Page 9 of Her Avenging Angel

Chapter Seven

Raven sat on a stoolat the bar staring into the beer he’d been working on for the last twenty minutes. What he wanted to do was go check on Taylynn, but knew she didn’t need him in her business all the time, she’d been through enough and probably didn’t want him, or anyone else around much. Still, he needed to get some answers out of her. She’d been there several days now, and every time they tried to talk to her about how she’d ended up where they found her, she refused to talk.

He took a deep breath and scowled as he tried to figure out how to get her to tell them. The obvious answer was they needed to gain her trust first. But how? He knew enough about the Demons and how they operated to know that she hadn’t had an easy time with them. He had managed to find out that she’d spent most of the last year with them. From the way she talked, it hadn’t been by her choice.

She was starting to move around more. And he was glad to see it. He’d hated seeing her look so sad and disheartened when she didn’t have the energy to do much more than sleep most of the day. She still wasn’t doing much but she could get up and go to the head on her own, and she’d been able to take a shower. That had been a big step for her self-esteem and had meant they didn’t need to either keep someone in the room with her or check on her all the time, and Raven had been doing that himself since she didn’t seem as terrified of him, and he didn’t like the idea of anyone else alone around her. She’d been through enough. She didn’t need to have a dozen different strangers putting hands on her to help her to the bathroom.

Most of the swelling in her face had subsided, but the bruising had developed into a spectacular display of colors showing how badly they’d beaten her. He knew she had to have seen it, there was a mirror in the bathroom in her room after all, but she hadn’t said anything—at least not that he’d heard.

The shuffle of leather against the bare cement of the clubhouse floor made him turn around.

“Hey, little one, I was just thinking about you. How are you feeling this afternoon?” Raven said when he spotted Taylynn.

“I’m okay.” She came closer, then stepped up to the bar, and climbed up onto one of the stools, wincing as she wiggled into place, but not saying anything about it. He noticed she’d left an empty stool between hers and where he sat. She braced the cast Freud had put on her left arm the day before on the bar and turned to look at him. “Do you mind if I use the kitchen? I’d like to fix myself something to eat, if it’s okay with you.”

“I do mind.” Raven barked out without thinking about it. He didn’t want her cooking. She just needed to tell one of the prospects what she wanted, and they could get it for her. He looked at her with a frown. She flinched and he instantly realized she misunderstood what he’d meant. He forced himself to take a deep breath and try again, his tone softer this time. “That didn’t come out the way I meant it to. I mind you making yourself something to eat because you don’t need to be doing that. Tell one of the prospects what you want, and they’ll get it for you. If we don’t have the stuff, we’ll figure it out, even if one of them has to go get whatever it is we need.” He watched her for a moment then continued. “You’re not a prisoner here. You’re a guest and we will treat you as such. Do you have anyone that will worry about you?” He’d tried several times to find out more about her, but she was tight-lipped. He didn’t know why but he got the impression that she was afraid of what they would do when they found out more about her. Or was it really that she was all alone in the world? That there was no one who cared about her? The very thought made his chest ache.

She stared at him, meeting his gaze for the span of several seconds before she looked away and shook her head.

Was that an answer? A clue? Anything? He’d take it.

“I don’t want you to feel like you’re trapped here, or that you’re not welcome to stay as long as you want, or need to.” Raven shook his head. “This isn’t coming out right.” He tilted the bottle he’d been nursing back and drained it before spinning on his stool to face her. “Look. I’ve heard some about how Ace runs the Demons. The Fallen Angels are not like them.”

The look on her face said clearly that she didn’t believe him.

“I’m not saying we’re what society would consider good, law-abiding citizens. Just not the total fuckwads with no respect for anyone or anything but ourselves that I think the Demons are. If we were, I never would have stopped.” Raven stopped, realizing he wasn’t making himself clear. He didn’t know how to do this. “Look, what I’m trying to say is that, yes, we have club mamas. Women that hang around and screw the brothers. That will do almost anything we ask of them, just like any club I’ve ever heard of, but our mamas are here by choice. They’re here because they want to be, not because we are forcing them in any way. We don’t have to blackmail them to keep them here. We don’t force them to do anything they don’t want to do. They can walk away any time they like, and we won’t go after them.” There was an exception to that, anyone who betrayed the club didn’t get out of it alive, but he wasn’t going to tell Taylynn that, not now. She’d been around motorcycle clubs enough she knew how things like that worked.

“Really?” she tilted her head to one side as she watched him.

Raven could almost see the thoughts spinning through her mind as she considered what he was telling her.

“So if I wanted to walk out of here tomorrow, you’d let me?”

Raven hesitated for a moment, trying to find the right words that wouldn’t piss her off right away. “I’ll be a hundred percent honest with you.” He looked down at the empty bottle he was rolling between his palms, then back up to meet her gaze. “I don’t want to let you walk away, but not for the reasons you probably think.”

“Oh?” She lifted one brow and went to fold her arms across her chest but gave up when she remembered the cast and how it didn’t bend to suit the gesture. “Then why don’t I get to be as free as the mamas who will put out for anyone?”

“I’m not saying you’re not as free to come and go as they are. I’m saying I don’twantto let you go. You can go, but will you let me at least give you my perspective before you take off?” he phrased the last as a question, then waited, watching her, for her to agree.

She stared at him long enough he thought she would say no, but eventually she nodded.

“If you stay in the area, Ace will find you. After the way he left you, I have no doubt that if he finds you and you’re not under another club’s protection, he will kill you this time. From what I know about him, he won’t do it fast.” He didn’t say that it was likely that what she was healing from now was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to what Ace was capable of. “I want to keep you safe. I want to make sure you recover from this.” He shifted so he could reach her, and lifted his hand slowly, giving her plenty of time to see what he was doing and move away if she didn’t want him to touch her. “If you have somewhere to go, somewhere far away from here preferably, I’ll make sure you get there. If not, if you just think you’re in the way or you are incurring a debt that we’ll find a way to make you pay back,” he brought one hand to gently cup her face, “then don’t. I’ll make sure you’re welcome as long as you need to be here.”

Liquid pooled in her eyes and he fought the urge to pull her into his arms and hold on to her. She’d been through so much, he didn’t know how she would take a move like that. He wanted to be there for her but was she ready for something like that? Not knowing, he decided to wait and see how she handled things before going any farther.

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