Tyrant (Satan’s Angels MC #1)

Chapter 1

Tyrant

“H ere we go! He’s red carpet ready, gents!”

Odin spots me first—not bad for a one-eyed man who donated one eyeball to a fight in LA, twenty some years ago. He winks at me with his lone eye and gives his big, meaty palms a hearty smack and the rest of the brothers gathered in the clubhouse take up after him, clapping and stamping boots as soon as I walk into the lounge. To get from our private rooms in the back, we pretty much have to pass through here. I could have skirted down the hall and gone out the back door, rounding through the compound to my borrowed cage that way, but that would have meant depriving my brothers of a much-needed laugh and I’d never be so cruel.

Crow, our club’s enforcer, gets up off the couch, shoving away Barbie, one of our women who was sitting perched in his lap. He walks over and appraises me, ignoring the pouting going on behind him. I’m somehow vastly more interesting than Barbie’s assets and she has plenty —blonde hair flowing all the way down her back, her big fake breasts pushed up in her tight pink clothing. She likes to dress to match her name.

“Black.” Crow has this strange way of talking in one syllable grunts that used to unnerve the hell out of all of us. The scars we could all deal with. It’s the eerie way he loves what he does, which is mostly stalking and gathering information right now because we’re living a time of peace, but if it was more, he’d enjoy it, gives off some chilling vibes.

“Thank the fucking stars you went with black, or you’d look like a penguin,” Bullet notes from one of the couches on the far end of the room. It’s evening, so that means it’s morning for most of the brothers, but not Bullet. He spends his days at Hart’s only gun range, proudly running the place. He holds up a can of beer in a salute.

Reckless, the club’s VP, is known for his wise and calm demeanor, but at the moment, a big grin carves its way into his cracked and weathered face. He joins the fray, walking over to give me a smack on my back that would send a smaller man flying. I’m not as thick around the middle as he is, but I have a few inches on him and an athletic build. “You’re a little late for your new job. The nine to five starts at nine, son.”

The rest of the guys laugh hard and there are a few more whistles. I roll my shoulders in the stiff suit, throw my head back and laugh. My father might be president of this club and it might run in our blood, but I don’t think I’m like him in the least. I’ve never heard him laugh full out about anything. If he was here in this room right now and not out on the road with a few of the other brothers, meeting with a potential new supplier up across the border in British Columbia, the guys wouldn’t cast so much as a wrong look in my suit clad direction.

I don’t mind the good-natured ribbing. It makes me feel like I’m part of something. I’ve always thought my dad had it wrong. Aloofness doesn’t make for a good leader but fuck if I’d be the one to ever tell him. He’d pound my ass into the ground. No son of his is going to disrespect him. He’s been prez of Satan’s Angels MC for as long as I’ve been alive, so he must be doing something right, even if we don’t all agree with his decisions. I’ll say one thing, the club is his lifeblood, his one and only god. Cut him and he’d bleed gray, the color of our bowed angel insignia, her wings spread wide over her kneeling form. He made sure I was named for that shade. Gray.

“Come over here and give us a kiss, princess,” Axe snorts at me. He’s a big, burly, older biker with a scraggly gray beard down to his heavy gut, and equally long hair to match.

“Looks like you’ve got as much as you can handle at the moment.” I indicate the three women sitting in his lap.

He laughs long and hard, which makes his huge belly bounce. “Always room for one more.”

That’s probably true. The night is young yet.

The club whores have never been for me. I refused to let my dad send a woman to me when I was fourteen, to teach me about becoming a man. No one refuses their prez, but he was just my dad back then as I hadn’t patched in and wasn’t even a prospect yet, so I got away with it. Not judging anyone here, I just prefer to enjoy women outside of the club. Privately. A few other guys are that way too, so I don’t catch much shit for it. I might not party as hard as the rest, but I’m every bit as serious about the MC as they are.

I spread my arms wide and stride to the middle of the room. The lounge is massive and so are all our private rooms here, compliments of the old warehouse that became our clubhouse. This place was all my dad’s doing and it’s been a second home to me for as long as I can remember.

The new clubhouse was just the first of many changes my dad made when he became President of Satan’s Angels MC. My grandfather didn’t believe in hard drugs and wouldn’t let the club have anything to do with them, and when he passed and my dad was voted in as president, he changed that too. He also started the long process of wiping out any and all competition to make Hart—our city in northern Washington state, an hour’s ride from Seattle— ours . There was never a full-scale war. One of the smartest things my grandfather did was to move to a place where no competition existed. Mostly, it was just smalltime thugs, gangsters, and dealers they took out.

I clear my throat roughly, setting levity aside. “It should be Raiden here tonight, wearing this tight fucking thing, stuffing himself into these polished sons of bitches that pass for shoes. He’d rock it like he really was going to walk the red carpet.” Murmurs echo around the room and I catch a few seething looks. “He wanted me to do this. For him, I’ll make myself as ridiculous as it takes. I’d be much more comfortable in my old jeans and bike boots, wearing my cut with pride, but that’s not what tonight is about.” A few more heads bow solemnly. People have this notion that bikers are animals and that might be true of some of us, but our family is sacred . No one fucks with our kids, our sisters our mothers and fathers, or our old ladies. “I want to be the man who takes my club brother’s little sister to her prom and makes sure she has the best night of her life. I want to get her home safe afterward, because Raiden’s not here to do it himself, and if it takes a suit and a fucking cage to make that a reality, then so be it.”

“A-fucking-men,” Bullet yells, stamping his feet in the corner. He’s an average man in height and build and doesn’t look overly fearsome. You’d never guess that he was in special ops, and he is extremely lethal.

Steel and Vigil are two of the club’s newest brothers, freshly patched in. They work at the range with Bullet and take most of their cues from him even though he has zero fatherly instincts. They raise their voices in assent and soon the rest of the club joins in.

I get at least eight beers and shots of stronger stuff passed my way, but I shake my head. I meant what I said about seeing this through.

Lark isn’t just Raiden’s little sister, she’s like one to me too, even if we’re not blood. After Raiden patched in, he wasn’t welcome at home. Lark did what she could to see him, but it split her in half, trying to obey her parents and maintain her relationship with her brother. We might be seven years older than her, but she and Raiden were always close. It made me detest Mabel and Henry. That feeling solidified into something much stronger and colder after Raiden went to prison.

The brothers usher me into the compound, where our bikes and cars are kept. I fucking hate driving a cage, but sometimes needs must, as they say. It’s guarded by a few prospects, but we really rely on the high level of security that Wizard installed. Every one of our businesses, warehouses, and storage spaces have pretty much the same. He has it wired all up so he can monitor everything all at once.

***

Everyone always jokes that I’m too sensitive to be a biker, too quiet and nice when it comes right down to it, but I’ve always taken that as a sign of respect and not grudgingly given either. No one doubts my blood or my toughness. I’ve more than proven myself over the years. Saving Wizard’s life in Seattle in a bar fight a few years ago when some fucker pulled a knife out of nowhere and taking that blade straight in my own shoulder, solidified just how far I’d go for any of them. I might be a little less rough around the edges thanks to the very place I’m heading and people I once considered like second parents, but that doesn’t mean I’m afraid to use my fists or that I’m incapable of extreme violence. I’ve just chosen when and where to unleash it.

I park down the sidewalk and stare at the yellow two-story house down the block where the Gardiners live. The street is quiet, lined with mature trees and manicured yards. It’s a solidly middle-class neighborhood without huge boats or fancy sports cars in the driveway. I grew up more than a few streets away, but close enough that Raiden and I attended the same school. We met in kindergarten, me about as rough and uncouth a brat as could be imagined, and him with his shiny new school clothes, his ordered belongings, his lunchbox packed lovingly with a matching thermos.

As different as we were and as much as I hated him because I was burning up with childish jealousy and longing for the things I didn’t have, we became instant friends. It turned out that as much as I envied Raiden’s shiny home life, he was enthralled with my own. All the rough around the edges club brothers, and the shiny chrome and black beasts they rode when they dropped me off at school the few times I didn’t have to walk. It was them who picked my ass up when I was sick or came to my games or parent fucking teacher interviews. It didn’t hurt that we were always seated together and paired up because our last names were so close alphabetically. In time, I was more than willing to share my life—mostly in secret so his parents didn’t know—and he was willing to share his family, not so in secret, with me.

This house used to be a second home, but now it’s full of the ghosts of good and bad memories.

I haven’t set foot in the Gardiner house since I was sixteen. They asked me not to, and I respected their wishes. It didn’t stop Raiden from prospecting with the club right at my side and patching in as a full brother when we turned eighteen. Mabel believed that I was a good kid who came from a bad situation up until the time I was old enough to get my bike license and it became clear I was destined to follow in my father’s footsteps. My sweet, innocent boyish youth gave way to an undeniable rough and rugged manhood. I went from boy to outlaw with almost no transition between. I was the one destined to end up in prison or on the wrong side of the turf.

Except, I’m still here and their son is the one doing time.

The son they like to pretend doesn’t exist because he brought shame on their good name. Hart is a strange kind of community that ebbs and swells with the tides of the season, sleepy on the side sprawling towards forest and lakes, quiet and suburban in the middle, and in the heart of it, a whole range of wealth and poverty mashed up and mingling with one another. It’s small enough a place that everyone knows everyone else’s business.

I adjust the tie that’s strangling me as I eat up the sidewalk and take the porch steps in one wide leap. Mabel opens the door for me, her face a tight mask. I expected bitterness and even outright derision and hatred. I’m the reason her son went astray. I’m the reason he’s not here right now to take his baby sister to her prom. It’s just me, and in this ridiculous rented getup from the tux to the shoes, I feel like a fraud.

She says nothing as I enter, which is a kindness in itself. The living room is eerily silent. It’s just Mabel, and neither of us know what to say.

The house is so much the same, even though it’s been almost ten years. Same floral couch and matching chairs, same photos of family on the walls, same immaculate beige carpet and the green throw rug in the center with the diamond pattern and flowers at the edges. Even the green floral curtains are the same at the large bay window. The only real difference is the TV. It’s larger and newer, mounted on the wall now and not a small thing in an entertainment stand.

Mabel looks older. I’ve seen her around over the years, but never really noticed how much she’d aged. Has it just been in the last year, since Raiden went to prison, that the gray in her hair has thickened and the lines around her eyes and mouth have set in deep?

“Gray.” She finally says my name, not an accusation or a hiss, just that one syllable in her soft voice. Dark, tired eyes sweep up to my face.

There’s a plea in them. Be good to my girl. Please. I can’t stand to lose another child.

My palms start to sweat, and my chest constricts. I don’t ask where Henry is. As a man, I couldn’t imagine abandoning my own son because he made different life choices. Him not being here in this room with me now saves me from having to rely solely on my self-control to keep from ripping into him.

I clear my throat roughly and shift from foot to foot. I miss my boots. Big, chunky, and heavy, at least they’ve been long broken in. These rented shoes are torture chambers. The suit feels itchy. The house is air conditioned, but even still, I can feel myself sweating underneath the stupid button up shirt and the noose of a tie.

“She’ll be down shortly.” Mabel blinks at me like she’s seeing a real ghost, looking back into the past at the boy I once was. A look of longing shadows her face.

I wouldn’t undo it all, but if I could, I’d go back a year. Prevent that run from ever happening.

“I’ll have her home by whatever time you’d like her to be home. I’ll keep her safe, I promise.”

Mabel shakes her head like my word means nothing. I can see how she’d think that. It doesn’t make me angry.

She leaves me and I hear her in the kitchen, probably getting refreshments. Even if she has every right to hate me, she’ll still offer lemonade and homemade cookies. A pang of pure nostalgia lodges in my chest. I glance over at the photos on the living room wall. They haven’t been updated since Lark and Raiden were just kids. Fifteen and eight. Raiden has a horrible haircut that I remember well. He thought getting a mullet was a great idea. Lark’s in a puffy dress with a big hairbow holding up auburn hair she started dying jet black when she was fourteen.

Soft footsteps echo above me. The house breaks off into stairs right by the front door. Raiden’s room used to be at the end of the hall. Is it still, or has it been cleaned out and used for storage or made into a guestroom? Lark’s was just down the hall. Across from hers was a small office. It used to have an old-fashioned desk with a home computer and a daybed in the corner, her parents’ wedding photos on the wall above it. Is it still unchanged?

My mouth is dry, and my chest feels like a thousand knives have been lodged into my vital organs.

Lark walks down the stairs like a queen. At first, I’m not even sure what I’m seeing. This goddess, radiant and beautiful steals my breath like a hammer to my lungs. It punches out of me and rattles up my throat. I’ve seen and known a lot of beautiful women, rough men and rumbling bikes are like catnip to them, but there has never been one as beautiful as this.

This can’t be my best friend’s baby sister. Seven years younger than me. Always a child, someone to be protected. Raiden and I knocked a lot of heads and threw a lot of punches, gave out more warnings than I can count, in an effort to make sure all of Hart knew Lark was off limits.

That’s exactly right, you fucking idiot. She’s as off limits as off limits can ever be to you.

I know that, but I’m still standing here like a fucking pervert, my jaw hammered down to the floor with silver nails, because I can’t believe that this is Lark. Out of the t-shirts and loose-fit jeans, in a form fitting black dress with the crystals and sparkles all over it. With the boning at her tiny waist, the sleek skirt with the high slit all the way up her long leg, she looks otherworldly. Like she’s aged ten years overnight in that way that a girl can transform herself into a woman.

She’s wearing some delicate perfume. It wraps around me like tendrils of smoke and goes right to my dick and this suit will do nothing to contain the problem the way my jeans would.

“Hey, Gray,” she whispers. That sensual voice doesn’t sound like her either and it sends a shiver right through me. I realize now that I forgot a corsage. She should have had one. Raiden mentioned it.

“Fuck,” I groan. “I don’t have a flower for you. I’m sorry.” I regret not getting a rose the same dusky deep red as the lipstick adorning her lips. They look petal soft and her dark, lined eyes with the impossibly long lashes and high cheekbones only set them off.

Yeah, I’m pretty much fucked.

“No worries.” She drops her voice. “We can make something out of mom’s flowers. I’ll snag some on the way out.” She pops a hair elastic off her wrist. “I’ll hold it together with this.”

I give her my signature smile to show how at ease and unaffected I am. What a load of bullshit. “You sure you don’t want to wear that with say… a pair of jeans underneath? A sweater overtop? A trench coat?”

She laughs and the sound is musical and silky. “This dress cost half a fortune. I want to show it off.”

I try very hard not to look straight down at her breasts. She’s a tiny thing, five four and about a foot shorter than I am. She’s willowy, never striking me as a woman before, but that dress. Fuck . It makes her breasts look bigger than they are. It’s cut so low that they’re pushed up and on display. Her waist is far smaller than I ever knew. The dress flows out over her hips, making her look like she has some. More than some.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“I’m going to get in at least twenty fights over you tonight.” I roll my eyes like I’m annoyed. I shake out my hand and make it into a fist. “You should apologize now for the state of my poor knuckles.”

She grins and shakes her head. “I’m excited to get to college. In Seattle, you and Ray won’t be able to make sure that every single boy in town is afraid to get anywhere near me.”

“I thought you didn’t know anything about that.”

She sticks her scarlet bottom lip out in a pout. “Seriously? It was so obvious. If I didn’t love you both so much, I’d hate you for wrecking my life.”

If I didn’t love you so much.

As a second older brother.

I want to apologize to her for all of this. For me. For the heat rushing through me and making me do something I haven’t done in all my life… blush. I feel like I’m the one who is standing here as a kid, not a man, hardened a lifetime over.

“I like your hair like that,” Lark whispers shyly. As in… combed and tied back. Her own is curled into an array of glossy black ringlets, threaded through with a crown of pearls. “And your beard. What do people say? You clean up well?”

The fancy words I would have had at the ready for any other woman are suddenly lodged in my throat. I finally get why so many of them are struck dumb in my presence. I promise myself right here and now I won’t ever laugh about it again. Not that I ever did it cruelly. I’ve never been cruel to a woman in my life. Even my dad, who is about as hardened and wild as they come, has always treated women like the queens they are. In our club, every woman from the club whores to the old ladies are respected. Maybe not in the way that the rest of the world would label respect, but we live different lives, and our women are a part of that, and they get it the way other people don’t.

I run my hand over the sandy beard I trimmed yesterday. It’s no longer a wild bush sprouting all over the place. I’ve been growing it since I was old enough to have my first porn stash. It felt all wrong standing over the sink, trimming it down to a respectable length.

“You look like you could go work in an office.” Lark laughs playfully. She steps forward and before I can prepare myself, she throws her arms around my neck.

Her small body with all her warmth crashes into me. The dress is thin, and I can feel the details of her clean through it. The sweet perfume tickles my nose. I hope to fucking god—and I’m doubtful of an existence of any higher power except the wind and the road, the sun and the rain, the laws that are made and made to broken—that she can’t feel my details at the same time.

Raiden would snap my cock clean off if he knew it ever got near his baby sister.

“Well? Should we go?” Lark asks, eyes so dark they’re nearly black, shining away in her angelic face.

“Your mom, uh…”

“She helped me get ready. She’s not going to come see us off. My dad’s out in the garage. He thinks that if he’s not here, this whole thing is different. They like to do that. Pretend things are different. I’ll never forgive them for turning their back on Ray.”

“You shouldn’t forgive me either. He should be here with you now, not me.” This whole thing is far more bitter than sweet. I’m only putting on a good face for Lark because that’s what Raiden wanted me to do. He refused to put any of his family’s names on the visitor list. He doesn’t want Lark anywhere near that place. All she can do is write and order books for him directly to the prison.

She screws up her face in the famous Lark pout. For someone so small, she’s feisty. It was always cute before, but seeing her now as a woman, it hits different. I can’t stop staring at her.

“I’m the reason your brother prospected at all. I’m the reason he had the money to buy a house as soon as he graduated so he could get out from under your parents. As soon as I got my bike license, he got his. He might have graduated and did his degree online, but he paid for it because he was with the club. Raiden’s smart. He’s a fucking genius. And I cocked it all up just by knowing him.”

She laughs like that’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard. She punches me hard in my upper arm. Hard enough that I feel the sting. “Jesus Christ, Tyrant. No one ever could tell Raiden a thing. You didn’t force him into anything. He didn’t do anything blindly. He knew the risks and he knew what it could cost him, and he still chose to patch in.”

I let out a long sigh. It unspools through me, unravelling me like a ball of yarn, tugging all the strings apart inside of me. I’m hurting. Lark is too. Tonight, we get to pretend like we’re not. This is her night. It’s not about anyone or anything else. I want it to be special for her.

“It’s Gray,” I rasp, firmly but gently. “Only ever Gray to you.”

She crosses her arms, which makes the front of her dress ride dangerously low. I barely resist the urge to shuck the stupid jacket I have on and wrap her in it twice over, so she’s fully covered. The thought of anyone looking at her breasts makes my blood boil and my fists itch. I have to make it through the night without smashing faces. It’s bad enough everyone knows who I am and what I do. Everyone in this place knows the club and knows I’m a one-percenter. Even those who don’t realize that we run Hart to the extent we do, will see the bowed stone angel with its wings spread wide as if I was wearing my vest.

“Okay, Gray. Let’s go. I’ve never been on the back of your bike.”

The sudden light that flares in her eyes makes my stomach lurch with alarm. She doesn’t understand. She’s not part of the life. Raiden and I have worked hard to keep her safe and innocent. She’s ridden with him, but never with me. It means something, to be on the back of a man’s bike. Something she can’t comprehend. Thinking about her back there, her body pressed against mine, arms locked onto me, physically hurts in all the wrong ways because I have never, ever once considered it. The horrible static of attraction booms through my veins. I can’t turn it off.

“I brought a car tonight.” And since it’s Gunner’s, I checked the trunk and backseat thoroughly for bodies and bloodstains.

Lark’s face falls. “But you hate cars.”

“The bike would have messed up your hair and it is far too perfect and lovely to mess up.”

There’s no flattery in it, even though I tried to pour it on thick. She’s not fooled, and she’s not distracted, but she does offer me her arm and give me a sassy smirk. “Let’s go then, my white knight for tonight. I have to say though, Gray, it doesn’t suit you at all. You’re much more fun as the devil everyone says that you are.”

“Devil’s spawn,” I correct tightly—my nickname in this stupid fucking place since I was just a kid. Grow up the son of the president of a notorious motorcycle club in a small city, and people are going to know who you are. That shit sticks. I soon learned how to wear it with pride instead of confusion and shame, which only irritated people more.

Something flashes in Lark’s eyes, something angry and protective, but she twists her arm to elbow me in the side playfully. “Well then, devil’s spawn… your chariot cage awaits us.”