Hellraiser (The Devil's Own #2) (21 page)

Melissa

“Mom!” I exclaim, running into her arms. She taps the top of the taxi, signaling him to go.

“Hi, darling. How have you been and where’s the bar?”

I laugh, taking her hand in mine, her gold bangles slipping over the tips of my fingers. “Come on, come meet the gang.”

“Melissa, they don’t like to be referred to as ‘The Gang’,” she whispers discretely into my ear as her arm hooks around mine.

I smile, leaning into her. “Mom? I was talking about the girls.”

“Oh!” She stands straight as she follows me to the Clubhouse doors. “I can’t wait.”

We walk inside the bar to find it empty, which is a good thing. I don’t want to terrify her right off the bat. “Come on.” I tug her hand and pull her towards the back of the kitchen where the girls are. Meadow has the catering crew she hired in there organizing all the food. I push open the doors.

“Mom!” Millie gasps, running towards her with open arms.

“Hi, darling.” Mom’s in her fifties, but she has the soul of someone in her twenties. “Your mother needs a drink.”

Meadow introduces herself along with Jada, Layla, and Asha. Phoebe should be here sometime tonight for the bridal reception she’s planning, which frightens Meadow and excites me. After mom’s introduced, she runs through all the things she organized from home, which is everything—from equipment hire, to the DJ, even so much as a professional bartender who will be set up in the corner with his own little bar. The wedding is still two weeks away, but they’re casing out the space and what’s going where.

“You missing your man?” Layla nudges my shoulder with hers. It’s strange. I know her and Hella have some sort of history—it’s been said enough—but she doesn’t seem to mind.

“I am a little. I get cold at night.” Hella, Beast, Frost, and Ripper went on a run a couple of days ago. They should be back tonight. With the wedding so close, Meadow isn’t too happy with them making an emergency run, but club business is club business and it doesn’t involve us. He’s texted me throughout his entire time away. I still miss him, which is a foreign feeling for me, but I’m learning to just go with it when it comes to Hella. If I get hurt, then I get hurt.

Layla laughs. “At least they’ll be back tonight.” She walks back to her duties of floral placements on the tables. I look at Millie, who watches our conversation uncomfortably.

“What’s wrong?” I ask her, opening a new box of cutlery.

She shakes her head, an absent look passing over her. “Nothing. It’s… nothing.” Her smile drops and she walks out of the kitchen to the bar.

I sigh, pushing the utility knife into my back pocket. She’s not telling me something. What’s new?

Hella

Little red droplets splatter on my face as I deliver the next blow, his jaw cracking under my knuckles. He’s barely recognizable now. Where his once-white skin and blue eyes flared with anger, they’re now masked by the sticky evidence of my wrath.

I chuckle, pushing on my gloves. Beast looks at me, eyebrows raised. “What’d this fucker do?”

I roll my shoulders back, tightening the mask that’s sitting around the bottom of my face.

“Please,” the woman pleads, her arms bound around the back of her chair, her hair falling over her eyes. “Please, what did we do wrong?”

I bring my eyes back to the piece of shit sitting on the seat in front of me. “He fucked with someone who belongs to me.”

Her tear-stricken eyes widen. “Melissa?” She scoffs. “That slut had it coming! He told me all about it. She’s just a stupid fucking slut who wanted to be in the—“

I slap her face so hard, her body flying across the room as the sting from the force tingles over the back of my hand. That felt damn good, too.

“Yeah?” I walk towards her, bending down and tilting my head. I pause, my eyes running over her. Big tits, tight little body, blood smeared over her forehead. “You know…” My hand reaches up, my fingers gliding down her cheek, over her jaw, and down her sternum. She flinches. “Nah, it’s gone,” I mutter, rising to my feet.

“What’s gone?” she asks, her eyes searching mine.

“The need to fuck anything that isn’t my girl.” I turn to Frost. “Playtime for the Joker?”

A smirk appears on his face as he pulls her up by her hair and drags her screaming to the back of the house.

“Yo!” I call out. “Do it out here! I want this fucker to see his girl being abused.”

Frost drags her back towards us, looking at me. “Brother, rape isn’t really my thing.”

I roll my eyes, my hand flying up to her throat. I squeeze until I feel the tubes of her throat creaking under my fingertips. I pull her face to mine. “Lucky for you, I brought the wrong brother.” I look at Frost. “But unlucky for you,” I add, looking back to her, “I’m going to make you wish that I
did
just rape you.” I swipe her hair out of the way with my face, my mask skimming over the blood that’s tracing down the side of her cheek, her desperate tears causing her mascara to run. “At least you’d enjoy my cock.”

Frost steps up. “Me, I’ll do it.” He pulls out his gun and clocks it. “I want to try something.”

I look up at him. “Try what?”

He looks down to the tip of his barrel where there’s a silencer screwed on, then he looks down at her legs, running his eyes up her body. “I wanna see what her insides look like if I blow her up from the inside.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Beast whispers, pulling one of the seats from the kitchen table and taking a seat. “Well, hurry up, you two. I have my woman to marry. Quit fucking around.”

The piece of shit starts tugging on his ties around his wrist, his muffled screams silenced by the duct tape that’s over his mouth.

I chuckle. “Do it.”

Eddy’s screams come louder, more desperate. I walk to the back of him, my hands tightening around the back of his neck. His eyes shut. She looks at him pleadingly, the smug smirk she had over her face when talking about Melissa long gone.

I bend down to his ear. “Open your fucking eyes. See, you played with the wrong girl. You played with a girl who’s owned by a man who likes to watch his victim endure pain, who gets off on the perverse, sadistic need of the kill. That man is
me.
”

His eyes flare open just as Frost bends down, spreading the woman’s legs wide. She begins kicking, tossing, and turning, so he brings the back of his gun up, slamming it down over her face. Her back hits the floor, her head turning sideways slowly as she drifts in and out of consciousness. He continues by removing her G-string. Frost smirks, brings it up to his nose, and inhales deeply. I laugh as he shoves it into his back pocket. The piece of shit starts wriggling in his spot, his screams turning into sobs. Frost’s gun disappears between her thighs. The very moment that skinny barrel inserts into her, her head begins yanking sideways desperately, calling out for her boyfriend as his shoulders shake under my grip. I smirk, and with a small nod of my head, the silent gunshot rips through the air as blood, brain matter, skin, and organs rain down on us.

The asshole screams. I pull the knife out of my holster and face him. I bend down to his level, my mouth going to his ear, the thick tang of metallic now filling the room like smoke. My arm flies back before I lodge the knife into his groin. He lets out an almighty howl and I twist it in circles, the rigid jolts pushing against my blade every time it scrapes over one of his internal organs. I whisper, “I fucked her with this knife, you know.” He continues to howl, blood spurting out of his mouth. “She came all over this very blade that is now lodged so deep inside your useless excuse of a cock.” I push deeper, my jaw clenching tightly. “Now, her retribution is dripping all over it.” His body begins to convulse in fits, the final minutes of his life passing by my hands. When the jolting of his body begins to fade out into the nothingness of his piece of shit existence, I whisper, “See you in Hell,
Eddy Woolbrock
.”

Melissa

The heavy rumble of what sounds like one hundred bikes shake the clubhouse walls and I look at my mom nervously. “Are you sure you want to do this? And please don’t hit on anyone, I’m serious.”

She brushes my comment away. “Oh honey, I’m a married woman.” Yeah, like that’s ever stopped her. A loud roar of laughter sounds out in the bar. Millie drops what she’s doing and walks out. What the hell is her problem? She’s acting stranger than usual. Mom walks out all on her own following Millie, and I turn to Meadow and Jada. “What’s going on with my sister?”

They both shrug their shoulders. “Not sure. She’s being acting a little more quiet than usual lately.”

My eyebrows rise slightly. “Yeah, well I guess she’s always been the quiet one. A lot goes on in the inside of her head, though, and the mind is a dangerous place to dwell for someone like Millie.”

Meadow hooks my elbow with hers. “Come on, let’s go see our men.”

“Yeah, except I’m not an old lady. I’m not even sure what the fuck I am,” I whisper.

She pauses just short of the little door that separates the kitchen to the bar. “What is it you want, Melissa?”

I exhale, my shoulders slouching in defeat. “I honestly don’t know.” It’s true, I don’t know. I care about Hella. We have immense chemistry and kick-ass sex, but uprooting my life from Westbeach to live in the isolation of this clubhouse? I’m just not sure if that’s what I want, or even something I can do right now… even if I did want it.

Once we’re back at the bar, I find Hella instantly talking with Millie in hushed tones in the corner. My mom’s talking with Beast. They both seem to be fine. My mom has seen and been through a lot of shit. She’s the strongest person I know.

I walk towards Hella and Millie, who both pause their talking. “Hey!”

He smiles, pulling me under his arm, which has become my home away from home.

“Hey, baby. You miss me?”

Millie excuses herself and returns to the kitchen. Jada catches her arm in her retreat and I look up at Hella to find him watching her carefully.

“Okay, cut the shit. What the fuck’s going on with you and Millie?”

“What?” he mutters. “Nothing, nothing with her.”

I don’t believe him, but I decide to drop it until we get back to his house later tonight. I lace my fingers through his. “Come meet my mom, and don’t take it personally if she hits on you; she’s a natural flirt.”

After introducing him to my mom, we walk back toward the bar and leave her to chat with Beast and Meadow. My mom’s a free spirit. You can unleash her in any environment and she will adapt to it.

“I think she loved you a little too much,” I mumble to Hella, pulling out a barstool.

He smirks, taking a seat and dragging mine towards his. “Do you blame her?” I pause at his question and pretend to think about it. He shoves me playfully in my arm before we both laugh. I shake my head. “No, I guess I don’t. But had you asked me that same question a couple of weeks ago, I’m not sure I’d have the same answer.”

***

The next morning, Hella’s in the shower, so I start picking up his clothes that are on the ground from the night before, rolling my eyes at him just dropping them in the middle of the room. Collecting the pile in my arms with the steam from his shower slipping out of the crack of the door, I smile and walk to the laundry room. Throwing the clothes into the washing machine, I pause at the skull biker mask Hella always wears when he’s riding. Picking it up, I unfold it to find it saturated in blood. My heart halts and my chest wavers as I take a step back until my back hits the wall, still clutching the mask in my hand. Where the skull was once white, it’s now stained in blood.
So much blood
. Exhaling, I walk back to the washing machine and pull out the black t-shirt that he was wearing to find it clean.
Odd
. There’s a lot of fucking blood on this mask. Whoever was on the receiving end of that wouldn’t look pretty, if he’s still alive, that is.

Realization sinks in. What the hell am I actually doing? I know Hella is a dangerous man and yeah, I knew he had taken lives before. You only had to meet him to see that he had, but was this the sort of life I wanted? The life where I’d be doing my husband’s laundry and scrubbing bloodstains out of his MC shirt? I just don’t know.

My breathing picks up again, my chest rising and falling as I squeeze the mask in my hand. My eyes close briefly.

“What’re you doing?” Hella asks, gripping the towel around his waist. My eyes shoot open and zone in on him, the water trickling from his hair and tracing down his body.

“What’s this?” I flash the mask at him.

“You’re not ready for that convo, babe.”

I throw the mask into the washing machine and walk up to him. “Did you kill someone when you were away?”

He tightens the grip around his towel. “We need to talk.”

I follow him back to the bedroom, my panicking dying out. I feel like I already know what’s coming, but I guess being face-to-face with it is a little haunting. He shoves his shirt over the top of his head before making a point to drop his towel in front of me and pulling his jeans on, commando.

I take a seat on the bed, but he comes up to me and tugs me to my feet. “Come, we can do this outside.”

I wrap my fingers in his and follow him out of the room. Once we hit the sand of the waterhole, a profound exhale escapes me and shivers run up and down my arm. “It’s so beautiful out here.” There’s a tree branch curved over to the middle of the waterhole, which has a tire swing hanging off. I have thoughts of Garret swinging off of it and dropping to the water in a splash, which brings a smile to my face. I decide I love that kid. Warm fingers skim past mine and I jump up suddenly, forgetting what I was doing. He tugs me down next to him on the long log, which is used as a seat in front of the dry bonfire.

“It must look amazing out here with that lit in the middle of the night,” I say, pointing towards the pile of ash.

“We had parties here all the time,” he answers.

Needing to change the subject because parties usually mean whores, I ask, “So, did you kill someone?”

He watches me closely, his eyes moving from my lips to my eyes. “Yes.”

“You do this often? Kill people, I mean.” I wrap my arms around myself.

“Yes. Not as much as I used to.” He watches my discomfort. “Look, babe. I’ve killed a lot of people. I don’t even know how many because in The Army, they’d pump us with this bullshit serum called Schyronide, which caused blackouts of anything we had done within the previous seven hours. It wasn’t a memory serum or any bullshit like that; it was simple science conducted by a fucking genius—also known as Beast’s mom. I’ve killed a lot, but not one person who I’ve taken has given me more pleasure than who I 86’ed this weekend.”

“86’ed?” I ask, my brain skimming over everything else he just admitted.

“86’ed, killed, took care of, whatever you wanna call it.”

My eyes gloss over. “Okay. I mean, I knew that you had killed people before. I mean, I had been around Sinful Souls since I was little. I knew the shit they do.” I exhaled again. “Who was it? Are you allowed to tell me?”