Page 46 of Devil's Due: Sarge

“She belongs to the Horde. SheisHorde.” Vlad? It is—it’s Vlad!

Mitzi reaches her hand over to squeeze my arm. I glance down at it, then at her. “I take it you know them,” she whispers.

I nod. “Vlad and Sarge. I love him, Sarge.” I admit it for the first time out loud.

“I’m hardly going to turn her over to the likes of you.” We hear Drew. “Greer is engaged to be married. To a very wealthy man, I might add.”

“Money doesn’t mean happiness, but you know what does? Greer, in my house. In my bed.That” – Sarge punctuates the word – “is happiness.”

“You going to get her for us, or do we call in the troops?” Vlad asks, sounding every bit the biker president that he is. I wish I could see his face from up here. I bet he’s nonverbally challenging my stepfather with nothing more than a raised eyebrow. To be fair, it’s a scary, hardened raised eyebrow. At some point he’d mastered it. Now he uses it on Nic and me when we’ve pissed him off, and I’ve found when bikers who aren’t used to living with women start living with women, they get pissed quite frequently. There’s a learning curve. But he makes it worthwhile for Nic. And I’m sure that even if he never fully loves me, Sarge will make it worthwhile for me, too.

Because I feel safe enough to and really, I can’t keep myself away any longer, I rush down the stairs and leap onto Sarge, causing him to take a step back. He grunts and that’s when I remember his injuries and try to push off of him, but he’s locked his arm around me, keeping me exactly where I am. My legs around his waist, one of those locked hands holding my bottom.

“You came for me,” I whisper in his ear, a few errant tears escaping my eyes transfer to his skin. He must feel the wetness, as he pulls his head back slightly to look at me.

“I’ll always come for you, baby.”

Drew clears his throat. “I take it you know this…man,” he says snidely.

“Obviously. This is Sarge, and that” – pointing to Vlad, I introduce him – “is Vlad. He’s the club president. Sarge is the vice president.”

“I told you she’s my old lady,” Sarge barks, now starting to lose patience. Feeling him hard against me, I understand why. “I just want her back.”

“We live together,” I feel confident enough to tell him.

“Live together?” Drew asks derisively. “That didn’t take long.”

“And you know this how?” I ask back, even though we all know full-well how he knows.

My stepfather doesn’t deign to answer.

Before returning his attention to Drew, Sarge bends in to press a sweet, yet claiming kiss to my lips that I’m sure is done for our audience. I feel alive again, where just ten minutes earlier I’d been coming to terms with the empty, dead life facing me.

The way I was forced to sit there and play nice with a man who outright told me how my life would be going from this point on. Where we would live, who I’d be allowed to talk to or visit with, what was expected of me and our life together. One thing was clear during that meeting with Timothy, he didn’t see me as a person, he saw me as property. I could vomit out of revulsion thinking about it. Like his money or looks would make up for that?

Once he pulls his lips away, Sarge loosens his grip, allowing me to slide down, but he refuses to let go, flipping me around to face the interior of the house. His arm hooks under my breasts, pressing my back against his solid chest. We’ve garnered quite the audience of staff. Some pretend to polish wood or wipe down glass, whereas others don’t even try to hide that they’re listening. Although I know if Drew turned around right now, they’d scatter like cockroaches.

“We’ve been together for a couple of months now,” I answer. And yes, I know we haven’t technically been together that long, but still, we have.

“And you already live together?” Drew asks in a caustic tone that none of us miss. Not that we were meant to miss it. Without using the words he’s calling me a whore. Without using the words, he’s telling us how he could rationalize selling his only daughter, step or otherwise, to Timothy Van Houtten. I’m not worth any more than what he monetarily stands to gain. My moving in with Sarge cements that—except I am, Iamworth more. To Sarge. To Vlad. To Nic. To myself. The men harden their stances.

“Let me school you on the biker way of life.” Sarge takes a step forward. How Drew isn’t pissing his pants, I have no idea. “First,” he says, “don’teverdisrespect my woman.” He takes another highly threatening step forward, eyes glued to my stepfather. “I knew Greer was the one and didn’t fuck around waiting to have her.” The venom radiating off him is enough to shock even me for a moment. Sarge bends down getting right in Drew’s face with his pointed finger stopped maybe an inch away from the man’s chest. “Now, you got anymore shit to say?”

“Stay for dinner,” my stepfather returns, throwing me off my game. I never saw a dinner invite coming. Good play. And to his credit, he doesn’t back down. I’d have backed down, backed up, backed all the way to the marina, climbed onto my yacht and sailed to freaking Borneo to get away from Sarge if I was Drew. “Her mother will want to meet you before you go.”

My mother? Ha!Right. One look at their biker cuts and tats, and she’ll decide that they “aren’t the kind of boys you should be associating with, Greer.”Like I didn’t hear that every time I brought someone around who wasn’t a clone of Drew or his sons. And no one I brought around was ever a clone of Drew or his sons. Eventually I smartened up and stopped bringing men around.

Sarge turns to Vlad. Vlad nods. They’re planning something. There’s no way either of them trusts Andrew, becauseIdon’t trust Andrew but right now, Iamgoing to trust that they have a handle on the situation, and I tip my head up to kiss Sarge again.

As it’s a little early for dinner, to get them away from prying eyes, I take the men on a tour of the house ending with my room.

Vlad gives the space only a cursory glance while pulling his phone from his pocket. “I’ve got calls to make.”

And there we have it.

“It’s private in here.” I assure him. Then, smiling at both men, I feel free for the first time since my arrival a couple of days ago. “I’m going to use the restroom, make yourself at home.”

When I reach the threshold to the bathroom, I find myself gently shoved inside before the door claps shut behind me. Then I’m being spun and forced up against it. Sarge’s hard, lithely muscular body is the thing pressing me there. One of his hands sifts through my hair at the back of my head. With the other, his fingers dust the hem of my T-shirt. I nod and he snakes them up the skin of my torsoundermy shirt until his whisper-soft touches reach my breasts. When I gasp, he begins to knead them, skimming his hand over my now at-attention nipples, and hekissesme. Not the sweet kind from downstairs. This one gets me drunk off his lips, his smell, him.

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