Knight (107 page)

“Can you kill your father?”

“He’s not my father. Not anymore.”

She chose her words carefully. Not delicately enough. “He’s the man who raised you.”

“He’s the man who poisoned me with his lies. What I learned from him I should forget, and everything I got from his blood is a curse.”

I reached for my shirt, but what the hell would I do with it? It was one in the morning. We had ridden all day, and the sex that normally refueled me left me exhausted, mentally and physically drained. My strength once allowed me to conquer a woman. Tonight, it punished me. My arms hurt from gripping the bed, my shoulder punished me for tensing as Martini arched and whimpered and fought her own needs while she rode me into oblivion.

“Are you able to kill a man?” She whispered.

“I’ve done it before,” I said. Her expression shifted, caught between a false bravery and the vulnerability of being trapped, naked and fucked within a killer’s bed. “Does that scare you?”

“Does it scare you?”

“Christ.”

“I’m sure it scares him.”

I swore. “This man destroyed my family. He broke Rose, and we’re only now putting her together. She won’t ever be right.”

“But—”

“There is no
but
. This is what I have to do. It’s the only reason I’m still alive.”

“Okay.” She nodded. “Okay. I understand.”

She didn’t, but I didn’t expect her to understand the bottomless, bile-ridden depths of my hatred. She was no stranger to ugly violence, but revenge wasn’t ugly. It was pure, raw, and honest. An eye for an eye regulated Anathema MC even if we were blind to my father’s crimes. The vile, disturbing things he did to Rose transcended the accepted punishments for a band of anarchist outlaws, living beyond the shadow of justice.

My revenge wouldn’t be emotional. It’d be exacted for one reason and one reason only.

Rose.

“What are you doing?” Martini sat up. The sweet swell of her breasts peeked from the sheet. My cock screamed, but I ignored the thoughts pooling my blood. The things I wanted to do to her, the ways I had to restrain my urges—I’d cut the goddamned cock from my body if it meant never subjecting her to the monstrous desires blackening my soul.

I shoved a shirt into my bag. “Packing.”

“You’re leaving now?” She reached for her phone. “It’s the middle of the night. We need to sleep.”

“I won’t be able to sleep.”

My shoulder burned as I hauled the traveling bag onto the table. A bottle of painkillers rolled on the inside. I popped a few and chewed. Bitter. The pills and I had a lot in common.

“Okay, then we should think about this,” she said.

“What’s to think about?”

“…Me?”

I dropped the bag.

Fuck.

She folded her arms over the sheet, but it didn’t hide her. Any of her. The creamy pale skin, the mused blonde wisped edges of her hair, the distance in her silver eyes. Her body heated, exploded on me, revealed her deepest thoughts and fears and joy…

…Then got tossed away as soon as the phone rang.

Fuck.

The bag weighed heavy in my hands. The weapons inside were only part of the weight, their intentions another. I dropped it to the table.

The open road didn’t ask for much, and my solitude the past three months hadn’t demanded any responsibilities aside from finding a gas station to refuel and a bar to drown in my exile.

I never expected a companion. Not that I deserved one. My life was too dangerous for any more complications. Taking her on was a mistake. Keeping her with me would be fatal. For both of us.

Goliath. Temple. Kingdom. I didn’t want to imagine what would happen to her if she were taken. I had the self-control and conscience to deny any sadistic urges. But war had no rules, and men no morals. Martini acted tough. She learned to take a punch and come out smiling. But her world darkened with such shadow she’d never find her way home without getting lost in the mire.

If she made it home at all.

Fuck.

Leaving her was no better than the years I spent ignoring Rose.

Rose needed me, but splitting from Martini meant tossing her to the wolves. They’d maul her, destroy her, and break her, and I wouldn’t be there to rescue her. Rose had survived, but Martini’s mouth would satisfy an enemy only until it opened and no one else lined up to shove a cock in it before she got herself in trouble.

I tensed, swallowing my profanity. Every second that passed trapped Rose with my father. But every second I stayed with Martini protected her from the dangers stalking us both.

So who had more time?

Neither of them.

And I knew it.

“Brew,” Martini said. “Please. Talk to me.”

“Why?” I tossed the bag to the floor. “I got nothing good to say.”

“Take me with you.”

The sheets dropped. She flushed as she wiggled to the edge of the bed, reaching for my hand. The softness of her body offered me everything. Comfort. Forgiveness. She might have asked me for my still-beating heart, and, like a fool, I would have dug the breaking fragments from my chest.

“Take you where?”

“Home.”

“To Goliath?”

She frowned. “No. To Anathema.”

I suspected she was wild—a miniature deviant who got off on danger. That confirmed it.

“Ain’t no way I’m letting you near Anathema.”

“Are they any more dangerous than Temple?”

“Temple is an army armed with smuggled weapons and trained soldiers. Anathema is a dented grenade that lost its pin. You get me?”

“So what do you suggest?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Are you leaving me?”

A naked woman, beautiful and spirited and slick with my desire, wavered on the edge of utter devotion and absolute heartbreak.

What the hell was I supposed to do?

Who was I supposed to save?

“I don’t know,” I said.

Martini gnawed on her lip. She urged me to come closer with the twitch of her eyebrows and the glistening shade of her eyes.

I always thought myself the sadist, but I put myself through enough shit to shame a masochist. I obeyed her, resting on the side of the bed as she curled her arms over my neck and rested her head on my shoulder. She laid over the tattoo I etched into my skin to remind me of
this
decision. Of
this
moment. I meant for the ink to tell me what I had to do—whether it was right, wrong, hard, or the last fucking decision I’d ever make.

It stayed silent and waited for me to fuck everything up.

“You have to go,” she whispered. “It’s for Rose. She needs her brother.”

I tensed. Didn’t answer. She edged closer, pressing her body against mine. I never felt a heat so perfect.

“Take me with you.”

“I’m not going to put you in that kind of danger.”

“And leaving me here is a walk in the sunshine?”

“Christ, Martini. Anathema is a club on the brink of war, with itself and Temple. I’m won’t lead you into that clusterfuck.”

“You won’t. You’ll protect me.”

“Are you that sure?”

She sighed, tightening her hold over me. Her eyes fluttered closed, and the gentle brush of her breath tingled over my skin.

“I am. Because of Rose.”

I swore. She hugged me tighter. I didn’t push her away.

She was right.

“I’ll be there with you,” she whispered. “I’ll help you. I promise.”

“And when I kill him?”

She hesitated. “Then you can forgive yourself. Let this guilt go. We can’t survive both your past and the war with Temple and Kingdom. If we leave, they won’t be able to find us. We’ll be safe.”

“No place is going to be safe.”

“We’ll find a place where we can handle it. It won’t feel like running if we’re together.”

I took a deep breath. “It’s been a while since I did a run up the coast. There’s…these vineyards in the Central Valley. They do these wine tastings. High class shit. You’d like it.”

“Why, Brew.” Martini’s finger traced over my tattoos. “That sounds like a date. Usually men woo a girl with the romantic escape before getting her involved in a gang war.”

“Can’t say I’ve ever been conventional.”

“So you’ll let me tag along?”

I wrapped an arm around her, letting her snuggle in deeper against my chest. “Don’t think I have a choice.”

“No other way to keep me out of trouble?”

“No, I don’t think I’ll be able to get you off my bike.”

He almost left me.

I saw it in his eyes. His posture. He shifted from impassioned lover to caged, rabid animal within a moment of darkness. The torment exhausted him.

I curled in his arms as he held me tight. His phone lay silent on the nightstand. He stared at it like it would ring again, like he expected to hear the worst all over again.

He finally spoke about Rose with me, but confessing to his past was nothing like hearing her fear over the phone.

Brew punished himself every minute of every day, but when confronted with the ultimate reaper of his sins—no matter how gentle and timid she whispered for her brother—Brew lost himself in the concussion of his grief.

He’d leave me for her.

And what did I expect? All the talk of trust and protection and keeping me alive? It wasn’t me he was protecting. It was her.

Except I couldn’t blame him. And I’d never blame her.

He was right all along. It was my fault for getting into the trouble. My fault for hopping into bed with Goliath. My fault for the ink on my neck, the bruises on my cheek, and the lies I spun to shield myself and those I loved from my own irresponsibility.

Brew would to leave to save his family—rescue the little sister born into a world of vile corruption and absolute agony.

I didn’t try to escape. I didn’t go to school or attempt to get out. I applied to the first bar in a rough neighborhood and strapped a corset over my chest. I had no one to blame but myself.

The shattered remnants of my pride scattered over the room. Panties on the floor. Shoes kicked near the door. It wasn’t the nudity that bothered me, not when the only thing I still wore was the pink scarf concealing my branding. At least that was covered. At least when I offered my heart and crashed into a million pieces of confusion, adoration, and submission for a man who hadn’t even held me as we fucked, I hadn’t exposed the worst of me colored with the ink of another’s name.

Take me with you
.

The words slipped out before I realized what I said. I shivered. Mostly from our pleasure, even if Brew didn’t trust himself enough to touch me, to taste me, to hold me. But a new shudder stole my breath. The cold, bone-breaking, mind-clouding, break of my body.

It was fear.

Utter fear.

And I wasn’t used to being so afraid.

Isolation scared me, but I managed so far. I’d run, stay two steps ahead of Sacrilege with Red’s help. I didn’t want to face the wrath of the country’s worst MCs, but as long as I had boots on the ground and a tube of lip gloss, a shimmy and smile would get me out of anything.

But I couldn’t smirk my way any closer to Brew.

And it killed me.

Asking to join him was just another bad decision. Brew’s vengeance consumed him. While he hunted for blood, nothing but rage pumped in his veins. He didn’t let me edge into his heart while it belonged to another woman. And I understood why, with every fracturing beat of my own heart, I knew why he gave himself to Rose.

What would remain of him after he killed his father? His guilt would never fade, and a lifetime of shame haunted his thoughts. I couldn’t lose his protection and his soul in the same moment.

And so I said it.

I reminded him.

He bared his innermost demons, and I sent him back to hell with a new burden of sins. I needed his help, and I earned it through his remorse.

He took me in his arms and comforted me as if it were Goliath I feared and not the possibility of losing the only man who might have healed me from the sickness that attracted danger. I fell harder than ever. It wasn’t a hand curled around my throat or a thick paw gripping my hair. Brew’s embrace promised more than a quick thrill and adrenaline rush. His strength controlled me, and I obeyed his every command to rest and sleep.

We’d leave in the morning.

He thought himself a monster. I envied that. I’d rather believe I was evil as a result of my blood. Instead I was a puppet-master. When charm didn’t work, a trembling voice got what I wanted.

Another night with me and he might have forgotten about Rose.

Another night with me, and I would have conquered him without ropes or bindings, brandings on his neck or veiled threats.

I tucked into his arms, snuggling against the severe streaks of ink blackening his chest. He breathed hard, as desperate as me.

He almost left me.

Maybe he should have.

At least if he did, he’d be safe from me. If he traveled outside the state, beyond Sacrilege and Kingdom’s territory, I’d pretend I did what they ordered. They expected me to kill him? The gun would turn on me before it happened.