misunderstoodebook (8 page)

Kendall shuddered at his words, not answering. She grabbed the bottle and drank, swallowing the pills without another word, then curling into a ball.

“Tie her up. I’m going to call her as soon as I get Logan settled so wait in here with her.”

“I have to use the bathroom,” Kendall called, already getting dizzy.

“Piss on yourself,” Spoon responded and stalked out of the room.

The ringing phone pulled Kendall from her drugged sleep and she jerked against her restraints. Her full bladder pressed against her belly, hurting. She’d hold her urine as long as possible, but she had to go so bad.

“Untying her right now,” Goon said and began unlocking her shackles. “Go piss and don’t take long. Spoon need to talk to you.”

Not questioning their small mercy, Kendall got to her feet, and swayed. She held her hands out to balance herself, wishing she’d had someone to reach out and steady her.

A man with blond hair and silver-gray eyes rose in her head, helped her to plant her feet a little more firmly on the floor. She stayed upright but stumbled forward, ignoring Goon’s snicker.

A few minutes later, she had her bladder empty and had returned to the bed. The partially opened curtain revealed the reddish-gray dawn. It was morning. Spoon had taken almost all night to get Logan settled and she didn’t want to imagine what Caroline had gone through.

Kendall bit down on her lip and closed her eyes, thinking about Johnnie and how he seemed in control of all those around him. She considered going to him and confessing her original reason for showing up at the bachelor party. If she had, maybe, her mother would be alive and, maybe, Caroline wouldn’t have been getting fucked ten times a day.

She didn’t want to think and she didn’t want to hurt and she didn’t want to talk herself into the abortion she had no choice but to have. She wanted to just
be
. She wanted her baby. She was educated and she had a career. She could support a baby.

NO way in hell would she bring a baby into this sick situation. No. Way. So she’d do it a favor and get rid of it and—

“H-hey, babe,” she answered in as strong a voice as possible, still groggy and a little out of it.

“You need to get your ass back to the clubhouse today,” Spoon rasped.

Kendall blew hair out of her face, wondering where all the pretty, swirly colors were coming from. Whatever manufactured the dizzying kaleidoscope on the ceiling, Kendall didn’t care. It was the prettiest thing she’d seen in a while.

“Kendall!”

“Spoon?”

He blew out a noisy breath and Kendall squinted. “I’m levitating,” she whispered on a hysterical laugh.

“No, you’re still fucked up,” he snapped.

Yeah, that, too. But she
was
levitating. Wasn’t she? She was laying flat on her back and it felt like she hovered two feet above the bed.

“You have to get the fucking job?” he barked.

Job? She had a job. She was sure she did. “I have a job.”

“You fucking cow, focus. You didn’t get the job with the Dwellers, did you?”

Her face crumpled. “No,” she admitted, crashing back onto the bed and wanting to sleep.

“No,” he echoed. “Never did ask you what the fuck happened thanks to Logan.”

A second went by. Then, two and she remained silent.

“Kendall,” he said impatiently. “What the fuck happened?”

“They got distracted.” And Johnnie wanted to have sex with her, but she couldn’t do that with him. She could
never
do that with him or anyone else ever again. Sex was bad. Really, really bad.

“You’re such a stupid fucking cunt,” Spoon snapped. “How the fuck you allowed them to get distracted. I told you I don’t give a fuck if you have to fuck the entire club in one night. You get fucking in with them.”

“I-I thought you said I couldn’t have sex with anybody else.”

“Not unless I tell you to do it. Understand?”

“Johnnie wanted to have sex with me,” she said slowly.

“Listen to me.”

“’Kay,” she mumbled, the fog in her brain beginning to envelope her entire body. Soon, she’d been cocooned in blessed numbness. And she’d sleep. Her brain would shut down and stop working again. Her eyes slipped closed.

“KENDALL!” Spoon boomed, loud enough to burst her eardrum.

Startled, Kendall bolted upright. “I want to sleep.”

“You’re a miserable excuse for a sister. Caroline needs you and all you can think about is sleeping. If you don’t get this fucking right, she’s being auctioned off next week.”

Caroline. God, Caroline. The memory of her little sister broke through and Kendall forced a semblance of awareness into her brain. She had to concentrate on Spoon’s directions. “I-I’m listening,” she croaked, her head beginning to pound and her breasts sore and tender.
   

“You heard me?”

“Uh, yeah, Spoon. Everything you said.”

Spoon chortled a laugh. “You want me to visit you again tonight to make sure you pay attention to me when I talk to you?”

“No,” she whispered, pressing a hand against her belly.

“I rather enjoyed choking you with my dick. Thinking, maybe, we need to have that kind of fun again soon.”

“Will you give me Caroline back?”

“I don’t have Caroline anymore. Remember?”

Right. Kendall frowned. Logan did. A man who resembled a grandfather but was really a monster.

“Besides, I don’t have to give you anything to fuck you,” Spoon reminded her. “Not even respect. As I recall, you said you were mine and, as mine, I have the right to fuck you whenever the fuck I want. Get your ass back the fuck to that club now.”

“It’s late,” she said and she was exhausted. Drugged up exhausted and soul shattered exhausted. Besides, seeing Johnnie again had affected her down to her bones. Not because she had any real feelings for him, but because she carried his baby. Silly, yes, but she attributed that to her rioting hormones. “Spoon?”

“Get to the club tomorrow. Logan’s been out of contact for twenty four hours. I don’t know where the fuck he’s at and I don’t like this shit. Get in with the Dwellers, Kendall. However you have to. The man is obsessed with them. All of them, but especially their Prez and Veep. He wants…” Spoon sighed in real frustration. “I don’t know exactly. He keeps asking all kinds of fucking questions about them. We didn’t get you in bed with the president, so we have to get the Intel on the brothers and give it to him. He’s given us one week.”

Kendall scowled. Spoon really, really needed to shut the fuck up. He’d been going on and on without a breath and she’d barely been able to keep up. At least, she’d gotten the last part. “What information do you need first?”

“Give me the information and I’ll tell you if I need it or not after I send it to Logan,” he countered. “Rest tonight. Go fuck one of the Dwellers. I don’t care. Just make sure you have what the fuck I need by the time I speak to you tomorrow evening.”

Leaning against the wall in his room, Johnnie sipped from a bottle of beer, the song on the radio one he’d have chosen as part of the soundtrack for his life.
Say Something
by Alex and Sierra.

Despite his best intentions, the words made him think of Megs, compelling him to pull out a photo of her. One of the ones they’d taken over the holidays almost two years ago when Christopher had left her with him. To torture him.
Which
him was debatable since Johnnie knew walking away from her had been one of the hardest things Christopher had ever done.

Tasting the beer again, he held it in his mouth a bit, then refocused on Megs as he swallowed. She’d been in a red lace dress, her gorgeous legs made longer by her sexy-as-fuck heels. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes, though. She’d looked…lost. Much like Johnnie felt right now.

As the song ended and another one began, he passed a thumb over Megs’s photo, smiling at her. The only girl to interest him since Megan, scampered in and out his life with no rhyme or reason, running out of the club, several hours ago, before he’d had a chance to get her alone.

Closing his eyes, he rested his head on the headboard and scratched his chest. He hated that he couldn’t get past Megan. As with everything else in his life, he went all the way. No half-assing for him,
ever.
When he loved, he went the full Monty. When he killed, he now did it with no regrets. And when he kept secrets? He did it with the knowledge of holding everyone’s happiness—maybe the continued existence of the MC—in the palm of his hands.

Sometimes, key moments in his life flashed in his head and he’d remember how he came to be at this point in his life. The memories evoked a variety of reactions from him. Sometimes, nostalgia. Sometimes, laughter. Sometimes, anger. And every now and then grief that his perception of who he was had been so brutally stripped away.

Unfortunately, for him, almost
all
his memories centered around not only him, but Christopher, too. It was one of the most fucked up things within a bevy of fucked up things between the two of them. Because Johnnie knew what he was good at and running this fucking club wasn’t it. That was Christopher’s thing and if the club fell apart because of the constant cloud of
one
man, then all the secrets Johnnie had kept would be for naught.

One man. How could
one man
wield so much fucking power and he wasn’t even fucking around?

But Logan Donovan…tension dropped into Johnnie and his muscles bunched. He refused to think of Logan with the same determination he pushed away thoughts of Sebastian Caldwell and Joseph Foy. Though he might’ve more than succeeded in paying as much attention to Cee Cee’s former existence as he would a pile of horse shit, he wasn’t as lucky with Big Joe and Logan.

Rubbing his eyes, Johnnie wondered if Little Man was asleep. It amazed him how a club of big, bad-ass bikers catered to a
baby
. Of course, Christopher couldn’t wait to take his son on a motorcycle. He was already searching for earplugs…that he’d more than likely never use. Megs would
kill
Christopher if he took their son for a ride on Little Man’s first birthday.

On the other hand, all Christopher had to do was get her in bed and wring ten orgasms from her, and she’d be putty in the man’s hands. The sour thought made Johnnie’s brow crease. He didn’t like the envy surging up in him. Envy that had nothing to do with the way he felt about Megan. No. It was more the thought of wanting what Christopher had—his own family who loved him without condition.

Johnnie wanted a wife and a child, too, a woman he could confide in. He wanted to erase…
everything
….connected to
him
. No,
them.
Because, if he compared his grandfather and his father to one another, he’d find one was as bad as the other.

The gorgeous redhead popped into Johnnie’s mind and his chest tightened a little more. He’d intended to have her followed, but then all the other bullshit had started. She’d acted so different from the night he’d met her. The question was
why.
Had she come as friend or foe? If it was foe and she was trying to spy on the club, either amateurs had sent her or dickheads. Either scenario could get her killed. He was only happy he’d have free time on his hands the next few days. Not anticipating any problems in the foreseeable future, he could devote hours to discovering her secrets and enjoying her body.

He’d find out if she needed his protection, which he’d be more than happy to give her. The thought was surprising but uplifting. It meant he was getting control of his emotions again after months of hell.

Unrequited love was good for nothing but the shithouse.

A hard rap sounded on his door before it opened and Val stepped in.

“John Boy,” he greeted, walking forward.

A frown creased his brow and Johnnie knew he was either in pain from his barely healed wound or he’d had a run-in with Zoann. Or both.

Val zeroed in on the photo in Johnnie’s hand and snorted.

Johnnie finished his beer, then slammed it on the nightstand. “Don’t. I know what the fuck I’m doing.”

“So do I, brother,” Val said flatly, “and sitting in here licking your balls not getting you Meggie. She’s with Outlaw.” He glanced at his watch. “Probably under him or on him or sucking him right about now.”