Odin (Satan’s Angels MC #10)

Chapter 1

Willow

Does size matter? Well, when the size in question was eight inches, belonged to my fiancé, and was fucking my mother on the living room floor, I’d say yes, it matters a great deal. About as much as two tiny letters matter. Ex. Ex-fiancé. Ex-mother. Ex-home. Ex-everything-I-thought-I-knew.

Goodbye LA, RIP to my future marriage, and the life that I thought we were building together.

What’s worse than coming home and catching your fiancé sleeping with your mother?

Having to walk upstairs and pack the few things that you know you’re not going to be able to live without while he fluttered and flapped, garbled and snorted, spat and pleaded, all around you, the entire time.

It all fell on deaf ears. I was on dead-tome ground.

I’ll never go back to that house. Once I had a few bags packed, I got in my car and drove.

I drove, and drove, and drove. I drove until four in the morning, when I pulled over at a truck stop and slept in the back of the car. I didn’t need a pillow or a blanket. My rage and the hot, useless tears I cried kept me warm.

I woke up to a knock on the window at seven in the morning, a stern faced older man telling me I had to get going.

The old guy was working the morning shift, and he was nice enough to let me use the bathroom to wash up when I promised to buy breakfast at the little diner on the side of the building.

I choked down what I could and packed up the rest as force of habit. It was something Preston always hated about me. The fact that I knew what it was like to be poor, and I couldn’t let anything go to waste.

Actually, there were many things Preston didn’t like about me.

It was actually about him. But you know what?

Fuck Preston. Fuck him and his nasty dick, his fragile ego, and all his stupid friends.

Fuck the way he never defended me against them, fuck the looks his mother gave me like she hated the reminder of where she came from.

Fuck his plastic surgeon stepfather, and all the fake bullshit in that family.

Fuck his job and all his co-workers who made him so insecure about himself that he had to beg me to give up everything I wanted.

And fuck me too, for ever taking my mom’s advice, for considering Preston’s feelings, for trying to understand, and for making massive changes that I thought would help our marriage grow, because… compromise.

In the brutal light of day, my wrath still burned just as bright and driving for miles hadn’t dimmed it, but now that I’m actually here in Hart and got directions from a sweet lady at the diner on the edge of town to the Satan’s Angels clubhouse, I’m starting to feel twinges.

I could get back in my little white car and keep on driving until I find somewhere that seems…

nice. I could start over again. I have a small amount of savings in my bank account.

I could rent an apartment and find a job.

I could pick up the pieces and survive this, because what’s the alternative?

Maybe I could finally get that cat I always wanted.

Whether I go through with my wild revenge plan or not, I’m here in Hart, Washington, and that’s where I’m going to spend the night. It might be in the back of my car again, or… it might not.

I grasp the wheel so tightly in both hands that when I unfurl my nearly numb fingers, my palms make a sucking sound against the leather.

Wincing, I rub my hands against my short black pleated skirt. When the GPS told me I was fifteen minutes from Hart, I pulled over, drove five minutes down a backroad, and enacted stage one of my revenge plan.

Dress to impress. Impress meaning seduce.

I’m not entirely sure what it would take to bring a forty-something year old, surly biker to his knees, but I figured that a short skirt would do it.

I have five-inch heels on, which makes me look a little less like the teenager that people often mistake me for, and a tight black leather vest. I pushed my small breasts up, nearly right out of the cups of my bra, arranging them near the V cut out of the vest.

I’ve been staring at the brick clubhouse for the past fifteen minutes.

I parked across the street so I could have a good vantage point.

Aside from the chain link compound on the far side of the building with rows and rows of motorcycles, the place looks pretty harmless.

It’s nicely landscaped in front, with immaculate green grass bisecting a neat sidewalk.

There are even trimmed shrubs, and two large stone angel statues flank the front door.

The parking lot on the other side of the building has a few vehicles parked, but nothing crazy.

There are a few trucks, some old and some newer, two cars, and one older SUV.

The area is quite industrial, with other factories, garages, compounds, and things like tire shops, scattered around.

It makes me think that the big brick building was probably renovated from a factory or a warehouse and given new life.

This late at night on a Saturday, the only signs of life come from the two tall, muscular young guys walking around in the compound, and the thumping bass that drifts out through the sturdy building and into the dark night.

I pictured a dank, creepy compound in a seedy neighborhood, punctuated with the sounds of yelling, loud music, and gunshots. Knife fights, scantily clad women, and men beating the shit out of each other while smoking joints and cigarettes at the same time.

I still came anyway.

Over the years, I’d done a little bit of research on Satan’s Angels MC. From what I’ve read, the club doesn’t sound all that bad, but I thought maybe they were paying whoever published those articles so that they’d look good.

I tug my vest down and do one last check on my breasts.

The last thing I need is a nip slip. Even in my most determined moments, when I had nothing but revenge and rage flowing through my veins, that wasn’t part of the plan.

There’s seduction, and then there’s just too much.

Honestly? I suck at both. I can’t say I’ve really even flirted before.

I get out of the car, my feet already aching from the heels, but I’m used to having to parade around in them, sucking it up and pasting on a fake smile for hours.

I manage to walk with a saunter, forcing confidence I don’t feel.

I’ve had a lot of practice doing that over the past few years too.

The one thing I do miss about being poor is that I never had to fake shit all.

Maybe there were a few moments here and there, but the only fronts I truly remember putting on were the charades and the masks that I made sure were always firmly in place the day I stepped back into Preston’s world.

How the fuck did I think I could make that my life?

I don’t know if I want to scream, rage, or throw back my head and laugh hysterically at how that all ended up.

I approach the chain link fence where the gate is. I figure if I’m going to get in, it’s going to be through there.

The two younger men approach, somewhat cautiously, but with genuine smiles on their faces.

“Hey,” the first one says. He looks all of twenty, with dark hair, a fledgling beard he’s struggling to grow, and what probably passes for the biker uniform because the other guy, even though he’s taller and broader and maybe a few years older, is wearing the exact same thing.

They’re both clad in shitkicker boots, jeans, black t-shirt, and a leather jacket with a patch on the front that says ‘Prospect’. I can’t see the back, but I know what Satan’s Angels’ logo looks like. It’s a bowed stone angel with big wings swept overhead.

I only knew about them at all because Preston’s mom was extremely drunk one night.

She and his stepdad had gone to some function, and they’d come back late, both of them pretty wrecked.

I was sixteen and intimidated as hell by her plastic appearance, cold eyes, fixed smile, and her fake niceness.

She wanted to talk to me, and I was too nice to tell her no.

Preston was outside with his stepdad, and all of a sudden, his mom was telling me about the man she still thought of in her unguarded moments.

She’d laughed a little, then sighed longingly.

It was probably the only real emotion and true words I ever saw and heard from her.

Preston once let slip something about his real dad being in a biker club somewhere.

His mom had been wild and rebellious when she was younger.

She wanted to be an actress, but she worked at a nightclub to make ends meet, and that’s where she met Preston’s dad.

He lived in LA at the time, but he moved on a few weeks after they shared a night together. The end result of that night?

Preston.

Instead of being a deadbeat biker, his dad sent money every single month, even though Preston’s mom basically told him flat out he was going to have no part in raising a child.

He seemed to be okay with that. He did the right thing and supported his son how he could.

He kept doing it until Preston’s mom remarried.

She met a plastic surgeon in LA and instead of starring in movies, she became the star of her own show.

That night, she mentioned not only the name of the club, but Preston’s dad as well.

I use that name. It’s the only one I know. If I’m wrong about all of this, I know how stupid I’m going to look. If I’m right about all of it, I can’t say it’s a very smart plan either, but anger makes a person do things they normally wouldn’t do. “Hey… I’m looking for someone named Kenneth Miller?”

Both guys give me a blank look. Shit. Right. He probably has a club name. I don’t know it.

“Uh- I don’t know what he might go by. I’m friends with his son. In LA. Preston.” I screw my eyes shut, heaving an internal sigh. What if Preston’s dad didn’t tell anyone he had a kid? What if they don’t even know his real name?

Fucking hell. I thought I was as prepared as I could be for this, and maybe I am, but I’m starting to realize just how out of my depth I am.

I raise my chin the same way I used to dig in back when I worked a full time job in high school to keep my mom and I from ending up homeless. I was scared back then, when my dad died and we lost everything, but I’m not afraid. I’m not that na?ve girl anymore.

I refuse to be afraid, just like I refuse to feel any grief over what happened last night.

“Can you hold on a second?” The younger guy asks. He runs a hand over his chin. He’s probably my age, but I feel so much older than him. I think he’s cute, but not in an attractive way. In a baby-faced, sweet, fumbling, nice guy kind of way.

He tries very hard not to let his eyes travel away from my face and he mostly succeeds, but he still blushes deeply, the streetlight revealing the red creeping down his neck and up into his cheeks.

My hands flex at my sides, but I try to hide them in the pleats of my skirt. “Sure.”

He leaves while the other guy crosses his arms and walks back and forth in the compound. He doesn’t give me any sort of stink eye. He seems as nervous as I’m trying to pretend I’m not.

The back metal door slams shut, and I snap my head up and around. The younger guy is back, and trailing after him is a guy who looks…

Like a battle-scarred Viking.

Impossibly tall. Broad. I’d put him in his late forties. His beard is surprisingly well groomed, and his salt and pepper hair is shaved short on the sides and left long on top.

It’s the eyepatch that gets me. He has several other scars on his face, one by his lip, another along his jaw, but they’re small enough. I doubt he just wants to look cool wearing that patch. He probably has it because he needs it.

He passes the young man, eating up the gravel with long strides.

He’s wearing the same arrangement of clothing as they are, but on him, that leather jacket seems more dignified.

He’s at least twice the size of the other two guys, filled out with age, his chest massive, and his shoulders huge.

Instead of looking grizzled or gnarled like I expected he’d be, the scars only add to his allure.

I came prepared to sacrifice myself on an altar of revenge. It didn’t matter how nasty I pictured Preston’s dad. I would do it, photograph it, get it over with, and move on. Out of character? Yes. Wildly inappropriate? Also yes. I never thought I’d be here in a million fucking years.

I also never thought Preston’s dad would be smoking hot.

Preston’s dad—at least I assume they’ve brought me the right guy—pushes buttons into a keypad on the other side and the chain link gates slides open with a quiet whirr of the mechanism above.

I freeze in place, unable to take a breath or think a coherent thought.

My heart races as this giant of a man steps right out, past the chain link and into the night. The golden streetlight glints off his left eye. It’s dark brown, but not cold at all. He smiles as he extends a tattooed hand. Heavy silver rings adorn long, capable fingers with blunt nails.

“I’m Odin. I believe you wanted to see me?” He keeps his hand extended, even when I don’t automatically reach to take it.

The only thing my brain can currently process is oh my god, of course he’s freaking Odin.

He drops his hand back to his side without looking bothered by my rudeness in not shaking it.

He has the shoulders of a linebacker, arms defined even beneath leather, and his t-shirt reveals the boxes of his abs beneath.

This? This is no boy. This is a straight up, raw, beast of a man.

The thought sends a shiver down my spine and heat that nearly shocks me senseless, storms my blood and pools in my belly.

I’m hit hard with a wave of insta-lust and pure feminine appreciation for the finely honed weapon of a body before me.

“You seem to know who I am and exactly where to find me, but I’m afraid I don’t have the slightest idea who you are. Gonna give me a hint?”

He wasn’t what I expected in any way, but it’s his smile, so ready and kind that undoes me.

“I’m engaged to your son. Was engaged.”

Just like that, I do the one thing I promised myself I wasn’t going to do and break down.

Hot, angry, bitter tears flow down my cheeks faster than I can stop them.

Once the first two escape, the whole torrent follows, a flash flood that I’m powerless to stop.

I came here to flip a big middle finger at Preston, but it turns out, I’m only going to embarrass myself further.