Devil's Own

  Was he right? She’d asked herself that all the way home from Mississippi. Was she willfully choosing not to see the truth about her brother? He was an Ashburn, after all. He’d been born into the life, expected to patch into the club or fight his way out. And Mikey had never been interested in escaping the life. He’d never tried. He’d been neck deep in the BGMC from the time he could walk, and he’d started keeping club-related things from her in his teens. Maybe Lara really was the only person standing who thought there was anything good in him.

  But that was the trouble, she thought then, rubbing her hands over her face as she sat in her car outside the bakery, sure she could smell the damned prison on them despite the amount of hand sanitizer she’d bathed in all the way home. She wanted to believe that hardened, rough men who rode motorcycles like it was a religion weren’t irredeemably, irrevocably lost simply because of their choices. Their lifestyle. That Mikey wasn’t.

  And that Chaser isn’t, either, chimed in the dumb, heartsick teenager she’d apparently always be inside.

  Because she persisted in imagining that her vagina made good choices. That it somehow knew things her brain didn’t. That it had some way of sensing how good a man was and allowing her to experience only a matching amount of pleasure.

  She knew that was crazy. She also knew it was wrong, because she had a past that proved it. Because if it was true, she would have been a whole lot more excited by the sheriff. And she mostly knew it was bullshit because she had a reasonable idea of exactly how terrible Chaser was, and she pretty much came every time he looked at her. So.

  Her vagina was a fucking idiot.

  Lara shoved her way out of the car, slamming the door shut with her hip as she tugged at her unobjectionable ponytail with her other hand. Her hair fell down around her, making her temperature skyrocket as the intense heat of the September night tackled her, but she liked it. She liked the rich bayou air, thick and wild, with a hint of thunder off in the distance. The stormy night licked over her skin, pressed against her face, damp and insistent. And it was better than prison.

  Anything was better than prison.

  Something changed in the soupy air around her. It was as if the shadows came alive as she moved toward her door tucked up beneath the fire escape. Something electric skated over her skin, then seemed to bloom inward, heavy and lush as it settled in her belly. Then lower.

  And in the next breath she saw that one of the shadows was Chaser.

  He watched her walk toward him, his dark whiskey gaze glittering, and she felt everything inside of her go still. Like prey, she snapped at herself, though it wasn’t quite that. It felt more like a complicated sort of safety. Hers if she dared.

  You’re such a dumbass, she threw at herself then.

  But it was good she was still so very, very foolish. It shocked her into action. Because she wanted him. Her entire body was lit up and longing for him as if she hadn’t had him a thousand different ways less than twenty-four hours ago. More than that, she wanted to walk straight up to him and bury her face in that hard, tough chest of his and let the arms he’d close around her protect her from the whole world.

  God, she was an idiot. Wolves didn’t protect sheep, no matter the strength in their tough arms. They ripped them to pieces and ate them alive.

  But she remembered last night too well. When Chaser had finally shrugged out of his clothes and stood there before her, naked at last. And so much more beautiful than she’d been prepared to admit to herself. So hard and harshly beautiful it wedged inside of her like a torn ligament, red hot and painful any time she moved. All those tattoos stamped into that long, hard, rangy form. All that power that blazed from him, as obvious as the thick, blunt arc of his cock standing away from his body.

  She knew she was the worst kind of addict. She knew she’d thrown herself face-first into a terrible bender that evening in her school, and last night had made it even worse. But in that moment, if she’d ODed on the sight of Chaser alone, Lara wouldn’t have cared at all.

  You could break me in half with one hand, she’d whispered last night, when he was finally bared before her in all his brutal glory. She’d watched that very male curve take over his hard mouth.

  I could, he’d agreed, and it had shivered through her like another long, sure stroke of that magnificent cock of his, thrusting deep inside of her as she broke apart. But, baby, I don’t want to break you. Yet.

  Tonight he wasn’t looking at her with all that ferocious need. Or not only that, anyway. If anything, he seemed to be sizing her up. Too watchful, she thought as she stupidly drew even closer. Too still. And not—it went without saying though she clearly needed to keep on saying it to herself anyway—because he was likely to feel any sense of safety, complicated or otherwise.

  “You seem to really love this alley,” she said, because it had started to feel as if not breaking the charged silence was an act of weakness. And Lara was nothing if not full to the brim with bravado. Or as it was more commonly known, stupidity.

  “The president wants to see you,” Chaser said, his voice little more than a growl against the night. The sound seemed to trace its way down her spine, kicking up far too much sensation as it went.

  At first his actual words didn’t make any sense. Then they did—or anyway, she understood them—and she made herself smile. She also stopped walking, as if the few feet that separated her from him, and that gleaming motorcycle she couldn’t understand how she hadn’t seen from a distance, might keep her out of his reach. As if anything could.

  “Lucky me,” she replied, and somehow she kept her voice light. Her only shot at some kind of defiance. “I’ve always wanted to visit the White House.”

  Chaser’s mouth tightened. “Cute. Digger isn’t a patient guy, babe. And he sent me to get you hours ago. Where have you been?”

  It took her brain much too long to work in his presence. That was the trouble. Because now that she’d processed the fact that he was really there and not simply a figment of her overheated imagination, a few things seemed abundantly clear. First, there was no particular reason she needed to share her prison visits with Chaser or any other member of the DKMC. She didn’t know how the local club felt about the Brothers of Goliath—or any other club, for that matter—but why admit Mikey was in the mix if she didn’t have to? And second, she couldn’t imagine that the president of the Devil’s Keepers was likely to want anything to do with a schoolteacher at the local high school. It was too random and pointless. Though she could imagine several scenarios in which he might want to have a little chat with a woman who was dumb enough to wear another club’s colors splashed across her lower back.

  But that led to the third and most important thing: there was only one person in Louisiana who’d seen her tattoo. Only one person who knew she even had it, much less that it was an obvious support tat for the Brothers of Goliath MC. So if the president of the Devil’s Keepers knew about it—and her—there was only one way that could have happened. Only one mouth that information could have come from.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d been betrayed by a man. Given her track record, it was probably safe to assume it wouldn’t be the last, either.

  And Lara’s tragedy was that even as everything inside of her shifted to a belated high alert, what she really noticed was the way he stood there, so effortlessly dangerous and still so goddamned beautiful. As if it didn’t matter what he did or how he sold her out or why. As if that scraped-raw sensation inside her chest didn’t signal the sharp betrayal she had no right to feel over a man who’d promised her nothing and owed her less. As if she would react to him just the same no matter what he did. No matter how she felt.

  As if wanting him like this was a permanent thing. Like that damned tattoo, indelible and impossible to really hide, no matter how she tried. It didn’t matter if she covered it up with sleek pencil skirts and appropriate blazers. She still knew it was there. She always knew it was there. She knew exactly who she was, who she’d been, a
nd what that tattoo made her.

  But such thoughts weren’t exactly helpful when she had a biker club president extending invitations that she knew perfectly well were flat-out demands only a dumbass with a death wish would ignore.

  “Why would your president want to see me?” she asked. She tilted her head slightly to one side as she regarded Chaser there in the thick night, shadowy and compelling. “Does he want to talk about getting his GED?”

  “Digger wants to see you,” Chaser said without even the faintest hint of anything but that stern enforcer steel in his voice, and Lara still found that hot. That was the level of her illness where this man was concerned. That was the truth about her, right there in that clenching heat in her pussy. “That means you’re coming to meet him. Now.”

  The hard, cold fact was that Lara knew better. She’d known there was more than an average chance that the father of the troubled teenage girl she was worried about was one of Lagrange’s many bikers. There were always going to be people who didn’t know any better who stumbled into the life and didn’t know what the hell had happened to them, but she wasn’t one of them. She knew better and she’d not only taunted this man, she’d gone ahead and fucked him. Repeatedly.

  Suck it up, dumbass, she advised herself as stoutly as she could. You made this bed. Enjoy lying in it.

  “Well,” Lara said after a moment, and she even smiled, because why not? It wasn’t as if she had anything to lose. She’d already given herself away. In more than one way. Again and again and again. Which meant she was faced with a much bigger challenge: living with the choices she’d made and the trouble she’d gotten herself into while being such an idiot. “When you put it like that, how can I refuse?”

  Chapter 7

  His prissy little dirty girl fit on the back of his bike like a wet dream. Lara climbed up behind him and settled in easy, sliding her arms around him in a way that told Chaser in no uncertain terms that she knew her way around a motorcycle.

  He liked that. He was a biker. He liked a woman who knew how to handle a ride. His cock, meanwhile, loved how she didn’t mess around, trying to maintain any space between them. Her thighs were open around his, her groin pressed to his ass.

  Perfection.

  And he didn’t know how to describe that thing in him that seemed to settle a little when she tucked herself even tighter against him, wrapping herself around him and holding on with a serious grip without having to be told. Like he’d been right the first time he’d seen her, all those delicate limbs and that tight little body, and she was made to ride on the back of a man’s bike.

  His bike, goddamn it.

  The last place on earth he wanted to take her was to the clubhouse, where all his perverted brothers could salivate all over her. He was hardly the only one likely to notice the sweet curve of her ass or those tiny little tits that begged for a man’s rough mouth. Chaser wanted to take her home and chain her to his bed rather than parade her around in front of a bunch of horny bastards. A possessive thought he hardly recognized in himself, but there it was.

  He took off down the town’s deserted Main Street, headed out into the bayous and the lonely little road that led away from what passed for civilization in Lagrange and straight on into Devil’s Keepers country. And Lara moved with him on the bike, leaning into the curves and staying tight against him when he sped up. Making him want to keep on going, straight on out to the interstate where they could ride and ride forever. And then he could stop by the side of the road somewhere, maybe find a nice place to camp near some water, and fuck her until they both went blind.

  Focus, asshole, he growled at himself. There were more things at stake here than his dick.

  The road out to the clubhouse was a long, straight shot that looked like it was headed into the middle of nowhere. Brothers were always putting up various signs to entertain themselves and warn off the few random civilians who were dumb enough to wander this way. Tonight his headlight picked up the old abandon hope all ye who enter here placard that someone had nailed to a cypress tree sometime before Chaser patched into the Lagrange charter. It usually made him grin a little no matter what else was going on, because it meant he was home, possibly riddled with bullet holes and flashing a little dark humor just like the sign. But tonight he felt something else entirely, and it was all about the woman nestled tight against his back.

  Chaser didn’t want to feel anything about any woman. He had his hands full with his junkie ex, his pain-in-the-ass daughter, and even his bitchy sister. He had no room for a schoolteacher with secrets and the wrong club splashed all over her back. His cock didn’t seem to give a shit, but Chaser knew better than to listen to that sick bastard. It was that edgy, possessive thing in his gut that was making his head spin.

  He pulled into the long line of bikes out in front of the clubhouse and turned off the engine, then waited as Lara climbed off and peeled her helmet from her head. He eyed her for a moment, aware of the prospects waiting at a respectful distance to polish his bike and make sure it was in working order. He was equally aware of how many bikes were lined up here tonight, way more than usual on a hot-ass summer weekend, showing that everyone had hauled their asses out here to play their part in welcoming Digger home. Regardless of a man’s feelings about things, when the president showed up after a long absence, everyone else did, too.

  “You told your president about my tattoo,” Lara said in a low voice meant for his ears alone, proving yet again that she was made for this shit. That she was steeped in the life even though she was prancing around playing schoolteacher. Chaser felt something surge inside him that wasn’t as simple as that same old lust he couldn’t seem to quench, not even after a whole, long night of trying every way he knew. Worse, it wasn’t as straightforward as that possessive thing, either. It was much warmer.

  It was bullshit.

  He kept his voice hard. “I did.”

  She didn’t freak out. She didn’t cry or yell or make the vast mistake of swinging at him the way some might. Her blue gaze seemed calm in the stormy night, all that thunder in the distance and the press of the fat, wet clouds, and Chaser had the strangest notion that the storm moved inside of him instead of in the sky above, taking up residence in his chest.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Simple and direct.

  It would be so much easier to figure out how to handle her if he didn’t like her so much. That was the trouble.

  Chaser wasn’t about to tell her any club business. He didn’t talk about the club to civilians, no matter if it was his own kid, his sister, or a piece of ass. And definitely not to a woman with another club’s tat on her skin. But there was a part of him tonight that recognized exactly how much of a cop-out his traditional wall of silence was, because what would he say if he could? His president had rolled back into town like everything was normal after a three-month absence, and had acted surprised that his arrival was greeted as an event instead of a normal occurrence. Digger had then offered zero explanation for his disappearance, his silence while he was gone, or his sudden return now. Instead, he’d acted like Whale had just “gone missing” last night, and had hauled all his officers in to have a chat around the table they called their church, where a man was expected to tell the truth on pain of death or excommunication.

  Apparently, Digger had spent his three-month vacation from the club thinking over the events of the past year and coming up with dark conclusions. There had been the time the sergeant at arms, Greeley, had questioned Digger’s loyalty to the club—straight to his face. And there was the fact that Whale had gone off to handle Uptown’s woman when he’d “disappeared.” Those two facts had led Digger to think a few pointedly black thoughts about the brothers in question, apparently.

  Something he’d had no trouble saying to Greeley’s face right there at the table, all of five minutes after they’d sat down. Almost before they could welcome his crooked ass home.

  I’m not loving having the worst night of my life thrown in my f
ace all these months later, Dig, Greeley had said with the steely sort of calm that made him so good at his job. Because he didn’t tell Digger to go fuck himself. He didn’t remind Digger that he’d hauled himself out to kiss Digger’s ass the morning after the night in question, precisely to smooth something like this over before it blew up. I thought you and me were good. What the fuck?

  Chaser had seen exactly where this was going. The Devil’s Keepers were men of revenge and retaliation. Blood for blood—that was the oath they took. It was written on their bodies. It was breath and it was air. Digger might not know where his piece of shit son was or what had happened to him, but he knew it wasn’t good that Whale had been gone this long. And he was still the president of the club, no matter what mutterings there were or what suspicions had been raised in his absence—and before. He could handle things in whatever bloody manner he wanted. But Chaser had figured it was unlikely that he was going to go after Greeley—if he was, he wouldn’t have called him to the table to give him the heads-up.

  That meant his real target was Uptown.

  Chaser had come to that conclusion fast. A glance around the table to see the looks on Roscoe’s and Greeley’s faces made him pretty sure that they’d ended up in the same place. And no one wanted a loyal, smart brother and friend like Uptown to pay for a righteous takedown of a piece of shit like Whale. Chaser needed to defuse that shit fast, so they could keep trying to catch Digger out in a betrayal of the club he couldn’t explain away. A betrayal that even his die-hard supporters couldn’t pretend was something else. And he had to do something that would keep Uptown from becoming a sacrifice to that cause.

  The brotherhood might not matter to Digger any longer, something that ate at Chaser’s gut. But the club was Chaser’s family—and a far better family than his real one. The club had supported him during those black, shitty years when everyone had thought Kaylee was dead or worse, but they’d helped him look for her anyway because that was what he’d needed. Uptown had been right there at Chaser’s back since the day he’d decided to prospect with the Devils. He was Chaser’s brother in a way that went much deeper than blood.