Page 5

Five

bound

chapter-seperator

J ace tossed me over his shoulder, caveman style, and marched through the clubhouse to his room…pantsless. His possessive grip promised darker things to come.

I bounced on the bed, not having time to notice the changes to the decor over the many years since I was last here in this place. He fried my brain; everything about him, his demeanor, discombobulated my assuredness and swept it away like ashes in the wind.

Apparently, the last fifteen years had been very different for him. I didn’t know why I had never considered that possibility before… while I was being broken, he was becoming king.

My body jostled as he knelt on the bed, his mouth covering mine in an intense and too-brief kiss. It was a distraction for the handcuff he slapped around my wrist, securing me to his headboard. The cold metal bit into my skin like an old friend.

“Don’t move, kitten,” he said as he moved reluctantly off the bed. “I’ve got to take care of something, then I’ll be back, and we can talk.”

Sure, that’s what he said, but his predatory eyes told a different story. They promised pain wrapped in pleasure.

Panic rose up inside me like a rocket blast. I couldn’t be locked up in a room ever again!

No fucking way!

Never again!

I pulled at the offensively binding steel as I screamed like a torture victim. The memories of chains and darkness flooded back.

“What’s wrong with you?” He turned before reaching the door, hearing my shrill wail of grief.

It was a moment before I realized I was chanting to myself, not again, not again, not again, not again, not again, not again…

As Jace approached with a concerned look, I finally pulled my gun out and aimed it at the cuffs, not at him. My hands shook with remembered terrors.

“What the fuck are you doing? You’re gonna blow your damn hand off, Naomi!” He tackled me to the mattress. His rage didn’t scare me. Nothing he did could compare to the monsters I carried inside. The gun went off as he wrestled it from my free hand. The sound echoed like thunder in the small room.

“Let me go, please just let me go.” I needed to run further away than I ever had before. But my body betrayed me, remembering his touch too well.

“No, you came back to me, kitten. I’m never going to let you out of my sight again. Understand?” He kissed my forehead before he beat feet fast across the room, my gun still in his hand! His possessiveness wrapped around me like barbed wire.

What a fucking idiot I was!

That was my only damn weapon!

The metal of my bindings bit into my skin, sharp enough to break it. I didn’t stop pulling. Pain was better than feeling nothing.

I quickly surveyed the room for anything I could use to free myself from the cuff before Jace’s return. I didn’t doubt he would keep his word on that. I didn’t know how long I had until that event happened. Until he came back to claim what he thought was his.

I stretched across the bed until I could open a bedside table drawer. It was full of condoms, a bottle of lube, and an old cigar box. I pulled it out to see if the key was inside. It was a futile hope at best.

My heart almost stopped beating when I saw the contents. There were old Polaroids of me, of us, and the jewelry he’d given me that I left behind unwillingly all those years ago… Each piece a reminder of the lies he’d wrapped me in.

My throat seized as I touched those gifts—necklaces, rings, bracelets—that he gave me on my birthdays and at Christmas. He kept everything that had ever meant anything to me. Like a shrine to the girl he’d destroyed.

Why would he do that?

Either he truly didn’t remember what happened all those years ago, or he felt deep remorse for having done them. Maybe it was both. Or maybe he was just that twisted.

No, wait, that didn’t make sense. My brain fogged as I tried to clear it. It was funny how memories worked—some were so crystal, and others were like muddy water, murky as hell and twice as treacherous.

I remembered how much of an asshole Jace was, to everyone except me. How he never capitulated to anyone about anything, but when his father, Luke, had found out about us, he commanded that Jace and I wait until I was old enough. It was the only time he bent to another person’s will, and he did it because he wanted me that much. Could you imagine a big bad biker having a girlfriend he didn’t and wouldn’t fuck?

That lasted until Luke went away, which was just before the end of my world. Before he wrecked me completely in a way I would never fully recover from. Before the monster showed his true face.

Jason French was the living, breathing embodiment of the duality in men. He was the light and the dark, but there was so much dark. I was even loathe to admit now that back then his moods scared me. They turned on a dime, and yet he never pointed it at me. He never hurt me… until he did. Until he broke every promise he’d ever made.

Honey, his sister, was my only friend. I never had any siblings, not even step ones with any of my mom’s boyfriends. But that’s what she was to me. She never needed or had any requirement to spend time with me, but she did. She always checked on me and did girl things with me, like makeup, hair, and shopping. I wanted to be like her, a glamorous model type, but I’d never have the kind of stunning looks she possessed. One word summed her up: gorgeous. Now she was gone, and her own brother was the reason why.

I knew from personal experience that drug use could leave gaping holes in your memory. To be told you’d done certain things but have no clue what the accuser was talking about. A huge portion of my young adult life was a blur, a life of fractures, most of them dark, and they felt forbidden. I didn’t pick at the scab over them because what I did remember was enough of a warning. Some memories should stay buried.

If Jace realized I knew what he did, if any of the past came back to him because I was here, I was dead. I knew I was planning on dying to avenge Honey, but that was my choice. No woman wanted her choices taken from her. Sometimes that was all we had left—the choice of how we checked out of this shitshow. This broken amusement park ride of lost dreams and sister-stabbing psycho boyfriends who shagged like a Greek god from mythology.

There was nothing heroic about Jace. He served himself and was true only to his own ego. Whereas his sister’s beauty was no mask—she was equally beautiful inside—Jace had those angelic good looks too, but they were a camouflage for the demon he really was, had always been. My mama used to say the devil’s greatest trick was convincing the world he didn’t exist. And I’d fallen for every one of his lies.

For a time, Jace convinced me he was the illusion and not what lay beneath the gorgeous facade. The years had been kind to his beauty; he grew more fully into his hotness. It was absolutely terrifying how much I still wanted him, even knowing what he was.

It took several years, throughout the torturous confinement and abuse, to reconcile a horrible fact. It was true before I learned it; it’s always been so. All women lived in a perpetual state of danger because we shared the world with those who could easily kill us. If a girl lived, it was by the grace of a man who loved her, who hadn’t grown bored or tired of her. In an outlaw world, devotion and loyalty were for the club, for their brothers. They had so much of it there was nothing left for anyone else. Not even for sisters.

I needed to escape for the second time in my life, from a very dangerous group of outlaws. Their leader was the most lethal. Very soon, he would change. He would turn on me because he turned on everyone, and then it would be too late.

The sound of footsteps in the hallway made my blood run cold.

Time was up.