Taking Meghan: A Dark Romance (Disciples Book 5)

by Izzy Sweet

  6

  Gabriel

  The moment Lucifer called to inform me of the mandatory meeting, I felt the tension in my shoulders increase tenfold. Fuck, the tension in my shoulders isn’t nearly as thick as the tension in the car.

  Meghan posed the question of whether I’ll be touching her without her permission… and a lot of things could cause that to happen…

  But what I think she means is will I be taking her against her will…

  “I won’t rape you, Meghan. That’s not my bag,” I say with a grunt as I pull to a stop at a red light.

  I won’t have to take her or force her. When it comes time, she’ll be coming to me and begging me for it.

  Watching her body, I notice she doesn’t edge toward the door for escape, but the way she’s riding that side of the car, I can feel she wants to get away from me as much as she wants to kiss the fuck out of me. We’ve got that fucking animal magnetism.

  “I… I know that. I just don’t understand exactly what the fuck is going on,” she snaps at me.

  Obviously, us turning around and heading toward Lucifer has thrown her off kilter.

  Fuck, it wasn’t in my plans either. I expected, at the very least, to be able to head back to the hotel room I got last night. But now the boss wants us there… At the fucking compound.

  Joy of fucking joys.

  “We’re heading to the compound for a debriefing,” I say, and my damn hand wants to reach out to feel hers.

  Just touching her skin back there in the church has me itching for more contact. No one else but hers. I can smell her perfume from here and it’s fucking intoxicating in this small fucking space of a vehicle.

  Meghan’s the first person I’ve touched in ten long fucking years that I didn’t want to commit violence upon.

  I can’t stop the thoughts of how different this world is. I went in a man and came out something else. I feel like a fucking shadow of death. I can’t be near people or touch them without wanting to strangle the life out of them. Something broke inside of me while I was in the supermax. Something that I can’t name or even understand. Killing that fucking Russian prick last night helped though, it let me feel alive again. I wasn’t the fucking one being beat up on.

  I was in control.

  Last night I dumped the corpse on the steps of the church, lit it on fire, and headed out to an out-of-the-way motel. That was my night. No parties or huge ass meals. I got a bottle of soda from the vending machine and a bag of chips.

  John offered me a place at his house to stay. So did most of the other guys. I wasn’t ready for that, though. I don’t think I’d be good in a house full of kids or around happy people. I didn’t do those kinds of things back then, before I went in, and I won’t be doing them now.

  John saw my face when he tried to touch me. He knows how much I don’t want to be touched by another human being. It’s something deep down and primal. I survived ten years of hell, and now I’m out here in this bright shiny fucking world. I can’t seem to get a grip on the pace of the world surrounding me.

  Maybe that’s why I stood there when she tried to put a bullet through my chest.

  There was more than enough time to snatch that gun from her tiny hands. I just didn’t do it. Was I not sharp enough, was I not up to my old self? Or did I want her to put that slug through my heart so I could at least feel something besides the dead fucking husk of a body I walk around in?

  Dead and full of fucking hunger.

  Hunger for an outlet.

  “Are you going to answer me?” Meghan asks with annoyance.

  “What?” I ask as I turn my gaze to her.

  “I asked what is the compound? Are you guys in a cult or something?”

  “Or something,” I say as I fight to keep my eyes on the road and not her.

  She’s beautiful, feisty as fuck, and has those lips that would look amazing wrapped around my cock. Although, in truth, I’m getting that cock-biter vibe from her all of a sudden.

  Dead inside and all I can think about is pulling her over to my chest and hoping she can breathe life into my brain.

  “Look, this really doesn’t need to be like this…” she says as she looks out the window.

  “It does,” I say simply.

  I don’t have any other words for her. She’ll learn we won’t be stopping the wheel that’s been set in motion.

  * * *

  Pulling into the compound is like going back in fucking time, except not at all. All those memories of my early days in the family are there in the back of my mind, but this place has become something so different I almost can’t believe it’s the same place.

  The first thing I notice is the wall surrounding the house. The chain link fence has been removed, replaced by a huge stone wall with mini towers on the corners. A huge mammoth gate blocks off the private drive with a fucking guard station.

  Fuck, time and money has turned this place into a fucking fortress.

  Slowing down to enter the gate, I stare at the guard who motions for me to open the window. Who the fuck is this guy?

  Pushing the button down, I’m half-tempted to reach out and rip his fucking throat out as he touches the trigger of his semi-assault rifle.

  “Sir,” he says simply, and if he was close enough I really would hurt him.

  “Open the fucking gate,” I growl out at him.

  “Gabriel…” Meghan hisses from my side as she watches more men surround the SUV we’re sitting in.

  It’s a tense couple of seconds before I hear a radio squawk from the guard’s shoulder. “Let him in.”

  The guard simply turns away from me. Heading back to the guard house, he steps inside to activate the gate.

  “Asshole,” comes from my gritted teeth as I gun the engine of the vehicle.

  Meghan quietly murmurs to me as the steering wheel starts to groan from how hard I’m gripping it. “Calm down, Gabriel. They’re just doing their job.”

  The blood rushing to my brain slowly abates as I pull the SUV through the gates and down the drive to the massive house. I can slowly feel my hands loosening on the wheel as her touch radiates a feeling of warmth.

  “Fuck,” I say with a shake of my whole body.

  The red haze that started to flood my vision has abated completely when I look over at her.

  Her hand slowly pulls away from me as she watches me. Is she afraid of me? I can’t really tell, but she doesn’t act like it. If anything, she seems to be emboldened by being able to calm me.

  She should be afraid of me, not fucking smirking when I look her in the eyes.

  “You okay there, big guy? We kind of need a steering wheel if we want to drive away from here,” she says with that sexy fucking smirk.

  “I don’t like guards, and I really don’t like asshole guards,” I grumble before hopping out of the parked vehicle.

  It’s fucking springtime here in Garden City, and as fucking usual it’s freezing temperatures one day and mild the next. All the same, as I go around the car to help my struggling bride out of the vehicle, I take a moment to pull my black tactical coat from the back. It’s not fucking cold outside right now, but it’s not exactly warm.

  Going around to her side of SUV, I start yanking out yards and fucking yards of fabric. I know my bride was stuffed into the fucking passenger side of the vehicle, I’m the one who put her there, dammit. But right now, I can’t find anything but the ankle of a very pissed off woman.

  “Who the fuck even wants to wear one of these bulky dresses in the first place?” she shouts as I finally grab her forearm and yank her out of the seat.

  Pulling out the combat knife attached to my belt, I give her a look. “You didn’t pick this fucking thing out?”

  Eyeing the knife, she shakes her head slowly. “No, they had me so drugged up I had no clue I was even wearing this until right before the wedding started.”

  “Ah.” Kneeling down in front of her, I start slicing through most of the frilly shit that I can’t even rememb
er the name of.

  Hacking my way through until I see her calves, I quickly move around her, trying to trim off as much of the material as I can.

  “Holy shit!” she groans when she looks down at the huge pile of white stuff. “You cut off like thirty pounds. My hips hurt so bad from all that damn weight on them.”

  Lifting up my jacket to her, I motion for her to take it. “Would’ve been better for the both of us if we’d had a nudist wedding.”

  Snatching the jacket out of my hands, she tucks herself inside of it before she responds. “Not on your life “

  Looking down into her eyes, I can’t help but notice how small she is inside my coat. She almost looks like a lost little waif. But those fiery eyes stare back at me with a spirit that goes straight to my cock. This little one is all fucking kinds of danger bound in a little body.

  “We’ll see,” I say as I turn toward the house.

  “Fuck no, we won’t.” she growls at my back before jogging to catch up to me.

  My silence must really irritate her though because she jabs me hard in the ribs to ask, “What are we doing here?”

  “My boss wants to have a talk. I suspect it’s about the marriage and what’s going on with your father and your former fiancé,” I say as we approach the door. “There’s a lot of shit blowing around the city right now and we’d rather it be blowing in our favor.”

  “But I don’t have anything to do with this!” she snarls. “I was being forced to fucking marry him. I didn’t get to choose whether I wanted to marry him any more than I got to choose being married to you.”

  Reaching up to knock on the door, I’m tempted to use the knocker, but instead I use my fist as a hammer and just give it a couple of good thumps. “Yeah, well, we all have shit choices in life. You said yes, too late to back out now.”

  “You didn’t even give me a choice!” she shouts just as the door swings open.

  A beautiful young woman appears before us, her eyes taking us in quickly. “You must be Gabriel and Meghan.”

  Nice, she didn’t even bat an eye with how either of us are dressed.

  “I am,” I say.

  “Good, please come in. Matthew is up in his office, but I’m sure he’ll be down soon,” the woman says. “I’m Lily, Matthew’s wife.”

  As soon as we step into the warm home, I can hear the distant screech of children running around the house. What the fuck kind of twilight zone did I enter? The last time I was here, I was leaving the house with handcuffs on my wrists as multiple dead bodies were being taken away.

  Kids… a wife…

  Fucking hell, who the hell has Lucifer turned into?

  “Ah, there the two lovebirds are,” Lucifer’s drawl comes as he descends the stairs.

  He’s got a smirk a mile wide when he looks at the both of us. I haven’t removed my tactical holster or vest, and looking over at my wife in my black tactical jacket and torn up wedding attire, I can’t even begin to imagine what Lucifer’s wife thinks of us both.

  “Lovebirds?” Meghan repeats in disbelief.

  “Yes dear,” I say with a deep frown at the small beauty beside me.

  It’s going to be so much better if she goes with the flow, I think. If she doesn’t, shit here could turn messy pretty damn quickly. I’m not letting her get away from me, and I sure as hell won’t be letting anyone fucking try to take her away from me, not even Lucifer himself.

  This sexy little woman is fucking mine.

  “Dear?” Meghan rounds on me and stares into my eyes.

  She’s pissed and not hiding it.

  “Remember our vows,” I say.

  Standing on her tiptoes in those fucking heels she’s wearing must be painful, but she adds a couple inches to herself as she tries and fails to look me dead in the eye.

  “I’m going to fucking kill you,” she says only loud enough that I can hear her.

  Grinning, I wrap my arm around her waist, pulling her in tight.

  Then I whisper softly in her ear. “I’m going to fuck you so hard.”

  Gasping, she pulls away from me, turning a bright red. Fiery anger in her eyes mixes with something entirely different as she stares at me. Annoyance, fear, and lust all mixed in one delicious package.

  A knock at the door behind us breaks the tension that’s been building in the large foyer.

  “That will be one of the men,” Lily says with a smile as she goes to the door and opens it up.

  “Ma’am,” James’s voice comes from behind me.

  “Ah, now that we’re all mostly here, we should head upstairs to talk,” Lucifer says with a nod toward James and me.

  Meghan may be as brave as they come, but the look of fear that crosses her features as she hears this startles me. Does she think we’re going to hurt her for information? I’d never allow that.

  “Meghan, you look like you could use a cup of coffee,” Lily says with a smile.

  “I… I think I could,” Meghan stammers when she turns to look at Lily.

  “Excellent,” Lucifer says. “We’ll be in the office.”

  Right now I’d rather catch a cup of coffee, but that’s only because I need to keep Meghan close to me. She’s mine and it feels as if she’s being ripped from my hands as she walks past the staircase that I’m walking up.

  One last look over her shoulder at me rips my insides out.

  Fucking hell.

  Rolling my shoulders, I clench my fists a couple of times to get the blood flowing in my body. She’s safe in this house, I keep telling myself. I don’t like that she’s without me, though.

  I said I’d protect her. Not someone else.

  “Where’s your bag?” I ask James as we get closer to the office.

  “Bag?” he asks in confusion.

  “Yeah, with the thumbs in it.”

  “Shit!” James groans. “I just got all that fucking blood off me.”

  “Leave them in the car,” Simon’s voice calls out from the office. “My wife doesn’t need to see you trailing a bunch of severed thumbs through the house.”

  “Agreed,” Matthew says.

  Shrugging my shoulders, I turn back to James and say, “Ten fucking years. Ten years and I never touched a dick but my own.”

  “What?” he asks.

  Flinging my wrist out at his balls, I feel just the tips of my fingers connect. His eyes cross and he slowly falls to his knees. The groan he lets out is sweet music to my ears.

  “Lucifer had to explain what the apps you put on my phone were,” I say with a laugh.

  Lucifer just shakes his head at our antics.

  “Could you act your fucking ages?” Simon grumbles as he gives me a dirty ass look.

  “What’s got your panties in a bunch?” I ask Simon as I sit down in one of the chairs.

  “You fucking taking Callahan’s daughter as your fucking bride for starters,” he spits out at me.

  “You said bedlam and mayhem. I just married our families together,” I say.

  “I like it,” Lucifer says from behind the desk he’s sitting at.

  It’s the same desk that’s been in this house long before I came to family. He fits well behind it. Though it reminds me of the last time I saw him sitting there. It was the first time he sat there as the head of the family, with the bodies of his father’s former men splayed out around the house. A true coup.

  But that coup had come at a cost.

  Too many connected men died in this house that day. One of them being the mayor of Garden City.

  It was the mayor’s death that ended up sending me to prison.

  I should have rotted away in prison and died a long miserable death. But Lucifer kept his promise. He got me out. He said he would, but ten long years was a long time to see any light at the end of the tunnel.

  It turned me into the man I am now, for good or ill.

  Johnathan enters the office. He walks over to a chair near mine and flops his ass down. Doesn’t seem like he’s changed much. He’s still dressed li
ke when I met him, jeans and biker boots with a gun at his hip.

  Andrew and the rest of our inner circle make it into the office, and Lucifer looks at us all with a deep grin.

  “I like having you all back together again,” Lucifer says.

  “Been a long time,” Johnathan says as he reaches over to slap me on the shoulder.

  Fucker. He knows I don’t want to be touched, but with that damn look in his eyes he doesn’t give a shit. Typical fucking Johnathan.

  Andrew pulls a phone from his pocket and tosses it to Simon. “All the stiffs in the church. Got face pics, and tried to get as many tattoos as I could. Mix of Russians and Irish. Should be pretty evident which side they were on.”

  “Good,” Simon says as he begins scrolling through the phone.

  “So, what’s the next step?” Jude asks from behind me.

  “We need more intel on why they’re partnering up with the Irish. Callahan wasn’t even much of a player over in Bethlehem before now. Is he simply trying to take a larger slice of the pie?” Simon asks, looking up from the phone he’s now got attached by some cord to a laptop.

  “Bigger piece of the pie is my guess,” Andrew says.

  “Same here, especially since I talked to the Heralds of Hell. Their Sergeant at Arms, Cane, is pretty pissed at the Irish as well. They were getting a good supply of guns from them that’s dried up recently,” Johnathan says.

  Looking over to him, I ask, “They still the top dog MC over there?”

  “Were,” he responds to me. “They got knocked down a few pegs when the leader died and his son got too big for his britches. That, and the fucking Cartel they have popping up all over the place there.”

  “They’re going to be a problem before too long if we don’t keep an eye on them,” Jude says. “The Cartel is up in Ohio, and it’s not exactly going well for the big cities.”

  “They are unfortunately for another day,” Simon says as he flips the laptop around on his lap to show us a picture.

  “Who’d like a deathmark on their head?” he asks with a laugh.

  Looking at the picture on the screen, I see a pretty blonde woman with brown eyes staring vacantly back at us.