Stephanie Tyler - Vipers Run

“No, they’re smart in that regard. Most of the brotherhood doesn’t. In fact, if you’re caught doing drugs as a Heathen member, you’re out. But they don’t give a shit about their women. They keep them clean while they’re breeding, but that’s about it.”

“Breeding?”

He shrugged. “S’what they call it, babe. Not saying it’s pretty, or that I agree. If I agreed, I’d still be a Heathen. And what I went through to get out and get in Vipers? That wasn’t pretty either.”

“And no one stops them?”

“They don’t sell the meth in their own town, so everyone thinks they’re wonderful. Took that trick from Preach. Difference is, we don’t sell drugs at all.”

“Guns?”

“We ship them out of the country,” he said.

“So they’re trying to push meth into Skulls?”

“Among other things. They’ve got a prostitution ring.”

“So they drug the women, then pimp them out. I hate them.”

“Emotions will get you every time.”

“In this case, I consider them a bonus.”

He tapped on his heart. “Preacher gave me a second lease on life.”

From childhood, his few good memories centered on the bikes and the open road, anything and everything that happened away from the clubhouse.

MCs fucked you up good. But they were what he knew, and he was damned well and determined to believe in Preacher’s Vipers. Because Preacher had saved the Vipers from a fate similar to the Heathens, had shoved the Vipers out from under the weight of drugs and shifted them toward the equally dangerous gunrunning.

But gunrunning wasn’t destroying families from the ground up, not in the all-pervasive way drugs were. A mother with a gun could protect her baby; a mother on meth could not.

“Where’s your sister now?” Calla asked.

“She’s still in Florida. But she wants to come back.”

“And?”

“And I won’t let her. No one knows where she is except me, Preach and Tals. And Tenn, of course. I need it to stay that way.”

“She’s mad at you for that.”

“I think she’s beginning to hate me,” he admitted, careful not to let Calla see how much that shit broke his heart. “My family—what’s left of them—would destroy her. My mom . . . by the end, she was all fucking strung out. She wasn’t herself anymore. And my sisters were scared of her, but they needed her so much. I tried, but it wasn’t the same.”

He stopped before his voice broke. Calla was staring at him, her hand on his arm, rubbing the ink there, tracing the symbols there. And when he was able to talk again, he told her, “We might be above the law here at times . . . but we don’t pull that drug shit. I will never let that into my town.”

He paused, then told her part of the answer she’d been looking for. “I got out of the Army. Took the trip back here. That same night I came back to Vipers, they had a big welcome-home party for me.” He didn’t want to go there, but he did. “Heathens crashed it. They heard I was home and they wanted to fuck things up. Two of our guys died. Because of me. And the next day, two high school kids OD’d on meth, sold to them by the same Heathens who crashed the party.”

The Heathens were taunting him, basically telling him, You love your town so much, we’ll destroy it.

She looked so sad as she said, “So after all that . . .”

“I left. Didn’t say anything. Packed up some shit and took off. Let it be known I was going rogue. Heathens could hunt me down.”

“You were hoping they’d follow you and leave Vipers alone.”

“Yeah.”

“But why is Preacher so mad?”

“You’ve got to get permission to go rogue. If he’d known what I was planning, I wouldn’t have gotten it.” He took a deep breath and continued. “The number I gave you . . . it’s to a locked safety-deposit box. There are recordings in there that could take down my father and Troy. I was going to turn them over to the DA for their RICO case. If I could take it back, I would.”

“I know. I can’t unmemorize it any more than I could erase you from my mind. And I don’t want that.”

The Heathens left him hollowed out inside, and both Vipers and the Army had slowly filled the void, but they’d also made him a more efficient street criminal.

They’d also given him Calla. Calla, who touched the scars on his neck. She’d been there with him when he’d come back from the dead. Now it was up to him to help her bury her ghosts, no matter what it took.

After Cage and I went back up to the apartment, the now too familiar separation between us

began. The closeness we’d regained with the

reveal of his bike art—and the way we’d communicated—was still there when we got into bed. But I’d remained fully dressed in sweats and didn’t push anything, although he wrapped himself around me while we slept.

I’d say the lack of sexual willingness was my fault, that he was simply giving me space, but of course I assumed he didn’t want to touch me because of the pictures.

The next day we both hung around the apartment, under the weight of Ned’s death. We didn’t hear anything from Officer Flores, although I swore my heart skipped a beat every time the phone rang or someone knocked on the door. But it was just the guys checking on us, bringing us food.

By nightfall, I’d snuggled into the couch to watch a movie, not wanting to go back into the bedroom. Cage was downstairs for a while and I heard him moving back and forth, but I didn’t think anything of it.

Finally, he sat down next to me and put my feet in his lap. He rubbed them a little, the massage making me groan a little.

“That’s nice,” I told him.

“I’d do anything to make you feel good, babe. Anything for you—you know that.”

We weren’t talking about massages any longer. “I know, Cage. You keep your promises. But I don’t want you to do anything that will stay on your conscience.”

“Trust me, nothing I’ve got planned will make me lose a second of sleep.”

It wouldn’t for me either, and maybe I wasn’t supposed to think like that, but I did. Because lately, especially after staying at Tenn’s, I couldn’t help but think how many other girls Jeffrey had done this to, because I couldn’t have been the only special one he’d “chosen.” Anyone that sick didn’t simply stop after one.

But I didn’t want to think about Jeffrey now. He’d taken up too much of my life at this point.

“We’re going to figure it all out, Calla. But I care more about driving him from your mind, your heart, than I do about wiping him out right now. You’re more important.”

“You’ve gone a long way toward doing that already.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t gone far enough.”

My belly fluttered a little with nerves, but I didn’t say anything, waiting on him to elaborate, but all he asked was, “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Wait here, then.” He went into the bedroom and called me in about ten minutes later. He’d obviously put some thought and planning into it. There was a clean drop cloth draped over the bed. A camera. A video camera. Paints and brushes.

I looked between him and the setup.

“I’ve thought a lot about this. I’ve always known that art of any kind can heal.”

“Tenn thinks so too.” I hadn’t been surprised by the porn he’d been watching.

“Yeah, Tenn got me thinking,” he admitted. “You ready to help me create something new?”

“More than.”

“Good. All you need to do is get out of your clothes and lay down on your right side. I’ll do everything else.” As he spoke, he was opening the paints. I slid down the sweats and my underwear, and then my sweatshirt. My T-shirt was thin, and I wasn’t wearing a bra.

He turned to look at me, then moved closer, skimmed his hands along my bare hips and then up my sides, taking the fabric with it. When he pulled it over my head, he looked down at my naked body, murmured, “Beautiful,” and kissed my shoulder.

Then he picked me up and placed me on the bed. “Curl up.”

Curl up, like I’d been in those pictures. In that moment, I understood exactly what he was going to do, and warmth filled me to the point I was sure I’d cry and ruin everything.

But I wouldn’t, because doing this would heal me. It would heal us. So I laid down with my head on my arm, my legs pulled up a little. He arranged me a little and after he put the video camera on the tripod, I understood why. The angle wouldn’t let the camera see anything more than simple bare skin, but it would capture the entire transformation. I would be covered by my pose, by his body and, finally, by the paints.

“Just relax,” he told me, then grabbed a brush and began to mix the paints while I watched his back. When he turned to me, he was intent on his mission. I kept my eyes focused on Cage’s face. This was different, like being reborn, and I didn’t want to go back to that dark place in my memory.

The tickle of the brush on my hip bone put my nerve endings into overdrive, but I kept still. I bit my bottom lip to stifle the giggle, then realized I didn’t have to. This was about regaining my happiness, owning my memories and making new ones.

He grinned, his eyes flickering up to meet mine for half a second before concentrating on me, in much the same way I’d seen him focusing on his bike. To be put in that same all-important category was important, on so many levels.

While he worked the brush on my hip, his hand drifted to my sex. I gasped softly as his fingers slid between my folds, the sensation of his rough hands and the tickle of the brush leaving me wanting to beg. But I didn’t have to, because he fingered me to an orgasm quickly—it wrenched out of me as if to say, Finally. Reminding me that I was still okay, that Cage wasn’t defining me by what Jeffrey Harris did to me. Reminding me that, really, I was the only one who could hold myself in that cage.