Fire Inside (Chaos, #2) by Kristen Ashley
To all those wounded beauties out there who valiantly battle their monsters every day and find the strength to keep on keepin’ on. This book is yours.
Acknowledgments
The usual suspects…
Chas and Rikki, if you didn’t take my back, I wouldn’t be able to spend so much time creating my worlds. You know you rock. I know without you as my rocks, I’d be in some serious trouble.
Emily, your calm is infectious. But knowing I can live my days doing my gig with the understanding that you’re out there, hard at work broadening my horizons, is even better. You’re simply the bomb.
Amy, bathroom sex got better because of you. That’s saying something! And I said they were wee gifties to you, but they were your wee gifties to Lanie and Hop. You know what I’m talking about.
And to Bob Seger, a man who can tell a mean story through a rock song. You’re a god. Thank you for inadvertently helping me make some beautiful points by using your songs. But more, thank you for the hours of rock beauty you’ve given me while listening to them.
Prologue
Complicated
Hopper “Hop” Kincaid watched her wind through the loud, rowdy, drunk bikers and their groupies, heading his way.
Lanie Heron.
He didn’t move. He kept leaning against the post that held up the roof over the patio area of the Compound, holding a beer and watching her move.
Jesus, she was one serious class act. Even when she came to the Compound to shoot pool or to a hog roast, communing with the brethren of the Chaos Motorcycle Club, she didn’t dress down. Designer gear, head-to-toe. She looked like a f*cking model except better because she was real, right there, walking right to him, her eyes locked to his.
She was also one serious messed-up bitch.
This was not simply because the woman was pure drama. Fuck, he’d seen her create a scene when the diet cherry 7Up she was pouring fizzed over the top of the glass.
No, Lanie Heron was messed up because she stood by her man.
Under normal circumstances, Hopper would find that an admirable trait in any woman mostly because he knew by experience it was a rare one.
It was not admirable with Lanie.
This was because, before Lanie’s man Elliott Belova got shot to death, Belova had been even more messed up than she was. The proof of this was he was now very dead, and she had scars from the bullets her dead fiancé bought her, because he wanted to give her some crazy-ass, out-of-season flowers for their wedding and he got involved with the Russian Mob to do it.
The f*cking Russian Mob.
For flowers.
Not messed up, f*cked up.
Before it all went down, Lanie found out about her man working for the Mob. Being a woman, of course, first, she busted his balls. Then she made a tremendously bad decision and stood by him even after his shit got her kidnapped. Then she watched him die and nearly got herself killed in the process.
Fucked up. Your old man gets involved with the Russian Mob; this gets your ass kidnapped; once you get rescued you kick him to the curb. No question. You just do it.
You don’t go on the lam with him and get yourself shot.
Hop watched Lanie move his way thinking all of this, and at the same time thinking about the moment he first saw her. It was the night she found out her old man was making whacked decisions in order to buy her flowers. Even though, at the time, she was in full-blown drama mode—for once her drama being understandable—the second Hop saw her years ago, he’d thought she was definitely one fine piece of ass.
Watching her come his way, he had not changed his mind.
She was not his thing, normally. Too tall, too skinny, a nice ass but not enough of it for his usual taste. Also not enough tits and way too put together with her designer jeans and high-heeled boots that had to cost a f*cking mint.
But there was no denying her glossy, long, dark hair was f*cking gorgeous. And her green eyes defined what Hop always thought was a stupid as shit saying but in her case, it was true: She had bedroom eyes. The kind of eyes any man with a functioning dick would want staring into his as he was moving inside her.
Fuck, her eyes were amazing.
After she nearly lost her life standing by her man, she’d taken off, moved from Denver to be close to her family in Connecticut, and she’d stayed there for a while licking her wounds. This while lasted too long, according to Tyra, Lanie’s best friend and old lady to Kane “Tack” Allen, the president of Hop’s motorcycle club, the Chaos MC. Tyra, known to the boys as “Cherry”, flew out to Connecticut, reamed Lanie’s ass, and hauled it back to Denver.
Lanie set herself up again in house and job and now she was a staple at Chaos gatherings mostly because she was Tyra’s best friend. Also because the brothers liked looking at her so they didn’t mind her being around, and even Hop had to admit her frequent dramas were pretty damned funny (when they weren’t annoying). You had to give credit to anyone who was who they were no matter who was around and that was pure Lanie. She was Lanie; she didn’t water that down and she didn’t care what anyone thought of her.
This was the way of the biker, letting it all hang out, so men like Hop and his brothers could appreciate it.
That said, freaking out because your 7Up overflowed was over the top. Still, a bitch as gorgeous as Lanie Heron… f*ck, you’d watch her sitting around and watching TV. Having a fit over spilled soda was definitely worthwhile. Especially if she did it like she did it, jumping around so that hair was swinging, those eyes flashing, and what little tits and ass she had moving right along with her.