Chapter Nine
A Moment in Time.. .
“I thought I would find you here,” Anthony said.
Daisy spun around to look at him. She wore one of the favorite summer dresses he loved to see her in. It was a pastel pink that seemed to bring out the sparkle in her eyes.
“And you didn’t have to go far to look,” Daisy said.
“I never do.”
She smiled. “I thought you were busy. Club stuff.”
“There is always club stuff. We’re going on another run in three days.”
“Do you know why?” Daisy asked.
Anthony looked at her. There was rarely a secret between them. They both knew what the club did now, the dangers they took in trying to protect everyone.
“There’s a shipment of ten girls. We’ve got the location. Billionaires have everything covered. Dad’s taking care of the rest.”
Daisy nodded and turned back to look at the lake. “I hate they have to go through that.”
“Me too.”
“Are you sure you care?”
“I care.”
Daisy chuckled. “This, coming from a guy who doesn’t claim to care about anyone or anything.” She let out a tut. “You surprise me.”
He moved close and she surprised him by letting out a sigh, and then slowly she started to pull her summer dress up and over her head.
Anthony paused and admired the curve of her back. She wore a bra and a pair of panties, and he felt his cock start to harden.
Daisy glanced over her shoulder at him, and there was that sweet innocent smile that drove him wild. “Do you see something you like?”
“You know I do.”
Again, another giggle.
She reached behind her, releasing the catch of her bra. No one was around, and it was warm out. The last rays of sunlight shone over them, and it was getting impossibly tight around his cock.
He wanted her. That was never going to change.
She wriggled out of her panties and then stepped into the water. She continued to make her way into the lake, and then once she was covered by the water, she turned toward him.
“It’s quite warm,” she said.
He moved closer to the edge of the lake. “You’re a temptation, you know that, right?”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t come in and join me, but it does mean you’ll have to get naked while you do it.”
There was a soft head tilt to the side.
There was no way he could deny her anything. Sharing the lake with her, naked, he loved when they were like this. They rarely got this opportunity. Everyone around expected them to be serious, to keep their shit together, and he fucking hated it.
At least while everyone was distracted and believed he and Daisy were always doing the right thing, they were left alone, which was exactly what he wanted. He didn’t want people meddling in his business and the truth was, he liked that he and Daisy could just be . At least Simon and Tabitha had allowed that.
He removed his leather cut, followed by his shirt. Within seconds he removed his pants, boxers, and was able to step into the warm water. They loved to come to the lake, and the weather didn’t stop them. There were a few times they stepped into the lake, and they had both screamed as it was so cold. Daisy didn’t like the cold, she’d often wrap her body around him, and it was up to him to protect her.
She didn’t move away, and he advanced toward her. He loved when she was playful.
The moment he was within touching distance, she pulled away with a giggle. Daisy made him chase her, but she was no match for him. Not when he knew what he wanted.
Eventually, he caught her, pulling her into his arms and taking possession of her lips. He was addicted to her mouth, to her kisses, to her lips, to everything.
There was a time growing up, where his father had said his feelings would change for this woman, and he’d want to go out, sow his wild oats. He would see there were a lot of other fish in the sea. Anthony hadn’t believed it. And it never happened. There were no other fish for him. Daisy was his catch of the day, of the week, of the year, of his life. They worked. People didn’t get it, and he didn’t give a fuck.
His feelings for her had only gotten deeper, more intense, and he didn’t want to be without her for a second.
“You caught me,” Daisy said.
“It’s not like you made it hard for me,” he said, pointing out the obvious. “Of course, I’m not going to let you get away from me. That would defeat the purpose.”
“And what purpose is that?”
“You want me, Daisy.” He whispered the words against her temple. “Don’t you?”
She spun around in his arms, wrapping hers around the back of his neck. “Maybe.”
He chuckled. “Now you’re just trying to play hard to get.”
“No, I just know I want you.” She pressed her lips to his. “Always.”
Anthony growled against her neck. “You know what you’re doing to me, don’t you?” Just to be completely clear, he reached for her and pulled her in close so there was no mistaking what he wanted. He heard her sudden gasp as he was hard as rock.
Sinking one of his hands into her hair, he tilted her head back and stared into her eyes. They were the darkest brown, so stunning, so beautiful. Everything about her was amazing. He often caught his breath with how besotted he was with her. He just couldn’t seem to get enough.
“What?” Daisy asked.
“I’m just thinking about how lucky I am.”
She giggled. “You don’t have to say that kind of thing to me. You and I already know we’re a sure thing.”
Anthony wasn’t laughing. “You’ve never been a sure thing to me, Daisy, and I’m never going to take you for granted.” With that, he kissed her.
He knew there was an insecurity to Daisy, one she tried to hide so hard, yet no matter what, couldn’t seem to, at least not to him. He wasn’t even sure if Tabitha ever saw it. At first, as he kissed her, Daisy was tense in his arms, and then, little by little, she began to loosen up. He felt the change within her.
This was his woman. His girl. His everything.
People at the club had once said he would grow out of his obsession with Daisy. How it was just a childish little crush and meant nothing. For a short time, Anthony had waited. He had even tried to not hang out with her. Although that had been hard since Daisy was also one of his best friends as well as Tabitha’s.
Getting away from Daisy hadn’t been easy. However, he had done his best to ignore her, but his feelings for her never went away, never faded. They only continued to get stronger.
Then, one day he realized that all the other people in the club were putting him in the same category as everyone else. They expected him to be like other kids, and the truth was, he wasn’t anything like anyone else. He was his own person. When that happened, he stopped trying to pretend he didn’t love Daisy. This was not an infatuation. It was simple—he had found the love of his life.
He broke from the kiss, but only to trail his lips down her neck, nipping at the pulse he knew drove her crazy. The gasp told him he was exactly where he needed to be.
“Please,” she said.
He growled against her neck, and then stroked his hands up her body, cupping her tits within his hands. With him, she never had to beg. Lifting her tits up as if in offering, he moved down at the same time and took one peak into his mouth. Daisy was always so sensitive, and sucking the tip into his mouth, hard, he heard her moan.
Gliding his tongue between the valley of her breasts, he moved to the other, lavishing that one with equal amount of attention. During this time, he let go of her tit with one hand and slowly began to slide his hand down her body until he cupped her between the thighs. He caressed one finger through her slit, pushing past the swollen clit, going toward her sweet cunt. Sinking a single finger inside, he pulled out, moving back to her clit. She gasped, and he let go of her breast to claim that sweet sound, kissing her.
This time, Daisy broke from the kiss. “I want you inside me,” she said.
He stared into her eyes, and then let go of her pussy. What she wanted, she would get. He lined his cock up to her entrance. She was already on the pill. Daisy had gotten onto it when they had been caught up in the moment a few times, and they had to wait to find out if they had made a baby. They never had, and to be safe now, she was on the pill for moments like these.
Anthony continued to look into her dark brown eyes, as inch by inch, he thrust inside her, filling her to the hilt. The moment she moaned, he felt that catch around his cock. Her pussy tightening around him, drawing him in, and he just couldn’t stop. She felt so damn good.
“Anthony,” she said.
He held onto her hips in the water, pulled her in close, and they both cried out. This was the way it was with them. It didn’t matter how many times they had sex, fucked, or made love, each time was like the first time. It was always so intense, so hot, so ... indescribable.
He loved it.
He loved her.
And he never wanted it to stop.
“I love you,” Daisy said.
“And I love you.”
They didn’t share their feelings with one another often, but it was in these moments he knew them to be true.
****
P resent Day
Anthony had forgotten about the old storage lots the club used to use for Ned Walker. This explained what Ned was grumbling about when it came to wasted space in Fort Wills. Even after all this time, Ned was still pissed that they no longer worked for him.
Ned was still Eva’s dad, which made him Tiny’s father-in-law, but he was not in any other way associated with the club.
Stepping into the container, Anthony looked at Luke and gritted his teeth. He was chained up on a chair.
Luke lifted his head, and the moment he saw Anthony, he laughed. “Am I hallucinating now?”
“No, this is no hallucination.”
“You could have fooled me, but then again, your dad is right there, and he is only staring at me.”
Anthony stepped forward and started to untie him. Lash made no move to help him.
“Are you sure you’re supposed to be doing that?” Luke asked. “Your dad is right there and he is going to kill me.”
Anthony knew his father had a past, and he was not a man to be messed with. It had been so long since he’d seen any real action that it was easy to forget.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Lash said.
“Why? I would kill me. Regardless that I don’t want to be with them, I’m a fucking dog, aren’t I?” Luke asked.
Anthony glanced back to his dad, who simply shrugged. He had no idea what he was supposed to do with that kind of ... crap. What should he say? This was so fucking messed up. Not that he actually blamed his father. This was just a lot to deal with.
With the ties holding Luke on the chair gone, he reached out for him, but the other man stopped him.
“It might be easier if I died,” Luke said. “I ... I’m dirty.”
Anthony frowned. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The club took little girls, Anthony. They took them and sold them, and we all know what happens to children that are sold. They don’t play dollies with them, Anthony.”
“What the fuck did you do to him?” Anthony asked.
“I barely touched him, but I wanted to know where the shipment of girls was, and we need to know. According to my sources, the Monster Dogs are the ones that tend to them before they are shipped to wherever the sale is. With you and all the little fucking Skull brats making your mark and exacting your revenge, well, that means there is currently a shipment no longer being tended to.”
This time, Luke whimpered. “There was another one.”
Anthony reached for him and lifted him up into his arms. Luke gave a grunt. This kid was nothing like Miles’s little brother. Eva and Tiny’s Luke was growing up fast, and he was enormous, all muscle.
“Come on.” He helped Luke make it to the door, and his father was already at the car.
“If you’re not going to kill me...” Luke asked, as they struggled into the back of the car. “Does that mean Daisy is alive?”
Anthony had no choice but to stay in the back with him, although it was the last place he wanted to be.
“She’s ... holding on,” Anthony said.
“Holding on?”
“She’s in a coma. There was a lot of blood loss.”
Luke sighed. “I liked Daisy.”
This made Anthony look at him and frown. “I thought you had a thing for Tabitha.”
“I did, but that ship sailed long ago in high school when she kept turning me down, telling me it was a waste of time. Trust me, I don’t make it a habit to keep making a fool of myself.” Luke groaned. “Daisy was different, though. She was still loyal to the club, but like me, she only wanted to survive. It was easy when we were the only two in some classes. We both had the same agenda. Survival. It was like neither of us were there. Daisy doesn’t deserve to die.”
“She’s not going to fucking die,” Anthony said.
“Sorry, man.”
Anthony gritted his teeth.
“It seems to me you and him have a little bromance thing going on,” Lash said.
“Dad, stop it. We both knew what his club was doing was wrong. There was no hiding it, and he didn’t like it either.” He was not liking the fact he actually liked this guy. That was the worst thing about all of this.
“I’m so sleepy,” Luke said.
“Dad, you checked him for wounds and stuff, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why is he acting like he is going to die?” Anthony asked.
“He’s not had any sleep for a couple of days, and I have been messing with his head. We’ll get him to the clubhouse, and it will be fine.”
“When are the Billionaires getting here?” Anthony asked.
They were all on a deadline.
“Soon,” Lash said. “We need to find that shipment of girls. We don’t know how long it was before the Dogs last checked on them.”
He already knew the finer details. The girls were locked up in a small, confined space. The Monster Dogs were not exactly known for being nice.
Anthony didn’t know how many women and girls they had saved that could have been handled by the Monsters. Everything was so fucked up.
They arrived at The Skulls’ clubhouse, and he wasn’t surprised to find Killer and Nash there, ready to help with Luke. Anthony climbed out of the car and rushed forward to take care of the doors. Opening them and making room to get the “all clear.”
They took Luke to one of the spare rooms they usually kept for random families they saved. The Skulls helped all kinds of people, not just those who were kidnapped and sold on the black market. They helped domestic abuse victims as well. Those that called, desperate for a way out with their families, and no one willing to help them.
The guys didn’t drop Luke off in the bedroom, but moved him into the bathroom.
“The kid fucking stinks,” Killer said.
Anthony couldn’t have agreed more, considering he was tied to a chair, then he figured the only way Luke had gone to the toilet was in his pants.
With Killer, Nash, and even Lash’s help, he was able to get Luke cleaned up. He had old scars, which told their own story. Luke was the president’s son of the Monster Dogs MC, and it looked to Anthony he didn’t have an easy life, not by a long shot. There was pain in his eyes. Lash had hurt him a few times, and the scars were proof.
Anthony thought of their time through high school. It wasn’t like he had paid that much attention to Luke or the Monsters. He had only taken notice of them when they were causing a nuisance. He didn’t give a fuck about them. There was never a time that Luke showed any kind of pain, yet the scars told a different story.
He glanced over at his dad, and for a brief moment, he was pretty sure he had seen guilt. Luke had been beaten ... and survived.
This surprised Anthony since he had always assumed Luke was a cocky little prick, because he was in line for the Monster Dogs throne. Not once did he think the kid was being beat.
“Don’t mind the scars,” Luke said, coming out of his sleep. “They’re my father’s way of showing love.”
And that was fucked up. This was not how he wanted to deal with Luke. He didn’t want to fucking feel anything. Before Daisy went into the hospital, she was the only person he cared about. With Daisy in a coma, it was like his own being had been shattered open, and it was allowing all kinds of fucked-up mess, and that he couldn’t accept.
Luke was just a guy. His enemy. Nothing more.
And that was how it was going to stay.
****
D aisy was tired of looking at the beach. If she let go of the railing that kept her grounded, she fell into another memory, or something else—a nightmare. She didn’t want to keep going down memory lane.
Gritting her teeth, she wanted to growl and cry. Why was she stuck here? What did she have to do to get back? She was tired of the view. She hated it. There was a time she would have gladly given anything to go to the beach. Now, she was getting tired of being here, waiting. That light in front of her was scaring her a lot more than she wanted to admit.
She wanted to get back to the hospital to see Anthony. She missed him so much, and it was then she had to accept what was going on. She was dying, or maybe right now she was stuck in this world, at a point where she couldn’t move forward.
Tears filled her eyes. All she wanted to do was go home, hold onto Anthony, and never let him go. She took a deep breath and wondered what she had to do to get home, to hold the people she loved.
****
M iles stepped into the room and came to a stop when he saw Constance sitting close to the bed. He had not been alone with this woman since high school. He turned on his heel, hoping to leave before she noticed he was even there.
“Don’t go,” Constance said.
He gritted his teeth. Damn it. Ignoring her was a lot easier when she wasn’t around. Right now, he couldn’t ignore her and instead turned toward her.
“Where has everyone else gone?” Ever since she came back to Fort Wills, he’d been able to avoid talking to her. He’d been able to avoid a lot of other stuff as well.
“They had to go. Stuff needed to be done. I said I would sit with her. Daisy doesn’t deserve to be alone.” She leaned forward and reached out to take Daisy’s hand. “She shouldn’t have gotten hurt.”
“I know,” Miles said.
“Where did we go wrong?”
Miles shrugged. “Bad shit happens.”
Constance laughed. “Do I make you that uncomfortable?”
This made him tense. Constance didn’t make him uncomfortable. That would be his feelings he had for this woman. They had been there in high school, no matter what he did to ignore them. They were still there now, and it terrified the fucking life out of him.
“Uh, no,” he said.
Constance looked toward him and laughed. “Seriously, after all this time.” She shook her head. “I had to wonder what I had done to you.”
“You haven’t done anything to me.”
“Are you sure about that, because, you see, I went looking at that special grant I apparently earned, and it didn’t come from any reliable source. It was a one-time donor, and it came from you.” Constance shrugged.
He stared at her and then gritted his teeth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re kidding right now.” Constance laughed. “You’re going to stand there and lie. I was able to find out where it came from. You paid to get me the hell out of town. Did you hate me that much?”
This was not going the way he hoped. The point of providing those funds was easy, to give Constance the life experiences she deserved. He knew there was a chance she would never return to Fort Wills, but he had always lived in hope that she would. His dreams had come true when he saw her around town.
However, when he first found the money nearly six years ago, and he did so through his grandfather and his own personal funds, he had expected a different outcome. He had hoped to have gotten closer to Constance.
He loved this woman. It scared him how deeply he felt for her. And he knew it wasn’t going to be easy for her to love him as well.
“I don’t hate you,” Miles said.
This made her laugh. “You’re joking, right?”
He glanced toward the bed, hoping Daisy would choose this time to wake up and distance this woman from whatever warpath she was on, but of course, Daisy was still asleep. Great, this was Karma coming to bite him in the ass.
“I didn’t do it to get you out of town. Not in that sense,” he said. He blew out a breath. “I knew how fucked up your family was, and you wanted to go to college.” He had seen how sad she had looked when applications had been discussed. He overheard a conversation she had with one of the guidance counselors. He’d been sneaking around the fucking office, and hid while Constance was at her interview. He wanted to see what was going on with the Monster Dogs’ kids, and he didn’t tell anyone about it, as he knew the guys would either want in or tell him no.
He found absolutely nothing of worth. Only, Constance’s interview had taken place while he was hiding in the closet. Luckily, after that interview the guidance counselor then left for lunch, which was how he was able to make it out without being trapped.
During that brief visit, he heard Constance and knew she was upset at the prospect of never going to college. Her family couldn’t afford it, and they refused to spend any money they did have on her education.
She wanted the chance to go, but it was never going to happen for her. That was when he got the idea of helping to fund her education, to give her the experience she always wanted.
“And you made that decision for me?” Constance asked.
“Did you have a good time?” Miles asked. “Did you get to do all the things you wanted? Did you at least get to experience it to know it wasn’t what you were looking for?”
“Yes,” Constance said.
“Then that is all that matters.”
“What do you want in return?” Contance asked.
“What?”
“I know how this works and people don’t do nice things and expect nothing back. They do this and they want ... stuff back. What do you want?”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. How messed up is your family that even a gift comes with a price? You know what, fuck you.” He turned on his heel and left.
****
C onstance sat back and growled. This was not what she wanted to happen. The truth was, she had hoped to just thank him. When she realized what Miles had done for her, she knew it had been a gift.
She always had feelings for Miles, not that she would ever act on them and ruin their friendship. She would never be that foolish. But that didn’t stop her from hoping one day that he would.
She returned her attention to Daisy, taking hold of her hand. “I’m so sorry,” Constance said. “You shouldn’t have to hear us arguing. He just ... makes me so mad at times. I mean, did he send me away because he didn’t like me, or was he just being sweet and thoughtful, and I am thinking too much into this?” She growled. “Just ignore me. I don’t have a clue what I am even saying right now.”
She let out a sigh.
“It’s just that I know Miles has always been kind of a strange person for me. I mean, he has lots of girls, I mean women, hanging around him. At school there were a lot of girls.” She blew out a breath. “Can I tell you a secret, Daisy? I am still a virgin. There were guys at college but none of them reminded me of Miles. He is a one-of-a-kind, kind of guy.” She blew out another breath. “I’ve got to talk to him. I’ve got to thank him and stop sounding like a bitch.”
She went to get up but then realized there was no one with Daisy.
“You know what, Miles can wait. He can always wait, and I’m going to stay and keep you company. You really need to wake up, Daisy. I know Anthony is keeping it together right now, but it won’t be long before he snaps. You know it. I know it. I think it is safe to say everyone knows it.” Constance pressed her lips together, hoping for a sign, for anything.
“I love you, Daisy. I love all of you guys, and I love the Skulls. You’ve made me feel like part of a family in ways my own family never did. Please come back to us. Come back to us.”