Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 33520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 168(@200wpm)___ 134(@250wpm)___ 112(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33520 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 168(@200wpm)___ 134(@250wpm)___ 112(@300wpm)
Yeah. I think I could do that.
I loved my life…
Chapter Three
Lemon
“You settling in better?”
Gina smiled and nodded her head slightly. “Yeah. The guys have been really great. They check on me every day and never…” She trailed off, her smile fading. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears but she sniffed a couple times, cleared her throat, then looked up at me again, smiling. “They’re all really nice to me. I’m sure they’d scowl if they heard me say so, but it’s the truth.” Gina reached out and squeezed my hand briefly before letting go and folding her hands onto her lap. “I know it’s all your doing. I appreciate it.”
“Pffft. They’re all Alpha males. I seriously doubt they do anything they don’t want to.”
For the first time since I’d found out how hurt and terrified Gina had been of the men in the club, even as she couldn’t leave because she had no place else to go, the other woman gave me a wry grin, looking more like the woman I thought she was. “Really? You telling me they’ll willingly take me on rides through town on a pink Harley because they want to?”
I grinned. “OK. You got me there.” We shared an amused moment before I continued. “Honestly, I think they all enjoy it.” I waved my hand dismissively. “Not the pink Harley thing. Spending time with you. In a platonic way. I doubt any one of them have thought of a woman as other than a sexual object since they were twelve. They like you.”
“I know they’re trying to make things up to me. While I appreciate it, it’s not necessary. I know they were unaware of… you know. The situation.”
“That doesn’t lessen the trauma to you, or the guilt to them.” I reached over and covered both her hands with one of mine and squeezed. “You may not realize it, but even though they’re all morally gray, they’re not bad men. They have their lines they won’t cross. All of them consider what they did to you as not only crossing the line, but obliterating it. If they’d known you were fucking them against your will, they’d never have allowed anyone to touch you. And that bastard, Hammer, would have been dead long before he finally was.”
“How’d he die?” Gina winced as she asked her question. Then she shook her head before swallowing and looking up at me, her expression equal parts relief and pain.
How the fuck to answer that question? How to tell her the man she’d once thought she loved had been systematically and surgically taken apart piece by piece? While he was conscious. And made to watch through an overhead mirror. I still had nightmares about it and I hadn’t been close to him.
“Gina, do you really want to know the answer to that? I’ll tell you if you insist, but I really think you might want to just accept he’s dead and leave it at that.”
She stared at me for long moments before nodding her head slowly. “Yeah. I can see in your eyes that maybe I don’t want to know.”
“Just know it was sufficiently brutal and that, while he didn’t suffer everything you did, he suffered. Very fuckin’ much.”
Two tears overflowed her eyes and spilled down her cheeks before Gina swiped them away with an angry swat of her hand. “You know, he told me he loved me. That he wanted me to live with him here so he could take care of me. He said everyone who lived in Grim Road had to earn their keep and he’d find something for me to do that wasn’t too strenuous. I was in a car accident when I was younger and my back sometimes spasms. He told me he’d promised my work wouldn’t be that strenuous and he didn’t lie. All I had to do was lay on the bed and spread my legs. The men would do everything else.” She sniffed as another tear spilled down her cheek. “He actually made it sound like he’d done exactly what he promised me.”
“Hammer was a first rate bastard, Gina. He wasn’t worthy of you or this club. The men here aren’t like Hammer.”
“I know,” she said softly, but I could tell she wasn’t really convinced.
Then a thought occurred to me. “Gina? Did any of the guys, you know, hurt you? During sex?” I was trying to tiptoe my way through a fucking mine field and thought I wasn’t doing such a bang-up job.
“There were a couple who were rough, but not overly so. They’ve both talked to me. Which surprised the shit outta me.” She gave a small laugh, trying to play off the situation as a big misunderstanding when she was still obviously traumatized. “None of them seem like the type to explain themselves.”