Headlong
The Hellbound Brotherhood Book Two
SHANNON MCKENNA
Table of Contents
Title Page
Headlong
Praise for Shannon McKenna
Also by Shannon McKenna
Copyright
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Hellbent
Hellbent - Chapter 1
Heedless
Hellion
Right Through Me
Right Through Me - Chapter 1
About the Author
Only one woman could tempt him to return…
Eric Trask and his brothers have turned their backs on their past. Only their beloved foster father’s funeral could drag them back to the small town of Shaw’s Crossing. Eric is haunted by the memory of GodsAcre, the doomsday cult in the mountains where they were raised and the deadly fire that destroyed it, but one memory still shines bright…Demi Vaughan. Her lush, sexy mouth, her stunning green eyes. Their hot fling seven years ago crashed and burned in the worst possible way, and she’s still mortally pissed at him…and more gorgeous than ever.
Second chances…
Demi Vaughan did her best to forget Eric Trask. They told her from the start that he was a train wreck, and she hadn’t listened. He’d broken her heart and derailed her life, and she’d be damned if she’d let him do it again, now that she’d followed her dream and opened her own restaurant. But the years that passed have only turned Eric into a more concentrated version of what he’d always been—a flint-eyed, brutally ambitious, hyper-focused alpha male hunk. Just taller. Harder. As intoxicating as hell.
Demi tries to withstand Eric’s magnetic pull, but she can’t resist the all-consuming heat between them. But an old evil still lies low in Shaw’s Crossing, and Eric’s arrival has shocked it back into life.
Now it’s not just their hearts that are in danger. It’s their lives…
* * *
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PRAISE FOR SHANNON MCKENNA
“Blends an intensely terrifying psychic thriller with a mind-blowing erotic romance.”
—Library Journal, on Fade To Midnight
“Blasts readers with a highly charged, action-adventure romance . . . extra steamy.”
—Booklist
“Pulse-pounding . . . with searing sex and raw emotions.”
—Romantic Times, 4 ½ stars
“Shannon McKenna makes the pulse pound.”
—Bookpage
“Shannon McKenna introduces us to fleshed-out characters in a tailspin plot that culminates in an explosive ending.”
—Fresh Fiction
"An erotic romance in a suspense vehicle on overdrive. . . sizzles!"
—RT Book Reviews
"McKenna expertly stokes the fires of romantic tension."
—Publishers Weekly
"McKenna strikes gold again."
—Publishers Weekly
"Her books will take readers on a nonstop thrill ride and leave them begging for more when the last pages are devoured."
—Maya Banks, New York Times bestselling author
"Full of turbocharged sex scenes, this action-packed novel is sure to be a crowd pleaser."
—Publishers Weekly on Edge Of Midnight
"Highly creative. . . erotic sex and constant danger."
—Romantic Times on Hot Night (4 ½-star review and a Top Pick)
"Aims for the heart with scorching precision."
—Publishers Weekly on Ultimate Weapon
ALSO BY SHANNON MCKENNA
The Hellbound Brotherhood
Hellion
Headlong
The Obsidian Files Series
Right Through Me
My Next Breath
In My Skin
Light Me Up
The McClouds & Friends Series
Behind Closed Doors
Standing In The Shadows
Out Of Control
Edge Of Midnight
Extreme Danger
Ultimate Weapon
Fade To Midnight
Blood And Fire
One Wrong Move
Fatal Strike
In For The Kill
Stand-alone Titles
Return To Me
Hot Night
Tasting Fear
Anthologies
All Through The Night
(with Suzanne Forster, Thea Devine and Lori Foster)
I Brake For Bad Boys
(with Lori Foster and Janelle Denison)
Bad Boys Next Exit
(with Donna Kauffman and E.C. Sheedy)
Baddest Bad Boys
(with E.C. Sheedy and Cate Noble)
All About Men
(a single author anthology)
Copyright © February 2020 Shannon McKenna
http://shannonmckenna.com
Print ISBN: 978-1-7344317-0-4
Digital ISBN: 978-1-7344317-1-1
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishment, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
1
Eric Trask stared over Otis’s flower-heaped coffin. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth.
He couldn’t skip his adoptive father’s funeral, but couldn’t help reflecting that this display was a huge waste of extreme discomfort. The old man was gone. He couldn’t appreciate the gesture, and no one else around here gave a flying fuck if Eric was present or not, other than his brothers Mace and Anton, who stood on either side of him.
They hated funerals like he did. For all the same reasons.
Yet here they were. Shoulder to shoulder, grim and stoic as befitted the sons of the Prophet, as well as sons of Otis Trask. Both those men had been heavy into grim stoicism.
A big crowd of Shaw’s Crossing inhabitants had trooped down to the cemetery in the frigid wind for Otis’s interment, which wasn’t that surprising. Otis had been the chief of police in Shaw’s Crossing for many years and had been highly respected in that role.
Some of those people were giving the Trask boys the side-eye from across Otis’s open grave. Not that they gave a shit.
No side-eye coming from Demi Vaughan, though. She didn’t look at him at all.
Eric hadn’t expected to see Demi here in Shaw’s Crossing. He would have thought she’d be long gone, as far from her asshole of a father as it was possible to get.
But here she was, right in front of him. No time to prepare. To brace himself.
Looking at Demi gave him a hard, twisting ache in his chest. Different and distinct from the pain and shock of losing Otis. The feeling surprised him. He
’d thought all that stuff from the past was buried deep and covered with concrete. He’d gone to great lengths to bury it. He’d even congratulated himself on how completely he’d gotten over it.
He hadn’t. Like he needed anything else to humble him today.
On the plus side, being ignored by Demi left him free to discreetly ogle her, which was well worth doing. Seven years hadn’t dimmed her glow. She hadn’t gotten any taller, but her small frame had filled out, and every part of it looked great. Her full lips were painted a hot red and her long brown ringlets fluttered in the gusts of wind. He keenly remembered her hair’s satiny softness and scent.
She looked sexy and tough in her snug black skirt. Black tights on her strong, shapely legs. High-heeled boots. A nipped-in black leather bomber jacket. Hot.
She still had that regal, indomitable look he remembered so well in those striking, pale green eyes. Clear, challenging. Demi Vaughan stared the world down fearlessly, calling out any bullshit she saw for what it was. Including Eric’s own.
It had made him hard, when it wasn’t driving him fucking nuts. Sometimes both at the same time.
Demi stared at Otis’s casket, not sparing him a glance, but Benedict Vaughan, her asshole father, made up for it with an unwavering glare.
Eric gazed right back. A look that silently said everything he needed it to say.
I know what you did. I know what you are, you lying piece of shit. And so do you.
Ben Vaughan’s mouth twisted. His eyes slid away.
Vaughan himself, unlike Demi, didn’t look so good. Seven years ago he could still have been called a good-looking guy, but not anymore. His face was puffy and bloated. His eyes bagged, his jowls sagged. Demi’s granddad Henry Shaw, acknowledged king and boss of Shaw’s Crossing, stood with them, but old man Shaw didn’t glower at Eric. He just gazed at Otis’s coffin with hollow, reddened eyes, hunched and sad in his black wool coat. Henry Shaw and Otis had served in Vietnam together. Marines. They went way back.
Eric forced himself to look away. Eye contact with the Vaughan/Shaw family was unwise. His long-ago fling with Demi had ended about as badly as a fling could.
Which was to say, with him in jail, looking at eight to ten. It had been a near thing.
Mace tapped his arm. “Pinstripes and hair grease at three o’clock,” he said under his breath. “What’s wrong with this picture?”
Eric spotted the guy instantly when he looked in that direction. He should have noticed the man already, but he’d been shamefully inattentive. Wandering down memory lane, gawking at Demi’s hypnotic green eyes. He tried without success to place the stranger. A new arrival, a visiting relative, somebody’s new out-of-town boyfriend?
No. ‘Professional asshole’ came off the man like a bad smell. He had shifty snake eyes. A hook nose. Balding, with a greasy black widow’s peak. Bad skin, a pimp suit, and a restless, seedy urban vibe that was all wrong for Shaw’s Crossing.
“His buddy’s at nine o’clock,” Anton whispered.
Eric assessed the other guy. Bigger than the first, beefy and bearded and thick in the neck. Cold, shuttered eyes. A brainless thug in a suit. The two were a matched pair.
“Assholes that Otis sent to jail?” he speculated under his breath.
“Maybe,” Mace said. “Come to gloat over his corpse.”
“If it was just one, maybe,” Anton replied, his voice barely audible. “Not two. Bet they’re packing.”
“Yah think?” Mace said. “Good. Let’s separate these shitheads off from the herd after and pick a fight with ‘em. I need to vent.”
The hungry flash of eagerness in his younger brother’s eyes made Eric nervous. “No,” he hissed. “We talked about this. In and out. No drama. Stick to the plan.”
He forced his attention back to the service. The familiar verses made his stomach clench, just like the drone of the organ and the sickly smell of lilies at the funeral home. Otis’s sister-in-law Maureen had organized all of that.
But when they lowered the coffin into the ground…God, he dreaded that part.
Eric and his brothers had declined to give a eulogy, their memories of Otis being their own damn business, so the eulogy had been given by the man who replaced Otis as chief of police after his retirement, Wade Bristol. Big, beefy guy in his late fifties. Eric remembered him all too well. Bristol had been the guy who arrested him and read him his rights while Eric was lying in bed in the Granger Valley Hospital Intensive Care Unit.
He didn’t hold it against the guy. Bristol had just been doing his job to the best of his ability.
The eulogy Bristol gave wasn’t bad. Comprehensive. No surprises. Bristol droned on about Otis’s courage, his exemplary life, his heroic and highly decorated military service, his selfless dedication to the community of Shaw’s Crossing, etc., etc. All of which was absolutely true and could not be overstated, even if you tried.
Only Eric, Anton and Mace heard the subtext. Thirteen years ago, everyone had told Otis he was a goddamn lunatic for taking on a three-headed monster like Eric, Anton and Mace, after all the bad shit that gone down at GodsAcre. Just because it was the right thing to do, and nobody else seemed to be willing to do it.
Taking not one, not two, but three big, strong, massively fucked-up teenage boys with extensive combat training and a bizarre upbringing into his home…it was a disaster waiting to happen. Otis would be murdered in his bed. Everyone was sure of it.
But they hadn’t hurt Otis. The old man was tougher than boot leather. He’d kept them in line. They’d all survived. It hadn’t been easy, but Eric and his brothers had kept it together. Graduated from high school. Eric and Mace had even gone on into the military.
It was afterwards that everything had gone to shit. When Eric ran afoul of Benedict Vaughan and Henry Shaw for daring to raise his eyes to their precious princess.
And not just his eyes. Another part had risen up, as well.
Bad scene, all around. But in spite of everything, sex dreams about Demi Vaughan regularly jolted him out of sleep, panting and sweating and stone hard.
He’d gotten well away from that fucking place after the charges were dropped. Started his life fresh, far away from Shaw’s Crossing. He’d worked like a bastard. So had his brothers, each in his own way. They’d promised not just Otis, but also each other. They would not be defeated.
They would make something out of themselves. Prove all the shitheads wrong.
They’d done it, for the most part. Built good careers. Lives for themselves, such as they were. Strange but true. They owed it all to Otis. Boot-leather tough, cantankerous, lecturing Otis.
It still seemed impossible that he could be gone. A stroke, they said, but Otis had gotten himself checked out, and recently. He’d bragged to them about being as healthy as a horse for his age. Just some arthritis. No reason that he wouldn’t go on being his own ornery, opinionated, difficult self for decades to come.
And suddenly he was gone. With no warning except for that strange voicemail he’d sent to the three of them the night before his death. Not one of them had managed to get back to him in time.
He hadn’t said that he was sick. Just that he had something urgent to tell them about GodsAcre, and that they needed to be in Shaw’s Crossing to hear it. He’d sounded agitated. Afraid, even. Insofar as it was impossible to imagine Otis afraid.
But the mystery message had never been delivered. Otis had died on his own dining room floor. No warning.
Like all the people in the death cluster.
He tried not to dwell on that, but the thought hung heavy in the air and Eric was sure he wasn’t the only person thinking it. Thirteen years ago, right before the GodsAcre fire, fourteen people in Shaw’s Crossing had dropped dead in the course of only twelve days. All deaths had been unexpected, but there was no evidence of foul play. Like Otis.
Perfectly natural deaths…but for their suspicious timing.
The Prophet’s Curse, the town called it. Sometimes to their faces.
> It was the creaking of the ropes as they lowered Otis’s casket down that set him off. Eric started struggling to breathe. His chest was being crushed in a vise. His head roared, his heart thudded, his belly heaved.
He heard coffin ropes in his nightmares. Thirteen years ago, they’d laid the victims of the GodsAcre fire to rest. So many coffins. All of them closed. By necessity, since the thirty-eight bodies inside them had been charred beyond recognition.
Nine of those coffins had been very small.
He felt like a container swiftly filling up with icy liquid. Fuck. After all these years, and it still got to him, as bad as it ever was. His throat was closing, chest squeezing, no air, vision dimming. Heart thudding, boom boom boom.
Guilt, clawing inside him. For surviving it. Not being able to save them.
“…Trask? Mr. Trask? Excuse me? Sir?”
The funeral director spoke with the tone of someone who’d asked the question more than once. When he saw he’d gotten Eric’s attention, he gestured at the heap of earth that had been uncovered from the shroud of fake green grass.
Time to finish this.
Eric took a handful of earth and tossed it down. Dark, thick clods scattered over the gleaming cherry-wood coffin that Maureen, Otis’s sister-in-law, had selected. His brothers followed suit.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the guy with the greasy black hair and his thuggish pal stroll toward the access road where the mourners’ cars were all parked. Good. He wouldn’t have to wrangle Mace out of provoking them. He didn’t have the juice for that fight today.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Eric whispered to his brothers.
“Oh yeah,” Mace agreed fervently.
They wasted no time putting distance between themselves and the rhythmic shovelfuls of dirt hitting Otis’s coffin. They’d opted to park on the rough dirt road on the far side of the cemetery, far from the paved road where the mourners usually parked, for the purposes of a quick getaway. Why not avoid the stiff, awkward, socially mandated conversations from the get-go? They were doing everyone a favor by sparing them that necessity.
They were so intent on their escape, the black granite obelisk that loomed suddenly before them took them by surprise. They all stopped in their tracks at the same moment.
Headlong: The Hellbound Brotherhood Book Two Page 1
