Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142818 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
I didn’t hesitate to slip my hand underneath the tee Violet was wearing, pulling her back to my front and cupping her perfect breast.
She let out a contented sigh, sinking into me.
I nuzzled her neck, inhaling the delicious scent that was my wife. That drove me crazy to this day and would until the day I died.
“You’re getting too good at getting out of bed without me noticin’,” I grumbled, annoyed at myself for not noting my wife leave.
She leaned her head back against my shoulder. “I didn’t want to wake you,” she said. “You know that you’re the one Willow wants in the morning anyway.”
I grinned, thinking of it. Willow adored her mother with everything she was, but the mornings were ours. As soon as Violet stopped breastfeeding, I let her sleep, taking Willow with me into the kitchen, sitting there with her, sipping coffee and watching the sun rise. We’d go on long walks with Artemis in tow, dutifully protecting her sister because she didn’t seem to trust me to do it.
The quiet. The desert. The sun rising. My daughter’s warmth, smell, the noises she made in delight as she discovered something new about the world, they were like nothing on this earth. I hadn’t known such peace existed. Especially when we got home to my wife either wearing my tee or a nightgown, holding two coffees, smiling sleepily at us.
“Don’t give a fuck,” I told Violet. “You’re not getting up, shakin’ off nightmares, standing here in the middle of the night alone.” I tweaked her nipple, and she let out a moan I felt in my dick.
The need to take her was almost impossible to control.
Almost.
“She’s gone again,” Violet whispered.
I moved my hands down her sides, slowly turning her to face me. “She’ll come back. She always does.”
Violet let out a long sigh. “I’m worried about her.”
Everyone was worried about Sariah.
She had survived what most people wouldn’t at the hands of that piece of shit.
The fucking sheriff.
Yeah, no one had been expecting that.
No one had thought he’d be smart enough to bury his fucking craziness down that deep. Separate it so completely from his outward persona.
It was Ollie, Violet and Sariah’s old roommate, who had found it out. Figured out a twisted and well buried trail that led to what he was.
A fucked-up piece of shit with an equally fucked-up past.
His mother had been a club girl.
Long fucking ago.
Attached to a different club, not the Sons. One that didn’t treat women with respect. One that used them up whenever and however they wanted until they were done with them then threw them away like trash.
Apparently, the young sheriff had been old enough to remember that. Remember the cigarette burns in his dear mother’s skin. Her bruises, her broken bones. The drug habit that they hooked her on.
Little Elijah—or Beau was his birth name—acquired a healthy hatred for motorcycle clubs in general and toward ‘loose women’ who reminded him of the mother he loved and hated in equal measures.
He had been watching the club for some time, had been making plans.
He told us all of this after we caught him. He stayed alive for a good long while, each of us taking our time with him.
Our new sheriff, one of his former deputies, was a local and more than willing to work with us and declare the perpetrator as ‘missing.’
We caused him pain. Made him bleed. Made him wish he was dead long before we killed him. But that wouldn’t heal anything. Wouldn’t change shit.
Sariah, to her credit, was one tough bitch. She shouldn’t have even been able to stand when she was there for the birth of our daughter. The fuck had cut her up good. She was bleeding out, standing there. Had done it quietly, without a fucking word while Violet gave birth.
She’d almost fucking died in the hospital. Something she forbade every single patch to tell Violet. Something everyone had agreed to do because they didn’t want to face her wrath.
She wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Violet, what he did to her in those hours he had her. But whatever that sick fuck did was enough to cause damage. Damage that birthed a darkness in her that hadn’t been there before.
I knew she and Violet had spoken about what Sariah’d kept from her. Knew that Violet didn’t give a fuck about how her best friend got her money; all she cared about was that her best friend was breathing.
She moved to Garnett permanently. Colby barely left her side. At first, she fought it. Then she did her best to ignore him. She was there for Willow. For my wife.
Until she wasn’t.
Until one day she left with a note and a promise she’d be back.
No one knew where she went, and not for lack of trying. The bitch was fucking smart and evaded even Wire. I suspected she had help from her hacker friend.