Page 5 of Obey

A hand jumped out and grabbed my wrist before I could get anywhere, though, and the woman yanked me back onto my ass, twisting my arm and securing my wrist back to the bedpost.

“Stupid girl,” she hissed, slamming the handcuff closed and shoving my arm away from her. “Stupid, stupid girl!” She jumped to her feet and stalked toward the door I’d been about to run for. When she got to it, she whirled and stared down at me, her eyes dark fire and her mouth pulled down in a furious scowl. “You. Don’t. Run,” she snapped.

Then she turned and was gone, the door slamming behind her.

Shit.

I’D BEEN ON MY OWN again for no more than five minutes, and realized that I actually did have to go to the bathroom, when the door swung open again. This time I ducked back, unsure of what to expect. I’d already made an enemy of the first woman and tipped her off to my need for escape. I’d jumped from the frying pan right into the fire, and even worse was that I’d done it knowingly.

Stupid, idiotic, twitchy body. I should have waited longer to get up and run. Scratch that. I should have gotten all the way to the bathroom and then sat in there and built a plan, rather than just trying to scramble out at the first opportunity.

It had been too long since I’d had to run for my life, and I was out of practice. Too much time being safe with Knight had dulled my instincts.

Safe with Knight.

I felt a crack run through my heart at the thought, then turned my eyes to the door, wondering who the hell was coming for me now.

I was dead surprised when the same woman was standing there, a flush on her cheeks and her eyes narrowed in what looked a whole lot like dislike. She threw something at me and it skidded across the floor, coming to a bumping stop against the other leg of the bed.

I didn’t look at it. I kept my eyes on the woman’s, trying to read her and figure out how angry she really was. Was that glare actually meant for me, or did it mean something else? Could she still be an ally?

“No bathroom breaks for you,” she said coldly. “You can use that from here on out. Don’t call for me again. I have more important things to do than take care of you.”

The last word was a sneer, like she’d never met anyone as despicable as me, but the expression didn’t touch her eyes.

Which made me think she didn’t actually believe it.

And she hadn’t turned me over to anyone else. Hadn’t told anyone what I’d done, I guessed, and hadn’t called for anyone to come in and discipline me or teach me a lesson—which, I thought, was what Devil would have suggested. I’d known him long enough to know that when a prisoner acted up, he demanded that they be turned over to someone who could beat the rebellion out of them.

If there were other men here and she hadn’t turned me over to them...

It meant she was already breaking the rules Devil had probably set for her.

She stared at me for several moments longer, then turned and left without another word.

I watched the door close behind her, my mind touching again and again on the idea that she was breaking rules, potentially to protect me, and then finally turned my eyes to whatever she’d thrown at me. It had sounded heavy and metal, but it also hadn’t hit me, which meant she’d been careful with how she threw it. Where had it...?

The moment I saw it, I felt the corners of my mouth tug up in a slight grin.

The woman might have barred me from the bathroom. She might not trust me enough to unlock my handcuffs again. But she hadn’t left me without any recourse, like she might have.

She’d given me a bedpan. Not ideal, of course, and honestly kind of disgusting, but there was no avoiding the simple truth that she’d realized she couldn’t trust me on my own and had given me an option. She hadn’t sentenced me to peeing on the floor—or handed me over to the other guards for discipline.

Instead, she’d brought me a safe way to use the bathroom.

And that right there made me feel like there might be a way out of this that didn’t involve my death. As long as I could get her all the way onto my side before Devil showed up to kill me.

CHAPTER 3

KNIGHT

“THAT’S WHAT WE’RE THINKING,” I said softly, letting the other man talk through what he’d been saying and come to his own conclusions. My eyes met Remy’s and I nodded slightly, letting him know that things were going well.

Better than I’d expected, honestly. Jack the Skull Mason was president of a crew that hailed from outside of Arizona—they did most of their business in Nevada—but they were in Arizona often enough that I’d thought from the start that they would be important. When Remy and Frank put the list together of clubs we needed to contact, his Hell Hounds had been right there at the top.

And they’d been a group under the ‘Might Side with Devil’ heading. Which was, as we’d discussed, a problem.

I was on the phone now keeping him abreast of what was going on and trying to convince him to stay out of it. Because if Devil and I could count on an equal number of clubs coming to our sides, it meant we’d be equally matched. But if I could talk even one club out of coming when Devil called...