Page 85 of Mimic
I shed my clothes as I returned to the bed and helped Indie remove everything but her panties. I crawled in behind her, planning to spoon, but she turned to face me and sobbed onto my chest.
We lay there for hours, no words spoken between us, but a lifetime of pain and humiliation bound us together. A trauma bond, she called it, when she talked about her sisters. The eleven girls she lived with and escaped with.
I didn’t care what kind of bond it was, as long as she stayed with me forever. She was mine.
Her sobs softened to quiet tears until finally, her breath evened out and she fell asleep. I lay there trapped beneath her, the feel of her fingers splayed over my abs as I drifted off myself, and the nightmares returned.
“I said hold him still, you worthless fuck!”
“I’m trying; the kid is fucking stronger than he looks. Why don’t you switch with me, you old bastard, and see how well you hold him?”
“Don’t do this, please!” I begged them to stop.
Dakota lay on the floor on his back, holding me over him. His arms strapped around my shoulders and his legs wrapped around my waist.
This was a move I could easily get free of. We’d practiced it endlessly until I had it perfected. The only difference was that when we were training, my back was to his chest. The way he held me now, we were front to front. This time, my bare back was exposed to George Stone as he held a scalding hot branding iron in his hand.
“Hold him still!” George screamed.
The cold, dead sound of his voice made me freeze. This was happening whether I wanted it or not. I’d learned early with Dakota to accept my fate. It didn’t mean there wouldn’t be pain, but there wouldn’t be as much.
So, I stopped struggling. I lay in Dakota’s arms and braced for the pain. As soon as the brand hit the center of my back, myshoulders locked up. The scent of burning flesh assaulted my nose, causing bile to rise up my throat.
I tried to swallow it down, but between the pain and the smell, I lost all control. Satisfaction welled inside me as I puked on Dakota’s neck and pissed all over him as the blackness took me under.
I jackknifed up in bed, looking around the room, expecting to see George or Dakota glaring down at me. The sound of Indie’s gasp brought me to the present.
I felt her fingers on my back tracing the lines of my Silver Shadows tattoo. Making her way toward the center.
“What the fuck is this?” she asked, sitting up beside me. “This is not a tattoo.”
“No, it’s a brand.”
“A brand? Like they do to cattle?”
“Yeah.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed. My forearms rested on my legs as I bent over, trying to steady my racing heart. My secret was out.
“Why the fuck were you branded?” She scooted closer, tracing the lines of scarred skin hidden under the large tattoo. She leaned forward and kissed my battered skin. My eyes closed, reveling in the feel of her lips on me.
I looked over my shoulder, my eyes locked on hers, never once dipping to catch a glance of her naked tits on full display.
“Everyone in the Soulless Sinners MC gets branded.”
Chapter Thirty
Mimic
“The Soulless Sinners? But you’re here, in the Silver Shadows.” I nodded. “I thought you could only be in one MC?”
“No one here knows. And I didn’t join because I wanted to. I had no choice.”
“What do you mean, you had no choice?”
I turned around and crawled back into bed, pulling Indie against my chest and kissing the top of her head.
“I told you about what happened to my mom and how Rose and I got separated. Well, the man who took my mother and then found me was Dakota Stone.”
Indie stiffened in my arms, and I felt the rage begin to boil inside me as I asked the question I didn’t want the answer to.
