No matter how much I want to see Cedric, I hope he doesn’t try to find me and end up getting himself hurt again. While Lowell may be a demanding jackass, taking whatever he wants from me whenever he wants it without bothering to ask, he hasn’t ever hurt me. But I have no doubt that he’ll kill Cedric out of some insecure masculine bullshit.
“Where the fuck did you go?” Lowell asks when he jerks on the handful of my long hair he’s holding at the back of my head and jerks my face around so that I’m looking at him. It’s hard to pretend he’s Cedric when he’s so rough with me or when he makes me look at his face when his cock is being shoved deep inside of me. On my hands and knees staring down at the tattoo on my hand, it was much easier to imagine the man behind me was someone else.
“I’m here. I’m right here,” I assure him.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks, like the self-conscious man he is.
“You,” I lie. “How generous you are and how lucky I am to be yours.”
“Then why can’t I hear you being grateful for me and my dick?”
“I-I’ll try harder,” I promise him. I’m relieved when he lets my hair go and pulls his cock out of me with a grunt. Watching him over my shoulder, he climbs off the bed naked and strolls over to the bathroom, coming back a moment later with something in his clenched fists.
“Open your mouth,” he demands. When I do, he places a yellow pill on my tongue and then slams my jaw closed so that I have to swallow whatever drug he just gave me. I’m certain it wasn’t a multivitamin or some other over-the-counter pill.
When he lets me open my mouth again, I ask, “What was that?”
“Just a little X to help you enjoy yourself,” he says before he mounts me again.
And gradually, while Lowell has his way with me, I do start to relax as a comforting sensation wraps around me, like being in Cedric’s arms again. It’s how I felt when he kissed me and touched me, warming me up from the depths of my soul.
Happiness.
No, it’s more than happiness.
I’m truly euphoric for only the second time in my life.
Chapter Five
Cedric
It took me several months of hanging around the Savage Asylum, watching and waiting before Reece and Maddox finally said I had made the cut to potentially prospect with the Savage Kings MC. Potentially being the keyword.
The sheriff wasn’t lying. These guys don’t trust lightly, and I can’t say I blame them. But there’s a major difference I’ve noticed between the Kings and the Aces – the Kings are legit badasses on the east coast, with a ton of businesses and charters, while the Aces seem…shady.
Whenever I’m not at the Kings’ bar, I’ve been in Carolina Beach, watching the Dirty Aces’ clubhouse. At least, I assume it’s where they hang out, and it’s right below the apartment where Evelyn and Lowell are living. She hardly leaves the building; and when she does, it’s to go see her mother, who lives in an apartment nearby. And that asshole is always with her. At least Ev doesn’t look like she’s been physically hurt, at least not as far as I can tell, since I’ve had to keep my distance. She does seem tired and sad, which I fucking hate to see.
It didn’t take a detective to find their marriage license at the county register of deeds a few weeks after the night he took her from my house. I wanted to throw up after I saw it typed in black and white, but what’s done is done.
I watch and wait from my car one Sunday afternoon for Evelyn and Lowell to leave her mother Rita’s apartment. As soon as they ride off on his crotch rocket down the street, I grab my gift for Rita from the passenger seat and finally climb out of my car to jog over to the first-floor apartment. I’ve strolled up and down the hallways before today with a hoodie covering most of my face, looking for security cameras, but so far, I haven’t seen a single one. Already, I know one thing for certain – Lowell is sloppy and careless.
After a quick knock on the door, Rita answers in her long housecoat and purple slippers, her dark hair cut short nowadays because she probably doesn’t have the energy to fool with it.
“Cedric?” Her jaw drops in in surprise. Her skin has a yellowish hue and her face looks like it’s aged years in the span of a few brutal months because of her failing kidneys.
“Hey, sorry to just drop by…”
“What? No! Come in, come in!” she urges, shuffling her feet backward to let me in. “You just missed Evelyn! I know she would’ve loved to see you.”
Yeah, but her husband definitely wouldn’t have loved seeing me. He seems like the type who takes great joy in hurting others. In a way, I think I get his protectiveness. Sort of. If Evelyn was my wife, I would be jealous of every man who looks at her because she’s so damn beautiful.
“Actually, could you maybe not tell Ev I stopped by?” I ask as I follow Rita into the living room where she has a romantic comedy paused on the flat screen.
“But, why wouldn’t I tell her?” she asks when she takes a seat in her plush recliner and I lower myself onto the edge of the sofa.
“Evelyn’s, ah, husband doesn’t like me and doesn’t want me talking to her now that they’re…married,” I explain.
The words husband and married taste grittier than sand in my mouth. Fuck, I hate saying that shit aloud, making it even more real than the court document.
“How could Lowell not like you? You’re the sweetest boy I know!”
And there’s that goddamn word that I hate yet again – sweet.
“It’s fine,” I tell her. “I don’t want to cause Evelyn any problems,” I say, when what I mean is that I don’t want to die at the young age of eighteen. My parents would be devastated. “But is it okay if I come by to see you maybe every few weeks?” I ask Rita. I hold up my offering, “I brought you your favorite – strawberry cheesecake.”
Not only is Carolina Beach too far a drive for me to keep making every single day, but I’m not sure if I can keep seeing Evelyn from afar knowing I can’t touch her or talk to her. And even worse, having to see her with him, knowing he does both of those things whenever the hell he wants.
“Of course! You can come see me anytime, sweetie,” Rita tells me with a smile. “And you know I can never turn down strawberry cheesecake, even though it’s not part of my diet.”
“One slice a month can’t really hurt you, can it?” I ask.
“It will be our little secret,” she whispers as I hand her the plastic container.
And so begins my surveillance of Evelyn from a distance.
Rita tells me all about her routine without even knowing it. When she comes by, always on Sundays and Wednesdays, and that Evelyn goes to the pharmacy in town to get her prescriptions for her on Wednesdays before coming over. She also goes with her to all of her doctor appointments. Appointments are the only time that Lowell doesn’t accompany Evelyn like the doting husband Rita thinks he is. Psycho is more like it. I’m not surprised that Rita’s local nephrologist is female. Dicks like Lowell wouldn’t let Evelyn go to appointments where she could - god forbid - have to speak to any men.