“That was incredible,” Lynx panted as he kissed her forehead.
Tammy nuzzled into him and breathed him in. In that moment, she realized that she didn’t care what anyone else was saying about him, or even if he had murdered someone ten years ago. All she knew was that she had fallen for him harder and faster than she had ever thought possible.
10.
As the day turned into night and they lay together exploring each other’s bodies, Tammy knew she had found her soul mate. Everything about Lynx fit with her perfectly, and there was nothing she didn’t want to tell him.
She told him of how she longed for a family, and he agreed with her. He explained how he had always felt the same and couldn’t wait to have one of his own. He opened up about his past and his childhood, confiding in her about how he had been treated badly, abused by his guardians, and eventually fled when he was fifteen and found himself in Slate Springs without a penny to his name and not a clue of how to look after himself.
“What happened?” Tammy asked him with eager eyes.
“I met one of The Forsaken Riders,” he smiled as he ran his fingertips through her hair. “They took me in, put a roof over my head, gave me a job… They saved my life.”
Tammy had no idea how it must have felt to be so alone in the world. Even though she missed her mother dearly every day, she had always had the love and support of her father and Dean.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she whispered before she gave him a single kiss on his chest.
“I’m not anymore,” he said. “If it hadn’t of happened, I never would have wound up here with you.”
Even though he was right, she still couldn’t help but feel like a lot of his life had been either traumatic or wasted being locked up in jail.
“Who were you protecting, Lynx?” Tammy blurted the words out before she even knew she was going to say them.
He sat up and rested his forearms on the tips of his knees.
“I can’t tell you that, Tam,” he said gently as he turned to look at her.
She felt herself stiffen and she knew that if he ever wanted her to believe a word that came out of his mouth ever again, then he didn’t have the option… He was going to have to tell her.
“All you’ve been saying since the moment we met is that I have to trust you,” she said as she pulled herself up. “Now don’t you think it’s about time you trusted me?”
He looked thoughtful for a moment before he took hold of her hand.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked.
Tammy searched his face for an answer, but she would never be able to guess. She shook her head and he dropped his.
“It was Reid, babe…” he said with a sigh. “I was protecting the only man who ever really took care of me.”
Tammy felt the blood rush into her head, and she felt dizzy. Reid, Lexi’s dad, had murdered someone and Lynx had protected him and done the time.
“But why?” she asked with confusion.
“Reid was the one who took me in when I found myself here at fifteen,” he shrugged. “He’d already been away and done time, and he wasn’t well…” He stopped for a moment and Tammy could see the tears welling up behind his eyes.
“It was my fault he did it in the first place. I botched up a job, we got caught. It was either Reid shot the guy whose shop we were turning over, or we were all going down.”
Tammy shivered.
“I couldn’t let him go back inside,” Lynx said. “It would have finished the old boy off…”
“But he’s sick now?” she said, her confusion mounting.
“The cancer came back,” he nodded. “I’m glad he didn’t spend the last years of his life rotting away in some jail when it was my fault he would have been there in the first place.”
He sniffed and then smiled.
“So now you know everything,” he concluded. “But you can never tell Lexi…or King, for that matter. The code of The Forsaken Riders is one that can never be broken, and King wasn’t around when all of this went down. Okay?”
She nodded and reached out to stroke his arm once more.
For a man who had lived on the wrong side of the tracks since he was a kid, Lynx was wise and full of integrity. When he confessed his darkest secret to her, she knew why she loved him… He was just like her underneath it all. Under all of the muscles, the piercings and tattoos, and the scent of booze and smoke, he was a kind-hearted man, and he had won her over with his honesty.
She looked up at him, and he pulled her close to him. She knew her life was never going to be the same again. She had met the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with. He was going to be the father of her children, and she was never going to be looked at the same in Slate Springs ever again. Less than a week before, Tammy had barely even laid eyes on any of the Forsaken Riders, but now she and Lexi were in deep, and they were beginning the lives they had always dreamed of in their own unique ways.
She was no longer going to be sweet, innocent good girl Tammy. She was going to be Lynx’s woman, a wild cat just like him. And she was going to make sure that they fought for each other, their family, and their right to their love over and above anything else...
THE END
Find out more about the Forsaken Riders and the inhabitants of Slate Springs in STEEL, the next installment which is available now
What the Outlaw Demands
Samantha Leal
Copyright ©2015 by Samantha Leal. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Thank you so much for your interest in my work!
1.
Kristin watched the hands of the clock ticking opposite her. Every second seemed to drag and she bit the edge of her pen as she turned to look out of the office window. After working so hard to get there, now all she wanted to do was run. The thought of spending another week in that place was making her skin crawl.
Outside, in the corridor, she could see the male partners all patting each other on the back and boosting each other’s egos. She was never invited into their little office chats, ones where she could be a part of the boys club. In the center of it was Pete, grinning from ear to ear, taking the odd glance back to her office because he knew she would be watching.
Fucking Pete, she thought.
She knew at home later he would be full of it. He’d swagger in, puffing his chest and try to make her feel inferior. It was how it always went… She got ignored and he made her feel like crap about it. She knew she needed to change firms…and boyfriends…but she had wanted to be a partner at Anderson and Coleridge Law so much that she just didn’t think she had it in her to walk away.
She realized she was holding the pen so tight, it was almost snapping in her hand.
“Shit,” she breathed out and dropped it on the desk. She was going to have to calm down. She didn’t need to work herself up like this… She was bigger than them and she wasn’t going to rise to it. Instead, she got to her feet, walked over to the door and lowered the blind so the pane of glass allowing her to see the little boys club grooming each other in the hallway was blocked out. She went back to her desk, sat down and closed her eyes.
She was reaching her limit. She and Pete had been together for almost a year, and while it had started out really well, it had rapidly declined into something rather sinister. Pete was a control freak. He loved making her feel inferior, and even though she was a strong woman who could see right through him, there were times when she was afraid of what he was capable of. She could hear him out in the hallway, laughing and joking with the other male partners. She was the only female partner at the firm and was regularly left out, and although she was used to it, she was still struggling to accept it. Deep down she knew it was time to move on.
Her phone rang and ma
de her jump. “Hello?” she answered.
“Hi, Kristin,” her PA Sally said from the other end. “Did you finish with the paperwork for the Green Case?”
“Just give me five more minutes and I’ll bring it out to you,” she said with a sigh. She hated to admit it, but her work really was starting to suffer. She could never seem to keep her mind on the job.
She looked down and scanned the explosion of files on the desk in front of her and wanted to scream. She rubbed her eyes and massaged her temples with her fingers.
“I need to get out of here,” she whispered.
She got to her feet and looked out across the skyline. It was almost five and the sun looked like it was already on its way down, which was impossible for summer, but she felt it all the same.
“I guess it’s always night somewhere,” she said to herself.
Her telephone rang again and she jumped. She turned around and grabbed the receiver. “Just five more minutes, Sally,” she snapped.
“No,” Sally said quietly, clearly taken aback by her boss’s tone. “It’s a call from the police department. They have someone in custody who wants to talk to you.”
“What?” she said rubbing her temples again. “Can’t it wait? We have a duty lawyer who could deal with that.”
“They asked for you specifically,” she said nervously. “The cop said his name was Dan Lockhart.”
Kristin paused for a moment, her heart rising into her throat at the sound of the name… A name she hadn’t heard for years.
“Did you say Dan Lockhart?” she repeated as she sat back down at her desk.
“That’s what the cop told me, yeah,” Sally confirmed.
“Okay,” Kristin said quietly, “Put him on.”
The line beeped, and there was a click before Kristin could hear shallow breathing on the other end of the line.
“Dan?” she whispered, still unsure of whether she believed it.
“Kristin?” he replied.
Her skin went cold when she heard his voice, but she instantly found herself smiling.
“How the heck are you?” he asked, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“I’m wonderful,” she smiled. “I take it things aren’t so great for you?”
“Haha,” he chuckled. “They’re certainly not… I could do with your expertise.”
“Which station are you at?” she asked as she grabbed a pen.
“South,” he sounded as if he was smoking. “I would normally deal with this sort of thing myself, but I thought it might be a nice excuse to see you again after all these years.”
“Just stay put and don’t say anything. You can explain to me when I get there.” She hung up the phone and grabbed her jacket.
The Green case file would have to wait…
2.
Dan Lockhart… she hadn’t heard a word from him in over ten years, and here he was calling her as if it were only yesterday. She was a fool for going down there. She should have told him she was busy, or that she didn’t deal with criminal cases anymore… He was probably in hot water, after all. Hell, she should have told him anything. But there was something drawing her to him. Just hearing his voice again after all that time had instantly struck a chord.
She slid into the driver’s seat of her Mercedes and fastened her seat belt. It was dark in the firm’s underground parking lot, and the summer heat was intense and stuffy. She started the engine and put the AC on full blast before she looked at herself in the review mirror. Her heart was pounding and her pupils were dilated. In a rush of memory she recalled the last time she had seen him… She remembered it all…
***
Growing up, Kristin had fallen hard and fast for Dan. He was her next-door neighbor and one of the hottest guys at her high school. He was a few years older than her and she had watched him from afar while she matured. She had seen him go from being the boy next door to something else entirely…something frightening. She had heard the arguments. She had watched him come home tattooed and liquored up, and saw the bruises and the scars. Whatever he was doing, it was bad. And what surprised her even more than the fact that he kept doing it…was the fact that she liked it.
He never seemed to really realize that she existed until one afternoon when she came home from school when she was about seventeen and he was out on the driveway having a screaming match with his parents. She pulled up in her car and parked it down the street before meekly walking up the path to her front door. He was screaming, spitting hate and anger at them. He had a red raw scar right down his face from the corner of his eye to his chin, and she knew she was gawping but she couldn’t stop.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” he spat as she tried to reach her front door and pretend like none of it was happening.
His parents rounded on him, his mother trying to pull him back from the truck that was waiting for him. Inside, a man tipped his hat and smoked a cigarette while laughing and cranking up the heavy rock he was listening to.
“Please, Dan!” his mother called. “Don’t do this!”
He stuck his middle finger up at her and strode down to the truck before pulling open the door and jumping inside. The driver pulled out of the driveway with a wheel spin and they shouted something at Kristin that sounded like “Show us your pussy!” and then they were gone.
Kristin went inside, flushed red and turned on. She had no idea what had just happened, but it had woken something inside of her. From that moment on, Dan Lockhart, the dangerous boy from next door, was all she could think about.
He came back a week later, black and blue and miserable. She watched him from her bedroom window as he lay in the backyard sunbathing with his shirt off, exposing his rippling abs and tanned chest. His tattoos were fierce and they covered him from neck to waist. Kristin bit her lip as she watched him and wondered what it would feel like to be swept up in his arms. When he caught her looking, she was so embarrassed she didn’t know how she would ever face him. But luckily for her, Dan wasn’t as shy.
The following evening, she was down in her own backyard and he stuck his head over the fence and dangled a bottle of beer.
“Care to join?” he asked her.
Kristin was a mess of nerves and excitement inside, and although she knew she should stay away and go back inside, she just couldn’t. She had to get to know him some more.
She went to his yard, and they sat on deck chairs and drank straight from the bottle. He barely spoke to her, but he eyed her continuously and kept flashing her a mischievous smile. She knew it was the start of something, but she also knew she couldn’t let it happen. She was a good girl. She was on course for bigger and better things than her dumb small town, and she couldn’t let a bad boy hold her back… No matter how much she wanted it.
She went to leave, but he pushed her up against the wall of his garage. “You’re all I’ve thought about since the moment we moved here, did you know that?” he said. His knuckles were skinned raw and the smell of stale smoke clung to him, oozing out of his pores. Instead of turning her off, it made her even hotter for him.
“I’m going to get you one day,” he grinned. “Little Miss Good Girl… you’re not even going to know what’s hit you.”
Kristin’s heart pounded as she ran back home and locked herself in her bedroom. She stripped naked and ran a cold shower before jumping in and cooling off. Dan Lockhart was such bad news, the worst kind…
She didn’t seen him again after that night. Her mother told her that he had been arrested and that he’d got involved with a gang. Kristin left for college a year later and trained to be a lawyer. She heard snippets of information from her family and his about what he was up to, and it was never anything good. Their mothers had become good friends, and they regularly chatted about both Kristin and Dan, but the last she had heard, he was heavily involved with bikers and organized crime. When she got the call from him, she was more surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. She was pretty sure she would be the only lawyer he knew
.
***
As she pulled up outside of the station, she looked into the mirror again and reapplied her lipstick. It had been over ten years since the night in the yard that summer, but after hearing his voice again, it felt like only ten days. She was excited to see him but also apprehensive. He’d been her first crush and completely forbidden because of his edge and criminal ways. She had no idea what to expect. He could be anyone now. He could be married for all she knew. But there was something deep inside her that had the feeling he was about to make good on his promise.
I’m going to get you one day… Little Miss Good Girl…
3.
Kristin walked into the station and buttoned up the middle of her jacket. She groomed her hair behind her ears with her long, manicured nails and clipped down the hallway in her stiletto heels. There were cops swarming the reception area, and as she placed her briefcase down and announced who she was, a few of them turned to look at her up and down and check her out. She was used to being stared at. Kristin was petite but curvy and had incredibly large breasts. They were like a bull’s-eye for leery men.
“I thought you were off criminal cases?” a familiar voice chimed in behind her.
Kristin spun around to see Jonny, a cop she was used to dealing with when she had represented the majority of the city’s criminals.
“This is a one-time thing,” she raised her eyebrows. “Take me to Dan Lockhart?”
“Yikes,” Jonny whistled. “Locke, huh?” He shook his head and nodded reluctantly. “If you say so….”
He turned and motioned for her to follow him. She swiped her visitor’s badge from the reception desk and pinned it to the side of her skirt. Jonny slowed down and said discreetly over her shoulder, “What you getting mixed up in that for?”
Shifter Romance: BODHI (LOST CREEK SHIFTERS NOVELLAS Book 4) Page 78
