Ember's Burn: A Steel Demons MC Novel

by Annelise Reynolds

  I drove to the outside of town toward the clubhouse, but where I would have turned off, for the club, I kept going. I knew about this property because it backed up against the club property line. I’d toyed with buying it for a while, but I just hadn’t gone through with it yet. I knew about horses, because we had a few growing up, but I knew nothing about ranching. That is where Roper would come in. Unlike Legend, Grit, and I he grew up in Colorado on a ranch. We all met in the service, and he moved to Texas to join us in becoming a Demon. He had the knowledge of how to run a ranch, and I had the money to get us started.

  The gate was rusted and bent, its hinges groaned as I pushed it open to ride through. I pulled up to the house. The soft blue and white paint was faded and cracked, the darker blue shutters that were still attached were broken in several places, some were missing altogether, and some were hanging on by a thread. There were a few windows broken out in the home and plywood sat in their place. The front steps, porch, and rails all had boards missing and were rotting.

  I carefully walked up the steps, skipping over the missing one, the others groaned and creaked under my weight. I used the key, but the door still wouldn’t budge when I turned the knob. The wood was swollen and warped, so I had to shove my way into the old home. The wooden floors were dusty and scarred. As I looked around, I knew that this place would have to be totally gutted and made new. The kitchen was small. I’d have to knock out some walls to make it bigger for the chef’s kitchen I had in mind.

  The rest of the lower floor was just as bad. I wasn’t surprised to see some rodents running around. It would be a project, but there were a few bonuses to making this place into what it once was. I walked up the rickety stairs, the banister wasn’t even attached anymore. The rail hung down into the hallway below. The second level of the house had three bedrooms and a bathroom. There wasn’t a room in the house that wasn’t covered in dust and littered with mouse droppings. The smell was overwhelming, there was so much work that needed to be done to the structure to make it livable, but the house itself had really good bones. To tear the house down completely would be cheaper than fixing everything that was wrong with it, but the integrity of the old structure was worth the cost of bringing it back to its former glory. Even after the years of abuse and neglect, the house still stood strong and still had beauty inside just waiting to be brought to the surface, just like McKenzie.

  I went back outside and pulled my phone out. “Roper, it’s time,” I said, when he answered. “Are you ready for this?”

  “I’ve been waiting on you, brother.”

  “I’m out at the property now. You want to head over to take a look at the barn and other buildings. The home is a disaster, but I want to completely restore it.”

  “Yeah, I’m on my way.”

  I would have stayed on the porch in the shade to wait for Roper to show up, but I didn’t trust the boards to hold my weight for any length of time. I walked out to the barn, not sure what to expect inside. The house was bad enough, but the barn was worse. There was no point in saving it. I was honestly surprised the damn thing hadn’t fallen down already.

  When I heard Roper coming up the drive, I headed back toward the driveway. He pulled up next to my bike and sat there. “You sure you want to do this, man? She doesn’t even want you right now. You might not be able to break those walls down. This is a lot of money and time to invest in a woman that wants nothing to do with you.”

  “If it were just about her, then I’d agree with you, but this is about me too.” Roper’s look said he didn’t believe me, and as well he shouldn’t, since it was a lie. I watched her for months as we were working on the bar and the restaurant. When she would bring us all lunch, she would cut up with the other guys, but avoided talking to me. She flicked wary glances at me, which suggested she felt differently about me than she did the other guys.

  The day Grit had come back from Amarillo and caught me kissing McKenzie, I had caught her looking at me with a confused look on her face. I saw the desire in her eyes. Now, knowing the hell she’d been through, I could kick myself for confronting her about her desire and her refusal to acknowledge it. I kissed her to prove a point and was punched in the gut with a need so deep that I hadn’t anticipated it. I knew I wanted her, but it went beyond that. I craved her. I didn’t touch another of the girls at the club until the night she disappeared. I would regret that mistake for a lifetime.

  “You can’t make somebody love you back.” His words broke into my thoughts. Roper had the uncanny ability to read people like an open book. Very few people ever fooled him, and if they did, it wasn’t for long. His ability is what made him so valuable in the service. It was also what made him so good at that crazy shit he was into.

  “I know.”

  My phone rang, I looked at Gavel’s name, and answered, “Yeah?”

  “Michelle Price is dead.”

  “How?”

  “They are investigating, but preliminary reports say suicide.” It was horse shit, Gavel’s voice said it and so did my gut. Richards found out she was trying to cut a deal and had her killed, which meant he’d be coming after McKenzie. She was a loose end he couldn’t afford.

  “Did you call Grit?”

  “Yeah. He’s telling Phoenix.”

  “Alright, I’ll have Chink tell McKenzie. He’s with her now.”

  After Titan left the kitchen that day, I didn’t see or hear from him again. I thought he would come back to the house for dinner, but he didn’t. It bugged me, and I hated the fact that it bugged me. Scenes of that night at the clubhouse flashed in my mind. Titan on the couch with two women on him. Their bodies rubbing up against each other, his mouth and hands on them, as others watched on. I tried to break my thoughts because thinking of that night made me sick. Not just him with the other women, but everything that happened afterward, but it was too late, the memories flooded back to me.

  I knew right off they planned to kill me, because Sam was talking about how they destroyed the bar and why. Monica was ranting at me about her husband being with my friend. I wanted to say ex-husband, but knew that would just piss her off more. This chick was crazy, and if I didn’t know that Grit had good taste with Phoenix, I’d doubt his intelligence.

  They drove me out to the cabin, and fear like I had never known gripped me. Price was there. His suit was so out of place, and he looked like a damn idiot with it on in this heat.

  Sam grabbed me by the hair and yanked me out of the cool confines of the car and into the brutal Texas heat. I bit my cheek to keep from screaming out from pain that radiated at my scalp. The metallic taste of blood seeped into my mouth, but I didn’t make a sound. Price enjoyed that shit too much, just like Richards and his bastard son.

  “Hello, McKenzie. It’s been a long time now. What is it, seven years since I last saw you?” The look he gave me told me he knew exactly how long ago he saw me, and he remembered every moment of it too. I made to lash out at him, but Sam’s grip on my hair yanked me back again, bringing tears to my eyes. “Now is that any way to greet the father of your daughter?”

  I froze. He knew about her. I thought we had covered the tracks as best we could. We used a midwife and gave birth at home rather than a hospital. We paid everything under the table, but he knew about her. He was guessing he was the father, but the truth was, it could have been him or Richards or his son. I have no idea which man it was that planted his seed in me that night, and I didn’t really care. They were all evil. I just hoped it was circumstantial and not genetic.

  “She’s not yours,” I rasped at him. If she belonged to anyone, it was her adoptive parents. I would be the next person in line able to claim her as theirs.

  The closing of the front door brought me back to the here and now. I looked up to see Phoenix and Grit standing in the doorway. The pain I saw on her face that morning when I said I didn’t trust her was etched into my memory. Her eyes were red-rimmed with unshed tears. The blue depths showing the pain and
sorrow she was feeling inside, not only from the pain I inflicted, but the pain of her mother’s death.

  “Hi,” she said tentatively, her voice choked with emotion. “Can I join you?”

  “Yes.” I was going to sit in the chair, but I thought she might take that as even more of an insult, and I didn’t want to hurt her any more than I already had that morning. “I’m sorry about your mom.” I didn’t mean it. Michelle Price was evil and, after what she did to both of us, I felt little sympathy. My pain was more for my friend. I knew what it was like to lose a mother, the only difference was my mother was a good one who got taken from me. Phoenix’s was evil and died by her own hand.

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m not,” she said, her voice was cold and hard, but it seemed more like she was trying to convince herself not to care.

  We both sat on the ends of the couch. Like we always did, we faced each other, leaning against the arms. She just looked at me for a long time, studying my face. I met her head on, trying to keep everything inside like I always did. She didn’t need to know more than she already knew. It would just hurt her worse to know everything, and fear that she would hate me clawed at my gut.

  “Are you going to tell me?” Her voice thick with emotion.

  “Tell you what?”

  “McKenzie, don’t-”

  “Ember,” I cut her off, correcting her. Pain flickered in her eyes, but she nodded anyway.

  “Ember,” she started again. “Please, talk to me. Don’t shut me out, again.”

  I looked away from her. “There’s nothing to tell, Phoenix.”

  She closed her eyes. “You can lie to yourself all you want, but we both know there is a lot you need to tell me, like the fact that I may have a half-sister out there.”

  Fuck! She knew. Of course she knew, why wouldn’t she know? The guys gossiped as bad as old women in a nursing home. If she knew, then Grit knew, and if Grit knew, Titan knew. “How?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the real answer, and bracing myself for what was to come.

  “Titan had Hack look into us after he found out who we were. He just got around to looking in the files. The more important question is, why did you hide this from me all these years?”

  I got up from the couch, careful not to jostle my ribs too much. I went back to the window to look out. The war was waging within me. Should I tell her everything, or should I keep it all to myself as I’ve always done? I’ve never told anybody about what really happened. I’ve never talked about it. Dotty knew the most, but even she didn’t know everything.

  I heard her make to get up like she was going to leave, and I made my decision. I told her about the night I saved her from the attack. I told her everything about what they had done to me when she had left for Texas, before I had been sent to boarding school. She never knew that I got my GED instead of graduating. I kept that from her, until now. I told her about my plans to abort the baby, and about the nurse’s attitude toward me and how it changed my mind.

  I finished by telling her about Dotty and all she had done for me. How she had taken me in, and how I thought she was the one that paid for my place at culinary school.

  “What do you mean, you thought?” she asked me. Her voice was hoarse. I looked over at her to see her eyes overflowing with tears. My eyes remained dry and my emotions cut off. It was like I was telling someone else’s story instead of my own.

  “The letter Ellen gave me. She knew, I don’t know how she put it all together, but she knew what was happening. She also knew that she couldn’t take me away from the senator’s guardianship without a lot of questions being asked and putting me in more danger. She knew Richards would never allow that, so to protect me, your grandmother blackmailed him.”

  “I know,” she said nodding.

  “How?”

  “Dad told me in Gavel’s office.”

  “When I read her letter, she knew about everything. She found out I was staying with Dotty. In the letter she said that she did all kinds of digging on Dotty because she wanted to make sure I was safe. I never knew your grandmother did all that until I opened that letter she wrote me.” I took a deep breath and finished telling her what was in the letter. How Ellen had contacted Dotty and they became friends over the phone, and when Dotty told her about me working in the kitchen and being a natural, she was the one to suggest cooking school and she paid for it. Every last penny. I also found out that I was left the exact amount of money in Ellen’s will that I had paid back to Dotty for school, plus some. All these years, and it was too late for me to say thank you.

  I finished telling her everything, and she came to me and wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “I love you, McKen-, Ember,” she corrected herself. “I could never hate you for any of your actions. You were far braver than I could ever have been given the circumstances. You were then, and you are now. I’m so sorry for what they did to you, and I’m surprised you can even look at me because of my father being a part of that. I wish I could bring him back to life and pull the trigger myself.”

  “I’m fine Phoenix.” A part of me wanted to be held and comforted, but the other part of me was screaming to pull away. I made myself stay. She’d been hurt enough by my mood swings.

  “You aren’t fine.”

  “Yes, Phoenix, I am. I’m fine. I’ve dealt with this stuff since I was 14. After so many times, you just detach yourself from it.” I shrugged it off like it was nothing, and for some reason that seemed to upset her even more.

  “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, covering her mouth with her hand as tears poured from her eyes. She looked like she was in physical pain from hearing what I had been through all those years ago.

  “Phoenix, one of the reasons I never told you about all this was because I don’t want any pity. I don’t want any praise for bravery either. I did what I had to do in order to survive, and as for bravery,” I laughed sarcastically, “I wasn’t brave. I’ve been scared ever since. I’ve lived a half-life because I’ve been too damn chicken shit to get out there and live a full one, but not anymore. I’m taking control of my fear and of my life.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  I turned to look at her. “I just mean it’s time for me to make some changes. First one being, I want to go to the salon.”

  She blinked, not expecting that answer, and her face was a little confused. “Ok. We can do that and make a day of it. I’ll let Hannah and Piper know that I won’t be in until the evening tomorrow. I’ll see if Grit will go in to work at the bar in the afternoon for me.”

  We talked a few more minutes. She was still concerned. I could see it, but I didn’t think anything I said would put her mind at ease. There was another stop I wanted to make after going to the salon, but I decided to just spring that one on her. I’d make the phone call tonight to tell him exactly what I wanted.

  I called the salon first thing. We didn’t have many choices in Belle, so we decided to go to Beauford instead. Phoenix and I both protested when Grit told Phoenix that Chink had to come with us. “Grit, we’re going to get our hair done, do you honestly think Chink wants to go sit with us?” Phoenix pulled him down by his neck and whispered against his lips. “We promise to go straight there and come straight back.”

  I was surprised that Grit gave her her way, but I wasn’t surprised when I saw Chink on his bike, three cars back, following us. I brought it to McKenzie’s attention, and she smiled. “I know. I figured he would do that. It just means that now, if we want to go anywhere else while we’re in town, we can. Brice will have a fit if we go somewhere other than the salon.”

  “And that’s a good thing?”

  She had this dreamy smile on her face when she said, “Oh yes.”

  I shook my head. It was a relief after all these years to see her finally happy. I don’t know what all Grit did for her, but I was certain she was happy. The love-struck, sappy look was a dead giveaway on that one. “When we come back from the salon, I need to stop by BAD.�
� Ink’s tattoo shop, Body Art Demon. I called him last night and told him what I wanted.

  Phoenix turned to look at me. “What for?”

  “You know what for.”

  “What are you getting?”

  “Two things. I talked to Ink about it last night after you left. He said he would have a few drawings ready for me to look at today, and that I could tweak them when I got there.”

  “You’re getting two tattoos?”

  “I didn’t say two tattoos. I said two things. One is a tattoo, the other is a piercing.”

  “What are you getting pierced?”

  “My belly button.”

  “Oooh, I might do that too. Grit would probably like that, maybe soften him up a little from my punishment for not coming straight back.”

  “Punishment?” I questioned, thinking the worst, and wondering what the hell she was into. The idea of her really being hurt and enjoying it made me want to vomit.

  She grinned and her cheeks turned pink. “Yes, Brice likes to spank.” She sighed. “I like it too.”

  I looked at her and tried to process what she was saying. “How, how could you like something like that after…” I let my question trail off.

  “It’s different with Brice, everything is different with Brice.” She shrugged as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “I’m safe with him, and I trust him to know what my limits are and if he doesn’t, I know, and he stops if I say stop.” Her eyes flicked toward me. “I wouldn’t trust just anybody to have that kind of power over me. Nobody, except Brice.”

  “I don’t know if I could ever do anything like that.”

  She shrugged. “You don’t know until you try, and Titan, I’m sure, would be more than willing to help you find out.”

  “No, there is nothing between Titan and me.”