by Krane, Kasey
Knight
Dead Legion MC #3
Kasey Krane
Copyright © 2020 by Kasey Krane
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is previously released as Crow. A lot of changes and edits have been made to the manuscript.
Created with Vellum
Contents
1. Leia
2. Leia
3. Knight
4. Leia
5. Knight
6. Leia
7. Knight
8. Leia
9. Knight
10. Leia
11. Knight
12. Leia
13. Knight
14. Leia
15. Leia
16. Knight
17. Leia
18. Knight
19. Leia
20. Knight
21. Knight
22. Leia
23. Knight
24. Leia
25. Knight
26. Leia
27. Knight
28. Leia
29. Knight
Epilogue
About Kasey Krane
1
Leia
I sat at the diner table, pushing the last of my stuffed French toast around my plate, sneaking glances at the hot guy sitting just a few tables away, next to some other large man that some other girl might drool over, but I barely noticed. The hot guy, though? God, he was gorgeous, and I was having a hard time breathing just looking at him.
He was the calendar model, the centerfold, the epitome of what every hot guy eye candy should look like. Square jaw, full lips, clear skin, and straight white teeth. And his muscles! He was wearing a leather vest so he was probably part of some motorcycle gang, but from here, I couldn’t tell which one. The intricate tattoos that wound their way up his arms emphasized his bulging biceps and I swallowed hard. What I wouldn’t do to run my hands up those biceps…
I quickly looked down when he looked up and caught my eye, embarrassed to have been caught staring at him. A flush stole up my cheeks and I stuffed the last of my French toast into my mouth. It wasn’t like this guy was going to be interested in me. Girls with my curves just didn’t get laid by guys like that.
With a sigh, I pushed my empty plate away from me just as I saw a ticket flutter to the floor next to me out of the corner of my eye. Quickly, I picked it up and, straightening up, I saw that it was him. Reminding myself to breathe, I held it out to him with a smile.
“Here you go,” I said and then our fingertips brushed as he reached out to take it and oh God, a lightning bolt went up my arm. This guy was way too good-looking for my mental state of being.
“Appreciate it,” he said.
“Sure, you’re welcome,” I said and smiled again, feeling like an idiot but unable to stop myself. There was something about this guy that was just yummy and breathing seemed to have become…optional.
I realized belatedly that I was still holding the receipt and hurriedly let go.
“So, you from ‘round here?” I asked, a question I asked almost every customer I had ever waited on in a restaurant. Bonus points for sounding like a normal human being.
“No, just on our way back to Deming.”
My eyes widened with surprise. I let my eyes flick down to his leather vest where I saw the patch “Dead Legion” emblazoned.
Then back up to his face.
Ho
Ly
Shit
He’s from the Dead Legion.
Keep it together; don’t act like an idiot.
If it wasn’t too late for that already...
“Oh, how nice,” and even as I uttered the words, I knew how banal they sounded but I seemed to be devoid of all intelligent thought. “I’ll go with you up to the cash register,” I said brightly and grabbed my ticket that the waitress had dropped off quite a bit earlier. Damn waitresses in this diner - no knowledge of how to treat their customers. Everyone knows you don’t give the customer their ticket for their meal as you deliver said meal to them. It was just plain rude.
But, whatever. I had to focus, and not act like a crazy person.
Two things that seemed more difficult than normal around this guy.
I scooted out of the diner booth and followed the Dead Legion up to the front counter, eyes skimming his back and ass with appreciation as we went. While drooling over him earlier, I had been wondering how chiseled his abs really were was and now I knew. I could see the faint lines of his muscles underneath his shirt and imagined wrapping my hand around his waist then pulling his lips towards mine and…
Oh God, I gotta get myself under control.
I had never reacted to a guy like this before and God only knew how many men I had been around in my life. As a waitress, I had interacted with every kind of humanity out there.
But no man had ever affected me this way. It was thrilling, and totally fucking scary.
But mostly thrilling.
No waitress was around and so I figured we had a bit of time to kill – okay, to flirt – before a waitress finally made her way over to us.
“Deming is about an hours north of here – whatcha doing in El Paso?”
Something flicked across his features so quickly, I had a hard time catching it but then his face smoothed out and he said casually, “A ride to Mexico. A…day ride, just down there and back.”
“Day ride”? Normally people call it a “day trip.” Maybe this was a motorcyclist thing…?
“I’m on my way down to Mexico myself,” I said, more convincingly than I really felt. “Going to go wander around and play tourist.” Actually, I’m supposed to be going to Deming too, but I’m currently playing the part of a chicken rather convincingly.
Not really something I should tell him right now.
He nodded. “Cheap shopping. Ever been?”
I noticed that he tended to use fewer words than pretty much anyone else I had ever met, and yet, somehow, still got his point across. A talent I didn’t possess on the best of days, and especially didn’t possess around fucking hot men who made my tongue feel like it was two feet thick.
He cocked his eyebrow at me and I realized that I hadn’t answered his question yet.
“No, my passport is a virgin,” I said without thinking, which caused him to laugh, which I couldn’t help but feel was an incredibly unusual experience. It came out rusty and hard, as if he’d long-ago forgotten how to do it. We grinned at each other and I was back to not being able to breathe and lightning bolts were striking again and —
“Sir, I’m ready whenever you are,” the waitress said.
Oh, right.
Waitress.
At a restaurant in a line to pay for food.
Dammit.
He turned towards the waitress to pay for his meal, which conveniently gave me a chance to eyeball his ass again. But really, not my fault. What do you expect a girl to do when a guy wears leather chaps that perfectly frame his ass?
Which, of course, made me think about him not wearing jeans at all.
But still the leather chaps.
Oh yeah…
He turned back to me, having finished with the waitress, and I opened up my mouth to say something — anything, really, although I hadn’t actually thought of what I was going to say, but I hoped something brilliant and witty and, you know, not stupid would come out — when he beat me to the punch.
“Sorry we’re just leaving Mexico. Coulda showed you around.” Which, of course, did n
ot help with the non-breathing problem I seemed to be experiencing. To have a guy this handsome offer to show me around Mexico was…mind-blowing.
Before I could do something desperate like throw myself at him and beg him to take me to Mexico, the blond guy who’d been sitting next to my model-in-the-flesh showed up at his elbow.
Shit.
“Come on, Knight, gotta go. Ma’am,” and with a nod from both of them, they turned around and walked out of the restaurant. I stared after them longingly, sure that there was drool somewhere on my chin but not even caring. Suddenly, the idea of going to Deming wasn’t nearly as intimidating. I could go there and go to the Dead Legion clubhouse and ask where my dad was and flirt with Knight and —
“Ma’am, I’m ready,” the waitress said impatiently, and with a sigh, I turned back to her. Nothing against the waitress of course, but needless to say, she was a hell of a lot less gorgeous than Knight.
I had never been one to go after the bad boy - okay, let’s be honest here, I was never one to go after any guy - but there was something about Knight that set me on fire.
In a good way.
The motorcycles roared off as I headed back to my table to grab my mom’s journal and my phone, which I had stupidly left behind when I had followed Knight up to the front. Good thing El Paso was a tiny town, and the diner didn’t seem to be full of thieves - my items were still at the table where I’d left them.
God bless small towns.
I walked across the street in the blazing hot sun to the park. I sat at the base of a tree in the shade on the stubby grass - the only kind of grass that can grow in the hot Sonoran Desert - and opened up my mom’s journal to reread that first entry again. By this time, I had read several journal entries ahead, but the first was still my favorite. Who wouldn’t want to read about their parents meeting for the first time?
Although I guessed that most people didn’t know quite as much about their parent’s sex lives as I now did.
September 17, 1992
So I met the sexiest motorcycle rider ever last night at Jennifer’s party. She turned 21 yesterday and she just went batshit crazy. Lots of alcohol and, of course, lots of Mary Jane.
There we were, out on the front lawn, taking a couple of hits, when the Outlaws pulled up. I know Dad would never approve, so it’s a good thing I don’t live at home anymore, right?
Butcher - I’m sure that’s his name as much as mine is Sparkling Unicorns R Us - got off his bike and ran his hand through his hair - wow!! Damn, he’s hot. When we started talking, he just had such a great attitude. He doesn’t take shit from anyone; he just knows what he wants, and last night, he told me that he wants me!
I can already tell that he’s the one for me. We went behind the shed and fucked out under the stars. We could hear everyone at the party but no one saw us. It was the naughtiest thing I’ve ever done!
He says he’s going to come over to my apartment today and we’re supposed to go out on a real date. I don’t know where we’re going or what we’re doing, but I do know I can’t wait.
And then, I flipped back to the inside flap of the journal to reread my mom’s inscription for what was probably the hundredth time, but I excused my obsession with the thought that my mom had been talking to me. My mom had never woken from her coma; I had never been able to tell her goodbye. Here were her final words of wisdom to her only child. Of course I would read it once or twice…or a hundred times.
I could almost hear my mom’s lilting voice as I read it:
I dedicate this journal to the only man I’ve ever loved - the father of my daughter. And to my little girl, who will never know her dad. I love you, Butcher. I love you, Leia. I wish you both knew how much I loved you, and how much I wish you knew each other.
I closed my eyes and leaned against the tree trunk, letting the journal close in my lap.
When I was eight, I had stopped accepting my mother’s non-answers about who my dad was, and began pushing. Pushing for information. Pushing for a name. Pushing for something more than, “He was a good guy - I’m sorry you never met him.” But instead of getting answers, my mother had gotten angry with me and hadn’t spoken to me for two days. I hated for people to be mad at me - I was a peacemaker, through and through - and so I finally broke, apologizing to my mom for my bad manners.
It taught me two things: My mother was damn stubborn and capable of becoming a cold, thick wall of silence when angered, and that the topic of my father was truly off-limits.
All of this meant that finding this journal in amongst my mother’s things after her death was, by far, the best present I had ever been given, a small salve for the bottomless wound of losing my best friend and confidante. I had been reading the entries slowly over the last two weeks, forcing myself to savor them, rather than to devour them all in one sitting like I had been tempted to.
Realizing that I had gotten inexplicably hotter, I opened my eyes and realized that the sun had moved and my shade had moved with it. Scooting to the right so I could continue to stay under the cover of the acacia tree, I pulled out my second favorite part of the journal: A newspaper clipping from the Deming News, a newspaper down in the southern part of the state. Far, far away from where I had grown up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I reread the caption: The Dead Legion Motorcycle Club from Deming presenting a $1750 check to the University of New Mexico Trauma Center, proceeds from their annual fundraiser held on the second Thursday of every July in honor of James Miller. Then a list of the members who were present for the photograph.
Third over from the left was my dad. The lightly smeared clipping didn’t give me enough details - I could tell that he’d smiled for the picture, and was wearing a bandana around his head. I guessed that it was red, but the newspaper was in black and white, so I would never know. Did his eyes crinkle in the corner when he smiled? Did he have a cowlick in his hair like I did? Did he have my hazel eyes, an indescribable combination of green and brown that defied a name? And how did he end up with the Dead Legion instead of the Outlaws, as he had been when my mom had met him? Just a hundred puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit together.
Not yet, anyway.
I also knew that I had to quit impersonating a chicken if I was ever actually going to meet my dad and put these puzzle pieces together, but…what if he didn’t like me? What if he didn’t believe he was my dad? What if he laughed at me and walked away? The last connection I had with my mother would disappear under the weight of his scorn, breaking into a million different pieces. It would hurt so damn bad if he were to reject me. Could I handle it? Could I do it? It’d been so much safer to dream about this adventure in the safety of my mother’s bedroom; it was a lot more fucking scary to actually do something about it.
Realizing that I had only ever looked at my dad in the photo, I smoothed the clipping open again, curious to see if Knight had been there that day. My eyes ran across the row of men until they fell on his angular features, two men over from my dad. The photographer had obviously been lazy that day because only first names of all members were listed - names like Judge, Knight, Butcher, and Ghost. I squinted harder at Knight’s face, trying to make out his eyes and square jaw, but the quality of the newspaper print failed me again.
With a sigh, I refolded the clipping and slipped it into the pages of the journal, just like I had found it. I had to remember that my mom had liked Butcher from the first moment she’d met him, just like I had felt fireworks just now in the diner with Knight. Also, Butcher and Knight were both bad boy motorcycle gang members. I wasn’t really sure what this meant, but I did know that I had to tread carefully. I didn’t want to end up like my mom - single and lonely and trying so very hard to hide it from her only daughter and failing desperately in that attempt.
I stood up and wiped the dirt off my ass, and headed for my car. If I was going to be a chicken, at least I could do it while traveling footloose and fancy-free down in Mexico, right? My virgin passport needed to get stamped up at some point, and that sur
e as hell wasn’t going to happen in the parking lot of the only restaurant in El Paso, Texas. Having already driven from Albuquerque to El Paso, getting back into my car appealed to me as much as…well, as much as watching Knight walk away, but I couldn’t live a life of an adventurer by sitting in a city park, now could I?
And that’s what I wanted to do, right? I was going to do the things that I hadn’t been able to do before, now that I was on my own. I was going to take life by the horns and no longer let it ride on by.
I was pretty sure I just mixed up metaphors there, but oh well. I was a waitress, not a writer.
I pulled into the parking lot that evening and got out, stretching, then pulled out my backpack filled with my toiletries and a change of clothes. I was going to cross over the border, finally get my passport stamped – yahooooo! – spend the night in Mexico, and then maybe buy some of that cheap stuff tomorrow that Knight was talking about.
I had spent my life planning trips I had never gone on, dreaming about places I had never seen, but that was the old Leia. The new Leia was going to do shit.
Like go to Deming and meet my long-lost father who didn’t know I even existed.
I pushed the scary thought away. First, a trip into a new country.
2
Leia
I took a deep breath, drawing in the cooler mountain air of the Coronado National Forest. It reminded me of Albuquerque, of home, and it gave me a sense of peace that I hadn't felt for a long time. This trip was so out of character for me that, in some ways, it’d been more terrifying than fun.