CHAPTER ONE

Maisy Stuart stared at her father as he paced back and forth in his suite on the second floor of the Motley Kings Motorcycle Club’s clubhouse just outside of Flatline, Texas.

Her dad, Malice, had called her and asked her to come home from California so he could tell her something important. So far, all he’d done since she walked into his suite was pace.

Malice wore his club cut – the black leather vest with the Motley Kings’ patches all over it, including the most important one. The one that said, PRESIDENT.

“Dad?” She’d seen him upset before. Like the day he’d told her that her mother was ill and only had a few months to live. “What’s going on?” She tucked her long, wavy red hair behind her ear, a nervous habit, and leaned back on the black leather couch.

He continued to pace.

There was no rushing him. Her father did things in a logical, organized fashion. She looked behind him, where the floor-to-ceiling windows gave a view in two directions over the Motley Kings’ 19,000-acre cattle ranch.

To the west, the sun hung about an hour above the horizon. She yawned. She’d just flown in from California and had been picked up at the airport by one of the prospects in one of the many creepy, unmarked white vans belonging to the Kings.

She licked her lips, looking at the bottles lined up on the bar back that sat in front of one of the windows. In front of it, the bar counter had six stools. Maisy would like to be sitting in one right now, enjoying a gin and tonic.

No, she’d be gulping one down. Whatever her dad had to tell her, it was not good. She gasped. Oh, god. Was he…?

“Dad, are you sick?” Tears flooded her eyes. He was only fifty. But her mother had died at forty-eight, and she couldn’t handle losing both parents so young.

He stopped pacing, his tall, wiry, muscular body vibrating, his green eyes intense as he looked at her. Green eyes that were like looking in a mirror. “No, Maisy.” He let out a breath and ran his hand down his long, white beard. He did it twice.

“Please just tell me.” She held out her hand to him. “You’re scaring me.”

“Aw, Maze.” He walked to her and grabbed her hand, then sat next to her. “I just want you to know that what I’m about to tell you is something I wished I could have told you twenty years ago.

She frowned. Twenty years ago, she would have been three. What could a three-year-old need to understand… The thought that popped into her head was a crazy question, but strange things happened in motorcycle clubs. “Dad, are you not my real father?”

He snorted, then laughed. “God, Maisy. I’m your bio father, and your mother was your bio mother.” He pointed to his face. “I mean, look at our eyes, girl. And you’ve seen the pictures of my hair before it turned white.”

“Sorry, Dad. Of course, I’m your little squirt.” She snorted at the joke.

“Ah, Maze. Gross!” He pulled a face, then laughed.

She relaxed a little at his laughter. “Just blurt it out, Prez. Pretend you’re talking to one of your underlings.” The Motley Kings had over two dozen patched members. Plus a handful of prospects who were looking to earn their way into the club.”

He sighed. “Okay, I’m going to say this all at once, then you can ask questions.”

“Ready.” She turned to face him, tucking one of her ankles up under her opposite leg. She wore riding boots, jeans, and a denim jacket over a stretchy tank top. She’d changed into them when she arrived at the ranch an hour early and was notified that her father was in a meeting. Like he usually was. So she’d changed and gone out to the horse barn to say hello to the club’s filly, Sorority.

“Fuck.” Malice shook his head. “You have an aunt. And a cousin.”

Maisy blinked a few times. “For real?” The room spun a little bit. She’d always thought it was just their little family…and now just the two of them.

“Yeah.” He ran his hand over his short, white hair. “The story is, your mom was a twin. Her mom, your grandmother, got pregnant with twins with Dancer.”

“Dancer?” She’d heard the stories of the legendary biker, saw his photos on the walls in the main room downstairs. Maisy did a quick calculation. “So, Dancer is…was my grandfather?”

“Yes.”

“But he just died a few months ago.”

“Right.” Her dad took a few deep breaths. “I promised him I wouldn’t tell your mother or you this until after he died.”

Maisy stood. She tottered a little, her head filling with questions, pictures, more questions. She walked to the bar back and grabbed a tall glass. Turning to face him, she set it down on the bar. “You said I have an aunt and cousin.”

“As an infant, your mother’s twin went with Dancer to California.” He held up a hand. “It was all amicable; Dancer and your grandma decided to split up the girls. Permanently.”

Maisy had to hang onto the edge of the bar. “That seems so…barbaric!”

Malice raised his shoulders then let them drop. He got up and walked to the bar, then sat in one of the chairs. “Pour one for me, too.”

She grabbed a lowball glass for her dad, took a big, round ice cube from the freezer and set it in the glass, and poured a healthy dose of bourbon for him.

He took a sip.

In hers, she just poured gin. About an inch. And she gulped it down.

“Maisy. Easy.”

“Dad….” She coughed a few times as the alcohol burned her throat. “Don’t even.”

He rolled his eyes. “Just let me finish, then you can go to your room with a bottle if you need to.”

“Sure. Go ahead.” She waited for the liquor to give her a buzz, to take away the burn of the lies and deceptions that her father and grandmother chose to bullshit Maisy with. And her mom. Her mom never knew she had a sister…and a father.

He turned his glass a few times, the ice ball clinking on the crystal. “I told you about the Kings’ rescue of Dancer.”

“Yes.” He’d given her the story over the phone, then asked her to come home. ASAP. Which, coming from her father, she’d interpreted as a command.

“Your cousin was the person who came to us requesting we liberate Dancer and bring him back here.”

“Male or female?”

He frowned at her. “What? Oh, your cousin. Is a woman. I will give you all the details, but let me finish the basics first.”

“Sure.” She poured more gin into her glass.

He raised a brow at her.

Maisy added ice and tonic. “There. Happy?” She sipped.

“Ecstatic.” He sighed. “Sorry. I’m still not used to you being of drinking age.”

“Dad.” She just wanted to know what was happening.

“Alright. Your cousin came to us with the request, we rescued Dancer, then she called her parents, who came here. They all saw Dancer before he died.”

“But I wasn’t allowed to?” She squeezed a slice of lime into her drink.

“I made a promise to Dancer that I wouldn’t tell his daughters or granddaughters about their being twins until after he died. And I live up to my promises.”

Maisy closed her eyes. She’d heard that bullshit from him all her life. She opened her eyes and glared at him. “To recap, you’ve known about my aunt and cousin for, what, twenty-four years?”

“Twenty-six. When your mother and I first got together.” He looked sad like he did every time he thought of her mom.

She gulped half her drink. “All those years, Dad. You didn’t think Mom deserved to know she had a sister? That she had a twin sister?” The last words came out a little loud. “Or that Mom’s twin and her family deserved to know about us?” She couldn’t stop the words from blasting out of her mouth.

His poker face fell into place. “It wasn’t my secret to tell, Maisy.”

“Right.” She carried her drink to the window and finished it. “Because your promise to Dancer was all that was important to you.” Maisy spun and looked at him. “What if Mom and her sister had been men? Then would you have told them? If the twins weren’t just useless, good-only-for-sex women?”

He stood, his eyes flashing. “That’s enough. You know better than to talk like that. You are my—”

“But it’s true, isn’t it?” She shrugged. “Men are soooo much more valuable in your MC culture than mere bitches like me and—”

“That’s it.” He stormed across the room and took the empty glass out of her hand and set it down. “You’re going to say something that we’ll both regret.”

“I regret….” She fisted her hands. “Coming back here again. To this fortress….” She swung her arm wildly. “To this shrine of male domination. But I promise you won’t have to worry about me saying stupid things anymore.”

“And you know what?” She made fists and set them on her hips. “I can fix this mess you made of my life by reconnecting with my aunt and cousin.” She stared into his eyes. “But it’s too late for Mom. So this….” She flipped him off. The most dangerous man in Texas. “Is for keeping it from her all those years.” And then she walked past him toward the door.

“If you walk out that door, Maisy….” His voice rolled low and extremely frightening.

A shiver chased up her spine as she opened the door.

“Maisy. Hear me out, please. Do not….”

She walked out the door. She looked right, the direction of the guest suite where her suitcases were. Then looked left, where the wide, carpeted stairway led down to the club’s main room. She turned left.

Grabbing the railing, she stomped down three steps before she heard her dad’s heavy footsteps on the landing behind her.

“Maisy. Turn around and come back up here. This is something we need to talk about.” He sounded like the devil on a bad day in hell.

Continuing down the stairs, she lifted her arm and flipped him off over her shoulder.

Just as Vapor, one of the officers of the Motley Kings, appeared at the bottom of the stairway and walked up a step. His curly dirty-blond hair was longer now, reaching past his shoulders. His brown beard and mustache looked fuller.

Vapor looked up. “Hey, Maisy.” His intense blue eyes locked with her green ones. “I heard you were back. I was just comin’ up to say hi.”

They’d been friends since he came to the Kings three years ago as a prospect. The two of them had talked about everything in the world when she’d come back to visit her parents, then after her mother died, to visit her dad.

Vapor was the club’s Sergeant at Arms, one of her father’s right-hand men. And she was about to ask him to risk his status with the Kings.

“Vapor, take me for a ride on your bike.” She walked down three more steps.

His brows lifted.

She’d never asked him, or any other King, for a ride. But that was before. Now, things were different. Ugly. And she needed to get away from it. Away from her dad.

Vapor looked past her up to where her father must be standing.

Maisy shook her head. Vapor would never go against the Prez. No one defied the mighty…no, almighty Malice.

“Yeah.” Her father’s voice echoed in the stairwell. “Go ahead and take her, Vapor.” Malice’s footsteps grew quieter as he retreated.

Vapor stared at her. “You ready now?”

She nodded. “You got a pair of glasses I can wear?” Her knees shook as she took the next step down, and she grabbed tight onto the railing. For three years, she’d had a quiet crush on this man. Now she’d be riding behind him, holding tight to him. Something she’d dreamed of.

But would this be a bad time to tell him how she felt? With everything going on with her father?

He frowned and stared up behind her toward her father’s suite, then shrugged. “Got glasses and a helmet. He waited until she reached the step he was on. “Where d’you want to go?”

“Vapor, just…please just get me away from here.”

****

Vapor watched Maisy’s face. She and her father, Malice, must have had a bad dustup if he was lettin’ his baby girl go off with a biker. Prez had made it clear years ago that she was off-limits to the Kings and to any other bikers. “You okay, Maisy?”

She sucked in a deep breath, and he tried not to notice how her nice breasts filled out her tank top beneath her jacket. “I got some bad news. Dad—”

“He sick?” He frowned.

“No. Just sick in the head.” She shrugged. “Do you mind taking me out for a little while? Just so I can clear my head.” Her long, wavy red hair would need a band, too, to keep it from knotting up in the wind.

He looked into her pretty green eyes. He could see the pain in them, hear the unhappiness in her voice. “Yeah, sure. She’s all gassed up and ready to go.” He held out his hand, then dropped it. Kings didn’t just take the hand of the Prez’s daughter.

But fuck, in about three minutes, she’d be spreading her legs and shoving her warm thighs and sweet lady parts against his ass. The visual caused a rise in his jeans. He turned. “Let’s go for a ride.” He led the way.

Her booted footsteps followed him through the main room toward the front door.

Every eye in the place was on them. Brothers and sweetbutts followed their progress through the room. In the corner where the televisions and couches were, one of his brothers sat with a naked sweetbutt on his lap, facing him, riding his cock hard and fast.

Vapor turned to look at Maisy.

She glanced at the couple, then looked at him and shook her head. Thanks to her father’s membership in different MCs for decades, Maisy had seen it all in her short life.

He opened the door and held it for her. Hell, they were the same age, Maisy and him, and he’d seen more than he’d ever thought possible in his years with the Kings.

His bike sat right next to Malice’s in the motorcycle parking spaces under the open-sided metal roof that protected their choppers from the sun and rain.

“Oh, she’s so shiny.” She walked around his bike. “How is The Bitch running?” She smiled.

Vapor laughed. “Sounds strange when you call her that. But she’s still kickin’ ass and takin’ names like the best of ‘em.”

A few times in the past years, Maisy had stood and talked to him when he was washing and waxing The Bitch. His big, American-made, all-black bike.

Vapor looked at Maisy, his heart thudding at her smile. He’d held a special place in his heart for her, but the time had never been right for the two of them.

“New handlebars?”

He’d swapped out his old ones for mid-height black ape hangers. “Yeah. Wizard suggested ‘em. My back was getting’ sore on long rides. Turns out they help.”

“New pipes, too.” She squatted down near the rear tire. “I’ve never seen black fishtail pipes before. They’re pretty.”

He shrugged. “She looked odd with the chrome ones. Now, she’s a happy…bitch.”

Maisy stood. “Oh, Vapor.” She took a long inhale. “I’ve missed you.” Her brows dropped.

He’d known her for the three years he’d been with the Kings but only saw her when she came back to Texas for holidays and vacations. And she hadn’t been back in seven months.

He watched her face for a few seconds, then walked to the left side of the bike and opened the saddlebag. He handed her a pair of clear glasses and a helmet. “You know, whatever’s got you riled up, maybe talking it out with him….” He put on his helmet.

She frowned. “I will. But this isn’t anything simple, and I’d like to clear my head before I go back into the dungeon of Malice.”

He laughed. “You’d best not let Prez hear you call it that.”

She shrugged. “I just flipped him off. Twice.” Her eyes went wide. “Can’t get much worse than that.”

He put his hand over his heart. “God bless it, girl. You’re a brave one.” Lucky she was a girl. If Malice had a son who behaved like her, the kid would have been in for a smackdown.

Maisy slid on the glasses and helmet, then pulled her long hair into a band at the back of her neck, turning to look at the clubhouse.

Was she thinking about going back inside? Then she walked to the left side of his bike.

He mounted The Bitch, leaving it resting on the kickstand.

She flipped down the left passenger peg, grabbed the left handlebar, then stepped over the passenger seat and settled. Maisy used her foot to lower the right passenger peg. She knew her way around a bike from hours riding behind her dad. Or…had she been riding behind some asshole while she’d been in California?

He shook his head. He didn’t have the right to ask her that. But he wished he did.

She wrapped her arms around him and slid tight against him.

The heat of her body, especially low down where she snugged up against his ass and thighs…fuck. Vapor. Don’t fuckin’ think of her pussy and thighs… “Damn it.” He was thinking of her pussy and thighs.

“Something wrong?” Her sweet voice in his ear and her spicy-sweet scent teasing him.

“Nope. Let’s roll.” He started his bike and tipped her up straight, then booted the kickstand up. He shifted, and the bike rolled forward.

At the gate, two prospects, Phobia, the white-haired guy who’d been a street racer, and Yankee, with his thick brown hair and shaggy beard, stared at them. Well, stared at Maisy as the gate rattled open.

Vapor frowned at them until they turned away. He rode through the open gate and down the dirt path that hid the compound from the highway.

Maisy laughed. “I’ve never seen two Kings as shocked as those two were.”

He nodded. “Those two Kings have never seen you leave the compound with anyone but your father.”

“True.”

They reached the highway, he eased them out onto the pavement, and gave the bike some gas.

She held onto him tighter. “Let’s go somewhere that you can open her up.”

He wanted nothing more than to crank the throttle, but… He turned his head. “If you promise not to tell the Prez.”

Maisy laughed. “Promise. He’s probably going to give me the freeze-out when I get back, anyway.”

He headed east. He knew a high spot where they could stop and look out over the land. “Prez doesn’t seem like the type to hold back when he’s got something to say.”

She pressed her cheek to his neck.

Warmth flooded through him, centering low in his groin.

“Dad…Prez has learned to hold back when it’s his family. That way, he doesn’t permanently offend his blood relatives.”

Vapor laughed. “He’s a diplomat, that’s for sure.”

They rode east, and he pushed the speed limit. And a few times, gunned it on curves.

She laughed and held tighter when he did.

He settled back, liking the feel of her pressed against him. The sun was warm, the air brushing his skin was dry. Life was good.

He turned off onto a side road, followed it around and up a moderate slope. He’d been here a few times on his way to his property. In the eight miles they’d just ridden, there had been no other traffic. It was how he liked it. Isolated.

Vapor pulled up at the turnaround at the end of the road.

Maisy gasped. “This is beautiful.”

To the north, the view of the land was awesome. He turned off the motor, set the kickstand, and helped her off. He got off and stood beside her.

Half the land, the west side, was desert. To the right, trees grew, green foliage became thicker the further east they looked.

Vapor took her arm and helped her over the large rocks and scrub brush.

She smiled at him. “You’re a heck of a gentleman for being such a badass biker.” Maisy stopped and turned, looking at him. “Vapor, I….” She took a breath. Then her gaze jerked back toward his bike. “Oh, no!”