Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
It’s disorienting when I wake. The room is dark, the sheets are soft, and the pillow smells really good. All woodsy and clean.
It’s the first time I’ve ever woken up to this smell. Remembering that this is Skyler’s scent makes me bolt upright.
Holy mother of god! I’m in the enemy’s bed.
Oh my god. This happened.
Tingles erupt in places that shouldn’t be awake right now. The memory of his fingers inside of me, gives me a warm rush.
Lord, the man knows how to make my body do things I didn’t even know were possible.
But the memory is quickly tainted with the car wreck, and the reason I ran from the Pussy Palace.
My virginity was on the auction block.
Along with my sore neck, there’s a gash in my heart placed there by the man who should have been protecting me my whole life. My arms sting. My knees ache. In other words, everything hurts.
The feeling of dread sitting in my stomach is a lump of coal.
In one night, my father tried to sell me. And I pretty much slept with our club’s sworn enemy.
Now I have to figure out what to do.
I’m a shower thinker, so I throw off the blanket and return to the infamous bathroom where Skyler gave me a lesson I won’t be forgetting any time soon.
When I turn on the light, what I see is so bad, I flip it back off. Nope. Not even going to look at all the cuts and bruises.
Or the way my hair is tangled from his hands.
Definitely not looking at the mark on my neck from Skyler’s devilish mouth.
I pop off the pasties and dump them in the trash because I’m not going back to the Pussy Palace. Ever.
I’d be walking right into my father’s grip, if I even step foot on the property. I’m sure his men already impounded my car.
That causes me to grimace again. I have to confess to Michelle that I borrowed her car and totaled it. Thank god she left her keys inside, like we all promised to do in case anyone of the girls needed a fast getaway.
Well, I did.
Muttering, I cut on the water, tapping my foot on the floor. What the hell am I going to do?
I can’t just move in here. It’s stupid.
Disappearing is going to be hard without any money. But returning to the Dagger’s compound is suicide. I’ll be sold to that creepy Italian.
No way. Not happening.
I’m so up in my head, I don’t realize the shower is scalding, and I scream behind my teeth as I scramble for the knob.
My skin is still stinging from the assault when a shadow moves across the doorway.
“Skyler?” I call out, almost dropping his bar of soap.
Lord, just saying his name makes my pulse speed. And the idea of him joining me in the shower overloads my rattled brain.
But a few seconds tick by and he doesn’t answer. I call out again. “Hey, I hope you don’t mind. I felt like a shower would take away some of the soreness?—”
I choke on my words when a gigantic man steps into the bathroom. I’ve never seen him before.
My back hits the tile wall, the cold barely registering as fight-or-flight tries to kick in. “Who are you?” I stammer, trying to cover myself.
His gaze slowly rakes down my body before he grabs a towel off the shelf and tosses it over the glass enclosure.
“I was told to move you to a secure location.”
My heart stops. Starts. Chugs in a disorganized rhythm. “I need to talk to Skyler.”
“He’s with the Prez. Your father’s men are circling.”
The bearded man turns and strides out, grumbling over his shoulder, “Get dressed. We have to roll now.”
Before I even kill the water, I’m already ice inside. Oh god. My father’s men will kill everyone here. I can’t let him hurt Skyler.
I launch out of the shower, water flying everywhere and remember I don’t have any clothing to put on.
I storm into the bedroom and tear open the door to Skyler’s closet, telling the man, “I have to warn Skyler about my father’s strategies. I need to talk to him.
The closet is sparse, almost like he doesn’t live here, but he’s got a few T-shirts and a pair of sweats. Enough for what I need. I grab the clothing and rush back to the bathroom. But when I try to close the door, the man’s enormous hand slaps it open. “You don’t get out of my sight.”
He stares down at me, a dark flicker in his eyes that sets off alarms in my head. He’s not wearing a cut. But neither was Skyler when he rescued me on the side of the road.
“What’s your name?”
“Don.” He points to his shirt. His T-shirt has a logo on the front, Don’s Electrical. Again not altogether weird, Clubs own all kinds of businesses and maybe they don’t live in their cuts like the Dagger’s do.
I take a step back, my mind going a million miles an hour. The first thing I need is to get clothing on so I snap at him. “At least turn around, not like I can go anywhere.”
His frown deepens, but he does put his back to me. “Just hurry the fuck up.”
As soon as I’m dressed, the man hustles me out the door into the hallway, crowding me as he takes me to a nearby exit. Outside the door, a black van is idling.
A shiver runs down my spine.
The rear has no windows. The front windows are blacked out with limo tint. I’ve seen MCs use vans like this for their guns and drugs.
“Get in the back, stay low. We don’t want any of your father’s men to see you.”
I scan the unfamiliar MC compound—what little of it I can see from this angle—as I climb into the back of the van. Club brothers are striding across the gravel lot, serious expressions on their faces beneath the security lights. But none of them are Skyler.
“Can you call him? Skyler should know some things about my father,” I say as I crouch on the wool moving blankets spread over the metal floor.
Again, this feels wrong. But MC life is never normal. Hell, I don’t even know what normal is. At least there isn’t a mattress and shackles on the wall.
The man starts the van. Locks click on all the doors, causing another knot to twist in my stomach.
“Yeah. Later.” He yells back to me as he guns the engine. Seconds later he stops at the gate, muttering something to the gate guard that I can’t make out. I can barely see the tall barricade from where I’m sitting on the floor, but it slides open and we roll through.
My alarms are going off at maximum threat level now. Shouldn’t there be a group of men moving me?
If this was the Daggers, there would be a crew of Harleys surrounding the van.
“Hey, where are the others? Shouldn’t there be other brothers with you?”
Instead of replying he lifts his phone to his ear as we speed away from the compound.
“Yeah, I got her,” he says loud and clear as he scans the side mirrors. “Easy as eating cake.”
Got her.
Now I’ve got prickles all over my skin. This is wrong.
He chuckles and checks the mirrors again. “About that,” he says and pauses.
Glancing back at me, dark evil behind his eyes, he says, “Since she’s worth half a mil, it shouldn’t be any problem for you to cough up two-hundred-fifty-thousand to get her back.”