by Jayne Blue
Dark Desire
A Dark Saints MC Novel
Jayne Blue
Nokay Press LLC
Copyright © 2017 by Jayne Blue/Nokay Press LLC
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.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Contents
Don’t Miss a Thing!
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
Epilogue
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Chapter 1
Chase
“So which one of these hellholes you actually crawl out of, man?”
Domino meant it as a joke. He sat back on his Harley and cracked his knuckles. His face split into a wide, shit-eating grin as he looked at me.
The bones of my jaw crunched, sending a shiver down my spine as I mustered an answer for him. The comeback I had seemed to die in mid-air as my focus went back to the row of rundown houses in front of us.
My old man used to brag that Hutchins Street had been where all the working rich lived when his grandpa came back from the war. Those men carved out freedom with their bare hands and used the skills they’d learned building bridges and taking out Nazis to provide for their families when they got out. I’d seen plenty of pictures. Hell, there used to be a big wooden billboard on the Interstate showing rows of brightly colored homes with state-of-the-art appliances and manicured lawns just waiting for young families to move in. The thing had been complete with a picture of a Marilyn Monroe-type blonde spreading her arms in welcome with her ample tits bursting out the top of her tight dress. Yeah, that sign became a running joke when the neighborhood turned. Graffiti artists had their fun with fake Marilyn until some city councilman tore the sign down.
“Chase!” Domino climbed off his bike and came over to mine. He waved his hand in front of my face. “The fuck, man? Where’d you go?”
I slid my aviator glasses to the top of my head and squinted at the three houses in front of us. Two were abandoned with not a single window intact. Someone had cleaned up the third, slapping a coat of white paint over the brick and sprucing up the lawn.
My house was in the middle: 5294 Hutchins Street. It was a split-level with an ugly brown garage door and cement flower beds all along the front. There were no flowers there now.
I pointed to it as I climbed off my bike. Dom crossed his arms. The sun baked the back of my neck as I stood shoulder to shoulder with him. Domino had been the closest thing I’d had to a brother. We both patched into the Dark Saints the same year. As the club’s tail gunner, I’ve been the eyes in the back of the club’s head for as long as I can remember. I liked it that way. I lived and died for these men. Today though, I’d wanted to make this trip alone. Dom wouldn’t hear of it.
Dom went first. He walked up to the blue-and-white “For Sale” sign on the house. It hung on a chain and Dom pushed it, making it swing.
“What the fuck do you suppose they’re asking for this dump?” he asked. “I bet I could get it for the change I’ve got in my pocket.”
It was a good question. Hardly anyone came out of the north side of Port Azrael, Texas unscathed. Northies ended up in coffins or jail cells most of the time. First the old-timers moved out. Then the gangs started moving in during the eighties and nineties. Then the recession hit and the place became a lawless ghost town. My club had tried to run out the worst elements, but we’d had better luck on the east side near the Gulf.
“I don’t know,” I said. I hung back. Dom got bold, walking up to the old cement flower boxes. He peered in through the front window, wiping the grime off with the side of his fist.
My heart started to pound as I made my way up the crumbling sidewalk. A memory flashed of my mother sitting out here with me when I was maybe four or five. She’d been beautiful. Radiant. I remembered her wearing white shorts with her long, tanned legs and a pink crop top. She had white-blonde hair piled high in a bun. I used to brush it for her when she came home from work at night.
“You’re a good boy, Charlie,” she’d say. She had been the last person to ever call me that. I was Chase now, the name my club prez, Bear Bullock, had given me.
Charlie. Charles Cutter. That kid didn’t exist anymore. That kid had been skinny, pale, with a lisp on account of a front tooth that wouldn’t come in. The first kid who’d tried to tease me about it ended up losing both of his front teeth when I pushed him down.
“Walk away, Charlie,” my mother had said as she pressed a cool cloth to the cut above my eye. I’d struck first, but that kid had gotten back up and beaten the shit out of me. I still had a tiny scar just above the brow. “You need to pick your battles better, little man. That kid was twice your size.”
“That’s why he wanted to fight me,” I said. “He won’t anymore.”
She’d pulled me against her breast and rocked me back and forth as she finally stopped the bleeding. I needed stitches, but she couldn’t afford to take me. My old man had never held a steady job in the brief time I knew him. He was dead by the time I was seven years old.
“You going in?” Domino asked, pulling me back to the present. I walked up to the “For Sale” sign. It was still swinging in the breeze. I stopped it with my hand.
Was I going in? It’s why we came, wasn’t it? I’d wanted to make this trip alone. Bear caught wind of my plans and insisted Domino ride with me. He made up some shit about it still being a bad part of town. That earned him side eye from just about every crew member at the table. We owned Port Azrael. There wasn’t anything badder than we were.
Bear knew what I couldn’t tell Domino He was one of the few people who knew what had happened in this house twenty years ago today.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just to have one last look around. You mind hanging?”
Domino shrugged. He had a fierce gaze that made people move out of his way just on principle. James “Domino” Dormer had Comanche in his blood and just about every other ethnic mix there was. Nobody could quite figure out what he was and he liked it that way.
“I’m cool,” Dom said. “Just give me a holler if you need anything.”
“You don’t have to stay,” I said. “In fact, why don’t you head on back to the clubhouse? Tell Bear and Mama Bear I’m not planning on staying long. I know we’ve got an early ride in the morning.”
Dom raised a skeptical brow and pulled his sunglasses off his shirt collar. He slid them up hi
s nose with one finger and stepped off the porch. He came to me and put a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“Ghosts, man,” he said. “Nothing but ghosts. Whatever it is you came here to find, it’s long gone now.”
I snorted out a laugh. “You’ve been talking to Mama Bear.”
Domino squeezed my shoulder hard. “Yeah. She says you don’t talk to her enough. She maybe had a point though, you know? Fuck Hutchins Street. Fuck the north side. It ain’t you anymore, Chase. This place. Whatever happened here, it’s no good looking back.”
I stiffened. Domino meant well. We’d been friends since we were fifteen and Bear and Mama Bear finally brought me to the club to live with them full time. That’s when my life started. My new life. Still, the scars of the old one ran deep.
“It’s all good, Dom,” I said. “It’s just somethin’ I gotta do.”
“You sure you don’t want me to come in there with you?” Dom looked back up at the house. A shadow crossed his face and his expression turned uncertain as he locked eyes with me again. He seemed spooked by something. It was this house, this place, and the horrors it held.
“I’ll just be a minute,” I said. “We’ll take the long way back up the coast. I know you wanna break in that new beast a little before tomorrow’s ride.”
Dom’s face lit up. His new ride was his pride and joy. It was a custom build and he’d taken over a year to do it. Bringing it down here to Hutchins Street was a risk. Not that Dom and I couldn’t handle any trouble headed our way, but it drew attention we maybe didn’t need.
“Fine, hurry up then,” he said. “I feel a storm coming anyway.”
“Sure,” I said. I slapped Dom on the back and headed up the walkway. My fingers froze just above the doorknob. If I closed my eyes, I could see the house as it was twenty years ago. My mother had just put in new beige carpeting throughout. It smelled clean and expensive with a plush pile. She’d lain in the middle of it, laughing, making “carpet angels” in the living room.
I opened the door and the echo of her laughter hit me like an anvil in the chest. The tile in the foyer was different, chipped and grimy. The beige carpeting was still there though, covering the steps going up to the main floor and down to the basement. There was nothing plush about it anymore. Instead, it was worn, dirty with large, threadbare patches more gray than beige. The pungent smell of mildew hit me. Upstairs seemed like a safer bet than downstairs.
The banister had been broken in half; splintered wood littered the stairs. Squatters had been in here. Lots of them. I had to step over mounds of trash and dirty needles.
“What the fuck am I doing here?” I whispered, chasing away the echoes of my mother’s laughter.
In the corner of the first-floor living room, she’d had a cheap, upright piano. Two of the black keys had been missing and she couldn’t afford to tune it. Still, she taught me how to play when I was six years old, sitting on her lap. The piano was long gone; shadowy grime against the wall marked where it stood. How was that possible?
I had no idea what had happened to this house after my last night here. I’d been whisked away in the middle of the night to the sound of sirens and chaos. In the twenty years since, I’d had no need to come down this street. Not once.
I stood in the dining room at the top of the landing. What remained of the kitchen was behind two crooked swinging doors. I’d pretended to be a cowboy, pushing my way through them. I’d forgotten that until this very second. I’d forgotten a lot of things. Others, I just couldn’t make myself remember no matter how hard I tried.
My heart squeezed in my chest as I moved out of the dining area and squared my shoulders. The short hallway in front of me led to three bedrooms and the only bathroom on this floor. Mine had been the first on the right. Mom’s had been at the end of the hall. She had sliding doors leading to a little deck over the backyard.
I took three steps forward and my breath went out of me. The walls seemed to shimmer, as if they’d become liquid. I put a hand out to steady myself. Where she’d once hung my school pictures, red spray-painted graffiti spelled out a few racial slurs.
I should go. There was nothing for me here but hard memories. When Bear told me the house had gone up for sale, I felt stone cold. It was Mama Bear who told me I should come.
“To put it behind you,” she’d said. “Once and for all. You need to know Hutchins Street is just a place, baby. It’s not part of you.”
Not part of me. Fuck. The place was falling down around my ears. The floorboards were uneven and swelled. The stench from the basement made my eyes water. With every step I took, my cold resolve seemed to melt. I took one more step toward the back bedroom and I swore I could hear my mother’s soft cries.
I don’t remember moving. There was a can of empty spray paint on the ground. It was in my hand somehow. I let out a primal yell that made my head pound as I threw the can as hard as I could. I didn’t see where it landed, but heard shattering glass.
A fuse lit inside of me. Once I’d started, there was no turning back. I don’t believe in ghosts. But my mother’s sweet face seemed to hover over me that day. First she smiled, then she cried. Another memory clutched my heart. Her, on the living room floor, making carpet angels again. Then she changed. She was on her back, her legs bent beneath her. The angle of her neck was wrong and the red spray paint became blood.
My fist went through the wall. Hot tears stung my eyes, but I held them back. No more. I would give this place no more of me. It had already taken everything. But I had remade myself.
I punched the wall again, intending for that to be the last thing I left here. Domino’s engine revved outside. I don’t know if he heard me, but it was time to go.
Shaking broken drywall off my sleeve, I turned. From the corner of my eye, I saw movement. At the last second, instinct made me duck.
A whoosh of air circled my head as I dropped to my knees. The sledgehammer struck the wall a few feet from me. I staggered back, my hand going to the handle of the Nine I kept in a side holster.
“Move one more inch and the next one’s through your skull,” she said.
Still in a crouch, my eyes went up and up. The woman stared at me with cold green eyes, her chest heaving as sweat made her tanned skin glisten. She was toned and tight with cutoff jeans molded to her tanned legs. She wore work boots and a white tank top with an old flannel shirt unbuttoned over it. Her hair was strawberry blonde and hung loose around her shoulders. She held her sledgehammer in a warrior stance, raised two-handed and ready to strike.
“Whoa!” I said, holding up my hands in surrender. I hadn’t ruled out drawing down on her, but for now I was going to take my chances.
“Get up,” she said, blowing a wild strand of hair out of her eyes. Her chest heaved and I could see she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her nipples peaked beneath the thin white fabric. Dammit, she was glorious like some goddess in flannel and work boots. I didn’t expect it. She wasn’t supposed to be here. Was I seeing things? Partied too hard last night and now this was some fucked-up figment of my imagination here to drive out the ghosts I imagined from this place?
No. Not my imagination. I felt a light wind against my cheek as she swung the hammer back over her shoulder.
I did what she told me, keeping my hands up. I took a step back. I couldn’t help but smile. This woman was about to take my head off with that sledgehammer, but damn it if she didn’t look hot as fuck doing it.
Chapter 2
Ariel
Adrenaline made me bold and probably a little stupid. In the span of a few seconds, I’d pegged this guy as every devil I fought against.
This was my house. My neighborhood. And there he was, all leather, swirling ink, and menace smashing his fist through my wall. He didn’t think I saw him reach for his sidearm. Later, I’d probably curl up in a shivering ball and let in the fear that should have made me run. For now, I was just damn pissed.
“Whoa,” he said, thinking the better of reaching for his gun. He put his h
ands up in surrender and a tiny smirk lifted the corner of his mouth. Oh, I knew this guy all right. Knew how he made his way through life. The cut he wore told me everything. The Dark Saints M.C. were bad news through and through. I’d heard the stories my whole life. The guy was solid muscle. Colorful bands of ink covered his massive biceps. It was a rose or something with blood-red thorns.
“Take it easy, baby,” he said. My heart tripped. His voice was deep and dark. Cutter. His name was Cutter. I read it on the patch above his left breast. Below that, it said “Tail Gunner,” whatever that meant.
“Get the fuck out of here,” I said, stunned I could even form words. I held the sledgehammer in a vise grip. Would I use it on him? A startling thought flashed in my mind. It would be a shame. This man was beautiful and brutal all at once. His stone-gray eyes flicked over me, taking everything in about me. He studied me in the span of a few seconds just like I did him. He kept his broad hands out, palms up. They were rough, a working man’s hands. He was tall. Lord, my eyes went up and up as he straightened his back. He chanced a look over his shoulder, then just as quick brought his eyes back to mine. His blond hair swung over his shoulder. He brought one hand up then, rubbing it over the rough, golden stubble on his jaw.
“Calm down,” he said. “I just came to have one last look around. Didn’t know anyone else was doing the same.”
