Biker’s Collar: Property of Scrap (Rebel Barbarians MC #6)

Chapter 29 – Vickie

Twenty-Nine

Vickie

I don’t know what the hell just happened, but I know Owen Shaw has never met a game he could resist. Putting my ass on the line definitely pushes me into extreme doubt over this man’s claims that he loves me. Do you gamble away the life of someone you love? His efforts to make affectionate eye contact with me as he gives my ass away to the man who traumatized me doesn’t make me feel any better.

Trust me.

Fuck you. I mean it. Magnum takes my gun and he makes it clear that he’s willing to rough my ass up as he drags me to Hakeem’s white Lexus. Hakeem taunts me as Magnum ties me up. He takes the opportunity to lean in and whisper, “Barbarians look after their old ladies.”

I don’t respond. Not even with eye contact. Leaving me in Hakeem’s custody for longer than a minute is plenty of time for this man to fire a bullet. Considering what I told him, how the hell can I forgive Owen for this?

This time, there’s no way out. No weapon, no baggie of drugs. They tie me up and throw me in the trunk of the white Lexus. Hakeem gets into the front seat. I can’t hear most of his conversation. I hear the last bit before Hakeem rolls up the window, ready to drive me off to the desert so he can pee on me – if I’m meant to believe his threat.

“My idiot boss lost our spot. We won’t be a problem anymore.”

“Good,” Hakeem says. “Good. I’ll help y’all against those Nazis but… don’t get big ideas about Vegas. It won’t work… You white boys aren’t mean enough.”

I don’t hear what Magnum says in response but shit… Maybe Hakeem was right.

I make an active effort not to think from my position in the back. I am hog-tied like a Thanksgiving turkey and I feel just about as graceful. Owen…

I want to kill Owen…

I don’t know how to make this easier on myself. I want to kill him, but I can’t because I have to first figure out what Hakeem wants to do with me… and get away. He speeds up and I can feel the nausea building up in my stomach. I never had much tolerance for tummy issues.

I feel like shit. No part of my body is under my control and now… Hakeem is swerving around like he’s driving on a dirt road. This Escalade isn’t bumping around enough for us to be on a dirt road, so I don’t have an explanation for Hakeem’s crazy ass driving.

Fuck…

The white Lexus swerves again and this time, I know something is wrong. The vehicle makes a jerky movement and then it feels like I’m rolling smoothly across ice – diagonally. Hakeem isn’t in control of this car anymore. The white Lexus accelerates faster. And faster. Why isn’t it stopping? Why isn’t he moving in a straight line?

I hear a loud crunching sound. Then I feel the impact. Next thing I know, the whole world is black. Slipping into unconsciousness is strangely peaceful.

But waking up is hell.

“I was a good shot!”

I don’t recognize the voice, but it feels like someone is driving a screwdriver behind my eyes. Pain. There is just so much damn pain everywhere.

“YOU COULD HAVE KILLED HER.”

The darkness drags me under again.

The next time I wake up, I can feel that I have the freedom to move because I jerk awake awkwardly and my limbs move freely. Thank God is my first thought, followed by disoriented panic as I have no fucking clue where I am or who the hell has custody of me. There’s a bed beneath me, but that’s not necessarily a good thing.

I jump out of the bed and the second I get to my feet, the light turns on, making me scream in fucking terror until I realize Owen is the one standing at the light switch. And he’s grinning. I stumble around disoriented, trying to piece together details of the room but all I get are flashes of color

“You’re awake.”

I feel way more emotions at once than I am comfortable feeling, quite frankly. The only sound that comes out of my mouth when I open it is a frustrated scream. My body shakes with emotion and I lunge forward violently, smacking Owen hard as fuck across the chest.

“OW!”

His pained cry sends a surge of pleasure through me and this time I really try to hurt his ass. Owen grunts as I smack him with one hand and try to scratch the fuck out of his face with another.

“I HATE YOU!” I scream at him as I hit him. “I HATE YOU!”

My hand falls against Owen’s hard, impossibly muscular chest. I don’t even think I’m hurting him at all.

“I hate you!” I beat his chest one last time before Owen curls his hand around mine. Controlling me again. Doing whatever the fuck he wants because that’s how men in his world work. Even if he thinks he loves me, he can’t stop himself from exerting his control over me. Trading me away like a fucking poker chip.

“You can stop hitting me now,” he says in that infuriatingly deep and sexy voice. He is out of his mind if he thinks I will ever stop trying to beat his ass. I look up into Owen’s eyes. They’re so fucking pretty, he could honestly get away with murder if he blinked a few times. That doesn’t change my fury with him.

“You have a serious fucking problem.”

“It was just a game,” he says, scowling and sounding like a little boy who got caught touching his dick in the back of the class. “I knew I could get you back.”

“But you just had to play?”

Owen’s cheeks darken, so at least I know beneath the goddamn audacity this man has just a little bit of fucking shame.

“Yes,” he says. “It’s how I’m wired.”

“You told me you loved me! What about Waverly? Would you wager your own damn daughter?”

It’s like all his flaws are hitting me at once. I knew he wasn’t perfect when I first met him. I wouldn’t have drugged his ass and hopped out the window if he was perfect. But the dark side of Owen’s gambling and his criminal lifestyle ended with me rattling around Hakeem’s trunk.

“I’m fucked up,” he says.

“I know that.”

“But I want to do better. Every day I do a little better. Since I met you… that was the first time I gambled.”

“You gambled me,” I say to him, trying my best to move my hands away from Owen’s grasp. He just grips me tighter. This confusing asshole makes me so damn mad, especially because I can’t stop looking into his eyes and if I really wanted to get away from him right now… I could.

“I know,” he says. “ I won’t do it again and I would never wager my own daughter.”

“Or a son?”

“I don’t have a son,” he says, but he smirks. “Unless that was a hint about the future.”

“Calm down,” I reply harshly because I don’t want Owen using sex to wriggle his way out of accountability for this. I don’t care how good his chest feels beneath my palm. Or how it makes me feel that just talking to me causes his heart to race. You never think of men as having those subtle feelings like a racing heart or flushed skin, but with Owen it’s obvious and it makes me so damn weak for this man.

Because at the end of the day, as crazy as he might be, I believe when he looks at me and when he holds me that he really loves me. He might have even loved me the first night he saw me, which would explain what scared me so bad. Big emotions make you vulnerable and after what I’ve been through, they’re not just scary. They’re life threatening.

“I know I did the most fucked up thing I could do,” Owen says. “But I want you by my side here, Vickie. I want you to rule Las Vegas with me.”

I laugh. “What? You want me working poker tables again. Because, no way.”

Owen explains everything that happened. Hakeem’s death. The Rebel Barbarians takeover. I feel like he swept me up in a tornado of action and now, with his arms around me, we are slowly coming down to Earth. This patch of Earth in… Las Vegas. My head spins. I can’t believe what Owen wants from me but then again, I met him hunched over a poker table about to lose his life savings in an instant.

“No,” he says. “I want you to live here with me, with Waverly… and with our kids.”

I try to pull away from him again, but Owen’s hands move to my hips and he traps me right in place where he wants me. Bastard. He makes another low chuckle in the back of his throat that makes me want to smack Owen across the face. He loves that he has me trapped. And again, under his control.

“You’re staying,” he says.

“Don’t you think the fact that you gambled me like a poker chip is enough reason for me to distrust you?”

“That does paint me in an unfortunate light,” Owen says, his face getting suspiciously closer, like he really thinks sex can fix this. I move my head back as much as I can, which isn’t much. He smells so damn good that I’m already losing my resistance to him.

I could have beaten him again with my hands and I didn’t. He already knows what this means. Owen is too damn good at chipping away at my walls. The same strange patience and obsession that keeps him gambling seems to mirror the way he feels about me.

“I love you more than I love games,” he says. “If I ever take it too far, I’ll quit.”

“I’m not holding you hostage.”

Owen laughs. “Damn right. I’m holding your sexy ass hostage.”

“Is this still your apology?”

“No,” he says. Then, he kisses me. That’s the apology right there. Owen has always been an incredible kisser. His lips are so soft and they always have a slightly minty taste to them. He tastes so good that I can fool myself into thinking that I am meant to be kissing Owen and nothing should stop me.

He sinks his fingers into my hips the instant our lips meet, making it clear that he has no plans of letting me get away from him. My heart thumps like crazy. So hard that I can’t hear anything happening around us. For the first time in my life, I experience one of those kisses that blocks out the rest of the world.

It’s intentional. Owen’s hands roam over my body appreciatively and just the way he kisses and touches me is more than enough to get me soaked. I have to pull away. I need to breathe and think of a new plan since I no longer have to escape from Hakeem. He’s dead. And Owen killed him for me. My eyes flicker back to Owen’s. I still think it’s unfair how attractive he is, but that just makes me more vulnerable to ignoring the red flags. Like murder. Our eyes meet and for a moment, I wonder if maybe I need to escape someone else.

One look, and this man can read my fucking mind.

“You’re not running away,” he growls. “I’m sorry about the gambling. I mean it.”

“Mean it again,” I whisper back. He won’t let me pull away, so I have to keep my hands pressed to his chest. I have to allow myself to feel all the places his body touches mine and accept him getting closer.

Owen keeps his hands clasped around my ass as he kisses me again. He means it. I can feel that he means it. This kiss sends a thrill of excitement straight between my legs. I can’t let him get away with this, can I? But Owen pulls away and smirks. “I’m sorry.”

“Mean it.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers again, pulling away from our kiss and dropping to his knees. I look down at Owen, trying to calm my fucking heart down. The intense feeling grips my chest so tightly that I feel like I can’t fight him anymore. I don’t want to fight him. I just want him to be sorry and I want us to both move on.

“Hakeem is dead,” he reminds me. “And nobody will ever hurt you again.”

He rolls my sweatpants over my ass. I don’t know how the hell I got into sweatpants, but I notice them when Owen begins the slow process of removal. My bare legs and butt immediately break out into gooseflesh once they are exposed to the crisp air. Owen grabs the back of my legs and pulls me close to him so he can kiss the top of my mound through my underwear.

Now those underwear, I remember. Owen kisses my panties like they’re not the same panties I got kidnapped with. Shouldn’t I be a little fresher?

“Fuck, your pussy smells great,” Owen murmurs. Then my underwear flies off my ass so fast, it’s like an Olympic sprinter ran off with them. I shiver as Owen moves his head closer to my wetness and slides his tongue inside me like it’s nothing.

Okay, this is an apology…

His tongue slides perfectly between my lower lips, slipping in a circle around my clit that feels like just the perfect amount of stimulation for me. I moan. Instantly. Without meaning to moan. My legs spread apart a little bit as Owen’s big, masculine tongue spreads me open and he starts eating me like a 3 a.m. slice of pizza after a night at the club.

The way his tongue moves around my clit is far unlike anything I experienced with him before. I gasp sharply and try to back away so I can allow myself to feel everything going on between my legs with Owen’s tongue.

He moves away from my lower lips and starts teasing my inner thighs with soft kisses instead, not exactly giving me a break from the intensity of pleasure, but amping everything up by spreading tingling pleasure in all the surrounding areas. Owen leaves behind little supernovas with each sharp, stinging kiss to my thighs. Then he sucks on my outer lips with such passion that I cry out. Loudly.

I don’t know who the hell else might be here, and I know we aren’t at the same condo as before, so I try to bite down on my lower lip to stop myself from moaning but Owen’s tongue hits my clit in just the right spot at just the wrong time. I bite down so hard on my own lip that I bleed, but the rush of adrenaline doesn’t fuck with my high from Owen’s tongue.

With blood dripping down my lower lip and chin, Owen stays oblivious and thrusts his tongue so deep in my pussy that I climax hard. My hands instinctively reach for Owen’s head as I try to push him away from my pussy, but he won’t stop until he decides he’s done, so my fingers end up sinking into his soft, wispy hair as I lose myself in pleasure again.

This man knows exactly what he’s doing, so it’s easy to cum again when his tongue returns to my clit for more direct pleasuring. My thighs and lower lips are as juicy as two peaches smashed together. The juices are all over my calves. I haven’t missed the floor.

Owen gazes up at me from his knees with this damn look in his eye. The irresistible look that stops me from constantly searching for an excuse or a chance to run away. He hooked me… the same way those fucking poker tables and dice games hooked him.

“I love you,” he says, his voice hoarse from all the hard work he did between my legs. His words are almost enough to make me cum without any extra assistance.

“You are crazy.”

“I know,” he says. “I wagered you. I screw up a lot… but you make me want to be better, Vickie. For the first time in my life, I want to chase something other than the next high.”

“You said you loved me and wagered my life right after.”

“And it won’t happen again,” he says. “And… I don’t just want you running tables. I want you by my side.”

“You won’t let me go,” I whisper. But the truth is, I stopped trying to run away from Owen, didn’t I? There’s something about him that I just can’t let go of… Maybe it’s because I know that even if he screws up… we’re always going to end up back together.

“I love you,” Owen says again, standing this time so he’s just above my eye level. “I know your ass needs to hear it a lot because of what happened. And I’ll tell you every single day…”

He pulls me close. Then kisses me. And I feel the urge to say the words I know he wants to hear once I pull away from him.

“I love you,” I tell Owen Shaw.

“I know you do, baby,” he says. “You can’t help it. Same way I can’t help it.”