Chapter 4 #2
But since what we were doing here wasn’t exactly legal, there was also the threat of not having the cops called. A rulebreaker knew they would have to answer to the Royal Bastards MC if they pushed too hard.
The way I was feeling tonight, I was actually wishing for the distraction of some entitled prick trying to fuck up the fun for everyone else.
Saga approached me. His face was looking better after the bashing I gave him last week. He was in his mid-twenties, if I had to guess, and American. Some might argue that I was too, but they’d be wrong. You can slap a tiara on a pua’a, but that still doesn’t make that pig a princess.
“Truce?” he offered, holding a beer out to me.
I took it, because truce or no, I needed it.
I’d been trying to curb my drinking ever since Caroline had told me Jones used to get her drunk before he would touch her.
I wanted Caroline to feel comfortable enough with me that she could tell me anything, but fuck, that did not stop the pain of certain knowledge.
Being skinned alive was too quick a death for the fucker.
But I could take it. I had to. The alternative was her not talking to me at all, and I would die before I allowed that to happen.
I didn’t even look at the label before I popped the top off on the tailgate of the truck and took a giant gulp. I barely tasted it.
Saga watched me like he was trying to read me. I didn’t know him well. He had been nominated into the club the day we’d formed by Spirit, whom Aloiki and I both knew well through our dealings with Kahoku.
He volunteered to be our Secretary because he had an auditory eidetic memory, meaning he remembered everything he heard.
Literally everything. He still wrote things down for our records, but he never had to take notes until later.
Aloiki didn’t care when he wrote down Church minutes, so long as they were ready when he asked for them.
“I really am sorry, man. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I took another swig of my beer. Saga wasn’t a bad guy, but I wouldn’t apologize for rearranging his face. He should have been more careful of who was around when he spoke, and now everyone in the club knew the lengths I would go to protect Caroline and Samantha. Even from them.
“Look, I don’t want you pissed at me. So I wanted to offer my help if you needed it. I know you didn’t ask to basically adopt two—”
“Watch it,” I warned. He was already walking the volcano’s edge with me.
He automatically put his hands up between us.
“Not how I meant it. I’m just saying that, between work and taking care of them, you have a lot on your plate.
I’m here if you need help with anything.
” He slowly lowered his hands, eyeing me warily.
“And I can hang out with Carolyn, if you want. Like take her out and show her around—”
I chucked my beer, the glass shattering upon contact with the cement. Before Saga could even react, I had him up on his toes by his cut. “The fuck you just say to me?”
“I… I… I’m just trying to help!” he shouted down at me. “We’re closer in age, so I thought—”
“You thought wrong.” I put our noses right up against each other. Even closer than Caroline and I had been last night. “If you go near her, if you say a single word in her presence, I won’t stop with you losing a fucking tooth.”
He paled. “I thought… I’m sorry, Tangaloa, really. I was just trying to make peace.”
I tossed him. He landed hard on the concrete, skidding back a few feet. Not caring about any audience, I stormed over to him. I pulled my Desert Eagle from the holster on my hip, but before I could aim, a meaty hand caught my wrist.
Not many men towered over me, but compared to Yooko, I looked like a child. Actual children probably looked like ants.
His hold was unbreakable as he pulled my Desert Eagle from my grip.
I was no slouch; he was just that strong.
Without letting go of my wrist, he dragged me inside the trucking company building.
The lights were low, with only the back hallway available for the bathrooms. Generally, though, they weren’t used, as there were at least three trucks that had piss sluts in them.
Towing me behind him like I was a fucking toddler, I had no choice but to follow. I had more of a chance of breaking my leg if I tried to drag my feet than I did of stopping him.
Yooko had horrible taste in style. For reasons unknown, he liked to wear sarongs with touristy shirts.
Maybe they were cheap, maybe they were all he could find that fit him, maybe he had a fetish about wearing them.
I didn’t know and I didn’t care. Tonight, though, he was butt-fucking-naked.
No doubt he’d been partaking in what his employees had to offer.
I’d seen a lot of dicks in my time. Didn’t grow up around Aloiki, who despised clothing like he was allergic to it, without getting used to being around other naked men.
Honestly, I didn’t care. I wasn’t attracted to men, but I’d been involved in directing enough porn shoots to have grown an appreciation for the male form.
Still had no intention of ever fucking one or getting fucked by one. Nor was I particularly thrilled to be forced to stare at Yooko’s naked ass, which was probably double the size of my own.
He made a sharp turn and pushed open his office door. A woman jumped up from where she had been sitting on the edge of his desk. I’d been in this office numerous times, but certainly never like this.
Yooko didn’t acknowledge the woman in any way, which was very unlike him. He just dragged me forward and gave my back a solid push. As I stumbled inside, he barked, “Do the world a favor and get yourself fucking laid.”
And then he closed the door.
I stumbled into my room. Lu had been having trouble sleeping recently, so Aloiki had decreed that all motorcycles would be left at the barn after dark.
I seconded it, because I didn’t want any loud or startling noises to disturb Caroline and Samantha either.
Yet, at three in the morning when we all made the long trek back to Bacon’s house, I was regretting not having thought of a shuttle or some other way to prevent us from having to hoof the mile-plus.
Then again, it was no less than I deserved.
I could still smell her on me. My shirt was somewhere unknown, likely ripped and torn in the corner of Yooko’s office. I gripped my cut in my hand, my back still stinging from her claw-like nails.
Yooko’s plan had failed. My headspace was no better off now than it had been when he’d shoved me into his office. If anything, it was worse.
I needed to shower, but I didn’t want to put my dirty clothes back on, and I couldn’t walk back into my room naked. The plan was to sneak inside, grab a clean pair of shorts, and then slip out to the shower. I’d already warned the others not to use the bathroom.
Everything hurt, and yet I needed it to hurt more. Physical pain I could take. It was the emotional pain I couldn’t stomach. I’d done nothing wrong, so why did I feel like I had? Why did I feel like my insides were acid and my heart was hollow?
The light by the couch was on the lowest setting.
Despite me telling her not to numerous times, Caroline always left it on for me when she knew I was going to be late.
It was sweet, but I didn’t like the idea that the lamp might disturb her.
Samantha was a little burrower, sleeping like the dead with her head under the pillow and blankets.
It scared the crap out of me at first, because I didn’t know if she could breathe under all that.
In a way, though, I guess it was a child’s version of a defense. They hid under the blankets when they thought they were in trouble or if there was a fire or from the monster under their bed. Samantha would soon learn that her monster was dead, and no one else would ever harm her.
I wouldn’t let them.
What I did not expect to find was Caroline slumbering at the end of the couch, her small body curled into a ball over the arm. I froze, the light from the hallway behind me shining a path through the dark room directly to her. She was so small and childlike, completely innocent.
I closed my eyes, turning my face away. What the fuck was I doing? What the fuck was wrong with me? What was I deluding myself into believing? That I could help raise her, heal her, and then the second she turned eighteen, she would fall into my open arms and we’d live happily ever after?
That wasn’t reality; that was the plot to a piss-poor porn shoot. Even Aloiki wouldn’t stoop so low. And yet I had.
I kept telling myself that I would get over whatever this was. But it had been over a month since she and Samantha had come home with me, and my feelings were only getting stronger. I refused to even contemplate the L-word. It felt too fucking perverted.
But maybe I needed to call it what it was, what I was.
I was lusting after, and growing feelings for, a seventeen-year-old single mother and sex trafficking victim.
I was perverted. How was I any different from the pedophiles I’d killed, from the men who twisted and deluded their perversions, making excuses to justify their sick actions?
How was I any better than Weatherby Dalton-Jones IV?
I opened my eyes, and met a pair of sea-green ones staring directly at me. She hadn’t moved. Didn’t stand or make a gesture of greeting. Just stared across the room at me, like she’d been awake the entire time.
I wanted to toss my cut aside, storm over to her, and claim her. Kiss her within an inch of her life, take her down to the couch, and make her mine.