Knox met her gaze. “Like I said … loose ends.” And he shot her in the head.
Tommaso raced along the road to Tyler’s house, the car skidding and swerving on the icy roads. The car almost smashed into the porch steps of the house, such was Tommaso’s hurry and panic, but one quick search of the house proved fruitless. He was back in the car in seconds and racing back towards town. Then he stopped as he reached the main street. Olly’s car was outside another home, one he didn’t recognize. He got out of the car and searched around, calling Olly’s name, the blizzard taking his words and flinging them to the wind.
Then he saw it, glinting, half buried in the falling snow. He went over and picked it up. Inca’s watch. His heart began to beat fast—there were tracks leading away from where the watch was, half hidden now by the snow.
A movement to his side caught his eye and he looked around to see Olly, blood pouring from his head, staggering from the house. Tommaso dashed to help him, moving back into the house, out of the blizzard, kicking the door shut behind them.
Then he saw her. A woman, dead, prone on the floor. “Jesus.” Tommaso stepped over her and checked her pulse, but it was obvious she was dead.
“It’s Belinda. She was working with Knox. He killed her. I didn’t.”
“If she was working with Knox, then she got what she deserved,” Tommaso spat. He grabbed a towel from the kitchen and pressed it against Olly’s head wound. “What happened?”
Olly gave him the basics. “Knox is insane, man. He’ll kill Inca. I know it.”
Tommaso’s face was pinched and pale as he pulled out his phone to call Raffaelo. “I think Raff was right—if he’s this petty, he’ll want to kill her where it’ll hurt us the most. Our own home.”
The snow was three feet deep by the time Knox pulled Inca from his car and marched her, hands bound behind her back, into the night. She shivered uncontrollably as the freezing air hit her skin. She recognized the garden immediately and she gritted her teeth. Bastard. He would use her murder to add more hurt and pain to Raffaelo and Tommaso.
Motherfucker.
Knox pulled her into the open garden—a vision of pure white snow. The killing ground. He’d fixed up a light so that it shone in a pool on the snow.
“I’m going to stab you to death here, Inca,” he said matter of factly. “I like the look of your blood on the snow.”
“You’re insane,” Inca whispered. “Completely insane.”
Knox smiled, then cuffed her around the face, splitting her lip. “And you’re a dead woman walking, Inca. Your billionaires aren’t going to save you now. Listen …”
All around them, all she could hear was the cold wind, the snow whipping around her. Knox forced her down onto her back. Her skin reacted to the cold snow, and he knelt above her.
“I waited until it was like this, because I don’t want you to die too quickly. I want to savor this, want you to feel the utter agony of what I’m going to do to you. The cold will slow your heart.”
The knife in his hand was a bayonet knife—Tyler’s knife. He saw her look at it and smiled. “Yes, I killed your mother with the same knife. Both of your mothers. And your father. And all those women who looked like you. Practice runs for the big event. Now,” and he placed the tip of the knife into the hollow of her navel, “I’m going to do this real slow.”
And he pushed the blade slowly into her belly. Inca gasped, the pain unimaginable as the steel sliced through her. Knox smiled. “Beautiful … beautiful.”
He pulled the blade out and Inca felt her blood pumping out of the wound onto the snow. She could smell it, rust and blood. Dark spots were at the corner of her eyes and they whirled in her head. Knox slapped her face, hard.
“Don’t lose consciousness, now, baby. I’m not nearly done with you.”
From somewhere, she thought she heard a voice. A shout. A cry in the night. Another stab from the knife. Her systems began to shut down.
Just let me die …
She heard Knox laugh. “You’re not getting off that easy, my darling.” There was needle in her arm, and she was shocked back to full alertness. Knox’s face was very close to hers. “I told you; we’re going to take our time here.”
“Just kill me,” she said. “I’m already dead.” The blessed delirium of unconsciousness had been taken away by whatever he had injected into her and she watched the knife, dripping with her own blood, as he raised it above his head. Suddenly, despite the agony, despite the hopelessness, Inca began to laugh.
That stopped him. “What the fuck are you laughing at, bitch? I’m killing you, for fuck’s sake!’ His face was a picture of rage that she could have the nerve to be laughing at him at this moment.
“I know,” Inca laughed at him, “and I’ll probably die right here. But right now, behind you, Raffaelo Winter is holding the gun that’s going to blow your head off.”
Knox whipped around and got to see Raffaelo’s furious face just for a second before Raffaelo did indeed blow his head off. Knox slumped to the snowy ground, the eye that was still attached to his head open and staring in disbelief.
The adrenaline left Inca then, as Raff dropped to his knees beside her, ripping his coat off and wrapping it around her, and she began to feel the agony burn through her body. He pulled his sweater off and pushed it against her wounds. “You live? You hear me? You hang on!”
Inca nodded, knowing that it was impossible to hope, but in her final moments with this man, the man she loved so very deeply, she didn’t want to be sad. “I love you so much, Raffaelo. So very much.”
Raff’s face was pale, but he had never looked more gloriously handsome to her. “And you are my life, Inca. Please, I know it’s bad, but please try …”
She leaned her head against his chest as he carried her back to his car and laid her in the passenger seat, grabbing a blanket from the front seat and tucking it around her. “Keep talking to me, Inca. Keep putting pressure on your wounds if you can—I have to drive us back through the storm.”
Raffaelo saw she was shivering violently now and knew the cold, and the blood loss meant her body was going into shock.
God, please, no.
He was having a hard enough time seeing her so badly hurt … dying.
No. No way.
Inca, his love, his life, was going to be okay.
Inca touched his face. “Where’s Tommaso?”
Raffaelo hesitated. “He’s dealing with Rosenbaum. Olly’s pretty badly hurt.”
Inca’s eyes opened wide. “What?”
Another pause. “Knox attacked him, knocked him out. We think your old friend Belinda had something to do with it, but it doesn’t matter anymore She’s dead.”
Inca moaned softly and he looked around. “Inca?”
“I’m okay—are you or Tommaso hurt?”
Raffaelo swallowed. “No, we’re fine. Look, we’ve got some people just up here; Rosenbaum gave us a few places he could think of, so we split up. It was just luck that I found you, my darling. I’m so sorry.”
“You saved me.” Her voice was growing weaker.
“Inca, stay with me. Keep talking to me …”
“I love you.”
Raffaelo couldn’t help the tears that poured down his face then. “I love you, Inca Sardee. Don’t you dare fucking die on me.”
“You’re so sexy when you curse in that accent. You wanna pull the car over and we’ll get busy right now?”
He laughed. “Even now, you’re making jokes.” He knew why she was doing it, so that when—no, if, she died—he would at least have a happy memory of their last moments together. “God, I love you so much, but I will fucking kill you if you die.”
He was gratified to hear her chuckle, but he could also hear the pain in her voice. “Baby … I want you to know … it was always you, Raffaelo. Always you…”
That broke him and he began to sob, his whole body shaking uncontrollably. “Oh God, Inca. Please don’t leave me … we’re so close, so very close …
”
“I’m trying, baby. I promise. I don’t want to die.” But her voice was getting weaker. The car skidded all over the icy road, the snow battering down, almost completely obscuring his vision. For a second, just a second, he considered pulling the car over and dying with her, but something was stopping him. The promise, the hope for their future.
We have survived so far; we’ll survive now. There is a reason I love her as much as I do …
He reached back and held her hand for a moment. “We’re going to be okay, Inca. I swear we will. And I’m going to marry you.”
Inca laughed softly. “Well, you’d better …”
Hope suddenly soared as he saw the lights of the town in front of him. Raffaelo almost laughed. “Almost there, mio caro, almost safe …”
Inca was silent, and Raffaelo, half-crazed, looked around. Her eyes were closed, the blanket soaked with blood.
“No … no …” The car screeched into town, towards the blue and red lights of the emergency vehicles, braking sharply, and he was out, opening the passenger door, desperate to get to her.
“Raff!” He heard his brother through the storm. Raffaelo gathered Inca up in his arms and trudged through the snow towards the emergency vehicles. Hot tears were flooding down his cheeks. He saw Tommaso’s expression when he saw her. Fear. Grief.
Then they were surrounded by paramedics and police and everything was a whirl.
Inca opened her eyes and drew in a long, deep lungful of cool fresh air. Alive. There was pain, yes, but nothing she couldn’t handle. Because, there, right in front of her, Raffaelo Winter saw her eyes had opened and his smile was better than any morphine.
Three months, four days, six hours. That’s how long they had been back in Italy. Back, safe, alive …
Inca stroked her fiancé’s face, marveling at his glorious beauty, the way he looked at her, the feel of his arms around her body. They sat in their bed, in their new villa in Naples, across the bay from Sorrento. They’d decided, like Tommaso in Venice, like Olly in Portland, on a new life, a new home.
It was summer, and the evening was sultry. They had dinner in a small trattoria in the city, then walked back up the hill to their home. As they walked into the villa, Inca had pulled her little white dress over her head, looking back over her shoulder at a grinning Raff. She lost her panties and her bra on the way to their bedroom; Raff lost his shirt and pants …
Now they held each other, enjoying the feeling of skin on skin. Nothing was hurried, nothing was desperate. They knew they had forever. Inca glanced down at his cock, thick, long, and rigid against her belly, and smiled, lying back and spreading her legs so he could plunge into her. They fucked slowly, leisurely, and came, shuddering and vibrating, kissing each other and murmuring their love.
Outside, the sun slid beneath the horizon and lit up the sky with fire as the lovers, catching their breath, began all over again …
The End
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Hot Nights in Sturgis
A Billionaire, Bad Boy, Motorcycle, BDSM, Romance
Intrigue. Lust. Passion.
Blaze is a member of a motorcycle gang on their way to Sturgis, South Dakota for the huge biker rally held there every year. He’s single and wants to keep it that way, but plans on taking as many females as he can to his bed while in the rowdy town.
Angel is working in her uncle’s motorcycle repair shop and when Blaze comes in with a little trouble with his new ride, she finds him as interesting as he finds her.
Blaze is stricken with her knowledge of bikes and her beauty as well as her feisty attitude.
But when he asks her out, a thing he never does, she refuses.
It only serves to send Blaze into alpha-mode and he shows up at her home and makes her dinner then she takes him to her bedroom.
Both know they have stumbled onto something neither saw coming.
But can Angel get past her fear of abandonment and let Blaze have a place in her heart? And can Blaze get past his idea of being single forever and let Angel into his heart? As both want to be the master of the situation, can they give into the other without losing who they are?
The Billionaire Bad Boy Meets His Angel #1
Chapter 1
BLAZE
Vibrations filled the air as the fifteen of us made the last leg of our journey to the motorcycle Mecca of the world; Sturgis, South Dakota.
After our gang met up at the Ohio headquarters of The Brothers of the Scarlet Dragon, the motorcycle club I belong to, we headed out for the three-day trip to the rally which beats all motorcycle rallies.
This is the third year that I’ve made this trip. I have to fool my entire family each year to be able to do this.
I’m a business lawyer. That means I push papers for the law firm that my grandfather started way back before even my father was born. Thanks to that man, we all are stinking rich.
That alone was good enough reason for me to be able to flake off my entire life. But one of the stipulations of being able to receive one’s trust fund is that you have to show my grandfather your college degree.
Oh, and it must pertain to the law in some fashion!
So I had to keep my grades up in school. I had to be able to get into Harvard and that is where I stayed until I successfully completed my Master’s Degree in Business Law.
A thing that I hate with every fiber of my being!
I’m the youngest in my family. My father’s an only child. So the billions upon billions of dollars my grandfather has managed to make with my father’s help and now my oldest brother’s help too, keeps us in our fancy mansions, cars and motorcycles, in my case.
After six years of college, I was placed in the family firm. That’s where I’ve been the last six years and I’m going completely stir crazy in the New York office.
Only a mere thirty now, I’m ready to sow a few wild oats. My family has kept my ass so damn busy, I’ve had little to no time for extracurricular activities, like chasing ass.
Those snooty East Coast bitches just don’t do it for me anymore. Especially the ones that my family approves of.
That’s another reason I hate my life revolving around the law firm. One must always keep the family name of Worthington in good standing.
My name is Benjamin Franklin Worthington of the Manhattan Worthington's. That’s how I am introduced at all functions and do you think anyone is ever allowed to call me anything other than by my full first name?
No!
I am to be called Benjamin at all times, according to my stuffy grandfather, who insisted on naming my brother, and me. He got saddled with Theodore Roosevelt.
Poor man.
But my older brother is different than I am. He actually likes to be stuffy just like our father and grandfather. Mom’s okay, but when Father is around, she has to act a certain way or he belittles her.
I really hate it when he does that. Thankfully, Mom has her act down pat. I can only call her Mom when no one else is around. Other than that, I must call her Mother.
Even the tiniest infraction of civilized rules and etiquette is dealt with hastily. And the ever present threat of being cut off without a dime is always in the air when anyone is even thinking about doing something my grandfather deems inappropriate.
So, as far as he knows, I’m on a learning mission to better understand the legal conditions under which motorcycle manufacturers can get by with violating the safety standards that other motor vehicles have to follow.
I came up with that whole idea all by myself!
I had to purchase a very impressive piece of machinery to make this learning mission I am on. Each year, I get a brand new bike to test. Of course, he makes me sell it afterward, but for the month of August, I get to be a free man with a badass motorcycle under my ass.
My ride for this trip is a brand new Harley CVO Street Glide in red
. It ey CVO Street Glide in red. It’is one amazing machine and a killer ride. The last three days have flown by as I do feel like I’m gliding over the road with my gang of fellow bikers.
My family knows nothing about my involvement with the gang. They would lose their shit if they knew about this!
The higher ups in this gang know about my real name and my real life. But all the others know me simply as Blaze. The badass who happens to be a lawyer too.
And when I get to be this man, the man I really feel I am, I go all the way bad.
Drinking, smoking, cussing, womanizing! You name it. I do it!
The day after Labor Day marks the end of Blaze and back I go to the slightly depressed version of myself, Benjamin Worthington.
But those first few weeks after I go back still has me feeling kind of high from all the fun I’ve had. And I know that this trip will be the same.
Hot ass chicks are everywhere in Sturgis with the bike rally. And they are ready to go at all times. You can get laid just about anywhere in the town that overflows with bikers for a limited amount of time.
And I plan on getting a different one every single night I’m there. I already booked myself a private motel room and had a whole box full of clothes and assorted sexual devices sent up to the motel I’m going to be staying at.
I am ready to roll!
The rumble of another Harley moves up next me and I see out of the corner of my eye it is a couple who have been in this gang for quite some time.
Rod and Ashley Manning are one of the few married couples in the gang. She rides behind him for this trip but she’s got her own ride, and even rides on her own sometimes.
They have two teenage daughters and take this trip each year to get away from all the family and just be the couple they are. It’s cool, I suppose. But I wouldn’t want to take a chick to this babe-fest.
No way!
As they move ahead of me, another couple pulls up and I see it’s the newest couple, Paco, and Phoenix. From what they said when we were camping last night, they met only three months ago and hit it off so well, they’ve been together nonstop ever since.
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