Burnout: A Legal Heat Novella
Read Burnout: A Legal Heat Novella Online
Authors: Sarah Castille
A Legal Heat Novella
SARAH CASTILLE
New York Times
Bestselling Author
BURNOUT
A Legal Heat Novella
Published by Sarah Castille
Copyright © 2016 by Sarah Castille
Kindle Edition
Print ISBN: 978-0-9938168-3-3
Digital ISBN: 978-0-9938168-2-6
Cover Design by Croco Designs
Editing by: Blue Otter Editing
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual locales, events, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
This book was previously published in the
New York Times
Bestselling anthology,
Riding Desire: Alpha Bad Boy Bikers
, ISBN 9780991916672 (no longer available for purchase), and now includes approximately 50% more content.
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The Legal Heat Series
Burnout
To Alysha, who is wild at heart.
Excerpt from Barely Undercover
She vowed to uphold the law.
He’s determined to break it.
Together, they just might bend the rules.
Rookie cop, Sophie Nichols, knows the dangers of a one-night stand with a sexy stranger. Unable to resist the pull of cocky, badass biker, Ace Logan, she indulges in one steamy night of raw, unbridled passion.
At least, that was the plan…
As the new sergeant-at-arms for the Rogue Riders MC, Ace doesn’t need complications in his life—especially a curvy, captivating cop with a kick-ass attitude who has the power to wreak havoc on his club. So why can’t he stay away?
When Sophie’s brother is kidnapped by a ruthless criminal gang, Ace might be her only hope to find him. But once he has the rookie in his arms, he’ll never let her go. Now, Sophie must make a choice: break the law or break her heart?
S
ophie Nichols knew
regret.
It slithered through her dreams every night, tainted every relationship she had, and now, as she pushed open her brother’s front door, it whispered a warning.
What if her move to Vancouver was nothing more than another attempt to run away? What if she couldn’t shake the past?
But there was no going back now. She’d quit her job in Toronto, transferred to the Vancouver Police Department, sold her house, and given away everything of sentimental value. Today was the first day of her new life, and there was no better way to start than going to one of Jason’s crazy parties.
Taking a deep breath, she walked into the small, dilapidated bungalow and closed the door behind her, shutting out the incessant hum of Main Street traffic only half a block away. Heavy metal music pounded loudly through the house and reverberated through her body. She walked the floor looking for her brother. If memory served, Jason would be in the kitchen, selling drugs to his closest friends at a hefty mark-up. He was nothing if not entrepreneurial.
Leather, piercings, and tattoos appeared to be the style of choice for Jason’s guests, with the odd Mohawk and fluorescent-streaked hair. Not Sophie’s usual crowd, but then she hadn’t moved to Vancouver to hang out with the same conservative, law-abiding crowd she had left behind to start her new life.
She smoothed her top down over her tight jeans and checked the laces on her knee-high boots, the three-inch heels giving her the height she so desperately craved. Not that five foot four inches was unusually short for a woman, but it just meant she had to act tougher, fight harder, and throw out a lot more attitude on the job to ensure both colleagues and criminals took her seriously.
“Hey, Soph.” Jason waved to her from across the open-plan living space. Sophie pushed her way through the crowd, keeping her eyes on the sweep of blond hair on top of his head, and away from the curious stares. She had never been a social butterfly. Her ex, Ryan, had been the talker in their relationship, the darling of the Toronto real estate crowd. Slick talk. Sweet talk. Dirty talk. Lies. He’d say anything to get a sale. Or a wife. She’d always wondered if he’d first hooked up with her simply because of the opportunities her connection to the most prestigious real estate agency in the city had afforded his career.
No.
She refused to think about Ryan. She was never going to move on if she spent another year sitting in her apartment, wishing she could live just one night of her life over again.
Jason swept her up in a hug, and she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him back. They didn’t see each other often, but they stayed in touch, and when he’d found out what had happened with Ryan, he was on the first plane to Toronto to help her through the trauma. Despite being blessed with charm, height and good looks, Jason had been the high-school bad boy, cutting class, smoking cigarettes or weed behind the gym, and blowing off teachers, while convincing their parents he was the perfect son. They were night and day—Jason, tall and blond; Sophie short and dark—and yet he had always been there for her. If not for Jason, she would still be sitting in her apartment in Toronto, drowning her sorrows in vodka and soap operas, letting life pass her by.
Sophie buried her face in his shoulder and inhaled the distinctive foxy scent of marijuana.
She might have lost her way, but Jason hadn’t changed.
* * *
“Who is she?”
Ace Logan, sergeant-at-arms for the Rogue Riders MC, sipped his beer, his eyes skimming over the sweet curves of the dark-haired woman who, only moments ago, had been picking her way cautiously through the crowd.
“Jason’s girlfriend, maybe?” Kickstand, a junior patch member of the MC, grimaced when Ace scowled.
“Your job is to find out everything about the people we do business with
before
we do business. If that is his girlfriend, you should know her name, what she does, where she lives, and how much time they spend together.”
Ace leaned against the wall, arms crossed, as he surveyed the room, taking note of the biker brothers who had accompanied him for the meet with Jason scattered around the room. They weren’t here to party, but he’d instructed them to blend into the crowd, and so far everyone except Kickstand, who had clearly had one beer too many, was doing a bang-up job.
“No one mentioned her when we checked him out.” Kickstand fiddled with the bottom of his cut, the leather vest worn by all serious bikers. Once a lowly prospect in Hades MC, an outlaw club based in Surrey, British Columbia, Kickstand had joined Ace and a handful of brothers who’d decided to split from their mother club. Under a new president, Ryder, they’d moved to Vancouver and formed the Rogue Riders MC, a biker club that operated in the grey—not totally legit, but not committed to the outlaw life of their Hades brothers. Having grown increasingly disillusioned with the outlaw life after losing his closest friends in senseless acts of violence, Ace had welcomed the opportunity to be part of something new, and after Hades was decimated in a vicious territorial war after the split, he was glad he’d left.
At least, until Ryder had allowed the few remaining Hades bikers to patch into his new MC.
“Then we’ve got a problem,” Ace said. “Because any man with a dick is gonna mention a woman who looks like Marilyn Monroe with long, dark hair, especially if she’s in business with Jason.”
“You think she’s an arms dealer?” Kickstand’s eyes widened and he swayed to the side.
“I think you’ve got two minutes to figure out who she is before I kick your ass.” Ace took another sip of his beer and let the warm, bitter liquid slide over his tongue. “Maybe she’s a reporter. Maybe she’s in the secret service. Maybe Jason’s turned rat and she’s wired. I don’t want to take any risks.”
Patching Kickstand into the new MC as a full-patch member had been a risk that Ace was now beginning to think wasn’t going to pay off. Kickstand had only just joined Hades when the club split, and although he’d gone above and beyond to save a woman who wasn’t part of the club, he still didn’t have the street savvy that came only with the two gruelling years of training and hazing that turned a green prospect into a full-patch member of the club.
Taking on the remnants of Hades MC had also been a risk. Although the Hades brothers had agreed with the Rogue Riders’ mandate not to get involved in heavy criminal enterprise—namely arms and drugs—old habits died hard. Despite Ryder’s best efforts, the club had slipped into outlaw territory, and the old guard managed to convince the Riders to declare as “one percenters”—the one percent of motorcyclists who were not law-abiding citizens.
Ace hadn’t supported the motion when it was put to members. He didn’t want to go back to the outlaw life. He’d seen too much death, lost too many friends. Life was short. There had to be something more. But damned if he knew what it was. The vote went against him and since the biker pledge was for life, he was stuck with the one-percenter patch again.
“I’m on it.” Kickstand ran a hand through his thick blond hair. “Although, I think she might be a relative. He’s hugging her the way I hug my mom and sister, and my Aunt Rose. You know, where you kinda roll your shoulders forward and suck in your chest so you don’t touch their boobs.”
“No, I don’t know,” Ace snapped. “I spent my childhood being treated like a piece of shit by people who took me in just so they could get money to spend on booze and drugs instead of food and clothing. The only people I got close to were the girls I started fucking when I was fourteen, and back then it was all about boobs and sex.”
Fourteen years later, and it was still about the sex. Abandoned to the child welfare system since birth, Ace had no role models for a healthy relationship, and absolutely no desire to settle down. And yet he was always searching, trying to fill a deep-seated longing for something that was always out of reach, an ache in his soul that was soothed only for the few short moments he held a woman in his arms.
“She’s pretty damn hot,” Kickstand mused. “If she is his sister…”
Ace watched the woman stretch to reach her arms around Jason’s neck. Her top rode up, baring the sweet curve of her back and highlighting the delicious swell of her well-rounded ass. So many damn curves he didn’t know where to look. And those boots.
Christ
. Nothing he liked more than a woman in lots of leather. He pictured her reaching up around his neck, his hands under her ass, her breasts rubbing against his chest. She was small enough that he’d be able to lift her easily, wrap those legs around his hips, her pussy grinding against his cock…
“Ace.”
Kickstand pulled him out of his fantasy, and he swatted the junior patch, clipping him behind the ear. “Don’t even think about it. If she’s not his, she’s mine. Even if she is his, she’s gonna be mine. Been a long time since I had some civilian pussy.”
Damned if Kickstand didn’t lift an eyebrow. “Maybe she likes blonds.”
“Maybe you don’t want to have your ass kicked so hard you wind up in the fucking U.S. of A.”
Kickstand gave him a resigned look, his moment of rebellion quashed by the reminder of his junior status in the club. “She might turn you down, Ace. A classy girl like that…”
“Never.”
“Because of your charm, wit, and pretty, banged-up face?”
Ace snorted a laugh. He had never felt self-conscious about the scars on his face, or his slightly crooked nose. They were mementos of the life he’d left behind when he joined the MC—his badges of survival.
He clapped Kickstand on the shoulder, letting him know he was going to let the disrespect slide, because the girl
was
fucking hot, and if she hadn’t caught Ace’s interest, she would have been spending the night in Kickstand’s bed. With his charm and boy band good looks, Kickstand was a favourite with the ladies.