Shady: MC Romance (3 page)

Chapter
Two

Slider and Cajun buried another body in the desert and then drove back toward the compound. Both men belonged to the Warriors, although not to one specific chapter, they were Nomads and they liked it—until now. They were settling and it looked like they were walking into a shit storm. It was going to be a beautiful morning, dawn just passing, but it wouldn’t stay that way. It couldn’t, they were riding back to the one place both dreaded for different reasons. Slider, to face his one and only regret and Cajun, to face his past all in one fucking place. It was not going to be a smooth road. They had already been here off and on for a month and it hadn’t been pretty. They had been assigned shit jobs, like burying the bodies until their leaders were ready to talk to them.

Creed and Fork approached Cajun several times, but became frustrated when Cajun told them he was back, but wouldn't talk about why he'd been off the grid for so long. Their group of Marines had made a plan when they were in the desert on post those long fucking nights. Creed and Fork told them about their club and all of them agreed it was something they were interested in when they got out. An MC club was freedom to be who they needed to be without worrying about the confines of normal society. They were trained and bred to be killers, making them unable to fit in society. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them; Cajun didn’t want anyone to know the shit he had been through, it was too sick. Cajun dealt and moved on, well kinda. He hoped the interest his cock was showing in Shady was a step in the right direction; she was the first female he had actually been attracted to that didn’t give him the creeps.

As they rolled into the compound and got off their bikes, Creed and Fork came out front and they looked pissed. Cajun shifted on his feet nervously, he knew things were coming to a head, he just didn’t know if his leaders were going to let this shit go.

“Church in five,” Creed barked and Slider nodded. Something happened between last night and this morning. Something they didn’t know about, and by the looks of their leaders, something that was going to piss them the fuck off. “Freebyrd called this morning, you were Prospecting for them for the last year?”

Cajun nodded slowly, he wasn’t sure how his old leader was going to feel about the fact that when he finally cleared his fucking head out, he'd went to the leader of the Ops Warriors in Cali to join. Freebyrd told him he wouldn't say anything until he had too. Well apparently, Freebyrd felt the time had come.

“Yeah, Creed, needed to make sure I could actually handle all this,” Cajun said slowly, Creed should know what he was talking about. Cajun’s leg had been damaged when he was captured overseas, and until a year ago, he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to ride again. Then there was the other shit, his head was messed up, and he needed to just ride to get it on straight.

“You are patched in, we voted, get your ass in the meeting, we'll find your room later,” Creed said and Cajun nodded. They weren’t going to ask questions, Cajun was relieved. He knew he would tell them sooner or later, because they were his friends. He just wasn’t ready yet.

Slider grinned, put his hand around his friend’s neck, and put him in a chokehold. “Fuck ya, we are back!”

Cajun walked to his side and shook his head. “No rest for the weary. No time to celebrate.”

“Don’t think we are going to have rest for a long time,” Slider said.

They walked into the clubhouse and looked around. The guys were just now getting up and moving but they felt the air of tension. As they filed into the room where they held their meeting, Slider greeted several of the men, but they were staring at him with a hard expression, like he had done something wrong. What, he had no idea.

“Dominic Reyes III is a dead man,” Creed said with a hard tone. “Last month we found out why Dominic Reyes has decided to target our club. It seems he is looking for someone, a long lost family member, as you know. Now, we know when he showed up and tried to kill Harmony and Shay that things were gonna be fucked up. After last night, I have to tell you all how fucked up they are going to be,” Creed said slowly.

The room became silent, Slider and Cajun tensed, one, because he was afraid of what was coming and the other, because he could tell by the look on his former leader's face the woman had been through hell, and they were just finding out about it.

“As we know, Reyes is Shady’s stepbrother, in addition to being a sick fuck. Abused our girl for years until she ran away—ran to us and we claimed her as family. When I say abused, I mean in the worst fucking sense of the word. Shay is having issues right now, and we need to cover her.”

“Okay wait, he tried to kill Shady and Harmony, I get that. What the fuck else are you talking about?” Slider said quietly. He had been on the road and, besides seeing them at the storage container, he had no idea what was going on. He hadn’t listened because he hadn’t cared—it was a job, he was a cleaner and good at his job. But now, now he want to know goddammit. Shady was the reason he was here, and damn it, each and every one of them knew it.

“Well, he shot Harmony in the arm, and Shady point blank in the chest, she was lucky but she is still healing, man. You know this part. The part you don't know is because Shady didn’t tell us the whole story until she was out of the hospital,” Fork said. “Fucker stood there laughing over them for a minute before he took off, the look he had on the tape seemed fucking weird. Shady has been having nightmares, fucking scary ass shit, which I will spare you the details to because Shay needs to wrap her head around this shit first. Let’s just say, the shit is way beyond what we imagined. We'll talk about that shit later, because honest to God, I can only stomach saying it once, and not everyone is fucking here. The guy we were talking to that night was one of his fucking minions. He gave nothing. The only thing we did get was Lola. The bitch is fucking stupid. She kept the phone the idiot used to contact her. We have a location. It is hot, and it is dangerous. We need to make a fucking plan before we go in.”

Slider lost it completely. It took five men to hold him down to keep him from leaving the compound to hunt for that bastard. Slider finally got his answer, and it ripped him apart knowing he had once again failed someone who needed him.

He hadn't known, damn it. Fuck, let’s be honest, he hadn’t asked. He knew there was something deep going on with Shady a year ago, he just chose to let it go and walk away. It was easier,
right
—for him not her. Every single fucking night they were together, she didn’t sleep all the way through the night. Every single fucking time she crawled out of bed mumbling she needed a drink and he had just fallen back asleep, never asking a fucking question—never seeing why she woke. He just went back to sleep.

“Rein it in, Slider. We need a plan on how to protect Shay. We don’t need for this to fuck with our heads,” Fork ordered while Slider glared at him.

Fuck, I want to ignore him, but for once, I can't.

He shook off the hands that were holding him and stood straight and nodded. The room was still filled with tension as he picked up his chair and sat back down next to Cajun. His brother didn’t even know Shady, and Cajun was clenching his fists and, by the tension in his jaw, he would likely need new fillings. Cajun wasn’t fucking down with hurting women. Over the last month, they had talked about Shady, and both were interested.

Creed looked around the room at his brothers, his family, and nodded. “I am calling the kill shot on this one. Don’t give a fuck what you do to him before he gets to me, but he get to me, breathing. I will kill that motherfucker.”

The men nodded and then they began to make phone calls. At least the fucking little pervert they tortured gave them information, they needed a location even if it wasn’t through his lips. Because the Ops Warriors would have burned the town to the ground searching for that sick fuck. He hurt one of their sisters, and for
that,
he would pay with blood. There was no other option for him.

*****

“The fuck, Cajun?” Creed said and leaned back into his chair with a beer in his hand.

Cajun sat silently for a minute. They were all there, all the men he fought beside and called brothers. It had been too long and yet, looking at their faces, maybe not long enough. He wasn’t sure he was ready to talk to them yet, but fuck it, he had to give them something, just not the worst.

Ryan ‘Cajun’ Dubois was a Marine, and a fucking good one. He joined the unit with the rest of these guys one month after Creed became the Commander. He requested the assignment because he respected the man. Creed had risen quickly through the ranks, and he was a legend in their circles. From the moment they met, Cajun knew this man was a kindred spirit if you believed that kind of shit. Which he did because his mama was all about the woo woo shit.

For three years, Ryan worked with Creed, Fork, Slider, and the others. Then one day it all changed in the blink of an eye. While in the Middle East, Ryan had filled in on a mission with a unit that had been one man down. The mission turned into a clusterfuck from the moment it started until it ended with him and two other men captured.

They were held for a month before Creed and the others rescued him, he was the only one to walk out alive. Well, not walk, carried out alive. The others two had been tortured for information, which they never gave. He closed his eyes remembering and if he concentrated, he could still hear the screaming from the room where they were tortured.

When he was rescued, Ryan Dubois was not the same. He was suffering from burns, cuts, and various other injuries, compliments of the assholes who took him. He was transported directly to Germany where he recovered, then to his mother’s home in Louisiana where he did physical therapy until they declared him completely cured. Yeah, right. He left the day he was released, kissing his mother on the head, getting on his bike, and roaring away. For a while, he drifted, trying to figure out why the fuck he was even still alive. He never talked about the days he was captured, and even though people tried to get him to open up, he refused. Which is why he avoided Creed and the others for so long, they would want to talk about it, and he couldn’t—no wouldn’t.

“Needed to get my head on straight,” Ryan said and stared at Creed with an intense look hoping the questioning would end there. The room was silent for a moment, his friends staring at him intently, waiting for him to elaborate and he was so not going to do that.

Finally, Creed nodded and then switched his gaze to Slider. “What about you, you got your head on straight?”

“Fuck no,” Slider replied instantly.

The guys in the room laughed and Creed shook his head but continued, “Listen, this shit is gonna get real, we need to get prepared. I have a meeting with the Devil Savages tomorrow. We are going to have to work together to get this fucked up shit straight. Shady, being Shady, is gonna want in, this is partly her gig and we need to get it straight before we even make plans about what we are gonna let her in on.”

“She has been through too much as it is,” Slider said softly and looked around the room. “Shady is going to want to kill him, don’t want that shadow on her soul, we all know how that can fuck someone up.”

The men nodded and then Fork said, “Nightmares.”

“Huh?” Poke said and leaned forward.

“She has nightmares,” Fork said and then guys shifted uncomfortably. “They are bad, never seen anything like it. Harmony had to tackle her and hold her down she was so wrapped up in the nightmare. Creed and I just stood there, nothing we could do but let it play out. She has demons, even with what we know, I think it is just the surface. Someone needs to find out what we are dealing with. This whole thing could blow up in our face if we don’t do this right.”

Kink leaned forward and said, “She never had a nightmare when she slept with me.”

Slider went still and his eyes swung to Kink and narrowed. What the fuck? He knows he has no right to be pissed because Shady found someone else when he fucked up, but it still burned, and it burned hard.
Fuck
, he thought and looked at Cajun who was staring intently at Kink as if he was waiting for him to elaborate, but the man said not another word.

“Just saying,” Raven said slowly, “not with me either.”

Fuck
, Slider thought and stood sharply, making his chair bang into the wall behind him. The other members of the club didn’t move, the tension could be felt in the air as he stalked to the door.

“Need air,” he said brusquely, threw the door open, and walked down the hallway to the bar. He needed a fucking drink. Slider knew when he came back it was going to be hard, but he'd convinced himself it would be hard dealing with Shady and her hurt feelings. But that wasn't going to be the hard part, no, it was knowing his brothers had picked up the slack and took care of his woman when she needed it. Fuck. He was jealous and pissed and nothing was going to change that. He couldn’t blame his brothers for doing what they did. Hell, he would have done the same thing. It was just a hard pill to swallow.

The bar held only the Prospects and a few of the club whores, everyone else was in the meeting or still sleeping. Fuck, he needed to get himself straight and fast.

He felt Cajun's presence next to him and ignored his friend. They were tight, but they hadn't talked about Shady much, his friend only knew that Slider was coming back for a woman, and her name was Shady.

“Hey, brother,” Cajun said. “Thinking maybe we should rethink our plan of moving here and joining this chapter permanently?”

Slider was silent, he could run away, of course it would be the easiest route. However, it wasn't what either of them needed. With a loud sigh, Slider waved to the babe behind the bar, ordered two shots of Crown, and then looked at his friend.

“No way,” Slider said slowly. “Too much invested in this, let her down before, not going to do that again.”

“How did you let her down? You told me it was mutual, the break,” Cajun said and smiled at the babe who brought them their drinks.