Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series (70 page)

She must have seen the terror on my face because something in her expression changed. She closed off; became more resigned. It was a coping mechanism she employed regularly to stop me from getting in so she could keep her sadness from leaking out and infecting me. It didn’t work, though. Her despair became mine as I watched her wither and fade away for three whole years. In rare moments, and I mean very rare, I saw her smile. I saw those green eyes turn bright as she recalled happier times, but it never lasted.

The despair always returned.

“I don’t want to be your burden,” she whispered, turning her sad eyes towards the floor.

“You’re not,” I said, sitting beside her, wrapping my arms around her fragile body. I’d burn the world down if it would make her feel one ounce of peace, but I knew she’d be just as sad and broken, no matter what I did. “I promise you’re not a burden to me.”

But the words that came out of my mouth were lies.

*****

Time was supposed to heal all wounds.

But it didn’t heal Juliette’s.

Time gave her
too much tim
e
;
Time to relive the horrors that those sick, twisted fucks had subjected her to. She lived through them every single day without a moment’s peace. And monsters was a poor word. I couldn’t think of a word that adequately conveyed just how heinous they were. Beasts? Yeah. Maybe beasts was more accurate. Beasts that had ripped her apart, and destroyed her, through no fault of her own. And these boys had been her family growing up. The ringleader, Dornan Ross, had been her father’s best friend. It sounded as though he’d been like a father to her, from the way she told the story.

I watched her thrashing in bed, the rope marks still clearly visible on her neck. My stomach knotted; I knew what would come next. Her mouth opened, sucking in air as her eyes opened, blank and unseeing. They were night terrors. I’d seen her have them enough times that they no longer shocked me. They just filled my gut with icy dread, and heartbreak for her, every single night.

Because of her memories and her constant suffering, I was depressed all the time, as well. I was stuck with her, and I didn’t want to be. I resented her. I loved her to fucking death,, but most of all, I just wanted her to get better. However, I’d finally come to the realization that she was never going to get better.

“Hey,” I said, my voice almost monotone. The way she screamed out in the night still scared the ever living fuck out of me, but at least now I knew what to expect. She’d claw at the air above her, and I’d stay out of her way. She’d thrash and battle with imaginary attackers, and I’d stay out of her way. She’d call for
him
, and a little piece of me would die inside.

“Jase!” She’d scream. She did this every night for three years until one night, I broke.

I’d started packing before the sun even rose. I tried to be quiet at first, but I decided fuck it. I’d held her three times—no, wait, four in total—while I freaked the fuck out, not knowing if she’d live through the night or not. She’d put me through hell, and didn’t even care that she was hurting me, even though she knew what she was doing to me. I made a little more noise as I threw more shit in the bag.

I’d stormed towards the Mustang with nothing but a black duffel bag, crammed with clothes and very few possessions. I was leaving the only girl I’d ever loved, and I wasn’t coming back.

It wasn’t the fact that she’d tried to kill herself three times already. Fuck, that shit was so goddamn hard on me, but I could hardly blame her. It was a wonder she had survived at all, but was living even worth it if she lived this way for the rest of her life? I couldn’t bear living my life with her this way anymore. It wasn’t because she didn’t love me, because she did. I knew she did. In the night, before we fell asleep, she would search for my hand in the dark, clutching it until she fell asleep. No, it was because after three years, she still called out for that bastard Ross who watched as his father and brothers destroyed a defenceless fifteen-year-old girl he claimed to love.

Jason fucking Ross
.

My hatred was singularly focused on that son-of-a-bitch. I’d become obsessed with hi
m—
with all the Gypsy Brothers, but it would always come back to Jason, because he was one of
them
, and he was the one she still called out for.

Julz was awake by the time I started the Mustang and revved the engine, loud enough to wake the entire street. I was out of fucks to give. Let them complain about the noise. I wouldn’t be back to listen to them anyway.

As I was debating whether to go back inside and grab my hunting rifle from the toolshed, Julz appeared in the window. One look at her face and I knew
she knew
. Her eyes were glassy, but she threw me a half-hearted smile as she tapped on the glass. Reluctantly, I rolled my window down, my dark sunglasses shielding the tears in my own eyes. I mean, I wasn’t a fucking pussy, but I was pissed. Why’d we have to meet the way we did, in a goddamn nightmare? She was so beautiful and passionate in the moments her demons weren’t dragging her beneath the murky waters and drowning her. Selfishly, I wished she would try harder to be that girl who laughed and said funny things, dazzling me with her smile, instead of the girl who held my gun in her lap and willed herself not to eat it.

“Going somewhere?” she asked, looking at the black duffel in the backseat.

I nodded, tearing my gaze from her.

“Yeah.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her trying not to cry. “Are you coming back?” I gripped the steering wheel so tight, my fingers turned white. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t even answer her. If I’d let myself get sucked into her doe-eyes again, I’d never be able to leave. I was afraid that if I stayed, I might end up killing us both to stop feeling so fucking miserable. “It’s okay, Elliot,” she said, trailing her hand over my cheek. “I’d leave me too, if I could.” I swallowed back all the words I’d never be able to say to her. Her fingers left my face and she stepped back from the car.

I could have stayed, but I didn’t. I was done. Maybe without me, she’d get better instead of sliding into the blackness until it consumed her and she really did die.

I revved the engine one last time and took my foot off the brake pedal, slamming the accelerator as hard as I could and sped away from the scene of my ruin.

The first time I saw Juliette Portland, after six years of death, I didn’t even notice her. She was just a generic girl with fake tits and a dazed expression on her face as she looked around the bar, taking the place in. I barely glanced at her as I moved racks of clean beer glasses into the refrigerator, getting the bar of my father’s strip club ready for another night of customers. They’d swill beer and get their rocks off as they tucked crumpled dollar bills into tiny thongs that left nothing to the imagination, and I’d fix drinks and count down the hours until I could leave.

She was wearing ridiculously short cut-offs that showed the underside of her pert ass cheeks, but she didn’t even make my cock react. She looked like every other girl who walked into that strip club with stars in their eyes and left with my father’s jizz on their tongues.

But looking back on that day, knowing what I know now, I think that’s the hardest thing of all for me to accept inside myself. That I had the girl I thought I’d lost forever, and she was standing right in front of me, and. I could have grabbed her and taken her away from the all the madness before my father ever had the chance to lay his hands on her again;
and I didn’t even know it.

My father’s dead now, and we’re safe  – for the moment, at least – but Juliette’s retribution cost more than I could have ever fathomed. She’s not the same girl I knew when we were young, and I’m not the same boy I was when we met. We’re all grown up, now. And what a hellish fucking upbringing it was.

The first time I ever met Juliette Portland was in a filthy little room in the Gypsy Brothers clubhouse. Only days earlier I’d existed in a different world, where my father was a figment of my imagination instead of a ruthless biker, where we were safe from people like the Gypsy Brothers. I’d arrived home to our house in Colorado to find my mom murdered and the father I’d never met, sitting at our kitchen table, eating a fucking sandwich with her blood still on his hands. Being the stupid teenager I was, instead of running, I’d tried to fight him, and I lost. I lost everything. He knocked me out with one blow and kept me drugged in the trunk of a car for two days. When I finally woke up from my drugged slumber, I’d pissed all over myself.

I turned into a fucking animal. I lunged at them, raged at them. I even tried to escape, but I was just a kid with massive amounts of drugs in my system. I moved like a clumsy drunk, crashing into walls as I took swings at Dornan, the man who’d both given me life and returned to take it away from me. I might’ve been clumsy and disoriented, but I refused to let anyone within ten feet of me … until Julz.

She crept into the room like she wasn’t supposed to be there while I crouched in the corner. She was so young, so beautiful, like a fucking angel that had been sent to save me. She didn’t save me, but she did bring healing ointment for the
GYPSY BROTHERS
tattoo that now took up my entire back. It had taken hours upon hours of a needle being dragged through my skin, and I’d finally passed out from the exhaustion and the drugs as my
brothers
held me down and laughed.

Funny how we both ended up waiting for the other to miraculously materialize and save the other. After they killed her, my father took me to my grandfather’s compound in San Diego.

I’d had barely a year of freedom between my mother’s death and Juliette’s, but in that time, I’d fallen hard for John’s daughter. I’d realized that he was the man who visited my mother and checked in on us, but I never uttered a word. I knew if I did, my father would probably kill him, too.

I mean, he killed him anyway, but that’s not the point.

See, my father eventually found out what John had done – ; stolen his girlfriend for himself, and plotted to leave Los Angeles with Juliette and me in tow.

You don’t try to take a son from Dornan Ross and survive.

My father delivered the first bullet to John himself, before he forced me to finish him off. After that, I’d spent the next three years of my life underground in a tiny cell, chained to a wall and forced to watch the video, on an endless loop, of my father and brothers raping, torturing, and beating the only girl I’d ever loved as a club whore knelt between my legs and sucked my cock.

For the first month of this, I didn’t even get an erection; the horror was still so fresh. Whatever slutty girl they’d send in would spend hours sucking away at me like a leech, and I’d stare at the TV screen in front of me, willing myself to die.

By the end of the first month, I was getting hard. After three months, I was coming in whatever mouth was sucking me as I stared blankly at the horrors unfolding in front of me in black and white.

After six months, I wasn’t chained anymore. I was still locked in my cell, but shit was different. The things I did to those girls. I don’t even want to think about how much I enjoyed their cries of pain as I shoved them face-down into the concrete fucking floor, making them bleed from busted lips and smashed noses. Some would leave, bloody and scratched from the force of my hand shoving their faces into the hard floor. I would sink my teeth into their flesh while I fucked them as hard and as rough as I could. I no longer cared about whether they hurt or not. At least they got to leave afterwards, with their torn panties in their hands and their lipstick still on my cock. Fucking the girls my father gifted me in my chamber of horrors was the only thing I had to look forward to in my solitary existence, and watching that torturous video became so routine, I almost looked forward to the release it would bring while I sank my dick inside them.

I know. I was a sick fuck, and I still am, but I’ll never tell Juliette what happened down there. I’ll fucking die before I utter a word of those three years of hell to her.

*****

There’s something to be said about a person who’s been put in hell and doesn’t lose themselves.

But what if you
find
yourself there instead?

Growing up, I always knew I was different. The things in my mind weren’t the same things that existed in others, and I knew this. My mom never told me anything about my father, other than to run for my goddamn life if he ever showed up. The way she said it scared the living shit out of me, and I never asked about him again.

I was about twelve when I figured out who he was. He scared me. I didn’t want him to find us.

He did anyway.

*****

My oldest brother, Chad, tasked himself with schooling me in the realities of fucking, after my father grew tired of the job. I’d become compliant, abusing each girl he sent into my cell worse than the last until he stopped sending them altogether. That made me mad. He’d gotten me addicted to them, and then took them awa
y—
my only form of releas
e—
, so I ended up like a fucking pervert, jerking off in the dark to a video that showed the rape of a dead girl I used to love.

My brother didn’t want to fuck
me
, thank Go
d—
it wasn’t like tha
t—
but he was a perverted bastard who wanted me to be one, too, just like him. He couldn’t understand how I couldn’t do to Juliette what he did to her after watching how I’d treated the whores my father sent to me. He knew I’d hurt every single girl my father sent down to my cell, but it was different. I wasn’t raping anyone. Dear old Dad was paying them to come fuck me, so I had no problem making them work for their money … and then some. He was fucking with me, and I was fucking his whores right back.

So one day, my brother introduced me to a different gir
l;
a girl who I wasn’t allowed to fuck. A girl I was supposed to
respect
. I wanted to fuck her, of course. I wanted to force her to her knees and squeeze her cheeks until she opened her mouth and took my cock all the way down her throat until she gagged. I wanted to hold her against the wall and choke her while I fucked her.

I was turning into my father, and I didn’t even care.

She was skinny, pale, with reddish hair that hung limply around her long face. Waifish was the word you’d use to describe her, but after weeks of no girls to take care of my needs, all I saw was an empty vessel to stick my dick in.

She actually stuck her hand out to shake mine, and I recoiled. Chad snickered.

“He doesn’t get out much,” he supplied helpfully. I glowered at him. The girl shrugged, apparently unperturbed by my lack of social skills.

“You can call me Rails,” she said.

Chad snorted. “Because you’re built like a fuckin’ rail? Take some of your whorin’ money and buy yourself a push-up bra, for Christ’s sake. You look like you’re twelve.” She rolled her eyes at him and I felt a smile twitch at my lip, but I didn’t dare show it. This girl was rolling her eyes at crazy Chad, and suddenly, I didn’t want to just fuck her, I wanted to know her.

After that, Rails was the only girl I’d touch. I didn’t fuck he
r—
I refused to fuck her. I did just about everything else with her, though. She sucked cock like a pro. And while I didn’t love her, I came to rely on her … even need her. She visited me every week. Sometimes, she’d even bring a friend, and I’d have no trouble fucking them, but I could never bring myself to have sex with Raelene.

It was almost as if she reminded me of a girl I used to love.

*****

“Fuck me,” Rails whispered. “Fuck me and they’ll let you leave. It’s your birthday today and it’s warm outside. Don’t you want to feel the sun on your face?”

I let out a whoosh of air, hot water pricking at my eyelids. I hadn’t cried in years, not since Juliette. But for some reason, the tender concern in Raelene’s voice made me want to scream. I’d been holding off her suggestions and advances for so long, I couldn’t bear the thought of poisoning her with my sick brand of fun that made women scream.

“I can’t,” I whispered. “You’re too good for me. I’ll hurt you, Rails.”

“Put your hand on my neck,” she whispered. I swallowed thickly.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I protested. She shook her head, a wan smile on her lips.

“You won’t hurt me,” she replied, straddling my hips, my cock already leaking with pre-cum as I thought about slamming her down on me until her eyes rolled back in her head and she begged me to stop. The thought caused a hot blade of shame to stab into my gut and twist painfully.

Why did I want to make her cry? What the fuck was wrong with me?

Maybe I could be softer with her. Maybe I wouldn’t have to hurt her. She was the first human being I’d cared about in any way since Juliette had been ripped from my arms and brutalized by first Chad, then the rest of my fucked -up brothers, before my father swooped in and finished the job.

“Just tell me,” I whispered. “How long have I been in here?”

“A little over three years,” she whispered back. She rocked her hips against me and I struggled with the desire to impale her with my rock-hard erection. God, I wanted to fuck her. I wanted more release than I could get from her hands, or her mouth. I could be good to her, couldn’t I? I didn’t have to hurt her to satisfy myself. As it was, it’d been so long since I sank into a wet, warm pussy, I was about to come just from the friction of her cotton-covered pussy rubbing along my cock.

She’d already unbuckled my pants and had me in her hands, under the pretense of blowing me when she’d seemed to change her mind, crawling onto my lap instead. “I want you inside me.”

“I can’t,” I protested.

“Let me do it for you,” she said, lifting her hips and lining her pussy up with my cock. Just the feeling of the tip at her entrance made me want to flip her over and punish her with a good, hard fucking. I fisted the sheets and squeezed hard enough that I heard my joints pop.

“Jesus, fuck…” I groaned as her hot, slick pussy slid down my cock. She was so tight, it was bordering on painful. She let out a little gasp as I filled her completely, and started to rock against me. I pushed harder into her and she winced in pain, her pupils big and round. I was hurting her, and I had barely moved inside her. I looked down to where our bodies met and saw blood. “What the … you’re a virgin?” Shame rushed through me as I saw her swollen pussy lips stretched around my dick, painted red with her blood. I’d just taken her virginity in a filthy room in a corner of my grandfather’s dank drug compound.