The Outlaw Stakes His Claim

Evernight
Publishing

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2014
Jenika
Snow

 
ISBN: 978-1-77130-848-9

Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs

Editor:
Karyn
White

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized
reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
 
No part of this book may be used or
reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All
names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

Don't lose hope even when you
feel it slipping through your fingers.

THE OUTLAW STAKES HIS CLAIM

The
Grizzly MC, 5

Jenika
Snow

Copyright © 2014

Chapter One

Dallas brought the bottle of Jack to his lips and
took another long drink from the now half-empty bottle. He was on one of the
leather couches watching as Stinger got a lap dance from one of the club
whores. He was already drunker than fuck, feeling shittier than usual since he
had gone to
Maddix’s
grave today to pay his respects,
and just wanted to find oblivion. He held up the bottle of whiskey and looked
at it. He was half-way there already, but he wanted to be so fucked up he
didn’t know what was up and what was down. He took another long pull from the
bottle and leaned back even further in the couch. Stinger had a joint between
his lips and his hands on the club pussy’s ass as she shook that shit like it
was going out of style. He had seen Meghan’s grave, too, and although they
hadn’t really spoken civilly since the divorce, she still had been the mother
of his son, and he had loved her at one time in his life.

“Hey, baby.”

Dallas turned and looked at Cotton, one of the newer
club whores. She was wearing one of those dresses short enough that if a breeze
moved past her he had no doubts her cunt would flash the world.

“You look sad, baby.” She placed her hand on his
thigh.

Dallas couldn’t help the low growl that left him.
But she was smart enough that she removed her hand and took a step back.

“You not in the mood, Dallas?”
She pouted, obviously thinking that she could seduce him with those glossy lips
that had been dubbed by the MC as DSLs: dick
suckin
’
lips.

“I’m not in the mood for you.” He really wasn’t a
bastard,
well,
he hadn’t been until the accident that
had taken
Maddix
and Meghan. “You’d be smart to walk
away, Cotton. I’m in a foul mood, and the alcohol isn’t helping any.” He didn’t
look at her, but he saw her take another step back out of the corner of his
eye, and heard her swallow. These females might be here willingly, and give up
their pussy like it was a buffet and they were the spread, but they knew what
The Grizzly MC was, and that was cold–blooded, killing animals.

He finished off the rest of the bottle and set the
now empty Jack on the table beside him Yeah, he was a messed up bastard, one
who was bringing a lot of people down with him. Maybe this was his punishment
for all the messed up things he had done in his life? It would be fitting to
take lives from him like he had done to so many others—even if the ones he had
killed had been bad men that had done a lot of harm in this world. He needed
more liquor, a fucking lot more alcohol to make this life bearable.

****

One
week later

Hope took the winding mountain road and leaned
forward so she could try to see out of her windshield. Rain pelted the glass,
and her windshield wipers were doing a shit job of making the road in front of
her visible. She had been running her whole life. It was not because she had a
broken, ruined life, but because she was missing something. She just didn’t
know what it was. Hope had been working her ass off since the age of fifteen.
Living in a small town like Silver Springs, Colorado had been nice and homey,
but of course it had its own set of problems. Secrets had been aplenty, and
condemnation ran rampant. If someone didn’t fit into the mold that the
residents of Silver Springs wanted, then they were seen as an outcast. She had
experienced some of that, but had put that behind her, and was now starting her
life over.

Her family
was loving
, and
although she hadn’t been the social type in school and didn’t have any friends she
considered close, she had gotten through it—even if those four years before she
graduated high school were hell in many ways. Life after high school had been slightly
better. She attended the community college in
Riverton,
gotten her degree, and then it took her a year before she got offered a
position for her specific area of study.

At twenty-three she had seen herself in a big city,
with tall buildings and people surrounding her. Hope wanted to be invisible,
and a larger city could provide that for her. But where she was headed wasn’t
big by any means. Steel Corner was certainly larger than Silver Springs, but
after a year of sending out resumes she had finally gotten a formal invitation
to work at a small printing press for the Steel Corner Gazette, and she had
jumped at the opportunity. It certainly wasn’t the bustle of Denver, the
artistic atmosphere of Boulder, and was just a small newspaper press, but it
was a start.

She took a slight left, and her Jeep hydroplaned for
a second. She was able to get control of the car, but her heart was already
slamming hard behind her ribs. Maybe if she was a superstitious person she
might have thought this was a bad omen on her move. Her GPS chimed out in the
female voice with a slight English accent that she was ten minutes from Steel
Corner.

The trees thinned out right before the very beautiful,
but frightening view of Steel Corner Lake came into view on her left hand side.
It wasn’t the largest lake she had ever seen, but it certainly was the most
frightening, especially right now. Her Jeep hydroplaned once more, and she
swerved to the right. Hope tightened her hands on the steering wheel and pulled
off to the side of the road. She hated driving in this kind of weather, but it
seemed the higher she climbed the mountainside the worse the rain came down.
Waiting until it cleared up a bit sounded like the smart and sane thing to do.
Hope hadn’t seen a car on the road in at least half an hour, but no one in
their right mind would be trying to navigate these winding mountain roads in
this weather. Well, no one but her.

She looked out the driver’s side window and stared
at the lake. It was huge but with the rain coming down, from the distance, it
looked ominous and dark, hence why she thought it was one of the most
frightening things she had seen. She was so focused on lake in front of her
that she hadn’t spotted the person parked off the side of the road across from
her. He was a little ways from where she was parked, but what was clear was
that he was standing beside a motorcycle. Clearly he had pulled off until the
storm ended. She squinted and ran her hand over her window, cleaning off some
of the fog that started to coat the glass. It was hard to really make him out,
but he had something written on the back of the leather vest he wore. He stood
a few feet from his bike, his arms hanging by his side.

For a minute or two all she did was
stare
at him. Should she see if he was okay? He didn’t seem
hurt,
and just stood there staring at the lake. And Hope
certainly shouldn’t have even been thinking about talking to a man on the side
of the road, but she couldn’t push away the nagging voice that there might be
something wrong. She rolled down the window halfway, and wind and rain
instantly came through and slammed into her face.

“Hey?” She had to yell over the howl of wind.

He didn’t turn around.

“Hey. Are you okay?” She yelled even louder, and
wiped her face with her hand when a huge gust of wind had the rain slapping
against her skin like an open palm.