Chapter 1
Becki
I wake up chained to a bed.
At first the fact doesn’t land.I feel the cold bite around my wrist before my mind crawls toward the truth.Metal.Locked tight.Thick enough, it could hold a wild dog or something worse.The cuff scrapes when I pull, and the chain rattles against the steel frame bolted straight into the floor.
It ain’t tight enough to cut bone.Just tight enough to keep me owned.
A low, animal sound rolls out of my throat.I push myself upright and blink until the cracked ceiling stops swimming.Smoke, leather, bourbon, and something male cling to the sheets.Every inch of this place breathes him.
This ain’t a nightmare.Ain’t a drunken memory scrambled with fear.
This is Royal’s room.
Royal.
The dark one.
Legend’s blade in human form.The quiet brother who glides through the Lockup like a ghost with a heartbeat.The biker who dragged me out of Paradise Falls last night without a word.The bastard actually chained me to his bed.
Naked.
Waking up nude in a biker’s bed ain’t nothing new.
Anger hits first.Hard.I yank on the cuff so violently that the metal bruises my wrist in seconds.Fine.Hurt me.Better that than the shame boiling up within me.But the chain doesn’t budge.Whoever installed this setup meant business.This wasn’t put here for fun.It was forged for control.
My mouth tastes like acid.My head throbs.My throat burns.I swing my gaze across the room.Royal doesn’t decorate.He occupies.Bed.Nightstand.Bars on the window from when this place was still a jail.The walls are bare concrete.No pictures.No softness.Just a warning.
And now I’m part of that warning.
A folded stack of clothes sits at the foot of the bed.My black tank top.Denim cutoffs.Nothing else.Not even my panties.My humiliation prickles my chest.
He folded these.
After ripping them off.
He kept my panties.
I dress anyway.Best I can.Dignity is thin as tissue paper in this place, but I cling to it with both hands.
As I pull the tank top over my head, the long chain finds a home in my shirt and memory strikes fresh and sharp.
Sophie’s stupid stricken face.Her trembling perfect hands down to her manicured nails.My own voice cutting her down with that threat.I told her I would marry her daddy.I told her that the Reverend would officiate.I told her she would lose Paradise Falls because I would hand it to my daddy on a silver plate.
Then, when he found out, Legend’s face went cold.The cold-hearted king I used to worship.I thought his teeth might break.He aimed to hit me.I saw it.He never would, but he wished to.The king of Hell, Kentucky, eyed me like he was imagining where to bury my body.Not literally.Legend doesn’t kill women.But he stared at me like I wasn’t even a woman, or that he wished like hell, his own rules were different.
Royal didn’t flinch.He stepped forward as if he had been waiting for that moment all his life.He grabbed me, hauled me off the ground, and threw me onto the back of his horse like a bag of sin he planned to hide.He locked me in here like the club’s filthiest secret.
Now I’m here, chained like a monster he intends to slay.I sit on the bed, breathing through the humiliation, when the shadows shift.
Royal ain’t just a man.You feel the biker before you see him.
He steps out.
No knock.
No hello.
