Phoenix’s Plight by Tiffany Casper

 

“It ain’t crafting. It’s artwork.”

- Heathen

 

Chapter 6

Heathen

After he had finished the last embellishment on her gift, he drove over to her house and hoped she wouldn’t be there. For once in his life, he didn’t want to see the sadness on her face when he told her that he couldn’t spend time with her on her birthday.

It made him feel like the biggest failure of all.

Grabbing the small bag out of his saddlebag, he placed it right at her front door and off to the side, and hoped no one would mess with it. Since it was closing in on four-forty-five, he figured she would be home soon. She also had that Ring doorbell by Amazon with a camera on it, so if someone did try to take it, that person could be caught and he would show no mercy on them.

The moment he made it back to the clubhouse, he headed straight for the bar and grabbed a bottle of Jack. That was a bad idea, but he needed something to calm the beast inside of him.

The beast had been raging for closing in on a month now. When he had left to go to her after some punk-ass had bothered her, his fucking phone rang, signaling it was Powers. So, it had been almost four weeks now and he was itching to have her.

But since they were waiting on a new Dove to come to them tomorrow, they had to work out her plan. And since the woman had a child, this came first.

The sound of screeching tires was what had alerted them that something was fucking wrong. On top of having to abandon June on her birthday, now this?

The men in the main room all went to the front of the courtyard.

“The fuck?” Gage asked.

They didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“Holy shit,” Cam stated as he ran out to the gate.

They all followed him, and that was when they saw the body curled up in itself lying on the pavement.

The body had dark brown hair—well, that was what it looked like, except it had been matted with blood.

Cam knelt down and rolled her over so they could get a better look at her.

“What the fuck?” She was beaten and bloodied almost to the point of unrecognizable.

But it was Gage who recognized her.

“Holy shit.”

“What?” Powers questioned.

“She’s a Dove,” Gage said in a low whisper. Then, he knelt and picked her up. He carried her inside the clubhouse with all of the others keeping a lookout, making sure that there were no signs of danger.

The moment Doc walked into the room that they had set up for medical, he cursed.

Their doctor was on the payroll and he came whenever they needed him. How he managed it and still worked at the emergency room, Heathen didn’t know, but he was grateful for it.

A half-hour later, Doc walked out of the room with a grim expression on his face.

“Fuck,” Powers muttered.

“She opened her eyes, and when she saw Gage, she said she was finally safe. I had administered morphine earlier to help with her pain, but as soon as she said she was safe, she let go,” Doc said remorsefully.

“Son of a fucking bitch,” Savage hollered as he threw his bottle of beer at the nearest wall and shattered it.

“Get me her fucking file,” Heathen said low as he glanced at Skinner and received a nod from him.

“Yeah,” Cam said as he headed for the office.

An hour later, they sat around the table in church and poured over every bit of intel they had. They had also gotten the plan together for their newest arrivals.

As soon as they had the right course of action, Heathen, Linc, Gage, Skinner, and Savage all mounted their bikes, with Zeke driving the black van that they intended to haul some cargo back home in. Powers, Cam, Pipe, and Clutch had stayed back at the clubhouse.

Two hours later, they made it to their destination.

They all dismounted and walked to the house. Heathen brought his boot up and kicked in the front door. Fuck, that fueled the beast.

Walking inside, he hated the view before him. Fucking drug addicts. Nothing but little bags of white powder were strewn all over the coffee table.

Then he saw the scum, the man with his head thrown back while some woman was going down on his cock. But that wasn’t what had his attention. No, it was the man’s bruised-up knuckles and the scratches on his face.

“Well, what do we have here?” Heathen asked to no one in particular.

The man slowly opened his eyes. That must have been some good head because he hadn’t even roused when Heathen had kicked open the door.

“What the fuck?” the girl screamed. “You just pissed in my mouth!” The men with him couldn’t hold their laughter. That was undoubtedly the best thing he had heard all day.

“Well, some men have pissed themselves at the sight of me. Glad to know I still got it.” Heathen reached inside his kutte and grabbed his knife.

Twirling it around, he walked behind the man who had finished pissing himself and whose cock was now lying flaccid and limp.

Poor guy.

Not.

Heathen grabbed the man by the back of his shirt and stabbed his knife into his shoulder blade. The yelp of pain that came from the son of a bitch’s mouth was music to his ears.

He hauled him out of his house, hearing Savage tell the girl to wash out her mouth and get the fuck out of here.

Then, he heard her seductive reply. Looked like Savage would be having a woman on the back of his bike for the night.

He threw the asshat into the back of the van after he pulled out his knife, wiping the blood from his blade on his pants.

The moment he mounted his bike, Gage had lit a fire on the man’s house.

With the cover of night, they headed back to the clubhouse.

It didn’t seem like it took as long to make it home as the drive up there did, and that was bad news because his anger was now simmering on the verge of exploding.

Parking his bike, Heathen nodded to Powers where he stood in the front courtyard, his arm around Lil. Lil didn’t make a sound as she saw Heathen and Skinner carting the asshole from the back of the van to the shed.

The evil grin that marred her face told Heathen that Powers had indeed informed her.

They would be having a toast for that Dove. She would have her justice served on a silver fucking platter.

Grinning, he went to his table of little tricks while Skinner and Cam placed cuffs on the man’s wrists and hoisted his body up into the air with his feet dangling.

Not saying a word, Heathen grabbed his blowtorch and lit it up.

The whites in the man’s eyes were a stark contrast to his tanned skin.

Looking at Gage, Heathen asked, “You want to have the first few pounds of flesh?”

“Fuck yeah.” Gage grinned as he went at the asshat with everything he had.

The kidneys and ribs were bruised already.

“Is it true the man was getting head and then—” Powers began.

“Yeah. The sight of Heathen made the man piss himself while his dick was in the girl’s mouth.” Linc fucking roared with laughter after he told Powers.

Powers smirked. “Same woman on the back of Savage’s bike?”

“Yep,” Heathen said with a nod as he brought the blowtorch to the man’s dick and smiled when the fucker tried to wiggle away. The howls of pain made the beast calm just a little.

“That man has some fucking kink I don’t want to even think about,” Powers said nonchalantly as he left the shed, smiling the entire way back to the clubhouse.

After the man slipped into the blackness from the pain of having his dick burnt off, Heathen quickly soldered the artery closed so the man wouldn’t bleed out.

Yet.

Turning the water on, he gripped the nozzle and sprayed the man in the face, causing him to sputter awake.

“Come on, man, you may be pale, but the human body has approximately one-point-five gallons of blood. You may have lost point-four only.”

“Look man, I don’t know who the fuck you are or why the fuck you’re doing this . . .”

“I’ll tell you who the fuck I am. I’m your worst nightmare come to life. And this isn’t for me or my club, which is why you would have been leaving here and we would have dropped your body off at the hospital, eventually. This is for Claire.”

The moment Heathen said that name, the man visibly flinched. There it is.

“So, as you can see, no amount of whining or begging, or hell, even pleading with me is going to save you now. You should have just let her go.”

He took the knife and sliced off the man’s shirt, uncaring how far into the skin he went. It was then that he grabbed his cattle prod and began poking the man in the sensitive areas—under the arms, the middle of the back, the back of the neck, and all along the man’s spinal column.

He glanced at his watch and saw that it was already four in the morning. Knowing the beast was far from being ready to end this, he went to his fists.

And then he heard it, the sound of his last breath came from the man when Heathen punched so hard into the side of his head. Since he was six-foot-five, he still towered over the man, even though he was strung up.

And that was that.

Another abuser was off the streets and burning in hell for the rest of his miserable, unforsaken life.

Men like this, they didn’t deserve an ounce of mercy. No man who brought his fist to a woman did.

Savage came into the shed then, when he saw that Heathen was putting away his tools.

They wrapped the body in plastic, washed away the blood with bleach, and cleaned the shed. They carted the body into the van and dumped it where the animals could feast on what was left of him.

The moment he made it to his room, he showered, then he put his clothes in the fireplace in the basement and shared a drink with the MC to celebrate Claire’s life.

After he had gone rounds with the son of a bitch, and felt the beast inside of him rising even more with every punch, he glanced at the clock. It was then that he saw it was six in the morning and he had yet to go to sleep.

Heathen thought about hitting the gym to calm the beast, but his temper was through the roof. There was one person who would calm him.

After all that last night, he desperately needed her. He remembered this was her weekend off, so she should be off tonight. He didn’t go to her last night because it was one thing after another. And it had been her birthday.

So, for the first time, he used her number and called her.

He asked her if she could come to him, to keep an open mind, and to remember that she knew him. She knew him behind the mask that he always wore to protect himself. He learned at an early age that the only person he could depend on to protect him, was him. Nobody else was going to do it for him.

That didn’t include the brothers in his MC. They had his back just like he had theirs.

But he did know that there was one other person on this planet who he could count on to have his back, even though their relationship, or whatever you call it, was shit. It was June.

“I’ll see if I can switch with someone. I decided to work today and get double time. Can I call you back in a bit?” she asked softly. He knew that he had woken her up and felt like shit for it.

“Yeah, babe,” he said with his head hung low. Fuck, he needed her.

His hands were twitching, and he was getting antsy. He hated this feeling. He didn’t want to get drunk and he didn’t want to fuck anyone else.

A lot of his brothers and the club girls had been wondering why he’d quit cold turkey.

All he told them was that he found something that calmed him. And it wasn’t illegal.

There was only one brother who knew about June, and that was Clutch. But it was time for the others to meet her.

Hell, a lot of the girls still tried to get him to have some fun with them even though he wasn’t in one of his moods. But just the thought of being with someone who wasn’t June made his dick shrivel up.

The one and only time that he even remotely tried with another woman, he had to take a shower and wash his body three times after she had shimmied out of her clothes and his dick barely even touched her pussy.

He heard his phone ring, flipped it open, and placed it to his ear.

“Yeah?” he answered so low, he wasn’t sure she had heard him.

Clenching and unclenching his fist hadn’t seemed to be helping.

“I’m free. Do I need to pack for tonight and tomorrow or is this a few days?” she asked him.

“Tonight and tomorrow night. Just hurry, okay?” He hated showing this side of himself, but with her, he knew she would never hold it against him.

Maybe it was time to do some hard thinking about their arrangement.

“Okay, Johnny. Can you text me the address of where I’m going?” she asked sleepily, and the sound of his name through his speaker calmed him just a tad bit.

“Yeah, babe. Remember what I told you. You know me, so please keep an open mind.” There was a lot about him that she still didn’t know. And one of those things was that he was the club’s Enforcer. And he knew for a fact that she wouldn’t know what all that entailed.

Had she known, would she ever have allowed him to touch her pure body with all of the blood that was on his hands? Only time would tell, but was he really ready to chance it all?

It was partly why he waited so long to see her. He had to let his hands, and sometimes his body, heal before he ever brought that to her doorstep.

But if he wanted more from her—though he had no clue how much more—she was going to have to know that about him.

“Okay, Johnny, I will. I promise.” She didn’t know, but those two words helped bring him down just a little bit more. He trusted in her that she meant that, and he knew she did.