Rich Dirty Dangerous

by Julie Kriss

  Rich Dirty Dangerous

  Julie Kriss

  Contents

  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

  Copyright © 2017 by Julie Kriss

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The Bad Billionaire Series

  Bad Billionaire (Book 1)

  Dirty Sweet Wild (Book 2)

  The Eden Hills Series

  Bad Boyfriend

  Bad Wedding

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  Rich Dirty Dangerous (Bad Billionaires, Book 3)

  I was a dead man the minute I inked her.

  I’ve spent ten years as the ink man for the Black Dog MC. When a member needs ink, he comes to me — and I always obey. Because even when you’re not a brother, disobeying the Black Dog is deadly. So they own me.

  And they also own her.

  Dani. Beautiful, sweetly sensual, temptation incarnate. The president’s woman — completely off-limits. But when she comes to me to get a tattoo, and begs me to get her out of the Black Dog before he kills her, my blood starts to burn for the first time in a decade. And when I realize my own reason for getting out — an inheritance from nowhere that will make me obscenely rich — I have to decide.

  Stay, and we’ll both be sacrificed. Run, and we’ll both have a price on our heads. Take Dani, like she begs me to, and I might not live to see the morning.

  Some things, I hear, are worth dying for. Tonight is the night I find out.

  One

  Cavan

  I was a dead man the minute I inked her. I knew it from the first.

  Her name was Danielle, Dani for short—no last names were used in the Black Dog Motorcycle Club—and she didn’t even look twenty-five. A tall, slender body with long legs and narrow hips. Dark hair worn long and sleek down her back, arrow-straight, with a long fringe of bangs over her dark-lashed brown eyes. A real beauty, every inch of her, and one hundred per cent the property—yes, property—of the Black Dogs’ current president, McMurphy. She wanted ink, and when the Black Dogs wanted ink, they came to me. Which meant I’d have to touch her.

  I was a dead man.

  She lay in my chair and handed me the drawing of what she wanted. Four small black birds, flying in silhouette; nicely drawn, and not too hard. “I’ve never had a tattoo before,” she said, watching me from those dark eyes while McMurphy sat on the other side of her, his eyes fixed on me. “This is my first one.”

  Virgin skin, I thought. I didn’t look at McMurphy.

  “Did you draw these yourself?” I asked her.

  She nodded.

  Impressive. “Where do you want it done?”

  She pulled up her t-shirt, exposing first a sweet, flat plane of stomach and then the underside of one breast in its lacy bra. “Here,” she said, indicating the skin just below her breast. “And here.” Her finger traced around the curve of her breast to the side.

  I did look at McMurphy then. She was his property; I had to make sure he was permitting this. The idea of the president’s woman picking out her own tattoo, and placing it on her own body, without the president’s approval was unheard-of in the Black Dog MC. McMurphy’s expression said that he already knew what she was going to propose. He kept his gaze fixed on me, his blue eyes in their sun-weathered face as hard as chips of diamond. “Just keep your hands where they belong, Wilder,” was all he said.

  It wasn’t exactly my protocol to grope a woman’s tits while I was inking her, but he had a point. The tattoo wasn’t on her breast, but close enough that I’d have to touch it. My fingers brushing it. Quite a bit. I’d also have to look at it—I was already looking at it right now.

  It was just a breast. Every woman had ’em—two, in fact. You could go on the internet and see as many as you wanted, on women doing whatever turned you on. Dani’s weren’t very big, maybe small B cups, fitted to her slender body. Which I should definitely not be thinking about.

  I looked back at her to find her watching me. “It’ll hurt,” I warned her. “You’ve never done this, and the skin there is sensitive.”

  “I can take pain,” she replied.

  The words sat there for a second. Of course—any woman who was McMurphy’s would have to be able to take pain.

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re going to have to take your shirt and bra off, but I’ll give you a sheet to cover yourself with.”

  She nodded. Over her head, McMurphy said, “How long will it take?”

  I shrugged, looking at the drawing again. “An hour and a half maybe.”

  He fixed me with his laser gaze. “Do I have to sit here for an hour and a half and watch you, Wilder?”

  “If you want,” I said. It was best not to show fear to McMurphy; he ate it like candy. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “You know the rules,” he said. McMurphy was about forty, way too old for this woman, with a hard face and muscles like a bulldog’s. He wore his beat-up leather cut, like he always did, and I could smell him from where I sat: sweat, oil, and yesterday’s whiskey. Some women just couldn’t resist it, like an aphrodisiac.

  The rules meant that I wasn’t supposed to touch the president’s old lady. I wasn’t supposed to touch anyone’s old lady. I was just the guy who did the club’s ink, not a full-fledged brother.

  I looked him back, straight in the eye, and said, “How long have I been inking the Black D?” Which meant Of course I know the rules, idiot.

  McMurphy shoved his chair back hard and stood up. If I’d flinched in that moment, he would probably have hit me, but I didn’t.

  “You touch her, you’re dead,” he said. “Fucking dead.” He turned and left the room.

  I looked back down at Dani. She hadn’t even looked at McMurphy. She was still watching me. She still had her shirt hiked up, her skin showing, the edge of her bra visible. Her look wasn’t hostile—it was afraid, but courageous. Her body was so vulnerable. In a few years, her eyes would be hard and her body would be a canvas of the hits she’d taken.

  And I realized something. When he’d warned me not to touch her, McMurphy had assumed that it mattered, that I cared about dying.

  And I didn’t.

  Two

  Dani

  God, he was beautiful.

  He had no idea. He was a little scruffy—a short beard like a lot of the guys wore, and his hair was a little long. But he didn’t have the sunburned look that the men of the club had, because he didn’t ride for hours in the sun like they did. He didn’t ride at all. From what I heard, Cavan Wilder was a nowhere man: not in the club, not out of it, living on its fringes without being bound by its rules. Without being bound by any rules.

  And he was beautiful.

  You really saw it when you were up close, like I was. His hair was light brown, lit with a few strands of gold. It w
as thick, brushed back from his forehead, curling on the back of his neck. His eyes were gray, set in a face that had not a single flaw in it: straight nose, high cheekbones, an angled chin. Not a baby face—a man’s face. A faint crease on his forehead, between the eyes, like he did a lot of thinking. Eyes that had seen things, most of them dark and maybe unhappy.

  He didn’t have big muscles like most of the guys, but he was fit, his movements quietly graceful, the arms that showed from the sleeves of his t-shirt supple with muscles and tendons moving beneath his tanned skin. He was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, not leather. He had a small silver earring in the lobe of one ear. He smelled like laundry and something spicy.

  He sent me to a dressing room, and I pulled off my shirt and bra. My hands were shaking. I could do this. This was the plan. It had to work. It had to.

  I held the sheet he’d given me over my chest and came back out, lying down on the chair again. He had prepped the drawing, so he could print it on my skin, and was getting his ink and tattoo machine ready. I watched him work. I’d heard some of the other old ladies talking about him—he could have had any woman he wanted, the girls who came and went from the club, but he rarely did. No one had ever seen him with a steady woman, and he certainly didn’t have a wife.

  The club was like family, and everyone knew everyone’s business, but no one knew Cavan Wilder’s business. He was just their ink man, ready to do their ink at a moment’s notice, day or night. Outside of that, he was a mystery.

  He was perfect.

  “You want some music?” he asked, breaking the silence. I nodded, still too nervous to speak, and he put on the Black Keys, the volume low. He didn’t look in my eyes again, kept his averted. “Put your arm up, bent, like this,” he said. I did as I was told and he moved the sheet where he wanted it and bent to work without another word.

  It hurt. I knew it would. I stared at the ceiling with tears leaking from the corners of my eyes, but I didn’t move.

  “You want a break?” he asked after ten minutes.

  “No,” I replied. “Keep going.” If we took breaks, if this took too long, McMurphy would think I’d fucked him. That was his default, that I fucked everybody. It didn’t matter what I did, how I argued, how I protested—he thought I fucked every man I met. He was getting violent about it. And it was getting worse.

  “I’ve seen you before,” I said to Cavan after a while, lying with my arm above my head, staring at the ceiling. “You come to the club parties sometimes.”

  “Sometimes,” he agreed, not raising his head. “I’ve seen you, too, from afar.”

  From afar. I hadn’t heard a man use words like that in the seven months I’d been with McMurphy. They were also true, because until today McMurphy had never let me get within four feet of the club’s ink man, let alone introduce me to him, as if he thought I’d hump him like a bitch in heat the minute I got near. He wasn’t far wrong, and I didn’t care.

  We kept going. After the first half hour he made me take a break, giving me a bottle of water. My skin was throbbing hard, but I didn’t mind. It meant I was being inked. It meant those birds would be on me forever, where I wanted them.

  But time was spiraling away, and I was chickening out. It was just so nice, in that quiet room with him, smelling his nice smell, listening to the Black Keys and his breathing. No yelling. Not even any fucking. God knew he made my panties wet, and I was tempted to roll over and lick the collarbone that showed so deliciously above the neck of his t-shirt, but sex wasn’t what I wanted right now. It was just this. Just the quiet peace of his presence, and even with the eye-watering pain, I wanted it to go on forever. I wanted to forget the end would ever come.

  But it was coming. McMurphy would be back, and my chance would be gone. So I screwed up my courage, put everything on the line, and said softly to him while he got to work again, “I want out.”

  He didn’t even lift his head from where he was bent over my ink. Maybe he hadn’t heard me, or didn’t understand. But of course he did. “That so?” he said.

  My heart soared. I felt like crying. That so? No shouting, no calling me an ungrateful bitch. Just That so? Listening. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had listened to me.

  “I have to get out,” I said, staring at the ceiling. “He’ll kill me.”

  “He might,” Cavan Wilder said. He took a cloth and dabbed at my weeping skin.

  “I know he will,” I persisted. “He’s getting worse and worse, the paranoia. He’s using more than he used to. He’s losing control. He’s going to do it, and soon. You can help me.”

  Still he worked, as if someone was watching us. But he sighed. “That’s not something I do.”

  “You don’t help women who are about to get killed?”

  That got me a glare, brief and beautiful. “You made your own choices,” he said. “Women make their choices the same way men do.”

  I swallowed. I had. But I’d made the wrong choice, a stupid one, a mistake. The only thing you could do when you made a mistake was do your best to right it. In this case, right it before McMurphy decided one day that I really had fucked some guy, and either put me in the hospital or put an end to me altogether.

  Or before he found out the one thing I was hiding from everyone.

  “The thing is, you have to help me,” I said to Cavan. “You have no choice.”

  Again he dabbed my skin, as if we were talking about the weather, except I could see his jaw was tight, his body tense. I wondered what it was like in bed, that body, what he did with it when he was with a woman. Whether it was good. “Tell me,” he said. “Why do I have no choice?”

  “Because you’re Devon Wilder’s brother.”

  Cavan went very still.

  “You are,” I said. “Anyone who sees you both can tell. You don’t look exactly like him. Your hair is different, your eyes. But it’s the same face, the same name.” The words were coming out of me in a rush. The ink was almost finished, McMurphy would be back any minute, and this was my only chance. “You’re his brother. And if I can figure it out, then so can the club. And once they do, you’ll have to run, just like me.”

  He looked at me. Emotion worked behind his eyes, anger and outrage and confusion and something else, something deeper I couldn’t name. “Dani,” he said, the first time he’d spoken my name. “When did you see my brother?”

  So I was right, then. I’d been certain, but it still felt good to be vindicated. “In the news,” I answered him.

  Now he looked shocked. “In the news?”

  “You didn’t know?” He just stared at me, so I said, “Look it up, Cavan. Put your brother’s name in Google and see what you see. It didn’t make the national news, but it was big enough. Big enough for the club to find out, even here in Arizona.”

  “Are you fucking with me?” he said, almost asking himself the question.

  “Find out,” I told him. He had to put the pieces together himself, or this would never work. He didn’t know me, didn’t know if I was a liar. “Go look it up. There’s a boarded-up Sav-Mart on the edge of town. I’ll be in the parking lot at four o’clock tomorrow morning, my bags packed. If McMurphy finds out I’m gone, he’ll come after me and kill me. So be there, and save my life, or don’t be there. It’s up to you.”

  Three

  Cavan

  Be there, and save my life, or don’t be there. What a fucking choice.

  I didn’t have time to say anything else, because McMurphy came back—early, probably hoping in his black heart to catch me with my cock deep in his old lady so he could do us both some damage. Doing damage was McMurphy’s favorite hobby. But all he found was me with my dick in my pants, finishing up the bird tattoo as Dani stared silently at the ceiling.

  I finished the tattoo, disinfected it, bandaged it, gave her some antibiotic cream and told her how to take care of it. She nodded, not meeting my eyes, playing the cowed girlfriend to perfection. And all the time my brain was buzzing, the words she’d said going
off in there like fireworks. You’re Devon Wilder’s brother.

  She was right. I was. Devon and I had grown up like weeds on the streets of L.A., our father long gone and our mother checked out. I was the older by two years, and I’d looked out for him, not that Devon needed much looking out for. He was smart, my brother was, and tough. He saw through people. Nothing got by him. I’d acted out, done stupid shit, but Devon never had. He was forged in steel, my brother, even when he was a kid. The truth was, I’d admired the hell out of him, even though he was younger.

  Then everything had gone to hell, and I’d let him down.

  Fuck, that was a long time ago.

  When Dani and McMurphy left I cleaned my instruments, thorough and methodical, just like I always was. You don’t fuck around with your instruments when you’re inking the Black D—any biker with an infection, even a minor one, is likely to put your teeth out.

  I lived in the tiny rundown apartment above my ink studio. The building was a shabby one, an old house that was owned by the club and had been converted to a studio downstairs and living quarters upstairs. The living space was a little one-room dive that fit me, a few pieces of furniture, and not much else. The club didn’t pay me for my work, but in return I lived rent-free. I could take on other clients—paying ones—and pocket the money, but the club’s requests had to come first, and I had to be on call for them at all times. If you don’t think a biker ever wants a tattoo at two in the morning, you haven’t spent much time around biker clubs.

  So in a way, the Black Dog MC owned me. And in other ways, they didn’t.

  Like now. Now I had some free time and no other appointments booked, so I walked upstairs to my place and pulled out the years-old laptop I used to watch the odd movie and not much else. I lived an unplugged life—no email, no Facebook bullshit. Definitely no daily news. Still, the thing worked, so I got on the internet and did what Dani had told me to: I looked up my brother.