The Devil's Silver (The Road Devils MC Book 2) Read online

  The Devil’s Silver

  (The Road Devils MC #2)

  By Marysol James

  © 2018 by Marysol James.

  All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design: theuntitledbook.com

  Cover photo: © tverdohlib/Adobe Stock

  Dedications

  For K. Because you make second chances look like perfect grace.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  About the author

  By the same author

  Chapter One

  Omaha, Nebraska

  Jolene Angeles set her battered leather backpack down on the table with a sigh, took a giant slug of her Margarita and tried to look like she was not completely freaking out. She was sure that she was failing miserably, of course. Almost one full year of perfecting a poker face hadn’t let her down, but she knew that her shaking hands and shaking voice were giving her away. The tall, tattooed, gray-haired woman behind the bar had leveled her with A Knowing Look, after all, and Jo had felt transparent under the older woman’s steady blue gaze.

  Sure, bartenders were experts in human nature and what trouble looked like, and ones who worked in rough dive bars even more so, but still… Jo knew that the scowling woman serving up her drink had clocked her as a woman on the edge, or in trouble, or both, and she didn’t like that. Not at all. It made her feel vulnerable, and also like easy prey to anyone looking for weakness and confusion.

  She had no desire to feel or be either one of those things. Not ever again.

  And anyway, she wasn’t on the edge or in trouble or confused, just for a refreshing change. But she was nervous. Oh, hell, yes. That she was.

  Jo took a mighty slug of booze for courage and glanced around the hot, crowded bar, looking at the men under lowered eyelids. She was fully aware of what she was doing, of course, but that didn’t mean that everyone else had to be. No sense advertising that she was possibly looking for a one-night-stand, right? Surely that would attract exactly the wrong kind of attention and candidates and if nothing else, Jo wanted to be the one to make the choice. If she made the choice.

  She wasn’t a woman used to making her own choices anymore. She hadn’t had the luxury, or the right, or the permission, or even the energy to do so. Not for a long, long time. But she’d made her first decision exactly ten months ago to the day – the Big Decision, the one that had saved her life and her sanity – and since then, her life had consisted of one decision after another. Most of them really hard, all of them major and stressful; she’d come to privately think of them as ‘capital D’ decisions. They were Decisions.

  She’d made the biggest Decision exactly one month ago: she’d waited until her soon-to-be ex-husband had left town, she’d packed a single suitcase and she’d run. Since then, she’d been living in cheap motels and sleeping in her shit-box little car, paying cash and living off black coffee and gas station tuna sandwiches.

  Tonight, though… tonight she was going to make a fun decision, a ‘lower-case d’ one. One that was based on pure selfishness and want and lust.

  She was launching herself fully into a new life now – and she was determined to enjoy it. Revel and luxuriate in it. Even for just one night. Before the next round of hard work started.

  Jo thought of that evening as the potential official beginning of her new life. Her coronation, maybe. And unlike her life so far – or most of the past five years of it, at least – she was going to do it right this time. She was going to make choices that made her happy… choices that empowered her and brought new experiences into her world.

  Now. She needed to find the guy to help her do just that, in one way at any rate.

  Jo looked around the room more slowly, rejecting out-of-hand the men standing around in groups, laughing and drinking. She was intimidated enough as it was, and the thought of approaching a guy in front of his buddies was not going to happen. Besides, she’d feel weirdly and horribly embarrassed and exposed if she picked a man up in plain sight of his friends, kind of like holding up a sign saying, ‘I’m going to go have sex with your buddy now! Byyyyyyye!’. Stupid and illogical, really, because if she left with any guy at all, the assumption of events to follow was clear – but there it was. No guys in groups.

  Another decision made. Look at me go.

  Happy to now be a woman with a clear mission, Jo stared around the bar again, seeking out single guys. Hmmmm. There was one at the bar chatting to the scary bartender with the x-ray blue eyes. Dark hair that curled at the nape of his tanned neck, a relaxed stance and best of all, broad shoulders.

  Jo knew that most women went for a man’s butt, or that amazing ‘V’ that led teasingly down a hard stomach and into jeans and she wasn’t above looking and appreciating those things. But if she had to pick something that made her melt, it was a large, solid, muscular upper body. Preferably with some chest hair, because privately, she thought that smooth, gleaming chests on men were odd. Too Baywatch. Too shiny.

  Broad Shoulders turned now, lifted his beer to his mouth and she saw a gleam on his left hand… oh, damn. Married. Well, nope, then. Even if he was game – like, in some alternate universe where a god like that would find Jo’s short legs and fat ass sexy – she wasn’t interested in helping him cheat. She didn’t care if the wife never knew, if Jo never laid eyes on her. As a woman who’d been cheated on many (many many) times by her soon-to-be-ex, she knew where her lines and limits were on this subject.

  She looked away from him, decided to lower her standards slightly. As much as she enjoyed looking at hot guys across a smoky dark room, she had to be realistic here. She knew what she looked like, she knew her age, she knew all about the damn wrinkles around her eyes and the dimples around her knees. She knew that she couldn’t compete with the lithe little twenty-something-year-olds slinking around the place, wearing tight jeans and crop tops that revealed flat tummies, pierced navels and lower back tattoos.

  Jo looked at these women now, with exactly zero envy. No sense being jealous of or resentful about what might have been fifteen years ago… and truthfully, she admired their confidence and devil-may-care attitude. She wished them well. She appreciated their stunning beauty and fresh glow, hoped that they made better choices than she had at that age. She wanted them to have good, happy lives.

  N
ot like she had.

  She looked down at herself, at her new clothes, marveling at just how different they were to every single other piece of clothing that she owned. She’d bought them literally forty minutes earlier, and hidden in a mall McDonald’s bathroom to get changed. She’d also done her makeup in the same bathroom, makeup that she’d bought in the Target next door to the fast food restaurant, barely having a clue what she was buying. She was way out of practice.

  Brian had hated her wearing anything short, tight, bright, revealing. He’d loathed her wearing eye makeup, lipstick, perfume. Anything that had emphasized her assets (such as they were, in their non-supermodel faded and saggy glory), anything that got her any attention at all… that stuff was all out.

  To be sitting here in this clinging red dress and high-heeled knee-high brown boots, showing off her shoulders and displaying her rather impressive cleavage, was quite a shock to the system, then. Jo hadn’t recognized herself in the bathroom mirror at all and that feeling had only increased when she’d brushed on the bold blush, dabbed smoky gray eyeshadow on her lids, lined her black eyes with a gold pencil to lighten up the gray a bit, put on a racy red lipstick, covered her full lips with gloss. The face that had gazed back at her in the poorly-lit bathroom mirror had been a stranger’s in some ways, but in other ways – much more important ways – it had been the face of an old friend.

  So, OK. She couldn’t hold a candle to these sexy young things fifteen years younger than her own thirty-five, swanning around the bar on lustrous waves of golden confidence. That was fact and reality, and that was fine. She wasn’t here to compete, or be the most beautiful woman in the room. But Jo could look better tonight than she had in almost half a decade; she could flirt and feel attractive for the first time since Brian Fielding had entered her life and shattered both it and her into a million pieces.

  And yes… she could enjoy a man’s body, and let her own body feel pleasure.

  She could. And if luck was on her side, tonight she would.

  She sipped her drink, crossed her legs, tried to look like she was cool and confident, despite not wearing her usual ensemble of baggy jeans and oversized t-shirt. She looked down at the dress again, still a bit unsure if it was quite right for a bar like this. The dress had a definite 50’s vibe to it, mostly because Jo’s Mom had always been a huge fan of Marilyn Monroe and Mae West and Elizabeth Taylor – and Jane Russell most of all.

  Jo had grown up thinking that those 50’s starlets were the height of femininity and sultriness, so when she’d seen the off-the-shoulder, belted pencil dress on the half-price rack that afternoon, she’d gravitated to it without a thought. And when she’d looked at herself under the glaring lights of the dressing room mirror, she’d known that any one of those Hollywood sirens would have gone for the dress in a heartbeat. So she’d bought it and been so happy – but it wasn’t really what everyone else was wearing in the bar. She looked around at the other women, all so hip and fresh and modern, and suddenly felt desperately old and unstylish and insecure. She felt dated, and not in the ways that referred to the fruit or being taken out for a romantic dinner.

  She spotted a group of guys in one corner and narrowed her eyes to try to see them better, sure that they had to be a motorcycle club. No big surprise, because this place was a well-known MC hangout, though not exclusively.

  Jo had recently done plenty of research into motorcycle clubs, for obvious and self-defensive reasons, and was pretty fluent in MC culture now. Those matching leather vest things were cuts, worn over leather or jean jackets usually, and showing the club colors. Jo knew that if she got close enough, she’d see patches on the cuts. Some would show a guy’s rank in the club, maybe a position if he was high-up or important enough. Some would show if the club was made up of outlaw-types more commonly known as ‘one percenters’. All would have the club logo or insignia.

  For just a minute, Jo toyed with the idea of picking up a motorcycle man… she briefly indulged in a fantasy of peeling off layers of leather, of running her fingers over the inevitable tattoos on his body, of moaning a sexy road name (like Chains, or Rider, or Brute) as he took her trembling body over and over.

  To nothing but her own astonishment, she loved the large, bristling beards that so many guys were sporting lately – such a refreshing change from Brian’s pasty, clean-shaven face – and she had a serious weakness for men who lived with passion and zero apologies. Lately, Jo was finding herself attracted to rough, to wild, to untamed… and her research into the MC lifestyle and culture had unlocked a whole realm of desires and wants that she’d had no idea that she held and had hidden deep inside.

  She squinted again, trying to see if she could place the colors on the men’s cuts, which might give her an idea which MC members were standing over there, but she wasn’t very clued up on Nebraska motorcycle clubs. She’d become familiar with clubs in Colorado specifically, because she was a woman who played it safe and smart – and she was determined to walk into that interview in Denver in three days’ time armed to the teeth with information. She still wasn’t sure that her decision to apply for this particular job was her smartest one ever… but what the hell. She had very little to lose now, so risks were acceptable.

  Well. Calculated risks.

  And as a potential one-night-stand, an MC guy had too many unknown factors attached, too many questionable activities, too much history. That made a guy like that an incalculable risk and therefore, unacceptable. Wild beard and inked body be damned.

  There were too many people milling around the room, cutting off her view to the guys in the corner, so Jo gave up trying to pinpoint which MC those guys belonged to. She resumed her perusal of the bar’s male patrons, the ones not wearing cuts. She took another sip of her drink and mentally crossed a few men off the list: the ones openly drooling over the pert butts of the much-younger women, the ones smoking outside (her biggest pet-peeve), the ones who gave off a vibe that made her think of danger or hidden anger and reminded her of Brian.

  She might well be wrong about those guys, of course, and maybe they weren’t actually simmering with unleashed violence and hidden sociopathic tendencies, but she wasn’t taking that chance. Besides, if she sensed and saw that dark energy, even a bit, even if she was way off-base, she’d never be able to relax around a guy. Forget about being alone with him, or letting him get her naked, or taking him into her body.

  She sighed a bit, saw that the pickings were on the slim side and glanced at her watch. It was still pretty early on a Friday evening and she decided to wait one hour. If by nine o’clock, nobody attractive, safe, sane and single had shown up and looked receptive to an older woman with a few gray hairs along her temples, and a few extra pounds on her thighs, then she’d call it a night and head back to her rented cabin across the highway alone. Try again another time.

  No rush. Right? No sense just going back to your bed with any shmuck who doesn’t happen to look like a serial killer… if you’re going to do this, you make it count. You do it right, or you don’t do it at all.

  Jo nodded to herself, pushed her tumbled black curls over a golden shoulder and felt immediately better. More focused and at peace and relaxed.

  If it was meant to be, it’d happen. If she was going to share a bed with a man for just the third time in her entire life, it had to be someone pretty damn special. Not a boyfriend, clearly, and not even a relationship-type, but someone decent. Nice. Funny. Someone who made her smile and relax; feeling sexy and desirable would be a bonus, even if it was for just one night, even if he only meant it for one night.

  If Man Number Three wasn’t on the cards, though, then she’d be cool with a couple of drinks, listening to the music and enjoying all the eye candy strolling around the room in jeans and in t-shirts and (some of them) in cuts, all broad shoulders and large hands. After all… she hadn’t had the freedom to do even this casual stuff for years. Before, if she’d so much as glanced
at the guy bagging her groceries, she’d got a backhand the second she and Brian had set foot back home. Usually more than one. Usually more than just a backhand.

  So just sitting here – alone and safe and free to look around at the men – was good. It was better than good. It was amazing.

  Jo realized that in this moment, here and now, in this dive-bar heaving with chattering strangers and questionable biker-types, she was happy. Truly happy.

  That was enough. It was everything.

  You made it, girl. You really did.

  Jo had just sucked in a breath, taken it deep into her lungs, when the bar door opened and he walked in. Blond and silver, broad and muscular and bearded, bringing a strange, rough grace and power to even the simplest of his movements: shutting the door, crossing the room, greeting the other customers, removing his jean jacket to show dark tattoos the length of both arms.

  At the sight of him, her whole body reacted. The air whooshed out of her lungs, hard and fast. Her stomach jumped, smashed up against her heart which began to beat double-time, triple-time. Her eyes widened until they hurt, her jaw dropped to the floor, and she was suddenly openly and unabashedly staring at the only man on the planet that she’d ever had a primal, visceral, physical reaction to.

  And just like that, Jo made a decision. A ‘capital D’ one. A goddamn Decision.

  Him. I want it to be him.

  Chapter Two

  Zeke ‘Silver’ Bennett walked over to Nell Patton, who had started pouring his double whiskey the second that she’d spotted him coming through the door of her bar. By the time he’d reached her, she’d already dropped in a single ice cube and she stood, her arm extended. Silver gave her his slow smile, took the drink from her with a nod of thanks.

  “Here you go, handsome,” she said, in that husky voice that still made men pause in their tracks and eye her up, even at sixty-one years of age. “Welcome back to Nebraska. Been a while. What – six months? Eight?”