Man of the House: A Dark Bad Boy Romance(126)

I kicked that kid’s ass and then I took the name as my own.

My dad ran off when I was a baby, leaving me and my momma alone to survive. She had her own problems, mostly booze and pills, but she tried. She worked two jobs and whored on the side to earn her drug money. She kept the whoring a secret for a while, but as I got older, I figured things out.

I was left to figure things out for myself. I got a part-time job when I could and got real good at stealing from the rich kids at school. I saved up everything I had and bought parts at the local junkyard to work on my bikes.

When I found the Demons, it was like coming home.

I was eighteen. I just left home, rode my bike out to Austin with nothing but a duffle bag full of clothes and some money in my pocket. I found them on that first day and never left again.

It wasn’t easy joining the Demons. I had to hang around the bar they used as their clubhouse for over a year before someone invited me to pledge. The man who sponsored me, his name was Leopold. Big guy, old-timer, member of the council. He took me under his wing, taught me everything he knew. I pledged and eventually was the only pledge of the guys I started out with to make it into the Demons.

Leopold lived long enough to see me wear the Demon patch. He died a few days later of a heart attack.

Like I said, Leopold was a big man.

From there, I worked my way into the club, did what I could to earn their respect. I moved up through the ranks because I wasn’t afraid of violence. I did what the club needed done, cracked skulls and killed other violent men. The club was my life and my family. The club was everything to me.

Later on, I found out that my momma died, killed by one of her sex clients. The guy stabbed her to death because he couldn’t afford to pay her after he used her up.

That was five years ago, five years after I joined the club. Now, ten years since I was a little eighteen-year-old kid, I knew more than I could ever have guessed, done some things I never imagined I’d do.

I had no dad, no mom. My only family was the club, and that was all I needed.



I still remembered the first time I saw her.

I was a pledge back then, brand new to the place. I was sitting at the bar getting drunk with Leopold and two other guys I couldn’t remember anymore when she walked in that door.

Long legs, long blond hair. Beautiful, absolutely f*cking beautiful, and every guy in the place turned and looked.

“Ah,” Leopold said. “There she is, the little biker princess.”

I looked at him. “Who is she?”

Leopold grinned. “You don’t know?”

“Tell me, Leo.”

“That’s Janine. She’s Larkin’s adopted daughter.”

“Shit,” I said, looking at her again. “She’s gorgeous.”

Leopold laughed. “Look away, kid. She’s out of your league. That girl is royalty. Ain’t no pledge in the world ever going to touch her body.”

“She’s free to do what she wants, right?”

Leopold just laughed and shook his head. “You don’t know how the club works yet, do you, kid?”

I didn’t, not at that point, but over the years I’d figure it out. And although I never forgot that first time I saw Janine, I also never forgot what Leopold said about her.

She was the biker princess. She was f*cking royalty.

We knew each other. Janine knew everyone in the club. She was three years younger than me, which meant we had more in common than some. We were friendly, as friendly as you could be with her at least. Larkin had the habit of beating the f*ck out of any member that pushed the line with Janine.

I respected Larkin too much to make a pass. And truth be told, for those ten years we were orbiting around each other, I was too busy finding my own damn place in the club to really see her too clearly.

It wasn’t until I was twenty-eight and she was twenty-five that she came back into focus.

She came back to me, sharp and alive. I had forgotten what it was like to really want someone until that night. But of course, that night wasn’t the beginning, though it did begin a lot of things for us.

No, it really started a week before that. One week before my whole f*cking life got a hell of a lot more complicated.



“Clutch.”

I looked up and grunted. Janine grinned at me across the table, cocking her head to one side. She had this way of saying my name, like she was being sarcastic or some shit.

“What do you want?” I asked her.

She laughed. “You in a bad mood tonight?”

“Just don’t have time to mess around,” I said, knocking back my whisky.

Truth was, I had all the time in the world, but I’d learned a long time ago not to mess with Janine, even if she did want to flirt with you. Larkin had given me many of his famous bone-chilling looks, even if it was Janine’s own damn fault that she ended up in my lap.

I never asked for that shit, and I sure as hell didn’t understand the girl.

“Just wanted to say hi, is all,” she said. “Haven’t seen you around much.”

“War got us all busy,” I said.

“Yeah. War does that.” She tossed her blond hair, smiling at me. Of everyone in the club, I’d say that she liked me the best. Maybe I just thought that because she flirted with me the most, and because I was willing to walk the line between harmless and getting my ass beat.