Fury: Book 2 in the Vengeance MC series (13 page)

Avery pushes past me, making her way to the bathroom attached to my bedroom without uttering a word. Sadly, Sam, however, can’t keep her big fucking mouth shut.

“You’re only here because they pity you, you know. Even if they’re not saying it, that’s what they’re thinking. Poor, poor Avery. If you hadn’t been stupid enough to get yourself kidnapped and raped, they would have told you months ago to go home where you belong.”

Just as I’m about to do something I’ve never done before – hit a woman – Avery spins on her heel, stomps across the room, and wedges herself between Sam and me. Getting close enough so that they’re almost nose to nose, Avery gives her a wicked smile.

“Green isn’t your color, honey, but I bet red is.”

Cocking her arm at the elbow, Avery lets her fist fly connecting with Sam’s nose with a sickening crunch. Blood gushes from both nostrils instantly, and by the sound of it, I’m pretty sure it’s broken. Not that I give a fuck, I would have done worse.

“I recommend you crawl your nasty ass back to whichever hole you crawled out of and in future, stay the fuck away from me. If you don’t, rest assured, we’ll revisit the last part of this conversation as many times as it takes for it to sink in,” Avery snarls before walking back to the bathroom, slamming the door.

Well, while this wasn’t the way I anticipated tonight ending, I can’t say I’m not ecstatic Avery’s here. It’s just a shame I have to take out the trash before I can spend some time with her.

Washing my hands, making sure to remove every last trace of nasty skank, I stare at my reflection in the mirror.

I can’t remember the last time I punched someone, but even then, I don’t remember it hurting this badly afterward. My knuckles are red and a little swollen, but thankfully, I didn’t break the skin when I broke degenerate Barbie’s nose. Stupid cow.

A year ago I would have laughed off her bitchy comments and walked away. I heard it all before, multiple times. Girls at high school threw around the term ‘biker brat’ more times than I can count, but never had it pissed me off as much as hearing it from Sam’s mouth.

As a child raised in an MC people made assumptions about not only me, but my sisters, cousins, and friends all the time. Our parents’ behavior, good or bad, reflected on all of us. I never took their slights to heart, I knew they said that stuff because they were ignorant. It is just the way of the world. People are petty, narrow-minded and at times, can be cruel simply because.

By the time I was in my senior year, I had conditioned myself to ignore it when the self-proclaimed popular girls had called me hateful, nasty names. It was as if I flicked a switch and they were all of a sudden rendered mute. The same could not be said for, Blaine.

To this day, my best friend is overly sensitive when it comes to scenes like the one I’d just had with, Sam. That confrontation would have sent Blaine running from the room in tears. For the many times I tried to convince Blaine what they said didn’t matter, she would come up with equally as many explanations for why it did. For some inexplicable reason, Blaine cared what other people thought of her. She wanted everyone to like her, even if that wasn’t realistic. Some might say, impossible.

But women like, Sam, they affect Blaine more than all the rest. She can’t understand their motivation – why they are willing to be used the way they are – and why they take an immediate disliking to her.

The simple truth is; Blaine is gorgeous. Club whores and hang-arounds don’t hate her, they’re jealous. Blaine isn’t just beautiful; her beauty is remarkable. Perfect skin, hair, curves, and smile don’t scrape the surface when describing how stunning she is. Her real beauty comes from within. Blaine is intelligent, funny, the sweetest person you’ll ever care to meet, compassionate, humble and self-sacrificing. And when she laughs; she lights up a room. 

It’s no secret Sam and I don’t get along, and never have. Her intense hatred of me began the very first time I met her seven years ago. I won’t lie and say she and I were ever destined to be friends – we weren’t – but common courtesy toward another human being wouldn’t have gone amiss.

I didn’t dislike her initially, not until I’d been around her and witnessed first-hand what kind of person she truly was. So, several visits, or a few months later. I was barely eighteen when Sam gathered the courage to confront me openly, another scene that didn’t end well. For her that is. Sarge, Fury, and Boss didn’t take kindly to her ripping me to shreds in the middle of a club cookout attended by friends and family. However, her public dressing down in front of a crowd only further fueled Sam’s hatred toward me. So all-in-all, it didn’t have the desired effect which would have been to keep her away from me.

After that, her vicious remarks got worse and my patience plummeted to an all-time low. I wasn’t going to let her humiliate me as if it was a spectator sport anymore. It was time to stand up and fight back, which I did with varying degrees of success.

To make matters worse, there was the added complication of Fury and what Sam meant to him. My anger at her didn’t merely stem from her insults and generally shitty behavior toward me, part of it has to do with her being Fury’s go-to piece of ass. It doesn’t help that she’s a miserable excuse for a human being, but that was lower on my list of reasons for despising her.

So, with that being said, now you know why I can’t bring myself to feel bad about hitting her.

Does that make me a terrible person? I hope not, but even if it does, she deserved that and more. I was serious about revisiting the conversation too. I’m done with backing down. If someone wants to talk about shit they clearly have no idea about, then I’m happy to educate them in a way they won’t be able to misunderstand me.

Drying my hands, I pull the bathroom door open and come face to face with Fury. He’s leaning against the doorframe as if he doesn’t have a care in the world, which makes me want to kick him in the balls, more than I did before that friendly little run-in with washed up tramp Barbie.

Smirking at me, Fury inquires curiously,

“What are you doing her, Ave? Not that I’m not happy to see you, you know I am, but you said you wanted space. And by my count, we’ve still got a little less than three days on that clock.”

While this may be true, I had a burning question to ask him and I knew if I didn’t do it now, I wouldn’t.

At my weekly therapy appointment this afternoon, my doctor and I discussed Fury’s visit from a few days ago and what he said to me. I didn’t leave anything out, going as far as to tell him about Blaine’s candid conversation with him, and my juvenile fleeing of the scene post-kiss.

My doctor wasn’t surprised in the least. He had been telling me for months that my unresolved situation with Fury would eventually come to a head, and it seems he was right. He usually was.

Doctor Jennings, or Paul as he requested I call him from our first session onwards, doesn’t sugar coat things. One of the many reasons I found myself almost immediately trusting him. He believes my anger at Fury isn’t only based on the lack of contact since he left, but more to do with my fear around losing his friendship.

Fury was the one constant in my life for years – family and a select few friends aside. I confided things in him I wouldn’t dream of sharing with anyone else, and that includes Blaine. I wouldn’t say in that time I created an unhealthy dependency on him, but I definitely relied on him for more than just a shoulder or ear when I needed them.

Ours is a strange friendship. Both of us feel the chemistry that flows between us, we just refuse to acknowledge it. There have been times over the years I’ve thought about broaching our connection with him, but when I do, I circle back to the same conclusion. Nothing good could come of it.

There’s a good chance if I bring it up, Fury will deny it exists and I can only imagine that would hurt more than ignoring it altogether. My heart can’t take hearing he doesn’t feel the same way about me as I do about him. I have hidden my feelings from him for this long, so what’s another sixty or so years?

I can remember exactly when – down to the precise moment in time – I fell in love with, Tanner Scott. To most people, it probably wouldn’t have been a noteworthy memory, but to me, it was the pinnacle turning point in my life. The time when I was forced to make a choice. One which would inevitably change the course of our entire friendship.

*****

“What are you doing all the way over there, Ave? You too grown up to give your old friend a hug anymore?”

It had been thirteen months since I’d seen Fury, he was on a run the last three times I’d come to visit Vengeance MC’s clubhouse with my Dad. In the life of a sixteen-year-old, a year feels like a decade. So many things can happen in such a short time, and this last year was no exception.

I have finally grown into my body, my curves are more pronounced, I shot up another two inches, and Mom says I look like a real woman now, not a little girl anymore. A fact my Dad has been lamenting by buying more guns which he claims is to ensure “the little fuckers keep in their pants.” As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t need to worry about that, though. There’s only one boy I’m interested in and he’s not a boy, he’s a man.

Rushing over to him, I literally throw myself into Fury’s arms and squeeze him tightly around his middle.

“That’s better. That’s the kind of hello I expected from you, Ave. How you doing, darlin’?”

I’ve always loved it when Fury calls me darlin’, but it wasn’t until a few years ago the word gave me butterflies in my belly and tingles down my spine. At the time, I didn’t understand why my body was reacting like that, but it didn’t take long to figure out.

My older sister talked to her friends and our cousins about how she felt about Cody all the time. I heard her say that she had the same sensations every time he walked into a room, so it wasn’t hard for me to put two and two together and realize what I felt for Fury was the same thing. I was in love with him, and that wasn’t a good thing. Not at all.

“I’m good. I missed you, though,” I admit, smiling widely at him.

Fury has always been handsome, but at some point in time during the months I’d lost with him, my view of
s
him changed. Now, to me, he is beautiful. Rugged and rough around the edges, he’s the epitome of what you’d imagine a biker to be, yet there’s something magnetic about Fury that sets him apart.

He wears his hair slightly longer than most of his brothers, a mass of wavy hair covering the top of his head with the sides cropped shorter close to his scalp. Fury has facial hair too. Not a full beard like Sarge – one of my favorite people in the world – but a neatly trimmed goatee and mustache instead.

His eyes are the color of cloudless blue skies in summer. I’ve always loved his eyes, everything he feels is reflected in them, making it easy to read his moods.

But what I began to notice and hadn’t before was Fury’s body. He has broad shoulders, heavily tattooed muscular arms, washboard abs – an eight pack, yum – tapering down to a trim waist and thick well-defined thighs. Fury’s hands are huge and since he’s the clubs Enforcer, capable of delivering enormous amounts of pain I’m sure, but with me, they’ve always been gentle. Irreverently so.

Placing a soft kiss on the top of my head, Fury murmurs,

“I missed you too, darlin’. It’s been too long. I’ll give you my number before you leave, this time, then you can call me and tell me when you’re coming next and I can make sure I’m here if I can be.”

Him wanting to see me, spend time with me warms my heart, so in response, I give him a friendly grin.

“Okay,” I chirp happily. “Sarge is helping Emily with something today so I don’t have anyone to hang out with while Dad is busy. Are you busy?”

“Just got back last night, so I’ve got time, sweetheart. What are you thinking?” He smiles down at me.

Clapping my hands together gleefully, I tug on his arm leading him toward the back entrance to the clubhouse.

“I want to show you how good I’m getting with the Glock. I’ve been practicing a few times a week with Uncle Tank and he says I’m a crack shot now.”

Chuckling, Fury wraps an arm around my shoulders pulling me into his side. His body is large and warm, and he smells delicious. Like leather, musk, and sunshine.

“Really?” He replies, quirking an eyebrow at me. “Well, I think I’ll be the judge of that. Tank’s a good teacher?” He asks.

“Not as good as you, but he’ll do,” I tease, earning me a full belly laugh from him. Fury doesn’t laugh like this often, so when he does, I treat it as the gift it is.

“You’re great for a man’s ego, darlin’,” he rumbles in the deep voice I love so much.

After spending an hour with Fury showing him my skills and him teaching me how to use the new Berretta he bought a month ago, I collapse onto the grass under the shade of one of the trees surrounding the firing range.

“My arms are sore,” I complain, rubbing the muscles of my biceps.

“You get that when you’re holding your arms out straight like that for so long,” Fury states, taking a seat to my left. “You need to get Saint to take you to the gym. Lifting weights’ a couple of times a week will help build up the strength in your arms. Don’t need to be heavy, five-pounds ought to do it.”

“Hmm,” I groan, closing my eyes.

It’s then Fury does something he’s never done before. He takes my left hand in his and begins gently stroking his thumb over my wrist. I don’t open my eyes because I’m scared if I do, I’ll wake up and this will all be a dream.

I’m sure it isn’t affecting him the same way as it does me, and why would it? I’m just a kid and Fury’s just being sweet. But to me, this simple action makes my heart burst with love for him. The tenderness Fury shows me, the way he listens when I speak, like every word has him captivated, and the kindness in his eyes every time I look at him has me falling irrevocably in love with him.