By afternoon the following day, she was feeling better, and the docs didn’t see any signs of worry. Like a patient guardian, Jase listened to a doctor describe her recovery treatment. Henry stood in the back of the room, waiting to help transport her home. Jase was careful as he scooped her up from the bed and into a wheelchair. Henry walked alongside her as Jase pushed. The doctor had offered, but Jase refused to let him.
Henry stood by as Jase helped her carefully into the passenger seat of his truck. Once she was belted in, he came up and took her hand. He planted a gentle kiss on top of it. “Tell me this is the end of the family curse.”
Maggie smirked at him, still not quite herself under the painkillers. “I hope so, dad.”
Henry had a confused smile on his face. “You haven’t called me dad in a long time.”
“I’m on a lot of drugs. I probably won’t remember it tomorrow, so don’t get used to it,” she said. For once, Henry just laughed at her backtalk. Jase climbed into the driver’s seat and double-checked her seatbelt before he started the ignition.
“Sheriff’s digging out the last of the Rebel Cross boys from their chapter in Howlett. Most of them had nothing to do with it, but he’s not taking any chances,” said Henry. “Things should be safe now with Evan eliminated, but keep your eyes out just in case for the next few days.”
“I dare them to try again,” said Jase with a grin as he started the truck. “The higher my body count, the sexier she thinks I am.”
“It’s true,” said Maggie. She laughed much harder at the joke than it deserved, which only made Jase and Henry laugh at her.
“Take care of my little girl, Jase,” said Henry before he closed the door.
Jase saluted him with serious eyes. “Always, boss.”
Maggie smiled at her father through the truck window and waved as they backed out of the hospital parking lot. For sure, she knew now, it was the painkillers giving her such ease of emotion. But as silly as she felt, it was a welcome relief from the horror of the past week. She let it envelop her as she turned to look at Jase in the driver’s seat, watching the road. His hand had already wandered over to find one of hers in her lap. Every now and again, he would sneak a look over at her, and she would already be watching him and grinning. Jase would laugh and turn red a bit before he went back to watching the road.
“I’m glad to see you sitting there,” he said at one stoplight. He squeezed her hand when she told him she was thinking the same thing.
Jase took them back to his house. He set her up in bed and demanded her orders. “Anything you want, I’ll get it for you. Just say the word.”
“Anything?”
“Yep.”
“A puppy?”
“Done. What else?”
“A glass of whiskey.”
“As long as you don’t tell the doc. Next?”
“Some crack cocaine?”
“Sure. Wait, what?” said Jase with a laugh.
Maggie said, “For real on the whiskey. And why don’t you tell me what the hell happened, while you’re at it.” She patted the bedspread for him to sit down.
Jase made her wait until he got them both two fingers of a very smooth whiskey he’d been keeping stashed away in his kitchen. They clinked a small ‘cheers’. The whiskey burned down her throat, and toasted up her insides nicely.
“What do you remember?” said Jase.
“Just what I told the sheriff. I couldn’t see anything on the van ride, didn’t know where we were. I didn’t recognize any of the Rebel Cross men… only Evan,” she said. “They left me in there for a while until suddenly I could hear gunfire from somewhere close. Gunfire came and went, and then Evan came in and started untying me. He kept saying we had to go, he had to get me out of there.”
“That was Will and Ghost,” said Jase. “If Will hadn’t called me about Drake, I probably never would have found you.”
“I can’t believe that motherfucker had something to do with all of this,” said Maggie. Even as she said it, some part of her actually did believe it. He had never sat right with her.
“It’s always about the deals for him. That’s what made him so good for the club; he had connections to everyone. It was stupid of us to think he would keep us sacred,” said Jase. “But that opportunistic little fuck has cut his last deal around these parts.”
“Is that secret club business you’re sharing with me?” said Maggie.
Jase smiled and moved a bit of hair out of her face. “From now on, my love, I will be sharing all secret club business with you.”
Maggie raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
Jase nodded, serious. “You might not wear a cut, but your blood is in the MC as much as any of us that do. Henry was wrong to try and keep you out of it. And if we’re going to be together, it makes no sense for me to try to keep you out of it, either. We have to trust each other.” He bent and pressed his forehead against hers. “We share it all.”
Maggie smiled to herself. “I like that.”
Jase pulled back and kissed her. Then he cleared his throat and looked away. “So I suppose you’ll just be staying here then, hmm?”
Maggie grinned widely, watching his face tint red. “You mean while I recover?” She teased.
“Well of course, yes-- plus the days after that.”
“Oh? How many days?”
“I don’t know, like….three or four? Or all of them?” said Jase with a grin he could no longer fight.
“I told you, Campbell, you gotta put a ring on it,” said Maggie, tapping her left hand sarcastically.
“Oh, right,” he said. He suddenly stood and started digging through his pockets, and Maggie felt her heart stop. She stared at him with wide eyes as he sat back down with something in his hand.
Jase turned and saw the look on her face and froze. Then he said, “Oh, this isn’t…. this isn’t that.”
Maggie slumped and started laughing at herself.
“When would I have had time to get a ring?” said Jase with a shake of his head and a laugh.
“I don’t know, I’ve been on a painkiller high for twenty-four hours!” she said.
“Don’t worry, beautiful, you won’t be waiting long for that,” he said. He opened her hand and dropped into it her mother’s rosewood-beaded rosary. “They found this in the van that snatched you. Henry said it was yours.”
Maggie gasped and closed her hand tightly. In the chaos of the kidnapping, she hadn’t even noticed the rosary fall out of her pocket. She looked at Jase with a teary smile. She felt too overwhelmed to speak.
Jase returned the smile and put a gentle hand on her head, smoothing her hair. “I never did get you that coffee.”
She cleared her throat. “That sounds nice,” said Maggie. “I think I’ll stay right here this time.”
Jase laughed. He bent and gave her a kiss. “I wouldn’t mind if you were in that bed every time I came looking.”
He headed down the hall towards the kitchen and Maggie called after him, “Like you’re that lucky!” She heard him chuckle to himself.
Maggie sunk into the warm softness of Jase’s bed and clenched her mother’s rosary tightly in her palm. It was probably all in her fuzzy mind, but she thought the beads felt hot under her touch. She listened to the sounds of Jase in the kitchen, the soft chirping of the summer birds outside the window, the faraway hum of tractors on the farmland.
Safe, loved, and warm, Maggie realized, in that moment, that her life had become better than any daydream she could conjure. Henry had said she only need find hands that can handle her. There was no question—if there ever had been—whose hands she needed.
It was only Jase who tamed the fire in her heart.
* * *
The entire Black Dogs Bundle is available as a set on Amazon, but if you still aren’t sure, keep reading for an excerpt from book 2 – Retribution.
Bonus Excerpt - Retribution (Black Dogs MC Book 2)
~ PROLOGUE ~
* * *
&
nbsp; Will sighed and took a quick glance under the conference table at his watch. The voices of the other members of the MC faded into the background of his thoughts. He just wanted this thing to be over. It felt like the Black Dogs had been, well, chasing their tails over this same issue for weeks now, and he was growing tired of it.
Ghost cleared his throat and began speaking. The sound brought Will back to the present. “Look, here’s my thing. It’s not like the cartel has a reputation for throwing fucking tea parties. If we try to set up some UN summit instead of a ground offensive, we’re just gonna get mowed down like a bunch of assholes.”
A few grumbles began around the huge wooden conference table. At its head sat Henry Oliver, president of the Black Dogs MC, who leaned back heavy in his big, comfortable leather chair with a hand over his mouth, listening, thinking. A cigar burned, half-ignored, in a crystal ash tray in front of him. To his right sat the vice president, Douglas Dillon, longtime comrade and war buddy. The rest of the seats were taken by the MC’s most trusted men—Jase Campbell, Ghost McBride, Martin Palmer, Trevor Bones, and Will himself, the MC’s spymaster.
Usually, these types of meetings were reserved for Mondays, after the boys’ weekend blazes left them tired and hungover enough that sitting in an air-conditioned office chair for a few hours seemed appealing. But Henry had called this semi-emergency meeting on a Friday evening, and everyone stirred in their chairs, antsy. Everyone had places they wanted to be instead. But things had begun to stir in LeBeau.
“He’s not wrong,” said Jase. “We’ve heard some upsetting reports from the southern part of the state where the cartels have a better handle on the territory, and it’s not a pretty picture.”
Murders, assaults, arson, robberies… they had all heard the reports. The cartel had come in hard and fast in the big cities in the south. The first calls from shopkeepers getting hassled in LeBeau was what had prompted Henry to make the issue a priority—it seemed to be the first rumblings of a bigger problem. Already, there had been some minor violence against businesses that seemed to have been strategically chosen, stretched along a few of the lesser-traveled highways that ran through the towns of the mountain pass.
Henry raised a palm. “I know we’re all troubled by what’s happening, and Douglas has already reached out to the affected businesses to offer some support. But this is a delicate situation. The cartel is expanding. Now, we can present ourselves as enemies, or we can be allies.”
Douglas added, “We might be able to keep them out of the corridor, if we banded together all our allies and called in most of our favors. Truth is, they’re bigger than we are. We would have to be ready for potentially heavy casualties.”
Will shook his head and dropped a finger on the table. “I’m not okay with that, and you know I haven’t been okay with it since this first became an issue.”
“None of us want casualties, man,” said Ghost from down the table. “Fuck, none of us want the cartel here in the first place. But they’re escalating, and we’re just sitting here with our dicks in our hands.”
“I understand the issue,” said Will, leaning back in his chair. “But I don’t see how adding more bullets to a firefight is going to end it.”
“It ends if those bullets hit their targets,” said Jase, pointing to Will from directly across the table.
Will gave him a sour look. “And what if they don’t?” The table was silent so he pressed on with his point, the same one he felt like he’d been arguing for weeks now. “If the cartel wanted to come in hard and give us no choice but to fold, they could have done it. Instead, it’s like they’re flirting with us. They’ve caused enough of a rumble to get our attention without killing anyone or drawing down the Feds. This is them giving us a chance to make a deal.”
“Or they’re just being smart about their resources,” said Ghost sardonically. He always got this heavy-browed, dark look when he disagreed with Will, and it was there in plain view now. At least the man was easy to read.
Will shook his head. “I’m with Henry on this, still. We have a chance to make a deal that will keep things steady around here, maybe even benefit the MC in some way. We’d be idiots not to take it.”
Around the table, a few men groaned, including Jase and Ghost. Sometimes, Will couldn’t help but feel like the odd man out in the MC, even though he knew damn well he belonged—no, thrived—within its ranks. He found himself thinking of his grandfather, a commander during World War II, wishing he had survived into the present to give Will his wisdom at times like these. But Will was smart enough to know that even soldiers differed from each other. Of course Jase and Ghost wanted to go in blazing; what was the type of men they were. Will knew there were other paths to consider. He was the quiet assassin to their front line cavalry. He held fast against their disagreement.
Henry sat up in his chair and took hold of his gavel. He leaned his thick arms on the table. “All those in favor of arranging a diplomatic meeting with the cartel?”
Will raised his hand. So did Henry, Douglas, Martin, and Bones. As they looked around the table, the remaining men who disagreed shook their heads or sighed in defeat. Diplomacy had the vote.
Henry banged his gavel once on the shiny wooden table. “There it is. We’ll take the weekend and come back to this Monday morning. In the meantime, keep me notified of any developments.”
The room filled with the sounds of chairs rolling and men grumbling, leather cuts shifting against chain wallets and weapon holsters. Will stood up and looked at Jase staring at him from across the table, stern but not angry.
“When are your balls gonna drop, man?” said Jase as he walked around in slow procession behind the others headed for the door. “You never vote for a fight.”
“And you never vote for diplomacy,” said Will with a laugh, landing a punch on Jase’s thick left arm when he approached. “If you’re going to be the trigger-happy one around here, someone else has to be the sane one.”
“I do not want that job!” said Ghost loudly from behind them.
Will shook his head, laughing, and walked next to Jase as they made their way down the stairs and into the clubhouse den. Already, men posted up at the bar and cracked open beers, while others bee-lined out the door and to their bikes outside. “You’d think after all this time I would have taught you that there is more than one way to destroy an enemy, Jase.”
“Oh, do enlighten me, Sun Tzu.”
“If they’re our allies, they can’t be our enemies. That destroys them as effectively as bullets,” said Will.
“Ooh, that’s good—did you come up with that?”
Will smirked and shook his head. “Copyright Abraham Lincoln.”
“Fucking nerd.” Jase fell silent a moment as they walked up to the bar. “Ah! Counterpoint: allies can betray you.”
“Only allies can betray you,” said Ghost as he pushed in between them, leaned over the bar until one of his feet was off the floor, and pulled back up with three bottles of beer. He opened them roughly on the side of the bar with his hand and offered one to Will and Jase each.
“Now that’s good,” said Jase as he clinked his beer bottle against Ghost’s.
“Copyright Ghost McBride into eternity,” said Ghost.
Will rolled his eyes and took a few hearty swigs of beer. As Jase and Ghost changed the subject, he set his half-finished beer on the bar and took a quick visit to the restroom. When he came back out, he found an empty den with sounds of laughter coming from the open door leading out to the rear yard of the clubhouse.
“Hey there, baby.” The feminine voice came from behind him, heavy with insinuation. Will felt small hands caress around his waist, one running under his cut to rub his muscular chest, the other wandering south, diving into the waistband of his jeans without hesitation. “Running off so soon? I waited for you.”
Will moaned as she pressed her ample tits against his back. His cock began to harden at the approach of her soft fingers. “Did you now?”
She made a soft moaning sound in return. Will pulled her hand out of his jeans so he could turn around to face her. One of the house mouses, Tracy, stood before him with a seductive grin. With her blonde hair pulled up in a messy pile on top of her head, there was nothing obstructing his view of her thin, tanned frame, or the enhanced cleavage staring at him from her very low-cut black top. She leaned in and kissed him, sucking his lip into her mouth gently. Her hand rubbed his cock boldly outside his jeans, hardening him to steel in just a few seconds.
“C’mon, I need it,” she murmured into his mouth. Will kissed her back with heated lips and pushed her against the wall, grinding up against her as she threw her arms around his neck and wrapped one leg around his waist. He rubbed his hands up and down her bare, toned thighs, almost fully exposed by the insanely short shorts she wore.
“Tell me again,” he said, his voice heavy with lust. He leaned down and kissed her forcefully, running a firm hand to grope her breasts over her shirt. Tracy whimpered, leaning her head back against the wall.
“I need it….” She begged, digging her nails into his neck.
Will lifted the petite blonde off her feet, holding her against him as he pushed them both into the closest bedroom. He kicked the door shut behind him without moving his mouth from where it was planted on Tracy’s neck, sucking and biting as she writhed against him. He threw her across the bed.
“Get your pants off,” he growled as he fumbled at his own belt buckle. Will soaked in the sight of her disrobing, and moaned when she stuck her fingers down her black silk panties and ran them over her clit, waiting for him.
Will stripped off his clothes and leaned over her to take one of her taut nipples into his mouth. He twirled his tongue over it until Tracy squealed beneath him, his hand firmly kneading the other. He moaned as he sucked on her tit, grinding his hard cock against the wet silk of her panties.
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