Page 27 of Savage

The biker sets the cookie down on the paper bag and stands. He wipes the grease from his hands on the back of his worn jeans as he walks to the dresser and rummages through the open top drawer. Every muscle in my body tenses as I wait to see what his next move will be. I don’t bother to try and run. What would be the point? He can’t do anything to me that hasn’t been done before.

The biker moves towards me, and despite my prior thoughts of self-fortification, I shrink back into the pillows when he circles the bed and parks himself down on the mattress. He lunges. I shrink away, but he grabs my wrist and forces it above my head. The white-hot bolt of pain shooting down my side causes me to still, which makes it easier for him to slap one loop of a pair of cuffs around my wrist and the other to the wrought-iron bed rail.

I stare at the shiny silver restraints for a beat, and then fear seizes my chest, my heart. I thrash wildly, despite the pain in my ribs. I scream and kick, but my legs are tangled in the covers. I can’t do this again. I can’t. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Relax, little spitfire,” he says, rising from the mattress. My gaze follows him as he stalks around the bed and slips his leather cut on over a black hoodie. There’s a winged skull insignia stitched onto the back of the vest and patches above and below that readSavage SaintsandSydney. When he turns around to face me, I notice the small patch over his heart:KICK. I store all this information away for later and focus on his face as he says, “I’m not going to rape you. When you submit to me, it will be because you need to.”

“That won’t ever happen,” I say through clenched teeth.

His eyes blaze with smug certainty and his mouth tips up in the corners. “Yes, it will. I can help you, Indie.”

His statement makes me want to laugh, but tears well in my eyes again. A knot forms in my throat as I try to hold them at bay.

He can help?How can he possibly help me? How can he possibly fix this?

“You keep saying that and yet I’m still here, handcuffed to a fucking bed, held captive by another sick, twisted scumbag.”

He smirks. Fucking smug bastard. One day he will let his guard down, and I’ll take his gun and shoot him in the head, and then I’ll walk out of here, and disappear for good. I may not be able to go home to my family, but I will be free.

“The club wants your captors dead just as much as you do. Seems they have a little something that could incriminate Tank and me in your disappearance, and the Dentist’s death.”

I frown, not understanding what he means by that. The MC didn’t have anything to do with my abduction, so how ... “The tape. The Dentist was recording when you shot him. You left the tape behind?” I ask incredulously, because that is possibly the dumbest thing any criminal has ever done.

He sets his jaw and glowers at me. “Yes, I left the fucking tape behind. I might not have done that if you hadn’t resisted my help.”

“You kidnapped me,” I shout. “Excuse the fuck out of me for not helping you execute your plan to abduct me.”

“I didn’t have to fucking save you, I did it because—”

“Let me guess, you did it out of the goodness of your heart?” I scoff. “You should have let the big guy shoot me if you were too gutless to do it yourself.”

“Bitch, you need to fuckin’ stop talking,” he snaps, stalking over to the door, his shoulders tight with anger and his face twisted into a sneer.

“Where are you going?”

“Out. I got business.”

“You can’t leave me here like this. What if I choke? Or I need to pee?”

“You’ll hold it ’til I get back. And if you choke, then I guess you’re checking into the Pearly Gates early.” He pulls a cigarette from the packet and lights up. Thumbing his keys from the table, he shoves them and his wallet in the front pocket of his jeans. I don’t realise his gun is sitting on the coffee table until he picks it up and holsters it in the back of his jeans. “You should think about what I said, Indie. I can’t erase what they did to you, but with a little cooperation on your part, I sure as shit can take down those motherfuckers.”

“And then what? You’re just going to let me go? Your club is going to let me walk out of here knowing what I know?”

“Pretty much,” he agrees as he ashes his cigarette on the carpet. I glance briefly around the room. It’s disgusting. The biker’s a genuine slob. There’s left over food wrappers and empty bottles of beer strewn everywhere. The room reeks of smoke and mildew. I remember coming to, covered in vomit, the biker hovering over me, and I’m both relieved and mortified that someone had cleaned me up while I was comatose—obviously it wasn’t this guy because he is a complete pig.

“You keep your mouth shut, and we don’t have a problem. We can put the bad guys to ground and you can live out your life however the fuck you want to, and you never see any of us again.”

“And if I talk?”

He smiles. “If you talk, you see me again. And I promise you, my face will be the last thing you see.” Biker winks and slips from the room. The key turns in the lock. He deadbolts the door from the outside.

I roar in frustration, yanking on the hand that’s cuffed to the bed, though I know it won’t do me any good. My left arm is pinned in position with the IV bag. I feel the needle beneath my skin and I long to rip it out, but for some reason, I trusted him when he said it was just fluids. I don’t know why, and it’s a feeling that puts me completely at odds with the chills he gives me the other ninety-nine-point-nine per cent of the time. I know I can’t let my guard down with him, but do I trust him enough to let him help me when it comes to finding and destroying the Priest and the Cop as badly as they destroyed me?

I don’t know.

There’s only one thing I’m sure about now: they have to pay. With or without the biker’s help, I will hunt down both men, and I will grin like the devil as the light leaves their eyes.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

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