O Come, All Ye Sinners Read online

  “I…uh…” She didn’t get more than that out of her mouth before he was crowding into her space, shoulders blocking out the room.

  His head dipped, and she saw muscles in his jaw jump and quiver with the force of his words. “I said strip.”

  “I’m not wearing a wire.” She offered the only thing that made sense, a possibility that hadn’t even occurred to her until this instant, that he’d see her visit as an attempt to damage the people and organization he was part of. “Promise.” She lifted her shirt and turned all the way around. “It’s just me.”

  His hand was on her throat and he lifted, bringing her to her toes as he slammed her back against the wall. “That’s what you think of me?”

  Confused, she shook her head, lungs working overtime to pull in air against the constriction around her neck. “No,” she gasped, and he eased his hold slightly. “I don’t under—”

  His mouth was on hers with an angry possession she’d never experienced. Teeth slicing at her lips, his tongue fucked into her, every stroke brutal and hard. Through the long minutes of the kiss, she let him dominate, giving way to his control until he took her wherever he wanted, drawing her along one path for a moment, then changing course and the angle of his head to cut off that path and find a different route. He gasped into her mouth, his long, guttural groans forcing themselves down her throat, and she swallowed it all, taking and taking and taking until he eased back, softening his assault, bringing her hammering heart slower and slower. He tenderly broke the kiss and leaned on her, forehead pressed against hers.

  Slowly Justine came back to herself to realize her arms were wound around his neck, holding tight, fingers through his hair in a desperate grip. He surrounded her, hot body braced on his arms to keep from crushing her. She was framed in on either side by a wall of flesh, his biceps, chest, and face all she could see. She lowered her leg from where it had hooked itself around his hip and pulled in a breath.

  “Better?” He asked the question like it made sense, his heavy breathing balanced by the deep growl in his voice, gravel traveling across velvet, rattling through her head.

  “Yes?” Better than what? The idea ran through her head and was what she wanted to say, but her mouth wasn’t working quite yet. “Maybe?”

  Wildman

  She sounded and looked so softly confused that he couldn’t stop the chuckle that rolled out of him. Kissed her stupid. “Now, strip so I can fuck you like I want.” He took her mouth again, tasting her, slowly tongue-fucking her mouth, stroking and twisting in a sensual battle with hers as he amped her back up, satisfied by how quickly she lost herself. “We keep this up, I’ll fuck you against the wall.”

  The way that caught at her breath, it wasn’t an unwelcome idea, and he filed the information away for later use. Because there will be a later.

  He waited a beat, letting her catch up until eventually she nodded, gaze lifting to his eyes. He saw the weight of her giving this to him again, her fears that he’d reject her falling away, losing substance and growing lighter with every breath. “Okay,” she said finally, eyes clear once more from the haze he’d brought her to with a kiss.

  “Did they rape you?” His words appeared to strike her like a blow, and he wished he could have found different ones, but he needed to know. If she’d come to him before in an effort to wipe another man’s touch from her body, then he’d misread everything.

  She shook her head slowly.

  “Say it.”

  “No, they didn’t rape me. I…bartered with them for something else, to protect the women.”

  He remembered the bruises, the way she’d dived deep with him, pulling roughness from him. She’d taken everything he’d offered. “A beating.” She nodded. “Why?” Her gaze didn’t falter, staring at him as she shook her head side to side, dark wings of her hair flying through the air. Oh, honey. Tongue pressed between his teeth, he stepped over to the door and locked it, making a show out of it so she’d know. Turning to face her, he stood for a moment, then told her, “You and me, we’re going to come to an understanding.”

  Justine LaPorte might be the most dangerous woman he’d ever met. She didn’t know it yet, but she held him in the palm of her hand, could break him with a single word, and send him soaring with a smile. It didn’t matter who she was, her name or where she worked. No, what counted most was what she was—the other half of his soul. Something he never expected to find again. He closed his eyes for a moment, pushing back the desire to be done with this, all this talking, all this chatter. To be done with it and inside her.

  “What you gave me was something I liked.” She nodded, even though he hadn’t asked a question, the statement seeming to settle something inside her. “Then before I could get back to talk to you, a man took you from a place I thought was safe.” He swept his hands out to the sides, indicating the clubhouse, the people in it, and his room. All of me. “I dealt with it. This is my life, woman. I will always protect what’s mine by force, because there are assholes who want to take it from me. This is who I am. It’s all I am. The club made me, and then with my brothers, I make the club. It’s a give and take, always. You and me, we shouldn’t work, but I think we do. We will. If you wanna give this a go, if that’s why you came here tonight, then I’m all in on the idea. We’ll push through whatever obstacles there are, and baby, given the fact me and your job are like polar opposites, there’ll be a bunch of ’em. I got shit in my past, too, and we’ll get to that eventually. But I can’t get you out of my head. And I suspect you’re the same or you wouldn’t be here.”

  She opened her mouth and he cut her off with a shake of his head.

  “Here’s what’s going on in this room tonight. It’s you and me, and nobody else. I wanna fuck you, wanna see what’ll make you come fast, drag it out of you slow. But I also wanna talk about what matters to you. I did some digging—”

  She tipped her head to the side with a frown and he laughed.

  “Woman, we know a fuck of a lot of the same people, so I did some asking around. I think I know a lot of your secrets, but I wanna earn ’em. Wanna be someone you think’s worth hearing them from your lips, and that’ll take time. You live in Florida, and I’m here in Louisiana, but it ain’t that far a drive, and isn’t a place I’m unfamiliar with. Now if you didn’t come here for this, and I’ve misread every fucking thing, then you say your piece and turn around, take your sweet, sweet ass down the stairs and out the door, and you won’t ever, not ever see me again.” He pulled in a breath filled with the ease of relief because she hadn’t moved, didn’t scamper to escape, and that told him more than she knew. “You wanna get to know this old outlaw a little, I’m down for that, because there’s something about you that just fuckin’ fits me. So what do you say, Justine LaPorte? You ready to take a walk on the wild side with me?”

  Thunder rolled outside, lightning flashing as they stood on opposite sides of the room, and he waited.

  “I’m not submissive.” The words burst from her, and he wondered at the desperation in her tone. “I like what we did in bed, but I’m not going to kneel at your feet. If that’s what you need, then we can—”

  “Did I say I wanted that?” She shook her head in confusion, and he smirked at how cute she looked. “I’ll tell you what I want, and right now—” He thumbed his belt free, followed by the fastening of his jeans, sighing as the uncomfortable constriction around his rigid cock eased. Wildman marked how her breathing increased. Aww, yeah. She might not have come to the clubhouse for a fucking, but she’d take one with pleasure. “What I want—” He bent and tugged at one boot and sock, tossing it to the side. “My dearest Christmas wish come true—” He changed stance to do the same to the other, his gaze never leaving her face. “Would be for you—” He shoved his pants down and stepped out of them, standing bare-assed before her, cock rigid. “To fucking strip.”

  To the physically and spiritually dispossessed, I hope you find your home.

  “Who ever loved that loved not
at first sight?.”

  Christopher Marlowe

  I was an old hat at running away.

  In fact, I’d been running since I was eleven-years-old and my foster father started to pinch my developing curves for sport. At first, I’d only run small distances, to the nearest park to hide from my crabby foster father’s red pinchers, then to 24/7 convenience stores like Max and 7/11 to bum off flirty teenaged boys and pervy old men. I stayed in a few shelters, fewer motels and once, I broke into a truck to spend the night during one of Alberta’s random summer blizzards.

  Then I turned fourteen and I was old enough to make real bank. I didn’t look older than my years at all but I found a skeevy friend of a friend to make me a passable fake ID and then I got a job at an even skeevier dive bar.

  The owner let me sleep on a cot in the storage room. It was dark, too close and yeasty, like living in a breadbox lined with mildew, but I loved it. The customers were seedy but interesting, with art painted, punched, and punctured into their faces and bodies, exposed by leather, lace, and cheap cotton. No one cared what anyone else did as long as it didn’t involve them. There was such a freedom to that way of living, to their apathy and self-centeredness. I found myself loving it, if only because it was so different from the foster system I’d been bounced through as a young girl.

  I loved the life, not the bar, and I cycled through six more just like it from Alberta across the prairies to Ontario in the next twelve months.

  It was there I lost my virginity to a man named Fernando who was at least two decades older than me but handsome because his Spanish genes made him so no matter his age. He was also richer than anyone I’d ever met before and it would have made me slightly uncomfortable if not for the fact that he was very kind. Not just nice or friendly, two characteristics that were genetically coded into Canadians, but genuinely kind, in the way of elderly librarians and sweet cheeked homemakers. He was better suited to some suburb in the 1950s and not the concrete stretch of Toronto he found himself in, but I was grateful for the error. He wooed me for weeks at the bar, took my v-card gently when the time came for it, and bedded me for three months. It was the longest I’d ever spent in one place but it was worth it in the end, because Fernando up and invited me back to Spain with him.

  I went.

  He bought the plane ticket, hearts in his eyes as he handed it to me and I pocketed it easily, betrayal on my mind without a trickle of remorse or dread.

  I spent two months with him in San Sebastian, stole all his cash, pawned a gold necklace he’d given me that felt too much like a collar, and then I was gone.

  Running, running, running across Spain from the orange scented streets of Valencia to Madrid, Barcelona, and then up into France from war scarred Normandy across the famous coast of azure blue and up into Paris where I stayed, found a job as a tour guide under the table and settled in.

  I’d just returned to Canada after four years abroad, my only skills a fluency in Spanish and French, and pickpocketing tourists in front of the Eiffel Tower. I didn’t really care, I only returned because I was tired of European life. I missed rough men with rougher hands, beards, plaid, and hearty constitutions. I was tired of beauty and romance, I wanted grit and the kind of love that devoured.

  European men ate pizza with a knife and fork.

  So, I was back, this time in British Columbia because I’d heard good things. I landed in Vancouver but hitchhiked up the coast the very next day because I hadn’t snowboarded in years and Whistler had just had a fresh dumping of prime powder.

  That was my mistake. Hitch hiking.

  Europe had ruined me and I’d romanticized the very roughness I craved from Canada.

  The men who picked me up on the side of the Sea to Sky Highway were not the kind of men who ate with a knife and fork.

  They were the kind of men who smoked like it was the 1980s, drank like it was the 1950s and fucked like Neanderthals.

  Oh, and they were also the type of men who abducted and trafficked young women.

  I guess I buried the lead there.

  So, that was where I currently found myself, hustled into the back of a minivan, the seats removed to make room for the three other women folded up and tied with rope alongside me. They stared at me with sad, dark eyes, their make-up smeared nightmarishly around their mouths, spit and semen dried on their chins.

  Clearly, these girls had already been put to use.

  For the first time in my life, running wasn’t an option.

  I waited, listening to the two guys in the front shoot the shit. Finally, just before it turned dark, we pulled off the side of the highway into a busy parking lot in front of a place called Eugene’s. It was the kind of place I would have loved to frequent normally, panelled and turquoise with just a small pink neon sign to distinguish the name. There was a huge movie-theatre style sign with the saying “We serve beer colder and cheaper than your ex.”

  “Ain’t this place where some of those Fallen bikers hang?” one of the idiots in the front seat muttered to the other.

  “Scared of a little leather, Greg? Don’t be a pussy. The man said to meet here, we’re meetin’ him here.”

  The man called Greg looked around uneasily, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in a way that made me think he was high.

  “Just don’t think the boss’ll be happy we turned a scouting trip into something a little more profitable, you hear me?”

  “Don’t be a pussy. Ventura’s a stone, cold bitch. If she understands anything, it’s money. ’Sides, we contact a buyer, she’ll be fucking thrilled we took initiative.”

  I wished my mouth wasn’t pressed closed by a scrap of duct tape so I could tell them what morons they were. I was no criminal–– unless you counted petty theft–– but even I knew crime bosses weren’t really up on their minions doing a little business on the side.

  “Yeah, okay. So, how do ya wanna do this?”

  I kept an avid ear tuned into the conversation even as I slipped the small Buck Lite folding knife from out of my left boot. The idiots hadn’t even checked me for weapons. I had the knife easily accessible with my hands tied behind my back, and another one, slimmer, almost elegant, attached to a long necklace that hung between my breast and lay cold on my belly.

  The other girls watched me squirm slightly to angle the knife between the layers of duct tape at my ankles, then switched the blade up and back to free my hands. I raised a finger to my lips, but their frightened expressions didn’t change.

  The front doors opened, closed and then the automatic sliding side door powered open to reveal the two men who immediately began to unbind us and make the clearly used girls more presentable with baby wipes. They didn’t notice I’d already cut the tape, because I’d carefully rewrapped it, but I hated that my first attempt at escape was thwarted.

  They were cute, which sucked and also explained why I thought they weren’t as sketchy as they obviously were. The one named Greg was tall, lanky in a way that made him lean slightly forward like a stalk of grass in the breeze and he wore one of those baggy toques over a mop of curls. The other one was shorter, a square jaw on top of a thick neck and a squat body, but he had gorgeous blue eyes with the kind of lashes girls would kill for.

  There was something about beauty that had always repelled me, maybe because I’d had so little of it in my life. I was too small to be truly beautiful myself, barely five foot two, thin as a reed with breasts and an ass that could fit easily in a grown man’s hands. I think friends would have called me cute if I had any to give me compliments.

  As it was, I didn’t and because I hadn’t grown up with anything but neglect and the wear and tear of poverty, I didn’t like beauty or anything that it entailed.

  So, I should have known better to get into a van with two pretty looking ski bums.

  At least I was prepared enough to give them a run for their money as soon as I got the chance.

  It came ten minutes later, after they’d corralled us into the building
and ushered us to a dimly lit booth in the corner farthest from the bar and adjoining stage where a half-decent country rock band was playing. It was relatively busy for a week day night, which surprised me even though the place was cool as shit.

  The one named Greg stayed with us while his buddy went to the opposite end of the bar to speak with his contact. I wasn’t sure what kind of deal they were making, but Greg jumped a little each time the contact gestured to our table.

  “You don’t seem like the kind of dude to sell women into prostitution,” I told him, curious to see how he’d react to my directness.

  He blinked, licked his lips, and then looked down at his hands on the table. “Pushed into a corner, what’re ya gonna do, ya know?”

  “Not really,” I disagreed, but gently because I was sensing he was a soft touch and not the brightest guy. There was a chance I could convince him to let us go. “You’re pushing us into the corner with you, only for us, there’s no escape after this.”

  Greg bit his lower lip, his gaze somewhere over my left shoulder. “Better you than me.”

  I swallowed my sigh. I should have known better than to hope for the best out of a person. I’d learned a long time ago and thoroughly that human beings were only decent to each other if they had the means to be.

  As soon as you took away their prosperity, it was every man for himself.

  I wanted to lean into the table and spit at Greg’s stupid, handsome face, to rally against his selfishness just to purge myself of this sick fear and inaction.

  In direct contrast, the girls beside me were docile, clearly beaten into submission a long time ago. They were all white, young enough to carry baby weight in their cheeks and firmness to their curves like immature fruit. I wondered about their stories, if they were misguided teenage runaways from good suburban homes who were bored with their cardigan-clad lives or girls like me who’d never had a place to call home and went running unwittingly into the arms of dangerous because they had nowhere else to go.