by Zoey Parker
This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons--living or dead--is entirely coincidental.
A PRICE TO PAY copyright 2017 by Zoey Parker. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.
Table of Contents
Note from the Author
A PRICE TO PAY: A Dark Bad Boy Romance
Prologue
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 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
TAKE ME, OUTLAW: A Dark Bad Boy Romance [FREE BONUS NOVEL]
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 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Epilogue
OVERDOSED: Fury’s Storm MC [FREE SAMPLE]
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Books by Zoey Parker
Take Me, Outlaw
Break Me, Outlaw
Spike
Stolen
Overdosed
Ravage
Bounty
Trouble
Monster
INKED ANGELS: A Bad Boy Romance Box Set
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Note from the Author
I’m incredibly excited about A PRICE TO PAY: A Dark Bad Boy Romance. I honestly think this is my best book yet, and I’m so excited to share it with you. The stakes are higher than ever in this novel – the sex is hotter, the bad guys are badder, the gore is gorier. It all came together so beautifully that I even cried a little bit when I was putting the finishing touches on it (shh, don’t tell anyone!)
Thanks, as always, for your support, your kind words, your criticisms, and all the little odds and ends that make me smile every single day. I can’t thank you enough for allowing me to live my dream of being a real, live author.
xo,
Zoey Parker
A PRICE TO PAY: A Dark Bad Boy Romance
By Zoey Parker
We’ll both pay the price for crossing the line.
There are some things in this world a man should never do.
But as far as I’m concerned, the rules can go f*ck themselves.
I’m Cain Vale.
I do whatever the hell I want.
Of course, that’s part of the reason I ended up in this situation:
Bleeding from a cracked skull, as a lifetime of naked sluts and roaring bikes flashes before my eyes.
A life well lived, but I’m not ready for it to be over just yet.
Not when there’s revenge to be dealt.
Once I’m back on my feet, the men who betrayed me will pay dearly for their crimes.
They will suffer.
Scream.
Beg for my mercy.
But my injuries are worse than I thought.
Until I can ride again, my president tasks his kid sister with helping me recover.
What she doesn’t know is that, while she’s in my household, she’ll live on my terms.
She’ll please me.
She’ll taste me.
And by the time I’m finished, she’ll know how it feels to be owned.
Prologue
The pistol in Missy Dermott’s hands was slick with sweat as she waited for Death to find her.
She had pulled the shower curtain closed and was hunkered down in the bathtub, hearing her own panicked breathing echoing off the ceramic just inches from her ears.
She stared at the tiny motel bottles of shampoo and body wash standing on the edge of the tub like blank-faced soldiers marching to their doom, and thought about how unpardonably stupid she had been.
Missy told herself that she should have known this was a trap—the brutal kind with rusty metal teeth that would tear her whole world into bloody chunks the moment it snapped shut.
She'd spent her entire life around her brother and the rest of the Blood Eagles, and even though her gender meant she'd never become an Eagle herself, she'd still absorbed enough of their outlaw mentality that her antennae were always up and twitching, ready to warn her when danger was closing in. That keen awareness she'd cultivated had saved her from lots of arrests and hazards in the past.
Today, though, when she'd needed it the most, it had deserted her. And why?
Because she'd been distracted. Because on the day when it mattered most, her mind and her heart hadn't been focused on what they should have. Because she'd actually been dumb enough to believe that when happiness came knocking at the door, even a hardass like her deserved the chance to invite it in without worrying whether it was hiding a knife behind its back.
And now she'd pay the price for it, along with everyone she'd ever cared about.
Drops of condensation formed and rolled down the inside of the tub, and Missy realized she was still breathing hard against its milky surface. She closed her eyes and willed herself to take slow, deep breaths. Loud gasping and panting would only betray her location more quickly.
Death was coming.
Not a metaphor, but a man with a singular purpose. Every second brought the increased certainty that he was getting closer with each step, scenting the night air for her, ready to draw back the shower curtain and reach in and snatch
away her life before she had time to blink.
Missy knew that the gun in her hands might not be enough to stop Death when it came for her. But she'd fired plenty of guns in her life. She was a damn good shot, and she intended to do everything she could to put a bullet between its eyes before it had a chance to take her. One well-placed bullet—that's all it would take. One bullet could be the difference between living and dying in the next few minutes.
But as Missy hefted the revolver in her hands and felt its unexpected lightness, she had the slow, sickening realization that she wasn't even sure she had one bullet.
How many shots had she fired a few minutes before? She was surprised to discover that she couldn't remember, and she kicked herself inwardly. When the bullets started flying at the Eagles, she had just aimed and squeezed the trigger again and again, her blood pumping so loudly in her ears that it drowned out the thunder of the guns and made her forget to conserve her ammunition.
She offered a silent prayer to anyone who'd listen as she flipped open the revolver's cylinder, spinning through the chambers.
All empty. She'd fired all six of them without even realizing it. And as far as she knew, only her sixth bullet had managed to put one of the bastards down. She may as well have shoved the rest of them up her ass for all the good they'd done her.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. The kind of rookie mistake that was usually made by some amateur who couldn't keep her cool, not the daughter of one of the founding members of the Blood Eagles. Not the kind of mistake Missy would ever have made in a million years, if she hadn't been so worried about...
No. No time to think of him now. Only Death, and how to deal with him when he got to her.
As if on cue, Missy heard the flat smack of the door being kicked open in the motel room next to hers. She gritted her teeth as she listened to Death tearing the place apart like a cyclone, slamming the closet door open, flipping over the small desk, and shoving the bed aside to check underneath. She heard the sharp rasp of plastic rings sliding against a curtain rod on the other side of the bathroom's thin wall.
Well, so much for hoping Death is dumb enough not to check the shower, Missy thought queasily. She peered down at the gun in her hands and wondered if she could try to bluff him.
She immediately realized the question was moot. There was no choice. It was either that, or throw it at him and hope for the best.
And even if I don't shoot like a girl, Missy thought, I do happen to throw like one.
She stifled a hysterical giggle at this thought. Her nerves were sparking, stripped down to the copper. She knew she just had to keep it together for a few more minutes. Just enough to get out of this tub alive. Just enough to find a way to save her endangered Eagles from sudden extinction.
Missy heard Death stomping back to the door of the room next door, and braced herself. A moment later, she heard the sound of the cheap wood splitting away from the lock as the door to the room she was in slammed inward. There were the same sounds of furniture being pushed aside, this time accompanied by frustrated grunts.
Missy raised her gun, preparing for the inevitable. She told herself that she had to look cool, menacing, and in control. She had to instantly convince Death that she had the drop on him. Even a momentary flicker of fear or uncertainty in her eyes would be her undoing.
The shower curtain was raked aside, revealing the face of Death. He had beady black eyes that were set close together over a beak-like nose, and there were three tear-drop tattoos running down his left cheek. His upper lip was fixed in a permanent snarl by a jagged scar that lifted one corner of it.
Death carried a .44 semi-automatic with a long barrel that gleamed in the dim light of the bathroom, but before he could raise it, Missy thumbed back the hammer of her revolver with a loud click.
“Drop it,” Missy growled, “or prepare to feel fresh fucking air on your brain.”
Death blinked for a moment, surprised. Then he threw back his head and laughed.
“Man, I knew girls were supposed to be bad at math, but this shit's ridiculous,” he snickered. “Here, chica, let me teach you some basic fucking arithmetic. Six bullets...”
With the speed of a striking cobra, he smacked the revolver out of Missy's hands. It bounced off the wall and hit the bathroom floor, cracking the tiles into splinters.
“...minus six bullets...”
Before Missy could even raise her hands to defend herself, the barrel of her attacker's gun smashed against the side of her head.
“...equals you're fucked,” he finished.
Black waves of pain crashed against each other in Missy's skull until the world around her was swallowed up by a dark and bottomless ocean. She felt her knees give out and she started to sink beneath the churning waters of unconsciousness, lower and lower with no bubbles, no way up, and no way of knowing whether she'd ever see the sunlight shimmering on the surface again.
Chapter 1
Cain
Four Days Earlier
It was an unseasonably warm evening, given the fact that it was December 12th in the small town of Micanaw, Ohio.
As Cain Vale stood a short distance from the rear of the Happy Teepee Motel & Trailer Camp and pissed into the scrubby grass, his thoughts turned to this same date two years before. It was a day he felt sure he would always remember, for three reasons.
The first reason was that it was the day Cain had been awarded the rank of Vice President of the Blood Eagles MC, and the patch that went with it.
Cain had become a prospect at the age of seventeen, and in the nine years after that, he'd done everything he could to demonstrate his commitment to the club and the code they lived by. He'd proven himself to be a capable hijacker, cool under pressure, and talented in the art of violence when it was deemed necessary. He'd even managed to do a four-year stretch upstate without picking up a drug habit and without snitching, no matter what tantalizing rewards the feds and state's attorneys dangled in front of him.
He'd become almost as trusted and invaluable a resource to club president Hunter Dermott as Skipper Hammond had been. And when old Skip had a little too much to drink at his cousin's anniversary party and crashed his bike into an eighteen-wheeler on his way home—promptly going to that great biker rally in the sky—Hunter knocked on Cain's door, handed him a VP patch, and solemnly informed him that his time had come. At 26, Cain would be the youngest VP since 1972, when the Eagles were founded.
The patching ceremony took place in the Lost Knife, the bar that served as headquarters for the Blood Eagles. It was a shack at the outskirts of Micanaw, surrounded by about an acre of oily blacktop that served as the club's parking lot, drag strip, arena, shooting range, repair area, and open-air bazaar, depending on the needs of the moment.
Micanaw had been the Eagles' base of operations since the beginning. It was a small town full of poor folks with failed dreams who happily spent what little money they earned on the weed and opioids the Eagles sold, and local cops who were eager to take bribes to supplement salaries that barely let them survive on dog food.
Hunter used to say that Micanaw was an Indian word that meant “bloody soil,” but Hunter liked his tall tales, so Cain doubted it was true. He reckoned if it really was an Indian word, it probably meant “stinkweed” or something.
Still, it was home to the Eagles, the only real family Cain had ever known, and he didn't see himself leaving it anytime soon.
The party following the patching ceremony was held outside. There were long folding tables heaped with bags of chips and bowls of chili and dip, plus platters of burgers, chops, and steaks to toss on the fire pit. There were deep, icy coolers filled with beer.
And there were women. So many gorgeous women, and all of them eager to hang on Cain's neck or sit in his lap. In fact, there were only two he could remember who hadn't—Hunter's girlfriend Marian, and Hunter's sister Missy.
They were the second reason Cain knew he'd never forget that night.
No one noticed Missy much at
first. She hadn't been dressed in a bikini and miniskirt and throwing herself at the men like the other girls were. She wore a black t-shirt and jeans with steel-toed work boots, her bright red hair pulled up in a blue kerchief as she kept the music playing on the loudspeakers and kept the tables full of food.
But a few hours into the party, Missy stomped over to one of the port-a-johns that had been rented for the occasion, stood in front of the blue plastic door, and put her ear to it. Even with two scantily-clad women massaging his neck and vying for his affections, Cain still couldn't help but watch the strange scene, wondering what Missy was up to.
Suddenly, Missy took a step back and slammed both hands against the door of the port-a-john, throwing all of her weight behind it. There were murmurs of amusement from the Eagles standing around her, and confused yelling and pounding emanated from inside the portable toilet moments before it fell over on its side with a crash and a splash. Anguished shrieks came from within, and for the first time, Cain realized there were two voices—a man and a woman.
There was laughter and applause from some of the Eagles who thought Missy had executed a brilliant prank, the first one they'd ever seen from her. But then Missy opened the door and reached in, dragging Marian out by her hair and tossing her onto the blacktop. Marian was sputtering and screaming, trying to wipe the shit, piss, and blue chemicals from her face and failing miserably.