Craving Redemption Read online

  I was looking longingly at the front door, my heart in my throat and praying for deliverance, when all of a sudden it came. But not in the manner I would have ever envisioned.

  The door burst open quickly, and the man behind me paused at the entrance of the living room, giving me a glimpse of the men stomping into the house. They were huge, all of them, and they were covered in tattoos and matching black leather vests. They didn’t seem happy.

  There was a clear hierarchy in the group that even I could catch in my fuzzy state, and the leader was one of the most gorgeous guys I’d ever seen. He had to be over six feet tall and his shoulders were massive. He had full-sleeve tattoos wrapped around his arms, and I wondered vaguely how I could find him attractive when his face was covered in a full beard. If I hadn’t been ready to crawl out of my skin at the arm encircling me, I might have smiled. But the vibe in the room had changed when the men walked through the door and I just wanted to get as far away from the situation as I could. I was just a high school student from Mira Mesa; I just wanted to go home.

  “Jose,” Beard Guy nodded to the man holding me, his body coiled tight. “We got business. Why don’t you let her go and we can talk.”

  “Eh, this one’s mine for the night. Grab a beer while I bring her upstairs. I’ll be with you in a minute,” he replied with a forced chuckle.

  When his arm tightened to move me, I whimpered and tried again to pull his arm from around my waist. I knew if he got me upstairs, I wouldn’t be going anywhere that night, and saliva pooled in my mouth as I envisioned what that would entail. My head had dropped forward, feeling too heavy for my neck, and I slammed it backward, trying to hit anything I could. It felt like I was moving in slow motion, and I guess I was, because my head landed ineffectually on his shoulder. I left it there, too tired to fight.

  Beard Guy raised his eyebrows as he finally got a good look at me, and I could only imagine what he was seeing. My tank top had risen with the arm wrapped around me, my hair was falling out of its ponytail, and my mouth was slack, showing off my braces with little purple rubber bands. For the first time that night I hoped that someone would see me as I truly was—a scared sixteen-year-old girl with a mouthful of orthodontia and makeup covered pimples.

  Before I could speak, four men who’d been at the back of the house joined us in the entryway, and the energy in the room went from tense to electric. The man holding me let go and I dropped to the floor in a heap of arms and legs. As I scurried to get my limbs under me to crawl away, I heard the men arguing above me. Beard Guy never raised his voice, but the way he spoke was much scarier than Jose’s screaming in Spanish. I couldn’t figure out what they were arguing about, but at that point I was too concerned with myself to care. I got to my hands and knees and crawled toward the men in the vests. They had to take me with them. I didn’t care what their problem was with the guys at the party; they couldn’t leave me alone with them.

  When I reached the leader, I kneeled at his feet and slowly wrapped my arm around his thigh. He was warm and he smelled good and I wanted to rest where I was for just a moment, so I closed my eyes and laid my head on his thigh.

  “What the fuck?” I heard him rumble above me as his hand weaved through my hair. “You fuckin’ drug her?”

  He sounded pissed off, but I couldn’t tell who his anger was directed at, so I leaned my head back to look up at his face. He wasn’t looking at me, so I pulled on his pant leg to get his attention. He didn’t look away from the guys across from him, and just when I thought he was going to completely ignore me, he looked down and his brown eyes met mine.

  I didn’t think he would help. I was tired and disoriented and afraid, but I knew I had to try one last time to get away from there. It didn’t ever dawn on me that I might be exchanging one bad situation for another.

  “Please,” I whispered, but my word was lost in the sound of a gunshot. He shoved me sideways to the floor as another shot rang out, this one closer to us. I whimpered and tried to crawl away, but he held firm to my hair, pressing my face into the floor.

  I wondered detachedly if that was my punishment for disobeying my parents, and then everything went black.

  Chapter 2

  Callie

  I woke up on a scratchy comforter, and as soon as I opened my eyes, I squinted at the bright lamp in front of my face. Where the hell was I? It looked like a hotel room, but I couldn’t remember going to a hotel. The last thing I could recall was walking through the house party on Mallory’s heels, trying not to bring any attention to myself.

  I lay there quietly, trying to catch my bearings, when I realized I wasn’t alone in the room. I could hear two men’s voices, one deep and the other raspy.

  “You fucked up the meet, man. Slider’s gonna cut off your balls,” the raspy one joked.

  “Shut the fuck up. Jose was gonna cause problems and you know it. Had nothin’ to do with the girl,” the deep voice replied, sounding frustrated.

  “Yeah, but it wouldn’t have been a fuckin’ gun fight if you woulda kept your head.”

  “I kept my head. Someone starts fuckin’ shooting at me, I shoot back. It’s fuckin’ common sense. Jose’s low level, no one’s gonna miss him or his men.”

  Then, another voice joined the discussion.

  “Dude, it’s gonna look like you took Jose out over a piece of ass,” he said quietly.

  “Then you’ll have to explain matters, won’t you?” the deep voice warned.

  “Not sure what I’ll be explaining. You took them out and then grabbed the bitch and left. Looks pretty cut and dry to me…”

  “Brother or not, I’ll fuckin’ drop you where you stand.”

  “Fine.”

  I tried not to panic as someone grabbed a hold of my foot at the edge of the bed and shook it.

  “Grease, man, it looks like your girl is waking up,” Raspy Voice said to someone else in the room.

  I lay there silently, begging to be anywhere but in that fucking hotel room waiting to see what would happen. My head was starting to throb with the beat of my racing heart, and when someone spoke from right behind me, my whole body jerked.

  “Get your fuckin’ hand off her foot,” the deep voice growled. “Don’t fuckin’ touch her.”

  The tone of his voice was enough to clear all the cobwebs from my brain. Before he even finished speaking, I had pulled my legs up and pushed with my heels until I was sitting, curled into a ball against the headboard of the bed. As soon as I was as small as I could make myself, I jerked my head up to see what I was dealing with.

  There were four men in the room—really big men—and when I saw them I whimpered a little in the back of my throat. Three of the men were wearing matching black leather vests, tattoos covered their arms and they all had beards. They looked like they belonged in a Hell’s Angels documentary, and I swallowed hard, knowing they belonged to some motorcycle club. Motorcycle Clubs were full of criminals, weren’t they?

  God, if I had just stayed home like I was supposed to, I wouldn’t have had to deal with any of the mess I had created for myself. My eyes raced around the room, taking all of them in, and I was surprised when I saw the fourth man. He wasn’t wearing a vest, and his clothes seemed similar to the ones I saw every day at school. The only thing setting him apart from my peers was the Mohawk on his head and the tattoo that wrapped around his left hand. He didn’t seem scary until I looked at his face. He was scowling at me and his eyes were empty.

  I didn’t know what the hell I was doing there, but I knew it was bad. They looked scary. None of them were smiling, and for the life of me, I couldn’t think of one good reason that I would be in a hotel room with four men. My clothes were still intact—I even had my shoes on—but I was afraid they had been waiting for me to wake up.

  I eyed the door, but there was no way I could get off the bed and through it before one of them caught me. They were sitting and standing throughout the room, and one of the guys in a vest seemed to be standing guard in front of th
e door. Why would he be guarding the door? Oh God, I was in so much trouble.

  The second I was about to panic—crying and screaming for them to let me go—the man closest to me sat down on the edge of the bed. He was extremely good looking, and probably not that much older than I was, though he had a full beard covering the lower half of his face. When he reached out to lay his hand on my knee, I squeaked in fear and pulled my legs closer to my body. God, I didn’t want him to touch me.

  “Hey, not gonna hurt you,” he told me quietly. “You passed the fuck out and we had no idea where to take you. Now that you’re awake, you can call someone to come and get ya.”

  His voice, so different from the tone he’d used earlier, calmed me down enough that I was able to look up into his eyes. As soon as I saw them, I remembered the night in a rush of clarity. He’d saved me. He’d taken me out of that house with the disgusting guy that was trying to pull me upstairs. Before the thought was even finished in my mind, I’d launched myself across the bed and into his lap sideways, wrapping my arms tight around his neck.

  “Thank you. Thank you,” I told him over and over again, pressing my forehead into his neck. I didn’t realize that he hadn’t touched me until his hands gripped my upper arms and pushed me away from him.

  “The fuck are you doing?” he asked me, his eyebrows furrowed.

  “You took me out of there. Oh my God, thank you,” I told him again, straining against his hold.

  “Babe, I’m not sure if whatever you were on just hasn’t worn off yet, or if you’re fuckin’ naïve as hell, but you can’t sit on my fuckin’ lap,” he mumbled as he pushed me onto the bed.

  My face blushed beet red as I realized what I had done. The man wasn’t a policeman or a fireman. He wasn’t a family member. Shit, he wasn’t even like the guys I knew from school. He was big, strong, and completely rough around the edges. I’d been so thankful to be out of the house, I hadn’t grasped the actual situation I was in. I was surrounded by men that I didn’t know from Adam, and they were all staring at me as if I’d just sprouted horns.

  “I’m, uh, sorry,” I whispered, worried about what would happen next.

  “No need to be sorry. Just need to get you home. You got someone you can call?” he asked as he walked toward the dresser with a cell phone sitting on top of it. He tossed it to the bed, and I reached out quickly to grab it. I needed to get home, but my stubborn pride wouldn’t allow me to call my parents. I wasn’t sure what to do, but he was treating me like an adult, and for some reason I didn’t want to look like a kid in front of him.

  I should have been scared as hell, but I wasn’t. I was just … worried. I wasn’t sure what would happen next, but the guy didn’t set off any alarm bells. He’d protected me, and that’s what I felt—protected. I was pretty concerned with how things would play out, though. I couldn’t just sit there on the bed indefinitely, looking at the phone, while the men in the room watched me in silence. The man in the corner made my skin crawl a little, and though my protector seemed to be in charge, I knew with the slightest provocation that the man in the corner would make his play.

  “Um, I don’t have anyone to come get me tonight,” I told The Protector, “But I’ll call my Gram. She can come get me in the morning. She can’t drive at night,” I hurried to explain before running my tongue between my braces and my lips. My mouth was dry from whatever I’d drunk at the party, and my lips were starting to stick to the little metal brackets in my mouth.

  “Yeah. Call her. But tell her I’ll bring you home,” he grumbled, staring at my lips.

  “But—,” I started, but he cut me off.

  “No. You’re not staying the night in my goddamn motel room. Not gonna happen. Call your fuckin’ grandmother, or a friend, or your fuckin’ priest, but you’re not staying here.”

  His voice was so sharp that I felt my breath catch in my throat. I mean, I knew I was a nuisance, and I could tell that they didn’t know what to do with me, but he didn’t have to be so mean about it.

  I flipped open the phone and dialed the number from memory as The Protector went to stand against the wall, his eyes never leaving me. After only half a ring, she answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Gram. What are you doing up this late?” I put my hand to my forehead in embarrassment as one of the guys chuckled quietly at my attempt of small talk.

  “Callie? What’s going on? Where are you? This isn’t your number.”

  “Yeah, I lost my phone.” I looked up to see The Protector swinging my purse from side to side across the room. Okay, I guess I didn’t lose my phone. “Well, I mean, I couldn’t find my purse.”

  “Your purse? Why aren’t you at home?” she asked, and I could hear her leaning forward in her creaky recliner.

  “It’s a long story, Gram. I’m on my way—I have a friend bringing me to your house. If Mom calls can you tell her I’m there and I’m asleep?” I asked, crossing my fingers. Asking Gram to cover for me was hit or miss, I wasn’t sure if she would help me out.

  After a minute of silence, she answered slowly, “Yeah, I’ll tell them. But if you’re not here in an hour, I’m calling your dad.”

  I’m not sure what she heard in my voice, but she knew I needed her to help me out, and for once she wasn’t going to give me shit and leave me hanging ‘for my own good’.

  “Thanks, Gram. I’ll see you soon. Love you.”

  “Love you, too. Get your ass home,” she told me and then disconnected.

  When I looked up at the room, eight eyes were watching me closely, and it looked like the man who’d saved me had gone pale. I looked around the room, trying to figure out what the problem was, when the man by the door barked out a sharp laugh.

  “Holy fuck, Romeo. You decide to play fuckin’ knight in shining armor, and the bitch you bring home is jailbait.”

  Chapter 3

  Callie

  The Protector didn’t say anything as he moved around the room. He pulled two hoodies out of a duffel bag at the foot of the bed and handed me one as he pulled off his vest.

  “Put that on. It’s gonna be cold on the bike,” he instructed, most of his words muffled as he pulled the sweatshirt over his head and then threaded his arms back through the vest. When he lifted his arms, his black Metallica t-shirt raised just enough that I could see some sort of tattoo across the bottom of his stomach. I quickly looked away before he could catch me staring.

  I put the sweatshirt on and took a deep breath, noticing it smelled like him. His scent was a mixture of leather and surprisingly, Armani cologne. It was almost ironic, those two scents mixed together. Who was this guy?

  As soon as I had the sweatshirt on, I stood up and he handed me my purse so I could sling it over my shoulder. I knew that I should check my cell phone for messages, but I just didn’t think I could take any more drama. I decided to wait and see who had called once I was safe at Gram’s; I’d deal with everything then.

  I was lost in my head, trying to decide how I was going to explain everything to my parents when the Protector’s voice cut through the silence in the room. Half of his mouth was pulled up in a smile, his eyes were crinkled at the corners when he looked at me, and I just knew I’d been thinking out loud.

  My face burned in mortification as they watched me, but I straightened my shoulders and tilted my chin up as if they hadn’t just heard me talking to myself.

  “I’m Grease,” he mumbled, lifting his arm out to shake my hand. As soon as I took hold, he gestured with his other to the men in the room. “That’s Dragon by the dresser.”

  “Hey,” Dragon called out quietly, busy messing with the phone in his hands.

  “His voice isn’t usually like that,” Grease shared, a genuine full-blown smile on his face. “Got strep-throat from some chick with kids.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Dragon spat back, looking up from his phone.

  With a smile in his voice, he introduced the last two in the room. “That’s Tommy Gun by the door. The guy wi
th the Mohawk is my brother Deke.”

  The men both lifted their chins at me, watching me from their sides of the room, but didn’t say a word.

  He stopped talking as I nodded to the guys around the room, but he never let go of my hand, and I didn’t try to pull away.

  “I’m Calliope. Callie,” I replied nervously, wondering if I should have given them a fake name. It’s not like Calliope is a popular name, it wouldn’t be hard to find me if they were looking. Then I realized that Grease would be driving me to my Gram’s house, so it’s not like giving them my real name would’ve mattered anyway.

  “What kind of name is Grease?” I asked as he pulled me out of the room, following the other men as they strode down the stairs to the back parking lot. He was pulling me quickly, and my legs weren’t quite up to the pace he was keeping, so I kept stumbling over nonexistent dips in the concrete.

  “Only name you’re gonna get,” he answered, pausing for a second so I could catch up with his long strides.

  As we made our way out to the bikes, Grease never let go of my hand. I thought that maybe he was afraid I’d take off if he didn’t have a hold on me, but when I glanced up at the expression on his face, I knew differently. I wasn’t sure what happened in the room that I didn’t notice, but the hand-holding was for the men’s benefit, not mine. He was staking his claim.

  “Stand right here. Don’t move,” he ordered, placing me next to a big black Harley.

  “Um, okay…” I answered, wondering why we weren’t getting on the bike.

  He answered the question in my voice by walking six feet away to where the rest of the men were huddled at the far end of the bikes. I couldn’t hear a word they were saying, but the body language of Dragon and Tommy Gun led me to believe that they weren’t happy with whatever Grease was telling them. When my eyes moved to Deke, I noticed he was watching me, completely ignoring the conversation going on around him. When he smiled at me, his entire face changed and I smiled back, wondering why he’d given me such a weird feeling before. He seemed nice enough.