DornanShe was pretty, but he"d seen pretty. Dornan Ross, vice-president of the Gypsy Brothers motorcycle club, had seen hundreds of pretty girls, broken and abused, usually by someone else but occasionally by him. As soon as the little minx had opened her mouth, his d.i.c.k had twitched in his jeans at the thought of all the deplorable things he could do to her. She had sa.s.s, and s.p.u.n.k, and something else that he couldn"t quite figure out.
She"s a survivor. The phrase jumped into his head. She wasn"t like the girls they typically had under these circ.u.mstances.
Women in the Gypsy Brothers world were divided firmly into three camps: Old ladies, who were wives or partners of the bikers and not to be shared around. Usually, they weren"t welcome at the club, but occasionally they wheedled their way in. Then there were party girls, who were usually young and f.u.c.king stupid, and would pretty much let you stick it anywhere you wanted. Dornan had his favourites, the ones he used and abused, and he didn"t feel guilty about it one little bit, because they chose to stay. They each got their pay-off in some way — drugs, protection, the thrill of danger. Sometimes they left the club, and other times, if they were found to have divulged club information — h.e.l.l, even if they had seen something potentially incriminating — they were taken up to the roof of the clubhouse and given a bullet. Quick, efficient, and more often than not, n.o.body even reported them as missing, let alone actually missed them.
Yeah, it was a pretty bleak way to handle things, but the smart ones stayed alive because they knew what would happen if they stepped out of line.
Which made Dornan consider the third group of women who were frequently around the club compound.
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The transients. The ones who didn"t belong there. The ones who made him slightly uncomfortable, the ones his father insisted on dealing in.
The slaves.
Human trafficking was a nicer term for what they were doing with those girls, but not by much. Typically the girls were an in-and-out job, a truck or a boat or a carload that needed to go from point A to point B; usually teenage girls from out of state or, less frequently, from overseas. Sometimes, the girls would beg him to help them, and it broke his f.u.c.king heart every time he turned a blind eye to what his father was doing.
But he still did it, and so he was an a.s.shole. He accepted that. It was part of who he was.
John Portland didn"t like it. He was Dornan"s best friend and the president of the Gypsy Brothers, and he abhorred the practice of taking these young girls and forcing them into a life of prost.i.tution or drug smuggling. He wanted to f.u.c.king save everyone all the time. Dornan often had to remind him that his role as president was largely symbolic; he was not the one in charge.
It hadn"t always been that way. The club had been just that — a club. Not a gang. Not organised crime. Just riding, free as birds, setting up camp and sleeping under the stars. They"d both ditched school in favour of seeing the world, riding their Triumphs across the USA, along Route 66 and beyond.
It had been John who suggested the name Gypsy Brothers. They"d jokingly tossed a coin and declared the winner the president, the loser VP. John had called heads, and the coin landed heads up. They"d cut lines into the flesh of their palms with a pocketknife and sealed the deal with a handshake marked in blood. Blood Brothers. Gypsy Brothers who travelled the roads, and had each other"s backs.
And then everything had gone to s.h.i.t. They"d returned home to LA to find Dornan"s girlfriend, Lucy, pregnant with his baby, John"s younger sister needing cancer treatment that he couldn"t afford, and Dornan"s mafioso father finally having caught up to his wayward son.
It was a complete cl.u.s.terf.u.c.k. John"s sister wasn"t even eighteen, yet she was riddled with cancer. Full of cancer and no insurance meant one thing: John needed money, a lot of money, and fast.
It had seemed straightforward at the time. A road trip, a simple swap. Drugs for cash. But once Emilio had them under his thumb, it happened time and time again. The Gypsy Brothers club expanded to deal with the mounting work Emilio was throwing at them. Dornan liked to claim it was his family obligation, but really, he knew he couldn"t argue. His father was a stone-cold killer from old-school Italia, and Dornan had always known that he would be called to the darkness one day. He"d felt that familiar violence bubble under his skin more than once.
He just didn"t realise his best friend would end up as deep in the blood of innocents as him.
Lucy had crafted the Gypsy Brothers patches and the leather cut-off jackets that John and Dornan wore with pride. Lucy loved to f.u.c.king sew, especially when she was eight months pregnant and could barely move. It drove Dornan insane; every time he walked around the house barefoot he"d step on a G.o.dd.a.m.n sewing pin, sticking precariously out of the carpet. That had been before everything really went to s.h.i.t, though. Once things got crazy and she was washing blood and pieces of brain matter out of her husband"s clothes on a semi-regular basis, she"d stopped sewing.
It had started in the simplest, most innocent of ways; two friends, drinking beers by an open fire, shooting the s.h.i.t and talking about how their lives might turn out. Things had been good then. Simple. Fun.
And now … now, the Gypsy Brothers dealt in the darkest of sins. They stole lives and they ended them, and they did a d.a.m.n fine job of both. Dornan sometimes wondered how things would have turned out if he had just kept riding, had never returned home, had never accepted his father"s offer of cash to help John"s sister in return for their souls.
The saddest thing of all was that she died anyway.
She died and Lucy ended up divorcing his a.s.s, two kids and one affair later. So Dornan rarely thought about the old days. Rarely thought about the way he and John had signed their lives away, because, in the end, it had all been for nothing.
It wasn"t that difficult to ride with a raging hard-on — unless the reason for that hard-on was seated behind you, her delicious warmth pressed up against the small of your back with her legs draped over your bike.
Dornan figured he must"ve had a guardian angel for the ride from San Diego, because there was no blood left in his head to help him think straight. It was all directed into his lap, dangerously close to the girl"s small hands as she clung to him. At one point, when they reached open road and opened up their bikes, she held onto him so hard, her nails were gouging through his leather cut and t-shirt and into the firm flesh of his torso. He didn"t say anything, though.
He enjoyed the pain.
Just before Tijuana, the boys broke up into several smaller groups to avoid attention. The bright lights of the San Ysidro border crossing that straddled Mexico and the United States marked the almost-there point, and Dornan was glad for that. He loved being on the bike, but there was s.h.i.t to do to sort out this c.o.ke shortage, plus his d.i.c.k wasn"t showing any signs of calming down.
He revved his engine and made the turn into the road that led to his father"s compound, and with one hand he reached behind and pulled the girl closer to him, so her heat was jammed up tight against his back. He thought he felt her gasp, and that only excited him more.
From what his father had said, this girl was going to be staying with them for a very long time. It made him f.u.c.king ashamed that he was looking forward to her captivity.