by Lane Hart
“It wasn’t your fault, Reece.”
“How can I ever make it up to you? How do I convince you that I can take care of you after what he did?”
“You take care of me more than anyone ever has,” I assure him. “Better than anyone ever will.”
Eyes on the ground, he says, “I wasn’t taking care of you when he was beating you or when he was…when he may have gotten you pregnant.”
“I’m not pregnant,” I assure him.
“You’re not?” he asks, gaze finally lifting to mine. I don’t think he’s looked me in the eye since he walked in. Mostly he was yelling at my carpet.
“No.”
“Thank god,” Reece says on a heavy exhale before he hits his knees in front of me. “I would’ve stuck around. I swear, sunshine. I just didn’t want you to have to deal with that on top of everything else you’ve been through.”
“My bruises, my broken bones, they’ll all heal with time,” I tell him. “You know what won’t? My heart that you broke when I needed you and you disappeared!”
Reece shakes his bowed head and says, “I never disappeared. I just didn’t know how the hell I could be with you when you were hurt, and I wasn’t there to stop it.”
“Great, you feel guilty? Well, I do too for not being able to fight him off. I wanted to. I tried to fight back, because of you!” I exclaim, tears swimming in my vision. “He gave me a choice, a quick death or a long, suffering one. I could’ve taken the easy way, but I didn’t. Because I couldn’t give up on seeing you again, no matter how slim the chance. And when I did see you in that hospital room, it was worth every second of pain! Now, I don’t know if you’ll ever touch me again, so maybe I made the wrong choice…” I finish on a sob.
“Of course I want to touch you, sunshine,” Reece says, reaching up like he’s going to place his hands on my knees before letting them fall again. “But how can I with you in so much pain and after what he did?”
“He didn’t rape me,” I tell him softly.
“What?” Reece asks, his head snapping up at that.
“We had unprotected sex. You and me. That morning before he found me, remember? It was my fault for not saying anything. And god, it was so good that neither of us stopped for protection,” I remind him. “But I knew you were already starting to pull away from me at the hospital when you couldn’t look at me or touch me. I wasn’t going to take the chance of making you stick around just because I got pregnant by accident. It was unlikely anyway, with the timing and all, but I have to be more than an obligation. I’d rather be nothing to you than that…”
Reece blows out a breath, and then finally places his head onto my lap. It takes some effort, but the pain is worth it when my fingers lift to comb through his hair.
“I tried to tell you before you left the hospital that day,” I explain. “I couldn’t pick up a phone and didn’t want to have to tell our business to someone else for them to call you. Then, I only saw peeks of you sneaking out of my room at night when I was sleeping.” Taking a deep breath, I tell him, “He didn’t break me. He tried, but you helped them find me first, didn’t you? You saved me.”
“It should’ve been sooner.”
“How could you know he got out early and found me?” I ask, still stroking his hair. “You helped save Vicky’s life and mine. Jade came by at the hospital and told me everything.”
“I should’ve had you move in sooner, paid off the lease myself,” he murmurs into my lap.
“Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve,” I say. “Let’s forget everything that happened and let go of all the regret. That asshole is gone, and he’s not worth either of us feeling guilty for another second.”
“You’re right,” Reece agrees. Lifting his hand, he takes my hand and lowers his lips to my knuckles, aware of how painful it is for me to lift my arm. “I’m sorry, sunshine. I love you so damn much that I can’t imagine my life without you now.”
“I love you too,” I tell him, wishing the tears weren’t blurring him so I could see his handsome face more clearly. “And the beard looks good on you. Keep it until I can at least run my fingers through it and feel it on my lips and someplace else?”
“Absolutely,” he responds with the first smile on his face I’ve seen in a long time, those cute little dimples I love and all.
Epilogue
Reece
Six Months Later…
I’m lying on the bed when I hear a sharp knock on the hotel door, followed by a voice calling, “Room service!” Before I can twitch a muscle, Cynthia opens the door to the bathroom, where she had disappeared just after I put in the dinner order for us fifteen minutes ago.
“You stay right there. I’ll get it,” she tells me as she cinches the belt on the bathrobe she’s wrapped around herself. Her beautiful hair is pulled up, so I assume she was in there taking a quick shower.
Cynthia rushes out of the bedroom of the master suite I rented for us so quickly that she doesn’t even notice the present I had set out for her on the small table in the corner of the room. I realize I didn’t turn on the lamp hanging over it, so I jump up from the bed to flip the switch, making sure she’ll spot it when she comes back.
While I’m fussing with the placement of her gift yet again, I hear her pushing the room service cart through the suite and into the bedroom with us. I turn to her, and my mouth falls open in surprise as I take in what she’s wearing.
After tipping the delivery person, Cynthia must have ditched her bathrobe, because now she’s standing in front of me in a French maid outfit. The sheer black halter top can barely contain her breasts, which she’s accentuating by squeezing her arms on either side of them. With a coy grin, she drops a napkin from the tray, then gracefully bends over in her high heels to retrieve it. While standing back up, she slowly runs her hand up the short skirt of her outfit, making sure I can see that she’s not wearing any panties underneath.
“Room service is here, monsieur,” she says with a playful wink. “Do you see anything you might care to sample?” she asks as she moves towards me, rubbing a hand down my bare chest. “Or perhaps there is something dirty that needs my special attention?” she purrs as her hand reaches the front of my boxer briefs.
Realizing that she can’t see what I’ve laid out on the table while I’m standing in her way, I grab her ass to pull her close to me. When she leans in to kiss me, I gently turn to the side, waving my hand towards the table like a magician revealing his trick. “Maybe I could have you start here, sunshine. This dusty old set looks like it could use your touch.”
Cynthia’s cheeks had been flushed with lust, but instantly she pales as her eyes begin to water. “Reece, is that…?” she stammers. “Is that really my grandmother’s…”
“I’m almost certain it is,” I confirm. “I was looking for a tea set like you described when I found this one on an auction site. The seller was from Arizona, and when I contacted them, they said they had gotten it from a pawn shop out where you used to live. Does it look right to you? All the shamrocks in the right places?” I ask her, picking up one specific cup and handing it to her.
“Oh, Reece, it’s perfect!” she says as a tear slides down her cheek.
When she takes the cup from me, she stares at the handle for a moment, then picks up the diamond ring that’s dangling from the handle by a small bit of green ribbon. “Oh my god,” she gasps as I drop to one knee in front of her.
“I didn’t imagine being in my boxers when I asked you this. Although, I’ll admit I’ve imagined you in an outfit like that all the time,” I tell her as I take the cup from her and set it down on the table. After untying the ring, I grab her left hand and slide it onto her finger. “Cynthia, I hope you know I would do anything for you. I’ve loved you from a distance for years, but I was too stubborn to show you how I truly felt. If I had only known what you and I could have together, I would have asked you this the first day you walked into the clubhouse. Will you marry me?”
“Of course I w
ill!” she beams at me through her watery green eyes. Pulling me to my feet, she lays her left hand on my chest, staring at the ring for a moment before reaching up to grab the back of my head and crush our lips together.
“I knew those shamrocks were going to be lucky for me,” I quip when Cynthia finally pulls back from me, reaching down to tug my boxer briefs to the floor.
“I’m the lucky one,” she replies as she presses her palms on my chest to gently guide me backwards to the bed. “Having you watching over me, my own guardian angel, my Savage King, has been the best thing to ever happen to me.”
She climbs on top of me on the bed; and with one quick shift, our bodies come together, so naturally that there’s no doubt we were made for each other. “It’s nice to finally have my queen, sunshine,” I tell her. “Now, take me for a ride.”
The End
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue were created from the authors’ imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual people or events is coincidental.
The authors acknowledge the copyrighted and trademarked status of various products within this work of fiction.
© 2019 Editor's Choice Publishing
All Rights Reserved.
Only Amazon has permission from the publisher to sell and distribute this title.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Editor’s Choice Publishing
P.O. Box 10024
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Edited by Angela Snyder
Cover by Marianne Nowicki of www.PremadeEbookCoverShop.com
WARNING: THIS BOOK IS NOT SUITABLE FOR ANYONE UNDER 18. PLEASE NOTE THAT IT CONTAINS VIOLENT SCENES THAT MAY BE A TRIGGER FOR INDIVIDUALS WHO HAVE BEEN IN SIMILAR SITUATIONS.
Synopsis
Who could ever fall in love with a cold-blooded killer like me?
The answer is no one.
That’s why I’m giving up trying to find a woman who wants me for more than one rowdy night. I’m determined to find a wife instead.
If I buy a mail order bride, then she’ll have no choice but to stick around. Besides, I have plenty of money to spend thanks to all the successful Savage Kings MC legal and outlaw enterprises.
Kira’s the perfect woman, and she’s just as eager as I am to tie the knot. I didn’t ask why she needed half a million dollars; and honestly, I didn’t really care.
Maybe I should have.
A few weeks after Kira becomes my wife, I find myself in the middle of her family’s fallout with the Russian mafia.
When I shoot first and ask questions later, I unknowingly drag the entire MC into the crossfire.
Now the Russians are pissed and are out for blood. But they’ve screwed with the wrong man this time.
The Kings will do whatever it takes to protect their own, no matter the consequences.
And now that Kira is mine, I’ll gladly kill anyone who tries to hurt her.
Chapter One
Miles
“You knock Sasha up yet?” I hear Abe ask Chase from where he’s standing over him, spotting for his buddy as Chase powers through a rep of bench presses. I’m on the other side of the room alone, straining the muscles in my tattooed arms and down my back as I struggle to get my chin over the pull-up bar just a few more times.
It’s not much, but we have a decent workout room in the basement of the Savage Asylum with all of the standard weight lifting equipment.
“Nah. You knocked up Mercy?” Chase responds as the chrome bar maxed out with weight that he’s pressing clangs back down into the holder.
“Hell no,” Abe grumbles, sounding oddly disappointed. That doesn’t make any sense to me; I’ve spent my entire life trying not to get a woman pregnant.
“Sasha’s doc says we might be fucking too much,” Chase informs his best friend. I wait for Abe’s deep chuckle before he replies with something along the lines of “there’s no such thing as fucking too much”, because that is the obvious response.
Instead, Abe says, “No shit? Maybe that’s our problem too. I’ll tell Mercy. God knows my dick could use a break.”
“Mine too,” Chase agrees. “Every morning I wake up to Sasha riding me before my eyes open. And then at night she wants to go at it as many times as I can get it up. I can’t keep performing under all this goddamn pressure!”
That’s it.
I can’t listen to another fucking word of their ridiculous conversation.
Dropping from the pull-up bar and landing on the soles of my booted feet, I march over to the weight bench and wave my finger back and forth between them. “You two are idiots. Are you seriously bitching like pussies about too much sex? There is no such thing!”
“Man, if you only knew,” Abe says to me, his dark eyes serious. “Fucking isn’t fun when you know your old lady is gonna cry a river a few days later if you didn’t make the damn stick thing say she’s pregnant!”
“Amen, brother,” Chase says, sitting up on the bench to turn around and offer him a fist bump. “I hate disappointing Sasha. Every. Fucking. Month. And now we find out that we fuck too much. But if we fuck too little, she won’t get knocked up either. What’s the perfect amount of fucking?”
“No idea, man. No idea.” Abe mutters as he wipes away sweat from his forehead.
“You’re married and you get sex whenever you want. I don’t understand the problem. Do you know how lucky you are?” I ask them. “I need to find an old lady. Sasha or Mercy got any friends?”
“None that we would ever tell you about,” Chase replies with a grin.
“Screw you,” I say while flipping him off. “You both get to fuck your wives all the time without rubbers and still not put a kid in her. That sounds like heaven.”
“No, it’s hell,” Abe argues. “Making a kid is not as easy as you think. And as the man, it’s all up to me! I feel like one of those street monkeys and my owner is always saying, ‘Dance, Monkey! Dance!’ Well, dancing isn’t fun when you constantly fail at it.”
“I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about,” I tell him.
“You can’t understand unless you’ve been there,” Chase says as he strokes his auburn beard.
“Fine. Sign me the hell up! Where can I find an old lady who wants to fuck 24/7?” I ask. It sounds like married life has more perks than I would have expected.
Growing up, my mother nagged the shit out of her first three husbands, none of which were my father, until they eventually gave up and left her. Since I moved out of the house and joined the Marines sixteen years ago, she’s been married at least three more times. Maybe her marriages were not the norm after all.
Chuckling, Chase says, “Sorry, bro, but there’s not like a catalogue of women or any stores out there that will build the perfect woman and then ship her to you. You’ve got to go out and search for her.”
“Yeah, and it’s not easy even after you find her,” Abe adds. “There’s always shit going down, so you have to find someone to stick around even when things are fucked seven ways to Sunday.”
“How do you know if they’ll stick around, though?” I ask. That was something my mother couldn’t ever seem to figure out.
“You don’t,” Chase answers. “It’s just a chance you have to be willing to take when you feel like you can’t live without them.”
Fuck, why can’t wives and marriages be easier? They should come with a set of rules or something, ones that say you have to be in it for the long haul no matter how bad things get or how fucked up the man is. Something that’s more certain than a few vows spoken in a church. Hell, everyone seems to break those fuckers.
Most of my brothers are like Chase and Abe, starting to settle down with one woman. I never understood the benefits until now when it’s been weeks since I’ve gotten laid or
even had a blowjob. It’d be nice to have someone wake me up riding my cock before my eyes open every morning. And if she wants sex at night too? Fuck yes. Sign me the hell up for all of that.
Too bad I’m not the type of man anyone wants to marry.
I’m a cold-hearted killer with a dirty mouth and a filthy, fucked-up mind. Love and romance haven’t ever been even the smallest blips on my radar. They never will be either, because I’m incapable of both.
The only things I have to offer a woman are tons of money, thanks to the Kings’ outlaw way of life, and all the hardcore fucking they could ever want. That’s it. Nothing else.
So who the hell would ever be stupid enough to not only tie themselves to a man like me but stick around as well?
That’s the question that leaves me scratching my tattooed head over the next few days.
Chapter Two
Kira
“Mr. Kozlov is very unhappy with you, Yury,” Zeno says to my trembling father as he towers over him in our living room.
“The fire…it wasn’t my fault,” my father says before he breaks into his native Russian tongue.
After being raised in the home of two Russian immigrants for all of my twenty-three years, you would think I would’ve picked up the language by now.
I haven’t. All I know are a few swear words.
My parents spoke English before they came to South Carolina and started their furniture business thirty years ago. Growing up, they spoke English ninety-nine percent of the time because they wanted me to fit in with all the other children in school. The only time I heard Russian was if my dad slammed the hammer on his finger, or if there was a problem he was discussing with my mother and didn’t want me to know the details. It was their secret language, and one I knew always meant trouble.
