Never Love An Outlaw (Deadly Pistols MC #1)(9)

Sane, sweet, and easy. It wouldn't be the first time he used that phrase.

I'd hear it over and over again, almost every f*cking day, whenever I was washing my mouth out with baking soda and water, trying to forget the foul taste of latex and cherry flavored lube.

“Take a couple minutes to yourself, baby. I'll bring you some breakfast, leave you alone to get your head straight. You haven't figured out why you're here yet, and that's okay. Give it a few more weeks, a month or two, and you'll understand.” His rough palm patted my cheek, and I slumped down, holding myself in a fetal position until I heard the door close behind him.

Alone. Defeated. Confused.

I didn't believe him then. It didn't seem like it was possible for me to ever understand anything again.

Six months showed me how wrong I was. They showed me I didn't even know who or what I was. I'd been stripped down, rebuilt, recreated in sorrow and shame and dozens of anonymous cocks.

My ego, my self, my mind disappeared in a haze of sweat and smoke. My pimp gave me food, shelter, and weed. I'd never been much of a pot head before, but I smoked up without hesitation.

I used the stuff to take the edge off, to take me away from this hell for a few blissful hours. I took the only escape he offered.

Ricky kept his word. Greed held the bastard to his promises, the only thing that saved me from the wretched existence of the other girls I shared a brothel with.

He carefully controlled the men who used me, and he even went so far to test me each week, steering the roughest, dirtiest truckers and thugs to his other girls – all of them except the Deadhands he feared. I became the golden girl again, the same thing I'd always been, but this time there was no glamor or pride.

I was still a whore, a prisoner, and completely broken.

Every day I stumbled awake and rubbed my sore eyes, I wondered if I was dreaming this demented fairy tale. Ricky wasn't the only demon here.

The bigger ones showed up just a few weeks in, the first time the bikers came to the whorehouse. I learned not to stick my head out of my room and stare at the men from the Deadhands MC too long. Whenever I did, they started to ask Ricky uncomfortable questions about his 'hot, new piece of ass.'

The first time Big Vic came after me, the brute shoved his gun in Ricky's face, told him he wouldn't hesitate to kill everybody here if he tried to get in the way. The pimp caved, pleading for his life, and begging them not to ruin his pet project – me.

I realized I wasn't the only one here forced into prostitution. Ricky groveled to the bikers. He feared them.

One day, he warned me point-blank, told me that if they ever wanted more, he couldn't protect me anymore. They'd take my virginity and whatever else they wanted, and he'd let them, since the alternative was ending up in a shallow grave.

These were the monsters in my story, my life, an endless parade of them. Some days, they were all I saw. I wondered about the yin to my yang, all the joy bled from my life.

It wasn't fair. There wasn't any balance.

Where was my prince? Where was my happy ending?

There had to be more to my life than working for this grubby, cruel man who smiled like a crocodile and never paid me a single cent for my slavery. There had to be another way out besides ending up with a sicker, richer, more brutal stranger, right?

I hoped and prayed. The months wore on, long and cold and brutal. The police didn't find me.

Life in the whorehouse became such business as usual that I wondered if I'd ever known anything else, or if my life in the big ranch on the hill had been a dream. Only the faded white summer dress hanging in my closet told me the truth.

Some nights, I held it close, trying not to stain it with more tears, my only reminder that another world was possible. I'd had it once, and had it stolen away.

“Don't forget,” I'd whisper to myself. “There's a whole, wide world beyond this place.”

Yes, there was. I'd known it once. Mountains, grand family picnics, and beer fueled laughter with friends and soft, playful men. Times with girlfriends and lovers who laughed at the gaudy billboards along the highways, who'd never dream of stepping foot into a trucker's spa with the sticky floors and hallow-eyed women.

I thought about Becky, Crawford, and my parents the most. Too bad they weren't as easy to hold onto as my dress, the last thing I'd worn as a free woman.

Lately, I couldn't even cry about them anymore, and I wondered why they felt so empty. My memories were fading with my mind, perhaps. He'd already taken away my name, depersonalized me the second week, when he started calling me Fresh.

Fresh, as in Fresh Meat. At first, I despised it, but little by little, it wore me down, until I forgot what it even felt like to be called by anything that wasn't fit for a low budget whore.

I accepted my name. It fit this hell, and most anything else I could imagine.

Sooner or later, I had to stop waiting, wondering, hoping. I had to accept my fate.

There were no heroes in this story, and there wouldn't be a happy ending. I was going to be Ricky's until the bitter end.

And if I wanted to stay alive, I had to be dead inside to the man who took me next. Strangers used my lips, my tongue every single day, and giving up more of my body didn't bother me anymore.

But I wouldn't give them any joy, any spark, any life. I had none left to give.

Meg died. Fresh lived.