WRECKED: GODS OF CHAOS MC, BOOK FOUR by Honey Palomino Page A

small, quick and efficient, with not a lot of laughter, despite my father’s best efforts.
    And dinner with Royce was pretty much nonexistent. Most of my nights I ate dinner alone, unless there was some boring dinner engagement he was dragging me off to, and those were much more boring than eating dinner alone. The times I did have to eat with him, we sat staring across at each other like mortal enemies.
    I’d grown to love the solitude. And, even though being in such close proximity with so many people was unfamiliar, I could see how I could grow to love it. I’d always wanted to just be alone, so that I could avoid being with Royce.
    This was different. Way different.
    The love these people had for each other was so evident. I was envious, and that hurt, but it made me want it.
    But I was here now, and as I took that first delicious bite of Cherry’s cheeseburger, I felt like I’d surely died and gone to heaven. I devoured it and then asked for another. I avoided the small glances they all exchanged with one another, not letting myself get paranoid that they were all thinking about what a pig I was eating two cheeseburgers - those were Royce’s thoughts, not mine.
    Fuck you, Royce.
    This small, first act of rebellion made me feel amazing, and I made a silent vow to myself to do everything I could that Royce had prohibited me from doing. Suddenly, my head was full of excited ideas. I wanted to live - hell, I wanted to thrive!
    I wanted to eat cupcakes and hot dogs, go to a dive bar and get drunk, get a sunburn floating down the Clackamas river in an inner-tube and go shopping at a thrift store - all things I’d loved to do as a teen. Royce refused to let me wear anything that wasn’t couture out of the house and I couldn’t wait to slide on a pair of old faded Levi’s. But there was so much more, things I’d never done before.
    Excitement bubbled in my chest. Excitement to finally be able to live my life. Excitement to make my own decisions. Go where I wanted to go. See who I wanted to see.
    Maybe even have sex.
    The fact that I was an almost thirty year old virgin was not something I was proud of. But I was extremely glad that even though it was for his own disgusting and weirdly twisted reasons, Royce hadn’t touched me.
    He’d asked me shortly after he kidnapped me if I was a virgin and I’d told him the truth. I was. Jesse and I had come close but we’d never gone all the way. This fact alone added to Royce’s sick perception of me as some kind of pure object that he possessed. He loved it that nobody had ever been inside of me. He loved it that no other man had ever touched my face. It was like I was some brand new doll that he’d purchased that he didn’t want to take out of the box.
    The fact that he’d not touched me almost made me feel worse, when I thought about the girls he was abusing. If I could have taken every one of his assaults to save them from it, I would have. I don’t know if I’ll ever shake the guilt from that.
    That’s why I was so intent on bringing him down. What he did to me was horrible enough, but what he’s doing to those girls? It was too much to bear.
    I shoved five fries into my mouth and chugged it with a huge gulp of beer. It was like heaven to my tastebuds.
    “My God, this is so good,” I said to no one in particular, my mouth full of food.
    “There’s plenty, darlin’, you go on and have as much as you want,” Cherry said, her copper curls bouncing around her head as she talked. She was great - sassy and fiery with a drawl that made her sound like she came straight off a South Carolina plantation or something. I half expected Rhett Butler to emerge from the shadows. Without asking, she walked over to the fridge and brought back another ice cold bottle of beer and placed it in front of me.
    “I bet you could use a few more, couldn’t ya, darlin’?” I nodded enthusiastically, bringing the bottle to my mouth and washing down the fries.
    “What’s for