Page 10 of Serendipity

“Are you done chucking a tantrum like a child?” Judas said flatly, and I snarled at him, more beast than man. He just waited there like a fucking king and I was a peasant. I wanted to slam my fist into his face instead. The crunch of bones was even more satisfying than drywall.

Instead, I sucked in a deep breath through my nose and gritted my teeth. “Who is she?”

Her face blurred over another one from my past, another blonde. Another baby.

“She’s one of Cain’s strays, that’s all.”

I curled my lip. She’d been dancing awful close to Cain for some stray. He might collect the damaged ones, but he never held them in his arms. Not since… the other one.

“Her name is Serendipity. I would have introduced you if you weren’t such a psychopath,”

Solomon said.

I flipped him the bird. The way Solomon said her name, I thought perhaps she wasn’t just Cain’s stray. “She needs to go.”

I sounded like a fucking broken record, but it was the truth. Women were poison. They’d poison the Club, poison my Brothers, leave us all broken in the dirt, and I wasn’t sure I could get back up again.

“She stays. It’s time you got over this. It’s been thirty five years, man. You have to let it go.

Serendipity isn’t Laura,” Solomon said softly and I whirled on him, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him into the wall. Judas made no move to stop me, but his eyes were full of disappointment and pity. Fuck him. I didn’t need his pity and I no longer gave a damn about disappointing him. Still, I dropped Solomon and he landed on his feet like a cat.

Judas stepped closer, putting his hand on my shoulder. I flinched away and he sighed. “Sol is right. The girl is staying until after the baby is born. You just need to stay out of her way. If you so much as raise your voice at her, you’ll answer to me. Do you understand?” I growled again and nodded. But Judas wasn’t done. “It wasn’t Laura’s fault she died, G. We killed the bastards who took her life, but she never would have left if they didn’t take the choice from her. It wasn’t her fault, anymore than it is Serendipity’s fault some fucker knocked her up and kept her locked in a basement for months.”

I jerked at his words. Someone had kept her in a basement? “Who?” I kept my voice as impassive as I could so no one knew the emotions rolling around in my gut.

Judas shook his head, darkness clouding in his eyes. My own darkness rose to meet it. If misery loved company, then my darkness enjoyed bathing in blood with someone else.

I had no doubt about what I was. I was damaged. Broken. Tainted by evil.

Solomon growled. The pretty boy was dangerous when he wanted to be. Hell, we all were. “She wouldn’t say, thinks we can’t help. She doesn’t know, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t want to tell her that there was nothing walking this earth that could take us on and survive.”

Solomon was cocky. There were several things not walking this earth that could crush us like bugs under their boot heels. First and foremost was the cause of this salvation and damnation. Luc. Lucifer.

Even thinking about the Devil sent chills down my arms, and I looked around like he might appear because I thought about him too hard.

“Find out. I need to kill something.”

I turned and strode out of the room, down the hall to the tiny storage room at the back where I slept. It was the size of a closet, but I prefered the close confines. The only decoration I had in there were guns taped to the undersides of different pieces of furniture. Judas said they were a security blanket. I said they were smart. Had to agree to disagree on that one.

I walked into my room, kicking the door shut with my foot. I slipped off my cut and hung it over the only chair in the room. I slipped off my holsters and put them there too, checking the safety was on first. The glorified janitors closet had an ensuite, basically a waterproof room because it was small and I was huge, so I didn’t fit inside conventional shower stalls.

I peeled off my clothes which were stuck to my body after my long ride and then the sweat of my rage. The rage was still burning through my blood about the woman, and I grasped the feeling. I would take any feeling at all right now.

I turned on the hot water to max, and let the water heat up until it burned me. I let it sear my flesh, absolving me of my sins, but nothing would wash the blood from my hands. When the room got too steamy and I was worried I’d pass out, I switched the cold all the way on until it rained down on my skin in punishingly icy rivulets. Hopefully, it would cool the rage that was heating my blood.

I thought about the woman. She looked tiny in Cain’s arms, but she really wasn’t. She was average height, her body waif-like, like she’d been starved. It made the swell of her stomach even more conspicuous. Her wide, weird colored eyes popped into my head, her pretty pink lips parted in shock at my anger. The image of her on her knees in front of me, that look on her face, as I slid my cock between those pretty lips formed uninvited in my head. My dick responded immediately, hardening even though I wanted to twist the fucker off for its betrayal.

Instead, I wrapped my hand around its length, the only untattooed part of me, and squeezed hard. I imagined fucking her with all the brutality in my soul until she was a tangled, unrecognizable mess. I tugged at my cock angrily. This wasn’t a release. It was a punishment.

Because women were the fucking downfall of man. Eve was the downfall of Adam. Laura was the downfall of me. I wouldn’t let this woman, this Serendipity, be the downfall of my Brothers.

I pumped hard, the pain making my balls tight, until I blew hot streams of cum on the shower wall.

I stared at my dick like the traitor it was.

I climbed out of the shower, dressed again in clean jeans and a t-shirt. I pulled on my boots, and laid down on top of my blankets to stare at the ceiling. I willed my body to sleep, but I knew it was useless. I didn’t sleep much anymore, and despite my exhaustion, I was still too riled up. I reached beneath the bed and pulled out a bottle of Jack. I tipped the bottle to my lips and gulped it down.

I couldn’t will myself into unconsciousness, but I could drink until I passed out. I needed the release of sweet oblivion before I did something I’d regret.

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