Kellan
Authors: Jayne Blue
Kellan
Great Wolves M.C. - Book Four
By
Jayne Blue
Copyright © 2015 by Jayne Blue
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law or for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Exclusive Sneak Peek of Sawyer by Jayne Blue 181
Chapter One
Kellan
It’s the little shit that ends up changing your life in big ways. Ways you never could have expected. If I hadn’t leaned six inches over to my left to grab a canteen off the floor of that Humvee, the IED blast would have blown a hole through my chest too, instead of just tearing off my right leg below the knee. Or if I had leaned over just two or three inches more, maybe I wouldn’t have been hit at all. Or if I’d have just stayed home like the rest of my M.C. brothers, I never would have been on that shithole of a road in the Parwan Province. Instead, I might have just had a sweet piece of ass squeezing her thighs against me as she straddled the seat of my Harley while we blazed down I-75.
It’s not that I spend a lot of time thinking about the what ifs. I have no regrets. Even after all of it, I know I came home lucky, if not easy. Sometimes though, don’t you get that feeling low in your gut when you know some little thing is about to blast your world apart again?
“Just give them about five more minutes.” The bartender, a college kid, early twenties, flashed me a toothy grin as he brushed the hair out of his eyes. What the fuck was I doing here? I was in a hole-in-the-wall lakefront bar in what had to be the hick capital of Michigan. The only other place to get food around here was at a truck stop called Hummers. I shit you not.
The kid slid me a fresh cold draft beer. “Boss says that one’s on the house,” he said. At least that was something. I was about to say that when my phone buzzed in the back pocket of my jeans. I pulled it out.
“Hey, Prez,” I said. Colt hated when I called him that. He was still getting used to the title though it suited him damn well.
“You on your way back yet?”
“No, the headlining act hasn’t even come out yet. You sure you heard the name of this place right?
The Sand Bar
?”
“That’s the place.” Colt laughed. He was getting a kick out of my misery. We’d just opened a new bar in our hometown, Lincolnshire, Ohio. We called it
The Wolf Den
. It was club headquarters, but we were turning it into the kind of place the whole town felt comfortable spending their money in. A big part of that was lining up a killer house band. I’d been scouting the tri-state area for months trying to find just the right talent. So far, I’d seen nothing but a string of pop star wannabes and shit that was half grunge and half . . . well . . . shit. I had no reason to think
The Sand Bar
was going to bring me anything better, but here I was.
“Just come on home when you finish up there,” Colt said. “We’ll take a break and regroup. There’s some shit going on down here we need to talk about anyway.”
“Sounds good,” I said, curious what kind of shit he meant. But before I could ask anything else, I had to click off because the crowd of townies and
college-aged kids started to stir. I couldn’t help thinking what a huge waste of my time this was. Just like all of the other dives I’d been in. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking agreeing to take this on. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Most of the rowdier hicks crowded around the dance floor, beers in hand. A few of the busboys doubled as roadies on stage, setting up the microphones and amps for tonight’s act. The real party was happening past the patio out on the beach and anchored just beyond it. Boats had come in from all over the Irish Hills area to watch the band play. That is, if they ever fucking made it on stage.
The bartender vaulted over the bar one-handed and ran up to the stage. He stepped to the mic, adjusting it higher as the crowd playfully booed him and the din died down.
“Are you ready, people?” he shouted too close to the mic and the reverb made me as well as everyone else in the room wince. This wasn’t a good sign.
“Show us your tits, Brad!” came a shout from the back. All activity in the bar stopped; everyone was focused on the stage, including the busboys and bartenders.
Brad, the bartender, stepped back, running a hand through his unruly blond hair. “You couldn’t handle this jelly,” he said. Oh for fuck’s sake. I was outta there.
When the catcalls and whistles started to escalate, Brad put his hands up, then waved them downward to quiet the crowd. “Okay. Without further ado. I’m pretty sure she’s finally ready. You ready, Miss Rhodes?” he called behind him.
“Fuck you, Brad!” came a playful feminine voice from somewhere in the direction of the kitchen. Brad’s face fell and his posture shifted. I got the impression he was thinking about how much he’d like whoever belonged to that voice to actually fuck him. Jesus.
“She loves me.” Brad laughed into the microphone. “All right, all right, the moment you’ve all been waiting for ... the one ... the only ... your favorite hot mess and mine ... Mallory and the Malcontents!” Brad made a sweeping gesture toward the stage and then sidestepped around the microphone. He came to the edge of the platform and faked a lunge as if he were about to stage dive then neatly popped down to the dance floor to good-natured slaps on the back before he disappeared into the crowd.
The lights around the dance floor dimmed. There was movement in the dark, shuffling on stage, and a light cymbal crash. Then a slow, driving drum beat started as two spotlights came up, pointing straight down on the stage and the lonely mic stand. The bar patrons started to hoot and whistle, followed a few seconds later by screams from the beach and out on the boats as the sound reverberated across the water. The drumbeat continued. I could see two guitar players in shadow but the mic stand was solitary. The lead singer still hadn’t come out from backstage. A few random catcalls morphed into outright booing. Whatever was happening back there, the singer needed to get her shit together soon or this crowd was going to turn big time.
As the unease grew, my hand went to the handle of the Glock I always carried concealed at my side. I tried to make eye contact with the bouncers at the exits, but they were both chatting up college girls.
Fuck this, I thought. I’m not waiting another second and getting into a brawl that was none of my business.
Then the air in the room seemed to change. My heart skipped as I looked back toward the stage. Off to the side, still in shadow, the guitar picked up the instantly recognizable melody of “Creep” by Radiohead. Fucking fantastic. More grunge. I downed the last of my beer and got up to leave.
Then
she
came out. Something shifted in me and I had that feeling low in my gut that something special was about to happen. She stepped into the light singing the first slow, quiet notes of the song and I got a look at Mallory of the Malcontents.
She was stunning, beautiful with white blonde hair cropped just above her shoulders, a shock of hot pink running down one side half covering her eye. She wore black leather pants, silver-sequined stilettos, and a skin-tight black tank top which showed off her toned, tanned arms and a killer rack, her bra strap already slung over her right shoulder. Her right upper arm was tattooed with a black feminine symbol, the masculine symbol in the same place on her left arm. She took the song slow, deliberate, barely more than breathing out the first notes about a beautiful world. She cast her eyes down, her hands caressing the microphone in a way that made my dick tighten. Then she looked up. She had the palest blue eyes I’d ever seen with irises rimmed in black.
She growled the next note then launched into the chorus. She let loose a little, hitting the high notes dead on with a power that sent a shiver down my spine and straight to my cock. Fuck me, the girl was hot.
Mallory stalked her guitar player and quiet fury rose within me as she circled him while singing about wanting a perfect body and a perfect soul. She leaned against him back to back and swayed her hips in time to the drum beat as her guitar player slid his fingers down the frets. Yeah, he was good at working the crowd too; I just wanted to bash the fucker over the head with that guitar. I didn’t like him touching her.
Maybe he had some sixth sense too that shit was about to change because he let out a growl and twirled away from Mallory. This left her alone with her microphone as he hit his guitar hard three times making the signature ka-ka-chunk ... ka-ka-chunk effect, right before Mallory’s voice soared into the last chorus.
Mallory turned to the crowd and wound up to hit the last notes of the song with a controlled power and amplitude that made her microphone pretty much unnecessary. It was breathtaking, soul-wrenching, and I wondered what the fuck she really was doing here. She didn’t belong here. She belonged in an arena in front of thousands. She belonged with me. Under me. Above me. The crowd cheered as she dropped an F-bomb then belted out the last of the song and let her hand holding the mic fall to her side.
“You want her, right?” My head snapped back to reality as the bartender slid another draft in front of me. “I mean, that’s why you’re here, you said.”
“What? Who? You mean them?” I was in the middle of picking my damn jaw up off the floor as Mallory and her Malcontents launched into an oversexed version of a Beach Boys song. She sang about getting around and it was starting to
piss me off. I didn’t want to think about her with anyone else and it made no sense. I didn’t know her. She was nothing to me. And yet, it seemed like every nerve ending I had was tuned to her.
“You’re scouting talent. I know the look.” Brad the bartender grabbed my empty glass and stuck it in the sink beneath the bar.
I downed the fresh beer and tried to collect myself. “Yeah. Do they have a manager?” The second I said it I kind of regretted it. Bringing that girl back to
The Wolf Den
could cause me all kinds of distractions I didn’t need.
Brad smiled and spread his hands across the bar. He leaned forward. “God help the poor bastard who ever tries to manage Mallory. But yeah, I know who’s in charge of booking their gigs. You got a card or something? I’ll make sure he gets the word.”