Through A Glass, Darkly (The Assassins of Youth MC #1)(23)
I’d been correct when I’d pictured the house at Train A. Cumming Street. It was ultra-modern even by 1995 standards. The living room at the front was a half-moon of floor-to-ceiling windows, and now they were all lit up with no blinds obscuring the view. From the living room, one could walk out onto a deck and look out at the fiery valleys leading up to the heights of Zion.
Gideon was standing out there now, smoking a cigarette. He must’ve seen my truck, being practically the only vehicle parking at the curb on the entire street, but he didn’t wave or anything. I practically skipped like a girl to the front door. He opened it before I could ring the bell.
“Hi.” Now he was smiling, and it seemed to me he’d spruced up a bit for me. Maybe that was just my imagination, my desire to feel wanted, flattered. And how spruced up can a biker get when his only choice of attire is the leather vest and jeans?
Still, it was not my imagination that he’d at least washed his clean-cut face with soap. “Hi, Gideon. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you doing this for me. You don’t know how hard it is to get prescriptions out in Cornucopia. They really frown on us going to any doctor at all.”
He shut the door behind me. “You look beautiful.”
What? Had I just heard correctly? I scanned his face for any clue. He just had this enigmatic smile as he led the way up a flight of stairs to the living room. There was a wet bar there holding nothing but a bottle of whiskey, but Gideon took a beer from a small fridge.
“Soda pop?” he asked me.
“How’d you know? You must’ve noticed we’re allowed to drink in Cornucopia, but I personally don’t.”
“I noticed.” He handed me a 7 Up. “And this is what you ordered the other day in the bar.”
“Oh.” That reminded me of my shame—that I’d overstepped my boundaries and told a goddamned federal agent some things I shouldn’t have. “Things have been rough lately.”
“That why you were meeting with an ATF agent?”
So that was why he’d called me here. He could’ve easily given me the medication by meeting me at the High Dive or even just some street corner, a drive-by hand-off. I set down my pop and went to stand by the window. The sun was just setting, washing the canyons in nearly fluorescent shades of orange and pink. I had never ceased to be amazed by the beauty of southwest Utah. “Yes. Since you’re a good friend of Bronson Carradine, you probably heard that they’re sealing my daughter to an elder in the church. She’s only fifteen and it upset me greatly. I wanted to know if Bronson could do anything about it. I was angry with Allred and other elders. I wanted vengeance, I guess you call it.”
“What. The. Fuck.” Gideon came to stand behind me. It was dark enough that I could see our reflections in the ceiling-high glass, like two ghosts who had come to revisit the flaming mesas of their happiest days. He stood so close behind me I could feel his body heat. His hand hovered over my shoulder as though afraid to touch me. I remembered him putting his hand over mine while we sat at the bar table. It was the closest, most sexual touch I’d received since my husband had died. His hand just resting on mine sent pangs of lust shooting directly to my sex, almost as though he was licking at my very core. Later that day, I’d not even had to barely touch my tiny vibrator to my clitoris before I’d exploded in an almost religious blast of climax.
“Yes,” I said, weary now. The subject had burdened my mind so heavily over the past week. “Next month she’s set to be sealed to him at the Court of the Patriarchs. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
He said softly, “Unless you take her and run.”
I looked up at the reflection of his face. His eyes met mine in the glass. “But how? Anywhere we go, he’ll hunt us down and drag us back, like he did when Field died.”
“Stay here. I just bought this house. No one’s coming to drag anyone away from any house of mine.”
I sputtered. “But—”
He spun me around as he sat on the arm of a couch. The house was understandably bare of furniture and I sort of liked it that way. Just a couch, a couple of lamps, a coffee table, for now. He took both my hands in his, forcing me to stand between his outspread thighs. I hadn’t been in such an intimate position with any man other than Allred in five years. The novelty of it made my heart race, made the inner walls of my labia expand like they were filling with blood.
“But nothing. Does your church not allow divorce?”
“Well, yes, but…”
He frowned. He was even more handsome when showing concern for someone. “But what?”
“But no one’s ever divorced The Prophet.”
“Surely someone must have. He’s got what? Forty wives? Odds are that at least a couple of them can’t stand his f*cking evil, twisted, perverted f*cking guts.”
I had to giggle at that. “Well, probably. But I think I hate him the most.”
“Besides, you’re not legally married,” he needlessly pointed out.
“Right. Which means it’s not a legal issue, it’s more of a question of power, of control.”
This seemed to concern him most of all. Standing, he took my chin between his fingers. Shiz, he was tall. Or maybe I was used to the five-foot-eight Allred standing this close to me. “Nobody has ever had the upper hand with me. I’m a rebel, pure and simple, to the bone. Got me in trouble in the military. Got me in trouble with my club.”