He caught sight of my expression and scowled at my flush.
“I’m gonna make you a deal, Lou,” Zeus started, his voice and face stern like a parent lecturing a child. I didn’t care because he hadn’t called me Lou once since I’d seen him again and the sound of those syllables in his mouth were better than a song.
“Okay,” I agreed, apparently too eager, because his face darkened with disapproval.
I squirmed in my chair because he was impossibly sexy in stern Dad mode. I resolved to be naughty more often.
“There are rules. You know I didn’t want this life for ya, but you seem hell-bent on it so I figure the only way to get you through is to show you myself.”
“Show me what?” I breathed.
“Show you how to live on the wild side. You wanna drink, party and rebel? I’m the safe place to learn that shit.”
“Definitely,” I agreed again, this time carefully trying to hide my enthusiasm.
It didn’t work.
His scowl deepened. “Before you get too fuckin’ excited, there’ll be rules.”
I echoed his frown. “I thought bikers don’t follow rules?”
“So young and naïve, little girl.” He leaned forward, his messy tumble of hair framing his rugged face. “See, without rules, a person is aimless. You gotta believe in somethin’, adhere to some kinda code or your soul can wander down some dark fuckin’ paths. We got rules; brotherhood, bikes and bitches you treat like fuckin’ queens because they give you the kinda sweet a rough man can’t find anywhere else. And you know who enforces those rules, Lou? Me.”
“You aren’t the boss of me,” I told him because I couldn’t help myself. Something dark and eager inside my soul called out to him, wanted to test his edges like a sharp blade point against my thumb. I wanted to see how far I could push him, if it was farther than anyone else ever had and what he would do when I finally went too far.
Something told me, it would be just as dirty and dark as I’d always imagined.
“I’m the boss of this world. All those monsters you picture under your bed, in the dark corners of hospitals and night black forests? They’re fuckin’ real, Lou. And I own ’em. So, yeah, you want this world, you better believe I’m the fuckin’ boss of ya.”
“Fine,” I pouted just to watch his hot eyes fall like a kiss on my lips. “What are your rules, then?”
“No touchin’,” he responded immediately as he dragged his eyes away from my mouth. “As in, you don’t get to touch me.”
“What?” I cried, thrusting my arms in the air so that he had to duck away from my flying hand. “That’s so unfair.”
“Tough shit, kid. I don’t need you touchin’ me, cuddlin’ or some shit when you get scared and, trust me, little girl, you’ll get scared livin’ this life. Can’t coddle you every time somethin’ goes sideways.”
I crossed my arms under my breasts and glowered at him. “I’m not seven years old anymore, Zeus. And don’t tell me you haven’t noticed, because you have.”
His beautiful mouth twisted into a sneer as he landed a heavy palm on the table and leaned close. “Yeah, I fuckin’ noticed ’cause I’m a man with goddamn eyes and any man—monk, eunuch or married—is gonna get off on the sighta those tits, that ass, and a waist that spans one fuckin’ hand and not think about touchin’ ya. Difference is, I don’t wanna touch you. I don’t even wanna fuckin’ think about it.”
“Because you’re tempted?” I whispered, my hope like a dove struggling to take flight in my chest.
“Nah, ’cause I’m a man. The kinda man that needs a woman to satisfy him. Little girls, however stacked, don’t do it for me and, Lou? They never will so kill that hope in your eyes. I quit talkin’ to ya before because of these little girls dreams and I’ll do it again, you don’t obey my rules.”
Ouch.
I tried not to let the colossal amount of hurt radiating through my chest crack through my eyes and let the tears spill through but it was a monumental effort that left me strangely breathless.
“Got it,” I murmured.
The heartbreak of his words was that he spoke the truth. The man sitting across from me was all man, from the top of his wild mass of gold dipped brown waves to the tips of his heavy motorcycle boots and the ends of his deeply calloused fingers. He smoked, drank, marauded and fucked like he was on Death Row, like every single moment counted more than the next.
Who was I to claim a man like that?
I closed my eyes as I took a deep breath to settle the ruckus of insecurity that surged through my mind.
I was Louise Lafayette and that obedient, sad excuse for a woman didn’t deserve a man like Zeus Garro.
But, I thought with sudden verve, Loulou Fox could give him a run for his money.
So, I opened my eyes and knew they burned on his skin as I said, “Fine, no touching. But you never said you couldn’t touch me, and I’m telling you now, Z, I’m going to do everything in my power to make these tits, this ass and this tiny waist as tempting to you as possible.”
He stared at me for a long minute, inscrutable and arbitrating like the God of Olympus on his throne casting judgment on a mortal. And then, to my utter surprise and delight, he threw back his great mane of hair exposing his corded brown throat in the process, and laughed.
The sound was just as rich and warm as I remembered from my childhood and I let it wash over me as I stared at his throat and thought I’d never known how sexy an Adam’s apple could be.
“Finished?” I asked snottily when he finally wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of a hand.
“Don’t figure I’ll ever finish bein’ surprised havin’ you back in my life,” he said through his grin. “Can’t believe little Loulou just threw down with me.”
“You bet your ass, I did,” I said with a defiant chin tilt. “I’m not a kid anymore, Zeus Garro. And with or without you, this is who I am and I’m in this world to stay.”
“Then it’ll fuckin’ well be with me,” he growled, his smile so quickly replaced with a scowl that I lost balance and leaned toward him. “Hear this, little girl, you got what you wanted, yer guardian monster is back but this time, he’s teachin’ ya how to keep the monsters at bay yourself so when the time comes that you no longer need me, you’ll be good.”
I rolled my lips under my teeth and held out my hand to secure his promise with a shake. His eyes sparked with humor as his huge, rough hand engulfed my own and then his lips stretched into an arrogant grin when the warm contact made me shiver but I didn’t say anything.
I was too busy thinking, Game on, Zeus.
Zeus.
To say my life was a fucking mess would have been an understatement of epic fucking proportions.
I was elbow deep in blood, debt and drugs, none of them my own and all of them fucking poison. Just ’cause they weren’t mine personally didn’t mean they weren’t my problem.
The Fallen MC had a problem, it meant I had a problem. And right now, we had a big fuckin’ problem.
The Nightstalkers were back.
Cut off the head of the beast and three more grow back, right?
’Cause it seemed that no matter, I’d sliced up the bastard in charge less than a year ago, the fuckin’ MC was back and still lookin’ to take over my operation.
I’d bled, sweat and fuckin’ killed for The Fallen, for the success of each of my brothers and there was no way in heaven or hell I’d hand over shit to those fuckers.
There were a coupla problems with that though.
I stood starin’ at one; the ashen remains of one of the biggest warehouses we had just outside Vancouver tucked away on a supply route off Highway 99. It wasn’t a grow-op, thank Christ, but we had nearly three million dollars wortha grade A weed in that fuckin’ warehouse.
Now, it was grade A trash.
And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
’Cause I stood there holdin’ a eight by ten glossy photograph of my daughter, Harleigh Rose, that’d been sta
ked to the ground just outta range of the fire. I hadn’t noticed it when we’d put out the fire the night ’fore last and we’d had to let the scene cool before we came back to assess the damage but I’d seen it right quick when we’d pulled up that morning.
In it, she was laughin’ as only a beautiful, confident teenage girl could do, lips pulled back over teeth, chin tipped back and hair streamin’ behind her. It was a fuckin’ great photo, one my son’s woman had taken durin’ the summer. I had a copy of it on my desk at the garage, framed in kickass chrome and gifted to me by Cress for Christmas.
I treasured that fuckin’ thing.
And now I was holdin’ a copy with H.R.’s eyes punched out by bullet holes, her neck slashed open by a jagged knife.
A warnin’.
A warnin’ that those fuckin’ scumbags were back and they were gonna play dirty, play for wives, children and families.
A warnin’.
It had been ten years since we’d had to deal with shit like this. Ten years that my brothers had lived an outlaw life of recklessness, boozin’, smokin’, ridin’ out into the night like midnight raiders but without the real violence a life like that could bring. I’d made sure of it when I’d killed Crux, ex-Prez of The Fallen MC, a decade ago. The same night he’d shot a bullet through Lou and me.
“Prez,” Lab-Rat called to me, scuttling like his namesake through the mess of burnt wood. “They took it ’fore they lit it.”
I blinked slowly at him, careful not to crunch the photo of H.R. in my clenching fist. “Say again.”
“They took the supply ’fore they lit the buildin’. There’s no weed left here,” Lab-Rat explained.
Fuck me.
“You’re fuckin’ with me,” I growled.
“He’s not,” Curtains said, appearing with his laptop open balanced on one arm, clickin’ through things on his screen like a maniac. “Got surveillance from Evergreen Gas Station. A sixteen-wheeler with blacked out plates stopped for fuckin’ gas yesterday at five pm.”
I reached out to drag the prospect closer by the hood of his sweater so I could see the screen. “Show me.”
“The fuckers,” I muttered as I watched the truck pull up for fuckin’ gas like it was nothin’ and two tall, familiar motherfuckers crawled outta the cab.
One went into the store.
Lysander fuckin’ Garrison pumped the gas and did it starin’ right into the fuckin’ security camera.
I roared, the fury hot and fuckin’ alive in my chest as it burned out over my tongue. I spun away from my brothers and stomped into the debris, picked up a charred plank and snapped it over my knee.
“Fuck,” I shouted again. Another plank crumbled between my hands. Pretended it was Lysander Garrison’s fuckin’ neck givin’ way to my grip. Or that fuckface defector Ace Munford’s skinny spine snappin’ like a fuckin’ twig over my knee.
“You ’bout done?” Bat called over, standing at the top of the incline with his hands in the pockets of his army fatigues as if it was a normal fuckin’ Thursday.
I rolled my shoulders back, cracked my neck and grinned menacingly at the prospect just to see ’im flinch ’cause I was in that kinda mood.
“Yeah, I’m fuckin’ done. Get the brothers to fuckin’ Chapel and call in some of the Nomads if they’re around. I’m not havin’ another war on my fuckin’ hands without reinforcements.”
Bat nodded as I climbed up to him, his eyes cold and calculating, battle mode. “They’re gonna go after families.”
“No shit,” I said, swiping down to pick up the mutilated picture of my girl.
“You gonna call King?”
“Fuck.” I ran a hand over my tangled mess of hair and across my beard. “Gotta. He’ll fuckin’ hate it, but they gotta be careful even down at the university. The fucks won’t stop at nothin’ to get what we have.”
“They didn’t learn their lessons last time,” Bat noted.
“No shit,” I growled. “But last time we were on the fuckin’ defensive. This time, we’ll take this war to them.”
“You ready for that, brother? Got a lotta other things on your mind lately,” the fuck chose to remind me.
I glared at him but he did have a point.
I was a thirty-six-year-old man with two kids, both born before I’d been old enough to grow a full fucking beard. One of them was off at college livin’ a mostly clean life that I fuckin’ loved for him and his woman. Missed him like hell-fire in my chest but knew it was good for him.
Got another kid, Harleigh Rose, grew up like an angel and only now had discovered how to be a serious pain in my ass. She was too gorgeous for her own good and she’d discovered it young, given how she’d grown up around a group of men that were all men and made sure she knew that ’cause she was such a beaut, they’d beat on any man that mistreated her. My girl found she liked the attention, both from my protective brothers and from other darker men. She was dating a two-bit drug dealer called Cricket of all fuckin’ things and she was “in love with him.” Keepin’ track of her was a bitch and now with this new threat, there was no way I wouldn’t shackle her to her fuckin’ bedroom so I’d know she’d be safe. She’d fuckin’ hate it, cause a drama because she was too much her mother’s kid sometimes. Not that I gave a fuck, so long as she was safe.
Then there was Lou.
What the fuck was I gonna do about Lou?
I was a man who kept his fuckin’ word and I’d promised to teach her about the outlaw life.
It wasn’t the place for a girl like her, with a soul too wise for such a young thing, with eyes the colour of pure, unblemished skies and hair like pale gold. She may have had the body of a sinner but she had the looks of an angel and the heart to match.
Too good for the likes of me and this life.
But she was in it now, I told myself because I wanted to believe it, she was in it and if there was trouble brewin’, she’d be at my side for all of it.
No one could keep her safe like me.
“Garro.”
Just what I fuckin’ needed.
Cops.
I turned around, crossed my arms over my chest and tipped my chin at the young officer Danner and his partner, Riley Gibson, as they stepped outta their squad car.
To say “fuck the police” was The Fallen’s mandate would have been an understatement. Cy actually had the words tattooed on his back over The Fallen symbol.
I hated the fuckin’ pigs.
“Long time no see, Garro,” Danner said, strollin’ toward me as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Not long enough,” I told him as I felt my brothers take my back. “What can I do you for, pretty boy?”
I grinned at his frown. The kid was always tryin’ to prove himself. He was somethin’ like sixth generation British Columbian cop and his daddy was staff sergeant. He’d been tryin’ to use the MC for years to make his mark but fuck if I was gonna let ’im.
“Seems the question is, what can I do for you?” he asked, recovering quick enough to indicate the wreckage. “Wasn’t aware you had property up here but seems like you’ve had something of an accident.”
I snorted. “Yeah? What makes ya think that?”
His partner, more impulsive than Danner, stepped forward. “Stop screwing around, Garro. We’ve got forensics coming up behind us. Before they get here, why don’t you tell us what the story is?”
“Can’t say for sure, boys.” I shrugged and rubbed at my bearded chin like I was confounded by the situation. “Just bought an empty building up here, thinkin’ about demolishin’ it and making myself a pretty ranch like home on the land. Not surprised it went up in flames, givin’ how old it was and how dry the weather’s been.”
The cops stared out at the scrubby, remote wilderness and looked back at me skeptically.
I fought the urge to laugh and won. Instead, I shrugged. “Like bein’ alone.”
“Cut the bullshit, Garro. It’s obvious there was foul play at work here,” Gibson snapped.
I pressed a palm to my heart. “Now, why the fuck would anyone want to do somethin’ like that to little ole’ me?”
Gibson looked ready to beat me but Danner just smiled slightly and shook his head. More cop cars pulled up and my favourite cop of all time emerged into the sunlight.
“Hutchinson,” Danner greeted the other man with a grimace as he approached.
The other cop, a Fallen cop, grinned at him and clapped him on the back. He was an older man with serious seniority in Entrance police ranks and he’d been livin’ in my back pocket for a good nine years. Older, yeah, but the old codger sure as fuck loved the weed we gave him to soothe his arthritis.
“I’ll take it from here boys. Let’s let the experienced men get to the bottom of this, hmm?” Hutchinson told the rookies, already roundin’ em to shake hands with me and Bat. “Spot a trouble here, Garro?”
“Not much. The old thing crapped out on us. I’ll file an insurance claim and all that shit but I gotta be gettin’ home to my kid. You cool to catch up with me later if you find anythin’ in your investigation?”
Hutchinson nodded like the good ole boy he was. “Sure thing, Garro.”
I grinned at Danner and Gibson as I passed them on the way to my bike but I noticed the way Danner’s eyes caught on the photo of H.R. peekin’ outta my back jeans pocket, the flash of apprehension in those sharp eyes, and I knew he wouldn’t drop it for shit.
Zeus.
She was bendin’ low, her tight jeans strainin’ against her round ass, and every man in the fuckin’ room was lookin’ over at that pretty sight, droolin’ like a fool.
I knew ’cause dammit if I wasn’t one of ’em.
A kid with hair the colour of a fire engine sat between her spread legs, laughing up at her as she swung her long gold hair back and forth over them like a curtain. He grabbed a fistful of it and yanked so hard it musta hurt but her laugh only rang out louder, musical in a way I’d never heard music played before. She dropped to her ass, legs splayed around him like a bracket as she brought him into the fold of her body and smothered his face in kisses.
Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men Book 2) Page 12