RIDE (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance) (36 page)

After Abram died, I was married off to Isaiah, at nineteen. Isaiah, at forty-five years old, had one wife before me, Carolyn, whose bed he rarely seemed to share after our marriage.

The night of our wedding, despite my terror, I did my wifely duty and lay still as I had been told to do, while he took his pleasure with me. Despite the shock of searing pain, I made sure not to cry out when he first entered me. The next night, and every night after that, he made clear that he expected me to get into bed and wait for him, and I did so, listening with revulsion to his animal pants and groans and trying not to smell his stagnant breath as he thrashed and thrust inside me.

Once, I had been taken ill with a fever, and was so tired and achy that I tried to tell him no. When he pushed me back on the bed and tried to take me by force, I tried to fight him, even though I was weak from the sickness. Before I realized what was happening, he had raised his arm and backhanded me across the face, splitting my bottom lip open with the force of it.

After that, I never dared fight him again.

Whatever awaited me now, I reminded myself bitterly, short of death it could only be as bad as what was waiting for me back at the Ranch. I swore to myself for the hundredth time that I would never go back, no matter what.

I spent the afternoon walking up and down Main Street in Lupine, asking random strangers if they knew where the Stone Kings MC could be found. Many of them looked at me with surprise and warned me against what I was asking. Finally, a young man of about my age told me that they had a clubhouse at the edge of town, and explained to me where it was. He stared after me curiously as I thanked him and set off on foot. I had no idea how far I would have to walk to get there, but it didn’t matter as I had no other option but to walk.

Eventually, I came to a large, two-story structure that looked a bit like a small warehouse or commercial building. About twenty motorcycles were parked in two long rows in the parking lot. It was as though someone had dumped a bucket of ice in my stomach: this was it. For better or for worse, I had finally reached the end of my journey.

After all I had done to get here, I couldn’t make myself take the final steps and go inside the building. I knew I would feel safer outside meeting Levi, even if, unlike downtown, no one was around to hear me if anything happened. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait very long before a tall, thin man with short red hair and a beard came out and started toward the far row of motorcycles. I approached him, asked if he would tell Levi Wolff I was there to see him, and sat down at an ancient, peeling picnic table outside the entrance to wait.

I
had just managed
to kick Trigger’s ass in an arm wrestling match and was basking in the glory of him having to serve me up a shot like a little bitch, when Pig came up next to me at the bar.

“Levi, there’s some chick in a Minions shirt outside to see you.”

“What the fuck?” I cocked a brow at him. “What did you say?”

“Some chick in a Minions T-shirt. She’s waiting outside.”

I shook my head and frowned, trying to get my head around what the hell he was talking about. The only chicks I knew wore leather and skin-tight Harley tanks, not some fuckin’ cartoon character shirt. My mind’s eye conjured up an image of a twelve year-old girl, but no twelve year-old was gonna be waiting outside a biker clubhouse unless she was serious jail bait.

“You’re shitting me.” I said, frowning. “She say what she want?”

“Nope,” Pig replied, taking a stool next to me and reaching for the Jack.

I was half-inclined just to ignore whoever it was and give Trig the rematch he was begging for, but curiosity got the better of me. Standing up, I reached my arms behind my head and stretched, then wandered outside, trying to think of any civilian chick that could possibly be stupid or brave enough to come by the MC to find me.

The sun was bright and I didn’t have my shades on me, so at first all I could see was a fucking ridiculous yellow shirt with one of those damn googly-eyed things on it, sitting on our picnic table. I walked toward it, squinting, my hand raised to shade my eyes.

“You wanted to talk to me?” I asked the figure.

“Leviticus?” she said in a questioning voice, and stood up.

What. The. Fuck.

I stopped dead in my tracks as soon as I heard the name that no one had called me for a dozen years. My fists clenched involuntarily as my eyes finally began to adjust to the glaring sunlight enough for me to see who the voice belonged to.

She looked to be in her early twenties, though she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Most twenty-something women I knew wouldn’t be caught dead in public without it. That fucking ridiculous yellow shirt obscured whatever figure she might be hiding under it, and made her look even younger. She was wearing jeans and dusty flip flops. Her arms hung awkwardly at her sides, though the longer I stared at her without speaking, she crossed them in front of her self-consciously, as though to defend herself. Dark reddish-brown hair fell down past her shoulders to the middle of her back, and framed her heart-shaped face in gentle, artless waves. Her eyes were dark and wide as she stared at me, her plump lips slightly parted in an expression I couldn’t quite read, but that was probably fear.

Good. I wanted her to be scared. Whoever she was, she had no business here.

Leviticus, she had called me. That took care of one of my questions. There was only one place she could be from.

My past.

“It’s Levi,” I barked back at her. It came out more harshly than I had meant to, but I told myself I didn’t care.

She shrank back for a moment, and looked down. “I’m sorry. Levi,” she mumbled.

“What the fuck do you want?” I snarled at her. She looked so nervous that I felt just a little bit bad about the way I was talking to her, but too fucking bad. I didn’t want her here. Whatever the fuck she was trying to pull, the quickest way to get her gone was to show her that she was not welcome, in no uncertain terms. The man she was looking for didn’t exist anymore.

There was no reason for her to be here. None.

“It’s just… I…” she began. Her eyes filled with sudden tears, and she brushed at them distractedly with the back of one hand. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I guess I didn’t really plan this part out very well.”

“What part?” I demanded. “You shouldn’t be here.”
I know where you’re from, little girl. You need to go back there right now, before someone gets hurt
.

“I’m…” she took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. When she started again, her voice was more or less steady. “My name is Cherish Holmes,” she said, looking me directly in the eye. “I’m from the Waiting For Zion Ranch.” Her eyes flickered for a moment. “At least, I was. I’ve run away. I left the Ranch.” Her jaw set, and she continued. “I’m hoping you’ll help me.”

“Help you?” I asked incredulously, scoffing. “How the hell can I help you? Do you even know where you are?”

“Lupine, Colorado, at the clubhouse of the Stone Kings Motorcycle Gang,” she answered. Her chin jutted almost defiantly.

In spite of myself, I had to laugh. “It’s a club, not a gang,” I said, one corner of my mouth curving upward.

“Club, then,” she corrected, her face coloring. “I know you’re a member of the club. And I know you used to be in the WFZ community, too.”

My anger surged back. “How the hell do you know about me?” I demanded, taking a threatening step closer.

This was already too much information for her to have. I needed to get her the hell away from here. The last thing I needed was some ex-cult member hanging on to me, expecting me to help her make it in the cold, cruel world. I was not a babysitter for a young, beautiful woman who had no fucking experience with life outside her sheltered little existence. I had barely made it out myself, and I was the worse for wear in every respect.

“My brother is Elias Holmes. You were friends when you were kids.”

My mind flashed back to my childhood.
Elias
. The image of a freckled redhead with a gap-toothed grin came to my mind. The two of us used to play together during the rare times where there was any room for recreation between school, chores, and prayer. I remember that Elias’s mother hadn’t liked me much, and thought I was a bad influence on her son. I laughed to myself at the memory.
She was a perceptive woman
.

The girl, Cherish, widened her eyes a bit at my sudden laugh. “You remember him, don’t you?” she asked. “I’m not lying, I swear.”

I shook my head and snorted. “I know you’re not lying,” I scowled at her. “I remember your brother. Besides, you look like the last person in the world who would be capable of telling a lie.”

To my amusement, she seemed actually put out by that remark. “I can so tell a lie.” She jutted her chin at me defiantly. “I had to conceal my escape plans from everybody, for months.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked mockingly, but curious in spite of myself. “Who’d you have to hide from?”

“My husband,” she retorted. “My stepchildren.”

Her voice tripped over the words, and strangely, my stomach dropped to hear them.

To imagine her married, when she couldn’t be more than twenty-one or twenty-two… well, it’s not that she wasn’t old enough. Hell, twenty-two was practically ancient for a woman to be unmarried in the WFZ. But she just seemed so… innocent. Granted, the women I was used to being around these days looked older at eighteen than this one probably would at thirty. But still. Given what I knew about the place she had escaped, I could fill in some of the blanks of what her marriage had probably been like. And it wasn’t pretty.

“Wait a minute,” I said, my mind fixing on something she had said. “You said your name was Cherish Holmes. But if you’re married…”

She nodded. “My married name is Whitehead.” Her jaw set. “
Was
Whitehead,” she corrected.

I dimly remembered the name. “Which Whitehead?” I asked.

“Isaiah,” she murmured. Her eyes grew dark, troubled, and a pang of sympathy shot through me. The Whiteheads were one of the most prominent families of the WFZ, second only to the Radleffs.

Isaiah Whitehead, if I remembered correctly, had been a brooding, borderline sadistic asshole, the kind of bully that cults like the WFZ bred like rabbits. Their version of God’s will somehow seemed to always coincidentally line up with whatever the hell they wanted to do, anyway. Isaiah Whitehead had been about thirty or so when I left the faith. As I gazed at Cherish now, my stomach twisted at the thought of him bedding her, my fist clenching involuntarily at the idea of her forced to do her wifely duty by him.

Women didn’t have the right to say no in the WFZ community. Their primary duty was to be entirely subservient to their husbands in all things. Judging from the fact that Cherish had chosen to run rather than stay with her husband told me I probably had a pretty accurate picture of what her marriage had been like.

“Stepkids, you said?” I asked, noting that she hadn’t mentioned children.

“Yes,” she nodded. “Isaiah and I did not have the… did not have children of our own.” Her face colored again at the reference to sex. Sudden anger flooded through me at the realization that she had probably never experienced it as anything but pain or unpleasant duty. I didn’t know why I cared, exactly, but it galled me that she had probably only experienced sex as pain and unpleasant obligation.

Yes you do
, an inner voice said.
You know exactly why it pisses you off
.

Fuck. That fucking cult.

I had tried so hard to get away from it and never think of that god-forsaken place again. It made me furious to have to think of that band of sick assholes again.

Suddenly, my mind registered something else Cherish had said. “Wait,” I said. “You said your brother told you where I was?” How the hell did Elias know anything about me? And had he helped Cherish to escape?

“No,” she shook her head. “He didn’t tell me. Not exactly.” She sighed as she ran a hand through her hair and sat back down on the picnic table. For the first time, I realized how exhausted she probably was, and how hard it must have been for her to get here, with no car and no resources.

“Elias somehow heard through the grapevine that you had come here,” she continued tiredly. “You’re the only person I can remember who ever left and didn’t come back. You’re shunned, you know. Your name isn’t to be spoken by anyone. Not even your family.”

She looked up suddenly, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I’m sure that isn’t easy to hear.”

“No skin off my nose,” I snorted. I had said goodbye to my family a long time ago.

“Anyway,” she went on, “that doesn’t keep people from gossiping, of course. Whispering. You’re like this… this boogey man in people’s minds. You’re the fallen one who has gone to the Devil. They know that you left for a place called Lupine, which they say is the symbol of the devil because it’s named after a wolf, and that you’re a killer in a motorcycle gang.”

I burst into laughter. “Lupine isn’t named after a wolf. It’s named after a goddamn flower.”

“Well, anyway,” she shrugged. “That’s what they say.”

My laughter subsided, and I tilted my head at her in confusion. “So, you heard I lived in a town named after Satan, and that I’m a killer, and you decided that it would be a good idea to come find me?” I smirked.

She looked up at me, her dark eyes clear and frank. “I had to get out. You were the only person I knew who might help me.”

Shit
. That wasn’t where I wanted this to go. I had been trying to get rid of her, but I had gotten distracted by her story in spite of myself.

“Look,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t help you. I’m not exactly what Elias told you I was, but I’m not that far off. My life doesn’t have any room in it for helping out some woman I’ve never met. I can’t do anything for you.”

A look of desperation and fear crossed her face. She stood up from the picnic table and took a few steps forward, until she was facing me not two feet away. Her large, dark eyes met mine, imploring me without words, and a shock of electricity shot through me before I knew what was happening. Up until now, I had noticed that she was pretty, but the fucking Minions shirt she was wearing had been so distracting that I hadn’t paid much more attention than that. Up close, with her face raised toward me, I realized for the first time that she was fucking beautiful. Her creamy, clear skin set off the full, pouty pinkness of her lips, and before I realized what was going on, I had grown hard as a rock as my mind conjured up an image of how that soft, full mouth would look wrapped around my dick.

“Please,” she said simply as I fought for self-control. She didn’t seem to have any idea of the fucking effect she was having on me as her voice lowered to a whisper. “I don’t have any place else to go. I don’t have any money left.” Her eyes searched mine, begging me, and my cock jumped in my pants. “Please,” she repeated, softer this time. “Please, just help me find someplace to sleep tonight, and take a shower. I promise I’ll leave you alone after that.”

Goddamn
. My heart was slamming against my ribcage so hard I was afraid she’d hear it. She couldn’t have known that all I could think of now was joining her naked body in the shower she’d just asked for, and hearing that throaty little voice beg me for something else entirely. I took a step back and arranged my face in an angry frown.
Fuck
.

I couldn’t believe I was about to do this. Grey would probably fucking kill me for it.

“Okay,” I growled at her. “One night. One night only.” I nodded back toward the clubhouse. “There’s an apartment upstairs. You can stay there. It’s got a bathroom with a shower.”
And a lock on the door
.

“Oh, thank you!” she cried, jumping up and down slightly. She smiled at me then, a bright, dazzling smile that lit up her whole face and made my heart start slamming in my chest again. “Thank you so much, Levi!” She stepped forward just a little, then pulled back in embarrassment, her arms clasped tightly to her chest.

Grumbling to myself, I had her follow me to the entrance to the clubhouse and held the door open for her. Inside, I led her through the bar, upstairs, to the nicest of the apartments we kept. After telling her as quickly as I could where things were and, I got the hell out of there and went back downstairs. I announced to the astonished men who had watched me lead her in that she was staying for one night, and that she was strictly off limits.

Then I took out my cell and called the only person I could think of to come help me the fuck out.

“Hey, Seton?” I said when she answered. “I’ve got a situation.”