Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
The second she stepped out of her brother’s car, I knew she was a wildfire.
Spitting mad and so stunning she stole my breath.
She thinks her brother made a deal with the devil, and by working for me, she’s paying off his debt.
She doesn’t know the real reason she’s here.
Doesn’t know the danger that surrounds her.
Soon, she realizes there is something sinister lurking in the shadows.
She hates me for keeping her in the dark.
I want to hate her back, but with every sassy thing that fires from her mouth, she gets deeper under my skin.
With each heated glance, I feel myself losing control.
And when I crawl into bed with her, I combust.
I know better than thinking I can keep her. My life is nothing but secrets and peril.
But as outside threats begin to infiltrate, I’ll do anything to keep the oath I made to keep her safe.
Even expose her to the monster that I am…
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
ONE
SILAS
It was a little before five when I stepped out from an open bay at Torque & Talon Autobody Shop, wiping my hands on an oil-stained rag.
My guts in fuckin’ knots as I let my attention travel over the gravel drive that led onto the property.
I squinted against the sunlight pouring from above. A thick, stagnant heat saturated the summer air and slicked my skin in sweat.
Or maybe it was just the irritation boiling inside me that made me feel like I was getting burned alive.
Trevan was already out there, leaning against the white exterior wall and sipping from a bottle of beer.
His own anxiety rolled from his burly frame as he eyed me from the side.
“You think this is a good idea?” he finally asked, hard voice cutting through the tension, verbalizing the same damned thing I’d been asking myself all day.
A heavy sigh pilfered from between my lips as I looked in his direction.
Dude was pure beast.
Dark brown hair and even darker eyes. A mountain of muscle that was covered in ink and oozing the type of ferocity required of my second in command.
He was also my oldest friend. With me from childhood. I trusted him more than anyone else.
I scoffed at my own expense. “Afraid it might be one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made.”
Inviting more danger onto our property than we were already facing.
We’d packed our shit and left Moonlit Ridge to get my sister farther away from the bullshit I’d gotten us mixed in there, and we’d come here to Crimson Creek, a small town in Southern Oregon.
But it seemed no matter where I went, peril loved to hunt me down.
He took another swig of his beer, dark eyes narrowed back at me. “Then why are you making it?”
He was the only one with balls big enough to question me. More than that? He was the only one who’d earned the right to do it.
“He was intrinsic in saving my sister. I owe him the favor.”
Trevan chuckled a disbelieving sound. “Thought that favor was leaving him alive? Not that the bastard won’t end up dead, anyway.”
Air heaved from my lungs, and I sank back against the wall next to him as I dove frustrated fingers through my hair. “Have to believe there is some kind of good in him since he came to me and offered the information.”
“Or did he know he was a dead man otherwise?”
Uncertainty bound up my insides.
I considered myself a damned good judge of character. You didn’t live long with a life like mine if you weren’t.
But there was something about Dereck Webber that I couldn’t put my finger on.
Instinct told me he couldn’t fully be trusted.
“Don’t know. But the one thing I do know is that his sister is innocent of the whole thing.”
Trevan’s brows raised like he was questioning that, too. “You sure about that?”
“As far as I know, she doesn’t know a thing.”
Was clueless as to what her brother was really involved in.
“Only thing that matters is that this arrangement gets us what we need,” I insisted. “He’d never dish if he didn’t think he was getting something out of it.”
Incredulity heaved out of Trevan. “There are other ways to get information out of someone.”
“Can’t take the chance that he would remain tight-lipped before Phoenix killed him.”
Phoenix was the club’s sergeant at arms.
Amused agreement huffed from Trevan before he shook his head. “You’re breaking every fuckin’ one of your own rules, man. You know that, right?”
I scrubbed a palm over my face. “Yup.”
It didn’t matter, though. With one thought of my baby sister, Elena, I knew what I had to do.
Dereck Webber might have been a low-life scumbag piece of shit, but when he’d had the barrel of my gun shoved down his throat, his one concern had been his sister.
To me, that counted for something.
“As long as you don’t mind when I tell you ‘I told you so’,” Trevan goaded around another gulp of his beer.
“As long as you don’t mind when I kick your ass when you do it,” I tossed back.
“Would like to see you try.”
Fucker tried to hide his grin before he sobered. “Seriously, though. I get it. Just worried it’s gonna bring us trouble, and God knows we already have plenty of that.”
Nah, trouble wasn’t anything new to us.
Being a part of a brutal MC tended to do that to you, and you could be sure the Crimson Crows were no strangers to strife and turmoil.
Funny that motorcycle club acted as a front for what we really did. The minor crimes we let fly flagrant used as a distraction from the monsters we became under the shadows of the night.
But it was my one big fuckup that brought us here, and I’d do anything I had to in order to rectify it.
“We’ll handle it if it comes to that,” I told him. “We always do.”