Losing It All

by Wilde, Kati

  “That’s not his blood, angel. And he’s all right.”

  That seems true. Though the big man isn’t exactly smiling, somehow he looks a hell of a lot happier than he did only an hour ago.

  Duke and Gunner head into the house carrying more fuel. Handlebar comes closer, wiping down his hands with a cloth that Hashtag douses with more gas as soon as he’s done with it.

  Handlebar pauses in front of us, his gaze locked on Stone. “I appreciate that, brother.”

  “I figured you would,” Stone says gruffly, then takes my hand. “So let’s finish this.”

  Handlebar walks with us toward the farmhouse. We stop at the end of a trail of fuel that Blowback pours for us...a trail that leads back to the house. Stone pulls out a lighter from his pocket.

  “Ready to watch it burn?” he asks me.

  I’ve been ready for so long. It seems like forever since the moment I stood inside a tavern, preparing myself to meet a fighter who I didn’t know but was determined to save, and realizing that the next step I took would be the one that lit the match to burn down the nightmare I’d found myself in.

  But I had no idea how far that step would take me.

  “Can I do it?” I ask him, my throat aching.

  “Fuck yes, angel,” he says, then kisses me before handing over the lighter.

  And finally, finally—I burn down the fucking Cage.

  Epilogue

  “Show of hands.” At the head of the table, Saxon calls for a vote. “Those in favor of establishing a new chapter of the Hellfire Riders?”

  Every hand on the executive board goes up. No surprise there. Our numbers are getting too damn big for this little town, and after all the shit that went down a while back—the Devil’s Hangmen gone, the Iron Blood gone, the Eighty-Eight weakened without Papa and the other Cage-fuckers to provide all the shit they were running—there’s been a huge power vacuum in the region. And the Hellfire Riders aren’t looking for power, but we’d sure as fuck like to take up some more territory and flex some muscle when more skinheads or skin traffickers try to move in.

  And do it real quiet, just like we’ve always been.

  “All right, then. Record that vote, Widowmaker, and then all you fuckers go home.”

  Zoomie smirks. “Aw,” she says to me. “I think the new daddy is cranky.”

  “Probably hasn’t slept in about two years,” I agree. Not since his first boy came along. Now the second’s only three months old. “Jenny always looks real well-rested, though.”

  Saxon narrows that steely glare at me. “Laugh it up, fucker. Your turn is coming.”

  I grin. Yeah, it is. And I can’t fucking wait.

  Groaning, Zoomie shakes her head. “This new chapter shouldn’t be called the Hellfire Riders. Just call it the Happy Fuckers Club.”

  “And make you the president?” I ask her.

  “I can’t be a member. You have to be real sappy to patch in. Jack could be prez, though,” she says, looking toward Blowback, and his dead flat stare lights up when he grins at her.

  “I’ll be prez,” he agrees. “But it sounds like we also need to have a baby.”

  She snorts. “We have a dog. That’s close enough. So you’ll be prez, then we’ll throw both these happy fuckers in there, too”—she waves toward me and Saxon—“and also you, and you, and you.”

  She points to Gunner and Duke and Bull, who all missed the beginning of the conversation but look real worried now that she’s singling them out.

  “What club are we joining?” Duke asks.

  “The Happy Fuckers Club,” I tell him.

  Bull seems to consider that before nodding. “Yeah, all right. Next executive meeting, I’m bringing Nadia in that little lamb pajama set she’s got, and we’re going to spend the whole time coloring rainbows. Because I’m a real happy fucker when we do that.”

  “And that’s just too damn cute.” Zoomie pushes back from the table. “So I’ll leave all you dick-swingers to this sappy shit, while I go have a real good time out drinking with your wives.”

  Yeah, maybe I’ll be going that way soon, too. I look to Gunner as she heads out. “Where are they meeting up tonight?”

  “The prez’s place.”

  “House or bar?”

  “Bar,” Saxon says.

  “No offense, brothers,” Duke tells us as he gets to his feet. “This happy fuck club sounds like good clean fun, but I’m thinking Zoomie’s got a point. I can stay here and look at you all, or I can go look at Olivia, and I know which one sounds like a real good time.”

  “Shit, I don’t know.” Bull looks real torn. “Gunner’s so pretty.”

  “Prettier than Sara?” Gunner asks dryly.

  The big man shoots out of his chair. “Not even close. Sorry, brother. Maybe there’s an Ugly Fuckers Club you can join.”

  Scowling, Saxon drums his fingers on the table. “Does anyone else have any real funny jokes to tell before we get the fuck out of here?”

  Blowback’s expression doesn’t crack a bit. “Lily’s pregnant,” he says.

  The prez closes his eyes like he’s in pain. “And now I really fucking need to go see my wife.”

  * * *

  Just like I always really need to see mine. It’s been over four years since I first spotted her in a tavern and then had to keep staring—and that hasn’t changed a damn bit. She’s up at the bar, looking so fucking pretty…but not a bit vulnerable.

  She catches sight of me in the mirror behind the shelves of liquor, and spins on her stool, her emerald eyes shining and her smile bright. Then she brings me in with a crook of her finger.

  I push in close, dropping a kiss to her mouth. “I missed you, angel.”

  “I missed you, too,” she says softly, though it’s only been a few hours since we last saw each other, when her last class of the day ended and I finished up the final coaching session at the gym that me and a few of the other brothers own. I made enough of a reputation for myself fighting in the biker circuit that the training slots are always filled up, and I’m enjoying the hell out of it. But there’s always a Maxine-sized hole in me when I’m not with her.

  “How’d your meeting go?” she asks. “Saxon came in, and then he and Jenny went back to his office, but I can never tell if he’s in a good mood or bad.”

  “We established that we’re all happy fuckers. Why’s Anna working the bar?”

  Which is why I’m assuming that the women are sitting up here instead of at a table. Anna used to bartend at Saxon’s joint, but cut back her hours as soon as she started selling paintings on the regular. Then quit altogether when her and Gunner’s adoption paperwork finally went through, and they brought their daughter home.

  “She just stepped in while Lacey went on break, so we’re keeping her company.” Maxine takes a sip from the glass in front of her and then gives me a little pout. “No cherry for you tonight.”

  Because she’s drinking water instead of a cocktail. Grinning, I glance down at her rounded little belly, then let my gaze drift lower. She’s wearing a white dress that flirts around her knees and some sexy-as-fuck red heels. “I bet I can still find something sweet to eat between those pretty thighs of yours.”

  “Are you sure you want to?” Gripping my vest, she tugs me closer and brings my gaze back to hers. “I’m trouble. I’ll take advantage of all your soft spots.”

  “I fucking hope so,” I say real low. “But I don’t have any soft spots right now, angel. They’re all real damn hard.”

  “What about your soft spot for dogs? Because I’ve got one of those. And I’ve got a kid coming. I bet you’ll have a really soft spot for him. And I’m also a damsel in so much distress,” she adds breathily.

  Killing me. “You hurting?”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “You need to be fucked, girl?” I push in real close. “Want me to just tug those panties aside and get into you right here in front of everyone?”

  “Oh god. I don’t even care. Yes.”

&
nbsp; “Nah,” I tell her. “I ain’t sharing you with anyone.”

  But I’m a man who likes to get things done. And there’s something that needs doing.

  She lets out a laugh when I scoop her off the barstool, then winds her arms around my neck as I cradle her against my chest and head for the employees’ door.

  “Saxon and Jenny are already back there!” Anna calls after me, and Maxine starts giggling.

  I head through the kitchen instead, carrying her out behind the building and into the warm spring night. There I back her up against the brick wall, and she looks up at me with her eyes shining with need—and so much more.

  All that emotion just grabs me by the throat. “I love you so fucking much, angel,” I tell her hoarsely.

  That emerald glistens. “Show me.”

  Always. I lift her up, tug her panties aside, and slide deep. So fucking deep, while her legs wrap me up tight. Never letting me go. And as I start pumping into her, she’s kissing me, touching me, wrecking me. This girl, this fucking girl, who’s got me so crazy in love with her. Maxine. My wife, my angel, my everything.

  She just about takes me out with that hair trigger and her miracle of a pussy, but I ain’t done.

  Kissing her panting mouth, I tell her gruffly, “Hold on tight, angel. We’ve still got a ways to go.”

  Not just tonight. We’ve got a lifetime ahead of us.

  And it’s gonna be a long, hot ride.

  A NOTE FROM KATI

  TL;DR version of this long author’s note: Phew, this was a long time coming, and now it’s done! Thank you for sticking with me, and I hope you loved it! Next up is Sheriff’s Bad Bear and Midsummer Bride!

  So…this has been a long road. I intended to finish this book in late 2016/early 2017. But between contracted work, ‘real-life’ stuff, and just personal and emotional reasons (and then the story not being exactly what I wanted) writing Stone’s book was a lot harder than I expected. But it’s finally here!

  A few quick notes about the timeline for Losing It All and other books (and if you are skipping ahead to read this author’s note first, there are spoilers!): originally this book was going to be a part of a crossover between Ella’s Death Lords and Ruby’s Bedlam Butchers. That plan never quite pulled together for various reasons, but you can still see where we planted a few seeds of that crossover through a few of our books, beginning with Jack & Lily’s story and the first mention of the Cage. The strongest crossover element was of course Crash & Handlebar disappearing off the pages of the Bedlam Butchers, then showing up in Gunner’s story, Breaking It All … and now in this story, we see exactly what happened to them. I’m super grateful to Ruby for letting me take on Crash and Handlebar, especially since she knew what I planned to do. When I told Ruby and Ella that I needed Stone to fight someone in the Cage who’d have a deeper emotional impact on him (as well as the Riders and the Butchers…and our readers) and it couldn’t be just a random fighter, she graciously offered me her characters.

  She also wrote Double Dare You, which tells the story of one of the girls who was branded as a “cherry” and is eventually rescued by two Bedlam Butchers. Those events take place at the same time as Breaking It All and Losing It All … but we did have a little timeline bobble there. My books are set primarily in November/December, whereas her heroine is about to begin college (which would be early autumn, unless we pretended it was the rare freshman who started during winter term.) So if you are going from one book to the next and scratching your head about the timeline, it’s just a mix-up on our part, and not something we caught at the time of writing. Just pretend it’s the same month!

  Also my new adult romance, Going Nowhere Fast, features Stone’s cousin as a heroine and has a few chapters where the Hellfire Riders show up. Although Maxine isn’t mentioned (because I was trying to avoid spoilers for Stone’s book) — and Gunner is also missing because it would have been weird if he was there and Aspen didn’t remark on how pretty he was, and so his presence would have been too distracting, story-wise — that romance takes place the summer after Gunner & Anna are married.

  The final timeline note is from Craving It All, when Stone returns to help the Riders hand out a punishment. Originally, I’d planned to have Maxine in a long coma after being shot (seriously, that version was so much darker and a more depressing, with Maxine still believing Stone hated her even up to the point where she was shot, and with Matt staying dead and I’m so glad I rewrote the second half) — so when I wrote both Craving It All and Faking It All, part of the reason Stone was still away for so long was because he was chasing down bad guys but also always checking in on her in the hospital. Since I changed that part of the plot, however, now it means that in Craving It All, he showed up in Pine Valley while Maxine was waiting for him to come home. I thought about forcing a scene into this book that would explain that, because it really doesn’t make sense that Maxine would be so close to him and he wouldn’t go see her. (And pushing their reunion ahead to that moment would have then completely messed up a larger plot element in Faking It All, when Stone is still gone and his enforcer’s patch is up for grabs.) So there are one of two options there: I go back to revise Bull’s book and take out the mention that Stone was there … or Stone did make a very quick trip home to take care of Club business, and looked longingly in at Maxine at some point without alerting Daisy to his presence or Maxine knowing he was there, but had to leave again right away to take down one of the stable owners.

  And I don’t really like the idea of going back to change Bull’s book, so I’m okay with that second option. Just picture a heart-wrenching moment when Stone is about to go see Maxine — and it’s probably pouring rain, so it looks like tears are dripping down his cheeks — and he sees that she’s lonely and she’s playing with Daisy but still a little sore from her injuries, and he’s fighting his guilt that she was shot but he LOVES HER SO MUCH HE HAS TO SEE HER, and is just about to go knock on the door…but then he gets that call saying that maybe there’s a lead on Papa. So he goes, because taking Papa out was how he’d protect her. Awww.

  Also, we are going to pretend that there is a good veterinary school near where Pine Valley is supposed to be (if you’re familiar with Central Oregon, you might be scratching your head about where she’s going to enroll in a veterinary program.) In Oregon, only OSU in Corvallis offers a doctorate in veterinary medicine, but we’ll just say that by the time Maxine had finished her undergraduate work, they also had a program at the OSU Cascades campus in Bend. Make-believe is fun!

  Some Hellfire Riders housekeeping…

  You might have also noticed that I’ve changed up quite a few covers in the series! That’s simply because when the Hellfire Riders started out, it was a part of the Motorcycle Clubs line of novellas that I was writing with Ella, Ruby, and Alexa. We numbered those novellas to make it easier for readers to keep track of them, but as the line ended (and I continued writing Hellfire Riders stories) the numbering created a lot of confusion for readers, instead.

  So I’ve tried to remove most of the Motorcycle Clubs branding from the covers and re-numbered the series to make it easier to recognize a Hellfire Rider book. These covers are just simple updates to the Kindle file at Amazon, so if you already bought it, no worries! You won’t accidentally buy it again.

  If you purchased a paperback, please note that only the cover changed! I updated the series list in the books, but aside from that, the text is exactly the same.

  What’s coming next?

  Sheriff’s Bad Bear and The Midsummer Bride! Sheriff’s Bad Bear will come first, simply because I have the audiobook under contract with Tantor Media and so there’s an additional obligation there (plus it’s shorter, so it’ll come out faster!) I have another ‘other job’ project about to hit, too, so I can’t give any concrete dates for either book. Just know that it’ll be as soon as I possibly can.

  After that … I’m not sure! It’s funny, because when I started out with the Motorcycle Clubs, I was very fo
cused on just one type of sexy, contemporary MC story — but knowing myself a bit better now, I really need to let off creative pressure in different ways. So that’s why you’ve been getting all these different things from me: holiday contemporary, paranormal werewolves, barbarian fantasy, and motorcycle clubs. I probably won’t have any more Hellfire Riders for a while (at least not in the sense of “I’m writing a motorcycle club romance”) but we might see them show up again in stories I’ve been tossing around in my head for Creek, Hashtag, and a few others.

  So I have a ton of ideas, but which one will come after Midsummer Bride mostly depends on which one grabs me the hardest! For right now, though, I’ll just focus on getting those two stories done in 2020, and also Evil Twin, because that story is going to be so much fun.

  I have started making news updates on my site and I will continue that at least monthly, even if I don’t have a book coming out that month. So if you’d like to stay on top of Kati news, that’s a good place to go. And as always, if you’d like to be notified of a new release, you can sign up for my newsletter (this is the Motorcycle Clubs newsletter, but you can choose which authors to get news from). I won’t spam you; I typically only send out newsletters when I have a release or other important news, and I never share your information with other authors.

  Again, thank you all so much for picking up Stone’s book after all this time (or if you’re a new reader, thank you for giving it a try!) I hope you loved it as much as I do.

  Happy reading!

  Kati

  Also by Kati Wilde

  Contemporary Romance

  Going Nowhere Fast

  (new adult, enemies-to-lovers, road trip)

  Secret Santa