Their eyes collided, and what Preacher saw in her face gutted him. He’d already guessed there was pain in her past, but he hadn’t speculated the extent of it. Looking at her now, he knew someone had hurt this girl badly. And he didn’t know what to feel first—pity or rage.
“Wheels,” he started to say and then stopped. He didn’t have a clue what to say; he just felt like he needed to say something, anything at all, to try and close that raw, gaping wound he saw in her expression.
A sudden crash caused Debbie to jump, and Preacher spun in a circle, seeking the source of the noise. There was a splintering crack, and Preacher watched as the entire face of a trailer bowed outward and then shuddered, rippling. Then a muffled shout, and the unmistakable thump of a fist hitting something solid—wood or bone—and then the trailer door flew open, the wall of metal quaking around it, and a body came flying through the opening. A man wearing a blood-soaked T-shirt and boxer shorts hit the ground on his back with an audible thump.
A young woman appeared in the doorway, blonde and beautiful, with legs for days and big, bouncy tits, the kind a man could bury his face in and fall asleep happy. Wearing only a bra and a pair of underwear half torn off her, she fled down the steps and dropped to her knees beside the man. “Oh my God!” she cried, horror-stricken. “Are you okay?”
“Get the fuck off me, Christine,” the man hissed, shoving her away.
“It wasn’t my fault!” Wrapping her arms around her middle, she rocked backward. Tears streamed down her cheeks, black rivulets of smeared eye makeup. “I was sleepin’! He attacked me!”
“You motherfuckin’ stupid fuck.”
Preacher jerked. He knew that voice—that unmistakable Midwestern snarl.
Robert “Reaper” West, president of the Hell’s Horsemen Motorcycle Club, stepped out of the shadows of the trailer and into the growing daylight. With arms the size of tree trunks folded across an impressively built chest, and wearing a scowl forged in the bowels of hell, one couldn’t help but get the impression that “Reaper” wasn’t just a nickname.
Preacher instinctively grabbed Debbie’s arm and shoved her behind him. Doing a mental sweep of himself, he quickly pinpointed the blade in his boot.
Hailing from Miles City, Montana, the Hell’s Horsemen Motorcycle Club had been making quite a name for itself lately. It wasn’t a new club by any means, but it was less well-known than the Silver Demons. And their president was suddenly, desperately trying to change all that. Within the last five years, the Hell’s Horsemen had gone from making friends and forging alliances to acting like petty thieves and street thugs.
It had started out small—stealing business associates out from under the noses of other clubs and breaking the faces of anyone who tried to talk some sense into them. It hadn’t made any sense at first, and they had been more or less dismissed as a bunch of country-bumpkin bastards with a collective Napoleon complex.
But then they’d begun to grow. Hell’s Horsemen chapters had begun popping up all over the country, and as the club had tripled in size, so had Reaper’s ego. They’d continued with their overbearing tactics, ostracizing themselves and making powerful enemies. It was now to the point where the mere mention of their name created a sense of unease among other clubs, and when people became apprehensive or afraid, especially when said people didn’t work under the guidelines of a strict moral code, things tended to get messy. Or bloody.
The young man on the ground pushed himself upright. On his feet, his fists clenched, he straightened to his full height. Preacher blinked. Holy shit.
By Preacher’s estimation, Cole West was still a teenager, although he hardly looked like one. He’d doubled in size since Preacher had last seen him, grown into a beast of a man, and was nearly as big as Reaper now. But not even Cole’s size had stopped Reaper from giving his oldest son two black eyes and a bloody nose.
“Boy, you are as dumb as shit,” Reaper snarled. “Fact, you’re even dumber than shit. How many times do I gotta tell you, you don’t stick your nose where it don’t fuckin’ belong?”
Cole, his jaw locked and ticking furiously, his legs spread apart, his fists so tightly clenched that his knuckles had turned white, took a menacing step forward. “Fuck you, old man,” he gritted out.
Reaper smiled—a vicious showing of teeth. Arms raised, he tauntingly gestured his son forward.
Yep. Time to go. This was an explosion waiting to happen, and Preacher had no interest in witnessing it.
Still holding tightly to Debbie’s arm, he slid his hand into hers, interlocking their fingers. They’d taken only a single backward step when Reaper’s head whipped in their direction, his ice-blue stare catching sight of them.
“Well, well, well, what’s this?” Reaper’s gaze narrowed, then widened with cruel delight. “Preacher Fuckin’ Fox, that you, boy? I’d heard you gone and gotten yourself locked up.”
Preacher cursed under his breath. The next person to call him “boy” was going get spoon-fed his balls.
“Free as a bird, as you can see,” Preacher drawled lazily, though he felt anything but lazy—or free, for that matter.
Reaper let out a laugh that was more of a sneer. “Prison finally make a man of you?”
Preacher shrugged. “Depends on your definition of a man.”
If by man Reaper was referring to someone like himself, a madman who apparently ruled his kids like he did his club—with an iron fist—then no, Preacher wasn’t that kind of man. And God willing, he never would be.
Reaper raised a menacing brow. “That so? Maybe you shoulda stayed locked up. Then that pussy-footin’ daddy of yours wouldn’t have to worry ‘bout you fuckin’ everything up. How much did that fuck-up of yours cost the club? I’m bettin’ it was more than you’re worth.”
Preacher’s heart rate picked up. “What are you tryin’ to say?”
Reaper shrugged his massive shoulders. “Nothin’. Just that maybe you were safer behind bars.”
Releasing Debbie, Preacher took a step forward. Reaper’s insinuation wasn’t lost on him—that was a threat if he’d ever heard one. And Preacher didn’t back down from threats. If he’d learned anything at all during his twenty-four years on Earth, it was that men like Reaper didn’t respect you for being the bigger man and walking away. Respect from men like him was hard earned, usually only after you beat it into them.
“Preacher!” Debbie hissed, grabbing his arm. “Don’t!”
Shaking her off, Preacher growled at Reaper. “What the fuck are you really tryin’ to say?”
Reaper grinned—one hell of a sadistic smile meant to egg Preacher on. And it worked. Preacher took another step forward, thinking only about how satisfying it would be to wipe that grin off Reaper’s face. With his fists.
Instead, he found himself face to face with Cole.
“Walk the fuck away, Preacher,” Cole ground out hoarsely between clenched, bloodied teeth. He lowered his voice. “He’s mine.”
Staring into the teenager’s light blue eye, the one that wasn’t swollen shut—an eye alight with so much anger, anger that needed an outlet—gave Preacher pause.
This wasn’t his fight and it was none of his business.
Behind Cole, Reaper began to laugh, a deep, bloodthirsty rumble that would have sent lesser men running for the hills.
Cole’s nostrils flared wide in response, his fists clenched tighter, and the muscles in his arms twitched, bunching restlessly. He was primed and ready to fight, and Preacher knew it was only a matter of minutes before father and son went at it again.
“Give him hell,” Preacher said, dipping his chin and taking a step back. Finding Debbie where he’d left her—the stupid girl didn’t seem to know when to run—he snatched up her arm and strode quickly toward the dirt pathway that would lead them back to their campsite.
• • •
Holy crap.
Debbie glanced at where her arm was being squeezed uncomfortably inside Preacher’s unforgiving grip, then up at his face, her gaze tracing the hard edge of his jaw all the way up to the tightness around his eyes. He was tense, practically vibrating with unspent energy and aggression.