The Beginning—A Duet: Ryder & Two Worlds Colliding (4 page)

Before Ryder could react, the giant of a man stormed down on the lifeless body of his brother. He would probably snap Max in half with his bare hands.

Ryder couldn’t allow him to hurt his baby brother. Max was all he had left in the world.

He tripped Tiny. He simply stuck out his foot as the beast of a man stormed past him toward Max.

With a heavy thud Tiny landed on the floor, screaming bloody murder as he slid toward Ryder on his stomach and grabbed his ankles. Panic flooded Ryder’s body, his heart nearly jumping out of his chest. Their survival was at stake. Max’s and his.

Adrenaline pumped into his bloodstream, giving Ryder a burst of strength. He didn’t hesitate. Pulling the Swiss knife he had hidden in his pocket, he jabbed the giant man in the throat as he went tumbling down on top of him. Tiny’s eyes went wide and he made strange gurgling sounds.

Tiny wrapped both hands around his throat, but nothing stopped the blood from seeping through his thick fingers. Ryder watched as the giant’s eyes glazed over, and on exhaling a heavy breath, he went completely still.

Ryder had never seen so much blood, other than in movies. Marianne had always told the boys that it was just tomato sauce and that it wasn’t real. The blood pouring from the madman’s thick neck definitely didn’t look, or smell, anything like ketchup.

It was then Ryder knew: Marianne had lied about
everything
.

He already knew she’d lied about Santa, but he pretended he didn’t know any better, for Max’s sake. Now he’d discovered his mother had lied about ketchup being used in the movies. That could only mean one thing;
it meant she had to be lying about loving them.
Max and him.

That day was the last time he saw Max as a child. Ryder was taken to juvenile court and placed in a detention centre for criminal behavior. He’d killed a man, possibly his own father, with the pocket knife Marianne had given him two months back for his eleventh birthday.

Unintentionally, Ryder had stabbed Tiny in the jugular. The thick vein had protruded angrily—the small knife found it’s target with ease.

Ryder could have handled everything, even being called a coldblooded murderer, if only his mom had come back to help him.

But Marianne never came. It was as if she had wiped her hands off Ryder and Max.

And now he, Ryder Knox, had blood on his hands.

T
he life I lived in that center, I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Because I was the youngest, I was the target of every other boy. They called me their bitch and did things I didn’t even know boys could do to other boys with their dicks. I always thought that men only liked sticking it into women.

Boy, was I wrong.

My life became a living hell. With every passing day my hopes that Marianne would come and bail me out and take me away from the god awful place diminished. The light in my eyes dimmed along with my spirit. How could she not care what happened to me? How could she let me suffer at the hands of these boys? Why did my mom no longer love me?

I knew I had done wrong, but I also knew I didn’t deserve this life.

A year later and life in this hellhole hadn’t gotten any better. I found myself cornered in the shower by a group of three boys, their dicks hard, sneers on their pimply faces. With every grain of strength, I fought back, only to be sliced across my cheek and eyebrow by a switchblade knife. I fell to my knees, clutching my cheek—warm blood oozed through my fingers. Hot and sticky.

Blood poured down over and into my eye. Everything was red. Fear gripped my heart. My throat tightened and my head started spinning.

Today I’m going to die
.

The short fat kid with the pimply face grabbed my hair and pulled my head toward his groin, shoving his dick into my gasping mouth and forced me to suck it. He hit the side of my head with the back of his hand. My head burst with pain, stars floating across my vision. I closed my eyes and gagged.

My torture was far from over. As I nearly choked on thick warm liquid filling my mouth, the ring leader, Riccardo, angled his cock between my ass cheeks, trying to mount me from behind, screaming for me to hold still, or he’d cut my throat.

Cold hard steel pressed into my skin. My eyes squeezed shut. I tried to go away in my mind. To a better place. For God’s sake, it was my twelfth birthday.

Birthdays were supposed to be happy days. Another lie.
Fuck Marianne.

The door swung open and slammed against the wall. Somebody was listening and heard my anguished prayers. The gods had decided to smile on me after all. My salvation came in the form of Jessie ‘Razor’ Malone and his older brother, Cobra.

Both young men had just been re-admitted to the center and needed a piss. Followed by Razor, Cobra walked in on the confrontation. Fists flew, together with kicks to the groin and head, as the brothers beat the living shit out of all three assailants.

Razor was street wise and knew how to fight. Using razor blades inserted into his shoe’s toecaps was his not-so-secret weapon. He didn't have those shoes on that day, but his fists did more than enough damage.

Cobra was known for striking fast and unexpectedly. A martial arts expert, he could take a life with a swift turn of the neck. The pimply kid didn't stand a chance, his neck clicked once before he slid to the floor in a heap.

Their father was the President of a biker gang and both were here for a few weeks, for their ‘protection’, while the Scorpio Stinger MC compound was in lockdown.

The Malone boys were badass. I’d heard stories about them from when they’d been at the detention center before. Everyone spoke of them with fear lacing their voices, because apparently nobody ever won a fight against the brothers. If they were lucky enough to win the battle of the fists, they were found dead in their beds only a few days later.

The Scorpio Stinger Motorcycle Club would somehow find a way to even the score. They took care of their own. They went to great lengths to protect their brother’s lives, even willing to give up their own to do so. It was the kind of loyalty I could understand.

At first I hadn’t believed the stories. They sounded like urban legends. Until Razor and Cobra walked into that bathroom, on that particular Sunday afternoon, and beat my assaulters to a pulp, leaving one dead.

Cobra was seventeen and Razor sixteen, both just young enough to escape going to adult prison.

The brothers instantly adopted me. I pretty much owed them my life. My attackers were not only planning to rape me, they were part of a satanic gang and had plans to offer me up in a ritual later that day. Apparently because it was my birthday, I was the perfect offering. I was to be carved up, penis first, then one limb at a time, until I slowly bled to death.

The cut on my cheek needed nine stitches and the one above my eye, five. Glad to be alive, I didn’t even flinch when I saw the needle the nurse used to sew me up. I knew I would always have scars on my face. But I was fine with it, because it would always remind me of this day and how close I had come to death. It would remind me to live every day as if it were my last, never taking a single breath of air for granted.

Over the next few weeks, the Malone brothers helped me to become strong. They taught me how to exercise my body with simple moves, using my own body weight as resistance. They not only helped me strengthen my body, but also my mind.

That’s how I became Cobra’s wing man. Robin to his Batman.

I was VP to the Scorpio Stinger, a Motorcycle Club as deadly as our name.

W
as it sad that my sex life consisted mainly of playing with BOB after reading a steamy sexy novel, role playing that I was the heroine, being ravished by the hot alpha male? I didn’t think so.

BOB would never leave me
.

I shuddered when I thought of all those body fluids messing up my beautiful thousand-two-hundred thread Egyptian linens. BOB didn’t make a mess or turn around and fall asleep afterward. BOB was always ready to please me—all I needed to do, was to make sure that my trusty vibrator had fresh batteries.

BOB never let me down or tried to control me.

Oh yes, in fiction, I loved a hot domineering alpha male.

Just not in real life.

I didn’t like bossy or overbearing. Being dominated by a man didn’t gel with me.

Give me gentle and caring.

Apparently the kind of men I liked, were as easy to find as unicorns. Which was why cousin Lexi reminded me that I was going to die an old maid.

Not if Daddy had anything to do with it. Marcus Masterton was my father’s protégé and had just been made junior partner in his law firm. He was exactly the type of man my parents hoped I’d end up with. Well bred, Marcus was from a wealthy family with old money, and an up and coming young lawyer who would make full partner in the next ten years, if he kept wowing everyone with his brilliance.

Besides all of those credentials, Marcus was hot as hell. Whenever I dropped in to Daddy’s office, he always made a point of chatting to me. He could just as easily have been a model or an elite athlete with his tall, lithe body and thick dark eyelashes that framed dazzling blue eyes. His TV-commercial smile, displaying perfect pearly whites, made many a pantie damp in the offices of Summers, Walker and Hedgewick.

In fact, I’d heard via the grapevine that many of the secretaries did a trip to the photocopy room more often than they needed to, just to walk past his office and to steal a peak at the gorgeous man. It was a joke around the firm that Marcus had more cups of coffee or tea brought to his office than any of the other junior or senior partners had in decades.

So, needless to say, I was rather apprehensive when my father informed me that we were going to dinner on Friday evening, at the prestigious club most of the partners frequented, and that he had invited Marcus along as well. I was being set up with the office hunk by parents who were eager for grandchildren.

“Daddy, I would’ve preferred if Marcus invited me on a date himself, rather than being set up by my dad. He probably feels obligated to come because you’re the boss. I mean, how could he say no and it not be a career limiting move for him?”

My father laughed, shaking his head. “Nonsense honey, it’s just a matter of time before he asks you anyway. I’ve seen the way he looks at you when you come into my office. Somehow he always happens to be around my office at lunch times. Exactly when he knows you’re likely to pop in.”

Mom chimed in her two cents worth. “Yes, from what I’ve heard, the girls in the office are practically throwing themselves at him. Getting a jump start, before Marcus latches on to one of them, is a really good idea, Jade.”

I crossed my arms and rolled my eyes. “Oh. My. God. The two of you are treating me as if I’m a business deal, or some stock to be bought and sold. Are you sure you don’t want to ask Marcus if he wants to set a wedding date on Friday night?”

My mother looked up from her magazine, smiling. “Now there’s an idea. You know I like to be organized.”

The woman was probably damn serious. I laughed nervously. “Mom, you’re crazy. I hardly know the man and you’re trying to marry me off. Anyway, I’m way too young to be tied down now. I still have so much more of the world I want to see, before I settle down.”

“What do you mean, too young? At twenty two I was already married, with your brother on the way.”

I raised an eyebrow. “That’s because Dad couldn’t keep it in his pants, and you couldn’t just shack up without scandal in those days.”

“Jade!” My mother feigned shock, but I could see the good humor in her eyes. Her and my father were always telling stories of how they met and fell in love, and couldn’t wait to be together forever. It was so sweet and I loved hearing it. But it was also annoying, because they wanted the same for me. Sooner rather than later.

Jade Summers was definitely not an ‘insta-love’ kind of girl. I’d never felt those butterflies they professed to have felt the first time they laid eyes on one another. Love at first sight was something that the fictional characters in my novels did. It wasn’t for a smart, level headed woman like me. In fact, I’d hardly felt anything, let alone butterflies, when both Greg and Brandon had kissed me, or when we’d had sex. I really didn’t know what all the damn fuss was about.

“She has a point there,” Dad said as he wiggled his eyebrows and pulled Mom to his chest, kissing her warmly. After all these years my parents were still crazy for one another. I’d grown up with them smooching all the time, Dad grabbing a handful of her ass or breast whenever they thought I wasn’t looking. I always knew what they were up to, but I played along, a smile on my face that they so clearly adored one another, when many of my friend’s parents were splitting up. I could think of far worse things than watching them steal kisses and groping one another.

Of one thing I was sure though. The day I finally did fall in love, I wanted all-encompassing, all-consuming, and unconditional love. The kind where we couldn’t get enough of one another. The kind where we couldn’t wait to tear off one another’s clothes and ravish one another, over and over. Just like in my novels. Yes, that was definitely what I was waiting for.

I was aware that a perfect man was non-existent. So I wasn’t waiting for a perfect man.

I was just waiting for the man who was perfect for me.

So I didn’t mind being without a boyfriend until I found a guy that turned my insides to jelly. It would be worth the wait, and the mess on my sheets. Because once I started, with the man who was right for me, I knew I’d be insatiable. I was hoping like hell that Marcus Masterton would turn out to be that man.

“Sorry to break the news to you oldies. Times have changed. Most of my friends don’t consider getting married till their thirties. Besides, my career is way more important now. Men and babies can wait.”

My dad laughed. “See, we should’ve had more kids. Then maybe we could’ve had grandkids by now.” He winked at me over my mother’s head—I knew he was proud of my achievements and wouldn’t have it any other way.