Chapter 4
FOUR
Shona
The bar was so unbelievably boring with half the crew either in Europe, Limerick or Dublin.
There was nothing to do. Even the bunnies had been waking up late and finding things to do other than sit around to watch paint dry.
Maree was humming to herself as she went over the inventory list for the week, and I stood behind the bar and waited for someone to come and order a drink.
“It’s quiet, Shona,” Maree said. “Go and take the night off, girl.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she smiled. “With this level of activity, I am sure I can keep up.”
I smirked at her, catching her little smile as she went back to her paperwork and kissed her on the cheek as I passed by. Once I got to my room, I sat on the edge of my bed and flicked through Netflix. I’d seen almost everything already, and no new releases had me frustrated.
This was why I worked so damn hard. I got bored too easily.
I leaned over and grabbed my phone from my bedside table, flicking through my apps, but nothing seemed to appease me. Groaning, I opened up my contacts and found the name I’d been dying to dial since he left.
Before I could hang up, he answered.
“I was wondering when you’d call.”
“Is that how you answer a phone call?” I asked, smirking at his warm and comforting tone.
“When it’s from someone I’ve been dying to hear from? Absolutely. What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to find something to keep myself busy.”
“You’re not working tonight?” he asked. I could hear him getting comfortable wherever he was.
“It’s quiet with half the guys in Europe and half of you in Limerick, so Maree told me to scoot.”
His chuckle was warm and deep, “I guess so. You could always come out to Limerick and talk to me in person.”
“If I came there, Niall, we wouldn’t be doing much talking.”
He chuckled, and I knew I had him there. It made me smile to think I could outwit him or even just to make him laugh. It was so warm to hear from such a badass biker.
“What kind of talking do you want to do, Shona?”
“I don’t know anything about you, Savage, which is insane considering how long I’ve known you. I get it, you’re a private guy, but it’s almost as if no one actually knows anything about you.”
He sighed on the other end. “Go to my room.”
“What?”
“Just go to my room, take me with you, and I can show you something.”
I pushed off the bed, and moved down the hall to his room. I’d been in here plenty, and yet every time it felt so masculine, so very like I didn’t belong in here.
Forbidden.
“Okay.”
“Go to my dresser, and open the second drawer. On the left side, there’s a box.”
I did as he instructed and pulled the wooden box out of the drawer.
“It’s locked.”
“Put it on the bed. The combination is 1206.”
I pushed the numbers to that combination and the lock clicked open.
“Okay, what is 1206?”
I could hear him smiling somehow, “It’s my birthday.”
“What?” I gasped. “For years, Maree has been trying to find that out about you.”
“I know, and you are the only one who knows, so if she finds out I’ll know you blabbed.”
I chuckled as I opened the lid of the box, sitting on his bed cross legged. The first thing I saw was a photo of a baby and a beautiful woman.
“Is this your mum?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You wanted to know about me. This is everything I have kept, everything from my youth. Go through it and if you have questions, ask me later. I gotta go.”
I could hear people yelling down the line, and I realised he was probably babysitting some of the rowdier Nomads.
“Okay.”
He hung up and I lifted the photo to look at her.
She was gorgeous. He got his eyes from her, but the rest of his face must have been his father.
I looked at the next photo and it was of two pre-teen boys outside of an old building, leaning on a brick wall with a plaque that read, Dewesdale Orphanage.
He was an orphan?
I wondered what happened to his mother. It felt very private to be seeing these photos when no one knew anything about him, but he’d told me to. I felt an odd sense of pride that he would allow me to see things no one else was allowed to know about him.
It felt sacred.
As I really looked at the photo, I noticed the boy next to him was familiar.
Viper.
Wow, they really did go way back. I grabbed the photo and headed out to the clubhouse. Viper was sitting on the couch, looking down at his phone. I made my way over to sit next to him and he slowly looked up, a smile spreading over his face.
“Hey.”
I showed him the photo. “Is this you?”
His smile shifted and he took the photo off me before sighing. “Yeah.”
“I didn’t know you both were orphans,” I found myself saying. “I’m sorry if that’s insensitive.”
“Why’d you go looking through his stuff?” he asked me. He wasn’t accusing me, he was genuinely curious.
“I told him I didn’t know anything about him, which was crazy since I’d known him for so long, and he told me to go and look through it for my answers.”
Viper handed the photo back to me and offered me a tight smile. “It wasn’t a nice place. It was where kids went that had no one to help them, where the government stuck you when you were a nuisance with no hope of being adopted.”
“I’m sorry,” I said to him. Viper was such a fun loving and sweet man, even if he pretended not to be.
I’d known he and Savage were darker, rougher around the edges than most of the boys here, but I felt safe with both of them.
I knew they weren’t bad eggs. I hated that they’d had a rough upbringing with no one around to love them.
“Savage wasn’t truly an orphan. His mum did a lot of things to get him in there so he could be protected from his dad.
She died protecting him, and it’s a sore spot for him.
What we endured in that place was worse than the streets.
When we were sixteen, we ran and became street urchins until Bear found us when we were eighteen and pushed us into cleaning our shit up. ”
“He has a shit dad?” I asked.
“That you’ll need to ask him yourself,” Viper said. “I know how much he likes you Shona, and if you’re here asking about him, I know you like him too. The past is the past. All you need to know is what he wants you to know now.”
I could tell Viper knew more about his dad than he let on, but I also wanted Savage to be the one to tell me…
if he wanted me to know. He trusted me with his prized possessions after all, so maybe he would let me know about his past. Hell, I was no innocent bunny.
I had a past too, one I really didn’t want anyone to know, so I should leave well enough alone.
“Thanks,” I said to Viper and got up and headed back to Savage’s room.
I was putting the photos back when I saw a mini photo in the back of the box.
I picked it up, realising it was a photo of a few of us girls from years ago.
He’d ripped the other people off and kept the photo of me.
The breath left me suddenly, and I sat down on his bed.
He didn’t seem like the type to have photos of anyone, his mother I understood, but me?
I found that I liked that he had one of me in here.
I didn’t even have one photo of him. He never stuck around long enough to get a photo with anyone. I desperately wanted one. I don’t know what I’d do with it, but I wanted a photo of Savage for myself, just like he had one of me.
I took a photo of it with my phone and packed the photos away in his box, relocking it and putting it away. Sitting back on his bed, I could smell his manly scent on his pillows and I took a big inhale.
If I closed my eyes, I could imagine he was here with me.
Fuck.
I had it bad.
I sat up and opened up the photo, sending it to him with a message.
SHONA
Creeper. I didn’t even know you had this. I want one of you though. Send me one.
His response was immediate.
SAVAGE
Are you still in my room?
SHONA
Yes.
My phone lit up with an incoming video call. I gasped when I accepted the call and his face appeared. He was laying down on a bed, shirtless, and he had a lazy grin on his face.
“Hey you,” he said, his voice all smoky and sexy. “Find anything interesting?”
“Many things,” I replied. “Including a picture of me.”
“So? I’m allowed to have a photo of the woman I want to look at everyday.”
The air got sucked out of my lungs, and I saw his smirk creep up on his face.
“Then I can have one of you.”
“Nope,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “You can have a photo of me, but you have to be in it, and it’ll be on the day you let me make you Shona Gleason.”
Was it hot in here? I felt my cheeks turn hot, my chest panting. “I’m not marrying you, Savage.”
“Yeah, baby, you will,” he said with confidence. “And until you do, you don’t get a photo of me.”
“I’ll find one, Niall.”
His laugh did things to my tummy as I rolled my eyes. “Goodnight, Shona. Sweet dreams. Feel free to sleep where you are. You look good in my bed. Just lock the goddamn door.”
I chuckled. “Maybe, maybe not.”
“Shona…I mean it. Lock the damn door.”
“It’s not like anyone is going to creep in here anyway. They know this is your room.”
The growl that came out of his throat did things to my legs, and to my pussy. I wish he was here growling as he ate me out. He was always so damn good at that.
“You don’t mind if I mess up your sheets, do you? I’m feeling a little horny.”
His growl was louder this time. “I don’t give a damn what you do in my bed, but lock the goddamn door first.”
I chuckled before I waved my fingers at him and hung up without saying goodbye. Before I had a chance to get up and go back to my room, I heard a sound outside the room and Viper cleared his throat.
“I don’t know why, but he asked me to lock you in here tonight.”
“Viper, don’t you fucking dare,” I screamed, running to the door.
“I’m loyal to Savage, Shona. What he asks, he gets. I’ll unlock it in the morning, get some sleep.”
“Viper, I swear to god. I will call Maree in here.”