Midnight Deceit: A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 3 Read online

  MIDNIGHT DECEIT

  A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance

  Part 3

  Olivia Thorne

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  Books By Olivia Thorne

  MIDNIGHT DESIRE

  A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 1

  MIDNIGHT LUST

  A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 2

  MIDNIGHT DECEIT

  A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 3

  ALL THAT HE WANTS Volume 1

  The Billionaire’s Seduction Parts 1-4

  Or you can buy the installments separately:

  All That He Wants Part 1 - free on Amazon

  All That He Desires Part 2

  All That He Demands Part 3

  All That He Requires Part 4

  ALL THAT HE LOVES Volume 2

  The Billionaire’s Seduction Parts 5-7

  ALL THAT *SHE* WANTS

  The Billionaire’s POV Part 1

  A Retelling of the story from Connor's POV

  ALL THAT *SHE* DESIRES

  The Billionaire’s POV Part 2

  ROCK ME HARD

  The Rock Star’s Seduction Part 1

  ROCK ALL NIGHT

  The Rock Star’s Seduction Part 2

  HARD AS ROCK

  The Rock Star’s Seduction Part 3

  PASSION AND PRIDE

  MIDNIGHT DECEIT

  A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance

  Part 3

  1

  10

  20

  30

  40

  1

  Jack

  Back when I first patched in to the Midnight Riders – back when we really were outlaw bikers – there was this one fucker who had it out for me. His nickname was Moose, and he embodied everything that the handle implies: tall, heavy, and utterly stupid.

  I was 21. I think he was a few years older, but he patched in right around the same time that I did. He was pissed because I got in within six months of meeting the brothers, while he’d been trying since he was 17.

  They let me in because they liked me. Respected me. Not to mention I made my bones. I did some gnarly shit I swore would go with me to my grave… things I still regret to this day.

  They basically let Moose in because, well, he was fuckin’ hanging around all the time – what else were they going to do? Plus he did all the shit work nobody else wanted to touch.

  I guess they felt sorry for him. Or they needed somebody on call to clean the toilets after all the strippers we brought to the Roadhouse got drunk and puked in the stalls.

  Anyway, Moose wanted to fight me. He tried to pick one every opportunity he got. Called me a pussy in front of the entire club.

  And every time I walked away.

  Why?

  Because I knew he wanted to kill me. I could see it in his eyes.

  Wanted to kill me, for no other reason than dumb animal hatred and jealousy.

  And I knew that, given half a chance, he would.

  Now, you got to remember, at 21 I was young, dumb, and full of cum – at least compared with how I am now. I’d been in dozens of fights by that point. Juvie as a teenager, bar fights, at least a dozen nasty street-fighting bouts. I got my ass handed to me a couple of times, but I prevailed in the rest. Sometimes handily, sometimes by the skin of my teeth, but I won a shit-ton more than I lost.

  Along the way, I sent a few guys to the hospital. I’m not necessarily proud of it now, but…

  Yeah I am.

  They deserved it. Each and every one of them.

  I was young, dumb, and full of cum.

  But I wasn’t stupid.

  Moose was in a different category altogether. I’d taken on big guys before, but Moose had 8 inches of height and over a hundred and fifty pounds on me. I was real good in a fight, but I didn’t know if I was that good.

  But I was fucking infuriated. Every time he called me a pussy in front of the brothers…

  And yet I just took it. And stewed. And fumed. And festered.

  The rest of the club had a good laugh at my predicament. My nickname became ‘Pussy Pollari’ for a few weeks.

  Club leadership said nothing, just stepped back and watched how I handled it. I went to the president at the time, a bad motherfucker named John Glynn (like the astronaut but spelled different). I told him Moose was trying to pick a fight.

  “So give him one,” John said, and walked away.

  “What if somebody dies?” I asked his backside.

  “Then I’d make sure it ain’t you,” he called over his shoulder.

  The casual disregard he treated me with… the disrespect he showed me… the total lack of giving a shit…

  That, coupled with the best advice I’d ever gotten – “If somebody dies, make sure it ain’t you” – changed the entire course of my life.

  At that moment I swore to myself, no matter what happened, I wasn’t backing down. Not ever again. Whether I got my nose busted, my jaw broken, or every bone in my body shattered – hell, even if I got planted six feet under – I wasn’t backing down.

  Ever.

  I was sick of living in fear.

  The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one.

  Yeah, didn’t think a roughneck like me would be quoting Shakespeare, did you?

  I’m not. It’s Hemingway. Paraphrasing Shakespeare.

  Kiss my ass. I can Google shit, too.

  Know that I say that with a wink and a smile.

  Anyway, Moose started in on me that very same night.

  “Hey, Pussy – Pussy Pollari – tell me somethin’: how’d a worthless little bitch like you get in this club?”

  While the other guys stood around laughing, I looked over in the corner.

  John Glynn was there, watching me.

  I gritted my teeth.

  Made my choice.

  “Okay. You want a fight? Go for it, shithead,” I said to Moose.

  The laughter stopped.

  Moose looked at me like the dumb animal he was. “What?”

  “Bring it, asshole,” I seethed.

  Moose just blinked. Then he tried to regain his footing. “You fuckin’ pussy – you think you’re fuckin’ tough, you’re just a – ”

  “I fucked your mother last night, Moose,” I interrupted. “Lot louder than you, and a whole lot more action, too.”

  That did it.

  It took about three seconds for the insult to fully register – Moose’s brain worked at the speed of rush-hour traffic – and then I watched it all happen in slow motion.

  His face crumpled into a raging snarl.

  His cheeks flushed sweaty red.

  He bellowed, just like his four-legged namesake.

  He hoisted up that big, meaty fist and cocked it way back in the air. Telegraphed it from a mile away. He took almost a full second to do it –

  Meanwhile, I launched myself in the air and headbutted his nose as hard as I could.

  An audible CRACK!

  A shower of blood.

  Moose stumbled backwards and touched his face, horrified. Looked down at his wet, red hand as though he couldn’t believe it.

  A split second later, I landed an uppercut to his jaw.

  Laid him out flat on the floor.

  I stood over him and screamed, �
��GET UP!”

  He just lay there, cowering.

  “GET THE FUCK UP!”

  He whimpered and got into a fetal position.

  I felt disgust – but not at him. At myself.

  I’d been afraid of this piece of shit? Somebody not even man enough to back up his words?

  Then I made a ‘mistake’ that wasn’t really a mistake; it was a calculated gamble.

  I turned my back on him and walked away.

  I heard him stumble to his feet, then run towards me.

  He was trying to tackle me from behind.

  Stupid idiot forgot about the mirrors on the wall opposite the pool table.

  I didn’t even have to judge by sound; I just watched till he got close, then sidestepped at the last minute and tripped him.

  He went down in a pile. When he tried to roll over, I straddled him and went to work.

  Some of the brothers were about to jump in and pull me off, but John Glynn stopped them with a wave of his hand.

  “Moose wanted a fight. He’s gettin’ it.”

  So they all just watched until Moose went limp and I finally had mercy.

  When I stood up and walked away, John Glynn looked me in the eye.

  And nodded, just once.

  With approval.

  With respect.

  Nobody called me Pussy Pollari after that.

  I heard ‘Psycho’ and ‘Nutjob’ behind my back a couple of times, but never ‘Pussy.’

  Funny, nobody in the club ever tried to fuck with me again.

  Moose went to the hospital. Broken nose, broken jaw, severely wounded ego. He never came back to the Midnight Riders. In fact, he totally disappeared from Richards. Nobody cared. I certainly didn’t.

  I don’t know for sure what happened to him, but I heard years later he picked another fight in a bar in Sacramento. This time, it really was with the wrong guy. Moose got shot in the head. They said he was dead before he hit the ground.

  Dumbass.

  Live and learn.

  Or don’t learn, and die.

  I learned a lot of lessons that night:

  Sometimes your enemy isn’t nearly as scary as you think he is.

  You can avoid a hundred future fights by winning one very decisively.

  Commit 100%. Once you decide to go all in, go all in.

  And never, ever back down.

  2

  The problem was, now I was back in a similar situation… but with an even worse opponent.

  Last night, Lou Shaw, my VP of the Midnight Riders, had directly flouted my authority in front of the entire club and murdered a member of a rival gang, the Santa Muertes.

  The gunman had probably come to the Seven Veils as part of an arranged hit. Why, I don’t know, and I can’t figure it out. But even if he wasn’t there looking to kill a specific person, the asshole had gunned down one of our youngest club members and then bolted.

  I was trying to save the gunman’s life when Lou took matters into his own hands.

  Why was I trying to save a worthless, murdering scumbag?

  Because we weren’t outlaws anymore.

  The Midnight Riders were legit – or at least 95% of the way there.

  We’d been on the right side of the law for the last three years, since I’d been elected president.

  And now Lou had thrown it all away… and spat in my face doing it.

  Metaphorically. If he’d spat in my face literally, I probably would have beat him to death with my bare hands.

  That is, unless the dozen club members surrounding us had pulled me off and torn me limb from limb.

  See, they had all been on Lou’s side. They all wanted the Santa Muerte dead. At the moment, they didn’t care about being legit or staying on the right side of the law. They wanted blood.

  Which I had denied them.

  Lou had given it to them in spades.

  So I violated the rule I learned when I was 21, and I backed down.

  I still don’t know if it was a mistake.

  What I did know was this:

  My opponent this time was much scarier than Moose. Not nearly as physically imposing, but a thousand times smarter.

  Far more powerful.

  And a hell of a lot more evil.

  I also knew this:

  I had invited a hundred future fights because I had walked away from one.

  Bad call on that one.

  Now I was going to face down the Devil and pick a fight.

  Time to commit 100%.

  Time to go all in.

  And never, ever back down again.

  3

  Of course, it didn’t work out that way at all.

  Before I left Fiona’s motel room, I sent Lou a text: We need to meet NOW.

  The bastard replied immediately.

  Seven Veils. Come see me.

  What the fuck?

  ‘Come see me.’

  Presumptuous prick.

  And smart, too, I’d give him that.

  The cops would be crawling all over the strip club, processing the crime scene where Benjy got shot.

  Lou was absolutely safe. Nothing I could do to touch him there.

  Meanwhile, a dozen of our guys were out in the desert disposing of a Santa Muerte corpse.

  The Devil may take a breather, but his minions are always busy.

  Years before, Moose had been playing checkers with one red chip.

  Lou was playing chess with a couple of queens, and he was a fucking master.

  I left Fiona’s telling myself to remember what game I was in, and to not bring a knife to a gunfight.

  4

  I thought about her the entire way there. Fiona.

  God, she was beautiful. Sexy, smart, tough, funny… the whole package.

  And she was worried about me.

  She cared for me, more than she probably wanted to let on.

  Me?

  I wanted nothing more than to turn the bike around and have my way with her for the next 24 hours.

  Forget the cops. Forget the corpse. Forget Benjy lying wounded in the hospital. Forget the brothers, forget Lou, forget the whole damn thing. Just revel in her body, her sultry smile and sassy eyes, and let the rest of the world go hang.

  But I’m a soldier.

  And I had a job to do.

  Still… when I thought of her breasts… of sliding inside her, wet and tight… of the way she cried out when she came…

  I’ll let you come inside me.

  FUCK.

  Why the hell was I leaving that, to go face down a world of problems?

  Oh yeah.

  ‘Cause heavy is the head that wears the fuckin’ crown.

  No, not Shakespeare – again. The Zac Brown Band, with Chris Cornell, paraphrasing Shakespeare.

  Google that shit.

  5

  I got to the Seven Veils and parked my ride. The lot was jammed with patrol cars, their lights turning the whole exterior of the building into a red-and-blue bad acid trip.

  I walked past the rank and file cops on the outside. Not one of them tried to stop me; every single one of them knew who I was.

  Most of them just averted their eyes.

  Once I got inside, I winced. With all the lights on and no music or titties, the Seven Veils was the most depressing, shabbiest place this side of Calcutta.

  There was the other Santa Muerte, still dead, still slumped against the nearest support post. Only difference now was he was outlined in white tape.

  At least he was going to get a proper burial. His friend out in the desert was going to be a feast for coyotes.

  Over the murmur of the crime techs and the whir and click of camera flashes going off, a familiar voice pierced the air.

  “Hey – Jack.”

  Shit.

  I turned around and saw the one face I didn’t want to see here tonight.

  Dan Peters, chief of police.

  Tall, thin, hatchet-faced motherfucker with iron-gray hair and the eyes of a jackal.
>
  Greedy. Always with a hand out, always on the take.

  Or he was before I became president of the Midnight Riders.

  I’m sure there were plenty of good cops in the Richards police department.

  But the fish rots from the head down, so to speak.

  He walked over and put out a hand. I clasped it and pumped it hard, like he was an old friend and not a fucking politician looking for a ‘donation.’

  “Dan… why the fuck did they drag you out of bed for this?”

  “Ahh, you know… some desk sergeant gets his panties in a wad, next thing you know I’m getting calls about ‘gang warfare’ between the Midnight Riders and the Santa Muertes.”

  He used the tone of his voice to put ‘gang warfare’ in air quotes, like he was laughing it off. No big deal.

  Translation: If you don’t want ‘gang warfare’ in the official police report tomorrow – and the papers – I better see some green, buddy boy.

  “There’s no gang warfare here, man,” I said.

  “Oh, I know, I know,” he clucked sympathetically.

  “This is just a simple case of some fuckin’ idiots trespassin’ in a field and not realizing it’s full of landmines.”

  “Idiots – plural.”

  He looked at me like we shared a little secret.

  I scowled. “Yeah, there were two. The other one shot Benjy.”

  “And took off right after.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What I heard was your men went off after him.”

  “Some of the brothers went off after him of their own volition. Not on my orders. I was here trying to save Benjy’s life.”