doorstep, and this isn’t fucking Kabul. This is regular small town Americana, and this was one of our own.

  Kee
ler’s first appointment is at ten thirty, so Cade and I sit and stew for a good hour and a half before the low rumble of Keeler’s motorcycle rattles the glass in the shop’s window frames.

  “How you gonna handle this?” Cade asks.

  “I don’t know. I guess we’re about to find out.”

  Keeler looks surprised when he opens the shop door and finds Cade and me sitting at the counter. Concern flashes across his face. He’s young, mid-twenties. Good guy. Not ex-army like most of the Widow Makers. He was beaten by his father from the moment he could walk til the moment he ran away from home—spent some time pin-balling between different drug gangs before he wound up on the wrong side of the law and serving three years for possession with intent to supply. He got his shit dialled in prison. He’d been out for a month when he walked through the doors of Dead Man’s Ink for the first time, looking for work. Cade gave him a job on the spot. Took him a clean year to convince me to let him prospect for the club, though. Now I’m feeling really fucking guilty that I caved and swore him in.

  “Hey, guys. What’s up? Did I leave the door open or something?” He eyes us cautiously, like we’re about to ream him out.

  “No, dude. Come in. We gotta talk to you about something.” I pull out a chair by the counter, gesturing for him to sit down. He looks like he’s about to shit his pants.

  “Uhhh… should I be freaking out right now? ‘Cause I’m freaking out.” He slowly walks into the shop and lowers himself into the seat.

  “You haven’t done anything wrong,” Cade tells him. “It’s—it’s about Bron.”

  I watch the nervous smile fall from Keeler’s face. “What about her?” he says slowly.

  I take over. I’m the president of this club. I’m responsible for the people who have joined, and I should also be responsible for their loved ones. I should have known this was going to happen. I tell Keeler what’s happened, doing my best to provide as few details as possible. It’s impossible to keep the truth from him for long, though. The guy stares at me, as though I’m making it all up.