When they arrived back at the Citadel, they found The Order of the Phoenix brothers busy cleaning up. The stench of smoke, ash, and chemicals was heavy in the air. Thankfully, the blaze had been confined to a storage room and a hallway outside it.
They were damn lucky.
“Is there anything we can do?” Stone asked Tobias when they found him inspecting the damage.
The other cadre leader sighed. “Yes, thank you. We’ve worked so hard to renovate this place. Every surface on the first floor needs cleaned, plus the stairs and the hallway on the second floor. The men contained it before the smoke went higher.”
Quake groaned. He knew that meant lots of washing things down. The Hell’s Fury MC were men of action, not domestic creatures. Warriors, not camp followers.
They rolled up their sleeves and pitched in anyway.
Some of their brothers in The Order of the Phoenix seemed distracted as they worked. He could hear Zac and Aiden speculating about someone named Morgan. Malik and Iosefa were whispering concerns over a redhead they had seen at the fight hanging out with the wrong crowd.
Quake checked his phone a few times but found no messages from Magenta. It made him wonder what she was up to. Thanksgiving dinner with Madam Belle and the other women she lived with? After the run-in with the jackals at the fight, he hoped she was staying safe.
He’d know tomorrow. They’d be heading out early in the morning, landing at Vegas equally early, thanks to the different time zones. Shit. He should call Magenta, see if she was up to eating out. There was a great little mom-and-pop diner that offered all-day breakfasts. Regardless of the time, he was certain he could sweet talk her into going.
At least he didn’t have to wonder how she liked his presents. He hadn’t gotten a mile down the road after dropping them off before his text alert sounded, thanking him for his gifts. The flowers. The cookbook. The guitar pick and his promise to play for her.
Magenta had been undecided about the song, though. She promised to give it some thought.
She’d had time to pick one while they were gone. Hopefully, she would have an answer when he saw her again.
Quake couldn’t wait.
He shut off his phone for the flight. Turning it back on as soon as they landed, he saw that he had a text message from Magenta. He opened it eagerly but what he read nearly sent him to his knees.
I’m sorry.
I can’t do this anymore.
Take care of yourself.
I wish you all the best.
“What the fuck?” he grated, unable to believe what he was seeing. Had she just been stringing him along, giving him hope?
Or had Madam Belle nipped things in the bud, forcing her to part ways with him if she wanted to stay in the fold?
Well, fuck that.
Quake was royally pissed. Who the hell did Belle think she was? Who the hell did the Fae think he was? She’d vastly underestimated him if she thought a single text message was going to put him off after the week of correspondence they’d had.
And if it was Magenta’s idea, Belle wasn’t about to turn down the money he had to buy her time. He was prepared to offer double the going rate if that’s what it took.
One way or another, he intended to confront Magenta and learn exactly what the hell was going on.
He was at the front door when The Pole Barn opened. Amos looked at him oddly but said nothing. Quake headed back to where Madam Belle was consulting with her bar manager.
She didn’t seem surprised to see him.
She didn’t look pleased about it, either.
He waited for her to finish before speaking. “I want to book a VIP session with Magenta tonight. All night,” he added meaningfully.
“I’m sorry, you can’t,” she replied flatly.
Quake’s resentment boiled up. “I’ve got the cash if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Belle shook her head. “You still can’t.”
“I’m not good enough to see her, is that it?” he snapped. “Or she doesn’t want to see me?”
“She’s gone,” Belle informed him. “Turned in her notice and left. Candy, tell him.”
The pink-haired stripper popped her gum and nodded. “She’s gone, Quake, but I’m here. You need to forget about her, you come see me, alright? I promise I’ll take good care of you.”
Every word was like a jab to the heart. Magenta was gone. Vanished. Nothing but a fare-thee-well and a fistful of memories to console him. He couldn’t believe it. How could she do this to him?
He didn’t pay for Candy that night. Instead, he got on his bike, rode to The Dragons’ Den, and drank himself under the table.
He woke up the next morning fully dressed, reeking of blunt smoke and alcohol, lying on his bed with no idea how he’d gotten there. Stripping in slow motion, he dragged his ass into his ensuite and stood in the shower, letting the rain heads wash over him like tears that he swore not to shed.
She wasn’t worth it. Fuck her. After everything he’d done for her, after everything that they’d been through, she didn’t even have the balls to say goodbye to his face.
Bitch.
Quake started the morning depressed. By the end of his shower, he was filled with righteous indignation and burning with a need for vengeance. He’d planned to go after Khan, but there wasn’t much point if all he wanted to do was avenge Magenta’s honor. She’d just proven to him how little she had, the way she’d discarded him so easily.
No, he needed to find her. Find her and make her suffer like he was hurting, dammit.
He didn’t care how long it took.
One day, he would have his revenge.
Epilogue
Twelve months later . . .
The Hell’s Fury MC was back in New York for another Thanksgiving celebration with The Order of the Phoenix. This was supposed to be a mini-vacation, a break from all the drama with the Death’s Head MC back home. Instead, they’d helped hunt vampires and attended a fight, where they’d survived a bombing and helped foil a kidnapping attempt on Ash Gabrielli, the Citadel’s newest fated mate.
Things had changed at the Citadel and not for the better as far as Quake was concerned. Every fucking Phoenix was mated, including Tobias, who’d proven to be a sly old fox and landed the youngest one of the bunch. The place never seemed free of the smell of shitty diapers. The only good thing about having babies left and right were the tits popping out to feed them. He tried not to stare but damn. A man could get used to a sight like that. Mother and child forging and strengthening the bond between them.
They hadn’t brought any she-wolves with them this time. Madam Belle had let three of her girls come with them for the fight in September when they’d last visited but no more, not after Candy had been kidnapped. Some of the men who’d abused her and the other shifter women were dead but the sick fucks who’d run the experimental lab where they’d been held were still at large. The hunt continued for Dr. Liu Chan, a Chinese chimera shifter, the vampire Etienne de Foix, his minion Dr. Damgaard, and a Russian arms dealer named Ivan Michalov.
As long as they were out there, no woman here was safe.
Right now, Ash was in the infirmary and Tobias was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, worried about his babygirl and his security head Lukas Schmidt, injured tonight when a bomb went off beneath the cage while they were watching him fight.
To distract the Citadel superior, Stone suggested that he buy leathers for Ash. The Dragons had given her some just to mess with Tobias, but Quake didn’t think he was too happy with her wearing the Hell’s Fury colors.
They followed Tobias into the security center, where his cyber expert Zac Blackstone was running security camera footage around the fight venue, looking for Dr. Damgaard or any of the vampire Etienne’s minions. Malik Nassir sat at the computer next to him, a printed list on the desktop and a search engine window pulled up.
“Shopping for the mates,” he explained. “Black Friday sales are already on and some
things sell out quickly. We’ve all added to the list for our women. Lucky me, I am tasked with ordering for everyone.”
Quake started scanning the list and nearly chuckled. With not one but two dungeons in the building, it didn’t surprise him when designer fetishwear and toys topped some of their lists. Picking it up, he started reading aloud. “Terithian Dildo by Lady Chatterley’s Lovers. French Maid Peignoir Set by Lady Chatterley’s Lovelies. Leather corset and matching garter belt from Lady Chatterley’s Leathers. Who the fuck is Lady Chatterley?”
Malik turned from the website and looked at him like he was a relic from the Stone Age.
Not quite, but sometimes he felt like it.
“It’s the hottest place on the planet for adult toys and fetishwear. I can’t believe you’ve never seen it. Here.”
Quake looked over Malik’s shoulder, expecting to see an e-store front. Instead, his search engine had pulled up one point two million hits.
The top story had an image that hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. She had red hair and blue eyes now, not the dyed stuff and contacts she’d worn at The Pole Barn, but Magenta was wearing his damn guitar pick that he’d given her. Set in silver and made into a pendant, it hung from the necklace she wore with a black lace corset that barely covered her nipples.
“Click on that,” he told Malik. He obeyed without question, pulling up an article about a recent fashion show where Rory Lockheart, CEO of Lady Chatterley Unlimited, had modeled one of her creations in her “dear friend” Sydney Tremaine’s fashion show.
Quake stared at the image long and hard. It had been a year since he’d set eyes on her. A year since she’d vanished. All the feelings he’d been carrying around since that day threatened to overwhelm him.
All his anger and resentment. The times he had worried about her, wondering where she was, what she was doing. How she was doing. Well, it looked like Magenta—Rory—was doing just fine.
Stone stepped closer, looking at the screen. “Isn’t that—”
“Magenta,” Quake grated.
“You know her?” Malik questioned, reading his expression.
“Yes . . . no,” Quake muttered. “I thought I did once. She used to work at a club I know run by a Fae. Fuck. I don’t know how I’ve never seen this before where it’s so popular.”
It looked like her website and online store generated a lot of buzz. He might not be a geek surfing the internet all the time but something like this should have popped up at least once or twice on ads at the porn sites he trolled.
“We have an anti-Fae ward around the building,” Tobias told him. “It shuts down their magic. If someone is protected by fairy glamour, hiding them in plain sight, then the blinders come off inside the Citadel.”
Stone watched Malik pull up the homepage of Lady Chatterley’s Leathers. “I’ve seen that website before but it was a different model . . . . Fuck, that is Magenta.”
Quake was only half listening. His attention was on the image on the screen, taking in every detail of the female who had haunted his waking hours and his dreams. Now that he’d found her, the questions burning inside him would finally be answered.
“Can one of you get me her business address?” he asked Malik and Zac.
Without a word, the other men typed away. Malik easily found the Lady Chatterley headquarters address. It took a while longer, but Zac got him a home address, too. “Her legal name is Rory Lockheart and she lives with Sydney Tremaine. Sorry, dude.”
So Rory Lockheart and Sydney Tremaine were an item. They fucking shared the same address. Not that he cared.
Quake was about to come calling.
The time for Magenta’s reckoning was at hand.
Their story continues in Hell’s Fury MC: Rory
(Guarded Hearts Book 8), out May 1, 2021.
Follow the Guarded Hearts Series here:
http://bit.ly/GuardedHeartsWP
About the Authors
CLAIRE MARTA
A native Brit, I live in Italy with my husband and daughter. When I am not writing and drinking copious amounts of tea, I enjoy taking photos of my adoptive country, trying to stay fit with running, reading amazing books, and being a stay-at-home mother.
CLAIRE MARTA AUTHOR LINKS:
Website: http://bit.ly/ClaireMartaWix
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NIA FARRELL
Nia Farrell is a four-time Golden Flogger Finalist and a founding member of the Wicked Pens. Dubbed “The Queen of Steam”, she writes hot sex and happy endings
NIA FARRELL AUTHOR LINKS:
Webpage: http://bit.ly/My3PensWP
Facebook Readers Group: http://bit.ly/TheFoldFB
MeWe group: http://bit.ly/TheFoldMeWe
Twitter: http://bit.ly/NiaFarrellTwitter
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Savage Beginnings
An introduction to the Twisted Kings MC
April Canavan
Reader Warning
When I talked to Elizabeth Knox about joining Twisted Steel, I thought she was absolutely batty. She’s such a great friend of mine, though, and listened to my crazy idea for the start of Deacon’s story. I hope you enjoy this teaser, and I can’t wait to see what you think.
Be warned. This is not a complete story.
xoxo
April
1
Deacon
Silence.
For the first time in days, I found myself alone. There weren’t any of my men standing around, waiting for an order that I wasn’t ready to give. I didn’t have to check on my son to make sure he was safe. Everything, all the chaos and destruction that made up every single day of my life, was gone for once.
There weren’t any problems to solve. There weren’t a million things on my list to get done before I could go home and fall asleep, only to do it all again the next morning. I stood in front of the sliding glass doors that overlooked the lake and took in a deep breath.
After taking the longest shower of my life, making sure to wash all the blood from under my nails and scrub it out of my hair, I expected to hear nothing but the screams that had filled my ears and mind for the last week.
But there was nothing.
Nothing but silence.
“Fuck this shit.”
I slipped into a pair of jeans and a shirt that my little sister slid into my laundry when she didn’t think I was looking. What the fuck did I care if my shirt declared ‘I have anger issues’ to the world? Maybe it would make them think twice before trying to talk to me at the bar.
I grabbed my cut off the hook and slipped into the familiar leather, savoring the way it clung to my back like an old friend. Maybe if I got out, I wouldn’t feel so alone. I wouldn’t get caught in the emptiness without an escape. Maybe I wouldn’t feel like drowning my sorrows in a bottle of tequila if I had something else to concentrate on.
All the confidence in my choice that I had only a moment before vanished in an instant when I saw the open door in the hall. Rett’s bedroom. Just like that, I didn’t want to go out. I wanted to pick up my son and bring him home. When I pushed open the door with my boot, the silence was deafening.
His bed was made, and his toys were put away, and I couldn’t fight the sharp sting of sadness at the reminder of his absence. Avery must have cleaned Rett’s room before taking him for the week, because there wasn’t a single thing out of place. At seven years old, there hadn’t yet b
een a room that Rett couldn’t trash in under a minute, so his bedroom shouldn’t be clean.
When I saw the single sheet of paper lying on his bed, I laughed.
Deacon,
We cleaned his room, big brother. And the rest of the house. Enjoy your week. And NO, you cannot have your kid back. Rett will be fine. He’s got Lucas to keep him company. Maybe get laid or something. Mom wants more grandbabies and we all know she isn’t getting them from me.
Your favorite little sister,
Avery
P.S. NO. Again, you can’t have Rett back. Go out. Get laid. Do something besides sit in your house like a lonely old maid.
Of course Avery would be the one to call me on my bullshit. But then again, she always was. I shut the door to Rett’s room without looking back and grabbed my shit from the locked cabinet next to the front door.
In a haze, I rode through town toward the only place I knew wouldn’t feel empty. Why that even mattered, I didn’t have the time or inclination to think about. There was a time when all I wanted was quiet, when I used to sneak out back after Rett fell asleep as a baby, just to have a few seconds all to myself. But after Rett grew up, even slightly, I couldn’t focus when it was quiet. I needed his chaos to have even the smallest sense of normalcy in my life.
On the outskirts of Birch, far enough away from town that no one cared what we did, sat the bar my father built after he got out of the military. For thirty years, it’d stood against the weather, the times, and everyone who wanted to see it torn down.
A black skull decorated the front door, shining like a beacon to those who knew the meaning. A reminder of the cost of service, the cost so many refused to see. One I knew… all too well.
Twisted Steel: An MC Anthology: Second Edition Page 100
