Ridden, p.1
Ridden, page 1
part #1 of Claimed by Outlaws Series
RIDDEN
Claimed by Outlaws
R. B. Fields
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
SMITTEN
FREE STORY
BORN OF DARKNESS
3 FOR DINNER
PRETTY AS A PICTURE
About the Author
Copyright 2020
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Opinions expressed are those of the characters and do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
* * *
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, scanned, or transmitted or distributed in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise without written consent of the author. All rights reserved.
* * *
Distributed by Pygmalion Publishing, LLC
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ISBN (electronic): 978-1-947748-73-6
Chapter 1
The Seeker
I squint through the haze of the trees. The field between the two of us is wide, and ever more vast emotionally than physically—I feel that bit internally, a vacant space residing deep in my lungs. A stump sticks from the middle of the lawn like a sore thumb, the top gleaming as if oiled.
I cannot believe she came here.
The little farmhouse is more like a glorified cottage, a single story done up in beige bricks. There’s a barn out back for their bikes, but I can’t fathom storing my motorcycle in such a building. My old girl deserves four walls of brick and a real roof, not hay beneath her tires, the air smelling of old horseshit. That is a stink that does not go away no matter how long you air her out on the open road.
It is second only to the stink of betrayal.
I shift, my rubber boots making a sickly wet noise against the rotting vegetation.
I hate the woods. Mosquitos as big as blue jays, their constant high-pitched whine warning you of their approach, though you can do little to stop the attack. It’s a tease.
Perhaps this is too.
I swallow hard and blink once more at the farmhouse. The logs are wide, the home shockingly modern despite the materials. The band of windows that runs around the outer perimeter is a single lighted stripe, too thin to escape through.
I’ve never been one to take chances, but this is an exceptional case. A million circumstances had to line up perfectly for us to come to this crossroads.
But if I believed it was a coincidence, I would not be so unnerved.
Things have been building in the shadows for far too long. There will be no walking away this time.
I should feel more about this outside of that bone-deep vacancy—I should. But when you live this life, you give up the ability to feel in the tender, soft place where most people keep their emotions; they go numb. When I imagine what might happen tomorrow, when I consider where we’ll end up, I almost wish I could say that it creates a bloom of heartfelt emotion in me, as one might feel—nay, should feel—for their own family. But what is most pronounced inside my guts is the sickly tug of inevitability.
The chickens are coming home to roost; it’s a ridiculous saying, but it seems a fitting expression because of where we currently find ourselves. Lost, in a manner of speaking, so far from where we must be in order to survive—both of us on a farm, in the dark. Isabelle with those men, five of them at last count.
But it matters little how many men she beds; they will not be able to protect her. Not from what’s coming.
She has something I need.
I step into the clearing, eyes on the house, waiting for just a heartbeat on the moon-soaked grass—Do they sense me here, waiting in the shadows? When nothing stirs within those log walls, I step carefully toward the stump, the perfect platform to showcase my gift.
“What will it be, Isabelle?” I whisper to myself, but the buzz of crickets is the only reply. I am struck again by how lax they are in their security; they clearly believe themselves to be safe. Perhaps they think that all they must do is deliver their product on schedule—which they are—and they will somehow remain unscathed.
I sigh softly. Voluminous clouds slide over the moon, shrouding the lawn in blackness as if my presence has expanded outward, soaking the world in dark thoughts. Even the grass, until now glittering in the silvered rush of night, has gone dull.
I lower my package to the stump. Then I turn once more for the protection of the deeper woods. The dank air shudders through my lungs. Decaying leaves squelch, spongy beneath my feet. I do not know how long it will take for her to find it, but I am sure that when she does, she will act.
She will lead me exactly where I need to go.
And if she doesn’t, they’re all dead.
Chapter 2
Isabelle
I wake to a beam of sunlight spearing into my eyeball. The cottage is pretty, modern with an old-world twist, but the architect who designed the windows is obviously a sadist. While the rest of the place is a mix of stone and log, the long, thin band of glass around the entire exterior is something forged in Hell if you like your sleep. Those windows give you panoramic views, but they’re too narrow to be useful for more than a breeze, and you can’t exactly string curtains over the entire wall. I mean, we could, but it’d be a giant pain. Someone thought it was cool, I’m sure. Conceptual. But once they moved out, the house sat empty, unclaimed for years… until we came along.
I sigh and screw my eyes shut. I worked all day on the house, fixing the porch stairs, sweating my butt off. I thought I’d just lie down before dinner to rest my aching shoulders, but I must have dozed off.
“It’s certainly not my fault,” Ryder says from the next room. “I measured everything perfectly.”
I love living here with them, but the size of the house makes it so that every little sound can be heard to the farthest corners of the cottage.
“Aye, bruther, it sure as shite wasn’t me.”
I smile. I’d be able to tell Rooster’s Scottish lilt anywhere, can almost see his red beard moving as I listen. A pan clatters against the counter—are they making dinner? I sure hope so. As if in response, my stomach grumbles, a wet, gurgling groan.
I raise my hands above my head and stretch. My right hands hits skin. I turn in time to see Cue mutter something and roll away from me. There’s nothing much beyond him to see; the only furniture in this room is two king-sized beds pushed together to form a giant expanse of mattress, the honey-colored walls acting as both headboard and sideboard on the right, entombing us in logs on two sides. There are two other rooms, both with queen beds and dressers—sometimes we swap around a little. It keeps things from getting stale, I suppose, though I’m not sold that I’ll ever get bored here. Despite my strange—and perhaps dysfunctional—attachment history, this is the first time I’ve ever felt at home with a man, and it just happens to be with multiple men. I finally feel… less hollow, like the emptiness inside my chest has been filled with something warm, something safe—something real that no one can ever take away. And though I’m too much of a pessimist to believe such hopeful notions logically, I can’t deny that the sensation feels real.
It’s intense, this infatuation, the kind of adoration born on the battlefield—we were fighting for our lives when we met. But that initial necessary attachment has, over the prevailing months, taken on the dreamlike quality of a fairy tale. I went from con artist to rolling with the hottest bikers I’ve ever seen, let alone met. What more could any storybook princess want?
The pans in the kitchen rattle again; someone swears—Ryder this time. I inhale deeply, relishing the aroma of salt and cooked meat. Thank goodness they aren’t going to try to force me to eat vegetables after a day of manual labor.
I roll onto my side. Cue’s facing away from me, but on first glance, it always appears that he’s looking at me; the back of his bald head is a giant tattooed skull, deep black sockets gaping, a slashing blade of sun scoring the nasal ridge. I snuggle closer to him and bring my fingertips to the crown of his head, then trace the eyes of that skull with my index. He remains still. Silent.
Always silent.
He can talk, I think, but he doesn’t—I’ve come to believe that he’s punishing himself for an awful past experience, some sin he can’t get beyond, but I still don’t know what it is. It has to be pretty bad for him not to tell any of the others. I suppose it doesn’t really matter—we all have a past. And he’s never needed words to communicate; he’s the boss because he finds ways to take care of us.
“Maybe it’s the new guy,” Ryder says from the kitchen.
Blade? “The Prospect”—that’s what they call him. He was an assassin for another biker gang, the one my guys still work for, but I think they’re keeping him on the outside because he’s my ex-boyfriend. I d on’t think it’s jealousy though, not for most of them—they aren’t sure they can trust him.
Do I trust him? We have a history that might take me some time to get beyond, so I feel like I’m biding my time, watching to see what happens between him and the guys—feeling it out. I never imagined that I’d love so many men at the same time, and with such intensity, and I certainly hadn’t expected them to love me back the same way. Even my ex is growing on me under the circumstances. Men who save your life perhaps deserve a special place in your heart.
“Shite,” Rooster crows from the kitchen. “What’re we gonna do, bruther? Just start over, eh?”
I trace the inked nasal bone on the back of Cue’s head, but Rooster’s words make him stir. He rolls onto his back and turns my way. Despite the ink, he looks more like a model than a biker. High cheekbones, straight nose, bright white teeth, deep, dark eyes, lips that always look kissable. And the rest of him… well. They spend a lot of time lifting weights out in the barn. I think they probably go out there to visit their bikes more than anything else.
Cue smiles and runs a finger over my cheekbone, then down over my throat. I wonder, and not for the first time, what the inked hash marks on his arm mean. I’ve seen the way he traces them sometimes. Something terrible lurks beneath those lines, maybe even a body count. He was a soldier, I’m sure of that—I’ve seen him shoot.
Yeah, I think I’d rather not know.
Cue puckers his lips. I blow him a kiss back, and he pushes himself to his feet and heads for the bathroom—totally nude. The piercing in the tip of his penis glints.
From the kitchen, porcelain clatters against the countertop. I wince.
I wiggle to the edge of the bed and swing my legs to the floor. Chill breeze kisses my skin, but my robe is hanging from the doorknob, and I wrap it around me as I pad toward the kitchen.
The short hallway smells of bacon—one of the larger concessions they made for my sake. They’re not vegan or anything crazy like that, but Rooster, farmer that he is, has always grown the majority of what they eat. Sure, they often aren’t in one place long enough to raise livestock, but I also think that living a life where brutality is celebrated squashes the desire to kill things in your downtime.
Three of them are in the kitchen, lined up in a hard-muscled row along the far wall, blocking the glass cupboards with their bulk—the cabinetry is one of the few things in the house that isn’t forged of light-colored wood. Ryder’s doing something on the stovetop; Cue is at the sink, filling a glass, Rooster at his side.
Rooster turns as I enter, his red ponytail and long red beard gilded by evening light. His tank top is smudged with dirt, but his muscular tattooed arms are clean. I can see the edge of the rooster he has tattooed on his chest peeking over the top of his shirt.
“Aye, how’s my lady this evenin’?”
“Your lady?” I cock an eyebrow, but I grin as he strides around the narrow center island—white cabinets topped with a marbled green Formica—and lowers his lips to my forehead. I give him a squeeze.
Ryder turns from the stove. I was wrong about the bacon; there’s already a plate of kielbasa on the back counter, and now I can see the cast-iron skillet full of fried potatoes. He settles both on the center island as I slide onto the wooden stool.
“Where’s Mack?” I ask.
“He’s out looking at the fields with Blade,” Ryder says, his gaze cloudy. “Lots of plants dead or dying out there.”
I reach for a plate and spoon potato and meat onto it. My stomach grumbles again. “Does Mack know how to farm?”
The others fill their plates, too, but there’s not room for all of us at the two-stool counter. We have a four person table in the adjoining alcove to make up the difference. Apparently, the architect loved his stripe of windows, and hated all things that might be used for entertaining—like dining rooms. I suppose that’s fair. Most people aren’t living in an isolated cottage with a whole mess of bikers.
“Mack doesn’t think the loss of the plants is an accident,” Ryder says.
A prickle of unease rises on my neck.
Well, of course he doesn’t, I tell myself. Mack is the most suspicious person I’ve ever met, and he always looks for malicious activity first; hell, I caught him trying to research Blade’s past just a few weeks ago. And my path only crossed with theirs because I was running from Mack’s brother—a tech millionaire who’d kidnapped me. Mack knows real evil.
He’s also the one who believed me last month when I told them that I felt eyes on my back—this prickle of unease is not a new phenomenon. When I wake at night from what the others believe to be bad dreams and hear a subtle scraping on the log walls, Mack is the one who searches the woods. He’s never found anything of concern, though he once suspected that someone was tampering with our clothesline when his T-shirts blew away.
Sometimes evil is hard to tease apart from natural phenomenon.
Rooster slides onto the stool beside me. He smells of grass and sunshine; the scent of the outdoors.
The back door slams. Heavy boots thunk against the floor.
“Aye, speak of the devil,” Rooster says.
We all turn as Mack enters, clutching a blackened head of cabbage, the thing dead and dusty-looking—tiny in his fist. By far the biggest of the group, he’s a monster of a human, six-eight with a mammoth chest and arms like tree trunks. His long black hair makes his emerald eyes stand out all the more… well, his hair and the jewel-toned tattoos that cover his flesh from neck to toe—snakes.
“There’s no way this is an accident,” he growls in a rasp that seems to rattle the cabinets. “Someone is trying to sabotage us.”
Chapter 3
“Why would someone try to sabotage us by poisoning our produce? I mean, stores exist. It’s not like we’ll starve.” I take a bite of sausage to emphasize the point. We might live like peasants, but we certainly aren’t. Moving out to the boonies was a decisive act—like an old grouch shaking a cane at the neighbor kids, we just wanted a little peace and quiet.
“It’s not just the produce—yeah, we can get that at the store,” Ryder says between bites. “But we’re looking at a complete loss. They took out everything.”
Ah. I’ll admit that I’m not entirely sure what vast array of items Rooster grows back there, but Ryder uses plants to make designer drugs, some manner of hallucinogenics. Safer than synthetics, and they fetch a high price with a very specific—very wealthy—Grunge clientele.
And if those plants died, we might be screwed. It’s how we’re currently paying the bills, though I still have a storage unit in the states that will pay our way for a while if we’re extremely frugal and take odd jobs to fill in the gaps. It was a nest egg for me, but I’m not sold on supporting six people with it.
Mack slams the cabbage into the trash bin and heads for the sink to wash up. “Obviously, someone hates us.”
“Lots of people have a reason to hate us, but I don’t think anyone has a reason to come here and fuck with us,” Ryder fires back from the table in the alcove. He forks another bite of potato into his mouth, then goes on: “Anyone who has that deep of a vendetta would have shot us, not screwed with your carrots.”
“Screwed with carrots? There’s an idea.” Blade winks at me from his spot in the corner—short dark hair, vibrant blue eyes, crossed arms sheathed in leather. He looks like a biker waiter standing behind Ryder and Cue as they eat, but he always stands at mealtimes, symbolic of his current position with the club.
“Shut your mouth, Prospect,” Mack snaps, sliding into the chair beside Cue. He plunks his plate on the table. “I don’t know how you used to do things, but we don’t need vegetables to take care of her.”
