by Miss Merikan
Stripped Raw
a Sex & Mayhem novel
by Miss Merikan
Acerbi & Villani ltd
Stripped Raw
Miss Merikan
--- What’s left when you strip away the lies? ---
Sam. Loyal to the Coffin Nails MC. Lives by his own rules. Weakness: Damsels in distress.
Jolie. In a deeply ambiguous relationship with the Coffin Nails MC. Lives from paycheck to paycheck. Weakness: Bad boys.
As a patched member of the Coffin Nails MC, Sam is finally living the life he was destined for. A life of Harleys, guns, drugs, and eating pussy. A life of brotherhood above all.
When he goes to pick up some pot brownies for the club president’s old lady, he meets a girl so sweet, his inner wolf wants to eat her there and then. What is supposed to be a typical fling, gets damn more complicated when the Coffin Nails decide to involve the pretty blonde baker in their drugs operation.
Jolie has a knack for baking delicious cakes, but when it comes to her taste in men, she is a self-professed failure. After a disastrous relationship, she is still picking up the pieces and working three jobs to manage the financial carnage her ex left her with. The last thing she needs is a hot piece of tattooed hunk stomping into her life. Sam calls her ‘Candy’, but with a talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Jolie should be called ‘Trouble’.
To be with Jolie, Sam would have to disclose a secret he kept locked away for years. A secret so raw, that it might destroy his place in the brotherhood he’s fought so hard to be a part of.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS:
Themes: Outlaw motorcycle club, drugs, gender identity, secrets, misunderstandings, criminal activity, entrepreneurship, bad luck, debt
Genre: Erotic romance, suspense
Length: ~75,000 words
WARNING: Adult content. Explicit sex, strong language, violence, and morally ambiguous protagonists.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living, dead, or undead, events, places or names is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transferred in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without a permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.
Text copyright © 2015 Miss Merikan
All Rights Reserved
http://missmerikan.com
Editing by Kelly Hartigan (Xterra Web)
http://editing.xterraweb.com/
Cover design by
Natasha Snow
http://natashasnow.com
Table of contents
Foreword
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
About the Author
Other Books
Foreword
Stripped Raw is the first of at least three books set in the California chapter of the Coffin Nails. They will all be written as standalones, but will be lots of fun to read together, as the characters will keep reappearing. All we can say for now is that two books in this series will be by Miss Merikan, and one by K.A. Merikan, which means one will be M/M. Not to mention that Stripped Raw is an M/F book with a twist that I'm dying to disclose, yet we don't want to spoil the fun, so we won't!
Kat & Agnes Merikan
(Miss Merikan)
Chapter 1
Hash brownies. But a job was a job. Jolie had never baked them for sale, only a few times for friends, and that was when she still lived back in Kansas. When she had friends. When she had a boyfriend. When she had a bit of money to spare. She had never imagined herself ending up in this position. Moving to California with Jake was supposed to be a dream come true. They got a cool apartment together (with a pool!), they rented a Jag for a month, basked in the sun, and even got matching tattoos.
Well, life was different now. Now, Jolie was stuck in a run-down apartment, paying off Jake’s debts she stupidly signed for, working three jobs, and despising the mere concept of a boyfriend. To make matters worse, she was on pins and needles, waiting for a delivery of hash from a Coffin Nails drug dealer. If it were up to her, she would have gotten the drugs from her friendly local junkie living down the road, but because the brownies were for a Coffin Nails MC party, the club insisted they give Jolie their own hash.
Only adding to the pile of stress on Jolie’s shoulders was the impending visit of the loan sharks Jake—and Jolie by association—owed money to. All the shitty problems in her life seemed to be coinciding today into a clusterfuck of trouble. The drug dealer was also supposed to bring payment for the brownies, which in turn would be her payment to the loan sharks. Everything needed to come together at the right time, or she would be screwed. And that is exactly how her life had been for the last few months.
When the doorbell rang, Jolie’s heart skipped a beat, and instead of running to open it, she froze. What if it were Bastian, who she liked to think of as ‘bastard’, or his fucking friend Goldy, the one with freaky gold teeth? She didn’t have the money yet. She had primped herself up, put her long blonde hair in curls, and done all that in case she needed to charm them into giving her a few more days. But she knew that blue eyes and long eyelashes weren’t going to work for much longer. She was beginning to think that Bastian and Goldy were the first Italians she’d ever met who didn’t like blondes. Jolie took a deep breath and pulled the neckline of her dress lower to reveal more cleavage before she opened the door.
Her heart fluttered with relief when she saw the patches of the motorcycle club sewn on a loose leather vest. They were positioned below her eye level, as the man standing at her door wasn’t much taller than her, even if so much broader in the shoulders. His presence took up the whole doorframe, and just as she looked up at his face, rough fingers brushed the upper part of her breasts.
“That’s not in season,” said the man with a slight rasp to his voice, grasping the plastic candy cane pendant she wore on a thin chain around her neck.
Jolie’s skin tingled where he touched her, so she quickly pulled the fabric higher up her neckline. “It goes with my pink dress,” she said and looked up into the guy’s eyes, which were a deep grey framed by long black eyelashes. He was young and handsome, with a short beard and a broad mohawk of no more than a half inch length. A thick septum piercing lying under a shapely roman nose gave him that extra dusting of danger.
He gave Jolie a wide smile. “It goes well with you, Candy,” he said, still hovering his warm hand over her skin.
She swallowed, trying to avoid his gaze, as it was giving her goose bumps. “Um, my business is called Candygirl, but I’m not actually ‘Candy’” She tried to avoid taking a deeper breath, as the guy was still holding his fingers all too close under the pretense of examining her necklace.
The man smirked and pulled on the necklace gently, making Jolie step closer out of fear of the chain breaking. He smelled of an earthy cologne that pulled her close like a powerful magnet. “Well, you look delicious enough to lick.”
The words sobered her up from the lucid dream. “I can’t believe you just said that!” She slapped the candy cane out of his fingers, with her cheeks going hot. “Just give me that stuff, and go.”
The man raised
his hands and stepped inside as if it were his own home. “That’s a no-do, princess. It’s my duty to check whether you’re trustworthy,” he said, walking into the small living room/kitchen space cluttered with boxes of stuff Jolie wasn’t ready to let go of.
She didn’t have time for this. Bastian could show his tattooed face at any point. She swallowed, watching the guy’s imposing form move around in her tiny apartment smelling of vanilla cupcakes. “It was one of your guys calling me about this, so I’m guessing he deemed me ‘trustworthy’.” Jolie folded her arms on her chest, now wishing she hadn’t gone all out with the lipstick, eyeliner, and the pink bow in her hair. She discreetly got out of her heeled slippers and pushed them under the table.
The biker walked closer to the beat-up leather sofa and scrutinized it, hands deep in his front pockets. “That’s a lot of boxes,” he said as if he hadn’t listened to her at all. “You selling something, Candy?”
Jolie crossed the room and closed the door to her messy bedroom. Not that she needed to impress him, but it still bugged her to have a stranger see all the disarray. “No, I’m still unpacking,” she said, but the sad truth was her storage spaces were already tight, and with all the extra shifts she’d been taking at the diner, she didn’t have time to look through any of the boxes.
The guy turned to face her with a self-satisfied smile. “Need any help with the move? It would be a shame if you had to carry around heavy stuff,” he said, and before she knew what was happening, he pulled her hand up by the wrist and traced the underside of her arm with his finger.
“Hey!” Jolie pulled her arm back, but his grip wouldn’t give. “I’m fine. I brought it all here myself.” It was a small lie considering that she did carry most of it. Help came from the downstairs neighbor when, after an hour of carrying stuff back and forth in the sun, she tripped over with her industrial-size mixer and started crying when it fell apart. But she was fine. She even put the mixer back together on her own.
Yet despite her nervousness, Jolie’s gaze trailed up the colorful tattoos on the man’s muscular forearm. Pink and purple hot rods rushed through a cloud of green smoke, and on the other forearm, a pair of plush dice hanging off a skeletal hand. There were many smaller elements, but she didn’t want to stare for too long.
He was still holding up her hand as he crooked his head, so that she could see him from behind their arms, and smiled. “What’s your name then, if not Candy?”
Jolie finally found it too hard to fight and locked her gaze with his. “Jolie,” she muttered. The guy should have kept his sleeves rolled down all the way to his wrists. She’d always had a weakness for inked guys. And this is where it led her—to his hellhole in California, away from her family and friends. Yet she wouldn’t go back to Kansas even if someone paid her. She would not have her mother screech her ‘I told you so’.
The biker made a sharp gesture that made her stiffen and gasp, but he just spun her straight into his arms, and she ended up with his warm body pressing against her back and ass, with the beard tickling her shoulder.
“Hi, Jolie,” he whispered against the sensitive skin of her neck. “I’m Sam.”
“H-hello,” Jolie uttered, cursing her pussy for throbbing at the sound of his name and the feeling of his hard muscle behind her. The scent of his cologne and leather was like a pair of phantom hands squeezing her breasts.
“Will you write a dedication on the cake? It’s for our president’s old lady. Needs to be perfect,” he whispered, gently swaying with Jolie, as if they were slow dancing. Her face couldn’t have been any hotter.
“I can do that. Do you want the cake to have frosting?” The situation couldn’t be any more surreal. She could swear that Sam sniffed her next to her ear. Jolie tried to make herself pull away, she really did, but it felt too good to be pressed against his chest. Then again, what if she was giving mixed signals? A guy like him would probably jump at the opportunity of sex without hesitation. What if he took her indecisiveness as a green light?
She stilled when one of his hands slowly trailed up her stomach and stopped below her breasts, a warm weight anchoring her in place. “Whipped cream and toffee?” whispered Sam before unashamedly nuzzling the back of Jolie’s neck.
Oh. My. God. She needed to slide out, or she’d end up being the dessert before Bastian or Goldy even got here. Her stomach was twisting up in a mixture of excitement and anxiety that made her clench her thighs. Jolie needed to squash those butterflies before they reached her pussy, or it would be too late. “That sounds good. I’ll go write it down.” She let out a nervous laugh and managed to slide out of the hug. Her heart was thudding as if she’d just run a mile. With Sam’s presence, the room felt even smaller than usual. His clothes were baggy, but Jolie had felt the muscle beneath first hand.
Sam shrugged and placed a plastic packet on the table along with rolled-up bank notes. “Use it all. We’ll know if you sneaked some into your own batch,” he said, leaning against the kitchen table.
Jolie swallowed hard, but grabbed the money and drugs to put them in a kitchen drawer. What was she thinking, getting enchanted like that by a Coffin Nail’s guy? Sam would probably have no remorse over breaking her ribs if she tried to cheat the club, no matter how pretty his grey eyes were. “I will. I only use the best quality products for my business.” She closed the drawer and dared a smile.
Sam pulled back from the table and rested his hand right next to Jolie’s, penetrating her personal space without even paying any mind to it. “If you need quality stuff, I’m the guy to speak to. I have some spares on me. Wanna try?” he whispered, curling a strand of Jolie’s hair around his finger.
“I …” If she got high right now, she’d probably end up spreading her legs for him on the freaking dining table. She needed to start resisting guys like him. Not being in control was what got her into this situation in the first place.
Her dilemma ended abruptly when the choice was made for her. A loud knock at the door told Jolie that Bastian came for his money.
“Be a sweetie, and go in there, okay?” she whispered in panic and pushed Sam toward her bedroom. The last thing she needed was for Bastian to know that she was doing business with a motorcycle club.
Sam grinned and put up some resistance, forcing her to continue pushing him. “Oh, I get it. You’re hiding me from your boyfriend? How thoughtful of you, Candy.”
“It’s some business stuff,” she groaned, finally getting him into the bedroom. “Just stay here, please.” She shut the door and took a deep breath. “Coming!”
But the hard pounding on the door urged her to run. She pulled out the wad of cash she just got out of the drawer and opened the door only to face the naked mermaids tattooed on Bastian’s throat. Seeing their bare breasts always made her uncomfortable when she was alone with him.
Bastian squinted at her and put his foot forward, prepared to block the door if she wanted to shut it. “You got it?” he asked, blowing out a cloud of smoke straight into Jolie’s carefully arranged hair. His full lips squeezed around the cigarette as he leaned against the doorframe. Goldy wasn’t with him this time. A welcome change.
“Yes, the whole sum is here.” Jolie smiled at him despite the smoke. “You shouldn’t worry so much. I told you I’d have it on time.” She put the cash in his palm, and her heart wept to see it go. Jake’s debts were a well so deep that she would never climb out of it. The banks and credit cards were one thing, but Italian gangsters were quite another. If Jolie ever saw Jake again, she would throttle him with her garter belt.
Bastian took the cash and pulled off the elastic band, quickly counting through the wad. He pulled out three twenty-dollar bills and smirked. “Thanks for the tip, girlie. It’s good to stay on my good side,” he said, patting her mouth with the cash. There was just something about him that made Jolie freeze on the spot and pray, even though she wasn’t very religious.
“Soon enough I’ll have it all paid off, and we’ll both laugh about it,” she said and
swatted his arm. As soon as she paid off Jake’s debt, she hoped to never see Bastian’s face again. Maybe she’d even change apartments again.
He let out a chuckle and made a swiping gesture between them. “Good one. The interest is rising every day, and I’d have to check with the others how much you’re due now.”
She couldn’t help her energy deflating. “Text me,” she muttered. No credit card bill was as scary as Bastian and his skinny body, which, no doubt, could hurt her in more ways than having to declare bankruptcy ever could.
She closed the door behind him and rested her back against it, exhausted. Now to get rid of the other pest. She put on her heeled slippers to seem taller and stomped over to her bedroom. “My customer’s gone now,” she said as she opened the door, greeted by a loud buzz that soon softened her knees.
Sam sat on her rustled bed and held the large vibrator Jolie got in the mail the day before—for testing, her third and most secret job. She’d pulled it out of the package earlier, but it was so big and weird she didn’t dare start trials yet. It was pink, with bright green light peeking through as the shaft thrust up and down, shaking the nubs placed all over the length. The head of the device spun like a spinning top, while the rabbit extension close to the base pulsated, making the ear-shaped nubs tremble.
Sam raised his brows.
“Oh, my God! Put that away!” Jolie jumped at him to grab the buzzing toy. She’d never been more embarrassed in her life. Sam was now probably imagining she was some sex-crazed nympho.
But before she could grab the toy, he rolled off, straight to his feet. “Now that’s interesting. You into that?”
“Turn it off! Make it stop!” she whined, trying to catch him. What if he took it and showed it to his friends? Not to mention that he was probably imagining her with it now, and she was not about to tell this stranger that one of her part-time jobs was testing out sex toys, and that toy had nothing to do with who she actually was.
