Rowe by Jessica Gadziala

CHAPTER EIGHT

Rowe

She’d literally run away from me.

I hadn’t even seen her use her phone, but she’d clearly done so since that was the only reason Malc’s truck pulled into the parking lot of the learning center.

That was how much she didn’t want to be around me.

She called in someone else to take me home.

After she’d had some sort of energy orgasm right on top of me.

I wouldn’t have believed such a thing existed if I hadn’t watched her experience it firsthand. And there was no denying that she’d climaxed. It might have been a while at that point, but I knew when a woman was coming.

What I didn’t expect, though, was the look of complete and utter horror after she realized she’d had an orgasm.

Horror.

This was Billie we were talking about. The woman had no shame in her sex game. I’d heard the woman talk about orgasms at least a hundred times over the years. I couldn’t imagine she ever felt upset or embarrassed by a climax before.

Except with me.

I won’t lie. Whatever high I’d been riding at seeing her come, it was overshadowed by the knife in the gut sensation at knowing she didn’t want that with me.

“You look freaked,” Malc said, lumbering up to me. “Were they all naked?” he asked, wincing.

“What? No. No one was naked.”

“That’s a first,” Malcolm said, shrugging. “Were they chanting and shit?”

“No. They, ah, they were breathing,” I said, shaking my head.

I’d never given much thought to tantric anything before. But after breathing with Billie, and seeing the couples get really fucking into each other with just breath work, I had to admit there was something to it. Apparently, if you got as advanced as Billie, you could come without having any actual physical stimulation.

“Oh, yeah, Billie is a big fan of that. She once told me I was breathing into my chest, not my stomach. Whatever the fuck that means. You ready to head out?” he asked, gesturing toward the truck that suddenly looked very far away.

“Yeah,” I agreed, wondering if I would be seeing Billie before bed to help me out of the brace.

Somehow, though, I knew I wouldn’t.

And, as it turned out, I didn’t.

I didn’t see her in the morning, either.

No.

She had Gracie stop by to bring me more tea, help me with the salve, then get my brace on me. At lunchtime, it was Willa. Then around bedtime, it was Hope. Of all people. Looking annoyed and tired.

“What the fuck did you do to Billie that she’s pawning off patient care on us?” Hope asked, ripping at the velcro none too gently. “You realize she lives for this shit, right?” she added, unscrewing the top of the jar of salve. “Me? I have the bedside manner of a feral cat,” she said, giving me a slight self-deprecating smile before moving behind my back.

“Not gonna say I didn’t notice that,” I admitted, wincing a bit as she rubbed the salve in a lot more roughly than was necessary.

“So, the question is, what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said, shrugging.

“This shit burns,” Hope grumbled, wiping her hand off on her pant leg. “And bullshit. You had to have done something.”

“I didn’t. I went with her to her class because Dezi had to run off on me to do some club shit.”

“Which class?” Hope asked. “Did you mock it? She really doesn’t like when you mock it.”

“It sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”

“Hey, am I really to blame when it is a bunch of people in a room screaming at the top of their lungs like they’re being hacked apart with machetes?”

“Nice visual. And why were they screaming?”

“I don’t know. Screaming yoga or some shit. Letting out your emotions. I like my emotions locked down inside where they belong,” she added, smirking.

I was pretty sure her shrink-like parents wouldn’t agree with that. Renny was the club profiler. And he’d married Mina, who had the same position up at Hailstorm.

“I hear she’s going to start some sort of swearing yoga class. That might be up my alley,” she said, smirking. “But, yeah, I’m not blind, you know.”

“I never said you were.”

“Billie was all over you. Until one day, she wasn’t. And then she was avoiding you. She probably would have kept on doing that, but Malc asked a favor. And none of us can deny him anything since he asks for so little and puts up with so much. But if she suddenly is going back on that… something happened.”

“It didn’t,” I insisted. Or, if it did, I didn’t understand it. “Maybe you should be grilling Billie, not me,” I suggested, getting small eyes from Hope.

“I’m going to let that snippy-ass tone slide since you’re in pain,” she said, brow arching up even as she took a step back and lifted her shirt, revealing a nasty fucking bruise that covered half her stomach. “I know a thing or two about being an asshole since this happened,” she said, shrugging.

“What happened?” I asked, stiffening, ready to charge out of the clubhouse and take on whoever had done it, broken back or not. No one put their hands on the princesses. True, I didn’t know any of them as long as the actual family members, but they’d long since become family to me too. Maybe especially because I didn’t really have one of my own.

“Work,” Hope said, shrugging.

“Are the men you work with always on jobs that have them roughed up, or is it just you?” I pressed. At that, her jaw went tight, and I had all the answers I needed. “Hope, fucking quit,” I said, shaking my head. “You’ve put up with nonstop fucking abuse there. Quit. You don’t need that job.”

“They’re going to fucking respect me,” she said, voice taking on a rough edge.

I couldn’t claim to relate to that desire. But I’d also never been discriminated against based solely on my gender. I didn’t know what it was like to feel the need to prove your entire sex as capable as the opposite sex. I’d also never been constantly beaten down over and over no matter how hard I tried, how good a job I’d done.

I guess if you’d been through all that shit, you had to get the outcome you wanted, or it would feel like you went through all that shit for nothing.

“I get it,” I agreed. “But don’t kill yourself for a bunch of assholes who can’t see your worth either.”

“If I’m not dead yet on this job, it isn’t going to happen,” she said, gaze dark enough for me to believe she wasn’t exaggerating. Things had been a lot worse than she’d let on about. “But if you say anything to any of our people about it, I’ll break the rest of your back.”

“Understood. But if you need help, Hope, you got a lot of people.”

“I want to do it on my own,” she insisted, chin jerking up. “And, besides, we weren’t supposed to be talking about me. We’re talking about what happened with you and the hippie sex goddess.”

“Hippie sex goddess?” I repeated, lips twitching.

“Can you think of a better descriptor?” she shot back, smirking at me.

“I guess not. And nothing. Nothing that I can pinpoint anyway. Maybe she was just having an off night. Or forgot she had another naked potluck to attend.”

I swear at those words, Hope went green in the face.

“I was dragged to that the last time. I wasn’t told about the clothing strongly discouraged thing. I just walked in with store-bought tacos because I don’t have time for cooking. And there they were. Cocks and balls and boobs all out. Eating. They were eating while naked. I’m pretty fucking sure that isn’t sanitary, y’know? Hightailed it out of there quick. But… fine. Keep your secrets. Billie is a shit liar. I will get it out of her.”

With that, she was gone. And I was left wondering if I would see Billie again.

As it would turn out, I wouldn’t the next day.

Or the day after.

It wasn’t until the third day that, I guess, she hadn’t been able to find anyone to come and drop off tea and a replacement salve because on the way back from therapy, Cary turned the SUV off the main road and headed in the direction of Billie’s place.

“Wait, Billie asked me to come in,” Cary said, giving me a look that was, at once, apologetic and somehow knowing. I guess when he lived quite a few more years than I had, you came to know shit, to read a situation without having any details.

“She’ll live with the disappointment,” I said, shrugging, and climbing out of the vehicle.

I couldn’t claim my back was feeling any better. If anything, I was just adapting to the pain a bit better. It was still there most of the way, a piercing, stabbing sensation that could steal my breath if I wasn’t careful and purposeful with my movements. But I managed to move around more, get some shit done so I felt like a productive member of society, and brother of the MC.

There was a package outside of Billie’s door, and I managed to do this awkward squat assisted by the door molding to get down low enough to grab it, then stand back up before knocking.

“Cary, it’s open,” Billie called, tone light, breezy. The tone she used with everyone except for me, it seemed. “I can’t thank you enough for—oh,” she said, her air rushing out of her as she froze in her rush across the room.

Seeing her was a kick to the gut.

Hell, to the balls, given what she was wearing.

Which wasn’t much.

This woman was inviting a man damn near old enough to be her pop-pop into her apartment when she was walking around in a vivid purple thong and a cut-off white shirt that was just barely covering her tits. Tits that weren’t contained by a bra, I might add.

She must have been chilly, too, because her nipples had pebbled up against the fabric, making me painfully aware that not only did she have her belly button pierced, and her hood pierced in the past, but she also presently had her nipples pierced.

Fuck.

That was information I was better off not knowing.

Yet there was no un-knowing it.

“Hey, babe,” I said, needing to clear my throat to get rid of the husky edge to my voice. “You had a package,” I added since she was still standing there—a deer in the headlights—with wide eyes and parted lips.

“Oh, ah, put it with the rest,” she said, waving toward her coffee table.

It was cleared of the usual crystals and tarot cards. In their place were three other boxes the identical size of the one in my hands.

The other boxes had their tops off, revealing their insides.

Which looked like handwritten notes and sketches of, well, Billie.

Dozens of them.

“The fuck is this?” I asked, waving toward one of the boxes where a naked sketch of Billie sitting cross legged with her hands at prayer position was sitting on top of the others.

“Sketches?” she said, brows knitting.

“From who?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, shrugging, and turning to walk away.

I repeat: turning to walk away.

In a thong.

I like to think of myself as a good man. But I wasn’t good enough to avert my gaze. No, I watched as her bare ass bounced as she walked away from me, going into the kitchen, and grabbing the steaming mug on the counter.

My cock, still not cooperating most of the time when it came to having any discernible sensation, hardened as I stood there, my system too overwhelmed with different sensations to know how to act.

First, there was the desire.

Second, the concern over the boxes.

Third, the confusion about why she was being so cold with me.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“Well, they have no address on them,” she said, shrugging as she lifted her mug with the bolt print declaring Evil Feminist Slut to her lips and blowing on the hot liquid.

Even more confused, I looked at the box I’d brought in. And, sure enough, there was no label on it. Meaning it hadn’t gone through any sort of delivery service.

“Someone dropped this at your door,” I declared.

“Yes.”

“Someone dropped naked sketches of you in four separate boxes on your doorstep, and you’re not seeing this as a problem?”

“I have a lot of friends and acquaintances.”

“Do your friends and acquaintances often leave you gifts?” I said, spitting out the word because there was nothing that seemed like a gift in those boxes, “without saying who they are from or why?”

“I can’t say they do. But it’s a nice gesture.”

“A nice gesture. You’re fucking spread eagle in this picture,” I snapped, reaching for it, and waving it in the air.

“Lotus.”

“What?”

“That’s not spread eagle. That’s lotus pose.”

“Not sure that distinction fucking matters in this situation.”

“Why are you so angry?” she asked, brows pinching as she watched me.

And, well, it was a valid question, wasn’t it?

She wasn’t my girl, my mom, or my sister.

Why did it matter to me who sent her what?

Needing more ammunition, I dropped the picture, grabbing the note instead.

“I walk up behind you when you sit in lotus. You don’t know I’m there. I kneel down and slip my fingers into your tight cunt.”

“It’s a little amateur,” Billie decided as my hands tightened on the paper, threatened to shred it to pieces in my anger.

“You cry out, not ready to be penet—what the actual fuck, Billie?” I snapped, rage a crackling sensation through my chest. “This fucker is writing you notes about assaulting you, and you’re criticizing his writing?”

“My mom and aunt are librarians. They instilled in me the importance of good writing. Especially good smut writing.”

“This isn’t smut, Billie. This is some sick fucking stalker shit. At your front door. That you leave fucking unlocked.”

“Why are you raising your voice at me?” she asked, and it was only then that I realized I had done just that.

“You need to take this seriously. This is a threat.”

“Not everyone who fantasizes about assault is a rapist. Do you know that a lot of women actually have fantasies about non-consensual sex? It’s a thing. And it doesn’t mean they want to be raped. So someone else writing about doing it doesn’t mean they actually want to do it, or would ever act on the fantasy. It’s a power thing.”

“Billie, this is not some goddamn sex-ed class. This is your life. And your body.”

“Yes, mine,” she said, chin lifting. “Not yours. So stop concerning yourself with it.”

“If you’re not going—“

“I can hear the yelling in the hallway,” Cary said, appearing behind me. “Need a mediator?” he asked, looking between the two of us. And I wasn’t quite sure how he managed not to eye-fuck Billie in all her almost-naked glory. But he didn’t. I knew. I was watching closely.

Why?

Well, that was a good question, wasn’t it?

“You can tell Rowe that a little fan erotica is no big deal,” Billie said, making Cary’s brows draw together until I shoved the paper at him.

There was the briefest of pauses before Cary turned to her.

“Sweetheart, this is not from a fan of any sort,” he said, tone calm, rational, a father figure of sorts in that moment. “This is not complimentary. I’ve known bastards like this. They’re fucked in the head. You don’t want them in your life. Let alone leaving things like this to you.”

“You both are making a really big deal out of a really small thing,” Billie insisted.

Cary’s gaze cut to mine, seeming to understand the raised voices he’d walked in on.

“This isn’t okay, honey,” Cary said. “And if you’re not going to take it seriously, we are going to need to.”

“Oh, don’t bring the club in on this,” she grumbled.

“Your father would cut off my balls if I didn’t come to him with this information,” Cary insisted. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I just let it slide. Fucked in the head men like this escalate. I did time with predators. This is how it starts. No one starts their path of becoming a rapist by starting with rape. They start small and escalate as each step loses the thrill. Until they get to the rape itself. And they always do. I’m sorry to say, but you don’t have a choice in this. I have to call your old man. And Chris up at Hailstorm.”

With that, he excused himself out into the hallway to do just that.

“You’re both overreacting,” Billie insisted, crossing her arms over her chest. But she reached up to tug at her pussy flower earring, an unmistakable sign of discomfort or anxiety.

“I’d rather we overreact and keep you safe than under react and you end up hurt.”

“I am not uprooting my life again,” she insisted. “I am tired of going into lockdown. I’m not doing it again over this little nothing.”

“Think you’re gonna end up doing whatever your old man decides is best.”

“He’s not the boss of me either,” Billie insisted. “This isn’t the eighteen-hundreds. He doesn’t get to make my decisions for me.”

“Sugar might not be able to make your decisions, but I’m not stupid, babe. You listen to your old man. He’s not someone who overreacts.” Out of all the men, Sugar was probably the most likely to react the exact right way in any given situation. I imagined many years with Billie’s crazy-ass mother, then having to raise his hippie-ass daughter had only made him even more accepting of shit.

But if Sugar decided something was worth a big reaction, you knew it was serious. I had no doubt he was going to side with me on this.

“Honey, your ma and dad are on their way over,” Cary called, peeking his head in. “And some of the guys,” he added.

“Ugh,” Billie grumbled, making her way out of the kitchen, then into her bedroom.

Maybe I should have left her alone.

She was in a mood.

She was pissed at me for sticking my nose in her business, and potentially forcing her into yet another lockdown. But I couldn’t seem to reason with myself as I followed her into her bedroom, finding her pulling a pair of jean shorts up her legs.

“I’m not trying to be a dick, babe,” I said, watching as her head snapped up, her gaze landing on mine.

I wasn’t sure what, exactly, was in her gaze right then.

Anger or resentment or hurt.

Hell, maybe a mix of all three.

Whatever it was, though, it wasn’t a look I’d ever seen on her face before. It wasn’t one I liked seeing there, either. But I got a sinking suspicion that I was the only reason a look like that existed for Billie.

She quickly fastened her shorts then made her way toward me, barely pausing in her stride when she passed me to murmur, “You never have to try to be a dick, Rowe.”

I wasn’t sure anyone had ever heard something close to a true insult from Billie before. I’d clearly fucked up royally to be the first.

But soon, Sugar and Peyton were making their way in. It almost felt wrong to hand over naked sketches and violent threats about their daughter to them, but it wasn’t like I could shield them from the severity of the situation either.

“I mean, if you are going to write threats, you could at least try to add in some adverbs,” Peyton grumbled as she read the last of the notes.

If there was any wonder in anyone’s mind why Billie turned out how she did, you only had to look to Peyton. Billie’s mom was maybe even more over-the-top than her daughter with her mermaid colored hair, tattoos, and piercings. The woman drove a hearse for fuck’s sake. And read what everyone else referred to as “horror porn.” On top of that, she often helped her sister, Autumn, give sexual education lessons at Autumn’s adult toy store Phallus-ophy.

Her father, Sugar, had grown up in an MC then eventually joined the Henchmen later on. He was the calm to Peyton’s chaos most of the time. Except in situations like this, where Peyton was surprisingly composed, and Sugar was practically shaking with rage.

I guess I would be too if someone sent shit like that to my daughter.

“These were dropped at her door?” Sugar asked, looking at me.

“Yeah. No mailing label. He brought them here.”

“Why are you asking Rowe? This is my apartment,” Billie insisted, crossing her arms.

None of the women took too kindly to the way the Henchmen would breeze in and take over every situation. It couldn’t be easy, when you’d been raised up to be strong and independent and capable, to have the men around you constantly swoop in and brush you aside.

“Because you, my girl, can’t even be trusted to lock your door,” Sugar grumbled.

“It’s not like I just forgot to do it, Dad. I just don’t lock the door.”

“You’re making it worse, not better,” Sugar said, exhaling hard.

“You and Rowe are overreacting,” Billie insisted.

“You have a stalker who is threatening to rape you, and I’m the one overreacting?” Sugar shot back.

“Dad—“

“Baby girl, we are not going a couple rounds on this. You want to bitch at me about wearing leather or buying bottled water, fucking fine. But this is not trifling shit. This is serious. And thank fucking God Rowe had the sense to bring this to us, so we can do something about it.”

“Ugh, it is never good when one of you decides to ‘Do something’ about a situation,” Billie sighed, dropping down onto her sofa, absentmindedly reaching for a crystal on the coffee table—pink with white and black streaks in it—and closing her palm around it. “What are you going to do?”

“For starters, make sure this door has no choice but to lock,” Sugar said. “A security system. Maybe even someone in the house at all times to keep an eye on you. And you, like it or not, are going to take a gun.”

It was no secret in our circle that Billie was hardcore anti-violence. The only person who could get her to carry a weapon of any sort when she went out with the girls was Malc. And even then, it was something a lot less deadly than a gun.

“I won’t be doing that,” Billie said, shaking her head.

“I get it,” Sugar said. “Peace and love and fucking chanting at the moon and shit. I get it. But too fucking bad. I want you to have a gun.”

“You’re talking to her like she’s harmless,” Peyton said. “She’s not harmless. She’s passive.”

“Babe, I’m not seeing much of a fucking difference here,” Sugar admitted, shoulders slumping.

“Harmless is something you are. Passive is something you choose to be. You’re not passive if you are capable of violence. And since I once watched our peace and love and chanting at the moon daughter knock the teeth out of someone she saw spiking someone’s drink at the bar, I think we can assume that if push came to shove, she would do what is necessary, and what she’s been trained to do.”

“Fine. Yeah. But she needs a gun to do that.”

“Maybe we can find some sort of compromise,” Peyton suggested.

“I want a gun in this apartment,” Sugar insisted.

“And I am not going to carry one,” Billie said, digging in her heels.

“Fine. Then the compromise is one of our guys will be with you in this apartment at all times,” Sugar insisted. “We might have some shit going down with the fuckers who ambushed us on the drop, so I will have to ask around about the schedules of everyone. But for now, you don’t have shit to do, right?” Sugar asked, looking at me.

I could practically hear Billie’s spine and shoulders stiffening at what we both knew what was coming.

“No. I’m free.”

“You got a gun?”

“Main and a throwaway,” I agreed, nodding. “Always.”

“Good. Then you’ve got the first shift while her ma and I head to the club and Hailstorm to figure some shit out. We’re taking these,” he added, grabbing the boxes, shoving one on top of the other.

“Dad, Cary can…” Billie started, but trailed off when her father stormed out of the room.

“I’ll calm him down,” Peyton said, ruffling her daughter’s hair. “Not much riles him up. But someone trying to hurt one of his girls? That’s his trigger. Once there is a plan in place, he will be more reasonable.”

“Yeah,” Billie agreed, but she was only getting tenser.

“You take care of my girl,” Peyton said, moving to stand in front of me. “Or the next pair of testicle earrings I wear will be yours.”

“Got it,” I agreed, nodding. “I won’t let anything happen to her.”

“Honestly, she’s pissed right now. I’m kind of more worried what she might do to you,” Peyton said, touching my face for a second, then giving it a slap. “Have fun with that!” she called, breezing out.

And leaving me alone.

With a caged animal who was used to absolute freedom.

And looked ready to fight her way out with claws and teeth.

This was going to get interesting.