Prologue
Trix
I knew her. I knew her. Goddammit.
I ground my teeth together as I watched her move above him, giggling and flipping her hair around. She was a senior at my high school—obviously eighteen, or they would have never let her into the clubhouse—but she went to my fucking school.
My stomach clenched in self-pity. I’d gotten my driver’s license today, and I’d been feeling like pretty hot shit as I drove my little brother, Leo, around town before dropping him off at our house. He’d thought I was pretty hot shit, too—probably because he knew I’d drive him to his friends’ houses whenever he wanted just so I could take my new Honda out on the road.
I’d practically strut my way through the forecourt, grinning back at the guys who’d smiled indulgently at me for driving my car over when I could see the garage from my front porch.
God, I was such an idiot.
A few of the guys had tried to pull me into conversation as I’d walked toward the front door, but I hadn’t let them distract me from my goal.
I was at the clubhouse I’d practically grown up in for one reason.
Cameron Harrison.
And he was currently getting what looked like a lap dance from a senior in my high school.
Motherfucker.
I stood frozen as she ground all over him, a part of me unable to comprehend what I was seeing. She was wearing a short, flowery skirt that swished with every movement of her hips and a grey tank top that barely covered her small breasts.
I sighed. At least my boobs were bigger. I had that going for me.
After a few moments spent standing dumbly in the doorway, I was knocked out of my daze by the sounds of men’s voices arguing cheerfully at my back. They were coming in behind me, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that if I didn’t move from the door, I’d be greeted with long, pitying looks the minute they saw me.
I took one step forward, and then another, until I was moving swiftly through the room. It didn’t take me long to reach the couch I’d sat on a hundred times before, but never would again.
“Are you kidding me right now?” I asked thickly, making the girl’s head spin in my direction. Her name was Abbie. Fucking Abbie.
“Excuse me?” Abbie asked with a snicker.
I swallowed hard as my eyes automatically met his, then felt seething fury and overwhelming hurt build inside my chest. His face was completely void of emotion.
“We’re busy.” Abbie made a shooing motion with one hand that I ignored.
“Is this how it’s going to be?” I asked him, tucking my thumbs into my palms to stop myself from fidgeting as I heard conversations around the room go quiet. “She goes to my fucking high school, Cameron.”
He raised his eyebrows, the expression so condescending I could barely breathe. It was as if I was boring him, as if he didn’t give two shits about me.
As if he didn’t know why I was bothering him.
My heart began to pump loudly in my ears as my pop, gramps and uncles came walking into the room, their voices cutting off abruptly when they saw me.
Berating a member in the clubhouse. Berating a member like I was his nagging old lady and not a seventeen-year-old girl with absolutely no rights to him whatsoever.
The feeling in my chest grew and grew until I could barely breathe past it.
In that moment, the tramp did something incredibly stupid.
Turning her face back to Cam, she asked loudly, “Why the hell is she still standing there?”
I don’t think I could have stopped myself if I’d tried.
I took one step forward, grabbed a handful of her mousy brown hair and ripped her ass off his lap and onto the floor.
I heard a loud, “Oh, fuck!” from across the room, but I ignored it.
I also ignored Cameron as he stood, quickly buttoning his pants and buckling his belt. Oh, God. His pants had been undone.
Instead, I watched as the mousy haired senior got to her feet and rushed toward me. She shouldn’t have done that. Things would have been so much simpler if she’d just fucking left it alone.
As she reached for me, I felt tears of humiliation blur my eyes. Then I leaned away as she tried to hit me, using her momentum to grab hold of the back of her head and slam her face into the edge of the pool table on my right.
The room was completely silent for a full thirty seconds as she slumped to the floor.
“Little Warrior!” I heard my pop yell, his voice growing louder as he ran toward me.
“Bea,” I heard softly spoken. “What the fuck?”
I met his eyes as the first tears fell down my cheeks. My humiliation was complete.
“Fuck you, Cam,” I rasped. “Don’t ever come near me again.”
“The fuck are you doin’ here?” he hissed, reaching for me. I stumbled back, tripping over Abbie’s legs before righting myself.
I watched Cam’s eyes dart over my shoulder as booted feet made their way toward us, but before I could turn to face my pop, Cameron was moving toward me—his shoulder meeting my belly so hard that it knocked the wind out of me as he slung me over his shoulder.
“Give me a minute?” he asked my pop angrily as I gasped and pounded on his back. What an asshole! I could smell her, I could fucking smell her on his clothes.
“She’s fuckin’ seventeen years old,” my pop ground out, obviously furious.
“Seventeen or not, you see that shit?”
“Saw it.”
“I need a fuckin’ minute,” Cam ground out between his teeth.
There was a tense silence that gave me hope, but then my pop murmured, “A minute,” and my entire body deflated.
I was so fucking embarrassed I wanted to crawl into a hole, so I wasn’t going to make it worse by fighting Cam as he carried me to the back hallway and through the door to his room.
This wasn’t going to end well.
I’d finally gotten my breath back when the door to Cam’s room was slammed behind us and I was tossed onto the bed.
“You asshole,” I yelled, pushing my hair from my face as I scrambled onto my knees.
“You wanna tell me what that was about?” Cam asked, crossing his arms.
“Fuck you,” I mumbled back, shaking my head. I was an idiot.
I’d let my emotions take control and I’d made myself look like a complete moron in front of every single man sitting in the clubhouse. There was no excuse, no way I could explain it away. Frankly, I knew better.
I may not agree with the rules, but I knew them.
I crawled to the edge of the bed, clenching my jaw to keep from spewing my hurt feelings all over the place. I needed to get the fuck out of there.
A hand planted in the center of my chest had me falling back into the bed.
“Explain!” Cam yelled, finally losing patience.
“Fuck you! I don’t have to explain shit to you!” I yelled back, climbing to my feet again.
“You jealous? That what this is about?”
I scoffed, turning my head away from him.
“You knocked that girl out, Bea!”
“She fucking deserved it,” I mumbled back, refusing to look at him.
“She didn’t do fuck all to you!”
“She’s a bitch.”
“She’s hot as fuck and down for anything. Don’t fuckin’ care if she’s Miss Congeniality,” he shot back.
My body jolted as if he’d slapped me.
“You’re right,” I told him around the lump in my throat, making eye contact and smiling ruefully as stupid tears began to leak out of my eyes again. “You can fuck anyone you want to.”
“Bea,” he murmured softly as his shoulders slumped forward.
“I’m sorry for bothering you,” I told him, jerking away from his hand when he reached for me. “My problem with Abbie has nothing to do with you.”
“Baby girl—”
“Don’t,” I cut him off, shaking my head as I got to my feet once more. “I’m going to go.”
The moment I tried to step past him, he grabbed me, pulling me into his huge chest. He was big, one of the biggest guys I’d ever been around, and usually his thick arms and broad shoulders comforted me when nothing else could.
But they didn’t comfort me then.
“Let go,” I ordered, pushing away from him and slapping his hands as he tried to pull me back.
“Bea, come on—”
“I’m done,” I whispered, backing toward the door. “Whatever we are—it’s done.”
“Don’t be so fuckin’ dramatic,” he said in exasperation, reaching for me again.
I think we were both surprised by the sound of my hand meeting his cheek.
“I got my license today,” I said with a humorless laugh as I backed away and grabbed hold of the doorknob. “I came by to see if you wanted to go for a ride with me. Didn’t realize you were already getting one.”
He lurched toward me, but I got the door open and was running toward the main room before he could catch me.
I heard his door splinter as he roared, “Goddammit!” but I didn’t slow. I raced past my pop as he paused in a conversation with Cam’s dad, Casper, and didn’t stop until I’d reached the door to my new car.
I needed to get the fuck out of there.
Cam had been my best friend for as long as I could remember. He’d taught me how to ride my bike without training wheels and how to change both a flat tire and the oil in a car. He’d been to every birthday party I’d ever had, and even though he was almost six years older than me, he’d let me tag along with him whenever I was having a bad day or just needed some attention.
Like an idiot, I’d even waited to get my license because I liked it that he drove me around when I needed it.
I was completely in love with him.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t even a little bit in love with me.
* * *
Cameron
Six months later…
“Got the parts in today, wasn’t sure if you wanted to—ow, man! What the fuck?” I yelled as Dragon shoved me face-first into the cement wall of the garage. I’d been talking to Casper and minding my own business, when the guy hit me like a fucking linebacker.
“You got somethin’ you wanna say to me?” Dragon growled as I shrugged him off my back and spun around. He looked like he wanted to rip my head off, and I had no clue why.
Dragon and I had no problems, as far as I knew. We weren’t tight—I was closer with my adopted uncle, Grease—but we were cool.
“Nope,” I replied, watching him warily.
He was practically shaking, he was so livid.
“You sure about that, kid?”
“Not a kid, and I’ve got no fuckin’ clue why you’re in my face.” My shoulders bunched as he glared at me. I wasn’t taking his shit. I’d gone through the same probation period he had and I was a full fucking member of the club. I didn’t answer to him—not until he had the gavel, at least.
Dragon crossed his arms over his chest, but I kept mine loose at my sides. I was bigger than him—no question. But the guy was twice my age with twice the experience. He’d kill me.
“You been keepin’ those hands to yourself?” he asked darkly, searching my face for some sort of guilt.
Hands to myself? What?
Oh, shit.
“She’s seventeen!” I replied incredulously. “Yeah, I’ve been keepin’ my hands to my fuckin’ self. What the fuck?”
“So, you know nothin’ about my girl askin’ her mama for birth control, huh?”
It took longer than it should’ve for his words to register. I was fucking blindsided. I stepped back, bumping back into the wall as the implication behind his statement became clear.
She was not having sex. No fucking way.
“You fuckin’ joking?” I rasped, the back of my neck growing warm.
“I look like I’m jokin’?”
“Did you let her get it?” I roared, completely forgetting that the man could kill me with one well-placed blow.
“I look like I wanna be a grandpa?”
“Jesus Christ!” I knew my eyes were wide and I knew that my chest was heaving and the veins in my neck were visibly throbbing, but I couldn’t seem to curb my reaction.
My Bea had asked for birth control?
No. Fucking. Way.
“Didn’t touch her,” I finally ground out, glancing over at Casper as he glared at Dragon. “We done here?”
“Yeah, boy. We’re done,” my adopted dad replied. “Come over to the house tonight—family dinner, no excuses.”
“Will do,” I agreed, already moving away from them to strip off my coveralls and grab my shit off the huge tool box in the corner.
I hadn’t talked to Trix in months, not since she’d gone fucking nuts in the clubhouse—but that shit stopped today. What the hell was she thinking? Birth control? Not. Fucking. Happening.
She didn’t need birth control, because she wouldn’t be having sex with any needle dicked high school kid.
I pulled my cut over my shoulders and stuffed my wallet into my pants as I headed outside, catching a bit of Casper and Dragon’s conversation as I passed them.
“You know my boy better than that,” Casper said angrily.
“Yeah, I do. Girl doesn’t fuckin’ listen to me, though,” Dragon said with a sound of disgust and a nod in my direction. “He’ll put her on a fuckin’ leash.”
“Don’t listen to a word ye say?” Poet asked laughingly as he passed me with an absent slap to my shoulder. “Wonder where she got that?”
I didn’t hear Dragon’s reply as I climbed on my bike and slid my helmet on, re-checking to make sure Trix’s helmet was still strapped to the back of my bike.
I pulled up in front of the high school fifteen minutes later and parked in the fire lane. I wouldn’t be there long enough for them to give me shit about it.
It only took minutes before the secretary was calling Bellatrix White over the intercom, but I was too fucking keyed up to wait in the office, so I stepped outside. I knew she’d come looking for me.
The office knew me—I’d picked up Trix quite a bit in the past few years. My showing up at two o’clock on a sunny afternoon wasn’t anything noteworthy.
But apparently Trix didn’t get that memo, because as soon as she saw me, she threw the front doors open with an angry slam as she stormed toward me.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped as she came closer, her black hair flying all over the damn place.
“Let’s go,” I ordered. Shit, I could barely speak, I was so pissed.
Trix growled. She was angry? Really? What the fuck could she be pissed about?
“I have class,” she argued, stopping abruptly.
“Never stopped you before.”
“Yeah, when I actually wanted to leave.”
“Get on the fuckin’ bike, Bea.”
“No,” she replied stubbornly.
“Got your friends lookin’ out the window,” I said, glancing over her shoulder. “You want them to see me makin’ you get on, or you wanna climb on without the dramatics?”
She glanced back toward the school, then started toward me with a scowl. “You’re such an asshole.”
I ignored her as I climbed on my bike and handed her helmet over, waiting a few minutes while she got it situated and swung her leg over behind me. We’d done this dance a thousand times, and she wrapped her arms tight around my middle as I fired up the bike and pulled away from the curb.
It had taken years for her dad to let her ride on the back of my bike, but she’d worn him down eventually. Thank fuck. I hated driving the piece of shit truck Casper had given me when I got my license at sixteen, but I’d driven it often back then—for her.
Fifteen minutes later, I rode slowly down a gravel driveway and stopped at a large gate so Trix could unlock the pad lock and let me pull the bike through. As soon as I’d gotten a few feet inside, I was off the bike and turning toward her as she locked the gate behind us.
No one except us ever used the gate at the back of the club’s property. It was secluded and there was nothing much back there but trees and blackberry bushes. The road stopped a hundred yards from the gate, probably because at some point, they’d wanted to carve a path all the way to the clubhouse, but had lost interest.
“What are we doing here?” she asked, stomping toward me.
She was either completely oblivious to how pissed I was or was itching for a fight, because she didn’t stop until she was a foot from me and glaring up into my face.
“You need birth control?” I barked, the words torn from my throat.
I wanted her to tell me no. As she opened and closed her mouth twice, I waited for her to tell me that she had just been curious or some shit.
So, when she spoke, I had a hard time not reaching out and shaking her.
“Don’t really wanna be a teenage mother,” she snapped, throwing up her hands. “Is nothing freaking sacred around here?”
“Are you shitting me?” I growled.
“How did you even know?” she asked, tucking her thumbs into her fists and leaning up on her toes in a pathetic attempt to get in my face. She was almost a foot shorter than I was—she’d need a fucking step stool.
“You gonna have sex? That’s what you’re tellin’ me?” I sneered, leaning down until our faces were inches apart. “Got a little boyfriend?”
“I’ve already had sex with him,” she spat back.
I’d never looked at Trix in a sexual way. Never. She was my little Bea. My other half. When we were kids, she’d been best buds with my little brother, Curtis, and after he died in the fire that killed my family, she’d somehow switched her affections to me. I didn’t know if it was because she missed Curt or she’d just had no one to play with, but she’d followed me around and I hadn’t had the heart to make her leave me alone. She’d been so sweet, with her long dark hair and big brown eyes—I hadn’t stood a chance.
She was mine.
She’d always been mine.
And suddenly, the thought of her being someone else’s made me livid.
She’d fucked someone else?
She’d let someone else see her body?
I couldn’t even feel my hands when I reached out and fisted her hair between the fingers of one and gripped her jaw with the other. It felt like a fucking out-of-body experience as I watched her eyes go wide and her body freeze.
“You’ve been fuckin’ someone else?” I hissed as her hands came up to grip my forearms, her nails biting into my skin. “You belong to me!”
“Fuck you!” she yelled back, pulling at my arms.
It was like waving a flag in front of a bull—and later, I’d wonder if she knew exactly what she was doing—but in that moment, all I saw was red.
I pulled her mouth to mine and kissed her hard as she went completely still. Her fingers went lax on my arms and she stopped pulling away, but she didn’t move her mouth, either. That pissed me off even more.
I spun us around and pushed her up against a tree, the wet bark and moss soaking the back of her shirt and hair within seconds.
“You wanna be fucked, I fuck you,” I ordered into her mouth.
“Yeah, right!” she screeched back, reaching up to grab my head. My hair was too short for her to latch onto, but her fingers wrapped around the back of my head hard, neither pushing me away or pulling me forward.
As if she wasn’t sure what to do.
“You let a boy touch you, I’ll break his fuckin’ legs,” I growled, stepping in closer until my knee was wedged between her thighs.
With a moan, she finally relaxed against me, and my heart started pounding in my ears when she opened her mouth for my tongue.
God, she tasted good. Like cinnamon gum.
I inhaled deeply as I ran my tongue over her lips, letting go of her jaw so I could wrap my hand around one of her thighs and pull it up high on my hip.
I loved Trix’s thighs. I’d never thought of her as a conquest—that wasn’t how we worked, but I was a man. Hard to ignore it when a girl was shaped like she was. She was far from fat, but her thighs and ass were thick. Round. When she wore a bathing suit, no matter what type, bottoms rarely covered her ass—to the point that I’d forced her to start wearing shorts when I took her to the river during the summer, so I didn’t have to kill anyone. It was the type of cushion men dreamed about. The kind of thighs that you fucking knew would squeeze you to hell when they were wrapped around your waist.
I hated that I was still too tall in the position we were in, so I dropped my other hand, using both to hike her up my chest until I could notch my dick right between those gorgeous thighs.
Shit, that felt incredible.
I wasn’t prepared for her to bite my lip, and I jerked my head back in surprise to find her glaring at me.
“Does that go for you, too?” she asked breathlessly, moving her hand to press against my throat as I tried to catch her lips again.
“What?” I asked dumbly. Did she expect me to talk to her when I could feel the heat between her legs pressed against me?
“I don’t sleep with anyone else, you don’t sleep with anyone else,” she ordered, immediately pissing me off.
“What?” I asked again, lower.
“If I’m fucking you, you aren’t fucking anyone else,” she said, finally letting go of my throat so she could kiss me.
Oh, fuck no.
“I’m not gonna fuck you,” I snapped back, shaking my head.
What the fuck was I doing? All of a sudden, I was thinking clearly again, and I couldn’t believe what the hell I’d just done.
This was Trix.
My little Bea.
Jesus Christ.
I stepped back quickly and dropped her legs, making her stumble as she tried to catch her balance. “This isn’t happen—”
My words were cut off as she punched me in the face.
“I hate you!” she yelled, her chest heaving. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I watched her, dumbfounded, as she stomped toward the small break in the trees, moving so quickly she was almost running.
Reaching up to wipe a drop of blood off the side of my mouth, I grimaced. “You’re seventeen years old!” I yelled at her back.
She stopped, spinning around to glare at me. “I’m eighteen in three weeks, dick!”
“I’m still way too fuckin’ old for you! Where are you going?” I took a step forward, then stopped. She was on club property and half a mile from her house—I wasn’t following her ass through the forest.
“Fuck off!” she yelled, flipping me the bird as she stomped away until she disappeared in the trees.
“Eighteen,” I grumbled, slapping myself on the side of the head as I turned and headed toward my bike. “You fuckin’ asshole.”