Chapter One
Denver, Colorado
Ice Johansson jolted awake, a scream locked in his throat. He sucked a shaky breath into his broad chest, then another, felt his heartbeat go slow and steady. From almost three decades of hard-won experience, he knew that that implacable and menacing something was going to come to his rescue: it always showed up when Ice needed to regain control of a situation. Or of himself.
Sure enough, here it came, that cold, emotionless darkness, and it was nothing but a relief to Ice when it washed over him, washed him away. He lay there staring at the ceiling, waiting for the wave to carry off the last vestiges of horror that always clung to him after the nightmare, as strangely wispy and solid as cobwebs.
Or ghosts .
He could take a deep breath now, and he knew that his resting heart rate had dropped back to its usual fifty-seven beats per minute. But just because he’d calmed right down didn’t mean that he’d be going back to sleep; he was up now, up for the rest of wherever was left of this miserable night.
Just in his boxer shorts, Ice swung his long legs out of bed and his bare feet hit the floor with a thump. He grabbed a t-shirt from the clean pile on the chair in the corner of his bedroom, took five steps across to the half-open door. Despite himself, and despite promising himself the last time that he’d never do this again, he hesitated.
As always, the last image to fade behind his eyelids was the one that Ice had seen as he’d stepped into the trailer hallway all those years ago: his hulking drunk father standing over his Mom’s destroyed, faceless body. He knew that when he walked out of his bedroom now, he wasn’t going to see that grisly tableau displayed in his own living room – but he always paused anyway.
Just to be sure. If there are any goddamn ghosts that get called out when I have that dream, I’ll just give them a few more seconds to get the fuck away again, to get back to wherever the hell they came from.
“Asshole,” Ice said aloud, and as usual, hearing his own voice brought him fully back into his own body. “There’s nothing out there. Get it together, man. Jesus .”
Briskly, he left his room and stalked down the hallway and through his immaculate living room to his kitchen, pulling the t-shirt on as he went. He flicked on the light over the stove, and stared at his reflection in the huge window next to the round wooden table. If the sun were up, he’d be gazing at a breathtaking view of the Rockies right now, but since it was pitch-black out there, all he got to look at was his own hard-as-granite face.
He gave himself a final look, the turned away to start the coffee. As the machine hissed and steamed, Ice contemplated the fact that seeing as he was a man who’d killed dozens of people, it was slightly preposterous that he didn’t feel haunted by any of them . No, he only felt that way about the two people whose lives he hadn’t actually taken.
Ice sighed now, glanced over at the clock on the microwave. It was just past four o’clock, and he sighed again as he poured out an extra-large cup of strong black coffee, knowing that this was going to be a very long few hours. He walked over to his massive leather armchair, the one that had an unimpeded view of his beloved mountains, and settled in to drink and stare into the darkness. To wait for the dawn.
As he drank and gazed fixedly at the inky sky scattered with a few brilliant stars, he reflected on the reappearance of the nightmare. Ice’s parents only ever showed up when things got really, really rough in his life; he’d rigorously trained himself to never think about them while he was awake. But his sleeping mind was clearly far more vulnerable, and when he was under especially high amounts of stress, Mom and her murderer showed up. In technicolor.
His time as a SEAL had seen the dream make at least a weekly appearance, and no big shock there, considering where he’d been for those six years and what he’d been surrounded by every minute of every day. Stress and tension had been the very air that he’d breathed back then, and he’d simply accepted the inevitable: he’d closed his eyes every night fully anticipating yet another visit from his dead parents.
The difference between then and now was that Ice had been physically exhausted at that time, so going back to sleep was a cinch. Now , though, despite him hitting the gym at least six times a week and working out hard, it just wasn’t the same level of exhaustion. Sleep was hard to sink back into when the dream came now. So he’d get up, make coffee, wait for the sunrise.
And spend the brooding, solitary hours contemplating what had brought his parents crawling out of their graves this morning.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” he said aloud to the man reflected in the window. “You know good and fucking well.”
Ice fell silent, fell into thought about The Road Devils MC and what the past few years had brought his beloved band of brothers. It had been nothing but a fucking litany of tragedies, one thing right after the other. It had been unceasing and completely out of control.
First, the tattoo parlour had been blown up and Keira, Zoe Parish’s baby girl, had almost been kidnapped by her own killer father. Then Scars Innis – the club VP – had been badly burned running into the blaze to rescue Keira as she sat on the floor wailing.
Just a year after that whole disaster, Jolene Angeles – the MC accountant and Silver Bennett’s girlfriend – had killed her abusive ex-husband after he came back and almost beat her to death.
Then there was the whole cover-up and clean-up of that mess, which just led to yet another mess when Elle Turner – known back then as Iris, back when she’d been a cult member on the run – had clambered into Viking Callahan’s van when he’d been burning Jo’s ex’s body deep in the Utah woods. He’d unwittingly brought her back to Denver – and that had put The Road Devils on the cult leader’s radar.
After Elle had been snatched up by the cult, Ice and a few of the other boys had stormed the compound, shot first and asked questions later, and rescued Elle and Violet, one of her fellow woman-servants. They’d managed to get away, and Ice had hoped hard that that might be the end of the raging ocean of shit… but he’d been way wrong. In fact, things became worse than ever.
Violet, Elle’s old servant buddy, promptly sold everyone out to Gideon, the maniacal cult leader; unbelievably, the asshole had had a direct link to Crusher Alcott, the President of The Highway Hellions MC out of Utah. Crusher had a grudge against The Road Devils in general, and against the club President Wolf Connor personally. His involvement had directly led to the murder of Rebel Armstrong, one of Ice’s MC brothers. It was bitterly meagre comfort for Ice to know that Crusher was dead too, brutally stabbed in the neck by his own old high-school friend.
Again, if Ice had hoped that that might be the end of it all, he’d been way, way wrong. His fellow Enforcers, Dux and Drake Keeler, had decided to leave the MC, with Wolf’s blessing. They’d moved to Pennsylvania to live with their pregnant girlfriend (Ice didn’t actually know what to call Briley Cross, who the twins shared in every single way, and who was carrying twins of her own), and were officially long gone.
And they’re not the only ones .
That’s what’s really got you all stressed out, isn’t it? That’s he’s going too?
“Yeah,” he said to the empty room. “Yeah. It is.”
He got to his feet, and headed back to the kitchen for another cup of black-as-the-night coffee. After he poured it, he leaned against the counter, sipping morosely as he yet again thought about Wolf leaving the MC. Going out to Utah as some kind of fucking human sacrifice to Viper Grant, Crusher’s right-hand-man who was now in charge of The Hellions. Doing it to keep everyone else safe, Wolf had said, but if the past few years had taught Ice anything , it was that no matter how hard he tried – and he really had tried, he’d fucking tied himself up in knots trying to protect everyone – The Road Devils were not safe, their loved ones and friends were not safe. Not even fucking close.
Ice had begged his President to take him to Utah too. Ice had argued that he could watch Wolf’s back out there, that Wolf going alone was nothing but suicide, and that whatever promises Viper had made regarding his safety were useless and worthless. Wolf had flat-out refused his Chief Enforcer’s help, and had told Ice to stay here in Denver and support Scars, who was stepping in as Acting-President.
It seemed to Ice that the MC was slowly but surely falling apart, one devastating piece at a time. Death and destruction, murder and mayhem, foes and fuck-ups, everywhere that he looked . And if all of this shit had happened on Ice’s lookout, when he’d been actively on alert and had been watching for trouble, just what the hell was going to happen to his Prez when Ice wasn’t anywhere close-by, didn’t have eyes on him?
Ice had a horrible feeling, way deep down in the pit of his stomach, that when Wolf peeled off into the sunset and headed to Utah, that would be the last that any of the boys saw of him. He might be the toughest fucker that Ice knew, and Wolf also possessed a level of cunning and smarts that left every other man in the MC in the dust… but he wasn’t invincible.
And that’s what had Ice’s parents poking their heads out of their graves, that’s what had him up at four o’clock in the morning. That’s what was setting off every single fucking nerve in his body, and they were vibrating so hard that they were practically jangling like Christmas bells.
Jingle bells, jingle bells .
Shut the fuck up .
Ice roughly shoved any and all thoughts of Christmas out of his mind; he hadn’t celebrated it since he was six, and he avoided anything and everything to do with it. The fact that it was just around the corner – just under a month away now – was yet another reason that he was feeling pressured and cornered and weirdly panicky. None of this was like him… he’d earned the name Ice fair and square, but right now, he was a melting iceberg.
Too much going on all at once – and no way for me to get any control over it. Goddammit .
He poured his third cup of coffee and went back to his chair. He sank down into the leather, saw that the stars had moved and dimmed a bit. Ice glanced over at the clock in the kitchen and was startled to see that it was now going on six-thirty. Time was going fast today, a bit too fast for his liking, because as much as he detested sitting here and fretting and stewing, he wasn’t at all ready for the day’s events. He hated weddings at the best of times, but considering everything that was happening, he was dreading hauling ass out to Open Skies Ranch to witness Scars and Zoe getting married. He was glad that they’d found each other, and he’d never let down his Acting-President, but he’d give a lot right now for an iron-clad reason to not have to be in the presence of love for hours and hours.
And now – as the first of the morning light lazily touched the mountain peaks, turning their icy caps pink and gold – yet another reason for Ice’s stress and disquiet came to mind. He’d been studiously ignoring it, forcing it out of his already brimming mind… but in the stillness of the glorious dawn, alone in his minimalist little apartment, downing his third coffee and pondering his worries for Wolf and his brothers, lying to himself about it any longer just seemed stupid. Stupid and weak.
So here she came in his mind’s eye, just walking on over to him, flashing those incredible firm thighs and curvy hips in a short skirt, her full breasts pushing up against her tight little t-shirt. Her long blonde hair fell over her slim shoulders like a shining waterfall, and her amazing dark eyes – a beautiful inky almost-black, a color that Ice had never seen on anyone except her – were bright with desire. She gave him a heart stopping smile, and all that Ice wanted was to take her in his arms, take her into the back room. Just take her.
Vix .
In Satan’s Bar, Victoria ‘Vixen’ Shaw was known as the MC’s favorite ride – and she was rumored to have been with every one of the guys, and multiple times, though Ice knew that to not be true, at all. What was true was that she had been the ultimate pass-around, the quintessential biker’s girl… and she owned that moniker, without shame. The woman was smokily and sexily hot, about that there was no doubt, and she had the brazen, aggressive, unpolished beauty of a wild creature. There was nothing demure or elegant or wallflower about Vix as she carried out her waitressing duties. She was, to her core, an MC bar back room toy, and she was proud of it.
Ice had never had an issue with Vix’s sexual activities, never saw her as anything cheap or low. How could he, when he’d been in those back rooms so often himself over the years? Ice was an asshole in more ways than he could count, but he wasn’t a hypocrite. Except that it turned out that he was worse than that: he was actually a bigger prick than even he knew.
The last words that he’d spoken to Vix came back to him now:
“The only useful part of you is between your legs, not between your ears. Keep your fucking inane thoughts to yourself, whore.”
God , the look on her beautiful face when he’d said that… he’d never seen her hurt before, but that was all he’d seen that day. He’d lashed out at Vix because he’d felt frustrated and impotent about Wolf going to Utah, and he’d taken it out on her. Just unloaded on a woman who didn’t deserve it, not even a little bit. He’d been utterly appalled at himself, shocked and disgusted with the uncalled-for name-calling. Worse than that , though, was the name that he’d actually used.
Whore .
The way that he’d said it, the tone and the vitriol, was an echo of someone else’s voice, a voice that still carried almost thirty years later. A man with Ice’s same blue eyes and cropped blond hair, and his height and strength. And rage.
Dear Christ, am I turning into him ? Have I always been him?
Ice had just turned and walked away from Vix that day, left her standing there. Ice knew the truth about Vix, which was that she hadn’t been with anyone except him for well over a year now. Oh, sure, the woman flirted with men and flaunted her hot little body – but that came with the territory when you waited for tips at a biker bar. When she’d told him that she was with him only , that he was all she wanted, he’d never doubted her for one second; she was honest with him about her sexual desire and her sexual history. She was also the hottest thing that he’d ever touched – she drove him crazy with want.
And then he had called her a whore, just thrown that absolute bullshit insult in her face. All because he was angry.
Despite his violent history, Ice didn’t much believe in having regrets, didn’t at all believe in wallowing in doubt. If he’d taken a life, it had been necessary, and that was that. He didn’t spend time agonizing over what he’d done and he didn’t lose sleep over any of it… but if he were being honest now, he bitterly and totally regretted saying what he did to Vix in that bar hallway. He felt deep shame about it, actually, and he was struggling with this new emotion; before now, Ice Johansson had thought that he was impervious to it.
This had all happened two weeks ago, and they hadn’t spoken since. Ice knew that he should have gone to Vix that same day and apologized. He should have made it right, and right away, but not only was he a colossal prick, he was also apparently a pathetic coward.
As he poured his fourth bucket-sized cup of coffee, he turned that word over and over in his mind. He doubted that anyone would ever think to call him a coward to his face, not unless they had a death wish, but Ice had to face the truth: he was afraid to talk to Vix, terrified to apologize. And why? Well…
“Don’t trust a woman. Not one, not ever. Don’t let one close to you . Never let one get anything over on you.”
Ice was good and worried about a lot of shit right now, and if he were being honest with himself – and what better time than when I’m sitting here alone and downing gallons of coffee like water? – he was freaked out at how much of a hold Vix had over him. He just couldn’t believe what she’d come to mean to him, despite his utter lack of interest in relationships; he didn’t understand just how she’d crawled into his mind and set up residence in there.
It was an unending source of confusion to Ice just why he’d taken his asshole father’s last words to him to heart, but he had. Fuck knows that he didn’t carry around anything else that the bastard had ever told him, but that advice about women had burrowed into his skin and just taken hold. But why?
Because it’s easier to completely avoid having feelings for a woman than admitting to them. Why be vulnerable? Why care about a woman? What has that ever gotten me, ever?
Nothing but a dead mother. That’s all .
“Fuck it,” he said aloud to the brilliant purple mountains. “Just fuck the whole fucking thing.”
The loud blaring of the phone alarm in his bedroom made him jump out of the chair in a single startled movement. In the kitchen, he confirmed the time as he poured out a fifth coffee: eight o’clock. Time to get his ass into the shower and into his pristine bespoke suit, and then drag himself up to Open Skies for one o’clock. He also had to paste on a less surly look than he usually wore, because today was all about a good thing, in the end. He’d been a complete dickhead to Vix, but he wasn’t going to upset Zoe on her wedding day. She and Scars had been through hell on earth, and this was a joyous occasion, one that they’d fought for and which they’d made happen, despite it all.
So, yay for love, right?
Yeah. Right.