“Did he have her?” Mace sounds like he’s hanging on by a thread.
“No.” A small smile crosses her face. “Major thought he had me in the palm of his hand by then, and Esme would do anything I told her. So he paired me up with her, explaining that I go with her. I think he thought I’d tell her to do whatever the man asked. He didn’t regard me as a flight risk, or not so much as he’d done earlier. There were two of his men with us, but they didn’t come into the bathroom I’d told them we had to use. Oh, they’d checked it and thought the window was too small, too high to get out of.” Her face twists, half in triumph, half in something remembered that wasn’t so pleasant. “Desperation makes us do anything, doesn’t it? A busted leg had to be better than what was planned for us, for her. I went first, landed winded but not broken. Major was right. She did whatever I told her. She jumped too. Landed on me, but she was unharmed. We ran.” Another twist to her face. “Well, she did, I hobbled.”
I exchange a look with Mace. Fuck, but they were lucky. I’m relieved Esme had been saved from the worst, but gutted what happened to Shayla, and more than a little impressed at the fortitude she’d shown.
“They must have searched for you,” Mace rasps. “How the fuck did you keep out of their clutches?”
“We hid, in a dumpster, both of us clinging to the other. Esme knew, somehow she knew to keep quiet and still. We stayed there for two days. There were rats, food rotting around us. But still, she stayed mute, clinging to me, knowing enough that she shouldn’t move or give us away. Not even when a drunk pissed on us.”
Mace is pacing, when he reaches each wall, again he bangs his fist against it.
“When I thought it was safe, we emerged. My posh dress was discoloured and torn, Esme’s hair ratted and her clothes unrecognisable. Under cover of darkness, I moved us to the worst part of town. We were so disgusting, even the dropouts avoided us. We lived rough. I pretended Esme was my daughter. I managed to scavenge food and scrounge some clothing from a charity store. Cleaned us up and knew we had to put distance between us and Vegas. So we hitchhiked. Got dropped at a truck stop, and I… I did what I had to do to get us a long-distance ride out of Nevada. We stopped off in one place then another and eventually ended up in Colorado.”
“You still living rough?” She doesn’t look like it, but then, she’s resourceful.
She shakes her head. “No, I managed to get a job waiting tables, enough to get a dump of a one-room studio, but it works. All I wanted was to save up enough to get rid of this tattoo, firstly because with it, there’s always a chance the wrong person might see it. Secondly,” she looks up and meets my eyes, “I won’t ever belong to a man again. I’ll never be property. Ever.”
“You safe?” Mace suddenly swings around.
I wouldn’t need to be a mind reader to know what he’s thinking as his thoughts are probably along the same lines as mine.
Her quick look down gives us the answer neither of us like, but then she straightens her back. “The diner’s not too bad. Andy, the owner, keeps a shotgun under the bar. The apartment is cheap, and not in the best part of town, but it’s better than living rough.”
Her eyes that I thought were so haunted now also seem tired.
Mace looks like a taut elastic band to me, as if he’s going to snap any moment. I can read the signs, so I’m not surprised when he mumbles something about needing to be somewhere, then opens the door and walks out.
Chapter Twelve
Mace
I left Shayla with Liz for two reasons, the main one being I couldn’t stand to be in that room anymore. What I’d heard about her was enough by itself, add a cute kid like Esme into the mix and it becomes so much worse.
I don’t know who this Major is, have never heard of him before. That’s what had gotten me so uptight, that I couldn’t jump on my bike and go deal with him myself. I’ve an enemy to fight, and I’ve no idea who he is or where he’s to be found.
It angers me that there are men of his ilk who think they can steal women and own them. I’m not naïve. I know it goes on all the time, but to come face-to-face with someone pulled off the street just because they’ve a pretty face and a body that men would like to fuck is abhorrent to me.
I’m also annoyed at myself. While I can’t put myself in the mindset of a man who’d fuck a kid like Esme, what was it I thought when I saw Shayla for the first time? That I wanted to sink my dick into her. After hearing her story, I hated that I, too, had seen her not as a person but as a body. The only difference between me and Major is that I like my women willing.
It’s pulled me up and made me think twice. Most women to me mean little more than having tits and asses which turn me on, exactly what I’d thought when I first saw Shayla.
Shayla’s story had gotten to me. Sure, she had the assets which made my cock stand to attention, but as I listened, it wasn’t her physical attributes that had me listening to her. It was her bravery, her loyalty. She had stood up for that girl, offered to take her fucking punishment, and risked everything to save her from the future Major had planned for her. She’d done what she had to, to keep them both safe. Her resilience in simply surviving was admirable.
I’ve never thought of giving a woman my property patch, but I live with men who have. It’s in our bylaws that we mark our women, but I’ve never seen anything wrong in that. To us, our property is something to treasure, to love and protect. Any of my brothers would be fooling themselves if they thought ownership worked one way. I’d often joked, the old ladies had their men by their balls, but it’s true, when brothers fall, they go down hard. If anything happened to the woman who wore their patch, they’d be devastated. We all know Heart’s story, the man in the Tucson club whose old lady was murdered. He very near followed her into the grave, such was his desolation at her loss.
Some clubs might treat property differently, but not us. Some clubs pass their women around, but again, not us. For a pimp to kidnap and hold women against their will, that thought fills me with disgust.
I pause for a moment outside Vi’s station. What fucked up kind of man would take a girl like Esme? Who the fuck would destroy that kid’s trust, seeing her not as a sweet child, but as an opportunity to make money? It’s way beyond my imagination, which brings my thoughts back to Shayla. She’s fully grown, but just thinking about what she’s been through makes me feel physically sick. I may torture the sweet butts, but only sensually, never, ever, would I use a woman who didn’t want it, or said no to anything I proposed and meant it.
Hitting the heel of my hand against my forehead, I realise it’s only my refusal to force myself on an unwilling woman that separates me from Major or his clients.
Shayla’s reactions, her nervousness around me and Liz, showed how greatly she’d been damaged. I’ve no idea what she was before, but suspect she knew of the darker side of life only from stories in the newspaper, never expecting to be living it herself. Men were viewed as potential boyfriends, maybe future husbands. Now she knows intimately that there are men who take without giving, who hurt, just because their innate strength means that they can. She was denigrated as something less than human, her own thoughts and feelings meaning nothing at all.