Hunte
Authors: Rie Warren
HUNTER
Bad Boys of Retribution MC
Book I
RIE WARREN
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Hunter
Copyright © 2015 by Rie Warren
Excerpt from Kinkaid copyright
© 2015 by Rie Warren
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations.
Warren, Rie.
Hunter / Rie Warren – 1
st
ed
1.Contemporary Romance—Fiction. 2. Alpha Male—Fiction. 3. Bikers—Fiction. 4. Erotica—Fiction. 5. MC Romance—Fiction. I. Title
ASIN: B00UWHWMO8
Cover Design
By Tera Shanley
Editing
By Gilly Wright
http://www.gillywright.com
Author’s Note
Hey, y’all!
Welcome to the
Bad Boys of Retribution MC
. This is a
Carolina Bad Boys
series spinoff, directly following
Steele: Into Your Heart.
But don’t worry, each book can be read as standalone, with or without the CBBs, and I promise to take you on one wild, hot, sexy ride each time.
Sit back. Relax. And enjoy the
Bad Boys of Retribution MC
. Three more badass, hardcore men are coming at you this summer. Fear not, CBBs will be back fall 2015 with Boomer in
Chrome: With A Heart Forged In Steele
.
Chapter One
“YO, HUNTER.” COLE SLID me a fresh cold beer across the steel-topped bar in the Retribution clubhouse.
I savored the first swig, watching the man who was the biker on MC probationary status. In fact, most of the guys here called him Probie instead of his given name. I knew he wasn’t wet behind the ears or too stupid to have a clue. Unfortunately for him, everyone had to start out on the ground floor when pledging an MC, and he’d gotten the shit end of the stick. But he’d proved himself during our search for Detective Ashe Kingston. Brodie Steele, the VP of this club, was going to make things right with Cole the Probie tonight.
Just then, the old lady of the hour and her wildman entered Retribution. Whistles erupted only eclipsed by loud shouts and fists pounding on the tables.
Ashe accepted her welcome with the usual smile and sass, Brodie beaming by her side. The pair was well matched. Both blond: he the tall rangy biker dude, she the curvy babe on his arm. Ashe wasn’t new to the MC ’hood—she’d ridden a cop chopper in her time on duty as a Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, Police Department officer before ranking as Vice detective. But word had it there’d been so much bad blood between Brodie and her in years past he’d just as likely have flipped her off as flipped out over her.
The times, they were a’changin’.
Ashe had been through the wringer. Solving her first case after her promotion to Vice, she’d been kidnapped while making the arrest. That night in September I’d come clean with Brodie about my undercover status. I worked off the record, in the dark, and usually solo. Lucky for him I’d been brought in on the sly, and we’d doled out a little vigilante justice.
In my eyes, the detective was Comeback Ashe. Now it was November. She’d recovered from the trauma and sat through endless hours of counseling. She’d just completed her first full week back on the force. She was back in the saddle, and for a change, Brodie didn’t look like he wanted to go full bodily harm on anyone who crossed his path.
I couldn’t imagine the hell he’d gone through, which was why I tended to keep my relationship status firmly in the one-night-only column and women at arm’s length unless they were deemed content to let me fuck them then leave them. My work was dangerous enough. I didn’t need to drag a honey into it—or into my heart.
Glancing across the room as the celebratory furor died down, I performed my usual calm cool appraisal of the action.
Who might be a threat, who was working an angle, who was to be trusted. Along with Cole and Brodie, Boomer Steele—Brodie’s older bro—was in the solid corner. He was the founder and president of this club. The Steele family was tight and included Catarina, the youngest sibling of the trio who owned and operated the auto parts dynasty next door—Chrome and Steele.
Where Brodie was blond and leanly muscled, usually with a wicked gleam in his icy pale blue eyes, Boomer was a brick shithouse on legs, broad enough to take up an entire doorway, and his eyes either danced in laughter or held a dark sadness. I’d looked into the background of each Retribution member. Unfortunately, due to the Steele family tragedy, theirs was the most captivating.
The most sad.
I took another drink and turned to face the back of the barroom. The pool tables drew a crowd. So did the dartboards. The wood was polished. The tables shined. The floors didn’t stick to the soles of my boots. In fact, despite the usual loud rock tunes, many drinks imbibed, and the ladies in waiting to get
laid
, this was one of the cleanest clubs I’d ever investigated. All thanks to Cole aka Probie.
Brodie waded through the crowded room toward me as his woman made a show of banking balls at insane angles before pocketing them at one of the pool tables. He looked like he was ready to sink a couple balls of his own into Ashe.
Cole fetched a beer for Brodie, setting it at the ready before he even took the stool beside me.
I clinked his bottle. “Chief’s happy with Ashe’s progress.”
“Yeah. I know. Sipowicz and I are like this.” He knitted two fingers together.
I chuckled. Sipowicz was Brodie’s very appropriate nickname for Chief Tilden, head of the Mt. Pleasant Police Department. His face was haggard and lined and he was most notable for wearing wrinkled suits over a larger-than-life belly, but there was more intelligence going on behind that workaday exterior than anyone could ever fathom. Tight ship? He ran it out of the side of his mouth without ever letting a smile show. Good man.
“You still on MPPD’s payroll?” Brodie asked.
I considered the question. No one besides Ashe and her partner Davies—both of whom I’d worked with on the Retribution case—Cole, Boomer, and Brodie knew the real solid deal about me. And even then . . .
they don’t have a fucking clue who I really am
. Brodie had once mentioned I was a ghost. He wasn’t wrong.
“Now, now. I wouldn’t be undercover if I told you, would I?”
“Whatever.” He sniggered. “I’ll get it out of Probie later.”
“His name’s Cole. You know it. I know it. He’s a good one to have on the lookout. Might try to recruit him.”
“As long as you give him enough time to swab the decks around here,” Brodie replied.
I was staying put in Mt. Pleasant for reasons no one needed to know. Another case? Maybe. Let them guess. My personal life was well hidden, off the record, and very fucking lost at the bottom of the sea along with my real identity.
A parade of women from the sister charter sashayed inside. The First Ladies of Redemption went hand-in-hand with the Presidents of Retribution. I’d had my eyeful of the honeys before, but tonight there was a new babe in the mix.
A minx, in fact. I stared at the woman, stunned stupid. Beautiful didn’t cover what she had going on. Her soft-looking brown curls bounced as she strutted inside on ankle-high suede boots. I couldn’t see the color of her eyes, but damned if I didn’t drink in the pink fullness of her lips canted in a smile and her tight body revealed in a pair of hipster jeans to go with the slashed top. That top dripped off her shoulders and down her back, revealing creamy skin marked with a line of butterfly tats all the way down her spine by the looks of it.
That had to have hurt like a bitch.
Jesus, she looked untouched, totally fresh, and more than a little naughty all at the same time.
I cleared my throat, nailing the woman with my eyes. “Who’s that?”
Brodie swiveled around and lazily scratched at his goatee. “Oh, her? With the First Ladies. She’s pretty new.”
I leveled my gaze on the girl again. She faced full frontal, and damn me if her face wasn’t as sexy as the rearview. Worse? She had a smattering of freckles across her slim nose and along her high cheekbones. My own personal weakness.
“Fuck that. She’s pretty. Straight up.”
“New cherry,” Brodie said. “Fresh off the tree. She goes by JB, but we gave her our own nickname.”
“JB?” I asked.
“Jailbait, dude.”
I dropped my forehead onto the bar with a groan.
Of fucking course.
“Fitting. Don’t you think? Detective Sexton—if that’s even your real name?”
“It’s Lieutenant Sexton, asswipe.” I gave him the bird, my forehead still planted against the bar.
His laughter echoed as he walked away.
“Got company comin’ your way, Hunter,” Cole murmured.
I glanced around.
Oh hell.
JB was headed straight for the bar on mile-long legs. I dropped my chin to my chest, peering at her through the shafts of my black hair. She passed by, leaving the scent of her addictive floral perfume in her wake.
I didn’t do the obvious thing—like adjusting my suddenly hard cock in my jeans, or making a pass at her. Obvious was not part of my MO. I was the
Ghost
, literally. That was my callsign and my roadname. I kept my head down, worked the grind, did my job and got the hell out of Dodge before the dust settled.
I used the same set of rules with women. Chicks did not get to me, not anymore. I was thirty-one goddamn years old—and a hell of a lot older if you counted my kills—yet I’d never reacted to a woman like this before. Immediately. Intensely. And probably destructively.
There was a reason I stayed off the relationship grid. Tangle with me, end up dead or worse. I might officially be the “good guy” on paper, but bad shit had a way of following in my footsteps.
Despite my better judgment, I listened to JB place her order and watched her beneath the shadow of my eyelashes. She had a body to die for and a velvety voice that drove a spike of need through me. I hung on her every word, wishing I were playing bartender for the night. Then she met my penetrating stare and lifted her drink in my direction.
I’d been made.
Well, fuck it. I’d never been one to turn tail and run. Beer in hand, I prowled to her. “Hunter Sexton.”
“JB, as I’m sure you’ve heard.”
Her palm swallowed in mine, I leaned closer for another hit of her perfume. “JB?”
“My initials, among other things.” She slipped her fingers from my grasp. “I’ll be playing darts if you want to go a round or two later.”
There was no mistaking her invitation. As she slinked off, I reminded myself I had absolutely no intensions of taking her up on it.
Right
.
Throughout the night, I kept her in my sights. She denied all dickheads out to get into her pants, usually with an easy letdown so the beat-down didn’t sting too hard.
After her latest brush-off of
I am purely sorry, but you don’t have the equipment I’m lookin’ for
with a batting of her eyelashes as she drew her arm through her busty femme fatale sidekick’s, I hid my grin against the top of my beer bottle.
She was so not a lipstick lesbian the idea was laughable, but it got Tail to move along. He was Retribution lady-killer numero uno. I was glad to see him amble away with a good-natured shrug of his shoulders.
JB was as aware of me as I was of her. I remained all the way across the room—arguably a safe distance away—but I felt her gaze on me during the course of the night. She wasn’t obvious about it; I was just good at my job. Reading people inside and out, backward and forward, came part and parcel with my line of work. I lived by my wits, without a safety net. And JB had me free-falling for her in the space of two goddamn hours. She sent her subtle fuck-me vibe in my direction and mine alone. Her attention thrilled me more than I cared to admit.
Finally Brodie sidetracked me by calling for order. Thank fuck for that. As the din died down, he motioned Cole from behind the bar. Leaving the latest MC prospect hanging just long enough so he looked like he might crap his pants, Brodie finally welcomed Cole into the Retribution fold as a full member. When he held up the new leather cut identical to the rest of the brethren’s with the scales of justice and skull and crossbones, I almost shed a goddamn tear.
Cole grinned so hard I thought he’d crack his face as he accepted the MC colors.
He deserved the Retribution patch more than I did. He’d taken shit and come up shining time and time again.