by Parker, Ali
Owen
The Lost Breed MC #9
Ali Parker
Weston Parker
BrixBaxter Publishing
Contents
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Description
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
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Copyright
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Description
I’m done with my old ways.
No more bar fights, making enemies, or saying goodbye to friends who got caught in the crossfire of our dangerous lifestyle.
Things are better.
But it’s impossible for it to stay that way for long.
I’m not that lucky.
Evangeline Snow is the girl from my past who I didn’t deserve. Her father made sure I knew that. But now, seven years later, after running into each other by happenstance, it’s like no time has passed. We’re both stronger people and we know what we want.
Nothing has changed for me. I want her.
The question is whether or not she’s willing to stand her ground and stay by me or choose her father and her own reputation over what we have.
I won’t blame her if she chooses the safe route.
I am the road less travelled.
And trouble will inevitably find its way back to me one way or another.
It always does.
Introduction
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Chapter 1
Owen
Rhys was draped carelessly across his chair with one arm over Quinn’s shoulder. The pub was loud. He had to lean forward a bit, moving closer to the table we shared between us and Liam and raising his voice to call to me over the racket of the music and the obnoxious drunks scattered around the place.
“Want to rack up a game of pool?” He nodded across the pub toward the far corner, where there was a bunch of old-school arcade games like Pinball and Pac-man and four felt-lined pool tables. One of them had just opened up.
I smirked. “Why? You looking to get your ass kicked in front of your girl?”
Quinn giggled into her beer as she took a sip. “He won’t lose with me on his team.”
“Tough words.” I chuckled.
Quinn shrugged a shoulder and looked up at Rhys. Her cheeks were rosy from a couple of beers she’d had over the course of the hour. “What do you say, babe? Want to help me embarrass these two?”
“For the record,” Liam said beside me, “I have not done any trash talking, and I would rather you didn’t make an ass out of me in front of all these pretty and very single chicks.”
I clapped a hand on his shoulder. “They’re not paying any mind to you, Liam. You’re too young.”
“Am not,” he said defensively.
I reached for his chin. “Is that the beginnings of a chin strap? Can you even grow a full beard?”
“Fuck off,” he said, slapping my hand away.
Rhys and Quinn laughed at his expense, and then Rhys got to his feet smoothly. “You guys set the table up. I’m going to use the bathroom, and then I’ll order us another round. Want another beer, babe?”
Quinn shook her head. “Just ice water, please.”
He bent down and kissed her forehead. “You got it.”
Rhys strode away, leaving the three of us sitting around the table to quickly polish off our beers.
Quinn finished hers first. “I’ll go get the table set up before someone steals it out from under us. Hurry up, boys. Drink those beers.”
She swept away from the table, hips swaying as she went, and I did a noble job of keeping my gaze on my drink. Liam, however, did not fare as well.
I jabbed him in the ribs with my elbow. “If Rhys caught you looking at her like that, he’d have your head. Or your dick.”
Liam let out a nervous little laugh as he nursed his ribs. “I wasn’t looking.”
“Right. That line won’t work on Rhys, brother. I’m just saying. Nose down.”
Liam tilted his head back to polish off the last couple mouthfuls of his beer. “I just need to get laid, man. It’s getting a little dire in that area of my life. I’m desperate.”
“Maybe you should start looking at more attainable options. You know, women who aren’t spoken for?”
“Ha. Ha.”
“I’m serious. Here.” I took the back of his chair and dragged him sideways to drape an arm over his shoulders. I nodded at a blonde girl at the bar. She was wearing blue jeans and a white crop top that showed off about an inch and a half of midriff. She was thick, curvy, and cute as hell. She crossed her ankles and leaned on the bar as she ordered herself a drink. “What about her?”
“She’s out of my league.” Liam sighed.
“Says who?”
“Me.”
I shook my head. “Give yourself a little credit. You just have to have the right approach.”
“Which is what?”
“Well, for starters, introduce yourself,” I said before slumping back in my chair and sipping my beer. “You’re not gonna get a woman when you’re sitting here and she’s standing all the way over there. Say hello. Talk to her about something generic. Something happening around you.”
“Like?”
I shrugged and looked around the pub. “Like the drunk clowns at the table beside Quinn.”
Liam twisted around in his chair to look across the pub at the pool table area. Quinn was bent over and stretching across the table to rack up the pool balls inside the triangle. She was blissfully unaware of the drunk buffoons behind her checking out her ass.
Liam’s eyes narrowed. “Should we do something about that?”
I watched the men carefully. There were four of them. They had put their game on hold and were leaning against their pool cues and staring unabashedly at Quinn as she straightened up and planted her hands on her hips. Then she walked around the table and pulled a cue from its place on the wall. She chalked the end of it.
The men nudged each other and whispered what I was sure were objectionable remarks about Rhys’s girl, and then they descended into childish snickering.
That seemed to get Quinn’s attention.
She turned to them with her eyes narrowed.
Then they started chatting her up.
Right from the get-go, it was going terribly. It was clear to me that Quinn was telling them to leave her alone. Her body language suggested that she was annoyed, not threatened, and the scowl she wore told me they had already said more than a couple of things that rubbed her the wrong way.
I sighed. “You can’t go anywhere these days without running into assholes.”
When
I stood up, Liam was quick to follow.
I marched across the bar. If Rhys hadn’t been in the bathroom, he would have done the same, but we were Lost Breeds, and if he wasn’t around to come to Quinn’s aid, then I was the next best thing she had for backup.
Not that she needed it.
Quinn was in one of the guys’ face. She jabbed a finger at him, and her voice was raised. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but her face was getting red—and it wasn’t from the beer.
I jogged the rest of the way across the pub and came up beside her, taking her elbow and pulling her back toward me as she practically spit on the tall, preppy-looking guy who had approached her.
“Is there a problem here?” I asked as Liam stepped up on Quinn’s other side.
The preppy guy, who had thick black hair and a long mouth that was twisted in a cocky smirk, shook his head. “No, no problem, man. I just said hello to your friend here, and she started blowing smoke out her ears.”
Quinn scoffed. “Yeah. That’s exactly how it went, you misogynistic, ignorant prick.”
His eyebrows lifted.
I kept a firm hand on Quinn, who was vibrating with anger. Whatever Mr. Preppy had said had most definitely rubbed her the wrong way, and she was a hard woman to anger.
“You should leave,” I told him, nodding at his buddies. “Go back to your game, and we’ll go to ours.”
“I think your little friend owes me an apology,” Mr. Preppy said.
Quinn’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “I owe you an apology? I don’t think so.”
The smirk he wore stretched into a smile that reminded me of the smug look a salesman would give you if you said, “Yes please, I’d like to take the warranty package.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans and swayed on the spot. He was drunk. “Listen, baby girl, you’re making me look bad in front of my boys. And you don’t want that, do you?”
“Fuck you,” Quinn hissed.
He leaned forward. “Say you’re sorry, bitch.”
Quinn yanked her arm out of my grip and moved forward.
But she was too slow.
I closed the gap between me and Mr. Preppy in one short step, and I used that momentum as I wound back with my right fist. I swung, twisting at the hip to gather as much power as I could in the short amount of time I had, and my knuckles landed right across his jaw with a loud crack.
He hit the floor and stayed there.
His buddies all stared at me, dumbfounded by how quickly things had taken a turn as I shook out my fist.
“Well, shit,” I growled, staring down at the unconscious jerk sprawled out at my feet.
Quinn clapped her hands over her mouth. Then she giggled.
Liam put his arm in front of her and pushed her back a couple of steps. “You’d better let us take it from here, Quinn.”
She fell back behind us.
The whole pub had gone quiet. The live band up on stage had ended their song with an unsynchronized wheeze of noise as their instruments stopped. Security guards were making their way through the crowd.
And the three friends of Mr. Preppy had finally collected their jaws from the floor to make a decision. They wanted to fight.
They charged Liam and me with battle cries and raised fists.
I grinned.
We slammed into each other with force, and I brought one to the floor in seconds, breaking his nose under my fist and leaving him in the fetal position on the floor, cupping his bloody face. I stepped over him as the second man blew past me and made for Liam, while the third put his fists up in front of his face to protect himself.
Finally, someone who had a clue.
He let out an angry yell and came in low, wrapping his arms around my waist and spreading me out flat on my back. The fall knocked the air from my lungs, and as I tried to catch my breath, he gathered the front of my shirt in his fist and wound back with his other hand. His eyes were wide, his nostrils flared, and his shaggy brown hair was sticking out in every direction.
He landed a hit to my jaw, and I tasted blood. I shielded my face with my forearms as he let out a flurry of punches. Those were definitely going to bruise.
While he wailed on me, I waited for my chance to strike. He tired after only about fifteen seconds, and then I took my opportunity to drive a fist up into his ribs. He yelped, and I rolled him off of me. As I rolled, I decked him in the face, and he rolled onto his back, where he stared up at the ceiling, dazed.
I made to strike him again, but Quinn grabbed the wrist of my raised arm. “We have to go. Now!”
She pulled me away from the pool tables. Liam was already making a mad dash for the door, and as he went, he caught Rhys coming down the hall from the bathrooms. Rhys saw us running toward him and took the hint, falling into line behind Liam and running after him.
I was laughing wildly when we burst out into the parking lot. Security yelled after us never to come back, and Quinn flipped them the bird over her shoulder as she ran up ahead of us, calling for us to move our dumb asses.
Liam shook his head at me as we jogged across the parking lot. “You’re a fucking madman, Owen.”
I grinned. “Don’t tell me you didn’t have a blast in there.”
“I think I broke my thumb,” he grumbled as we slowed to a walk.
I dragged the back of my hand across my bloody lip and looked back over my shoulder. “I wish there’d been more of them. Then we really could have had some fun.”
Chapter 2
Evangeline
The modern open-concept mansion was beautiful—I would give it that—but it had nothing on the manor I’d grown up in back home in Chicago. It lacked the character my manor had. Where my home was finished with dark cherry-oak features and stained-glass windows, this home was stark and white and bright, with floor-to-ceiling windows and glass partitions separating the kitchen from the living room and other living areas. No matter where you stood in the house, you could see through to other areas.
For a party like this, it made sense.
I could easily see which rooms had a bar, which rooms were full of people I wanted to avoid, and which rooms had a nice private spot to sit down and take a breather from all the eager socialites who wanted to steal a minute to talk to me privately about my father’s success and how proud I must be.
I moved through the rooms toward the backyard.
The air was fresh and crisp, as fall had just arrived a couple of weeks ago in New York City. The rich aroma of the turning leaves filled the air and was punctuated with the chemical smell of chlorine wafting up in the steam from the in-ground swimming pool. Nobody was in it, but as the night wore on and went into the late hours and people were a bit more intoxicated, I imagined they would have looser inhibitions, and some of them might get in the pool.
Or be thrown in.
House parties like this tended to escalate in that direction.
The outdoor bar was crowded with people, but they made way for me as I stepped up and ordered myself a Manhattan. The bartender showed off a bit, probably looking for praise or just my attention, but I put my back to the bar and scanned the crowd, searching for my father.
I knew he was here somewhere. Several people had told me they’d already spoken to him. But with so many people around, it was hard to spot him. All the men were well dressed in perfect bespoke suits. The women dazzled the rooms with their floor-length gowns and glittering jewelry. My dress, a floor-length silk black gown, stood out from the crowd. It was a bit edgy, with a slit up the right leg that nearly went to my hip. Each step I took showed a good amount of leg and a flash of my strappy black cage heels.
The only jewelry I wore was a pair of teardrop-shaped diamond earrings that were long enough to graze the sides of my neck while I walked.
The bartender handed me my Manhattan, and as I took a sip, a familiar face cut through the crowd and came toward me.
Emory Cage.
Great, I thought, thankful for my Manhattan that wash
ed the sudden bad taste out of my mouth.
Emory sauntered over and flashed me his most offensive womanizer smile. “Evangeline,” he purred, taking my hand and pressing my knuckles to his lips. “A pleasure to see you here. I didn’t think you were coming.”
The event was for my father, and I wasn’t going to be rude to one of his biggest donors. “For a while there, I didn’t think I’d be able to make it either. But here I am.”
“Here you are,” he said. His tone dripped with sex, and I had the sense he wished he was in a socially appropriate setting where he could lick his lips and give me a very obvious up and down.
Thank God he didn’t.
“You look good,” he said.
“You too.”
I wasn’t lying. He was a good-looking man. Most of the men at parties like these were. They had money spilling out their ears to afford the best forms of self-care, as did I, and it showed. Emory had almost black hair, peppered with the first appearances of gray. It suited him. He was cleanly shaven with square, bold features, and he looked more like an athlete than a marketing tycoon.
“What’s new with you?” he asked, sliding between a couple of people at the bar to stand beside me and flag down the bartender. He ordered himself a whiskey on the rocks.
“Not much,” I said, still casting my eyes around the place in search of my father.
