Satan’s Devils MC -Colorado Box Set: Books 4-6

by Mellett, Manda

  Treated him? “You don’t treat a corpse and give them a death certificate.” I thought I’d just thought that, not voiced it aloud.

  “Connor Foster is dead. Dan Forster is alive and getting well.”

  “My son?” Mom’s voice is hesitant and filled with cautious hope. “Are you telling me my son is alive? Don’t give a damn what he’s calling himself now. But he’s alive?”

  “He is.” Demon leans forward. I always wondered how he got his name. I stop wondering now as gold flecks glow in his eyes making him resemble his namesake. “But he’ll only stay that way if you don’t let that information leak out of this clubhouse. No one, apart from my members who I trust, know Connor’s real identity. No one else must know his real name.”

  “Got to be clear here, Beth.” One of Ink’s hands lands on my shoulder, and his other on my mom’s. “Patsy. We’re hoping to make the deal with Agent Caruso, his handler. Alder’s still around though Phil has gone. Connor—Dan—will leave Colorado and start a new life under his new name.”

  “Witness Protection?” Mom asks.

  “That’s what we hope. If the FBI doesn’t come through, if eight kilos of heroin and certain knowledge that your son has in his possession don’t persuade him to help, then we’ll spirit Dan away and set him up on our own.”

  “Will we know where he is?”

  As Ink’s fingers press into my shoulder, I realise his tactile support is confirming that we won’t. I squeeze Mom’s hand. “It’s better knowing he’s somewhere out there alive than thinking he’s dead, Mom.”

  She’s quiet. Everyone gives her time. Then, slowly, she nods. “I’ve been through hell thinking he was gone. Thinking I’d failed him by not protesting harder when he left to live with his father. Though short of locking him up, I don’t know what more I could have done. He’s not dead, but he could have died had you not found him when you did. You’re right, he can’t stay in Colorado, and can’t come home. I don’t want to resurrect him only to bury him for real. I hate it, but if this is a chance for him to turn his life around, he should take it.”

  “You’ll have to continue with the funeral arrangements,” Demon says.

  Mom and I exchange looks. I hadn’t thought about that. I squeeze her hand again as she says, “We can do that.”

  As Mom agrees, I reckon we’ll be crying hard enough to convince anyone. Connor might not be dead, but from what Demon has said, once he leaves Pueblo, we’ll never see him again. As estranged as he might have been, he’s still family.

  “You can have some time with him before you have to say goodbye,” says Demon. He takes out his phone and checks it. “I take it you want to go see him now.” He glances at Ink and adds, “Skull’s old room.”

  “I do want to see him.” Mom stands.

  “Patsy? He’s a family friend, okay? That’s all anyone here except the members know.”

  “Anyone seeing him will notice the family resemblance. He looks like me,” I tell him straight.

  “Not at the moment he doesn’t,” Demon replies enigmatically. Unless he’s talking about my blue hair, I have no idea what he means.

  A few minutes later Ink pushes a door open. It’s a room laid out similar to Ink’s. There, sitting on the bed, is a man. A man who, as Demon said, barely resembles me at all. One eye is swollen shut, the other open a slit. There’s a big cut down the side of a nose that’s also twice the size it should be. Same with his lips. As he turns his head to check who’s entered, the whole of the upper half of his body moves with it, as though he’s stiff as a board.

  One arm is in a sling.

  “Oh, Connor!” Mom runs over, then stops. Yeah, how could she hug him so it doesn’t hurt? There doesn’t look like any part of him that’s unharmed.

  “Dan.” He looks up. His expression doesn’t change, but I can hear some of the cockiness in his voice. “I’m Dan Forster. Nice to meet you.” His one working eye closes and opens again, so I reckon he’s tried a wink.

  He looks past Mom and views me. “Beth, I’m so fuckin’ sorry.”

  “Don’t apologise to me.” I can’t keep the ire out of my voice. “Apologise to Ink.” I gesture to the man behind me.

  “No matter,” Ink tells him. “I think we’re even. I stitched you up and identified you as the one I took the drugs from that night. Fender Childs had already named you as who he’d been expecting, so I just confirmed it.”

  “Fender gave me up?”

  “Plea deal,” Ink explains. “Since you’re ‘dead’, the cops had nothing to go on.”

  “Fender was one of Phil’s trusted men.”

  “He was looking at thirty-plus years inside. You turned on Phil for less,” Ink reminds him.

  “You really going to make a fresh start?” Mom asks.

  Again, he does that full body turn. “When I went to live with Phil, I knew he was wheeling and dealing. But it was a buzz, you know? I couldn’t see what was wrong with what he was doing. But then it came about I could no longer turn a blind eye. He got me collecting loan repayments, and some of those people were addicts. I then found out that he was the one dealing to them or supplying the dealers to be exact. Then, worse…

  “You found out about the trafficking,” Ink’s voice booms out.

  Connor tries to shake his head and winces. “I can’t believe how stupid I was. Phil kept me out of the house when he was bringing women in and out. The basement was soundproofed, until someone went down and left the door ajar.” This time when his face twists, it’s not with physical pain. “I confronted him, he said he was branching out his business. When I got arrested, it was almost a relief.”

  “You were going to give up Phil for a chance to start afresh?”

  “Exactly.” Connor’s open eye meet’s Ink’s gratefully. Then he groans and holds a hand to his head.

  “You need rest,” says Mom, getting up and going over to rearrange his pillows and settle him back. “Sleep, now. I’ll be here. I’ll spend all the time I can with you while I still have you.”

  “And I,” Ink says, his tone unreadable, “need to have a talk with your sister.”

  Going over to the bed I lean down and place the gentlest of kisses to my brother’s head. It’s hard to believe he’s come back to life only for me to lose him again.

  “Patsy?”

  “Yes, Ink?”

  “Don’t forget you’ve got to arrange that funeral. It will be interesting to see who turns up.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Ink

  As we exit the room leaving Connor and Patsy alone, I place my hand on the small of Beth’s back and guide her to my own. Opening the door, I gently push her inside.

  Apart from the ride back from Denver which had allowed no conversation at all, this is the first time we’ve been alone together since before I was arrested. I’d let her know I never wanted to see her again, while conversely telling my brothers I was claiming her. The latter at first only to make sure my club kept her safe.

  We’ve known each other less than three weeks, and many people would say it was far too soon to know I could commit to her forever. But the nineteen days since I’d met her had been packed full of more than in the majority of most other people’s whole time on earth. I’d lived through so much, things I wanted to experience forever, like how good it felt to be in her cunt, and shit I never wanted to go through again. When I thought I’d lost her for good, it had concreted my views. If I had another chance, this time, I’d keep her. I’d never met anyone like her before, I’d be a fool not to snap her up and tie her to me. People talk about finding the other half of their soul. Well, corny as it sounds, Beth is mine.

  She’s taken a few steps into my room and slowly turns to face me. For a second our eyes meet, then she looks away.

  “Ink…” she starts.

  Suddenly I don’t want to hear what she has to say. I close the gap between us and pull her to me tightly. “Shush. I just want to hold you for now.” I might have my own views on where I
want us to go from here, but if she doesn’t agree, this could be the last time I have her in my arms. Fuck I hope not. If she went, there’d be a fucking great hole in my life.

  “Hey, what’s up?” In my arms, she’s gently shaking, crying quietly. Pulling back a little, I see tears leaking from her eyes.

  “So much has happened, Ink. I feel like I’ve been trapped in a whirlwind, and now it’s suddenly stopped,” she sobs.

  She doesn’t have to explain, I feel much the same. “It’s over now, sweetheart. Phil’s not a threat anymore. Connor, or Dan, I suppose we should call him now, has a chance at a new life. It’s all over now.”

  Her hands have been clutching at my cut, now she lets me go. “You’re right, it’s over.” Pulling away from me, she walks to the wall, stands facing it and wraps her arms around her body.

  Is this a sign that she thinks there’s no future between us?

  “I’m sorry, Ink,” she starts, seeming to confirm my suspicions. She rises on her toes and back down as if she doesn’t know what to do with herself. “I’m so sorry. I did everything wrong. And you, you ended up in jail. No wonder you hated, hate me.” She stills. “Are you out for good?”

  “I’m out for good.” Unless the cops think they’ve got something else on me, but as I’d been telling almost the whole truth, there’s little they can disprove. But I keep any residual concern to myself. “And hate you? Why the fuck should I hate you?” Didn’t riding behind me all the way from Denver give her some type of clue to how I felt? Once again, it’s me who steps closer. “Darlin’,” I put my hand on her shoulder, still turned away, “what I feel for you is so fuckin’ far from that it’s a joke.”

  “But I got you locked up, Ink. I..,” her voice breaks. “You could have gone away for years.”

  “I didn’t.” Something else I don’t admit, how much I’d been convinced that was going to be the result.

  Suddenly she turns. “Why did you do it, Ink? Why? When you knew the cops were waiting? You must have known what was likely to happen? Why?”

  Why? The million-dollar question. “I’ve asked that myself,” I admit.

  Her face tightens.

  I squeeze my fingers, anchoring her to me. “In one split second I knew you’d be walking into a trap and knew I had to stop you. One split second, but time for a myriad of thoughts. How I couldn’t bear it if you went inside, even if there was a valid excuse for you being there? Hell, there was a SWAT team waiting, darlin’. You could have been walking into a bullet.”

  Now she gasps. “You knew all that? That you could have been killed?”

  My hand moves from her shoulder around the back of her head. I grasp hold of her hair which has now faded to a much lighter shade of blue. “Yeah. I knew all that. And I’d do it all over again if I had to.”

  “Why?” She tries to shake her head, but my hold is tight, controlling.

  “Because in that moment, I knew what you meant to me Beth. You staying safe was worth more than my freedom.”

  “But we hardly know each other.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Know? Got a lifetime to find out our likes and dislikes. I do know we’re compatible in bed, and since I met you, I don’t need any other woman, and I doubt I ever will. The thought of any man touching you makes me want to kill whoever it is stone cold dead. Even if it’s one of my brothers.”

  “But you told me to leave you alone. That you didn’t want to see me.”

  “Yeah. And that’s another thing I’d do all over again.” I fist my hand tighter in her hair and tilt it back enough I can look down into her eyes. “I couldn’t see how I wasn’t looking at the next thirty or so years in the penitentiary, Beth. It wouldn’t have been right to ask you to wait. Or hang around hoping I’d get out early on parole. You had to be free to get on with your own life. Fuckin’ killed me, babe, but it had to be done. Could I stand the thought of you with another man? No, I fuckin’ couldn’t. But I knew you would find someone, knew some fucker would sweep you up, and it wouldn’t be fair to hold you back.” She goes to speak, I put my free hand over her mouth. “Wanted you to have the freedom which I hadn’t. Wanted you to move on without feeling guilt. And last, but not fuckin’ least, didn’t want the cops to sniff out a connection between us. Could I stand being locked up? Wouldn’t have been easy, but yeah, I’d have survived it. Could I have stood knowing you were in jail? Fuck, no. I couldn’t.”

  Her eyes have widened. Her pupils are dilated. Whether it’s my words or my tight hold on her hair, I’ve no idea.

  My cock is swelling. He wants to be done with this conversation and right now, I don’t blame him. “You were mine,” I tell her. “Even though the words you were told were to stay away and that we were over. But my brothers knew different. I told them I’d claimed you.”

  “You claimed me?” Her head tilts to the side, and her brow creases.

  “Claiming you gave me the comfort of knowing you had family watching out for you.” I bow my forehead to touch hers. “Not that they did a good job of it.”

  “They tried,” she says fast.

  “Sure. They sent hangarounds…”

  “Ink, they couldn’t send anyone else. Else the cops would have sniffed out a connection between us or more than the one we admitted.”

  “You’re not just a fuck buddy to me,” I tell her. Hoping this time she’ll say the words back. She doesn’t, she seems at a loss for words. If she won’t say it to me, perhaps I’ll spell it out to her. “I told my brothers I’d claimed you, and that’s what I want. But I need to know you’re with me.” I hardly dare breathe as I start asking questions to which I might not want to hear the answers. “Do you want to be claimed, Beth? Do you want to be the only girl who’s ever ridden behind me on my bike and know it will only ever be you there? Do you want to wear my patch showing I own you, as you, in return, own me? Do you want to spend the rest of your days in my bed and in my life? Because that’s what I want, sweetheart.”

  Her eyes stare into mine, disbelieving as she tries to process what I’ve said. “We’ve only just met.”

  “Why waste time? I don’t need longer, fuck, I’ve had more than enough time to think. Sitting in the jail cell, all I could think of were the chances I’d lost. Now I’m a free man, I don’t want to wait any longer. I’m ready to be all-in, babe.”

  It’s now her hand touching my cheek. “I feel the same way, Ink. Losing you hurt more than it should. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, even when you told me it was over. Now you’re saying everything I wanted you to say, but I can’t believe it. I must be dreaming.”

  I chuckle with relief. “I’ll pinch you if you like.”

  “Kiss me.” It’s almost a challenge.

  A challenge I’m more than happy to rise to. Without hesitation I lower my head, taking her lips gently at first, then applying more pressure, sweeping my tongue inside her mouth. That taste, it’s like home. My pelvis leans forward, my hardness grinds against her. After a few minutes when I pull back, her face is flushed.

  “You sure it isn’t just sex?” she asks, having realised my state of arousal.

  “After everything I’ve said, Beth? After I’ve laid my soul bare?” I go to say more, but now it’s her putting her fingers over my lips.

  “My turn.” She looks away, then back. “I didn’t understand how quickly you’d wormed your way into my heart until I thought I’d lost you forever, or for a good long time anyway. I didn’t want anyone else, Ink. I would have waited.”

  “You’d have forgotten me soon enough.” I smile to soften my words. I wouldn’t have blamed her.

  “Forgotten you? There’s never been another man like you, Ink. You take, you don’t ask. Yet you never ask more of me than I’m prepared to give, except for your request which I only heard second hand, to stay away from you. But I’d have done that, if I’d thought that was really what you wanted. Now you say you already claimed me?”

  “I wanted you to have protection.”

  “Your club
hated, hates me, with good reason.”

  “My club doesn’t hate you. They didn’t trust you, but when they found Connor, they knew you’d been telling the truth.” I don’t tell her they treated her as my old lady with a caveat, a caveat that no longer exists. They’ve still to officially vote her in, but I’m sure there won’t be a problem with that.

  She’s staring past me at a point on the opposite wall. I’d felt we were making headway, now I’m not sure at all. Cupping my hand under her chin, I turn her to face me again. “What is it, Beth?”

  “It’s stupid… but you mean everything to me, Ink. It was only ever you. I saw you at Mel’s wedding and didn’t want anyone else. Yes, I came onto Mace, but only to get a reaction from you. I’d never have gone with him. If you’d turned me down…”

  “I didn’t,” I tell her. “Even then I didn’t want you with anyone else.”

  “Ink, you knew what you were doing, you were prepared to give up your freedom for me, well, I wanted to give up mine for you. I wanted to go to the cops, but Demon and Mom told me it wouldn’t make any difference. If it had meant you’d have gotten out, I’d have done it.”

  Again, I chuckle. “Two martyrs, yeah?”

  She smiles back. “Seems it would be a waste not to give whatever’s between us a chance.”

  “I want everything, Beth,” I warn her, laying out what I want to happen. “I want you with me, living with me, sharing my life. If we’re going to make a go of this, I want the whole damn package.”

  “Live, here?” She looks around my room. It’s not much to offer her, I know that.

  “We’ll buy a house, Beth. Choose somewhere together. But yeah, for now, here will do.”

  She glances around again, and once more her lips curve. “Well, you do have a well-equipped bed.”

  I move closer, putting my mouth to her ear. “I’m ready to show you just how well equipped it is.” More than fucking ready. It’s time I physically claimed her.

  Her hands wrap around me pulling my body into hers. “I don’t mind if you do.”