Chapter Three #2
“Her name’s Darby,” I said finally, the word feeling strange on my tongue after days of only thinking it, never saying it aloud.
“About five-three. Athletic build. Dark hair she wears in a braid. Small scar above her right eyebrow.” My fingers brushed against my wallet where her note still resided.
“Smart. Knows how to work a room. Came in here last week and had half the bar ready to tear each other apart inside an hour.”
Knight’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Sounds like a real live mustang to me. Buck wild.”
“You have no idea,” I muttered, remembering the violence of our connection, the way we’d nearly destroyed that hotel room in our need for each other.
“Last name?”
I shook my head. “She didn’t offer. I had other things on my mind.” Like how her round, perfect ass filled out her jeans.
“Credit card? Phone number? License plate?”
I shrugged and gave him the hotel’s business card. “Stayed here. Can you” -- I twirled a finger in the air -- “computer shit the place?”
Knight barked out a laugh. “Computer shit.”
“Look, she and I didn’t exchange numbers. And I didn’t see her vehicle.”
Knight leaned back, considering. “Not much to go on.”
“I know.”
“But not nothing.” He took another drink of his beer. “I’m good at finding people who don’t want to be found. It’s what I do for the club.”
I knew this, of course. It was why I’d allowed this conversation to happen instead of telling him to mind his own fucking business.
“Why would you help me with this?” I asked, suspicious despite myself.
I had only been with Kiss of Death a few months.
I’d stumbled onto Darby pretty quickly after getting out of prison.
In my experience, people rarely offered assistance without expecting something in return.
Knuckles didn’t seem to run his outfit that way, but the jury was still out.
I hated that metaphor.
Knight shrugged one shoulder. “Been where you are. Obsessed with someone who left a mark.” His strange, tattooed eyes held mine.
“You took your time inside without complaint. Dealt with your own shit without ratting. That earns you a favor in my book. Besides, anyone Knuckles lets into this club is on the up-and-up. That makes you family. We help our family.”
I considered his offer, turning my glass in slow circles on the table. Pride told me to handle this myself. Experience told me I was getting nowhere fast on my own. And I might be a shade too proud to admit how much I wanted the guys in Kiss of Death to be my family. Just like Knight described.
“All right,” I said finally. “But keep it quiet. Don’t want the whole club knowing my fuckin’ business.” I had to grumble or look like a pussy. It was in the guy code somewhere, I was sure.
Knight nodded once, his lips twitching in amusement. “You got it bad, brother.”
My hand tightened around my glass. “Just find her. If you can.”
He finished his beer and stood, his massive frame casting a shadow across our table. “I’ll see what I can dig up. Might take some time.”
I nodded, already turning my attention back to the door. Knight lingered a moment longer, and I felt his gaze on me, assessing.
“One more thing,” he said. “When I find her -- not if, when -- what are you planning to do?”
The question caught me off guard. What was I planning to do? I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Hadn’t allowed myself to imagine what would happen if I actually found her again.
“I just need to see her,” I said finally, the words coming out rougher than I intended.
“I know I sound like a creepy stalker, but I swear I won’t hurt her.
If you doubt my state of mind, come with me.
Bring one of the guys with his old lady.
If Darby doesn’t want to see me, if she’s a woman havin’ a fling to bring some fun into a stuffy life or something, I won’t approach her.
I won’t lie and say I won’t be disappointed, but I don’t wish her any harm. ”
Knight nodded slowly. “I get it. If she’s available, you want the chance to make her unavailable.”
“Yeah.” I chuckled, the tension finally leaving my shoulders. “I guess that’s it. I get she left for a reason. If that reason’s because she truly is a wild mustang, then I’m good. If she’s runnin’ because I scared her…”
“Did you?”
I scrubbed my hand over my face. “I don’t think so. I mean, it was a pretty wild night. We’d both been drinking. But we were both sober the last conversation we had. I got the impression I might be able to do something to convince her to give me a chance to make her happy.”
“Jesus, this woman did a number on you.” Knight was equal parts horrified and amused. I’m not sure even he knew which emotion dominated.
“Yeah, she fuckin’ did a number on me.” I shook my head. “The bad part is, I’m not all that tore up about it.”
“Give me a week. I’ll see what I can find.” He stood and clapped me on the shoulder.
* * *
Three weeks later I watched Knight’s confidence erode with each passing day, his initial certainty giving way to frustration, then disbelief.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he’d say, shaking his head as he delivered another dead-end report.
“Everyone leaves traces.” Except Darby, apparently.
“Either she doesn’t exist, or she’s got access to some really fuckin’ good identity creators. ”
I took a slow sip of my whiskey, unsurprised. “She knows how to stay off the grid.”
“This is beyond staying off the grid, Sully. This is…” Knight trailed off, searching for the right words.
“It’s like she’s a ghost. Like she doesn’t exist.” He closed his laptop with more force than necessary.
“Even my contacts in the police department have nothing. No arrests, no warrants, no parking tickets. Not even a Goddamn library card.”
Knight shook his head. “Whoever this woman is, she knows how to disappear. Professional level. And that makes me wonder…”
“What?”
“What she’s running from. Or who.” He leaned forward. “People don’t go to these lengths unless they’re hiding from something serious. And I mean more than an abusive ex or a gang or something. This is government-level disappearing.”
The thought had occurred to me as well. She didn’t strike me as the type of woman to be in that kind of trouble, but what did I know? “She was so in your face, she’d be memorable, though I can’t fault your reasoning. But what the fuck?”
“I’ll keep looking.” He frowned as he looked at his computer screen, concentrating as his fingers flew over the keys.
“I’ll try some less conventional channels.
Got a few contacts who operate in gray areas.
Maybe they’ve heard something.” He packed up his laptop.
“But Sully, you might need to consider the possibility that --”
“Don’t,” I cut him off. “Just… don’t.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “All right. I’ll let you know if anything turns up.”
After he left, I lingered, nursing another whiskey and watching the door out of habit now more than hope. The crowd at Throttle had changed over the weeks, familiar faces replaced by new ones, but the energy remained the same. Not one fucking sign of Darby.
By now, Mike was used to me leaving bills under my glass before I walked out. I threw up my hand on the way out the door. He nodded in return.
I straddled my bike, started it up, and took off back to the clubhouse. Nashville’s streets blurred around me, neon signs bleeding into streaks of color until I got out of the city and closer to the Kiss of Death compound I now called home.
The clubhouse was on the outskirts of the city, nestled among industrial warehouses where no one asked questions about the comings and goings of men on motorcycles at all hours. I parked my bike in the big garage and headed up to my apartment in one of the outlying warehouses.
Once there, I unlocked the door and stepped inside, tossing my keys on the dresser. I stripped off my jacket and shirt, my body aching from tension I couldn’t seem to release.
The shower called to me. Water as hot as I wanted it was one of the few luxuries I’d craved in prison, and even years after my release, I still appreciated the simple pleasure of standing under a spray as hot as I wanted for as long as I wanted.
I turned the water on as hot as I could stand, stripped off the rest of my clothes, and stepped in.
Steam billowed around me as the water sluiced down my body, washing away the stink of cigarettes and whiskey from Throttle.
I closed my eyes, letting my head fall back, feeling the spray hammer against my chest and face.
And like they always did when I allowed my guard to drop, memories of Darby flooded in.
The way she’d laughed when I pushed her against the wall, that wild, unrepentant sound that had made me want to both silence her with my mouth and hear it again and again.
The feel of her nails digging into my back, marking me as hers in that moment.
The taste of whiskey on her tongue as she’d kissed me with a hunger that matched my own.
I remembered how she’d moved beneath me, against me, on top of me. How she’d taken control then surrendered it, a constant push and pull of power that had left us both breathless. The sounds she’d made, halfway between pleasure and pain, when she came.
My hand slid down my torso of its own accord, finding my cock and circling it tightly.
I didn’t fight it. This had become part of my nightly ritual, a surrender to the most memorable night of my life.
I braced one arm against the tile wall, letting the hot water continue to pound against my back as I jacked my cock.
I could almost feel her legs wrapped around my waist, her breath hot against my neck, her body clenching around mine.
“Darby,” I whispered, the name barely audible over the sound of the shower. Then louder as tension built, as release approached. “Darby.” Her name became a mantra, a prayer, a curse. The only word that mattered.
When I came, it was with her name on my lips and her image burned behind my eyelids.
For those few seconds of release, she was with me again, real and present and mine.
Then reality rushed back in with the water, washing away the evidence of my obsession but leaving the hunger that drove it fully intact.
I leaned against the tile wall, breathing hard, water running in rivulets down my face and chest. This was madness.
I knew it. Knight knew it. Yet I couldn’t stop myself from seeking her, couldn’t purge her from my system no matter how many times I tried to exorcise her memory through physical release.
She had burned herself into me during that single night, leaving marks no one could see, but which I felt with every breath.
I turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around my waist. Water dripped from my hair onto my shoulders as I moved to the window, looking out over the courtyard the guys had made for their women. I wanted Darby here with them. With me.