by Bourne, Lena
Ink: Devil’s Nightmare MC
Lena Bourne
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Also by Lena Bourne
About the Author
Prologue
One Year Ago
Ink
My father’s lying in the bed by the window, hooked up to so many different life-support machines they form a screen around him. My brother, Justin, is standing behind that screen, his eyes fixed on me as I approach my father’s hospital bed. Or should I call it his deathbed? It’s too soon to call it that, and as I realize it, I also realize it will always be too soon to imagine my father dead.
“You should be gone by now,” my brother says sharply, but his tone also carries a lot of regret and pointless wishing the situation was different.
I ignore his words and their undercurrent. This is what the situation is and there’s no changing it. He’s also right. I should be gone by now.
“He’s sleeping,” he adds and this time there’s only regret in his voice. Regret over me not getting the last goodbye I so clearly came here to find. “The doctor said not to wake him.”
I let the regret in his voice and the one in my chest slip on by and out of my thoughts. What I can see of my father’s face under his bushy beard is ashen, and even his beard seems to have more grey in it than it did before the shit that put him in this bed happened. He’s a big man, larger than life, always active, and he isn’t that anymore. I can’t shake the feeling that he’ll never be again. The hospital nightgown he’s wearing is covered in tiny blue dots against white. It looks like something a woman would wear. He’d hate it.
Is this really how my father’s life will end? In a hospital bed, hooked up to machines, dressed in something he’d hate? All the years I’ve known him, all we shared as father and son is flooding my mind, and I have no power to stop the memories. Even the beeping of the monitors he’s hooked up to isn’t breaking through the painful knot of regret, anger, frustration and fucking sadness that’s been growing and growing in my stomach since my father was stabbed three days ago. That knot is all there is now.
“He was a good father,” I say. Words like that come easy when other things to say are so useless.
“Is,” Justin hisses. He’s holding onto hope that my father will wake up and walk out of here soon. Besides him, only a select few have hope for that. The doctors aren’t among them.
“Is,” I correct myself because I hope for it too. More than anyone else, because my father dying is my fault. The simple fact that I couldn’t not love Julie put him in this hospital bed.
I wish I could say I’d do it differently if I got a second chance at it, that I’d leave her before it came to this, but I can’t. The most I can say is that I’d make sure me and her left a year ago, when we first started planning our escape from this town where men were willing to kill to keep us apart. We were stupid to wait and knowing that, feeling all that stupidity, makes my blood boil. I prefer not to think about it at all. It’s easier.
Justin is about to say something, but Dad opens his eyes just then. They’re alive, sparkling the way nothing else in his face does anymore. He looks so weak, so frail, so fucking defeated and it’s my fault. At least there’s fire in his eyes still. But for how long?
I walk over to the bed, bumping Justin aside to get closer, but I don’t feel the contact. I don’t feel anything. I’m in a dream, a nightmare, and I wish I could wake up. But I know I never will.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I tell my father. “I wish I could go back and change it.”
It’s the truth, but I still feel like a naive ten-year-old saying it. Justin’s derisive snort drives that knowledge deeper.
Dad’s got an oxygen tube in his nose and his chapped lips are shaking as he tries to speak. I lean down instinctively to hear him, because I’m sure the words he’s trying to say, if they come, will be in a whisper.
His lips are shaking worse and worse, but no sound is coming out. And the beeping of the machine by the side of his bed is growing shriller.
“Live,” he finally manages to say, and it’s not even a whisper, it’s barely a breath. Or did he say, “Love”?
Then his eyes flutter shut and don’t open again. The monitor keeps beeping and beeping.
As I straighten, I realize that it makes no difference what my father said. Live or love, I can’t do or have either.
“Go now,” Justin says quietly in a shaky voice, regret and sadness not only in his voice but all over his face as he extends his hand in goodbye. “I hope we meet again.”
“But it’d be better if we don’t,” I say, speaking aloud the part of his sentence he left unspoken.
I shake his hand and he pulls me into an embrace, a bear hug like he hasn’t given me in years, not since we were young and he was always there to watch my back as only an older brother can. I know he wants to take this shit from my shoulders too and deal with it, but there’s no way he can, and we both know that. I wish he didn’t go for a hug, I wish I didn’t feel his regret and sadness over this crap so clearly, because there’s a limit to how much regret I can stand and I’ve already been well past my limit for days now.
“For what it’s worth, I wish I could go back and change this too,” he says once he releases me. I wish he didn’t say anything. I wish there was something to say that wasn’t just empty useless words.
I turn away from him and my father and then I’m outside, the wind beating against me. Then I’m astride my bike, the engine roaring. Then the hospital is just a blob of light on the horizon behind me.
I meant to go by Julie’s house before I left, hoping to get one last look at her from afar before I never see her again. But I can’t face saying goodbye to her a second time. Not even from a distance.
Live or Love. Neither is an option for me anymore. My father’s last words to me are just as useless and empty as all the rest that my family and I can still speak to each other. That includes all the words I want to say to Julie, because she’s my family too, even though we never got to turn that engagement ring into a wedding ring. She took it off and threw it at me when I broke up with her, and even though it was the only logical thing she could’ve done, I still wish she hadn’t thought of it.
I stop atop a cliff overlooking the ocean and consider tossing the ring into the black waters. But I can’t do that. If I do, it’ll just be one more thing I’ll regret, and I can’t take any more regret.
Die. That’s probably the least useless word anyone could say to me now. But there’s no one left. I’m alone with nowhere to go.
1
One Year Later
Ink
Coming back to Sanctuary before returning home to Julie and begging her forgiveness is a step back I don’t want to take, but Doc insisted.
“So how is it?” I ask, since he’s already thoroughly examined my three healed bullet holes and has been silently reading my release papers from the hospital for a good long while now.
He mutte
rs something I don’t hear and keeps on reading. If I keep asking, he’ll snap at me, that’s how our good old Doc is, but I want to know.
“Am I clear to ride?” I ask, chuckling at the serious expression on his face.
He sets the papers down and meets my eyes.
“Give it another week at least,” he says. “You’re healing fast, but you’re not completely healed yet. A long ride won’t do you any favors.”
“Sure it will,” I say and chuckle again, then start pulling my t-shirt back on. “It’ll give me the greatest favor of them all.”
“If she waited this long, she’ll wait another week,” he finally does snap at me like I predicted he would.
Our Doc has a very short fuse and between my chuckles and smart-ass words, I’d expected it to blow by now. I was sure him talking to me like he’s my father and not just the MCs doctor charged with keeping me alive wouldn’t bother me today, but it kinda does. This isn’t the first time he’s had to keep me alive, and it’s not the first time I’ve detected fatherly tones in the way he speaks to me, nor is it the first time I’ve been annoyed by it. I had a father. He’s been dead for a year now, and he’s irreplaceable. I also don’t appreciate him saying if in regards to Julie waiting for me. There’s a lot of reasons to think she didn’t, and I don’t want to think about any of them.
Though on the whole, ever since I decided to go find Julie and make her mine again, make her mine forever, nothing fazes me anymore, and nothing fouls up my mood for long. Least of all a cranky doctor who’s now saved my life twice.
“I’ll give it three more days,” I say and slide off the exam table, wincing in the process, because while the stitches healed up the skin over my bullet holes just fine, what’s beneath the surface isn’t quite whole yet.
Doc shakes his head in that resigned way he has when we don’t follow his orders. “Come see me again before you leave.”
“So you can tell me to give it a couple more days?” I ask.
“If I have to,” he snaps.
“Alright, will do,” I say, but I’m not so sure I’ll stay true to my word.
Julie’s waited long enough. The only thing’s that’s putting a dent in my good mood is the thought that it might have been too long. We didn’t leave it in the best way. I broke it off with her and left her begging for an explanation I couldn’t give her. She even begged me to stay. And she’s not the begging type. I might have broken things between us beyond repair. That was my plan at the time, to give her no hope so she’d move on like I knew I never could. Now I’m thinking maybe she never could either. I’m putting all my bets and hopes and dreams on it. Whether she’ll forgive me or not is a different question, one I don’t want to dwell on at all.
“So we’re set,” I hear Cross’ voice from the foyer as I near it. “Call the meeting for Thursday night. I want everyone there.”
There’s grunts of agreement from the others with him, then Rook says, “Consider it done,” and the front door opens and closes.
I stopped in the hallway on my way from Doc’s exam room, because I didn’t want to barge into the middle of what was clearly the end of an execs meeting.
A Thursday night meeting puts a gash in my plans though, because that’s a week from now. Doc’ll be happy to hear I have to stay put that long. Maybe I’ll just leave tomorrow, and make sure I don’t get the order to attend this meeting before then. If I never heard about it, they can’t blame me for missing it.
“Hey, Hawk, wait up!” I call after him as he opens the door at the end of my hallway to go downstairs to his basement office. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”
He halts and waits for me by the door.
He owes me big time, since I got shot protecting his old lady, and it’s time to collect on that. Hawk is something of a wiz with computers, and he does all the surveillance and info-gathering for the MC as well as a bunch of other computer-related stuff. He’s given most of our members new identities, so I’m sure finding Julie won’t be a problem for him.
I still remember Julie’s old phone number and her email, but she might have changed both by now and besides, what I want to say to her shouldn’t be done over the phone or from a distance. I need to know where she lives, because I want to look into her golden brown eyes when I tell her how sorry I am for being the idiot who thought he could live without her.
“Can you find someone for me?” I ask once I reach him.
“Yeah, no problem. Follow me.” He opens the door and disappears behind it.
Hawk traverses the narrow hallway on the other side of the door in three long strides then jogs down the barely lit stairwell that leads to his computer room. This part of Sanctuary, which used to be a nursing home or something once upon a time, was for the servants, or so I’ve heard. I try to keep up, but the jarring motion of skipping down stairs is waking pain deep inside two of my bullet holes. I don’t really feel the third anymore, except the pulling of the scar on my skin, so I guess it’s as healed as it’s ever gonna be.
Good. One down, two to go. But the other two seem to still have a ways to go. I don’t fall prey to weakness, my father taught me to fight until the end, so I won’t be admitting to it, but Doc might be right. It’s too soon for me to ride the hundred or so miles that separate me from Julie. Damn. I guess she’ll have to wait a little longer after all, though I’m not sure if I can.
“So what can I do for you, Ink?” Hawk asks, sitting down in his chair, swirling towards me, but still not meeting my eyes.
I wonder why that is. I saved his lady from dying in a thick puddle of her own blood by letting them spill mine instead, so why’s he having trouble meeting my eyes? He’s thanked me for it often enough, promised to return the favor any way he can, and I’ve never seen his signature arrogant smile off Hawk’s face for long, so what the fuck is this looking down at the floor shit now?
“Can you look up someone for me?” I ask. “I want to see if she’s still where I think she is. Or, I should say, where I left her.”
That came out wrong. I blame Hawk’s reluctance to meet my eyes. Just plain rude, that is.
“What’s her name?” he asks and picks up a notepad and pen off his desk. “And any other details you can give me.”
I rattle off all I know about her. Which used to be everything. Is a year of no contact enough to make two people strangers? I sincerely fucking hope not.
“Her eyes are the color of honey,” I finish up giving him the basic details like her name and date of birth. “And her lips curl up just so at the edges, making a perfect bow, especially when she smiles.”
I could go on, tell him about the perfect wave that flows from her calves up to her hips, dips at her cinched waist and rises again over her perfectly round breasts, ending at her neck, which is long and slender and tastes like clean water and freedom and everything else that’s good in this world. I could also tell him about her clit that’s soft and delicate, and more intricate and beautiful than any flower I’ve ever seen. Just thinking about all this makes me rock hard and it’s entirely too much information to share, especially with someone who’s not even meeting my eyes.
“Alright, give me a day or two and I’ll find what I can on her,” he says.
“One would be better. I’m dying to see her.”
As I say that it hits me just how true it actually is. I’ve been dying a little each day that we’ve been apart, like cut flowers slowly dying in a vase, until one day they collapse and start turning black as they rot. I thought I was well past the rotting stage, but now I know I’m far from it.
“You can’t leave right now,” Hawk says and this time he finally meets my eyes.
“I’m almost healed. Another day or two should do it, even Doc agrees,” I tell him.
“It’s not that…” he says, but then stops talking and keeps looking at me, like he’s being forced to shut up. It makes absolutely no sense.
“There’s a meeting next Thursday night,” he finally adds. “You have to be
there.”
Fucking hell. He had to go and tell me about the meeting. Now I’m stuck here for another week.
“Meeting? What meeting?” I might have overdone the being surprised part, but the last thing I need is anyone suspecting me of eavesdropping on the execs’ private conversations. I don’t know Cross very well yet, but I’m certain he doesn’t condone underhanded shit like that.
“Cross called it and he wants everyone to be there,” Hawk says.
He smiles, but it’s a strained thing like there’s more to it than that, a whole lot more. As in I won’t be able to go see Julie for a lot longer than a week. But I’m probably just imagining that. Getting wounded and not being a hundred percent will make you paranoid. At least that’s what happens to me.
Hawk tells me he’ll call when he has the info I need, and I leave him to it.
I now have no choice but to stick around until Thursday night. But I’m not waiting a minute longer than that.
* * *
I got the official summons to the meeting along with everyone else a couple of days after Hawk told me about it. No reason for the meeting was given, so speculations and rumors regarding what it could be about started sparking up as soon as the brothers learned about it, and a couple of days later they were burning like forest fires.
I’ve only been with the Devils for about a year, and most of that time was spent hunting down members of Satan’s Spawn MC, so there’s a lot I don’t know about how things are done in times of peace. What I do know is that our president, Cross, likes to play things close to the heart. Even his execs don’t always know what he’s planning. That’s fine by me so long as he’s steering us in the right direction. Which I believe he is. Even though I’m a new member, and I was fast-tracked to getting my cut by first saving one of their own, and second because they needed men for the war with the Spawns, he never made me feel unwelcome or expandable. I’m glad I joined them.