“Tax?” he whispers, ignoring my insult. “Why you wearin' a property patch if you're his fucking sister?” The man's voice is faraway, like maybe he's only here in body and not soul. Whatever happened today, whoever's blood that is, it hurt him bad. What did you do, Darren? And are you okay? Please be okay. “Doesn't matter. I don't fuckin' care.” The man shifts his shoulder forward and uses the fabric on his T-shirt to wipe away some of the sweat and my spit from his face. “You're comin' with me, sweetheart.”
“Fuck I am,” I blurt at him, doing my best to come up with a plan. I'm shoeless which is a huge hindrance. I could kick at him, but it probably wouldn't do me any good. My brain spins as I think up a hundred different scenarios. My brother's taught me how to defend myself. Today's just been a mix-up of strange circumstances and poor mistakes. And this odd ache in my belly. This weird connection to the bastard towering over me. I suck in a massive breath and get ready to scream.
I hardly get out a squeak before I'm being tugged forward by my wrists and have a gun pressed into my belly. My captor presses his forehead to mine, closing his eyes and sighing heavily, like the weight of the world is on his shoulders.
“I do not want to shoot you, sugar cakes. But if I have to, I will. I'm sorry, but I'll do it, and I won't look back.”
The man opens his green eyes and locks gazes with me, stealing my breath away, knocking the sense from my head. He releases my wrists and steps away, gesturing down the steps with his gun. I could keep fighting here; my brother would probably respect me more if I did. But I can tell on this guy's face: he's serious. He'd put that bullet in me and walk away twice as broken as he is now. I don't want to die facedown on this porch. I can't. It's just not the way things are supposed to be.
Besides, I know from his look, the deep set of his frown, the tightness of the skin on his face, that whatever happened back there, Seventy-seven Brothers burned him hard. Oh, no, no, no, no. This was not supposed to happen. It wasn't supposed to happen.
Or maybe, just maybe, in some grand scheme of the universe, it was.
Tease
Chapter 9
Once I'm situated on the front of the redhead's bike, I don't bother to fight. As someone who grew up around bikes could tell you, a crash on one of these things hurts. There's nothing between you and the road, but a bit of leather. Or today, in my case, some old jeans. My flesh would be stripped from my bones if we were to take a fall. So no, I don't fight, but I think about it. About what I'm going to do when we stop.
Right now, I've got the wind in my face, and my heart in my throat. It's still pumping furiously, reminding me that a couple hundred pounds of rock hard muscle is wrapped around my body. I am keenly aware of his scent, a mixture of blood, sweat, and some sort of spicy soap that gives me the chills. I want to be sitting here hating him, but I can't find it in me. Obviously, something happened to him, something that my club was responsible for. I don't see malice in his eyes or lust or greed, just frustration and fear. Besides, if he'd wanted to hurt them, he could've simply killed me. There's another motive here.
I swallow hard and listen to the rapid thumping of this man's heart. It's pressed tight against my back, beating a rhythm that's a near perfect match to mine. We're both worked up, pumped full of adrenaline and breathing hard. For one of the first times in a long time, I get to ponder the question: what the hell happens next?
We move down the highway at a blistering speed, right up until a series of red and blue lights flashes by us on the opposite side of the divider wall. I feel the man behind me tense and then all of a sudden, we're flying down a ramp and into a suburban area I know I've been to before. We maneuver through the area at lightning speed, racing around slow moving minivans and slipping right out of the clusters of houses and perfect yards and into the countryside.
We haven't been traveling for more than an hour when suddenly, we're pulling sharply onto the gravel shoulder of the road and stopping on a dime. The redhead gets off of the bike and takes a few steps back from me, putting his hands on the back of his head and breathing in sharply.
“Shoot and fuck and Goddamn it, Mother Mary and Christ the Lord. Why?”
He screams his frustration into the quiet air, getting some very strange looks from a herd of nearby cows. I know he's still got the gun on him, so I stay put on the motorcycle, watching as he moves in a small circle and then pauses, drawing a cellphone from his pocket. He dials a number, waits. Hangs up. Tries again. “Fuck a pig,” he growls, squeezing the phone in his hand for a moment before reconsidering and sticking it back in his pocket.
Then he pauses for a moment and just stares at me. I get that strange feeling in my stomach again, that pull that makes me wish I could step off the bike and move across the gravel towards him. Towards my kidnapper. Towards a member of a rival gang, one that might possibly have hurt my brother. I touch a hand to my chest and listen to the beat of my heart through my fingertips.