I was entranced by the rush of pavement beneath the luxury car’s tires. My high heels, abandoned and forlorn on the passenger side floor board where I sat, had my feet sighing with relief. I watched the darkened landscape pass by the tinted glass in a blur. It was warm in the car and I was grateful. The nights were cool if not downright chilly and my dress wasn’t made for the weather. It was made to make me look good, and by extension, make
him
look good.

“I mean are you
trying
to start with me?” he demanded. I blinked long and slow and watched the reflection of his hand move off of the gear shift in the darkened glass. I flinched and turned wide fearful eyes in his direction. My hands remained clasped primly in my lap the skin on my knuckles mottling white, the harder I gripped the more they started to shake and he hated it when I shook but I couldn’t help it… I was scared and rightfully so.

Chadwick Granger was a beautiful monster and most definitely something I should fear. I took in his profile. Short wheat blonde hair and hazel eyes that penetrated the soul
. His jaw was square and strong the angle leading to a generous mouth that had, at first, said the sweetest things until I had found, much too late, it had the capacity to say things infinitely more cruel.

“I’m not… I didn’t… I…” I closed my mouth resolutely on my murmured words
that were meant to appease him when I saw the spark of victory in his eyes. The generous mouth that had long ago been sweet twisted into all too familiar cruel lines.

“So now you want to argue?” I swallowed convulsively… He was a master at manipulation, at twisting how things were to meet his own ends and I had walked right into it… again… I sh
ould have just remained silent.

“Answer me!” he snarled.

“No. I’m not trying to start with you, I’m not trying to argue… You’re absolutely correct Chadwick, you’re always correct. I don’t know what I’d been thinking.” I forced a smile but I knew it was heavily watered down and halfhearted at best. I had never been good at lying with my expression or, for that matter, of lying with my eyes and truthfully I think that was partially why he’d chosen me in the beginning, all those years ago.

He took his eyes off the road and looked at me. He returned his gaze out the windshield and I relaxed marginally, but then he looked at me again, and any semblance of warmth seeped from his gaze and desolation crept into my heart. His hand shot off the gearshift and knotted in the back of my hair. I cried out but willed my hands to remain in my lap.

I’ve earned his correction…
I thought bitterly as he wrenched my head to the side and back. Searing pain went up the side of my neck behind my ear, down to my shoulder as the muscle cramped.

“Just remember darling. You
’ve
earned
my correction.” He said, pulling the car off to the side of the lonely highway. Tears poured from my eyes, down my face, hot and slick as panic seized in my breast making it hard to breathe.

“What do you say!?” he shouted into the small space, shaking my head by the fistful of hair he had ahold of. I cried out, fire alighting along my scalp. My eyes burned with the fresh sting of tears.

“Yes sir!” I screamed and covered my mouth with my hands.

“How many times do I have to tell you,
Ashton?” he demanded, turning the wheel sharply onto the shoulder. Gravel and debris pinged the underside of the car and I closed my eyes, sobbing. His voice had taken on the frozen steel quality that I had only heard a time or two before, the times he had hurt me bad enough I really thought I was going to die.

“How many times do I have to tell you, you stupid whore, that you don’t raise your voice to me!” he stomped on the emergency brake and flung open his door, I shrieked in pain and terror as he dragged me across the center console and into the still cold night by my hair…

Please God… don’t let him kill me this time…
I silently begged.

Chapter 1

Trig
…

The thrum of the bike beneath me, the open road in front of me,
I was a little disappointed that I was coming in early from my solo run. This was fucking freedom and I loved it. I gently twisted the handlebars to guide my bike into a curve when the sweep of my headlight caught on something moving up ahead along the shoulder. I took a drag off the cigarette pressed between my lips and cursed under my breath letting out a cloud of that vapor shit instead of the smoke I so seriously craved.

I still couldn’t believe I let
Reaver talk me into this e-cig shit. I blinked and angled my bike across the lane so my headlight went more toward the shoulder and cursed again. That was no deer, it looked like a kid. I downshifted and slowed my roll pulling up alongside the girl, who wasn’t a kid after all, she was just that fucking small.

She hugged herself, teeth chattering uncontrollably as she stomped resolutely along the shoulder, bare fucking feet slapping along the glass strewn pavement.

“Woah, sweetheart! What the Hell are you doin’ out here!?” I called above the chug of my engine. I walked the bike alongside her and grimaced as my boots crunched over the freezing asphalt, sparkling in the moon and my headlamp light with frost and bits of glass. Early spring my ass, it was mid-March and we were still freezing over.

She cringed and I was cringing too. Her dress was a halter style and her upper back and shoulders were exposed as well as her shapely legs from the thigh down. She was small but proportionate. Her hair was a bit of a tangle and dark. It hid her face from me but I could tell she was crying from the odd sniff and the way her shoulders hitched.

“Hey, hey, hey, stop a minute!” I tried, she didn’t stop, but she spoke.

“I can’t be seen talking to you,” she intoned, “He’ll come back and when he comes back he won’t like it if I’m talking to you.” her voice cracked.

I stopped my bike and put down the kickstand switching it off. I swung a leg over and caught up to her in two long strides, easily keeping pace beside her.

“Hey, wait stop!” I pulled off my gloves and stuffed them in the pocket of my
motorcycle vest, or cut.

“Stop a minute!” I tried again.

“I can’t!” she wailed, “I’ve earned his correction and I have to be home by morning, but he’ll come back! I’m sure he will…” she picked up her pace.

“Let me give you a lift!” I blurted to buy time, just what the fuck was going on here?

“I can’t! He’ll know, and I’ve earned this correction. I have to walk he told me so.” Her breath plumed the air and I stopped cold. Just what the fuck was this crazy broad talking about!? I caught up to her and grabbed her arm.

“Just stop a minute and look at me!” I said and she whirled, a high frightened cry emanating from her that rose the hair on the back of my neck. The only time I had ever heard anything like it was when I had been out trapping with my granddad one winter and we’d come up on this fucking fox trapped in a snare… this was just like that only worse somehow because damned if she wasn’t pretty.

A pair of the loveliest dark eyes looked up into mine with way too much white showing. Her face was smeared with tracks of eye makeup and her lip was busted and swelling. Her skin was petal soft beneath my work rough hand and as cold as ice.

I grimaced at the necklace of bruised fingerprints raising on her pale throat. Her cheekbone was swelling and I swallowed back the bitter bite of anger. Someone had worked her over pretty good and left her out here in her pretty party dress to freeze to death.

“What’s your name?” I asked her gently.

“Ashton.” She breathed, frozen in place. I gave her another once over from head to toe.

“Ashton, I’m Ethan but nobody calls me that. You can call me Trigger or just Trig.” She swallowed and let out a whimper.

“Please just let me go… I have to…”

“No.” I said it gently but firmly. “No Baby, you’re coming with me. I gotta get you looked at.” I sniffed and pulled off my jacket and cut and wrapped it around her slender shoulders.

She blinked her dark
eyes up at me and said, “I don’t know what to do…” she looked dejectedly up the lonesome highway like it would provide her answers but seeing as not a single other soul had driven by since she was presumably abandoned out here I doubted there were any for her.

“Well Ashton, let’s start by getting you someplace warm where I can get a look at you.” I said. My mind was racing. What I should have done was call the cops, but that was kind of hard to do with a key of smack in my left saddlebag and a sawed off in my right.

“Come on Baby, let someone take care of you huh?” I used a tone of voice that I would use on a spooked animal and guided her resolutely towards the bike.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
I was so not in the business of taking in fucking strays and this particular stray stank of money. Her rich asshole husband likely
was
coming back for her but man… I couldn’t leave her like this. No woman, no matter how much of a pain in the ass she might be, deserved this kind of treatment.

“I don’t… I…” she was resisting my pull as she looked at the bike. This ride was going to be cold as fuck but at least we were only about ten more minutes or so out from the clubhouse. The party would be in full swing when we got there but I would worry about it when we
arrived.

“I’m going to pick you up and put you on it…” I started, I explained exactly what I wanted from her, how to lean with the bike not against it, how I wanted her to hold onto me, all of it in great detail. I placed her feet where I wanted ‘
em and winced, they were a shredded bloody mess.

“Don’t you dare move your feet off of these bars you got it?” I asked. She nodded mutely, her face as white as snow.
I didn’t want her to burn herself on the pipes.

What t
he fuck was I doing?

I got on in front of her and
kicked the bike into life. My Baby roared and Ashton’s slender arms pulled her small lithe body tight against my back, the sleeves of my jacket rucked back and huge around her fine boned wrists. I spared a thought that at least she was cooperating before I pulled out onto the highway in a spray of gravel. I had one singular thought. I hoped Doc was sober enough to help me take care of her injuries. I didn’t know a God damned thing about patching up the damage, just how to dish it out…

About ten minutes later
I pulled into the gates and up the steep drive of the compound. A prospect dragged the chain link fence closed behind us. I backed my bike into its place in the line out front and killed the engine. Ashton shook, her entire body trembling against my broad back. I could feel the side of her face pressed in the hollow between my shoulder blades. My shirt stuck to my back there with her tears.

I had no fucking idea what I was doing. None. I was way off the fucking reservation with this one. I pulled off my gloves for a second time that night and covered her icy hands with one of my much larger ones
which were only marginally warmer.

She was like a little fucking china doll. It was unreal. She clung to me, and trembled like one of those little fucking rat dogs that celebrity skanks carry around in their purses and I started doing a slow burn.

Burn. Yeah… that’s what I’d like to do. Burn whatever mother fucker had done this to her to the motherfucking ground. I took off my brain bucket and hung it on my handlebars, the wraparound glasses with the clear lenses went into the overturned helmet and I raked fingers through my thick unruly thatch of blonde hair.

“Welcome back Trig!” the prospect jogged up the drive, gravel crunching beneath his boots.

“Go find Doc.” I ordered by way of greeting. A furrow appeared between his brows.

“You hurt?” he asked.

“Not me, now go find fuckin’ Doc and hope like hell he’s sober enough to fuckin’ help!” Ashton jumped at my raised voice and shook harder, her arms were locked around me and I was kind of impressed at her strength despite her diminutive size.

The prospect jumped too and went immediately for the club house, music blared out into the night and softened to a dull roar as the door opened and shut.

“Ashton.” I said, speaking to her like a spooked animal again. It had worked before…

“Ashton B
aby, you gotta let me go.” I soothed. I pried her arms from around my waist and stood up. I got off the bike and turned. She looked as freaked out as someone could get. Her eyes were far too wide and her skin so pale it was luminous in the light of the moon. The door to the clubhouse opened and the prospect and Doc came out.

Doc strode forward, he was in his typical uniform of unrelieved black, from boots to pants to tee to cut to the black do-rag that covered his shaven head. His salt and pepper handlebar mustache nearly vibrated with irritation and his light colored eyes peered into the dark in my direction.

“Chucky here says you got wounded?” he asked.

I stood to the side, revealing Ashton, still perched on my bike.

“Eh?” he blinked and looked her over.

“Bring her inside, can’t do shit out here.” He grunted, “I’ll go get my kit.”

“My room, five minutes?” I asked.

“Better make it ten, but yeah, your
room’ll do fine.” He went to his bike and I turned and looked down at Ashton. She was shaking like a god damned leaf and looked like she was about to lose her shit. I slid my coat and cut off her and threw it over the saddle of my bike.

“I’m going to
pick you up Baby. Put your arms around my neck.” She didn’t want to comply, her head shaking violently back and forth. Too bad. I put an arm behind her back and scooped her off the bike with my other beneath her knees.

“Chucky, take my coat, cover her up.
” He jumped, and scrambled to comply and I made note of it. It almost made up for the Q&A rather than just going to get Doc when I’d asked. He covered her and I jerked my head to indicate he should cover her face. He nodded and did what he was told.

“Get the doors then find Dray and have him deal with my bike.” I looked at him pointedly and he nodded. He
didn’t know why, but at least he didn’t ask this time. He was back in the black and earning points with me again.

“Didn’t make it to the rally?” he asked.
I cursed in my head, he was just a prospect and shouldn’t know about that kind of shit yet, but damage apparently done so I didn’t deny it.

“
Naw man, found her on the way past here, needed to stop. Couldn’t exactly call the cops…” he opened the door and we were swallowed by a rush of heat and noise. I barreled into the thick of it, rushing towards the back and the rooms set aside for members on the council.

I was on the council, I had a room.

Dray, the VP of the Sacred Hearts MC gave me a chin lift from across the room and started shoving towards me. He fell into step beside me.

“
Whatcha got there?” he asked with a crooked grin.

“Not what you think man, you
gotta get out to my bike like double time.” He gave me a cold hard glare.

“You didn’t deliver?” he asked.

“Tell you about it later, I was ahead of schedule, if you move it you can easily make it on time.” Dray raked a hand through his chin length straight black hair and nodded. His equally black eyes were seething in my direction.

“You and me, we’re going to talk about this brother.” He was pissed, I was pissed, we would talk and t
hen we could both be pissed together. Sacred Hearts had one rule… No women, no children and fuck if Ashton wasn’t some weird amalgamation of both.

“Yeah. I feel you.” I said and he broke away and went out.

The further back into the sprawling compound I went the quieter it got until I reached my room, kicking the door open after stooping to turn the knob. Chuckie had peeled off when Dray had come up. He was smart. The music was a dull and distant throb back here and it was quiet enough that I could hear Ashton’s teeth clacking together along with her ragged too fast intake of breath.

“How you
doin’ Baby?” I asked, I set her down on the bed and pulled my jacket and cut off her face and around her shoulders. She blinked up at me under the harsh overhead light and I sucked in a breath. Her eyes weren’t dark, they had just been fully dilated out on the road… I had never met a woman, or man for that matter, with eyes like hers.

They were gold…
light gold, like twin suns set in her delicate heart shaped face. Her long auburn hair, windblown and tangled as it was, with its reddish highlights in it made the gold of her eyes that much more intensive. I swallowed, lost in them for more than a minute.

“Where’s my patient?” Doc asked from the door and the spell she had me under snapped
with a damn near audible pop. I stood aside and let him into the room. Ashton crab walked backwards up the bed and away from Doc until her back pressed flat against the headboard.

“Easy
Darlin’” he put his bag down by the bed.

“Ashton this is Doc, he’s here to help.” I soothed.

“Nobody can help me…” she moaned, “He’s going to kill me…” to which my first thought was,
the fuck he is.

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