Rowe by Jessica Gadziala

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Billie

I was planning on teaching my class, then rushing home to throw together some roasted veggies for Valen’s welcome home party.

Well, Valen and some guy named Voss that Layna had texted me to call him “all the way fuckable.”

I’d even gone out to grab the pretty carrots: orange, yellow, red, and purple.

Sure, most of the guys in the club weren’t exactly big veggie eaters, but most of them would snag a carrot or potato or asparagus spear just so I didn’t get my feelings hurt that they preferred the meat-heavy meals. And I considered it a win whenever I could get anything that grew from the ground in the stomachs of those bikers.

“I get the feeling you don’t like me,” I said to the taciturn Brooks sitting in the passenger seat of my van.

“I never said that.”

“See, that’s just it. You haven’t said anything to me. You never do. Is it my titty earrings?” I asked, waving at my round earrings with their brown, half-hardened nipples.

“Your… oh,” he said, noticing them for the first time. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Wear all the tit or cock or pussy earrings you want. Doesn’t bother me.”

“Then what is it? Why don’t you want to talk to me?”

“I don’t talk to anyone.”

“Yeah, well, that’s weird, don’t you think?” I asked, looking over at him as I stopped at a light. “The whole point of the MC is to form bonds.”

“It’s a job.”

“It is, but it is more than that. Well, if you let it be more than that. I can’t figure out why you wouldn’t take advantage of that. Unless you don’t like us.”

“I like you all,” he said, shrugging.

“Is it because you feel like an outsider? I know it is a lot of family, but now with Dezi and Cary and this Voss guy, you’re not the only non-legacy guy around anymore.”

“It has always been part of it.”

“Is that why you work so hard too?” I asked.

“Guess so.”

“So… who was it in your life who first made you believe your worth was determined by how much you could do for them?” I asked, watching as his head whipped over, looked stricken.

“Shit,” he said, shaking his head.

“I know, right?” I said, nodding. “Usually, when we have issues like that, it stems back to one person.”

“Kind of like how you’ve been avoiding your family and the club because of Rowe?” he asked, and it was my turn for my head to whip over at him. “Yeah, I know,” he said, nodding.

“What? How?”

“Think the people in the club family get caught up in their own shit. I am watching it unfold from the outside. So I see more. Like the way whenever you weren’t eye-fucking Rowe, he was watching you with sad eyes. Then glancing over at your old man, or Reign, the men in your life who he probably thinks wouldn’t approve. And then one day, you could barely stand to look at him. And you stop coming by. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out he said something, you took it to heart, and didn’t want to see him again.”

“You know, Brooks, with observation skills like that, you could be this generations Renny.”

“Hey, I’m not that bad,” he said, shaking his head.

“Oh, don’t be so hard on Uncle Renny. He’s a misunderstood soul. And he raised Hope who is one of my favorite people ever. So you know he has to have a lot of good in him. Even if he does like pressing sore spots to watch people squirm. Speaking of squirming… this might not be comfortable for you,” I told him as we pulled up to the learning center.

It sounded crazy, but it seemed almost a little eerie as we parked. That thought made a strange chill move up my spine and through my body until an actual shiver coursed through my body.

What was that about?

“A yoga class?” Brooks asked, brows furrowing. “Oh, are they going to be naked?”

“Oh my God. Why does everyone assume that if it involves me, there is going to be nudity?”

“History?” Brooks suggested, smirking at me.

“Careful, Brooks, that was dangerously close to being a joke. We can’t let the world know you are a human underneath all that robot armor you wear. No, this is a couples’ tantric sex workshop, and—“

“Say no more,” Brooks cut me off, holding a hand up. “I will hang outside the door,” he said.

“Good choice,” I said, thinking of Reggie and his insistence that there be no lookie-loos around. I mean, I liked Brooks. But not in the way I liked Rowe. And it would almost feel akin to cheating to have to demonstrate to a class with Brooks.

Even though Rowe and I weren’t even a couple.

Hell, we hadn’t even sealed the deal yet.

But it felt like we were heading in that direction. Slowly. At a glacial pace, really. Thanks to circumstances beyond our control.

So, yeah, tantric sex with Brooks was out of the question.

Besides, things were starting to heat up with the couples in the class. And, quite frankly, if you weren’t used to that sort of thing, it could be a little uncomfortable to watch them, all the women climaxing and the men coming without the actual ejaculation. It was all just a bit much. And I wasn’t sure Brooks was quite at that level of sexual freedom yet.

Hell, sometimes it got so heated that even I got the slightest bit uncomfortable.

“I will be right here,” Brooks said after the class showed up and filed in, and I’d gone to pull the door closed.

“You might want some earplugs,” I told him with a smile as I closed the door.

And with that, the class got going, and I was lost in the lesson for a while.

By the time it was over, I swear the whole air in the class was charged with sexual energy. You could feel it sparking off the walls, igniting little flames all over your body.

Which, of course, made me long for Rowe as I went about cleaning up the mats and putting away the speakers, and grabbing my iPod.

“I know, I know. Your poor, virgin ears,” I said with a smile to the wide-eyed Brooks I met when I walked out the door.

“You’re telling me that no one was fucking in there tonight?” he asked, skeptical brow raised.

“If by ‘fucking’ you mean penetration or friction of any sort, then no. No one was fucking.”

“Listen, Bills, I know fucking sounds when I hear them,” he said, shaking his head.

“You know orgasm sounds. Orgasms don’t have to do anything with fucking.”

“If you say so,” he said, falling into step with me as we made our way toward my van.

It was weirdly quiet in the lot. Usually the woods were alive with crickets and cicadas, the rustling of wind through the trees, the occasional startled bird call.

But everything was silent.

Another chill moved through me as we each got to our doors.

I had mine half open.

Brooks hadn’t even reached for his door.

But it was too late.

For either of us to get inside.

For us even to react.

Because the shadows weren’t shadows at all.

And before I could even scream, one of those shadows was coming up behind Brooks, raising something that looked like some sort of pipe, and slamming it down into his head.

My heart sped into overdrive, leaving me reaching for my keychain where I kept the eye-gouger thing that Malcolm gave to me and the pepper spray my dad insisted I carry.

Hope’s words played around in my head in that split second where I realized they weren’t just paranoid ramblings, but the cold, hard truth.

If your self-defense item is not already in your hand when you realize you are in trouble, it is already too late to try to reach for them.

And it was.

Before I could even slip my fingers into the little holes in the eye-gouger, something was slamming into the back of my head, and that was the last I knew of anything for a few precious moments.

When I gained consciousness again, I was in a trunk, bouncing around at what felt like a break-neck pace. Whoever had me, they were in a hurry, that was for sure. Which made sense. Since Brooks would be waking up soon, if he hadn’t already. And as soon as he realized I was missing, he was going to call in the entire club to come find me.

But would they be quick enough?

I wasn’t an idiot.

People didn’t beat you and your friend over the head to have you come over to drink tea and talk about which planet was in retrograde next.

“Ugh,” I grumbled as my fingers searched for the release latch into the backseat.

See, I’d done this simulation more than a dozen times in the past. Sure, at the time, I’d been more than a little bit sullen and frustrated by the forced exercises my aunts had made me do. Stuck in a trunk, zip-tied to a chair, any situation where a normal woman would be paralyzed with fear and uncertainty, my family had thrown me into, so that if it happened for real, I wouldn’t hesitate. I wouldn’t waste precious seconds. I would stay calm and act.

I just never figured any of that would be practical for me.

For Hope and Vi and Layna?

Sure.

But for the ‘normal’ girls like me, and Gracie, Luna, and Andi? Not so much.

Well, no. That wasn’t a great example since something similar to this had happened to Andi too. But unlike her, I didn’t have medical training that would help me stitch up an injured cartel member under the watchful eye of their dark, dangerous, yet sexy leader.

I had no useful skills to take advantage of.

But I could still be, you know, taken advantage of.

My stomach twisted hard at the idea as the car took a sharp turn so quickly that it made me lose my grip, and slam hard against the back of the trunk before I threw out my arms and legs to steady myself.

Damnit.

I should have just jumped at the opportunity to go to the clubhouse, stay there for a while. At least I would have gotten to spend my last few days with Rowe. Even if we couldn’t be, you know, intimate in any way with my family all around. We could still be around each other without the dark cloud of disappointment and rejection hanging over my head. It would have given me a few extra bright moments to cling to in case this was going to be the end for me.

No.

I couldn’t let myself think like that.

That was like Rule Number One in the “If You Find Yourself In A Life-Or-Death Situation…” handbook.

You had to have the right mindset. The second you started to let doubt sow itself, you were all but assured to harvest the worst possible outcome.

Focus.

I needed to focus.

Planting my feet and one of my arms hard enough that my joints ached in objection, I freed one hand to grab for the seat pull again.

But as soon as my fingers grabbed it, the car slammed to a stop, leaving me flying forward, knocking my face against the back of the seat, the pain ricocheting up my chin and jaw.

I could barely adjust to the pain when the doors were slamming.

And then the trunk was opening.

Whoever it was, they were still in shadow, their hoodie pulled up over their head, making their face disappear into the dark depths.

A grumbling noise escaped whoever it was, but before I could even anticipate the movement, my attacker was ramming something into my head for a second time.

When consciousness came to me again, it was reluctantly. Like some part of me knew that consciousness had nothing positive to give me. As such, my eyes stayed closed for a long moment as the pain shot through my skull.

I’d had migraines exactly twice in my entire life.

This pain was similar to that, but in both hemispheres since I’d gotten struck on both sides of my head.

Keeping my eyes closed, I focused on watching my breath, trying to control it, knowing that pain management could be achieved with enough concentration. It was part of the reason they pushed Lamaze on birthing moms.

As soon as that started to work enough for me to at least be able to think straight, I tried to mentally push aside all of the expected, but useless thoughts.

The ones where I worried about what was going to happen to me.

The “r” word hung like heavy drapes on my mind, making it nearly impossible to part them, think beyond them. My stomach swirled in response as all those warnings and statistics I’d been told my entire adolescence came back to me.

None of them worked in my favor. Not since I was already at a secondary location. Not since I was outnumbered.

I hadn’t seen my attacker, but there was no way that there had only been one if they got from Brooks to me that quickly. So I was up against two men instead of the one I’d been expecting, the “one” who’d been sending me notes and art.

I ran those notes back to myself, wishing I’d studied them with the intensity of my relatives who took it more seriously than I had. But I was certain they had written as a singular. “I am going to.” Not “we are going to.”

Sometimes, dominant and submissive types worked together in preying on women. One did the passive stalking, taking pictures, doing research, and watching whatever sick acts went down once the woman was in their control, while the other one only performed the torment.

One got off from the act.

The other got off watching it.

It wasn’t as common as just a normal sexual predator, but it happened. It wasn’t unheard of.

God, I hated being a part of that statistic.

Almost as much as I hated the idea of something I placed such a high personal and spiritual value on being used as a weapon against my body.

I knew this wasn’t going to end with me walking away from this situation, either. I wasn’t going to be allowed to live, or…

No.

No, I couldn’t let myself think like that. It made me powerless. I wasn’t powerless.

I’d been trained for this.

No, I hadn’t taken the training as seriously as many of my cousins had, but it was still there, still a part of my muscle memory. I just had to stop letting my mind run away with me, and focus on what needed to be done.

First, I needed to stop being such a chickenshit, open my eyes, and take in my surroundings. I couldn’t get myself free if I didn’t know what exits were around and if there were any weapons I could improvise to protect myself as I fled.

Taking a slow, steadying breath, I forced my eyes open.

I guess a part of me had somehow imagined I’d be in a dark, cinderblock-walled basement with no light and very little chance for escape. That was how they described it in the movies, right? Hell, it was usually how my aunts described most escape scenarios. We’d even been forced to try to wedge ourselves out of those tiny little casement windows. Those of us who had the boob and hip gods pour a little more generously didn’t ever manage to squeeze out of those.

But I wasn’t in a basement with the ever-present scent of must and the chill that hung in the air no matter the season, and no way out but the stairs that led up and into who-knew what sort of situation.

No. I was in a bedroom.

Directly in front of me, wedged up against a wall by a window was what looked like a full-sized bed covered in an old, painstakingly crafted quilt. Like someone’s grandma had made it.

Strange.

But okay.

That didn’t matter.

What mattered was the window. And the fact that it didn’t have bars or wasn’t boarded up. It was just sitting there, inviting me to get free from my restraints, throw myself out of it, and run like hell.

I was suddenly thankful that at least one of my jobs kept me in decent shape since I didn’t exactly go out of my way to run on a treadmill or anything like that. I at least had a chance. Especially if I could get out quickly and quietly, which would give me the head start I needed to get away from them.

Okay.

First things first.

Restraints.

I had to get out of my restraints.

I gave my wrists a good tug, trying to figure out what I was working with. Zipties would be best. Handcuffs weren’t impossible either.

But I found myself bound with rope.

“Damnit,” I hissed to myself as I started rubbing my wrists together, trying to get the ropes to give me just enough leeway to at least turn my hands so I could try to undo the knot. The rope burned against my skin as I moved, biting in, likely leaving marks.

But those would heal.

I had to think past the pain.

Taking slow, deep breaths, I focused on that instead of my wrists, drawing my focus inward instead of out as I kept rubbing and pulling.

I finally felt the smallest bit of slack, maybe enough for me to slip one hand out, then the next, if I really tried, when the door behind me opened.

It made no sound. But I swear I could just feel it slide open.

My stomach tensed as my breath got caught in my chest.

I swear I felt my pulse thrum in my throat, temples, and wrists.

The hair on my arms and neck prickled as I felt the air shift as whoever it was moved into the room behind me.

Bile rose up my throat as a hand ran along the edge of my hair. It was a soft, barely-there touch. The kind of motion you’d expect from a lover, not a predator. Which made it all the worse in my opinion.

My body went ramrod straight in the chair as a body brushed my shoulder as it started to come around me.

I had a moment to process that it didn’t feel right before the person was in front of me, and the floor fell like it dropped out from under me.

Not two men.

Not even one man.

No.

It was a woman.

A very familiar woman, in fact.

“Lizzie?” I asked, my voice sounded choked and airless.

Lizzie?

The sweet, shy wife of my pain-in-the-ass tantric student Reggie?

In what world did that make any kind of sense?

“Hey, Billie,” she said, shooting me a nonthreatening, soft smile as she moved over toward the bed, kicking out of her flats, then climbing up on it and sitting in lotus like she would at the beginning of her classes. She even put her hands at her knees and sat up straight. Like we were just a couple of friends having a chat. Not a captor and her prisoner.

But wait… no.

There were two.

Two.

Which meant one of them had to be Reggie, right?

Lizzie was one thing. I felt like I could maybe talk her into letting me go.

But Reggie?

Reggie was a different story altogether. He was cold and harsh and unnerving. Hell, how many times had I said to myself that he had creepy eyes? This was why. He was a creep. I always felt like the eyes told you a lot about a person. There was always just “something” there when a person was off in some way. Something that made a chill run up your spine, that activated your fight-or-flight response.

How many times had my aunts told me to listen to that instinct? To immediately respond to that flinch because sometimes something inside of us could sense trouble before even our brains could process it.

But I’d just kept pushing away that weird feeling I had about Reggie.

Why?

Because he was paying? Because, for once, I let greed make me second-guess myself?

Damnit.

And Lizzie, well, I just plain had her wrong. I thought she was, for all intents and purposes, just a good woman stuck with a bad man. We’d all seen it a dozen times in our lives. So many good women who just couldn’t break free from their toxic partners.

Maybe she was just a victim after all. Maybe she was brainwashed and just as much a victim as I was in a way. But I couldn’t seem to muster too much sympathy for her right in that moment since she was free to walk around, and I was tied to a damn chair.

Anger—unfamiliar and overpowering—coursed through me, boiling my stomach, sending flames across my skin.

I was not a violent person.

But my mother had been right.

I was passive, not harmless.

And, God, right that moment, I wanted to do some harm.

“Where’s Reggie?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm and light, not wanting to set her off if she had some sort of trigger.

“Oh, he’s coming. He wanted to shower and make himself extra clean for you,” she said, sending me a sick, hollow-eyed smile.

“I, ah, I got your boxes,” I said, trying to wiggle my wrists without my shoulders moving, which was a lot harder than it sounded in my head. “Why didn’t you sign them?” I asked, feeling my lips shake with the effort to keep my tone conversational and friendly when I felt like I was choking on the bile in my throat.

“They were a surprise, silly,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You can’t sign a surprise gift.”

“Right. Yes, of course. That was a silly question, wasn’t it?”

“Did you like my drawings?” she asked. “I’ve always liked to ‘doodle,’ as Reggie calls it. He thought they looked a lot like you, so we included them in the packages.”

That was why the notes had been from a singular stalker.

Because Reggie had written those.

And Lizzie had done the supposed artwork.

“You did really good,” I said, smile so fake it hurt my cheeks. “They really looked like me.”

“Yeah?” she asked, smile bright. “Did I miss anything?”

“Ah, well, I have a tattoo on my side,” I told her. “But you couldn’t have known that,” I added, not wanting her to think I was criticizing her.

“I took some artistic license since I didn’t have the full reference to go off of. But that’s okay. Because I will soon!” she said, bouncing a little in excitement as I realized that while she may have been a victim in her own way, she was also very, very sick herself if she was excited about them forcibly removing my clothes so she could see the ‘full reference.’

“Oh, yeah?” I asked through barely open lips.

“Totally. We can’t wait to see all of you. You know what I think?”

“No. What do you think, Lizzie?” I asked.

“I think you maybe have some very naughty piercings. Like… here,” she said, motioning toward her own breasts. “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the outlines of the rings through your shirt. Reggie isn’t too happy about it, but I am excited to see them. And to play with them,” she said, nodding a bit maniacally. “Do they hurt?”

“When I got them done?” I asked. “A little.”

“No, like if someone tugs them a little.”

“Ah, um, it depends,” I said, stomach flip-flopping.

“Well, I am excited to see,” she said, drumming her fingers on her knees. “I haven’t really been with a girl before,” she said. “You always talk about how sexuality is fluid for many people. Is it fluid for you? Do you like girls?”

“I, ah, I like people,” I said. “It doesn’t really matter to me what their gender or gender identity is.”

“So you have been with girls.”

“I’ve been with people,” I said, doubling down on what I felt mattered.

“We see a lot of girls at your apartment.”

“Those are my cousins. I have a really big family,” I told her. “And we are all very, very close. So we see each other pretty much every day.”

I hoped my hint was subtle but clear: They will notice me being gone. They will look for me.

“I actually have a family party tonight,” I added, doubling down.

“I think you’re going to miss that,” Lizzie said, wincing like she was sorry for it. “Reggie says we need a really long time to play with you.”

“Play what?” I asked, tone bright, innocent.

“Oh, in all sorts of ways,” she said, smiling. “Reggie says he’s been thinking about you a lot. It’s why he doesn’t want to touch me anymore. But that’s okay. Because now we have you.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Yeah. Reggie thinks about being inside you. He tells me all the time.”

“Oh, really?” I asked, pulling a bit harder on my restraints.

Reggie was in the shower for the time being. Which meant I only had Lunatic Lizzie to deal with. And she had the crazy person edge, sure, but she was small. And I had a lot of training and a hell of a lot of motivation to get away.

I just needed to keep her distracted. I could just about get one hand free. If I could keep her focus on my face, I could get it out, then get my other hand free.

My ankles, well, I was just going to need to be quick about that. Or I could attempt the old-fashioned duck forward and slam the legs against the wall move. It would alert Reggie. But it would get me free faster.

“Yeah,” Lizzie said, picking at a pull in the knee of her pants. “He said he thinks you have a tight inside,” she said, cheeks flushing.

“We all do,” I said.

“Reggie said he wants me to feel it too,” Lizzie said, smiling up at me. “He said he wants me to put my fingers in your front while he is inside you in the back,” she said, and I barely managed to stop from rolling my eyes at her childish descriptions of basic anatomy. “He said he bets you get really wet down there. I don’t. I’ve always needed to use something.”

“There’s no shame in using lube,” I said, a knee-jerk defense of it, even when I was talking to my damn future rapist. “Many women don’t get wet. Sometimes it is a medicine thing or some girls just don’t, no matter how much they want it.”

“You’re going to want it,” she declared, nodding enthusiastically. “Reggie says you love being…”

“What? Being what?” I asked, wincing at the sharpness in my tone, knowing I needed to tone it down.

“Fucked,” Lizzie supplied, pressing her lips together like she said something bad. “He said you love being fucked. And stuffed in both holes. And having a, you know,” she said, pointing toward her waist, “down your throat.”

Ugh.

I could do without the vivid visuals.

But the more I kept her talking, the less she was paying attention to my movements. And I was able to slip one burning, aching wrist out of the rope finally.

“Do you like doing those things with Reggie?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Why only sometimes?” I asked, finding the knot, but it required my wrist at an angle that sent shooting pain up my arm and shoulder.

But it was that pain or far worse when Reggie came in. So I kept at it.

“Well, sometimes Reggie, he struggles,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s why we were so glad to find you. Once we found you, he had no trouble getting hard again. Rock hard,” she added, eyes excited as I worked hard not to recoil from her words. “He calls me your name sometimes. We even have a wig just like your hair. I will put it on, and he will take me from behind so he can imagine it is you.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“Bother me? No. I want to keep Reggie happy. And he gets so happy when he thinks of himself buried inside of you.”

“That’s… that is very nice of you,” I said, forcing a smile.

“He was really unhappy that one night…”

“Which night?” I asked.

“That night when you brought your friend to class. He didn’t like seeing him there.”

“Why not?”

“Because he didn’t deserve to be close to you,” Lizzie said, eyes burning, looking crazier by the minute.

“But… but Reggie wanted me to get closer to him,” I reminded her.

“He told me he wanted to know what you looked and sounded like when you were, you know, heated up before we finally brought you here. But he was so angry,” she said, shaking her head. “He took me on the side of the road on the way home,” she said. “Very, very hard.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He didn’t want to hurt me, he wanted to hurt you,” she said, shooting me dark, empty eyes. “But now he is too excited to remember that. I didn’t forget though. I think I might play with you a little hard,” she said, shooting me a smirk I couldn’t call anything but evil. “I’ve seen some videos, you know.”

“What kinds of videos?” I asked as a surge of relief flooded through me when the knot loosened. I was just quick enough to keep the rope from falling to the floor.

“The kinds where men use their whole hand, sometimes even their arm. You know… inside a woman,” she said, eyes alive.

Okay.

Maybe I wasn’t entirely correct in thinking Reggie was the most dangerous of the two of them.

He might have been a disgusting stalker and potential rapist.

But Lizzie was out of her goddamn mind.

Screw slow and careful.

I had to get the fuck out of there.

Even as the thought crossed my mind, though, I could hear the shower water cutting off.

“Oh, we’re going to have fun now!” Lizzie said, clapping her hands.

No.

No the absolute fuck we were not.

I had to get myself out of there.

Immediately.