I watched the back of his head as he walked away, and realized this job was much more dangerous than watching the club’s bikes. One fuck-up with Bud’s daughter and I’d be six feet under.
Chapter Two
Eight years ago
Angelica
Kayla met me in the bathroom after last period, and watched as I changed out of my super tiny mini-skirt into jeans. God, if my dad saw me in this skirt he’d have an aneurism.
“I can’t believe you lost Brain. God, Ang, he’s the best biker-bitch you’ve had yet.”
Speaking of aneurisms, my dad nearly had one when he found out Kayla called me Ang. He calls me Angel, but says no one else is allowed to shorten my name. One of the reasons I love Kayla is she isn’t afraid of my dad, or any of the other bikers, and she just kept calling me what she wanted.
I shrugged as I buttoned my jeans and stowed the skirt in my backpack. “I got one of the new guys. I’ve only met him a couple of times. He looks like he’s pissed at the world, and I seriously doubt he’s going to be any fucking help at all with my calculus or chemistry homework.”
“He have a cool name?” she asked as we left the bathroom.
“Bash, and best I can tell, it isn’t ‘cause he’s bashful. And damn, the boy is beautiful.” And he’d be so fucking pissed if he knew I’d called him a boy.
“How you gonna break him in?”
I shook my head. “Haven’t decided. He’s actually kinda scary, even for one of my dad’s men. Also, I don’t think he’s that much older than us. I know when he first came, he couldn’t have even the prospect patch yet, ’cause he wasn’t old enough. They treated him like one, which had to suck, but he didn’t get his first patch until a few weeks ago, so I think he just turned eighteen.”
“You know his story?”
I shook my head. “He has a fucked up accent though. He isn’t from around here.”
Kayla showed the assistant principal the note from her mom saying she could ride home with me, and he waved us to the RTMC vehicle waiting in the car line.
I got into the front passenger seat and settled my backpack at my feet as I put my seatbelt on and told him, “Bash, meet Kayla. She’s my BFF and you’re her ride now, too. Not just mine.”
He breathed deep, and I assumed he’d just realized she’s human and not wolf, and I added, “We have a problem, you take care of her first, then me. I can handle myself a few minutes, but she isn’t a fighter. Get me?”
He pulled forward and glanced in his rear view mirror at Kayla before looking forward again. “My orders are to keep you safe, Princess.”
I sighed and leaned my head back, looking at the road instead of him. “Those are your orders from my dad. Thing is, I can make your life a living hell if I want, or I can help make this a cushy assignment until you get your patch. I’ve grown up in the club, I know the drill.”
He didn’t say anything, so I kept going. “When Kayla and I became best friends in the fourth grade, our dads had a talk. Their agreement was she’d come to the house, but never to the club, and there’d be no parties at our house when she’s over. She hasn’t been around ya’ll much at all. Her parents have met my prospect chauffeurs over the years, and they’re mostly chilled about it now, but they’ll need to meet you sometime this week.”
“Basically,” Kayla said from the backseat, “you’re our bitch now. You’re our ride when we need one, and you go get stuff we need, even if it’s tampons at two in the morning. You’ll carry our packages for us when we go shopping at the mall, and if we ask if our ass looks fat when we try on clothes, you’ll be honest and tell it to us straight from a guy’s perspective.”
“And not,” I added, my voice low and deep, “from my father’s viewpoint.” I held my wolf in, so I didn’t growl at him in front of Kayla. “I know you’re supposed to cock-block us, but I also know you can’t actually hurt any of the guys.” He held his hand up, thinking he could silence me, and I said, “Fuck you, asshole. I’ll talk when I fuckin’ want to.”
He pulled into a church parking lot, put the SUV into park, tossed his cellphone into the little compartment in the dash, and got out.
Bash might only be eighteen, but he wasn’t a boy. He paced like a caged animal and I realized he was on the edge. This wasn’t a wolf thing, though — it was something else. He moved with a lethal, fluid grace that set something inside me on fire, and I didn’t get out of the vehicle, knowing he’d smell it on me.
I’d had a crush on my prospect when I was twelve, and my dad had given me someone else and then hadn’t assigned anyone else who was my type, since. Brain had truly been like a big brother to me. I mean, I knew he was dangerous, all the men of the RTMC are, but to me, they mean safety. I’m their little sister, the president’s daughter, and they’ll all protect me with their life.
I instinctively knew Bash didn’t necessarily represent safety for me, though.
With his back to me, he said, “Out of the car, Princess. You and I need to have a talk without your friend hearing.”
My insides shook from the threat of violence in his voice, and I didn’t want to get out of the car. I reminded myself he couldn’t hurt me without risking my dad’s wrath, and felt my body chilling out. I couldn’t go outside smelling of fear — he’d eat me alive.
I heard him with my wolf hearing, but Kayla wouldn’t have a clue he’d spoken. I sighed and told her, “Stay here a sec. Maybe we pushed him too hard? I’m gonna go talk to him.”
“He’s kind of scary, Ang.”
“My dad wouldn’t have assigned someone who’d hurt us, Kayla. I’ll just go talk to him a second. It’ll be okay.”
As I got out of the car, I suddenly wasn’t so sure my dad wouldn’t have upped his game with the guys he assigned me. He and my mom had a huge argument last week, but she convinced him it was time he let me start double-dating with an early curfew. She’d successfully argued they had to let me take baby-steps and learn responsibility slowly, or I’d go wild when I went off to college without him around to supervise my every move. He’d finally agreed to it, but only if my prospect tagged along. It was more than I’d hoped for, but at the time I’d thought it’d be Brain.
As I got out, Bash said, “Leave your cellphone — and anything else with a battery — in the car.”
This was standard RTMC procedure when we wanted to make sure we weren’t recorded. Apparently, he was gonna say stuff my dad wouldn’t approve of. I tossed my phone onto the dashboard, turned the radio up a little, and told Kayla, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
I followed him off the parking lot pavement onto grass, assuring myself all the while that my dad wouldn’t have sent someone likely to hurt me. Still, Bash was harsher than the other guys my dad had assigned me, and I needed to be careful with my strategy. As soon as I caught up to him, he said, “Here’s the way it’s gonna be, Princess. I may not be able to bash any of your boy-toys’ heads in with witnesses around, but that don’t mean I can’t do it later. You want ‘em to live? You make sure they stay on my good side. Nobody disrespects someone in the RTMC, not even a prospect.” His voice deepened, and I heard his wolf. “Second thing, is you may be under RTMC protection, but you’re a split tail, and that means you do what you’re told. You want me to show you respect? You show it to me. I’ll throw your words right back at ya — we can either get along, or not. I don’t give a flying fuck which you choose, Princess. You think you can make my life hell? You have no idea what I can do to yours.”
Yeah, this I could work with. I gave him a half smile and shrugged one shoulder. “Take a deep breath, Bash. You smell any fear comin’ off me?”
He took a whiff, shook his head, his eyes suddenly a touch uncertain.
“My dad stopped assigning me guys I could walk all over when I was about eight. He’s miscalculated a few times, though he quickly gave me someone new once he figured it out. So, I can’t boss you around — okay, I get it.” I offered my hand. “Truce?”
He shook his hea
d. “No, Princess. No truce just yet. Let’s give it a couple of days, see where we stand then.”
Chapter Three
Eight years ago
Bash
Three days later, Angelica got in without Kayla. This was the first time it’d been just the two of us, and I wondered which personality I’d see today. Rough-biker-wannabe bitch, or the pretty-and-smart-and-too-cool-for-words bitch.
I’d met Kayla’s parents when I took her home last night. Coulda bowled me over with a feather when I realized her dad’s a cop. What the hell was Bud thinking, bringing me to the attention of LEO? I knew the chapter here has decent relations with them, but shit. I barely skated under a multiple murder charge in Arkansas, and the juvie records might be hard to get to, but there were plenty of articles online. All someone had to do was Google my real name to see them.
And the fact I’d actually killed the men, and the lawyers had gotten me off, made my situation that much more precarious. I’d been sent out of town because local LEO at home had it out for me. This was supposed to be my fresh start.
“So, my mom told me this morning, your dad owned some kind of classic car restoration company?”
I nodded, and noted she wasn’t in bitch mode. “Yeah. Reckon that’s why your dad assigned me to you, so I can help you build your car.”
“My dad bought me a dirt bike when I was six. Most of the other MC kids had them, too. I got pissed ‘cause one of the boys kept beating me when we raced, and when I didn’t get a new, faster bike for my eighth birthday, like I’d asked, I snuck downstairs in the middle of the night and took my bike apart, thinking I could figure out a better way to put it back together, make it faster. I’d watched my dad tear bikes down and rebuild them, figured it couldn’t be that hard.”
She was talking to me like a regular human, so I smiled and asked, “And how’d that work out, Princess?”
“Stop calling me princess.”
It was an order, not a request, so I answered, “Stop acting like one for a few days and I’ll consider it.”
She shook her head. “I shocked the ever-loving shit out of myself on the ignition condenser, and my dad came running downstairs when he heard me scream, and then busted out laughing when he saw what I’d done. He moved all the parts to the shop the next day, and made me help him put it back together.”
She paused a few seconds before adding, “I raced the hell out of all the boys the next time we got to go to the forest and ride, though. The boy I’d been struggling to get in front of? I lapped him. Felt damned good.”
“So, you’re happy about this project, or pissed you have to build your own car?” Most girls would be pissed.
“A little of both, probably. I mean, he knows I wanted a Miata for my sixteenth, but I also knew it wasn’t likely to happen. He hates new computerized shit, so this is probably as close to a Miata as I was likely to get. I like knowing how things work, so as long as it doesn’t take too fucking long to put it together…”
I was liking this new side of her, and warning bells went off in my head. She was gorgeous, and exactly my type, plus she was smart and wasn’t afraid of me. If her dad ever got a whiff of what I really wanted to do to his daughter, he’d cut pieces of me off before he killed me.
Trying to keep up the antagonism we seemed to have going, and reassert myself as the adult, even though I was only three years older, I told her, “You didn’t cuss like this around your daddy last night.”
She shook her head. “Daddy doesn’t care if I cuss, but Mom wants me to learn how to control it. She knows I cuss when I’m not around her, but if I ever get caught by her, any of my friends’ parents, or by the teachers, I’m in deep shit.” She shook her head again and rolled her eyes. “She says there’s a time and place for everything, and I have to learn when it’s appropriate and when it isn’t.” She gave me a mock appraising look and added, “Didn’t figure you to have virgin ears.”
“What’s the story with Kayla’s dad?” I’d gotten the rundown from Brain today, but wanted to hear Angelica’s take.
“He works narcotics, which means while he has moral issues with the club, his current position doesn’t represent a conflict of interest.” She used air quotes on the last three words, and I wondered if she’d heard this from Kayla or her dad, but didn’t interrupt to ask. “He knows the MC is anti-drugs, and he knows we keep our section of the city drug-free. Still, he doesn’t want Kayla to associate with the club members, or be on club property. Not even the shop — which means she can’t hang out when I work on my car.” She shrugged and looked out the window. “Dad’s serious about keeping the agreement, too. I tried to sneak her into a family party once, and he marched us straight to Kayla’s house and was straight-up with her dad about it, as soon as he realized she was there.”
“What’d her dad do?”
“We were both grounded for two weeks. From every fucking thing. Even our damned phones and computers.”
I pulled into the RTMC’s shop and decided it was time to start talking about her car. “If you’ve already torn a bike down and rebuilt it, you know about spark plugs, alternators, engine basics, and simple transmissions already. Right?”
Chapter Four
Seven months later
Angelica
“Fuck you, Sloane! You’re an asshole of the biggest proportions!”
“Yeah, and I’m Pack, and you’re a fucking lone wolf. You exist in this city because my Pack allows it. Now, get on your knees and blow me, cunt.”
How could I have thought he was so great? And what the fuck had made me think sneaking out with him was a good idea? Dad was on a run, Mom was doing something with the other ol’ladies, and Bash had been given the night off because I was supposed to stay in and study for a huge chemistry exam tomorrow. Brain had been working with me for a week, though, and I was ready for the test, so I agreed to sneak out and meet Sloane.
Sloane’s twenty. He’s in college, but he can come home on the weekends some until football practice starts back, and I thought he liked me.
But, there was no time to get my feelings hurt right now. I needed a plan. I knew I couldn’t take him — he’s a linebacker for Georgia State, and a werewolf. Shapeshifters aren’t supposed to play sports with humans, but his daddy was rich and powerful, and had somehow gotten permission from the Concilio. My daddy’s taught me to defend myself, and I’m good at it, but I didn’t stand a chance against Sloane. Even if I could somehow best him, I’d be in trouble with the Pack.
My left cheek erupted in pain and my head slung around, and I had to take a step back to keep my balance. The fucker had slapped me.
“On. Your. Knees. Cunt.”
Tears filled my eyes, but I took a breath and brought my emotions under control. If I had to do this, I’d do it, but he wouldn’t get my tears. I’d seen the club sluts giving blowjobs as if it was nothing — I could pull it off, too. I dropped to my knees as I told him, “My daddy will kill you for this.” My voice was totally steady as I said it. Go me.
Of course, he’d smell my terror, and my revulsion, but I couldn’t stop the way I smelled. I did not want to put his dick in my mouth, but I seemed to be out of options, and tears filled my eyes again. Dammit.
“You tell your daddy and you’ll start a Pack war with the RTMC. People you love will die. Sure you want to do that over a fuckin’ blowjob?” he asked as he unfastened his pants and pulled his cock out.
I heard something a half-second before Sloane fell away from me, and my wolf instincts had me up and on the other side of his Range Rover in an instant, using it as cover since I didn’t have the keys.
I smelled Bash, and then I smelled Sloane’s blood, and my mouth fell open as I watched Bash beat the ever-lovin’ hell out of another wolf twice his weight.
When Bash stopped hitting him, I only heard one heartbeat besides my own, which seemed to be trying to escape my rib cage.
“Fuck.” It was all I could think of to say, but it pretty much summed up the situ
ation. My terror of a few minutes ago when I was at Sloane’s mercy hadn’t totally faded, and now I worried about the fallout of… shit, killing a Pack member.
After another two minutes of silence, with Bash standing over Sloane’s body, I finally trusted my legs enough to walk toward them. Sloane’s skull was caved in, his facial features totally gone.
“How did you know I snuck out?”
“Knew something was up, just didn’t know what. Kept an eye on you.”
“Thanks.”
His chuckle had no humor in it at all. “Glad I could help, Princess.”
“No one knows you’re here. I’ll call Duke.”
He nodded, and I called the person my dad had left in charge.
“Punkin?” God, the club had given me the nickname when I was a toddler, and it’d stuck. I might get aggravated at Bash calling me Princess, but at least he didn’t call me Punkin.
“I have a situation. We’re gonna need you and Brain, probably a cargo van, and some old timers. No bikes, no colors.” Old-timers was a code word for ‘this is as bad as it gets and make sure you bring people super loyal to the club’.
“You alone?”
“Not saying over the phone. I’m safe for the time being, but you need to come fast.”
I told him where I was, and he said he’d be there in fifteen minutes. I told him to try to make it ten, even though I knew it was a twenty-minute drive at this time of night, with no traffic.
“You’re a little scary sometimes, Princess,” Bash told me as I hung up and put my phone back in my pocket.
I looked at him a few seconds and answered, “I’m not the one who just bashed someone’s skull in.”
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