by Kiki Leach
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Author's Note
Synopsis
Copyright
About the Author
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
Other Works
Find Me Online
Author's Note
As with all my MC novels, I do not sugarcoat these stories or the language used. Of course, not all members of MC's speak in the way that I portray in my books but I have done research of outlaw clubs over the last few years in helping me to bring these stories to life and yes, many of them do. Their world is very different from our own in which they live by their own set of rules and have a certain way of life; there is only so much that I can fictionalize about it until the story itself becomes something that it isn't. Therefore, if alpha asshole bikers who use vulgar language offends you as a reader, then please put this book down immediately and walk away.
PS: There are two 'guest' characters in this book named River and Blue. Both are members of the Shadow Riders MC and have their own books in that series, INFLAMED and CODE BLUE, respectively. Though it is not necessary to read either prior to or after this one, if you would like to get to know those characters outside of the Reaper's world, it would be in your best interest to check out their individual stories.
'Reaper's Promise' is also an IR/BWWM romance with a length of approximately 100k words.
Thank you.
Synopsis:
Reaper's Promise ~ A Wild Reapers MC
"They play by the rules and get fucked. We don't and never do."
Colette: I woke up in Vegas married to my ex-boyfriend's hot as hell biker brother. Not that I'm exactly complaining considering I've practically been in love with him since forever, but... Record scratch. Wait a second. I bet you're wondering how the hell a kindergarten teacher got here, right? Well join the (biker) club, because so am I!
Roman: She woke up next to me in Vegas with a diamond cuff around her ankle and a matching ring on her finger, and is wondering how the hell she got here. I didn't have the heart to tell her that she only said yes to my proposal because she thought I was my inept kid brother. I didn't have the guts to tell her that I've wanted to know the taste of her skin and the feel of her legs wrapped around my waist from the moment she was first introduced to me as his girlfriend nine years ago. But I DO have the b*lls to tell her that since she's now officially been made mine, there's no way in f*ck that I'm letting her go.
Complete standalone with an HEA (no cheating) told in first person for each Colette and Roman in alternating chapters. Sometimes silly and fun, sometimes serious and thoughtful, 'Reaper's Promise' contains adult situations such as swearing, explicit sex and violence not suited for anyone under the age of 18.
Copyright © 2017 Kiki Leach
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.
First Edition: May 2017
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
About the Author:
Kiki Leach was born and raised in Oklahoma City, OK where she still resides. As a child, she was surrounded by books, pens, and notepads, all of which she quickly took advantage of from the time she could read and write. Her favorite past-time has always been telling stories and in college, was encouraged by her mother and professors to take her storytelling more seriously.
Dedication
To those learning to love again.
Chapter One
Colette
"That shit really did a number on you last night, babe." Roman placed the key to the diamond cuff that had been linked around my ankle behind himself on the counter -- something of which I was still confused about; why the hell had I been chained up to his belt all night while we were in bed together, like some kind of dog? -- then bent forward to give me a glass of water.
As my eyes rolled down to his hand, all I could think was how big it was along with the other one that he kept firmly at his side. Just the thought of them both being wrapped around someone's neck or even a watermelon made me wonder just how quickly they could be crushed or snapped in two thanks to his strength. At just over six-foot-three and whatever the hell he weighed of pure muscle, he didn't leave much of it to the imagination, at least not to mine.
He leaned his head aside and arched a brow when my response to the water wasn't immediate. "Babe?" His voice was thick and gravelly now. My heart skipped a few beats, but I wasn't entirely sure if it was due to him or the impending hangover. "You still don't remember any of what the fuck happened, do you?"
I glanced up at him through mascara smudged lashes and slightly wagged my head, then took the glass from his hand with ease and quickly lowered my eyes back down to the table in front of me.
Damn, he was beautiful; too much for me to even stare at for longer than a few seconds at a time, lest my entire body burst into a ball of flames where I sat. Because this man -- and I do mean man in every damn sense of the word -- was like a fantasy come to life right before my very eyes.
He had dark grey eyes that reminded me of an overcast on a gloomy winter morning or the aftermath of a full on rainstorm on a hot summer day in June; a thin layer of stubble covering all sides of a perfectly angled jawline that had been known to shatter damn near every fist that ever came into contact with it since the beginning of his time; thick rose-colored lips that I was all too desperate to know the taste and feel of as they kissed and suckled along every inch of my body, and skin so perfectly, naturally and evenly tanned that it looked as if he had literally been born beneath the sun and was raised in a field full of wheat. And for most of his life, wore nothing but overalls, grass and sweat before graduating to baggy jeans that hung just a few inches below his amazingly taut waist, showcasing the very top of a perfect V that led straight down to an all too visible bulge between his thighs, along with black leather jackets and white tanks that fit him like a glove.
Not to mention that thick head of hair; beautiful, jet black hair that often looked as if a woman had just threaded her fingers through every strand of it during sex and he never bothered to fix it right after, much like now; the broad shoulders that made me wonder if along with being a mechanic for the 'business' portion his MC (at least one aspect of it), he shuffled boulders across town on the weekends; the perfectly sculpted eight pack hidden behind the fabric of that crisp white tank that made him look as if he had been carved from pure stone and blessed with the personal touch of God Himself; and those thickly muscled arms, each laced with a spiral of tattoos that swam around his biceps like thorn covered vines and dipped straight down to each of his long, thick fingers like a set
of blooming rosebuds.
My God. Just the thought of him dragging each one across my bare breasts while flicking my nipples with his tongue, against my stomach, between my thighs and directly inside my sex while making me scream out his name in every language I knew and even those I didn't until I went hoarse at the exact same time, made my body quiver in places that I hadn't felt react to even the idea of sex since I first learned what the hell went where and why, and maybe even longer than that.
I gulped back the saliva flooding against the inside of my cheeks as my mind raced with more reckless and impure thoughts I knew I shouldn't have been having in that very moment in front of him; especially given my current condition of feeling and looking like absolute shit (I was certain) and the circumstances of not even remembering much of what the hell happened from the night before. Then I raised the edge of the glass up to my lips and took a quick sip of the lukewarm tap water that had been slushing around inside.
"You might wanna have a few aspirin with that too, babe," he told me, his rough voice forcing the tiny hairs on the back of my neck to stand on edge, while a hard, solid throb pounded directly between my thighs and against the soft flesh of my sex like a gong.
Had I been a few shades lighter in my complexion, I would've blushed with complete embarrassment at what I was feeling in that exact moment with him, which I'm sure would've either made his cock go completely out of control (he could never seem to resist a woman, any kind of woman whatsoever, being turned on by his voice, his face, his charm when he used it well enough, his body, his absolute everything) or forced him into a fit of laughter that he wouldn't have been able to control (considering he had known me since I was just nineteen years old and never saw me as much more than his younger brother's girlfriend, more than likely turned ex for good after this shit). Or hell, maybe even both.
I wagged my head at him again and muttered a quick, "I'm fine," though we both knew that I wasn't, then leaned back in the chair. He stood up straight and cleared his throat, then rested his hands on either side of his hips. And that's when I caught a glimpse of something shiny and silver wrapped around the base of his left ring finger. There was no way in hell it was what it looked like; I had to still be drunk out of my mind from the night before. "What the hell is that?" I asked him, pulling the glass from my lips and nodding toward his hand.
He arched his thick, bushy brows and glanced down at himself, then lifted his shoulders in a shrug and ticked up the corner of his lips. "What the hell does it look like to you, darlin'?"
Darlin'. I both loved and hated the way his hard, gravelly voice sounded when he called me that; the softness of each syllable was part teasing and part... sex.
I tilted my head back to stare him straight in the face this time and tried like hell to concentrate on everything but his perfectly defined, chiseled features while responding. "It looks like a wedding band," I said.
He bobbed his head and widened his smirk. "Well, you'd be damn correct in that shit."
I narrowed my eyes, then shoved my brows together in complete wonder. 'Am I in fact still drunk or has this man lost every bit of his damn mind? Or is this some kind of joke or a trick? Or hell, is it all the above and then some? Maybe I'm still asleep...?'
"Who the hell did you manage to get married to last night in the middle of what I'm guessing was nothing more than a big, fat pile of chaos not long after we showed up here?"
A light but throaty chuckle escaped him and he brought his left hand up to his mouth and dragged his fingers back and forth across and between his lips. Then he folded his arms over his chest, slid his hands beneath his arm pits and cleared his throat again. "I'm looking right into the big brown eyes of the woman I married last night, babe."
I blinked once and loosened my fingers around the glass. "What?" He pointed down at my left hand and when my eyes followed the direction of his index finger, they widened in absolute shock. "Holy fucking shit!" I didn't normally swear like a sailor and all in one sentence, but if there was ever a moment in my life that called for something more than a few bad words that often gave the devil himself a chuckle, this was it.
On my ring finger was a square yellow diamond surrounded by a double row of white diamonds that looked to be the size of my head, and more than likely cost the entirety of what I had yet to even begin paying back in student loans. I had guessed about 20 carats but I was no expert; I had just managed to see enough of something similar over the years from friends who had gotten engaged and eventually married to their current spouses to know the difference between cheap as shit and hella, over the top expensive.
This thing was a definite member of the latter. My hand must have been completely numb to not have even felt the band around my finger; my eyes must have been blinded by the beauty of this man's face and hard as hell body as he stood in front of me to not even catch a single glimpse of it in the sunlight as it shown through the curtains across the room, until he directly pointed it out to me.
What the hell have I done?
"Yeah, darlin'," he said as I continued to remain quiet and in awe. "Just in case you were wondering--"
"I'm not wondering about anything except for how the hell this all happened to me in the first place and why."
"What happened is that we got hitched at the Little White Chapel a few blocks from this place last night," he replied, his voice a light rumble of pure ecstasy. I shuddered, hating that I was all too desperate to know the sound of it up close and personal as he had me pinned down on my back on the bed. "The why is a bit more complicated than that and might take some time for me to explain and for you to fully understand."
"You had enough time to get me married last night, you've got enough time to tell me how the hell it all happened."
But he didn't, unfortunately, and instead turned from me as if I had asked him nothing at all.
God, why couldn't I just go back to hating him in the same way I had when we first met nine years ago, when he silently refused to shake my hand and never once looked me in the eye the minute his brother Jeremiah first introduced me to him as his latest girlfriend. We were at their place, a shared house off the lake back in Culver City, during a BBQ that had been thrown together at the last minute by his MC. I never outright asked what the hell his problem was during all of that, but often got the feeling that he didn't think I would stick around long enough for him to get to know me much like the other women in Jeremiah's life often didn't; but I did.
I was around long enough for him to talk marriage between us, to talk kids and a real live family before we each turned thirty-five and were trying to get our careers off the ground; he currently worked three days a week at the local infirmary as their computer tech while aiming to become a pilot despite refusing to take classes and his own lessons for it. The man had the skills but constantly lacked ambition; always wanting money from high powered jobs but never wanting to work hard enough to get or keep them. Not to mention what little he ever earned is what he often managed to gamble away during every other weekend spent out here alone. My ambition had always been to teach young children, though I often hoped to someday open my own child care center back home.
I was around long enough for him to buy the ring, one the size of a half-boiled peanut in comparison to this one, but a ring nonetheless. Though he would never actually propose due to wanting to 'wait for the right time', which truth be told, never came. I was around long enough to personally come in contact with just about every living member of his family, from uncles to cousins to aunts and grandfathers in the same way he had managed to come in contact with my legal guardian at the time, my grandmother, before she passed; long enough that their father had openly accepted me as an unofficial daughter-in-law before he eventually passed away from cancer just six months later.
And I was around long enough for Roman to soften his touch a little after getting to know me as a person; to see me as more than just another notch on his brother's belt after realizing that I wasn't going anywhere any
time soon; which led to random talks at 2am around the kitchen table and between buckets of ice cream about his MC and brothers, about my gig teaching kids their ABC's, and sometimes about life in general, how shitty it could be without even trying and the like. All of this when I had initially come to see Jeremiah, who often fell asleep right after sex.
There were other times when he would catch me staring off into space during one of Jeremiah's boring as hell stories about something that never mattered, if only to hear his own voice for hours on end, and would crack a smile wide enough to show off that perfectly slanted dimple in the center of his left cheek, right along with those exceptionally white teeth that almost seemed man made. And times when he unconsciously held the door open for me when we would attempt to enter the house at the same time, which often led to a few shared laughs and awkward glances tossed back and forth between us.
I've never fully wanted to admit just how much I treasured the hell out of those moments because despite them being so small and insignificant (at least to him, I was certain), and few and far between, they were also the moments that made me start to see him as more than just a pretty faced, tattooed biker with brass knuckles and a snarl, and more like someone I could spend the rest of my life with instead of his brother.
But now sure as hell wasn't the time for any of that.
When he continued to remain silent, I pushed away from the table and jumped up from my chair. Without realizing that I was even still holding onto it, the glass in my hand went flying across the room like a Frisbee, straight into the wall near a tiny box television set in the corner, as water splashed across the floor in a kitchen small enough to fit inside of Barbie's dream house. I assumed that any chance of a decent hotel and room went out the window the moment this ring was put on my finger.
Roman peeked over his shoulder at the shattered pieces of glass that had crashed down hard against the linoleum, then dragged his cool grey eyes back to my face and frowned. "That's some shit I wasn't exactly planning on paying for along with everything else in here, babe."