Page 5 of Digg

“Fine. Whatever you say.” I shrug. Time will tell if he’s like every other guy around. Even Hyram lied to me when he thought he ought to.

“I do say. Now, get on back to that frilly bedroom of yours and get to petting that needy little pussy, so we can get on with the day.” He crosses his arms, tree-trunk sized biceps flexing the cotton of his T-shirt to the max.

“And don’t think I won’t know if you try to trick me and skip it. I’ll know, and if I have to come get you off, you’ll regret it. These fingers are a lot thicker than those dainty digits you got. Am I clear?” As far as threats go, that’s not much of one.

Still, I hustle back down the short hallway to my room. A naughty impulse takes over, and instead of closing the door behind me, I leave it cracked a bit. Not so much he can see much more than the foot of the bed, but enough he’ll know I’m obeying him.

Do I want to touch myself while a shockingly demanding stranger waits in my living room after demanding I masturbate? I wish I could say I don’t. But a lifetime of clinging to routines coupled with the rollercoaster influx of hormones, thanks to pregnancy, make it impossible. The pregnancy also makes it impossible to get right to business without a quick pit stop in the bathroom to take care of the morning necessities fear had momentarily overridden. I use the toilet, wash my hands and brush my teeth before going back into my bedroom with its cracked open door.

I lie down on my bed, my back propped against the pillows, and watch the doorway. When Arlo stays true to his word and doesn’t follow me, I slip my left hand under my shirt and cup my breast. I trace my short nails in smaller and smaller circles around the bumpy edge of my areola until they catch on the knot at the center of my nipple. The sharp little tug plucks that cord of arousal connecting my breast to my clit, and my core clenches.

“Louder,” Arlo’s gruff voice calls out. He sounds closer than when I first entered my bedroom, so I know he’s taken a few steps toward my room. Instead of stifling my need, knowing he’s listening to my reluctant show sends a frisson of liquid heat to my pussy.

What is wrong with me that I want to obey this stranger who has broken into my house? Supposedly, he’s here with the blessing of my overprotective brother. I have no way of knowing that for sure, though. I can blame the pregnancy hormones, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration. For the past three weeks, despite my worries about Mark, my sex drive has been unquenchable. Being a pregnant single woman is terrible. Zero of ten; would not recommend.

“Give me your sounds, Francesca. They belong to me now, and I want them.” His tone is deep enough to be an intimidating growl, but instead of being frightened, my heart-rate picks up as if he’s whispering words of adoration.

A soft moan pries from me, the fantasy of those thick fingers he threatened me with taking over where my own slender ones press inside my feverish core. Slippery arousal coats them and smears around my clit. Back and forth, I alternate between plunging three fingers as deep inside myself as they can go and pinching and rubbing that achy button.

I clamp my eyes closed and pretend it’s Arlo’s hands on my body. Imagine he’s the one plucking at my nipple and crooking blunt fingers along the inside walls of my pussy, searching out that spongy spot-right there…

That feels so good. My back arches, the gently curve of my round baby belly lifting high, as an orgasm steals my breath.

Over the high-pitch wail I’m helpless to hold back, I hear Arlo’s low, masculine grunt. Boneless, my body flops onto the mattress while my mind races a thousand miles an hour. I obeyed him, this stranger, and loudly got myself off while he listened. Does that mean he’ll come into my room and slake his lust with my wrung-out body?

Has my obedience created a consent for him to use my body to barter for safety? Instead of feeling energized by my orgasm, the way I have been every morning for weeks, today, I’m wiped out from it. Maybe, the stress of worrying about Mark has finally reached a breaking point. Maybe, it’s knowing, even if I have to trade sex for protection, this man will keep me safe. Who knows exactly why my brain shuts down and it’s lights out Frankie? It just does.

My last thought before sleep claims me is hoping Arlo James is who he says he is. If not, then I have a bigger monster than Mark to worry about.

Chapter

Six

DIGG

Francesca Holt is a woman deeply tied to her routines. I find I appreciate a person who prefers to keep an orderly and consistent life. I anticipated that showing up this morning would shake up things, and she might feel some sort of way about it. I even expected she might throw a bit of a fit about finding a stranger cooking breakfast in her kitchen. Hyram had assured me his sister is a rational, calm, female, but her response to me was anything but sensible.

The moment she realized her brother had sent me, it was as if a light switch had flipped, and she went from scared to obedient. I’d already decided to keep her. Made that decision on day two when I’d realized I was using every excuse I could come up with to justify delaying my return to the club. I love my brothers. Ghost Born MC is my family. The found family we’d created from the hell of our pasts, all of us coming from households with parents incarcerated and absent from our lives. Ghosts in our fucked-up childhoods had led us all to wind up in the same state-run group home.

When Jax got sent to prison, it frayed the fabric of our bonds, sending everyone in different directions. With Shaw and Kameron enlisted in the military and gone, Cameron disappeared to college and a life that I knew nothing about, and Jax in prison, that left only Ace and me in town. Swinging a hammer and hauling construction materials seemed like all I was qualified for, having barely scraped by with a high school diploma, awarded more to ensure I got the fuck out of the public school system than due to any actual knowledge on my part.

I’d been a couple towns away, working day labor with a roofing company, when Shaw found me and told me it was time to come home. Unlike Cameron, who I still think hates us all on some days, I’m happy to be part of a family again. As fucked up as we definitely are. Family being family, I know they’ll be pissed at me for going rogue, but I figure they’ll get over it when they find out everything I learned.

Francesca’s soft little snore-snuffles break the silence. Another anomaly in the routine. Over the past few days, orgasms have seemed to wind Frankie’s motor and amp her up. I had counted on the energy boost to carry her through the next few hours. She’ll need it to deal with the shitstorm we’ll weather once I bring her back with me.

I wish I could spare her the drama. We’re all strangers to her, and after the violence she’s gone through with that bastard Mark, I don’t want my brothers to scare her. I’d don’t expect to escape today without taking at least a couple punches. Only time will tell how Francesca handles seeing the rough relationship my brothers and I share.

Hopefully, when she meets the girls and Grey, she’ll see that, no matter how much we might pound on each other, none of my brothers would ever lay a hand on a woman. Well, mentally, I revise that thought. Jax lays hands on Blakely every chance they get, but those two are kinky as fuck. Blakely loves pain, and Jax needs to dole it out. So I guess I really want Francesca to see none of us would ever harm someone weaker than we are.

Personally, I can’t imagine ever wanting to see a woman who belongs to me in pain. Not that it’s stopped me from listening to the sounds of Jax and Blakely battle-fucking at every opportunity they can find. I may not have ever been with a woman, but I’ve been listening to their sex sounds since I was way too young for that shit. And the sounds Blakely makes when my brother’s laying pipe make it very, very obvious she likes what he’s dishing out.

Thinking of Jax with Blakely actually gives me a lot of hope for my ability to figure out what Francesca needs, so I can give it to her. We all have our damage, but when Jax got out of prison, he was more animal than man. It killed me inside to watch him pay sex workers, night after night, to let him vent his sadistic aggression on them. Every night, when he came home, cumdrunk and relaxed from the sex he’d paid for, it was impossible not to spiral back to the nights I hid in the closet of whatever shitty hotel room we were calling home for the week, while my mother earned her money letting men do the exact same thing to her.

Sometimes, I think Jax finding Blakely and realizing he deserved more than paying for sex saved me as much as it saved him. I’m unsure I could have accepted his coping methods much longer, brotherhood or not. Still, my damage and fucked up views about sex seem to match his more closely than any of my other brothers. We just cope with our trauma in different ways. Jax can’t get enough, and I choose not to get any.

Of all my brothers, Jax is the one who might understand what’s going on with me the most. Probably, he’ll also be the most pissed at me for putting myself in that concrete box for all these months. Jax would die before going back behind bars, and I offered myself up to it. Still, he’s the one I pull up on the burner phone I picked up when I was released.

I’m sprung. Will be home in a couple hours. Church when I get there?

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