Forgotten & Found: A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Boxset

by Serena Akeroyd

Quite clearly, it wasn’t.

  He’d felt my reaction when I’d spotted Lily.

  Shit.

  I cleared my throat. “I don’t want to tell her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she might tell my dad.”

  “So?”

  He was so beautiful, and I totally didn’t think he knew it. Sure, he was cocky, but around me? With time? That faded away.

  But his pitch-dark hair was glossy in the early morning light, and because we hadn’t done anything other than roll out of bed to get on his hog, it was soft rather than crispy with gel. His face was a little worn from lack of sleep—not just because of our escapades, but because of whatever the club had him doing—and his eyes were…crap, stormy.

  He was getting ready to fight.

  I didn’t want that.

  So I spun in his arms, didn’t let him move away by slinging mine around his neck, and admitted, “When someone’s nice to you, do you find it hard to say no?”

  His brow puckered. “Tiff—”

  “I don’t mean me and you. I’m not manipulating you. I’m trying to make you understand.” I sucked in a breath. “When someone is a bastard to you, you can be rebellious. It’s easy to say no. It’s easy to think ‘fuck you.’ But when someone’s nice? When they reason with you, when they turn your world on its head to make you think you’re wrong, and they use everything you’ve done as a weapon against you, all while saying it’s in your best interests, and all while doing it because they love you? It’s harder to say, ‘fuck you,’ isn’t it?”

  He scowled at me, but it softened as he read how earnest I was being.

  This was no bullshit.

  This was my life.

  “I guess.”

  “That’s my dad,” I whispered. “I love him. I do. But he’s definitely old school. He gives me more freedom than most daughters who still live at home, who still buy shit on his card, and who dropped out of college, get from their father, but that’s because I live like my mother. He understands that. He molded her a certain way, and as long as I live in her image, that’s fine.” There’d been a time when he’d wanted to bring me into the business but, of late, that had changed, and that just made me feel even more worthless. Useless. Like my mom. A pretty butterfly whose only role in this world was to look pretty and to make men smile.

  “But you’re not boning a dude from the country club. You’re boning a biker,” Sin rumbled softly.

  “Exactly. If he thought you were on the up and up, if we’d make an advantageous match, he’d have no problem with this. But I know him. He’ll—” I gulped. “He’ll kill me with kindness until I find it hard to say no. He’ll learn stuff about you that I don’t know, and he’ll use that as ammunition to break us apart.

  “I know there are things about your life that no sane father would approve of. I’m not an idiot. I know you have a past, and I’m sure your present isn’t squeaky clean, but I don’t need him pushing his nose into it. Can you get that?”

  He didn’t answer that, instead, asked, “You think Lily would tell him?” He knew how I felt about her. Knew I considered her to be a sister from another mister.

  “I don’t know. You’re a Sinner,” I said drolly, reaching up and running my fingers through his hair. When his eyes fell to half-mast, I almost smiled at his visceral response to my touch. “She might think telling him is in my best interest. I don’t know that I wouldn’t do the same if I thought she was dating a Sinner too.”

  His eyes popped open at that. “We’re dating?”

  I froze, then when there was only amusement in his eyes, muttered, “Jerk.”

  He grinned at me, his entire face lighting up as he squeezed my waist. “We’re dating, angel,” he rumbled, dipping his chin and letting his scratchy stubble scrape down my nose like the jerk he was. When I pinched his butt in payback, he snorted out a laugh, then hauled me high so I could wrap my legs around his hips.

  He pushed me back into the fridge, and I didn’t even mind that a magnet was digging into my hip. I was just more focused on the look in his eyes, on that intense stare that made me melt and tense at the same time.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  “I get your reticence, I do. I even understand why you don’t want your friends and family to know, but this, what we have, it’s not going nowhere. You get me?”

  I bit my bottom lip but nodded.

  He was right.

  “Okay,” he muttered, blowing out a breath. “So long as we both know that.”

  “Yeah. We do.”

  His eyes darkened. “Good. With that in mind, I want to fuck you with no condoms. I’m clean. You’re clean. And I don’t need us rolling out of bed at the asscrack of dawn to grab the morning after pill because we had too much fun the night before.”

  My lips hitched up in a grin, and I squeezed my arms around his neck. “Aww, poor baby,” I retorted, then squealed when he darted forward and nipped my chin.

  “You know exactly what I’m saying.” The intensity in his words and on his face? God, it hit me hard. In places that I couldn’t afford to respond to him like this. Places like my goddamn heart. “I want you raw. Never experienced anything like it. Don’t think I ever will again—”

  Before he could say another word, another terrifying word, I whispered quickly, “I’ll get the shot.” I mean, hell, I’d been intending on having this conversation with him anyway. It was to my benefit that he brought it up first.

  He dipped his chin. “Good.” Then, “When?”

  Snorting, I muttered, “I’ll get an appointment with the doctor today. So whenever they can fit me in.”

  “Even better.” He let me down at that, evidently no longer worrying I was going to run off and faint, or go screaming for the woods at this conversation.

  But I got it.

  We weren’t that great at talking.

  Doing? Being? Yeah. We rocked at that. Especially when we were together.

  Now that I was on my feet again, I grabbed the coconut milk from the fridge, and the regular stuff for him, then began making us coffee.

  I was well aware that I moved around his kitchen like it was mine.

  Even more aware that he hadn’t said anything when I rearranged his cupboards so I could fit some of my things in there.

  As I doctored our cups, he slung himself onto a counter stool and asked, “What are your plans for the day?”

  “Talking with the doctor is one of them,” I answered dryly, and since my back was to him, I shot him a sassy grin over my shoulder when he just grunted. “Tonight, I won’t be here until late.”

  “Me either. After eleven, at least.”

  I nodded.

  Work.

  It went without saying.

  It also went without saying that I couldn’t ask what he was doing. Which technically sucked, but I wasn’t sure I really wanted to frickin’ know.

  He didn’t ask either, but I could see he wanted to. It amused me that he could be fair though. This big, badass biker who liked to grill and sit in a hammock, and who maybe killed people for a living or delivered drugs—dear God, I could just hear the conversation with my father if he ever discovered what was going on here—being fair.

  Because I couldn’t ask him what he was doing, his logic was why should he be able to ask me? Feminists didn’t all come with burned bras, it seemed. They wore cuts too.

  Because he didn’t, because he let it go, even though he was curious, I explained, “Meal with Lily and her dad and brother tonight.”

  Tension hit him. “Yeah?”

  I frowned, but hummed too. “It was Lily’s birthday yesterday. They have a family meal thing on the day itself, but then I get invited the day after to a more ‘relaxed’ meal. You okay?”

  “I don’t like that Luke Lancaster fucker. He came into the bar and—”

  “And what?” My eyes lit up. “Oh man, please tell me you were the one to break his nose? He’s been bitching about that ever since it happ
ened.”

  Sin snorted. “No, but I wish I was.”

  I grinned. “But a biker did it?” I hooted. “Love it. Bet he didn’t tell his dad that.”

  As I snickered when I handed him his coffee, he gripped his hand around my wrist and stated, “Don’t trust that Luke fucker, Tiffany.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was a command or him telling me that he didn’t trust him. Frowning, I stared at his tight grip on my wrist, and muttered, “Don’t worry, I don’t even like Luke.” I’d had a crush on the pretty boy back when I was younger, but there was something weird about him that gave me the creeps now.

  He relaxed some. “Good. Keep your guard up tonight.”

  My brow puckered, because I wasn’t sure why he thought that was necessary. I ate at Lily’s place a few times a week, maybe once a month with both her brother and father in attendance.

  “Okay,” I agreed slowly, knowing something was happening here that he couldn’t explain.

  I just wished I’d heeded his warning.

  Maybe if I had, things would have turned out differently.

  Luke Lancaster

  Later that night

  When Lily flinched at Father’s hold on her shoulder, my lips snagged into a nasty smirk, before I had to stop when it made me move my nose. Even that fraction of an inch pulled on the break, and the tape I had on the bridge, snagged on my skin, dampening my mood, even as it fed my desire for revenge.

  Tonight was my night for vengeance, and the plan was already underway.

  Lily gently tilted away from Father, just a tad, not enough for him to notice. But me? I noticed everything. Of course, I knew what Father was doing to her, what he’d been doing for years, but with a man like our father, there was no stopping him.

  I knew because I was reared in his image.

  Lily was weak. Exactly like Mother. The opposite of Father and me.

  We were men of old. Vikings who raped and pillaged, took what we wanted, owned whatever we dared claim.

  Did it sicken me that he was fucking her?

  Yes.

  Not much sickened me, but that did.

  Even if it didn’t surprise me.

  A man like Donavan Lancaster wasn’t one to be denied anything he desired, but even though I knew, there wasn’t much I could do.

  Not yet.

  I was biding my time.

  There’d come a day when he’d topple from his pedestal, and I’d be ready and waiting to take advantage of his weakness and to claim everything that was his and make it my own.

  It was a day that wasn’t far in the distance. The second I’d shown him my sanctuary, I’d known he’d fall into temptation too.

  And he had.

  His end was approaching.

  My lips curved in earnest when he moved to the head of the table and Lily relaxed. My gaze switched between her and her best friend. Tiffany was an annoyance, but in this instance, she was going to help me.

  Without even knowing it.

  I watched her as she guzzled the drinks I’d insisted Conchita use to accompany this meal, and I handled the bar myself, slipping small amounts of the drug I’d ground up into her drink over the course of the evening. She was starting to look a little shaky on her feet.

  Lily’s tension at our father’s impromptu speech about how he missed our mother, and how he wished she was here to see us both—farcical considering he was the reason she wasn’t here in the first place—actually came to my aid.

  She was tense, on edge, and ever since he touched her? In another world.

  I knew how that worked.

  A safe place.

  Like anywhere on this rotten planet was truly safe.

  Her wandering off to Narnia helped me because she didn’t recognize the state Tiffany was in.

  There’d been a time when I liked Tiffany. I liked her goo-goo eyes over me, but something changed, and ever since, she’d turned into an irritation. When her crush had died, I’d tried manipulating her into wanting me, but she’d rebuffed me one too many times, and only Father telling me to back off had made me stop. I wasn’t the kind of man who took no for an answer—which was why tonight was going down the way it was—but for business? I got it.

  Tiffany’s father was a cash cow for some important people, our family included, so who was I to turn down free money?

  When the interminable meal was over, I wandered off without a farewell. Heading outside to where I parked my car in a dark corner of the front yard, I waited for Tiffany to stagger toward her car, leaving Lily and Father back in the house.

  She almost tripped and fell on her face, but she caught herself just in time. Her purse landed on the ground, and I almost laughed, watching her try to collect the crap she stored in there.

  By the time she was back on her feet, she was shaking, and she almost slouched over the wheel.

  Without the drug, she’d probably just be riding the limit, but now? She was a danger to everyone on the road.

  Which was exactly what I was banking on.

  Loving that my new car was fully electric, which meant it purred to life rather than roaring like Tiffany’s did, I began tailing her.

  It was painful and pitiful watching her crawl down the drive in her beast of a car, but when she sped up as she approached the highway that would make the journey to her house take five minutes, she stalled the engine. A few seconds later, she was back in motion, but she was going too fast. When she slipped down the shoulder, the tires spinning, I was almost disappointed when she wasn’t involved in a worse crash. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, I thought, as I pulled up behind her and slid out onto the asphalt.

  She was moaning when I reached her, but luckily for her, she wasn’t harmed. Puke covered her front, though, and she reeked of it. I was used to worse stenches, however, so I didn’t curl up my nose, just was careful not to touch any of the filet mignon Conchita had served us as I reached for the phone she had put in the dock on her dash.

  Holding it up to her face for it to unlock, I rummaged around her messages until I found the biker I was looking for.

  Sin.

  The unofficial guard dog the biker had set on his bitch.

  A bitch whose blood I was going to taste tonight.

  My lips curved at the thought, and I thought about how tracking him had been so easy. Surprising, but easy. Tiffany was more fastidious than anyone let on. I was fucking gorgeous, but she’d never fuck me. Never even cast a look my way since she was a teen. What the fuck she saw in that scum, I didn’t know, but it was to my good fortune that she was deciding to rough it.

  I’d been following the bikers for about a week, tracking the ones the Sinners’ Enforcer had set on his cunt of a woman, and the pretty boy fuck called Sin was the one who was usually on the snatch’s tail.

  That was how I’d put this plan together.

  Following him had led me to discover that he was boning Tiffany.

  Fucking slut.

  She was snippy with me, but would spread her legs for that biker trash?

  The thought had rage flushing through me, and though I wanted to take it out on her, I decided not to waste my energy on this bitch.

  Giulia Fontaine was the woman who deserved my wrath, and with that fucking biker of hers out of town, tonight was my night to party.

  The second I’d found Sin’s number, I typed out a message.

  Tiffany: Got into a crash. Can you help me?

  Sin: Fuck, are you all right?

  That he responded almost immediately had my brow rising.

  Did the filth have feelings for his uptown girl?

  My lips snagged into a grin at the thought, and as I hummed the Billy Joel song under my breath, I replied.

  Tiffany: No. I don’t feel so good. Can you come and help me?

  Sin: Shit. I’m on the clock.

  A pause when I didn’t reply.

  Sin: Christ. Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Send me your live location.

  I sent it, carefully wip
ed the phone down, then I dumped it in the dock where I’d found it.

  Squeezing her tit on the way out of the car, hard enough for it to hurt, for her to moan in her drug-induced state, I chuckled at the noise and, with a jaunty step, retreated to my car.

  Blasting the radio as I pulled out onto the road, I headed toward the town where the Sinners’ new bar was located.

  The second Sin had left, the second that bitch was alone, she was mine. Giulia was about to learn how it felt to wish she was dead.

  The dead felt nothing.

  The dead were free.

  Life was the prison, and I was about to become that cunt’s jailor.

  Tiffany

  I squinted at my phone as it started to ring. The light blared into the darkness, making my eyes ache until I grabbed it and pressed it to my ear after a quick glance at the time told me it was two in the morning.

  Shit, I’d slept the whole day and night through.

  I’d woken up at Sin’s in a daze, we’d talked about what happened, and then he’d dropped me off here. That was pretty much all I remembered as I connected the call, wishing I was at his place and not my parents’ home.

  “Are you okay?” was Sin’s greeting.

  “No.” Sin’s voice made me wish he was here. Christ, what I wouldn’t give to be waking up in his arms like I had yesterday. Misery filled me, misery and want and need as I whispered, “I still feel sick, and my head is killing me.” I blew out a breath, then, knowing I’d caused him some trouble last night by having to leave work early, I asked, “Everything all right?”

  “Not exactly.” His breath gusted down the line. “I need to tell you something. It’s big.”

  My eyes widened, which made my head pound. “What? Are you okay?”

  “Everything comes at a cost, Tiff. My staying silent about what we discussed this morning means I have to listen to my Prez. It won’t be for long.”

  “What won’t be for long?” I rasped, sitting up, then hiding a moan as the ache in my head transmogrified into a monster.

  He grunted. “I should have explained this morning, but fuck, we had other things to talk about. I should have been on the road last night, I just couldn’t let you wake up alone this morning. I had to see you before I left.”