by Nicole James
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Epilogue
CLUB PRINCESS by Nicole James
Also by Nicole James
About the Author
DIRTY DESIRES
A Devil Kings MC Story
By
Nicole James
DIRTY DESIRES
A Devil Kings MC Story
Nicole James
Published by Nicole James
Copyright 2020 Nicole James
All Rights Reserved
Cover Art by Lori Jackson
Cover Photography copyright by Wander Aguiar
Cover Model: Griffin Forsyth
Editing by CookieLynn Publishing
CHAPTER ONE
Tess—
I can’t believe I’m here.
I stare through the passenger window at the imposing institutional building—intimidating, as it is meant to be. Rutledge State Prison.
I can’t believe I’m here to visit a man I don’t give a damn about.
My mother pulls into a visitor parking spot, jams the gearshift in park, and twists toward me. Her face gives away no emotion, but she repeatedly flicks the ashes of her cigarette out the cracked window.
“Well, come on,” I say.
“I’m not going in,” she replies matter-of-factly, like she didn’t just drop a bomb on me.
“What?”
“You do it.”
“Me?” I practically shriek. Has she lost her friggin’ mind?
“Sorry, honey. I can’t go in there.”
“Damn your fucking anxiety, Mother. You have to. I’m not going by myself.”
“It’s not the anxiety. I’m not allowed in. He took me off the visitor list.”
“What? Why?”
“We had a fight.”
“Oh, for the love of Christ. The two of you are something else, you know that? I thought I was just here for moral support, Mother. But you knew all along… and you didn’t say shit.”
“Would you have come?” she bites out.
Not a chance in hell. I fold my arms. “I’m not doing it.”
“You have to, Tess. I need that money.”
Fucking hell. She digs a hole, and once again I’m supposed to pull her out of it. And the hell of it is, she knows I’ll cave. I blow out a long breath. “What do I do?”
“You go in that door. Just follow the others.”
“And then what?”
She pulls a bunch of sweaty singles from her bra and holds them out to me. “Here. Use these for the vending machines. Get him some snacks and drinks. And only take your drivers license. Leave everything else with me. They won’t let you bring anything else in anyway.”
Great, so if she doesn’t come back, I’m stranded.
I stare at her, pissed this is all being pushed onto me. My mother is in the predicament she’s in all of her own doing, or as my late grandparents often said, because of that no-account bum she ran off with—that no-account bum being my dirt-bag biker father.
“You really think he’ll tell me?” I stare out the window, dreading climbing out of the cool air-conditioned car into the hot South Georgia heat.
“Baby, I’m counting on you.” She reaches over and takes my hand.
I glance at our entwined fingers. My mother has rarely been maternal, but I know in her own way she does love me. I remember as a young child she would crawl in bed with me and sing me lullabies until I fell asleep. That was before the drugs and alcohol became more important.
She’s counting on me now. When could I ever count on her? I wish I had it in me to tell her to fuck off, to tell her to fix this on her own, to tell her I don’t give a damn. But I do give a damn. Still. After everything, I still love her. Sometimes I hate that I do. It would be so much easier if I could just cut her from my life.
Now with my father in prison, doing a forty-year sentence on drug charges, maybe there’s a chance for us. Maybe without his influence, I can pull her back from her addictions, and we can be family again. After all, with her parents passed on and Growler in prison, all we have is each other.
I huff out a breath and jerk the door handle, shoving it with my shoulder. Her car is old. We should have taken mine, but I didn’t want her to drive it. She sucks at driving, even on a good day, but especially if she’s been hitting the wine early—something I can’t trust her not to do.
I would have driven, but unfortunately my driving privileges have been suspended for three months due to my proclivity to speed. I have a lead foot, as they say. I can’t help it; I’m an impatient person.
I look back at her, frowning. “You’ll be here in two hours, right?”
“Of course, dear.”
“Do not go back to the motel room and start drinking. You do, I swear you’re on your own.”
“I promise.”
“Mother…”
“I won’t drink.”
“No pills either.”
“You really are a stick in the mud, aren’t you? Grams sure did her job well with you.”
“Leave her out of this. I loved her, and I don’t want to hear any of your misplaced hatred, understand?”
“Okay. Okay. Jesus Christ.”
I climb out of the car and slam the door. I brush a hand over my jeans and stare up at the building. The blouse with the tiny rosebuds was the only one I could find that looked halfway decent and wasn’t too revealing. Mom had warned me there were a lot of rules about what you can wear when visiting a prisoner. We both had dressed appropriately. Her outfit was just a ruse, apparently.
I see a woman carrying a baby and follow her to the entrance. I hear mom backing out, and when I step up on the sidewalk and look back, she’s already heading down the long drive off the prison grounds. If she doesn’t return for me, it’s going to be a long walk to the nearest bus stop. I head inside through one small building, then outside again through a walkway surrounded by fencing and barbed wire. It’s like walking down a tunnel to my doom.
I’m out of the hot sun and humidity, but inside the next larger building is hardly what I’d call cool.
There’s a desk, and I just do what the others ahead of me do. I sign in and wait until my name is called.
I take the chair next to the woman with the baby that I followed in.
“She’s adorable,” I tell her, smiling at the infant in the pink onesie.
“Thank you. Lord knows she’s a blessing.”
“I’m Tess,” I say.
“Nessa,” she returns, studying me. “I haven’t seen you here before. First time?”
I nod.
She pats my knee. “Don’t let the guards frighten you. They can be mean and snappy, but they’re just doin’ their job. Don’t take it personal. Just do what they say.”
“Thanks.”
“You bring any money for the vendin
g machines?” she asks.
“Yes. My mother gave me some ones before she dropped me off.”
“When you get to the visitation room, get what you want out of the machines straight off, ‘cause they run out quick.”
“Thanks. Who are you here to see?”
“My man. He’s been in here six months. Missed the birth of little Riana, here.”
“How often do you come visit?”
“I try to come at least every other week, but it’s hard. I can’t always get the time off in my work schedule. Then I’ve got to have gas money to drive up here. It’s rough.”
“I’ll bet.”
“This is the second place they’ve moved him to, and it’s farther away.”
“Do they do that often? Move them around to different prisons?”
“Sometimes.”
A guard calls my name. I stand and move to him. He asks to see my driver’s license and tells me I have to fill out a form since I’ve never visited before.
There’s an officer in the front lobby that verifies I’m on the inmate’s approved visitor list in his computer. He has trouble finding it, and it takes a while.
Once that’s done, I’m taken into a room and searched by a female guard. She asks me to take my hair down from the messy bun and shake it loose. She feels my scalp to make sure I’m not smuggling in anything, then frisks me and makes me pull my bra off and hand it to her. She checks it to make sure there’s no contraband hidden inside. Finally, she gives it back to me to slip on. The whole process is degrading and humiliating.
She leads me over to another desk.
“Hold your hand out, palm down,” the guard says.
I do, and he puts a stamp on my hand.
Then I’m led through the locked doors by a different guard. The sound of the heavy metal doors locking with a loud clank jars me and reminds me that I’m now locked inside the prison. I follow the guard down a long hallway. It’s drab with institutional green walls.
The visiting room officers are waiting for me.
“Put your hand there,” one snaps out in a gruff voice, pointing to an ultraviolet light. He seems impatient with the fact that I don’t know what to do without having to be told. Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed, although, I’d be a grump too if I had to work in this depressing place.
I do as he says, and my stamp is illuminated. He verifies my identity again before I’m allowed to enter the room.
When I do, I find that the visitation room reminds me of a high school cafeteria without windows. There are only four other visitors so far, but I know more are coming.
I take a seat at a table off to the side near the vending machines.
I get a couple bags of chips and some Cokes, remembering what Nessa said about the machines emptying out quickly when everyone gets in the room. I get myself a cup of coffee. Probably not the best choice since my nerves are already frazzled. I return to my seat, take a sip of the horrid brew, and wait. The room slowly fills up with more visitors.
I’m nervous to see my father again. I was eleven years old the last time I saw him. That’s when I went to live with my mother’s parents, who raised me from then on. My mother was a wild child, stubborn and headstrong like her father, and they often bumped heads.
My grandparents were all too happy to take me in when she was no longer capable of raising me, and my life with them was happy and much more stable than it had ever been with my rebellious mother and my biker father. I had love, attention, structure, and positive encouragement—things I had little of before that summer my mother overdosed and the hospital called her parents because my father was off on some club run. One thing I’d learned at a young age: the MC always came first for my father.
When my mother met him he was the VP of the Devil Kings MC’s Atlanta chapter. By the time I went to live with my grandparents, he had risen to President.
I remember little of him except that when he did come home, he would be drunk and usually bring other members of his club. They would continue to drink and party into all hours of the night. They were loud, obnoxious, and cussed a lot.
I would stay locked in my room and read the books I’d brought home from the school library, which were the only books in our house.
My grandmother would come over every Thursday night, when my father was gone at his club meetings. I loved when she came; she would always bring us food.
My mother would lean against the kitchen sink and smoke a cigarette, giving her the stink-eye, her voice drenched in bitterness as she snapped, “I don’t need your charity.”
Grandma would ignore her, put the food in the fridge, and then she would hug me and ask my mother if I could come and stay with them for the weekend. Sometimes my mother would let me, other times she refused. Now that I’m older, I’m sure it was just to spite her mother, because she was always glad for the times I was out of her hair.
My mom would never say thank you for the food, but I always did, because I knew without it I would probably go hungry. After Grandma left and my mother returned to the living room with a glass of whiskey, I would sneak the tin of chocolate chip cookies Grandma baked into my bedroom and hide them. I often hid food because if my dad’s biker club came over, they would eat everything in the house.
It wasn’t that I was afraid of my father; I just wanted nothing to do with him.
Now, as I sit here waiting, I wonder what I’ll feel when I see him again.
Finally, they lead the inmates into the room. They file in, dressed in the Georgia State Prison uniform of white pants and shirts. The pants have navy stripes down the side of the legs and the shirts have navy collars and plackets. Across the back, emblazoned in big letters, are the words, State Prisoner. The men disperse around the room, and I get my first glimpse of my father. He’s changed so much since that last time I saw him that I hardly recognize him. If it weren’t for the short snippets of his arrest and trial from the news, I wouldn’t. But seeing him in person is still shocking. He’s overweight, his hair is graying, and his face has sagging jowls. The man I remember from my childhood was handsome, even though he rarely paid attention to me, and was always gruff.
This man looks tired, beaten down, and bitter.
I read all that as his eyes zero in on me, the only remaining visitor still sitting alone. His eyes sweep over me, and he trudges toward my table.
He settles his big body in the chair across from me, leans his elbows on the table, and runs a hand over his mouth. His knee begins to bounce up and down, the only sign that this visit is affecting him.
My throat is dry, and I don’t know what to say. We don’t exchange the allowed hug of greeting like other visitors and inmates. There are no smiles, because there is no love lost between us. This man is a stranger to me, and I to him.
I slide one of the cold cans toward him, condensation dripping down the side. He takes it, his eyes on me, and pops the top, then chugs down a good portion of it. Then he reaches for a bag of chips and rips it open. He eats three before he speaks.
“Why’d you come?”
“Hello to you, too,” I bite out. I still have a little of my mother’s spunk and that Covington stiff spine my grandfather had, after all.
“I know you didn’t miss me. And I know you don’t give a shit about me, so why you here, Tess?”
“Don’t you want to know how Mother’s doing?”
His eyes shift to the side, scanning the room. “Nope.”
“You’ve been together thirty years. The woman fell apart when you were sent here. None of that matters to you?”
“Why the fuck do you care? You haven’t been around for years.”
My coffee is already cold, but I still want to throw it in his smug face. Did this man ever love me? Ever love my mother? Ever love anyone but himself? I shake my head. “Even now, you’re going to be a dick?”
He eats another chip and looks away again. “We had a fight.”
“So I heard.”
“She pi
ssed me off.”
“She always does.”
“How is she doin’?” Finally, the bravado drops.
“Hanging on by a thread. Losing you, losing the club… It’s all she’s known since she was nineteen. How do you think she’s doing?”
“She send you here?”
“She drove me.”
He huffs, but continues eating the chips. He finishes the bag and starts on the second.
“She’s out of money, Growler.” I call him that, because the word “dad” sticks in my throat. He doesn’t seem at all bothered by the lack of endearment.
“What does she want me to do about it? Tell her to get a job.”
“You know she has issues with anxiety.”
He huffs again, as if to remind me that yes, he does know. “Nothin’ I can do for her now.”
“Surely you have some money stashed somewhere.”
His eyes flash to mine, then move off as if he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. But he does.
“Where’s the key to the safe deposit box?”
“Think I’d tell you. I’ll need that money for when I get out. Like I’m gonna let her piss it all away on booze and dope.”
“That’s forty years from now.”
His eyes narrow on me. His hand tightens into a fist before relaxing, and he blows out a slow breath. He glances over at the guard, then back at me. “Maybe not.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m appealing my conviction. I didn’t get a fair trial.”
This is news to me. “How so?”
“Never you mind.” He runs a hand over his mouth and cocks his head to the side, studying me and I can see the wheels turning behind his eyes. That’s not good. That’s never good. Whatever scheme he’s cooking up I want no part of it.
“You want the key,” he says, “you do something for me first.”
“What do you want me to do?”
He strokes his chin again, thinking.
A chill runs down my spine. “If you think I’m helping you escape or smuggling you in something, forget it. I’m not going to jail for you or anybody.”
“Calm down.” He glances over his shoulder at the guards. “You want them to come over here.”
