Wicked Legacy: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Rough Jesters MC Book 8)

by Brook Wilder

  Plus, he was my baby’s father and I really wanted him to meet his daughter one day or vice versa.

  So, I had gotten the gun and walked back inside, trying to keep my bravado up as I crept through the swinging door and saw him pinned behind the bar.

  The other two shooters never saw me coming.

  “That was some damn good shooting,” Clayton was saying as he yanked open the door, wincing as he did so.

  It was then I realized he had been shot. “Oh my God,” I gasped. “You’re shot!”

  He looked down at his arm, the smear of the blood making me a bit woozy. “It’s just a graze. Get in.”

  Clayton was so nonchalant about the fact that he had been shot that I wondered just how often in his life he had been in this sort of situation.

  I probably didn’t want to know.

  Turning over the engine, I pulled out of the parking lot, the sound of sirens filling the air. I had to get away from here, especially since Clayton had the murder weapon with my fingerprints on it.

  Oh my God, what had I been thinking? What if they tracked the deaths back to me? I was going to be locked up in a Mexican prison for the rest of my life! Who would watch out for Emily or Amelia?

  “Cora.”

  Realizing I was nearly hyperventilating, I looked over at Clayton. His tender expression surprised me. “It’s gonna be okay,” he said softly. “I’m gonna protect you.”

  “What if you can’t?” I blurted out, turning my attention back on the road. “You’re not God.”

  He chuckled. “No, I’m not, but I have a lot of contacts. Just get us somewhere off the streets, all right?”

  There was only one place I knew to go.

  After a few turns to ensure the police weren’t following us, I pulled the car into the parking lot away from my apartment, shutting off the engine. “Do you think they will come looking for me?”

  Clayton opened the passenger side door, grunting as he climbed out. “No. Red isn’t a dumbass. He’s already gotten rid of the tape, I promise you.”

  My breath stilled in my lungs. I forgot he had cameras all over the bar. There was no doubt in my mind that I had been on one of the cameras, shooting those two guys. “Are you sure?” I asked as I scrambled out of the car. “Do we need to make a run for it?”

  Clayton grabbed my arm as I rounded the front of the car, pulling me close to him. “Listen,” he said, his eyes searching mine. “I told you, I’ve got this. If I thought for one minute that you or the kid were in serious danger, we would be long gone, okay? Trust me, Cora.”

  I didn’t want to have to trust him. This guy was all mysterious and some of his actions were questionable.

  But he was my best chance at getting out of this alive and not ending up in prison. “All right,” I finally said. “But this is my life I am trusting you with.”

  He gave me a firm nod and I stepped out of his touch, starting up the stairs. The moment I put the key in the lock, the door flew open and Emily was there, holding Amelia. “What is going on?” she asked immediately, looking over my shoulder to see Clayton there. “Why is he here?”

  I drew in a breath, stepping inside the apartment. “Emily, something has happened.”

  “Something that you don’t need to know about,” Clayton interrupted, giving me a sidelong glance. “The less she knows, the better.”

  He was right. I didn’t want to involve Emily if I didn’t have to. “Is there somewhere she and Amelia can go?”

  Clayton wasn’t paying attention to me, his eyes on the baby in my sister’s arms. I watched as his jaw worked, his gaze roving over her features as if he was trying to find the piece of him in her.

  “Are you hurt?” Emily asked sharply, capturing his attention.

  Clayton snapped out of his trance, looking down at his arm. “It’s just a bullet graze. I’ve had worse.”

  He wasn’t lying. I had seen his scars.

  “Cora,” Emily hissed. “What is going on?”

  Clayton stepped forward. “Do you have a cell phone?”

  My sister bristled. “Of course I do. Who doesn’t?”

  “Give it here.”

  Her gaze narrowed as she tried to stare him down. “What? I’m not giving you my phone.”

  Exhaustion started to pull on my body and I sighed. “Just do it, Emily.”

  She handed me my daughter and I cuddled her sleeping form, trying to pull some of her goodness into my body. I was a murderer.

  “Here,” Emily said, handing over her phone to Clayton. “I swear to God if you smash it, I will kill you.”

  Chuckling, Clayton opened her contacts and typed in an address before handing it back to her. “Go to that address. Tell them I sent you. They will keep you safe.”

  I pressed a kiss to my daughter’s soft forehead, watching as she wrinkled her nose in her sleep. Amelia was my world, my everything. I couldn’t let anything happen to her. “Here,” I said to Emily, pushing Amelia toward her. “Take her with you.”

  Emily’s expression softened. “Oh, Cora, are you sure?”

  I nodded, tears gathering in my eyes. “She will be safe with you. We will come to you as soon as we can.”

  “Ask for Chains or Widow Maker,” Clayton added. “Tell them I sent you.”

  Emily glared at him and I knew I had to get her out of here. “Go, Emily,” I urged. “I’m trusting you to keep my child safe.”

  Whatever Emily was going to say, she chose not to, and I gathered Amelia’s things, throwing them into the diaper bag. I wanted to ask Clayton if he wanted to hold his daughter but thought better of it. It wasn’t the time to try and have a family reunion.

  I followed Emily to the door, laying my hand on Amelia’s sleeping forehead. “Please,” I said softly. “Keep her safe.”

  Emily reached over and hugged me. “You know I will. You be careful, Cora. I don’t know what’s going on, but you are scaring me.”

  “I’m fine,” I whispered. “Go.”

  She gave me a final nod and disappeared through the doorway. I shut the door behind her, my heart breaking as I thought about what I had just done. What if I didn’t see either of them again?

  “You did good,” Clayton said softly. “I know that was hard.”

  I turned toward him. “You have no idea.”

  He gave me a look. “You’re right,” he said slowly. “I don’t know.”

  I ran a hand over my face, feeling like I was one hundred years old. “Let’s get that wound taken care of.”

  After pulling out my first aid kit, I set it on the counter. Clayton walked over and before I knew it, he had removed his shirt, throwing it on the back of the couch. I tried not to notice his toned chest or the trail of hair that led down to the top of his jeans as I busied myself with pulling out the gauze and antibiotic cream. I was glad to have something to keep my hands occupied, though the thought of running them down his muscled chest caused my cheeks to burn in embarrassment.

  He sat down on the stool next to me and I took the gauze, wincing as I saw the angry red streak on his upper arm. “This is gonna hurt.”

  “I doubt it,” Clayton answered. “You can’t hurt me, Cora.”

  Oh, but he could hurt me. Not physically, but in so many other ways. Biting my lower lip, I placed the gauze to his wound, impressed when he didn’t even flinch.

  “You saved my life back there,” he said after a moment as I dabbed at the dried blood. “Thank you.”

  I sighed. “I didn’t really do that.”

  “Yes, you did,” he insisted as I pulled the gauze away and reached for the cream. “I would be dead right now if it wasn’t for you.”

  I didn’t want to think about him dead like the others. “I’m not a hero. There’s nothing special about me.”

  Clayton grabbed my wrist lightly, his thumb stroking the sensitive skin on the underside. I knew he could feel the rapid beat of my pulse, all associated with the nervousness he was causing me to feel. “I don’t know if I necessarily agree wi
th that.”

  I didn’t pull away, warmed by his touch. There was something inside me that felt like I could trust Clayton, like he wouldn’t judge me or anything I had done. Looking down at his hand on my wrist, I decided to talk. “My parents were killed when I was a kid,” I started out, my voice harsh to my own ears. “Crossfire, they said, from a cartel turf issue.” My parents had both been teachers and had chosen to move to Mexico with us in tow because of the shortage of teachers at the local college. I could still remember us being carried to the police station while they tried to find our relatives, no one telling us what had happened or that our parents were no longer on this earth.

  “Emily and I bounced around from relative to relative until she was old enough to take me in herself. I was a little wild, falling into the wrong crowd and causing all sorts of trouble for her.” Emily and I used to yell at each other a lot and there were many times she threatened to cut me off and leave me to my so-called friends. I was addicted to alcohol and some recreational drugs, but she had forced me to stay in school even though I didn’t give two craps about it.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. This was my deep, dark secret, the one that I kept close to my heart, and even though I knew it didn’t define me as a person, it still hurt to tell him. “I needed money for my vices, so I sold my body for sex. I only did it a few times.”

  Not that it made it any better. I hadn’t liked the fact I was reducing myself to something like that and once Emily found out, she had slapped me.

  That was the first and only time she had ever hit me like that, but it had worked. I had straightened myself out after that, trying to atone for all the wrong I had done in my life and to her all those years. She had worried for me when I didn’t want to worry for myself, pushing me to be a better person and not go down the path that so many could never get out of. I owed her my life and so much more, which was why it was so important to me to have her in my life. “So, yeah,” I finished up, placing the cream on his wound. “I’m not a hero, nor am I perfect.”

  I expected Clayton to drop my wrist, to be horrified by my confession, but he tugged on it instead, forcing me to meet his intense gaze. “We’ve all done things that we aren’t proud of,” he said. “But it doesn’t make you a bad person. It only makes you human to screw up. What’s important is that you figure it out and move past it.”

  I wanted to say that I had. I had stepped away from the bad influences, dropped the alcohol and the drugs, and even got my lab certification like my sister before I realized I couldn’t work in the same environment as she could. That was how I had gotten to Red’s bar, wanting to have some freedom in the way I dressed or talked.

  I just wished now that I had picked another bar. If I had, I wouldn’t be in the crap I was right now.

  I pulled away from his touch, flustered that I had shared something so intimate with him. “Let’s get that wound taken care of.”

  Chapter 15

  Halftrack

  I watched Cora as she worked, surprised that someone so young had gone through so much shit in her life. She was a survivor, the type of woman that I admired.

  The kind of woman I would want to be the mother of my kid.

  “There,” she said lightly as she finished bandaging the scratch on my arm. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was nothing. And hey, I did enjoy the fact that she was fussing over me,

  I flexed my arm, feeling the pull from the tape more than the cut. “Thanks. You didn’t have to do that.”

  Cora shrugged as she packed up the first aid kit, shutting the top. “It’s the least I can do.”

  I watched as she methodically put the kit up, making sure everything was back in place. “Tell me something,” I said as she walked to the fridge. “The night you went home with me, was it because of Red?”

  Cora hung her head, keeping her back to me. Would she tell me the truth? I had a hunch, a big fucking one, but I wanted to know if I had saved her from another night of hell with that asshole.

  “Yes,” she said after a moment, turning around to face me, rubbing her arms with her hands. “It was because of him. You saw what he liked to do to me. I knew that night he was going to force me to give him oral sex and I couldn’t take it anymore.”

  I stood, keeping my anger in check, and crossed the room to place my arms on either side of her head, trapping her against the fridge. “I will kill him,” I told her, staring into her hauntingly beautiful eyes. “I will make him pay for the hurt he has caused you.”

  She teared up briefly. “He knows who you are now.”

  Chuckling, I reached out and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “What gave you that idea? The hired guns or the fact that he acted like he wanted to fuck me?”

  She let out a choked laugh. “I think it was the tattoo.”

  I grinned. “Don’t worry about me.” Red could come at me all he wanted, but I had some secret weapons in my court, namely the temporary clubhouse. “I can handle it.”

  Cora bit her lower lip and I felt it all the way to my groin. Damn, she was beautiful. “How do I know I can trust you? I just allowed you to send my sister and my child away to a safe place. How do I know you aren’t just using me to get your hands on the cartel?”

  I stepped back. “You don’t feel comfortable around me.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement. I could see it in her eyes that she held some mistrust for me, as well as probably the whole fucking male population given what Red had been doing to her.

  Words weren’t going to be enough, and hell, I didn’t blame her.

  I wanted her to trust me. If her kid was mine, we would have to trust each other. “What can I do?”

  She blew out a breath. “I don’t know. It’s not anything personal. You’re just intimidating.”

  I arched a brow. “Me?”

  Cora gave me a look. “Yes, you. I mean, tonight you had no fear of being killed, even when Red outed you. I was shaking like a leaf for you.”

  Her words went straight to my black soul. It was nice to know that someone cared enough to worry about me. Sure, the club probably did, but that was a different kind of worry, like how they were going to replace me if I did get my ass killed.

  Cora was acting like she truly cared about my well-being. Was it because I really was her kid’s father or was it something else?

  Either way, I didn’t want to lose it right now. Neither one of us knew what was going to happen in the morning, or if we would even survive the damn night.

  I sure as hell didn’t want to spend it with her being afraid of me.

  So, I reached down, unlacing my boots and sliding my feet out of them.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as I toed the first one off before setting to work on the other.

  “I’m taking my clothes off.”

  “You’re what?”

  I got the other boot off, setting them aside so I wouldn’t trip over them. “I’m taking my clothes off,” I repeated, reaching for my belt buckle. “You don’t trust me, nor are you comfortable with me being here, so I’m leveling the playing field.”

  “By taking your clothes off?” she squeaked as I undid my belt buckle. I ignored her, shucking my jeans off a moment later. Standing there in just my boxers and my socks, I felt as ridiculous as I looked, but the smothered laugh coming from Cora was making it all worthwhile.

  I placed my hands on my hips. “You find this funny?”

  She nodded, a smile playing on her lips. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a semi-naked man in my kitchen before.”

  I returned her grin. “There’s a first time for everything. Have you ever been semi naked in your kitchen?”

  “Of course,” she laughed, her eyes roving over my body. I knew her torturous gaze was eliciting all sorts of responses with my cock, but I couldn’t hide it.

  I didn’t even have any pants on. I spread out my arms. “I’m yours to do with as you wish.”

  Cora’s eyes widened as she caught my meaning and I felt the a
ir being sucked out of the room. Shit. I had moved too fast. I should have given her some more time.

  But when she took the first step toward me, I held my breath. When her fingers trailed across my shoulders, I swore my heart stood still. My cock was begging for me to take advantage of the situation, but I wanted to earn her trust.

  I wanted her to lead and if it didn’t lead to where I wanted it to, well, I would be taking a cold-ass shower tonight and sleeping on the couch.

  Cora leaned in, brushing her lips against mine, and I fought the urge to grab her, knowing this was going to be sheer torture. I had never let a woman take the reins in a sexual encounter before and why I was letting Cora, I didn’t know.