Pretty Ugly

Pretty Ugly

By: Mary Martel

The Mercy Motorcycle Club

Vol. 1

Smashwords Edition License Note

Thank you for downloading/purchasing this ebook. This ebook and its contents are copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied, and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download/purchase their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

This book contains mature content not suitable for those under the age of 18. Involves strong language and sexual situations. All parties portrayed in sexual situations are adults over the age of 18.

All characters are fictional. Any similarities are purely coincidental.

Published by Mary Martel at Smashwords.com

Copyright © Mary Martel 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Mary Martel, except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

1st Edition Published: December 2016

Cover Design by: Mary Martel

Photo from: Shutterstock

ISBN-13:

978-1533681690

ISBN-10:

1533681694

All Rights Reserved: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction in whole or in part, without express written permission by Mary Martel.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Chapter One

Ugly

Carmine

You’re going to like it here.

I highly doubted this. I never liked it anywhere. Not even when I’d been home with my mother and brother before the state had rightfully stepped in had I liked being there. And in the handful of homes I’d been dumped in ever since were all the same to me. I hated each and every one with a passion.

They hadn’t been bad places to be, really. The people who’d occupied those places just, well, they kind of sucked. Or, maybe it was me who sucked. Either way, I never lasted long, and in no time at all they were ready to ship me off to the next place. And then the next.

I’d been too quiet. Too withdrawn. Too bitter and too angry. One family had gotten rid of me because they thought I was mentally unstable and feared I might either harm myself or eventually harm the other children in their home.

Please.

I snorted.

Something funny, Carmine?

I ignored the soft spoken question from the woman with too bright a shade of pink lipstick seated at my side. Just as I ignored all of her gentle, well meaning, insufferable prodding. Why the woman still bothered would forever remain a mystery to me.

I had to give it to her though, the lady was insistent. To be honest, it was kind of nice. Having someone give a shit, having someone talk to me, even when she knew I’d never respond. However, brief our encounters were, they were the only source of stability I’d had in my life for too long.

Ms. Manning had been with me since my older brother and I had been taken away from our mother. She’d been there to help me pack my meager belongings. She’d dropped me off and been the person to introduce me to my new family. She’d also been the one to pick my ungrateful ass up when said family had deemed me unsuitable for their household.

She and I were on our fourth house and the damned woman never seemed to lose her optimism. If she hadn’t been the only constant in my life, the one to always pick me up when everyone else decided they didn’t want me, I might have told her to shove her optimism right up her asshole. I couldn’t do that to her. I needed her too badly to be there to pick me up when no one else wanted me.

This couple is in their late forty’s and they only take in teenagers. Right now they’ve got two boys and two girls. They’re all a bit older than you are, but I don’t see that being an issue where you’re concerned.

She droned on and on about my new family. I ignored her words, choosing rather to stare blankly out the passenger window, watching the world as we passed it by. Nothing she said ever really mattered. She didn’t know these people. She only knew what she’d read about them in a folder, and she’d only seen the faces that had been put on for her benefit when she’d stopped in for her scheduled visit.

But she did not really know.

Therefore, I never really listened to her.

We’re here.

Already? It seemed this new family lived not too far from the one I’d just left behind. Usually it took longer to get there than this.

I took in my surroundings without a word as she drove on down the dirt lane. Trees as far as the eye could see. The road opened up into a clearing where an old, worn down farm house sat proudly in the center of the clearing. A big, wrap around porch housed a dilapidated bench and a broken down rocking chair.

The place was quiet and seemingly devoid of life.

For whatever insane reason, I loved it.

I could see myself blending in to the quiet scenery. Possibly even becoming forgotten altogether, like the rest of the place seemed to be.

It’s perfect, I whispered to myself, shocking not only myself but the woman seated beside me.

And it was.

For the year I stayed on there before being shipped off to the next place it was perfect. But like everything else in my life it didn’t last. Nothing in my life ever really did. Until the next place, that is. That place stuck. Only because I worked to make it so. And I only did that because of him.

King

Ugly.

She was ugly. Except for those goddamn eyes. Jesus. They reminded me of my mother’s eyes. Sweet, brown, big and full to the brim with hope.

How in the fuck she could land in a place like this and have eyes full of hope would forever remain a mystery to me. Too bad before she left this place that beautiful hope would probably bleed out of the corners of her eyes in the shape of tears and trace down her homely face.

No one left this place whole and she would be no different.

This thought made me unbearably sad.

Something uncomfortable stirred in my gut with just one look into those eyes. Uncomfortable because it had been a long time since I’d felt any sort of real emotion towards another human being. Not since my mother had been ripped away from me and my father had bled to death before my very eyes as he tried, and failed, to save her.

I shut myself off from my emotions after that.

One look into an ugly little girls’ beautiful brown eyes and a switch had been flipped inside me. One look into those eyes and somehow I knew, this little girl, if I let her in, would end up owning me.

This absolutely terrified me. And yet, for some insane reason, it elated me.

I’d been dead inside for so long just the thought of some part of me coming back to life, suddenly resurrected, hit me in ways I never would have expected. For some reason I wanted to reach out to the brown eyed girl and hug her as a thank you.

I did no such thing and I probably would never ever do so.

To touch her would be to destroy her. My father had taught me that with my mother. She hadn’t been much to look at either, but goddamn did she ever have beautiful eyes. And the eyes were the most important part on a person, the window to a person’s soul.

My old man had taken one look into my mother’s eyes and he’d fallen hard. And then he destroyed her.

I was a lot of things, not all of them were good, but the worst of them all I was my father’s son, through and through. I would be until the day I died. My father had taught me to embrace this and I did, feeling no shame or remorse when I more than probably should have.

Carmine changed all of that.

I knew what kind of life I was destined to live, even at fifteen with this little slip of an ugly girl with beautiful eyes standing before me, I knew. And I also knew that one look into those eyes was all it took for me to fall hard.

Something that also terrified me and the only time I loathed being my father’s son because if I gave into my emotions I’d be her ruin.

So I did something stupid. Something that hurt us both in more ways than I could have ever imagined. I’d take it all back if I could. But that’s the fucked up thing about life, you only got one shot at it and if you failed it’d be your own damn fault.

And I failed.

But it wasn’t just my own life I fucked up. I fucked hers all up too and it wasn’t the place we first met that lead to the hope bleeding out of her eyes. Oh no. It wouldn’t be til years later would I see the loss of hope in those eyes. And just like my father with my mother, I’d be the reason she lost the light in her eyes. Unlike my father I’d do it intentionally.

Chapter Two

Happy birthday, my precious girl

So yeah, we hooked up.

Those elated words, spoken by my newest foster sister, caused me to momentarily pause in the middle of the overcrowded hallway.

Someone bumped into me, jostling me from behind. I got no apology, nor did I expect one. The place was an absolute nightmare between classes and if you weren’t going with the flow of traffic you were roughly shoved out of the way. That was just the way of it and I knew better than to stop for anything, even heartbreaking news such as this. And this news, for me, was absolutely heartbreaking. It shouldn’t have been but it was. I should have been used to it by now. I’d gone down this road with two other foster sisters before this one and countless other girls to boot.

I didn’t even need to ask who it was she’d hooked up with. She’d hooked up with him. Of course. Everyone did. He gave his body away like it was nothing to any and every person who wanted a piece of it. Girls, boys, didn’t seem to make much of a difference. He never discriminated based on gender and he wasn’t at all picky.

Unless, of course, you were me.

I was the one exception even though I wanted it, wanted him, a whole hell of a lot more than most.

Lucien Oliver was probably the most beautiful person I’d ever laid eyes on in my whole freaking life and probably always would be. I know it sounds weird, calling a male beautiful, but that’s how I saw him. Not handsome or hot, just crazy beautiful. I mean, yeah, he totally was those things but at the same time so much more.

I’m fairly certain I’m the only person on the planet to ever describe him as such. Not when he was dark and scary and a whole lot of dangerous. He rarely spoke to anyone and when he did he never had nice things to say.

He was over six feet tall with broad shoulders, thick, hard muscled thighs and washboard abs that begged to be touched. Dark brown, over long hair and chocolate eyes. His eyes were cold and detached for the most part, unless they were aimed my way, then they warmed considerably. His face a hard, unforgiving mask unless he was smirking condescendingly at you. He didn’t give a fuck about anyone and didn’t pretend to either and it was undeniably attractive and sucked you in like a magnet, just hoping you might be the one to change his mind and get him to care about you.

So it was safe to say I couldn’t blame the boys and the girls for going for it with him. And I honestly couldn’t blame him for taking what was basically thrown at him on the daily.

But I hated it all just the same. And I hated it with a passion. A passion I tried and very successfully failed at hiding.

Lucien was the only person besides Ms. Manning to ever really give a shit about me. He saw me. To everyone else I was the forgotten, unwanted and very easily discarded ugly girl.

I used to think that maybe if I had been born beautiful my life would have turned out a whole lot different. Perhaps a whole lot better. Would it be easier to love someone if their outside matched their inside? Would I have been so easily discarded, so easily forgotten if I’d been prettier to look at?

The answers to my questions eluded me and probably always would.

No one ever actually even looked at me twice unless they were like my new sister here who wanted to use me in order to get closer to Lucien. Which is what they all did and in most cases they succeed beautifully at.

And they did it because I might have been the only person he wouldn’t sleep with but that didn’t mean he wanted nothing to do with me. It was the exact opposite. He may have given his body away to everyone else but I was the only person he gave any real piece of himself to.

From the first day Ms. Manning dumped me here and I met him Lucien treated me differently than he did everyone else.

He scared me at first. I’d been around all kinds of people but I’d never met anyone like him before. He was intense and he was scary.

But for whatever reason he didn’t scare me. Maybe it had something to do with the way his eyes changed when he looked into mine. He’d started at my black, scuffed up converse covered feet and moved his way upwards. And when he started at my feet his eyes had been so unfriendly they were downright hostile. My insides quivered while I waited in silence for him to be done with his perusal.

The look in his eyes didn’t change until his intense gaze locked with mine. That’s when they changed. I don’t know what it was that brought out the change in him but whatever the cause - it was immediate and made him all the more intense to me. I didn’t know him so I had no idea how to read the emotions that flickered through his eyes but the change in them was profound.

One second he was hostile and yet strangely detached in a very bizarre way and then the next thing I knew he was looking at me adoringly with almost tender eyes.

I had no idea what to make of this sudden change in him and I’d yet to see him look at anyone in even remotely the same way. To everyone else he remained hostile. Even the people he slept with he was hostile and weirdly detached with.

But to me he became my best friend. And for the first time since I started my journey into the system I actually got what Ms. Manning had always preached at me about family. My family only consisted of me and Lucien, though. And my long lost brother I hadn’t seen in years. I held onto hope that one day my brother would find his way back to me so I could have a part of my real family back and he’d join forces with the two person family I’d made for myself.

Fanciful dreams for a naïve girl.

Still, I held onto hope because it was all I had to hold on to.

Where Lucien closed himself off to everybody else except for access to his body he opened himself up to me. He didn’t tell me where he came from or where his parents were. He did, however, listen to me when I told him about all the homes I’d been in.

He listened to me when I told him about how my mom preferred booze and her boyfriends over taking care of her own children. Sometimes so much she forgot she even had children and she would do this for days on end. Just so long as she had a bottle and a temporary man (they were all temporary) nothing else existed for her. She never fought to get us back as far as I knew. Heck, she probably didn’t even notice when we were gone.

I told him how much I desperately wanted to hold on to a brother whose face I couldn’t even remember.

I did this in the quiet of the night after we snuck out of the house to lay on our backs on the grass in the backyard to drink warm beer and stare up at the stars. Through all of this I stared up at the sky too shy to look at him while the entire time he stared at me. It was awkward and my skin prickled the whole time but I couldn’t seem to shut my mouth. He kept giving me cans of warm beer, I kept drinking them and words just seemed to pour out of my mouth without my violation.

Throughout the whole thing he said not a word, remaining silent and ever watchful.

Come to think of it, I don’t think he spoke once that night. He’d knocked his knee into mine, grabbed ahold of my hand and pulled me after him. I followed him willingly. It had been my first week in the new place and I’d been so enraptured by his beauty that I would have willingly followed him anywhere.

Which is exactly what I did. I followed him everywhere. For two years I was his shadow. And when it was just the two of us I was at his side. Our friendship grew stronger by the day. Our bond strengthened. And, unfortunately, my love for him grew right along with it. My very real, unrequited, love.

From the time I was thirteen to fifteen I silently loved him from the shadows with everything I had in me. From the time he was fifteen to the time he was seventeen he was my best friend and the most important person in my whole life.

Then, finally, I’d had enough and I snapped.

***

So yeah, we hooked up.

Those elated words, spoken by my newest foster sister, caused me to momentarily pause in the middle of the overcrowded hallway.

Someone bumped into me, jostling me from behind. I got no apology, nor did I expect one. The place was an absolute nightmare between classes and if you weren’t going with the flow of traffic you were roughly shoved out of the way. That was just the way of it and I knew better than to stop for anything, even heartbreaking news such as this. And this news, for me, was absolutely heartbreaking. It shouldn’t have been but it was. I should have been used to it by now. I’d gone down this road with two other foster sisters before this one and countless other girls to boot.

I didn’t even need to ask who it was she’d hooked up with. She’d hooked up with him. Of course. Everyone did. He gave his body away like it was nothing to any and every person who wanted a piece of it. Girls, boys, didn’t seem to make much of a difference. He never discriminated based on gender and he wasn’t at all picky.

Unless, of course, you were me.

For some reason Lucien had held out longer before giving it to this girl. For one insane second I had thought it had something to do with me.

Two days before on my birthday something strange happened and that strangeness was waking up in my bed with him in it next to me. His face buried in my hair at the top of my head. One arm wrapped around my shoulders. His other arm under my t-shirt, his hand splayed out across my bare stomach, skin on skin.

Skin on skin.

The first time anyone had ever put their hands on me in such a way and it was awesome.

Not to mention his hips and his groin were pressed into my behind. His very hard groin. Something he always kept very far away from me. Something I very much wanted to get acquainted with on an up close and personal level. Something I knew I’d never, ever get the chance to do.

But here was my chance. Something I never thought I’d get. I would have been a fool to pass an opportunity like it up. I wasn’t a fool but I totally was a chicken shit, too afraid to move and ruin the moment. But then it got better if that could be believed and I didn’t have to do a damn thing for it to get better.

The warm hand on my stomach pressed in and slid up, stopping below my breasts.

The breath in my lungs caught in my throat threatening to choke me. How embarrassing. The first time someone touches me in an intimate way and I almost went and choked to death on nothing but air. How stupid would that make me? How utterly pathetic?

His deep, rough with sleep voice washed through me, making my heart stutter when he whispered, Happy birthday, my precious girl.

Happy birthday, my precious girl.

My precious girl.

He’d never called me anything like that before, never talked to me in such a way. He’d always been gentle