Never Love an Outlaw: Deadly Pistols MC Romance (Outlaw Love) (4 page)

“You starting to understand? A girl like you must have a fancy education. You're not stupid. Take a good, long look, bitch. That's your future. Only I ain't letting you have none of that junk. Gotta keep you happy and healthy for top dollar.”

I lost it. I couldn't bear to take another look at the miserable woman, holed up just like me, and I couldn't stand for the pimp to see me cry either. I buried my face in my hands, letting the hot tears come, until he pinched my shoulder so hard I looked up.

“Stop crying, beautiful. I won't let you get hooked on shit. You're too valuable to me. Shit, I'm gonna make every boy who comes in here use rubbers too. I'm not letting anybody fuck you up with damage, drugs, or disease while you're working off your rent. You'll be treated like a queen compared to these other junkie whores.”

I shook my head again. His cruel words blurred together, becoming incomprehensible. What the
fuck
was he getting at?

“What is this place?” My heart dropped another inch as I said it.

Deep down, I already knew.

Ricky stepped forward, wearing the same serpent smile I'd come to know too well, the one that strangled me, poisoned me, killed the woman named Megan.

“You kidding? Haven't you ever seen our billboards? Or are you one of those bitches who pays more attention to texting on her phone than the damned road when she's going down the highway?”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. He slammed it against the wall, smoothing it out before he pressed it into my shaking hands.

It took everything not to retch when I saw the outrageous, neon letters and overdone whore with her lips pursed on the cover.

LONG HAUL? COME UNWIND AT THE BIGGEST, BADDEST, HOTTEST TRUCKER SPA IN EAST TENNESSEE!

A trucker spa. A dirty, ditzy fucking whorehouse. And now that I was on the inside, it was even more miserable and soul crushing than I'd ever imagined.

“Jesus...help me.” It was the last thing I whispered before I took off running, flying into the cramped little bathroom attached to the beat up room.

Ricky held me like he actually cared while I spat out my guts. He reached over me when I was finished, flushing the bile down, a loud, harsh sound like the end of my life.

“There, there, baby girl. Be good for me. Get it all out of your system. Your first clients are coming this afternoon. I need those pretty lips clean and healthy for their dicks. I'll bet you suck a mean cock.”

I wanted to vomit again, but there was nothing left in my system. “Don't do this.
Please.
I'm a virgin.”

That got his attention. Ricky's eyes flickered, and the nasty smile he wore disappeared. He crouched next to me on one knee, grabbed my head, and pulled me close, until I was only inches from his evil face.

“You gotta be shitting me. A rich party cunt like you?”

I nodded, feeling my whole body shake. I didn't know if I was making another huge mistake, or telling him the only thing that might save me, but I was way past caring.

I had to get out of this. I didn't belong here. Megan Willow Wilder wasn't ever supposed to be reduced to sucking off strangers in a creepy fucking trucker's spa.

If only I could delay him, trigger some mercy deep inside him...

But when I opened my eyes again and looked at him, his eyes were small and black. Cold, cruel, lifeless as coal.

“If I find out you're lying to me, bitch, I'll fuck you myself. I swear it.” He reached for my chin, digging his fingers in so hard I could feel him on bone. “Last chance. You telling me the truth, or are you just fucking around?”

“It's true,” I muttered, my voice cracking as more hot tears came.

“Fuck. I never believed in miracles before, but I'm starting to think somebody up there loves me.” His sick smile reappeared, and he looked right through the ceiling, before turning back to me with the same vacant expression as before.

“Okay, Meg, here's what we're gonna do – you'll put those lips to work like a good little girl and earn me some money to keep you fed, clothed, and sheltered. In the meantime, I'll do my damnedest to land you a permanent home. It's out of my control the day I've got a buyer, but as long as you're here, I promise it'll be sane, sweet, and easy.”

Sane, sweet, and easy.
It wouldn't be the first time he used that phrase.

I'd hear it over and over again, almost every fucking day, whenever I was washing my mouth out with baking soda and water, trying to forget the foul taste of latex and cherry flavored lube.

“Take a couple minutes to yourself, baby. I'll bring you some breakfast, leave you alone to get your head straight. You haven't figured out why you're here yet, and that's okay. Give it a few more weeks, a month or two, and you'll understand.” His rough palm patted my cheek, and I slumped down, holding myself in a fetal position until I heard the door close behind him.

Alone. Defeated. Confused.

I didn't believe him then. It didn't seem like it was possible for me to ever understand anything again.

Six months showed me how wrong I was. They showed me I didn't even know who or what I was. I'd been stripped down, rebuilt, recreated in sorrow and shame and dozens of anonymous cocks.

My ego, my self, my mind disappeared in a haze of sweat and smoke. My pimp gave me food, shelter, and weed. I'd never been much of a pot head before, but I smoked up without hesitation.

I used the stuff to take the edge off, to take me away from this hell for a few blissful hours. I took the only escape he offered.

Ricky kept his word. Greed held the bastard to his promises, the only thing that saved me from the wretched existence of the other girls I shared a brothel with.

He carefully controlled the men who used me, and he even went so far to test me each week, steering the roughest, dirtiest truckers and thugs to his other girls – all of them except the Deadhands he feared. I became the golden girl again, the same thing I'd always been, but this time there was no glamor or pride.

I was still a whore, a prisoner, and completely broken.

Every day I stumbled awake and rubbed my sore eyes, I wondered if I was dreaming this demented fairy tale. Ricky wasn't the only demon here.

The bigger ones showed up just a few weeks in, the first time the bikers came to the whorehouse. I learned not to stick my head out of my room and stare at the men from the Deadhands MC too long. Whenever I did, they started to ask Ricky uncomfortable questions about his 'hot, new piece of ass.'

The first time Big Vic came after me, the brute shoved his gun in Ricky's face, told him he wouldn't hesitate to kill everybody here if he tried to get in the way. The pimp caved, pleading for his life, and begging them not to ruin his pet project – me.

I realized I wasn't the only one here forced into prostitution. Ricky groveled to the bikers. He feared them.

One day, he warned me point-blank, told me that if they ever wanted more, he couldn't protect me anymore. They'd take my virginity and whatever else they wanted, and he'd let them, since the alternative was ending up in a shallow grave.

These were the monsters in my story, my life, an endless parade of them. Some days, they were all I saw. I wondered about the yin to my yang, all the joy bled from my life.

It wasn't fair. There wasn't any balance.

Where was my prince? Where was my happy ending?

There had to be more to my life than working for this grubby, cruel man who smiled like a crocodile and never paid me a single cent for my slavery. There had to be another way out besides ending up with a sicker, richer, more brutal stranger, right?

I hoped and prayed. The months wore on, long and cold and brutal. The police didn't find me.

Life in the whorehouse became such business as usual that I wondered if I'd ever known anything else, or if my life in the big ranch on the hill had been a dream. Only the faded white summer dress hanging in my closet told me the truth.

Some nights, I held it close, trying not to stain it with more tears, my only reminder that another world was possible. I'd had it once, and had it stolen away.

“Don't forget,” I'd whisper to myself. “There's a whole, wide world beyond this place.”

Yes, there was. I'd known it once. Mountains, grand family picnics, and beer fueled laughter with friends and soft, playful men. Times with girlfriends and lovers who laughed at the gaudy billboards along the highways, who'd never dream of stepping foot into a trucker's spa with the sticky floors and hallow-eyed women.

I thought about Becky, Crawford, and my parents the most. Too bad they weren't as easy to hold onto as my dress, the last thing I'd worn as a free woman.

Lately, I couldn't even cry about them anymore, and I wondered why they felt so empty. My memories were fading with my mind, perhaps. He'd already taken away my name, depersonalized me the second week, when he started calling me Fresh.

Fresh,
as in Fresh Meat. At first, I despised it, but little by little, it wore me down, until I forgot what it even felt like to be called by anything that wasn't fit for a low budget whore.

I accepted my name. It fit this hell, and most anything else I could imagine.

Sooner or later, I had to stop waiting, wondering, hoping. I had to accept my fate.

There were no heroes in this story, and there wouldn't be a happy ending. I was going to be Ricky's until the bitter end.

And if I wanted to stay alive, I had to be dead inside to the man who took me next. Strangers used my lips, my tongue every single day, and giving up more of my body didn't bother me anymore.

But I wouldn't give them any joy, any spark, any life. I had none left to give.

Meg died. Fresh lived.

I swore I'd go to my grave with that name, and if any filthy bastard who touched me ever called me anything else, he'd have to strangle me to make me stop tearing pieces out of his flesh.

The pimp killed Meg without a fight. Fresh wouldn't go down so easy.

She wouldn't wait for her knight or her happy ending. She'd pick up the shattered pieces of herself and wield them like broken glass.

Twenty-four Hours Earlier

T
he worst part about the club being flat out broke? No fucking pussy.

When I heard the Prez wanted us to shakedown the trucker spas toward Knoxville, I could've ripped out my nine millimeter and shot it through the ceiling, screaming like an idiot.

I rolled out of bed early, showered and dressed, threw on a clean shirt and my cut. I took a second to study myself in the cracked mirror, a morning ritual I'd started the day I earned my prospect patch.

The colors on this leather had changed a lot over the years, but what it meant hadn't. Everything here was
earned,
just like a soldier's medals, the story of my entire adult life writ in blood and fire.

My fingers trailed up cold leather, grazing the skull with the one-percent sign etched into its head. I got that the first time I went away for the club after a bar fight. I could still feel myself gripping a pool cue, slamming it across the disrespectful motherfucker's head, the smartass who'd pushed the Veep and called our club
piss.

I'd slowly filled my cut with skulls and pistols after that, patches I'd earned for killing more disrespectful fucks and finishing runs for the club. I turned around in the mirror, glancing at the backside, which told all the rest.

Everything I'd ever die for appeared in the blood red smoking pistols and the skull sewn into the back. DEADLY PISTOLS MC, TENNESSEE, surrounded it.

Seeing my colors sent hot, angry blood flowing through my fists.

Some men had careers that kept them running like fucking hamsters, and other boys had families. This club was my job, my blood, my whole life.

I didn't do cubicles, and I damned sure didn't do love. That gun with the smoke pouring out of it reminded me of my place in the world every day – the only place I'd ever belonged.

The club had been good to me, and always would be. She might be in dire straits now, but fuck if I'd go limp and walk away. When I got patched in as a full voting member, I vowed my life, and now I was trying every day to stop the MC's lifeblood from bleeding through my hands as Treasurer.

We needed money, and lots of it. Collecting our tribute from the Deadhands' network of shitty whorehouses would tide us over for a while, but we were really after a treasure map.

I was putting on my helmet when the brothers filed out, one by one, everybody heading for their bikes.

The Veep, Joker, wore the same deadpan rip-your-arms-out-of-their-sockets expression he always did. The two prospects, Tinman and Lion, walked with him, and they all started their engines, holding position for the Prez.

“You remember the plan, Skin? Or did you forget last night while you were beating off to cable porn?” Firefly got on his bike next to me and shot me a sharp look, a fresh smoke in his mouth, blowing contrails over his bars.

“Fuck you, man. You know I'm more in love with the ladies than the bottle. Sorry all that sweet Jack makes it so hard to get your dick up.”

He grunted and laughed, then blew a long stream of smoke toward me. I ducked, wondering if there was some truth to the shit I flung at him.

Yeah, I'd been jerking off last night. What red blooded man with hurricane force testosterone and no pussy in sight wouldn't? I thought about the last girl I had under me while I pumped the volume up so high it must've disrupted our Enforcer's beauty sleep.

Her name was Stockings. Or at least that was the nickname I gave her. She was too drunk to mumble out her name, and I didn't fucking care. She looked a lot like the whore on the screen I beat my cock to last night.

One hard night with my face and cock buried in her pussy taught her mine. They
always
remembered Skin. And they always fell hard and fast too, coming back to find me in a bar or at the clubhouse with those big doe eyes.

I had to turn 'em down. I rarely fucked the same chick twice, and never when they were expecting something.