“You promise?”

I nodded slowly and meaningfully.

Small hands ghosted down my chest, carefully tracing my stitches. “How are you feeling?”

Sore, pissed at Nazi scum, but so f**kin’ good. Leaning down, I pressed a kiss to her lips. “G-good.”

Pulling out my still-hard c**k from inside my woman, I kneeled and rolled my stiff back straight, wincing at the burn of tight stitches now about to leave even more scars all over my body… including the permanent motherfucker of a swastika on my chest.

“Out. Water’s c-cold.”

As I glanced down at Mae, I literally stopped breathing. I had her now. No one was taking her away from me.

As I held out my hand, her scowl looked harsh on her usually soft face. I raised an eyebrow in question.

Ignoring me, Mae stood up and got out of the tub without my help. My jaw clenched. I wasn’t some weak pu**y, but as she shuffled closer and gripped my arm, she insisted, “Let me take care of you. This is my job… as your old lady.” I closed my eyes, savoring what she’d just said, my old lady. My old man was f**kin’ right; I did only need three things in life: my Harley, my Fender… and the love of an old lady—Mae; only Mae.

Smiling, Mae wrapped me in a towel, then herself and we walked—stupidly f**kin’ slow—toward the bed.

We stopped at my chair and she guided me to a sitting position. “I must change the bed linen. It is soiled with your blood.” She cupped my cheeks, stroking around the fresh slash mark. “Then we will sleep. You must get your rest.”

“With you n-next to me, r-right?”

Breaking out in a huge grin, Mae replied. “Yes, with me next to you.”

Mae pressed a soft kiss to my forehead and I sat back in my chair to watch her as she found freshly laundered black sheets.

Picking up my Fender, I lay it across my waist and set to strum, catching a happy smirk spreading on Mae’s lips, only pausing briefly as she heard the strings begin to vibrate. As The National’s “Gospel” flowed from my lips, I thanked Hades that I’d returned tonight, to my club, to my brothers… to my old lady.

Weren’t sure for a while that I was gonna get out. Took out seven Nazi skulls with my Uzis before being tackled to the floor by the last two. Tied to a chair, cut, beat, bled—the f**kers forgot about my blade. Ironically, my favorite German blade, the blade I always kept hidden in my cut. Slit the throat of one skinhead, plunged five inches of steel into the heart of the other, but only after I’d had my fun. Found my way back, a pair of blue wolf eyes calling me home.

“Darlin’, can you tie my string? Killers are callin’ on me…” As I finished the last chord, I looked up to see Mae perched on her knees before me, listening to me play.

“Bed?” she asked with bright eyes and put my fender gently to one side. She took my hand to help me lie flat on my mattress. Nervously, Mae lay down beside me so I pulled away my towel, telling her with a flick of my chin to do the same.

We were face to face on our pillows, and I reached out to take her hand. “Wh-why’d you r-run from the c-cult?”

Every muscle in her body seemed to tense and tears instantly filled her eyes.

I didn’t speak, just waited, waited for her to open up.

After several minutes, she whispered, “They killed my sister. I could not stay. She told me to run, I did as she asked.”

My lip curled in anger and my stomach tensed in disgust. Mae tried to cover her naked body with her free arm, as if cold. Kicking up the quilt, I covered her up. She smiled appreciatively as she shifted closer.

Her head lay next to mine on my pillow and then her shittin’ nose twitched. Her nerves were getting the better of her, but she needed to start f**kin’ talking.

“We…” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. I gripped her tighter. “We were full blood sisters. That did not happen often in commune. Parents have the children, then you are raised by a collective. I never got to know my parents. My mother died of a disease and my father left, he was sent on a mission by Prophet David and never returned.

“I have another sister, Magdalene, but she had a different mother. She is painfully quiet, nothing like Bella and me. Maddie is so frightened by men, by everything really. But Bella was my best friend. We were always so close.”

As she lifted her eyes, she smiled. “She was beautiful, Styx. You should have seen her. So stunning. So perfect. So unbelievably kind. But that was Bella’s downfall, her allurement and exquisiteness; it was the thing to ruin her life.” I held her gaze as I tried to picture someone more stunning than Mae. I couldn’t, but she sure believed it to be true.

“Beautiful women were treated worst of all by the brothers. Prophet David and his chief elder, Gabriel, would say the devil had a hand in their looks. That they were designed, no, created, to tempt men. They had to be treated differently from plain females—watched… broken in like a horse. They were seen as cursed.”

Mae shifted uncomfortably and a tear fell down her cheek, so I moved over and kissed it. Her breath hitched before she exhaled slowly through her lips.

“Bella and I, we were classed as such ‘Cursed’ women; my goodness, we were referred to as the ‘Cursed’. My friend Lilah and my sister Maddie were with us too, all four in our own private quarters in the commune. We were kept separate for the high elders’ personal attentions—their special trainings. Brother Gabriel had Bella. Brother Jacob had me. Brother Noah had Lilah. The most sexually cruel brother, Moses, had Maddie—Magdalene. Moses said she harbored demons because she did not speak often, did not leave her room. But she was just quiet, reserved, barely spoke or revealed her true feelings to me.” Her eyes crinkled in pain. “The things he would make her do…” Mae trailed off and her throat caught on a cry.