“Candy… it’s me.”
She ran down the stairs to the second floor and threw herself into his arms. He was covered in blood and his eye was swollen. Cuts that looked like knife wounds ran all down his arms, and he was trembling.
“Steel,” she panted. “Come here.”
Lexi charged down the stairs after her and found her way to King. He too was wounded, but he was okay, and they locked themselves in a passionate embrace.
“We won,” Steel croaked. “We got Red X back.”
He collapsed into her arms while she helped him up the stairs and back into his room and lay him down on the bed.
***
She cleaned him with water and washed the dried blood away. Most of it wasn’t his, but his cuts were deep and she knew he would need a doctor. As he lay there with his head on her lap, she couldn’t believe the love she felt for him. He was the single most important person she had ever met in her life, and she never wanted to be faced with a situation where she could ever lose him again.
She thought back to earlier in the day, when he had asked her what she was running from. She had lied; she had told him no one. But now, she didn’t want secrets. She had seen him cracked open and vulnerable at the loss of his friend, and she was sure that not many people would have ever seen that side to him. She wanted him to know everything about her—she wanted to give him the same courtesy. She had to be honest and tell him about her past. She wanted him to know the wrongs someone had done to her, how much she had needed saving and how grateful she was that he had come into her life.
She looked down at him and brushed the hair away from his eyes. He was soundly asleep, and she wouldn’t wake him.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered. “Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our lives together.”
She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the forehead and then she closed her eyes. She was part of the Forsaken Riders now. She was Steel’s woman, and even though she had been on the run for months, now she knew she could finally call somewhere home.
THE END
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Preview of Book 4 - Gunner
A Forsaken Riders Standalone MC Romance
Book 4
Samantha Leal
Copyright ©2016 by Samantha Leal. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of 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.
Table of Contents
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1.
Marv hunched over the bar top and poured himself another whiskey. It had been a long night, and he still didn’t know how long the last trucker was going to be there. He was sat near the front of the stage, a cigarette clamped between his teeth and a lazy trail of smoke curling up into the air. He’d been there for nearly two hours after coming in late with a couple of other regulars. But Marv had never seen this guy before. He was new to Red X and he was certainly getting well acquainted with the girls. Especially Destiny, who was currently snaking her hips around the pole in front of him and unhooking her bra to reveal the large swell of her breasts.
Marv snorted and rolled his eyes. When he’d hired Destiny, what he had really wanted was a barmaid, but for some reason most of his strippers had bailed on him over the past few weeks and he was only left with her. A dumb brunette from Ironhill, the next town over and ten miles away across the desert.
The trucker spread his legs wider and reached up to his mouth and took the cigarette between his fingertips before he exhaled a long plume of smoke up into the air. It caught in the glare of the spotlights and made it look as if the whole room was up in flames, smoke billowing out around them and leaving a dense cloud hanging in the air.
Destiny reached for her panties and hooked her fingers into them. For a broad who hadn’t worked a pole or a stage before she had come to Marv, she was doing alright. She looked at home there and she certainly wasn’t shy of showing this guy everything she had. She lifted her leg up and balanced her heel onto one of the speakers before she pulled her panties down and Marv realized she was fully naked, flashing her perfectly shaved box for the whole club to see. He almost choked on his drink and found himself spluttering whiskey across the wooden countertop, totally shocked but also turned on.
It had been a long time since Marv had had a woman… what he wouldn’t give to bend Destiny over the bar and slip himself inside of her. He reached down and grabbed at his crouch, feeling himself getting hard just at the thought.
Destiny bent over so her pert ass was right in front of the trucker’s eye line, and she ran the tip of her finger all the way down her delicate crease. Marv found himself averting his eyes. Almost ashamed that he was looking at her that way…
Almost…
When Destiny had finished her dance she bowed to her lone member of the audience and blew a gentle kiss over her naked shoulder before she stepped down from the stage and slipped into her red silk robe. Even though it had been a slow night takings wise, she had done her best and Marv was starting to take notice of what a good little worker she was.
Maybe I’ll have to give her a bonus, he thought to himself with a dirty smirk.
“Can we shut off now Marv?” Destiny asked as she sat down, breathless in front of him, her robe gaping open just enough for him to glance a close up of her erect nipple.
“Do we look fucking closed?” he asked her with a slur.
He’d been drinking since 6pm and it was now close to 5am. Eleven hours on the booze and he had come out of the other side of drunk, but he could still barely string a sentence together. He had too much on his mind to stay sober. Sober lead to thinking, and thinking made him want to go out back to his office, open his safe, take out his shotgun and put it in his mouth and pull the trigger.
Marv was in such deep shit.
And now it didn’t seem how much he swam against the tide… he was never going to make it back to shore. He knew he was done for.
Destiny crinkled her face in disgust at him and turned on her heel and began to walk back towards the changing room doors. Marv watched her leave. The sway of her hips was almost hypnotic, like she was charming him into an easy sleep.
The only thing that stopped him from flopping down on the bar top was something Destiny did… as he watched her, he was sure that she turned her head slightly and winked at the trucker still sat on his own at the front of the stage.
Marv sat up straight and squinted. She was looking at him alright, and she was disappearing through the double swing doors out into the corridor and down towards the dressing room… It was as if they were old friends, like she’d known him her whole life and she was giving him an affectionate wave before she headed off for the day.
Something wasn’t right.
Marv squinted through the darkness and tried to focus through the glare of the flashing lights from the red, pink and blue strobes being projected out of the stage. The trucker had turned to follow her. He too was watching the way her hips danced and he had a little smile on his face. One that was warm and affectionate. One that suggested intimacy…
Seeing him from that angle it suddenly hit him… Marv was sure the guy was in fact familiar. When he had walked in with the regulars, he could have been sure that he had never seen him before, but now, looking at him smiling towards Destiny… he knew that wasn’t so…
This guy wasn’t a trucker at all… he was a biker… the cap and ripped up jeans and flannel shirt had thrown him. This guy, whoever he was, was there in disguise.
Marv felt his gut tighten.
Even throug
h his drunken haze, he could sense that something wasn’t right.
He got to his feet, trying to silently get to the front door. If he could only sneak out and make his way around the back to the office, he’d be able to lock himself in there and get his gun. Or, grab his keys, jump in his truck, and get the hell out of there.
As he stumbled out from behind the bar he was both drunk and nervous, and he knocked off a stack of dirty glasses which came crashing down to the floor. The noise of the smash broke through the music and he knew he’d fucked up. He could feel the guys eyes on him from the front of the room, and Marv’s heart began to race with the tension.
He wiped the corner of his mouth and rubbed his eyes. And just when he was about to turn and face up to whoever this man was, he was aware of someone walking in through the front doors ahead of him.
Tanner.
He was clad in leather, a cigarette tucked behind his ear and the flames from his dragon tattoos licking the side of his neck.
“I’m here to collect, Marv,” Tanner said as he slung an empty bag down on the bar top. “Go and empty the safe.”
Marv’s mouth was so dry he couldn’t open it to speak. He wanted to tell Tanner that something was wrong, that there was someone else there who was going to be the death of them both, but he couldn’t make the words form.
Tanner shrugged and shoved Marv on the shoulder. The Forsaken Riders had never been ones to take tardiness, especially when it came to money, and the last thing Tanner had wanted at nearly 6am was having to come down to the filthy Red X and collect debts.
“T… Tanner,” Marv stuttered.
But it seemed as if he was too late. Tanner’s eyes had already settled on the man by the stage and his mouth was agape, his breath sharp in his throat.
“Well, well, well,” the voice came from behind Marv. “Ain’t this just perfect...”
The trucker took off his cap and revealed his skin head and Marv recognized him at once. He was from Ironhill and one of the Iron Riders MC. He felt his blood run cold.
“What the fuck…” Tanner whispered.
Marv could see in his eyes that Tanner could sense what was about to happen, but it still all seemed to happen in slow motion…
As the main door of the club burst open, so did the double swing doors that led down to the dressing rooms. Even though the back door had been locked… Destiny was down there and it hit Marv instantly that she must have betrayed him… she must have unlocked it and let them in…
Within seconds, the whole of the club was swarming with the Iron Riders, all of them brandishing guns and all of them ready to settle a score that had been turning bad for years.
“Don’t,” Tanner began but he stopped when each and every one of the mean looking men around him lifted their guns and aimed them at his head.
“Now,” the trucker in disguise said, “Which one of you is going to go first?” he had a wicked grin on his face, and both Marv and Tanner could tell that he wasn’t joking.
They knew they were going to die.
I hope you are enjoying the Forsaken Riders stories. You can continue reading Gunner by downloading from Amazon now
The series continues with:
Book 5: Hawk
Book 6: Bull
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BONUS BOOKS
In the Time of the Caveman
Samantha Leal
Copyright ©2016 by Samantha Leal. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of 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.
Table of Contents
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5.
6.
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9.
1.
Melissa sat looking out across the runway and sipped her coffee slowly. She had waited for a moment like this for her entire life, and now the pressure of being on the verge of launching herself into an important discovery was starting to weigh heavy. Deep down, she knew she was ready for it, but there was still a small, nagging doubt at the back of her mind. What if she missed something? What if she did something wrong that lost some important information? What if Jake continued to distract her?
She looked down at her watch and saw that she still had three hours before their flight was due to leave. She had gotten to the airport ridiculously early so she wouldn’t find herself flapping around at the last minute and risk getting caught in traffic. Melissa was always prepared, but she didn’t feel like there would ever be enough time to prepare for this. Her whole career had been building up to it, and now she was on her way to discover something no one else in the world had ever seen. As she thought about how fortunate she was, a smile slowly unfolded across her face. She could do it. And she would do it well.
“Mel!” a voice called from a distance.
She spun around on the leather coffee house chair and scanned the crowd of fellow travelers placing orders, swimming around duty-free shops and having pre-flight drinks to calm their nerves. She saw his hand in the air before she saw his face, but nonetheless she knew it was him. Jake stood tall and proud as he marched through the crowd to reach her, and Melissa stood up reluctantly to greet him.
“How’s it going?” he asked as he slung his backpack down to the floor by her table.
“Great,” Melissa smiled, unsure of what else to say.
“So I guess this is kind of weird,” Jake shrugged. “The two of us, heading off for a fortnight of fun in France.”
He wiggled his eyebrows and grinned. Melissa found herself wanting to wince.
“Yeah,” she smiled. “It is a little strange…” She looked down at the floor and decided to go back to her seat. Tension between her and Jake had been mounting since the Christmas party when they’d both gotten obscenely drunk and ended up getting to know each other a little too well in the lab’s stock cupboard. Melissa liked Jake a lot at first until she found out he had a fiancé at home. Now Melissa tried to avoid him at all costs and thought of him like the love rat that he was. She didn’t need someone like him in her life, and she was almost free until the original archaeologist planned for this expedition crashed his car and broke his leg, rendering him unable to travel. So now it was just the two of them traveling the eight-hour journey from JFK to Charles de Gaulle, and Melissa couldn’t wait to finally meet up with the rest of the crew so things weren’t so one-on-one.
“Guess I’ll get a drink then,” Jake said as he rooted for his wallet and crossed over to the counter.
Melissa watched him. Since the night they had sex in the laboratory, she knew that he had broken up with his fiancé, but she still couldn’t consider him a good choice for a boyfriend. There was something about him that made her skin crawl.
Melissa reached into her purse and pulled out her journal. She had been making notes and references ever since the cave was discovered, and she wanted to do nothing on the flight except continue recording her ideas and research theories. She had always been the type of girl to put her personal life on hold while she pursued her career, and her present situation was no exception. She would have to push Jake and their predicament to the very back of her mind while she threw herself into the excavation and investigation. This cave was still a secret to the world and what was down there no one truly knew.
She flipped open her laptop and opened a document she received the previous week. It said CONFIDENTIAL across the top and was only viewable to her by password. She still couldn’t believe what it said. She scanned the document again…
An underground cave-like structure has been discovered in the Dordogne region of Southwest France by farmers working in the area. Early reports suggest the presence of
prehistoric paintings similar to those of the Lascaux Caves in the same region. The Lascaux Caves have been sealed to researchers and all visitors since the discovery of fungi which began destroying the paintings, rendering them irreparable. If this recent discovery of a new structure is what it appears to be, this may be one of the most significant pre-historic discoveries of all time…
Her heart was beating fast in her chest as she looked at the initial snapshots captured by the farmers on their cellphones as they loitered at the opening to the cave. It was an incredible sight, even for someone like Melissa who had spent her whole life studying similar images. She knew this was something big, and she couldn’t wait to get there.
2.
The flight across the Atlantic went without incident except Jake making a cringe-worthy suggestion that maybe they should join the mile-high club. Melissa had flashed him a fake smile and turned her shoulder to block him out as she read through her notes and jotted down some other things that came to mind.
Jake had never been on a serious expedition before, and it was becoming more obvious with each passing moment. His inexperience oozed from him and his questions to Melissa were both irrelevant and irritating. When he finally drank enough vodka to send him off into a soundless sleep, Melissa closed her journal and picked up the headphones. She hadn’t had the time to watch a movie for years, and she was determined to take advantage of the opportunity while she knew Jake couldn’t hassle her.
As she flipped through the endless choices of horror, action and comedies she finally settled on an innocent-looking rom-com and made herself comfortable. If she didn’t have real love in her life, she could always live it through someone else’s fictional ideal. She smiled and wrapped the airline blanket around her as she settled into her seat. By the time the movie finished, they would pretty much be there and the next phase of their journey would begin… A three-hour train ride from Paris to Bordeaux.
STEEL: MC ROMANCE (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 3) Page 7
