Death Dwellers Motorcycle Club:: Fifteen Bad Boy Biker Books

by Kathryn C. Kelly

  He grinned. “Ready, everyone?”

  “Go for it,” Fee replied, already feeling her stress drifting away.

  “Do you think Uncle Chris is mad at me?”

  Diesel’s uncertain voice captured Cash’s attention from his contemplation of the climate-controlled room Stretch referred to as Bombs R Us. One of the things Cash admired about Stretch was his quirky sense-of-humor, hidden beneath vulnerability and a bit of naiveté. The reason Stretch was having such a hard time adjusting to Cowboy’s cruelty was because the man saw the good in everyone.

  It drove Cash crazy and made him want to both protect Stretch, and knock the shit out of him. If anyone knew that nothing but motherfuckers populated the world, it was Stretch, considering the cruel motherfucker who’d bred him.

  “Cash?”

  “Hmm?”

  This was the room where he’d first noticed Stretch. Really noticed him. Stretch was the reason Cash had decided to give up his Nomad status and patch back in as a full member. Not that Cash had ever—or would ever—admit that.

  Outlaw suspected. Not surprising to Cash. Only Meggie clouded the man’s vision.

  “Uncle Chris is mad, huh? That’s why you won’t answer.”

  Cash turned to Diesel, who stood in only his pants, worry creasing his brow.

  “Outlaw isn’t mad with anyone. He wishes he could be here with us.” Who wouldn’t want a no-strings dick suck?

  Diesel’s worry changed to confusion. “Really? He told you that?”

  “No, but, would you rather be here with Daphne? Or getting pizza with little kids?”

  Diesel ignored Cash’s question. “Uncle Chris is happy being married.”

  “Marriage is complicated. It’s a sacred entity that has nothing to do with who you fuck, Diesel. Most married people fuck other people.”

  “Yeah, women can be unreliable.”

  Cash thought of Fee. If he’d allow her, she’d be quite reliable. He was the asshole pushing her away. Because of her. Because of Stretch. Cash wanted it to be all about sex, for so many fucking reasons. Outlaw. Himself. Stretch. Having Fee with them added to Stretch’s feelings of worthlessness. Cash had already fucked with Stretch’s emotions. He didn’t want to do the same to Fee, who was just as vulnerable. “Men aren’t dependable all the time, either.”

  “My mom left me and my dad first,” Diesel scoffed. “If she hadn’t left, maybe, my dad wouldn’t have.”

  “They both had responsibilities to you. One no more than the other.”

  “She gave birth to me. That meant, she should’ve wanted me even more.” Instead of expanding on the comment, he asked, “Did your parents ever disappoint you?”

  “Not my mother.”

  “So you’re close to her?”

  “Not really.”

  “See? Unreliable.”

  Cash leaned against the table with containers of nails and wiring, and folded his arms. He wondered if he should sell the shit or keep it in case Outlaw needed something to go boom, boom, pow again. “She isn’t. I pushed her away. Not the other way around. I hurt her deeply, wanting her out of my business, so she started traipsing around the world with her second husband. My mother stayed single until I left her house at eighteen. She put her entire life on hold for me. My father put his life on hold for no one.”

  Scratching behind his ear, Diesel nodded, then looked at the items on the table. “Would you show me how to make a bomb?”

  “That would be up to Outlaw.”

  “Can you put in a good word for me?”

  Cash chuckled. “You did pretty well at getting your way today.”

  “He tried to talk me out of it, though. I…he’s told me about some of his experiences, when it’s just me and him. His past made him gave in, not because he thought I should be here.”

  “I disagree. You’re almost seventeen. He couldn’t stop you from doing whatever you want to.”

  Hooking his thumbs in his belt loops, Diesel rocked on his heels. “Uncle Chris could stop me from doing a lot of things. He could stop you, too.”

  Though true, the statement raised Cash’s hackles. “I’m a grown fucking man. No other motherfucker can dictate what I do.”

  He shoved aside the thought of Fee asking him to bring their relationship out in the open. That was different. If he wanted a committed situation, he wouldn’t concern himself with Outlaw’s threats.

  But Cash wasn’t fit for commitment. He’d tried with Stretch, harder than anyone knew, and he continued to fail. Part of the reason was because he missed the feel of a woman. Unfortunately, the girl he chose frightened the fuck out of Cash, as much as Stretch did.

  Cash didn’t do fear. He scoffed at it, found a way to turn it around. To his brain, fear equaled enemy. Enemies meant danger. Danger called for annihilation.

  “Are you ever getting married?”

  Fuck, this kid. Would he ever shut the fuck up? Once upon a time, in a world without Parnell, Cash had been a strange little motherfucker, understanding the importance of his name and his status. He’d had infatuations with Hollywood celebrities and listened to his mom about what it was like to fall in love. Then, his father had smashed his dreams, the ogre in the tale, and Cash stopped believing in true love.

  Hunger pangs hit him. Throwing Diesel an irritated glance, he left the room without commenting and headed to his kitchen. Menus from neighborhood restaurants offering delivery were in his drawer. Pulling the small stack out, he spread them on his counter.

  Diesel followed him. “Well, are you?”

  “No.”

  “I go back and forth about it. I’d like kids just to be the father my father never was. But I need a wife for that.”

  “You need a woman for that. No marriage required.”

  “Uncle Chris says if I bring kids into the world, I should be willing to make them legitimate.”

  Cash settled on the sandwich shop, the same one he, Stretch, and Fee had once ordered from several times during a weekend of fucking. Resenting the memory, he threw the menu aside and picked up the one from the Thai restaurant.

  “Kids are more responsibility than wives,” he said, looking over the menu. “Children are helpless little minions you have to steer in the right direction.”

  “Children love unconditionally,” Diesel countered.

  “There’s no such thing as unconditional love.” Stretch had conditions and so did Fee.

  “I disagree.”

  “That’s your prerogative.” The Thai-style chicken wings appealed to Cash. “What would you like to eat?”

  “Food,” Diesel answered cheekily.

  Cash ordered soft spring rolls, his chicken wings, and shrimp bikini, then went to the fridge and got a six pack of beer. In his living room, he lined the bottles on the edge of his coffee table, like usual, near the chair he always sat in. The routine comforted him. Order in his life was a must. Call it a holdover from his military days, one of the few he held onto, and a rebellion against the disorder of his childhood.

  He opened a bottle and finished half in a few gulps, nodding toward the sofa so Diesel could sit. “You going at Daphne again?”

  Instead of lightening the conversation as Cash intended, Diesel’s face fell. “What if Mindy finds out?”

  “Too fucking late, D. You’ve already fucked over her.”

  “I like her.” He squirmed in his seat and studied his hands. “But I’d leave her in a minute if Fee gave me a chance.”

  The beer in Cash’s mouth exploded out. His Fee? He couldn’t have heard the little motherfucker right. “Ophelia Donovan? Outlaw’s sister. Fee,” he added, to be one hundred percent certain.

  “Yeah.” A dreamy expression crossed Diesel’s face. “She’s so pretty, Cash. Daphne gave me tips on how to please a woman. I’ve been with other girls at school to get experience, for when I make my move on Fee.”

  When I make my move on Fee. Imagining Fee with anyone other than him mirrored imagining Stretch with someone else. Cash hated it.
The jealousy he’d experienced when he’d run across the two of them earlier today had been immediate and intense, vacillating from Fee to Stretch, until it centered on both of them. They’d been enjoying each other. Without him. As if they could move on, without him, and leave him all alone, and on his own.

  What was that? Where had that shit come from? Had he lost his fucking mind?

  Those feelings notwithstanding, hearing Diesel—a little wet-behind-the-ears puppy—moon over Fee pissed Cash off.

  “If you touch Fee, Outlaw will bury you,” he said in a hard voice, ignoring the hypocrisy of his words and the irony of the whole situation. “She’s off limits to you.”

  As if he knew the basis of the statement, Diesel lifted a brow in question.

  “To all of us,” Cash amended. “Outlaw doesn’t want her with a motherfucker from his club.”

  “Uncle Chris wants her happy.”

  Truth.

  Perhaps, if Cash was willing to show he’d make Fee happy, Outlaw wouldn’t have a problem.

  Except Cash didn’t know what that entailed. Giving up fucking random people? What about Stretch? Fuck. Outlaw wouldn’t want Fee involved in something so sordid. However, to Cash, what he had with Stretch and Fee wasn’t sordid. They were peace and happiness, love and acceptance.

  Yet Outlaw knew Cash took nothing seriously, especially relationships. The latest stunt might save Cash from suspicion but it would confirm Outlaw’s already-justified determination to keep Fee away from Cash.

  Shoving aside his regret at his latest antics, he looked to Diesel again.

  “I’ll love her for the rest of my life,” the kid said, seeing Cash’s attention back on him. “Worship her just like he worships Aunt Meggie.”

  “Stop calling her aunt.” His thoughts, his guilt, and the sincerity in Diesel’s tone infuriated Cash. Since he couldn’t vent over his real reason, he chose an asinine one. “Meggie’s six or seven years older than you. Definitely not your fucking aunt. You sound ridiculous.”

  Diesel’s shoulders slumped.

  You’re such an asshole. Fee’s and Stretch’s voices blended in his head and taunted Cash.

  “Fuck, I’m sorry. It’s just…” He couldn’t have Fee. He’d put conditions on his relationship with Stretch. And he was fucking with Outlaw’s marriage to hide behind.

  “Uncle Chris wants me to call Meggie ‘aunt’.”

  Exchanging his empty bottle for a full one, Cash wrestled his temper under control. “I understand.”

  “I try not to disappoint him. He might kick me out if I do.”

  “He wouldn’t do that,” Cash hurried to reassure him. The kid’s mood was plummeting, all because Cash had been an asshole. “He’d punish you as a warning, before turning you out.”

  “Even when I ask Fee to marry me? I mean, I do believe he wouldn’t care as long as she’s happy. But he was disappointed in me today.”

  “We all have choices.” Cash drank from his bottle, wanting to get back to the subject of Fee. “We have free will. You exercised yours by coming with me. If Outlaw intended to throw you out, he would’ve told you.”

  “Did I make him look bad in front of the guys?”

  “It was more about his sons. They’re small boys. He had to try to be a father figure to you but still be a man who could put himself in your place.”

  “Did you have sex with older women?”

  Older men, too, but Cash wouldn’t mention that. “My mother and I had a staff, thanks to my father. We had some very pretty housekeepers. I got my first hand job, courtesy of someone else’s hand, at fifteen. A week later, we were fucking like rabbits all over the house, until my mother caught us and fired her on the spot. The woman was…” He searched his memory. “Twenty-five. I think,” he added. “Married, with two small kids. No one cared but my mother.”

  “And the chick’s husband!”

  Cash shrugged. “If he ever found out. My mother tried to stop me. She got older maids. I fucked their daughters. She had her staff around when I was at school. I met them in secret. Then, there was my father’s house. Dad permitted us to have the best alcohol money could buy. I had my first drink at eight. Mom swore she’d call CPS. From then on, my drinking was between men. I could never tell my mother.” He’d started his life of subterfuge and deviousness at a young age. “My excessive lifestyle is responsible for every gray hair my mother has.”

  “I wish I could’ve led your life. It sounds awesome.”

  “We haven’t even gotten to my college and military years.”

  “Oh, man! Wow. Really? Tell me.”

  “Some other time,” he promised, steering the conversation back in the direction he wanted. “You plan on proposing to Fee anytime soon?” He stayed casual, feeling like a dickhead for being threatened by a high school kid.

  “On my seventeenth birthday. Four months away. Uncle Chris pays me to do certain jobs and I’ve been saving almost every penny for a ring. Ever since I decided to marry her.”

  “You might be a little too young for her.”

  “She looks so sad sometimes. Alone. Like me. I thought we could be together and we wouldn’t be alone anymore. I’d make sure she’d be happy for the rest of her life.”

  A nice sentiment, except…“We’re born alone and we’ll die alone. No one can fill that void in us. Especially a spouse. We have to find our own happiness.”

  Diesel cocked his head to the side. “Do you have a void like me and Fee?”

  Didn’t everyone? However, Cash didn’t want to remember Fee’s pain. Witnessing it had been enough for him. “Has she told you she has a fucking void?”

  “No, but I see her sometimes. Looking at the pictures and crying. She misses her family, Cash. Especially her mom. She’s a little lost. Like me.”

  Memories of Fee mourning sickened Cash. Hearing she still grieved, alone, made him long for the days they’d first started hanging out. Nothing had been complicated. It had just been him offering her his shoulder to lean on, and her needing his comfort. He wanted to find the key that opened the door to the laughter he’d witnessed this morning. If they’d allow their relationship to be on Cash’s terms, the three of them could be so good together.

  His phone rang just as his doorbell buzzed. Josh’s name flashed across his screen. As the doorbell rang again, Cash answered, concerned that his brother found it necessary to call a second time that day. “Hold on. Let me pay for my food.”

  “Get a cook,” Josh said without urgency.

  “With what?” Once Cash turned eighteen, his father cut off support, although he did pay all his college expenses. After Cash’s mother remarried, Parnell also stopped alimony, so the huge house Cash had grown up in was no longer viable. “You’re the rich one, not me.”

  “That’s why I’m calling,” Josh said as Cash made it to the door.

  He paid for the food, not surprised that Diesel had once again followed him. Keeping his hold on his phone, he stepped aside and allowed Diesel to grab the bags with delicious aromas wafting up.

  Cash put the phone back to his ear. “Is this an emergency?”

  “No, but—”

  “But nothing. I’m starving, so talk fast,” he ordered, relieved that nothing catastrophic had befallen any of their family members.

  “I want you to look over a prospectus I’m sending you. If you’re interested in the company, I’d like to meet with you, Dad, and Sloane, to talking about forming a partnership.”

  Business and investments bored the fuck out of Cash. He couldn’t imagine being constrained by suits, ties, and board rooms. Josh, on the other hand, knew his shit. If he thought something was worth looking into, then it was.

  “I’ll read over it when it arrives.”

  Josh snickered. “You want the audio version so you won’t fall asleep?”

  “Fuck you, asshole.”

  “Have you spoken to Georgiana lately?” Josh asked, traces of laughter still in his voice.

  “I can’t keep up with her.
She’s always jetting off somewhere with her rock star husband.”

  “That’s what cell phones are for. You can talk to her if she’s on the other side of the world on a secluded island. You do know that?”

  “I’ve been busy,” he muttered. “When I call, I talk more to Sloane than I do to Georgie. She’s always doing something.”

  “Cash, big brother, don’t you know anything about Sloane Mason?”

  Josh’s words put Cash on alert and he went into big brother mode. “What is there to know? Has he done something to her?”

  “Other than being obsessed? Nothing at all. That’s what I mean. You call her. She starts to talk. Sloane is right there—as usual. He asks to say hello. She hands him the phone. He then talks to you. Discovers if there’s anything that might upset Georgie in any way. If there isn’t, she gets the phone back.”

  “You’re shitting me. He vets her calls?”

  “Ask him,” Josh chortled. “Bryn and Chance keep her too busy for her to figure out his game. Me and the guys have a fucking bet that when it dawns on her, she’s going to rip his head off.”

  “Oh, food!” Daphne’s happy voice interrupted Cash’s response.

  She sashayed into the room, stark naked. Memories of Fee’s perfect body hit Cash. Daphne had been bred in poverty and wanted better for herself. She had that type of mystical sensuality that men made fools over themselves for. She loved giving and receiving pleasure. In the hours since he’d learned her name, he’d really listened to her—dreams for her future, aspirations for a better life, hopes for tomorrow.

  If not for Fee, Cash would’ve considered bringing Daphne in with him and Stretch. But Fee was in his blood, as much as he hated to admit it. She was the sheltered version of Daphne, searching to find her place in the world.

  Stretch stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, watching her dig into the bag and pull out one of the containers.

  “Delicious!” Daphne murmured.

  “Is that female company I hear?”

  “You’re a goddamn asshole,” Cash growled again. “For your information, our good friend, Stretch, is here.” That sounded innocent enough, hopefully raising neither Diesel nor Daphne’s suspicions about his bisexuality.