Retribution: A Motorcycle Club Romance

by Valentine, Sienna

  Shit, I was thinking about it, too.

  Right up until the moment the pool house door opened.

  The sounds that followed are ones I’ll never forget. The high-pitched cry of Iris helplessly surrendering to her orgasm, almost drowning out the sharp click of the doorknob turning. Then the little whine of the hinges as the door swung in, flooding the room with daylight and a single shadow, one that looked an awful lot like my dad’s.

  Sweet vindication filled me as I filled Iris right in front of him. I couldn’t tell which was better: revenge, or my orgasm.

  I expected a whole lot of yelling next. I thought Iris, for sure, was gonna start to scream. And my dad had always had a temper, albeit only a verbal one. I could almost taste his bellow on the back of my throat as I swallowed, turning toward him, following Iris’ horrified gaze.

  His face was ashen. There were deep, dark lines where none had been before. His eyes, cold as ice, made my skin prickle with pins, needles, and goosebumps. There was anger in him, all right, but it wasn’t the hot, explosive kind I’d anticipated. This was the silent kind, with a warning vibration that made the hairs on my nape stand on end.

  Iris was the one who spoke first, only it wasn’t really a word that escaped her lips so much as a strangled sob. The smirk on my face faltered for a fraction of an instant. I hadn’t been expecting that, either—that the sound of Iris’ grief would put a little crack in my stone heart.

  “Is this what you texted me for, Slade?” my father said. Disgust shimmered in his eyes, pulled taut at his lips. “You wanted me to see this, didn’t you? That’s why you said your mother and I needed to come home so urgently.” He shook his head. “Thank God she’s still in the main house.”

  “You did this?” Iris whispered, lip curled, brow furrowed tight. There was a note of disbelief in her voice at first, but the longer she searched my face, the more her denial abated and turned to rage. Disgust. “You bastard. You… did this. Used me.” Then she lost all expression, staring blankly at the floor. “Oh, my God. Everything you said was a lie…”

  I knew what she meant. I knew she wasn’t talking about the little stuff. Not about how I’d told her she was pretty, or that she had the best rack I’d ever seen. She was talking about those three little words I’d said. The ones I’d lost sleep over, thinking maybe I’d pushed it too far.

  I love you, I’d told her once, just to get her legs open. Or that’s what I told myself. Because thinking any other way, entertaining any other possibility, might make me back out. Might change my mind. Might fuck up all my plans to get even with the man who’d used my mother until she was dead, and then traded in her memory for a younger model.

  My father inspired a rage so strong in me that sometimes, I couldn’t see straight. Feeling anything for Iris, anything at all, was a threat to that. Because every time I even thought about the idea of those feelings, my vision got blurry in an entirely different way.

  And that just wouldn’t do.

  “Get out,” my father said. Despite how low his voice was, it seemed to shake the room. “Get out of here, Slade. And don’t you dare come back.”

  Iris withered as I withdrew, covering herself with her arms and legs while I pulled up my swim trunks. I risked a look in her direction and my stomach sank. Those eyes were wide again, but not with pleasure or sweet naiveté or even shock. They were wide with pain. Wide with rage.

  How could you? her gaze said to me. I just gave her a shrug and watched her eyes get wet.

  It didn’t matter how hurt she was. The fact of the matter was that Iris was better off without me. I would have told her as much, if she’d have listened. If my father would’ve let me stay in the same room with her for one second more. But I knew neither of those things were going to happen now, so I’d just have to say it to myself: Come on, Iris. This is the best thing that could’ve happened to you. Years from now, you’ll look back and see. Splitting our parents up was something I had to do. For me. For my mother. And in some ways, for you.

  ‘Cause being related to Slade Jarvis? Now that’s a hell I wouldn’t put my worst enemy through.

  My father moved to let me pass without so much of a word. I thought I saw a few gray hairs glinting in the sun, right around his temples, where there hadn’t been a single one before. I held his gaze and my cocky grin, savoring my triumph, knowing that I’d done what I set out to do. That I had won.

  I didn’t let him see it in my eyes or in my swagger, but at the same time, I wondered to myself: if I’d really beat my father, once and for all, then why the hell did I feel so shitty?

  Why the hell couldn’t I get the look on Iris Walker’s face out of my head?

  ~ ONE ~

  Iris

  SEVEN YEARS LATER

  “Dad, come on. You know it’s the right thing to do.”

  My stepfather looked down his nose at me, the wire frames of his glasses dangling precariously close to the tip. He looked like he’d aged ten years in the past three days. Ever since Kellan left home, our house had practically become a morgue.

  You would’ve thought my younger brother died, and maybe for Dad, that was, in a sense, true. He certainly wasn’t the kid we once knew.

  Dad shook his head and fixed his gaze outside the breakfast nook window again, like staring at the front lawn would magically make Kellan appear there. This was part of the Waiting Game, the one our family always played whenever Kellan took off on one of his benders. He was never gone for more than a week at a time—apparently, that was how long it took for him to run out of drug money and come crawling back home on his knees, begging for more. Or he’d call us from the drunk tank at the police station to plead for bail money so he wouldn’t have to spend the night.

  Whatever the case, my little brother had a self-destruct mechanism set for seven days. No matter what else he got himself into, we could rely on him to end up at our door a week later, just like clockwork.

  Until now.

  Three days ago marked one week since Kellan left the house. He’d used his usual ruse, promising Mom he was going to a job interview or the Army recruiter or whatever it was this time. Kellan used the guise of bettering himself as an excuse to relapse, and when his cellphone went straight to voicemail that night, we braced ourselves for another week of the Waiting Game.

  But now ten days had passed, and still no one could reach Kellan. Not even me. And I had one hell of a bad feeling about this.

  “We don’t have any other choice,” I continued, even as my stepfather looked away from me to his newspaper. “Not one that I see, anyway. We’ve already called all the hospitals and police stations. And I doubt you or Mom are going to be able to smoke him out. We need a bigger gun.”

  My stepfather snorted. “Fine choice of words.”

  I sighed and closed my eyes. It had been seven years since my parents caught me and Slade in the pool house, doing… what we’d done. Dad had sworn me and Mom to secrecy, along with Slade. Kellan was never to hear a word of it, and when Dad kicked Slade out the next day, he used Slade’s going off to Harvard as the perfect excuse. Still, for all his talk of secrecy, he was so obvious with his disdain for his own son that everyone knew how he felt. He thought Slade was an asshole. Dangerous. And maybe he was.

  But he was smart, too, and capable. And there were times were he had been incredibly sweet and kind to me. I hated the idea that it was all just an act to screw me, literally and figuratively, just to get back at his father and my mother. When he first left I clung to the belief that those were true parts of him, and that what he’d done at the end had just been him acting out in… whatever. But over the years, after never hearing from him again, I’ve all but lost that hope. Maybe he was the complete jerk that his dad seemed to believe him to be.

  One thing is for certain, Kellan had never stopped looking up to him, even when Mom and Dad basically forbade us from even mentioning Slade’s name. I knew my little brother felt abandoned, like he’d lost one of the most positive male influences i
n his life almost as quickly as it arrived. He’d never been the same after Slade left. That day marked the beginning of Kellan’s downward spiral.

  Slade might be the only one of us who could bring Kellan home. Knowing that was one thing. Convincing my parents it was true was another.

  My mother sat down at the table with us, two mugs of coffee in her hands. She handed one to my stepfather and said, “Kellan’s life is enough of a mess as it is, Iris. Adding yet another unstable element to the mix… I just can’t see how that would make things any better.”

  “Exactly,” Dad said, kissing my mother’s cheek before taking a sip of his coffee. “Kellan needs roots. He needs someone who can set a good example.” His eyes darkened and his brow creased. A shadow of a memory flitted over his face. “Not someone who forces himself on his own family.”

  “He didn’t force me,” I mumbled, and not for the first time. This was a regular argument, once upon a time, but over the past few years it became obvious he was never going to change his mind. I saw my stepfather start to open his mouth and quickly added, “And anyway, that’s not the point. The point is Kellan doesn’t know about that. All he knows is that the big brother he looked up to more than anyone else in the world just disappeared from his life one day, and that you wouldn’t even let him ask why. He’s not going to come home if either of you go after him. It’s obvious who he needs.”

  My stepfather leaned close to me over the table, lowering his voice and squeezing my mother’s hand so tight I saw his knuckles whiten. “If you think I’m inviting that… person into my home, after what he did to us, to you…”

  I furrowed my brow in disbelief. “He’s your son,” I reminded him. “And he’s a doctor. You don’t know what kind of trouble Kellan’s into. Mom found pills in his room just the other week. Who knows how long that’s been going on? He needs treatment, Dad.”

  My stepfather sat back and his face fell. He eyed my mother through his periphery. “Is that true?” he asked her. “About the pills?”

  I looked at my mom. She averted her gaze. Shit. I didn’t know she hadn’t told him.

  When she failed to answer, my stepfather let out a long sigh through his nose. He looked out the window again at the empty drive, at the absence of my brother’s car, at the clouds moving in over the horizon. A storm was coming. Maybe in more ways than one.

  As much as my mother and stepfather didn’t want Slade here, I didn’t want him around even more. It wasn’t because he’d “forced” himself on me—I was a willing and eager, albeit naïve, participant in what happened between us. But being played for a fool, having my heart torn open, being used just to settle some kind of score Slade had with our parents? I never wanted to see his smug, arrogant face ever again. No matter how handsome it was.

  Slade was the walking, talking embodiment of everything I’d tried to forget for almost a decade now. I’d done a lot in the past seven years. I’d graduated from college, started my own business as an interior designer—no, screw that, I had a thriving business, and that was even more impressive than just starting one. I was a smart, beautiful, self-possessed young woman who didn’t take shit from anybody, and Slade Jarvis was everything I wanted to leave behind.

  But he was exactly what I needed—what our family needed—right now. And I’d do anything for Kellan if it meant keeping him safe. Surely, my parents felt the same way?

  “Slade stays out of this,” my stepfather said, and my shoulders slumped. “He’s done enough damage. And if Kellan needs saving, he’ll get it. Just not from my degenerate son.”

  I looked to my mother, pleading with my eyes, but she only shook her head. My stepfather’s word was law, one of the many reasons I’d moved out right after high school, and probably one of the many reasons Kellan dropped out. There was no arguing with him once he’d made a decision of this magnitude. It was his way, or the highway.

  And we all knew what Kellan thought of that.

  I leaned back in my chair, glancing out the window at the coming storm. Great. Once again, it was up to me to make the sacrifices and be the adult. Once again, I would have to put myself on the line, and knowing Slade, I’d be the one who would have to live with the consequences too.

  I had to find my stepbrother, the last person on earth I wanted to see. I’d have to do it without our parents knowing, because if they found out, there would be hell to pay. And when I did manage to find Slade, I’d have to hope that he was different. Selfless. Grown up. And hopefully not so hot anymore, either.

  Because that part of me that wanted answers, the part of me I’d spent seven years trying to hold at bay? Yeah, that part of me would wake right up with just one quirk of Slade’s full, soft lips. Lips I knew way too well.

  Lips that, if I was being honest with myself, I still dreamed about.

  Here’s hoping this doesn’t turn into a nightmare, I thought as I mentally prepared myself for what I was about to do. One thing was certain: I was going to need a plane ticket, and balls of fucking steel.

  Slade available now on Amazon

  Now here’s a taste of Trust

  TRUST

  CHAPTER ONE

  "If I win, I get the girl."

  It was said so matter-of-factly that it didn't register with me until I heard it a second time, after Harrison asked him to repeat it.

  "You're in over your head, kid, that much is obvious," the other man continues, eying the small stack of chips left in front of my boyfriend meaningfully. He had just shoved a large stack of his own chips into the pot that more than eclipsed what Harrison had in front of him. "Instead of risking what you have left, which isn't much, I'm suggesting we change the stakes. You win, you get everything in the pot."

  With the chips he had just added, that would more than cover the heavy losses Harrison had accumulated in the last couple of days. "But if I win, the girl comes home with me."

  This time I knew I heard what he said and it sounded just as ludicrous as it did originally. Obviously he was joking, or crazy, if he thought Harrison would agree to something like that.

  The man lifts the dark sunglasses he's wearing up and off his face as he shifts his gaze up to me. His eyes are a cobalt blue, sitting beneath short blond hair and above a finely chiseled, unshaven jaw. Under normal circumstances he'd be drop dead gorgeous, but the fact that he is calmly trying to negotiate a price for my ass makes him decidedly less so.

  I glance down at Harrison who is also looking up at me. I expect to see a familiar grin on his lips, the one that tells me we are both sharing the same joke. But what I see is something else entirely. One of his eyebrows is raised, and his green eyes are staring at me intently, as if he is either considering this ludicrous proposal or asking for my permission.

  I shake my head slightly with a frown, annoyed that I even need to give my opinion on the matter.

  Harrison looks back at the poker player across from him. "Deal," he finally says.

  It's just a single word, but it's the only one needed to crash my whole world.

  So many things seem to happen at once in the moments that follow, my senses seem to jumble with time itself and I don't even know in what order everything occurs.

  There's a collective gasp that comes from onlookers, both those sitting at the table and others who are just standing around watching. For some reason, a lot of people are drawn to this game, despite the fact that until this particular bet, the stakes haven't been abnormally high.

  Cards are flipped, but I'm no longer paying attention to what they are. Despite Harrison's love of the game, and gambling in general, I've never taken any big interest in poker. The important point is, once the hand is over, the reaction from everyone around us tells me all I need to know.

  Harrison has lost.

  As soon as the cards are turned he's on his feet, explaining the unexplainable. "Unbelievable! There's no way I thought he had a boat there, baby. I thought for sure I had him, and then all of our troubles would have been solved. I'd have won all my mon
ey back in one hand!"

  All of our troubles? He convinced me to come with him on this trip using a lie about working on our relationship, but ever since we've landed he's spent all of his time at the poker tables. He lost money yesterday, and I'm pretty sure he went back after I fell asleep and lost some more.

  Harry is still talking, still trying to explain, but I'm too stunned to listen as I stare down at the table and the stranger sitting across from us. The dealer has shoved the huge pile of chips toward him in a messy assortment of hard, plastic, primary colors, but he's ignoring them as if they aren't worth thousands of dollars. Instead, he's watching me behind an expressionless mask of blue eyes and blond stubble. I wrench my gaze away and back to Harrison. He's still talking. Still explaining. I haven't heard much, but I don't need to. I've had enough. I don't need to listen anymore. I've spent too long listening in the past. I can recite the excuses by heart.