Bad Biker Stepbrother 2
Page 1
Bad Biker Stepbrother 2
A Dark Romance
By: Michelle Black
Copyright 2014 Michelle Black
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Note/Warning: This is part 2 of 3 in the serialized dark romance series, and ends on a cliffhanger. Part 3 will be released in March.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter One
The room was dark, and Mia stood huddled against the bed, her eyes darting towards Damon as he stood behind the door with a gun. The sound of the people knocking on the front door of her apartment had grown to a deafening height.
Her eyes scanned the room looking for an escape, but there was none. Only moments before, she had been lying in the warm embrace of Damon’s arms and ignoring the world around them. She didn’t want to remember it. Didn’t want to think about how their relationship was a taboo, despite only meeting when she was sixteen. It wasn’t her fault that Damon was her stepbrother or that her mom and his father were still together.
They had fought the attraction for so long...always drawn to each other like a moth to a flame, only to fight the heat between them. Finally, after all these years, when both of them were adults, they gave in to the desire. Mia knew that it was love between them, and she had to overcome the fear she felt with him. They had had a rocky beginning, but they had decided to finally explore the connection they had shared since she had first met him.
And while she had no reference to go by, having been a virgin before him, she knew that the sex was amazing and that they connected on so many levels. That was where she found herself only a few moments ago. They had just finished making love, and then he had told her he loved her. Before she could even process the situation, the banging on the door had begun.
“You better get moving Mia,” Damon says from the door, “Your life on the run is about to begin.”
The sound of a door crashing in fills the apartment, and Mia smothers a cry with her hands as Damon motions her towards the master bathroom. She runs towards it, her brain barely functioning as adrenaline flows through her. “Oh my God!” she cries as the door flings open, and two large men enter the room.
They are dressed in jeans and black leather coats; their long hair captured in ponytails...Mia captures these images—snapshots of death as the men enter the room, their guns pointed at the bed. Screaming, she hears two pops, low-sounding ones, and she is surprised by how silent the guns are...then it hits her—silencers! These men didn’t want anyone to hear the shots.
The pillow where her head had been only a few minutes before erupts in a shower of feathers as the bullet rips through it.
Mia’s screams fill the room, and the world slows down to a horrible speed as the men, their eyes cold with murder, pivot towards her—their guns spinning with them as they do.
Damon steps from behind the door, his gun pointed towards them. He glances at Mia, their eyes locking as his eyes fill with hesitation. They were filled with a question and Mia couldn’t grasp the answer. She shakes her head, No, God no. Don’t kill them Damon, she silently screams.
But she knew he had little choice; the men were there to kill them and maybe even do worse to her. She feels sick as their gazes sweep over her still naked form. She hadn’t even had the time to grab her housecoat to cover her body before they rushed the room.
Her arms wrap around herself as she tries to cover her body, but the men sneer at her. The taller man with a full beard, hard mouth, and even harder eyes asks, “Where’s Damon, bitch?”
Mia stands frozen to the spot as the large man takes a step towards her. His dark eyes sparkle with a sickening desire that almost makes her fall to the floor.
“Tell us where he is, and we will make it quick and easy for you,” he growls. “If you force us to get you to tell us, you aren’t going to like what I have planned for you.”
Tears stream down her face, blurring Mia’s vision. The scream trapped in her throat as she struggles to breathe feels hoarse and scrapes at her sanity. The man takes another step towards her, and she blinks away the tears burning her eyes. Damon gives her one last look, his eyes full of love before they harden into something terrifying.
Everything that is the Damon she knows is gone, and all that is left is the expression of a hunter. His voice is void of emotion as he says, “He’s behind you,” then a pop fills the air as a spray of blood cascades across the room, striking the wall, and the smaller man crumples to the floor. Mia’s eyes stay glued to the man, a large cavity where his face used to be. The scream still lodged in her throat, she watches in horrified awe as Damon shifts his body and smoothly swings his gun towards the larger man.
Fear fills the larger man’s face as he tries to turn towards Damon, but like a snake striking its prey, Damon is faster, and another pop echoes in the room. Mia watches in horrified disbelief as the man slumps to the ground, dead before he even hits the floor. She is then sobbing as she falls to the carpet, her mind screaming at her to run, to escape this horror while she still can.
Hands gently clutch her shoulders, and she gives a little shriek as Damon’s face comes into focus between her tears. “I had to do it Mia,” he says, and she realizes that he has been talking to her for a few minutes. “It was either us or them, and I couldn’t let them hurt you.”
He wipes at her tears and kisses each eyelid as her body continues to shake from the terror she had just felt—the terror she still feels. He gives her a little shake, and her head falls back as her mind spins around the room. She can’t bring herself to see the two dead men in her room. She ignores the ever-widening pool of blood soaking into her carpet and the knowledge that Damon was the one to create that puddle.
Damon shakes her again, this time more forcefully, and Mia’s eyes focus on his, which are filled with worry.
“Mia, I need you to focus on me. You have to get dressed and pack. At most, we have twenty-four hours; at worst, we have less than a half hour. It all depends on who noticed them breaking open the door. I’m going to go and secure the door again, and you need to get packed.”
Mia nods her head, but she doesn’t move, instead, her eyes finally focus on the men. They were people...they had names...had family or people who loved them and now...now they were just dead on her floor.
The thought makes her gag, and leaning forward, she deposits the contents of her stomach onto the floor. Tears sting her eyes and her throat feels raw when she finally finishes throwing up.
She feels wrung out, as though everything, including her soul, had been purged from her body. Damon was still crouched beside her, his hand smoothing her hair back as his other one rubbed her back. He didn’t say anything, didn’t tell her it was going to be okay. Maybe because he knew it wasn’t going to be. Maybe because their lives had changed completely tonight—first with them making love, and then with this.
“Mia,” he says firmly, as though he is reading her thoughts...and maybe he is. “This has nothing to do with what we did tonight. Nothing has changed about how much I love you or how right we are. This is because of my past.”
Mia nods her head in an effort to fight down her emotions. He’s right, even with the horror of what just happened running through her body, she is still very much in love with Damon. Nothing has changed between them, even when she had watched him kill those two men.
“Who were they?” she asks the one que
stion echoing in her thoughts. Who had loved them is probably the better question to ask.
“Derek Ryder and Jake Sanchez,” he says, glancing over at the two dead men as he answers. “Really bad guys. I’ve never liked them because they were always too happy about inflicting pain. They often made the victim suffer before they killed him...or her.”
Mia nods again, feeling like a marionette with tangled strings as she pulls herself up using Damon as her support. “Did they have people...” her voice trails away.
“Yeah, both of them were in the gang. Derek has, had, two little boys and an ex-wife that he used to use as a punching bag. They had a restraining order against him, but that didn’t matter. Jake has a girlfriend, but, from what I heard, they were calling it quits because Jake enjoyed using his fists too much, as well.”
Staring down at them, Mia shakes her head. “So they were just part of the gang? They were violent, horrible people who beat their kids and wives?”
Damon nods, and Mia blanches at the way her guilt leaves her body. It was them or her. She should feel relieved that she was standing here alive. She should feel relieved that the men couldn’t hurt anyone else. Steeling her resolve, Mia shifts her gaze towards her closet.
“I’ll pack, you do what you have to,” she says and shivers at the lack of emotion in her tone.
Damon nods and captures her lips with his. The kiss is calming and tells Mia that despite her own fear rippling through her body, Damon is definitely in charge. There is no way he will let anything happen to her. He tells her all of this in his kiss, and her body reacts...but not with desire...it is something deeper...something more primitive, as though they shared the same heart.
Breaking free, he says, “Take everything that you can’t live without and leave the rest.”
And then he strides towards the bedroom door and out the hallway. Mia touches her lips, looks down at the dead men once more before she turns towards her closet to grab her suitcase.
Chapter Two
Mia glances at her watch again and looks towards Damon, who is talking on a payphone across from her. The sounds of the airport create a bubble around her, and for the first time in hours, Mia is completely calm. It had been a flurry of activity leaving the apartment, and Damon had fixed the door and righted everything. If anyone came in, they wouldn’t suspect anything had happened...at least until they looked in her bedroom. There was just no way to hide two bodies.
That fact still haunted Mia. As much as she loved Damon, she wondered if she was making the right decision going with him. Maybe she should have stayed, called the cops and told them what happened. It was self-defense...they wouldn’t arrest Damon, would they?
Her eyes drift from the object of her thoughts and follow a happy couple heading towards their destination. A beautiful brunette with her arm wrapped around a tall, handsome blond smiles up at her boyfriend, or husband, and Mia feels a sting of jealousy. They don’t have the problems she has. They aren’t related by marriage. They didn’t just run from an apartment after almost dying. They didn’t have all these worries.
“What am I doing?” she mumbles to herself. She has a life. School, her parents, her future, and now she was running from all of that to be with the man she loved. And she did love him, but she was also terrified of him...no, that wasn’t right...she was terrified for him.
He had always been an alpha male, that was probably one of the first things that attracted her to him. He was the guy everyone else looked up to in high school. The guy that every girl wanted to date. He smiled and laughed and stood up for people. She had had her fair share of wet dreams about him as a teen.
Then he grew up and became something even better than the all-star in school. He was confident, knew what he wanted and how he was going to get it. Just thinking about him and his cocky smile made her panties wet...which was a whole other problem.
Knowing that he was technically a killer was one thing...seeing him in that visage was another. This was the second time she had watched him kill someone...the first had been a hit, and she shouldn’t have seen it. She had followed him and witnessed him murder a man, and she had sworn she would never have anything to do with Damon again. But she eventually caved and allowed her emotions to rule over her head.
Maybe if you hadn’t made love to him, none of this would have happened. Get a grip, Mia. The men asked where he was. You would have been murdered...and probably raped...if Damon hadn’t been there. Sleeping with him, instead of sending him away, saved your life!
Shaking her head to clear those thoughts, Mia knew that the little voice in her head was right. Those men would have been there regardless of whether Damon was or not. He had saved her. But it did bring to mind the bigger problem—Damon was involved with a gang, and they weren’t going to let him go easily. He had even admitted it himself. Could she be with someone who was a criminal?
Swiping at the tears in her eyes, she looked at him again. He had his back to her, and she couldn’t help but admire the muscular shape of him in his t-shirt. He was breathtaking, and she noticed a few women casting a few glances his way. The truth was that she didn’t see a criminal, she saw Damon...her lover...her friend...and the only man she wanted to be with. So for now, the answer was yes, she could be with a criminal.
Regardless of the fact that Damon confessed that part of his life was over, Mia had no idea how to move past what happened in the apartment. Since the attack, Damon had shifted between calling someone on his phone and urging her to hurry up. She had spent a half hour hunting down the tickets to Chicago while he had talked in another room with someone she didn’t know. Damon said he knew a few people in Chicago that would help them lie low while things cooled down.
But there are dead men in my apartment, she had wanted to yell, but she didn’t. Things would never cool down when the police finally found those men. How would they move past that?
Fresh tears threaten to fall from her eyes as she stares down at the plane ticket in her hands. She was leaving everything, and she wasn’t sure if it was the right move.
“It’s done.”
Jerking her head up, she could see the exhaustion in Damon’s face. She hadn’t even heard him walk up to her. “What’s done?”
“My friend removed the bodies, fixed the door, painted the walls with fresh paint, and cleaned the carpets. You could go home tonight without even knowing what a bad shape your apartment was in,” he says.
He takes in a deep breath and slowly lets it out as he slips his hand into hers. Mia watches as he threads his fingers between hers and raises her hand to his lips. Lightening courses through her as he kisses her hand, and she feels the desire shoot right to her core. Regardless of what has happened, her body knows she belongs to him.
“I have a friend who cleans up messes,” he explains. “No one, and I mean no one, will know what happened. As far as we know, nothing happened.”
Mia nods, “Are you sure? I mean, the po...”
“This isn’t the first time I have had this friend help. She hasn’t failed me in the past, and she won’t this time...she is that good,” he cuts off her words and casts a worried glance towards the surveillance camera in the corner.
“The reason I am telling you this now is because I want you to know you have a choice.”
A choice? Mia’s brow furrows in confusion, and she studies his eyes. He is trying to say it without telling her, and then it hits her like a punch to her stomach. He wants her to choose whether to go with him or go back to her apartment and carry on with life. “You...you don’t want me,” she stutters, unable to breathe.
His eyes fill with concern as he turns her shoulders so she is facing him in her chair. “No, that’s not it. God, I have never wanted anything in my life more than I want you with me,” he pauses and leans in to place a kiss on Mia’s lips. “I love you, Mia, don’t ever think that...and don’t ever think that I don’t want you.”
Mia’s heart fills with the love of this man. Love that she has for h
im and love that he has for her. She feels cherished and that makes the decision so easy...she wants to be with him. “But,” he says, there is always a but. “I have a lot in my life to take care of. I am going to break free of the gang, but, until then, I have to go into hiding. I can’t let my dad know where I am, and if you were to come with me, you couldn’t let your mom know either.”
He pulls her against his chest, and Mia could feel the cold metal of the armrest digging into her ribs. It wasn’t comfortable, but his heat surrounded her and made her crave his touch against her skin. There was too much between them.
“Your life will be in danger if you come with me,” he says, his words muffled as Mia presses her head against his chest, “so you need to know the risk you will have if you come with me.”
Kissing his shirt, Mia pulls away and stares in his eyes, “Will it be any different if I stay?”
He shakes his head and opens his lips to answer, but Mia places her hand against his mouth to stop the words.
“Look, you think that once you disappear I won’t be in danger. That is bullshit,” she blushes at her language. “They know what I am to you, and they will come looking for you at my apartment. The safest place for me to be is with you...regardless of whether they are hunting you down or not.”
Taking a deep breath, she continues, “I am not willing to lose you after finally allowing my emotions to rule my head. My heart belongs to you, and I know you can keep me safe. I am going with you.”
And there it was—the decision. Damon’s eyes crinkle as he smiles, and she can see a strange combination of worry and joy in them. “You belong with me just as much as I belong with you,” she finishes and then leans in, kissing him deeply.
He moans as her tongue spirals around his, and she can’t help the throbbing between her legs. God help her, but she wants him right here. Breaking free of the kiss, she stands up and grasps his hand. Pulling him up, she starts heading towards the bathrooms. Despite everything, she needs him between her legs...to feel whole again with him there.