SOLID GROUND: GODS OF CHAOS MC (BOOK TWO)

SOLID GROUND: GODS OF CHAOS MC

(BOOK TWO)

Copyright ©
2015 HONEY PALOMINO

All Rights Reserved Worldwide

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without permission from the author. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events, locations and incidences are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This book is for entertainment purposes only.

This book contains mature content and is intended for adults only.

NOTE:

THIS IS BOOK TWO OF THE

GODS OF CHAOS MC SERIES

BY HONEY PALOMINO

BOOK ONE, REMEMBER ME, CAN BE FOUND
HERE

EACH NOVEL MAY BE READ AS A STAND ALONE

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Some dates are more memorable than others.

“So, you’re Lacey?” the handsome, middle-aged man across the table from me, asked.

“I’m whoever you want me to be,” I replied, smiling sweetly at him.  

He chuckled, nodding his head, stretching out his arms and placing his hands behind his head as he leaned back in his chair.  An air of confidence exuded from his large frame.  Light threads of silver wove through his black hair, his heavy hooded eyelids squinting as he laughed.

“Monty said you were eager to please,” he said, his smile, while it might have been charming and playful to any other young woman, was sickening to me.  

I didn’t reply.  Not with words.  Instead, I winked at him slyly, a half-smile forming on my red-painted lips as I slipped my stiletto off under the table, and trailed my black-stockinged toe along his ankle.  I slipped under the slacks of his Armani suit, slowly inching up his leg.  It worked every time.

It shut them up.

I hated hearing them talk.  And most of them loved the sound of their voice more than anything else they were paying for.  They thought they were so charming.  So smart. So entertaining. So fucking
important
.

To me, they were none of that.  They were boring on the best nights, and downright abusive on the worst.

I played along.  I played the part perfectly - the pretty girl that knew how to pretend you were fascinating during dinner and, even better - how to pretend you had the biggest prick she had ever seen at your hotel room afterwards.

I knew how to follow the rules.  Because I knew what happened when I didn’t.

After hours of small talk over an outrageously extravagant dinner, my companion paid the check, and we walked down the street that led to his five-star hotel.  When he said he wanted to stop at the corner store, I figured he was buying condoms. 

But not this guy.

No. 

He bought a dozen eggs. And a bottle of wine.  Sure, the eggs were odd, but I was trying not to overthink things.

When we got back to his hotel, the first thing he did was open the wine and offer me a glass.  I accepted, downing it quickly and asking for more.  He refilled my glass as I sat on the sofa.  He sat next to me, each of us silently sipping the dry, red wine.  It was painfully awkward, and I tried to make small talk again to break the ice.

“So, you live in Seattle?”

“Yes, I do.  I’m the CEO of Puget Energy.  I’ve known Monty for two years now. He’s a very…efficient…politician.”  He sipped his wine, and looked over at me.

“Yes, he is,” I replied.  He was also a very efficient prick, I thought to myself.  Monty Patterson had been the mayor of Seattle for two years now.  He just so happened to be my pimp and owner, also.  And he had been for four long years before he even ran for office.

“Does he treat you well?” the man next to me on the bed asked.

“Of course,” I lied.  

He nodded, staring out through the glass door that led to the balcony of his room and overlooked the bright lights of the sprawling Seattle skyline.

“Do you like eggs?” he asked.  He rose to his feet, and I watched him with confusion as he began to undress.

“Eggs?  I’m not very hungry…after that dinner we just had and all…” I said.  What an odd question to ask, I thought, especially as he began to take off his clothes.

“There’s something about them, you know?” he said, as he loosened his tie.  “I love their texture.  So smooth.  So round.  So solid.  And yet, so fragile.  Delicate, even.”

“Um, sure, I guess so…” I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but he wasn’t paying Monty fifteen grand for me to think.

“More wine, Lacey?” He stood in front of me in nothing but his silk trousers and black dress socks.  He was in good shape, I had to give him that.  Thick, curly hair covered his muscular chest and the six pack that he was obviously very proud of.  The hair tapered down into a thin line that disappeared into his pants.

“Absolutely,” I replied.  Wine was one of my best friends on nights like these.  Hell, it was my best friend every night.  It made all the bullshit a little easier to endure.  He filled my glass once more before leaving the living area and returning to the kitchen of the suite.  

I looked around at the penthouse while I waited.  I had a keen eye for nice furnishings, and this hotel had not skimped on their decorating budget.  

I was used to nice things by now.  Not that I had grown up this way, though.  While my mother had desperately longed for a life filled with luxury, it had remained just outside of her reach.  Not that she hadn’t gone to the dark depths of humanity to obtain it, that’s for sure.  When you’ve sold your child to the devil, after a lifetime of using her for your own financial gain, well…you’ve reached a pretty dark place.

It’s not that my mother was evil.  She was just stupid, heinously misguided and tragically poor.  I had the misfortune of being the one child born to her, and consequently, the only chance she felt she ever had to acquire the lifestyle she had spent her life chasing.

The high life.  The good life.  The life of luxury.  

As soon as I was born, she wasted no time trying to make money off of me.  She signed me up with modeling agencies, took me to auditions for commercials for diapers, baby food and baby clothes.  And once I could walk, the pageants started.  I was barely able to find my way across the stage when she entered me in the first one.  

It was the Regal Princess pageant for children ages one to three.   

Unfortunately, I won.  

And that little taste of victory spurred her on to enter me into every pageant she could find in Oregon, Washington, Utah and California.  My entire childhood consisted of being primped, made-up, dressed-up and paraded around in front of a bunch of other equally dysfunctional mothers that lived their own fucked-up fantasies out through their children in some kind of sick competition with each other.

And of course, I went along with it.  I was kid.  It was all I had ever known.  Some of my first memories include her  being completely ecstatic about some part I had gotten.  I craved approval.  I was always that kind of girl.  I didn’t know anything about rebellion.  I didn’t know how to say no.  It was all I had ever known.  Hell, I didn’t even know saying ‘no’ was an option.

If I was being honest with myself, I would say it wasn’t an option.  If I ever dared complain, my costume was too tight, my shoes were giving me blisters - the quick pinch of her fingernails on the back of my arm would quickly put me right back on track, and I’d suck it up.

Of course, that was when I was younger.  As I got older, I knew something wasn’t right.  While she was entirely concerned with my physical appearance, and coming across as the perfect, loving maternal figure when some one was watching - behind closed doors, it was as if I didn’t exist.

Left to my own devices, I could care less if my hair was clean, let alone the dress I was wearing.  I was more interested in whether or not she was going to feed me that day or stay locked in her bedroom and forget about that one important task of being a Mom.

She was never a Mom.  I don’t know what she was.  I spent many years trying to figure out why she had me in the first place.  She mostly resented me - that is, when she couldn’t use me to make a few bucks.

When I got older and stopped winning the pageants, the money dried up.  She took it upon herself to find another, more profitable way of using me.  

Which brings us right back to this room.

If she hadn’t sold me to Monty when I was sixteen, I wouldn’t be sitting here on this velvet couch, staring up at a strange man holding a dozen eggs in his hand, and regaling me with their beauty.

“…and the pure whiteness of them is just beautiful, don’t you think?” Delicately, he lifted an egg from the carton, holding it up to the light. I was still confused. It was so much easier when they just fucked me, came within twenty seconds, and left me alone in the room for the rest of the night.  Apparently, this guy had something else in mind.

“Sure, sure…” I mumbled through the rim of the wine glass.  I eyed the bottle on the glass table in front of me, trying to determine if there was going to be enough left to get me to sleep.  If this guy kept droning on about eggs, I might not need any help falling asleep at all.