Love is Strange: A Taboo Anthology

by Yolanda Olson

  To my astonishment, she pulls me on top of her. I question her with my eyes and she smiles and nods. I feel like a skittish schoolgirl I am so excited. She is so beautiful and she is mine.

  We make love most of the night. It almost feels spiritual. She has the most loving look on her face. I swear I love this girl so much my heart could burst.

  “Celeste?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Would you spend the rest of your life with me?”

  I look at her with tears in my eyes and nod yes. I am kissing her full on the mouth I realize my fatal mistake as I feel the knife blade slide up my spine. She looks adoringly in my eyes and slits my throat.

  Lisbet

  Celeste is my ultimate stuffie. Having her here with me everyday is my ultimate pleasure.

  The End

  Caim

  ANNA EDWARDS

  Chapter One

  CAIM

  “I don’t like it. The motherfucker’s too quiet.” At Tank, my president, pulls his gun out of its holster and primes the weapon.

  “Slippery bastards probably trying to pull a fast one, again.” I bring my own weapon up, ready to fire should it be needed. A gun feels strange in my hands as it’s not my weapon of choice for something like this. I prefer a sword, and hence my road name. I’m the fallen angel with a rapier, Caim. Prez and I are here to pick up a ‘grass’, the cunt Snake, who lost us at least thirty thousand dollars in a deal. He ratted us out to the cops, and they found our stash before we could sell it. Perfectly good weed incinerated after months of hard work growing the stuff. I don't smoke it myself as I like to keep my brain focused. I've got enough shit going on in my head, so it doesn’t need to be clouded by an artificial high. I'm not against it, though. I'd be a hypocrite if I were, considering my club sells it. There are people who need it just to get through the day with their medical problems. You can't always judge a book by its cover. Damn, I need to get my head in the game and stop drifting off into my own dreamworld. The man we’re hunting may have been stupid to go to the police, but he's a skilled fighter and has been around motorcycle clubs for a long time. He was a prominent member of a club in Chicago until he relocated to sunny California, about ten years ago. Prez gave him a chance on a recommendation from his previous club, but he's never really fitted in with us. There was always something about him which seemed strange. Now we know what it was, he’s out for himself. Well, his luck has just run out, and tonight he dies. Nobody crosses the Jade Riders and gets away with it.

  Prez mouths ‘Caim’ and nods towards a door at the back of the house we’re in. The place is run down and stinks worse than the club after a party. Rotting, leftover meals litter the place, discarded smut magazines cover the floor, and ashtrays are everywhere overflowing with ash and butts. Reminds me of the wonderful place I grew up in!

  Prez wants the door opened and fast. The element of surprise is key to capturing this fucker before he can put a bullet in his own head or ours.

  I bring my giant size twelve booted foot up and smack it hard into the door. It splinters and cracks wide open. In an instant, Prez and I rush the room. It’s dark, but the light through the broken door allows us to make out the lonely figure of the man we came for. He’s sitting at a table surrounded by books, encyclopedias’, fiction stories, all of the edges tattered and torn as though they’ve been read over and over again. I never pictured Snake for much of a reader.

  “Snake?” The leader of our club strides over to the table and thumps his hands down on it.

  “Prez?”

  “I think you know why we’re here.”

  "To kill me," the condemned man replies with a bluntness, which sends a shiver down my spine. This seems far too easy. I'm on edge, and nothing about this room is doing anything to calm my sense of dread. I try to see into the corner of the unlit space but am met with only darkness. I go to my biker brother's side, ready to act on his instructions.

  “Why’d you do it?” the president asks.

  “Greed. What else?”

  “Didn’t you get enough from me? The club has made all of us rich men.”

  “I wanted more.”

  This was wrong, the whole fucking situation stunk to high heaven.

  “Kill me then.” Snake jerks his head toward my gun.

  “You know it isn’t that simple. We’ve got to set an example for the brothers, you’ve got to suffer before you die. Make anyone else who is thinking of doing the same reconsider.”

  “Just get on with it.” Snake rolls his eyes at us like we’re pissy little girls too afraid to get down to business. Doesn't he know who I am! Fuck! I'm the final option after Heat, the Sergeant at Arms and the enforcer of this club. He’s the nice guy out of the two of us who uses his words and smarts to enforce the club law, and I’m his deputy and the one who they bring in when his approach fails. I'm sick and twisted. The product of a dysfunctional childhood. My mother was too busy opening her legs for any guy who wanted in her and was willing to pay to support her flourishing drug habit. My father was absent most of the time, due to the fact he preferred to drink himself stupid, and when he was around, he liked to use his fists on my mom, my brother, and me. I think by the time I was ten, I’d been beaten black and blue more times than I’d had hot dinners. My parents, if you can call them that –I prefer to use sperm and egg donors– were the sort of people who should have been sterilized the second they discovered what a dick and pussy were for. It would’ve saved a great deal of hassle and prevented me from becoming the twisted freak I am, and the junkie lifer, in Maricopa County jail in Arizona, that my brother is. I guess I should be glad my baby sister died before her second birthday from an accidental heroin overdose. She wouldn’t have stood a chance at life and is better off in heaven.

  “Do you know what I’m going to do to you?” I step up and lean forward into his face.

  He laughs. He actually stares directly at me and throws his head back with a maniacal chuckle. The guy’s lost it – he’s gone insane. I raise an eyebrow at my president.

  "Enough." The big man slams his fist onto the table, and the sound reverberates around the sparsely decorated room. There’s really nothing else in here apart from a table, the chair Snake is sitting on, and lots of books. “It’s time to go. Up.”

  Snake doesn’t move.

  “I said get up.” Prez is getting pissed now, and his whole body’s shaking with rage. Nobody dares to defy him – that’s why he's the boss. Snake, though, he’s a dead man walking, and they don’t always do what’s expected of them, or maybe they do because he doesn’t get up, which is just what I thought would happen.

  “Prez said on your feet,” I snarl.

  “Do you know why I came here?” Snake asks while tapping the four fingers of his right hand on the table in a steady rhythm. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. He’s too calm.

  "Ok." My boss nods over to me indicating we’re going to let Snake have his say for now, but not for long. I step back from the table and fold my heavily tattooed arms over my chest. "We’ll allow you to have your say, but only because I don't have any decent pussy up at the clubhouse I want to be tapping today."

  I chuckle under my breath. Prez lost his wife five years ago to cancer and has been on a mission ever since to be balls deep in any willing hole the club bitches have to offer. Most just want to get laid by him because it could be a way of becoming his next old lady, and in turn, the ruling lady in the club, but none of them are in any way equal to his late wife. I don’t think anyone ever will be. They’re just convenient fucks.

  Snake starts talking, “I got greedy. My old MC were close to finding out the truth about me. I told them I had to come this way for family reasons, and I got a good recommendation out of them to join this chapter of the Jade Riders. I got away with it. They never knew."

  “You got greedy, again, but this time we found out.”

  "Yes..and no,"–Snake looks off into the darkness of the room, his mind must be elsewhere, and it'
s starting to freak me the fuck out–"you think this is all about me making money from selling out my club, don't you? You think I’m selling you out to other clubs as well as the cops."

  Prez steps back and also folds his bulky forearms across his chest.

  “It sure as hell seems like it's about the money to me. No one would be willing to sell their brothers out to the cops or anyone else unless there was a handsome sum on offer.”

  “It wasn’t this way, at first. It was normal.”

  “Normal. What the fuck are you talking about?” I shake my head, Prez has a lot more patience than me. I'm itching to get this guy back to the dungeon and have some fun with him.

  “Me and her.”

  “What are you talking about?” Prez asks, his eyes flicking up to me with confusion.

  “My daughter. She was the reason for all of this. But not anymore, I’m dying. Not just from what you lot are about to do to me but from the disease riddling my body with retribution for all the wrongs I’ve done. But you know what, I’m not scared. The fires of hell don’t bother me not when I’m going to go out in a blaze of glory by destroying so many others around me.”

  My head whips around at the sound of metallic clanking to the left of me, which echoes through the room. I bring my gun up ready to fire on anyone who might be a threat, but I instantly lower it when the shadow of a thin feminine form materializes into the dim light to reveal a battered, bruised, and naked woman.

  “Shit!”–Prez exclaims–"What the fuck have you done?" He's over the table, and his fists are flying into Snake's face. I don't move though. I can't. I'm transfixed by the girl. She's hauntingly beautiful.

  “Caim, call in back-up. We’re going to need it!” Prez shouts at me, and I shake my head, trying to clear the vision of her from it.

  “Why?” I ask, and he nods toward the girl while pinning a half-conscious Snake to the ground with his knee.

  “Because if that is who I think it is, we’ve got a shit-storm heading our way. A violent and deadly one.”

  Chapter Two

  LAYLA

  Daddy told me I needed to stay quiet until he said the word ‘daughter’. It was hard with strange men in the room. Since I was ten years old, I've only ever been around my father and I’m twenty now. I don't remember much before. He told me when my mom died I lost the memories of my early years owing to my grief, and I believe him because, well, I can’t remember anything.

  As I step out of the shadows, I am struck by the sight of the big man who is watching the other man punch my father. I momentarily worry for all my precious books but then I’m drawn by his eyes and I forget them in a flash. His eyes are nearly as black as the darkness surrounding me. He sees me, and he knows what I am – he's just like me. I can almost smell the deviance oozing out of him. I inhale deeply to allow his scent to flood my body and senses. His associate, who I think is also his boss, distracts him and orders him to call for more people. Three is already too many for me. I don't want any more in here.

  "No." The word feels funny coming from my mouth. It sounds eerie, given it's the first word I’ve spoken in I can’t remember how long. I'm surprised I remember how to talk. I test my tongue against the edges of my teeth before saying, "Please." The man who'd been staring re-focuses his attention on me, and his eyes seem to get even darker as he looks over my body.

  “Prez?” he questions but doesn’t take his eyes from me.

  “Call them. Nobody else comes in here though.”

  The man pulls something out of his pocket. I recognize it as a mobile phone. I’ve seen Daddy use one before. It seems magical to be able to press a button and then speak to someone who is elsewhere in the world. I’ve read about countries thousands of miles away, and it amazes me that such a little device would be able to reach someone there.

  “Heat, we got a situation. We need more bodies down here.” The man speaks into the device, his voice a deep timbre, which sends shivers down my spine. I can’t hear the reply on the other end of the line, just a deep rumbling that sounds like the voice of another man.

  My daddy groans as the man called Prez pulls him up from the floor. His eye is swelling and his nose bleeding. It’s strange seeing the blood coming from him, unnerving. I stroke down over my side to where I have a cut. It's about two inches long but not wide. It's healing, but when he stuck the knife into my flesh, it hurt. Daddy said it was because I was naughty and disrespected him by not allowing him to do the things to me he likes. The ones where he plays with me…down there. I had my monthly bleed at the time, and it felt wrong. I get so dirty not having the ability to wash, and without any cloths to stop the flow. He likes when my period comes, though. It means I've not made an error like the time I had a baby in my stomach. He did the right thing by beating me until I bled it away, though, because I knew I deserved it when he told me it was all my fault. I look at the man on the phone, and his nostrils are flaring with anger as he looks at where my hand rests on my healing wound.

  “Prez, you need to get him out of here. Heat’s on the way.”

  My daddy is led or rather dragged from the room, and it's the first time I start to feel anxious. My palms turn sweaty, and I step closer to where he was taken, but I'm prevented from leaving the room by the chains around my wrists.

  "Daddy," I call out but there’s no response. I can't see him anymore. I turn around and see the big man is still in the room with me. I'd forgotten about him for a moment with my anguish. "Where's he going?" Stringing several words together requires a lot of thought, and I'm already feeling tired – the exhaustion is causing my head to spin. The man must sense it because he places his phone down on the table and rushes forward to grab me, but I scream and jump backward.

  "I won't hurt you," he reassures, but I'm scared and not sure if I can trust him. He's a stranger, and someone I'm not used to, but I can't shake the feeling in my head he's the same as me –filled with darkness.

  "Please," I whimper when he takes another step forward. He’s wearing a leather cut similar to the one I've seen on Daddy. It has the same emblem, a skull with brightly shining green eyes and the words Jade Riders sewn into the leather. This man’s, however, also has a badge with an outline of a man holding a sword on it. Above is the word, "Caim". He sees me looking at it, and I quickly lower my eyes to the ground.

  “It’s my name, Caim,” he addresses me, and I dare to flick my eyes up to look at him. He’s handsome, a square jawline and a mop of brown messy hair.

  “Lay...Layla." I hesitate using my label. It's not what Daddy always calls me, but I don't want to repeat that word to the man in front of me. He's full enough of anger, and I don't want to give him anymore reason to hate me.

  "Layla," he says the word, and it's soft and welcoming. I want to burst into tears, but I know I can’t. Tears have to be reserved for Daddy. They’re his. His reward for treating me well. “I’m not going to hurt you, but I need to come closer." He holds his hands up in the air to show surrender. "I want to take the chains off your wrists.” He grabs the sides of his leather cut and slipping it off, he slowly kneels and places it on the floor. He stands and pulls his t-shirt over his head. I quickly retreat a few more steps, and I'm back in the dark shadows in the corner of the room, my spine hitting the wall behind me.

  “Please. No.” I’m finding it hard not to let the tears, pooling in my eyes, fall.

  He doesn’t say anything but bends back down, and placing the t-shirt on the floor, retrieves his cut and puts it on again. He then picks the t-shirt up and holds it out to me.

  "I want you to put this on. There’ll be lots of other men here in a minute, and we need to make sure you’re dressed and comfortable."

  I shudder. More men.

  “You promised they wouldn’t come in here.”

  "They won't, but I need to take you out there and to safety."

  "Out there?" I exclaim and slide down the wall, bringing my knees up to my chest. "No, I can't."

  Continuing to move slowly,
Caim comes and sits next to me on the floor. It’s pitch black in the area of the room we’re in, but I can just about make out his presence. I feel him more than see him.

  “When was the last time you left here?”

  “I do…don’t,” I stammer.

  “You don’t?” he repeats with a question.

  “After my mom died, Daddy said I wasn’t well, and I needed to stay here otherwise people would take me away from him. I've not left the room since. I think Daddy said it’s been at least ten years." He deeply inhaled a hissing breath. "Are you the people he was talking about? Are you going to take me away from him?"

  He doesn’t reply straight away. It’s strange. I can almost hear the cogs of his brain trying to figure out what to say to me.

  “What Daddy does to me is wrong, isn’t it?” I blurt out.

  He growls a low rumbling noise, which vibrates off him in waves and fills the room with more truth than words ever could.

  “I need to get you out of here.” He stands up and walks over to the table. “Do you know where the key is to the chains?”

  "No," I reply and bow my head. I know from where he stands in the room I’m shrouded in darkness, and I prefer that. He can't see what I am –the dirty little whore I've become.

  "Layla." I get lost in my own thoughts I don’t notice he's right in front of me until he bends down and lifts my chin, so I’m forced to look up at him. My body’s screaming at me to push him away, but I’m lulled into a sense of security by his warm breath on my face and the spell he weaves from the pools that are his charming black eyes. "I'm going to go and find some bolt cutters. I’ll be back. Nobody’ll come in here. You have my word. Prez is taking care of your father.”