Dedication
A special thanks goes out to Zac Smith, my cover model, and FuriousFotog for taking such an excellent picture. I knew he’d be perfect for Loki, and the photo is just beautiful.
To my husband, thank you for giving me the time to write this book. None of this would be possible without you.
To my kids- as always, you’re the beat to my heart. The reason I do all things. Without you, I’d be lost.
Other Titles by Lani Lynn Vale:
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight (March 2015)
Charge To My Line (April 2015)
Text copyright ©2014 Lani Lynn Vale
All Rights Reserved
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Coming Soon
You’re the Keys
Loki’s life was a lie. Everything he’d done for the last eight years was under an assumed name for the Benton Police Department. He’d lied, cheated, and stolen all in the name of the law. He wore himself thin, and not even the open road could take away the pain anymore. Then his little next door neighbor moved in, and suddenly he had a reason to get out of bed every morning. Except he was an officer of the law, and a member of a prominent motorcycle club in the area, The Dixie Wardens MC. Neither of which she could deal with.
To My
It wasn’t the scars that covered her new neighbor’s body that scared Channing. It was the badge. The fact that he belonged to The Dixie Wardens MC was only icing on the cake. She should be running away as fast as her legs could carry her. But there’s something about Bryce ‘Loki’ Rector. Something that eased the unreasonable fear she felt every time she came into contact with something that reminded her of her past.
Cuffs
They say love isn’t easy, and it definitely isn’t for the two of them. Loki has to learn to feel again, and Channing has to learn to live. Their road isn’t an easy one by any means, but Loki makes two promises. One, he’ll never let anything hurt Channing. Two, it’d be over his dead body that he’d ever let her go.
Chapter 1
I finally found my sleep number. It’s six. As in, six bottles of beer.
-Things to live by
Loki
1 year ago
“Will you please, please, please mow the lawn, Andrew? Please,” my next-door neighbor begged.
She was begging her husband...brother...lover...roommate? Hell, I didn’t know what he was. They didn’t look anything alike, so I was inclined to think that they weren’t brother and sister. I had only heard him call her Channing. But they sure as hell didn’t act like lovers...or even husband and wife. Their relationship wasn’t a normal one. It was as if they only tolerated one another, which was why I leaned towards roommate, more than anything.
They worked opposite shifts.
She was a nurse or something at the hospital at nights; based on the black scrubs she left the house in every night. He worked in an office during the day, as a manager or something.
She worked outside a lot, making their home the best looking on the block, while all I ever saw him do was play video games from his chair in the living room.
She was always the one who bought the groceries. She was always the one who washed the car. She was also the one who mowed the lawn. She got the mail. The list goes on and on.
Except this day. She looked...rough. Like she hadn’t slept in days. Her red/brown hair was in a messy bun on the top of her head, tendrils falling out all around her face. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants that said, Destin, FL. on them, and a white tank top that showed off a slight pudge that was adorably cute on her.
She was on the heavier side than what I normally went for, but there was something about my little neighbor that made me want her. Hell, even right now she was hot.
I was on a creeper under my truck, changing out the oil. No, not a creeper as in a creepy person, but a flat board-like device on wheels that let me lay on my back and move around under the car.
Our houses were small, and our yards were even smaller. Which meant I was about fifteen feet away from her and I could hear every word.
Especially when Andrew, the douchebag, told her, “Fuck off, I had to work all day.”
“I know, Andrew, but I have someone coming to quote how much it’ll be to fix the foundation, and I can’t have them look at the foundation if they can’t see it. So we have to mow the lawn. Please, I feel really awful today,” she pleaded.
She did sound awful, that was for sure. Her voice was nasally, and she coughed every couple of seconds. My guess would be the flu.
“Sorry, sister dearest, but I really am tired. Reschedule the appointment,” he told her. “Maybe next week when you can mow the lawn yourself.”
So...he was her brother. Good to know. I’d been wondering about that for nearly five months of living next to them. I could’ve, of course, found out. But I was supposed to act like I didn’t know anything about anybody. Which would’ve been hard to do with her. She had this...magnetism that made me want to know every little detail.
With that he took his ‘tired self’ inside. It was only minutes later that I saw him sit down on the chair I could see through the living room window. He slipped on a pair of headphones, took a sip of his beer, and started playing.
Lazy bastard.
Going back to my work to distract me on how irate it made me feel that he wouldn’t help his own sister out when she was sick, I was surprised to hear the sound of the lawn mower going.
Scooting out from under the car comp
letely, I found the stubborn woman mowing the lawn. She made two passes right across the part of the yard that was closest to the foundation before she physically had to stop.
I was on my feet without conscious thought, watching her to make sure she was okay. When she finally called it quits and stopped the lawn mower in the middle of the yard, my alarm became warranted.
She bent over, coughing and wheezing, and it was then that I walked over to her, scared shitless.
“Hey, are you okay?” I asked her from a far enough distance back, as not to scare her.
She looked up, giving me only her light green eyes, and nodded. “Yes, I just have asthma. And I’m pretty sure I have a cold. Normally, I wear a face mask, but I forgot.”
I remembered the facemask. She looked ridiculous with it on, and I’d always wondered why she wore it. Asthma was a good explanation, though.
“Do you need something?” I asked in concern when she dropped to her knees.
“In-inhaler,” she wheezed. “P-purse on table.”
I left her there, on her knees, and walked straight into their house. The little fucker playing Call of Duty didn’t even look up as I walked straight through the living room to the kitchen table. Grabbing the pink polka dotted purse, I dumped its contents on the table.
Fishing through the sheer amount of shit, I finally found two inhalers, one brown and one red.
Fisting them both in my hand, I walked out of the house, directly between the TV and the man playing his war game. He snarled, but didn’t say anything as I hurried back outside, finding the woman on her hands and knees, trying her hardest to take a deep breath.
“Red or brown?” I asked as I dropped down to my knees beside her.
Her answer was to grab the brown one, uncap it, and take two puffs.
Long moments later, her breathing began to slow, and she pulled a long, deep pull of air into her lungs. She repeated this two more times as she looked at the grass. On her third deep inhale, her head finally lifted, and her eyes locked on my own. Then she froze.
Yeah, that was normally the reaction I got out of people. At least lately.
I was undercover for the Benton Police Department trying to take down Varian Strong. Strong was a ‘suspected’ rapist, and dealer in the area. I said ‘suspected’ very loosely. We all knew he did it, we just couldn’t prove it. The BPD had six women come forward with their suspicions, yet not one single shred of evidence could point towards him. He’d been questioned, warrants had been served, and wiretaps were put on his phone. Which had been monitored nearly 24/7 for three months before they made the decision to put someone undercover in his construction business.
What better way to do that than making someone look like a druggie wanting his next hit of Meth? Someone desperate. Someone who’d look the other way when their boss did something shady.
Yeah, that’s what I looked like. Long, shaggy hair down to my shoulders. Bruises and needle sticks from sterilized needles at the bends of my elbows and in the webbing of my fingers. Shitty clothes that hung off my form. I was big though, no doubt about it. I couldn’t hide the muscle with anything else but baggy clothes.
I looked like a vagrant.
Then her eyes locked on the scar on my neck. The one I’d gotten when I was sixteen, when a gang member from my hometown slit my throat for his initiation into a gang. A gang that I was trying to get out of. A gang that didn’t let people just leave.
I’d survived having my throat sliced open because of a police officer. The local gang officer that’d cruised the gang’s territory trying to keep gang activity to a minimum. He’d saved me with his quick thinking, and kept an eye on me for the duration of my high school years.
Oh, and married my single mother.
He was also now my stepfather.
Trying to do him proud, I’d joined the Coast Guard, and went to school to get my paramedic degree. After six years in the coast guard, I got out when my mom got sick, and got triple certified as a firefighter, paramedic, and police officer.
I moved to Benton because of its nearly nonexistent gang activity. I didn’t want to deal with gangs. But I did want to make the town, and the surrounding area, better.
Going undercover wasn’t my original goal; but, overtime, it was certainly a bonus. I became good at being a different person. Or maybe I was just that person, trying not to be me. I mean I was in a gang for five years. I lived on the streets while my mother worked her ass off at a diner, working the night shift. I was most definitely not supervised, which is what led to my destruction at the ripe old age of eleven.
“T-thank you,” She said after a while, finally finding her voice.
“No problem,” I said and walked away, leaving her there in the grass.
Her eyes were terror filled, and I knew she wouldn’t be able to walk with me that close.
She was in a vulnerable position: sick and scared. I gave her the only reassurance I could. My back.
Chapter 2
I don’t always find a series I like on Netflix. But when I do, I watch all twelve seasons in a row while living off of cookies and chips for three days straight.
-E-card
Channing
“I’ll be back by midnight,” I said to my brother, just in case he was listening to me and didn’t have his earphones all the way up. Although, most likely a useless statement, I wanted to think that he cared enough about me to be concerned about where I went. Though, I knew he didn’t.
When I said he could move in here for a couple of weeks, I never meant he could stay with me forever. It’d been six months since he’d moved in, and in that time he hadn’t once looked for alternate places to stay.
I should’ve known, but it was nice having someone around...even if they didn’t talk to me. Or help. Or pay for anything.
The neighborhood wasn’t a good one, and I liked the feeling of knowing my house wouldn’t be unoccupied when I came home. Especially with all the rapes that had been occurring during the night.
Who would have thought that a serial rapist would show up in this small town?
It all started about six months ago with a young teenager, arriving home after a night of partying with her friends. She’d pulled her car in the garage, shut it off, and got out before she closed the garage door. Then she set the alarm and went to bed. Which was a serious mistake.
According to the news feed from the security cameras, the man had bypassed the security system by unknown means, and rearmed it once he was inside. From there everything looked fine on the outside, while inside a young girl was getting her innocence stolen from her, and then drugged to make her forget.
Since then, there’ve been nearly nine other victims, and they can only remember that they were fine before they got home. The first one was the luckiest since they’d installed cameras after the home was built. The others hadn’t been so lucky. They only woke up confused, beaten, and raped with nothing to remember about how it happened.
Walking outside, I made it to my car, keeping my head down as I went.
It wouldn’t do to see my neighbor. My hot, sexy, drug using, badass neighbor.
It was inevitable though. I was drawn to the man like the crops need the rain. He was like an incandescent star in a pitch-black sky to me. No matter how hard I tried, my eyes always strayed his way. The way he watched me unnerved me, but it also set my blood on fire.
Hell, I was a 26-year-old woman. He was a hot male in his prime, despite the baggy gangster clothes that covered an extremely muscled body. His hair was about three inches too long and shaggy blonde. When he looked at me, he always had a couple strands in his steel blue eyes, only adding to the appeal.
“Hey, sis,” Andrew called. “Can you pick up some dinner on the way home from work?”
He didn’t wait for the reply, which wasn’t surprising. He didn’t care that I worked until nearly three in the morning. All he cared about was getting a hamburger and fries. Did it ever cr
oss his mind that I didn’t have the energy to do that after I got off? I had to be at school at nine tomorrow morning.
When I turned back around, I saw my neighbor shirtless, bending over the hood of his newest acquisition. A 1970 Plymouth Barracuda that I was just dying to take a ride in. In fact, I would kick my brother out right now if he gave that car to me.
It was loud. So loud that it made my heart race. The color could use some work, but the engine was sound. With all the work that the man put in it over the past three weeks, there was no wonder.
Did he even work?
I’d seen him outside on my way to work the last three days, and he’d still been there when I’d gotten home. Although it was nearly seven at night, and I was gone the entire day, he was out there. In the same spot he’d been in when I left. He could work sometime in the interim, yet I didn’t think he did.
I couldn’t wait to see what color he painted it.
“Hi, Channing!”
I screamed loudly and turned, finding my next-door neighbor, the creepy as fuck next door neighbor to my immediate right. Varian Strong.
“Umm, hi, Mr. Strong. How are you?” I asked, backing away toward my car.
He smiled at my retreat, knowing what he did to me.
My heart raced.
“I’m fine, sweet thing. Going to work?” He asked with feigned concern.
I nodded emphatically. “Sure am. Have a good night!”
I dropped down in my car, then locked it as inconspicuously as I could before starting it and backing the fuck out of my driveway.
I freakin’ hated my neighborhood.
Mostly.
Mostly, because I liked the way that my neighbor was watching me drive away, and the way his eyes narrowed in Varian’s direction once he saw me pass him.
I’d known he was paying attention. He was a smart man. He knew the neighborhood was just as dangerous as I did. Although he wasn’t a scared little rabbit like I was.
I’d grown up in a suburb in New Orleans before the levees collapsed. My mom had died in the floods shortly after, and my dad’s shrimping business had gone under as a result. We’d never done badly for ourselves, but with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was nothing left for us to go back to.
Keys To My Cuffs (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC Book 4) Page 1