by Tia Lewis
Creed
A Blood Riders MC Novel (Book 3)
Tia Lewis
Salted Pen Publications
Contents
Mailing List
Books by Tia Lewis
The Blood Riders MC Series
About This Book
1. Tamara
2. Creed
3. Tamara
4. Creed
5. Tamara
6. Creed
7. Tamara
8. Tamara
9. Creed
10. Tamara
11. Creed
12. Tamara
13. Creed
14. Tamara
15. Creed
16. Creed
17. Tamara
18. Creed
19. Tamara
20. Tamara
21. Creed
22. Tamara
Epilogue
Thank You
Mailing List
Also by Tia Lewis
About the Author
Sign up for Tia Lewis’ VIP e-mail list to receive new releases, excerpts, sales, and giveaways!
Go to: www.NextBookRelease.com to sign up now or text LEWIS to 31996.
FULL BOOK CATALOG BY TIA LEWIS
Want to read all her future releases for FREE in exchange for your honest review? Then join her ARC team today!
CLICK HERE TO JOIN
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by Tia Lewis. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
First Published in November 2016.
First Edition.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please contact: [email protected]. www.AuthorTiaLewis.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, 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.
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. No part of the book may be scanned, uploaded to or downloaded from file sharing sites, or distributed in any other way via the Internet or any other means, electronic, or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 (www.fbi.gov/ipr/).
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Published by Salted Pen Publications, Minnesota.
Creed: A Blood Riders MC Novel (Book 3)
Edited by: Raeshelle Smith
Cover Designed by: Mayhem Cover Creations
FULL BOOK CATALOG BY TIA LEWIS
Sports Romance:
Draw Play: A Sports Romance
Stadium of Lights: A Second Chance Romance
The Blood Riders MC Series:
(Motorcycle Romance)
Threat: A Blood Riders MC (Book 1)
Reveal: A Blood Riders MC (Book 2)
Creed: A Blood Riders MC (Book 3)
Bad Boy Mafia Duology Series:
The Hitman’s Possession: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Book 1)
The Hitman’s Property: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Book 2) - coming 11/2016
The Blood Riders MC Series:
(Motorcycle Romance)
Threat: A Blood Riders MC (Book 1)
Reveal: A Blood Riders MC (Book 2)
Creed: A Blood Riders MC (Book 3)
About This Book
Creed:
She puts me through hell… but there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
I thought Tamara and I had something special. I know we did. But then she up and left me. Didn’t leave a note. Nothing.
One day I’m gripping onto her lush curves and hearing my name spill from those pouty lips of hers. And then she’s gone.
The hell of it is, I don’t care. Other women aren’t an option. I want her. I need her. She’s still mine, and I’m claiming her no matter what.
I’ll drag her ass back here kicking and screaming. When I’m done with her, she’ll know who she belongs to.
Tamara:
My only rule: Never hook up with an MC rider.
I’ve been around the Blood Riders MC my whole life. My father was a member. After the heartache he handed my mother, I promised myself I deserved better.
Then came Creed. With his broad shoulders and rippling muscles, he won me over before I even knew what was happening. The things he makes me feel almost make me believe in forever. But I can’t.
And now I’m f*cked.
I knew better to put myself in this position, but I caved to his touch, and now I’m carrying his baby. I won’t let this child lead the sh*t life I had.
I have to protect our child. Creed can never know; even if it tears my heart in two.
Creed is book 3 of the Blood Riders MC series.
Author’s Note:
Creed is a motorcycle romance novel that contains explicit sexual content, strong language, and intended for mature audiences only.
Please note: While Threat and Reveal of the Blood Riders series are romance suspense novels, Creed is a “secret baby,” steamy contemporary romance novel only.
1
Tamara
I started that morning like I’d started all mornings for the past six weeks. I woke up, sat up, and immediately raced to the bathroom so I could throw up.
Would it ever end? The doctor told me the morning sickness would possibly improve in the second trimester. I was nearly at twelve weeks, and that milestone couldn’t come fast enough as far as I was concerned. I was sick to death of saltine crackers, ginger ale and tired of pretending not to feel sick.
It wasn’t the right time to tell the rest of the Blood Riders Motorcycle Club that I had a baby on the way. If I hadn’t felt forced to tell Nicole on her wedding day, I wouldn’t have confided in her in the first place. There was no way that I could avoid telling her the truth. I was constantly barfing in her wastebasket, and my body was swelling up like a water balloon.
She’d kept my secret since then—at least, I hoped that she had. It seemed like she was trustworthy. had. Nobody had said a word in the clubhouse. They treated me like they always did so at this point there was no cause for alarm.
I sat on the bathroom floor, across from the porcelain bowl which had become such a close friend of mine to wait for nausea to pass. It usually did after a little while, as long as I sat down, breathed deeply and tried to get my mind off it.
How could I get my mind off the fact that I was going to have a baby and I had no idea what to do with it? More importantly, how the hell was I going to provide for this baby financially?
Every day that ticked by made the baby more real. With time, the baby’s development advanced, and the fact that I was pregnant became undeniable. I sat on the black and white tiled bathroom floor, letting the coolness of the tub against my back sooth me as I grappled with the fact that it was starting to become a real person inside of me and I still wasn’t sure what to do once it came.
Termination hadn’t been an option for me, though anyo
ne with half a brain would have done it. Even the doctor had looked surprised when I first told him that I wasn’t considering it. He probably thought that a woman like me had no business with a child in the first place. He saw the way that I dressed, the way that I did my hair, the amount of makeup that I felt comfortable wearing and he immediately thought that I was trash. I knew that he had a poor opinion of me because I had seen that same scrutinizing look on his face so many times before. I’d grown up experiencing the introspection and judgment all the way back to when men used to look at my mother that exact same way.
He probably wrote me off as just another woman who got knocked up to get money from the baby’s father. He had clearly noticed the absence of wedding band on my left finger when he asked me if I’d considered my options. Maybe it was the stubborn streak in me, but I’d been even more determined to have the baby when I saw the critical, disapproving look in his eye.
I immediately decided to keep it, but I had never been so torn in my life. Adoption was always a choice. There were lots of people in the world who wanted a baby; there were plenty of couples right here in New York who were trying to conceive and failed all the time. They would love the chance to adopt my kid. But could I do that? Could I give up my child once I had felt it kick inside of me?
I put my hands on my belly. It was way too early for that. I wasn’t even showing, not even close. Even so, I felt a little connection to that little person growing inside of me.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, sighing up at the bathroom ceiling. “You deserve better than this.” A child deserved a mother and father who both loved it. It deserved to be born into a happy home with parents who treasured the new addition to their family and eagerly anticipated its arrival. No child deserved a mother who still didn’t know at the end of the first trimester whether she wanted to keep it for her own.
It deserved a better home, too. My apartment had been good enough for me for a long time, and it wasn’t a bad place by any stretch. But it was small. Just the right size for one, but not nearly enough for two. That wouldn’t be a problem until the baby became mobile—even I knew that—so I had a little time, but did I have the money? I had savings, but they wouldn’t cover rent on a bigger place in New York. Not the kind of place I’d want my baby to live in, anyway. I wouldn’t let anybody think that I hadn’t done my very best from the start. I wanted my baby to have the best of everything, even if that meant having me as a mother. I would just have to be a good mother.
To be honest, I had no idea how to be one. It’s not like I’d had an excellent example of my own.
It felt like my stomach had settled, so I dared grip the side of the tub while getting to my feet. I felt a little shaky, as I usually did after getting sick, and brushed my teeth to wipe the acidic aftertaste from my mouth. My face looked a little gray. I hadn’t slept well, which was hilarious considering how exhausted I was all the time. I always collapsed into bed confident that I would sleep for an entire day, only to stare at the ceiling or toss and turn. Minutes would tick by, reminding me of how my baby was becoming more and more of reality with every passing moment.
I would have to tell the father soon.
No, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.
I stared at myself in the mirror, my eyes automatically narrowing in an involuntary response. Every time that I thought about it, each time that I contemplated what his involvement would mean for my baby’s future I was surer than ever that he could never know about its existence. If anybody had asked me why I felt that way, I probably couldn’t tell them. I wasn’t totally sure myself. I only knew that he didn’t need to be any part of my baby’s growth and development. He wasn’t the kind of man that I could depend on. He didn’t want a relationship. He certainly didn’t want kids. He wouldn’t want me, and I would be damned if he would reject my baby and me. I wouldn’t give him the chance to spurn our child and me.
How could I have been so stupid to let this shit happen?
I’d known it was a bad idea to sleep with him. It had been two years since that first misguided fling that we had. I shook my head at the memory as I went back to the bedroom to undress and pull on my bathrobe. I moved slowly, still unsure of my stomach. It would clench every so often like it wanted to purge itself although it was empty.
Even back then, we had told each other that we would never do it again. We’d both been weak, heartbroken over losing people who had mattered so much to us. We had turned to each other for comfort back in those days, as cliché as it sounded even two years later. I chuckled to myself, thinking how much it sounded like one of the cheesy romance novels my mother would always read when I was growing up. I learned more about the difference between boys and girls from those stories and the sounds which filtered through the thin wall between our bedrooms than I did in school or anywhere else. That had been my entire, sad education in those days. I would have needed a decent mother who was interested in my livelihood and well-being to teach me about the facts of life that mattered, and she just didn’t have the time.
The hot water helped relax me a little, and by the time that I finished in the shower I felt more human. It was the slow, cautious dance that I’d been repeating for weeks. Taking the morning one step at a time until I felt confident enough to leave the apartment.
Hooking up with a member of the club was a foolish mistake. We’d been each other’s refuge in those days. We’d been careful, too, making sure that nobody in the club knew that we were fooling around. Nobody did—there was way too much mayhem happening back then for anyone in the club to pay too much attention to us. They were all too busy worrying about getting back at the Cobras, protecting all of us, that sort of thing. We had fucked each other senseless right under everybody’s noses
Then we’d stopped. We’d told each other we could never have sex again. So why had we gone there after two whole years of staying away from each other? Why couldn’t we just keep our hands off each other?
Jack.
I sighed when I thought about it. It was true. I brushed out my long blonde hair after drying it, remembering all the times Jack used to call me “Blondie” back when I first started working for the club, and he hadn’t taken a chance to learn my name. He’d learned my name since then. I was probably one of the only women to walk through the clubhouse doors to never sleep with him. That was likely due to him knowing who I was. I wasn’t just a stranger to the club. The club had been part of my life long before Jack ever knew that I existed.
When it was clear Jack, the past President of the Blood Riders Motorcycle Club didn’t have much longer to live, something inside me had lost it. His illness had shaken the entire club, even though Drake had done a terrific job of stepping up to take care of business. I was proud of Drake for doing so but, emotionally I couldn’t handle it. Watching Jack get weaker by the day in front of my eyes was too much to bear.
So, I’d fallen into the first pair of arms to catch me as I fell. They’d just happened to be the same arms that had caught me years earlier. It was something familiar, something I could count on at the end of a long, sad day. We’d used each other for comfort, pleasure, peace and the warmth associated with familiarity.
Only we weren’t so careful that last time. We’d spent a couple of days going at it whenever we had the chance—those early, heady days when we just couldn’t keep our hands off each other. I blushed a little at the memory of sneaking off to the basement, the office or upstairs to one of the bedrooms regardless the fact that Drake would kill us if we were discovered.
A seed with both of our DNA was planted. We just weren’t careful enough to prevent it.
He could never know that our escapades had produced ramifications for both of us that would last a lifetime.
What did that make me in his eyes? I wondered. He might be able to laugh it off at first. At first, he would probably think that I was starting to get fat, but after enough weeks it would be clear. And his corrupt, jaded ass would undoubtedly believe that I had slept around on
him.
So, what? I stared defiantly in the mirror as I put on my makeup. Like he hadn’t spent his years with the club fucking everything that moved. But those guys all had their double standards.
It was okay for the men to screw around, but not for the women. Pussy was like a revolving door, going in and out at all times of the night whenever a guy in the club needed to get his rocks off. It was only a matter of time before one girl slept with multiple club members and that shit got messy.
I laughed softly to myself as I dressed. What would be better? Him not knowing and thinking I was a slut, or him knowing and throwing me out of his life to avoid the responsibility of a child? I would take the first option any day. I wouldn’t let him make me feel like a cast-off as if I didn’t matter. That was the way that my father had made my mother feel.
It was the way that my mother had let him make her feel because she had refused to stand up for herself.
Regardless of my situation, I had resolved that I would not to allow the same set of hopeless circumstances to befall me.
I left my apartment determined to do my work and leave my personal life behind me, even if I couldn’t button my jeans and I had to wear a pair of leggings under a long, flowy shirt to disguise my condition. It was not my usual outfit, but it wasn’t like any of the guys in the clubhouse would notice the changes in me. They never noticed things like that. It was just another way that the club members were just like all other men; they were unobservant, blind and oblivious. I would have to admit that I was pregnant soon if I couldn’t button the jeans that I’d been wearing for years. I dreaded the day that the time would come for me to face the music when I had been avoiding it for so long.
