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My skin crawled with the feeling of a million tiny bugs dancing just beneath the surface. Would soap and water even be enough to take that sensation away?
“I think I need a shower,” I whispered, but then a shiver ran up and down my body setting every hair on end. “But I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to shower again without worrying and wondering. Oh God! How did I not realize? How could I have stayed there?”
“You’re going to stop being so hard on yourself, because my guess is that you didn’t have any other options.”
“I didn’t.” That’s when I lost it. Before I could even register what was happening, I was being pulled into someone’s lap as large arms wrapped completely around me, cocooning me in their warmth and safety.
“You got her?” Kip asked. There was no verbal answer to his question, but he spoke again as if there had been. “I’m taking Knox for the night. Stay here and get some rest, sweetheart.”
Sobs wracked my body as those arms held me tightly to a warm chest that smelled fresh from a shower.
“Shh,” he cooed so sweetly my brain had trouble processing who exactly it was that held me together. His actions seemed incongruous with who I thought he was. It couldn’t possibly be him.
“It’ll be okay,” Breakneck whispered softly to me as his fingers stroked gently across my back. If I was being honest with myself, I wouldn’t think he had it in him to be so kind and reassuring. Didn’t I just watch two prospects remove a woman from his room after she passed out during sex? It didn’t equate with him being the person to sit there and comfort me.I pulled back to look up into his eyes, though he appeared a bit blurry thanks to all the moisture in my own.
“Creepy Dave was going to kill me.”His head tipped forward in acknowledgement of that fact.“He would have kept my body.”Again, he repeated the gesture.“And done things to it.”
I couldn’t bring myself to fully spell out what the man would have done to my body. My corpse. “No one would have known I was gone. My dad isn’t even my father anymore. I’m too much trouble for the man who really did create me. Not that I wanted anything to do with him or my mother. Between the three of them, and my father’s – Jeremy’s – family, were all I had in this world. If Creepy Dave killed me, no one would have even looked for my body.” It was all one, giant horrified ramble as Breakneck held on while a soul deep tremble vibrated through me.
“You’re safe,” he assured me.
It was my turn to nod because I felt safe right where I was, in his arms even though I knew that feeling couldn’t be trusted.
“He will never hurt you again.”
“You made sure of that?”
“I did.”
“Okay then,” I whispered against his shoulder.
“Okay?” He asked, and again, his voice was so gentle it was like speaking to a different man than the one I’d had interactions with earlier that day.
“Thank you.” Those two words came out no higher than a whisper, but he heard. His arms tightened around me, and I placed my head back on his shoulder and rested there in his lap, enveloped in warmth, and comforted that the monster who wanted to kill me was no longer of this earth, but then a thought occurred to me.
“What about the others?”
“What others?”
“Kip said there were others, women I guess, in the basement.”
“They were all dead already, didn’t he tell you?”
“I know, but what about their bodies? Surely, some of them had families who would want to know.”
Breakneck sighed against the top of my head. “I know what you’re getting at, but we took this asshole out. If we go pointing out a truck load of bodies to law enforcement, we’ll have to answer some uncomfortable questions about where this asshole is.”
There didn’t really seem to be a good answer. I hated it that those families might never know what happened to their loved ones. Then again, did they really have loving families who would care, considering where they were living before they were killed? Hadn’t that been the reason I was in that house? No one cared about me enough to know I even lived there, let alone that I might have died there, too.
While it seemed completely out of character for him to do so, Breakneck continued to cradle me gently while my thoughts raced through horrible images of what that basement might have looked like. Eventually, the man holding me heaved a sigh and rested his chin on top of my head after tucking me back down into his body so that we were both as comfortable as possible.
“I’ll take it to the club to see what we can do about the victims. No promises. We’re still trying to work out some things about whether the videos were being streamed, distributed, or whatever else. It’s possible that me and Kip are on a tape somewhere beating the shit out of the asshole. If that’s the case, we can’t exactly tip the cops off. Whoever was working with him, or behind the operation, they’ll know that our club was involved in his disappearance and that’s enough of a concern without adding law enforcement into the mix.”
“Okay,” I agreed. I hadn’t thought about the possibility of them missing some cameras or there being evidence about whatever they had done to Dave. I didn’t want any of the Savage Vipers to get into trouble, especially since they had saved my life by getting involved.
“Nova, I need your word that you will not say anything to anyone - ever! If that’s what the club decides, you need to know they won’t tolerate you going against that decision.”
“I understand. You have it.” I thought about everything that happened, but I still worried. Those cameras made me crazy. Besides the creepy-crawly feeling under my skin, there was a concern playing at the back of my mind that Dave had shown those videos to someone else, and that I was still in danger.
