REDEMPTION
Black Dogs MC
(Previously published as “Gravel”)
BLAKELEY WILDE
Copyright 2014 – BLAKELEY WILDE
All Rights Reserved
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher or author. If you are reading this book and you have not purchased it or received an advanced copy directly from the author, this book has been pirated.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or, if an actual place, are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
DESCRIPTION
“I killed him, Marina,” Ash said, his hands covered in blood and dust. “I killed him with my bare hands.”
Ash Decker never intended on killing anyone, but when he saw the love of his life lying battered and mangled on a gravel road, he knew what he had to do. When someone hurt a member of the Black Dogs MC, there was no stopping his inner beast from seeking justice.
But when Ash’s justice-seeking ways force him to kill a prized member of a rival club, there are dire consequences. Consequences that will haunt him the rest of his life.
As he tries to build a life with Marina and their son by his side, the demons from his past threaten to take away everything – and everyone – he’s ever loved…
DEDICATION
To you. Yes, you! The one reading this book right now. I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. Life can get pretty crazy sometimes, and every once in a while we all just need a little bit of an escape.
Love,
B-dub
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
EPILOGUE
BONUS STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
“Oh, my God, Ash,” I heaved, my hands still raw and pitted from the gravel beneath them. “What did you do?”
“Let’s go,” he said. His lips were pursed and his body language screamed a mix of fear and adrenaline.
“What’d you do?” I begged him to tell me.
His hands, scraped and bloody, reached down to help me up. I straightened my dress which was twisted and tangled around my body and straightened the hemline. My underwear was lying somewhere in the cornfield and my bare feet ached once pressed against the gravel.
“I fucking killed him, Marina,” he said. His bottom lip quivered, and his eyes began to mist. “I killed him.”
I hobbled over and wrapped my arms around him. Ash was such a gentle soul. He wasn’t a killer. “You didn’t have to do that for me. Why’d you do that, Ash?”
He buried his head in the crook of my shoulder, my hair matted and stuck to my neck, and began to sob. He only allowed himself to sob for a minute before finally gaining composure. He wiped his tears, cleared his throat, and took a deep breath.
His eyes glanced over my shoulder to where the rest of the party was. Not even a half-mile away our friends were sharing drinks and laughing over a bonfire in the middle of a dirt field under a pale, full moon. We were hardly out of high school. We shouldn’t have been drinking let alone lighting bonfires amongst acres of precious Midwestern farmland.
“We have to get out of here before anyone sees,” I said, looking him straight in the eyes. “I’m taking you home with me.”
Ash nodded as he stared at my sullen face. Smears of dirt across my cheeks and swollen eyes told a story no man should ever have to see on the face of the girl he loves.
“Ouch,” I said as I hobbled along the gravel, linked onto Ash’s arm. The soreness that came with every barefoot step on the country road was nothing compared to the pain that radiated from between my legs.
“Stop,” Ash said.
“What?” I asked, obeying.
He slipped his hand down around my waist and hooked it around my hips. His other hand swept up the bottom of my skirt before he hoisted me up and carried me. His skin was moist, covered in a thin layer of blood and sweat.
“Thank you,” I whispered as I laid my head down on his shoulder.
He carried me, quietly, to his truck, which was parked down the road from the bonfire.
“What are we going to do, Ash?” I asked as he helped me into his car. “They’re going to know it was us.”
“It wasn’t you,” he said through gritted teeth. “You did nothing.”
My heart ached for him. At eighteen years old, he had his entire life ahead of him…until me. Ash Decker had loved the hell out of me since we were kids. While I chased after every blue-eyed, bad-intentioned boy I ever met, Ash Decker chased after me. By the time we hit high school, he settled for the role of my best friend. Somewhere inside he always hoped I’d come around. I just didn’t think it was going to take him murdering my attacker for me to see him in a completely different light.
“I have to turn myself in,” he said. His lip quivered once again. Knowing him, the thought of never having a chance to be with me was more of a death sentence than anything the judicial system could sentence him to.
“No,” I said. I shook my head. “There’s got to be another option.”
Ash’s truck came to a screeching halt at a blinking red light in the middle of a country intersection. Streaks of dried blood on his face revealed themselves under the moonlight that spilled in through the cracked windshield.
“Why’d you run off with Tripp Cotton?” He asked. His voice was low and his eyes burned into mine as he turned to face me. “I told you to stay away from him. He’s nothing but trouble. You do realize his club is a rival club, right? Your daddy would freak if he knew you were talking to Tripp.”
I wiped a rogue tear from my cheek and tried to fight the wave of emotions flooding my body in that moment. I couldn’t focus on one thing. I couldn’t focus on the fact that Tripp had just assaulted me or that Ash had just murdered him or that life as we knew it was officially over. My mind was on overload, and all I wanted to do was go back in time and do it all differently.
Tripp had been eyeing me from the moment I arrived at the bonfire. His blue eyes virtually undressed me, and I was secretly proud of wearing my cute little floral sundress with the low cut top. I’d been crushing on Tripp all summer, and he’d completely ignored me until that night.
“Wanna go for a walk?” he asked me after we’d been sipping frosty beers for an hour. There was something different behind those icy blue eyes of his, and I was determined to find out what it was. His thick, broad shoulders, his devious smirk, and his magnetic personality drew everyone to him like moths to flames. He was larger than life and always the life of the party.
“Sure,” I replied. My heart raced at the thought of kissing him.
As we walked further away from the bonfire, the air around us was ripe with tension and the summer symphony of chirping crickets.
“So what took you so long to talk to me?” Tripp teased as he walked alongside me. He leaned his arm into mine, keeping his hands locked in his jeans pockets. His thick, brown boots kicked the gravel beneath him.
“I was just waiting for you to make the move I guess,” I said, shyly. “I
’ve been crushing on you all summer. You wouldn’t even look at me.”
His lips curled into a devilish grin, and he stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the gravel road. “I’m lookin’ at you now.”
My cheeks burned red, and I was thankful for the shade of night around us so he couldn’t see them. He placed his hands on my hips and pulled me in close, planting a kiss on my lips. We’d been talking all night, and I knew he was bound to make a move eventually.
As his lips left my mouth and trailed soft kisses down my neck, his hand left my hip and tugged up the bottom hemline of my skirt. Before I had time to react, he’d reached up and tugged my panties off.
“Tripp!” I yelled as I took a step back. “No. Not here. Not now. We can’t.”
Tripp had black in his eyes, and he didn’t seem to be listening to me. The magnetic and charming blue-eyed boy I’d been talking to by the fire all night had disappeared and left a monster in his place.
“You know you want it,” he replied. His opposite hand gripped my wrist, tight, and he forced me down onto the gravel. “Keep your mouth shut and do what I tell you.”
I must have blacked out for a bit because the next thing I remembered was seeing Ash’s face.
“Marina,” he said. “Marina, can you hear me?”
My eyes fluttered open. I was so exhausted I couldn’t mutter a single word.
“Who did this?” he asked. “Was it Cotton?”
I licked my dry lips and parted them in an attempt to answer, but nothing came out. I simply nodded.
“God damn it, mother fucker,” Ash said. His hands were on his hips, and I watched as he scanned the perimeter. “There he is. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to fucking murder him.”
“No…” I managed to cough out. “Ash…”
It was too late. Ash was gone. The thunder of his feet as they pounded the gravel grew more distant as he chased after Tripp.
CHAPTER 2
“What the hell happened to you?” my father asked. It was well past midnight by the time Ash and I made it to my house.
“Oh, my goodness,” my mom said. In her housedress and slippers, hair pulled back in a ponytail, and glasses on, she could see we were both in poor shape. “Is that blood?!”
“Marina,” my father said. “Ash. What happened? One of you needs to tell me what happened right now.”
My father was terrifying when he got mad. A brut of a man with bass in his voice and narrow, beady eyes, one look from him could send someone huddling in a corner. His arms covered in tattoos and his skull cap always in place, he was known around our town as the president of the Black Dogs MC. Descended from decades of brave biker-loving men, the club had been formed long before I was born. It was our world and it was our lifestyle – all I’d ever known.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” I whimpered. How do you tell your own father that you were just sexually assaulted? And that your attacker was the son of the president of a rival MC? Perhaps that’s why I’d lusted for Tripp like I did. I knew he was off limits.
I held my head low and felt Ash’s eyes on me. He reached over and squeezed my hand. “Marina was attacked.”
I glanced up and thanked Ash for saying what I didn’t have the strength to say.
“Attacked?” My father, all 270 pounds of him, stood up, fists clenched.
“Tripp Cotton,” Ash said. His face winced and he turned to avoid my father’s reaction.
“What the hell were you doing around that piece of shit?!” my father’s voice boomed.
“Rex,” my mother said as she grabbed his arm. “Shh. You’re going to wake everyone up.” I’d forgotten that my two younger sisters were asleep in their beds down the hall.
“We were at a bonfire,” I said. I still couldn’t look at him. “Tripp was talking to me and then he asked if I wanted to go on a walk.”
My eyes burned hot. I couldn’t finish the rest, and suddenly my body collapsed on the floor. My mother rushed to my side as she and Ash worked to help me back up.
“It doesn’t matter what happened,” Ash said. He held his shoulders back and took a deep breath, fighting off the tears that filled his eyes. “I killed him.”
“You what?” my father squinted as he studied Ash’s face. None of us could tell whether he was proud or furious.
“I-I killed him,” Ash stammered. “I snapped. And then I killed him.”
My father slammed his hands on the table and turned his head away, looking lost in thought for a moment. The three of us stood in silence, waiting for him to speak.
He paced around the kitchen for a minute before grabbing his phone and making a call. “Yeah, Riggs, it’s Rex. Meet me in five at the clubhouse.”
“What are you doing?” my mom asked, fear in her eyes. Her hands clenched at her neckline. They’d been together over twenty years, and she’d seen him do a lot of things, but this was different.
“We’re taking care of it,” my dad said, like it was nothing. Like he was just taking out the trash. “I need to know where the body is.”
Ash and I exchanged looks and his face softened as his eyes filled with a tiny sliver of hope.
“County line road,” Ash said. “Two miles north of the red light intersection. There’s a cornfield and a sign. It’s just before 86th avenue.”
My father pursed his lips and sighed as if it was just a mere inconvenience that he had to clean up someone else’s murder; just another day in the life of the Club.
“Take this to the grave.” He turned to all three of us before walking out and waved his finger in our faces. “I mean it.”
Ash took a seat the kitchen table and breathed a sigh of relief. Color was returning to his face, though we both knew it wasn’t over yet. It would never be over. We’d both carry this heavy secret for the rest of our lives, and I couldn’t help but blame myself. I never should’ve given Tripp Cotton a second glance. I never should have walked off with a boy I hardly knew from a rival club. Ash never would’ve gotten himself into that situation if it weren’t for my dumb decisions.
“Go get cleaned up,” my mom said. She tried to hide the worry in her voice, but she didn’t fool either of us. “Both of you.”
CHAPTER 3
Five years later…
I awoke as our car slowed and turned down a gravel road. We’d been driving for at least six hours in the middle of the night and it had been more than a challenge to stay awake. Ash convinced me that I didn’t want to know where I was going anyway. It would be much safer for us that way.
I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He leaned closer to the steering wheel, straining to stay awake. The car was silent except for the rumble of the road and the chips of gravel pinging the underbelly of our faithful blue Ford. Tucker, our toddler, was sound asleep in the car seat behind Ash. The sky above us was flecked with delicate golden stars. Under any other circumstances I would’ve marveled at how beautiful they were.
I shivered as the air conditioning blew cold on my skin, but I knew Ash needed it to stay alert. As we slowed to a stop at an unlit, deserted gravel intersection, Ash toyed around with the GPS.
“Everything alright?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m just checking something,” Ash replied.
He was never one to go into detail about anything. Ever since that fateful summer, something changed in him. I supposed killing a man would do that to a guy.
We always knew the day would come when we’d have to uproot our lives and go on the run. The Cottonmouths had been trying to pin Tripp’s murder on someone for years, and five years later they were starting to figure out who’d done it.
The day after Ash had saved me, my father initiated him into his club and within a few short years he’d worked his way up in the ranks, and I’d fallen head over heels in love with the man who had saved me that horrific night. He’d given so much for me. What kind of a man loves a woman so much he’d kill for her? I couldn’t let him go, so I gave him my heart, unconditionally,
and never looked back.
We turned onto yet another gravel road. The green sign read something like 237th Avenue. I’d never heard of any avenues numbered higher than one hundred before.
Redemption (MC Biker Romance) Page 1
