Chapter 2: Taken

The Tuesday started normal. I was in the clubhouse kitchen making eggs, wearing nothing but one of Max's flannel shirts and a pair of fuzzy socks because the concrete floor was cold. That's the thing about living in a biker clubhouse — you stop dressing for other people and start dressing for the refrigerator. Shay was at the table doing a crossword puzzle in pen because she said pencils were for people who regretted their choices. Candy was braiding her hair and giving me unsolicited advice about my posture.

"You're rounding your back again," she said. "Pilates voice."

"I'm cracking eggs, not doing a swan dive."

"Still."

Max came in from the back, kissed the top of my head, grabbed a coffee, and squeezed my ass hard enough that I yelped and almost dropped the spatula. "Club meeting tonight," he said. "Patch-overs from the Desert Kings are coming to talk territory. You'll be in the back room."

"Got it," I said. That was protocol. When club business was serious, I stayed out of sight. Not because Max was hiding me — because rival crews didn't need to know the club's business, and I'd become part of that business.

I should have asked more questions about the Desert Kings.

The meeting was supposed to start at eight. At seven-thirty, Max kissed me, told me to stay put, and shut the back room door. I heard voices in the main hall — a lot of them, more than I expected. The Desert Kings had brought twice as many guys as Max had planned for. I could tell because I could hear Max's voice go tight, that controlled calm he used when things were about to get ugly.

I sat on the bed with my knees pulled up, listening. Something about a supply route. Something about a debt. Something about territory lines that someone had crossed. Then shouting. Then a gunshot — just one, into the ceiling, the way bikers do when they want a room to shut up without actually killing anyone yet.

Then footsteps. Lots of them. Coming toward the back room.

The door kicked open and a man I'd never seen filled the frame. Tall, broad, Mexican, with a patch that said DESERT KINGS across his chest and a gold tooth that caught the hallway light. He looked at me the way you look at something you just won at auction.

"There she is," he said. "Max's little Pilates whore."

"I'm not a —"

"Grab her."

Two guys came in behind him. One grabbed my arms, the other grabbed my legs, and they lifted me off the bed like I was a piece of furniture. I screamed. I kicked. The one holding my legs caught my heel in the jaw and swore in Spanish and then a third guy came in and they had enough hands to pin everything.

"Max!" I screamed. "MAX!"

I heard him. I heard him yelling my name from somewhere in the main hall, and then I heard the sound of a fight — real fighting, not the posturing kind — and something heavy hitting the floor, and then someone was dragging me through the kitchen door and out the back exit into the parking lot where three motorcycles and a van were running.

They threw me into the van. Four guys climbed in after me. The door slid shut and we were moving before I could get my hands under me.

The one with the gold tooth — I'd learn later his name was Reyes — sat across from me on a bench seat. He lit a cigarette. The van smelled like exhaust and weed and leather.

"Your president killed one of our prospects last month," he said, exhaling smoke toward the roof. "We told him the price. He didn't pay. So we're collecting."

"I'm not — I'm not collateral. That's not — my husband's debt was paid. I'm not even —"

"Your husband's debt was with Max's club. This is between us and Max. Different ledger." He smiled. The gold tooth glinted. "Same concept though."

"I'll fight you."

"No," he said. "You won't."

The van took corners hard and I slid on the metal floor. One of the guys zip-tied my wrists behind my back. Another one — thick-necked, tattoos running up to his jaw — pulled my flannel shirt off over my head, and I was naked from the waist down in nothing but a sports bra, on the floor of a van full of men I didn't know, driving somewhere I couldn't see.

The thick-necked one pulled my bra off too. Then I was just naked. On the floor. Zip-tied. They looked at me and I looked at the ceiling of the van and tried to breathe.

"Don't bruise the face," Reyes said to no one in particular. "Makes the photos harder to sell."

Photos. The word landed in my stomach like a stone.

We drove for maybe forty minutes. When the van stopped and the door opened, we were in a garage. Concrete walls, no windows, fluorescent lights. They pulled me out and carried me through a door into what looked like a warehouse space that had been converted into a clubhouse — couches, a bar, pool table, but rougher than Max's place. Dirtier. The walls had graffiti and old beer signs and a mounted deer head with a cigarette hanging from its mouth.

There were men everywhere. Twenty? Thirty? Some playing cards, some drinking, some just leaning against walls watching me get carried in. A few women too — three or four, sitting on couches or standing behind the bar, and they looked at me with expressions ranging from boredom to amusement.

Reyes pointed to a padded bench in the center of the room, the kind you'd see in a locker room, bolted to the floor. They set me on it. Someone cut the zip ties and immediately replaced them with leather cuffs — wrists to the bench legs, ankles to the other end. I was on my back, arms stretched above my head, legs spread and locked open. The air hit me between my legs and I felt how exposed I was and my face burned.

"Gentlemen," Reyes said, loud enough for the room. "Refreshments are served."

Someone laughed. Someone else cracked a beer. A guy with a red bandana and a gut that hung over his belt walked up and looked down at me and reached out and grabbed my right tit, squeezed it hard, pinched the nipple.

"Perky," he said.

"Fuck off," I said.

He slapped me. Open palm, across the face, hard enough that my ears rang. Not hard enough to bruise. They knew what they were doing.

"Language," Reyes said from the bar, where he was pouring himself a whiskey.

Red Bandana unzipped his jeans and pulled out a cock that was already half hard. He stroked it a few times, right above me, and I watched it grow and I felt that thing — that flicker, that furious traitorous flicker that I thought I'd killed and buried — spark to life somewhere behind my ribs.

No. No no no. This was different. This wasn't Max. This wasn't my choice. This was —

He pushed into my mouth.

Not slow. Not careful. He put one hand on the bench beside my head and the other on my jaw and he pushed his cock past my lips and over my tongue and into my throat, and I gagged and choked and he held still for a second and then started moving. In and out. Using my mouth like a hole, because that's what it was to him. That's all I was.

"Watch the teeth," he said, and I tried to adjust my jaw and he pushed deeper and my throat opened the way Max had trained it to, and I hated that my body knew what to do, hated that the muscle memory was there, hated that I could take it without throwing up.

He came in my mouth. Held my head down and pumped and I felt it, thick and hot, and I swallowed because I'd learned that swallowing was easier than choking, and when he pulled out I coughed and spit trailed from my lip to his thigh.

"Next," someone said.

The next one was younger, maybe late twenties, with a fade haircut and a silver grill. He straddled the bench and put his cock in my mouth and fucked my face sideways, from the side, which was a different angle and hit different parts of my throat and I gagged more. He came on my face — across my cheek, in my eye, on my forehead. I blinked through it and felt it dripping down my temple into my hair.

The third one made me swallow too. The fourth came on my tits. By the sixth, my jaw was aching and my face was a mess and the bench under my head was wet with spit and cum and I was making sounds I couldn't control — little gasping moans between cocks, and one of the women at the bar said, "She's getting into it," and I wanted to say I wasn't but my body was doing something else entirely.

Because I was wet. Between my legs, strapped open on that bench, I was soaking wet, and I could feel it, and anyone standing at the right angle could see it, and that was the worst part. Not the cocks. Not the cum. The fact that my pussy was glistening under fluorescent lights for a room full of strangers to see.

The first one to fuck me was Reyes himself. He set his whiskey down, unzipped, and climbed between my legs. He looked at me — actually looked, not just at my body but at my face, cum-streaked and flushed — and he smiled with that gold tooth and said, "Tell me you don't want this."

"I don't want this," I said.

He pushed into me. One long stroke, all the way, and I was so wet that he slid in despite his size — and he was big, bigger than Max, thick enough that I felt myself stretch around him — and he bottomed out and held there and I made a sound that was not a no.

"There it is," he said.

He fucked me slow at first. Deliberate. Hands on my hips, thumbs pressing into the hollows above my hip bones. He watched himself going in and out, watched his cock disappearing into me, and then he sped up and started hitting hard, the bench rattling under me, my bound wrists pulling against the cuffs, my tits bouncing with every thrust.

Someone stepped up to my head. A tall guy with a goatee and a leather vest with no shirt under it. He turned my face to the side and pushed his cock into my mouth, and then I was being fucked from both ends, and the rhythm was offset — Reyes thrusting up into my pussy while Goatee thrust down into my throat — and the mismatched rhythm made everything feel more intense, more chaotic, less like something I could brace against.

Reyes came inside me. I felt it — hot and pulsing, deep, and he held himself against my cervix and groaned and I felt every spurt. When he pulled out, cum ran out of me immediately, pooling on the bench under my ass.

Goatee pulled out of my mouth and came on my neck and chest. Then he walked away and two more took their place.

They rotated for what felt like hours. One in my pussy, one in my mouth, switching, fresh ones stepping up. Some came inside me. Some came on my face. Some came on my stomach, my tits, my thighs. The bench was soaked. I was soaked. Cum was everywhere — on me, under me, dripping off me. My pussy was swollen and tender and they kept going and I kept getting wetter, which made it easier for them, which made it worse.

The first orgasm hit me around the fourth or fifth guy to fuck me. He was pounding into me and someone was in my throat and I couldn't breathe right and the lack of oxygen mixed with the overstimulation and my body just — seized. My back arched off the bench, my legs shook in the cuffs, and I screamed around the cock in my mouth and my pussy clamped down on the one inside me and he said "Oh fuck" and came, and I came again on his cum, and the room cheered.

"There it is!" someone yelled. "The Pilates girl squirts."

I didn't squirt. But there was definitely a wet spot that wasn't just cum.

They untied me at some point and moved me to a mattress on the floor. I didn't fight it. I got up on my hands and knees because I knew what they wanted and some part of me — the part that had learned to love this at Max's clubhouse, the part that had gone back voluntarily, the part that asked Max to stay and fuck her slow while she cried — that part took over.

Someone fucked me from behind. Someone else knelt in front of me and I took his cock in my mouth and worked it with my tongue, and I was spit-roasted on a mattress on a warehouse floor and I was moaning and pushing back against the cock inside me and the guy behind me said, "She's fucking back into it," and I didn't care.

Then they did something new.

Two of them. One underneath me, one behind. The one underneath pushed into my pussy. The one behind pushed into my ass, slow and rough and relentless, and I'd done anal before but never like this, never with someone already inside my cunt, and the fullness was overwhelming — two cocks in me at once, separated by a thin wall of tissue, both moving, both thrusting, and I screamed and it wasn't pain or pleasure, it was just too much sensation, more than my body could process, and I came so hard my vision went white.

They both came inside me. I felt it — both of them, pulsing, filling me in two places at once, and when they pulled out everything just ran out of me, a mess of cum and lube and my own fluids, and I collapsed on the mattress and shook.

One of the women — a dark-haired girl with a lip ring and cutoff shorts — knelt next to me. "Cleanup," she said, like it was a job title.

She pushed my legs open and put her mouth on my pussy and I flinched because I was over-sensitive, but she was gentle, surprisingly gentle, and her tongue was warm and soft and she licked the cum out of me in long slow strokes, lapping at my folds, swirling around my clit, dipping inside me. It felt nothing like the cocks. It was patient and careful and she knew exactly how much pressure to use and I felt my hips moving, pushing toward her mouth, and she looked up at me and smiled against my pussy and kept going.

Another woman joined her — older, bigger, with red hair and freckles across her chest. She knelt beside me and started licking the cum off my tits, her tongue tracing circles around my nipples, and I was being cleaned by two women at once and it was the most intimate thing that had happened to me all night and I moaned and the dark-haired girl slid two fingers inside me and curled them and I came again, softer this time, a rolling wave instead of a crash.

The dark-haired girl sat up and grabbed my jaw and kissed me. I felt the cum pass from her mouth to mine — warm, salty, mixed with my own taste — and I swallowed. She pulled back and licked her lips.

"You taste like a frat party," she said.

The red-haired woman kissed me next, transferring cum from my chest to my tongue, and I swallowed that too.

Then they rolled me onto my back and the dark-haired girl straddled my face. "Fair's fair," she said, and lowered her pussy onto my mouth. She tasted different from me — muskier, tangier — and I licked her because there was nothing else to do and because some part of me wanted to, and she ground against my mouth and I felt someone push into my pussy again while I was eating her out, and the rhythm of the fucking pushed my tongue deeper into her, and she came on my face, shaking, and the guy inside me came too, and I came too, and we were all just a pile of bodies making sounds that didn't mean anything anymore.

They brought out a beer bong around midnight. I was sitting against the wall with a blanket someone had thrown over me, drinking water, trying to find my jaw muscles. Reyes took the blanket off and held up the funnel — the kind you'd use at a frat party, clear plastic tube, big funnel at the top.

"Special blend," he said. "Every guy in the room contributed."

I looked at it. The funnel was full. Thick, white, slightly varied in shade — some loads more translucent, some more opaque — and it was swirling slowly in the funnel like a disgusting cocktail.

"You're kidding," I said.

"I'm not."

They held me. Two guys, one on each arm, and someone held my head and someone else held the tube to my lips and I kept my mouth shut and Red Bandana pinched my nose and I had to open my mouth to breathe and the tube went in and the funnel tilted and I felt it — warm, thick, salty, seemingly endless — flowing into my mouth and down my throat. I swallowed and swallowed and swallowed. It was too much, too fast, and some of it came out my nose and ran down my chin and I coughed and they kept pouring and I kept swallowing and my stomach churned and my eyes watered and when it was finally done I doubled over and gasped and cum dripped from my nose onto the concrete floor.

"Good girl," Reyes said, and those two words — the same two words Max had said that first night — hit me somewhere terrible and I felt my pussy clench around nothing.

I hated it. I hated that I was wet again. I hated that part of me wanted more.

They used me until dawn. I lost track of everything — how many men, how many loads, how many orgasms. I was a mess. Cum in my hair, on my face, on every inch of my skin, inside me, on me, around me. My pussy was raw. My ass was sore. My jaw barely functioned. My wrists had bruise marks from the cuffs. I smelled like sex and sweat and beer and I was lying on a mattress that was soaked through and I couldn't move.

I slept. Or passed out. Same thing.

When I woke up, I was in a different room — smaller, darker, a cot against the wall. My wrists were cuffed to a chain attached to the wall. I was still naked. There was a bottle of water and a sandwich on the floor next to the cot.

I ate the sandwich like an animal. I drank the water. I peed in a bucket in the corner because there was no bathroom. I sat on the cot and waited.

They came for me again that night. And the next. And the next.

By day three I stopped saying no. By day five I was on my knees when they opened the door. By day seven I asked the dark-haired girl — her name was Nina — to stay after the cleanup, and she ate me out without any cum to clean, just because I asked, and I came against her mouth and kissed her and tasted myself and didn't taste anyone else for the first time in a week.

By day nine I was deep-throating Reyes without being asked and he looked down at me with something that wasn't just possession anymore. It was respect, or the closest thing to it that a man like that could manage.

"You're something, Erica," he said.

I didn't say anything. I just kept going.

On day eleven, I heard motorcycles. A lot of them. Not Desert Kings — I'd learned the sound of their bikes by now, the rattle of their pipes. These were different. Heavier. I was in the main room on my knees with two guys when the warehouse doors blew open and Max walked in with twenty men behind him, armed, furious, and carrying baseball bats and tire irons and at least two shotguns.

He looked at me. On my knees. Cum on my face. Two strangers' cocks in my hands.

I looked at him.

"Hey," I said, like an idiot.

Max shot the nearest Desert King in the shoulder. Not to kill. To make a point. The room erupted and there was fighting and I crawled under the pool table and stayed there until the noise stopped.

When I came out, Reyes was on the floor with a broken nose and Max was standing over him with a bat.

"The supply route is ours," Max said. "The territory line is ours. And she's fucking mine. Say it."

"She's yours," Reyes said, blood bubbling between his lips.

Max looked at me. I was still naked, still covered in cum, still shaking. He took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders. It was warm and it smelled like leather and tobacco and him.

"Let's go home," he said.

I got on the back of his bike in nothing but his jacket and pressed my face into his back and cried the whole way back to the clubhouse, and when we got there he carried me inside and put me in the shower and washed me himself, gently, with soap and warm water, and he didn't fuck me that night. He just held me in that narrow bed in the back room and I pressed against him and fell asleep listening to his heartbeat.

Three days later I was on my knees in the main hall again, but this time by choice, and Max was in my throat, and Shay was watching from the bar and she said, "You're insane, you know that?"

I pulled off Max's cock and looked at her, cum on my chin, grinning.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," I said.

Max laughed. Actually laughed. That deep, rare one that made his beard shake.

"She's the best thing that ever happened to this club," he said.

I went back to what I was doing.

Some collateral damages don't get returned. They just change hands and get better.