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And, again, I saw his point.
There was no denying the logic there.
The old ladies, they were protected out of a need to respect your brothers. No one would so much as look at Summer, Lo, or Janie sideways for fear of getting their eyes gouged out by their men.
Maze didn't have that kind of protection.
If someone got a couple too many in them, got turned down by one of the bitches, or were the sick kind of fucks who liked a fight, liked to take what wasn't freely offered, Reign was right... there was no way to promise that couldn't happen. And while there would be consequences, he was also right about it not taking away the damage. Maze would be left to have to deal with what happened.
I could see that Reign wished he had the ability to trust all his men implicitly. And while he did trust the ones he had appointed himself: Cash, Wolf, myself, and about three or four of the other guys... there was nothing he could do about the other men, the ones who had been around when he was still biting ankles. He couldn't kick them out because of something they might be capable of. And because he couldn't do that, he couldn't tell Maze she was as safe as any of the other men.
It wasn't right.
It was unfair.
It sucked.
But it was how things were.
"Get her better," Reign broke into my thoughts. "Then get her out. The sooner, the better."
With that, Reign left me alone with Maze.
Every few hours, I got her conscious enough to shove some fever reducers and pain medicine in her before she passed back out again. She didn't eat. She barely drank. And by the time I opened that door on the sixteenth hour, I was seriously worried I'd have to wrap her up and drag her to the hospital to get some fluids in her. But I walked in to find her on the bed, somewhat alert, and I felt a weight slide slightly away.
Her fever was still around one-oh-four so I dragged her to the bathroom and got her in the tub. Tired, weak, sore, and miserable, her defenses she wore as a impenetrable shield slipped away. Once she was done fighting me in the water, she curled up on her side, her hand holding onto mine as she passed out. She slept peacefully for half an hour as I tried to drain water and refill with hotter water three times over until her skin stopped feeling like you could fry an egg on it. But even after that, I stayed there with her for another twenty minutes, stroking my hand up her side or through her long purple hair.
See, the problem was, I fucking liked Maze.
It was easy in my lifestyle, our lifestyle, to start to view women as nothing more than pieces of ass. For men like me who spent the majority of their time at the clubhouse, most of the women we came into contact with were clubwhores, biker groupies, women who just wanted to fuck a bad boy. And while, in recent years, the arrival of Lo and Janie and their own brand of gender-bending badassery, they weren't around nearly enough to make a big change in everyones' ways of thinking.
Having Maze around constantly as she slaved around the compound on next to no sleep and did whatever one of the members asked her to do, which included: getting drink refills, cooking dinner, cleaning sheets, scrubbing floors, changing television stations, scrubbing bikes, and fetching fucking darts, and doing so without so much as a whimper of complaint, it was easy to be reminded how sexy it was to have a strong woman around.
Being obedient, however, did not mean she was meek. Far from it. I couldn't walk past the group of probates without overhearing her saying some smartass, well-crafted rib to one of the men, doing so mostly in good-nature toward Duke and Renny, dismissively toward Fox, and maliciously toward Moose. And while she was extremely careful to never be disrespectful to patched members, there was an air of defiance, of quiet rebellion. Hell, I'd even heard her address a demand from Reign himself with a sharp tongue but a huge, fake ass smile that made it impossible to call her out on her behavior.
And despite her staying far away from any of the physical altercations between the members and her fellow probates, I'd once caught her screwing around with Renny in the yard one night and damn if she didn't best him twice.
Whoever Maze was, whatever her background, there was one thing that was clear: Maze had some kind of training. And it wasn't just a self-defense class at a local fire station. It wasn't all solar plexis, instep, nose, and groin. Renny had moved to grab her from behind and in the space of a blink, he was over her shoulder and on the ground. She anticipated his advance before he even moved. She blocked, deflected, then advanced herself. And she did it with a sort of practiced ease that made me wonder if maybe she grew up with some kind of martial arts.
