“Solomon?” I paused, a small part of me hoping she was about to call me back, ask me to stay with her. “Can you leave the light on? I… I don’t like the dark.”
I smiled softly at her, and switched on the overhead light. “No worries.”
Guess that explained why the light to her ensuite was on. I strolled down the now quiet hallways with Cain.
“She’s…” he started, but seemed to lose the words. Didn’t matter. I had enough words for both of us.
“Fucked up? Beautiful?”
He nodded, and cocked his head toward the sound of Judas and Goliath in the bar. We turned, heading back toward our apartments at the rear of the Clubhouse. “I screwed up with Goliath though. I just saw him there with a knife and I fucking reacted, you know?”
I didn’t say anything. He had fucked up, and he’d have to make it right. But I wasn’t so sure I wouldn’t have thought the very same thing if I’d been the first through the door. Goliath was unpredictable, and although I trusted him with the safety of the Club, I wasn’t sure I trusted him with Dippy.
But there was still a little bit of the man I used to know, the man who lived before Laura, deep down in there. That man I trusted above all else. That man was still hard and brutal, but he had a heart so big that when it broke, it shattered like crystal. Now nothing was left of it but dust that threatened to shred the hands of all those who reached for it.
It didn’t help that he was Conquest. Violence was his duty now, and he reveled in the darkness of it all.
Cain stilled his feet outside his own door. I doubted any of us were going to be sleeping, but we all needed space. “Maybe G is right. Maybe she does need to go.”
I stepped back in surprise as I tried to read his face. “What the fuck? You were the one who brought her here, remember?”
Cain glared. “Yeah, I remember. But she’s different, I can feel it in my bones. I feel like she could, fuck I don’t know, she could destroy us. Destroy me.”
Ah, Cain felt it too. The pull. I noticed as soon as I walked up to her. I couldn’t resist. She was like the sun. We were getting so close that we were going to burn, but I hadn’t felt more alive in thirty years. I was loath to give that up because these assholes couldn’t tell the past from the present. Maybe that was dangerous in its own way.
“She stays, Cain. We aren’t throwing her out on the streets because you guys can’t fucking control yourselves for five minutes.”
His eyes narrowed and I could tell he wanted to hit me. I’d probably welcome the sensation at this point. “I never suggest we throw her on the streets,” he growled. “Just that she shouldn’t be here. We could assign some of the boys to watch her. Maybe Shots and Sweetie, because Sweetie knows this baby shit.”
“And you don’t trust any of the other single members not to climb between her pretty white thighs, right?”
Cain turned and had his hand around my throat in an instant, shoving me into the wall with a thud. “Watch your mouth,” he growled again.
I just grinned back, a big shit-eating smirk spread across my lips because I knew it would rile him more. “You know, if you’re gonna keep choking me out like this, you should at least let me have my cock in my hand first.”
Cain narrowed his eyes, but I saw his lips twitch. He let go and I dropped softly to my feet. “Sorry man. She just makes me feel things.”
I slapped him hard on the back. “There's nothing wrong with feeling shit, Cain. It's what separates man and beast. But protect your heart too.”
I just hoped I could take my own damn advice.
6
Serendipity
I rolled out of bed the following morning, although the light told me it was late. I felt like a zombie, my sleep broken and fragmented. Waking to find half of Damnation MC in my bedroom hadn’t helped. Not because I felt threatened, despite the fact they were huge, scary bikers. That would have been way too sane for me. Instead, I kept imagining the way Solomon sat back on his haunches, his eyes soft, his hands curling gently into my sheets, and it made me… horny. Yeah, that was the word. Horny as hell.
I huffed out a laugh as I stepped into the shower and set it to as hot as I could stand it. If I could punch my libido in the face, I probably would. It got me in this situation. It could calm the fuck down.
Under the cleansing rush of hot water, I could think about what happened in Purgatory. Uriel stealing me from my bed the morning after I got shit faced and had really uninspired sex with the giant, beautiful douche. He was an ugly kind of beautiful. Perfection on the outside, with fire-red hair and a physique like he’d been moulded by God himself, which I guess he had. Cruelty had danced behind his eyes, but when you’ve lived as long as I have, even cruelty is better than feeling nothing. But he ended up being a two pump chump, then zapped me to fucking Purgatory to hide his sins. Then his friend visited.
I twisted the tap on the hot water higher as the chill in my bones made me shudder. Dalius. He’d been an Angel too. He believed in punishing the wicked with the fervor of a zealot. It made him very creative in his punishments. But the rats were the worst. The beatings I could take. The deprivation of light, heat, food, everything necessary for life, I could deal with. But the scrabbling of tiny nails over the stone floors, the feel of them scratching across my skin, biting at my flesh, that is what broke me.
Bile rose up in my throat and I vomited all over the shower floor. Another reason why I only thought about my time in Purgatory while in the shower. I could wash my weakness right down the drain.
I stepped out and pulled on some clothes. My t-shirt was so tight it rolled up. I was going to need some maternity clothes or something soon. I pulled on my jeans, and sucked in a deep breath to button them up. When it didn’t happen, I pulled the tie from my hair, letting my blonde locks cascade around my shoulders in a golden wave. I hooked my hair tie through the buttonhole then secured over the button. It would have to do. I wondered if any of the thrift shops around here had maternity clothes. My shirt rolled up my stomach again and I huffed.
I tiptoed out of my room, looking up and down the hallways like a thief. I padded softly down the stairs in search of Cain’s room. He might loan me a giant shirt until I could get my own. I didn’t want to walk around with my shirt looking like a crop top for the rest of the day.
I wracked my brain as to whether it was the third or fourth door that was his bedroom, but I couldn’t remember, so I tried the one at the very end. I knocked softly. I could hear the heavy thump of boots behind the door, then it was wrenched open.
Behind it wasn’t Cain. It was the guy from last night. He didn’t look any less scary in the daylight, his eyes filled with rage and his face contorting into contempt as he realized who was on the other side of his door.
I backed up until my shoulders hit the wall on the other side of the hall. “I’m sorry. I was looking for Cain. I need a shirt, I mean, sorry. I’ll just go. Shit. Sorry. Go back to sleep. If you want.” I slapped a hand over my mouth. I wanted to run, but he pinned me to the spot with his gaze. I felt like an ant caught beneath a magnifying glass, just waiting for the sun to move. “I’ll just-”