Misled (4 page)

Her spoon clanked against t
he bowl and she frowned. She’d finished? Already? God, she’d just gotten started.

“How long since you last ate?”

A sexy voice to go with a sexy body and magnificent face. Meggie shivered at the timbre, promising to memorize his voice so it soothed her to sleep at night and banished the memories of Thomas’s voice and actions. “Two days.”

He grabbed the bo
wl from her. “Can’t give you no more. You gonna hurl if you stuff your stomach with food after not eatin’ so long.”

“But I’m still hungry,” she protested, hating her whiny plea. “And I haven’t had anything hot to eat in days.”

“Your ma ain’t feedin’ you or somethin’?”

“She can’t
since she’s in Seattle.”

That startled him. His eyes widened and he cocked his head to the side.
Meggie squirmed beneath his intense scrutiny. Their gazes locked and she wondered at his impression of her. Electrical currents raced through her veins and she parted her lips. From her head to her toes, her body reacted to him. The memory of her last night in her mother’s house replayed in her mind and she closed her eyes.

His voice broke through her misery.
“Why’re you here and she there?”

“Because my father is
here
and her husband is
there
.” She didn’t want Thomas inflicting any more damage to her psyche or her person. She pretended the sheer horror of his actions didn’t affect her. In reality, she hurt to her very soul. Recognizing the sickness in Thomas consoled her but left her with two choices. Allow his brutality to rule her or acknowledge the problem for what it was and keep her life on a forward motion.

To counteract her reaction to his proximity, she refocused on her feet, deciding to give up the argument about more soup. Her stomach was already starting to hurt. He touched her foot, his hand dark against her white skin. Crouching in front of her, he checked one foot and then the other.

“You cut your feet?”

“Rack didn’t tell you?”

He straightened and sat next to her, his raised brow encouraging her to continue. His thumb caressed the high arch of her foot, almost stealing her ability to think and talk.

“Don’t matter if he did. I’m askin’ you.”

A spot he touched made her wince.

“Um, I stole five dollars from him. I wanted a hamburger, fries, and a milk shake
tonight.” To celebrate her birthday.

He didn’t stop his investigation of her feet.
“Five dollars ain’t enough.”

“For a kid’s meal it would’ve been,” she countered, gasping when he squeezed her upper sole.

“Are you? A kid, I mean.”

Not as of today.
“I’m eighteen,” she said softly, taking advantage of her unfettered access to him and touching his scruffy jaw before combing her fingers through his silky hair.

Her touch seemed to anger him and he glared at her. “I told you don’t fuckin’ touch me.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ve been touching me. Why can’t I touch you?”

He got to his feet and she looke
d away, not wanting to defy him. Whenever she or her mother stared at Thomas, he took that as a challenge. But this man said he didn’t hit women. And? What man admitted to domestic abuse? Thomas certainly didn’t. He didn’t even admit it behind closed doors. He blamed everything on either Meggie or Dinah.

She sat still, not raising her gaze when she heard him rambling around through a draw
er. A moment later, he stood before her, wrapping his big hand around each ankle, one at a time, to wipe first one foot and then the other with a wet napkin before covering them with medical tape. Who knew an MC had such things? She supposed it was necessary given all the alcohol she’d noticed and the temperament of the men involved.

“By the fuckin’ way, what
is
your name?”

“Megan,” she answered. She didn’t have her ID. It was in her backpack and she’d left it in her hiding space at the creek.

“Have a last name, Megan?”

“Same as Big Joe,” she said, slumping against the sofa. “Foy. My name is Megan Foy.”

He drew in a deep breath and his green eyes shuttered. Jaw clenched, he nodded. “Where are your shoes?”

“I
n some alleyway, I guess. I threw them at Rack and the others,” she added when she saw his curiosity.

“Shit.”

He left her in the room, leaving the door open, so she saw the long hallway with lights from the main room shimmering against the brown wall. With the door open, the overwhelming noise level made her head hurt. The smell of cigarette smoke thickened the air. Everything she should’ve noticed while the man mesmerized her, she was noticing now. But he engaged all Meggie’s senses, her ears warmed by the sound of his voice, her eyes fascinated by the sight of his face and body, her nose filled with his scent and her skin consumed by the feel of his hands.

She noticed him storming back toward her and she rose to her feet. Standing up, she wouldn’t feel so vulnerable
. He still loomed over her, but, somehow, she seemed like a frightened little girl when she sat down and let him intimidate her.

He threw socks at her and
she noticed a burly, baldheaded man behind him. A teardrop was tattooed beneath his left eye. She sat down to put the socks on. They were terribly big and colored the type of gray that once was white.

“
Val, escort Boss’s daughter outside the compound.”

“No!” Meggie said. “C-can’t I stay here until--?”

“No,” he barked.

She set her jaw and raised her chin. “My daddy won’t be too happy when he finds out you made me go.”

“Ain’t as if I give a fuck, but I appreciate your concern. Don’t worry, babe, I know just how to handle Boss.”

The man named
Val snickered but the other man’s warning look shut him up. She realized she didn’t even know his name.

“I can’t go back out there. Please? I won’t be any trouble. I promise to behave until my daddy gets back. I’ll even tell him how nice you were to me.”

The more she spoke, the angrier the man seemed to get. He signaled to Val, who grabbed her arm and started dragging her out the office.

Tears rushed to Meggie’s eyes. “Please,” she whispered, looking over her shoulder at the other man.

In response, he slammed the door shut, smashing the last of her hope that he might soften toward her and allow her to stay within the safety of the club.

The next morning, Outlaw scowled at Rack as they sat at the table in the meeting room. “I don’
t ever want no little bitch comin’ in my club tellin’ me my boys went after her for five fuckin’ dollars,” he snarled.

He couldn’t get
the girl’s fascination with his dick out of his head. She should’ve had
virgin pussy
stamped somewhere on her. She was that fucking innocent. A fool could see she was fucking trouble. Not only as Boss’s daughter—and Outlaw had killed the fucker—but because the thought of deflowering her appealed to him. He knew whores and he knew innocents. Her big, blue eyes had been completely taken with his cock and not because it was
large
. No. A chastity belt clamped on her ass wouldn’t have proclaimed her inexperience as loudly as her expressions had.

Virgin or not, though, s
he was a feisty little thing. Determined to have him listen to her, she’d touched him even when he’d ordered her not to. Her conversation in his office had been engaging and lively. Every now and then, her eyes sparkled and snapped, fascinating him. Her eyes were so much like Boss’s and Snake’s, hinting at the little hellcat hiding within the frightened girl.

But she’d left Seattle because her s
tepfather lived there. Outlaw didn’t like the unspoken words. The things she hadn’t said must’ve been bad as a motherfucker for her to have sought out Boss for help.

Outlaw
fucking wanted her. He wanted inside of her. He tried to drum up disgust at the thought but couldn’t. He couldn’t blame her because her father had turned into a murdering, lying, drugged-up dickhead. He doubted she was even aware of what the man had become.

“I can’t allow nobody to get away with lifting my shit. I don’t fucking care if it’s a penny—“

“You heard me, Rack. When she told you she was Boss’
s kid that shoulda ended it. You shoulda put her on the back of your fuckin’ bike, bought her whatever the fuck she needed and been done with it.”

“Oh yeah?” Rack snapped, planting his forearms on the table and leaning forward. “You’re so concerned with Big Joe’s daughter when you stopped being concerned
about
him
months ago?”

Outlaw
looked at Mortician, who shrugged. His dreads were queued and the skull ring on his dark brown fingers reminded Outlaw of how the man had earned his patch. He’d rewarded himself after being patched in and he’d earned his patch by helping Outlaw bury a motherfucker alive.

If anything pussified Outlaw
, it was that shit. He’d never forget the horror frozen on the dude’s post-mortem face when they’d dug him up. It had taken him months to sleep in the fucking dark again. That had been some intense and fucked up shit. He swallowed. After all these years, he wanted to hurl. Other kills had been much more gruesome. Fuck, the disposal had been more gruesome. Something about digging the man up instead of letting him stay there.

They’d had orders, though, and they’d had to follow them.

“I ain’t in here to discuss what went down with Boss, brother,” he said as nice as he could, when he wanted to rip Rack’s throat out.

“Nothing new there,
brother
.”

“Yo’, Rack, if you have a p
roblem, you need to get gone,” Val advised, chewing on the straw he’d just used to slurp up beer and thrusting his chin toward the door.

“We aren’t here to dig up old shit,” Digger advised, then laughed, although Outlaw didn’t find what he said funny. “Get it?
Dig
?”

“Shut your dumb ass up, pardner,” Mortician growled. “With your Winnie-the-Pooh ass.”

“That was Trigger,” the man amended.

“You mean
Tigger
, dumb ass,” Mortician corrected his brother. He rolled his eyes, reached over and slapped Digger’s arm. The two men shared a strong family resemblance but Digger was slightly taller than his older brother.

“Can it. All of you,”
Outlaw said. He focused on his vice president again. “Heed my fuckin’ words. You want somebody to pick on, go find somebody your own fuckin’ size. She was hungry. You shoulda fed her.”

“She’s also homeless,” Rack said with a smirk. “I didn’t hear you inviting her to stay here. And you lucky I decided to bring her here and not take my money out of her ass.”

Bitches came and went. Every man in the club had his favorite piece of ass and many of them had their old ladies. But the thought of Rack putting his big paws on that gorgeous little piece infuriated Outlaw. He shot from his seat, knocking it over, and grabbed Rack by the throat.

“You fuckin’ touch her, I’m gonna let Digger shovel out your grave and give Mortician a shot at you with all his s
pecial little tools. We clear?” He pressed his fingers into the man’s neck until his eyes started bugging out, then he abruptly released him.

Rack slumped into the chair, holding his throat and gasping for breath.

“Who the fuck else was with you?”

Rack threw him a dirty look and tightened his lips.

“That’s the way it is, huh, Rack?” Outlaw didn’t have time to deal with a young bitch who had more spunk than sense. However, he intended to impress upon Rack what a wise decision it would be not to harm her if he ever ran into her again. “I’ll deal with you after this fuckin’ meetin’ ends. Right now, we gotta get ready for distribution and collection.”

O
utlaw braked his bike before killing the engine and toeing the kickstand down. The creek languished beneath the sun, the glare bouncing off the placid gray water. He stared at nothing in particular, enjoying the warmth on his face, though it was as cold as a motherfucker. Lighting up a smoke, he walked to the edge of the water. He needed the peace and quiet, the beauty of nature. He had some hard shit facing him and if he didn’t survive, he hoped his last thought would be of this place. The serenity to be found here.

God knows, he’d had little enough of peace, quiet, or serenity. Not in the last fourteen or fifteen years. Since the age of twenty, he’d killed God knew how many dumb fucks. He’d stolen shit from rival clubs. He’d run guns. He’d moved drugs. He’d gotten himself and his brothers out of some pretty
fucking tough spots. Outlaw knew his time was coming to a close. Motherfuckers just couldn’t keep fucking with dangerous shit and continue to live. Sooner or later, luck walked the fuck away, leaving a poor bastard with a knifed or bullet-ridden body, then small parts of you buried deep in forests and shit.

Or buried the fuck alive.

His cigarette was almost burned out, but he took a drag anyway. He gazed to his left where lush vegetation mingled with tall trees before sloping to a flat carpet of grass and the creek. He stilled. For the first time, he noticed a bundle curled up beneath a tree. He squinted, angled his head first one way and then the other. That didn’t look like just a discarded jacket.

“Fuck,” he said, releasing the smoke from his lungs and throwing the butt aside.

When he reached it, he saw that, yeah, in-fucking-deed, the figure was real. He couldn’t see her face, but he saw the small foot and delicate arch identifying her as female. This bitch had to be whacked out of her fucking mind to be out here without shoes. He should leave her the fuck here. If a bitch wanted to freeze the fuck to death, who the fuck was he to stop her?

He grunt
ed at the thought, his conscience pricking him. He had a mother, sisters, and nieces. He’d want a fucker to help one of them.

“Fuck.”

With another curse, he brushed aside the jacket and revealed a head of golden blonde hair. Long and thick, it covered her face. He turned the bundle over.

“Fuckin’ motherfucker.”

Her eyes were blackened and her lip and nose bloody but he recognized Boss’s daughter. Someone had worked her over. He really, really, really didn’t need this shit. He should leave her right the fuck here and let her go and join her fucking father in the afterworld.

Outlaw
felt the pulse at her throat. Weak and reedy, but there. He hated to look at her, hated to see Joe Foy in her gorgeous features. Whereas the male members of her family were big and masculine—but even Outlaw had to admit handsome fucks—this girl was little. She reminded him of how much her father had betrayed Outlaw—the entire club. He’d looked up to Boss and loved him like a father. Only to be stabbed in the back and have to face the decision of choosing his own life over Boss’s.

He
hated
that fucker. Would never,
ever
fucking forgive him.

Outlaw
stood, spat near her head. His conscience had deserted him when he’d made his first kill, determined to move from Probate to a fully patched in member. He’d been a kid, but responsible for looking after a houseful of females. He’d appreciated the brotherhood, the loyalty, a place where he could find his own species—men. His uncle and cousin had been around, yeah, but in his
immediate
household, he’d been surrounded by girls. A mother and five sisters. And, later, as his sisters fucked with dickhead after dickhead after dickhead, a mother, five sisters, and three nieces. Fuck him, but his family couldn’t seem to produce dicks to save their fucking lives.

Boss and Rack had accepted him for him. They hadn’t blamed him for all the woes in his mother’s life. He’d been able
to forget the pitiful circumstances of his conception. They’d let him do that when no one else would.

Now, gazing at this battered girl, h
e wanted to walk the fuck away, but he couldn’t fucking do it. Away from the male-infused atmosphere of the clubhouse, Outlaw could hear his mother’s voice, see her beloved features. She’d want him to help this girl. She’d
raised
him to help. She was good and kind and loving, and if he could do shit over again, he’d do so much fucking different. He’d wouldn’t have fucked a swath through a battalion of women. He wouldn’t have lied.

He wouldn’t have killed.

But he’d found Boss and his brothers and gotten the acceptance and male influence he so craved. At the clubhouse, he could belch, fart, fuck, pick his nose, curse at the top of his lungs, and do whatever shit he felt like without having to worry about female sensibilities.

Crouching down, he scooped her into his arms. She weighed next to nothing. A strong wind would knock her the fuck over. She pulled in a deep breath, half gasp, half sob.

He could always take her to town, put her up in a motel, keep her pockets flush until she figured out what to do. That was the sensible thing to do. Motherfuckers were gunning for him, meaning he didn’t need the distraction of a virginal pussy. Because, fuck him, he’d done a lot of shit, but as far as he knew he’d never fucked a virgin or such a young bitch. Bitches at least had to be legal drinking age to get in his bed. He just couldn’t get her cock study out of his head, though. Her fascination with such a cherished part of his anatomy tempted the shit out of him.

Fuck it. He’d take her to the clubhouse. It was going to be a fucking tedious ride with her unconscious. The clubhouse was closer than town, any-fucking-way.

Twenty minutes later, Outlaw was striding into the clubhouse carrying Boss’s daughter. Early in the day, not many people were around. Most of them were preparing for tonight when brothers from a smaller club rolled in to pick up the shit that needed distributing. The Dwellers didn’t need to dirty their hands with drug distribution and gun running no more. They’d paid their dues.
He’d
paid his dues. So had Mortician, Digger, and Val. Even Johnnie, his cousin, who wasn’t a full patch member anymore.

After Boss tried to fuck them up the ass with an
other club and after Outlaw put him to ground, Outlaw had had to decide if the club would wage war with the smaller club or if they could somehow work together in a way to benefit both organizations. He’d moved his mother out of her house and relocated her to the place he owned two hours away. He’d moved to the club, for all intents and purposes. Motherfuckers knew where his mother lived, so he’d had to wrap away any thoughts of retaliation against him through her. Fortunately, though, they’d come to a peaceful resolution.

For now. Shit could change any time, so whenev
er the other MC members set foot on Death Dwellers’ property, his boys were out in force.