Burnout_ A Legal Heat Novella - Sarah Castille Page 0,1

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