I stayed in the pay-by-the-week place because it was what I was used to. I worked. I saved money. I drank. I fucked. I tried to find a new kind of normal.
And that was the way it was for several years.
Then, as luck would have it, one day years later, I would find myself called to work on a job at some place called The Henchmen compound. The owner needed a couple extra rooms added onto the already massive living quarters, all the walls reinforced and completely windowless.
In working on the job, I saw something I hadn't realized I had been missing. I saw a community. I saw brotherhood and loyalty. I saw people who would die for one another.
And I fucking missed that.
And it was something else to see it exist without the confines of hate.
Even if what they did wasn't exactly legal.
Connections got made and, before I could talk myself out of it, I was prospecting the club.
It had been fucking Cash who pointed me in the direction of someone to remove my tattoo, saying that not only did he think it would be good for me to get that shit off my skin for my own peace of mind, but that Reign didn't want anyone to think he and his men were affiliated with any racist bullshit like the Aryan Brotherhood.
I had two sessions and it was halfway gone, the lines being thick and the ink being black, making it stubborn to remove.
I had just never gotten around to getting the third, and likely final, procedure done.
I guess I would realize pretty fucking quick how stupid that shit was.THIRTEENPennyI couldn't think straight.
I thought I understood that phrase, but I didn't. Not until I moved out of that shower and tried to focus on basic, simple tasks like drying my body and brushing my hair. Because I couldn't freaking seem to do anything but freeze in place, staring unseeing at my reflection in the mirror to the sound of Duke still in the shower.
Duke with his freaking Nazi tattoo.
Duke was a white supremacist?
Kind, sweet, protective Duke who had held me through stitches and eased my fears and fed me and warned off the men from me was someone who could believe in such a vile ideal?
Then, as I heard a clammer outside the bedroom, I had another horrible thought.
Were they all racists?
Were The Henchmen MC some kind of hate group? Was that why they had enemies that wanted to shoot them?
Because, really, I kind of understood that.
Not that I condoned violence, but if anyone was deserving of it, it was people who could hate and harm people on the sole basis of the color of their skin or who they loved or what nation they came from.
That was despicable.
And I was just naked in a shower with someone who believed that crap.
I was stuck in a compound with a bunch of other men who might as well.
What did that say about me to everyone else?
Dirty by association, remember?
That was what Duke had said to me and it was all-too true.
I needed to find a way out of this situation.
I rubbed the makeup over my face, finding it heavy and oppressive, like my pores couldn't breathe. But what did it matter, I felt like my lungs couldn't either. Finished, I got into my clothes, flinching a little when my shirt touched my stitches, but not willing to ask Duke to wrap me back up.
"You alright?" Duke's voice broke in. It was low, but it went off in the quiet room and my frantic mind like a foghorn.
My hand flew to my heart as I saw his reflection in the mirror behind me, a towel slung so low on his hips that I could see the deep cuts of his Adonis belt. A bead of water slid down the center of his chest and stomach to slip under the towel, drawing my attention and I felt my body react immediately and uncontrollably. Apparently, the message about Duke being the worst kind of bad guy didn't get from my brain to between my thighs yet.
"Penny," he said again, drawing my attention to his face in the mirror.
"I'm fine," I said, but it wasn't the least bit convincing. My eyes were big, my brows were drawn together, my body was tense. "I just... I'm nervous about my grandmother figuring out something is wrong," I lied. "She's pretty perceptive. I, ah, need to go get my shoes on," I said, turning and all but running out of the room.
"Shit shit shit," I mumbled to myself as I rummaged for socks and shoes. I wasn't much for cursing, but if ever there was a situation to do it, this was it.
Would they even let me go?
I know Duke kept telling me that I wasn't a prisoner, but was that only to ease my mind? What would happen if I told him I was leaving? I mean... he moved all my stuff into his room in his fenced and armed-guarded compound.