Staking Her Claim...: Book 1 in the Patricks' Brothers series (4 page)

Taking a deep breath through my nose, I look straight into his gorgeous blue eyes adding,

“This is me stating my intentions, staking my claim on my life so to speak. If you continue to work here, you stay the hell out of my way. If you decide to man up and hang around long enough for my brothers to accept you back into the fold completely, you can rest assured you’ll have no complaints from me, but I will not be a party to it. I am not your friend, I am your colleague, and you will treat me with the respect my position deserves. You’ll do your job and I’ll do mine, but I can tell you now; if you cross that line again like you’ve just done now, I will make you sorrier than you could ever imagine.”

Gathering my things, I turn to leave, but not without one last parting shot. A shot I shouldn’t have taken.

At the time, I wasn’t to know it was the only thing I could have said to ensure my status as, Rob’s newest challenge, however.

“I’ll be in tomorrow at eight, Bossman. You better have a juicy case on my desk by the time I get here or I’ll know where you stand regarding my longevity with the company. And you,” I say, pointing at Rob. “You stay the fuck away from me. I loved you once, but I will never be stupid enough to make that mistake again. Any and all feelings I had for you died when I found out what a colossal asshole you are, and you saw fit to judge me and the choices I’ve made. You do not know me. You do not know what I’ve been through. And as of now, you’ve got no right to either of those things. So, I highly recommend you keep your mouth shut and kindly reserve your generous sharing of your personal opinions with someone who gives a damn. In case you hadn’t picked up what I was putting down, that would be anyone but me.”

Giving Harper a two fingered salute, I add,

“You pick tonight, Harp. Jose, Jim, Jack, or Johnny, I don’t care which but make sure there’s plenty of one of them. And I want chocolate, nachos, and ice cream. Lots and lots of ice cream.”

On that note, I turn and exit the room, slamming the door behind me. I wish I’d have looked back once, because if I had, I would have seen the broad grin stretched across Rob’s face, the first of many clues my life was about to get a whole hell of a lot more complicated.

She is fucking magnificent when she’s angry. That’s the first thought I have as Alysia tears me a new asshole. I know it shouldn’t be, but it is. I’ve always loved he
1
r strong-will. And by the looks of it, her attitude has only matured with age, becoming e
1
ven sexier.

My second thought is that I’ve just fucked up, and I’ve done it huge. If the looks on her brother’s faces, and the furious glare I’m getting from Harper are anything to go by I might as well start digging my own grave.

“What in the hell were you thinking,” Harper screeches at me. Jesus, she has a set of lungs on her, I muse as I rub my abused ear. “I cannot believe you of all people think you have the right to ask about where a man you assume she wanted around was in her hour of need. You out of all the men in her life have more to answer for on that count than anyone else.”

I’ve spent a lot of time in the past couple of weeks trying to decode the mystery that is Harper Cox, and I’m still coming up blank. To look at her you’d think she was a timid, shy, yet stunningly beautiful woman, but piss her off and you’ll learn differently. While I don’t have cause to upset her except, in this case, Brookes on the other hand does, and, unfortunately, I’ve been in the room when she’s unleashed all her fury on him. Being there when she let loose on him has given me an all new appreciation for the pocket rocket of a woman that Alysia calls her best friend.

I have no idea what history Brookes and Harper have between them, but from what I’ve seen you could cut the sexual tension with a knife up until about four days ago, that is.

Whatever went down between them in Brookes’ office that day was monumental enough to have her walking around like someone had kicked her puppy, and Brookes storming through the offices like a bear with a thorn stuck in his paw. I can only hope for both their sakes that they sort their shit out because I know from personal experience that having the woman you’re in love with furious with you is not fun for anyone.

Yeah, you heard me correctly, I’m one hundred and ten percent in love with a woman who would l
1
ike nothing more than to see me get hit by a speeding train over having to face at me. And that shit just fucking sucks.

Watching a bullet tear through her delicate flesh, seeing her body go limp and drop to the floor, her life draining out of her woke my shit up. I might have thought I was in love with another woman for a while, a woman I had no business being interested in. However, all it took was the possibility of losing Alysia again, and the fear that came with not having her as a permanent fixture in my life, to prove I’d never truly loved, Tilly.

It was easy to get attached to Tilly, the woman I thought my heart wanted for a while there. She was soft, sweet, and needed someone to look out for her. At the time, she believed her husband had been cheating on her for years and that he’d made a baby with his woman on the side.

It didn’t matter to me that it came out he hadn’t. It didn’t make a lick of difference that he’d been framed by a vindictive bitch that wanted to get her hooks into him. No, all I cared about was making Tilly mine, and I was willing to cross whatever lines I had to to make it happen.

Naturally, I crossed one too many lines when I found myself knocked the hell out, gagged, and tied to a fucking chair in some run down shack in the middle of nowhere. But it wasn’t until I heard her rich, husky voice, a voice which still visited me in my dreams occasionally, that I realized the gravity of the situation I’d created for myself. Because I had done it to myself, that is. No one else was to blame, only me.

In the limited time I had while restrained and conscious in that shack, I didn’t once stop to consider how I’d get myself out of this one. I’d been in some fucked up situations before, but never one this bad. This was a new low for me, and that was saying something.

For a while as a stupid, cocky teenager I’d run with the wrong crowd, experimented with drugs, alcohol, and more girls than any fourteen, or fifteen-year-old boy should have. I did it as an escape from the hell I was living through, but in the end, it did fuck all to numb the pain I suffered with daily. It gave me a blissful hour or two of nothing, but when the high evaporated so did the numbness that had clouded my mind. It didn’t take long for me to realize that shit couldn’t continue. But before I made that decision, I’d found myself mugged, beaten a handful of times for the little money or drugs I had on my person, and arrested twice.

Those times were bad, downright fucking terrifying for a teenager who knew the consequences of his actions would more than likely be worse when he got home than anything that could happen to him on the street. But those consequences had nothing on the situation I found myself in now; at the mercy of a biker lost in a rage induced haze, with me restrained and helpless.

If it wasn’t for Alysia’s timely intervention, I don’t know what would have gone down that day. Would I have ended up dead in a ditch somewhere? Could Saint actually have gone through with ending me? Probably, but I didn’t need to worry about that shit when I heard her voice and the deal she made. My life would be spared, but it came with conditions. Conditions she agreed to without batting an eye. Conditions Thomas negotiated to save me again.

I never doubted Alysia would hold up her end of the bargain when she secured my release. I remembered even when we were kids that when she gave her word, she stuck to it. Hating that I needed to be saved by her, that she would be the one to see me at my lowest, I resigned myself to accepting whatever they’d agreed to. It’s not like I had a choice, it was already decided. Alysia was to get me the hell out of Blackwater, Colorado and take me with her to finish her latest assignment, and it was made clear I was never to return.

I wasn’t all fired up to leave the place I’d finally decided to start putting down roots, but when it came down to it, I was saving myself from what I was sure would be a fate worse than death after Saint finished with me. I didn’t agree to make myself disappear permanently, though. That, however, wasn’t something they needed to be made aware of. It would be evident when I put my plan, one I hadn’t come up with yet, into action to earn Saint’s forgiveness that I wasn’t going to just vanish from their lives.

The day I was released is still a little hazy. There are parts I don’t think I’ll ever completely recall. I was beaten, groggy, and angry, so fucking angry. Not at Saint, Thomas, or Alysia, but at myself.

The pain of my ribs pressing against my lung, the throbbing headache at the base of my skull, and the two black eyes I was sporting did nothing to quell my anger any. If anything, it just made me more pissed off. I’d left myself vulnerable, and that was something I knew better than to ever let happen.

After I was helped into Alysia’s car by Thomas, ordered to take care of myself, and Alysia drove away from the man I’d always see as my brother, reality came crashing down on me like a ton of bricks. I had no home, no family, no woman, and no hope. Everything I held dear, everything I’d ever wanted I’d systematically destroyed, or ruined the chance at having.

That’s where my anger stemmed from. And I had no one to blame but myself. Especially not the woman beside me in the car that had bigger things to worry about than the colossal fuck up she’d called in a favor to save me from.

Alysia’s assignment was to gather information as it related to a member of another chapter of Devil’s Spawn MC that had gone rogue. It was supposed to be a simple in and out, nothing dangerous, but like most things when it came to the MC nothing was as straightforward as it seemed.

She was supposed to be undercover as a stripper for one night only, approved by the fuckwit owner with dollar signs in his eyes. Tank, the MC’s enforcer, had set it up and gone over all the safety measures with Alysia, at least, twenty times before she set foot in the shit hole strip club, but it was all for nothing.

The man in question rocked up wasted, high as a fucking kite, and angry as hell. It was clear from the way his gaze zeroed in on Alysia that she had captured his interest, and he’d stop at nothing to get a taste of her.

I wasn’t supposed to be there that night. Actually, she explicitly told me to stay at the apartment she’d temporarily rented and keep out of sight, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

When I found out what she was doing, the danger she was putting herself in, I had no intention of sitting around. The intense pain around my heart, the throbbing headache, and the way my fists involuntarily clenched was enough to alert me to the fact I wouldn’t, and couldn’t sit idly by while she risked her safety for people she barely knew.

I understood it was her job and that she was damn good at it, but it went against every protective instinct I had, all of which reared their ugly heads when it came to her to allow herself to go in there without me.

Shit hit the fan when the asshole in question cornered her and another woman that was vaguely familiar. By the time Tank, Arrow, Saint, and I burst into the dressing room she’d headed toward after leaving the stage, Alysia already had a gun pointed at her and a cowering, Macy behind her using Alysia as a human shield.

The guys moved into position slowly and cautiously, but it was too late. Unfortunately, we lost the opportunity to come enter with the upper-hand, because the asshole had already fired his gun by the time we made it to Alysia.

The bullet ripped through Alysia’s shoulder which had Macy releasing a blood-curdling scream loud enough to wake the dead. Thank fuck the woman I loved was a warrior, though, because before any of the men that had filled the room could get a shot off, Alysia had double tapped him, lodging two bullets right between his eyes.

That’s something I’ll never be able to erase from my memories for years to come, if ever. The sight of blood and brain matter exploding and decorating the wall behind him was fucking gruesome, but even though it turned my stomach, had me fighting back the bile that was rising in my throat, I couldn’t bring myself to feel sorry for the man’s life she’d just ended. He would have had no qualms about doing the same to her, so whatever shred of humanity I could have felt for him evaporated almost instantly.

As fucked up as all that was, watching a man die in front of me, I have to say; Alysia standing her legs planted shoulder width apart, hair disheveled, arms braced in front of her gripping her hand cannon with ease and experience was a fucking turn on.

I probably shouldn’t have had to fight not to get hard in front of a room full of pissed off men, one hysterical female, and a woman in danger of losing more blood than her tiny body possessed, but I did. It might make me sound like an epic asshole, but I can honestly admit, I couldn’t care less.

Alysia was fucking hot as she faced off against the man who tried to end her life. Her hands were steady, her movements controlled, and she looked every bit the badass ex-military specialist she was. And nothing turns a man on more than a woman that can handle herself and a gun.

Pride over her ability to handle herself morphed into gut-wrenching fear when her tiny frame collapsed onto the floor. My first thought was that Alysia was dead. Her pale, lifeless body had slumped to the filthy floor of the dressing room, and a massive amount of blood was pooling at her side.

It wasn’t until she lifted her head and asked someone to get her a fucking Band-Aid that I found myself able to take a breath. Until then I hadn’t realized I’d stopped, but the sweet burn of oxygen hitting my lungs as I inhaled was reminder enough that this woman had imprinted herself on my soul in a way no other had.

That was also when I knew I didn’t love Tilly. I only thought I did. I’d gone so long without having a connection with a woman that I’d taken what was an innocent offer of friendship and twisted it in my head into something else. Something I didn’t have a right to, and in the end realized I didn’t want to begin with.

The simple truth was; Tilly wasn’t mine and she never would be. She was meant for another man, a man who owned her heart, body, and soul. The scary part of my realization wasn’t that I’d fucked up in trying to pursue her, it was realizing I wanted what they had.

I came from a family who wanted nothing to do with me. Born by a mother incapable of love, and created by a father I would never know. I went from there to a group home, followed by so many foster homes I ended up losing count. Eventually, I was placed with a couple, who for lack of a better description, were seriously sick motherfuckers.