The Devil's Due
Authors: Vivian Lux
Tags: #biker gang romance, #Motorcycle Club romance, #biker romance, #contemporary motorcycle club romance, #new adult urban contemporary romance, #biker mc romance thriller, #biker club romance suspense
by Vivian Lux
Copyright 2014
Velvetfire Press
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
This book contains adult themes, explicit language and sexual situations. It is intended for mature audiences.
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PROLOGUE
F
lint Springs is a hot, dusty, desperate little town, no bigger than a wide spot in the road. The one stoplight shuts off at night, its services unneeded. The springs after which my town was named have long since dried up, sucked up in a futile attempt by farmers to eke a living from the dry earth that surrounds us.
They’ve all left now, heading for greener pastures and easier lives. Flint Springs now only holds those of us who can’t get out: the poor; the simple; the eternally trapped.
About the only people who do get to leave Flint Springs these days are those who don’t live here in the first place. Once a year, our town is flooded with outsiders, with new life and new blood. I live for the once-yearly meet-up of the Devil’s Due motorcycle club.
Every year since I was very small, I would run out of my stepfather’s trailer to watch them roar up the lonely highway. A billowing dust cloud always preceded their convoy, but the howling of their bikes was what I wanted to hear. The rumbling engines pierced the suffocating silence of Flint Springs and gave me hope that something new and interesting might finally happen.
When the outlaw motorcycle club rolled in, the townspeople locked their doors for the first time since the last time they were here. The younger version of me would watch from the dirty windows of the trailer, thrilling at the noise, the incessant roar of the engines. Sometimes fights would break out, and I would see strong, burly men grappling with one another in the middle of the street. It was a sight that never failed to excite me, though I was never sure why.
Now that I’m old enough, I do know why. These men represent freedom. They get to leave. They get to head out onto the open road, into adventures beyond my wildest fantasies. So while the rest of the town hated when the Devils took over our town, I welcomed them. And this year, I planned on joining them.
I
first heard the roar of the engines in my dream. I moaned softly in my sleep as my reverie of the bikers drifted apart.
It had been the usual delicious fantasy. My arms were wrapped around a strong torso and the wind ripped at my hair as we hurtled headlong into the sunset. I screamed aloud in joy, and my unseen biker hit the throttle. The bike surged forward with a throaty roar, issuing delectable vibrations through my body.
The far-off rumbling wended its way into my unconscious and the fantasy drifted away. Instead, I dreamed of a coming tidal wave. When the wave was poised to crash over Flint Springs and drown us all, I woke up gasping.
The roar continued upon my waking and I realized it was real. It was really happening today. Turning to the wall calendar, I grinned widely, then winced at the pain in my cheek.
Darryl is usually more careful. People will see this.
Usually my stepfather took great pains not to leave visible marks. But he had been drunk as a skunk last night, and his usual caution went out the window. I had absorbed his bad temper with more grace than usual, and my patient endurance had only served to enrage him further.
He didn’t know it was going to be the last time he ever saw me.
My room was tiny, not much bigger than the bed, and the huge calendar dominated the wall. The bright red X’s I’d scrawled upon it had counted down the days to today. And now the rumbling noises confirmed it: today was the day the Devil’s Due MC rolled into town.
It was the day I had been waiting for since I had decided to leave Darryl’s tiny trailer and get the hell out of Flint Springs. And now that it was here, I had some work to do.
I stood up from my childhood bed and stretched, then winced again. I was nineteen, a grown woman with a body that was long and lean—too long to be crammed into a bed so small.
But Darryl wouldn’t let me get a larger one. “You’ll only use it for more whoring!” he had shouted at me when I dared broach the subject.
Darryl was obsessed with the idea that I was sleeping with every man in Flint Springs.
Only a few,
I thought archly, stretching to release the kink in my back.
I endured their clumsy embraces and fumbling fingers; anything to bring variety to my monotonous days. I seduced boys and men alike. Old or young, I didn’t care. I had inspected the ceilings of nearly every pickup in town.
But today, I had much bigger plans for my talents.
I padded barefoot over to my dresser and regarded myself in the mirror. The bruise on my cheekbone was an ugly, mottled purple ringed with sickening shades of green and puke-yellow. It looked horrible, and I needed to look my best.
Sighing deeply, I swirled my finger in a tube of concealer and dabbed at it gingerly. But when I tried to blend it in, hot tears sprang to my eyes.
Fucking asshole. He thinks he owns me.
Against my will, the anger began to rise inside of me, a bitter hate that always accompanied thoughts of my stepdad.
Darryl was useless. I could tell that from the moment my mother had married him nine years ago. When Mom found out he was beating me on a semi-regular basis, she took the easy way out and died of an aneurysm. From that moment on, I was Darryl’s property. He used me like a serving girl.
At ten years old, I was preparing all the meals, scrubbing the shit-stains out of his underwear, and on my hands and knees every night with a mop and bucket, making futile attempts to keep the filth of the grimy trailer at bay. Darryl rewarded my efforts by beating me soundly whenever my results didn’t meet with his approval.
Which was always.
But that’s enough of that, Lainey. Get yourself together.
I raised my chin and brushed the tears away. He was going to be a speck in my rearview mirror before today was over.
Dabbing carefully, I applied dark black eyeliner, ringing my clear blue eyes and coating my light blonde lashes in a thick lacquer of mascara. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to blend the concealer into my foundation, carefully trying to cover up the smatterings of freckles across my nose.
Some blush to contour my round cheeks and several layers of slick red lipstick completed my efforts on my face, and then I went to work on my hair. Teasing and backcombing brought out the volume in my fine, platinum blonde waves. I set it in a few hot rollers, and then blasted the whole thing with hairspray.
I blinked at the woman in the mirror. Then I smiled. She looked tough. And more importantly, she looked like the kind of woman that rode with the Devils. They were hard, tough, sexy women who would never take shit from white-trash stepdads.
That was who I wanted to be, not the pathetic victim I was now: the girl with no money and no skills; the girl who had just barely graduated high school; the girl who spent her days minding her stepfather’s dusty, failing store and her nights getting groped in Chevys.
The roar of the engines brought me out of my reverie. It was almost time.
I opened my bottom drawer to dig out the outfit I had picked out for the occasion. I had to keep it hidden from Darryl’s watchful eye.
I zipped up the tight leather bustier. The boning at the waist lifted my breasts high enough that I could forego wearing a bra. Bending over, I shimmed them even higher, making sure my deep cleavage was shown off to its upmost.
Zipping up the matching black miniskirt, I stepped back from the mirror and regarded myself.
I was no idiot. And I was no quivering virgin, either. Darryl had reason to accuse me of being a whore. I knew what women who rode with the Devils had to do. But I was ready to do whatever it took to ride out of here. And the first thing to do was make sure I looked the part.