THE OUTLAW’S BRIDE Read online

  The wall was closer to them now, and she felt herself push closer to it. Darren's mouth went to her shoulder, biting and kissing and licking the skin there.

  He quit touching for a second, but his mouth never left her skin. Speaking against the flesh there, he pulled her hair back and said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  He bit her shoulder again. “Bondage.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Darren

  He looked over at her sleeping face. She was so beautiful and so soft-looking, and he knew that there was no way she could handle this. She tried to seem like she was okay with everything, and she was tough. It was true that she was. That much, at least, wasn’t an act.

  But some of it had to be, and she had to be acting out that she was okay with all of this club chaos. He was forcing her into something she probably didn’t want. He had no doubt that she would just go along with things if she thought it meant they’d be okay, and he couldn’t stand for that.

  No. He didn’t want that for her. There could be no “they.”

  And even though they’d already gone pretty far, there was no way he could keep things going like this. He couldn’t deny that part of him was happy to be with her. Incredibly happy. And he also couldn’t deny that that same part of him lit up at the thought of her, and that she was always on his mind. That last part was probably just because they’d been stuck together for this last while, but he didn’t mind it. In fact, he liked it, and he looked forward to protecting her.

  Victoria mewled a little in her sleep, moving and stretching her body out so that she was pressed even closer to him than she had been before. He wasn’t protecting her by staying here. And she didn’t have to get in trouble for what had happened, just because of him.

  He could take the fall for her. She could go back to her normal life. They were here because people were trying to hurt her, but people were only trying to hurt her because they thought she had a connection to him. Actually forming a connection to her wasn’t going to help at all, and if he just disappeared, maybe people would leave her alone.

  He would make people leave her alone. There was no way she was going to deal with this; he would take care of this, even if it meant he wasn’t in her life.

  He got out of bed as quietly and as carefully as he could. He didn’t want to risk her waking up and asking what he was doing, so he had to be near-silent and he had to be quick. He hadn’t really had time to explore the bedroom or the rest of the villa earlier, and for good reason. But that wasn’t an excuse for slowness now.

  He got up and opened the drawer to the nightstand slowly. Then he put his hand in it and explored, looking for anything. There was nothing in there, although there was a lamp on the top of the dresser. He didn’t turn it on. He got his phone out of his jean pockets and then he turned the screen on low.

  Making his way through the rest of the room as slowly and silently as he’d started, he got to a table in the far corner of the room. There was a dresser, a nightstand, the bed, a TV and something for it to sit on, a pair of chairs, and a table. There was a thing of paper on the table to leave notes for room service and a couple pens.

  He picked up one of each. Looking up over his shoulder, he noticed that there was some dim light coming in through the closed curtains. The window was just past the table, so it was still easy enough to see out of. He didn’t remember sleeping, but he must’ve gone right to bed with Victoria after they’d fucked. And that meant she might wake up soon, too. He turned to look back at her. Shit. Still asleep, though. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  This note was going to have to be written and placed as soon as possible. And there was so much he wanted to say, but he needed to get out the specifics. He wanted to make sure that she was safe, and that she was in no trouble.

  Sullivan

  So he started writing. Scribbling, really, just barely clear enough that she could still read it, but sloppy enough that he could write as fast as he needed to. She still had a future if she said he had kidnapped her (which he had), he’d shot a guy (which he had), and that he’d forced her to help clean up his mess (which he would never do, but the lie could keep her out of trouble).

  It hurt to write, but he did it. Throwing the pen down, he left the piece of paper on the table and pivoted to walk away. But then he went back – there was something else he had to say. She needed to go to the police before she did anything else. As much as he liked to avoid them, they were the only people who could help her right now. And as much as he wanted to help her, he would only hurt her.

  He hesitated on adding any kind of affection to the note, before finally deciding against it. But leaving the note on the table might not be the best course of action. Taking in a heavy breath, he folded up the paper, and then he put it on his pillow – next to Victoria, where he had been.

  He had to keep himself from dragging a hand across one of her cheeks, from touching her lips, anything. He didn’t. He put the piece of paper down, took a deep breath, and then he left. It wasn’t easy.

  # # #

  Victoria

  Waking up for Victoria was even harder. She reached out, wanting to feel Darren next to her. His warmth, his affection, ideally his hardness. But there was nothing there except for her, and the room was cold in its emptiness.

  She sat up as fast as she could. If he wasn’t there, that couldn’t be good. The hotel room was only for the night – probably, she hadn’t really asked about the reservation – and he wouldn’t just leave her here on her own, especially when he was so paranoid about the safe house not being safe enough for her. For them. But there was no them. She saw it then: the paper wasn’t folded up as neatly as it could’ve been, but it was impossible to miss.

  She opened it up with deft fingers, trying not to tear the thin paper apart as she opened it. She regretted it as soon as her eyes started scanning the page, though, seeing the words there.

  Victoria,

  I have to leave. I’m only going to be more trouble for you, and I can’t help you now. The police can, though. You won’t be in trouble, don’t worry. Tell them that I kidnapped you, that I shot that guy, and that I made you help get rid of the body, and you should be fine. Don’t go to anyone else. Don’t look for the Bloody Saints and don’t contact me.

  -Darren

  P.S. Get rid of this note once you’ve read it.

  She didn’t want to just crumple up the paper and then throw it away. Trying to keep the tears from spilling out of her eyes, she folded the piece of paper back up and went looking for a pocket to put it into. She was still undressed, so that involved getting out of bed first. And she hated every second of it.

  She leaned over the bed, looking for the clothes she’d discarded the night before. She was still wearing around the same stuff she had been a few days ago, and it was in sore need of a wash. She didn’t have the time to worry about that, though, so she just wrinkled her nose and threw the stuff back on. It could be washed later, when she got back home. Because she did still have a home to go back to, and her time with Darren would just have to become memories that would eventually be forgotten.

  Getting into her clothing felt like so much work, even though it was just wiggling into jeans and putting on a shirt. Then, after making sure the paper was pressed neatly into one hand, she shoved it in a back pocket. And then she just hopped back into bed, trying to ignore the horrors of what had already happened.

  But it was hard to ignore that he was gone when she was in a bed they’d just shared.

  And it was hard to tune out anything when she could hear footsteps outside the doorway.

  There was no way it was Darren. When he wanted to do something, he probably wouldn’t just take it back. And besides, the footsteps were too loud and too many for it to be Darren. She froze, unsure of what to do. But she had to hide. Too bad she didn’t know where anything was in this place, since she’d just wandered in with Darren last night and gotten st
raight to business.

  She couldn’t stay in bed. The door opened up into the living room, and from the living room she could see the sitting room and the hallway. It was probably a bad idea to stay in a room that could be entered from the hallway, and it was definitely a bad idea to stay in the bedroom.

  Maybe there was an attic that she could hide in.

  She jumped out of bed, opening the door and then going out into the hallway. If there was an attic, the entrance would probably be in the ceiling at the end of the hallway. So she went there. She was in the middle of trying to find a panel to pull, maybe with those fold-out stairs, when the front door burst open.

  Fuck.

  She had nowhere to go.

  There were two people. Two guys. She recognized neither of them. Maybe they hadn’t seen her yet. They definitely had. She heard a yell, and then there was running, and she was trying to find somewhere to run to. She couldn’t go out the front door. Maybe there was a back door –

  She felt a hand grip her arm and turned to see the dark eyes of someone she didn’t know. She threw a hand out, slapping him, and then she kicked the guy in the balls.

  But then the other dude grabbed her, and there was thrashing, and kicking, and more thrashing, and struggle…

  And then she was being carried out the back door, which, apparently, the villa had.

  # # #

  Darren

  Darren didn’t know several things, the two most important being that some of the Broken Skulls had followed them to the villa and that those same people had dragged Victoria back to their main base. He did know that he hadn’t heard anything from his club, from Victoria, from anyone, since he’d left that morning, though, and that it had been a few hours. It hadn’t been long enough for it – whatever “it” was – to stop hurting, though. She should’ve seen the note by now.

  He checked his phone again. She hadn’t called. Of course she hadn’t; he’d told her not to contact him, or anyone from the Bloody Saints. But she was stubborn and disobedient, and he expected her to do that right away to give him a piece of her mind. And she hadn’t. He didn’t have any missed calls, actually, and that was really weird.

  He should have something. There was always something going on. But there was nothing. Nothing about Victoria, nothing about club warfare, not even anything about any of the boys.

  There was no chance that that was happening naturally. Something was always going wrong; that was his life, and there was no way anything was going well. Especially right now.

  He kept walking down the street, watching the sidewalk instead of his surroundings. The goal was to make himself look as suspicious as he possibly could, and to attract attention from two kinds of people – the law and people who might want him dead. Not might. Definitely did. But that was just semantics.

  He had to have been walking for a solid half hour before he put his head back up again. There was a police car sitting on the side of the street, just idling at the curb. He tried his best to draw attention to himself without actually doing anything, but nothing happened. The police officer inside made eye contact and then looked back at whatever he had in the car that was so much more interesting. So that meant that he didn’t have a warrant out on him. Or maybe that the officer inside just didn’t recognize him. Sure, he was walking around in public, but this wasn’t the type of public place where anyone would know him. It was just a random fancy neighborhood outside the area he normally operated in. No one knew him here. But a warrant would extend beyond throughout city, so that meant he didn’t have a warrant out for his arrest yet. And that meant…

  That meant that Victoria didn’t go to the police. She was probably still in the villa.

  But the fact that he and his club were both untouched at the moment also meant that the Skulls hadn’t gone looking for him again yet. But they had to know their guy was missing, the one he’d shot. And they’d want revenge even more badly then than they already had for the drug bust business. And there were two ways they could do that: through him, or through Victoria. No one had come bothering him, so they must be looking for her.

  And then it hit him: they were looking for her. If they hadn’t already found her. He opened his phone again. Maybe she had decided to go to the Bloody Saints and they just didn’t want to tell him about it, for some reason. That had to be it. Still, though, he knew that something was terribly wrong. And it had to do with Victoria. He couldn’t call Sullivan. He didn’t really have anyone beyond Sullivan that he would go to with a bunch of things, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t boys he trusted.

  Their names flashed through his head.

  Finally, he decided to call up Benny. He’d known Benny for a while, and Benny was usually who he spent the most time getting drunk with anyway. That meant that Benny would probably be at a bar, even though it was only – judging from the sun – about 2 in the afternoon. But it was also a weekday, and they were his boys, so it was to be expected. And if Benny was at a bar, he would be around other people, so there’d probably be more information to be had.

  He called.

  Benny picked up on the second ring. Darren used this number to call him a lot, so there was no surprise on the other end as to who was calling. “Hey.”

  Darren tried to keep panic out of his voice as he spoke. “Hey, Benny.” He turned away from the street without thinking about it, even though there was no one around who could overhear the conversation. If there was anyone there, they’d have looked at him funnily, given how secretive he was acting.

  “Darren,” Benny paused, his voice sounding like he was waiting for some bad news. He slurred a little at the end, though, and Darren could tell he was drunk. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing much,” he lied quickly. “Have you heard anything?”

  In the background of the phone call, Darren could hear the sounds of people partying behind them. There were the classic sounds – people stumbling over things, the loud rise and fall of yelling, and the occasional non-Benny slur that creeped over the line.

  Benny took a second to answer, and Darren could tell that even in his lack of sobriety, Benny was trying to get some privacy. Not that Benny would need to; Darren knew everyone in that bar. But he wasn't really worried about who Benny was around right now. He was just worried about Victoria.

  “No,” Benny finally said, after some time. He amended it in less. “Actually, wait. There’s a package for you.”

  Darren felt his heart drop down to his stomach. There was no room for it in his chest anymore, no matter the romantic feelings that had been going through his mind some hours earlier. This had to be something to do with Victoria. That was all it could be. And he wanted to ask, but his throat was dry and the words were dead within it.

  Benny coughed. “Do you want me to open it?”

  No, he didn’t. He said yes.

  There was a moment of silence on the line. Total silence. Darren couldn’t hear anything, and it seemed like even the background noises in the distance had faded out.

  He asked, “What’s in it?”

  “Uh...” There was something in Benny’s voice and Darren’s heart shuddered.

  “Tell me what it is.”

  “It’s...it’s a lock of brown hair.”

  They had Victoria. They had her, and she was probably going to die. He should be used to this; people hurt him and the people around him all the time, but it was so different now. He felt like he was going to fall down and never get up. He couldn’t. He couldn’t. He had to go, to get her, to save her. There was no time and no room for lying down.

  He had to save her, and only he could.

  Because he had gotten her into this mess.

  Because he couldn’t leave her alone. No, he just had to drag her along with him to the safe house. Someone else could have watched over her for a while, probably, making sure she was safe. Or she could have gone to the police. Instead, he had taken her with him because he wanted to be around her.

  Because he w
anted her.

  Because he...loved her. He is in love with Victoria Parker, and now he might never get the chance to tell her.

  “Darren? Hey?”

  He heard Benny on the other side of the line, but he wasn’t focused on responding. He was still in danger, but that didn’t matter. Victoria mattered more to him than he ever could, and now he was at risk of losing her. He had to go. Benny heard the click on the other line, and made some kind of swear.

  But Darren didn’t hear it. He’d already hung up.

  The walk to the bar was less of a walk and more of a full-blown sprint. He’d abandoned his car a while ago, and he wasn’t about to go back and get it. The rest of the journey had to be done on foot: all long, over-stretched steps to get to the bar as he ran there. Luckily, it wasn’t raining, but it felt like it should be.