Page 73 of Queen of Anarchy (Dirty Broken Savages 2)

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River

We lie stillfor a little while, Priest’s large frame slumped over mine.

I feel a bit like my body has been put through a fucking meat grinder, but it’sgood, in a way. It feels better than the hopeless despair that threatened to drown me earlier.

Plus, I feel closer to Priest than I ever have before. Like more barriers have come down between us. I’ve seen him at his most raw, just like he’s seen me. Neither of us are running screaming for the hills, so that’s probably a good sign.

My wrists ache where they’re tied, and I have to clear my throat a few times to get my voice to work after all of that.

“Will you untie me?” I manage to ask him.

Priest sucks in a breath and sits up, his fingers going immediately to the knots that hold me in place so he can release them.

I can see guilt in his eyes, his emotions still clearly on display. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice raw. “I shouldn’t have—”

He looks horrified with himself as he frees me, and I give a little sigh of relief when my arms come down and I can move them again.

“It’s okay,” I murmur back. “I know you needed that. I needed it too, in a way. I needed whatever you gave me.”

His eyes are heavy with so many things buried in their depths, and he lifts my wrists one by one, kissing the bruised, battered skin. It’s such a contrast from the rough and raw way he was handling me before, and I tug him back down to the bed so he can lie down with me.

“What… what was that?” I ask him after a bit.

One of his hands is tangled up in my hair, and the other is at my hip, touching my skin idly. I have a hand fisted in the fabric of the shirt he still has on somehow, and it feels comfortable and right to lie there, tangled up in each other.

Priest drags in a deep breath, but he doesn’t ask me to elaborate. He knows what I’m asking, and I wait to see if he’ll answer.

“Tonight was… too close to home,” he says finally. “I thought I was going to lose you, the way I lost her. By not being there when she needed me.”

My chest tightens as I piece together what he’s talking about. Someone he lost. The one whose loss left him the way he is now, broken and damaged. He’s never outright told me it was a woman, but I’m certain it was. He mentioned her that day in the piano room when I tried to get a rise out of him by sitting on the piano and touching myself while he tried to play.

“What happened to her?” I whisper.

It takes him another few seconds to get the words out. “Jade was the first and only girl I ever loved. She was… kind and smart. Funny. She loved animals. She wanted to be a vet one day, and she was saving up to be able to go to school for it. She was from a shitty part of Detroit and had a bad family. The usual shit, you know. Her dad was on drugs and owed money to more people than probably even he knew. But Jade never let it break her. She never let it get her down. She always had a smile on her face when I saw her, and she was always optimistic for the future.”

There’s a pang of jealousy in my chest, just from hearing the way he talks about her, but I push it down, letting him finish his story.

“It was my fault in the end. Jade would never have hurt anyone, but I got her killed. I crossed a local gang and got in over my head. They beat the shit out of me, and when that wasn’t enough… they killed her in front of me to make sure I learned my lesson.”

He sounds heartbroken when he says it, like he’s still dealing with that loss every single day, and I feel like I finally understand more about why Priest is the way he is. He loved that woman so completely, and she was taken from him because of a mistake he made.

Being forced to watch someone die, someone you wanted to protect with your whole self? It fucks a person up. I know that from experience. So even if there is jealousy in me because of Jade and how close they were, I also feel protective of Priest and sad for him.

It has to hurt like a motherfucker, and I understand closing yourself off from emotions after experiencing something like that. I’m also pissed off at the world and all the horrible people in it. All the people who use their status and strength to fuck with people who don’t deserve it. All the Ivans and Lorenzos of the world who make shit harder for people who are just trying to survive.

That anger laps at the raw edges of the wounds that opened up again in my own heart today. It would be so easy to let myself spiral back into rage and hurt, letting it overtake me like a storm.

But I’m tired of everything being about vengeance and hate and fury. I want to channel everything I’m feeling into something better. Into making Priest feel good for once.

I lick my lips and wiggle out from under him, pushing at his shoulder until he rolls over onto his back.

“What are you doing?” he asks, his voice soft and a little shaky.

“Just wait,” I tell him.

His cock is still out from when he was jerking off a minute ago, and I wrap my hand around it, feeling the heat of his body and the velvety skin of his soft dick.

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