by Nikki Wild
“It’s true,” Hunter reassured me, a finger lifting my chin as I turned to face him. “When I knew you before, you were a little brat… adorable, yes, but maybe a little more trouble than you were worth… and now…”
“Oh, trust me,” I grinned, leaning back against the kitchen island but resting my head against his chest. “I can still be a bit of a brat when I need to be. Part of me will always be that little teenage girl that you fell in love with… just like part of you will always be that tough, strong man I loved so much.”
Hunter nodded, reflecting on these words.
“Are you positive that you have to go? There can be a life for you here… you fought with the Devil’s Dragons. They already accept you as my woman, but now they’ll consider you one of their own…”
I sighed, nodding against his chest.
“I need to go,” I sadly answered him. “My lieutenant already wants my badge and my gun. There’s no reason to make that any harder than it is.”
Hunter lifted my chin with his finger again, steeling his gaze as he forced mine to meet it. He whispered the most vulnerable words I had ever heard him tell me:
“I don’t want you to go.”
The conviction, and the pain, in his eyes told me how truthful he was being. He meant those six words with everything that he had.
It pained me to give him my inevitable response.
“I don’t have a choice, Hunter.”
Twenty-One
The gravel crunched under the oversized tires of my old Jeep wrangler as I pulled into the parking lot and came to a complete stop. Before turning the key and killing the ignition, I sat and stared at myself in the rearview mirror, reflecting on the eternity that had dragged on by since I’d last been here…
It had only been a couple of months since I returned to Phoenix – but that time had made sure to be plenty eventful.
True to his word, Lieutenant Crabbe ensured that I was stripped of my badge the minute I showed up at his office. Unfortunately, he had already caught wind of an interesting development – a whole van load of missing women, my kidnapped cheerleaders included, had appeared in an El Paso hospital in the middle of the night.
He wasn’t exactly shy in grilling me for six hours in an interrogation room over that one, but I stuck to my guns.
I knew nothing.
I saw nothing.
I simply spent that afternoon drinking some beers with old friends and watching my career fall apart.
It was complete bullshit, and the entire precinct was well aware of that… Everyone from the Chief on down the line knew what had really happened. They didn’t know the details, but they knew that I’d found those cheerleaders… and somehow, I’d found them below the border. In a quiet, closed-doors meeting that was officially off the record and after office hours, the chief privately thanked me for whatever miracle I had pulled off – telling me in no uncertain terms that I was owed a favor… And that I needed to go away quietly. My career was over.
I’d saved him a lot of media backlash for incompetency of his entire department, and saved our partners in Tucson the same trouble… And I was shown the door for it.
Watching everything you’ve worked for crumble around you hurts…
My father, on the other hand was overjoyed.
He didn’t ask me for the truth – he knew I’d tell him if it was safe for him to know.
He told me that he couldn’t be prouder.
In the time since, I had plenty to do… at least for a couple of months. I took the Chief up on his favor, and was able to find myself a new career that was even more rewarding than before.
Which only left me one tiny little problem to finally address.
Ripped from my reflection, I glanced over at the dilapidated old bar. With a small smirk, I finally killed the ignition and stepped out over the gravel, feeling it crunch beneath my boots once again.
When I walked back into the bar, I strolled past the regulars and straight up to the sour redhead behind the counter – whose friendly face darkened the closer I came.
“Hi, Elmira,” I greeted her nonchalantly. “I’ll take a glass of water… easy on the spit.”
She stared at me with a smug look on her face. “I told you before, and I’ll tell you again – we don’t serve your kind here.”
“Well, it’s a damn good thing I’m not that kind of girl anymore,” I responded with a lighthearted shrug, reaching into my pocket and tossing a card onto the counter.
In bold letters and embossed print, it read:
Sarah Buchanan
PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR
“Now, if you’d be so kind, bartender… fetch me a goddamned glass of water.”
A familiar laugh piped up from the darkness. My eyes zeroed in across the bar, landing on a cross-armed man in the shadows. He was clad in the leather of the Devil’s Dragons MC, with a rugged voice stained with smugness.
“You’d be quicker to pour this woman a drink if you’d seen the way she shoots…”
Hunter smiled as he leaned forward off of the wood paneling, strolling into the light from the outside windows. He lifted a few strands of hair from my face with a tender pair of fingers.
“Had a feeling you’d be back, sooner or later…”
“You know that I had to keep my distance while the media spun their tops over those girls,” I replied comfortably.
“Couldn’t even spare me a little phone call, could you?” He asked, his voice smooth and soft.
“I wasn’t sure that I could trust myself if I did…”
“Well, you’re here now,” he observed calmly, his eyes firmly locked onto mine. I heard and ignored a veiled scoff from the redhead bartender. He leaned a little forward, eyebrow arching, and said, “Do you trust yourself to be a good girl?”
A smirk crossed my lips.
Did I?
“I’m here because somebody with deep pockets lost a cargo container… and word on the street is that you’ve got operations out in California. I know that the Devil’s Dragons run the port of Los Angeles.”
“All business, no pleasure?” Hunter chuckled, reaching out to turn my hips until I was facing him.
The same crystal blue eyes gazed mischievously into my soul, inviting me to surrender for a few hours. That same sexy stubble shifted beneath his smile, and I spotted that same sexy dragon tattoo rolling down his arm…
“Maybe a little pleasure, too,” I admitted, feeling the heat of my face flushing red as the bikers nearby began to hoot and holler.
“In that case, I’ll clear my schedule…” Hunter murmured, his finger lifting my chin. “Maybe we’ll talk business tomorrow, hmm?”
The men around us cheered again.
My eyes caught the piercing but approving gaze of Grizz, his arm still locked up in the cast from that bullet he took in Juarez. I figured he’d have discarded it already, but it would probably be coming off any day now…
“I think business can wait one night,” I spoke, turning back to Hunter. “But there’s something that you need to know.”
“Don’t worry, Princess,” he chuckled hungrily. “I know it’s been a while. You’re probably out of practice… I’ll go easy on you.”
I smirked, shaking my head. “It’s not that.”
The room slowly drifted silent, the whistles and laughs gradually drawn back. The single sound in the bar was water pouring from a tap into a cup behind me, slamming onto the countertop harder than necessary.
“Hunter… I’m pregnant.”
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Novels by Nikki Wild
Bad Boy Sports
Play Dirty (A Bad Boy Football Romance)
Running Game (A Bad Boy Football Romance)
Bad Boy Fighters:
Knockout (A Bad Boy MMA Romance)
Bad Boy Bikers:
Saving Landon (A Bad Boy Biker Romance)
Saved by the Bad Boy (A Devil’s Dragons Biker Romance)
Pride and Pregnancy (A Devil’s Dragons Motorcycle Club Romance)
Roughneck (A Bad Boy Motorcycle Club Romance)
Rough Rider (Outlaw Kings Motorcycle Club)
British Bad Boys:
Royal Prick (A Bad Boy British Romance)
Arrogant Brit (A Bad Boy British Sports Romance)
Rock Hard (A Bad Boy British Rockstar Romance)
Played (A Bad Boy British Romance)
Bad Boy Rockstars:
Illicit Behavior (A Bad Boy Rockstar Romance)
Rock Hard (A Bad Boy British Rockstar Romance)
Bad Boy Stepbrothers:
Lust (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance)
Richard (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance)
Bad Boy Billionaires:
Protect And Serve (A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance)
Pretend Married (A Sexy Billionaire Romance)
PULSE
A little preview…
Sawyer Samuels – the bane of my fucking existence.
No matter how I looked at my relationship to him, three inexcusable facts absolutely decimated me at every turn: a) Sawyer relished in his unflappably strong streak of arrogant prick when it came to me, b) he was the hottest fucking guy I’d ever met in my life, and c) for a few confusing, angry years, we shared a goddamn house together.
You see, in their rampant cruelty, the Fates saw fit to make Sawyer Samuels my fucking stepbrother.
With filthy good looks, a strong and handsome build, and an incredible smirk, Sawyer was an absolute force to be reckoned with. No matter how hard life hit him, he always came back swinging – and when he disappeared on me and descended into the brutal world of cage fighting, that metaphor turned literal real quick.
My relationship with him had always been complicated. Very complicated. From the day I met him, he was a complete jackass to me, just shy of belittling me at every last fucking turn. I never knew what his problem with me was, but he seemed to get his rocks off on antagonizing me in these small, subtle mind games. I hated it. I hated him.
Except…neither of those were true.
I enjoyed it. It was like we were playing this constant game with one another. I was always on the defensive, and he was always on the attack, but something about the game just kept me playing.
It was true that he was a complete asshole to me. I couldn’t stand how fucking cocky he was, with his attractive build that I saw way too often when he’d wander around the house shirtless. Then there was that stupid little smirk he had used on me all the time – the Panty-Dropper, his friends called it. It was his secret weapon – parting the legs of just about any girl he wanted. After years of endless sexual conquests and a raging need to constantly piss me off, Sawyer was so confidant, so self-assured…and he had never turned down an opportunity to pick at me.
But I…I loved it.
It was stupid and I knew it. I don’t know why I let him get away with it – it’s not like I couldn’t stand my ground against him. But for some reason… I reveled in his antagonistic attention. I didn’t let him walk all over me by any means, and I’d challenge him if he got out of line, but something about the weird, stupid stepsibling tension between us enticed me.
Was that why? I dwelled on the thought, thinking back to when I was sixteen years old. Did I just want his attention?
I was a good girl. Good girls don’t crush on their brothers…
… Sawyer had been handsome before.
Now, he was stupidly attractive.
I wasn’t sure how I could much I could bear a summer alone with the cocky, sculpted jackass now. It had been easy to let the past be the past and just forget the whole mess, but then he had to come back and make life a living hell again. Now, I was going to have to figure my feelings out while trapped with the guy. And there was no way I was going to let him have that kind of power over me, not after he’d betrayed me before.
But that didn’t resolve the looming crisis. With a couple of months living together alone, in close quarters, there were really only two options immediately visible; I really had no idea which one would be more appealing.
Either I’d want to kill my stepbrother, or…
I’d want him to fuck me...
One
Saffron
Pennsylvania, Seven Years Ago
The day that I met the arrogant prick named Sawyer Samuels, I was fresh from a year of studying abroad in England. Thanks to winning an essay competition, I’d been selected to spend a year outside the States, studying at a prestigious English academy – coming back home with a ton of stories to make high school a little more bearable. After a mad dash to the airport and most of the day up in the air, my tired body was sluggish with jet lag.
Perhaps that’s why I took the news that I had a new father – and a new stepbrother – not particularly well.
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself there.
I knew that my mother was dating – that she had met a really great guy who she was hitting things off with really well. God bless my mom, she was terrible at keeping up with people. It was as if she were completely averse to technology. I could understand why she didn’t want to pay for those pricey international texts, but she would barely respond to emails, phone calls, practically anything I threw at her. The few letters I wrote her were never answered, although she’d confirm she loved them the few times I caught her.
After spending so much time abroad, I was eager to find out about this new guy she’d alluded to – my mother had mentioned that he was a real charmer. She even happily confessed that he made her feel young again.
That was enough for me to like the guy.
Ever since my father walked out on us when I was young, it was just the two of us, and I knew that she needed that back in her life. That stone. That foundation. My mother was a strong woman, don’t get me wrong, and her endless cheerfulness could illuminate the darkest room. But too often had I found her curled up on the couch, asleep, a half-filled glass of wine on the coffee table and a late movie marathon quietly lighting the room – with the captions on, so she wouldn’t wake me. I would always find a blanket for her and drape it across her tired, saddened body, hoping that she got her rest before the next monotonous shift at the Waffle House.
Mom hadn’t told me much about this strange suitor, but what she had told me had interested me.
A little salt and pepper in his hair. He looks very distinguished, and he has this incredible smile, she wrote once. Chet is this big business guy, I guess. I pretend to listen when he tells me about it sometimes. When he talks, I just like to hear his thick, rugged voice. I can’t wait for you to hear it.
I’d been worried when I hadn’t heard from her for a month and a half, prior to my return, but those fears fell to the wayside when she snatched me up from the airport herself. My mother was positively beaming. I’d never seen her so happy in my life, and I knew that my return wasn’t the only reason.
Things must have been going fantastic with Chet.
But I didn’t get to really ask about that. The entire drive back, she wanted to know all about Bristol. As soon as I opened my mouth the words just fell out of me. I delighted her with first-hand accounts of the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, and how the sky filled with large, colorful hot air balloons. I proudly elaborated on the maritime history of the city, including the important
, early New World voyages that had sailed from the Bristol port. She had no idea that Bristol had been a major trade hub for nearly a thousand years. My tale continued on with the rich architecture; I elaborated on the beauty of the traditional European houses and the gorgeous and imposing government buildings; I even explained the beauty of the Bristol Cathedral, and its gothic, pale-brick twin towers.
Funnily enough, Bristol hadn’t been my first choice – that had been my beloved dream destination, Paris. Heartbreakingly, Paris wasn’t in the cards, so I settled for the historic port city…although I was determined to make my way there as soon as I could.
In hindsight, I should have suspected why she was keeping me so talkative. At the time, it didn’t really occur to me – in fact, nothing seemed really out of place until I pointed out our exit as we shot past it.
“Mom, we passed our turn. Did I excite you so much about Bristol that you forgot where we live?”
“I have something to show you, dearie,” she told me with a wink.
I bit my lip. She hadn’t called me dearie in years, and I wondered what had made her so happy that she slipped into the old habit.
It occurred to me that she wanted me to meet her boyfriend – and I was far too tired and jet-lagged to put up with that for too long. But I couldn’t bring myself to cut her off, or to grumble at her, and so I sat with my temple against the glass.
Half an hour later, we were driving down a district of filthy expensive houses. The setting sun had cast a beautiful painterly backdrop behind the exquisite homes, its light bathing everything within sight under a gorgeous glow. The entire scene was unreal. Studying the two, sometimes three-story houses against the blend of oranges overtaking the sky, I noticed small details that made the entire place reek of money we would never have. Many of the homes featured thick Greco-Roman pillars, accenting the exquisite painted woodwork of the houses; they also structurally supported the sprawling, second-floor stretch balconies. Large, healthy trees with outstretched branches dominated near the street, shading the asphalt and preventing the borderline blinding light from being too obnoxious.
