Ruthless (Dark MC Romance) (14 page)

You should call the girl and get whatever this is out of your damn system.

The night dragged on and I squirmed against the wall, growing bored. Hell, she didn’t need me. She had a piece in her purse just in case things got hairy, but my VP ordered me to protect her.

Somewhere in the smoke filled haze I heard a commotion. Men in white t-shirts under leather jackets entered the bar with bats in their hands. Faces of tigers were tattooed on their necks.

“Fuck.”

Every part of me surged to life as three Tigers stormed the bar. I ran to Julia and palmed her back. She uttered a scream and jumped from my hand as if I hurt her.

“What’s wrong?”

Her eyes gleamed as she shook her head. “N—nothing.”

That’s a lie.

She flinched as she heard a woman scream near the entrance of the bar.

“Follow me.” I took her hand and ran towards the back of the place. “I’m bringing you out the back door.”

What if there were Tigers waiting near the exit?
I stopped in my tracks and Julia’s excited face turned towards me.

 “Never mind that. You need to hide somewhere.”

A few girls yelled as I burst into the women’s bathroom and pushed her into a stall. I noticed with shock that she still held her pool cue.

“Stay here.”

Her pale, beautiful face nodded as I shut the door and ran out the bathroom. The sounds of glass breaking meant that the Tigers were smashing the whole bar. I peeked into the bar and saw the owner on the floor, clutching a phone to his ear. They ripped it out of his hands and swung down with their bats.

My hand moved to my waist automatically to remove my Colt, and I gunned them down, their bats falling to the floor with loud clatters. Blood sprayed all over the owner. I whirled around to meet my attacker and shot him in the chest.

Then something happened that made my heart sink. Six, seven Tigers streamed into the bar, all holding bludgeoning weapons. They weren’t here to kill—they were here to smash and hurt and disrupt.

I guess this is it.

I squeezed off three more shots, one of them missing and striking a framed poster, shattering glass over his head. I tossed the gun aside and picked up a bat, but there were four of them, grinning with malice all over their faces.

“Come on, then.”

I swung hard but only managed to hit his bat. One of them got me in my kidneys and I dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Then I knew it was over. Huge radiating blow like a hundreds fists smashed into my body one after the other. I twisted and flailed on the filthy floor, and then I heard something crack.

BAM, BAM, BAM.

Male screams erupted around me and heavy bodies crashed on the floor. My body aching, I uncovered my head and saw Cain standing in the middle of the bar. It looked like a bomb had been set off in the middle of it. He looked furious. He made his way towards me, glass crunching under his boots.

He knelt next to me, looking worried for once. “Spike, where’s Julia?”

“Bathroom,” I managed to gasp.

He got up and sprinted to the back at once. I tried to raise myself on my elbows to follow, a stabbing pain shooting in my ribs. Were they broken?
Fuck
. I screwed up my face and managed to slump against the wall.

I heard a scream in the bathroom followed by a scuffling noise, heavy bodies slamming into walls. The other Dragons Cain brought followed the yells in the bathroom. Cain returned, dragging a squirming man through broken glass and blood on the floor. The Tiger grimaced as he dropped him next to my feet.

“No,” he said as one of them raised their gun. “Use the bats.”

What followed was a sickening, gruesome beating that the man deserved, but that I didn’t really want to watch. I did anyway.  

I couldn’t stand listening to the sobbing, the gasping, wet sounds, and the horrifying
crack
of bone. The human body was a lot more fragile than I realized and I had to fight back vomit when I saw his caved-in head.

A high-pitched gasp made me turn my head to the right. Julia stood with her hands clapped around her mouth, staring in horror at me.

Her high heels stepped over the dead Tiger as she knelt to my side. Suddenly, her cool hands were on my face and her hair was tickling my chest and my heart beat like a jackhammer.

“Spike, you’re really hurt.”

I must really look like hell.

The emotion in her voice startled me. I looked at her trembling lips and managed a painful smile. “I’m okay.”

“You could have died, you idiot.”

I shrugged. “Anything for a pretty lady.”

She still held my face, looking close to tears. Her blonde hair whipped to the side as she gave Cain an accusatory stare. “We could have died, Cain.”

“Yes, I’m well aware. I do not plan on ignoring this.”

The chill in his voice almost made me feel sorry for them. “Seems like they’re getting bolder. We’ve pushed them too far.”

His eyebrows narrowed at that suggestion. Cain didn’t like being lectured about boundaries.

My eyes closed as Julia retrieved a wet rag from the bar and began wiping my face. It felt so good to be touched by her, to be the object of her attention. Only the gravelly voice of Cain snapped me out of the temporary relief.

“Can you walk?”

“Only one way to find out.”

“Tank, get over here and help me.” Cain swung my arm around his neck and stood up, gripping my sides.

Pain stabbed my chest as my muscles stretched. With every breath that expanded my chest, I felt shooting pain.

“Just fucking great. I probably fractured something. Cock suckers.” I kicked one of the bodies lying on the floor and winced as pain shot up my sides.

“You’re making it worse.”

“Julia, I’m going to drop you both at the hospital, and then I want you to go to his place and stay with him. I need to deal with this shit.”

We moved slowly towards the door and I waited to hear her protest, but she kept looking at me with sad, hooded eyes as if it was all her fault. Her blonde head nodded.

* * *

Several hours later, I hobbled up the steps to my apartment with Julia clutching my side. I fractured two ribs and the doctors said it would take weeks to heal. Great.

“Just a little bit more,” she whispered in my ear.

“Yeah,” I grunted. I felt really fucking weak for relying on her to walk and I felt even weaker because I secretly enjoyed being so close to her. “Julia, I got this.”

Biting my lip hard, I opened the door to my apartment and winced when I walked inside. I hadn’t cleaned in a while and a flurry of embarrassment caught me from the state of my furniture. All of it was old and moth-eaten, but Julia didn’t say a word as I limped onto my couch.

“I’ll get you some ice.”

She closed the door and whisked to get ice from the fridge and the silence made me realize that I was alone with Julia in my apartment. Her lean body sank into the couch next to me. I was close enough to smell the lavender in her hair. She handed me the ice pack and I laid it on my face. I caught a few blows on my head and it was radiating heat.

“Thanks.”

“Can I get you anything?”

I shook my head, but after a few moments of silence she got up and bustled around the place, clearing the coffee table. My cheeks flushed.

“You don’t have to do that.”

Julia ignored me as she stood in the kitchen, taking sandwich making crap out of the fridge and dutifully chopping and cutting. I watched her as she tucked her long hair behind her ears and set it all on a tray for me.

My heart melted a little bit when she brought it out. A beautiful girl holding a tray of food, with an ice-cold bottle of beer stopped in front me. What made this image of perfection even better was the radiant smile on her face. I wished I could see it more often. She set it down on the coffee table and sat back down next to me.

“Thanks, babe. That looks amazing.”

I set down the ice and she gave me a little wink that made my face hot.

“Don’t mention it.”

“If I asked you to feed me, would you do it?”

She laughed at my stupid joke.

Fucking hell. She’s your VP’s old lady.

“Hell no. What do I look like, your nursemaid?” Julia’s smile remained but her eyes drooped with that blue expression I saw so often.

“You’re too nice to be a biker,” she remarked softly as I ate my food.

I’m not that nice. I’m thinking about kissing my brother’s old lady.
Still, the compliment deserved a smile, which I gave her. “Funny, you seemed to hate me only a few hours ago.”

Her face fell even further and I despised myself.

“I never hated you.”

She winced as she freed her arms from the leather jacket, which tugged at her red t-shirt. I couldn’t help but look at the tantalizing strip of flesh on her lower back that was revealed and I gasped. Instead of white skin, I saw a crisscross of angry, raw flesh.

“What the hell is that?”

Julia gave me a frightened look as she tugged her shirt down, hiding the wounds on her back. “Nothing.”

I grabbed her and lifted the back of her shirt. She screamed and smacked my hands away, but not before I saw the ugly welts all over her back. The sandwich I just ate rose up my throat.

“He did this to you?”

“Goddamnit, Spike!” she screamed, tears filling her eyes. “Mind your own fucking business!”

 “I’ll fucking kill him. What a piece of shit.” Disbelief washed away into fury. I was angry enough to get up on my feet, but Julia pushed me back down.

“No, you won’t.”

“Oh, fucking yes, I will. He’s sick, Julia. Old ladies are not supposed to be treated like this—ever. No member would ever respect a brother who did this to his woman.”

Her hair shook as she yelled at me. “Maybe they would. Especially an old lady who betrayed the club. Crash doesn’t care about me. Spike, if you threaten him, he’ll kill us both.”

I sank back into the couch, she might just be right.

 “So you’re fucking okay with that?”

All of the energy left her. Her shoulders slumped. “He said he didn’t mean it. He was using Red.”

I looked at her trembling body and her streaming eyes, looking everywhere but me, and felt so sorry for her that I didn’t know what to say. It was like the mantra of every abused woman in the world.

“Julia, sit down next to me.”

She looked at me as she heard my softened voice and stepped over my legs. Sitting down, I saw how vulnerable she really was. All I could do to keep her hands from shaking was grab ahold of one. So I did.

“If you want to get out, I’ll help you. On my mother’s grave, I’ll take you out of this hell hole.”

“Don’t say that,” she gasped.

Her hand twitched inside mine. “Julia, I give you my word—”

She wasn’t listening to me.

“That’s just what he likes. It gets him off. Some men like it rough.”

I winced, wondering how someone so shrewd at playing billiards could be so clueless about her own situation.

“That ain’t right. I’m not a fucking gentle flower in bed, either, but I would never leave a mark on a woman like that. A real man would never do that.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

Her hand slipped out of mine as she rose from the couch.

“Julia!”

She paused for a moment as she stood over me, her eyes creasing with sadness when she looked at the bandages around my ribs. Then she bent towards me, her golden hair falling around her face as she came way too close. Her lips brushed over mine, you could barely call it a kiss, but heat blazed through her mouth into mine and I leaned forward to deepen it without thinking. Julia pulled back as if burned, her pupils small. Her face burned and I knew that mine probably did, too.

Holy shit. What just happened?

“
Hey
—”

“I’ll be outside if you need anything.” The firmness in her voice told me that the conversation was over. She gave me another melancholy look from behind her curtain of hair and paused by the door.

“You’re a nice guy, Spike. I wish he was like you.”

My heart galloped ahead when she said that.
She’s into me.
I was stunned. I was elated. I sank into the couch, overwhelmed with a sudden, steamy vision of Julia sitting on my lap with my arms wrapped around her. That was the first time I seriously considered what it would be like with Julia as my old lady. If I didn’t think of her in a sexual way before, I certainly was now. I always dismissed the thoughts from my head, assuming that she didn’t want me, but now it was possible.

She
kissed
me.

I wanted to bring her back inside and claim her as my own. I wanted her hair, her lips, her body, and her smooth voice.

She’s Cain’s old lady, you piece of shit.

JULIA

When Tank drove me home I decided that I would try harder to make things okay with Cain, even though I wanted more than anything to turn back around to Spike’s house. I was playing a deadly game with him.

 
I should have never said those things to him.
I was courting disaster by allowing these feelings to continue. I kissed him for Christ’s sake.

It had to stop.

But how could I stop something that soared inside me without reason? How could I tell my body to stop having feelings for Spike?

I sat in the living room in Cain's apartment, my shoulders tensed with waiting for his arrival. My stomach growled with hunger and I realized with a shock that I hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.

Too much coke.
But the cravings were nagging at me and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.

Opening the fridge, I found ingredients for a stir-fry and cooked rice on the side. In the steam of the cooking vegetables, I wondered whether I should eat first or wait for him to come home. My back was still raw and I didn’t want to risk pissing him off even more.

Paralysis froze my limbs as Cain opened the door. I didn’t even want to look at him. Realizing how painful a burn would be if he suddenly decided he wanted my face on the stove, I shut it off and stepped away.