sight of Daddies Flame and Dagger barreling through the door they’d kicked in, with Daddy Wolfe and Axe right behind them. The second they all saw me, they froze, then their faces turned rigid with fury as they glowered at the crumpled form at my feet.
“Daddy Dagger,” I whimpered, needing him to get me out of here. He always had a knife. That was why he had his name. “Please!”
He tensed at my cry, then dragged his attention to me.
You’ll be home soon, baby girl. I’m always going to be here when you need me.
As Daddy Ryan disappeared from my mind, Daddy Dagger cut me loose. When his boots scuffed in my pee, and his fingers connected with my bloody, wet wrists, I froze inside.
“It’s okay, Ama,” Ink rasped, and even though nothing was, I sent him a shaky smile filled with my gratitude.
He’d saved me and I’d never forget that.
Not for as long as I lived.
14
Ama
How could someone be so handsome?
I often stared at Saint and wondered how it was humanly possible. His face was like something Michelangelo himself couldn’t recreate in marble, but his features were somehow chiseled from that same stone—his jaw was hard and square, leading to a chin that had one of those little dents in the middle.
His nose was firm, Roman, and it flared out slightly when he was mad. It was flattened at the base, making his upper lip curve when he was amused.
His eyes could narrow into slits that burned with heat when his brown orbs gleamed with outrage, but were capable of such warmth they made molten chocolate look cold.
His hair was black. Coal black. I sometimes wondered how he’d look when he was older. Would he go salt and pepper? Would that black be overtaken by a pure silver? I didn’t know, and hoped he would be in my life still so I’d find out. He was twenty-four and I was eighteen. There was a long time to pass between now and that point where he’d be turning gray, but I was fanciful by nature. Some might call me stupid, like Lora-Beth from my senior year did, but I wasn’t. I just saw things a little differently than most.
Maybe that was why I often found myself studying the minutiae and not the bigger picture.
Very few people would probably call Saint handsome. But I thought he was beautiful. Each individual feature was a gift from God, and yet, when put together, I knew what most people saw—a predator.
I didn’t mind that though. I’d been around predators all my life, and even though someone like me could have been their prey, I was the creature they protected. The creature they’d lay down their lives to keep safe.
That was what happened when you were the only daughter of an MC Prez, his VP, Enforcer, and Treasurer. Yup. I had four dads, five counting the one who’d died when I was little. Not biologically, but that had never mattered. Just as it had never mattered that my two brothers, Matty and Seamus, were obviously Flame’s sons—the clue was in their shockingly red hair.
Paternity wasn’t what mattered in my family. Never had, never would. Not because my momma couldn’t keep it in her pants and had baby daddies running around, but because they were all together.
Together together.
Their relationship had always fascinated me, and although I’d been teased about it at school—somewhat miserably—I’d always been able to shove it aside because I’d never seen a dynamic like it.
My friends, both girls and boys, came from single parent families, with divorced marriages and bitter regrets littering their background.
Me?
I was forged from love and had been raised in it.
Funny how that worked. How we’d had Welfare around so many times to check up on us, to make sure things were copacetic at the clubhouse when we had the best family around.
“You’re staring.”
My lips curved. “I’m supposed to be. How can I draw you if I don’t?”
Saint sighed and pressed his forearm to his eyes. I’d seen those brown orbs filled with rage and such passion. I wanted him to show me both, wanted him to burn me with his need for me. Rage or need, I’d accept either.
Keys, to his left and jingling the keyring in his hand, grumbled, “Hurry up, Ama.”
My nose wrinkled. “You can’t hurry greatness.”
“Can’t we? We have to go on a run tonight. You gonna be done sometime this month?” he teased, and though I laughed, deep inside I hid my unease.