Kiko

Chapter 1-2

Ten years she’d spent trying to control those thoughts, and it didn’t always work. But here, it was working more and more. She didn’t know why. In fact, she was perplexed as to why.

All her little defensive maneuvers didn’t work here. She found she couldn’t maintain them.

Because of Kiko—the strange man who wanted her to buy something pretty. Who stared at her with such need, with such desperate hunger, and yet hadn’t approached her once with anything other than his heart in his eyes…

He was a handsome man. He made her heart go flutter in her chest.

One night, when the next day she’d been intending to leave the biker’s compound—or, as they called it, the ‘clubhouse’—she’d caught sight of him in the yard. He was tall. A foot taller than her five-five, and among the big bikers, he was one of the biggest. He stood at least a head higher than some of the tallest, so she’d seen him easily in the courtyard. He wore beaten up boots, navy jeans, a white sleeveless shirt, and a leather jacket the bikers called a ‘cut’. He seemed to wear this outfit every day. Well, not the same items of clothing—she hoped not, anyway—but the same style. Come rain or wind, sun or sleet, he never covered his arms, always bearing the ink he had adorned his biceps with—beautiful portraits of bears with their maws wide, claws outstretched. She’d studied his tawny hair, his eyes the color of treacle, and known she couldn’t leave.

She didn’t want him, didn’t want what he represented, but she couldn’t leave him.

Weeks later, when only a handful of the shipment of girls remained, she still couldn’t. And she’d tried to leave. Twice. She’d only made it to a small diner down the road every time, because with each step, something inside her had wept. For Kiko.

The memory of the ache had her rubbing at her chest as she made it to outside the mall. There was a taxi deck, and she decided she’d prefer to go back to the clubhouse rather than waste her time in the mall. The clothes were pretty, but she didn’t want them. She didn’t want to be pretty. She just wanted to survive.

She wanted to fill her belly, do the chores she felt certain eased the men’s lives—enough to earn her keep—and sleep in a warm, safe bed at night.

Kiko had given her more money than she’d paid for transportation over to the States, an amount that had taken an ungodly length of time to save. He’d given her it with ease though, had shoved it back into her hands when she’d refused and pushed it back at him. Then, he had tucked it in her bag when she’d refused again.

She was going to put it to use. She was going back to the clubhouse to do her chores. Her place wasn’t at the mall, enjoying herself. The other girls were fools if they imagined their lives were going to be one long round of shopping and free time.

The American dream came with a price, and it was a high one.

She would be wise to dismiss thoughts of an easier life.

She felt bad about not telling Annette she was sneaking off, but she was the leader of the gang’s old lady. This was another phrase Mischa found confusing because Annette was very young—not old at all. In fact, Mischa was certain the oldest she could be was thirty! She knew Americans thought highly of youth and looking forever young, but discarding Annette as old seemed very unfair.

Annette was very nice, very friendly, but she could be bossy and insistent, and Mischa knew if she went to her and told her she wanted to return to the clubhouse, Annette would cajole and pester her into staying.

This way, what the other woman didn’t know wouldn’t harm her. At least, she figured as much.

She squinted a little as the hot, low sun glowed brightly into her eyes. Ukraine never seemed to be so warm, at least not to her. She always ran on the colder side of the temperature scale, even in summer. She’d experienced winter and spring here, and she highly doubted summer here would prove to be chilly. She’d undoubtedly melt. For once, she might be warm without needing a hot water bottle in the height of August.

Texas was a strange place. So dry and so dusty, yet wide open, with an incredible amount of space in between highly built up areas. When she’d seen one of the highways in Houston for the first time, she’d found it incredible that so much land was given over to driving. In her village, this would have been farmland! But that aside, the roads had been crazy—like a bowl of noodles or some kind of labyrinth that everyone native to this area seemed quite at ease with.

Raising an arm, she hailed a cab. When one pulled up beside her, she climbed in and gave the address.

As the taxi took her back to the clubhouse, she kept her eyes pinned on the view outside and ignored the driver who kept flashing glances back at her. She didn’t like the look buried in his gaze, so she sat primly, drew no attention to herself, and watched the world pass by. She marveled at the wacky races that were going on around her as they crossed over to Channelview.

“Did you buy anything nice?”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“At the mall. Did you buy anything nice?” He stared at her through the rear-view mirror, that banked heat in his eyes that she’d seen so often before. Why was it men looked at her that way? Why didn’t she get looks of respect or warmth?

It wasn’t fair. She hated feeling like prey.

“No.” She kept her answer curt, turning back to the road to discourage further conversation.

“You don’t have many bags,” the man persisted.

“Because I didn’t go there to shop.” She clenched her hands tightly together in her lap.

“Did you go to meet friends? Was it your boyfriend?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.” Her words were sharper than she’d have liked, a little more defensive too. As she caught sight of a landmark she recognized, she realized they’d made it to the small township where the clubhouse sat on the outskirts, and unease hit her at how isolated she was now with the driver. She cleared her throat and said, “You take the next left here.”

She looked at him cautiously, hating the fact she was alone with him. Why hadn’t she realized she’d be alone with a man on this drive? On roads that were solitary, where a man could easily overpower a woman.

Mischa felt her heart start to pound and her stomach began to churn with terror. God, she was sick of viewing each and every man as a potential r****t, but with her past, it was a belief that was hard to overcome.

She’d known her attackers. They’d known her. That hadn’t stopped them. Why wouldn’t a stranger attack her when they felt no connection to her at all?

But just when she could feel sweat start to make her face clammy, she realized the tables had turned, yet she wasn’t sure why. He was the uneasy one. Tension filled him to the point that she could see the hairs on the back of his neck standing at attention. She peered around the road, seeing no reason other than the clubhouse in the distance. The side wall was scrawled with graffiti, but she was used to seeing it by now and didn’t think anything of it. She realized he must know the name merged into the designs. The club name, The Nomads, was part of a large pattern involving fiery blazes and bears, of all things. They all had a thing for bears though.

Kiko had them on his arms, and most of the brothers had a paw print or some variation on their bodies—not that she’d been looking or anything.

Knowing the shoe was on the other foot now, she could relax a little. She could enjoy his discomfort, as horrible as that sounded.

There was definitely a perk to lodging with people most of society was terrified of. And the irony was, those people, these so-called outlaws, had been utterly kind to her and the women she’d been trafficked with.

The car swerved around a bend, shooting up a spray of dust. The land was one big puddle of dust around here. As they drove down the road carved out over years of bikes riding on it, huge clouds of it rained down over the car, making it hard to see through the fine silty layer that covered the windshield.

By the time they’d made it to the gates of the clubhouse, the driver looked more anxious than ever. She studied him, curious as to why he was so nervous, but she felt his relief when he braked to a halt and told her how much the fare was.

The distance back was a little longer than she’d anticipated, and she handed over a chunk of the notes Kiko had given her with a guilty smile. It had been an expensive rebellion, but it was worth it.

Mischa wanted her feet planted firmly on the ground.

Girls in her village had imagined life in America to be one long round of parties, shopping, and getting their hair and nails done in beauty salons.

It wasn’t like that at all.

Jobs weren’t difficult to find—if you had papers and didn’t mind doing the jobs Americans didn’t want to do. Only trouble was, Mischa had no papers. Nor did any of the other girls. So, menial jobs were all that were available to her, and on the predictably low wages, she could probably afford to get one hand’s worth of nails manicured. If she was lucky, and if she didn’t mind walking around with one set of gel nails on the right and a bare hand on the left.

The gate to the clubhouse was wide, but there was a smaller gate that opened if you had a key—something Kiko had given her a while back. As she peered back at the desolate land around her, Mischa chuckled to herself at the speed in which the taxi was driving back toward civilization.

The speed confirmed her belief that he knew of the biker gang, and he must have been frightened by their reputation. Though the MC members had been nothing but kind to the women in their care, they were big, and they looked rough. Violent. Even Kiko, who treated her like spun glass, looked rough around the edges, more comfortable in a bar brawl than the bar itself.

Still smirking to herself, enjoying the man’s fear, she opened the gate and slipped inside. The front courtyard was empty, which had her lifting her brows in surprise.

Normally, the men parked their bikes out here, and most of the riders spent hours tinkering with them, cleaning them up or fixing parts that as far as she could see—she’d repaired farm machinery a time or two—had nothing wrong with them. Because of this tinkering habit, there were usually more men outside than in during the day. At night, they came in, congregating in an area that had a bar and a pool table, as well as dozens of tables and chairs.

Now, however, the bikes were here, but the men were not.

In fact, this side of the house, facing north, was quiet—so quiet that as she peered around, she was a little spooked out by it. Had the cartel been here and attacked while they were out? Had the trip to the mall been for a reason?