GUNNER: Southside Skulls Motorcycle Club (Southside Skulls MC Romance Book 3)

by Jessie Cooke

  Tamara slowly finished straightening up the house as her thoughts swirled around inside of her head. This morning was proof that she had to make some changes in her life, like it or not. It would be better for her in the long run and she knew it. Her dad had agreed to pull the guys back, but she suspected that was only because with Gunner in the house they’d all been in and out so much she’d hardly had an opportunity to be alone. Tommy’s overreaction that morning proved they would never let up.

  With a resigned sigh, she got in the shower and, deciding her day was already ruined, she made plans to ride out to the clubhouse and talk to her dad. He wasn’t going to like the idea of her going off on her own, but she was twenty-four and it was her decision, not his. At least if she lived in another town or state he wouldn’t have the manpower to have her watched around the clock, she hoped. She also wanted to talk to him about Gunner before he let Tommy beat the shit out of him. He was still healing and that was the main reason she’d gotten between him and her brother that morning. She didn’t doubt that in a fair fight, he could handle himself. But his body was still bruised and battered, and he was in no shape to defend himself against the likes of Tommy Covey.

  She pulled on a pair of jeans, her boots, and a black Harley t-shirt and then she went out to the garage. She pulled the tarp off Sadie and stood there for a second just admiring her. She’d bought her used and Ray, the head mechanic in the shop out at the clubhouse, had helped fix her up a little at a time. She loved her bike. The only time she truly felt free lately was when she was straddling the leather seat and feeling it vibrate between her legs. She shivered at the memory of Gunner’s hands on her sides and cupping the undersides of her breasts. That had been an accident, but he held them there for a long time and she didn’t object. When she opened up the throttle he gripped onto her thighs. That caused her pussy to throb, and she forced herself to turn around and head back to the house when she really wanted to stop the bike and fuck him right there.

  She could tell he wanted her, but like every guy that ever met her family before he fucked her, he was afraid. She didn’t blame them, knowing her family, but it still pissed her off. Their sex had been incredible but she loved that build-up to it. That was what she was missing the most in her life. Sex was a dime a dozen, and she didn’t have any problems going out to a club and finding a guy who wanted to fuck her when she was in the mood. What she was missing was the intimacy that came from getting to know someone. Those shared moments like talking about their lives while they had a late-night snack in the kitchen, or taking an evening motorcycle ride, were what she wanted. But those were the things her father and brother were standing in the way of. It’s hard to feel sexy or romantic when you know someone is always watching you.

  She hit the automatic door button on the side of the wall when she went to get her helmet. She heard a loud squeak and turned around to look at the garage door. It didn’t sound right. She had her helmet in her hand and dropped it to the concrete as a scream bubbled up in the back of her throat and stuck there. Malcolm, one of the older brothers from the club, was hanging from a rope fastened around his neck like a noose and attached to the garage door. His brown eyes were wide open and staring at her.

  Tamara suddenly realized that she hadn’t brought her phone out with her and ran for the back door. She only managed two or three steps before one big hand gripped her shoulder and another went around her waist. She was picked up off the ground, kicking and screaming at the top of her lungs. She knew that it wouldn’t matter. None of the neighbors would pay her any mind. They gave her a wide berth and looked at her with judgment in their eyes. When she first moved in, they called the police because the guys played music too loud or parked their Harleys on their lawn, but her dad had put a stop to that. Besides, as rowdy as the guys got most of the time, any witnesses would probably not think a thing of a big guy carrying a woman out of the garage in broad daylight.

  Tamara saw an SUV pull up close to the open garage door, and one of the back doors flew open. She was pushed from one pair of beefy arms into another. She tried to twist and scream some more, but the two big men were a lot stronger than her. She was held down by a big guy with hairy knuckles while the door was slammed shut. He put his pudgy hand over her face and blocked her vision and pressed down on her nose so she could hardly breathe. She heard another door open and close, and then the tires of the SUV squealed and she felt the motion of the car as it lurched forward. The man loosened his grip on her just enough that she could twist her body back around and kick out her legs again. She slammed her boots into the back of the seats in front of her.

  “She’s kicking my fucking seat. Hold her still.”

  “She’s like a wild animal. Where’s the syringe?”

  Shit. Tamara aimed her kick higher when the man in front bent forward and took something out of the glove box. When he sat back up and turned around, she was ready. Her boot made contact with his face. She felt a satisfying crunch and the warm spray of blood across her face.

  “Fucking cunt!” With his mouth and nose bleeding the man leaned over the seat and stuck the needle into her arm. It pinched and burned as he pushed whatever drug was in there into her muscle. “Now fucking hold her still while that shit takes effect because if she kicks me again I’m going to kill the bitch.”

  The guy with the hairy knuckles tightened his grip on her. She felt like she couldn’t breathe, and then the edges of her vision began to go blurry and her limbs were so heavy she couldn’t fight any longer. Being Randall Covey’s daughter, however, she just couldn’t give up that easily. She hocked a loogy deep in the back of her throat and the last thing she heard before she let it fly was:

  “Don’t you fucking dare.” As soon as it left her mouth, a searing pain struck the left side of her head and the lights went out.

  17

  Gunner kicked open the door. It was a satisfying feeling even though the door was barely hanging onto the frame by a set of rusty hinges. They wouldn’t give him a gun but they let him kick in the doors, so he was going to have fun with it. An old man with white hair and a saggy ass jumped out of the bed, taking the dirty comforter with him. “What the fuck is this?” he yelled in a girly voice.

  Tommy and a guy named Brick stood there with guns that looked like cannons in their hands, pointing them at the old geezer. The young girl that he’d been on top of sat on the bed up against the headboard with her feet drawn up underneath her and her arms wrapped across her tiny chest. “This is your day of reckoning, old man,” Tommy said. “This is the last time you dip that tiny dick in a girl young enough to be your granddaughter, because this is your one and only pass. The next time, we blow it off. It’s so fucking small it’ll take you days to bleed out the hole it leaves.”

  “What are you talking about? She’s nineteen.”

  “Are you fucking stupid? You want to argue with him?” Brick asked. “You’ve got two seconds to get out of here or I’m blowing that shit off today.” The old guy turned his back to them. They assumed he was going for his clothes. When he reached for the two hundred-dollar bills on the nightstand he sealed his fate. Tommy used one hand to grab him by the back of the neck and fling him across the room. He landed on his back with a thud and his hands went down to cover the shriveled-up organ between his legs. Brick walked over and stepped on the old man’s leg with one of his boots, and he cried out and moved his hands. Brick proceeded to push the big barrel of his gun into the man’s crotch and that was when the old guy started to cry.

  “I’m sorry. Please, please don’t kill me. I’m sorry.”

  “He’s sorry,” Brick said, sarcastically. “You’re sorry you got caught, old man.”

  “No, I have a problem. I’m really sorry. I won’t do it again.”

  “You won’t have anything to do it with.”

  Brick’s gun was an old .44 magnum. He pulled the hammer back on it and the old man howled like a wounded animal. “Please, oh God, please…”

  “Maybe
he should apologize to the girl,” Tommy said. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Mandy,” she whispered.

  “How old are you?” Gunner asked her. It was the first time he’d spoken, but in each room they’d been to so far, the kid had looked younger. He wondered how old his mother had been, her first time.

  “Nineteen.”

  “Bullshit, baby,” Tommy said. “I got boots older than you. Get dressed. We’re getting you out of here.”

  “I can’t go…Eddie…”

  “You’re going somewhere that Eddie won’t ever find you,” Gunner told her. Brick still had his gun pressed to the old man’s balls and the old man was still crying and pleading.

  “Tell Mandy you’re sorry,” Brick told him.

  The old man looked at the skinny, pathetic girl in the bed and said, “I’m sorry. I thought you were older…” His words were cut off by the backhand Brick gave him with the .44 Mag. The girl still hadn’t moved. Tommy picked her up and Gunner threw a sheet over her. They left the old guy bleeding on the floor. Mandy was the third underage prostitute they’d taken in as many hours. Dax and Randall and a few of the other guys were working other buildings, but they were all run by Eddie and his men. Gunner watched Tommy carry the girl down the stairs and put her into the back of the “grocery wagon.” It was an old white van, and that’s what the guys referred to it as. The other two kids, a boy about fourteen and a girl who was probably about fifteen and looked like she’d been on the streets for a while, both tried to run as soon as the doors were opened. Gunner felt bad for them. Working for Eddie was all they knew, and they’d either been filled with drugs or fear or both the entire time. The prospect of being taken somewhere by these bikers was more frightening than what they did for Eddie.

  Tommy pushed the two kids back as easily as brushing a fly off his arm and slammed the van door. It was locked from the outside and there was a cage that separated the driver and passenger seats from the back end. He looked down at his arm where one of them had left a deep scratch. It was bleeding. “Ungrateful little brats.”

  Brick tucked the .44 into his waistband and said, “Where are we taking these kids?”

  “Massachusetts,” Tommy said.

  “Dax going to start his own kiddie porn business?” Brick snorted out a laugh. Without even thinking about what he was doing, Gunner grabbed the burly biker by the front of his vest and shoved him against the van. “What the fuck are you doing? Get your fucking hands off me!”

  Gunner felt Tommy’s hands on his shoulders. “Let go of him, kid. He didn’t mean any disrespect.”

  “It sounded like he did. Don’t fucking ever talk about Dax like that again.”

  “Or what?” Gunner still had Brick pinned but the other man knew he wasn’t going to do anything with Tommy standing right there behind him.

  “Or I’ll fucking teach you some respect.”

  “Hey! What the hell’s going on?” The sound of Randall’s voice made Gunner loosen his grip on Brick. He stood up straight and keeping one eye on Brick, he looked in Randall’s direction. Dax was standing behind him and Cody had a squirming, squealing girl tucked underneath one of his arms.

  “He was being disrespectful.”

  Dax raised an eyebrow and Randall folded his arms and said, “Since when do you teach respect to a patched member of my club?”

  Gunner looked back at Brick and then at Randall and said, “I overstepped, I guess.” There was no way he could explain himself without snitching out Brick in front of Dax for what he said.

  “Fucking ‘A’ you did,” Brick said.

  “Shut the fuck up, Brick,” Tommy said in a low tone of voice.

  “Does anyone mind if I put this polecat in the van?” Cody asked. They made a path for him, and the tension was broken by the fight that ensued trying to get the little girl into the van and fighting the others to stay inside. They’d finally gotten the back end closed and locked again when Tommy’s phone dinged. He fished it out of his vest, and the look of terror that crossed his face when he read it was almost palpable.

  “What?” Randall said as he read the horror on his son’s face too.

  “Malcolm is dead. Pete found him hanging in Tammy’s garage. Tammy’s gone.”

  Tamara’s head was fuzzy when she started to come to. At first, she couldn’t remember anything, but when she felt her body being lifted out of the car it started to come back. She’d been kidnapped and drugged. The side of her face felt swollen and her head was throbbing. She tried to open her eyes to see where she was but it hurt too badly, and the motion of being carried was making her nauseous. She felt her body slam into something…a wall, maybe…and then a few minutes later she was being dropped. She braced herself as much as she could, but the impact was with something soft, maybe a bed. Panic began to snake its way back into her chest. Being kidnapped and held for her father to ransom her was one thing, but she was on a bed. Were they going to rape her? She forced her eyes open and saw that she was in a bedroom and lying on a huge bed. A large man dressed in a green polo shirt and black slacks was standing over her with a length of rope in his hands. His hair was cut short in a military-type buzz cut and he had a deep scar along one side of his face. There was blood on the front of his shirt and his nose was swollen and blood crusted his large nostrils. This must be the guy she kicked in the car. His dark eyes were trained on hers and with a sneer he said, “Nice bruise on your face, bitch. I guess you’ll think twice about who you spit on next time.

  She didn’t speak. She was still fighting through the fog in her head and trying to figure out who these people were and what she might be able to do to keep them from raping and killing her. The man was big. Almost as big as Tommy. It wouldn’t do any good to fight him. She’d just end up with the right side of her face as swollen as the left, and maybe lose a few teeth in the process. She closed her eyes, deciding that playing possum was best until she figured out her next move. She heard the big man snort as he grabbed hold of one of her arms and knotted the rope around her wrist. She lay still as he tied it to the bedpost and went around and started on the other one. The idea of being tied up, completely helpless, made her chest hurt even more, but again, she reminded herself that fighting him was not going to do her any good. She felt him at her feet next, wrapping the rope around one of her ankles. He got that one secured and moved to the other. That was when the adrenaline kicked in again. He was about to tie down her last limb and then she’d have no way of fighting them. They could do whatever they wanted to her. He grabbed her ankle, not expecting any resistance since she’d been limp so far. She wrenched it free and he said, “Fuck, what are you doing? You want me to kill you?”

  She cracked open her eyes and saw him lean over to get his hold back on her leg. As soon as he did, she let the adrenaline flow through her last unrestrained limb and with all the strength she had left in her, she kicked out. He turned his head but not fast enough to stop her foot from catching him on his already swollen, bloody nose. She was smiling when his big fist knocked her out for a second time.

  18

  “My father is going to cut you up into little pieces.” Tamara’s voice sounded raspy and her lips were swollen so the words sounded funny. The big guy sitting in a chair at the edge of the bed smirked at her. He wasn’t the one she’d scuffled with earlier but he looked just as nasty.

  “Aw, she’s going to tell her daddy on me, I’m scared.”

  “You should be.” It hurt to talk, but she couldn’t stop herself. She was tied down so tightly that she couldn’t feel her limbs. Her words were all she had left to use as a weapon. “Do you know who you’re fucking with? I’m the daughter of the vice president of the most formidable motorcycle club in the south. He’s going to seriously fuck you up and he’ll leave you alive for most of it.”

  The guy chuckled. “You know who I work for little girl?”

  “I’m guessing since you dress like you think you’re a fucking gangster that you work for that cunt Eddi
e Munster.”

  “Big words from a girl who’s tied down to the bed. I was just sitting here thinking, before you woke up, about fucking you.”

  The idea of being raped terrified her worse than anything else they might do but she willed herself to not let it show. “Rape me, you pig, and your death will be more epic than even I can imagine.”

  The big ugly guy licked his lips and let his dark eyes travel from her bruised face down to her chest, where he paused, and then the “V” her legs formed, thanks to the way they had her tied up. He paused and then with a disgusting perverse look back at her face he said, “I’ll bet you started fucking those bikers when you were just a kid, huh? I bet Daddy did you first and then passed you onto his friends.” Her mouth was dry but she managed to work up enough moisture to spit. He was too far away and as he watched it spray across the bed he chuckled. “Yeah, I’ll bet those filthy bikers taught you a lot. I think I’ll fill that nasty mouth with my big dick first.”

  “I’ll bite it off.”

  “Then you’ll die with my dick in your mouth.” He got up and unbuttoned his pants.

  “You’ll die with that dick cut off and in your own mouth if you touch me!”

  He slid the zipper down and let them drop to the floor. As he moved over closer to the bed he slid his hand down into his shorts and pulled out a long, thick, hard cock. “You’re gonna suck this like the slut you are, and if I feel one tooth I’ll fuck your unconscious body.”