Original Sin (Dark Saints Motorcycle Club Book 1)

by Love, Amy

  That was cold.

  “I knew I should have kept quiet.”

  At Liam's words, Vicky fixed her face into a neutral expression and picked up her own menu. “Like hell you will. You say that every time.”

  “Yeah, probably because I know you don't like what you hear.”

  “I need to hear it.” Vicky's menu fell back to the table with a snap, her gray eyes livid. “If Darren's not going to tell me what's going on, I'm not going to be fucking ignorant. I need you to tell me, Liam.” Her face softened slightly as she remembered better days with Darren. They may have been poorer, living on the streets and destitute; but, at least he hadn't been losing his mind. It was one thing to be a member of one of LA's most infamous motorcycle gangs. It was quite another to be at its head, faced with all the pressures of wheeling, dealing, and intimidating the hell out of people.

  While Darren had always been a serious, brooding person, the Dark Saints had brought out something frightening in him. Something cold, unpredictable, and unstable.

  “Oh...fuck.”

  Vicky was jerked back to the present when Liam's low curse reached her ears. He was glancing toward the front of the restaurant which—while in an upscale neighborhood—was frequented by people from all walks of life.

  Including rival gangs.

  The three men that entered the establishment now were all fairly lanky—though one was far taller than the other two. This man caught sight of Liam the moment he walked in and immediately made a beeline for their table. When she realized that all the men wore leather vests emblazoned with the Black Eagles logo, she shrank back slightly against the booth. She didn't overtly expect the men to do anything in so public a place, but the Black Eagles were one of the Dark Saints' biggest rivals, and they certainly knew her face.

  Currently, they weren’t looking for her.

  Once the men reached their table, they only had eyes for Liam.

  “Beck. We heard you'd crawled out from under a rock somewhere.”

  Across from her, her lover bristled. His eyes flickered to hers briefly and, instantly, she knew that she was about to be privy to something she shouldn't.

  Vicky and Liam might have been fucking for a few weeks, but she still knew relatively little about the man. He could spout sarcasm and witticisms all day long, but when it came to talking about himself, he fell a little short. For this, the young woman didn't particularly blame him. Everyone had their little skeletons.

  However, if Liam's skeletons were dangerous enough to include the Black Eagles, she would feel perfectly justified in demanding an explanation from him later.

  “So this is where you've been hiding.” The man who spoke had brilliant gray eyes and unkempt black hair held back from his sharp face with a bandana. In fact, the he seemed to be entirely angles, from the sharp jut of his collarbone exposed by the leather vest he wore to his pointy elbows and skinny arms. Though most people might have thought he didn't have the capacity to hurt a fly, Vicky knew better. Men like him, with lean strength and mean eyes, they were the ones you had to watch out for. Her brother might verbally abuse her, but this man would beat her to within an inch of her life if he got the opportunity.

  As much as Darren might try to protect her from it, she had snuck downtown to the headquarters enough to see certain acts of violence performed once or twice. It seemed as if men like this one were always the perpetrators. “You know the last time we saw you,” his voice was low, silky and dangerous, “I warned you we were going to bury you deep.”

  “Try it.” Liam's voice had its own edge. “You'll see backlash from the Saints before you're tucked into bed tonight, Reggie.”

  “Oh, that's right, I forgot. You've ponied up with another crew for protection. The only way you could show your face without me and my boys breaking it.”

  “If you think the reason I left the Eagles is because I'm afraid of you, you're welcome to stay in your little fantasy world.”

  At the insult, Reggie bristled, and the men flanking him on either side cracked their knuckles menacingly. Meanwhile, nervous patrons of the restaurant called for their bills as discreetly as they could, desperate to escape what they were sure was going to escalate into an all out brawl.

  Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that.

  “Keep talking, Beck. You'll talk yourself right into your grave.”

  “Excuse me.” At that minute, Vicky saw fit to interject. She already had enough to deal with without these clowns. Atop that, she was starving. She was not leaving until she got some food and damn these thugs. “I'm pretty sure Liam isn't looking for a fight right now. So, if you could please wait until a more opportune time, I'd appreciate it.”

  Reggie's gaze jerked to her, and beneath the cold cruelty of it, she repressed a shudder. However, he only broke into an eerie smile. “Ah, Victoria Platt. Fancy meeting you here.” He looked from her to Liam and back again, his expression wry. “I take it that douchebag Darren is completely and totally oblivious to the little situation going on here. Unless, of course, he's getting a piece of that ass, too.” He smirked as his eyes flickered to Liam, and the man's face reddened at the implication.

  Before he could say anything averse, Vicky spoke again, her tone cool and controlled. “Reggie, is it? We've never had the pleasure of personally meeting, but I've heard a lot about you. Big Bad Eagles front man, always rolling three deep to protect his own hide. I get it. You need a pretty scary rep to compete with my brother.” Her eyes narrowed in sudden distaste. “But you need to understand that language like that will get your ass in trouble. The last time I checked, the Saints had enough fire and manpower to wipe your pathetic little organization from the face of the earth. Do you really want to call the man with the trigger-finger a douchebag?”

  Almost immediately, Reggie scowled, his eyes lighting in anger. When he next spoke, his voice was lowered below the hum of the remaining restaurant customers. It was for Vicky and Liam's ears only. “Alright, honey. You want to talk threats? Let's talk.” His lip curled in smug enjoyment. “How about I send a little birdy to Darren to let him know that one of his boys is fuckin' his little china doll? How would you feel about that?”

  Vicky sucked in a sharp breath, making the man's smile turn into something almost predatory. He was like an enraged shark with a mouth full of teeth just waiting to clamp down into an artery and draw blood.

  Their blood.

  “Bullshit, Reggie.” At Liam's sudden interjection, Vicky's gaze jerked to him in surprise. What’s bullshit? They'd been caught red handed with three witnesses. If Reggie wanted to, he could technically give Darren the entire breakdown of the encounter—from the flowers on the table to the lust filled looks she and Liam had been shooting one another. “You don't have the balls.”

  “Don't I?” The gray-eyed man's voice was a low hiss.

  “No,” Liam returned flatly, his mouth a thin line of skepticism. “You telling Darren anything means that you'll have to confront him face-to-face. You, the vice-president of one of our greatest rival organizations, waltzing into the Dark Saints' compound on a good will mission? No one will believe it, and you don't care shit to improve relations with us. You just want me. If that's the way it goes, let's take this outside. You can beat me to a pulp—if you can even touch me, that is—and the Saints will be on you within the hour. You can weasel your skinny little ass on downtown to try and see Darren, but I guarantee you'll get a bullet in your gut for your troubles. That's what happens when people sow bullshit like you do, Reggie.”

  For a moment, the skinny man appeared on the cusp of physical violence. He raised his hand, and Vicky was sure that he meant to take down anything breakable on the table before them. But then, he merely stopped, his face contorted like a laughing hyena's. However, his smile, held no mirth.

  “You'd better watch yourself, Beck.” His gaze met Liam's, and its intensity made Vicky’s heart race. He was plotting something—that much was obvious. She'd never heard of a Black Eagle giving up without a f
ight. “You might think your new little playmates have your back, but I'll be watching you every step of the way. The moment you slip up, I'll be there to collect my garbage.”

  With that, the man turned on his heel, jerking his head for his companions. They almost immediately fell into step behind him with additional murderous looks in the couple's direction. When they finally left the restaurant, Vicky breathed a long sigh of relief.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  As soon as they left, she let into Liam. “What the hell were you thinking?” she hissed, incensed. “Challenging him to tell Darren like that? He might fucking do it, Liam!”

  Instead of being angry at her outburst, he only shot her a winning smile that spoke nothing of the frightening expression he'd hosted only moments before. “Relax, Vicky. We’re rival gangs. When is the last time you heard of even the lowest Black Eagles lackey making contact with someone from the Saints?”

  At the question, Vicky lost some of her steam, knowing he had a point.

  Darren's paranoia and hair-trigger temper were enough to keep most of their competitors away; but, those few organizations bold enough to come close were usually annihilated. Her brother didn't take any chances.

  “Well, you're going to have to be careful.” Trying to regain some of her sternness, she moved onto a subject nearly as serious as the exposure of their psuedo-relationship. “That guy is fucking out for your blood. You need to start moving with a crew. You never know when you might wake up to a knife in your back.”

  “So, you want me to travel with some of the brothers? That means less time alone.”

  Christ, those eyes.

  This shouldn't be about the time they spend together. She and Liam were bedmates—nothing more. When they got tired of one another, they'd part ways, and it would be infinitely better for both of them not to have Darren breathing down their necks.

  Right? Right?

  When Liam looked at her with those devastating green eyes, it seemed that maybe he wanted her for something more than the sex. True, they had excellent times outside the bedroom—almost as much as they did within it, and the man was more entertaining than anyone with a Y chromosome she'd met in her life.

  But actual feelings?

  Vicky had long learned that feelings were dangerous. She'd loved her mother and father, and they'd been taken from her. She'd loved her brother, and now he was almost like a stranger to her. She had crushes on boys growing up, certainly; but, Darren had sent each and every one of them away screaming for mercy.

  She was a marked woman.

  As long as she carried the same name of the President of the Dark Saints, romance and emotional entanglement were just pretty thing she could read about in sappy books. She was lucky that Liam was willing to put his life on the line simply for her body; but, that was about all that she should reasonably hope for.

  Then, why the hell did she find herself imagining something more?

  “I think the waitress is afraid of us.” Liam's low, amused statement had her glancing at the wait station. Sure enough, a group of girls seemed to be arguing about who was going to attend their table. While a part of her was annoyed, there was another portion that sympathized with them. The poor things were probably scared that coming into contact with her was a direct line into a world of gang violence.

  Well, they wouldn't be far off the mark. “Let's get out of here.” Sliding from the booth, Liam tossed a few dollars on the table as a tip before holding a hand out to her with a small smile. “I know a great taco place around the corner with a more intimate atmosphere.”

  His joke drew her lips into curving upward.

  Taking his hand, she let him help her from the booth, and they left the restaurant to walk down the well-lit street, past the hustle and bustle of the neighborhood around them. As they neared a boulevard famous for its plethora of food trucks, Vicky found herself pausing at the corner, her hand still in Liam's. When he realized she wasn't moving forward, he stopped as well, gazing back at her with a brow arched.

  She shouldn't.

  She shouldn't break his calm by interrogating him now, but Vicky had to know. If she was going to continue to be with a hunted man, she needed to know why the Eagles were after him. If Darren ever found out that he was a former member of a gang that had stolen Saints’ weaponry, burned their warehouses, and personally taken out more than twenty of their members, he would, quite literally, blow a fuse.

  Plus, at the end of that madly jerking electrical connection would be Liam, his body burned to a crisp.

  The thought made her queasy, and she swayed slightly on her feet.

  “What's wrong?” Liam was at her side, her arm in his strong, gentle grip.

  When Vicky gazed up at him, she saw a blinding hope for her future. Did she really want it dashed by delving into his past? There was an overwhelming possibility that he had a vendetta against Darren or the Saints and had joined them as some sort of perverse way to carry out his revenge. Maybe she herself was even part of the plotting.

  “The Saints,” she found herself demanding lowly, insistent over the traffic that passed them, “why did you join them? Why do you need protection?”

  At her inquiry, Liam's face fell. His green gaze immediately became serious, and he let go of her hand to expel a long breath, running his hands through his hair in distress. “Well, fuck. I should have known this was coming.”

  “You should have,” she agreed neutrally, continuing to stare at him in expectation.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When her gray gaze didn't waver, Liam knew that he was stuck. His expression grim, he turned back in the opposite direction, gesturing for her to follow him. “Not here.” His request was simple and short. Without any further explanation, he simply made back for the restaurant's parking lot to retrieve his bike.

  When he handed her his spare helmet, she put it on and straddled the hulking behemoth of a machine. Surprisingly, though her brother was the head of the most bad-ass motorcycle club on the West Coast, Vicky had never ridden a bike until Liam.

  The thrill couldn't be described in words.

  She knew that when they got to wherever they were going, he would tell her something that perhaps she didn't want to know. However, as she clung to him, the engine of the Harley roaring between her legs as they sped through the streets, she'd freely admit that she'd never known any greater exhilaration. It had been wrong of Darren to rob her of this. Perhaps he wanted to protect her from the drug busts, the guns, and the perversion of his men, but the pure joy of clinging to a hard man and zipping through the streets with the world at your feet? There wasn't one iota of harm in that.

  Liam drove them through the busy streets of LA until high rises and apartments turned into suburban neighborhoods. They kept going until the streets grew quiet and you could hear the crashing of the nearby ocean beneath the darkening sky.

  Then, before an overgrown path leading through a growth of brush, he stopped.

  Parking and locking the bike, he removed his helmet first. Then, to Vicky's surprise, he took off his boots and socks. His lips curving slightly, he held out his hands for her to do the same. It was with no small amount of reluctance that she stepped out of her heels to feel the warm pavement beneath her feet. She could only hope there wasn't glass or tapeworms lurking.

  “You know, for the sister of such a violent man, you're squeamish as fuck.” Liam's teasing statement made her scowl. As he moved to the path between the foliage, she followed him with her nose in the air.

  The clearance on either side of the sandy trail was perhaps only a few inches, the growth around them curtaining them from the world as they moved through it. In under a minute, they found themselves faced with a length of deserted beach and an amazing view of the sun sinking below the horizon. For a moment, Vicky just stared, giving Liam new opportunity to bait her.

  “I didn't bring you here to be romantic, you know.”

  She glared at him, rolling her eyes at the mirth in his gaze. How
ever, when he sobered, she did as well. “I brought us here to be sure that we could talk without being overheard. We may have been lucky so far, but I'd be a fool to think that Darren still isn't waiting for the slightest snippet of adverse information about you and a man. I've never been followed here.”

  Taking her hand, he led her over a sand dune to walk across sand that had fallen victim to the rising tide. Warm water lapped over their feet as they strolled down the beach. For a moment the beauty of the scene made her forget how dangerous it was for them to be together.

  “So, yeah...” Liam started casually enough, the wind tousling his dark hair, “You want to know about me and the Eagles.”