Rook and Ronin Box Set: The Complete Alpha Billionaire Series (Books 1-5)

by Huss, JA

  Personally, I think those two are made for each other, but Spencer's not a relationship kinda guy, so Veronica's sorta out of luck.

  We could not have planned this part better if we tried because Veronica sucks up attention like it's a precious commodity. She's got the entire parking lot filled with medics and cops twisted around her little finger as she moans about her injury. They all take turns lifting up her shirt to check her flesh wound—scrape really. That bullet scraped her as it flashed past her waist.

  Spence catches me watching and smiles at me from across the parking lot, then shoots me with his finger. "We're still road trippin'? Rook? Ronin?"

  I look over at Ford. He's busy with the lawyers now, explaining with his hands, smiling, and even laughing a little. The way he always does when things are nearing the end and he knows we just pulled off the perfect job. We're gonna get away with it. Again.

  "You wanna stay home, Rook? I think even Ford will understand if you flake on this deal."

  She finally lifts her head and looks me in the eye. "You set all this up?"

  I nod. "Well, I came up with the general idea, Spence made it real, and Ford hacked the shit out of that loser all summer trying to get him to take the bait. Of course, I didn't know he had access to the building or I'd never've left you upstairs. I'm so sorry it ended wrong, it was only supposed to be a virtual crime."

  She gets a little misty-eyed and I hug her close. "It's over now, OK? It's all over. He's going away, he'll never walk right again, and he's gonna spend a very long time being some thug's prison bitch."

  "Thank you," she says in her most serious and sincere voice. "Thank you."

  "Any time, Gidge. Any time. Oh, I almost forgot. You might be exactly four hundred and fifteen thousand dollars richer." I laugh as the number rolls off my tongue. "And it might be sitting in non-traceable off-shore bank accounts. Because we might've stolen all his money while we were at it. Serves him right since the only reason he got caught is because he tried to steal yours. Paybacks are always a bitch."

  Chapter Thirty-Six - Rook

  Elise, of all people, is driving the RV up to Sturgis. It's only a six-hour drive, so not a very big deal. But just seeing her tiny hands clutching that huge-ass steering wheel makes me laugh.

  "What's funny?" she asks me as she blows past a slow car on the highway. There's hardly anyone on this road. Not many people live up this way. Not many would want to.

  "You," I say. "You constantly surprise me. Elise."

  A loud roar from the back signals a winner of the current hand of poker. It's just us in this RV—no camera crews allowed. Ford's orders. It's just me, Elise, Spencer, Ronin, Antoine, and Ford. Just us.

  My new family.

  I cannot even explain how great it feels to think of them this way.

  Elise winks at me and then eases the massive vehicle back into the right lane and slows down a little. "I keep everyone on their toes, Rook. If I wasn't here, the whole place would fall down."

  I believe that, too.

  I chat with her like this for the entire drive, occasionally spotting some wildlife I never even knew existed in the US. Like antelope. Who knew? The cops kept us occupied most of the day yesterday, so we just decided to head out early this morning instead. We still have time to settle in before our show tomorrow. Spencer said he changed his mind about the final painting, he didn't even show Ronin.

  I never knew what the original one looked like, so I could care less. This summer I've been sexy Elvis, a cyborg, a slutty hitchhiker, a slutty beach girl, a slutty Catwoman-ish thing… well, just insert slutty in front of all the rest… Fifties waitress, roller derby girl, motocross rider, the tattooed woman—that was cool because Spencer painted me up to match him—rodeo queen, tied-up BDSM rope girl, superhero, go-go dancer, policewoman, mermaid, snow leopard, soccer player and a whole week of slutty lingerie models.

  Let me tell you, painting fishnet stockings—the worst. It took the entire day.

  But even though I'm still real nervous about the final painting and the show tomorrow night—this has been the best summer of my life. No matter what happens to me, no matter how things go after this is over—whether Ronin and I make it or not—no one will ever be able to take what we created together this summer.

  It's very special.

  I start to get excited as we get closer because there's lots of other RV's on the road now, plus all the bikers. They come out of nowhere, all of a sudden. One minute we're on this desolate highway in Wyoming, and then, bikers everywhere. All of us heading to the same place. I notice a few motocross racing team transport trucks. "Is there a motocross race here this week?" I ask Elise.

  "Yeah," Spencer answers from the seat behind me.

  I look back at him.

  He winks because he must remember that I told him my first boyfriend was a motocross racer back in Chicago.

  I shake my head. "Just asking, Spencer. I was pretty big into it when I was a kid."

  "Yeah, good thing, too. Otherwise I'd be teaching you how to ride that beautiful Shrike Rook bike tonight."

  I smile and secretly kiss him in my mind for not telling on me in front of Elise.

  We ease into the campgrounds about an hour later. It's all pretty primitive, but since we're headlining a show, and Spencer needs a private place with access to water in order to paint me, we get to stay in the executive cabins. The big luxury is that it comes with a bathroom.

  How lucky are we!

  The whole day just flies by with all the settling in. The campground is a madhouse and we're still a few miles outside Sturgis. Ronin and I turn in because I have to get up at three in the morning so Spencer can start painting.

  Ronin pulls me up to him in the bed, wrapping his arms around me and kissing my neck. "How you doing, Gidget?"

  I turn so I can see his face. "You know, not anything like I should be. I don't understand how I could've shot someone yesterday and today, I'm just camping up in Sturgis like it never happened. And the weirdest thing, Ronin? I could care less. What's that mean?"

  He tucks a wayward strand of hair behind my ear. "It means you're gonna be just fine, Rook. You owe that guy nothing. Not one second of remorse or sympathy."

  "Yeah," I sigh. "That's what I figure too. I'm just gonna forget about it, Ronin. I'm just gonna let the past go, move forward with you."

  He squeezes me. "You make my heart happy right now, Rook. So totally and completely happy."

  We cling to each other, but not in a desperate way. We cling to each other and fall asleep in a way that makes us feel complete.

  And when stupid Ford comes pounding on our cabin door at 3AM, I wake up feeling complete as well.

  "OK, Rook, last painting."

  Ronin and Ford went to the campground general store to get coffee for everyone, so right now it's just Spencer and I in his cabin. He's moved the beds out of the way to give us room, and he's got the music going. I'm pretty sure no one in this campground but Ronin and I bothered to go to sleep, because the party is still raging outside. It's loud as fuck and if I wasn't such a heavy sleeper, that might've prevented me from getting some shut-eye. But as it happens, I can sleep through the Sturgis rally no problem.

  "Are you gonna tell me what it is?"

  "Nope!" he says, grinning like a teenager. "You'll just have to discover it as I go."

  He gets his airbrush out and a smoky gray color goes on first. I watch patiently as he winds the paint around my body in ribbons. He switches to another airbrush so he doesn't have to keep cleaning it between colors and sprays on some black, blending it together. After that there's more gray, some shades lighter, some shades darker, and white to bring it all together. Even though he's only done background colors, it already looks amazing.

  Ronin and Ford come back with the coffee and take a seat on the couch to watch, but even with the caffeine and the roaring sounds of motorcycles outside, not to mention Spencer's airbrush, neither of them last long because Spencer is building the scene in
a really cryptic way to keep us all guessing.

  It becomes too boring for the tired babies and they are out.

  It's late morning before I figure it out, that's how well-honed Spencer's craft is. He's applying the red, the only other color besides the shades of black, gray and white, when it all starts to click.

  "It's us."

  Spence shoots me with his finger, just like he did when he sat across from me in Cookie's and offered me this job all those months ago. "It's you two. It was a helluva summer, huh, Rook?"

  "Yeah, it really was. But you know what, Spencer? I'm so glad I did this with you. My whole life has changed and you're a big part of it."

  "Same here, Blackbird. Same here. We got the contract for the first season of Shrike Bikes. It's your job, but I'll live if you say no."

  "I'll talk to Ronin and see."

  When Ronin and Ford wake up they are stunned silent by the artwork on my body. It's all in shades of black and red, just like Spencer's tattoos, and the front piece is a beautiful composition depicting a Samurai warrior and a blackbird sitting in a cherry tree. For the first time, in all the paintings Spencer Shrike has completed on my naked body, my girly parts are not emphasized. The painting flows flawlessly over my curves, hiding every inch of skin underneath. The blossoms take me back to the first day I arrived at Chaput Studios, broken, scared, and barely holding myself together.

  And a gentle man named after a masterless warrior pushed me in a swing and started the healing.

  But that moment in time was fleeting, just like those flowers.

  That girl blew away in the wind and this girl took her place.

  If I thought the catsuit made me feel beautiful and fully dressed, this is a hundred times that.

  I feel like a goddess.

  And when I get to town, I walk down that Sturgis strip with my head up, feeling loved and pretty.

  And no one whistles or talks to me rudely. They say hello, they compliment Spencer's talent, they take pictures with me, and they treat me like a piece of art.

  I see him in the crowd. Watching me, following our progress down the street, but from the opposite side. Trying to be stealthy, I guess. And a small part of me wonders if he's the real reason I took this job so quickly. I knew as soon as I saw the motocross transport trucks on the highway he'd be here. So did Spencer.

  He comes to the show that night too. Stands right in front. Here the crowd is more rowdy, they are all drunk after all, but Wade stands still, his eyes never moving from me while I'm on stage.

  He was my first love. I thought he was the one. I cried over losing him for years after his mom sent me away.

  But when he finally lifts his hand to wave I don't wave back.

  Because I'm not a runner anymore.

  I'm a chaser.

  READ BOOK THREE

  END OF BOOK SHIT

  Welcome to the End Of Book Shit – the part of the book where I get to reflect back and talk about what I wrote. This is the third EOBS I’ve written for Manic because this is the third time I’ve updated the file and made a new cover for it. So it’s interesting looking back on the ones that came before. Because I, like Rook, am a completely different person.

  I’m an audiobook junkie and right now I’m listening to a book called Braving The Wilderness by Brené Brown, a research professor who studies courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. It’s a book about belonging. Which is something I find interesting since I’ve been a happy outsider most of my life.

  I finished formatting this book a couple days ago but put off writing the EOBS because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. Well, last night I was listening to Braving The Wilderness and I heard her narrate a quote that I found compelling enough to think about further. And that’s how this EOBS was born.

  The quote is, “Art has the power to render sorrow beautiful, make loneliness a shared experience, and transform despair into hope.”

  And I thought to myself – Well, fuck. I didn’t realize it when I wrote the book but that’s exactly what Spencer’s body art does for Rook in Manic.

  When Rook finds the team she’s alone. Utterly. She has no parents, no siblings, no friends, and no direction. She gets off the bus in Denver and takes a chance on fate. And fate is what delivers her into the hands of her team. She signs Spencer’s contract on a whim to create purpose and self-determination in her life. It was probably a bad idea because she wasn’t ready for it and she was naive. But ya know… after all my own personal struggles I’ve figured out that most of the great things in my life have come out of my own naiveté. It’s the innocence of longing, and then reaching higher, and working harder, and then finally ending up where you intended that makes all the mistakes worth it in the end.

  And who cares if you didn’t realize what you were getting into when you started? It doesn’t matter if you find what you’re looking for at the end.

  And then there’s Ford. Turning into a… well, a possibility, I guess. I love that books became a “thing” in Manic. I loved it when Ford gave Rook his eReader to distract her from being naked in front of a whole crew of people and she had him one-click Spelunk Me. (Which BTW, is one of my most favorite secret jokes with my fan group! Spelunk Me turns up in other books and I just LOVE the inside joke!). But when Ford offers to read to Rook, man… that’s probably when I knew this guy, he was gonna steal hearts. Plus, it was The Secret Garden. Some teacher read that out loud in school when I was a kid, so that’s how I was introduced to it. But then when my own daughter was about five or six, it came out as a movie. And it was such a beautiful movie. We watched it dozens of times.

  I think Rook had her own secret garden. It started out in an almost literal sense. The roof-top apartment surrounded by blooming cherry trees. But blossoms don’t last forever. They have to fall away to make way for fruit. And that’s what happened for Rook with the guys. The initial sex appeal of each of these men fell away to reveal the real person inside. The true friendship bloomed and became something else. Something sweet. Something nourishing. Something necessary to move on to the next stage in her life.

  The body painting was a way to add some sexiness to the story, but also to open up the story and make it mean something deeper than it was first intended. Both for me and for Rook.

  Walking down that street in Sturgis wasn’t the shameful experience she’d imagined. It was beautiful. And a true turning point in her life where she let go of who she was before (a runner) and became something else—(a chaser.) A girl unafraid to go after what she wants.

  Art, man. It finds its way into your life in the most unexpected ways. And since stories are art too, it’s fitting that a book became something that brought all these people together. And sexiness in romance is there to fill a need in a very specific way. But if you can turn that into more than just sexiness, that story is maybe worth just a little bit more.

  So it was a pleasure returning to these books and reformatting them. Because it gave me time to reflect back on what my life was like back when I was writing them. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. I had no clue that THIS SERIES was about to change my life and the lives of other people. I had no idea that, years later, people would still be gushing over these characters. That I would still be thinking about them. Still be writing about them. Rook & Ronin appear in lots of books after this. Slack, Taut, Bomb, Guns, Happily Ever After, Five, Mr. Match, and Wasted Lust.

  This year will make FIVE YEARS since I first released Tragic. Unbelievable in my mind that five short years ago I was… someone else. Unbelievable that I had no idea what was coming my way. And I sit here now, looking back, feeling a lot like Rook at the end of Manic.

  Thankful. Proud. Unashamed. Living.

  Julie

  JA Huss

  READ BOOK THREE

  Panic

  Edited by RJ Locksley

  Cover Design: JA Huss

  Copyright © 2018 by J. A. Huss

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-978-1-936413-75-
1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  DESCRIPTION

  ROOK

  I’m chasing a dream here.

  And I’m so close to having everything I ever wanted.

  But I can’t start over when I’m still on the run.

  Before I can become the girl I want to be, I’ll need to deal with the girl I left behind.

  RONIN

  I’m chasing a dream too.

  I want a family of my own and life that has nothing to do with erotic modeling.

  But I have a past as well.

  A past that will make Rook question everything she thinks she knows about me.

  Lies, secrets, and shocking truths will rock the foundation Rook and Ronin have built. Can they put the past behind them and move forward together? Or is this just another too good to be true relationship that will crash and burn in the end?

  Prologue - Rook

  Day 1,110 in Captivity

  Six Months Ago

  Wayne, Illinois

  Thirty-one days.

  That’s how long it takes my face to heal.

  I watch the girl in the mirror, looking for marks. She tilts her head this way and that, lifts her chin, stretches her neck for any sign of fingertip-shaped bruises, and then she sighs.

  They are all gone. I can see a tiny scar on the edge of my lower lip, but it’s not as bad as it could’ve been if Jon hadn’t rigged up a rudimentary butterfly bandage so he didn’t have to take me to the hospital. It should’ve been stitched, but it wasn’t.