Forbidden Beauty (Coffin Cheaters Motorcycle Club) (11 page)

Chapter Thirteen

* * *

Gisele

My twin and I crept out into the late morning, our heads
bent low so as not to attract attention. We needn't have bothered. It was kind
of amazing: in all the hubbub, no one seemed to have noticed that the other
Owens girl had come home. She'd rode in on a jalopy of a Fat Boy, parked the
bike in the garage, and come knocking on my door all without speaking to any
other club members. Just another cruel reminder of how insignificant the men of
this club found the women to be. They were all so single-minded, they couldn't
even recognize one of their own.

When we reached the hangar-sized cement lodge where all the
bikes were usually stored, I hesitated for a moment on the threshold. I can't
explain it now—it was some kind of premonitory chill I experienced, some deep
conviction running through my body. Gazing into the gloom of the garage, I knew
we weren't alone.

“Someone's been in here.”

“No shit, Sherlock. Every single Coffin Cheater tore through
not an hour ago.” Tati gazed at me. “You feeling okay, hon? Do we need to lie
down before we head out?”

“We can't wait,” I murmured. “Never mind. Just grab your
bike and let's go, okay? For some reason, this place is giving me the creeps.”

My Street Bob had been rudely shoved to the furthermost part
of the garage, requiring me to walk some paces into the dark room. It usually
didn't make any difference; I didn't know quite why I was being such a
chickenshit. But I took two steps into the gloom, wary of my slight wine buzz—then
I heard a rustling behind me. As fast as I turned, my assailant was faster. He
was dressed in black leather from head to toe, but for a lurid clown's mask
covering his face.

I couldn't hear what he said, but the freak spoke words as
he pinned me down hard against the concrete. My temple started to throb again,
in the same place where I'd been hit before. Behind me, Tati was screaming. I
was dizzy, my vision fractured around the face above me. Whoever he was, his
hands were thick. They closed around my throat, while my legs flailed below me.

“Get the fuck OFF OF HER!” my sister screamed above me. I
was kicking and kicking, struggling to lift my arms, but the masked man was too
fast for me. He was too strong. I felt weak below him, I felt all the energy
draining away from my muscles.

Then the masked man leaned in close.

“Didn't know they made them this pretty in the Coffin
Cheaters,” he screeched into my ear, his voice so loud and shrill that it
seemed to reverberate in my skull. I tried to scream, but the full weight of
his hands was pressing into my windpipe. Near the sides of my face, my vision
was beginning to swim and ebb. The world, in my peripherals, was growing dark.

Then came the loudest, closest sound I'd ever heard. We both
seized up for a moment, the attacker and me.

For a full few seconds, I thought I was dead. I watched a
trickle of dark blood arrive under the masked man's hands, and spread across my
chest. I waited for an intuitive throb of pain, for the world to grow
completely dark. I was too scared to think properly, to weak to attempt
movement.

But in another few seconds, I felt the grip slacken around
my neck. I traced the blood to a damp patch in the center of my attacker's
chest. Above me, I heard him wheezing for breath. I heard the sounds of a
person choking, slowly, on their own bile.

And as soon as I'd processed this sudden, horrible turn of
events, I found my sister's face above me, slowly replacing the masked man's.
Tati was dragging my attacker's limp body to the ground, her face fixed with
shock. Once she'd removed all of his weight and dropped him into a heap beside
me, we sat silent for a moment, breathing ragged, echoing breaths. I tried not
to listen to the last jerky gasps of the masked man, but I understood that he
was dying. And from the sound of it, there was nothing we could do.

“Are you okay?” Tati whispered finally, her voice hoarse.
Her question reminded me of my own body, and at once I felt the feeling resume
in my petrified limbs. My neck was sore, my chest ached, by temple throbbed—but
it seemed like I could wiggle my fingers, my toes. I slowly pulled myself into
a sitting position. I could see everything around me. In vivid color, even.

“I'm okay. Are you okay?”

Tati nodded, though she was shaking like a leaf and pouring
sweat. My gaze turned reluctantly to the dead man in the room. He no longer
quivered, and the pool of blood beside him had grown wide and deep-looking.

“Did you know that man?” Tati breathed.

“No. I've never seen him before in my life.”

My twin looked relieved. By mutual, silent consensus, we
crept over to the corpse. He looked like a rag doll, in that stupid mask.
Gingerly, I bent down and lifted the plastic's corners.

It was a young kid my sister had shot—he couldn't have been
more than our age. His face was relaxed now, colorless. His hair was a sandy
brown. His nose, aquiline, reminded me of Carter's—and something about that was
tremendously sad.

“I didn't know what to do, Gizzy. He was going to kill
you...”

“I know that. Thank you,” I said to my sister. Looking over,
I saw that she was still shaking, violently. “Seriously, T. You saved my life.
I just wish I knew what he wanted, or what he was doing here.”

Tati tilted her head, and looked at me a little strangely.
“You've never seen the masked riders before?”

I shook my head.

Bending down, my sister gently lifted and set aside the dead
man's crumpled arms. On his braided leather vest—swinging so limply now, around
his skinny rib cage—Tati indicated a coat of arms, embroidered just over the
left breast, among the fringe. A ghoulish, gaping skull was pictured there,
with a red-eyed snake emerging from its jaws.

“He's from the Satan's Refuse MC,” Tati continued. “We've
seen these guys all over the highways in Missouri. They're like
The Warriors
—they
raise hell from town to town, they're always dressed up in some kind of freaky
costume. I couldn't place them, but I figured you'd be able to. I figured the
Coffin Cheaters would've seen 'em before.”

She dropped the boy's wrist, and it fell against the
concrete with a sickening, wet flop. I fought the urge to retch.

Unsavory characters...

“We should check to see if there's more around,” Tati was
saying now, though her voice sounded so far away. “They're like roaches. If
we've got one, three more'll come to his funeral. The band ran into some
trouble with these guys in Kansas.”

I'd never wanted to kill anyone. I'd prayed and prayed that
I'd never see another man shot above me,
for
me, the way my father had
been. This stupid gangster on the ground—he looked so small. I imagined him
pumped for his previous evening, raising hell at Casablanca. Had he been the
one to slash my sweet Carter across his forearm? This train of violence—when
the fuck was it going to end?

“I'm serious, Gizzy. It's strange enough that he knew to
come here, when that moat is supposed to keep us hidden from the road. We've
got to protect ourselves. You understand that, right?” She was pleading with me
now, still gripping her weapon tight.

“Let me see that gun.”

“Why?”

“Just let me see it!”

Tati forked over a sleek, light, ultra-compact pistol.

“When did you start carrying this?”

“Are you kidding? Everyone's got a gun. If I didn't have a
weapon, I'd never sleep easy in a cheap motel. You know what kinds of riff-raff
those
musicians
hang around with?”

“Don't use it again. Hear that? I'm serious. I don't want
any more bloodshed.”
Scowling slightly, my twin clicked the safety of her firearm. We gazed for
another moment at the prone body on the ground. Then, Tati bent low, as if to
move the dead man.

“No,” I countered. “Leave the body, just as it is. Leave it
so the mask and the crest are visible. Satan's Refuse is responsible for all
the recent attacks in the area, and now we can finally prove it. The council
will have to believe what they can plainly see.”

“But if we leave him here, they'll be able to figure out
that we killed someone,” Tati said. “That
I
killed someone.” Her voice
shook and shook.

“Then maybe they won't try to fuck with us again,” I said.
To my surprise, my voice came out strong and clear. I suddenly felt completely
in control of the situation, for the first time in days—possibly weeks. It
occurred to me that we'd survived this much. It seemed now, with this would-be
murderer dead at our feet, as if there was nothing more to fear.

“I love you, Tati,” I told my twin, bringing her damp frame
towards me. She was soaked through with an anxious sweat. “And you saved my
life. Thank you, always.”

“You'd have done it for me, dumbass,” she sobbed into my
shoulder.

Though I felt sick looking down at the man we'd killed, I
knew she was right. I would have killed for my sister, no fucking question.

Chapter Fourteen

* * *

I sped all the way to Casablanca, still bouncing with
adrenaline from the show-down in the garage. I knew that I ought to have been
in shock, but I had tunnel vision, and the pinnacle of my focus was clamped on Carter.
Once again, it had been merely hours since last we'd seen one another, but I
felt the lapse. And, too, now that we both had seen riders from Satan's Refuse,
perhaps there was some chance of derailing the showdown between our clubs.
Maybe it wasn't too late to stop this train before it left the station.

Tati kept apace behind me, even though it appeared that she
hadn't been comfortable on a motorcycle for some time. I lent her a newer,
bucket-seated Fat Boy, an ungainly but cozy ride. She'd clammed up since the
scene in the garage. After all those unsent letters, it was a wicked shame that
these were the terms of our reconciliation: my sister, committing murder on my
behalf.

The palms were wending this way and that above our heads.
The air implied a storm. But as soon as Scotty's shack materialized before me
in the swampland, I pressed my foot further into the gas pedal. The wind
whipping against my face dulled some of my aches and pains, blunted my humming
memory of recent events—and the promise of seeing the boy made me almost giddy.
He would set this all right. He would know what to do.

I hopped off my bike seat near as soon as the engine had
come to a stop, and started sprinting towards the club. Tati, just parking,
called to my retreating back—but I wasn't thinking about my sister just then.
Because here was Carter, his hair wet from a recent shower, his chest bare,
smoking a cigarette on the abandoned dance floor as he paced to and fro. When
he saw me, his brow unfurrowed. I saw, in that instant, that he'd been worried.

“Back so soon?” the biker smirked.

“You know me. Just can't pass up a good day-drinking spree.”
He laughed for a moment at my shitty joke, but then I watched his face scan
mine—the way it had all those days before, on the road.

“What happened? Are you hurt?”

“I'm fine. I'm...shook up.”

“Did someone hurt you?”

In a few neat steps, he crossed the distance between us.
With a firm hand, he pulled my chin up to the light, so as to inspect my face
from every angle. When his eyes landed on the tender part my temple, his
expression softened further. He drew a rough finger up to the wound.

“Concussion?”

“No. Really, Knox, I'm fine. Just had a run-in with some angry
Coffin Cheaters. And a masked sonofabitch.”

“The masked men?”

“They're called Satan's Refuse. Tati told me.” Suddenly, in
the midst of this sating reunion, the floor below me was beginning to swim. I
realized I hadn't slept in a day and a half. The facts of the day—the
complicated, wild facts of the day—were already beginning to seem as if they'd
happened to someone else.

“You need to lie down,” Knox intuited. And neatly, like I
was nothing, he scooped me into his arms and carried me in the direction of
that small chaise from our first meeting. Though the sky continued to darken
overhead, my eyes cast around for the sundial/birdbath/whateverthefuck. I was
pleased to see it still standing there.

Above me, the biker was fussing. With gentle fingers, he continued
to inspect my head scrape—until his eyes fell downward, and took in what I
imagined were the red lines along my throat. His touch was light and soothing.
I grew dimly aware of Scotty, ever-perturbed, waddling towards us with that
same silver tray from our first, botched date. He carried a pitcher of water.

The last thing I remember were Carter's violet eyes, running
over my wounds. His gaze was set with a mixture of anger and concern, but I
remember feeling so safe. And there, in his arms, I drifted into the deepest
sleep.

Chapter Seven

When I opened my eyes next, I was disoriented. A red sun was
curling around the edges of the world, but for the life of me I couldn't say if
it was dawn or dusk. The air was thick; I was still on the patio. Around me,
the bar was silent. It seemed that Scotty had elected to close his bar's doors
to the public for another day.

The next thing I knew was thick, hearty snoring—of the kind
I hadn't heard since I used to sleep on the floor of my father's bedroom, as a
child. My eyes adjusted to the light and I found Carter, sprawled in an
iron-wrought chair by my feet. His thick locks were tousled by sleep, and a
strand of dark hair had fallen across his face. His barrel chest was rising and
falling slowly, so the very ribs of his wifebeater appeared to breathe. His
muscular arms swung, relaxed, by his sides. For however long, he'd stayed with
me.

No sister, no Scotty, no putting engines sighing by the
highway...the only other thing I heard were the croaks of fat frogs, and the
buzzing of flies. Tentatively, I became aware of my own skin. I brought a cool
hand up to my temple, and found it no longer throbbed. I took a deep breath,
and was pleased to feel no pressure around my throat. Running a hand down my
form, I realized that someone had eased me out of my leather pants, so my legs
lay smooth beneath a stiff blanket. I watched my lover sleep for another
moment.

I felt so good, so easy, that I wasn't at all surprised to
find an amber-colored bottle of Vicodin resting on the sundial, near the
half-drunk pitcher of water. Beyond the grounds, a stray cat screeched. Carter
jolted awake at the noise. For a moment, we both looked at one another, utterly
silent. Then, he broke into a grin.

“What's so funny?”

“Oh, nothing. Just—you take care of me, I take care of you.”

“Softie.”

Another moment passed, and I felt myself growing
self-conscious. We'd had so much fun the evening prior, yes—but things looked
different in the dull glow of what I now assumed was afternoon. So much had
happened in the past twenty-four hours. And even through an ample drug haze, I
felt a little...shy.

“You feeling better?”

“Yes. Much. How's Tati?”

“That's right! I met your twin! She's resting inside, now. A
little shell-shocked, maybe. Guessing she'd never shot a person before
yesterday.”

“Don't think so.”

“Yeah. She's a tough one.”

“Pretty tough.”

“Not as tough as you, though,” Carter smiled. “And not as
pretty, either.”

In spite of myself, I smiled. My bones felt light. The world
was turmoil around us, and yet this all felt so easy, him and me—nothing about
us being together felt hard, or unbalanced—as was the case so often with all
the other riders. I thought of the Coffin Cheaters—their faces masks of fury as
they rode out to confront an enemy. I was different than they were, on some
fundamental level. Carter was different, too.

It took another moment to realize that he'd crept towards
me, and his shadow now blocked a portion of my vision. Against the setting sun,
he looked so powerful. He looked so strong.

Wordlessly, gently, he brought his meaty hand down to cup my
chin. As he raised my gaze to his, he leaned forward and kissed me, with no
particular fanfare. The first kiss was soft. Tentative, even. But after a slick
moment of our mouth's connecting, he wanted more.

He eased himself down onto the chaise beside me, so my naked
legs were flush with the seat of his pants. Keeping his grip firm along my
chin, he drew me closer and closer toward the full of his face, like he was
trying to draw me all the way inside. His tongue was soft, but assertive—his
mouth pressed against the parts of my own palate, with precise, serious
movements. His lips tasted daiquiri-sweet. It was easy to fall into the pillowy
smoothness of those lips, framed by that strong, hellbent-sculpture's face. I
brought my hands up to feel the thick stubble striping his jaw. Then, I drifted
my palms slowly up and toward his temples, so that my fingertips brushed the
fullness of his dark hair. His locks were damp and soft, and each time I fluttered
against some dangling strand, the air around my face seemed to fill with that
gingery, peachy, dash-of-tobacco smell that was so unique to him.

Yet I felt him growing more persistent, wanting more of me.
Leaning forward, Carter pressed himself fully into my space, moving his
rippling biceps so they flanked either side of my ribcage. I'd always felt so
gangly and awkward, but he made me feel dainty and small. While our mouths were
still locked together, our kiss increasing in speed and intensity, I felt his
legs part. He heaved himself across the chaise, so he was straddling my legs.
For a second, I felt all the weight of his sinewy strength, and the furniture
creaked below us.

Carter reached down between my legs and whipped the thin
blanket away, so I instantly felt the cool breeze against quivering thighs. He
broke away from our kiss for a moment, and hovered a few inches from my face. I
brought my hands to the back of his shaggy head, so it appeared I was holding
him up. We regarded each other, for a long, silent, sweet beat. Then that
sonofabitch arched an eyebrow, and made to grip my waist. He had stopped being
gentle.

I wanted him bad, so badly now—and the painkiller I must've
taken was abetting my desire, if anything. Pinned below his daunting form, I
let myself go lax to his grip. Pitching forward, emboldened, I whispered:

“You can do whatever you want to me, you know that? You can
fuck me just the way you talked about.”

Carter just groaned into my ear in response. His mouth moved
downward, aggressive now, and he began to suck hard on my neck. His hands still
kept me pinned to the mattress, so my movements were restricted. But below me,
he'd spread his legs across my pubis, so through the fabric of his pants I felt
his manhood quickening against my waiting pussy. I cooed as he sucked and
sucked on the small, naked space between my collarbone and shoulder, rapacious.
His mouth was so avid that he might have been biting me, but it felt better
than it hurt.

His hands intent, Carter moved one palm down to cup my
breast through the thin fabric of some borrowed t-shirt. His thumb flicked
softly across my rising nipple as he squeezed the whole of my tit, burrowing
into me with a pulsing, furious motion. Once he'd finished ravaging my neck,
replacing a would-be killer's scars with his own marks, he turned his mouth's
full attention to my chest. Rearing back, he slid both hands up towards my
softness, and began to squeeze me while his pelvis moved against mine. As he
continued to gyrate against me, I reached down to help him pull away the gauzy
remnants of my shirt—only instead, Carter pinned my arms up over my heard.

“You let me do it,” he commanded. And just as easily, I
consented. I kept my hands stretching towards the sundial, and watched as he
dragged the shirt over my head. The fabric seemed to catch for a moment on my
elbows, but rather than ease its passage, Carter took the material in two hands
and ripped it ragged, down the middle. I cried out.

Lurching forward, Carter took the ruined t-shirt and looped
it quickly around my wrists. I felt a thrill of something like fear, but I was
too turned on to question. Once the ruched cotton had circled my hands three
times, he tied it neatly, with a shoelace knot. He looked down into my face
again for a moment, perhaps to take stock of my reaction. His eyebrow arched,
as if to challenge me—but I was only craving more.

I imagine that my whole face must have been beet-red with
feeling, but Carter's attention remained fixed on my naked chest. He angled his
palms so as to massage the fullness of my heavy breasts, reaching thumb and
forefinger up to squeeze my nipples until they hurt. He kept his eyes on my
face while he did this, as if to feast on my pain and pleasure. When the
pressure grew too strong to bear, I arched my back up towards him, pressing my
wrists hard against their confines. In response, my lover bent down and began
to suck hard on my left breast, while gripping my jerking ribcage between his
hands.

“Fuck,” I whispered. And then I repeated it again, so it
became a kind of chant: “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He continued to flick his tongue back and forth across my
nipple, and his hips continued to gyrate above me, confined by those leather
pants. His mock thrusts had grown harder now, and I felt the fullness of his
erection pressing into the damp space of my pubis. I could barely wait.

“Please get inside of me,” I asked him, bucking my hips so
we continued to grind against one another. “I really,
really
want you to
come inside.”

“You do, huh?” Carter whispered, his head still bent low in
the valley of my cleavage. I saw that a crop of bright red bruises were
emerging on my tits, like a constellation. All the places that he'd sucked on
me, all the spaces he could claim.

“How badly do you want it, baby?”

“Bad. Please, Carter.”

I opened my eyes, and he'd peeled himself away from my chest
and was grinning above me. Arching back, he reached down and pressed a forceful
index finger against the blooming surface of my clit. My panties were soaked.

“You want this big, thick cock inside you?” he grunted. I
looked into his eyes, and he began to move his finger in small, tight circles.
I started to pant.

“Yes. I want you to put it in deep.”

“Beg.”

This was the same script he'd spoken of last night: “In the
Knights of Styx,
we make them beg for it.
”
Before I could
respond, however, Carter had removed his hand from the surface of my crotch,
and had begun to slide his fingers under the waistband of my underwear. His
warm palm on the soft thatch of my pubic hair was almost too much to bear.

“Please. Please, baby.”

“Beg harder.”

“
Please
give it to me. I want it
so
bad.”

His fingers had reached my unclothed clit, and slowly, he
began to resume the delicious, whirling motion. I felt my thighs and shins
tense up. While he was still gazing into my eyes, his movements picked up
speed.