I looked down at my raw, red skin and grimaced, realizing in my absentminded rants I had somehow scrubbed myself too hard, breaking the skin, causing a pain that I was almost completely numb to.
It made me think of Keelie and Ramona. The way those bruises and welts looked on their fair skin, the pain Wasp must’ve brought them both when he was delving out his punishments.
Is this why they craved his dominance? To find this place of emptiness that becomes completely numb and turned off from the world?
It sort of made sense in a way.
Ramona was running from her true self. Hiding her sexuality and pregnancy from the whole damn club.
Would Wasp have hurt her if he knew about the innocent life she was carrying inside of her?
I clutched my stomach, sinking to the floor of the shower as I remembered the life I used to carry in mine. Would I have kept the baby if I actually had the choice? Was it right for Sabbath to make it for me?
At the time I thought he had every say in the world, but now... now I feel like he cheated me out of my one and only chance of becoming a mommy.
I was almost certain that botched abortion made it impossible for me to have children. It had been a while since I was on birth control, I’d slept with quite a few men without using a condom, and yet here I was, still living and breathing as one person, while my womb laid empty inside me.
Tears poured down my face as I mourned the loss of the child I would never meet, and a future that would probably never be for me.
I’d never be a mother or know what it was like to hold a baby in my arms. I’d never be able to know what true love felt like because of him—Sabbath.
My fingers dug into my flesh, the water’s heat subsiding the longer I stayed under the stream.
He was doing that again to Nina. He stole that choice from her too. But I wouldn’t let him steal that choice from Ramona.
I was going to protect my best friend at all costs, even if it meant leaving the Lewd Outlaws for good.
But the thought of leaving the club also broke me inside. I’d grown closer to these men than I ever had before, and the thought of leaving them made me feel even emptier.
“Shasta?”
Snyder’s voice broke through my crazy thoughts, and I looked up to see him standing just outside the shower, watching me shiver under the ice-cold spray that was still beating down on me.
“Shasta, what’s wrong, baby girl?”
He turned off the water, and grabbed a towel, wrapping it around my shoulders just before he lifted me from the tub, shivering in his arms, teeth chattering away.
“S—Sabbath?”
“He’s gone. He took off about an hour ago with Skid and Priest.”
“H—he fucked K—Keelie.”
He went to lay me on the bed, but I freaked.
“No, take me anywhere but there.”
He held me closer, grabbed a dress from my closet—the same one I just fucked Wasp in, and then carried me out of the room.
We disappeared behind his door, making sure nobody saw us.
“What happened?”
“I—I told you.”
The warmth of his body heated my skin. His fingers raked through my wet strands of hair as he clutched me even tighter.
“H—he did it on the bed. I—I saw everything.”