Savage Saviors: The Complete Boxset (Savage Saviors MC)

by J. C. Allen

  And it was most certainly not the sort of place that Eve had just accidentally found herself in, no matter how beautiful and fun it might be. This was no coincidence and no “unexpected visit” that she had had. Wonder if Roost knew she went out that way.

  “Oh? And what were you doing in the area?” I said.

  She started to say something that I knew wasn’t the truth in the hopes of keeping the illusion up. But she knew me well enough to know I’d had her pegged, and she was a smart girl.

  “Yeah. Tracking down that photograph.”

  I stared at her, feeling myself fall in love with her all over again. Only one other person in my entire lifetime had ever treated me so well, and that person had just given me permission in some sense to go with this new person. No one else alive—not even Roost, as much as I loved the guy—cared about me as much as Eve just had.

  “Why did I ever get on that bike,” I said with a laugh.

  Before Eve could say another word, I reached for her, ripping a couple more cords off of me, and pulled her onto my lap, kissing her passionately. This was the kiss I should have given her when she first walked in, but the delay actually made it that much more pleasurable and passionate. I kissed her ferociously, all but dragging her onto the hospital bed, as if daring her to fuck me right here. I wasn’t sure if she would have feelings about it, but I sure didn’t—I loved this girl so much, I had to please her right here, right now.

  Because Derek Knight handles his business, even if that business is for public consumption.

  And, speaking of which…

  * * *

  Parting from the kiss, I carefully worked Eve’s gift back into its bag and hoisted myself from the hospital bed. This time, I worked to remove every single needle, suction cup, and wrapping from my body. Most of them hurt like hell, especially since I was no doctor and because I was on the hairier side of things—well, I was. But it was nothing compared to the raging hormones in my body that needed, yes, needed Eve right now.

  I found some fresh clothes from earlier, a pair of faded jeans with a tri-folded sheet of paper that read “No naked bosses here!” and my leather jacket, still encased in a plastic dry cleaner’s bag with a small gift tag looped around the top. Though it was pink and frilly, this tag’s message—“only a faggot knows how to get death and meth out of leather!”—was anything but fluffy and cute.

  But more importantly, it cemented proof that Roost had survived. I was sure he had when the doctor kept talking about some hulk of a man who moved out of here as if nothing had happened, but there was always the very slim chance that I was wrong. This, though? Unless someone had a very fucked up sense of humor considering the circumstances, humor that I would not call funny, then Roost was alive.

  Meth lab explosion? Multiple gunshot wounds? Burns? Lacerations? Smoke inhalation? Why should any of that go and spoil his fun, right? Goddamn you, Roost. Someday, you’re going to have to teach me how to be so damn indestructible. You’re like the second coming of Jesus.

  If Jesus, you know, was flamboyantly gay and ate every burger within a five-mile radius of the shop.

  But I’d had enough thinking about the Saviors, at least until I could finish being inside Eve. Nothing, and I mean nothing short of hell—and even then, that was doubtful—was keeping me from being with my woman in my apartment within the hour. I’d definitely have to be crazy to stick around there any longer when I could be out and about with Eve Kellerman.

  “You’re really doing this?” Eve said with a startled giggle. “Derek!”

  “Damn right!” I said, somewhat stumbling out of bed. “And nothing in the world’s gonna stop—”

  “Mister Knight!”

  I spun at the stunned and outraged call of my name and spotted the nurse from before glaring back at me from the doorway. The room fell into an awkward silence, and I became aggressively aware of a number of incriminating facts:

  I was out of bed.

  I did not have my hospital gown on, having discarded it for the clothes I had not yet reached.

  I was naked.

  And, likely most damning in this medical professional’s eyes, I had tampered with a great many pieces of equipment in order to accomplish those first few feats. And that’s not even considering that this woman probably thinks I lost my damn mind in that coma.

  With no small amount of bitter resentment, it occurred to me that any one of those machines I’d just unplugged myself from could have alerted her to what was either my attempted escape or my untimely demise. Well, granted, I more or less already knew that—but now, I knew that through observation, not guessing.

  Standing there—red-handed as a boy with his hand in the cookie jar and naked as the day I was born—I decided that maybe I should go back into that coma. Provided, of course, I could take Eve with me if it was possible without hurting her.

  “I… uh,” I stammered, glancing longingly towards my increasingly glorious-looking pair of gifted pants. “I don’t suppose a ‘sweet titty-fucking Christ’ would fix this, would it?”

  “Just, please, Mr. Knight, get dressed,” the nurse said.

  I swore that she tried to look so professional staring at me, likely having dealt with more naked bodies than porn stars ever did, but there was no way that she could have kept a straight face. In fact, more than once, she had to place her hand over her mouth to cover the laughter I knew she was seconds away from producing.

  “You’re in big trouble, you know,” she said. “There’s a procedure to remove that equipment, and done poorly, it can mess with the readings, and—”

  “Whatever you need, I got you,” I said.

  “I don’t think you understand, Mr. Knight, the cost—”

  “No, I think it’s you who doesn’t understand,” I said, finally feeling more confident once I got my jeans over my junk. I looked to Eve, who just had her head buried in her hands, probably wishing that she was anywhere but here—I think she may have even taken being back at the Falcons gala for how much she was blushing. Oh, tough cookie, I thought with a smile. “I’ll take care of whatever you need. You just tell the doctors or whoever it was a machine malfunction.”

  The nurse stared at me for a long, long time. I knew this was not just some cop I could bribe to get out of a parking ticket. This was not just some courtroom judge whom I could sway with an outdoor grilling to throw out the hundreds of speeding tickets the Saviors had accumulated.

  No, this was someone who was just new enough to the job that bribes were not going to so easily sway her.

  “You have that money,” she said, as if she believed she was calling my bluff.

  Little did she know that my wallet was right there with the rest of my clothes and leather jacket. I reached into the pocket and pulled out a couple hundred dollar bills and handed it to the nurse—or, more appropriately, gently grabbed her wrist and placed it in her palm.

  “There’s more where that came from,” I said. “Look, I’m not going to put you in any position of trouble or your employer. But I have not seen my girlfriend here in three days, and if I don’t get out, I’m going to ask for some real privacy here in the next half hour.”

  “Derek,” Eve said, but I think she enjoyed it—the smile on her face overrode the tone in her voice.

  “So you let me know what it’ll take.”

  The nurse stared at me again, her mind racing.

  “I’ll never forget you for being the Sweet titty-fucking Christ’ man.”

  And then, five minutes later, after another small bribe and the promise to fulfill any and all bills brought about by my “escape,” I had Eve in the palm of my hand, heading out the hospital.

  I couldn’t believe that for once in my life, when things had taken a turn for the worse and dark clouds had begun to form, not only had things not gone to shit, but things actually seemed to be improving. In years past, one death led to another, one mistake compounded into another, and one slippage resulted in a complete wipeout.

  But h
ere? No one died. Roost made it through. Eve had not been kidnapped. I had not died.

  Perhaps fate had seen to it that I bank up all my good luck to use here and now, with Eve by my side and Roost still alive.

  Hell, I ain’t gonna complain.

  “You know what I just realized,” Eve said as the doors opened to the lobby. “Matty never came upstairs.”

  Meh. He’s alive. I’ll see him later.

  “Well, yeah, he’s not here,” I said.

  “No, he dropped me off and said he was looking for parking. But the only parking he must’ve done was back at the shop.”

  I came out to the streets, looking for Matty’s bike in the lot, but Eve was right, there was no one here.

  “He knew what I wanted to do with you,” I said, pulling her close. “And I might still do it right here.”

  “Oh my God, Derek!” she said.

  “Don’t lie, you want it too.”

  “Of course I want you! I’ve been wet since that first kiss—but Christ, let’s get out of here first! They’ll put both of us in the ward for that if we aren’t careful! And besides… let’s not overlook that they called you the Sweet titty-fucking Christ man!”

  “You’re going to owe me a titjob every time you throw that back at me,” I warned, an ear-splitting grin abandoning my effort to come off stern.

  “Like I’d have a problem with that,” she taunted, slipping fluidly into a playful, skipping side-step to shake her chest at me for a moment before saying, “And I wouldn’t even charge you the twenty bucks for it, either!”

  Oh, she’s dirty. Oh, oh, oh, I don’t think I’m going to make it home in one piece at this rate!

  “Fuck twenty,” I said. “What I’ll be doing to you is priceless.”

  “You’re such a charmer,” she said. “For those kind of prices, maybe I should put myself back on the market, this time as a high-class whore? Maybe advertise as an escort to athletes and politicians. Only the best money can buy!”

  “Ew!” I gave a shutter and shook my head, mock-retching. “Politicians? Not sure I could share a bed with somebody who’s slept with that sort of scum.”

  “But I’m free to whore myself out to athletes, huh?” she said in a dangerously challenging voice.

  I shrugged, feeling up to a dangerous challenge. At the same time, though, this conversation was starting to leer a little too close to ugly pasts—I was walking a tightrope that I wasn’t sure had any benefit to walking upon, and one wrong word could wind me up in the doghouse.

  But, hey, there was a small thrill to it.

  “I guess there’s a few sports stars I wouldn’t mind taking sloppy seconds to,” I admitted. “Provided you got me an autograph, too.”

  “Jerk!” Eve snarled, driving a surprise punch into my shoulder and effectively numbing my arm in the process.

  “Damn!That actually hurt!”

  I wasn’t lying, either. I wondered if Eve had had some sort of training before the Falcons had kidnapped her. She would’ve lost all the strength in the six months of subpar eating and conditions, but she sure as hell wouldn’t have forgotten how to defend herself in the process.

  “Good!” she chastised, making another fist and moving like she was going to hit me again.

  I cringed, faking a whimper before devolving into full-on laughter.

  “Where the hell are we going, anyways?” I said, the laughter still ongoing. “I don’t have my bike, otherwise I’d be taking you somewhere far away so I could be so very close to you, if you know what I mean.”

  “Well, we could go home right now,” Eve said. “But why don’t we take a walk? It’s not like I have anything to do.”

  “No Tara?”

  “Oh! I don’t think you know. Tara has taken over Matty’s house and turned it into a brothel. Well, not really a brothel, more like a haven for prostitutes that escaped the Falcons grasp. But yeah, she’s kind of busy.”

  “He must be thinking that he woke up and found himself in hell,” I said with a mock-tragic shake of my head. “Or he’ll off himself soon.”

  “Hey, that’s… yeah, there’s probably an element of truth to it. Tara can be a bit much at times.”

  “At times?” I said with a smirk. “I like her, don’t get me wrong. She’s a friend of yours so she’s a friend of the Saviors. But sometimes she’s… yeah, a bit much.”

  “She comes from a different background than me,” Eve said, although she looked to be a bit discomforted by the phrase. “I never had visions of becoming a whore, obviously. I mean, who does? But I guess… I guess I always thought of myself as more high-class, more put-together than the world Eve comes from.”

  I nodded as we meandered down the sidewalk. I didn’t see anything odd about what she had said. She didn’t quite come from money money—I knew firsthand what that looked like—but she definitely had a better demeanor to her than Tara or most hookers I had interacted with.

  But what she said next sure as hell was possibly the oddest thing I’d ever heard.

  “So what would you do if I had been a high-class whore?” Eve asked. “Or… if I found myself being one again?”

  “I… uh, what?” I stammered, trying to wrap my mind around what she was asking. Why the fuck would she ever have gone back to being a whore with her consent? “I don’t think… I mean, I guess I can’t really stop you if that’s what you want, but… but… wait, no! You don’t want to be a whore again… do you?”

  Eve hummed, giving my shoulder another nuzzle, and then shook her head.

  “No, not really. Not unless I’d be your whore; your private whore.”

  Now I was just more confused than when she’d started the conversation.

  “So… why did you ask?”

  Eve bit her lip, as if she hated that she’d asked the question. I didn’t want to feel at fault for making her worse, so I opened my mouth to add some humor—but she beat me to it.

  “I guess there’s a part of me that just feels like this is all too good to be true, you know?” she said. “There’s a part of me that fears what we did… that someone or something is going to come for me and I’m going to wind back up on the streets. Or worse.”

  I got the sense from hearing her say “someone or something” that, well, something had happened while I was out. I let silence hang in the air for a few seconds, seeing if she would elaborate on what she had said. Eve, though, didn’t break unless she wanted to or was pushed to the limit—neither of which I had any interest in enforcing.

  So I decided to return it to humor, albeit a bit crude humor.

  “So… like, if you were my private whore… I take you to nice places, buy you nice things, and basically just show you a nice life, and in exchange I get to have nasty sex with you?”

  “Pretty much,” she said meekly. “Yeah.”

  I gave the appearance of considering this for a moment and then laughed as I wound up to deliver the punch line.

  “And how would that be different from being a girlfriend?”

  “Jerk!” she yelled, and, with this repetition, she served up another dose of shoulder-numbing fury.

  I yelped, laughed, and scooped her back into me with my now-throbbing arm. God, I loved this woman! I’d sooner become a gigolo myself before sending her back to the streets. I’d rather her run the Savage Saviors if it meant she would never have to be a hooker again. Oh, she’d be my freak in the sheets, but only my freak—no one else’s.

  She was mine, damnit, and no one else was going to have her, no matter how many Benjamins they had in their wallet.

  “But you really wouldn’t care, would you?” she asked. “You didn’t mind before—back when I was still working for the Black Falcons—and… and I don’t feel like you’d mind now.”

  I loved Eve… but I was beginning to get a little annoyed. I felt like this was one of those tests, the kind where a woman would say “would you love me if I was still fat?” The answer, as always, was “it depends,” but to give her that answer would
only draw more questions. And frankly, at this point, the questioning was getting to the point where I was starting to lose my sexual lust—oh, it’d come back, but the fact that it was fading…

  “Why should I care?” I said, trying desperately—probably futilely—to hide my frustration with her line of questioning. “It’s like I said before. Prostitution is a job—a service—not a relationship. You selling a blowjob or some casual sex isn’t really much different in my eyes than a baker selling a loaf of bread or a fancy cake.”

  “You know that not everyone would agree with that perspective,” she countered.

  Eve, c’mon. Please.

  “And they’re welcome to feel what they want. I won’t even say that they’re wrong. There’s obviously some differences, but the bulk of those differences are superficial.”

  “How do you mean?”

  OK. She’s being serious. Give her one hard single answer and then move on.

  “They put emphasis on sex as being strictly this or strictly that. It’s either an emotional act for them, and so it must always be an emotional act, or it’s a matter of ownership. Sort of like, ‘I fucked this, so it is therefore mine!’”

  I paused, shook my head, and sighed. How had I found myself in a conversation about my girlfriend returning to the profession I’d risked my life to help her escape? Especially when it was just a stupid hypothetical that I’d rather die than see brought to life?

  “I didn’t have a problem with you—or, more specifically, with your job—because I didn’t get the impression that you loved any of the guys who were buying from you. If I thought that any one of those guys was getting a bit of your mind or your heart, then, yeah, I’d feel pretty jealous, but…”

  The sickest part of this was that as I was speaking, my own kinds of doubts were entering my mind. Doubts about Eve feeling something for one of her Johns… doubts about Eve really wanting to be removed from the scene… doubts about what kind of a girl Eve was…