Chapter Eighteen
She distracted me. Her wrists were red and angry.
The blue rope aggravating the wounds further.
Yet she barely complained. She took long, slow breaths as I squeezed the warm water against the cuts, with only the slightest wince.
There was tension in her neck, as she fought the fear of me touching her, not knowing what I’d do next.
I’d cleaned plenty of wounds before, my own and my brothers’.
Knife cuts, burns, shit gone wrong on runs, but never like this.
Never wrists rubbed raw because some bastard thought a pair of cable ties good enough to hold her weight for days.
And I was one of those bastards. I chewed the inside of my cheek.
I knew what I was. What the club was. I’d done shit far worse than most people knew. But this, this was something else.
I soaked the cotton with antiseptic. This would sting like a bitch in heat with those open raw wounds. But she’d take it. Because she was as wild as she was resilient.
“This bit’s gonna sting like a bitch,” I warned.
The antiseptic bit into her, the sound that escaped her throat tighter than she wanted me to hear. Her fingers stretched, the tendons in her wrist jumping as she pulled against the rope. I pressed my palm into her arm, steadying her, feeling the heat of her skin and the smoothness underneath that.
“I know,” I soothed, talking to her like the motorbikes in my workshop.
Her arms were slender, a femininity that betrayed the wildcat that thrashed and kicked and fought.
Her skin wasn’t quite pale. I’d noticed that under the bleaching light of the warehouse, but under the dull orange glow of the solitary bulb that hung naked from the ceiling, she had even more of a golden glow.
Not a tan, but a deeper pigmentation, a blend of olive skin with a hint of sunlight.
Done. Her wrists looked rawer than when I started. But they were clean. And they would heal. If Dougal and Grim gave her time. My stomach twisted, and I swallowed, refusing to allow that to rise to my throat, concentrating on something else, anything else.
Jazz. Stretched out on that bed, the leather of her bike suit pulled tight.
The jacket hugged her chest, the trousers clung to her thighs.
Her entire figure sculpted in black and red.
Like her temper. I wanted to lift that blindfold.
Just once. Wanted to see the eyes behind it.
I’d caught myself thinking about them more than I should.
About whether they’d be hard and blazing or soft in that moment of pain.
Whether they’d be blue, or green, or dark like her hair.
That strip of fabric had become a wall between us, one I ached to tear away, but I didn’t.
Not yet. And that something else I’d just tried to concentrate on wasn’t helping me either.
My fingers traced down her arms, smoothing over her skin, searching for cracks and tears, for other wounds.
I thought I’d heard a little hitch in her breathing.
An unsteady rhythm. Just for a moment. I rolled the leather back over her arms, feeling and touching, my brain memorising the path.
Her skin was smooth. No lumps or bumps. No cuts or scrapes.
“Chase,” her voice cracked, weak but laced with something sharp underneath, jolting my mind and making me jump. I was pleased she was blindfolded, so she couldn’t see me jump like a pussy from the suddenness of her voice, however soft she had spoken. “Get me out of here.”
The words hit harder than I expected. As though she believed I could. As if she thought there was a chance I’d put her over my shoulder, walk out that door, and tell Grim and Dougal to shove it. I swallowed it down.
“I can’t,” I said finally, my voice lower than I’d meant. “There are rules. You know that. I follow my President, and you’re… you’re Kings. This is how it works. You have to understand.”
“Understand?” She laughed, hollow and bitter.
“Jazz. I don’t have control over this.”
“You’re fucking here. The only one. You can just walk me out of here and let me go.”
“Jazz.” The heaviness I’d felt in my stomach returned, like I’d swallowed a fucking boulder. “I just can’t.”
“Because of your rules?”
“You know my rules, Jazz. They’re the same as yours.”
“They’re not mine. Never fucking have been. I’m not part of it.”
“You’re a King, Jazz,” I reminded her, as if days in captivity, of being starved and beaten had finally sent her brain to mush.
“And you fucking know no MC lets women in. I’m not fucking patched.”
I sighed. I knew what she was saying. And I knew that she wasn’t really a Northern King, any more than my sister was a Teesside Road Rat. The boulder in my stomach dropped a little lower, like it might just take me off a cliff with it.
“To us, you’re a King.” My voice trailed off, and no chanting in my head was going to make me believe the shit that was coming out of my mouth.
“My brother is a King. Not me. I didn’t ask for this life. I don’t ride their bikes. I barely go to the club. I spend more time away from them than with them. My rules aren’t their rules. Or your rules. I’m free of your rules.”
Her voice was strong. Her chin tipped up to the ceiling defiantly, and her hands balled into fists. If she wasn’t tied to a fucking bed, she would have swung for me. And that’s what I loved about her. What drew me to her.
Fuck. Close. I was too close. I needed to treat her like what she was. Payback for Mike. A currency. A sacrifice to the MC Gods. To Grim. An offering in exchange for the Bloody Hand’s patch over ours.
“You know, you lot talk about freedom all the time?” She continued.
“But you’re chained to your presidents and your rules.
You do what they say, or you’re out. That’s not freedom.
” Her chest rose fast now, her voice biting despite how broken she was.
“I ride a Hayabusa. You know why? Because it’s fast. Because when I’m on it, nothing else matters.
It’s two fingers up at my brother, at the Kings, at their rules, at this bullshit.
They might run the Kings, but I’m free. They’ll never know that. You’ll never know that.”
She pulled on the ropes instinctively. A gesture reminding me we held her in captivity. Like a tiger in a cage.
I froze, her words cutting through me like nothing had in years. A Hayabusa. The fastest bastard thing on two wheels. The way she said it wasn’t just about the bike. It was about her, about the need to break out, to breathe in something other than orders.
Mike used to say the same before everything went to hell.
He used to ride like the devil was snapping at his back, and I’d ride with him.
We weren’t on club runs. Just the two of us.
No colours. No orders. No weight of this patch on our shoulders.
Just brothers, closer than blood. Now it was gone.
Mike was gone. And no patch, no Rat, no kill, would fill that hole.
My hand moved before I realised it. It went to the blindfold, fingers brushing the knot. I could undo it. I could see her. Those eyes, whatever they held. I needed them. Needed to know. My thumb pressed against the fabric.
But I stopped. Because I knew what was happening. I wasn’t supposed to care. I wasn’t supposed to want to protect her. She was leverage, nothing else. Pity had no place in this life, and the feeling digging its claws into me was far worse than pity.
I pulled my hand back. Got up. Left her there, wrists raw, blindfold still on, my head a fucking mess.
I turned at the door, looking at her one last time.
At the anger on her face. At the way her arms strained against the ropes.
At the way, when my mind lingered on her, that fucking mass of guilt and uncertainty in my stomach grew that little more.
At her, watching her spread-eagled and subdued, it was as conflicting as it was compelling.
Fuck.
*****
The clubhouse stank of smoke, stale beer, and sweat. The Notorious were there, lounging like they owned the place, and The Hand had slithered in, too. A table between us, bottles scattered, the conversation circled the Kings.
“They’re tearing Middlesbrough apart,” Grim smirked. “Can’t find their princess. Don’t even know where to start.”
“They’ll find her,” I muttered.
Dougal cut me a look sharp enough to pin me. “Not if we keep our shit together, they won’t. Kings are bleeding out. We keep the pressure on, they’ll crack.”
I nodded, but my head wasn’t in it. I could hear her voice, feel the heat of her skin under my hands, the way she said Hayabusa like it was holy. The void Mike left had been a wound I let fester. Now, somehow, she pressed her fingers right into it.
“Aye, but they’re tearing the place down looking for her,” Thrash grumbled. “I’ve got our lot riding in twos everywhere. And rumour has it the north west clubs are talking to them. If they get those fuckers on board, they’ll outnumber us.”
“You were supposed to have put a stop to that at the Frost Bite.” Grim studied Thrash over the rim of his pint glass.
“Aye, well, I didn’t expect the Kings to fuck off the way they did.”
“You’ve got a fucking mole, though. How did you not fucking know?”
Thrash shrugged, staring at his feet like a schoolboy getting a bollocking in the headmaster’s office.
“We had no intel on that. We had no idea that would happen.”
“Aye, well it did. And it didn’t look good for the Notorious, Thrash. You really let us down.” Grim continued, setting his pint back onto the table and leaning back in his chair. “I need people I can rely on, trust. I need to know if I give them a job, they’ll be able to fucking do it.”
Thrash nodded, looking humbled.
“Won’t happen again, Grim.”
“Too fucking right, it won’t.”
The president of the Hand stood, the wooden legs of his chair bumping across the uneven floor.
“There are no third chances here, Thrash. The Hand don’t make mistakes. Fuck up again, and it won’t be just the deal that’s ended. It’ll be fucking you and all the Notorious.”
There were over thirty blokes in the room. And every single one of them stopped talking. No one moved, and no fucker breathed.
Grim moved out from round the table, patting Dougal on the shoulder. Our president tensed, and every Rat in our clubhouse that night tensed with him. But Grim didn’t move to his back patch.
“Good call on our prize though, Dougal. Taunt the Kings some more. I want them rabid. I want them spreading themselves further and further apart to find her. And then we’ll start picking them off until they’re shaking like shitting dogs when they wonder who is next.
But no one touches that girl. I want her fresh for me. ”
Dougal nodded, glancing over his shoulder to watch Grim leave.
Behind him, the others spilled out. Ten in total.
Already the Hand’s numbers were increasing.
More and more coming over from America. Once the Notorious and the Rats were patched over, we’d be over sixty strong.
And the Kings would fall. My stomach jumped off a cliff once more.
I should have gone straight home. To my apartment above my bike shop.
To sit in a silence filled with heaviness.
To stare into the darkness while it invaded my brain and my emotions.
But on the back of my bike, as the Yamaha screamed its war cry from underneath me, all I could think of was Jazz.
The memory of antiseptic burning her wrists, of her defiance even half broken. Of her freedom.
I should’ve gone home. Should’ve drowned the darkness in whiskey and smoke and the buzz of coke. But I couldn’t.
The pull was stronger. Stronger than the patch, stronger than the rules, stronger than the club. And I’d always been selfish.