Defiance (2 page)

Her rejection could mean a war between the MCs, unless Defiance turned her away. “What did Padraic say when he dropped me here?”

“That we had to kill you in front of him,” Caspar said without flinching. She did, even though she knew that death wasn’t all that was supposed to happen with a dishonoring like hers. Padraic would call for that to happen from ten members of her own MC while the rest watched. She’d seen it happen once, at Padraic’s. The girl had stopped screaming after the third man took her.

“Do you really think me bonding to Roan’s going to fix things?”

“Never said that, but it’s not up to me.”

“Still playing the bastard victim?”

“Still chasing Silas?” he asked in the same bored tone he always used. “Lookin’ to be king and queen of this prom? Go fight Liv and kill her for the honor. Just do it before we all get dragged into your shit again.”

She wanted to tell him she’d never dragged him into anything, but she’d be lying. Needed to ask him about that night she’d left Defiance, but she didn’t know who else was listening.

But Cas knew. He always knew.

“I didn’t tell Silas.” Caspar’s voice was low and rough, a satin drag across her skin. “Never will.”

Never will. “What if I wanted you to?”

His jaw tightened. “You went to Paddy, instead of coming to me. Doesn’t fuckin’ matter anymore, Tru.”

She stared at his neck, at the tattoo of the gang’s symbol rising up toward one of his earlobes, an intricate and surprisingly delicate pattern, considering the raw violence the gang always embraced.

Then again, the woman behind Lance had been the one to design it, and had always been the real ruler of this gang. Now, Trixie would be the one to enforce the bond code more stringently than anyone. The MC lived and died by their inner order. To the outside world, it might seem like all violence and anarchy, but they were all leashed and released only at the command of the charter president...and the woman behind him.

Trixie had power and she’d never let it be taken from her the way Tru had seen happen with other MC women—both before and after the lights went out. Tru would have to follow her lead. “Who did you bond with, Caspar?”

His jaw clenched and she knew the answer was no one.

He stood, kicking the chair to the wall, and told her, “I won’t be your goddamned sloppy seconds, Tru,” before he slammed the door between them.

“You never were,” she whispered at the closed door.

* * *

Tru couldn’t see much through the darkness. Wherever they’d put her, it was far enough from the main part of the compound that she couldn’t hear anything but the low rumble of motorcycles coming and going.

“You really brought us a load of shit by coming back here.” Trixie’s voice rumbled through the darkness. A second later, a light clicked on, precious light being wasted on her.

The room Tru’d been put in had a female’s touch—there were fresh flowers in the corner of the room, the sheets were starched and clean, the comforter was a pale blue trimmed with lace. Oddly old-fashioned and so incongruous in this otherwise rough and tumble place.

Trixie looked the same—tall and broad for a woman, but pretty, with long dark hair curling along her shoulders and tattoos up and down her arms. Badges of honor.

“I know.”

“Shower’s ready—got some hot water for you.”

She knew why Trix was treating her with kid gloves, even though, in the eyes of the club, Tru had committed one of the worst offenses by leaving her legacy behind. If she’d been a guy, she would’ve been killed on sight.

It had always been like that here. You had to fight for what you wanted—claw for it.

In the privacy of the bathroom, she stripped and stared in the mirror with the aid of candlelight at the light bruises on her arm from where she’d fallen. That’s what the single women had started doing to help raise money—they made and sold candles to the locals, big fat ones that looked ugly but burned for days on end. There was nothing romantic about them anymore. Darkness had once been a wonderful cover for everything, especially feelings.

But the doctor had checked her out, had no doubt been filled in on Tru’s medical history by Trixie. Padraic hadn’t done any harm to her—not physically. He was going to let someone else do the dirty work.

As she soaped up, washed her hair, she wondered if that might’ve been better. By the time she finished, she felt nearly human again, and the steel was back in her spine. She’d survived, and she’d continue to do so.

“You used all the damned hot water,” Trix grumbled.

“I’ll take my next one cold.”

“‘’Course you will. Not a spa I’m running here.”

“Who survived?” she asked.

“Most of the families you knew are fine. Ten of the men were on a run down to Long Valley. We never heard from them again. Half sat at the table.”

Thirteen men had voting privileges and sat in at the weekly meetings they called church. Trixie told her the names of those from the table who were gone and Tru could easily picture the men, many of whom had hung out with her father, backed him when he’d needed it. “Did their families stay?”

“Some of the women took the opportunity to get out. Lots of others came here for protection.”

“How many members are we up to?”

Trix shot her a side look at the word
we
and snorted. “Close to forty here, plus their families. Four satellite clubs in four states, so all together, close to five hundred strong.”

Enough to defend themselves, but each charter was small enough to be self-sufficient.

Defiance had been a haven for doomsday preppers long before reality TV became obsessed with the concept. From the time she was little, the club always had two faces—the above-ground compound the public saw and the underground city the MC had been building since the inception of the club. The underground housing consisted of a series of interconnected tunnels and tubes, some buried directly below the main houses and others with more hidden entrances and exits. It was a complicated, sprawling system that belied how awesome it really was.

If you could handle being underground.

The original MC leaders had spent years perfecting the patents for the tubes and Lance Jr. and Abel Jr. put their plans into motion.

Lance’s and Abel’s fathers had been submariners and UTD—precursors to the SEALs—so they were used to being locked away in tubes for long periods of time. It’s what gave the men the idea in the first place. There were pictures all over the clubhouse walls of the drills they’d done—photos of tubes, buried in the sand with the tide rushing over them. At first, they did it with empty structures and later, with volunteers who stayed buried until high tide ceased.

They bought up acres of land that no one wanted, dug and buried the tubes and tested them for durability in all kinds of weather and other conditions. They became safe houses, prisons, places to go and screw around in private.

But mostly, they were insurance for the MC members that their families were as safe as they could be, and the first rule of Defiance’s doomsday prepping was that you didn’t talk about doomsday prepping. So she hadn’t. And when what seemed like the end of the world had come, Defiance, and by extension other MCs they were friendly with, were ready.

She remembered the big cranes, the diggers, the giant corrugated steel tubes being lowered into the holes and reburied. They were touted as survival shelters but they were more extensive than that. They were meant to be lived in long term, if necessary. Inside each family tube was a fully furnished apartment. The main clubhouse was also recreated underground, complete with a meeting room. There were also tubes designated simply for storage, for growing fruits and vegetables, for water wells, and for various other survival purposes. Everything was climate controlled, thanks to the generators that ran off natural gas, gasoline or propane, depending on availability.

Inside these tubes, they could survive weather disasters, nuclear attacks, bombings and any other disasters the world might throw at them. And it appeared as though the Chaos would continue to bring severe and unexpected storms and other weather-related events for years to come.

When the Chaos hit, she’d known Defiance would survive. Padraic’s MC had bought and installed the tube system on a much smaller scale in exchange for medical goods and pharmameds years before the Chaos. While she’d been with the Kill Devils, they’d been making their underground city more extensive, in preparation for more environmental disasters.

Somehow, everything had changed and still managed to remain exactly the same. The harder she’d tried to escape, the more she ended up in the same place. If Defiance was her destiny, then she’d have to give in to it full force.

“Lance wants you with Roan,” Trix told her, brushing out Tru’s hair as she sat with the towel wrapped around her, after she’d worked the salve into the worst of the contusions and cuts. “Did Padraic touch you?”

“No.” She was sure now that she’d showered. There was no soreness, not like there’d been that first time she’d had sex.

“Why? You convince him you were a virgin?” Trixie snorted like it was a dirty word. Especially post-Chaos, that wouldn’t make Tru special—sex was regularly traded for power and was also enjoyed by both sexes—there was no shame in any of it, which was a liberation from the old ways.

For Tru, that liberation was a start. “How’s Liv?”

“Honey, you’re treading thin ice.” Then her voice softened. “Your father asked for you until the day he died.”

“Then maybe he shouldn’t’ve hit me.” She wanted to add more, but didn’t.

“They all do it when they can get away with it.”

“And we’re supposed to take it?”

“We’re supposed to make sure they can’t get away with it. Honey, you always knew there was an order, a way women have to do things. You think anything’s changed since the lights went out? We just have to be smarter, that’s all.”

“There are men who don’t hit women,” Tru challenged.

“Then you go find one.”

“I don’t want Roan, Trix. I can’t...”

“You can’t have Si back.”

“I know.” She didn’t tell Trix she didn’t want her sons at all, because Trix was more than capable of violence herself, especially when it came down to her biological family.

“You’ve got to go for exactly what you want in this world. You pick one of them, you bond with him, and you stand behind him until no one else is left standing.” She paused and finished the long braid of Tru’s hair before she said, “Think about who you want to be standing next to if the rest of the world went to hell, and you’ve got your man.”

Trix put the brush on the table, pointed to the food she’d brought in. “Eat, get some sleep. Let those bruises heal and let everyone get used to knowing you’re around before you show your face.”

“Okay.” She waited until Trix was almost out of the room before she asked, “Did you pick right?”

Trixie left without answering the question.

Chapter Two

After several days of sleeping and healing, Tru started to feel like the prisoner she was. At least she was being kept above ground—she was thankful for that. And when the spotlights shone in, lighting up her room, she rushed to the window and watched the groups of people walking toward the covered, tentlike structure about forty feet from the main clubhouse.

Trixie had told her that tonight’s fight was a major brawl between Roan and Bear. According to Trixie’s ironclad ruling, Tru was supposed to stay put, rest and wait until Roan’s intention to bond with her was announced formally.

She couldn’t let that happen. And although Tru’d been vocal about her refusal to accept Roan, Trixie didn’t seem to be paying her any mind. It was as if Tru should just be grateful they’d taken her back.

She was grateful, but not for the reasons the rest of them thought.

Defiance was full of secrets. So was she. And it wasn’t that long ago when she’d geared up to watch her first Defiance brawl ringside and gotten more than she’d ever bargained for...

Tru had stood along the ring to watch the fight between Caspar and Roan. She was fifteen, finally allowed into the fighting space.

Boys were allowed in from nearly birth, but things got rowdy here. She used to sit from a distance and listen to the whoops coming from the space where the ring was set up outside, under a big tent.

The tent connected to the inside space, but most of the time, the party spilled outside both confines.

Si had dragged her here tonight. She would’ve been content to stay home, holed up, reading. Daydreaming. She hadn’t changed out of her jeans and loose, hippielike shirt she’d gotten from Luna’s mom, had never worn the leather or skimpy shirts lots of other teenage girls in Defiance favored.

But she was here and had a front-row view of the two young men set to spar that night. Roan was broader—he’d looked like a brick wall from an early age, which she’d never found attractive. Apparently, she was one of the few.

But Caspar...he took her breath away and she hadn’t expected that. His bare chest shone with a thin sheen of sweat that accented his scars and tattoos. His hair was tucked completely under a black bandana and it made his eyes look paler, almost see through. And even though he wasn’t musclebound with a thick neck, he was taut and lean and strong.

Everything smelled like sweat and fear and sex, whiskey and leather. Smoke clouded the air—cigarette and pot and all of it intoxicating.

The fighters were shirtless.

Tattooed.

Pierced.
Caspar’s nipples were both pierced with silver bars through them. They showed through the tight T-shirts he wore, maybe the most sensuous thing she’d ever seen.

His cock was pierced too, according to the rumors. And there was no reason not to believe those and every reason to be completely jealous of the girls who’d claimed to have seen it.

He’d gone into the Navy at seventeen and was home on leave now. She hadn’t seen him for nearly a year. The bad boy swagger was still there in spades but there was a new stillness to him, a settling down. She couldn’t describe it any other way.

Before that, he’d been kicked out of school when he’d been fourteen, and she’d seen him around the club and the parties, but he mainly hung around with the non-school crowd. The older crowd.

He never looked at her. And as much as she’d never tried to attract attention from any of the other MC guys, she’d found herself trying to get his attention, tried to gauge it. Told herself it was because of her father, out of respect for him. But that wasn’t the truth at all.

“He doesn’t usually bother with the chickens,” Aimee told her. Aimee, Tru and Luna were best friends. All dreamers, too young to not believe that dreams could become reality. Aimee, with her long blonde hair and crystal blue eyes, was a fierce protector of her friends, and slightly more social than Tru or Luna. She was dating Hammer, who was one of Silas’s friends on the football team, another legacy patch.

Tru was considered a chicken, underage; even though Caspar was just three years older, that made a world of difference. He flexed his hands and she tried not to stare at his long fingers, ignore what the girl behind her said he did with those fingers to make a woman beg.

Watching him fight tonight would be something she thought about later, when a drunk Silas would try to make her come with
his
fingers.

“I left those scratches there,” she heard Mary Ellen, one of the seniors who stood behind her, say proudly. Tru noticed the long red marks that ran down both of Caspar’s sides, and probably mixed into the tattoos on his back. “I couldn’t help it—and he loved it.”

Fiona had pushed her way to the front and stood next to Tru, staring at the ring and not bothering to acknowledge Tru. But she did laugh and shake her head when Mary Ellen spoke, muttered something about amateurs.

Fiona was seventeen, knew her way around the older boys in the club.

“She’s got a hell of a nerve,” Aimee fumed on the other side of Tru and Fiona, who’d definitely heard, didn’t bother to turn her head.

Fiona had been with Hammer and with Silas. Tru had been taught from an early age that all the men in Defiance cheated in some form or another. As an old lady, she’d be expected to look the other way, to understand that men had needs and that she was still the top of the heap.

Fiona would always be under that heap.

She wasn’t the only one Silas spent time with in Defiance—she’d always known that. She was happy about it, since it took the pressure off her and she wondered if Trixie set that up for her deliberately.

In the ring, Roan was cursing at Caspar, muttering that his brother was a bastard and behind him, on the outside of the ring, Lance smiled.

Caspar’s hands fisted. She saw the anger boiling in him that night, one of the first times she’d actually seen it so. He was normally completely contained, scarily so, she felt.

When Roan noticed it, he actually upped his taunts, but he was off his game because of the way Caspar was acting. Caspar’s anger was palpable.

When Hugh called Caspar and Roan together, they walked to the center of the ring, toe to toe, their faces inches apart. Hugh had to push them back, grabbed their wrists and forced their fisted hands together.

“Play nice, boys,” he’d said. The crowd laughed. She didn’t. Neither did Caspar, but Roan smirked. Then Hugh got serious, steadied his hands on top of theirs, then pulled back and said, “You’re on!”

He barely got out of the way before Roan tackled Caspar. She gasped, put her hands over her mouth, unable to take her eyes off the men. The crowd of people surged behind her and she was pressed against the ropes. She ducked so she could watch Roan trying to punch Caspar’s face.

Caspar turned his face left then right quickly and while Roan was distracted, Caspar slammed his body up, throwing a stunned Roan into the opposite ropes. From there, he didn’t let Roan get another advantage. She heard the slams of fists against flesh and then Hugh was pulling Caspar off of Roan.

Caspar jerked himself from her father, gave Hugh a look of warning that warmed her.

He could stand up to Hugh.

She’d never felt that about any other person in Defiance. She’d wanted to get into the ring, wipe the blood from his face.

She’d never felt anything before like this. Her world went from black and white to full-blown color in that moment. He might’ve won the fight, but she’d gained everything.

“He likes his dick sucked after he fights,” Fiona whispered in her ear.

Tru stared at her, unblinking, and Fiona smirked, shrugged and walked through the crowd and over to Caspar, who’d ducked through the ropes and balanced on the stool outside the ring. She ran a hand along his biceps and he watched her carefully, warily.

And then he nodded, and Fiona turned around, gave Tru a smug look and got on her knees. Pulled his shorts down and got in between his thighs.

Every patch in the MC meant something. Caspar had a lot of them by the time he’d turned eighteen, but the one that she remembered best was the 8 Ball.

He’d had that particular patch since she’d been in high school,
one of the youngest to wear it
, she’d heard Big Hugh say with hearty appreciation.

She hadn’t been witness to the act that earned the patch in the first place, but Caspar had never been shy about public sex. That usually happened after a fight—planned ring fighting or not.

She wanted to move closer, to look between his legs.

She wanted to be the one on her knees in front of him, and that thought rocked the hell out of her, because she’d never wanted to be on her knees for any man.

His eyes closed for the briefest second and his expression was almost pained. And then his icy blue eyes opened and his gaze locked on her and wouldn’t let go.

Pleasure zinged through her as though his hand was wound in her hair. Another one of his hands snaked around to Fiona’s shoulder and Tru swore she felt the touch there. She put her hand on her own shoulder and squeezed and the corner of his mouth quirked up, because he knew. And she couldn’t do a thing about it, was frozen in place watching even though she knew she hated him.

His cheeks were already flushed from the fight. Now, she watched the flush extend from his neck to the V of his chest. His breathing quickened, his eyes seemed to shoot fire, his mouth opened slightly.

Her tongue darted out to lick the corner of her lip. He did the same thing. Nodded at her.

She was mesmerized by how hot and dirty all of it was as she stood, sheltered by the crowd watching the next fight, eyes locked to Caspar’s.

No one else was really watching—public sex was commonplace in the MC, really almost expected. She wondered if Caspar ever had sex in private. If he’d even want to.

She knew she’d dream about this tonight. Would have to be careful not to murmur his name when she was making out with Silas.

Caspar raised his brows and glanced down and then back at her, a question in his eyes.

He was inviting her to come between his legs. A bold and completely insolent move that could get him killed.

And he didn’t seem to care.

She flushed. Took a step back and ran smack into Silas.

“Hey, baby.” His voice was hot against her ear. He smelled like beer and he was unsteady, holding on to her for support.

She still didn’t take her eyes from Caspar. He was coming—his mouth opened, he threw his head back for a second and she saw how tight his fist was in Fiona’s hair.

Her own scalp ached.

In her ear, Silas laughed.

“What’s so funny?” she managed.

“Cas earning his 8 Ball patch every fucking night,” he slurred. “Guy’s a machine.”

“I was watching the fight,” she told him.

“Of course, baby. In between chatting with the other bitches.”

She rolled her eyes and pulled away from him. He nearly pitched forward.

She glanced over and found Caspar still sitting on the stool. Fiona was walking away from him and he was still watching Tru. Holding a towel around his neck.

He gave her one last smoldering glance, lit a cigarette before getting up. He sauntered off without a backward look at her. It took everything she had not to follow him into the dark.