Promise Me
Authors: Cora Brent
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Women's Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Romance, #New Adult & College, #Romantic Suspense, #Contemporary Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Crime, #Psychological, #Multicultural & Interracial, #Mystery & Suspense, #Suspense
PROMISE ME
(DEFIANT Motorcycle Club)
By Cora Brent © 2014
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
This book contains adult themes, explicit language and sexual situations. It is intended for mature audiences.
Check out my
Author Page
to
see what else I’ve been up to.
This is a stand alone novel, but if you would like to read more about the Defiant MC and all its colorful characters,
Know Me
, a
short novella, is already available.
(Mojave Desert
outside Quartzsite, Arizona)
GRAYSON
He nursed his latest beer and watched the girl. She didn’t realize it; nothing in her peculiar past had taught her how beautiful she was. He was still uncomfortably hard from the impulsive dance they’d shared there on the sticky floor of the Riverbottom. Grayson had pulled back reluctantly when he’d felt himself rising but the way she had pressed against him with even more resolve told him all he needed to know.
Then came the shouts and catcalls from his brothers and he’d scoffed, retreating for the moment as she stared at him with a puzzled look in her pretty green eyes.
Grayson wanted to tell her why.
No baby
, not like that, no dirty ride in a back room for you.
But he just eased onto a chair
in the rear of the bar and tried to will his wooden arousal into submission.
“Guess who’s making fucking trouble?” Casper said by way of greeting, sinking down across from him.
Grayson looked at the VP of Defiant Motorcycle Club. He had an important history with this man. Picacho Prison hadn’t been titled the ‘Gladiator School’ for nothing and allies could get you killed or they could save your life; it was a crapshoot. Ever since the betrayal which had cost him his freedom at age nineteen, Grayson regarded friends as a liability. But he saw quality in Casper Weitz, and started to believe that maybe there were still men who honored each other. So when the sky opened up and rained down shit, he stepped up for Casper and wasn’t sorry, even when it cost him a year in The Walls. Solitary. That was the sacrifice which earned him a place here, in Defiant, and he was glad.
Casper
lit a smoke and waited patiently for his response.
“Goddamn it,” Grayson sighed, leaning back in the chair. He didn’t have to guess. He blamed himself for
not getting wise to Talia a lot sooner. But she’d jumped on him when he was on the outside fewer than twelve hours. Six years of young life was a long time for a man to go without a woman’s body. Grayson had never been too versed in the mysteries of the female mind and so that cold snake was able to fool him. For a while.
Casper’s old lady, Rachel, hurried over, her lovely face anxious. “Cas. Mojaves are outside.” Her manner made it plain the visit wasn’t a usual
sociable one.
Mojaves. Mojave Marauders. Grayson’s hand tensed into a fist. Mojaves were friends, mostly, a club out of nearby Parker. But Grayson knew that some friends turned on a dime.
Orion Jackson got to the door first. He was the Defiant President, and a big son of a bitch who never shrunk from charging in first. He didn’t even look behind him to see if any of his boys followed.
Grayson glanced around shrewdly. Besides hims
elf and Casper there was only a shit-faced Brandon, who got unsteadily to his feet when Casper jerked on his arm. He lurched into Grayson’s side as his blurred eyes tried to sort out what the hell was going on.
Grayson’s breath caught when he noticed the girl staring directly at him. The fearful look on he
r face as she clasped her hands together twisted a part of his soul which hadn’t been right ever since the day she’d stumbled into him, pleading for help. No, he wouldn’t allow her to be terrorized. Whatever the Mojaves wanted wasn’t for her eyes.
“Rachel,” he said hoarsely, jerking his head. Rachel understood and ushered the girl behind the bar.
When he stepped out into the clear desert night the first thing he heard was Orion’s ominous voice instructing someone to go piss twice and fuck himself.
“Make him answer
for his own goddamn ass first.” Grayson knew the voice before he saw the man. He was Angelo, VP of the Marauders. He was also the man whose bed Talia had filled since Grayson had thrown her over.
Orion’s arms were crossed and he was all but growling. No one rode u
p to his place and tossed out orders. This could be bad. Grayson quickly counted eight other Mojaves behind Angelo. Some grinned eerily as the prospect of violence loomed; others shifted uncomfortably, disliking this confrontation with associates.
Angelo noticed him and pointed a fat finger. He was more than halfway drunk. “You,”
he snarled. “You think you can dick me out of money and then laugh about it?”
Grayson cursed to himself, recognizing Talia’s hand. Likely
she had plied Angelo with mind-numbing garbage and fed him some crazy bullshit.
“
Look,” he said, stepping from behind Orion and addressing Angelo, “I don’t know what the hell she told you, but no such thing ever happened. Take a fucking minute to think it through and know that you’re being played.”
Casper stood beside
him. “’Lo,” he shook his head at the Mojave VP and spoke with firm sincerity, “since when does the word of some nutty whore come between men?”
Angelo may have been drunk and angry but reason hadn’t completely desert
ed him. He spat into the sand. “Never,” he grumbled. Some of his boys murmured in agreement.
Orion was already tired of the whole business. “So are we done with this shit? You and your bitches come inside and have a round on the house.”
Angelo lifted his head slowly. The fire may have gone out of him but he still wouldn’t walk away looking weak.
Grayson took a step forward, spreading his arms wide, recognizing the man’s dilemma.
Angelo had hauled his boys and their bikes out here for a reason. It didn’t matter that the reason didn’t exist; he couldn’t just meekly let it go. “What’ll it take?” Grayson asked quietly.
Angelo gave him a grim smile. “
Two from my fist and keep standing.”
Grayson g
lanced back at Orion. The big man nodded. Grayson removed his leather cut and the faded t-shirt underneath, tossing them back to Casper for safe keeping.
“Go,” he said.
The first blow was a stiff uppercut which caught him underneath his left eye. Angelo was a head shorter but outweighed him by a good fifty pounds and he’d been a boxer before his burgeoning gut got in the way. Grayson had to take a step back to stay upright but it was okay. The second punch aimed for his ribs. He’d taken dozens of hits like that clamoring through the teeming mess of Picacho and knew how to stiffen his body and let the muscle bounce it.
Grayson
exhaled as his abdomen relaxed and his face swelled. They weren’t too bad as blows went. The Mojave Marauders VP was trying to save face and be fair at the same time. He slapped Grayson on the shoulder good naturedly as he followed Orion into the Riverbottom Bar. “We’re square, kid.”
The tension loosened among the othe
r men and they began to mock the hell out of each other. Casper handed him his clothes back and shook his head with a grin.
Grayson returned the smile
but then it fell away a second later when he saw her. She was pushing her way through the broad backs of the men to reach him.
He said her name, “Promise,”
trying to keep his voice even to let the girl know it was all right. But she had witnessed everything and wouldn’t be held back.
“Gray,” she whispered, touching the swelling under his eye with one hand while allowing her fingertips to trail across his bare chest with the other. Then she threw her arms around his neck as she had when they danced, only this time it was urgent.
And he groaned as his body instantly responded to the feel of her. She knew it, arching into him. When their mouths met it was the sweetest agony he had ever known. His hands moved all over her with their own plan and she clutched him more tightly. When he lifted her with ease, her legs went around his waist, their mouths still fastened together. As she broke the kiss briefly she looked soulfully into his eyes and whispered a single word.
“
Now.”
H
e carried her back to his trailer as her lips moved tortuously along his neck.
He had told himself that he wouldn’t allow this.
He reasoned that the last thing she needed was him. But he hadn’t counted on the fact that her desire was as great as his.
Grayson had to force himself to play gently as he peeled off her clothes and covered her with his mouth, his hands. She moaned, helping him get where he wanted. She touched the rigid outline of his organ tentatively, and then more insistentl
y, as she released the length and held it in her hand while Grayson just about lost his goddamn mind. He had to have her.
Now,
she had demanded. And now it would happen.
This
, after all, was a dance older than time.
This
was how they were meant to be.