Mack (Twisted Devils MC Book 3) Read online

  Mack

  An MC Romance

  Book 3 in the Twisted Devils MC

  By

  Zahra Girard

  Copyright © 2020 by Zahra Girard

  All rights reserved. This ebook or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you'd like to share this book with another, please purchase a separate copy for them. Thank you for respecting the hard work that went into my work.

  Thank you so much for checking out my book. If you want the opportunity to score free advance copies of my books, or stay up on my latest releases and promotions, sign up for my Dirty List: http://www.subscribepage.com/d9p6y8

  You can check out my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/zahragirardromance/

  Or you can find me on BookBub! https://www.bookbub.com/authors/zahra-girard

  If you enjoy any of my books, I sincerely invite you to leave a review. Reviews are so important to self-published authors (like me). They let us hear from our fans, and they help others discover our work. Please, if you enjoyed this story, I invite you to leave a review.

  Thank you,

  -Zahra

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue Sophia

  Epilogue Mack

  Want More Steamy Action?

  The Twisted Devils MC

  Book one: Razor

  Book two: Rusty

  The Rebel Riders MC:

  Book one: Thrash

  Book two: Riot

  Book three: Duke

  Book four: Rooster

  Book five: Creole

  Book six: Bull

  The Wayward Kings MC Series:

  Book one: Bear

  Book Two: Ozzy

  Book Three: Hazard

  Book Four: Preacher

  Other books by Zahra Girard:

  His Captive

  Liar

  Chapter One

  Mack

  “What the fuck is a woman in a dress doing running in the woods late at night?”

  It isn’t a riddle, though it sure as fuck feels like it. The words leave my lips and whip by my ears at eighty miles an hour, just as the sight of her — with her ragged black evening dress, her bare feet, her raven hair fluttering around her frightened face like a dark-stranded tornado, her makeup smeared to high heaven, and her painted fingers wrapped around a cloth bundle clutched to her chest — sprinting along the shoulder of this forgotten mountain highway flashes by me. It’s surprising enough that I nearly lose control of my bike — it wobbles hard for a second before I fight the damn thing under control. Carefully, I reach behind me and check that the enormous bag lashed to the seat behind me is still secure and heave a sigh when I find it is.

  This isn’t the time for distractions and a woman sprinting full-bore down the side of a mountain road fucking looks like a distraction.

  And yet, idiot that I am, I’m already easing off the accelerator as I fly by her. Cursing myself for my foolish fucking judgment as I do it, but knowing I’m damn well going to stop for her.

  The woman makes no motion for my help, no cry for attention, yet I can’t ignore her; my eyes seek her out in my rear-view mirror the second she’s behind me — the tears streaming down her face are more than enough to bring my bike to a full stop.

  Tires screech and gravel crunches beneath my feet as I pull to the shoulder and dismount my bike in a leap.

  She stops.

  Freezes.

  Thirty feet away down the road, her body tenses and she stares at me with wide eyes like a wounded and wary animal.

  “Are you OK, lass?”

  I sure as hell know she isn’t — nothing about her seems right — but I’m not the comforting type, and I have no fucking clue what to say to her.

  “Lass?”

  I take a step forward; she takes two steps back.

  I hold my hands out wide, palms forward, showing that I’m not a threat. It’s the same way I’d approach a feral dog or a man who’s itching for a fight that he has no damn chance at surviving.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to help.”

  My mouth’s hardly closed before she turns toward the trees and breaks into a sprint. Like a ghost, she disappears into the misty mountain woods.

  For a moment, I hesitate, I debate; she sure as shit wants nothing to do with me and I’ve got important things to do — there’s a vital cargo strapped to my bike I need to get back to Lone Mesa. I can walk away and forget I ever saw that captivating, tear-soaked face and those brown eyes that brim with pain.

  It’s what I should do. Leave the feral woman to her night time running. Return home, continue on with my life, wash the memory of her away with a glass of whiskey and go to bed, knowing that the world will move on just fine.

  Then I hear the cry.

  It comes only moments after she enters the woods.

  It’s a small cry. From a small mouth. Powered by a small set of lungs. A wavering scream that I can’t ignore. Weak, tired, afraid.

  A baby.

  That little scream wraps itself around my heart, stirs adrenaline in my blood and pumps urgent need through my veins.

  I can’t walk away.

  Cursing a storm that would earn my ass the beating of a life if my mother were alive to hear it, I charge into the woods after her, twigs snapping beneath my feet and branches whipping my face as I beat a path through the underbrush.

  What the in fuck is going on with this woman?

  Questions flare through my mind as I chase her from glade to glade, following only those moonlit glimpses of her and the warbling cries of the babe.

  But not once do I think about turning around. Not after what I’ve heard. I can’t.

  “You shouldn’t be out here. Not with a baby,” I shout into the dark. “Lass, please, slow down and let me give you a ride.”

  I reach a clearing fogged with the fading remains of clouds. Wet grass dampens my shoes, the Milky Way shines down on me, stars twinkle with mirth at my plight.

  Chasing a woman and a babe through the woods. Fuck me.

  The night goes hush, the baby, too, and the fog and the grass underfoot swallows all sound around me with a voracious hunger. My soaked feet carry me forward, the only sound the squelch of slick grass and wet leaves crushing beneath my stride.

  I raise my voice, louder this time, stern. I do my best to stamp down my irritation, but it still rings through as I call into the night.

  “Lass, I’m not here to hurt you. I don’t know who the fuck you are, where the fuck you’ve been, or where you’ve going — and I don’t fucking care — but I do care about that baby you’ve got with you. A wee one like that shouldn’t be out in a night like this. Can you please stop?”

  A flash of movement in the moonlight-cut dark, a dark-and-pale blur that slips out from between two trees and comes racing toward me.
r />   Her.

  So fast and flitting, she might as well be a faerie.

  With a thick branch in one hand and an even wilder look on her face, she charges, catching me by surprise. Before I can blink or duck, that branch comes swinging in a wide arc, cracking against my face like a burst of thunder and sending me crashing and the air whooshing from my lungs.

  She screams. Feral. Wild with fear.

  “Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.”

  I hit the ground in a thud, taste pine needles and loamy earth, and spin and scramble just in time to avoid a follow-up strike from the screaming banshee.

  She’s out to kill.

  Something has this slight woman ready to murder.

  Fighting one-handed, clutching her babe to her breast and swinging the branch for all she’s worth, she’s a fucking Amazon.

  Struggling to my knees, I have time enough to shout at her to stop before she brings the branch to bear against my face with a swing that would make a professional cricketer jealous. My limbs go stiff and I hit the earth like dead weight.

  The night in this forest grove darkens, my vision blurs, and ringing erupts between my ears. Numbness floods my fingers and toes, and strength leaves my limbs.

  Distantly, I hear her dropping the branch and her footsteps crunching through the needles and underbrush as she disappears back into the trees, off in the road's direction.

  I shake my head clear. Every sensible part of me says to just let her go. I have things to do and getting my brains bashed by a whirling dervish of a woman isn’t on the list.

  But I stopped listening to the sensible part of me a long time ago.

  “Fucking Christ Almighty.”

  I grumble as I climb to my feet, my body thrumming with exhaustion as if I’d just climbed Everest. Again that voice inside me tries to convince me to just leave her be. It would be so easy and I could leave this mess behind with only a sore jaw to remind me.

  Then the cries of that child hit my ears.

  No, there’s no going back.

  I race into the underbrush.

  “I’m getting drunk as hell when I get back to Lone Mesa,” I promise myself as I stagger back into the trees after the sound of the crying child.

  A short way on, I find her.

  She’s slowed.

  For all the wild determination and fear in her eyes, there’s only so far her adrenaline can carry her and we’ve reached that limit.

  Moonlight hits her through a cleft in the branches overhead. A vision of terror. She turns and faces me, the crying child clutched tight to her chest.

  “Leave. Leave me alone.”

  A ragged voice teetering on the edge of utter loss.

  Sense says I should walk away, leave this woman and whatever damned insanity led her to seek sanctuary in the middle of the midnight woods, and continue on to Lone Mesa.

  But my heart and my past tell me that’s not happening. I can’t leave her, and I sure as hell can’t leave that little one that’s clinging to her chest.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” I say. “I was just driving by and I saw you and I couldn’t help myself, because I’m a fucking feckless idiot. I had to check on you. What is going on? Why are you running? Tell me so I can help you.”

  A silent stare and a step backward is her only answer.

  I am not playing any more games with her. The time for frolicking in the woods is long past, and I can feel the anger and frustration welling up inside me.

  “Look, if you want to play like you’re some fucking Faerie queen in search of her magic mushroom circle in the middle of the forest, that’s fine, you can do that on your own time, but it’s god damned irresponsible and dangerous to bring a baby with you. It’s cold out. That little one could get sick. Or you could drop it,” I say and, when she flinches, I pause and exhale, letting my frustration leave my body in a sigh. At least she isn’t running again. That’s progress. “Let’s start over. My name is Kellan McDowell. My friends call me ‘Mack’. What’s your name?”

  Silence.

  Maybe a step backward, though it’s hard to tell with her shaking and the way she’s swaying like she’s drunk. Even in the moonlight, with her pale face streaked by tears and smeared makeup, eyes wild and her hair looking like she’s just emerged from a tornado, she is strikingly beautiful. Blessed with delicate features, eyes that — even in their utmost insanity — draw me in, and a curvy body that’s barely covered by her tattered black evening dress.

  I can’t let her run. I have to keep her here. At least this maniac of a woman is listening to me.

  “I really don’t care about you. I don’t. Sure, you’re a beautiful lass, even though you look like you belong in a mental ward,” I start. At first, I’m idly babbling to keep her attention but, when she cocks her head in curiosity, I keep going. “It’s that kid I care about. It’s irresponsible to be out here with a baby. What if she got sick?”

  “He’s a boy.”

  Her voice makes me pause for a moment. It’s quiet, but much stronger than I would’ve expected from looking at her.

  “What if the little lad got sick? What if you tripped, and he got hurt? There’s no doctor around; the nearest town is half an hour’s ride away and their doctor has shakier hands than I do after I’ve spent an entire night drinking; this is no fucking place to be running around with a baby.”

  I’m just steps from her.

  This close, I can see the bruises hidden beneath the mussy veil of her makeup. Moonlight shimmers off the subtle scars on her upper arms and legs — some are fresh, some look like they’ve had time to age — and, surrounding some of the worst ones on her shoulder and chest, are some beautiful tattoos that further camouflage her injuries; barely hidden beneath a fold of cloth on her shoulder, there’s the dark ink of a tattoo — a stylized sun — and, as my eyes glide over her shivering body, I spy another: a rose that peeks out at me from her ankle.

  They’re intricate. Well-done, with perfect lines and coloration. The work you pay out the nose for, and only a few artists in all of Southern California have the skill to pull them off.

  This woman just gets stranger and stranger.

  As if she’s surprised at how close she’s let me get, she takes four huge steps backward.

  “Those are nice tattoos,” I say. “Whoever did them has some talent.”

  A bit of color touches her cheeks. Her eyes turn downward for a moment, bashfully. “Thank you. I did them.”

  “You’re kidding. On yourself?”

  She nods. A ghost of a smile tugs her lips upward. What a vision she is when she smiles. Even more so as I feel it’s been a long time since this woman had cause to do anything but frown.

  “No. I’m not kidding. I use them to cover up my—” she says. Then she stops for a second, pain flashing across her face. “They help me turn mistakes into art. It hurt a lot to do it, and it took forever in front of a mirror but, yes, these are all me.”

  “I fucking wish the person who did my first few tattoos had your talent,” I say, rolling up the sleeve of the flannel I’m wearing underneath my cut and showing my right bicep. It’s covered with ink — some exceptional, some bad, and some so atrocious that I’m having them covered up as time and money allow. “You see? This one over here on my bicep that looks like a drunken monkey drew it.”

  She leans forward a bit, squints. Smiles. Her eyes sparkle with mirth. Fuck, she is so beautiful.

  “I see. Yikes.”

  With three words and her tone alone, she expresses exactly how I feel about the mistakes of my youth that decorate my body. Mistakes, just like hers, only mine are inked and hers come as scars. Either way, no matter what we do, we’ll never be free of them; they’ll always be on our bodies.

  “Do you have any other tattoos?”

  She nods. One quick, jerky motion.

  I take another step forward, and her feet stay still, though she watches me with wary intensity.

  “Can I see them?”

 
She shakes her head, then points towards a spot on her chest that’s still concealed beneath her dress.

  “It’s here. But it’s private.”

  “I understand, lass. I’d have to take you on a few dates before I see that one, huh?”

  One big breath fills her chest and she lets it out nice and slow; that might almost have been a laugh. The shivering that wracks her body subsides and another smile quirks at the corners of her mouth.

  “Yeah, a few. At least three. And one of those would need to be a nice dinner. But you’re not really my type, so I don’t think you’ll be getting any kind of show from me.”

  In the dark, a tree branch cracks and falls, landing with a loud thud. She jumps in surprise and tosses her gaze about wildly into the dark.

  I reach out and put a hand on her bare shoulder, just above the stylized sun and the multicolored beams that radiate from it.

  She stills.

  “It’s just the forest — it hasn’t rained much and trees will do that when there’s drought. No one will hurt you or your son. Not while I’m around, OK?”

  She nods.

  Another crack splits the night, and she practically jumps out of her skin. I cast an irritated glance over my shoulder into the dark of the forest. Calm the fuck down, trees.

  “I’d like to take you back to my bike. I can give you a ride into my hometown: Lone Mesa. It’s just half an hour away. Then I can take you somewhere safe, wherever you want to go — a women’s shelter, bus station, whatever. If you’d prefer to just crash somewhere, I know a few women who can give you a bed for the night. Free of charge and any questions you don’t want to answer. Will you let me?”

  She nods.

  The forest lets loose another branch, the thudding crash of wood shakes the still night air. But she stays still. Progress.

  Then a dim glow suffuses us, yellow, the lights of a car parking on the shoulder of the road back where I left my bike.

  Great. Whoever the fuck is back there will ruin any progress I’ve made with this woman and send her scampering off into the woods with that baby.