Chapter 1
Coal
Walking down the steps of the clubhouse, I was silent on my feet.
Everyone else sounded like a herd of elephants was going down them, but not me.
After everything I’ve been through, you learn to be silent on your feet.
But alas, I didn’t want to end up with my head in a bottle for the rest of the day, so I tossed those thoughts out of my head.
I’ve been sober for three years.
And I don’t plan on going down that dark path.
Not when I knew that if she ever saw that part of me, the light in her eyes that I strived to protect… would diminish.
Once I reached the bottom stair, my boot landing on the concrete floor, I tried like hell not to let the vision before me take my mind to a place it didn’t need to go to.
To the woman that I needed to set free.
However, every time I thought about it… I realized I had no control.
Fucking none.
And it made it even worse anytime I saw the love between Pipe and Gabby.
Just like right freaking now.
Which instantly had my mind going back to that day… three years ago.
***
Around the old oak table that held our club insignia, a black dragon, with its wings spread out, its arrow-tipped tail ready to stab anyone that dared him harm, we were all deciding the best way to take out an MC that seemed to grow too big for their britches.
In other words, they acted like they had bigger balls than they actually had.
Normally, church was mandatory, however, even though it was, special circumstances made it possible for you to miss it without being fined a grand.
And the member that was missing was one of our oldest ones.
Piney was in the hospital on dialysis and was desperately needing a kidney.
If I had a heart left in my chest, that was even remotely beating, I would feel something for the old man.
But… well… I just didn’t have that organ anymore.
Or so I thought… and that thought was erased from my brain an hour later after Asher’s phone rang.
We weren’t like other clubs; we didn’t put our cells in a box outside of church.
We had tried that. Once.
And only once.
Some boy thought it would be okay to grab Stella’s bottom when she was in the fifth grade. Stella… well… Stella didn’t put up with that shit.
She had throat-punched the boy.
It wasn’t until two hours later, once church had ended, that he called the school back.
And let me tell you something, that throat punch was the least of what the parents had to worry about.
Asher held up his hand as he took the call.
He let out three words once he listened to the caller, “Well, fuck me.”
We all watched as he listened to whatever else was going on.
Then he stood up from his chair, looked at me, and said, “You’re with me. Need your gut reaction to a person if I’m going to do what Piney just asked of me.”
At my nod, he banged the gavel.
Within minutes, we got on our bikes and then headed to the hospital.
As we were walking in, Asher laid shit out for me in a low tone, “Piney just got out of surgery, and like the fool, he is, when he learned that the person who donated him the kidney had a bad reaction to the anesthesia, he got up from his bed and headed to the person’s room.”
I nodded, waiting for him to finish because I knew there was more to this story.
But he didn’t finish. Not yet anyway.
When we made it to the elevator, the moment the doors closed he explained further, “You remember a couple of years ago, the teenager who was his neighbor that got raped and Piney beat the absolute fuck out of her rapist?”
At my nod, his words floored me, “That teenager just turned eighteen this morning, and she was the one who donated him the kidney.”
I let his words process through my brain and all I could think was, holy fucking shit.
I didn’t say it though, words were useless. It was your actions that spoke for you.
He saw it on my face, though, and therefore he nodded.
When the doors opened, he looked at the screen showing what floor we were on, then he looked at the nurse that was about to step onto our elevator and asked, “Darlin’, you mind grabbing the next one?”
She looked at our kuttes, the whites of her eyes getting brighter with how wide her eyes were, and then she swallowed, nodded, then stepped back.
The doors closed again, and Asher mumbled, “Didn’t need anyone hearing this shit and need you to know the rest. Piney plans to offer her money to help her get on her feet, but he told me he knew she wouldn’t accept that. Then he asked if we could make her a club girl, but that she would be the only girl that had the power to tell anyone no. And I offered that if they didn’t listen to her, I would beat the lights of them.”
That was when Asher’s phone sounded; he pulled it out and read the screen, then pocketed it. “She agreed to be a club girl.”
I lifted my chin at him in acknowledgment and followed him off the elevator once we made it to the right floor.
And knowing my size, knowing what I come across as, the moment Asher stepped through the hospital room’s doorway, I followed suit but did it by hunching my shoulders to make myself look smaller.
Let me tell you something else you don’t know, nor will anyone ever fucking know.
The moment I walked in behind Asher, it had taken all of my control to not bang my chest and shout to the fucking stars in the sky with one word. Mine.
Laying there in a drab white hospital gown with little blue and pink flowers on it… there was nothing that could diminish her beauty.
She had long raven black hair that looked so soft I wanted to run my fingers through it.
But what really got me were her eyes. Eyes that I’ve never seen on another living soul.
They were so bright, and they reminded me of cold mornings when the sky is awash with pinks, oranges, blues, and purples.
Her eyes were the color of when the pink and the purple met.
They were fucking captivating.
And if I didn’t have control over my body, I would have missed her name when Piney introduced Asher and me to her.
As I took in her features, my only thought was Adeline.
Well, Adeline, I really want to see those full, cupid bow lips wrap around my cock.
You fucker.
After everything she’s been through that you know about, that isn’t the way to think about her.
But come the fuck on. I was a man. A red-blooded man.
There wasn’t a man alive, straight, or gay, that could look at her lips and not think about them wrapping around their dick.
I shook my head and cleared it from those thoughts.
And realized something; she was holding my gaze.
That alone told me that they didn’t steal her fire.
What I didn’t know at that moment in time was that I was going to break my back to make sure that no one ever managed to steal her fire.
And last, it hit me… I was fucking captivated.
Then… I watched as her cheeks took on a light pink blush and then she looked at Asher, smiled, and nodded.
He winked at her, and said, “Hey, darlin’.”
And no, it didn’t slip my brain that she hadn’t blushed. Not at fucking all.
That alone surprised me because any time a woman looked at Asher, they fucking blushed. It was the whole silver fox vibe he had going on, or so I’ve heard.
Then she looked back at me, feeling this, needing this, I opened my mouth, lowered my voice, and said, “Hey.”
I could feel them.
Piney and Asher’s stares. They knew.
I never talk.
But I just did.
To her.
She smiled shyly back at me, her cheeks taking on that light pink blush again, and whispered, “Hi.”
And with that one word, with only one syllable, she slid right beneath my skin.
***
Watching Whit and Lizette up on the platform, her tits bouncing with the motion while she was riding Whit’s dick had another memory slamming into me. Hard.
No, the memory didn’t come because of the lust in Lizette’s gaze.
Nor did the memory come from watching her bounce on Whit’s dick.
No, the memory came from seeing the look on Lizette’s face and recalling the look on Adeline’s face, visually, as she rode me just shy of two years ago. The look of pure adoration.
She was given the option of picking anyone to help get the memory of those hands off her mind and her body.
And you could have knocked me over with a fucking feather when she had picked me.
Not only was I the biggest son of a bitch in the club, but my body was littered with scars.
My face, chest, arms, legs, back, you name a place on my body, I’ve got a scar as well as a story for each and every single one of them.
And when Piney had looked at her and asked why she had picked me?
She had simply smiled while clutching the bottom of her t-shirt, and said, “Because when he walked into the hospital room, he had made himself look smaller so he wouldn’t frighten me. That action says more than any mere words could ever convey.”
That seemed to be all there was to it, but I could see the gears turning in a few of my brothers’ faces.
It wasn’t until later that night after we got her settled and brought her to the clubhouse so she could finish healing that I overheard Piney asking her the real reason why.
He knew there was more to it than that.
You didn’t simply pick someone to help you get over having your body violated because of one action that took place.
Her only response was, “He’s got a fire in his eyes, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. And that fire tells me everything I need to know. Plus, those scars... he’s been through a lot. Something tells me he wouldn’t harm a single soul unless he was provoked. And something else tells me that once you get into his circle, it takes an act from God to get you out of that circle.
Piney’s only response was to say one word, “Huh.”
Fucking huh.
It was four weeks later after I heard that conversation that she managed to slip through.
Straight through my carefully planted explosives, the barbed wire surrounding my stronghold, through the concrete, I had caked on that particular organ that seemed to start beating to a rhythm she created.
I remember it like it was yesterday, taking my time, something I wasn’t known for doing, fucking ever, but there had just been something in her eyes.
Something that called to me, something that no matter how hard I had fought, I had been lost.
No one else knew that she owned me.
No one else knew the power she had over me.
And no one was ever going to find out, because if they did, they wouldn’t see the man I am.
No, they would only have to look at the dirt underneath her shoe, and that was where they would find me.
Because all my life, that’s all I’ve been, nothing but fucking dirt.
However, every time I looked into her eyes, I didn’t feel that way.
Never did.
No, the way I felt, it was as if someone had taken the highest voltage with a cattle prod and hit me with it. Or the way your chest expands when you view the Grand Canyon, Eiffel Tower, and The Statue of Liberty, all for the very first time.
I shook my head from where my thoughts were headed, knowing it wouldn’t do me any good.
Sitting there in the middle of the clubhouse with a few brothers, we were waiting for Asher to get done doing whatever he was doing.
I watched as a few of the club girls came walking from the back hall while rubbing sleep from their eyes.
And none of them got me to react like Adeline did.
And yeah, I’m not going to lie to you. I have from time to time sampled the offerings from the girls who wanted to be one of our girls.
But not since I laid eyes on Adeline in that hospital bed after she donated Piney a kidney and on her eighteenth birthday, no less.
Asher came down the steps then just as Whit finished with Lizette, smacked her on her ass, and then at Asher’s words, “Let’s ride.” We all got up and headed to our bikes.
As we pulled out of the clubhouse, eleven bikes in total, we throttled up and hit the open road.
Four hours later, we had just made our drop of guns, got paid, and found ourselves back on the open road and coasting back into the clubhouse.
Gabby, Stella, Chloe, and a few other ol’ ladies were in the kitchen making food as their laughter carried out of the kitchen and into the main room.
My fingers itched to text Adeline and see if she could meet me out back. And since it was outside of the clubhouse, I wouldn’t be breaking a rule.
Besides, I never got enough of her, even though I knew that fucking her was all I could give her.
But just as I thought that I felt someone’s hand graze along the back of my neck.
My vision blackened immediately.
Someone. Fucking. Touched. The. Back. Of. My. Fucking. Neck.