Grim’s Angel (Damned Sinners MC #1)

1. Chapter 1

McKenna

The envelope in my lap contains directions to the man who bought me.

At twenty-three, I am newly licensed as a nurse.

I can start an IV without bruising a vein, recognize the early signs of shock, and name enough fatal conditions to ruin an otherwise pleasant headache.

None of my training covers what to do when my older brother gambles away our parents’ house and lists me in an online marriage auction to win it back.

I keep thinking there should be a protocol for this. A hotline. A form. Someone authorized to tell me whether being guilted into a marriage contract counts as consent.

In my family, Alan has always been the emergency, and I have always been expected to carry the bandages.

I read the instructions again, although this makes the seventh time since leaving Black Pines. The same Las Vegas hotel waits at the bottom of the page, and the same carefully polished paragraph informs me that my future husband will identify himself after I arrive.

My husband.

The words look harmless sitting there in black ink. So does benign until the biopsy comes back.

I press the edge of the envelope beneath my thumbnail and stare through the rain-streaked bus window.

Roseburn Falls spreads across the mountain valley below, its dark pines and wet rooftops disappearing beneath trails of mist. The town looks as though it has tucked itself between the mountains and hopes nobody will notice it.

I respect the strategy.

The bus shudders around a curve. My suitcase gives a wounded squeak from the rack above my head, and the woman across the aisle looks at it before directing the same disapproval toward my hips.

I give her the smile I reserve for people who consider my body a personal inconvenience.

It is a useful smile. I have worn it in narrow aisles, clothing stores, family photographs, and every room where my mother has looked at Alan’s athletic body before suggesting I might be happier if I tried harder.

My suitcase squeaks again.

At least one of us is willing to complain aloud.

My phone vibrates against my thigh.

Mom: Let us know when you meet him, sweetheart. We are so proud of you.

Pride should feel warm. This feels like a strap pulled tight beneath my ribs.

Another message waits below hers.

Alan: Don’t screw this up, Kenny. The deed isn’t released until you get there.

His concern is for the paperwork. I am relieved to see that selling his younger sister has not interfered with his ability to prioritize.

Three months ago, Alan walked into our parents’ kitchen with a split lip and a gambling debt large enough to swallow the house.

Two weeks ago, he admitted he had uploaded my name and photographs to an online auction for a one-year marriage contract.

Three days ago, I signed because my mother cried, my father called me their last hope, and everyone at the table spoke as though Alan had saved the family instead of setting it on fire.

I told myself it was only a year.

I told myself the contract contained medical protections, personal boundaries, and a private room if I requested one. I told myself a man willing to spend that much money on a wife might be lonely rather than cruel.

Mostly, I told myself that coming home with the deed might finally make my parents look at me the way they have always looked at my brother.

The bus passes a sign welcoming us to Roseburn Falls.

Something inside me settles.

I cannot do this.

The certainty arrives without the usual racing pulse or trembling hands. Anxiety loves a meeting, an agenda, and several hours of preparation. This thought ignores procedure and walks straight into my mind.

I cannot hand my name, my body, and a year of my life to a stranger because Alan gambled away something that never belonged to him.

I open the family group chat.

I am sorry. I changed my mind.

My thumb hovers over the Send button while anxiety rushes in late and begins listing the consequences. The house. My mother’s tears. My father’s silence. Alan telling anyone who listens that his selfish little sister ruined them.

Then I remember the auction listing.

Curvy. Educated. Healthy. Virgin.

Four words that reduced my life to desirable features.

I press send.

My bravery has arrived without money, shelter, or a return ticket, but I decide to welcome her anyway.

The bus pulls up beside a low brick station at the edge of town.

I retrieve my suitcase from the rack and wrestle it down the steps into the rain.

One wheel catches in a crack and jerks me backward.

I recover with a hop that nearly takes out an elderly man, then straighten as if the entire maneuver was a little-known form of travel yoga.

The driver leans toward the open door.

“Someone meeting you?”

I look across the deserted parking lot. The clock above the recessed station entrance reads four twelve. According to my instructions, a car will collect me at four fifteen.

“That was the plan.”

“Was?”

“I have withdrawn my support for the plan.”

His gaze moves from my damaged suitcase to the rain. “Next bus heading east leaves at nine tomorrow morning. Motel’s two blocks north.”

“So I only need a room, a return ticket, and a personality capable of planning ahead.”

“You might want to start with the room.”

“That does sound easier.”

If you have money.

The folding door closes between us. A moment later, the bus pulls away and takes my simplest escape route with it.

My phone rings.

Mom’s name fills the screen.

I silence it and slide the phone into my coat pocket before guilt persuades me to answer.

A black sedan turns into the lot at exactly four fifteen.

The car is sleek, expensive, and completely wrong for the tired little station. Its dark windows reflect the rain, and the headlights cast two pale paths across the pavement.

Two men step out.

The taller one holds a glossy page bearing my photograph above a block of printed information. He compares it to my face before allowing his attention to travel down my body.

My skin draws tight.

“McKenna Crane?”

I grip the handle of my suitcase. “No.”

He glances at the photograph again.

It was worth trying.

The shorter man moves to my left, cutting off the path to the road. “We’re here to take you to Las Vegas.”

“Then you have wasted a trip.”

“You signed the agreement,” the tall man says. “Our instructions are to deliver you.”

“It’s a marriage contract, not a prison sentence. I changed my mind.”

“You can discuss that with the buyer.”

“I can discuss it from Black Pines.”

I turn toward the station entrance, but the shorter man blocks my path.

Fear slips cold fingers beneath my coat. My mouth responds before my survival instincts can vote on the matter.

“Move.”

“We would rather handle this politely.”

“Polite left when you surrounded me. This looks more like kidnapping.”

His expression hardens. “Get in.”

“No.”

The tall man reaches for my arm.

I swing my purse.

It catches him across the cheek with a crack that sends satisfaction singing through me. For one magnificent second, I feel dangerous.

Then the strap winds around my wrist, my coat twists around my knees, and I nearly fall over my suitcase.

My brief career as an action heroine ends before anyone buys the film rights.

The man curses while his partner tears the suitcase from my hand and throws it aside. The damaged wheel strikes the pavement with a miserable squeal.

“That suitcase has already suffered enough,” I snap.

The tall man grabs my wrist just below the cuff of my coat.

Pain shoots toward my elbow, and the sass holding my fear at bay collapses.

“Let go of me!”

“Stop fighting.”

“Stop abducting me!”

I drive my heel down on his shoe. His fingers tighten until I can feel the bruises forming beneath them.

Then the growl of a bike rolls through the rain.

My body recognizes the sound before my mind places it.

In Black Pines, bikes used to empty sidewalks.

Shopkeepers turned their signs to CLOSED, mothers pulled children indoors, and everyone found somewhere else to look when the Wolves rode past. The Damned Saints from Lovestone Ridge eventually drove them out, but fear has a longer memory than any town.

The bike sweeps into the lot and stops several yards behind the sedan, its engine growling through the rain.

The man astride it looks like every warning my mother ever gave me, which is rich considering she is sending me to marry a stranger.

Rain gleams across his black leather cut.

DAMNED SINNERS curves above a hooded skull backed by crossed guns and framed by metallic wings.

Dark denim stretches over powerful thighs, and his open cut reveals a charcoal shirt darkened across the shoulders by the rain.

Black ink covers his forearms before vanishing beneath his sleeves.

He removes his helmet.

Dark hair brushes his collar. Rough stubble shadows a face made of hard, rugged angles, and a pale scar cuts through one eyebrow.

Then he looks at me.

His eyes are silver.

The color should make them cold, but the force of his attention sends heat through my stomach. My pulse kicks hard enough to qualify as a symptom.

My body has contributed nothing useful to this emergency, yet it chooses now to develop an attraction to the largest threat in the parking lot.

His gaze drops to the hand around my wrist.

Whatever warmth I imagined in those silver eyes disappears.

“Take your hand off her.”

His voice is deep and rough, the kind a woman feels against her skin long after the words end.

My common sense packs a bag and leaves.

The man holding me loosens his grip without releasing me. “This is private business.”

The biker swings one leg over the bike and rises.

He is taller than I expect, broad enough through the shoulders to make the men beside the sedan look smaller. The balanced way he plants his boots suggests training, although I cannot tell what kind. I only know he looks completely at ease with the possibility of violence.

He is the sort of bad decision a woman remembers more fondly than every good one.