AX (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 10) Read online

  AX

  A Forsaken Riders Standalone MC Romance

  Book 10

  Samantha Leal

  Copyright ©2017 by Samantha Leal. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Introduction

  Thank you so much for purchasing my Novellete. All of my stories also contain bonus stories, so please take a look at the other stories I offer here. Don’t forget to sign up to my newsletter for updates and free books!

  The Forsaken Riders series is a collection of novelette length standalone Bad boy romances that fit together to tell the longer tale of the Forsaken Riders – and the woman they love - as they fight to dominate the town of Slate Springs. I have include the first 3 stories in the series here to add even greater value! Enjoy!

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  The Forsaken Riders are:

  King (Book 1)

  Lynx (Book 2)

  Steel (Book 3)

  Gunner (Book 4)

  Hawk (Book 5)

  Bull (Book 6)

  Stag (Book 7)

  Stick (Book 8)

  Decker (Book 9)

  Ax (Book 10)

  …you’ll have to wait and see!

  and please have a look at my other baby…I have included the first Book inside!

  The Lost Creek Shifters

  The Lost Creek Shifters series is a collection of novelette length standalone Bad boy romances that fit together to tell the longer story of the ancient tale of the bear and wolf shifters in a small mountain town. Enjoy!

  ARLO (Book 1)

  SCAR (Book 2)

  BLU (Book 3)

  BODHI (Book 4)

  …wait and see…!

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  Table of Contents

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  BONUS BOOK

  ARLO

  1.

  Jill opened the car door and slid onto the driver’s seat. The music from the club was thumping loudly through the night and she could feel it shaking the ground beneath her. This was usual for Tanners, and the atmosphere followed her as it did most nights when she came out for a break, but tonight, for some reason, felt different. She could feel it in her bones. Whatever was in the air, it was making her nervous.

  She closed the door and wound down the window slightly before she reached into her bag and pulled out the packet of cigarettes she had just found in the changing room. She hadn’t smoked in well over a year, but the tension in her shoulders was making her even more nervy, and the feeling deep inside her was driving her to distraction. She pushed the car’s cigarette lighter down into the center console and let it heat for a moment before she pulled it out and used the glowing red end to spark up. As she inhaled, she instantly regretted it and felt the thick, acrid smoke fill her lungs. She coughed and waved her hand in front of her face before she threw the rest of it outside and laughed as she shook her head.

  “Seemed like such a good idea at the time,” she said to herself, almost in disbelief.

  She didn’t know what she had been thinking. But recently, things hadn’t been right, and she felt as if she had been set back a year. And a year ago, Jill was a completely different girl. She was a hard drinking, hard smoking, hard partying fireball who would do anything for her next thrill. But since she had met Jack, the trucker who had burst into Slate Springs one night and become fixated on her, all of that had changed. Jack had calmed her down out of nowhere and given her something she had never experienced before. He had swept her up and made her feel like a princess. It was like a fairytale that she sometimes couldn’t even really believe she was a part of. And even when her friends told her it all seemed too good to be true, that there had to be a catch somewhere, Jill would shake her head and assure them, “He’s the real deal.”

  She could still hear herself saying those words, but the thought of them now made her cringe. Had she been love blind and naïve? Had Jack been everything he made himself out to be? Or was he just the same as any other guy she had ever met? A complete liar, cheat, and manipulator?

  She rubbed her forehead and closed her eyes.

  There was only one way she was going to be able to find out. She was going to have to go home and see for herself.

  Jack was on the road three weeks out of four, but when he had met Jill that night in Tanner’s, he’d told her right there and then that because of her he was going to make Slate Springs his home. He had been pushy about it in a way. And at first, Jill thought it was because he loved her. That he was doing it because he couldn’t bear to be without her, or to think of her on her own at night. So when she had provisionally let him move in with her it had been a novelty at first, but slowly, things had taken a strange turn. Jack’s prince charming exterior was beginning to fade with each passing day, and it wasn’t long before Jill was starting to feel trapped in her own home.

  Possessive and a control freak, Jack’s bad habits were mounting. And Jill’s profession didn’t exactly make him feel at ease. But he had known who she was when they had met. And it hadn’t bothered him then, so why should it bother him now?

  “He’s a cheater, he’s got to be,” Star, her friend and fellow dancer had told her. “Why else would he be so paranoid? It’s because he knows all the tricks, because he’s a pro player. Going from one town to the next, looking for the pretty girls… I mean, he met you in the bar, for fuck’s sake… What was he even doing there if he’s such a stand-up gent?”

  “Don’t,” Jill had bemoaned, but she could see Star’s point. He had been drinking in a strip club, watching Jill dance… had she just gotten swept up in a fantasy that he had created? What if he had been lying to her? What if he was just trying to lock her down, change her, and then ditch her when he got bored?

  Maybe it wasn’t a fairytale after all but some ridiculous nursery rhyme with a lesson to be learned… they were already halfway there with their names as it was.

  Jack and Jill…

  She cringed again thinking about it.

  “Maybe he’s just not who I thought he was,” she had said to Star, almost in a bid to convince herself. “People have so many layers, maybe I’m just getting down to his insecurities from a past relationship.”

  Star had rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  “I know a douchebag when I see one,” she confirmed. “You’re wearing rose-tinted glasses. The guy’s an asshole.”

  The conversation with Star had been brutal, but it had also been needed. It had played on Jill’s mind ever since, and now, as she sat outside Tanner’s in her car, leaving halfway through her shift, she knew one way or the other, she was about to get some answers.

  Jack had come back to town earlier that day and had been grouchy and full of rage. Jill had been expecting to have a romantic reunion, but he had pretty much just pushed her away and fallen asleep. When she had left for work, she noticed his eyes darting from one side of her face to the other, trying to avoid contact with her own and it had made her even more wary. What if he
hadn’t even been away working? Maybe he hadn’t been on the road at all but in another town with another woman. The thought made her head spin and her blood run cold. But since her talk with Star, she hadn’t been able to get the thought out of her mind.

  “You’re just going to head home early when he’s fast asleep,” she whispered as she coached herself. “Grab his cell phone off the bedside table, quickly scroll through and look for anything suspicious… then you’ll have put your mind at rest.”

  She breathed out and tapped her fingertips on the steering wheel. She wasn’t sure whether she believed a word she was telling herself, but she had to try.

  She put the keys in the ignition and put the car in reverse. She had never felt so eager to stay at work as she had in that moment, but she couldn’t keep avoiding the truth forever. Jack wasn’t expecting her home until almost dawn. It was only midnight and she was wide awake and ready for a confrontation if there needed to be one. From the days that Jill hadn’t been working nights, she knew his routine when he got back from a few weeks on the road. By 7 p.m., he was always sitting on the couch working his way through a six-pack of beer, watching whatever sport he could find. By 9 p.m., the beer would all be gone and he’d have moved on to bourbon. If he was still awake at 10 p.m., which he rarely ever was and would typically snore himself awake at around 10:30 p.m., he stagger his way through to the bedroom where he would pass out face down, still fully clothed, sweating and drooling onto the pillow. That was usually when Jill would stand in the doorway and smile, wondering how he even managed to stay awake that late after he had been driving for over twelve hours a day, for the best part of three weeks. And even though the man she had first met was slowly disappearing, she still cared for him. She still wanted him there to look after her in whatever way he could, and she would do her very best for him.

  But something still nagged at the back of her mind. She knew the minute Star had introduced the idea, something wasn’t right. And his behavior in the past month was only making Jill even more suspicious.

  She drove along the desert roads with the windows down and the radio on low. All she could think of was times past and of how easily she had let him into her life. Had she been naïve? Or was she just soaking up Star’s paranoias and putting them out into her own life?

  The turning for her street was just up ahead and she instinctively slowed as she approached the corner. She let the car creep slowly forward and as she turned onto the street, her eyes darted around, looking up at her house ahead. It looked like the majority of the lights were off, but something wasn’t right, that much was evident the second she lay eyes on the place.

  Jack’s truck was parked where it had been when Jill had left earlier in the afternoon, but parked across the bottom of the driveway, blocking him in, was another car. An old, dirty, rusted piece of shit. One that Jill didn’t recognize.

  She felt her heart begin to pound.

  “Who the hell is that?” she whispered.

  She stopped the car and turned off the engine over a hundred feet away from the house. She scanned each and every window and the sinking feeling she had had in her stomach all day was growing by the second.

  Even without seeing, she knew.

  As she stepped out of the car and walked slowly and silently toward her front door, she had to steel herself to stop from shaking. Tears were pricking the corners of her eyes and her heartbeat was so fast, all she could hear was the blood whooshing through her ears.

  From the inside, even without opening the door, she could hear the sound of laughing. Jack’s booming, throaty roar was echoing through the house, but complimenting it perfectly alongside was another laugh too.

  The laugh of a woman.

  Jill braced herself.

  It was ten minutes past midnight, and she wasn’t supposed to be home until after 5 a.m. Jack had another woman in her home. She had felt it in her gut before she had even stepped out of the car, and now she knew.

  She debated turning and walking away, but then she got a hold of herself.

  “This is you fucking house,” she said to herself sternly.

  And then, without wasting a moment more, she gripped the handle and pulled the door forcefully open.

  Jack’s face as Jill strode through the front door was one she would never forget.

  He was lying down on the couch, exactly where she had left him, and his lady friend was straddling his lap with a bottle of wine in her hand, drizzling it all over his hairy stomach.

  Jill and his eyes had locked the moment she had flipped on the lights, and the woman had screamed and covered her bare chest and she jumped to her feet.

  “What the fuck, Jill?” Jack had gasped as he struggled to get to his too. “What are you doing back so early?”

  Jill looked at them both, the rage inside her mounting, but the strength she had had instilled in her from a young age told her to stay calm.

  Don’t let him see you hurt or upset, she told herself. Don’t let either of them know how much this hurts.

  “Are you kidding me?” she asked with a snarl. “This is my fucking house, Jack! Now get out and take your whore with you, I never want to see you again!”

  She was determined not to cry, but her hands were shaking. The girl was drunk and looked as if she hadn’t bathed for a week. Jill certainly didn’t recognize her from around town, and all the pieces started to slot together. She must have been someone he picked up on the road. Maybe he had brought her back to town with him that day and told her to hang around on Main Street until the coast had been clear. Whatever the explanation, and whoever she was, it didn’t really matter. All Jill knew was she had indeed been fooled, and she wanted to take back charge of her life.

  “You can’t just throw me out!” Jack slurred. “I live here too.”

  “Not anymore you don’t,” Jill said sweetly as she marched through to the bedroom and began to pull his clothes out of the wardrobe.

  He had only been there for a matter of months, but his poison had managed to seep deep into the fabric of her home. And she couldn’t wait to eradicate it.

  “Stop it, you crazy bitch,” he spat as he tried to pull the bunched up piles of jeans and t-shirts out of her hands and she kicked open the front door and threw them out onto the street.

  “You have less than ten seconds to grab the rest of your shit,” she said.

  The girl stood by the doorway giggling and it was with irritation that Jack grabbed her by the shoulders and ushered her outside.

  “Pick it all up,” he barked at her as he pointed at his belongings on the ground.

  Around the neighborhood, lights started to flicker on in the other homes and Jill felt another little part of her pride die. She knew what they would all be thinking.

  Oh, there goes the exotic dancer kicking out her no good trucker boyfriend…

  The clichés were unbearable.

  “I knew something wasn’t right,” Jill said calmly as Jack turned to face her, his pleading eyes already welling with fake tears. “And I can’t believe I ever stuck up for you. You’re just a liar and a cheat, and I don’t need a man like you in my life. So don’t even bother trying to convince me otherwise.”

  His expression softened ever so slightly as he reached out for her hands.

  “Baby,” he purred. “I know it looks bad, but it’s honestly not what you think.”

  Jill couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Get out, Jack,” she said. “I never want to see you again.”

  His smile turned to a snarl and snatched his mothballed jacket out of her hands before he turned on his heel and marched toward the door.

  “I got what I wanted here anyway,” he spat as he turned and looked over his shoulder. “A place to stay for a while and an easy lay. That’s all a girl like you’s good for anyway.”

  The door slammed behind him and Jill stood there in shock as she listened to the sounds as him and his trashy new girl gathered up the rest of his things and started up the truck and
her battered old car.

  Jill waited until both of the vehicles had left the street and everything outside was deathly quiet. And then, with her hands still shaking, she turned off the lights, locked the door twice over, walked slowly into her darkened bedroom where she crawled into bed and finally, after holding it in for far too long, she let herself cry big heaving cries as she drifted off to sleep.

  2.

  Two Months Later

  Jill sat in the changing room draped in silk and lace. She had been preening herself for the past hour, and she had to admit she had never felt better. The outfit she had chosen for the busiest night of the week was sexy, classic, and so very, very demure. She often classed herself as a performer rather than just a dancer, and so every shift to her was like a piece of theatre. And tonight would be no different.

  Her dark hair was perfectly long and curled so that it tickled her waist, and she had given herself the biggest, reddest lips she could manage. She smiled at herself in the mirror, her face illuminated by the lightbulbs that lined the outside of it, and for the first time in a while, she really felt like herself again.

  Her confidence had been knocked, sure, but she wasn’t about to let it define her. She was better than a man like Jack. She’d known it the second she’d opened her front door and caught him screwing around with another woman in her own home. And she certainly knew it even more now.

  Since she had split with Jack, Jill had let herself be mopey and sad for all of one day. Then she had pulled herself up and done the only thing she knew would help her through the difficult time. She booked herself into her favorite salon on Main Street, she got her hair, nails and eyebrows done, and she made a pact to love herself no matter what. She didn’t need the love of a man to let the world know who she was, she was perfectly capable of doing that all on her own. She had looked at herself in the mirror when her beauty therapist was done with her, and a sparkling, gleaming version of herself smiled back. She was beautiful, and she knew she was worth more than what Jack had thrown at her, insults and all. Really, he was just pissed at what he had lost. Because he sure as hell was never going to find anyone as good as Jill ever again.