Out of Sight

Copyright © 2018 Giana Darling

Edited by Ellie McLove

Formatting by Champagne Book Design

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This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

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 Table of Contents

Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
About Giana Darling
To the physically and spiritually dispossessed, I hope you find your home.
“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?.”
Christopher Marlowe
I was an old hat at running away.
In fact, I’d been running since I was eleven-years-old and my foster
father started to pinch my developing curves for sport. At first, I’d only run
small distances, to the nearest park to hide from my crabby foster father’s red
pinchers, then to 24/7 convenience stores like Max and 7/11 to bum off flirty
teenaged boys and pervy old men. I stayed in a few shelters, fewer motels
and once, I broke into a truck to spend the night during one of Alberta’s
random summer blizzards.
Then I turned fourteen and I was old enough to make real bank. I didn’t
look older than my years at all but I found a skeevy friend of a friend to make
me a passable fake ID and then I got a job at an even skeevier dive bar.
The owner let me sleep on a cot in the storage room. It was dark, too
close and yeasty, like living in a breadbox lined with mildew, but I loved it.
The customers were seedy but interesting, with art painted, punched, and
punctured into their faces and bodies, exposed by leather, lace, and cheap
cotton. No one cared what anyone else did as long as it didn’t involve them.
There was such a freedom to that way of living, to their apathy and self-
centeredness. I found myself loving it, if only because it was so different
from the foster system I’d been bounced through as a young girl.
I loved the life, not the bar, and I cycled through six more just like it from
Alberta across the prairies to Ontario in the next twelve months.
It was there I lost my virginity to a man named Fernando who was at least
two decades older than me but handsome because his Spanish genes made
him so no matter his age. He was also richer than anyone I’d ever met before
and it would have made me slightly uncomfortable if not for the fact that he
was very kind. Not just nice or friendly, two characteristics that were
genetically coded into Canadians, but genuinely kind, in the way of elderly
librarians and sweet cheeked homemakers. He was better suited to some
suburb in the 1950s and not the concrete stretch of Toronto he found himself
in, but I was grateful for the error. He wooed me for weeks at the bar, took
my v-card gently when the time came for it, and bedded me for three months.
It was the longest I’d ever spent in one place but it was worth it in the end,
because Fernando up and invited me back to Spain with him.
I went.
He bought the plane ticket, hearts in his eyes as he handed it to me and I
pocketed it easily, betrayal on my mind without a trickle of remorse or dread.
I spent two months with him in San Sebastian, stole all his cash, pawned
a gold necklace he’d given me that felt too much like a collar, and then I was
gone.
Running, running, running across Spain from the orange scented streets of
Valencia to Madrid, Barcelona, and then up into France from war scarred
Normandy across the famous coast of azure blue and up into Paris where I
stayed, found a job as a tour guide under the table and settled in.
I’d just returned to Canada after four years abroad, my only skills a
fluency in Spanish and French, and pickpocketing tourists in front of the
Eiffel Tower. I didn’t really care, I only returned because I was tired of
European life. I missed rough men with rougher hands, beards, plaid, and
hearty constitutions. I was tired of beauty and romance, I wanted grit and the
kind of love that devoured.
European men ate pizza with a knife and fork.
So, I was back, this time in British Columbia because I’d heard good
things. I landed in Vancouver but hitchhiked up the coast the very next day
because I hadn’t snowboarded in years and Whistler had just had a fresh
dumping of prime powder.
That was my mistake. Hitch hiking.
Europe had ruined me and I’d romanticized the very roughness I craved
from Canada.
The men who picked me up on the side of the Sea to Sky Highway were
not the kind of men who ate with a knife and fork.
They were the kind of men who smoked like it was the 1980s, drank like
it was the 1950s and fucked like Neanderthals.
Oh, and they were also the type of men who abducted and trafficked
young women.
I guess I buried the lead there.
 So, that was where I currently found myself, hustled into the back of a
minivan, the seats removed to make room for the three other women folded
up and tied with rope alongside me. They stared at me with sad, dark eyes,
their make-up smeared nightmarishly around their mouths, spit and semen
dried on their chins.
Clearly, these girls had already been put to use.
For the first time in my life, running wasn’t an option.
I waited, listening to the two guys in the front shoot the shit. Finally, just
before it turned dark, we pulled off the side of the highway into a busy
parking lot in front of a place called Eugene’s. It was the kind of place I
would have loved to frequent normally, panelled and turquoise with just a
small pink neon sign to distinguish the name. There was a huge movie-theatre
style sign with the saying “We serve beer colder and cheaper than your ex.”
“Ain’t this place where some of those Fallen bikers hang?” one of the
idiots in the front seat muttered to the other.
“Scared of a little leather, Greg? Don’t be a pussy. The man said to meet
here, we’re meetin’ him here.”
The man called Greg looked around uneasily, drumming his fingers on the
steering wheel in a way that made me think he was high.
“Just don’t think the boss’ll be happy we turned a scouting trip into
something a little more profitable, you hear me?”
“Don’t be a pussy. Ventura’s a stone, cold bitch. If she understands
anything, it’s money. ’Sides, we contact a buyer, she’ll be fucking thrilled we
took initiative.”
I wished my mouth wasn’t pressed closed by a scrap of duct tape so I
could tell them what morons they were. I was no criminal–– unless you
counted petty theft–– but even I knew crime bosses weren’t really up on their
minions doing a little business on the side.
“Yeah, okay. So, how do ya wanna do this?”
I kept an avid ear tuned into the conversation even as I slipped the small
Buck Lite folding knife from out of my left boot. The idiots hadn’t even
checked me for weapons. I had the knife easily accessible with my hands tied
behind my back, and another one, slimmer, almost elegant, attached to a long
necklace that hung between my breast and lay cold on my belly.
The other girls watched me squirm slightly to angle the knife between the
layers of duct tape at my ankles, then switched the blade up and back to free
my hands. I raised a finger to my lips, but their frightened expressions didn’t
change.
The front doors opened, closed and then the automatic sliding side door
powered open to reveal the two men who immediately began to unbind us
and make the clearly used girls more presentable with baby wipes. They
didn’t notice I’d already cut the tape, because I’d carefully rewrapped it, but
I hated that my first attempt at escape was thwarted.
They were cute, which sucked and also explained why I thought they
weren’t as sketchy as they obviously were. The one named Greg was tall,
lanky in a way that made him lean slightly forward like a stalk of grass in the
breeze and he wore one of those baggy toques over a mop of curls. The other
one was shorter, a square jaw on top of a thick neck and a squat body, but he
had gorgeous blue eyes with the kind of lashes girls would kill for.
There was something about beauty that had always repelled me, maybe
because I’d had so little of it in my life. I was too small to be truly beautiful
myself, barely five foot two, thin as a reed with breasts and an ass that could
fit easily in a grown man’s hands. I think friends would have called me cute
if I had any to give me compliments.
As it was, I didn’t and because I hadn’t grown up with anything but
neglect and the wear and tear of poverty, I didn’t like beauty or anything that
it entailed.
So, I should have known better to get into a van with two pretty looking
ski bums.
At least I was prepared enough to give them a run for their money as soon
as I got the chance.
It came ten minutes later, after they’d corralled us into the building and
ushered us to a dimly lit booth in the corner farthest from the bar and
adjoining stage where a half-decent country rock band was playing. It was
relatively busy for a week day night, which surprised me even though the
place was cool as shit.
The one named Greg stayed with us while his buddy went to the opposite
end of the bar to speak with his contact. I wasn’t sure what kind of deal they
were making, but Greg jumped a little each time the contact gestured to our
table.
“You don’t seem like the kind of dude to sell women into prostitution,” I
told him, curious to see how he’d react to my directness.
 He blinked, licked his lips, and then looked down at his hands on the
table. “Pushed into a corner, what’re ya gonna do, ya know?”
“Not really,” I disagreed, but gently because I was sensing he was a soft
touch and not the brightest guy. There was a chance I could convince him to
let us go. “You’re pushing us into the corner with you, only for us, there’s no
escape after this.”
Greg bit his lower lip, his gaze somewhere over my left shoulder. “Better
you than me.”
I swallowed my sigh. I should have known better than to hope for the best
out of a person. I’d learned a long time ago and thoroughly that human beings
were only decent to each other if they had the means to be.
As soon as you took away their prosperity, it was every man for himself.
I wanted to lean into the table and spit at Greg’s stupid, handsome face,
to rally against his selfishness just to purge myself of this sick fear and
inaction.
In direct contrast, the girls beside me were docile, clearly beaten into
submission a long time ago. They were all white, young enough to carry baby
weight in their cheeks and firmness to their curves like immature fruit. I
wondered about their stories, if they were misguided teenage runaways from
good suburban homes who were bored with their cardigan-clad lives or girls
like me who’d never had a place to call home and went running unwittingly
into the arms of dangerous because they had nowhere else to go.
I wanted to help them almost more than I wanted to help myself. They
didn’t stand a chance of getting out of this situation without me, but I was no
superhero and I’d spent the last twenty years of my life happily centered in
myself and my own priorities.
I felt the weight of uncharacteristic responsibility weigh on my shoulders
as I surveyed the room for some kind of escape or source of help.
We noticed each other at the same time.
It started with a feeling at the base of my spine, like the tightening before
an orgasm or the spasm before a hard shiver rips up your back. I knew
instinctively where the source came from, to the left of the booth some
distance across the room as if the person was giving off some kind of radar
location.
I wanted to look up and find him, and I knew it was a him because I could
feel his gaze in my pussy and his intent pressing on my brain like a brand.
He wanted me.
 And without even knowing who he was, what he looked like, or if he was
a serial killer, I wanted him to.
I looked up.
And everything fell away.
The sting of pain around my wrists from where they’d torn the duct tape
away, the fear emanating from the girls beside me thick as gas fumes, and the
worry that in a few hours I’d wear semen on my skin just like them.
And there was only him.
Not beautiful. No, there was no way a man like him so rugged he seemed
carved crudely from rough stone by the hands of some primal human, could
ever be called something so poetic. He was a statement of masculinity, a
bold declaration of strength. It was stamped in his broad palmed hands and
the scowl pressed between his heavy brow. It was chiselled out of his
hollowed cheeks and thickly bearded, square cut jaw.
It was imprinted in his eyes, hot and dark as freshly brewed coffee
scorching down my skin as his gaze spilled over me. I could feel myself
blister and boil under the heat, the way my flesh peeled away to reveal the
ugly, charred marrow of who I was, the bones I was built on.
And then I was ash, mute and wasted by his scrutiny.
I couldn’t even put a name to the man, but I knew by the way he’d razed
me, that only he could build me back up.
Maybe even build me better.
Before I could consciously decide against it, I was standing.
“Sit the fuck down,” Greg snapped, leaning over to shove me down.
The man, a biker if his leather jacket and tattooed arms were anything to
go by, stood up as I sat down, his scowled brow pulled tighter. There was a
threat in his eyes that was a promise, not an insinuation.
He wanted to rip off the hand that touched me like that.
So did I.
I turned my attention to Greg, forcing my features into some semblance of
a pretty smile. I was small, delicate like a blown glass figurine on some
grandma’s shelf. There was no way Greg wouldn’t underestimate me, no way
he could know that I had two knives on my person and a way with martial
arts thanks to Fernando’s penchant for Capoeira.
“I have to pee,” I told him.
Greg glared at me then looked at his partner as he stalked back over to
our table. He was clearly the one who called the shots.
 “Dude’s down to the girls off our hands. He’s got a man sells ’em to
whore houses on East Hastings Street down in Vancouver,” he said as he
stopped at the table. “Just stepped outside to talk numbers with his guy.”
“Sick,” Greg nodded, then gestured to me. “Bitch needs to pee.”
He sighed and waved a hand, “Take ’er. We don’t want the smell of piss
ruinin’ a good sale.”
“What am I gonna do, Harry? Follow her into the john?” Greg demanded.
“The guy’ll be back any minute, I should stay for negotiations.”
“Like you’d even know what to say to the guy,” Harry barked back. “Take
the girl and be lucky I even set this shit up and let you in on it.”
Greg cursed under his breath, but stood up, grabbed me by the arm and
yanked me out of the booth. I could feel my mystery man’s eyes on me as I
was dragged down the hall into the bathrooms, but I didn’t turn around.
I hoped he would follow, find some way to get me out of this clearly
desperate situation, but I’d never based my actions on anyone else before and
it wasn’t the time to start.
So, I was relieved when Greg ushered me into the separate handicap
washroom and locked the door behind us.
“Do your business and be fuckin’ quick. I don’t wanna miss out on the
meetin’,” Greg mumbled, folding his arms over his chest as he faced the
door, giving me a modicum of privacy that was slightly ironic given what he
was trying to sell me into.
Still, I took advantage of it.
There wasn’t much in the way of makeshift weapons, and I didn’t know if
I could get close enough to use one of my short, slim knives on him. If I
fumbled this opportunity, I wasn’t sure if I was going to get another.
It had to be now.
I turned to flush the toilet and saw it.
The heavy porcelain toilet tank cover.
“Hurry the fuck up,” Greg rumbled, shifting side to side on his feet.
My heart throbbed in my throat as I gingerly lifted the weighty cover in
my hands. I balanced it against my thigh as I flushed the toilet to cover the
sound of my movements, and then I tip toed behind Greg’s big body.
“’Bout fuckin’ time––” he said as he began to turn towards me.
I grunted as I hefted the cover into the air with both hands like I was
yielding a baseball bat and threw it with all my weight against Greg’s turning
head.
 The sound of crunching bone and then his warbled, shocked scream
echoed off the tiled walls of the bathroom. I watched him fall to his side on
the dirty bathroom floor and brought the toilet lid down again on the same
side of his bleeding, crushed face before he could even process what had
happened to him.
I could feel the bones in his cheek give way as the porcelain made
contact.
He was out.
Not dead––his breath still feathered wetly through his bloody lips––but
out cold.
One guy down.
One to go.
I took a deep breath to overcome the fizz of adrenaline popping through
my veins like soda pop and pushed out of the bathroom, making a beeline
down the hall straight to the bar. There were no thoughts in my overwhelmed
brain, instead I was running on instinct, that animal urge in my gut that
propelled me to survive at all costs.
A huge man who looked more than a lumberjack than a bartender stood
dead center behind the wood bar cleaning pint glasses, but his eyes were
already on me as I approached, his thick brown furrowed as he saw the
blood splatter on my pale blue ski jacket.
“There’s a man on the floor of the handicap washroom. He and another
guy probably sitting at a booth in the far corner over my shoulder are trying
to sell me and three other women into prostitution,” I said, surprised by the
lack of tremble in my voice, it’s matter-of-factness as if I was reciting the
weather forecast. “I need you to call the cops.”
The bartender stared at me for what felt like an eternal moment, then
nodded curtly and turned to call down the bar to another employee, “Rita,
call the cops. Try to get Danner junior down here insteada senior.”
“Ignore her.” It was a voice I’d only heard a dozen times in the last two
hours yet it was already as familiar to me as my own because it represented
my doom. “She’s been tryin’ to get me in trouble since I told ’er I was done
with ’er games and dumped ’er ass.”
His arm slid around my hip as he stepped up to the bar with a winning
smile, as if we were a feuding couple and not a cowboy with his condemned
cattle.
 The bartender’s eyes snapped between us and then from somewhere
beneath the bar the hand previously holding his dish rag slapped onto the
counter now holding the thick barrel of a shotgun.
“Thinkin’ you’d be a dumbass to drop such a fine woman,” he growled in
a voice like a bear’s roar.
I ducked out from under Harry’s arm and shoved him in the side just as
Greg appeared behind him, face a bloody, caved in mess yet somehow still
twisted with comprehensible anger. He reached for me but the bartender
hopped with one hand over the width of the bar and planted his gun in his
chest. He froze.
Harry didn’t. He lunged at me, his fist poised to land a hammer strike to
my cheek and I was caught against the counter and a stool at my back so I had
no choice but to take it.
Then he was there, the mysterious biker man from across the room. He
stepped in front of me and caught Harry’s descending fist in his own broad
palm before twisting it savagely.
Harry’s knees buckled as he let out a sharp yelp of pain.
“Stay down, motherfucker,” he growled, leaning down into his face as he
twisted that arm until there was an audible pop even above the music.
I caught a of glimpse of the female bartender, Rita, on the phone to the
cops and relaxed slightly as the fight hit a stalemate before it even broke out.
I should’ve known better, but I think we’ve established, I’m a slow
learner.
Greg and Harry were there to meet a man, a man who sold women like
Walmart salesmen sold vacuum cleaners, as if we were objects to use and
put back on the shelf. I should have known he’d have no compunction about
getting involved and that when he did, he would do it ruthlessly.
I didn’t realize any of this, of course, until it was too late and the crash
and tinkle of a breaking bottle sounded just behind me.
A second later, the sharp circular edge of ragged glass pressed against
my jugular.
“Think I’ll take this pretty one off your hands for you boys,” a reedy
voice said against my hair as he pulled me closer toward the door. “Y’all
stay there real still while I get outta here.”
There was stillness across the entire bar for one crystal clear moment,
even the band suspended mid-note in Bob Seger’s rendition of “Sock It To
Santa.”
 Then the mysterious biker man moved and he did it by launching himself
at my attacker. I fell into a stool as the two men tumbled to the floor and the
whole room burst into chaos.
People started fighting everywhere, even ones who weren’t involved in
our skirmish, but also Eugene and Greg, who were grappling over the shot
gun. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the three girls I’d been captured with
slink out the front door holding hands, terror warring with hope in their faces.
I hoped they got away.
I ducked out of the way as my mystery biker surged to his feet, Harry’s
neck in one of his wide hands. He slammed him into the bar and started to
pound a fist into his face.
Harry groaned, but he hadn’t given up.
I knew this because I watched as his hand dipped behind the bar he was
sprawled over to reach for a beer bottle. He shattered it against the bar top
and lunged.
I did too, soaring over the stool to jump on his back as he pushed my
mystery man off and slashed that bottle across his heathen handsome face.
I landed just as the bottle did.
The roar that ripped through the cacophony of the bar sent shiver down
my spine. It was a sound of pure and utter agony.
I wrapped myself around Harry’s back, pressed the knife dangling from a
chain on my neck to his throat and ordered him to stand down just in time to
watch the huge, beautiful man who’d tried to save me sway, blood gushing
from between his fingers as he held them over his eyes, then crash to the
ground.
A second later, the doors burst open to reveal red and blue lights and a
dozen police officer calling for everyone to freeze.
But I was already frozen, my eyes on a stranger who had stepped in to
save me and paid too steep a price for his heroism. A price I should have
been willing to pay myself.
Matt

I tried to open my eyes.

When that didn’t work, I thought maybe I was blind.
And in that small minute, thinking that, I realized everythin’ I was gonna
miss lookin’ at.
The way the road thinned into the horizon and disappeared into the sky as
I drove through the bare, long stretches of highway across the prairies. The
colour of the leaves as they turn in the fall and the sight’a the stars cast like
stolen diamonds across the velvet black sky.
These were my thoughts, only ever poetic in my head, turned to ash on my
tongue ’fore they could be voiced.
I’d always had a problem translatin’ myself for others, I didn’t need lack
of sight to worsen the burden.
But then somethin’ happened.
The dull pain in one eye deepened, dug roots deep into the soft tissue of
my brain and burst forth like some gnarled tree.
The other one opened.
My head swam as I tried to orientate myself, as the room fluxed between
flat and three dimensional. Experimentally, I held out one of my gauze
wrapped hands and tried to touch it with the other. I missed by inches.
Fuck.
I tried to take stock of the rest of my body, noted the soreness in my
knuckles, the awful weight of my head and then a deep, numb pressure on my
legs.
Dear fuckin’ God, please tell me I wasn’t half-blind and paraplegic.
 I held my breath as I carefully tipped my painful head off the pillow to
look down at my feet.
A girl lay there, curled up like a dark kitten at the base of the small
hospital bed, her face obscured by inky strands of her short, silky hair.
The girl from Eugene’s.
I felt her phantom hands in my chest lookin’ at her on my bed the same
way I had when I’d first spotted her across the crowded dive bar, as if her
little fingers were clutched around the pumping muscle, manipulatin’ its beat.
It was romantic probably, but it was also disconcerting as fuck.
Because how could you feel a stranger stake claim to you before you
even knew her name, her scent or the sound of her mouth formin’ words?
All it took was the sight’a her.
And she wasn’t a bombshell, not a blond stacked queen of a woman or
some exotic girl swept in from hotter, foreign lands.
She was just a girl. Young, slight, and exquisitely, delicately made like
some fine China doll complete with the porcelain skin, red bowed mouth and
huge dark eyes that swallowed me up even from distance.
I didn’t have a type, but if I did, I wouldn’ta said it was her.
But even lookin’ at her curled up at my feet, her sweet face soft in sleep,
her hand curled into the blanket over my left thigh, I knew she was it.
Not my type, more than that.
My girl.
I hadn’t had a girl, a friend, or a family in five years. Not since I’d stolen
my dad’s ancient Harley and rode out of small-town Newfoundland never to
look back. Fuck, even before that my family hardly counted as one.
Until that moment, I hadn’t thought I’d cared much about the loneliness. I
was a nomad in the purest sense’a the word. Everything I owned fit in my
saddlebags on the back of my bike and when I left a place, there were few
who’d remember my name for long.
I liked it like that.
But I wanted this waifish little thing to know my name. To learn it,
memorize it and tattoo it on her soul for her to keep for all’a eternity.
Yeah, I’d tried to save her from the fuckwads trying to abduct her. But
she’d tried to save me too.
The sight of her jumping onto my attackers back a split second after he
lashed out with that broken beer bottle to slash across my face was the last
sight I would ever see through both eyes.
 It was a good one.
One I knew I’d cherish the way some poor children cherished a second-
hand toy on Christmas morning. It was strange and a little sad, but I thought
that made it even more poignant.
I had to be more than twice this woman’s weight, and she’d tried to save
me.
“Yo.”
I looked to the door too quickly and hissed as pain exploded through my
skull. When I opened my eyes again after bracing for the pain, I saw two huge
bikers in the doorway.
One was seriously giant. Taller than my six-foot-two height by
considerable inches, his shoulders so wide they nearly didn’t fit through the
doorway. There was somethin’ more than just his hugeness that drew my eye
and made me straighten in the bed as much as I could, somethin’ powerful
that spoke of ferocity and leadership.
I could tell by the way the other guy, tattooed from neck to fingertips in
blue inked art, stood behind and to the right’a him, that the aura of leadership
was founded in reality.
“Help ya with somethin’?” I asked, one hand automatically going down to
the back of the girl’s head.
I didn’t know who these fuckers were and it was obvious the girl was
tied up with some bad people. I wasn’t in the best place to defend her, but
fuck me if I wouldn’t try.
“Easy, man,” the big guy said with a wide, creased smile as he strolled
into the room and moved an ugly orange plastic chair to the side of my bed.
“Just wanna talk to you ’bout what went down at Eugene’s.”
I watched the other guy moved to stand behind him and narrowed my eyes
as I noticed the way he moved, lethal and smooth like a wild cat stalking his
prey. It wouldn’t be a good idea to underestimate that fucker just ’cause he
was leaner, slightly shorter than the other.
“You cops?” I asked, sarcasm in my voice and the raise of my brow.
They both laughed.
“Nah, man, and lucky for ya too. Cops ’round ’ere don’t do much,” he
leaned forward in the chair with his forearms braced on his thighs. “We do.”
I hated that he was seated on my left side so I had to tip my head painfully
to keep him in my sights and even then, my vision was still wonky, lopsided
like it had a limp.
 “Club?” I asked, tilting my chin at their cuts, black leather jackets like
mine only theirs had distinguishing patches on them.
The guy sittin’ beside me wore one that said “Prez.”
He grinned. “The Fallen MC, at your fuckin’ service. I’m Zeus Garro, my
brother here is Bat Stevens.”
“Matt Broderick,” I muttered. “Not sure how much help I’m gonna be. I
jumped in when those fuckers tried to attack the girl. Don’t know the why of
it all or even the who.”
“Yeah well, the police only got the two guys traffickin’ the girls. The
other guy, the one they were meetin’ with got away.”
He shared a grim look with his brother Bat that was easy enough to read.
“Cops let them get away,” I confirmed.
Zeus Garro’s mouth flattened. “Lookin’ that way. Look, this is our town,
we don’t want women feelin’ unsafe ’ere and fuck, I got a daughter I wanna
know is good to walk home from school alone, ya get me? So, any
information you got, we want it.”
“She was with three other girls, not sure what happened to ’em, and those
two fuckers tryn’ to sell ’em. The guy that attacked me? Don’t remember
much, but the fact he was lean with blond hair like a kid not a man.”
“Hear anythin’?”
“Nah, only reason I even noticed the situation at all was the girl caught
my eye,” I said with a shrug.
Shit went down in bars like that all the time and I was no white fuckin’
knight.
I was just a man without a mission, wind at his back and nothing but road
in front’a him. There’d never been a good enough reason to get involved in
shit before I’d seen those huge brown eyes in that heart shaped face.
His gaze fell to the sight of my fingers strokin’ through the girl’s hair and
I froze the instant he brought my attention to it.
“Listen, these kinda people aren’t the type to leave loose ends, ya hear
me? You need a safe place to crash while they catch this motherfucker, I gotta
free room for you and your girl.”
I blinked at him. I felt those words warm in my gut like a heat lamp over
my weak-ass, faltering heart, something good that would help it grow and
thrive.
“What do you care?” I retorted, focusin’ on that instead’a the fact that this
nameless girl was not mine.
 At least, not yet.
The biker Prez stared at me for a long, hard minute with eyes the colour
of a steel blade. They cut through my shields, reduced them to ribbons so he
could see right through to the heart’a me.
“Recognize a lost man when I see ’im,” he said quietly. “Got a group’a
men fallen through the cracks of their lives, lost and fuckin’ alone ’til they
found a kinda home with the club. You wanna stick ’round, put in some time,
don’t see how a man like you who’d step in front’a an innocent woman to
protect ’er wouldn’t do well as one’a us.”
“An outlaw?” I asked harshly.
“A brother,” he replied instantly. “One with freedom, but also a home, a
purpose, and fuckin’ family.”
My vision swam as the headache swelling behind my eyes crested into a
tsunami and broke against my brain. Tears fell outta my right eye and when I
ran my fingers under the gauze on my left, they came away with blood.
“Leave ya too it,” he told me as he stood, droppin’ a card to the plastic
tray beside me. “Number’s there, you remember somethin’ or wanna call.”
I watched them move toward the door then waited when the man named
Bat hesitated in the doorway and turned back to say, “Went through hell, man,
two tours in Afghanistan. Thought I’d live alone with those demons for the
rest of my fuckin’ life.”
“You sayin’ those demons are gone now you got a nice, little family at
your back?” I offered drily.
“Fuck no,” he said in haunted voice, his eyes vacant as they stared into
some dark past. “But it feels a fuckuva lot better now they got company.”
I wasn’t asleep when the bikers came.
Normally, I didn’t sleep all that well or all that much. Sleeping in the
backrooms of bars and in shitty motels wasn’t exactly conducive to solid
slumber.
I’d slept well curled up at the base of mystery man Matt Broderick’s
hospital bed. It probably had something to do with the fact that for the first
time, probably in my life, I felt safe. This strange man had taken a broken
bottle to the face and lost an eye trying to protect me. I might not have known
his name from his own lips or any details of his life or even personality
beyond his awesome courage and unfailing bravery, but I knew what kind of
heart he had because he’d put it literally at risk to save a stranger.
To save me.
I felt his hand in my hair grow heavy as he fell asleep almost immediately
after the bikers left. Carefully, I unraveled from the bed and slipped out the
door to find something to soothe my growling stomach. I stared into the
vending machine at the far end of the hall, deciding on a Mr. Big candy bar
for Matt because the name was entirely suitable, and a KitKat for me when
the brisk clip of booted feet struck out against the linoleum down the hall
perpendicular to mine.
I recognized the police officer from the bar fight, a distinguished older
blond man who looked like an old-time Hollywood heartthrob. I’d gotten in
the back of the ambulance with Matt before they’d been able to question me
so I assumed he was there to get my statement.
I was about to round the corner and reveal myself when I caught sight of
the blond man who’d tried to buy me. Behind him came a beautiful Mexican
man, young and fit, but entirely terrifying and not just because his gun was
visible under his coat. There was a blankness to his face that spoke of apathy
and inherent cruelty.
Goosebumps broke out over my skin and I took an instinct step away,
pressing my back to the vending machine with a Mr. Big candy bar clutched
in my hand.
“This is not the auspicious beginning I was looking forward to, Jack,” the
cop said, his voice as clipped as his stride across the floor toward me. “Both
of you assured me that there would be no backlash on this community yet the
ink on this deal is barely dry and I’ve got a maimed biker in a hospital and a
local bar in disarray.”
“The kids went off book.” I shivered at the voice of my attacker.
“They’re Ventura’s boys, not mine.”
“They are,” the last man said, his accent lyrically Spanish, his tone dead
flat. “I will deal with them.”
“You talk to Irina and get this sorted,” Danner threatened.
“Fine. But first, let’s sort this mess, hmm? Where is the man and the
girl?”
I stopped breathing.
“Why do you need to kill them?” the cop asked, only mildly exasperated.
“They don’t know anything about what’s going on.”
“Ventura’s don’t like loose ends. They need to know that no one can
identify our connection or link them to the trafficking, especially if they hope
to move here one day and set up a permanent business.”
There was a long pause. I waited for the policeman’s sense of duty to
kick in and his outrage to surface. How could any man in blue okay the
murder of innocents?
“Last room at the end of the next hall,” he finally muttered wearily. “Wait
until I’m gone to do it.”
“Five minutes,” the Mexican man countered. “And I do it alone.”
“What the fuck, man? You think I can’t handle it,” the man named Jack
demanded.
“I don’t want messy, I just want dead.”
I turned, dropped the candy bar, and ran.
Panic turned my thoughts to static, but I flew to the nurse’s station on
instinct and ripped the landline telephone from behind the counter into my
hands.
“Hey!” an outraged nurse protested.
 I ignored her and read the label on the phone “dial 9 then the room
number for internal calls.”
Matt picked up on the second ring.
“Yeah?”
“Hey,” I said, watching with horrified eyes as the beautiful assassin
rounded the corner by the vending machine and started toward me, toward
the end of the hall where my beautiful, scarred hero lay vulnerable. “It’s me,
Tayline.”
“Tayline,” he repeated, his voice like sandpaper smoothing out the
syllables.
“Yeah, listen, the cop from the bar and the guy that attacked us? He’s here
and they’re sending a man to kill you like right now. Can you get out of the
room without help?”
I caught his eyes as he passed me, unwrapping my fallen Mr. Big candy
bar before tearing a bite out of it. He breezed by as if he was going for a
stroll, not stalking his prey to ultimately put a bullet in it.
“Fuck,” he said and then I heard the rustle of bedsheets as he got out of
bed.
“I don’t know if I should call the police,” I whispered quickly. “That guy
was one of them.”
“No, don’t. Just, fuck, get out of here.”
“I’m not just going to leave you, asshole,” I told him. “You saved my
fucking life!”
“Yeah, well let’s not make it worth shit, yeah? Get gone.”
Dial tone.
Fuck.
I stared at the annoyed nurse and the cursed, “Call the police, something
is going down in room 303.”
“Hey!” she called after me as I ran down the hall.
The man was just disappearing into Matt’s room.
I pushed my muscles so hard they burned with lactic acid and then I
pushed them harder so that my breath burst through my lips, fueled by the
panic that I wouldn’t get there in time.
I didn’t know what I would do when I got there, I just knew I couldn’t let
him die after all that.
There was a coarse shout and then a gun discharged as I slid to a stop in
the doorway, almost slipping on the discarded Mr. Big candy wrapper. The
would-be-murderer and Matt were grappling for control of the gun until Matt
slammed a heavy elbow into his nose and the weapon went flying into the
wall and then skidded to the floor between them and myself.
I blinked at it and then dove, the linoleum catching at my bare skin
through my ripped jeans so that the flesh tore, but I didn’t care. I could hear
the sick thud of fists hitting bone and I didn’t know how long Matt could last
in a fight, down one eye and exhausted from the trauma.
The hot barrel of the gun scorched the tips of my fingers so I fumbled it as
I tried to adjust my grip. It was heavier than I would’ve thought, but then
again, I didn’t know anything about guns.
So, I just did what I’d seen people do in the movies, raising it with both
hands, squinting slightly to try to aim at the man that was not Matt, and then I
squeezed the trigger.
The recoil bruised my thumb and made me jerk backward, but I was too
focused on the screaming villain to care.
I’d got him right in the ass.
Matt didn’t hesitate, he brought the groaning man down into his raised
thigh and kneed him in the gonads then pushed him to the ground. He swiped
his leather jacket from the chair beside the bed and ran toward me shouting,
“Let’s get the fuck outta here.”
He tagged my hand as if he’d held it every day for years and then
propelled me out of the room with him. I still clutched the warm gun in my
hand, wishing I knew how to turn the safety on as I raced after Matt into the
emergency exit and down the stairs.
He stumbled slightly as he turned the corners, his vision off, so I moved
closer to guide him. We burst out of the door into the brilliant light of the
midday sun and blinked the spots from our eyes.
Only they weren’t spots, but police lights flickering silently as cops
pulled up and poured out of them.
“Fuck,” Matt cursed, then clutched my hand tighter and swerved around
the building to the back-parking lot.
“Where the hell are you going?” I panted.
“Where the cops ain’t.”
“You’re in a hospital gown and your ass is showing,” I told him as if the
sight of those two muscular orbs, pale against his tan and clenched tight as he
ran wasn’t the loveliest sight I’d ever seen. “We need to get somewhere
private.”
 He stopped running abruptly, swaying slightly as he stopped, his one
good eye blinking hard against the dizziness. “Fine, you lead.”
I grinned at him and darted to one of the older model cars in the first row
of the parking lot. All I had left of my meager possessions were the clothes
on my back and my wallet, which thankfully, held my breaking and entering
kit.
I dug out the picks and went to work on the lock of the Prius.
“You can hotwire a car,” he said from behind me, wry amusement and
something kind of like pride in his voice.
“I can hotwire a car,” I agreed, finishing the job with a satisfying click as
I pulled the driver’s side door open. “Teenage runaway.” I told him in
explanation.
“Sure,” he muttered as he rounded the car and got in the passenger side
when I opened it for him.
I could feel his eyes on me as I broke open the steering column and
rewired the old system so the car started with a rumble and a purr.
“You take all your dates on rides like this?” he asked, mildly curious
even though when I glanced over, his dark brown eye danced with humour.
“Last I checked this wasn’t a date,” I told him even though the thought
thrilled me.
“I met you at any other bar on any other night, pixie, this would be our
first date.”
“Well then, I can’t say I’ve hotwired a car, shot anyone, or gotten my man
maimed on a date before.”
“So, I’m memorable already,” he noted proudly.
And somehow, after living through the absolute horror of the last twenty-
four hours, I burst out laughing.
I signed us in to the cheap motel called Purgatory on the outskirts of
Entrance, B.C. as Mr. Big and Miss Little. It made Matt laugh even though he
was fading fast. I loved the sound of his laugh, rough and wild like sound of
stampeding mustangs. He was quiet though on the way to the pink painted,
chipped door of our room on the second floor of the two-level structure and
he barely smiled at me when I snorted at the color of the door or the pink
décor inside. I wanted to help him to the far bed, especially when he
accidently bumped into the dresser on his way there, but he didn’t seem like
the kind of guy to accept help easily so I left it.
He flopped to the hard mattress with a loud groan and remained quiet as I
locked the door after us and tightly closed the cheap pink curtains. I’d looked
it up on my phone and there were three motels around the town so if someone
thought to look for us at one, there was a one in three chance we’d be found.
Then, not knowing what else to do, I sat down and stared at the man
who’d lost an eye for me. I felt his sacrifice in my chest like a hand clenched
too tightly around my heart. It was the pressure of responsibility, the
suffocation of guilt.
“You shouldn’t have stepped in like that,” I told him quietly, wanting to
apologize, but I was out of practice at it.
“Don’t make it out all hero-like,” he muttered, each word heavy with
exhaustion. “Did it ’cause I liked the look’a ya in a way I couldn’t ignore.”
“So, what’re you’re saying is, you’re not a good guy and I’m pretty
enough to warrant losing an eye over?” I asked bemusedly, drawing my
booted feet onto the mattress so I could hug my knees.
There was such a long pause, I figured it had fallen asleep and then,
“Yeah, sounds ’bout right.”
 I giggled, the sound tapering off as he finally moved, tipping his head to
the side so he could see me out of his good right eye. There was tenderness
in his craggy features that seemed at odds there even as I thought it was the
most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“She giggles,” he muttered. “Girl curls up like a kitten at the feet of a
stranger, shoots guns and hotwires car, and she giggles.”
I shrugged, not sure what that meant.
He closed his eye as his lips twitched into a faint smile. “Hard shell, soft
and sweet candy center.”
I smiled into my knees and watched quietly as he fell asleep.
He was hard and heathen even at rest, his features still suspended in a
glare of intimidation as if he could scare aware bad dreams. His big body
eclipsed the narrow bed completely, his overlong dark hair falling like an ink
stain against the pale pink pillow. I wasn’t sure how long I sat there staring at
the sleeping giant who’d saved me, but it was long enough for something to
work itself free of its restraints tucked deep in Tartarus-like pit of my chest
and crawl into my throat.
I didn’t know it until the possibility faced me bright and obvious as a
flashing neon sign, but I realized what I wanted and maybe even, what I’d
been unconsciously searching for across two continents over the last six
years. And it was simple, so simple it made me feel simple. Dumb and
oblivious without the bliss to go along with it.
I wanted something to call my own.
More, I wanted someone to call me their own.
I was a teenage runaway, there wasn’t anyone as apathetic of possessions
as me.
Yet… sitting there looking at the massive man sprawled across the tiny
motel bed, I wasn’t sure the idea of being his sounded so bad.

I returned to the room laden with plastic shopping bags to find Matt sweating,
grunting and thrashing restlessly on the bed. Immediately, I dropped the
goods and raced to his side, pressing my hand to his hot forehead, checking
the damp gauze over his eye, slightly pink with blood.
 “Matt, wake up,” I shouted, jerking him by the broad shoulder. “You’re
having a nightmare.”
He woke up with a snap, lurching to a seated position, his arms moving
quickly to pin me against his chest as he rolled to the side, away from the
door. At first, I thought he was attacking me and my heart tripped with fear.
Then, when one hand cradled the back of my head and he covered me with
his big body, I realized that he was instinctually protecting me from some
imagined threat.
My heart restarted with a thudding bang like some ancient furnaces
coming back to life.
“Shh, it’s okay, Mr. Big,” I murmured, stroking his damp hair back from
his forehead gently. “It’s just me. You were having a nightmare.”
He peeled off me slightly, his good eyes dazed with sleep and
remembered dreams as he raked it down my body, checking me out for
injuries. When he found me whole, he sighed gustily and dropped his head
into my shoulder, careful not to hurt his eye.
“Dreamt I was too late,” he growled into my hair. “Didn’t lose an eye,
but you lost your face.”
“Yikes,” I said and he let out an amused exhalation that was something
like a laugh. “Well, I’m fine and we need to get you sorted, so why don’t you
get undressed while I start you a bath?”
He frowned at me, but let me squeeze out from under him and go to the
pink tiled bathroom to start the water running in the tub. God, this place was
straight out of some Barbie themed horror film.
Matt followed me into the bathroom when the tub was nearly full, steam
rolling off the water and fogging up the wide mirror over the sink. I had my
makeshift medical paraphernalia set up on the closed toilet lit next to the bath
and there was an already soaped-up sponge in my hand, my jacket discarded
and my thermal sleeves rolled up so I could clean him.
“Get in, Mr. B,” I said, narrowing my eyes at his still clothed form. “Lose
the clothes.”
“Was hopin’ the first time you saw me naked would be a fuckuva lot
more romantic,” he said, glaring at the bubbling bath water as if it was
boiling lava.
“Didn’t take you as the making-love romantic type.”
He shifted his intense gaze to me. “I’m not. My kinda romantic is getting’
naked and doin’ the horizontal tango.”
 I laughed. “Not sure you’re up for that, buddy.”
“Try me,” he dared and then he reached behind his neck to slowly peeling
his sweat suctioned tee over his head.
My mouth went dry at the sight of his abs, perfectly staked boxes of hard
muscle I wanted to climb with my tongue. A tattoo dipped down from his
upper back onto both shoulders and down to cover his entire pectorals in an
abstract array of green and blue ink. One of his nipples was pierced. Saliva
pooled in my mouth at the thought of taking the silver barbell between my
teeth.
When I looked back up at his face, he was grinning.
I cleared my throat and leveled him with haughty look. “Let’s test that
after we get you clean of blood and grim.”
He chuckled low in his throat and popped open the button of his jeans. I
watched him slowly grasp and lower the zipper then part the denim with both
hands so he could lower them over his hips and down his thick, delicious
thighs. It felt like someone was revealing a profound secret just for me,
unearthing the answer to the question of life, and it lay nestled in the black
boxer briefs stretched tight around Matt’s big body.
He paused with the denim pooled at his feet, his fingers hooked in the
waistband of his underwear, his stare hot like a hand at my throat.
I tried to tell myself to calm down. A body was just a body no matter
how finely tuned. That Matt was fucking injured because of me and it was my
duty to nurse him back to health, not with the magic powers of my pussy, but
with hot bath water and stolen medication.
But nothing I told myself changed the fact that watching Matt Broderick
strip down in a steamy bathroom just inches from my flushed face was
without a doubt the sexiest moment of my life.
I held my breath as slowly dipped the fabric over that hard V of muscles
arrowing into his furred groin and then I choked on a groan as his
wonderfully thick, hard cock appeared. It was heavy and swollen red at the
tip with arousal, veins prominent in the dusky shaft that I wanted to explore
with my tongue.
He wasn’t even touching me and I felt on the edge of some kind of visual
orgasm.
My eyes stayed fixed on him as he moved forward and stepped into the
scalding water with a soft hiss before lowering his oversized body into the
tub. Water sloshed over the side as he settled, but I ignored it, my gaze
transfixed by the sight of water running down his wide chest, glistening in his
chest hair before rolling down into the bubbles obscuring his beautiful cock.
“Work quick,” he said gruffly, pulling my eyes to his. “Or I’m haulin’ ya
into this tub with me and we’ll do the tango wet.”
I shivered before I could quell the urge and then straightened my
shoulders.
“Lean back and relax,” I told him.
He stared at me for a long moment before complying, tipping his head
back against the rim and closing his eye.
I hesitated then stood up to quickly shuck off my jeans and black thermal
before I stepped one foot in the tub and then the other on the opposite side of
Matt’s body so I was straddling him. His eye snapped open, blazing with heat
as I lowered myself onto his lower torso and settled there.
His hands instantly went to my hips, his thumbs running over the string of
my white bikini-style underwear.
“Be good,” I scolded, but my voice was tight with arousal. “Let me take
care of you.”
And I did.
Gently, I use the soft sponge to rub over the deep hills and narrow valleys
of his muscular torso, worked my fingers into his stiff neck and up into his
hair so I could carefully wash it without getting suds in his eyes. He let me
tend to him, a giant sprawled in a tiny pink bathtub, his potential strength and
intimidating energy lax as if I’d tamed me like some wild animal with my
soothing pets.
I’d never taken care of a single soul in my life.
And the feeling was like nothing else, I could feel the warmth of
tenderness bloom like a bruise in my chest, part pain and part beautiful
reward.
When I was finished cleaning him, I leaned out of the tub to grab the glass
of water and pain meds I had waiting and handed them to him.
“Where’d ya get these?” he asked, his voice gravelly with relaxation and
sleepiness.
“Stole them.”
His eyebrow shot up. “You stole pain meds? For where? You hold up a
pharmacy in the twenty minutes you were gone?”
I sniffed. “No. I pretended to fall outside a house in a neighborhood a
few blocks away. The lovely family let me in to clean up in their washroom
and call a friend.”
“And you stole from them.”
“Yes,” I agreed, even though I was irritated by his incredulity. “You
needed something for the pain.”
“Teenage runaway skills,” he surmised.
I nodded curtly, taking the glass from him and placing it on the ground
before I started to unwrap his bad eye. “You gotta do what you gotta do, you
know?”
“Hey,” he called to me, his hands slicking up the backs of my thighs, over
my ass to my hips where he squeezed gently. “Kitten, if anyone knows that
better than me, I don’t know ’em.”
I stared down into his rough face and saw the truth of that. “Okay.”
When I peeled the gauze away, it was to find his bad eye slightly bloody
and weepy, the cut starting just above his eyebrow and angling all the way
down into his beard. The wound was stitched closed, even his torn eyelid,
but the eye itself was red, cloudy and it looked totally beyond repair. My
fingers lightly traced his sliced eyebrow then down his cheek over his sharp,
bearded jaw before going to his mouth. His lips were full, the lower one
plush, the colour of the inside of a seashell so pale pink.
I leaned down and pressed a kiss to that mouth, my gratitude and apology
more eloquent on my tongue than they ever could be through my voice.
Matt groaned and slanted his head to thrust his tongue between my lips. I
sighed into his mouth as his arms went around me, curling me into his chest
so that I felt surrounded by him, cocooned by him. I was safe and aroused, a
bizarre combination that shouldn’t have been so unbearably heady.
Then we were moving.
He shifted in the tub and stood quickly, his hands at my ass so he could
carry me out of the bath. We were dripping wet and his bad eye was
uncovered, but he didn’t seem to care as he kissed me and carried me over to
the bed. He dropped on top of me softly, bracing his weight in his forearms
so he wouldn’t crush me with his huge build.
“Feelin’ romantic, Tayline,” he warned me against my lips.
The sound of my name in his rich voice shot a shiver straight down my
spine to my pussy.
I gasped as his head lowered to my chest and his lips latched onto my
nipple through the sheer material of my bralette. The sight of his big, dark
head against my pale chest and the sharp pull of his lips and teeth against my
sensitive flesh had me writhing in minutes.
He soothed me a hand stroking down my side, slowly angling over my
belly to cup my sex over my panties.
“Taste so fuckin’ sweet everywhere else, gotta taste you here,” he told
me as he sat back on his knees and ripped my underwear down my legs.
His stare was hot against my pussy as he lifted my hips high with his
hands on my ass and brought me to his hungry mouth.
I moaned long and low as his lips latched onto my core and his hot, slick
tongue laved over my aching clit. He growled into my folds, shaking his head
back and forth between my thighs so his beard abraded my skin deliciously
and his tongue vibrated against my sweet spot.
“Fuck,” I cursed, my legs straightening to hold back the epic climax
threatening to snap my body in two. “Matt, God, that feels too good.”
He didn’t let up. Instead, he carted my body further into his lap, my hips
canted high into the air so he could drink shamelessly from my center. I could
hear the wet sound of his mouth on my pussy, the harsh rasp of his aroused
breath as he ate at me relentlessly, and I knew I was going to come.
One of Matt’s hands left my ass, slicking up my damp inner thigh to sink
to thick fingers in my snug cunt.
I came apart.
My body unravelled at the touch of his fingers, thoughts spilling out of my
fractured mind, sensation unspooling through my blood until all that was left
of me was the scattered remains of fabric and thread that had once held me
together.
“Fuck, gorgeous,” I heard Matt curse and then he was lowering my lips
so I was draped over his thighs and his searing hot cock was at my entrance.
“Look at me,” he barked. “Wanna see you as I take you.”
My eyes snapped open and locked with his one-eyed gaze just as he
powered his hips forward and impaled me on his huge cock.
I cried out as pain edged pleasure flooded my body, but I didn’t take my
eyes off his starkly aroused face, not even when he grasped my hips and
started to go at my hard.
“Look at that snug, pink pussy wrapped so tight ’round my cock,” he
groaned, looking down at our connection.
I lifted myself onto my elbows so I could see the obscene sight of his
thick, dark cock slick with my cum stretching out my cunt. My head fell back
on my shoulders as another orgasm sunk its teeth into my spine.
“Gonna come again.”
“You wait for me,” he told me.
“Hurry,” I begged, my pussy already tightening, twitching, ready to
detonate all around him.
“Look at me,” he ordered again as one hand smoothed up the center of my
body and rested over my left breast, over my heart. “Want you to feel me.”
And I could.
I could feel his eyes on me, the terrifying, glorious weight of his intent
and intense affection behind them, the heavy brand of his hand over my heart
and the thick surge of him between my thighs. He was everywhere; in me, on
me, around me.
In that moment, he was mine.
“Yeah,” he rasped, somehow reading my thoughts. “Fuckin’ yeah.”
And when we came, we did it together.
Later, I lay with him in the near dark, only the flickering grey light of the
muted tv casting pale shadows over the bed.
“There’s a word in Spanish for a man like you,” I told him. “Tuerto is a
one-eyed man. We don’t have a word for that in English.”
“We do. Cyclops,” he deadpanned.
I hit him in the shoulder then traced the pattern of his tattoos there,
distracted by their beauty and the stunning cut of his muscles below that.
“Cyclops. Well, it’s definitely more original than Matt.”
“What’s wrong with my name?”
I shrugged one shoulder. “It’s just…so normal. You are not a normal
man.”
His gaze seared into me and he pulled me tighter on top of him with the
arm at my hip so that he could speak against my lips when he said, “You are
not a normal woman. More like a fuckin’ dream.”
“A very bad one,” I corrected, my fingers soft with apology against his
freshly gauze wrapped left eye.
“I might’a had sight through both eyes before I met ya, but I’m tellin’ you
this in a real way that has nothin’ to do with your guilt or me wantin’ to make
you feel better and every-fuckin’-thin’ to do with the truth. In a lotta ways, I
was blinder last week than I am today.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “How’s that?”
“Was livin’ life on autopilot, stopped pausin’ to see the beauty and the
possibilities laid out for me. Man loses an eye, comes that close to a dirty
kinda death, he sees things differently than he used to.”
“Tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine,” I whispered, desperate to understand
every inch of him in a way I’d never felt before.
 His broad fingers played with one of my small hands, tracing over each
slim digit, mapping the veins in my wrist and the lines cutting through my
palms. There was an intensity to everything he did with me, for me, as if he
was an ardent scholar and I was every script, scroll, and verse he ever
wanted to read.
I’d never had anyone pay attention to me, let alone to the depths and
clarity of Matt’s attentiveness. It should have disturbed me, rubbed me raw
like some collar on the wildness of my free spirit. Instead, it settled
something restless in my chest, a beast that yearned for pack but had never
found one.
“Don’t really got much to tell, kitten, but I’ll tell it. Mum died’a breast
cancer when I was three, Dad was an alcoholic piece’a shit, never made
many friends back home ’cause he had a reputation as crook, which meant so
did I even young as twelve. Got the fuck out of Newfoundland and been
riding nomad ever since.”
“Young, wild, and free,” I surmised. “Same as me.”
His hand tightened at my hip. “Got a feelin’ we’re cut from the same
kinda clothe.”
“Yeah,” I agreed softly, loving that because I’d never had it before. “My
story starts different, but ends the same. Parents died in a wreck when I was
three, went into foster care, never found a good home, runaway until running
away became my whole life. Back in Canada after four years in Europe
bumming around and learning French and Spanish.”
He was quiet for a while, his coarse fingers running patterns over the
skin of my ass.
“You ever want a home?” he finally asked.
His words cracked open the lid of desire I’d kept screwed tightly shut in
the center of my chest.
I took a deep breath and let it out. “Yeah, sure. You?”
“Home can be a person or place, never found either worth stayin’ put
for,” he replied, feeling me stiffen beside him. “Thinkin’ that’s changed
now.”
“Yeah?” I asked, as if my heart wasn’t in my throat, as if hope wasn’t
clogging my airways.
“We figure out what to do ’bout this Mexican who wants to see us dead,
I’m thinkin’ fuck yeah. Try this place, it doesn’t suit, move on like normal,
just doin’ it together.”
 Together.
The word raced on the track of my mind, lap after lap.
“What’re we going to do about the guy?” I asked, instead of confirming,
because I as chicken shit.
Matt tensed around me then rolled us both to the side of the bed so he
could reach into his jacket and come back with a phone in his hand. “Stole
this from him. Figure, the second we turn it on, he’ll find us.”
“And then?”
His grin was a slow slice across his face. “We set ’im up.”

Early morning fog rolled in diaphanous clouds off the ocean through the
streets of Entrance and into the huge snowed over asphalt parking lot of
Evergreen Gas Station. It was quiet, too early on the Sunday morning before
Christmas for anyone to be up and about in a small town where church going
was probably still a normal thing.
We chose the gas station because it was close enough to town to draw
attention if things went backward, but far enough we wouldn’t risk engaging
any innocent civilians. Matt had made calls to set everything in motion even
early this morning while I showered and tried to brace for carnage.
“Relax, Kitten,” Matt said, drawing my attention to the passenger side of
the stolen Prius where we were parked and waiting behind the gas station.
“This could go so wrong,” I told him something he already knew.
I’d just found him, I didn’t want to lose him before we even got the
chance to be.
“As long as we don’t die,” he told me, his mouth twisted in something
like a grin but so much better. “This’ll make one hell of a story to tell the
grandkids.”
I grinned despite my nerves, marvelling at the fact that I’d only known
him a matter of days and he already knew how to make me laugh.
“Ready?” he asked me, his hand catching one of mine to bring it to his
mouth. “We do this, it’s done. We can set up house like some kind of
reformed Barbie and Ken.”
I snorted. “Not sure we’ll ever be that.”
 “No fun in it,” he agreed. “But I found a girl looks like sweet kitten, but
has steel claws and ruthless bravery. Any kinda life with her would be good,
I’m thinkin’.”
“You tryin’ to make me cry?” I accused him. “Because I don’t do that.”
He grinned, unabashed. “Just testin’ ya.”
A car pulled up to the front of the station, a nondescript black Volvo that
wouldn’t usually draw attention except for the fact that it was 5:30am on a
Sunday and no one should be pulling up for gas.
“Go time,” Matt muttered. “Stay safe, yeah? This looks like it’s goin’
south, get gone.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not leaving you, Cyclops.”
His smile was all teeth, full and happy in a way that didn’t suit his face
because he rarely did it. Without replying, he leaned forward to lay a hot,
wet kiss on me and then pushed open the door and got out of the car. I
watched him walk to the back entrance of the gas station convenience store,
his gait smooth and sure even though I knew his sight was still wonky. The
gun I’d stolen was tucked into the waistband of his jeans.
I glanced at the clock on the dash, my knee bouncing with pent of nerves.
I wasn’t supposed to follow him into the station unless he didn’t return for
more than fifteen minutes, but when the black Volvo remained idling at a
pump for five minutes without anyone getting out, I started to get worried.
I’d just unlocked to check it out when two things happened.
The idling Volvo’s wheels screeched against the pavement before it went
driving straight through the front glass wall of the gas station.
And someone yanked open the door I’d just unlocked and ripped me from
the car.
“Hey bitch,” Harry’s voice greeted me, his hot breath in my air as he
dragged me across the lot toward the gas station where the sound of gunfire
could be heard. “Miss me?”
“How the fuck did you get out of jail?” I demanded, writing in his hold
even though he hand a gun pressed to my back and a tight grip on my hair.
“Cartel’s got money, pretty thing. I made bail and thought, what would
make my freedom taste even more sweet? The blood of the bitch that tried to
fuckin’ end me.”
He pushed open the back door to the store and dragged me down the short
hall to the main room where the Volvo dangled half in, half out of the store
and Matt was pressed against the far-left wall exchanging gunfire with three
Mexican cartel agents at the front.
“Hey one-eyed guy,” Harry called. “Just in case you can’t see me over
here with your pretty little girlfriend, I got her jammed up nice and close to
the end of my gun.”
Matt froze, his gun still cocked even though his head swiveled to face us.
His features distorted with pain as he saw me in Harry’s violent grasp.
“Look, I’m sure we can figure somethin’ out,” he tried to ration.
Harry laughed. “Yeah, fuckin’ right you’d say that. We got you between a
rock and a fuckin’ hard place. Looks to me you got nothin’ to bargin with.”
Matt’s panicked face tensed then slowly broke open into a cutting grin.
“You so sure ’bout that?”
The rolling thunder of Harley Davidson motorcycle pipes crested through
the shattered glass and vibrated the broken pieces littering the ground. A
second later, through the fog, the bikers appeared, black leather avengers
wearing the patch of Fallen angels.
Gunfire erupted.
I dropped to the ground in Harry’s suddenly lax arms and watched a
moment later as he fell backwards with a shot to his head, his eyes wide and
dull with death even as he fell. His gun dropped with a clatter and
discharged, the shot brushing so close by my shoulder, I could feel the sting
of air as it past. Without thinking, I grabbed the hot barrel and curled my
fingers over it before I started scrambling along the linoleum floor toward
where I thought Matt would be. Twinkies and Lays chip bags exploded on the
shelves above me and the roar of fighting bikers punctured the air along with
bullets.
“Matt?” I screamed over the noise as I crawled around the shelf I thought
he’d be behind.
And he was there, facing away from me, his head caught in the locked
arms of the same man who’d tried to kill him in the hospital, the one I’d shot
in the ass. He was trying to fight the hold, but there was a gun in the other
man’s hand that was pressed precariously close to his temple.
No.
No death, no dying. Not for my Cyclops, for my scarred hero.
I jumped to my feet even though gunfire hailed all around me and
screamed to draw his attention away from Matt as I ran towards them, gun
raised.
 The beautiful assassin turned to me, his gun already moving to follow his
gaze so he could kill me.
I killed him first.
My finger pulled the trigger of the gun once, twice, three times because I
didn’t know what I was doing and I wanted to be sure.
The first bullet caught his outside shoulder because I didn’t want to aim
too close to Matt. The next missed him entirely. But the third… the third got
him right in the center of his chest.
Matt spun around on his knees and shoved the guy to the ground, drilling
another bullet straight into his skull even though he was already dead.
“I got him,” I whispered as the gunfire slowed then ceased completely.
I swayed on my feet as I stared at the blood spreading into a black-red
unctuous pool beneath the dead boy.
Matt caught me as I fell forward and he easily picked me up into his arms
as someone shouted his name from the front of the store. I could feel the
tension of adrenaline turning his muscles to iron as he strode over the debris
and through the blood to the shattered front door.
“You two good?”
I tried to twist out of Matt’s grip so I could stand on my own two feet
before The Fallen bikers, but when his grip only tightened on my thighs, I
turned my head to look at the man who’d spoken.
“We’re good, thanks to you,” I told the Prez, Zeus Garro, a man bigger
than any I’d ever seen before.
He grinned as he flexed his bloody knuckles, a badly beaten, unconscious
cartel man at his feet. “Happy to help rid the streets’a Entrance from this
kinda filth.”
“Strong words from an outlaw,” I noted even though Matt squeezed me in
warning.
Zeus laughed then sobered quickly. “Yeah, well, there’s a fuckin’ big
difference ’tween growin’ an’ sellin’ weed, and stealin’ and sellin’ women.”
“Touché.”
“We gotta get outta here ’fore the cops come, but Bat anonymously called
Danner junior so you should get a half-decent cop on the scene, even if he is
a rookie.”
“Thanks again for the help,” Matt said, tipping his chin in that solemn
way men did to convey the intensity of their sentiment.
 Zeus repeated the action. “Like I said, man, it was our fuckin’ pleasure.
We’re headin’ out, that don’t mean what I said ’fore in the hospital don’t still
stand. You wanna place in The Fallen, you’re willin’ to prospect, we’d be
fuckin’ lucky to have a man like you to call a brother.”
Matt stared at him for a moment then looked down at me, reading
something in my eyes that I knew was mirrored in his own.
“Yeah,” he finally said, his voice strong and sure even though I knew he
must have been nervous to commit when we weren’t the kind of people to
commit to anything. “Yeah, Garro, I’d like that.”
Zeus’s handsome face split into a wide grin. “Fuck yeah, so would I.
Come by the club house after this gets sorted and we’ll replace that piece’a
shit leather jacket with somethin’ a far sight fuckin’ better.”
Matt nodded and watched together as the group of five bikers all moved
together to swing their legs over their bikes and ride out of there in
formation. I watched them go, loving the sight of the wind in their hair, loving
that Matt and me would be a part of something that meant family and still
gave us our freedom.
Matt turned and carried us back into the store to wait for the cops, our
story already fine-tuned from before the incident. The cops wouldn’t believe
a one-eyed man and a slip of a twenty-year-old girl could take out four cartel
members and sleazy ski bum, but they’d have no evidence to support any
other story so they’d take our tale of self-defence and eat it.
I gasped when Matt pushed me up against a wall at the back of the store
and fisted a hand in the back of my short hair. His eye burned with fire, the
heat of relief and the eclectic burn of adrenaline turned to desire. I knew the
second before he kissed me that he was going to light me on fire too.
I groaned into his mouth as he plundered it, his hand already between my
legs working at my jeans nimbly until they were undone and his hand could
slide inside, finger to my clit. I rocked against his hand, feeling his erection
against my inner thigh, my pussy already wet through my panties.
I pushed him away hard with two hands so I could rip open his jeans and
tear them down his thighs. My knees had barely hit the ground before I hand
my hand in his boxer briefs tugging out his hard cock and my mouth was
sealed over the hot tip.
He let me suck him for a long minute, his hand braced on the wall over
my head, his chin ducked into his chest so he could watch my red lips move
over the flared head of his cock. I hummed over him as he hit the back of my
throat and then I swallowed hard, dragging his big dick down my throat.
“Fuck,” he cursed, then used my hair to drag me off his cock.
He sunk to the floor beside me, tore my jeans down my legs, snapped my
panties off with a quick tug and then sunk his cock deep to the root inside me.
I was still sore from the stretch of him the night before, but I love the ache
and burn of him. It reminded me that he was real, not some long forgotten
dream I’d cooked up then thrown out as a kid, but a real flesh and blood man
that wanted me to be his, that wanted to do something as beautiful and
tangible as lay down roots with me.
A stray bullet must have hit the gas station stereo because All I Want For
Christmas was playing on repeat over the drone of the drink fridges and the
whistle of winter wind streaming through the broken glass door. The
linoleum was cold, the blood pooled over it warm, and Matt’s skin was
almost unbearably hot against my own.
I stared up at him as he fucked me on the floor of the gas station, his hand
tight around my throat, his big cock inside me and I knew I’d kill a thousand
more men if it meant keeping him with me for eternity.
“Feel like fuckin’ home,” he growled into my ear as he wrapped himself
tight around me and came, flooding me with warmth.
“Yeah,” I gasped, as I came to, feeling me safe and warm on top of me,
more of a shield than any roof could be, more family than any one had ever
been and I’d only known him for four days. “Fuckin’ home.”

The End.

Check out the rest of The Fallen Men series in Lessons in Corruption,
Welcome to the Dark Side, and Good Gone Bad out now and free on
Kindle Unlimited.
Giana Darling is a Canadian romance writer who specializes in the taboo
and angsty side of love and romance. She currently lives in beautiful British
Columbia where she spends time riding on the back of her man’s bike, baking
pies, and reading snuggled up with her cat Persephone. She loves to hear
from readers so please contact her at gianadarling[at]gmail.com if you have
any questions or comments.

Other Books By Giana:

The Affair (The Evolution Of Sin #1)
The Secret (The Evolution Of Sin #2)
The Consequence (The Evolution Of Sin #3)
The Evolution Of Sin Trilogy Boxset
Lessons in Corruption (The Fallen Men Series #1)
Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men, #2)
Good Gone Bad (The Fallen Men, #3)

Coming Soon:

Enthralled (The Enslaved Duet, Book 1)

Enamoured (The Enslaved Duet, Book 2)
Out of Sight (A Fallen Men Short Story)
After the Fall (The Fallen Men, #4)

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