Colt Read online

  Colt. I cocked my head. “Of course it is.” I couldn’t help but let out a little laugh.

  “You gonna tell me yours?”

  I shrugged. I should end it here. Tell him to fuck off. I wasn’t like Kayla the nurse or all the rest of the women he probably racked up week to week. He took another step closer. Then another. He put his hands on either side of my knees as I perched on the edge of the gurney. God, he even smelled good, like musk and a hint of aftershave. It took everything in me not to bring my hands up and run them through his thick, dark hair. An errant lock had fallen over his eye again and he blew a breath to brush it away.

  “Amy,” I found myself saying.

  He gave me his full smile. I had the urge to lick him. Actually lick him where a dusting of dark stubble covered his strong jaw.

  “Of course it is,” he said, his smoky voice barely above a whisper. “I want to see you again, Amy. What are the chances of that happening?”

  Zero. Less than zero. I wanted to say it but couldn’t bring myself to. He was just some hot guy I met in the emergency room. All the danger bells clanged inside my head. He’d probably got that cut in some drunken bar fight the night before. I was not . . . repeat not . . . going to go down this road again.

  “They’re not very good, Colt,” I finally said. “I think you’re better off sticking to somebody like Nurse Kayla over there. In fact, if you turn around, you’ll see she’s back. I think she’s looking for you.”

  I slid off the gurney. Colt took a step back. My heart did a little flip. I thought he might try to stop me. But he didn’t even lay a hand on me. I grabbed my purse and headed for the door.

  “See you around, Amy,” he said to my back as I headed down the hall.

  My step faltered and I closed my eyes. Do not . . . do not . . . turn back around and look at him. He’s bad for you. And God help me, that’s exactly why I knew I wanted him.

  Chapter Three

  Colt

  Fuck me.

  I kept my eyes glued to Amy as she walked away. It had taken every ounce of strength I had not to lean in and run my tongue along the smooth column of her neck. The second I saw her there was no doubt I was going to have her, no matter how hard she made me work for it.

  Amy was smaller than I usually liked ’em. She probably weighed a buck ten. Straight blonde hair she pulled back in a ponytail. Not an ounce of makeup which made the natural blush that came in her cheeks when I leaned in close rev me up all the more.

  She was into me, even if she didn’t want to admit it. She dressed cute, not tarty, and somehow that made her even more sexy. She wore a blue top stretched snug over her gorgeous tits that she tried to cover with a little white sweater over her shoulders. Her perky ass in tight tan pants just begged to be grabbed as she quickened her step down the hall. Not heels, but white Converse that squeaked over the hospital tiles. No, not tarty at all. She dressed like a teacher, and it dawned on me that’s exactly what she was. It made the Junior High locker door comment make perfect sense.

  So there it was. I was hot for teacher and I sure as shit wasn’t done with her. I was already working out my plan for finding out how to meet her again when fate stepped in.

  The gurney she’d been sitting on started to vibrate. I looked down, and she’d left her phone. The caller ID popped up. Lincolnshire Junior High. Bingo. I picked it up and answered it.

  “Amy?” A male voice responded and my back went up. Who was he? A boss? Co-worker? Suddenly, the idea of any man getting to spend a whole day with her other than me had me more pissed than it should.

  “It looks like Amy’s left her phone behind,” I said. “Why don’t I leave my name and number and you can have her call me to make arrangements to get it back.”

  I waited while the guy on the other end, some dude named Larry, got a pen and paper, then I gave him my cell phone number. It wasn’t the smoothest trick in the book, but at least I knew I’d be hearing from Amy again and soon. That was enough for now.

  “You’re all checked out.” Nurse Kayla came around the corner with a serious pout face. She held my leather cut in her hands and smoothed her fingers over the leather. There’d been some blood on it and she’d only been too eager to volunteer to wipe it off while the doc patched me up. Shit. No doubt Kayla had seen me with Amy and knew what the hell was going on. I felt like a dick, but I couldn’t help it. One look at that hot little teacher and Kayla was in the rearview mirror for good.

  ***

  I went out to the parking lot and climbed on my Harley. Jase asked me to stop by later and I took that as progress toward mending the shit between us. But as the bike roared to life between my legs that familiar calm settled over me. No matter where I was, I never felt more at home than I did on the seat of this bike. I’d see Jase later but for now, it was time to go back to the only people who understood that.

  I took the first corner a little faster than I should and got a few dirty looks from a couple of pedestrians. I gave them a quick wave and headed out for the north end of town. I passed a row of abandoned warehouses that used to employ a good third of the population of Lincolnshire. Looming red brick buildings that had stood there for almost a century. Now, row after row of their windows were smashed out, garbage and refuse scattered over what used to be parking lots filled with the working-class men and women who made this town what it was. Or what it used to be.

  Lincolnshire was dying and that was part of the reason I came back. I’d spent the last fifteen years with the Green Bluff, California charter of the Great Wolves M.C. Green Bluff had been just like Lincolnshire was now. But we took it back. We started the Great Wolves Gym. It turned into a booming, legitimate franchise. Other charters like Grand City, Michigan took our lead, and then a dozen cities across the country.

  The Great Wolves Gym put people back to work and gave them a sense of pride as they watched their homegrown fighters rise in the ranks of the professional MMA world. It was big business, and I saw no reason Lincolnshire couldn’t be next on the list. The only trouble was, the Lincolnshire club president, Catman Wade, hadn’t yet been convinced. Change is hard.

  Catman had been voted in a couple of years after I left. I remembered him as a tough son of a bitch. His rise to power within this charter had spelled a real changing of the guard. Back when I was here, I would have thought Sully, Duke Wyler, or one of his generation would have taken over when Ace McCann was ready to step down. I didn’t know the particulars, but obviously it hadn’t gone down that way.

  I zoomed into the parking lot of the Great Wolves clubhouse. Even that was a dump from the outside. Just an ugly one-story brick building painted black with the G.W.M.C. letters scrawled in red on the sides and our howling wolf symbol next to that. In Green Bluff, our clubhouse was the first in our chain of local bars called The Wolf Den. This was something these Lincolnshire guys might seriously want to look into. The trick for me was not to bluster in there with my big ideas and piss the wrong people off. I needed these guys. For the time being, I had nowhere else to go.

  I parked my bike and set my helmet on the seat. I took a deep breath and headed for the front door. They knew I was coming, they just didn’t know when. Most of the guys who’d been in this charter when I patched in were long gone now. Either dead or lit out for greener pastures like I did. As my hand hovered over the doorknob, I knew I could be walking into just about anything.

  The place was dark and dingy with a ring of cigarette smoke hanging near the ceiling. A bunch of the guys were playing pool in the corner, and a few more hung out at the bar. They all stopped and turned when I walked in the door. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the light but then a big bear of a man came toward me, growling my name.

  “Reddick! You son of a bitch!” I got my hand out, and Sully Gordon slapped his into it. Sully was pushing sixty now. He’d been the club’s Sergeant-at-Arms when I left. The last of the old guard. God, it was good to see a familiar face. So far Sully’s was the only one.

  “G
ood to see you, man,” I said as I slapped Sully on the back. He threw an arm around me and steered me toward the bar.

  “Brax, pour this asshole a beer.” I wasn’t about to turn down a cold one.

  Brax was a giant. I guessed six foot five. He looked like some Viking warlord with wavy blond hair, pale blue eyes and a jaw like an anvil. He smiled and nodded as he poured me a draft and slid it across the bar. The mug was cold, and the beer tasted damn good going down.

  “What took you so long getting out here?” Sully asked. “We thought we’d see you at least a week ago.”

  The answer to that question was one I wanted to kind of sprinkle out in dribs and drabs. It was complicated. I’d left kind of a mess back in Green Bluff, and there was a good chance our rival club, the Devil’s Hawks M.C., had it out for me. I’d taken a meandering route back here just in case they were having me followed. I didn’t want to risk dragging my baggage into Lincolnshire.

  “Just took my time enjoying the countryside,” I said. Sully and the others seemed satisfied with that answer. Brax reached across the bar and shook my hand in a crushing grip.

  “Good to meet you, man,” he said, and a genuine smile spread across his face that put me right at ease.

  “Goddammit,” Sully said. “You look good. I think the last time I saw you you were just a scrawny teenager with a chip on your shoulder. Your damn feet barely touched the ground on that old Harley you rode. Let’s see who else you know from when you were a kid. You ran with Kellan a little bit, didn’t you?”

  Kellan. Shit. There was a name I hadn’t heard in over a decade. Kellan Carter. I’d lit out of Lincolnshire when I was eighteen. Sully was exaggerating the scrawny part. Kellan was maybe a year younger and at the time it seemed like a huge age difference. He’d been a gawky kid with a good heart who I knew dealt with a ton of bullshit at home and a drunk-ass dad just like I did. I started bringing him around to the club, and it stuck.

  “Kellan,” Brax yelled. “Get your ass out here.”

  I heard something crash in one of the back rooms and a couple of “motherfuckers.” Brax and Sully broke into deep laughter as a door opened down the hallway, and girl tumbled out of it, holding her top to her naked breasts. She straightened her skirt and grabbed a pair of shoes from the ground in the middle of the hallway.

  “You’re an asshole, Brax,” she said as she hustled down the hall and passed the bar.

  My eyes went wide. It was Bridget from The Shires yesterday. Apparently, she’d found her way from there to here. The girl had been hell-bent on getting in the sack with a wolf. She got her wish. I stuck my nose in my beer mug, hoping she wouldn’t notice me. I didn’t need the hassle this early in the day. Bridget pulled her top over her jiggling tits.

  “You want me to call you a cab, honey?” Brax asked her. He got flipped off for his trouble before she stormed out into the bright sun of the parking lot.

  There was more grumbling from the hallway and Kellan staggered out of the back room shirtless and adjusted his fly. I leaned back on the stool, and my face split into a wide smile.

  “Fuck me, Kellan, I think your nuts finally dropped.”

  Kellan looked up; his face melted into a slow smile as he recognized my voice. He came down the hall into the light. Shit. He had grown up. I remembered a tall, scrawny kid, not this hulking dude in front of me. He brushed back his long, brown hair. It hung in a thick hank down to his shoulders. There were a few more lines in his face and muscles across his chest. Lots of ink too. He had the howling wolf across his arm and snaking tribal tattoos over his biceps and veined forearms. Damn. He looked like a bona fide badass. A fighter even. I’d developed a trained eye for that kind of thing.

  “Fucking Colt!” He grabbed me into a hug, and I slapped his back. I made a big show out of bending at the waist to steer clear of his junk as if maybe Bridget hadn’t quite finished him off. Brax, Sully, and the rest of the guys in the bar laughed heartily.

  “Take it easy, Kellan,” Brax said. “You need a fucking shower. I can smell the stink on you from here.”

  Kellan flipped Brax off as he slapped me on the back and gripped my fist. “When did you get in?”

  I sat back down on my bar stool. Kellan took the one next to me. “Just yesterday. Long damn ride.”

  Kellan nodded as he leaned over the bar and grabbed a beer mug. Then he grabbed the tap backward and poured himself a glass that was mostly foam. Brax rolled his eyes and moved down to the other end of the bar.

  “Catman know he’s here?” Kellan turned to Sully.

  Sully shook his head. “He’s in the back room. I was just about to go and get him.”

  Kellan raised a brow, and a look passed between him and Sully that I wasn’t sure I liked.

  “Come on,” Kellan said, downing the last of his beer. “Let’s go back and have you meet the boss.” He slapped me on the back again. I squeezed Sully’s shoulder as I passed him.

  Kellan led me down the long, dark hallway to what we always used to call the Board Room. It was the president’s office and where we used to meet to vote on shit that impacted the club. Pictures of past club members lined the hall, and I paused to look. These were the old guard. There was Ace, the past president of course. And his old man who’d founded this chapter of the club. Next to his picture was one of Duke Wyler, Ace’s V.P.

  “Whatever happened to Duke?” I asked, tapping a finger on his picture. I remembered Duke as a tough son of a bitch but fair. He’d been the one to haul my ass out of the police station after I got picked up for shoplifting. It was just some stupid shit. Cigarettes or condoms or something. I’d been scared to death he was going to rat me out to Ace, and they’d stop letting me hang around the club. He didn’t though. Instead, he made me work off the bail he fronted at his bike shop. He worked my ass off that summer, but he taught me a skill or two. Thanks to Duke, I knew my way around an engine.

  Kellan stopped. “He bought it about five years ago. He had a pretty rough go of it. Throat cancer. Poor bastard. Took him almost a year to die of it.”

  “Tough break,” I said, placing a flat palm over Duke’s face as a sign of respect. Then I pounded the wall next to his picture. “I wish I’d known. I should have paid my respects.”

  Kellan shrugged. “He wouldn’t let us do any of that shit for him. Just wanted us all to have a beer in his honor and so we did. Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

  We’d come to the Board Room door, and Kellan gave it a firm knock with a closed fist. “You decent, Catman?”

  I heard a rumbling from within that didn’t sound too far off from a real wolf’s growl. “Better be important, Kellan.” Kellan looked back at me and pursed his lips. Then he opened the door.

  I walked in behind Kellan. Catman Wade sat behind a desk ruffling through a stack of papers. He had just hit the button on his cell phone and lobbed it on top of the desk. His eyes narrowed when he saw me and then his face widened into a grin. He leaned back in his chair and hooked his hands behind his head. Standing next to him was Tommy Lloyd, his V.P. Tommy was short, stocky with a shaved head and thick brown mustache and goatee that hung to the middle of his chest. He leaned against the wall with his hands crossed, his dark eyes flicking to me then to Catman, waiting to know how to react.

  “Colton Reddick. I was wondering when you were going to drag your sorry ass back here.”

  Catman stood and came around the desk. We gave each other a quick slap on the back and he slugged my arm. Catman hadn’t changed one bit. At about six feet, he was an inch or two shorter than me. He kept his brown hair buzzed short on the sides but long and slicked back on the top. His eyes gave him his nickname. They were pale amber, and he had a dark nevus in the left one that curved like a comma making it look like a cat eye.

  “It’s been a long time,” I said. “Too long.”

  “Neighborhood’s pretty much turned to shit, hasn’t it?” he said.

  It seemed like a loaded question and exactly the kind of thing I expected f
rom Catman. If I said no, well, then I was a liar. If I said yes, he might accuse me of criticizing how he ran things. Catman wasn’t stupid. He knew damn well what was happening with the other clubs. If he sensed me launching into a sales pitch about the gyms now, he’d probably throw me out on my ass right away.

  “It is what it is,” I said. “And it’s home no matter what.”

  Catman smiled, flashing a row of straight teeth. “You catch up with Jase yet?”

  Another loaded question. Having a cop for a brother in this town wasn’t exactly an asset. No more than it was for him having a biker for a brother. One of the reasons I’d left town the last time was because I got sick of walking that particular tightrope.

  “I’m sure I’ll see him again tonight. Homecoming dinner.”

  Catman nodded. “Yeah. Your old man used to come around every once in a while. Looking for you, I think. Drunk off his ass most of the time. Rough what happened to him and your mom.”

  “Thanks, man.” I shrugged off the conversation. It was family business. These guys got it. They really did. It was one more reason I felt more at home with them than I did with Jase.

  “How long you think you’re staying in town?” Tommy asked. An odd question for the first thing he said. It didn’t exactly make me feel welcomed.

  Also, it was the third loaded question I’d been asked in the span of ten minutes. I knew how this worked. The club operated under a tight pecking order. If the chapter agreed to let me rejoin, I’d be low man on the totem pole for a while. I could live with that, but only up to a point. I was no fucking rookie, and this charter needed my help, whether Catman wanted to admit it or not.

  For now, though, that shit could wait. Catman cracked another smile, and I knew he was probably thinking along similar lines as me. We’d have to figure each other out, but today didn’t have to be about that.

  “Why don’t you plan on hanging out with us after your dinner tonight?” he said. “We’d all like to catch up on old times and hear how things are going for you pussies out in Green Bluff. You got a place to crash?”