Holding On (8 page)

I turn away from Shame’s neck when I
hear a throat clearing from behind me and hear the voice laced with
anger.

“
Are you
about finished here, Shame?  She’s mine to console, not yours.
 Put her down and walk away,
friend
.  I don’t want your
disgusting hands on my girl.  Mace get your ass over here,
now.”  

Greyson.  Greyson is here.
 How?  Oh of course, Dad called him.  Nice.
 Even while grieving Dad ensures that I remain on his
perceived right path of life.

Shame stills below me.  Still
gripping my back but now he’s pulled me even tighter to him.
 Malice leaks from Greyson onto Shame.  I know I should
do something or say something but honestly, I don’t have the energy
for this right now.  The protective cocoon that I have been
spinning in with Shame feels far too safe to leave but I know I
have to calm the storm that’s about to break. 

This is our place here at the lake and
at this moment Greyson is the outsider and Shame will protect
anyone that enters, in the form of thief, foe, or fiancé.  The
definitions all mean the same to Shame and Grey is all these evils
wrapped in one.

“
Greyson, you’re here.
 Thank you.  I wasn’t sure if anyone called for you.
 I’m sorry I didn’t, after the news I was just in shocked and
came out here to get some clarity.”  I’m rambling and I’m
nervous.  I feel this, so does Greyson.

“
So you
were thinking that you would find some clarity in… this… him?
 I don’t believe this shit!  Are you fucking kidding me
right now, Mace?  Didn’t you and I already
t
alk
about this once, recently if I remember right? From the looks
of it, we should probably talk about it in greater detail.”
 

Oh God.  I know that he is
referring to the night in the car, outside the Club.  My
insides twist a bit and now not only am I nervous, I feel actually
a bit afraid. I flinch a tad under the hold of Shame. I try to
further explain.

“
Hem called Shame so I
would be around something familiar and not sitting alone scared and
upset, Greyson. You know as well as I do that you hate Hem. Hell he
knows it.  It isn’t as if Hem has you on speed dial, come on.
 It’s no more than that.  Stop overthinking this please,
for me.”  

“
Overthinking?  No,
I’m not overthinking.  Apparently I’m seeing this very fuckin’
clear.  What the fuck are you doing sitting on his lap, Mace?
 Warren called me concerned for you and apparently there is no
need.  You are out here, sitting under your childhood brothel
being felt up by some undereducated piece of shit that doesn’t know
his ass from his Harley.  Do you want to be a club whore?
 Do I treat you too well?  God, is that it?  Maybe I
am too soft with you?  How about I put my cock in your mouth
and call you a slut and see how you respond, hell my dick is
getting hard just thinking about that scene.  Jesus, Mace.
 I know you or at least I thought I did.  I see it on
your face, you wanna be a slut?  Well alright baby, let's go
home so I can bend you over and ass fuck you like a good little
whore like you deserves.”  He’s seething in anger and it’s
just rolling to Shame and I in waves now.

Before I can gather a response I’m
being thrown, literally thrown into the air and set down square on
my ass.  Shame has moved so quickly I haven’t registered
what’s about to happen. I’ve seen Shame pissed, but I realize in
this moment that I have never seen anything like the Biker Shame
about ready to thrown down, and I can’t move because everything is
happening so fast that I am registering all of this in slow motion.
I mouth for Hem to help, my voice is lost.

“
Shut your fucking mouth!”
 That’s all I hear coming from Shame as he throws himself
shoulder first into Greyson.  Shame has Greyson on the ground
sitting astride him and is beating his face with one hand and
holding his fingers around his neck with the other, successfully
cutting off Greys oxygen.  I only see the back of Shames cut
but I can hear the gurgling coming from Greyson.  Finally
regaining some composure I crawl my way to them and scream for
Shame to stop.  Not because Greyson may have had this coming
but because Shame will kill him if he continues this brutal
beating.

I grab Shames arm, the one currently
closing my fiancés throat.  “Shame stop, please.  You
will kill him.  STOP!”  Nothing registers to his rage so
I grab Shames face which is now covered with Grayson’s blood.
 “Shame, please.”

Now I’m talking quietly, pleading, but
at least he has turned his focus to me now.  With anger still
raging inside, he turns from me to lower his face to Grayson’s
getting very close to him. I watch Greyson roll his eyes with
evident pain.

“
If you ever insult or
mistreat her like this again you pussy assed cock sucker on my
account or anyone else’s, I will kill you brother and I won't make
it quick.  It is a promise to be full of pain.  Get your
face out of my sight before I finish you now, you piece of
shit.”

Shame steps off Greyson, spits on him
then comes towards me.  Immediately my eyes turn to saucers
and I’m actually scared.  I’m in no way afraid of Shame, but
I’m afraid for Greyson who just continues to lay there and gargle
in his own blood.  

Shame grabs my hand, then my back, and
presses me to him while looking me over inch by inch.  He
thinks he hurt me physically during his path to get to Greyson.
 I can see the cogs of his mind working, his past chasing him
as he remembers his father beating both he and his mother and the
aftermath it created.  

“
I’m okay, Shame.”
 His face relaxes in stark relief.  Grabbing my legs from
under me, he holds me to him and tells me to wrap my legs around
his hips. He lifts me in his arms and has me pressed into him
tightly.

“
God dammit, Mace.
 He doesn’t deserve you.  No one deserves you.”
 

He’s breathing heavily into my ear
from exhaustion from walking briskly while carrying me back to the
house and the residual anger from his fight with Grey.
 

“
I don’t
think that man understands a fucking thing about you, does he?
 Does he know what a lucky bastard he is to just have you near
him?  You’re so much good, you’ve got a heart made for only a
Saint to love, so much good, Mace.  Hearing him talk to you
like that when he said...wait…hold the fuck up... Mace...MACE, you
flinched.  You were
in my
arms
and held tight to against my fucking
body and you still fucking flinched because of
him
.”  

He stops, puts me down, grabs my face
with his hands.  “People do not fucking flinch if they are not
scared. You were scared back there, weren’t you?  What the
fuck, Mace?  Has he touched you?  Has he hurt you?
 Fucking TELL ME.”  

He starts to turn around and walk back
to a struggling Greyson who from what I can see is starting to sit
up now after his beating.  I grab onto his arm to stop
him.

“
Let me go check on him,
Shame.  You’ve bloodied him good and he needs medical
attention.”  I’m arguing with air.  I’m being
ignored.

“
ANSWER MY FUCKING
QUESTION!  Has. He. Hurt. You?”

His arms are up in the air as he says
this and his words are so powerful and full of anger.  I know
I can’t lie to him because Shame knowing me how he does, will just
call me on the lie and this isn’t what I want to think about while
Hem is at the house with Mom and Warren.  Another storm I’m
sure is brewing there between those two.

“
No, Shame.  He
hasn’t hurt my physically.  I’m fine okay?  He just took
me by surprise because I’ve never seen him that angry before.
 Please take me home.”  I run to him and jump back into
his arms without him expecting that but he catches me, both hands
on my ass this time but if it distracts him from going back and
finishing Greyson off he can have my ass in his hands.

He keeps walking now and over his
shoulder I can see the seethe in anger rolling off of Greyson as he
stares at me and mouths the word ‘whore’.  That hurt even more
than I wanted it to and coming from him and all he had just said,
I’m surprised it still hurts.

Chapter
Four
:

“
For we have thought the longer thoughts and
gone the shorter way. And we have danced to devils' tunes,
Shivering home to pray; to serve one master in the night, another
in the day.”

--Ernest Hemingway

I wake to hear raised voices.  It
takes me a few minutes to register where I’m at, then I remember
the events of yesterday.  Mom is dying.  I didn’t even
tell her goodbye yesterday before I left the house.
 

Shame had talked to Hem outside in the
yard after I insisted that I wanted to go home, all the while he
had refused to put me down, so I kept my legs wrapped around him
and my arms around his neck, holding tightly.  Hem had asked
Shame where he had left Greyson.  Shame told him he was
bloodied somewhere down near our lake so most likely Greyson was
about to get another visit from a very pissed off Biker Hem.
 

Shame wouldn’t let me go home
afterwards.  He didn’t want me sitting there all night crying
with Sadey, he seems to think women can only eat Oreos and sit
around desperate when we are upset.  Either way, he brought me
back to the Clubhouse and took me straight to his room.

I was hesitant to discuss sleeping
arrangements with him.  I was already emotionally drained and
didn’t want to argue with him when I told him I wanted to sleep in
bed, alone.  After a brief debate he accepted that I wasn’t
budging and said he would take in some sleep on the couch in the
common room.  I felt bad considering the action that couch has
seen, but I needed to rest.  

Sometime in the night though, Shame
must have stopped caring so much about my request because when I
woke to feel the bed dip I knew it was him.  It’s that smell
he has, I would know it from anywhere.

He climbed in the bed and pulled me to
him, my back to his front and held me close.  He didn’t make a
move other than to just hold me closer when he felt as though I was
trying to get away.  Not one of my muscles moved under his
hold, I was exactly where I wanted to be.  It felt like
home.

I know I have to go back to my house
today.  I sit up taking inventory of my appearance.  I’m
in Shames shirt the he wore yesterday and my panties.  I
nabbed it from the floor after he left for the couch last night.
 I may not have wanted a bed guest but being wrapped up in his
old undershirt made me feel like I wasn’t alone.

Finally I get up and I dart
to Shames en suite bathroom, if that’s what this qualifies to be
labeled.  At the Club, they all have their own rooms, but
these aren’t anything to write home about.  They are men, they
live like men, and definitely they definitely
smell
like men.  Rinsing my
mouth with wash and combing my fingers through my hair that I slept
wet on, I decide to just give up.  I’m a walking hot mess.
 I gather myself by putting my jeans from the floor even
though still feel wet from last night, then make my way to the
kitchen.  This is where all the raised voices were coming
from.  

“
Well Princess, there you
are.”  Hem’s tone is laced with malice, for me.  Not
good.

“
Good morning, big
brother.”  I’m testing waters in attempts to gauge on my Mace
scale just how pissed he is at me so I’m trying to act
endearing.

“
What the fuck is this?”
 He growls out at me quickly.

He throws me an envelope and after it
hits my chest it drops to the floor. I freeze, shocked by his
actions and look around.  In the room I’m searching for any
eyes that look friendly or familiar, but in this moment I see only
anger, especially coming from Gunner.  He’s the prospect that
is about to patch in with Ace and if looks could kill, well... you
know.

“
What’s wrong?”
 Again, testing waters.  No good.

“
Take a look!  Why
would I find that inside Grayson’s home, Mace?  I went there
last night and paid him a visit just as a follow up payback on my
behalf regarding his scene with you yesterday and after knocking
him out on his ass cold, I thought I should do a little clean up
around his place, check him out and be sure his intentions with you
are on the up and up, only to find these!”

I bend down to scoop up the offending
envelope then I open it to find pictures of Warren and Greyson.
 They are sitting in a bar, I cannot place which bar but I
know I have been there before.  To the right of Warren, I see
Hood.  The VP of the rival MC ‘Angels in Hell’ who share local
space and turf with Peril.  I’m speechless and I don’t
understand.

“
What?  You think I
know what this is?”  

Shame is standing beside me, looking
at me with concern but it’s not the same concern I’m getting from
Hem.  Hem is pissed at me.  “You think I know about this,
don’t you? Tell me brother that you don’t actually think I’m part
of this?”  

“
Well,
he is
your
dad, Mace.  I find these in
your
fiancé’s house.  A place
you willingly lay down your body for that piece of shit man of
yours.  This is quite alarming considering you fuck him
freely, or does he pay you to fuck him good, Sis?”