Chapter 8
EIGHT
Tossing another untouched bowl of cereal into the sink, Val stared into the mush that was once Froot Loops, and sighed.
She couldn’t keep doing this to herself; acting like nothing was wrong, like having no appetite or desire to do anything but work and sleep was good for her. Yes, she spent a majority of her time working, because she loved to work, but now…it was the only thing between her and total, utter devastation. She couldn’t allow herself to breakdown; she’d been doing so well, getting out of bed every day, taking a shower, getting dressed, actually brushing her hair, and she was actively communicating with her work colleagues—so, she was doing alright…right? She hadn’t cried since that night, three nights ago, and she refused to shed another tear.
Redtube—Damian Daniels, over six feet of muscles, tattoos, intelligence, and potent sex pheromones, was no longer a part of her life. It had taken two shots of Captain Morgan to stop her hands from shaking so she could block him from her phone…and eventually kick him from their online chat room. A place that was once their own personal temple, a haven, a sanctuary where they could come, be themselves, share the deepest parts of themselves, and have no fear of judgement. In that room, there’d only been acceptance, affection, fun, emotional revelations?—
And broken promises.
Sighing once again, she spun from the sink, leaving the dirty bowl and spoon for later; she had a new assignment to start, and that meant something else to keep her so busy she didn’t have the time nor energy to think of him .
From the kitchen counter, her phone pinged. She knew that sound, it was the one she set for updates on his social media.
He’d uploaded another video; of course, he did. For him, it was just another day of fuckery.
God, she was glad she cut him out of her life?—
But you’re still following him on Instagram and TikTok, like an addict in need of a fix but trying to fight the shakes.
Shit. Yes. She should unfollow, block, and unsubscribe from all the places they were still linked online, but…. She just couldn’t. Not yet. That was the last tether to him, the man she loved, and…going cold turkey…well, the prospect was more painful than she’d thought it would be. For now, she made it so he was unable to comment or message her on any of the online platforms. However, it still meant she got the notifications whenever he posted…like the sound of a gunshot in a dead silent room.
She’d stop, one day, soon, she just had to do it in stages, like weaning her off a drug. He was her drug, had been for too long, and now she was suffering from withdrawal.
At least, she decided, she’d never have to see him in person, since they’d never met face-to-face, she didn’t have to worry about him coming around, trying to use her weakness for him against her. The man was sex in jeans and leather, and he liked the attention, so to lose the one who’d showered him with the most praise would be a blow he refused to take.
Yeah, good thing he has no idea where I live. She knew the Unchained MC clubhouse was in Wilkes-Barre, but Red had rented a place off the compound in Kingston so he could live his kink without the club in his business. Val lived in Tunkhannock, a good fifty minutes away. And with the hundreds of thousands of people between their two homes, the probability of them just randomly running into each other was less than .0001 percent.
But…to see him, in the flesh, one last time….
God, she was such a weak-ass loser.
Her phone pinged again.
“Ugh!” she groaned, rolling her eyes. Her heart pounding, her hands curling in an effort to not pick up the phone, she leaned against the counter and fought the urge to bang her head against it. “Ignore it, you don’t need the drama or the pain—you know it’s probably another shirtless pic or a Reel of him leaning against a wall and shoving his hand into his jeans….”
Why was her mouth watering?
“Ugh!” she screamed, hating herself as she reached for the phone, snatched it to her chest, and heaved an annoyed breath. God, she was such a weakling!
Grumbling to herself, she looked down at the still black screen, blew a raspberry of frustration, then turned the screen on.
Yup, just as she’d guessed, two new notifications from him ; he’d posted twice in the last few minutes.
“Must be a record—not every day a man can fuck, nut, then upload the evidence, all in the span of five minutes,” she sneered, rolling her eyes at her own dumbassery.
One day, she’d stop thinking about him. One day, she’d stop letting her bitterness, anger, disappointment, humiliation, and grief at what she lost fill her with such ugliness.
But today was not that day, dammit!
Flicking her thumb down, she pulled up the notifications and pressed on the first one, immediately going to his Instagram profile.
And there they were, two new posts.
However…they were not what she was expecting.
Swallowing down the anxiety, curious and flustered, she pressed on the image he’d posted first.
He was standing, bare-chested—as per usual—in a room smattered with hand drawn images. Behind him was a mirror on the wall and next to him was a black leather chair.
He was in a tattoo parlor, and as soon as she asked herself why, her gaze caught on something she never thought she’d see in all her days on earth.
There was the tell-tale outline of a tattoo stencil on the skin right above that place, the peek-a-boo place he often showed as a teaser, that place right where his jeans would stop, leaving the rest of him a mystery—though, not much of one since the outline of his trouser anaconda was obvious most of the time.
The lines of the stencil were too light for her to make out what was meant to be there, but that didn’t make her as curious as the fact the bare-chested man was also…bare-faced.
He didn’t have a mask on.
He was…looking directly into the camera, without a mask to cover the lower half of his face, leaving his succulent lips, arrogantly formed nose, and dark stubbled, rock hewn chin and jaw visible.
Red was revealing himself. Online. To millions of people.
“What the hell?” she rasped, her breaths trembling.
What is happening right now?
Why didn’t he have a mask on? What was he thinking—his whole schtick was about being the masked seducer all women—and some men—wanted. It was about the allure of the unknown bad boy, the draw to the mysterious, the thrill of the tease.
The caption was vague as fuck.
#bigreveal #grandgesture @buckedupink
Bucked Up Ink was a tattoo place in Clarks Summit, and was known for providing ink to the Unchained MC.
Obviously, he’d posted a before and after image, waiting to post the first until the second was done.
But why?
Her fingers shaking, the swiped up to the second image, this one posted almost immediately afterward, and her breath burst from her chest at what she saw.
Where the faded stencil marks had once been was now a colorful, vibrant tattoo.
Of her name.
Valentina
Holy fucking shit! Suddenly, there wasn’t enough ice in the world to stop her from turning to molten lava in her own kitchen as a full body flush enveloped her.
Closing her eyes, disbelief snaking along her spine and into her brain, she shook her head, unable to believe what she was seeing. Taking a deep breath, she slowly opened her eyes again. It was the same; nothing had changed, it was still her name in bold reds and blacks, with the stark whites and yellows of two daisies, each on one end of her name, inked right above the base of his cock, a cock just barely hidden by the waistband of his Armani briefs. The sex god had fine taste in manties.
“What the ever-loving fuck?!” she screeched, the sound louder and shriller than she expected in her silent house. She flinched. “He tattooed my name on his dick ?” Her voice rose to glass shattering heights on that last word. No. It couldn’t be a real tattoo—those were permanent. It had to be henna or whatever the hell they used to make temporary tattoos. There was no way Redtube, RedDevilDog, social media thirst trap and manwhore extraordinaire inked her name , in bold letters and colors, right above his man meat!
What the hell was he thinking?
Her eyes wide, she glanced down at the caption and nearly fell over—thank God she was leaning against her counter, otherwise she’d be on the floor.
For my love, Valentina, the most beautiful woman in the fucking world. #Claimed #Owned #Valentinas #MyDaisy @xxxDaisyChainxxx
Mother of all fuckers! He’d even tagged her, which meant everyone, and their immediate family and friends, were going to be clicking on her profile to glare at her account like she’d slapped their puppy.
That fucker!
Good thing there wasn’t a single personal thing on her account. She’d had the thing for two years, but she hadn’t been active on it until she’d stumbled upon Red’s account. After that, she only ever used it to get notifications of his posts and Reels and, in the beginning, to chat with him in the DMs. She should have blocked him and not just unfollowed him, because now she was in the spotlight, having been put there by the asshole who’d broken her heart.
He called you beautiful, called you his love…but does he mean that? Would he reveal something like that online, to all of his fans, if he didn’t mean it, if he were just playing a game?
The man was serious as fuck about his “career” as a thirst trap; what he was doing would more than likely kill the whole single and “down to fuck” persona he’d been cultivating for years.
Damn…that…what did that mean? Did he really think she was beautiful? Did he really…love her?
Also, aren’t you a little happy to see he basically gave you possession of his pussy pounder?
She almost giggled at that thought, but cut it off when she started reading the comments.
There were hundreds of them!
As she scrolled, her stomach bottomed out, her mouth filled with sour bile, and her heart tripped along at an unsteady beat.
@DankSlut69: Who the fuck is this bitch?
@DarkMemeMomma25: This is a prank, right? No way that man is locked down. He likes the attention too much. #thirsttrap4life
@LightFootHeavyCock: Damn! I always hoped he was closet gay! #Jelly
@SlutMommaParks: Her account is fake. This is a publicity stunt. #fakenews
@ClittyMastersIO: Who the fuck is Valentina? No way they’re a couple. I fucked him last week.
It was that last one that hit her the hardest. Was @ClittyMasterIO the blue hair tie or the sparkling pink one?
The burning of tears behind Val’s eyes made her cringe; the man did not deserve her tears. So what if he performed some grand gesture and posted it for the world to see? So what if he claimed that he thought she was beautiful? So what if he called her an endearment that made her heart skip a beat? So what if he inked her name on his junk—it still didn’t belong to her, just like he never would.
Actions spoke louder than ink in skin, and he’d shown her, right up to just three days ago with the blonde, what she really meant to him. How could she believe him, what he said, if she couldn’t trust him? He said she was beautiful, but did he mean it, or was it all a play to assuage his guilt?
Would he really go that far, risk all that he’d built, just to make himself feel better about what he’d done.
She shook her head without thinking.
No, he wouldn’t.
However….
The tattoo was gorgeous, the meaning staggering in its intent, but the timing was too late.
He was too late.
Tossing the phone to the counter, she braced her hands against the edge and closed her eyes, sucking in a deep breath that broke as the tears that burned her eyes finally slipped down her cheeks.
Cursing, Red sneered at the comments beneath the pictures he’d posted two days ago. The pictures were meant to be a statement, one that no one—especially his Daisy—could ignore. He couldn’t get through to her through any normal means, so he took to social media, knowing she’d see—his woman was curious as hell and wouldn’t completely stop scrolling through his feeds. At least he hoped she wouldn’t. He’d wanted her to know he thought she was beautiful, that he loved her, that she owned him, that her belief that she was ugly and unworthy of his attention was utter bullshit—to him, there was no one more gorgeous, more sensual, more worthy of his attention, his affection, his devotion, and he wanted her to know that. But what had begun as a way to show the woman he loved that she owned him, that he belonged to her only, that his dick was now hers and hers alone had become a murky fucking swamp of internet trolls spewing ugliness and hatred from behind their keyboards like the gutless fucks they were.
Yes, he, better than anyone, knew the depths of evil to which the internet could delve, but to see such grotesqueness aimed at an innocent woman, one who obviously meant something to him—he’d inked her name on his fucking body, for fuck’s sake—was a whole new level of bullshit.
He was tempted to post another video, this one of him calling out all the basement dwellers who’d dared to talk shit about the woman he’d inked under his skin, like a permanent part of her literally woven into his very fabric.
“What’s got your face so fucking twisted, brother?” Patriot asked as he sauntered into the office where Red worked in the clubhouse.
Grunting, Red clicked on the tab for the program he was using to perform a dark web search for information Frost had requested that morning. The club prez was on the edge; his wife was barely speaking to him, his kids were ignoring him, and the patch over with the Bone Dogz was turning to shit day by day—and the rest of the club was feeling the pressure to step up. And right now wasn’t a good time for Red to split his loyalties between the club and Val.
Though you know which one you’d choose.
Yes, he did, which was why he’d been scrolling through Insta notifications instead of focusing on finding the fucker Frost was itching to bury.
“Don’t worry about it,” Red grumbled. “If you’ve come to ask about Michaels you’ll have to wait. Ain’t found anything new yet.”
Patriot pursed his lips, his too knowing gaze drifting over Red’s features.
“You know, one day you’ll have to speak to someone who isn’t an online avatar.” Red snorted, crossing his arms, which only made Patriot, the fucker, smirk. “You’ve got real people—your brothers—willing to help you unload whatever the fuck it is that has you so torqued you’re shooting laser beams from your eyes right now.”
Red snorted again before giving into the compulsion to pick up his cell and check the screen. He cursed. There were texts and missed calls, but they weren’t from his Daisy; they were from an unknown caller, the same one who’d been calling and texting ten to fifteen times a day over the last week. He was this close to doing a search for the person so he could ride the Wild Hunt over them and ruin their lives for fucking up his day, but he found he just didn’t have the energy to deal with something that had nothing to do with finding his woman or helping the club.
“I’m just dealing with shit, Patriot, nothing to concern you,” Red replied, dropping his phone back on his desk. “I should have something on Michaels by end of day.”
Patriot nodded but didn’t leave, his gaze flicking over the monitors, then over Red, his expression unreadable. The fuck was former Special Forces who could probably hand anyone in the club their ass, even him, so he knew to never push particular buttons. However, in that moment, he was feeling verrry… pushy .
“What’re you doin’ here so early? Cilla kick you outta bed?” Red drawled, his lips curling at Patriot’s narrowing gaze.
“Fuck you, dipshit,” Patriot snapped. “I’m not letting you get me riled up so you can distract yourself from whatever the fuck is going on in that meathead of yours.”
It was Red’s turn to narrow his eyes. “Meathead? Fuck you, Captain America’s Ugly Brother. I don’t need a distraction; I need to get back to work.” Lies. He needed a distraction like he needed his next shot of Monster Energy, both of which were fueling his day job tasks.
As if the universe were throwing him a bone, an incoming call pinged his cell and he practically threw his shoulder out of joint reaching for it. Patriot snorted a laugh at Red’s reaction, but Red didn’t give a fuck—as long as it was his Daisy finally reaching out to him.
Unknown Caller
“Fuck,” he growled, making Patriot shift closer to him.
“What? Not who you wanted it to be?” Patriot asked, his tone curious rather than condescending.
Before he could think about it, Red was shaking his head. “Nah.” He heaved a sigh, turned back to the monitors, and tried to focus on the task at hand—find any trace of his woman, and any information on a local drug dealer, Myles Michaels, who was selling his pain pills through the failing nursing homes in the area. The asshole was using the revolving door of CNAs to peddle his shit to the elderly who were being cheated on their prescriptions by a scammy owner who was pocketing the money he took from their Social Security every month. The problem with the cheaper pills was that they were made with cheaper drugs, and sometimes they weren’t medicine at all, but rather baby powder or cornstarch pressed into molds, and then put in pill bottles.
Headed toward the door, Patriot stopped just inside and turned. “I can tell this is something you have to do for yourself, but remember you have brothers willing to help you out.” With that, he departed, leaving silence in his wake.
Fuck, silence was annoying as fuck when what he wanted to be doing was hearing Valentina’s voice. It had been too long since he’d spoken with her that he was having auditory withdrawal.
And jacking his cock to the memories of their conversations only went so far, though that didn’t stop him from coming in the shower twice that morning and more than likely a couple of times that night.
Groaning at himself for the foray into beta male territory, he pinned his focus to the screen in front of him, scouring his brain for ideas on how to find his elusive prey. He was so engrossed in his task, he growled at the motherfucking motherfucker who knocked on the doorjamb.
“What?” he barked without bothering to turn and see who it was.
A soft, uncertain voice squeaked, “Um…Redtube?”
Startled, Red turned to peer at the woman standing just outside the door to his office.
Shit.
Sighing, he rubbed his hand down his face, ignoring the roughness of the scruff he’d already been ignoring the last three days, and offered an apologetic smile.
“Sorry, Sarah,” Red offered.
Sarah blushed, her blue eyes sparking with a light he was too familiar with. “That’s okay,” she cooed, pouting, her long and obviously fake eyelashes flapping in a way he assumed was meant to be coy.
Sarah was the newest addition to the club’s women; she came with the Bone Dogz MC members who were patching over. Though the process was going slower than any of them expected, Sarah and three of the former Bone Dogz members had already made themselves at home in the Unchained MC clubhouse.
Sarah, new and shiny, was a favorite among the single brothers, and she knew she was, which was going to cause problems sooner or later. He hadn’t touched her, and never would, since he never dipped his dick in club pussy. It created too much drama, and he already had enough drama in his fucking life to last him a goddamn lifetime.
Sarah was pretty, with her blonde locks, long, shapely legs, and big tits. She was dressed in a bikini top that barely covered her nipples, and a pair of jean shorts that barely covered her ass. He wasn’t an idiot, he knew she was using her wiles to entice him into a quickie on his desk, but fuck that, his cock was only hard and weeping for one woman.
Pushing away from his desk, he pinned her with a look that shut that shit down quick.
“You needed something?” he asked, wanting to get her out of his space ASAP.
Her lips pursing—no doubt annoyed at being shut down—she rolled her eyes, and replied, “Tony Dos says there’s some chick at the gate asking for you.”
Valentina!
Fuck, she’d finally come to him!
Immediately, he was on his feet, hurrying from his office, through the common room, and out the door so fucking fast, the world was a blur.
Outside, the gate in view, he slowed down. There was a woman standing there, alright, but it wasn’t the one who owned him, heart, body, and soul…it was a stranger.
A pregnant stranger.
And she was looking at him with danger in her eyes.