Chapter One
Steel
Three Years Later
My home is always gonna be with my brothers.
Our clubhouse gets used. Hard. We drink there, fight there, fuck there, fix bikes there, and crash wherever we drop when the night finally burns out.
It’s where we do church, where we bleed, where we celebrate, and where we tear into each other and put ourselves back together.
It’s not fragile and it sure as hell ain’t holy, but it’s ours.
You don’t just drag any stranger through the doors. You don’t let heat follow you home.
That’s where The Canteen comes in.
The Canteen is where we let things get loud.
Where outsiders mix with locals. Where we drink too much, pick up women, and start fights that don’t need to come back to our front step.
It’s neutral ground. Cops expect trouble there.
Rivals expect trouble there. Nobody’s surprised when shit goes sideways between the front door and the back exit.
And when it does, it stays off club property—off our bikes, off our beds, and off the place we sleep with our weapons close and our brothers closer.
So yeah. The Canteen serves a purpose.
Doesn’t matter that it’s poorly lit. Or that the pool tables are pretty much falling apart, with less green on the tops than there are pockets of bare wood sticking through.
It doesn’t matter that the floorboards are uneven and filthy or that the booths are highly suspect.
Hell, even the chairs seem to be coated with a layer of grime, but that kind of shit doesn’t bother anyone.
The town knows that the bar is frequented by Steel Riders and even though it doesn’t belong to us, I do give a hefty donation to the owner, a middle-aged greasy little man named Hecker, who actually gives a shit about the rat hole.
He bartends six nights a week and takes the seventh off because no, the place ain’t closed on Sunday.
A high-pitched laugh echoes through the gloom, the thick clouds of pot and cigarette smoke, and whiskey-induced conversation.
The cackle belongs to Ginger, a woman who looks exactly like her name sounds.
She’s pushing forty, but life hasn’t been kind to her.
She’s Brick’s old lady, a huge twenty-five-year-old bastard who likes to claim he’s Irish, but we all know he was born and raised in Kansas.
Says he likes redheads because they remind him of home.
Ginger ain’t a natural redhead. She has been dying her hair for a good ten years.
It’s so brittle it looks like it could snap right off.
She’s nice though, for the most part, and I guess that’s what actually matters.
When I started the MC, there were some ground rules.
First, we take ‘em all. Reformed addicts, ex-cons, ex-military. Doesn’t matter to me, as long as the guy’s heart is in the right place and he pledges allegiance to his brothers.
That might sound corny as shit, but trust me, when it comes down to taking a bullet, it’s not fucking corny at all.
So yeah, if a guy is willing to lay down his life for his brothers at the end of his prospecting with the club, then he’s in.
All I demand is loyalty, and that means that brothers are responsible for each other’s lives.
Which means no one gets fucked up on hard drugs.
Each man pulls their weight in the club and out of it.
We stay on the right side of the law as much as we can.
No murdering and no violence unless we go to war, and we haven’t done that for nearly a decade.
And most importantly, old ladies—and women who hang around the bars hoping to become one—are treated like human beings.
No abuse. No forcing a lady. Fucking ever.
I’m not running a bunch of thugs. I run a brotherhood, a place where men can come together to find the family they never had.
God knows I wouldn’t be here without my brothers.
It saved my life, becoming a fucking misfit family, and I have seen it save just about every single one of these men’s lives in return.
I look up just as Ginger laughs again and says something about fresh meat.
Her words capture my attention, because most people know to steer clear of the place, especially on a Friday night.
I narrow my eyes and lean forward, one hand curled around my half-full glass of whiskey, the other twitching on my knee, always ready, even when there isn’t any call to be ready for shit.
I was born into violence. The club has been the least violent part of my life, but that shit is in my blood, and my blood runs fucking thick.
My eyes cut through the place, straight to the entrance, where Ginger’s head is currently facing.
The gloom and darkness, the haze of smoke, and the hum of conversation break like a summer storm clearing off, the clouds parting way for the sun because that sun is the center of the damn universe and it is so bright it’s blinding.
Damn.
I never expected to actually see her again. Standing in the doorway like the goddamn queen she was born to be.
Edge, my VP, fellow club founder, and best fucking friend, sees her first. He wasn’t on that ride with us three and a half years ago.
He likely has a vague notion of who Leah Harris is, mostly because her dad is the biggest douchebag in the entire state of Florida—hell, maybe even the country—but he doesn’t know who she is.
She stands there, leaning on the doorway, with one hip jutting out, tiny little denim cutoffs showing off her shapely legs, fishnet stockings outlining the rest, high heeled black ankle boots, a black tank pushing her perky tits sky fucking high, a slash of perfect midriff exposed, and her blonde hair done in loose curls that fall in a silken mass down her back.
Last time I saw her she looked broken. Now she’s like a fucking goddess.
A woman with all her beauty on display, a motherfucking prize for any of my brothers to claim and claim her they will—since all heads shoot to the doorway.
I haven’t heard the place silent, ever, and I’ve been coming here for years.
Edge beats me to shoving back his chair.
He saunters across the room. I watch Leah’s eyes widen, and those lashes sweep down in a slow blink.
She’s not flirting with him, but her lips part in that flirty kind of way that a man could misunderstand.
The tip of her little pink tongue darts out to moisten them just as Edge leans in to whisper something smooth—and fuck me sideways, he’s real fucking smooth.
Women love Edge. They flock to him. He’s a good guy.
I love him like a real blood brother, but there is no way he’s laying a hand on Leah Harris.
Hell fucking no. No one touches her.
As my inner caveman lets out a roar that echoes the sound of my chair scraping back and hitting the floor, a deafening crash that brings a few more heads around, each one of my brothers stops what they are doing. Even the old ladies and the other women pause.
Shadow, our club enforcer, is bent over the pool table.
He stiffens, cue in hand. Gun, our local artist—drops his freshly poured drink all over the bar.
Wolf, our sergeant-at-arms, halts with a blonde on his lap.
And Edge… Edge turns slowly to look at me as I charge him.
I’m not like a bull in a china shop, I’m on the goddamn warpath, and Edge knows me well enough to steer clear.
He tries to sidestep me just as I grip him by his leather vest and shove him up against the wall hard enough to leave an indent.
“What’s up, Prez?” Edge only calls me that to piss me off, and hell, it’s working.
He raises one dark brow and sweeps a hand through his hair.
His cut is buzzed to his scalp on the sides and long on top in a freaky version of a Mohawk that somehow doesn’t look out of style on the bastard.
With that massive frame, all his height and muscle, he looks like he could have been a college quarterback or a fucking underwear model or some shit.
I know he was neither because he went to prison when he was eighteen for jacking a car and stayed in the slammer for a few years.
I found him after he got out. He was trying to jack my bike.
Could have put the fucker to ground, but instead, I took him to lunch, and we had a talk.
Things spiraled from there, and we came up with the idea for a bike club.
A place where bastards like us could find a home and brotherhood, the true family they never had, and a sense of freedom they wouldn’t have found locked up—since they couldn’t control the fucking demons eating away at their insides.
We have been at it for ten years. Ten fucking years. And not once have I ever looked at Edge like I am now.
“Fuck off,” I say through gritted teeth. “This lady’s leaving. Don’t want any trouble here and this… this is all trouble.”
Edge rolls his eyes. “I know who she is and that she don’t belong here. She’s probably spying for her daddy. I was just gonna escort her out myself before you went all apeshit on me.”
“This ain’t apeshit.”
Fucker knows I’m right and he backs off with a grin.
He saunters off, shaking his head. There’s a jukebox in the corner, a piece of shit from another era.
Its working days are long over, but no one has found the heart or the muscle to steer it towards its final resting place in the Helena town dump, so there it sits, collecting dust. There’s a girl in her early twenties, with dark hair, light eyes, and tall like my Harley, standing beside the box.
Clearly, she didn’t get the memo about the thing not working because she kicks it and mumbles something.
When she looks up to see Edge approaching, though, she offers him a smile, and things look up for her.
Deanna. That’s her name. She’s a nice girl, a single mom with a young daughter.
She’s looking to become an old lady, probably for the safety and protection it would afford her.
She won’t find that with Edge though. He is a one night stand—or hell, probably more like a ten-minute fuck up against the wall in the back alley—kind of guy. He doesn’t call a girl back the next day.
I could warn her off, but I have bigger problems. Problems in the form of Leah fucking Harris.
She’s still standing in the doorway, but now her arms are crossed over her chest, and she has a smirk painted on her gorgeous pouty lips.
Despite how fucking hot it is in this state, Leah’s skin is fair and pale.
She reminds me of a porcelain doll. Flawless.
Even though her father is a cunt, the bastard is decent looking, and her mother’s a former pageant queen.
Leah is a mix of the best of both of two really shitty humans.
At least as far as looks go. Although that night on the tower told me that she’s nothing like either of her parents.
Her cheekbones are high and sharp, her eyes the purest blue. The kind of blue that doesn’t exist on the color spectrum, and her hair… God, her hair. It’s like spun gold, wheat, or something.
Fuck. I’m no poet. All I know is that I want to grab that hair and run it between my fingers.
I can think of a few good uses for her pouty lips too, but I push those back down.
I can’t even begin to think about what the fuck is going on with my cock.
Then again, I’ve lived like this for the past three years.
With the ghost of a girl young enough to be my daughter haunting me like the sick bastard I am.
I’m no saint, but I ain’t going there. Don’t need to make her daddy dearest into any more of an enemy than he already is. She’s only twenty, and I’m fucking thirty-eight.
I lean in, a menacing scowl on my face. Grown men have pissed themselves over less, but there she stands, her arms crossed over her chest defiantly, pushing up those sweet perky tits a little further.
Even though I know everyone’s watching and I don’t want to do this here, I bark out something right next to her ear.
“This is no place for you, darlin’. Time to turn around, sneak back into your parents’ house, wipe off that makeup, and burn those clothes.”
She shakes her head, her eyes blazing. “I don’t think so,” she says lazily. She might as well have flipped me off right to my face. “Not until I get what I want.”
My ire spikes. Big time. No one talks back to me using that tone. I’ve fucking killed men for less. Yet my cock likes it. It stands straight up, the bulge in my jeans fucking obvious, but her eyes don’t travel there.
I want to throw her over my shoulder, cart her out of here, take her to some dark spot, and fucking brand her with my mouth, my teeth, my cock, my cum.
I decide to play her game, though, because I can’t do much else. “And what could you possibly want here, darlin’?”
She visibly swallows and refuses to back down.
God, she has balls of steel. She would truly make a damn good queen, and that only reinforces for me how fucked I am.
Not that I’m considering it. I’m not. I should never have uttered that fucking word.
I don’t want her at my side. I don’t want anyone at my side.
What I want is purely sexual. Hot, molten lust that I neither want to control nor will.
What I feel for Leah Harris is primal. Instinctual.
Even though I’m seventeen years older than her, I still have eyes.
“I want…” Her tongue snakes out to moisten her lips, and I choke back a groan. “… you. I’m back in town and I’m here for you. For what you promised me. I’m here to be your queen.”