Chapter 2
MASON
Dust stuck to everything after a long run.
It got in the seams of my boots, ground itself into denim, clung to the sweat at the back of my neck, and settled in the lines of my hands like it had paid rent.
I’d been riding since sunrise with the Royal Bastards stretched out behind me and the desert unrolling ahead, nothing but heat, road, engines, and the kind of silence a man didn’t have to explain.
Three state lines. One delivery. No trouble.
Clean run.
That was how we liked it. In and out, no flashing lights, no loose ends, no heroes trying to make their names on our backs.
By the time we pulled into a roadside bar outside Albuquerque, the sun had already dropped, and every one of us had that same road-worn look—faces gritty, shoulders tight, throats raw from wind and miles.
The bar wasn’t much. Low ceiling. Warped wood. Neon signs buzzing over bottles that had seen too many regrets. It smelled like burnt grease, stale whiskey, and bad decisions made in bathrooms with broken locks. Perfect place to wash the desert out of our mouths before heading home.
Edge hung near the back door with his phone pressed to his ear, talking low to his woman.
Tank took the stool beside me with a grunt like his bones had opinions.
Bullet was across the room working a blonde over the pool table like flirtation was a contact sport.
River leaned against the bar, half watching the room, half watching our backs.
Normal night.
I tipped my longneck and let the beer cut cold down my throat. It didn’t do much for the grit, but it helped. Three pulls and half the bottle was gone. I set it down, rolled my shoulders once, and felt the room shift around me.
Women.
I didn’t have to look hard. I knew the feel of it.
Had known it since my twenties, since the first time I patched in and realized a kutte did half the talking before a man ever opened his mouth.
Some women saw leather and wanted danger without consequences.
Some saw scars and thought they could be the soft place a rough man finally landed.
Some just wanted a story to tell their friends after brunch.
Tonight there were five of them. One near the jukebox pretending to choose a song while watching me in the reflection.
Two by the dartboard whispering into each other’s ears.
A redhead at the bar twisting her straw until the paper wrapper shredded.
Another one sitting with her knees angled toward me, all glossy mouth and practiced patience.
I knew women wanted me. Wasn’t vanity. Wasn’t a guess.
It was math I’d learned the hard way. The bike, the shoulders, the tattoos crawling down my arms, the scar cutting through my left eyebrow and another ridge of old damage along my ribs from a wreck I didn’t talk about unless I was drunk enough to forget my own rules.
Women looked at all that and built a man in their heads.
They liked the idea of being chosen by something dangerous.
Used to be, I let them.
Used to be, I’d pick one before the second beer, let her laugh too close, let her hand climb my thigh, let the night turn into skin, sweat, and a motel room that smelled like bleach over old smoke.
Quick. Easy. Forgettable, until morning made it awkward.
Until she wanted breakfast or my number or a promise I hadn’t offered.
Until I had to untangle fake lashes from my sink, find her earring in my sheets three weeks later, or watch her try to wear my shirt like we’d built something between midnight and regret.
I was done with it.
Done with one-night stands that left perfume on my pillow and nothing in my chest. Done with women who liked the rough edges until they cut. Done with pretending empty felt like freedom just because nobody stayed long enough to ask questions.
Tank caught me watching the room and smirked into his beer. “Your fan club showed up.”
“Lucky me.”
“Don’t sound too excited.”
“Trying not to hurt myself.”
River laughed under his breath. Bullet, hearing just enough from across the room, grinned like an idiot and sank a shot. The blonde clapped for him like he’d invented pool.
A brunette slid onto the stool beside me before Tank could keep running his mouth.
She was pretty enough, maybe late twenties, tight jeans, soft mouth, hair curled in waves that had taken effort.
She smelled like coconut lotion and tequila.
Her hand drifted over my forearm, fingers tracing the black ink there like she had permission.
“You riding alone tonight?” she asked.
I looked down at her hand first. Then up at her face.
“Not with that line.”
River choked on his beer. Tank turned his head, shoulders shaking.
The brunette’s mouth tightened. “Asshole.”
“Usually.”
She muttered something under her breath and pushed away from the bar, pride dented but not broken. She’d find somebody else before last call. Most people did. That was the whole point of places like this. Everybody hunting for a warm body to stand between them and whatever followed them home.
Bullet came over a minute later, grinning wide enough to irritate me on sight. “You broken?”
I grabbed the fresh beer the bartender slid my way. “No.”
Tank leaned back, stool creaking under him. “Could’ve fooled us.”
I stared at the bottle in my hand, at the water running down the brown glass, at the faint tremor in my knuckles from too much road and not enough sleep.
They didn’t know what to do with me like this.
Hell, I didn’t know what to do with me like this.
I’d spent enough years being easy to understand.
Mason liked women. Mason liked fights. Mason liked bikes, whiskey, and leaving before anyone got comfortable.
Now even I was tired of my own legend.
Rylee had cured me of believing chemistry meant loyalty.
Three years. That was what she got from me.
Three years of plans I didn’t admit out loud at first because plans made a man vulnerable.
Then I started saying them. Started meaning them.
A piece of land outside town. A garage big enough for bikes and old engines.
A kitchen with yellow light in the mornings because she said she hated cold rooms. Maybe a kid someday, though I’d pretended not to care when she talked about it because the wanting scared the hell out of me.
I’d been building a dream with my hands and my back, one job, one run, one saved envelope of cash at a time.
Rylee traded it in for a three-row European SUV, a six-carat solitaire, and a country club membership.
That was the part that still had teeth.
Not that she left. People left. That was the nature of things.
Roads split. Promises cracked. Love went stale if nobody fed it.
But she didn’t just leave me. She looked at what I was building for us and decided it wasn’t shiny enough to impress the women she wanted to sit beside at charity luncheons.
She wanted polished floors, polished friends, polished lies.
She wanted a man with clean hands, a retirement account, and a last name that opened gates.
She married a dentist with a house in one of those neighborhoods where the grass looked fake and every mailbox matched. Last I heard, she drove that big German SUV to pilates three mornings a week and wore a diamond so heavy it probably had its own insurance policy.
Good for her.
I hoped the leather seats were comfortable.
River tipped his bottle toward me. “One day you’ll loosen up again.”
“Maybe I like being tight.”
“That sounded filthy.”
“Only to lonely men.”
Tank snorted. Bullet laughed, but the laugh got cut short by a bottle shattering near the back.
The whole bar tensed.
Voices rose fast. Hot. Stupid. The kind of drunk male noise that came right before somebody made a choice his teeth would regret. I turned on my stool and saw one of our prospects near the hallway, palms out, trying to settle a guy in a sleeveless flannel who had more beer in him than sense.
The drunk shoved him.
Bad move.
Not fatal. Not yet. But the line was there, drawn in broken glass and bad judgment.
River’s grin came slow. Bullet set down his cue. Tank rolled his neck until it popped. I finished my beer because wasting alcohol offended me more than most people did, then set the bottle carefully on the bar.
Business.
That was all. Quick and simple.
The drunk swung first. Wild right hand. Too wide.
Too slow. I stepped inside it and put my fist where his jaw met bone.
He dropped like gravity had a personal grudge.
Another one came at me from the left, braver than smart, eyes wide and mouth open.
I caught him in the ribs, then the temple, and he folded over a table with a noise that told me he’d be feeling me tomorrow.
River handled the third with the calm efficiency of a man taking out trash.
Bullet cracked one across the bar hard enough to send two glasses jumping.
Tank didn’t even fully stand before some cowboy with a belt buckle the size of a dinner plate thought better of whatever heroic thought had crossed his mind.
Thirty seconds.
Four bodies.
Broken glass, blood on the floor, and the sharp stink of panic rising under the whiskey.
The bartender pointed at the door with a towel in his hand and murder in his eyes. “Take your circus somewhere else.”
I pulled cash from my wallet and tossed it on the bar. Enough for damages. Enough for silence. “For the mess.”
He looked at the money, then at me. “Out.”
“Already going.”
We walked outside into desert night, boots crunching over gravel. Edge came off his phone just as we hit the lot, his face sour when he realized we were leaving before he’d even gotten inside.
“What the hell? Already?”
“Bar had a short attention span,” River said.
Edge looked at my hands. “You bleed?”
I flexed my fingers. Knuckles red, skin intact. “Not worth bleeding over.”