“Okay, I’ll bite. You wanted to be some big movie star?”
“No, I’d be me, only with a normal family.”
He let her words flow over him.
“You know, the kind that eats together, argues over what TV show to watch, and takes a big vacation once a year.”
Daisy’s voice was light as she spun her fantasy, but a sadness overwhelmed him for the little girl who didn’t want to be a princess in a castle or a famous rock star. She wanted to be normal, and wasn’t that what he wanted for Derek?
“Some nights we’d have game night, some nights we’d watch TV, and one Saturday a month, we’d go to the movies.”
She leaned up on her elbow and faced Joker, but he kept his eyes on that damn ceiling fan because looking at her right now was way too painful. Her hopeful, innocent voice scraped so close to the bone that one slip and a weakness so powerful would take over and destroy him.
He blinked a few times, and Daisy silently caressed his cheek like she knew her little fantasy was so pure that it hurt.
Joker made a big production of clearing his throat, and when he was sure he could handle it, he turned to her. “That sounds nice.”
And it did. It sounded like a dozen dreams he’d told himself as a kid before he realized that some dreams would never come true, and any time he’d wish for them, they’d always bite him in the ass. Then, the reality of a fucked-up life showed him that he had to take what he wanted. Don’t ask, don’t get permission, just grab it and keep grabbing until I get my fill. The only catch was, he’d ended up filling his life with bullshit, and what mattered had fallen away because he hadn’t been paying attention to the important shit. Even sicker? He hadn’t even known what was important.
It left Joker with empty promises and a false sense of respect. Respect he stole by pulling a gun or giving somebody a beat down. Sure, those people respected him as long as he stayed tough and on top, but one slip and they were after his bones like a flock of vultures or a herd of hyenas, pulling him apart until there was nothing left.
Chapter Twelve
Joker and Daisy lay side by side for a long time with her hand tucked into his.
“What should I call you, Daisy or Charlie?”
She chewed on her bottom lip. “Good question.”
Charlie still lived in that rundown trailer by the railroad tracks. The little white-trash girl who nobody wanted, who turned into a beautiful, flawed heroine searching for her happily ever after.
“Daisy.” A name never tainted by the insecurities of a scarred childhood.
“I like it—Daisy.”
“With any luck, I’ll be able to leave Charlie in Miami.”
Joker wrapped his hand around hers and squeezed. Right now, she would’ve paid anything for some magic drug to erase all their pain. Give them a second chance, a do-over. More fantasies that would never come true.
“Tell me about your daughter.”
Her chest expanded as she geared up for the painful story. “I messed up so bad with her.”
“Easy to do when the lines of right and wrong get so blurred.”
It was like he could see into her head.
“She died soon after that picture was taken.” Daisy gazed down at the photo, remembering Jessie’s laugh, and her dark, pensive eyes examining her surroundings. Like she knew her fate, even at that young age.
“Accident?” he asked.
“Yes, a preventable accident.”
“And a biker had something to do with it?”
Of course a biker had something to do with it. Daisy’s screwed up DNA attracted every lowlife thug within a fifty-mile radius, her destiny already set and mired in tragedy.
“I really did grow up in Beetsville, West Virginia. A place with nothing to do but get into trouble. Viper was the vice president of the Dragons, the local motorcycle club that ruled that little shit town and all the surrounding towns. He was dark and dangerous with a body that all the local girls whispered about behind their hands. Even the rich girls drooled over Viper, and yet, it was me who snagged him.”
Her miniskirts and Daisy Dukes, paired with cutoff, see-through white t-shirts, attracted attention from all the local males.
“He took me to biker parties, where we got drunk and sampled every drug imaginable. Viper was the first person who ever acted like he cared, so when he suggested we live together, I was thrilled and more than happy to get away from that crummy trailer.”
Charlie knew how to keep it all together. She’d never let a man get to her. Never show any feelings. Charlie knew what she was doing. Until she didn’t.
She shifted on the bed so he couldn’t see her face.
“Everything was great until I complained about him screwing every woman in town. He rewarded me with a cracked rib and a broken arm. While having my arm set at the local hospital, a routine blood test revealed I was four months pregnant. Five months later, I gave birth, alone.”
“Okay, Viper was a first-rate asshole, but how is that your fault?”
“Because I should’ve left him, but I was so desperate for that fantasy family that I fooled myself into thinking I could change him.”
He wrapped his arms around her. “That doesn’t explain what happened to your daughter.”
“While I was working a double shift at some crap diner, Viper was too high on meth to notice that his four-year-old daughter wandered outside.”
She buried her head into his shoulder, hoping it would shield her from the truth.
“We lived on a busy street, and the truck never … the truck driver never saw her.”
Daisy shuddered against him, and he pulled back slightly to wipe away her tears, but there were none. Instead, she bit her bottom lip so hard that he expected to see blood. She had no tears because pain like that went way beyond crying, and a woman like Daisy knew crying was a useless emotion that happened after the fact.
Revenge.
Retribution.
Retaliation.
Those words held weight; those words gave you purpose and made you want to live another day.
She probably thought setting up another biker would fill the void, but it never worked. Joker’d lived on the edge, trying to quiet the memories by smashing in some guy’s face or trashing his room at the clubhouse until the floor was littered with shards of glass. Those actions got results, but they chipped away at you until there was nothing left but blood, skin, and bone. Just the basics to survive, but not enough to live.
“Jessie was my heart, my life, but … after she died, nothing mattered. I walked through the weeks afterward in a daze. A fog of regret and shame and guilt. I blamed myself for leaving her with him, blamed myself for being with him.”
Daisy pushed herself up against the pillows, like she needed to tell the story sitting upright, in full fight mode. “Viper didn’t even come to her funeral. Probably too high to even realize that his daughter had died. I left the gravesite with the clothes on my back and two hundred dollars I’d stolen from him that morning and hopped on a bus for Vegas. Three days later I got a text from him, accusing me of stealing his money. It took him three days to realize I was gone, and then all he did was ask about the money.”
“Did you ever hear from him again?”
“A few months later, a mutual friend told me he’d gotten shot in a bar fight, but by then, I was already a headliner at Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club. What they call a ‘gem’.”
“It doesn’t surprise me.” Joker couldn’t help the smirk that curved his lips. “I’ve been to Sapphire in Manhattan—some beautiful women.”
“Met an older guy out there, Jerry, and he helped me improve on what nature gave me. He also taught me that knowledge is power. So during the day I went back to school and eventually graduated a four-year college in two; then I received a master’s degree in European languages. Who knew little Daisy had a photographic mind, a passion for learning, and a gift for languages?”
“How long were you in Vegas?”
> “Four years. I left soon after Jerry went to prison. It seems the government doesn’t like it when you cheat them out of millions of dollars in taxes. Thankfully, although I’d set up most of his clients and helped with his scams, there was nothing to implicate me on paper.”
“I know I’m gonna sound like a douche, but you’re not making this up, right?”
“No.” She bit her lower lip. “Telling you about Jessie means everything that comes after is the truth.”
Joker couldn’t believe all Daisy’d been through, all she’d survived, and then everything she’d managed to accomplish. He’d barely gotten his high school diploma, let alone college and a master’s degree.
“And for the record, I’ve never told anyone about my daughter.”
“Not even the Vegas guy?”
“Not even Jerry.” She drew in a deep breath. “When I hit Vegas, all I wanted to do was forget, so I put up walls. Running cons let me be someone else—anyone but the neglectful mother who let her child die.”
“Don’t say that. You were a teenager with nowhere else to go.”
He held her tight but knew that nothing he could do would fill the hole that such a pain left in your heart and soul.
“That night in the club. You mentioned a son?”
Joker’s pained expression made her want to grab the words back and shove them in her mouth. Just because she’d shared her fucked-up life didn’t mean he was ready to do the same. Although it was amazing that this rough, edgy biker had a son. The universe was fucked up. That any higher power would allow either one of them to bear children was a slap in the face of everything decent.
“Derek. He’s thirteen.”
“You said your wife died, so you’ve been raising him on your own.”
“Yeah.”
“How did she die?”
He fisted the sheet. “I killed her.”
Her eyes widened, and the queasy feeling returned. “What?”
“A rival club kidnapped her over a year ago.”
Daisy knew there would be no good end to this story and wished to anything holy that she’d never questioned him.
“Before we got her back, they did shit to her.” His voice lowered to a raspy whisper, “Bad shit.” He braced his hands against his thighs.
Joker’s silence surrounded her like a pool of icy water that she didn’t want to jump into. His deep breathing filled the room, and he shook his head as if ridding himself of a nightmare. If the notorious biker struggled with this memory, what chance did she have?
"Two weeks later, she took a handful of pills and never woke up.”
She exhaled and swallowed hard. “That’s terrible—but you didn’t kill her.”
“I might as well have,” he shouted, then slammed his fist against the night table. “Digger screwed the Renegades on a deal, so they looked for revenge. They picked her up because they knew she was mine.”
“You can’t blame yourself for something somebody else does.”
“Like you didn’t blame yourself for what that bastard Viper did?”
“That was”—she bit her lower lip—“exactly the same thing.”
“She’d still be alive, and Derek would still have a mother and not be stuck with me.”
“I’m sure your son loves you.”
“He does. I don’t know why the fuck, but he does.”
“Maybe because you’re a good father.”
“A good father wouldn’t raise his kid in a clubhouse full of criminals.”
“A good father cares about his child and looks out for his child. The where and the how doesn’t matter. There were plenty of families as poor as us growing up in West Virginia, but they had love and security from their parents. Being poor or in a bad environment doesn’t mean you have a bad childhood. It’s what happens on the inside.” She tapped her chest. “Knowing that no matter what, you’re loved.”
He cuddled her to him and nuzzled into her hair. “And now that I know about Digger’s plan, I gotta get Derek out before something happens to him too.”
“Does he know about his mother?”
Joker pulled away from her. “He knows she committed suicide, but he doesn’t know why.”
“Maybe he doesn’t need to know.”
“If I tell him the truth, I could lose him forever.”
“You couldn’t know what would happen.”
“Desiree was just a kid when she started coming around the club for protection from her abusive father. First time I saw her I was twenty; she was seventeen and all banged up. I knew then I had to help her, protect her. A great fuckin’ job I did with that, huh?”
“It wasn’t your fault what those animals did.”
“A week after I met her, she moved into my room at the clubhouse. A few months later, I knocked her up. She was so excited. Wanted to give our baby a better life than she had growing up, but what chance did she have? Shacked up and pregnant with an outlaw biker who ran drugs for the Russian mob at underground fights. She was only seventeen when Derek was born, and she looked so young that people thought he was her baby brother.”
A huge lump settled in the back of her throat that made swallowing impossible.
“She loved him so much.” He blinked furiously, and then a huge, fat tear ran down his cheek. He tried to blink it away, but another one followed the first.
Seeing Joker so undone and vulnerable ruined her. The women’s magazines were always touting how men should cry and show their feelings, but this was freaking crazy. Daisy’s eyes burned with tears, and seconds later, the wetness rolled down her face.
He reached out to her and rubbed away her tears with his thumb. “You couldn’t cry before, but now you’re crying.”
“I don’t deserve my tears. I’m crying for you.” She placed her hands against his wife-beater, slid them up and over his shoulders, then dug her nails into his sinewy muscles. “Hold me.” She leaned in, taking his lips with hers. He resisted for half a second, then wrapped his arms around her. “Tighter.” Daisy liked him close. She needed him close.
His hands skimmed down her side, resting on her hips and pulling them closer. The heat of Joker’s body, solid and warm, smoothed out the rough edges. She’d revealed all her secrets, well, most of them. It liberated Daisy and made her light and weightless for the first time in a long while.
He pulled away from her mouth and growled into her neck. “You realize how fucked up we are, right?”
She nodded against the side of his face, and he stilled. For a second, she feared he would pull away and rob her of this magnificent sensation—rob her of the biker she wanted to hate. God, how she’d wanted to hate him, but it was the one lie she couldn’t pull off.
He undid the button and zipper of the white pants she’d worn to the cabana. The soft silk dragged against his calloused fingers. Joker’s lips found hers again, and she opened for him, giving him her tongue and letting him claim her mouth.
Daisy snaked her hand between them. “The sex was always real for me.”
“Shut up,” he ground out, a faint glimmer of doubt still clouding his eyes.
She didn’t blame Joker for his mistrust. She needed what he’d given her so many times over the last few days: his hard, beautiful body, and so much more. He’d rightfully accused her of scamming him; the sex as part of the con, yes, but the free abandon that she experienced with him, no.
He shifted his hips when she undid his jeans, then angled away from her long enough to push them down. “Damn, I’m fucked.”
With one knee on the bed, he bent forward and captured her mouth again. Stealing her air, he kissed her like no one had ever done before—desperate, needy, dirty, and oh-so good.
“Lie to me, steal from me.” He grunted. “I don’t give a fuck what you do to me as long as I can sink my dick into you.”
Daisy knew it was sex talk, but maybe for this little while she could imagine a man who wanted her unconditionally, in a place where she didn’t have to worry about the next jo
b. She wiggled her hips to lower her pants and thong; then, she pushed at Joker again, and he broke away from their connection. He zeroed in on her eyes as his hips did a slow grind, just enough to make her wet but not enough to make her come. He kept up the slow and steady pace, and when Daisy tried to touch herself, he pulled her hand away and glared at her—daring her and letting her know that this was the sweet justice for conning him—a punishment she deserved and readily accepted.
Joker forced himself to take it slow. Torture her, make her want him more than the air she sucked into her lungs. But the sweet agony pulled him from the inside out. His dick wanted to pound her hard, to fill her up until there was nothing left.
Daisy’s words rang in the way back of his brain—“The sex was always real for me.” Bullshit talk that happened when two fucked-up people were drowning and searching, but the way she commanded his body with a single touch was electrifying and sharp like the edge of a knife. Just the sound of Daisy’s voice and the way her body moved across a room set him off.
She had the power to wreck him, and when she wrapped her legs around his hips, he had to brace himself against the mattress as his fists gripped the sheets and clumps of her hair. The bandage on her cheek and the bruises that shadowed her eyes amped him up more. Yeah, he was a sick fuck, but something about her banged-up face tripped a switch in him. It made him want to protect her, keep her safe, and make her his.
Daisy’s fingers brushed against his dick, and he wanted to snarl and bite his way past all the barriers she put up, through all the fake bullshit, and find whatever made her tick. Find out what her heart was made of. She tightened her grip on him, not too tight, but just enough to drive him fuckin’ crazy. Just enough to put him right where he wanted to be, where he needed to be. Joker tilted his hips and stilled.
“Fuck!”
Her hooded lids went wide.
“Condom,” he gasped out, pissed off at his lack of control. He never let himself get this far without wrapping up. “What the hell are you doing to me?”
Beyond Redemption: Joker (Serpents MC Las Vegas Book 1) Page 8
