Athena's Raid: Book Two Perdition MC (21 page)

His voice was rising in volume, jerking the wheel with one hand to send them off the road and into an abandoned parking lot. She braced herself when he threw the car in park, figuring she was about to get tased. Which was about the time she struggled to stay mad, when fear was threatening to grab her in a chokehold. “Smart enough, to break into your fucking house, jack off all over your shit and walk right out. Would’ve gotten to watch you fucking him too, left a little camera in the bedroom, but you went and moved out into that new swanky place of yours.” The way he was yelling at her, it was like he was blaming her for all the trouble he’d had to go to, to follow her from Nevada, to hunt her down, and break into her house. Went through all that, and then she moved again. “Smart enough to kill my uncle and my dog, and get away with that too, huh?

He went still beside her, and when he turned his head to smile at her, it made chills ripple down her spine. It was like looking at a Chuckie Doll, that handsome face twisting into something unnatural and evil, “I wondered if you’d ever realize it was me.” She sat there and stared back at him, able to see how much he wanted to tell her all about it. All she had to do was stay quiet, and he told her everything. “Wasn’t hard, he was drunk like usual. Was easy, almost too easy to be any real fun. Nobody around, no one to see, who would suspect foul play, when a drunk just happened to run off the road.” Tears slipped down her cheeks to hear him so callously speak about killing the only family she’d had left. So proud of himself, like he should get a trophy or something for his genius. “That dog was just icing on the cake,” He ripped off a strip of tape from his roll and set the gun in his lap, clicking his tongue at her when she looked at it, making her wince involuntarily when he grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head back at a punishing angle. “Sat outside your place and waited for the troopers to call you. I wanted to see your face when you came out the door, when you came back after having to go identify the body.”

“You are the most pathetic excuse for a man I have ever met. Small brain, small ego, itty bitty little di-“

He shut her up by slapping the tape on her face, pushing her head back hard enough to cut the inside of her upper lip on her teeth. The pain of that was enough to make her cry out, the sound muffled against the tape, but she didn’t feel it for long. Pain spiked through her head, the end of his gun hitting her right in the temple. Enough to knock her out.

THIRTY FOUR

She wished she’d just stayed out, because when she came to, she was lying on a cold cement floor, in a windowless room, hands still taped together, chained by the ankle to a thick bolt in the floor. That wasn’t enough to have her sucking in huge gasps of air through her nose, it was the fact that she was naked. She didn’t know how long she’d been out, what Denny might have done to her while she was unconscious, but her body hurt like he’d beaten her.

Or worse.

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

She shrieked behind the tape when he hauled her up by the hair, dragging her forward until she was on her knees. He crouched down in front of her, wiggling a pair of pliers at her while his eyes stroked over her tattoo. Raid’s brand on her. “That’s a real pretty tattoo. You know, they say if you tattoo the name of your lover on your body, the relationship is forever after, doomed?” She didn’t try to say anything, wondering how, or where, he planned on using those pliers. She worried when he looked at her nipples, stroking the metal edge of the pliers down the slope of her breast. It was so cold in here, like a meat locker, that her nipples stood out as perfect little points to clamp pliers onto. “How do you think he’d feel, knowing I covered you in my come, fucked every hole I could put my cock in, carved my name over his and let him have you back?”

She wanted to let the fear take over, let it blot out her ability to think. But that would probably make his tiny little dick hard, and leave her at a decided disadvantage. Ever would have missed her about two seconds after Cruncher had come back without her, and when she’d last gotten a look at the clock in the rolling garbage can, it had been over a half an hour. At the least a full hour by now, Ruckus and the other prospect had seen her in the car with Denny. They’d have followed her. Raid wouldn’t be far behind, so she just had to stall for time. He was coming for her. One way or another, he’d get here. So she took a deep breath, forced herself not to flinch when Denny slapped her chest with the pliers and raised his brows at her like he was expecting an answer.

She looked back at him like he was stupid, lifted her chin at him and beneath the tape muffled out, “Can’t answer you, moron.” He ripped the tape off so roughly she was sure he’d taken chunks of skin, and part of her mouth with it. “What was that?” He cooed sweetly, “I said, you’re a fucking moron.” He hit her across the face hard enough to send her crashing to the floor, her head bouncing off the concrete with enough force to make her see stars. Mother fucker. Raid better hurry his ass up. “You and your big fucking mouth, Athena. Had to open it and get me sent to jail for a week. I lost my job at the Sherriff’s department, my shot at running that fucking county, because of you. Had to follow you here, get a job working as a fucking beat cop under my mom’s name, because you couldn’t get enough dick from that dirty fucking biker. And you opened your big fucking mouth again, and got me hit with an IAB investigation.”

She bit back the yelp when he jerked her back up by the hair, again. Bit back the tears when he shook her, making her now pounding head, scream at the pressure of her brain sloshing back and forth in her skull. “You went to jail for a week, for threatening to kill me in front of a judge, you moron. You lost your job, because you threatened to kill me in front of a judge. I moved here, to get the fuck away from you, and YOU followed ME, like an insane stalker. Making up the dumbest story to get your green partner to back your play, shakin your balls to get in my house and see me with Raid, whose dick is five times the size of yours by the way, and got hit with an IAB investigation because you LIED on your hiring paperwork and LIED about trying to force your way into my home, in front of your green ass partner. On CAMERA, you
fucking moron
!”

He hit her again, sent her down to the floor again, punched her in the ribs hard enough to crack something, and dug his fingers into her face to make her look at him. He looked high, eyes bloodshot, spit frothing at the corner of his mouth, and behind the pain, she couldn’t believe that she had ever found him attractive. He had a pretty face, a nice body, but beyond that…he was so ugly that it sat on his body like a layer of filth. She could smell it. Or maybe he’d picked up something gross from the trashcan car. “I can do this all day and take the greatest pleasure in making you bleed. I thought I might break your jaw, so I can fuck your face and not worry about you trying to bite my cock. But then you couldn’t suck it, so I thought, teeth. You won’t need them after I’m done with you. Right?”

Heart racing, blood filling her mouth after the cut under her lip had started to open back up, she was starting to panic. She knew as soon as she gave into that, she was going to lose what little control she had left. “Asked you a question, bitch.” He slapped her head sideways, her ears starting to ring in truth. “Make up your mind, do you want me to speak, or be quiet?” Another slap, pain was radiating through her entire body now, but that talk with Uncle John, she remembered. Pain was good. Pain meant you were still alive. Pain made you afraid, and being afraid made you fight to find ways to survive. Uncle John forgot to mention to her that pain this bad, really fucking sucked. “I want you, to answer the fucking question, Athena.”

“Which one?”

“What?”

“You asked me how Raid would feel if you raped me, and then gave me back. He’d still love me. And I will be needing my teeth, because pretty soon, about twenty armed, dirty, pissed off bikers are going to bust into this place and carve your ass up like a Thanksgiving day turkey. I’ll want to smile pretty for that, so yeah. Teeth would be good.”

For a second, Denny looked worried. He looked around quickly, long enough for her to notice he had a big knife on his belt, right within reach. But he recovered quickly enough, hauling her to her knees again, fisting his hand in her hair to hold her steady, discarding the pliers to work at his belt and his fly. Revulsion made her stomach churn, though it could have been the probable concussion and rapid movement, “No one knows where we are. We’ve got all night, baby, and I’m game to test your little theory. Let’s see, just how much he’ll want you after I’ve had all there is to have of you. Bite me, and I will rip out every single one of your teeth.”

He had to let go of her hair to whip out his tiny little dick, needing both hands to move his clothes aside for it to poke out far enough, and she made her move. It was over so quick, she barely had time to think. She threw her hands up and jerked them down, using the trick her Uncle had taught her to split the duck tape, and punched Denny right in his tiny little balls. He dropped with a high pitched shriek, and she scrambled to get the knife off his belt. Running on pure adrenaline now, she used her feet to push herself away from him, slashing at his hand when he reached for her ankle, his face purple from pain, mottled with rage. He launched himself at her with a roar, driving her to the floor with his hands around her neck.

THIRTY FIVE

Ahead of him by one step, Roar didn’t hesitate when they heard Athena shriek. He kicked the warped door in like it was made of tissue, and they ran in, guns drawn to see the stuff of fucking nightmares playing out right before them. Athena was kicking and fighting, trying to get Woodward off of her, his meaty hands around her throat, his massive body pinning her to the floor. He fired, Roar fired, several other weapons fired, and the mother fucker’s body jerked and jolted like a marionette.

He rushed the last few feet and kicked the now very dead piece of shit off of Athena, slipping in the huge pool of blood, heart in his fucking throat that she was hurt or dying from that much blood loss. He was taken aback for all of two seconds to see that she was totally naked, frantically grabbing at her despite her struggles, shouting at Roar for paramedics, a towel, anything to stop the bleeding. “Bro, it’s not hers!”

Someone brought a coarse blanket to cover her with, and at Roar’s bellow, he managed to look past his panic to see that Athena was in one piece. No holes, and the source of the blood was the knife sticking out of the dead fucker’s gut. Athena had been kicking and screaming, because she’d already killed the guy before they’d even fired a single shot. He hauled her into his lap, rocking with her while she hiccupped and cried, pretty sure he was close to shedding a tear or two himself, staring at the corpse a few feet away. The corpse with his fly open and his pants around his thighs. “I got you, I got you baby. I got you,” She clung to him while he rocked with her, repeating that over and over until the paramedics got there and made him let her go so they could check her out.

She was sleeping, curled up on her side in the hospital bed, making it look huge with her little bitty body in it. Bruises were bright and ugly on her face, her lip was split, she had three stitches on the inside of her upper lip, pretty serious concussion, two cracked ribs, a good bruise blossoming on her belly in the shape of steel toed boots, another one from the hilt of the knife where it had dug in under Woodward’s dead weight. Some skin abrasions on her cheeks and wrists from the duct tape…every single injury made him sick to his stomach, but it could have been so much worse.  Would have been, if his woman wasn’t such a bad ass and had somehow managed to get that knife she’d used to stab the fucker with.

She’d passed out in the ambulance, hadn’t woken up since, which was worrying the doctors, but thus far her vitals were steady and she was responsive. Even busted up and covered in blood, she’d fought like a demon to not let the cops separate them. Thankfully one of the officers that had responded to the call was Harding, and he’d made it happen, made sure Raid was in the bus with Athena, and as soon as he’d taken her hand and promised not to leave her side, she’d passed out. Top had come in not long ago, beard at an odd angle to see him cuffed to Athena’s bed, but he didn’t give a fuck, so long as he was with her and able to hold her hand. He didn’t know where everyone else was, or what was going on yet, he hadn’t been questioned, just cuffed to the bed after Athena had been put in the room and left alone.

The nurses came and went regularly, checking on them, nervous around him until they saw how he was holding onto Athena, bent over so he could keep his lips pressed to her wrist, feeling her pulse throbbing steadily against his mouth. A throat cleared, and he raised his eyes, not his head, not willing to trust the machines that said her heart was still beating, and saw the two IAB officers looking uncomfortable, but trying to bluff it with their really shit poker faces. “If you’re not here to uncuff me and make a formal fuckin apology for not keeping better tabs on your psychotic fuckin employee, get the fuck out.”