by Sophia Gray
This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons--living or dead--is entirely coincidental.
ONE MORE RIDE: Carnage Warriors MC copyright 2017 by Sophia Gray. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.
***
Sign up to my mailing list by clicking here:
http://dl.bookfunnel.com/sqou66sq56
Also, follow me on Facebook for hot content and free giveaways!
https://www.facebook.com/Sophia-Gray-1096596530486125/
Contents
One More Ride: Carnage Warriors MC
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
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
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
ONE MORE NIGHT: Jungle’s Thorns MC
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
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
ONE MORE TASTE: A Dark Bad Boy Mafia Romance
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
Epilogue
Also by Sophia Gray
ONE MORE NIGHT: Jungle’s Thorns MC
ONE MORE TASTE: A Dark Bad Boy Mafia Romance
SUBMISSION: A Dark Bad Boy Baby Romance (The Marauders MC)
DADDY’S ANGEL: A Dark Bad Boy Baby Romance (Crowns of Satan MC)
DADDY’S PRINCESS: The Horsemen MC
FILLED: Berserkers MC
BOUNTY: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Giustini Family Mafia)
Prize: A Bad Boy Hitman Romance
MINE: Fury Riders MC
SINS: Devil’s Horns MC
OBEY: A Dark Romance
DENY: A Dark Romance
HEAT: A Dark Romance
One More Ride: Carnage Warriors MC
By Sophia Gray
I’M GONNA TAKE THIS LITTLE PRINCESS ON THE RIDE OF HER LIFE.
I’m a convict. She’s a prison guard.
This was never supposed to happen.
But I saw what I wanted and I took it…
And now the world is about to make me pay for daring to break the rules.
I took her the first time because I needed to remind myself how good it feels to have skin on skin.
Lips on lips.
Breath comingling with breath.
It was what I needed.
But her moans that night were enough to awaken a beast inside me.
And when some drunk idiot says the wrong thing in my vicinity, that beast snaps.
The punishment I inflict on that bastard is enough to land me in jail.
But in that moment – with my bloodied fists, my unleashed rage – I felt alive for the first time in forever.
Still, prison is no cakewalk.
I’ll need all my wits – and all my luck – if I’m gonna make it out of here relatively intact.
There’s killers lurking in the shadows.
And not everyone is thrilled to have a burly, tattooed biker like me in there.
Messing things up.
Disrupting the delicate balance of power.
Some people have decided they might be better off if I weren’t around anymore…
And they’re not shy about getting their hands dirty.
Luckily enough, though, I’ve got a trump card.
I’m bringing Beth inside with me.
Chapter 1
Hank
The rainy, chilly night of December 18th was when the trouble started for Hank “The Hammer” Hall.
Of course, there were plenty of people who'd claim that the trouble had really started on the same date one year earlier when his wife and ten-month-old son were killed in a brutal car wreck with a drunk driver. And there were even some who'd swear the trouble actually began the year before that, when Hank—an enforcer for the Carnage Warriors motorcycle club—somehow allowed himself to believe that he deserved the happiness of marriage and a family, without karma swooping down and cackling and shitting all over it.
But no. Later on, Hank would be able to insist with absolute certainty that it was this particular evening in December when everything began to go horribly wrong.
That night, Hank's MC accounted for almost half the patrons in The Jingle Jangle Tavern in Matador, Texas. The town was their base of operations, and even though the Warriors had initially established themselves as purveyors of weed and meth, they were celebrating a new business venture that had greatly increased their income—selling fake IDs, Social Security cards, birth certificates, and other identification papers. The clientele for this service varied from high school kids who wanted to buy booze to immigrants who'd crossed over from Mexico, and even desperate fugitives.
Bib Statler, the president of the MC, was standing at the bar, grandly ordering rounds of drinks for his men and slapping them on the back. His niece Beth Callaghan stood at his side as she often did when she got off work. Her tiny frame was dwarfed by Bib's massive body as she laughed and traded dirty jokes with the bikers.
But Hank was sitting alone at the back of the tavern, chasing shots of whiskey with beer and staring down at the tabletop morosely. The sounds of happiness and triumph were drowned out by the grief that clanged in his ears, ugly and insistent, like a fire alarm.
A year since they'd died. Did it feel like more time had passed? Less? Both?
When he closed his eyes, he could still see the tiny crinkles at the edges of Elena's gray eyes, and the way her curly blonde hair would gently bounce back and forth as she shook her head and laughed at him. He could still hear her soft, mellow voice as she cooed and played with Jason, their infant son
. He could still taste her breath on his lips, sweet and warm, like a summer wind.
The rain pattered relentlessly on the roof of the bar, intruding on his memories. It had been raining the night she died, too. How long had she clung to life as the raindrops fell on the pavement around her? How long had she waited for the ambulance, holding Jason's broken little body and watching her blood mingle with the puddles in the road? The cops and paramedics who came to give Hank the news had said that they both died instantly and without pain.
Hank wanted to believe that. But he couldn't.
He opened his eyes again, and for a split-second, he thought he was still seeing an afterimage of Elena. It caught him off guard before he realized he was looking at Beth instead.
And she was looking at him.
Since Beth was related to Bib and he was fiercely protective of her, all the men in the club made a point of treating her like she was “just one of the guys.” No one dared to look at her or talk about her in any sexual context, and this had always applied to Hank too, since long before he'd met and married Elena.
But the way Beth was looking at him now, it was hard not to notice how beautiful and sexy she was. He could see the short nubs of her nipples under her tight t-shirt, and her cutoff jeans revealed her long, tan, toned legs. Her thick, wavy hair was the same shade of blonde that Elena's had been. Her eyes were blue instead of gray, but their shape was still similar to Elena's eyes. She even bit her lower lip in the same hesitant, sensual way, like a little girl who knew she was about to do something bad but couldn't help herself.
And she was staring at Hank as though he was the “something bad” she was about to do. There was seduction in those eyes—but there was tenderness, too, and compassion.
He shot a glance at Bib, but the president was leaning over the bar to flirt with the barmaid and order another round. In fact, it seemed like he was making a concerted effort to look in every direction but Hank's.
Hank looked away and shook his head, trying to clear it. He told himself that this was silly. He was overcome with grief, he'd lost count of how many shots he'd swallowed, and if his brain was telling him that Beth reminded him of Elena and that she was giving him the eye now, well, it just meant he was so drunk he was seeing things that weren't there. He decided to have one more drink, get up, go home, and pass out before he did something he'd regret.
But when he looked in her direction again, he saw that she was walking toward him, holding a fresh bottle and two more beers.
“May I join you?” she asked.
Chapter 2
Beth
Beth adopted a ridiculous French accent as she recited the punchline. “'Oh, monsieur,' the guide says to him, 'you dare not miss! For if you do...ze moose will fuck my brother Georges!'”
The bikers around her burst out into loud guffaws. Even Bib chuckled heartily, despite the fact that he'd heard the joke dozens of times—from Beth, and from her father before that.
Beth smiled, taking a sip of her beer. This was always the best part of her day, when she could forget her boring, low-paying job at the deli counter of the local grocery store and have fun with her uncle and his Warriors. She loved their crude humor, and the way they sang and danced badly whenever the right song would come on the radio. She loved the way they talked about their bikes, the way they always smelled of leather and motor oil, the way they drank until dawn while trading stories of the outlaw life.
But even though the Warriors were having their usual raucous good time, Beth couldn't help but notice that one of them—her favorite one—wasn't partying with them. She briefly scanned the room and saw Hank sitting in the corner, looking like a man who was slowly succumbing to a state of deep shock.
Beth had been hanging out with the MC since she was in high school, and from the very beginning, she'd had a crush on Hank. Back then, he'd just graduated from prospect to fully-patched member, and in the years since, she'd watched his meteoric rise within the club. He'd always been Bib's favorite, a surrogate son to him, and everyone knew that one day he was destined to take over for him as president.
When Hank announced that he was going to marry Elena, Beth congratulated him warmly, despite the guilty stab of jealousy in her heart. When Elena had a baby, Beth fussed over it and gushed about how cute it was, trying not to let herself picture a life in which she and Elena had traded places.
Then the accident happened, and ever since then, Hank hadn't been himself and Beth had struggled to find the right words to say to him—until enough time passed that it wouldn't be appropriate to say anything at all about it anymore.
And now here he was, drinking shots of whiskey like they were water and looking like the loneliest person on earth.
Beth glanced at Bib and saw that he'd been watching her with a bemused expression.
“It's the one-year anniversary, isn't it?” she asked quietly.
“Yep.”
“I feel so bad for him.”
Bib raised one of his bushy eyebrows, giving her a conspiratorial smile from behind his shaggy white beard. With that playful expression, he looked like some kind of biker Santa Claus about to disappear up a chimney. “From the look in your eyes, I'd say that's not all you're feeling about him.”
Beth blushed. “Oh, come on, that's...I mean, I'm not...”
Bib laughed. “Don't bother. It's obvious that you've been carrying a torch for Hank since you were still wearing braces.”
“Obvious?” Beth groaned. “Really? So you've known about it the whole time?”
“Yes.”
“Do the other Warriors know?”
“Yes.”
Beth blushed an even deeper shade of crimson, until her ears felt like they were on fire. “Does Hank know?”
Bib shrugged. “Right now, I don't think Hank knows much about anything except the ghosts fucking around in his head. You could help him with that, though, I think.”
Now it was Beth's turn to raise her eyebrows. “Are you saying you'd really be okay with...that?”
Bib put a hand on Beth's shoulder. “Look, I'm not gonna pretend it ain't weird having this talk with my niece, okay? But you ain't a kid no more. I love you, and I love Hank, and all I want is for both of you to be happy. Watching him sink deeper and deeper into the mud over the past year has damn near broken my heart, and if you think you've got an honest chance at yanking him back out, then you owe it to yourself—and to him—to head on over there and take your shot.”
Beth took a step toward Hank's table, then wavered. “But he's drunk, and he's grieving, and... what if it's the wrong time? What if it just confuses things?”
Bib shook his head. “Drunk or sober, grief or no, trust me—these things can always be confusing. But they can be worked out later. And anyway, he looks like he's drowning, and you look like someone who wants to throw him a lifeline. Seems like the perfect time to me.”
She grabbed a bottle of whiskey and two beers from the bar. “Okay. Here I go, then.”
Bib smiled. “Just breathe, hon. You'll do fine.”
Beth walked over to Hank's table. As she got close, Hank looked up at her with bleary eyes.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked.
He stared up at her for a long moment as though she'd just arrived on a UFO. Finally, he nodded, gesturing to the seat across from him. She took it, setting the whiskey and beers down between them.
“You looked like you could use a refill,” she said. “And maybe some company.”
Hank laughed bitterly. “I'm afraid I'm not gonna be very good company tonight, Beth.”
“Just because you're feeling sad doesn't mean I won't enjoy your company. I know this is a rough night for you, but you can talk to me about it if you want.”
“Trust me, you don't want to hear it.”
“Maybe I do want to hear it.” Beth put her hand over his, looking into his eyes. She saw aching loss there, but there was something deeper, too—something primal and undeniable.
Attracti
on, she thought. He finally sees me as someone he can want, instead of just the club's little sister. But what if it's just because of the booze? What if he sobers up and goes back to looking at me like I'm just Bib's niece? Could I handle that?
To her surprise, she found that she was willing to take that chance. Her need to kiss him, to touch him, to feel his arms around her—she suddenly knew that she'd risk anything to make that happen.
Hank pulled his hand away, and when he spoke, she heard his self-loathing quivering in his voice. “Well, maybe I don't want to hear it. Maybe I'm fucking tired and bored and sick of my own goddamn grief, and saying it all out loud will only make it worse. Did you ever think of that?”
Beth considered getting up and leaving Hank alone, since it seemed like he might prefer that. But then she realized that he was lashing out at himself, not her. She couldn't bring herself to desert him and let him tear himself to pieces inside. She reached out, taking his hand in hers again and gently pulling it back to the table.
“We don't have to talk,” she assured him. “And if you're sick of your grief, maybe I can help you feel something else tonight instead.”
Hank rubbed his red eyes, looking at her like he'd never seen her before. “Beth, I'm warning you. You're better off staying away from me. I'm a fucking mess.”
