Redemption_A Defiance Novel Read online

He nodded.

  “He’ll be angry about that, right?”

  Bishop laughed. “You think that scares me? Come on.”

  We ended up at the tattoo shop on the far end of the compound. It was open to the public on some days, but the sign on the door now said Private. Bishop motioned for me to go inside, and I guessed I was on my own after that. Because, with my hand on the door, I looked back and he was walking away with purpose in his long strides.

  I’d heard him and Mathias mentioning Luna. I wondered if Bishop spent a lot of his free time with her. She’d been so angry that I couldn’t see why anyone would want to. But Bishop had a calming effect on people, it seemed.

  Mathias had just the opposite effect on me, and my stomach was a bundle of nerves as I walked through the door and the bells above it jangled, not giving me the quiet entrance I’d hoped for.

  Mathias didn’t look up though. His back was to me, and he was tattooing Rebel using sticks and ink in a manner that looked barbaric and prone to infection. Instead of interrupting further, I took the empty seat that allowed me to watch the process.

  Neither man spoke. Rebel’s head was down, so I couldn’t see his face, but I winced for him when the sticks drove into his flesh. Mathias wiped away the excess ink mixed with blood, and I’d never considered that before, how the ink and blood would actually mix beneath your skin.

  There was something spiritual about that, the bonding that occurred. I’d never look at tattooing the same way again. After an hour, the outline of a cross was apparent—a Celtic cross, one Mathias had inked by hand. He hadn’t been following any kind of pattern, except the one he saw in his mind.

  My mother was an artist.

  So was he. And he was speaking through his art.

  When he finished, he handed Rebel a sugary soda. He put a hand on the back of his neck, indicating for him to stay there, and Rebel nodded and said, “Thanks, man,” in a sleepy voice.

  Mathias turned then, didn’t seem surprised in the least to see me, but he didn’t make any attempts at conversation. Instead, he went over to another table and picked up a small knife. As I watched, he cut one of his tattoos, the fleur-de-lis, with a knife and pressed what looked like herbs into it. The herbs mixed with his blood, Mathias hissed, closed his eyes, his mouth moving—a silent prayer or maybe a chant—but he was definitely concentrating on what he was doing. I knew ritual when I saw it.

  Politicians had their tricks—a superstitious bunch—but Mathias’s seemed to transcend that. This wasn’t about a moment of luck. Not when the peace passed over his face.

  He opened his eyes and mouthed slowly in time with the signs that I attempted to mirror.

  Have to...stand for...something.

  I smiled at the sentiment, and the fact that he’d wanted me to learn signs. Then he turned from me and helped Rebel up off the table. He handed him a piece of paper and Rebel nodded and said, “I’ll check in with you tomorrow.”

  Rebel gave me a small nod as he left. Once we were alone, I told Mathias, “I want a tattoo.”

  After I said it, I realized I’d forgotten about the apology I owed him, because I’d been mesmerized by the entire tattoo process, but he motioned for me to come over. He took my sweatshirt off and appraised my body, touching my bare shoulders, my upper back. And then he tugged the tank top up a little to assess my lower back. Pulled down my jeans a little to look at my hip.

  I was blushing as he appraised my body and he gave me a lazy smile when he saw that and made a motion with his hands to indicate small.

  Start small. Easier to go bigger later.

  “What would you do if I gave you free rein?”

  He smiled, like he’d been thinking about that. I knew he had, and I knew where he’d put it, since he loved to run his hands over the bare skin of my back after we made love. He’d been drawing on me with his fingers, planning the space since I’d first been with him, and now, he bent over the paper and quickly sketched something.

  But he wouldn’t let me see it, and I didn’t care. Instead, I pulled my tank top off and lay on a towel on the table, my back bared to him, ready to let him mark me again.

  This is how we do it, baby

  Mathias

  I put on fresh gloves as I mentally prepped for this tattoo. Jessa shivered for a second as I brushed her skin with the alcohol wipes. I rarely took these precautions with me or Bish, but I didn’t know how Jessa’s skin would react. I didn’t want to mar it, so much so that I almost backed off and told her I couldn’t do it. But I still believed so firmly in the protective aspects of a charmed tattoo and that’s what kept me moving ahead.

  I picked up the sticks with their needlelike ends and I dipped them in the inkwell. Black ink for the outline and then maybe I’d do some color.

  “I want it big, Mathias.”

  Bet you say that to all the guys, I mouthed jokingly before I could stop myself and she burst out laughing. I didn’t think she was that good at reading lips but apparently she had a natural talent.

  “Yeah, but you’re the biggest,” she said in a husky, teasing voice. “And wipe that look off your face. I’m the only naked one here, and that’s for the tattoo.”

  I motioned for her to put her head down and to stay still. Part of me wanted to use the gun, because it wouldn’t hurt as much, but doing a tattoo with these sticks meant more than I was able to explain.

  At the first break of the skin, I heard her exhale, but she remained still, and she didn’t tell me to stop. Carefully, I worked through the small design of the Celtic knot, something that would look pretty and that would protect her. I put a touch of color—a little splash of blue that made it look like a watercolor painting and some yellow.

  It took about an hour and a half and when I was done, I wiped the area with antibiotic ointment and then put a bandage over it. And a blanket over her, because she’d started to shiver.

  “Now I understand the soda, and why you made Rebel rest,” she murmured.

  Post-tattoo, there was a sudden loss of adrenaline. Most people didn’t realize there was an adrenaline rush during the tattoo process. Anything your body wasn’t sure how to interpret as pain can become pleasure—and getting inked was right along that pleasure/pain continuum—so post-tattoo there was always a giant crash. It was just like a post-orgasm drowsiness.

  I let her sleep while I cleaned up. When she woke, I helped her sit up.

  “I came here to apologize to you,” she said finally.

  I’d figured. I grabbed the alphasmart and typed, Letting me tattoo you...that said everything.

  She’d put all her trust in me, and hell, that was better than words could ever be. What she’d said to me had been said in honesty. But now, she seemed to understand why I’d reacted so badly, and I’m sure she’d had a nice long talk with Bish.

  Sometimes, it was better that I didn’t know.

  You know you got it if it makes you feel good

  Jessa

  I wouldn’t be able to see the finished product until Mathias took off the bandages. When I finally felt well enough to sit up, I noted he’d locked the shop and put the Closed sign in the window.

  The compound really was a mini town, and although I kept comparing Defiance and D.C., it was becoming easier to see why. Tonight, I’d found out that Defiance had Kat’s house, thanks to Bishop who’d pointed it out along the way as he’d walked me here. D.C. still had call girls kept in a private safe house. The similarities between the MC and the political world were numerous enough to make me comfortable here...and enough to make my head spin.

  I heard my mother’s voice in my head.

  “This isn’t about your happiness, although I’d think you’d be happy to be able to help out your family. To keep the pride. When your father got elected, we all did. The least I could do was appreciate all the hard wor
k.”

  Once back inside the guesthouse, I kept the jacket on, my body still pleasantly sleepy from the tattoo. “If my mom could see me now, wrapped in your leather jacket and nothing else, my hair down in the way she didn’t like it, wearing nothing else, she’d ask, ‘What kind of future can you expect to have acting like that?’” I murmured.

  I like seeing you like this.

  D.C.—that world, for all its faults, was all I knew. I couldn’t live between two worlds. I’d have to completely sever all ties to my family and to Charlie. Because they’d never be convinced I wanted to be here.

  If Charlie’s dad died in office, my dad was next in line. And with my father as one of the most powerful men in the world, I doubted my family would give up looking for me, and not because I was their child, but because of what I knew.

  As much as things change, they stay the same.

  We all put our pants on one leg at a time.

  All of that was a politician’s grab bag of phrases to make them seem like everyone else. Even though they thought they weren’t.

  Turns out, they were.

  The only thing my old life didn’t have was Mathias.

  Mathias, who took my wrists in his hands and turned them slowly, so the scars faced him. He looked at me and mouthed, Why? as he stroked my scarred wrists with his thumbs.

  He hadn’t avoided them when we’d had sex. If anything, he seemed to pay more attention to them and I’d never realized how much of an aphrodisiac my pulse points there were. For me, my scars were always the elephant in the room, but Mathias stroked and kissed them.

  I turned the question right back on him. “Why?”

  He typed, Because you’re here. You made it. You found out you get to live, and look what you’ve done since then. Because scars are beautiful. They mean you’ve lived hard. That means you can love hard.

  He was born to have his heart broken. So was I.

  I don’t want to love, he typed.

  “I don’t believe in it, so we’re even. Or at least we were, until we met.”

  Everybody’s got to fight to be free

  Mathias

  She kissed me then, her hands wrapped tenderly around the back of my neck. The kiss told me everything I needed to know.

  Jessa wasn’t suicidal now. Most likely, she wouldn’t be again.

  “Can you hide them for me? I mean, you and I know they’re there. You’ll always be able to feel them. But having you cover them up is right.”

  I traced the deep cuts with my forefingers. Covering scars was an art form. But I’d honor them, and I’d make sure no one made Jessa feel badly about them ever again. When I was through with them, she’d have charmed tattoos. Only after I nodded, told her that I’d cover them, if that’s what she wanted, did she answer my original question.

  “I was sixteen,” she started, the story she’d said she’d tell me at some point. The one she hadn’t fully been able to on our first night together. “I didn’t know what else to do to get their attention. My father was running for office. I was expected to go on the road with them and be tutored on the tour bus. I was expected to be perfect every minute of every day for as long as the campaign lasted. There were reporters who’d travel with us. There wasn’t any privacy, and that’s how my parents liked to live. When the reporters and the cameras went away, they honestly seemed not to know what to do with themselves.”

  I stroked her palm, ran a finger down her lifeline. I wasn’t psychic, but I knew the basics of palm and tea reading. It was about broken lines and split lines and long lines...and her lifeline was long and winding.

  Living a life in the public eye would’ve broken her. What do you want to do? If the Chaos hadn’t happened and you had your choice, what would you do?

  “I never really thought about it. Since I couldn’t have it, that only seemed like a waste of time. Something that would make me more sad.”

  But now you can.

  “Tell me yours.”

  I would’ve been happy on the bayou with my family close. Would raise a family of my own with my traditions. I like things simple.

  “You also like to blow things up.”

  Yeah well, I would’ve joined the military, with or without the Chaos. It hasn’t stopped me from doing a damned thing. Not since I’d floated out of the bayou, holding on and then running for my life, with Bish at my side.

  I wondered if I’d be doing the same thing with her.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  So wild and free, so far from me

  Bishop

  Luna was where she always was these days, in a corner of the shop, working on a bike. I didn’t know whose it was—but it was custom and he knew she’d started building it from the ground up the day after Aimee had been attacked.

  She was alone now, because Caspar was running drills, which gave me the time off. Sometimes Mathias and I participated but lately, since we hadn’t asked to officially join the club, Caspar had stopped pushing.

  Luna had a half sleeve of tattoos on her arm. Inside the shop was warm and she only wore a tank top, her long hair wrapped and held in place with a bandanna. Her face was bare of makeup, her cheek smudged with grease and she looked more beautiful to him than ever.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Bishop,” Luna told me finally, without looking up.

  “I’m always someplace I shouldn’t be.” I leaned against the door frame and gazed at her. She stood then and marched over to me, blocking my way in with her body. “Lettin’ me in?”

  “No.”

  Over my head

  Luna

  After she told him no, Bishop simply smiled easily and shrugged his way past her while managing to leave her in place. She huffed, looked over her shoulder at him and finally shut the door. “You can’t stay.”

  In response, he planted himself on her couch and started to put his feet up on the small table, until she shot him a look. He turned and put his feet up on the couch instead.

  “Incorrigible.”

  “And you like that, right, Luna?”

  “I don’t know what I like.” But she was lying and the insistent throb between her legs taunted her. It would be easy enough to give herself over to Bishop and God knew she’d had enough dreams about it.

  “You can’t hide him forever.”

  “You don’t know anything about it.”

  But his gaze told her differently. She wouldn’t say anything more, wouldn’t risk a man’s reputation, not someone who’d been her best friend through thick and thin, someone who hadn’t run off like Tru. She’d been closer to Rebel than she’d even been with Aimee, and she was really close to Aimee. Or had been, until Aimee had been hurt.

  “You wear that guilt so plain on your face, babe. Wipe that shit off. Not a good look,” Bishop admonished her.

  “Fuck you.” That made him smile. “You’re a sick man,” she told him and that made him smile more. “You can’t save everyone, Bishop,” she said finally, pushed past him and slammed the door so she could get the final word.

  “But I can try,” she heard him call through the closed door.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I never said I was a victim of circumstance

  Mathias

  We’d lost what was left of our childhood because of the Chaos. Most days, we hadn’t felt like we were adults, but we’d been forced to act like we were anyway. Now, when we got tired of the adult shit, Bish and I would run wild. Didn’t matter where we were or what our responsibilities were, for an hour or two, we’d steal gas for our bikes and whatever drink we could find.

  Bish could drink more and not show it better than anyone I knew. Had a wooden leg for sure, I told him as we passed the bottle back and forth on the hill that had once overlooked Lance’s house.

  Caspar had the hous
e taken down when Trix left and Roan died. No one had heard from Silas but we knew Caspar would let him back in.

  “You’re set to fight,” Bish told me.

  I took another drink.

  “She’s seen you fight.”

  Not what I’m worried about.

  Kian was here, in the compound with several other Kill Devils. They were here for the fight, but also to discuss the situation with Jessa. Keller was close. Kian said Keller was staying at the motel up the road.

  “You knew it’d come to this.”

  I had. But I hadn’t counted on my feelings for Jessa getting in the way of every goddamned rational thought. Just stay close to her while I’m fighting.

  “Won’t let her out of my sight.”

  Love, hate, sex and pain

  Jessa

  “He’s fighting here?”

  Bishop nodded. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

  “Before he didn’t want me there.”

  “That was before.”

  I studied his face, looking for the catch, the reason, but he had a poker face. I pulled boots on and followed him across the now-crowded compound. I knew Defiance held fights, but they were different than the fights Mathias and Bishop attended off the compound. Those were illegal, anything-goes fights, and from what little I knew, the fights Defiance hosted had rules and refs.

  The off-compound fights were mainly about money and then reputation. The fights held here, at the MC, were all about reputation. “He represents Defiance when he fights here.”

  “Yes.”

  I didn’t say anything else, just surveyed the scene. There were other MCs there—I saw the different symbols on the bikes and I was grateful to be next to Bishop. Rebel fell into step next to me and I let them weave me through the thick groups of people already inside the tent.

  It was warm in the tent where the ring was set up, thanks to all the bodies. We went right up to the raised ring and I saw Mathias was already in there, along with his opponent.

  Mathias. His hands, those beautiful hands with the long fingers and squared nails—his hands were such a big part of him and they were taped. The man in the ring with him wasn’t tall but he was brutishly wide. Tattooed with stars and teardrops.