Her chest rises and falls fast. My little thief shakes her head jerkily, but I can see something else in her eyes. Curiosity.
Resisting the urge to shove her to her knees and fill her mouth right there, I slide my palm inside her panties and squeeze her ass cheek hard. She whimpers. I rest my hand on her throat again and push her head up against the wall.
“Don’t even think of getting your hands on a weapon again.” I tongue her earlobe into my mouth and bite it, loving the soft, helpless cry she lets out. “If you do, I’ll skull fuck you until you choke, and then I’ll put you in the ground.”
She jolts. When I look at her, her face is bloodless.
She gets me, and for that split second, I know what she sees in me. She sees the demon. The monster.
She says nothing to me as we mount up, and she won’t look at me, at least not when she thinks I can see. I catch her snatching glances at me, though, her face pale, her hands shaking.
She really thinks I’m going to kill her.
Fuck, I should.
I should, but I’m not going to.
This Outlaw isn’t done with his Little Thief.
(End chapter here.)
4
Heartless
Skull fuck?
The words Spider used bounce around in my head, alien and leaving me unbalanced, so that I hardly notice the hot wind whipping at us as we ride through the desert.
I might not be the most experienced girl when it comes to sex, but I can work out what the phrase means. The images it conjures up make my stomach knot. I can’t imagine anyone in the Colony saying anything like that.
And I haven’t forgotten the rest of what he said.
He said if I got my hands on a weapon again, he’d skull fuck me and then he’d put me in the ground.
He’d kill me.
The thought makes my blood turn to ice. It should be enough to strangle any arousal I feel, but it isn’t. My sex still tightens when I think about what he’ll do to me when we get where we’re going.
Lord, what is wrong with me?
The need to get away from him claws at me, but there’s nowhere to go with the motorcycle tearing down the road like this. I can’t let go of him, so my arms tighten around his waist in reflex, and I swallow my own fear, burying my face in his back.
The smell of him, masculine and spicy, coupled with the scent of the well-worn leather of his vest and the exhaust from his bike invades my senses, making it impossible to shut out the awareness of him.
He’s everywhere. In my head, in my blood, under my skin.
There’s so much going through my head right now, I can hardly think straight.
Where is he taking me? What will he do to me when we get there? How long will he keep me with him? And what will happen when he’s done with me? Will he kill me then?
I almost wish I’d never left the Colony.
Almost.
Well, there’s nothing I can do about it right now, so I might as well learn all I can and wait for an opportunity to get away.
That’s how Sarah escaped His Holy Peace. She didn’t just take off without a plan, without thinking it through. She waited and watched for the right time to make her move. And weeks later, I’d done the same thing. I got out of the Colony. I will get out of this, too. Somehow.
He said he’d kill me if I tried to escape, and that thought leaves me cold, but if my time in the Colony has taught me one thing it’s that I can’t just let things happen. As Sarah would have said, I have to change them. Have to save myself. Otherwise, it’s over. Not only will I never be able to find Sarah, wherever she is. Even if Spider doesn’t take my life, I won’t really be living.
I’ll be a puppet. A machine. A…what did Deacon Harmon call them? A robot. If I let Spider take over my life, I’ll just exist, moving through the days without anything to live for. I’ll be exactly what I was in the Colony.
I shut out the thought of what lies ahead of me, but that only leaves my thoughts to dwell on Spider. The man who’ll take everything I care about from me if I let him.
My captor.
The leather of that vest he’s wearing is surprisingly soft against my cheek. I can feel the layers of powerful muscles in his back tense when he steers the bike, which he seems to do with an effortlessness that makes it seem as if it’s an extension of him. His body feels huge against mine, all power and muscle.
Everything about Spider screams of sex and masculinity. It’s like he was built for sin.
He would be fascinating if he didn’t scare me so much.
My thoughts are such a jumbled mess that I have no idea how much time passes before he finally stops the motorcycle. I lift my head. When I see where Spider’s taken me, my worries only mount.
We’ve stopped in front of an old, two-story building, what looks like a tavern with bedrooms above it. A few of the upper floor windows glow with light. A sign hangs above the first floor. It bears the same symbol that’s on the back of the men’s vests, with the name Casper’s, in the same flaming cursive. It looks like a bar, but no normal establishment would ever allow what’s going on out front of it.
Everywhere I look, there are motorcycles. They’re parked out front and at the sides of the building, rows of them, giving the place a rough, dangerous feel. Men talk and laugh amongst themselves, standing around or sitting astride the beasts, drinks in hand. A few of the men are in the middle of a brawl, punching each other. Women sashay between the gathered men or sit on their laps. Some of the couples grind against each other with a shocking openness. I swallow, averting my eyes, feeling every bit as off balance here as I do at the strip club.
The bikes have barely stopped and the men have hardly shut off their engines when Pip, Arson, Striker and Reaper swing off and make their way up to the doors, shaking Spider’s shoulders or clapping him on the back as they pass.
Spider dismounts lazily and cups my chin, pushing it up. He’s watching me with amusement. He likes that I’m uncomfortable.
“What is this place?” I ask him quietly.
He pulls the chinstrap open on the helmet and takes it off my head. “Home.”
“You live here?”
“Off the bike.”
I glance at the building and don’t move.
He grabs my waist and lifts me off the motorcycle. I cry out in surprise, but he ignores it and sets me on my feet. “You gonna walk, or do I have to carry you again?”
I have no desire to be manhandled by him in front of everyone here.
“I’ll walk,” I answer too quickly.
His hand shackles my wrist. Spider makes his way through the crowd toward the steps to the place.
There’s no point in trying to get away. Even if Spider let go of me, any one of these men would catch me before I got two steps. There are bikers everywhere, and all around the place, nothing but more flat, hot desert.
All eyes are on us as Spider weaves through the crowd, some of the men looking me up and down with surprise, others with hungry approval.
Were I at the strip club, those stares would have made me feel dirty, ready to crawl out of my skin. From these rough and grizzled men, those stares still scare me, but for a whole different reason. Every one of these men looks as if they’re cut from the same cloth as Spider, the image of rough, lethal, criminals built for violence and sex and death.