Read Extreme Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 7) Online
Authors: James,Marysol
Tags: #military, #gay, #mmromance, #contemporary, #series, #romantc suspense
Extreme Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 7)
Extreme Curves
(Dangerous Curves #7)
By Marysol James
© 2016 by Marysol James.
All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design:
theuntitledbook.com
Cover photo: © Andrei vishnyakov/Fotolia
Dedication
For S and K.
Because you knew love when you saw it, and then you fought for it. Hard.
Contents
Prologue
Seven years ago
“Ace.” Liam ‘Spider’ Valance’s brown eyes were wide with confusion and hurt. “Ace, please….
please
, babe. Let’s just run, OK? Just run and leave Denver. We can start again someplace where nobody knows who we are. We can – we can be together. For real and openly and really
together
, for the first time since this whole thing between us began. Please.”
Ace Cuddy’s eyes were much darker than Liam’s, and unlike his soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend’s, his were nothing but hard, heartless pools of endless night. He stopped packing his bag and stared at Liam, and it was like he had
no fucking idea
who this tall, slim man with a spider web tattoo across his face even
was
. Like he’d never laid eyes on the man in the whole of his goddamn life, and sure as hell didn’t know his name. Like he’d never kissed him, or held him, or whispered how much he loved him as he thrust deep into Liam’s sweaty, trembling body.
Like Liam meant nothing at all to him.
Like Liam was nothing to him now, and he never had been.
Like he never would be.
“I told you.” Ace’s voice was disinterested to the point of sheer boredom. “This was fun while it lasted, but it was never going to be forever. It was always going to go this way, if things came down to you or the club. You knew this.”
“
The club
?” Liam spat out. He’d never said one word against the Fallen Angels, the one-percenter motorcycle club that Ace was a member of, not in the whole year that he’d been with this man – but the time for reticence was over.
Way
fucking over. “The club that would make sure that you suffered a slow, painful death if they knew that you like men? The club that would shoot me between the eyes for being a
fag
?” His voice was dripping with sarcastic venom by now as he deliberately emphasized that hated, hateful word. “
That
club, Ace?
That
one?”
A muscle in Ace’s unshaven, scarred cheek twitched, but that was the only reaction that he gave. “No, Liam. The club that just tapped me to be Vice-President. The club that took me in and took care of me when nobody else on the whole fucking planet gave a shit about me. The club that’s my family, a family made up of my brothers.
That
club.”
“Family?” Liam’s voice rose with incredulity. “
Family
? Those killers and rapists and kidnappers and drug- and gun-running monsters?
God
, Ace… they
hate
you, even if they have no idea that they do. They hate everything that you stand for and everything that you are. Everything that I am. That
we
are, babe. They’d rip your skin off your bones and let rats eat your insides if they knew what we’ve been up to. And
these
are the ‘brothers’ that you’re leaving me for?
This
is the ‘family’ that you’ll end us for?”
Ace shrugged his broad shoulders, the Fallen Angels patch on his leather cut moving up and down with the movement. He turned back to the bed, carried on packing, more quickly now.
“I thought…” Liam’s voice trailed off, and despite his resolve to stay detached and ignore his lover’s obvious pain and distress, Ace found himself looking at Liam again. “I thought – that
I
was your family.”
“You –
what
?” Ace was thrown, thrown totally and genuinely, and he gaped at Liam. “Why the hell would you ever think
that
? The club is my family, always has been. I
belong
with them, Liam.”
Liam was silent; when he sighed, it was with the muted breath of a defeated man.
Yes, this was over, and he knew it. Ace Cuddy had been trouble from the get-go, and God knows, Liam had clocked that the second that their eyes had met at the Fallen Angels bar. But what was supposed to just be a bit of fun with a bad boy had spiraled out of control – and fast. It was love now; real, true, devastating and breath-stealing
love
, and Liam felt his heart crack right in two as he looked at Ace for what was probably the last time.
“You say that you belong with them,” Liam said slowly. “But if you stay with them, you’ll have to carry on lying every single second of every single day about who you are. You
get
that, right? If you choose them and you let me go, then you lose the only person on the whole damn planet that you can be who you
really
are with. With me, you can be yourself… I
love
you for who you are, and they
hate
you for the same thing.” He paused. “That’s not much of a family, Ace.”
Ace said nothing, mostly because he had nothing to say. Liam was nothing but bang-on right, of course he was, but he was also nothing but risk and ruin. Running away with him, running away from the only life that Ace had even known or understood – even if that life
was
teeming with danger and death and destruction – was impossible to imagine.
Or… maybe not so impossible. Not really. Because if Ace let his mind wander, he could easily see how life with Liam might be. They’d find a city somewhere far from Denver, maybe up in Canada, where the Fallen Angels had no strong, established connections and would never find them. Liam would work in a café somewhere, and Ace would… well. Ace would do something. He wasn’t bad with his hands and with engines, so maybe he’d be able to find work as a mechanic, and anyway, he had some money socked away for a rainy day that’d last them a good long while. They’d have a tiny apartment together, and they’d be able to sit on the sofa and watch TV and laugh and talk. Then they’d be able to climb into bed together and make love, or cuddle and talk some more, or just go to sleep, peaceful and safe, without worry or care that one of Ace’s MC brothers would come bursting in with no notice and find them naked in bed.
So, yeah. Maybe life with Liam wasn’t so hard to imagine after all.
But the big, honest truth was that living openly as a gay man was – hands down – the most terrifying thing that Ace had ever contemplated. And seeing as he hadn’t even
flinched
at killing people, or negotiating with drug dealers and pimps with a gun to his head, or beating the living hell out of rival MC gang members, the fact that he was petrified at admitting his own sexual orientation was a bit astonishing. But it was what it was.
And what it was was this: Ace wasn’t ready to be true to himself, and to be an unapologetic gay man. He could be himself in secret little hotel rooms with Liam, and that was amazing. It was the most amazing thing that he’d ever had in the whole of his hard, rough life; it was the only real sweetness or tenderness that he’d ever known, and he loved it like he loved nothing else.
But being gay out
there
, in the big, huge world?
No.
No fucking way
.
So Ace stiffened his resolve, and he proceeded to smash any hope for them that either one of them might have. He didn’t want Liam thinking that there was even the smallest, slimmest chance here, since it would be dangerous for
both
of them if Liam made any attempts to communicate or reconcile. The only way forward that was safe was to beat this whole thing down into the ground, and leave it there, dead and destroyed.
And that meant breaking Liam’s heart. It meant making Liam hate him.
And it meant that Ace would be breaking his own heart in the process.
But it would keep them both safe, and right now, that was all that he’d let himself see.
I have to keep Liam safe and alive and whole. Because if the boys do anything to him, I’d fucking die
long
before they ever got their hands on me too. Hell, if they hurt him as bad as I know they would, I’d
beg
for them to slit my throat, I swear it.
“I don’t give a flying fuck
what
you think a family looks like,” Ace said, his voice as cold as liquid nitrogen. “You ain’t anything
like
enough to make me turn my back on the club, and I don’t give a fuck if you can’t accept that. I’m walking out of this hotel room in less than a minute, and once I do, you never existed. Tomorrow, you'll get a massive transfer of cash to your bank account from an anonymous sender. Use it to leave Denver for a while, if you want, or buy a house, or whetever the fuck makes you happy, but understand this: that money buys your silence. It makes you forget that I ever knew your name. It makes you forget that I ever saw your face. You hear me? I walk out this door, and you’re
nothing
. You’re dead to me.”
The force of the ugliness of the words hit Liam like a sucker-punch to the gut, and he sat down on the bed, his legs weak. Numb, he watched as the man that he loved zipped up his overnight bag and threw it over his muscled shoulder. Liam opened his mouth, shut it again since he didn’t know what to say anyway, then he realized that he knew
exactly
what he wanted to say after all.
“You’re going to regret this, Ace,” he said hollowly. “And when you do, remember this and remember it always: you chose them over me. You did this to us. I wanted to run, I wanted to be with you. I’d have given it all up to start over with you, and I’d have done it in a heartbeat. So when you figure out that you just made a huge mistake, don’t you forget any of that. I know that
I
won’t.”
Ace curled his lip to hide its shaking. “I won’t regret this. Ever.”
Unable to look at Liam for one second longer, he turned on his heel and headed for the door, hating himself so much in this moment, but knowing that it was really just the beginning, and that he’d just hate himself more as time passed.
He was almost out and away, but not quite. That was when Ace heard the small, quiet voice behind him:
“I won’t forgive you for this. Never.”
And Ace knew that he’d never forgive himself, either.
Never
.
Chapter One
Present day
Carl ‘Tex’ Sinclair and Clarice ‘Honey’ Potts pulled up outside The Web Café and parked the dark SUV. They squinted through the early-February gloom, stared grimly at the brightly-lit, bustling café.
“
Jeeeeesus
,” Tex said, his Texan drawl giving the word an especially-disgusted edge. “I do
not
want to do this.”
“Right?” Honey replied, her baby-blue eyes narrowing as she scoped the busy street outside. “I wish to
hell
that I was with King and Jack right now. Body-disposal duty in the middle of a goddamn snow storm would be way better than
this
. Hands-frickin’-
down
.”
“Mmmm-hmmmm.” Tex checked his gun, checked the sidewalk in the driver’s side mirror. “I’d actually give a lot to be helping to put Kirk Fuckin’ Jensen in the ground once and for all.
Never
thought I’d see the day that the man kicked the bucket, and the fact that Ace Cuddy of all damn people was the one to pull the trigger gives me nothing but the happy feels, I swear to Christ.”
“Yeah, well.” Honey checked her own weapon, checked her own mirror. “Cuddy has started a damn
war
now, and we’d better start making sure that certain individuals are out of the direct line of fire.”
“Yeah.” Tex opened his door, lifted his collar against the wind. “Let’s go get him. What are the chances that he’ll come quietly and happily?”
“Uh, I’d say slim-to-none.”
“I’m with you.” Tex sighed. “I’d say that you’re even being wildly optimistic.”
“Yeah,” Honey agreed, her high-heeled boots clicking on the sidewalk as they headed for the café door. “I’m undoubtedly doing just that, cowboy.”
They walked into The Web, and spotted Liam ‘Spider’ Valance right away. They’d never met the man before, but that hardly mattered in identifying him, of course. The spider web tattooed across his face, the spiders tattooed around his neck – they were visible at two hundred paces, and no way anybody else in the whole of Denver had these distinctive tattoos. Hell, possibly nobody else in the whole
state
had them.
“Ready?” Tex muttered to Honey. “You want me to do the talking?”
“I’d
love
for you to do the talking,” she said. “I got your back.”
“Thanks, girl,” Tex said as he sauntered over to the counter. “Coffees are on you.”
“Deal.”
Spider looked up as a tall, broad, blond man approached the counter, looking like he meant business. Spider didn’t know
why
he thought that, but something about the way that the man was moving just made Spider want to back right up. The guy was clearly physically commanding and intimidating as hell… and those icy-cold green eyes didn’t help matters even
slightly
.
“Hello,” Spider said cautiously to the gorgeous scary man, as he just stood there looking equal parts insanely-hot and -terrifying. “Can I help you?”
“Two black coffees to go,” the guy said in a delicious southern drawl. “And is there someplace that we can have a word privately?”
Now Spider
did
take that step back. “Uh – why?”
“Because we need to talk,” the man said. “All three of us.”
That was when Spider saw the tiny blonde woman behind the hulking sex-god. He might have had his eyes nailed on Spider, but the woman was looking around the room, really clocking every single customer, and nothing seemed to escape her notice. She looked just as intense, just as in-control as the blond man, and it suddenly occurred to Spider that he’d only ever seen that level of focus and smarts in two other men: Matt ‘King’ Kingston and Jackson ‘Jack’ Taylor.
Both badass ex-military, and secretive black ops experts, and highly-trained members of King’s Men.
That
was when he knew that these two people weren’t customers on a much-needed coffee-run from the office. They
also
weren’t standing in his café by accident.
“What’s happened?” Spider said, already thinking pretty seriously about panicking. “Why are you here?”
“You know who sent us?” the man asked quietly.
Spider nodded. “King.”
“We need to talk,” the guy said brusquely. “
Now
. No bullshit, man.”
“I wasn’t even thinking of protesting,” Spider said, a bit taken aback at the stranger’s insistence. “I know that if you’re here, there’s a good reason.”
The man and woman nodded, and Spider felt fear clenching up in his flat stomach.
Now
what? It’s not like life hadn’t been eventful lately, and it’s not like Spider hadn’t been expecting the other shoe to drop, but now that it was here, he realized that actually, he hadn’t been as prepared as he’d thought he was.
After all, if two of King’s Men were in front of him, then King clearly felt that there was danger on the horizon – immediate danger. Or maybe the danger was already on Spider, and he’d been blissfully serving coffee and baking cookies all day, blithely unaware that he was a man dancing on a cliff’s edge.
Worse, anything that involved King’s Men and himself meant – almost definitely – that the Fallen Angels MC was
also
involved.
And
that
meant that Ace Cuddy was either in trouble, or causing trouble.
Or possibly both.
As always when he thought about Ace, Spider’s heart juddered to a halt in his chest, then started up again, jerky and too-fast. Because no matter how hard or how long or how much he hated that man, he also loved him, and missed him, desperately. Like he’d miss the sun if he never saw it again, or if the wind just stopped blowing one day. Not being with Ace felt totally
wrong
to Spider; it was an unnatural state of being for them to be separate. It was one of those things that time just didn’t help or heal, not in the slightest. After all, how would losing the warmth of the sun or the caress of the wind
ever
become something natural or normal or remotely-OK, even with the passing of time?
“So where can we talk?” The blond guy’s voice cut through Spider’s longing for Ace, bringing him up short. “Privately, man.”
“Oh.” Spider shook his dark head a bit. “Yeah. My office.”
“Let’s go.”
And so off they trooped, one after the other, Spider leading and the small blonde woman bringing up the rear. Once they were all in, the man locked the door, then turned to face Spider, who had backed up again and was now perched on the very edge of his desk.
“Tex,” the man said now, pointing at his own massive chest. He nodded at the woman. “Honey.”
Spider nodded, privately thinking that these special ops types always had the sexiest, most-appropriate nicknames going. Tex was – clearly – from Texas, and while tiny little Honey was as golden and sweet-looking as the liquid itself, Spider was absolutely positive that the woman was nothing but kick-ass and lethal. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be part of King’s crew. Hell, she could probably snap Spider in half with her perfectly-manicured baby finger.
“Liam,” he said, his voice shaky even to his own ears. “But everyone calls me Spider.” He took a deep breath, bracing himself for impact, trying to forget the one and only man who’d ever called him
Liam,
knowing that
that
man was impossible to forget, and even more impossible to avoid talking about here and now. “OK, guys. Hit me with it, whatever it is.”
Tex gave him a slow, lazy grin. “You’re a fan of the bandaid approach, huh, Spider? Just rip it on off in one go?”
“Yep.”
“You got it.” Tex stopped smiling, shifted his weight on his cowboy boots. “Ace killed Kirk Jensen, and now we have reason to think that the Fallen Angels will be coming after you.”
Spider blinked. He knew his mouth was hanging open, but he couldn’t seem to close it. Whatever he’d thought they were there for,
that
hadn’t been it.
“Uh,” he managed, then stuttered to a stop. What part of the clusterfuck to begin with? “Uh… Ace did
what
?”
“Killed Kirk Jensen,” Tex repeated slowly, like he was humoring a slow toddler. “Blew him away in cold blood.”
“Why?” Spider asked, stupefied at
this
news. God, he’d thought that Kirk Jensen had been indestructible, untouchable, immortal. “
Why
did he, knowing how dangerous it was to so much as touch one hair on that fucker’s greasy head?”
“He was protecting someone,” Honey said. “That’s all you need to know, alright? Ace didn’t have any choice. It was these other people or it was Jensen.”
“So – so Ace saved someone?” Spider said.
“Yes,” Tex replied. “He did. At great personal risk to himself, I need to add.”
“Oh.” Spider wrestled with himself for a second, trying hard not to feel a bit of pride about Ace’s good call. “OK… well. Uh. So if Ace killed that piece of shit, why would the Angels come after me? I didn’t have anything to do with it.” He paused, remembering just how involved he was with King’s Men, and he suddenly wasn’t sure that he
hadn’t
done something wrong, even inadvertently. “Did I?”
“Well…” Tex looked a bit uncomfortable. “Well… uh… this part’s a bit… it’s not… ummmm…”
“It seems that your ex held onto a pen drive with some very intimate pictures of you two,” Honey interrupted, clearly not the type to mince words or shy away from anything touchy. “Stupidly, he hid it somewhere in his apartment, and before Jensen died, he told Ace that his former MC brothers were in the process of tearing up his place with crowbars.”
“They –
what
?” Spider stammered. “But –
why
?”
“Because Jensen already knew that Ace was the one ratting him out.”
“Is that why Ace
really
killed him?” Spider said slowly. “To protect himself from being found out as an informant for King’s Men?”
“No,” Honey said. “No. What I said was the truth: he killed Kirk so someone else could live.” She thought about Warren Kane and Shay Alcott with fondness, wished them godspeed and good luck as they fled to their new life together. “
Two
someone else’s actually. I swear to you, I didn’t lie about that.”
“OK.” Spider sighed, feeling the wild urge to down a shot of vodka. Maybe two. “OK. So… Kirk Jensen figured out that Ace was working with you guys, and he told the MC?”
“Yep.”
“And they turned on Ace.” It wasn’t a question. “On their own President.”
“Of
course
they did,” Tex said, incredulous. “Ace betrayed them, man, and these boys may be vicious fucking wild animals, but they have their own codes of honor and ethics, and what Ace did was against everything they believe in. Hell, he’s
lucky
that Jensen decided to try to kill Ace himself. He could have just turned him over to the Fallen Angels, and told ‘em to let loose and have at him. If he’d done
that
, Ace’s death would have been slow and painful. It’d still be going on, to be blunt, and would probably go on until next week.”
Spider blanched, as image after horrible image raced through his spinning mind. Ace skinned alive and left to die in the mountains. Ace beaten for a week solid before succumbing to internal injuries. Ace burned with cigarettes for days before being set on fire. He shut his eyes, suddenly grateful that Jensen had been the type to want to take care of business himself, because his monster ego demanded it. That arrogance had probably saved Ace’s life. Far easier to take on one guy than an entire MC.
Not that Spider cared about Ace anymore, of course. He just didn’t want the man to be tortured to death. That’s all.
“So…” Spider said, refocusing on the situation at hand. “So you came here because…”
“Because we need to hide you,” Honey told him. “As soon as those animals find those pictures – and they will, make no mistake – they’ll come looking for you.”
“Oh. Oh, right.” Spider spoke numbly, automatically. “Of course they will.”
“We’ve come to take you to a safe house,” Honey said. “It’s all set up and ready, and King’s instructed us to get you there within the hour.”
“OK,” Spider said, still a bit stunned. “Uh-huh. Right.”
“Spider,” she said gently. “You with us?”
“Sure.” With a huge effort, he rejoined the here and now. “I’m fine.”
“OK.” Tex leaned his entire hulking frame back against the office door, crossed his muscled arms. “So we need to haul ass to the safe house, son. Like
now
. You go in, and you don’t come out until King declares that the coast is clear.”
“But…” Spider blinked, as a bit of reality began to hit. “But… what about my café? My apartment? My… well. My life?”
“If you give a good goddamn about your life, you’ll do what King says,” Tex growled. “Don’t be a fuckin’ fool, man.”
“But… I have responsibilities. Staff, suppliers, customers.”
“Right now, your
only
responsibility is seeing the sunrise tomorrow,” Honey said, her voice sharp. “Tex is right. If you have a death wish, then by all means, carry on with coming to work and serving up coffee and I hope you grow eyes in the back of your head, because whatever’s coming, you won’t see it and I know that for a
fact
. But if you want to be here to see the spring, then you’d better smarten up good and quick.”
“I’m not saying that I won’t come,” Spider said, stung. “I’m not an idiot, guys. I know what the hell’s at stake here. But it’s too sudden. I mean, can you call King and ask if I can have one night to put things in order? Go to the safe house tomorrow morning first thing?”
“No,” Tex and Honey said simultaneously.
“Just – no?”
“Just fuckin’ no,” Tex said, his voice rough enough to crush asphalt. “King said one hour, and you’re wasting time, man. You’re down to fifty-three minutes.”
“But –”
“You coming or not?” Honey interrupted him. “Because I have a really,
really
low bullshit tolerance threshold, and this conversation is boring me now.”
“Do I have a choice?” Spider said, a bit jokingly. “Or are you going to knock me out and throw me in the car?”