Nomad Kind of Love Read online

  “Look at the fucking mess you've created, June bug! Better clean it up.”

  Everything in my stomach twisted, winding my intestines in hot rage. I wanted to fling the towel I carried in my waitress pouch right at his dirty face.

  But I knew my place. I could do what he said, or suffer something a whole lot worse.

  Vulture was a greedy, despicable man, but he always backed his word with violence. There were no bluffs.

  I moved to the small empty space on the table first, mopping up stray sauce and fries.

  When I was done, I pulled away. Vulture grabbed my arm. His fingers dug into my flesh with the same cruel intensity he'd used when they killed Dad and hauled my sister and I here.

  “I'm not just talking about this table. You're a mess too, bitch. Take off your fucking clothes and clean this shit up. My friends want to see you naked. It'll be good practice before we send you to work at the new pole dancing place next week.” His eyes narrowed when he saw my resistance bristling. “Be glad I'm content to give them a show in just your panties – long as you cooperate, darlin'.”

  Bitter fire boiled in my veins. I burned to scream no, trembled with the need to blow venom in his face. I wanted to bite his fucking nose off and spit it on the table for his friends and brothers to see.

  How about that for a show?

  I walked away from the table and forced my feet to stop before they got into the hall. I turned, slowly wiggling off my dress, and then undoing my top.

  The men shouted and hollered like I was another stripper, another whore who came on the weekends to fuck their nasty brains out. I crawled between their legs, sweeping up the stray food. Up until that moment, I didn't think it could get any worse.

  What a fucking idiot I was. Worse wasn't even half of it when greasy fingers grazed my panties, pinching my ass while I cleaned.

  The Polish man was the worst.

  His breath grew heavy, rugged, full of raging need when he reached between my legs. The sick fuck slipped his finger between my folds once before I jerked away, diving for a rib rolled against Ursa's boot.

  “What is it, baby-baby? This little girl is dry as desert! You want I should help, Vulture?”

  That's it. You lay your filthy hand on me and I'll bite it. I'll rip away your finger or anything else that comes near my body.

  Don't. You. Fucking. Do. It.

  “No,” Vulture said slowly. “She's doing everything I promised. One thing you'll find about working with this MC is I'm a man of my word. You can look, Jaro, but you don't get to touch her. Go ahead, June bug. Get this shit out of here and go take a hot shower. You've earned it.”

  I stood, gathering up the last of the fallen food. I blinked in surprise.

  Vulture grinned and flashed a wink. His wicked trademark. The Polish man pouted next to him.

  I know what Vulture wanted: I was supposed to love him for this, fall to my feet in gratitude for holding back a man who'd love to screw me blind.

  Not likely, I thought. I won't thank you for this. Not for anything.

  I knew the bastard wanted me. Hell, both of us. The crude comments he made about twin sisters were manly jokes around his brothers, but they were also absolute truth.

  For some reason I couldn't figure out, he wanted to win me and Clara over, as if we were special prizes. He wanted us as willing, wet, and wild as the groupie whores who came through the clubhouse every weekend, slobbering all over any man with a few patches on his leather jacket.

  Quietly fuming, I carried the mess away to the kitchen. A dozen eyes followed my barely clad ass the whole time, making me flush beet red.

  Sickness and shame curdled my stomach.

  They were still drinking and laughing, carrying on like nothing happened, after I disappeared from view.

  Then it hit me.

  Why the hell couldn't I see it before? Every night like this was an opportunity, and this one was shaping up to be no different. The club always drank, gorged, and fucked itself into a stupor, unable to move a muscle until morning.

  Until morning...I smiled to myself. During the bewitching hours between two and seven a.m., anything might happen.

  Anything.

  Peters promised to cook up more food and serve it to them by himself. He looked at me sadly when he saw the grease and sauce all over me.

  “Rest up, June. I've got the rest of this tonight.” He was a kind man, even if he worked for brutal men willingly.

  Just make it to the shower like Vulture says. Wait a few hours. When they're passed out and dead to the world, that's when I'll take Clara.

  That's when we'll leave this place like we should've done months ago.

  The longest night of my life had officially started.

  “Clara, come on. We have to go.” I shook my sister three times before she groaned and rolled in her bed.

  She blinked, eyes big and hazy from the crap she'd smoked earlier. “Huh? Go where? I just wanna go back to bed, June. You...you woke me from a dead sleep.”

  Gritting my teeth in frustration, I grabbed her arms and pulled her up. I didn't like to hurt her – not when the men had plenty of pain and humiliation for us – but this was an exception.

  I slapped her. Hard.

  “Ow! What the hell, sis?” Clara held her hot cheek and began to cry.

  Damn it, I didn't have time for this.

  It was a little past three. Right now, everybody in the club was out, dozing in deep comas.

  “We're going to walk right past these fuckers while they're sleeping and go out the front door. They're all asleep. Checked and double checked. We've been here too long, sis...we're losing our will to fight.”

  Clara rolled her eyes. I seized her shoulders and shook her harder.

  “Don't do that! You've got to remember why we're here. Remember the way they killed Dad and probably killed Mom too. Remember.”

  It wasn't just probably, but I didn't have the heart to tell her I overheard Mom had been found dead weeks ago. Drug overdose.

  It didn't surprise me. By now, I was so fucking numb, the news about my mother was just one more insult, one more hazy scene in our waking nightmare.

  I shook her. Clara's eyes rolled and she started to weep.

  “Why you bringing back shitty memories, June? I've tried so hard to forget. So damned hard! You don't understand.” She paused, sucking in a big breath. “I want to forget, June. I want to lose myself in work and sleep and smoking...I want to erase everything and start all over.”

  Her lip quivered. My heart swelled with sympathy, even through my annoyance.

  My sister hadn't held up as well as I. It was like something broke when we arrived at the clubhouse. She lived like a fucking zombie, rarely showing any emotion except fits of crying which shook her whole body.

  She lived pretty straight while we were growing up. Now, she tried to get blazed on garbage every night, whatever she could scavenge from the clubhouse's medicine cabinet or underhanded Prospects.

  I was the only one who kept the will to fight burning, and not very well. Clara had her heart torn to shreds at once. Mine was coming undone slowly, blow by savage blow.

  Each day we spent in this hellhole meant surrendering another small piece of myself, accepting this dungeon as home.

  We needed to get out, and we had to do it now.

  Holding Clara's head, I looked at her, trying to reach her through the tears and shaking.

  Christ. If we really get out of here, she's gonna need a shrink. Dunno how we'll afford the pros to get her head straight.

  “I just need you to listen, okay? Follow me. Every step I take, you mirror it. Stay quiet and stick close behind me. We'll be out of here before you know it. You can really start over then, Clara. We'll be free.”

  I almost started crying when I spoke the last word. Good thing I didn't, especially when my sis was finally settling down.

  “Free to go where?” Clara's eyes were huge, like a puppy looking for a question its master had no way
to answer.

  I bit my lip. I didn't have a fucking clue, but right now, anywhere was going to be better than the Grizzlies MC Missoula clubhouse.

  “Come on. Stay behind me and keep quiet.”

  Clara had lost a lot of weight since we arrived. Her wrist was skinny and frail when I pulled her along, into the hallway leading through the bar.

  If we could just tiptoe past the fuckers slumped in their chairs or passed out half naked on the floor...

  In the beginning, all seemed well. There weren't too many guys laying around to trip over.

  We only stepped over two, maybe three, bloated bodies.

  I took extra care not to get my heel caught on their sprawling leather jackets. Clara followed, a little more shakily, but she did it.

  Going through the door wouldn't be easy. The buzzer would sound. With any luck, they'd think it was just someone stepping out for a smoke, or maybe to barf up ribs and whiskey and God knows what else they'd sucked down their gullets.

  Almost there...almost!

  “Hey, June! Look!” Clara's wrist slipped from my hand.

  She stood next to the wall and giggled. I looked back. By some terrible coincidence, my poor, dumb sister just happened to see the old black and white photo of Dad on his bike.

  Beneath the dust covering the photo, he stood by his Harley smiling, holding two baby girls in his arms. Mom leaned over his shoulder, a thousand times prettier than the last time we saw her. No junkie blemishes circled her eyes or stained her skin.

  Some asshole had written RAT over Dad's chest in black marker. I was surprised they'd let it go at that and hadn't scrubbed his image from existence.

  My heart throbbed. Clara's face crinkled. The air went out her lungs and panic set in. Horrified, I knew what was about to happen, and I couldn't stop it.

  She was one breath away from crying. Once she started sobbing all over the place, our chances were ruined.

  “Fucking come on, sis! We can look at photos later...come on!”

  I pulled at her. Hard. Clara wasn't budging.

  “Fucking stop it, June! Let me look. Just another minute. Please! I've forgotten what he looked like...”

  Near the bar, a man smacked his lips and grunted. My eyes snapped over to him and made sure he wasn't getting up.

  All clear. By some miracle, he rolled and slumped on his face.

  “Clara!” I hissed. “Let's go. We're almost there.”

  “No, no, no,” she bawled, staring past me at the darkness outside. “There's nothing out there for us. Everything we had died right here!”

  She jammed her pointer finger hard into the picture and cracked the glass. I looked up, trying to decide how best to drag my own sister out of this place without her kicking and screaming.

  Then the door behind me swung open, and all my worries about escape evaporated. Vulture stood there, wiping his head and slicking back his long hair. He didn't see us at first while his eyes adjusted to the dim light, and his hangover probably bought us two more seconds.

  Not nearly enough.

  “Hey, what the fuck? What the hell are you two doing out here?” The realization hit him and I saw the look.

  He didn't look playful in the cruel way he usually did when he toyed with us. The cold eyed killer was back, the same expression he'd worn when he admired my Dad's body like a sculpture he'd molded in his own bony hands.

  “Are you fucking bitches goin' where I think you're goin'?”

  I swallowed hard. Vulture took another step forward, breathing hot and angry through his mouth. Cheap tobacco turned his breath into a hot, reeking wind.

  “Ungrateful little cunts!” Vulture lunged, tearing at my hair.

  Pain blinded me. I thought he'd tear my hair out, but he must've been too distracted by grabbing Clara in the other hand.

  We buckled halfway to the ground and struggled to keep up as he dragged us down the hallway, back toward our rooms.

  When I saw the door to our freedom disappearing, I screamed. He twisted my hair that much harder, digging his dirty fingers into my earlobe for extra pain.

  “Huh?” One guy on the ground we'd stepped over in the hall wiped his eyes.

  “Wake the fuck up!” Vulture kicked him in the side. “Come with me, Scoop. Caught these little whores trying to get away without paying their dues.”

  “Jesus!” Scoop bolted to his feet, shaking off his coma.

  “The worst part is I tried,” he said darkly.

  “I tried to give you girls a home. I tried to be fucking nice. But obviously I'm a fucking retard for thinking you two ungrateful shits would see it!” He kicked in the door to our room.

  It hit the wall, and we screamed as he threw us inside. I landed on the floor so hard my ribs shook. Clara spun, curled herself into a ball, and began to blubber.

  She looked so much like Mom the last time we'd seen her, before they shot her up with heroine and stole her from us forever. Crazy sadness flickered in her eyes, but defeat overwhelmed everything else.

  We were beaten. Now, the victors were going to make us pay.

  I rolled, holding my ribs. Two dark shadows stood over us. I closed my eyes.

  It was hell trying to shut my brain down as my heart beat wild in my chest. What I'd feared most was imminent, if they didn't just decide to slit our throats on the spot.

  Vulture planted his big hands on his knees and leaned down, until his eyes matched my level.

  “Now, you listen up June-o, because I know you're the ring leader here. I could beat your little ass raw and drive my cock up it 'til you need a plastic bag to shit through.” He paused. “But I'm not going to do that.”

  His breath smelled like rancid ashes. I coughed, forced my eyes open, and looked into the dark gems set in his head.

  Hellfire blazed there. Pure evil.

  “What's stopping you? You want to punish me...I don't care anymore..” The words barely squeaked out of my throat.

  He's right about one thing: this is my doing. I'm ready to accept the consequences, no matter how horrific.

  “Brave little June bug.” With a heavy sigh, Vulture shot up, threw his head back, and laughed. “Sometimes I wish you were a man. You would've made a better addition to this MC than your shitty old daddy. You're a hard one to break. Lucky for both of us, I like hard.”

  He lifted one hand and snapped his fingers. “Scoop! You start in on the little cunt mewling like a kitten over there. I'll make sure this one doesn't do anything stupid while you get her pussy warmed up for me.”

  Clara screamed as soon as the biker's grimy hands were on her. Scoop forced her to the floor and pushed down her jeans, pinching her bare thighs as he ran his hands up the middle.

  “Clara! Jesus Christ. You can't do this!” I shouted. “Please, Vulture. I'm begging you! No, no, no...no.”

  My sister howled again. The beast between her legs grabbed her panties and ripped them down in one jerk. His filthy fingers moved deeper, into places they never should've been. A mean erection bulged in his pants between them, ready to replace his fingers anytime.

  “No!” I jerked forward. I couldn't let this happen!

  My sweet, broken, beautiful sister shouldn't pay for my mistake in a world that had any justice.

  Running into Vulture was like colliding with a brick wall. He grabbed my wrists to steady me, giving me a good jerk.

  Every fiber of my being shot hatred into his eyes. No, escape wasn't an option anymore. I had to murder this asshole, anything to make sure he stopped hurting everyone I loved.

  He forced my legs apart and rammed his hips into mine, making me feel the sick hardness he had between his legs.

  “Sit back down and shut up, cunt. Be happy you're not in her place. I'm gonna tear her virgin hole apart and lick the blood up later. Show a little fucking gratitude for once in your miserable life. You don't have to feel this ripping you open like her,” he banged his hips on mine again. “Not tonight, anyway.”

  Clara screamed. My eyes glanced
over Vulture's shoulder, and ice cold pain shot up my back. Scoop had one hand on his open fly, fishing out his erection. The other hand held Clara brutally by the chin, jerking her toward the split in his pants.

  “Bastard!” I spat in his face. “God. Damn. You.”

  Vulture reached up and wiped my spittle off his cheek. His eyes flashed with angry malevolence.

  “Stupid bitch!”

  The back of his hand slammed into my cheek so hard the whole room turned red, drowned in a curtain of blood. I topped to the floor, hit my head, and everything turned black.

  When I woke up, everything was deathly still. My brain hummed something fierce.

  I saw the crumpled heap laying on the cot across the room.

  Clara!

  I ran over. She lay very still. Something was clutched tight in her small hands.

  “Clara? Sis?” I shook her.

  My heart stopped when I realized she wasn't breathing at all. Her skin was unnaturally cold. Pale. Dead.

  “Oh, God!” I crumpled to my knees and hugged her close, pulling her toward me as I fell. “God!”

  Her arms flopped aside and packets of pills spilled out around her breasts. I saw the cartons were torn and empty.

  Trembling, I reached out and picked up a half-shredded box. Sleeping pills, the same shit she'd been hording to stop the bad dreams at night.

  I knew she had them, but I never, ever thought they'd be used like this.

  Her bare thighs were streaked with blood. They killed her – murdered my precious sister – even if she'd taken matters into her own hands as soon as they tossed her aside like a used condom.

  My heart dropped into my legs and never came up. The last shred of dignity and hope I had died right along with her.

  When Vulture came up behind me later that morning, admiring his work, I didn't even look up. There was no sense in fighting anymore.

  The need for vengeance was as sharp and distant as the angry spasms in my stomach. But I couldn't feed it now. I couldn't do anything but whimper like a beaten puppy when he ran his horrible fingers through my hair.

  “Dead?” he asked, sounding a little surprised. “Never saw that one coming. Guess the little bitch had more guts than I gave her credit for.”