The Devil's Silver (The Road Devils MC Book 2)

by Marysol James

  A bit dazed, she took a huge glug of Margarita, felt the booze hit her bloodstream. She immediately relaxed and looked over at Cole behind the bar. He grinned and gave her a quizzical thumbs up; she raised her glass in a toast and nodded at him. The drink was perfect.

  Jo took a more decorous sip and perused the bar. Right away, she spotted the only other adult female in the room and as she laid eyes on Zoe Parish for the first time, she found herself staring at the woman.

  Zoe was just so stunning. Tall for a woman to be sure, curvy and casual in her plain white t-shirt and jeans, long blonde hair curling wild over her shoulders and down her back. She was looking at Jo and even from across the distance, Jo saw the pure green of Zoe’s eyes, as strong and piercing as a laser beam. Everything about her just screamed self-assurance and calm competence and radiance, and Jo wished so damn hard that she’d thrown on a pair of jeans and a brightly-colored blouse that cinched at her waist like a corset. But instead here she was, epitomizing the role of ‘dowdy accountant’ to a T.

  “C’mon,” Cowboy was saying, and Jo gave him her attention, in all his Marlboro Man glory. “Let’s go.”

  “OK,” she said, really curious to hear Zoe’s voice despite her feeling even more invisible than usual next to the other woman’s looks and demeanor. “Lead on.”

  They crossed the room and Jo weirdly enjoyed this most basic of experiences: it was a first to be in a room teeming with biker hotness, most definitely, and also it was bizarre for each and every one of these paragons of rough male beauty to smile at her, say her name, give her a sexy little wink or kind word. For about the ninetieth time, it occurred to Jo just how completely the landscape of her life had changed – and that included the scenery, which had significantly improved, it had to be said.

  Briefly she wondered if she was objectifying the devastatingly sexy men surrounding her, realized that she was, then decided that they’d probably be just fine with that. She’d been around them for only a couple of days, had had short and sweet and flirty conversations with most of them, and she was utterly confident that they wouldn’t take her constant eye-popping with anything but good humor and grace. Because yes and extremely oddly and against all odds, these guys did have grace. They had strength and calm and warmth and intelligence, too – had all of that in spades. They were drop-dead hot and that was the end of the physical matter but they were so, so much more than their surfaces. Jo thought that they were men that she could really, genuinely, come to like as people. They could become friends.

  And speaking of grace and strength and things of sheer beauty: Jinx and Rebel moved a bit, clearing a path through the towering bodies blocking her view, and that’s when Jo saw a man who took her breath away for a reason other than his physical appearance. Though it had to be said that his physical charms were many: height and width and muscles and tattoos and eyes so blue, it was like a piece of summer sky had fallen and stayed for good in his hard, uncompromising face.

  He was talking to Wolf and cradling a little blonde girl (who could only be one person, really) in his massive arms… and he was so gorgeous and natural and unselfconscious in this moment, so clearly in love with Keira and so happy to be standing next to Zoe, that it took several seconds before Jo fully saw the long, raised white skin on his cheeks, his forearms, his throat and collarbone.

  This man could literally only be one man: Wolf’s trusted Vice-President, the guy who had run into a raging fire to save Keira with minimum thought to his own safety and with maximum damage to his own body.

  Scars Innis. A real life hero as I live and breathe, and no doubt.

  Jo realized that she was smiling just from being in the presence of these people that she’d heard so much about. Without knowing it, she’d come to like Scars and Zoe very much based on nothing but hearsay and third-party word-of-mouth, and she doubted that she’d be disappointed by imagination meeting reality.

  Two sets of astonishing eyes – one emerald-green, one ocean-blue – focused on Jo as she approached and almost as one, Zoe and Scars smiled at her. And just like that, in those few seconds, Jo felt yet again that she was absolutely in the right place and time, that she was somewhere that could be home. With time and patience.

  “Guys,” Cowboy said. “I don’t imagine she needs an introduction, but my mama raised me right and I had manners drilled into my thick head. So… Zoe Parish and Scars Innis, please meet Jolene Angeles. Jo, Zee and Scars. And of course, Keira.”

  Jo smiled. “I’m so happy to meet all of you. I’ve heard a lot.”

  “And it was all good, huh?” Scars asked her, his voice low and harsh, but with an undercurrent of sweetness that made her blink. “Not just good – amazing.”

  “One hundred percent amazing,” Jo said solemnly.

  “Thought so.” Scars held out a huge hand and she took it, felt the raised skin there. Without even looking, Jo knew that he had more scars on his hands and briefly wondered what he must look like under his jeans and blue t-shirt and cut: she’d heard from Jinx that the fire had burned Scars so badly, he’d needed reconstructive skin grafting on his back and shoulders. “It’s a pleasure, Jo.”

  “Likewise.” She smiled at Keira exclusively. “Hi Keira. How old are you, little one?”

  “She’ll be two in May,” Scars replied. “She’s a spring baby, our little flower.” He lowered his dark head and planted a tender kiss on her blonde curls. The little girl giggled and wriggled, and Jo laughed at her happiness. This was a loved baby, and there was nothing more beautiful to see than that.

  Zoe held out her hand now and Jo shook it. “Jo.” Zoe’s voice was surprisingly low for a woman, but it was somehow exactly right for her. “How are you settling in?”

  “Not bad, actually. I mean, it’s only been a few days since I got here, but I’m in love with the mountains. I’ve never lived anyplace like this before.”

  “Wolf says you’re from New Mexico?”

  “Yes. Santa Fe.”

  “Never been myself,” Zoe said. “But I’ve seen pictures. I remember the colors the most, the colors of the desserts and rocks. I always thought they’d just be brown, but they’re not.”

  “Lots of people are surprised at how vibrant they are. Pink and gold and red, and even more dramatic and gorgeous at sunrise and sunset.”

  “But you came here from Minnesota, right?” Scars asked.

  “Yep, from Minneapolis.”

  “So you’re not finding our winter weather too much of a challenge.”

  Jo laughed again and took a sip of her Margarita. “Not even slightly. And the snow on the mountains is a nice bonus.”

  “I can imagine,” Zoe said. “The Rockies are something special, and always seem to call people home. They called me.”

  “I wonder if the deserts will call me back,” Jo said. “I miss them, I know that. But Denver is – I don’t know. It’s easy to feel at home here.”

  “Well, we’re happy to welcome you,” Cowboy said. “Any help you need settling in, all’s you have to do is ask.”

  “Thank you,” Jo said. “I’ll remember that.”

  “My ranch van is your ranch van,” Cowboy said. “It’ll hold more than you can believe and we’re not short of big, burly guys to help you pack up your life and set it down again elsewhere.”

  Jo smiled and contemplated how Cowboy would react if he and a bunch of MC members showed up at her trailer to move her life – and discovered that it all fit in one battered suitcase. Like literally. One damn suitcase thrown in her car’s tiny backseat, and she was good to go. It occurred to her yet again how pathetic that was, then remembered that she was on her way back up.

  “The club has a cage too,” Scars said.

  “A – cage?” Jo repeated. “Like – with bars and for animals?”

  “Biker slang, hon,” Cowboy explained. “Means anything with wheels that ain’t a motorcycle. Car,
van, truck, whatever.”

  “Oh, right,” Jo said, recalling some of her studying of MC terminology. “Gotcha.”

  “Some of the guys helped me move into Silver’s place when I first got to Denver,” Zoe said. “They were amazing with everything.”

  “You lived with Silver?” Jo asked her. A surge of jealousy rose up in her at the thought of Zoe wandering around showing off those amazing long legs in cute underwear and having coffee with a towel-clad and gloriously bare-chested Silver. “Really?”

  “Oh, no. He has a second house that he uses as a rental. Keira and I lived there for a while, just us. Now we live up at Scars’ place in the mountains, but Silver’s house is freaking adorable.”

  “Ah.” Jo didn’t choose to ponder too hard why she felt so relieved. “So who helped you move in?”

  “Well, most of my small and personal stuff got shipped from Fargo by courier, so it came straight to my door,” Zoe explained. “But I needed some baby things. A crib, changing table, high chair, sheets, stuff like that that I hadn’t been able to ship because of the cost and the rush after I took the job. Jinx, Kansas and Ice hoofed it out to Ikea for me and bought everything I needed.”

  “I – wait. What? Jinx and Kansas and Ice went to Ikea?”

  “The kid’s section and on a weekend!” Zoe said merrily. “Can you believe it? To this day, I can’t imagine what the hell that must have looked like.”

  “Good Lord.”

  Zoe grinned and pushed her hair back off her face and the light caught her ring, the diamond flashing bright and beautiful.

  “Oh, I can’t believe that I forgot!” Jo exclaimed. “Congratulations on your engagement!”

  “Aw, thanks,” Zoe said and Scars nodded. “It’s a whole new world, you know?”

  “I imagine it must be an amazing thing, after… well. After all that you’ve been through.”

  “It hasn’t been easy,” Scars admitted in a low voice. “Not for either of us. But this woman is nothing less than a goddess and she stayed with me every step that I took, even when I went backwards.”

  “I can only imagine,” Jo said quietly. “I’m so happy that you both made it through. I hope that your life together only brings you good things from now on.”

  “Hey,” Zoe said suddenly. “You ever been to Dangerous Curves?”

  “Ummm.” Jo cocked her head at the other woman, a bit confused by the lightning-fast change in topic. “I don’t know what that is, so I guess I haven’t been. Is it a mountain pass or overlook or something?”

  “Nuh-uh. It’s a bar, out on the highway.”

  “Oh. So no then. This is the only bar I know in the entire state.”

  “I’ll champion Satan’s all day long,” Zoe said. “But it’s kinda full of Road Devils, huh?”

  “Ummmm.” For some inexplicable reason, Jo glanced around the room despite knowing precisely what and who she’d see, namely, a bunch of Road Devils. Across the room, she spotted Silver talking to Cole and she quickly snapped her eyes back to Zoe’s face. “Sure is.”

  “Well, I think that as the only two women around this joint, we need to get our asses away from these guys, have some non-testosterone-infused moments. You want to go for a drink tomorrow night? Check out Curves?”

  “You mean like a girl’s night out?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean, Jo. You and me.”

  “Well…” Jo stared at Zoe, noting yet again how stunning the other woman was, this time properly taking in Zoe’s gorgeous ink peeking out of the top of her shirt. “Well, yes. I’d love that.”

  “Already making your escape, are you?” Cowboy teased Jo. “Finding us MC boys a bit much?”

  “Aw, hell, Cowboy,” Zoe said grinning. “You’re all always too much. We girls need a break from being utterly surrounded by you from time to time.”

  “Really, baby? I’m too much for you?” Scars asked her, and Jo felt the possession and heat in those few words, heard the double meaning clear as a bell. “Here I thought you enjoyed being surrounded by me.”

  Zoe stared up at him, and Jo was both astonished and delighted to see the other woman blush a bit. Scars and Zoe were just gazing at each other and even though they were in a room heaving with music and chatter and bodies, it was like there was nobody else in their world: it was crystal clear to Jo that these two had something. That something was the thing that most people searched their whole lives to find, and which poets and songwriters and authors struggled to articulate in mere words. It was that something which made a man run into harm’s blazing way to save his woman’s baby girl, made a woman give up every single thing she knew to follow her man to the edges of his personal hell and support him there as he battled his demons.

  It was beautiful and powerful and so, so goddamn rare. Jo felt honored to be in its presence.

  “I do enjoy it,” Zoe murmured, her voice sweeter and softer than it had been up until then. “You know that, Scars.”

  “I do know that,” he whispered back as he wrapped his large arm around her waist, twisted her in his grip so she was up tight and close on his chest, helpless and happy. The movement pulled Zoe’s shirt up a bit and Jo saw more ink on her delicate lower back, just cementing in her mind Zoe’s drop-dead sex appeal. And as Scars stood there – holding Keira so tenderly with one arm, Zoe so fiercely with the other – his own undeniable sexiness was confirmed too.

  He kissed Zoe then, a quick sizzling kiss, and Jo resisted the urge to fan herself. Goddamn, these two had so much heat between them, Jo expected the air to spark and ignite.

  She caught Cowboy’s level blue gaze and then looked away, weirdly feeling like she was intruding on a private moment despite this being a very public display of affection, and she saw Silver again. This time he was leaning up against the bar holding a glass of what looked like whiskey, and even from a distance of fifty paces, Jo felt the mercury chill of those eyes resting on her. It still took her aback and saddened her how different this man was from the one that he’d been less than a week before. It made her angry, too – but more sad.

  “So, Jo…”

  The voice turned her attention back to Scars and Zoe. Zoe was all curled up in Scars’ embrace, pressed up against her sweet daughter, and Jo felt a pang of longing and wanting. Just a small one, very fleeting. But still. It was there. Brian had denied her kids and a part of her was never, ever going to stop being sorry about that.

  “Yes?” she asked, raising her voice a bit to be heard over Dux and Drake laughing uproariously next to her, a very handsome double vision of stunning hilarity.

  “Tomorrow night? Curves?” Zoe’s eyes sparkled as bright as her engagement ring. “You and I can go over the paperwork for Blue Dragon in my office, then we can head out from there?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “Yes.”

  “OK, so I’ll see you in the morning,” Scars told her. “We can meet here and have coffee and lunch, wade through the bar financial stuff in Wolf’s office. Then you and Zoe can work on the tattoo parlor numbers through the afternoon before you take the world by storm with your girl’s night.” He shook his head. “Good Lord Almighty. I hope the Curves boys are ready for what’s about to hit ‘em. Maybe I should call Jax and give him a heads up, huh? Tell him to tie up his more mild-mannered bar staff and throw ‘em in one of the back rooms for their own safety?”

  “Ohhh,” Zoe said pertly. “Are restraints on the menu for tomorrow night? I had no idea. Things just got interesting.”

  Jo blushed deeply, remembering Silver’s hands around her wrists pinning her down, how it had made her feel so vulnerable and aroused. Despite herself, she looked at him again, torn once more between weak-kneed desire and white-knuckled irritation.

  He was turned away from her now as he talked to Viking. Jo was glad to not have that frozen gimlet gaze fixed on her anymore, but it’s not as if his back offered her
much solace: her fingertips remembered perfectly how his back muscles had felt as he’d fucked her, moving in and out of her body. She’d loved clutching at his back and shoulders as she’d come; loved the tension in his back as he’d found his own release.

  Jesus. Even when the man was facing away from her, she could still get thrown back to Friday night against her will. Well. Mostly against her will.

  “Sassy girl,” Scars said to Zoe, bringing Jo back into the room and the here and now. “You two behave yourselves tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, we will,” Jo said. “I mean, Dangerous Curves isn’t full of tattooed biker types, is it?”

  “Ohhh, man.” Scars shook his head in mock dismay. “Maybe you’d better take her to a Starbucks, Zoe.”

  “Why?” Jo asked keenly. “Is Dangerous Curves full of tattooed biker types?”

  “Yep,” Zoe said. “And a few other types too. It’s a real bad boy magnet. Hell, the guy who owns the place is a badass and his best friends who drink there are pretty hardcore.”

  “They’re – what? Criminals?”

  “Nah. Well, actually… I’m not sure. But no need to worry, OK? I know most of them from the tattoo parlor and Satan’s, and many of them are friends with Wolf and Scars. Rough guys don’t have to be bad guys, you know, and you’ll have a blast with Mac and Aidan, believe me. Jax and King too, if we can get them to crack a damn smile.”

  “Jax and King don’t smile,” Scars announced, tickling Keira’s chin. “I do believe that they’re missing the required mouth and cheek muscles for that to happen. Also the humor gene.”

  “Has there been a scientific study done?” Jo asked him seriously. “If so, did they participate?”

  “Not that I know of,” Scars said. “Maybe ask them when you see them?”

  “Just let me tie them up first,” Zoe said. “You might find them more receptive as a captive audience, as opposed to free-ranging unsmiling badasses.”