“I like men. It’s just… we live in this swipe-left culture, where guys are only interested in hooking up. Like not even a first date—meet for the first time to bang. Then they’re off to the next one. I’m not that kind of girl. I’m a Virgo. We can rock your world, but you got to work for it a little before we do.”
I laugh. She did make the guys work for it when we were younger, that’s true.
“All right, either Rory or I will drop them off. Thanks, babe. I love you; you know that?”
“Back atcha, girl. Now go get pretty to show all those party skanks up.”
Party skanks? I never thought about them. Shit.
In the end, we decide Rory should take the girls because when I asked him if party skanks will be in the clubhouse, he informed me that skank is a judgmental word, but yes, the pieces—which stands for “pieces of ass,” but skank is judgmental?—will be there. I have to make myself look like I belong on the arm of a Lord.
The music blares from the clubhouse loud enough that I can sing along with the AC/DC song playing and I’m still inside Rory’s home. Yeah, yeah… I know about your dirty deeds, I think continuing to primp until my man finds me in the bathroom.
“Goddammit, Frankie, I wasn’t planning on carrying tonight,” he says. I look at him, puzzled.
“Uh, why would you need to carry?” The thought of him and guns still makes me nervous as hell, but the fact remains that this is him now and if I’m going to be with him, then I have to accept the new brother-of-the-Lords Rory.
“Because I’m gonna have to put a bullet in any man who looks atcha, and when yar sexy arse struts in that clubhouse, they’re all gonna be looking.”
It’s just a black Harley tee cut with a wide neckline to drape off the shoulder and a thick leather belt cinching in my waist. I paired it with a denim pencil skirt and my tall, black leather boots with the pointy toe and pointier heel. I call the look “sophisticated biker.” Maybe eventually, I’ll let loose enough to pull off a micro-mini and a tube top that only covers my boobs, but probably not. Baby steps. We’ll see how much into the life I’m willing to go in baby steps.
My hair is bigger than I normally wear it with loose curls and I even pulled out my best gold hoop earrings for the occasion. After a YouTube tutorial and an hour of applying, scrubbing and reapplying my face, I’ve finally perfected the 1940s movie star makeup look I was going for, though.
“So you like?”
As his answer, Rory pulls me against his hard, warm body to kiss the hell out of me. Good thing my lipstick is smudge-proof. Damn, this man always knew how to kiss, but he’s only gotten better.
“Baby,” I whisper against his lips, hardly able to speak, needing to catch my breath. “We aren’t going to make it to the party if you don’t stop.”
“Don’t fucking care,” he whispers back.
One of us has to be the reasonable party here. I take it upon myself and push him back a step. The man is so strong, he only goes because he’s giving in, not because I stand a chance in hell of moving him on my own. “I got all dressed up. You’re taking me out,” I scold him.
He laughs as he takes my hand. “I’ll be with ya all night. Ya know Elise, Trish, and Caity—they’ll be there, too. But I won’t leave ya unless yar ready.”
“Have I told you today that I love you?”
“Ya have now.” And that was the wrong thing to say because we fall back in to another round of kisses. It takes us another fifteen minutes before we ever leave his trailer.
Cigarette smoke billows out when Rory opens the door to the clubhouse. I’m unsure as to how I’m going to breathe in there. It smells yeasty, like beer, and smoke… and sex. And the reason for all three is pretty clear. Brighton and I went to plenty of parties in high school, and Rory always knew where to go when we were together the first time. But this…
There are women and men casually talking and laughing. All with drinks. Some men smoking cigarettes and I even notice—because who doesn’t recognize that scent?—a few guys smoking weed. And not two feet from them, there’s a man pounding into a woman bent over a sofa arm from behind. Right next to that chick’s head, there’s another woman riding a man sitting on the sofa.
My mouth drops open and it’s a struggle to close it. “They’re having… um… sex… in the open.” I speak softly yet sternly into Rory’s ear.
“Just a bit of fun, lass. No harm. Those men don’t have old ladies.”
“But they’re having sex in front of everyone.”
“That gonna be a problem?” he asks. As if I’m the one overreacting here?
“It might be. You don’t expect—”
“No.” No what? Is he telling me it’s not going to be a problem for me or that he doesn’t expect me to engage in public fornication?
“Rory, I… This is…”
“Ya see Elise fucking Boss on a table?”
What? Horrified, I scan the room looking to see her. I just never thought Elise would… “I don’t see her, no.”
“Caity? Trish?”
Ah. Now I get it. “No. I don’t see them fucking Boss on a table,” I try to joke.
“Woman,” he says. “This is serious. Check yar judgement at the door. We do thing differently here. The clubhouse is a place to let loose. Some of us don’t like fucking in public, some as ya can see, don’t give a fuck where they get their rocks off.” His voice holds an edge of irritation and he actually drops my hand.
Is he angry? With me? Oh, hell no. “Well, it makes me uncomfortable. You should have warned me. I’d have had time to, I don’t know, mentally prepare or something. In my life, people don’t just have sex where everyone else can see them. I’m not the unreasonable one here.”
“Drop the judgmental, bratty behavior or I’ll sit yar ass up on the bar and fuck ya so hard, yar moan’ll have everyone in the room staring.”
I fold my arms over my breasts and through gritted teeth hiss, “Touch me and I’ll make you wish you were never born.”
A skank piece who really should’ve picked up on the vibe coming from our side of the room picks the worse time in the world to saunter over. “Hey, Scotch, baby… you look tense. How ’bout I loosen you up?”
Then, I kid not, she drops to her knees in front of him and starts to unbuckle his belt like she plans to suck him off there in front of me. Something snaps inside me. That saying, “I saw red”—it’s a real, legitimate phenomenon. I literally see a red film drop in front of my eyes and I grab the woman by the hair to pull her up. She screams and claws at my hand, slicing several marks. All that does is piss me off more. This is something I’ve never done before, but I ball my fist and swing, connecting with her jaw. Blood dribbles down her chin.
“Don’t you ever fucking go near Rory again.” I ground out and it’s now that I realize everyone in the place is staring at me, including a dumbfounded Rory. My eyes fill with tears and I take off running back out the front door. He doesn’t follow me, either.
Not when I go back in his place to grab my purse and keys. Not when I start my car and peel out of there.
I’m almost to my apartment when I remember that my bed is in his place. “Dammit!” I scream and cut a left to head to Brighton’s house instead. I’ve never punched a woman in my life and I think I might have knocked a tooth out.
This isn’t me.
Crying fat, ugly tears on Brighton’s doorstep, I ring the bell and wait. It takes two seconds for her to answer and like a best friend, she doesn’t ask one question, just pulls me inside and hugs until I’m ready to spill my guts.
I plop down on her sofa right next to where the girls are passed out in the pack-and-play while she walks into her kitchen. A few minutes later, she comes back with a tumbler full of what I know is a cherry 7 and 7.
“They were having sex right out in the open,” I cry to my best friend, then gulp my drink and hiccup. “And when I said it made me uncomfortable, he called me… me… judgementalandbratty.” The last word gets jumbled
together as a fresh round of tears flow and a huge sob rips from my throat.
“Like real sex?” Brighton asks.
What does that even mean? “No. The fake kind, with robots. Of course, the real kind. Women bent over sofa arms or riding dudes right in front of us all.”
“And he never thought to give you a heads-up that this is what you might see?”
“No,” I answer. Brighton has known me long enough. If he’d just given me some warning, some time to mentally prepare, it wouldn’t have knocked me for such a loop.
“Asshole,” she mumbles through a loud pounding on her front door. “He’s gonna wake up his girls.” Brighton stands to storm over to lay into him when she throws the door open and it takes me a split second too long to realize that it’s not Rory come to hash things out with me.
It all happens so fast. All I see is a cut—but not a Lords cut, this one has blue lettering—and then an arm punches Brighton, knocking her on her butt and knocking her clean out.
Then he steps into the room. He fills the space in a very bad way. Shaved head, a bullet hole tattooed between his eyes, and a face that looks like he’d run it through a meatgrinder.
He glares at me, cracks his knuckles and his neck, and says, “Scotch fucked up. Yer gonna beg for death before I’m done.”
11.
Rory
I can’t fucking believe she’d embarrass me like that in front of my brothers. Every one of ’em looked at me like ‘Can’t ya control yar woman?’ I stomp over to the bar. “Scotch,” I order, sliding onto a stool. “Triple.” The prospect behind the bar doesn’t say a word, flipping over a glass and pulling a bottle from the shelf behind him before he pours the first of what I can already tell will be many.
After slamming the first, I choke at the same time coughing out, “Another.” The kid pours me a second even as I feel heat at my back.
“What the fuck?” Duke grumbles, then he says to the prospect, “I’ll take one too.”
The kid slides my drink to me and then one to Duke. He opens a beer and hands it off to Boss, who stepped up beside me, too. Duke shoots back his whiskey and turns to lean on his arm so he’s looking right at me.
“I’ll ask again. What. The. Fuck?”
“I didn’t know that’s how she’d react.” I only drink half my drink down this time. “Thought she was old lady material. Guess I was wrong.”
“You were wrong?” Duke asks. “That’s all ya got ta say?”
“She won’t be back at the club.”
Boss grips my shoulder. That’s one hell of an act of aggression.
“My brother and my boss or not,” I snarl, “Don’t wanna turn yar wife widow. Ya remove that motherfucking hand now.”
“Calm the fuck down and think for a second,” Duke butts in.
“I said she won’t be back. What more do ya want?”
“For you to get your head outta yer ass and go after her,” Boss, who still hadn’t removed his hand, says.
It’s too dark to read his face and overly loud and I—shit—I don’t think I heard him properly. “Ya want what?”
“For you to get your head outta yer ass and go get that woman.” He speaks real slow. Annunciating each word as if he thinks I’m too stupid to understand.
“I—” Confused, my mouth drops open and stays open.
“Did ya tell her about the pieces? She know they like to fuck out in the open? That it’s a badge of pride for ’em?” Duke asks.
I shut my mouth. “No.”
“You warn her when she ain’t tryin’ to process everything she’s seein’ that Lords parties are almost anything goes, but she don’t have to participate in anything she’s not comfortable with?” Boss continues.
“No.” I grit my teeth and slam back the last of my drink, then use the back of my hand to wipe my mouth. No, what I did was run my mouth like an arsehole and tell her I’d fuck her on the bar top. It felt like a slap in the face, like she was judging me because I don’t judge the brothers who don’t take it into private. Like I’m somehow wrong. What else was I supposed to do? Frankie is everything to me.
“Did ya send Ronnie away when she dropped to blow ya in front of yer woman?” Duke asks. “Because it sure as fuck didn’t look like it.”
This time I don’t bother to answer at all. I was shocked that Ronnie would be so brazen and the way Frankie reacted, she didn’t give me the chance to do anything but stand there and look dumb.
“Brother,” Boss says. “You got a second chance with this woman. Don’t blow it. Elise loves her. Says she’s total old lady material.”
Okay. “Listen—”
“No, you listen. Don’t know if you remember, but Elise freaked the fuck out when she saw the pieces.”
I shake my head. “No. I was taking care of business. We didn’t meet until you were opening the club.”
“Right. Then you missed some fireworks, brother. I neglected to tell her how the parties go. She wasn’t used to that shit. But she got used to it, just like your woman will if you give her the chance.”
All this is getting us nowhere. I should’ve never brought her to the party. Why did I think she’d be okay with it? She’s a daycare teacher for Christ’s sake. Nothing more to be said. I stand from the stool ready to call this night a bust and start over tomorrow. “I think she’s just too… good for the life.”
Wrong thing to say. Both Duke and Boss take defensive stances in front of me, blocking me in. “Ya sayin’ Doc ain’t good?” Duke asks. “I’d think long and hard about how yer gonna answer.”
“Brother, you gonna talk shit about my wife?” Boss says at almost the same time.
“Fuck, no… wasn’t saying yar women ain’t good, I meant goody two-shoes. That’s the phrase my ma used.”
“Ain’t no woman worth takin’ on as an old lady who ain’t a little goody two-shoes in the beginnin’. She wasn’t, she’d already be a piece up here fuckin’ the brothers. You gotta ease ’em into the life,” Duke says.
“Don’t remember ya easing Caity into anything.”
“It took her a year of comin’ here before she started gettin’ used to how things work. That’s when she finally opened to bein’ my old lady. She and I’d been dancin’ around our attraction that whole time.” Duke lifts his glass to the prospect for another drink. “Look, I ain’t tellin’ ya who to put in yer bed. I’m just sayin’ you got a woman who clearly loves yer stupid ass, and she loves those babies better than their own ma. Like she was their ma—takin’ on all that responsibility while you were gone. Don’t love her back, yer call. But if she’s the one, then brother, you better get yer ass down the mountain and bring that woman home.”
Then they both turn to leave me standing knee-deep in my own misery. The realization of what a stupid fuck I’ve been hits hard. I scrub my hands over my face and take in several slow breaths. Christ, I screwed this all up.
Phone in hand, I dial Frankie while leaving the club. Predictably, she doesn’t answer. “Woman, pick up. I was a major arse and I’m sorry. We need to talk.”
I jog for home to get my truck because we might have to stop and get the lassies. Dutchy opens the gate for me to speed through. It takes ten minutes to reach Frankie’s apartment complex. I forget which number is hers because she always brings the babes home to me and have to scroll through old texts to find it.
Her car’s not parked out front. I throw the truck in park and hop out to run up to her door. And I stand there for several minutes like a damn fool, knocking on a door that no one’s going to answer. If she’s not home, then she’s with Brighton.
Back in the truck, I hightail it over to Brighton’s neighborhood. And I notice a problem right away. The lights are on in the living room, but the front door is wide open, though Frankie’s car is in the drive, so I know she has to be here. They would’ve had to have seen my headlights turn into the driveway and yet no Brighton in the doorway waiting to bitch at me. Something isn’t right. I reach over to pull my pistol from t
he glovebox before exiting the cab.
Arms outstretched, the barrel pointing low, I slowly move up the paved walk to the front of the house. Still no one shows to bitch at me. No noise but the television coming from inside. “Frankie?” I call inside. I’m getting a bad feeling. “Ya alright in there?” My gut clenches. Fuck if I don’t wanna go in there but I know I have to. “Get the lasses, mo leannan. I was an arse for sure, but I’m bringing ya home.”
Nothing.
When I reach the open door, I know she’s not going to yell at me because she’s not fucking here. The front room is turned. Furniture flipped over. Broken glass. And I see at least one spot of blood on the carpet.
“Frankie!” I call out, again. “Frankie, it’s me. If yar here, please, Jesus, answer.” No answer comes. I run through the house, checking every room, using my shirt to open doors to not leave any prints. My wee ones are gone. Brighton is gone. Frankie is fucking gone. My chest grows tight. It feels like a fist wrapped around my heart trying to pull it out of my body.
Christ, it had to be loud. Did no neighbors come to check on them?
This can’t be happening again. We killed that fucker Houdini. Frankie had no psychotic ex coming after her. Did Brighton? I fall to my knees. If one hair is out of place on Frankie’s head, if they’ve hurt Mollie or Macie, whoever did this will wish for death before I’m done. That I swear.
Finally, a neighbor comes to check on the commotion I’ve caused. “You okay?” he asks.
“Call 9-1-1. The house is trashed. They’re missing.”
“Missing?” he asks, and I snap.
“Fucking go—now. Call the police.”
The man runs back inside his house and I fish my phone from my pocket to call my brothers. It’s Duke who finally answers. “Not goin’ well?” he asks, chuckling at something someone says there at the club. I can’t make out the words, just that there’s a voice.
“They been kidnapped!” I yell. “I need yar help.”
“What?” he shouts. “Music off!” The music in the background cuts immediately. “Fuck, you mean kidnapped?”
Scotch: Unraveled (Brimstone Lords MC Book 4) Page 12
