This Savage Love: A Bad Boy Romance Boxed Set

by Kathryn Thomas

  “Ali,” he panted. He’d clearly been running. He looked good sweaty. But that wasn’t what she was thinking about right now. Nope, she was focusing on how he’d shoved her away, thrust her into another man’s arms over some nonsense idea of what safety meant. “Ali, you can’t marry him.”

  Karen glanced at Ali, and saw something there that made her lips purse. “She got there on her own, darlin’. We need to go now, though. Care to help?”

  Ali tried to lift herself up a bit more, but whatever Cristina had given her was hitting hard now. Her knees were made of pudding. Heh, pudding knees. Squish squish squish.

  Alejandro hadn’t heard a word. He grabbed Ali’s hand and pressed it to his heart. “Ali, I love you. He doesn’t. He’s trying to ruin your business, everything that means anything to you. I know I said he could protect you, but Ali— I can’t live without you. Please.” He got down onto his knees, and in the world, miles away where parents were, Ali heard a horrified and disgusted gasp that had to have come from her mother.

  She pulled her hand away and shook her head. “Everyone keeps telling me what I need to do, how I need to be, but it’s all about them. Not me. Why isn’t anyone talking about what I want, what I need, how to make me happy?” She shook her head again, harder, and the world started to spin. “I’m done with all of it. Me, and my ranch, and my horses. I don’t need any of the rest of you.” She swept by him—or stumbled, though one would never be so impolite as to say so—and let Karen guide her out of the church.

  “You probably rode here in a limo?” Karen asked. No one had followed them out of the church yet. Ali felt her belly heave, and forced herself to keep from gagging through sheer power of will. Walking out on her own wedding, jilting Bobby at the altar, that was enough. She did not need to vomit on the steps of the church just to prove a point. She managed to nod, and Karen gave a little sigh. “Right, then. We’ll take my car back to your place. Think you can avoid barfing until I get you to a toilet?”

  Ali’s head was spinning, swirling through the air on a dizzying cloud of sunstreaks and sparkles. It was a gorgeous Texas day, hot and bright, and she wanted to put her arms out to the side and spin until she fell into the dust like a little girl. Her skirt was so full, it would spin out beautifully.

  Karen snapped her fingers in front of Ali’s eyes, and Ali reeled just a bit, blinking too fast. The world was spinning faster and faster, and her stomach—

  “Oh, here we go,” Karen said, and helped Ali keep her balance as she vomited into the bushes, and held back the pretty blond curls that Cristina had spent hours on, straightening and then curling. Ali, for her part, heaved until she thought her stomach was just ejecting on auto-pilot. She knew she had tears streaming down her face, and she prayed that she wouldn’t hear the snap of cameras or the fall of footsteps. There was noise coming from inside the church now. Raised voices. She heard Alejandro, and she heard Bobby, and she wanted to just be done. She wanted all of it to go away.

  Karen was making soft sounds. “What in the world did she give you, anyway?”

  “Just something to help me relax. She gave me one, and then I made her give me more because it wasn’t working.” Ali straightened up again, felt one nasty little urp get caught in her throat, and then managed to take a deeper breath. Her head was clearer now, though she was far from alright. Holy God on a gracenote, she’d just jilted Bobby at the altar. She was going to be— Well, drawn-and-quartered on the society pages would only be the beginning. And she’d told everyone what he’d done. He was going to deny it, and she’d be painted the slut everywhere. “Oh, I need to get out of here. I need to go home. Please, can you take me home?”

  Karen nodded without saying another word. Ali let the other woman lead her to a nice car, one of those funny-shaped hybrids that got a billion miles to the gallon. She wondered for a moment if it’d make it over the potholes in her road. But then, that was Karen’s problem, really. She’d been to the ranch before. It wasn’t anything new.

  Ali went to get in the car, and then looked down at herself. “I can’t wear this,” she said.

  Karen looked at her with her eyebrows raised.

  “There’s sick on the hem, and it’s not my dress, and I— I can’t—”

  The tears threatened again, and she worked hard to choke them back.

  “Will a size twelve fit you?”

  Ali nodded.

  “I’ve got some capris and a clean shirt in the back. I mean to change after the reception, before I went home. They’ll fit you okay if you need to change now.”

  “All right,” Ali said. She reached behind herself and found the zipper in the back of the dress, tugging at it. Karen’s eyes got incredibly wide, and Ali found herself giggling. “What’s the matter? Never seen a lady undress before?”

  Karen’s eyes squeezed closed and she laughed, her tone dry. “Of course I have, and you know it. Just never expected that I’d see a bride strip off in a parking lot outside of a bad movie.”

  Ali found herself glancing down at her body, her head still swimming a bit from the pills. She liked how she looked well enough. The corset gave her that hourglass shape that seemed classic, and her breasts were nice, swelling up out of the cups. She’d always felt like her thighs were a bit muscled from all her riding days, and it’d always messed up the whole skinny jeans trend for her, but otherwise, she wasn’t bad looking. “Do you think I’m attractive?”

  Karen shrugged, smirking. “You’re pretty, and you know it, but you’re clearly not my type.”

  “Then to heck with it. If anyone’s watching, let’s give ‘em a show. Besides, your Yankee car is too damn small for me to get dressed in.” And, dammit, she liked the statement of leaving the dress in a white satin puddle in the parking lot. It said something that Bobby would understand.

  “I can’t argue with that,” Karen said, shaking her head as she got into the car. Ali fastened the capris and tugged the T-shirt over her head. She kicked off the white satin pumps and left those with the dress. After thinking about it, she didn’t add the engagement ring to the pile. She’d get it back to Bobby later. When things had cooled down a little. Maybe send Cristina over with it. If Cristina was still speaking to her. The thought of having lost her best friend made her stomach twist again, but it had to happen. There was no other way it could happen. She took the ring off, though, and slipped it into the pocket of Karen’s capris. It felt strange, having such casual clothes on over her elaborate underwear, but it would work for the moment.

  Her head started to spin as soon as Karen put the car in drive, and she closed her eyes. Karen knew the way to her house. She could rest now. For the first time in ages, she was safe.

  CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

  When it was painfully clear that Ali was not coming back into the church to laugh and say it had all been a practical joke, Bobby’s eyes turned to Alejandro. Alejandro, for his part, sighed, ready to be the fence that kept Bobby off Ali’s ass long enough for her to get away. He could manage that much at least.

  “You son of a bitch,” Bobby roared as he barreled down the aisle. Dodging him was easy, and as gratifying as it would have been to let the ass land on his fist—or even better, a knife—Alejandro knew better. The only face in the church he’d even hoped would be friendly to him belonged to his cousin, and with the expression she wore, like she’d just taken a sip of someone’s shitty moonshine, she wasn’t going to come to his aid. He hadn’t come this far to be jailed on assault charges by a wannabe lawyer.

  Bobby managed to keep his feet, and seemed then to realize where he was. He stood up, straightened his cummerbund, and fixed Alejandro with a glare that might have made other politicians back down. Alejandro just grinned, and he saw Bobby’s nerve crack. He hid it well, but it happened, all the same. “Bobby,” he said, letting his voice slide low and dangerous, letting it be the knife he hadn’t wanted to carry into the church. “This is nothing to do with me. I haven’t talked to Ali since she started wearing your ring again.
You made your own bed.”

  “Rojas,” Bobby said, his voice low and threatening. “You don’t want to tangle with me.”

  Alejandro let some wildness slip into his grin, the crazed crackle of the biker that made good boys back off and run. He laughed, and let the tension drip from his fingers like fresh crude. “We’ve been tangling for weeks now. I’m surprised you only just noticed.”

  “She’s mine,” Bobby hissed, sounding like nothing so much as a little boy still in diapers crying after a lost toy. “She’s mine, you hear me, so you stay away.”

  Alejandro couldn’t help but laugh then. Mamá would slap his ear for laughing in church, but she also would have understood. “I’m pretty sure she just told us both that she’s no one’s but her own.” He turned on his heel and left the church. He doubted he’d just made anything easier for Ali, but hell, that hadn’t ever been one of his talents no matter how he’d tried. And he needed to get out of there before chaos happened. It wasn’t going to be long. His cousin would never believe he wasn’t involved, and was probably going to try and rip his face off, and he did not want to be around whenever Ali’s and Bobby’s mothers got moving. He was sure he could take the fathers, if it came to it, but angry women fought dirty.

  On the steps, he glanced around the parking lot. He could smell the nasty odor of fresh vomit, and over in the far end of the church lot, he could see a puddle of white satin. He had to laugh to himself; the Ali he knew a decade ago would have left her wedding dress in the parking lot in order to make a better escape, no question. Good for her.

  He’d told the scumbag lawyer the truth months ago. Just because Ali left him, it hadn’t meant that she’d come back to Alejandro. He hoped she would, and he hoped she wouldn’t. Things between the Padres and the Diablos weren’t getting any less tense, and he didn’t want her in harm’s way, but his nights had been cold and lonely without her, and it wasn’t just the nights. He wanted the days with her as well, the time to tell her the truth about what he was doing. To get her advice about how to deal with things. He wanted to hear her laugh and tell him not to worry, that she could handle herself.

  And yeah, sheathing himself inside of her hot body would be part of that, without question. But he needed to give her some time first. She hadn’t married Bobby. That was all he needed for today.

  He started to walk toward his bike, moving fast now, when his phone rang. He answered the call, but before he could even get the word hello out, he heard Zig-Zag’s panicked voice. “Shakespeare, that you?”

  “Zig, what’s happening?”

  He could hear the younger man taking a long breath, though it didn’t do much to steady him. “The Diablos. They came to the warehouse, and— Shit, there’s so much blood, so many guys, what do I do—”

  For it to have rattled Benny, things must be awful. “I’m on my way. Do what you can. Don’t lose your shit, okay, Zig? We might need you in what comes next.”

  CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

  Ali woke up in the dark, her mouth tasting like old socks and her skin feeling far too tight on her body. She groaned as she sat up, holding her head in her hands. When she opened her eyes, she found that even the moonlight was way too much, and closed them again.

  “Here,” said a soft voice—Karen’s—and hands pressed a glass of something cool into her grip. She took a sip automatically, and tasted a light, sweet juice. Her stomach told her that it wasn’t happy about this, but thought it might not rebel immediately. She took a long, slow breath, and then took another sip. “Better?”

  She experimented with opening her eyes again, and found that this time she could. Ali felt like she had a hangover the size of the panhandle, but she could open her eyes at least. “Getting there,” she replied. “You didn’t have to stay with me this whole time. Thank you for that.”

  She saw the outline of Karen’s form shrug. “Someone needed to. I thought your leather-wearing Eagle Scout might follow us, but so far, no one’s come to the house.”

  The way she said it made Ali pause. “What’s been happening, Karen?”

  “I had to unplug your phone, shut off your cell.”

  Ali sighed, running her hand over her face. “Bobby.”

  “Nope.”

  “Mama?”

  Karen shook her head. “Media. Reporters, newspapers. They all want the story.” There was a long pause, and then she pushed forward. “You talked about him trying to rape you.”

  She groaned again, burying her head in her hands and pulling her knees up to her chest. “Oh, I really hoped that part was just a dream.”

  “Can I turn the light on?”

  “Sure,” Ali said. She covered her eyes, winced as the brightness filtered through her fingers, and then let herself adjust. There was definitely a sledgehammer inside her skull, but she’d had worse. Not many worse, true, but worse.

  Slowly, as the pain filtered down to a level that she could manage, she opened her eyes. Karen sat across from her, sporting dark circles under her eyes. “What time is it?” Ali asked.

  “Past midnight,” Karen said. “Can we talk about—what happened to you? What he did?”

  “I guess,” Ali said, though her guts twisted up at the thought. That night— Bobby had been so drunk, and part of her wanted to excuse what he did as nothing more than that. But at the same time, it didn’t make it right, and it didn’t make it right that he’d just pretended it never happened. Yes, he’d stopped drinking, and yes, he’d been polite to her face since. But at the same time, Alejandro had thrown out something at the church about Bobby trying to ruin her business. Had he tipped off that blogger about the club helping her with the business? Had he been the one trying to run her out, to drive her back into his arms? If that was true, how could she ever bring herself to trust anything he said ever again?

  “I’m glad you said it out loud, but saying it in church like you did…” She gave a low whistle that was entirely out of place with the woman who’d so primly commented on the looks that Alejandro and Ali had shared that day. “People are going to get excited about that. You might want to think about how you’re going to tell your story, or if you’re going to tell it at all. Have you talked to anyone else about what happened?”

  Ali shook her head. The hammering hadn’t stopped. In fact, it had gotten louder. And it seemed—outside? Could that be right? She stood up, wavered a bit, and then got her feet under her. Holding on to walls and backs of chairs, she made her way to the rear door of the ranch. She’d made her way through the place in the dark of night so many times that it was no real trick now, though the floor seemed a bit more inclined to pitch over than usual.

  Karen followed her. “You sure you want to answer that?”

  “It’s not a reporter,” Ali said. She could feel Karen’s skepticism coming off her in waves, and she added, “I just know.”

  She got to the back door and opened it. She recognized Alejandro’s frame, silhouetted against the dark Texas night. “I’m not ready to talk to you yet,” she said, ready to slam the door in his face.

  “Ali, please,” he said, his voice low and scared, something she’d never heard from him before in her life. “I don’t know where else to go.”

  It was an instinct; she would have let a wounded animal in, too. She stepped back, and let him inside as Karen turned on the kitchen light. She closed the door as Karen gasped. When she turned around, she saw that Alejandro was covered with blood. His shirt, his hands, his worn jeans, all black with blood. She wavered, and had to grab onto the chair to keep from going down.

  Karen snapped into action, lifting his lifting his shirt to examine his abs, running her hands over his thighs, then his arms. “Is any of this yours?” His gaze was locked on Ali’s, and she snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Focus for a minute. Are you bleeding? Is any of this yours?”

  Slowly, like a man moving through thick August heat, Alejandro shook his head. “No. Not mine.”

  “Did you kill someone? Because she’s got enou
gh in her life right now, she doesn’t need you bringing a storm cloud of hell down on her.”

  He let out a stream of Spanish. Ali caught a few curses, and a few names. Names of the guys in the club. The ones closest to him. “The Diablos,” he said, eventually, when he’d run out of steam to swear. “They came to the headquarters we were using, outside of town, and I don’t know how they got the jump on the guys, but— Some of the guys are dead. A lot of them.”

  Karen glanced at Ali, but Ali still couldn’t find any words. “Did you call the police?” Karen asked.

  Alejandro nodded. “I had to. There was too much—no way to cover it up. So I called. But the Sheriff is in bed with the Diablos. They’re supplying his needs now. It’ll come down on my head sooner or later.”

  “Is it safe for you to be here?” He finally turned his gaze to Karen, his brow furrowed in confusion. She huffed out a breath that made her bangs float up into the air for a moment. “Safe for Ali. Will they follow you here, or will the police come after her?”