by Dark, Raven
8
No Place for Friends
I awake with a groan to the distant sound of breaking glass and raucous male laughter.
Lying on my stomach, I lift my head. Without a window in the room, I can’t tell what time it is. Darkness reduces the dresser and nightstand on either side of me to shadows. A digital clock glows red, readying 10:00.
10:00 PM? Have I slept all day?
Disoriented, I roll over to an empty room.
Spider’s bedroom. I’m still here.
The memory of last night floods my mind, and I cover my eyes with my arm, but it doesn’t shut out what that animal did.
Despair and shame settle in, a trapped feeling tightening my throat.
After drifting off to sleep, I’d awoken in the night several times and checked outside the bathroom window, hoping everyone who’d been out back of the clubhouse had gone in. They hadn’t.
Fighting matches continued. Partying had filtered in from outside throughout the night. After the last time I’d checked, I’d given up on the idea of crawling out of that window to freedom.
I reach over and flick on the bedside lamp and look around the room. Where is Spider? That he’s not there ignites a strange mixture of loneliness and relief. Loneliness at the thought of being surrounded by dangerous men I don’t know or trust, and relief that he isn’t there to do whatever else he intends to do to me.
Wait. The window.
I stare into the bathroom. The door has swung half-closed, but there’s light coming through that window. There’s no sound from outside.
Scrambling out of Spider’s bed, I rush to the bathroom, climb into the tub, and push the window open.
The desert heat hits me like a wave. Bright sunlight stabs at my eyes. Morning, then.
My heart sinks. It’ll be harder to run from here in daylight, with the sun baking the landscape.
I shield my eyes and peer out.
It wouldn’t matter if it was still dark. There are two men sitting under that tree. From this distance, it’s hard to see what they’re doing, but it looks like they’re gulping down bottles of beer. They’d see me if I tried to run now. I shove the window shut.
Escape will have to come later. After I’ve eaten. Maybe if I drink lots of water, it’ll help me last longer running in that heat, but I’ll have to leave before noon, before it gets even hotter.
When I do run, I’ll have to make my way back to the city somehow, or I could end up lost. But I’ll have to keep an eye out. Deacon Jacob is still out there. That’s the one bright side of Spider having taken me out of the city. I’m surrounded by desert. It’ll be a lot less likely anyone from His Holy Peace will find me out here.
Unsure what else to do, I step out of the tub, straightening my shirt and skirt. I’d thrown them both back on before climbing into bed, and they’d twisted and bunched up in the night.
I look longingly at the bathtub. I’d give anything for a shower, but it wouldn’t wash away the stain last night’s sin has left on my soul, will it?
It bothers me that I can’t bring myself to shower, to use the shampoo or soap that’s hanging from the showerhead without permission.
The instinctive need to show respect for Spider’s belongings in spite of his actions makes me feel weak. Last night’s debauchery should wipe away any such altruistic notions, but life in the Colony has ingrained it into me that you never take anything without permission.
My chest constricts. The irony is not lost on me. Taking something that didn’t belong to me is what landed me here in the first place.
A banging on the door to the bedroom makes me startle.
“Wake wakie, sunshine,” Pip calls.
I sigh and cross the bedroom, opening the door.
“Get cleaned up and I’ll take you for breakfast in the barroom,” Pip says. “Spider’s orders.” He hands me an unopened toothbrush and a comb. “He said there are some women’s clothes in his closet if you wanna change. Underthings are in one of his drawers somewhere.”
“Thank you. Wait…where is Spider?” I ask when he turns to leave.
When he looks at me, I instinctively lower my eyes, twisting my hands in front of me. As soon as I catch myself, I throw my hands behind me and meet his youthful grey gaze head-on. It’s surprisingly easy.
“He’s out. He put me on babysitting duty, so you’d better behave or it’s both our asses.”
“May I have a shower, please?” I suppress the urge to call him sir.
“Whatever. Just be ready in fifteen. Spider should be back by then.”
I go back into the room and shut the door slowly, processing my reactions to the young man.
The urge to defer to him as a male was hard to shut down, but it wasn’t as difficult to look at him as it is with Spider, and it wasn’t as hard to hold back the honorific, either.
If Pip is close to my age as I’ve guessed, he’s is at that age where, in the Colony, females would have to address him with sir or, when appropriate, by his last name. A year or two less, and they wouldn’t have to use the formality. It’s unsettling to realize why it’s easier to break the habit with him. Spider has a…presence of command that makes it feel wrong not to. It’s almost a kind of pull.
I shiver, not wanting to consider that too closely.
Fifteen minutes. The expectation that he see me when he arrives makes my heart speed up. I hate that it isn’t all from trepidation over what he might have planned.
After a quick shower, I brush my teeth and comb out my hair, then look for the girl’s clothes Pip mentioned.
A studded denim skirt that doesn’t look long enough to cover anything private hangs in the closet, along with a white halter top. It’s the only girl’s clothes in there. Looking at the outfit, my stomach tightens, realizing why Spider has them.
These belong to a woman who was in his bed.
I put my head back, forcing down an absurd pang on jealousy and toss the clothes on the bed. Why do I care who he shares his bed with?
I hunt for a pair of panties and bra in his dresser drawers. There’s no bra, but there is a pair of black lace panties with the price tag still on them. They look like the expensive kind I’ve seen women wear in the strip club. Spider must have bought them for Halter Top Girl after their little tryst and she never wore them.
So I’ll be wearing panties that were a gift to one of Spider’s floosies. I slap them on the bed, my blood boiling.
As soon as I’m dressed, I look at the mirror above the dresser. Mortification colors my cheeks.
The halter is little more than a strip of cloth that hides my boobs, and I can make out my nipples through the fabric. The studded skirt barely covers my backside.
“Seriously?” I find my sneakers and yank them on. “He expects me to go around looking like a harlot?”
It shouldn’t bother me to dress like this after a week of wearing that uniform at the strip club, but it does. That was a job. This is different. Dressing like this is too much like giving him an invitation.
I never thought I’d miss the drab, formless dresses of the Colony, but I do now.
Pip meets me at the door and walks me down to the barroom a few minutes later.
There’s only a handful of men in the room, two playing billiards off to the side, and another sitting at the bar talking to the girl behind it who serves him a beer. Another girl, a blond one who looks a few years older than me, sits on a chair against the wall, watching the guys playing pool. A man with silver hair captured in a ponytail is moving around in an office to my left. There’s a door on the other side of the office leading outside, and he paces in front of it, a phone to his ear while he talks.
Those bikes still hang from the ceiling on chains.
Despite the ruckus I heard when I woke up, the place is quiet. I think I hear a TV playing in a room down the hall we just went through, but the ones in here are off, thank heavens. At least there’s no one in here watching porn like last night.
At the fro
nt of the room is the only entrance to the place I see, the one Spider took me through last night. There’s no one near the door. My muscles tense.
“Don’t even think about it,” Pip warns, squeezing my arm.
My eyes snap up to his. His expression isn’t mean, just matter of fact. He looks tired, his face wan, but his eyes are still sharp.
Pip is skinnier than a lot of the men here, and he doesn’t have the same hardened, dangerous look as them, but I’m not fooled. He has good muscles, and he’s probably still faster than me. He’d be on me before I got two steps, and I’ve seen the way he defers to the others. He’s loyal to them. He’d do what he had to in order to keep me here.
Besides, he has a gun in a holster on his hip, partly hidden by his leather vest.
There’s no point in trying to convince him I wasn’t thinking of escaping, so I remain silent.
“Have a seat.” He nods to the stools along the bar. “Someone’ll bring you some breakfast.”
“When will Spider be back?” I ask quietly.
His grins. “Later.”
I blink at him. When he smiles, he looks friendly. If things were different, we’d probably be friends. If he weren’t an armed criminal assigned to keep an eye on me by my captor, and I wasn’t a prisoner, that is.
Feeling out of my element, I take a seat on a stool at the bar. Pip shuffles over to the blond girl, muttering something to her and pointing to me.
The girl shoots me an annoyed look. “I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a spork.”
“Just do it, Sassy,” Pip says tiredly.
“Yeah, yeah.” She pushes herself off her chair and disappears into a kitchen beside the long bar.
I can guess what that’s about. Pip just told her to get me breakfast, and she’d rather stab herself in the eye than serve a thief.
I glance around me and notice that another girl I didn’t see before, one with half her head shaved and the other half covered in dark curls, is giving me the same scathing glare as she heads toward the men playing pool with a couple of beers in her hands.
Those glares are exactly like the looks Monica gave me when she saw me after I stole those tips. It’s the look of betrayal.
My shoulders sag and I rub away a sudden chill from my arms. At least Monica isn’t here. Lord, I couldn’t face her right now.
She had to have some idea what went on in that party room at The Devil’s Den, and by the gleeful way she’d said goodbye to me before Spider drove off with me on his motorcycle, she had some idea of what was in store for me when we got here. Not only did she allow both to happen, but she glorified in it. A surge of anger wells up at the memory, and I let it burn away my guilt. Guilt over something I did because it was the only way to avoid being dragged back to the Colony, and straight into Seth’s creepy arms.
“You’d better get used to the stink eye you’re getting, girlie.”
I look up. The bartender stands in front of me, hands on the polished wood bar. For a minute, I can only stare.
Tall and lean, with a cascade of rich dark curls down her back and olive skin, she’s dressed in a red sleeveless camisole and pair of skintight black jeans. She looks like she belongs on one of those shampoo ads I’ve seen on billboards, where the women always look like their hair his blowing in a non-existent wind.
One of her arms is covered in tattoos, from the shoulder to her wrist. There’s one above her breast. I recognize the symbol. It’s the symbol I’ve seen on ambulances, a staff with wings and two serpents wrapped around it. A caduceus, I think they call it.
I sigh. “I don’t suppose it will make a difference if I said I was sorry,” I ask.
“Probably not.” She picks up a dirty glass to wash it, but stops, cocking her head at me. “It’s really true what Monica told us isn’t it?”
Her voice is sweet, but there’s mocking laughter in her eyes that puts me on my guard.
“What’s true?”
“That you didn’t know an MC owned The Devil’s Den when you tried to run off with those tips.”
“No. I don’t even know what that means.”
“MC?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
The blond girl Pip called Sassy walks out of the kitchen and thumps a plate down in front of me, then walks away without a word. Pip is over playing pool with the men, one eye on me. She goes over to him and rubs his tattooed arm, whispering in his ear.
My mouth waters at the smell of eggs and bacon that wafts up from the plate. The two eggs are a little overdone, the handful of bacon strips a little too crispy, but they still look better than most of the bland, healthy food I had to eat while I was in the Colony.
“MC stands for motorcycle club,” the bartender says, catching my attention.
“Oh.”
She processes that the information is new to me, watching me closely for a second. “You don’t have a clue what we’re about, do you?” She grins as she washes the glass. “You must not, otherwise you wouldn’t have done something to get on the club’s bad side.”
I slip a strip of bacon into my mouth, sensing that to answer would be to play into her hand.
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
She means Las Vegas, or maybe Nevada as a whole. I’m starting to get the feeling everyone in these parts knows what a motorcycle club is. And, that it’s a colossal mistake to cross them.
I say nothing, digging into my eggs. I’m starved, so I gobble them up, unable to bring myself to take small, proper bites. My mother would have given me one of her lectures about gluttony and how a proper lady eats if she saw me now.
“You’re lucky you’re not dead.” The bartender leans on the bar, close to me. “Let me give you some free advice.”
She pauses until she sees I’m waiting.
“Keep your head down and do what Spider tells you. Keep to yourself. You went against the club, so no one here is your friend, or ever will be. The fact that you’re alive doesn’t mean that Spider likes you. It means he likes your body. You’re a piece of ass and that’s all. Keep him happy, give him what he wants, and you’ll keep breathing.”
The blood drains out of my face. She means it.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure that keeping him happy will be enough. He still hasn’t told me whether or not he plans to kill me. I might be dead no matter what I do.
I catch myself looking over at Pip for a second as he knocks a ball into a corner pocket, then at the door to the bar. A door that seems at once so close, yet a million miles away.
“Tequila?” a familiar voice calls from the office I passed earlier.
“Yeah, Dee.” The bartender puts down another glass.
My stomach drops. Oh, Lord, Dee.
I turn to see Dee Masterson making her way to the bar. “Snake’s looking for the list of—” She cuts short and her eyes turn to ice when they settle on me. “You.”
Putting my head back, I sigh, about to apologize. Dee doesn’t give me the chance. She storms over to me and throws her fist at my face.
Thrown from the stool, I go flying. Pain blazes through my jaw and I slam into the floor. My head rebounds with a crack, sending a spear of pain through my skull.
I grunt, the wind knocked out of me.
I’ve never been punched before in my life. The church leaders don’t hit with closed fists like that, and even if they did, they’ve never struck me thanks to my dad’s skills at keeping the peace. Women in the Colony never, ever hit; that’s man’s work. Never in my life would I imagine a woman could punch that hard. Dee doesn’t look like much, but she hits like a hammer.
“Shit,” Pip snaps near me. “Dee, what the fuck, man?”
“Dee.” Tequila reaches for her. “Spider’s not going to be—”
“Go find a dick that needs sucking, Tequila.” Dee’s voice seems to be filtering through cotton. She doesn’t seem to hear Pip at all.
Tequila leaves without a glance at me. I struggle to my feet while Dee puts her hands on h
er hips and watches me as if I’m a bug crawling on the floor.
Buying time, I glance around me. Sassy is over by the one man sitting at the bar, talking to him, both of them pretending nothing happened. There’s another girl standing at the entrance to the hall watching us. I recognize her pretty face and short black curls.
Monica.
The satisfaction in her eyes makes my stomach curdle.
All of the women in the room have seen what Dee did, but none of them interfere.
Even Pip, who’s in front of me now, looks torn, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. “Spider’s gonna have my ass, Dee,” he growls at her.
Dee ignores him, glowering at me. “Got nothing to say for yourself?” she snaps.
There are no words that seem good enough. Loss squeezes my heart and guilt eats up my insides. “I’m sorry,” I say lamely, clutching my jaw and working it slowly.
“Sorry?” she hisses. “Are you for real right now?”
She doesn’t need to tell me why it’s not good enough. She did more than take me off the street. She gave me a job, a place to live, letting me pay the rent back a little at a time. She even gave me the clothes I wore when not working at The Devil’s Den. She saved my life and I stole from her. Considering what I’ve done, my apology falls woefully short of the mark.
“I know.” My voice comes out small and cracked.
I’d give anything to explain. Anything to tell her why, that I felt cornered and saw it as the only way out. But if I do that, I’d risk being found by the Colony. Jacob was in the strip club looking for me. Someone might tell him. Besides, the men in this…MC are dangerous. I’d be putting the people I care about there at risk. And Sarah, if they found out about her.
“I wish I had something better, but I don’t.” I meet Dee’s eyes, imploring her to understand. “It kills me that I did what I did. If I’d had a choice, I wouldn’t have done it.”
I wish I could bring myself to be angry with her for hitting me, but all I feel is shame.
Dee’s eyes blaze with so much anger that I half expect her to hit me again. Instead, she shakes her head, looking disgusted. “You’re not worth the energy,” she mutters. “What Spider will do to you is a lot worse than anything I could do.”
