Hi all!

Today, I’m revealing the title, cover, and synopsis of the next BBMC book, and I have a preview for you as well. I’m also, at the end of this post, including the book’s Author’s Note, which contains a major spoiler. This book kind of needs a content warning.

Fight releases in 6 weeks, on Saturday, 2 June. I’ll set up the preorder a few weeks in advance. You can add it to your Goodreads TBR in the meantime.

Fight is Ox and Maddie’s story, and that makes it a little bit different right off the bat, since Ox and Mads are a long-established couple. There are some other differences as well–for one thing, Ox is the son of a Mexican immigrant, from Yucatán. He has a large and boisterous blood family, and connections to his father’s birthplace and Maya heritage, and all that figures in his story fairly significantly.

I won’t say more about the story right now; down below you can read the synopsis, and Chapter One, and, if you don’t mind a big ol’ spoiler, the Author’s Note, and get all the flavor you need from that. But I will say that I personally love this book. It’s one of my most personal stories, and the act of writing it was deeply emotional and cathartic. It wasn’t an easy write, and it probably won’t be an easy read, but I’m really proud of this one.

2017 was a very good writing year, now that I think about it. I wrote a lot of my best stuff last year. Including this.

Anyway, on to the rest of the reveals. Here’s the synopsis:

Tulsa, Oklahoma, 2000.

Fernando “Ox” Sanchez spent more than two decades as an enforcer in the Brazen Bulls MC before he was named to take the Vice President flash from a brother lost in club turmoil. In the time since, as Ox has settled into the place at their president’s side, the club has cleaned out festering wounds and begun to heal.

The Bulls are strong and growing, their work is expanding, and Ox’s life with his old lady is perfect. Their love has never wavered in fifteen years, their lust for each other still burns hot, and together, they’ve made a home that is a sanctuary from their past and their present.

Life is good. But Ox came from nothing, and scraped for years just to get by. He’s lived long enough to know better than to take the good times for granted.

Madonna “Maddie” Donne met Ox when she was at her lowest, and with him at her side, she’s climbed to heights of success and power matched only by the Bulls. After spending her whole life fighting for survival, she built herself up from that nothing, and Ox offered his shoulders for her to climb on when she couldn’t reach alone.

Together, they’ve built a beautiful life. But that beauty won’t protect them from the fight they’re about to face.

When Ox, named for his size and brute power, takes ill, he and Maddie will need every ounce of strength and resolve, every moment of love and trust, to fight the battle before them now.

Note: explicit sex and violence.

***

And Chapter One:
(Oh! I should point out that, since Ox and Maddie have been together for a long time, they get right down to the good stuff. This last scene of this chapter is very “smexy,” as they say!)

CHAPTER ONE

“Do we need to grow the table?”

At Maverick’s question, Ox scanned the faces around the Brazen Bulls’ table. Ten men sat at that scarred oak with him. Eleven members wasn’t the biggest roster Ox had known, in twenty-five years of association with the club, but they were talking about patching in three prospects at once, and fourteen members would make the roster the biggest in Bulls’ history.

Maverick had raised a good point—the club was in a period of peace, hard-earned, and there was no need for a large table in peacetime. Of course, that kind of thinking could leave the club undermanned should trouble rise up again. They’d been stretched thin, with thirteen members, during the recent war with the Street Hounds, which had come up in the middle of their Tulsa home after a long peace with Northside—stretched so thin they’d nearly lost.

In fact, they were contending with the question of patching in three members at once because they’d taken on three prospects to help fill the gaps as that war had loomed. Back then, they hadn’t had the luxury to consider the question of what they’d do when these men came up at the table all at once.

Another factor, the one that had spurred Maverick’s question, which had come on the heels of Eight Ball asking directly: how much would each patch’s take shrink when it was divided among fourteen men rather than eleven? The officers’ takes were bigger than the others, and all takes were calculated according to seniority and involvement, but everybody would take a hit. The money was rolling in, but three new patches meant a noticeably smaller cut. Not enough to cripple anybody—except possibly Eight Ball, who used up cash like it was toilet paper—but enough for everybody to feel.

But Caleb, Fitz, and Gargoyle had been prospecting for two years. Normally, they considered that the limit—if a prospect hadn’t earned his patch after two years, he washed out. It wasn’t a rule, though. The rule was only that a prospect period was reviewed after two years. Technically, a prospect could keep prospecting if he wasn’t ready.

Still, they’d never let a prospect go much longer, certainly not without hope that his patch was in sight.

And there was more, something the table didn’t know yet. Only the officers knew. Until, Ox assumed, now.

At the head of the table, Delaney patted his kutte absently; he’d given up his unfiltered Camels a couple of months back. He chewed nicotine gum constantly now, but at the table, he really faltered. Ox saw his mood tank as he patted his empty pocket.

Delaney was a different president now than he’d been most of the time Ox had known him. He’d led the club for more than twenty years like a cross between a drill sergeant and a father, with a strong hand and a warm heart, never wavering in his confidence in his sense of rightness and integrity, always willing to hear other ideas.

His integrity hadn’t stumbled, but his confidence had. The last couple of years, since Dane Nielsen’s death, Delaney’s state of mind had darkened. And time, rather than easing the pain of losing his best friend and right hand man, seemed to have infected the wound. Now, he led the club with a palpable weariness and a dwindling sense of joy.

He’d made some bad calls, too.

Ox sat at his right hand, and he wondered, often, whether there was more he could do, should do, to bring Delaney back to the light. But they’d never been best friends. They were close as brothers, loved and trusted each other, but they’d never had the symbiotic bond Delaney and Dane had had. Delaney had tapped Ox for the VP chair because he thought he was the best fit for the job, not because he felt especially close to him.

There was much Delaney didn’t share with Ox. Personal, interior things he might have shared with a best friend.

His need for a smoke unsatisfied, Delaney scowled at Maverick. “Let’s get to the point that was first on my agenda, before Gunner brought up the prospects. Got a call from Irina. She wants to expand her reach into the west. Add a new route straight west, with a customer pickup in Bakersfield.”

Beside Ox, Apollo jerked up straight. “D, that’s…shit, that’s something like fifteen hundred miles. She wants us to manage that? Longest run we have now is Galveston, and that’s a third the distance.”

“Longest run we’re in charge of is to Canada,” Ox corrected him. “We hand off at Lincoln, but we’re responsible for the Riders all the way to the border. That’s a thousand miles. We brought them in, so Irina sees them as our subcontractors.”

“We’d have to ‘subcontract’ another club to get a fifteen-hundred mile run done,” Simon mused. “How often would this new route run?”

“Once a quarter,” Delaney answered. “Four times a year.”

Gunner laughed. “Fuck me. That’ll have us running Russian shit about once a month.”

Running guns for the Volkov bratva was by far their riskiest work. Every time they escorted a truckload of her wares, they ran the risk of getting caught up in a legal snare. In Tulsa, they were fairly safe; the club had highly-placed friends throughout the city government. In the whole state of Oklahoma, they faced little risk. But once they crossed state lines, the risk skyrocketed.

It was also by far their most lucrative work. All the Bulls had earned sizeable stacks of cash over the years of their partnership with Irina Volkov.

“We get paid a cut of the take and a transport fee by the mile, right? Same deal as the other runs?” Eight Ball asked. He could always be counted on to see the green first.

Delaney nodded. “That’s right.”

“And if we say no?” Maverick asked. He could always be counted on to shoot darts at Delaney’s plans.

Their president didn’t answer, except for what could be read in the lines on his furrowed brow.

After a silence so heavy and alive it thrummed, Delaney went on, leaving Maverick’s question without a voiced answer. “Alexei will come out, and we’ll hammer out the details face to face. The new run won’t start until we’ve got the route scouted. Simon’s right. We’ll need to bring another club on board—”

“At least one,” Maverick cut in.

Delaney’s scowl deepened, but he nodded. “At least one, yeah. I assume, Mav, you’re about to call for a vote?”

Maverick raised his head and lowered it, one time, slowly, and Delaney sighed.

“Do we agree to take on the Volkovs’ new run, or do we refuse and accept the consequences? Aye takes the work. Aye.”

It was eight to three in favor of the work. Maverick, Simon, and Gunner voted against it. Ox thought that was bullshit—they had the luxury of standing on principle because they knew the majority would go the other way. Everybody knew that the consequences of refusing Irina would be dire, and the vote was more formality than not. As far as Ox was concerned, a nay vote under these circumstances was a hairsbreadth from disloyal.

“Now,” Delaney said, breathing a bit more calmly, “we can take on the question of the prospects. Sponsors, are your men ready?”

Gunner was Caleb’s sponsor. Caleb had been prospecting a couple of weeks longer than Gargoyle or Fitz. He was the first to respond. “Yeah. Caleb’s ready. And it looks like we need the bodies after all.”

Eight Ball, Gargoyle’s sponsor, nodded. “Yeah. I’m not keen on a bigger split, but Gun’s right. If we’re gonna take on another run, we need them. Gargo’s a weird son of a bitch, but he’s tough and loyal, so yeah, he’s ready.”

“Same for Fitz,” Becker said. He grinned. “Not the weird, but the ready.”

“Alright, then,” Delaney said. “Let’s vote. Caleb. Aye.”

They went around the table three times, and all three votes were unanimous, as was required to seat a new patch at the table.

“Alright. We got us three new members. Simon, get the patches. Ox, bring the boys in.”

While Simon went to the safe at the far corner of the room, Ox went around the table and opened the door to the clubhouse. “PROSPECTS!” he shouted. “Get your asses in here, shitheads! NOW!”

Caleb stood behind the bar. He looked appropriately scared. “All of us? What’d we do?”

“DID I FUCKING STUTTER?” Behind him, the patches at the table coughed back their laughter. Ox didn’t have trouble stifling his own smile. He fucking loved scaring the shit out of prospects, and he especially loved the way this particular event had returned the table to its rightful goodwill.

Caleb flew out from behind the bar. Fitz ran from the kitchen. Gargoyle came last, up from the basement. Not taking his time, but not running, either. He was older than the others and not as easy to freak out.

When all the prospects were in the chapel, lined up behind the end of the table, Ox sat back down. The three men stood there, in varying stages of anxiety, while the patches at the table glared.

Delaney crossed his arms. “Sponsors, stand the fuck up and account for these assholes.”

This was all ritual, a performance the patches had each experienced themselves. Gunner, Becker and Eight Ball got up and stood behind their prospects. They each had a Brazen Bulls MC patch tucked inside their kutte.

Eight Ball moved more slowly that the others. Several months back, a few weeks before Thanksgiving, he’d laid his bike down on a Texas highway and spent months out of commission. His left leg now was a reconstructed mass of skin and muscle grafts, and not a pretty sight. He’d never be the same, and he’d never walk without a pronounced limp or move more quickly than that hitching gait, but he was back in the saddle again.

When Caleb tried to turn to his sponsor, Gunner slapped him upside the head. “Eyes front, meat.” Caleb’s head swung forward again, so fast that his long hair lifted off his shoulders.

When the prospects were fidgeting with tension, Delaney said, “What say you, sponsors?”

As one, the sponsors yelled “Aye!” and slapped the Bulls patches against the prospects’ backs. Almost as one, the prospects jumped. Caleb yipped out a chopped-off yell. Even Gargoyle jumped.

“Congratulations, brothers. Welcome to the table,” Delaney said, and the old patches stood up and cheered.

No matter what kind of shit had come up at the table, it was always a celebration when they named a new brother. Or three.

~oOo~

Ox grinned when he saw Maddie’s Porsche 911 in the driveway. He’d left the clubhouse while she was still at Signet Models, and yet she’d beaten him home. His old lady had missed her calling; she should have been on the NASCAR circuit.

He’d left the club still celebrating their new patches and didn’t feel at all guilty about it. They’d do the real party on the weekend, anyway, and tonight, the only celebration would be three young guys getting their rocks off every way they could. That would happen at the party, too, but there’d be more people around to dilute the obnoxiousness of it all.

Ox was getting old, no doubt about it. These days, when he could see fifty waiting up ahead, all that party-hearty bullshit was just that: bullshit. As much as he loved his brothers, hanging out at the clubhouse had lost its appeal even before the nastiness with the Street Hounds. If he wasn’t on the road, he preferred to be home.

Parking his bike on the driveway beside his woman’s little hotrod, Ox opened the garage overhead and walked past his truck and the covered corpse of his old 1950 Indian Chief. He’d restored that thing not long after he’d gotten his own patch, and he’d ridden it as his main bike for a while, which had been fucking stupid. He’d dropped it on a no-lane road out in the sticks, fuck, twenty years ago? Before he’d met Maddie. Wrecked a classic bike and fucked up his back, which had vexed him ever since.

Someday, he was going to put that Chief back together. Maddie didn’t really believe him anymore, after all these years, but she didn’t bitch about the hulking ghost taking up a slot in their three-car garage. She used her slot only in bad weather, anyway; she lacked the patience to pull it in and out of the garage. She liked to go fast in everything she did.

He went in through the garage door, which opened into a short hallway between the den and the huge, largely unused, kitchen. Maddie stood there, leaning on her hip at the end of the hallway, a glass of red wine in one beautiful hand, and a glass of tequila in the other.

“Hi, boo,” she purred.

God, she was beautiful. She could see fifty, too, not much more distant from it than he was, but whereas he looked every day of his age and more, she looked fifteen years younger. He liked her best as she was right now—all her jewelry off, her stilettos kicked away, her silk blouse untucked from her leather skirt, leaning on the wall in their house, holding a drink for him. His successful businesswoman home for a night relaxing together.

The danger and upheaval they survived, the turmoil and drama they tolerated, it was all for this.

“Hey, nena.” As he took his glass, he bent down and kissed her, tasting her wine on her tongue. “Good day?”

“Normal. You?” She held out the hand he’d emptied when he’d taken his glass, and he shrugged out of his kutte and handed it to her.

“Patched in the prospects.”

Maddie arched up an elegant eyebrow. “All three?” She hung his kutte on the back of a chair in the breakfast area.

“Yep.” He swallowed his tequila, letting the warm silk pour down his throat until the glass was empty. Then he set it on the table. As he untied his knife sheath from his thigh, he added, “Looks like the Russian work is expanding. Smells good in here, by the way.”

“I ordered from Jasmine Dream. Got here right before you did. Expanding how?”

Maddie didn’t cook, but she was a master takeout-orderer. She could get meals from restaurants that didn’t normally do takeout, and she could sometimes even get delivery from places that didn’t deliver or do takeout. Whatever they were in the mood for, she could get it in their house.

Ox loathed eating in restaurants. He had to do it plenty on the road, and he did not want to eat in public when he didn’t have to. Maddie loved eating out, the more posh and pampering the better, but she’d learned to do it with her friends instead.

When they wanted a homemade meal, Ox cooked.

“Thai sounds perfect. We’re adding a run to California.” He pulled his sheath off his belt and set it on the table beside his empty glass, and fastened his belt again.

Finishing her wine, Maddie picked up his glass and went to the liquor shelf in the kitchen. “California? You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. Nothing’s set up yet. We got a lot to do to get it ready. It’ll be months yet.” He sat down and pulled off his boots. Something in his back pulled, and he winced but held back a grunt. Something was always bitching in his back. He was getting old, and he’d lived a hard life. From when he was small.

His Mexican father had immigrated to the US after World War II; he’d married an Anglo girl in Texas, and they’d run north from her outraged father. They’d made their way to Tulsa, and they’d cobbled together a rocky living from seasonal farm work, odd jobs, and whatever charity or assistance they could get, mostly from the Church. Except for knocking up a girl before marriage, his father had been strictly Catholic and strictly traditional. Ox was the third of eight children. Like his older siblings and the two that had followed next after him, he’d dropped out of school after eighth grade and gone to work in the fields to help keep his family sheltered and fed.

So yeah, he had a lot of aches and pains. A new one barely deserved notice.

Maddie brought over his refreshed glass. “I don’t know, boo. I’m worried.” She smoothed her hand over his short-shorn head. “California is a lot of state lines to cross.”

Some patches kept their women in the dark about club business, but Ox’s old lady wasn’t the kind of woman who tolerated secrets and ignorance, and he didn’t like them, either. From the start, they’d been open with each other about what went on when they weren’t together.

Ox took the glass and pulled his woman between his legs. “You know we can’t say no to Irina.”

Her pretty mouth made an irritated twist. “You know, I worked my ass off to get to a place where there was nobody in my life I couldn’t say no to. I got rid of my pimp, but I’m stuck with yours.”

“Hey, Mads, come on. We’re not gonna fight about this, right? That’s not what I want to do.” He drank his second tequila and set the glass aside again, freeing up his hands to undo the buttons on her blouse. “You’re wearing my favorite bra.” He flipped the sides of her blouse away and cupped her gorgeous tits in his hands. Such a contrast of his brown, battered mitts on her silky, sheer bra and fair skin, both the same pale tone. Her nipples beaded up against his palms, and he took one hand away and replaced it with his mouth, savoring the pink sweetness.

She moaned, and her hands dropped to his head. “Dinner’ll get cold.”

“I like cold Thai.” He stood, ignoring the twinge in his back and the creak in his knees, and pulled his woman to their bedroom.

~oOo~

Their bedroom was Ox’s favorite room in the house. He was proud of the whole building; he’d grown up sharing one of two bedrooms in his parents’ tiny rental shack with three brothers, his three sisters had shared the other bedroom, and his parents and the youngest brother had slept on a fold-out sofa in the front room. His entire, enormous family had shared one bathroom. This three-thousand-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bath, ten-room house in a style he’d learned was called ‘Tudor’ was like some kind of lord’s estate to him, and in the first year after he and Maddie had bought it, he’d roamed the rooms in the night, trying to understand how he’d managed to live in such a place, and strummed with anxiety that it would be taken away. He loved the whole damn thing. Even the leaky basement.

But the bedroom—that was the best. Though they lived alone, it was this room that felt truly private, and, thus, truly comfortable. Maddie had chosen the décor here, as in every room, according to her taste, and that was fine with Ox. He hadn’t really developed any taste growing up, so glomming on to hers had been easy. Now, after living here for several years, he could say that he shared her taste—big pieces of dark furniture, rich colors on the walls and fabrics, no fussy clutter. But a lot of plants. Maddie had a green thumb, and there were big tropical leafy things in every room. Even the bathrooms.

In this room, which itself had almost half the square footage of his parents’ whole shack, Ox’s favorite thing was the bed. King-size, four poster, ebony wood, heaped with soft linens and pillows. They’d had it custom-made to stand at exactly the right height so that Ox could stand his six-foot-six-inch body against the mattress and fuck his wife from behind. Maddie had to do a little hop to climb on at night.

He loved that thing almost as much as he loved his bike.

As he led his woman into the bedroom, she shook her hand free of his and went to her dressing area. He followed, and caught her hands as she moved to push her blouse off her shoulders. Their eyes met in the mirror, and she dropped her hands. The framing rows of round, pinkish light bulbs glowed in her clever grey eyes.

Ox’s palms and fingers were rough, but he’d learned long ago how to handle her dainty things without snagging them with his clumsy clubs. He pulled the silk back and down, letting it wisp over her skin until it floated past her fingers. Leaning around her, he draped the blouse over the back of her chair.

She stood still, her chest rising softly with each deep breath, and watched him in the mirror.

He skimmed his sandpaper palms up her bare arms, from her wrists to her shoulders, and then paused there to knead the muscles at her neck. When she moaned and dropped her head forward, Ox smiled.

“Watch me, nena,” he murmured, leaning close to her ear. “See me claim what’s mine.”

Under the transparent silk of her bra, her nipples tightened to hard pink knots. Maddie lifted her head and met his eyes in their reflection again.

Now that she was watching, he brushed his fingertips down her spine and unfastened her bra. She didn’t move, but let him ease the straps from her shoulders and push the silk away, until he could drop it to the floor at the foot of her chair.

Again, he swept his hands up her arms to her shoulders; this time, he pushed them forward, down her chest, over her tits, and swirled his fingers around points of tender flesh gathered tightly. In the mirror, he watched his hands and saw her eyes watching, too. She bit down on her bottom lip.

“Ox…”

He took his hands away. “Shhh. You don’t talk.”

She closed her mouth, and her eyes.

Kissing his way down her spine, letting his tongue dawdle over his flame between her shoulder blades, Ox worked himself to his knees. He undid the hook and zipper of her leather skirt and pushed it from her hips, catching the slender sides of her thong as well. It matched her bra, the same creamy, see-through silk. Maddie’s underthings always matched. He pushed skirt and thong down to the floor. She stood still until he wrapped a hand around one of her graceful ankles, then she shifted so he could lift her foot and pull her clothes free.

This was who they were in this favorite room: Maddie was his, and she gave herself up to him, put herself in his hands. To some it might seem strange, that a woman who’d spent twenty years, from the time she was thirteen, working with her legs spread, doing the sexual bidding of an abusive pimp and every john who had the rate, would, now that she was free of that and in charge of her own life, wish to submit, but it made sense to Ox. She got off on being able to trust him, on knowing that his sexual desires were about her pleasure and not her pain. On being able to give freely what had once been bought and paid for or just plain taken.

Kneeling behind her, still clothed while she was now fully bare, Ox wrapped his arms around her hips and pressed his mouth to one of the round scars on her firm, shapely ass. A cluster of three dark, rough circles—cigar burns. She had two more on her belly, from another of her pimp’s ‘corrections.’ And a ruched scar at the top of her inner thigh, all the way to her pussy; the same pimp had tried to rape her with a butcher knife when she’d made her break for freedom.

Ox had very much enjoyed breaking that bastard’s bones until he could fit into a footlocker. He was buried in that box inside the concrete foundation of an office building downtown. As far as Ox knew, he’d still been alive when he’d sunk into the soft cement.

He’d killed more men, but none had ever been so satisfying.

When Ox loved on his woman, he loved on her scars, testaments to her toughness and spirit.

Working his way up to his feet, pushing back the pain in his knees, he stood behind Maddie again, head and shoulders taller than she. With his arms around her, he bent his head to her shoulder and kissed the knob of bone there. He trailed kisses to her neck, to her ear, and whispered, “What do you want tonight, nena? What do you need?”

“You, just you.”

“Just me?” He smoothed his palm over her sleek belly. “What do you want from me?”

“Your cock. Your beautiful cock.”

He brushed his nose through the tickling silk of her short blonde hair, taking in the tropical linger of her shampoo and styling gel. “What will you do for me if I give you what you want?”

She knew the answer; it was always the answer. “I’ll come for you.”

“When I say you can.” He pushed his fingers between her legs, over the smooth, hairless flesh at the heart of her. She was hot enough to scald him and wet enough to ease the burn. As he slid over her clit and into her, she moaned and trembled in his arms. “Not until I say.”

“Not until you say,” Maddie echoed on a breath.

He removed his hand and led her to the bed. “Up you go, and on your knees. Ass up.”

While she climbed up on their perfect bed and got into position, Ox yanked off his shirt and shoved out of his jeans. She was ready for him by the time he was as naked as she was; he fed himself into her, sliding easily into her scorching sheath, and grabbed her hips in the coarse mallets that were his hands.

Fifteen years. Thousands of fucks. It didn’t matter. Time between them was endless and immaterial. As well as they knew each other, as well as they knew the dances of their foreplay, the moves of their bodies, the places of their greatest pleasure, their intimacy had never grown routine. Each time with his old lady was better than any time he’d had with anyone before her. Every time his body and hers joined, his world rocked.

He thrust into her, picking up the drumbeat of their familiar rhythm. Each time he slammed against her, she grunted, the sound high-pitched and plaintive, each one like an extra stroke along his aching cock. When those high grunts became squeaks, he knew she was struggling to hold back, to do his bidding and wait to come. Struggling himself, the hot pool of need at the base of his gut catching flame, he held himself off, driving her to desperation.

Not until she flailed on the mattress, her head turning back and forth, those gorgeous grunting squeaks becoming the word please bursting out on every breath, not until his own body had tightened like a spring, did Ox relent. Still pounding into her, sweat seeping from his brow into his eyes, he leaned forward and slid his hands under her shoulders. He dragged her up until her back crashed into his chest. With one arm across her body, that hand gripping a tit, and his other hand shoved between her legs, over her clit, Ox worked Maddie with everything he had, until she screamed her pleas to the ceiling and her hands clawed at his arms.

“Please, Ox! Fuck, please let me come!”

“When I say,” he growled at her ear, tearing the words out through his clenched teeth. “You. Are. Mine.”

As always, those three words at her ear drove her need to its final frenzy, and as her nails dragged ridges into his arms, he said, “Go, nena. Show me.”

She exploded almost at once and went wild in his arms, her release washing over him as he kept up all his frantic attentions, chasing after her body that would no longer do his bidding. He let go of his own reins, too, and got slammed by his own climax just as she began to settle. His hoarse shout and tense clench drove her back up for another bump of fresh pleasure, and then he fell forward, dropping them both back to their sumptuous bed.

They lay in a heaving heap, her legs hooked back around his hips, his legs drooping off the end of the mattress.

“Love you, boo,” Maddie gasped, her voice muffled by the comforter.

“Te amo, nena,” Ox answered. “You hungry?”

***

And finally, the Author’s Note. WARNING! SPOILERS!

If you’re a reader like me, who wants to go into every book blind and experience the story without any preparation or protection, even if that means unexpectedly feeling raw pain, then you shouldn’t read this note. Just jump to Chapter One.

If you’re a reader for whom certain topics might trigger traumatic response, or who simply prefers to be girded before encountering hard topics, or who wishes to avoid them entirely, this note is for you, and will include certain specific spoilers for the story ahead.

I’ll wait before I proceed, while you decide whether you’d like to read this note.

…

…

…

Okay, now that I’m talking only to readers who don’t mind spoilers…

The trigger I’m warning you about here is terminal cancer.

In some way, every book I’ve written, from bikers to Vikings, contains a little part of me. Not only in the way that all books contain a piece of their writer, but in my own history and specific experiences. That’s not so unusual, either, of course. In my case, sometimes it’s a fairly subtle inclusion—a character who thinks like I do, for example, or looks like someone I know. But other times, I give a character an important piece of my history or personality. Cory’s unstructured parenting. Lilli’s Italian heritage (though I’m not fully Italian) and love of cooking. (And, of course, the whole Pagano Family, too.) Rad’s favorite exclamation. Sadie’s secret self-harm box. Carmen’s tendency to blow shit up when she gets scared. Theo’s professorship. Solveig’s self-doubt. Sid’s college rape. And so on.

Ox has a deeply important part of my own history, in several layers. The story of his father’s cancer is largely the story of my father’s cancer, all the way to the ages Ox was when it was diagnosed and when his father died. Ox’s decision about how he would respond should he ever be diagnosed with cancer himself, and how that decision, when he is faced with it, is complicated by love and obligation to others, is my own (though I haven’t had to face that diagnosis). His experiences with his own treatment reflect my experiences watching my father contend with his treatment.

Ox is alive at the end of this story, and he and Maddie are in a good place, content and at peace, wrapped up in their love. But even so, I’m not labeling this book a romance, because when it ends I know, you will know, and more importantly they know, quite clearly, that Ox won’t be alive much longer. Their happiness is thus too bittersweet and obviously fleeting, even for my own rather liberal interpretation of the genre guidelines for romance.

I’ve written about terminal cancer before, in Today & Tomorrow. That was a story about a young life flowering to fullness, finding fulfillment and new love in the brief moments before its untimely end.

This is a story about a mature life lived fully, and a deep, long-term love coming to terms with the time of parting.

Maybe because it’s so close to the rending loss of my father, I cried harder and more often—big, ugly, shirt-soaking tears—writing this book than any other book I’ve written, and I needed several days to recover before I could start the next thing. But those tears were cathartic and ultimately deeply satisfying. I’ve found myself returning again and again to read Ox and Maddie’s story. It’s full of love and strength and peace, and even hope.

It’s also full of family, both club and blood, and important things happen in the Brazen Bulls as well. So this book is not a “Byway” or a “Side Trip” or anything else that suggests it’s a pull-off on the series’ road. It’s not Book “5.5.” This is Book 6 because it is an integral part of the series. If you choose to skip it, but continue on with subsequent books in the series, you might need to ask someone for a recap of club events in the book so you can keep up. I’ve written Books 7 and 8, and I’ve done my best to include that recap myself in Book 7, within the context of that story.

I want to be clear, so you know what you’re getting into: though it’s also sweet and sexy (these two are seriously smoking hot, actually), though there’s club action and deep friendship, this isn’t a book with a difficult chapter or two. A lot of this story focuses on Ox’s illness and how it changes his and Maddie’s life together. This is a book about finding peace in the certainty of dying, and finding strength when you know you’ll lose the one you love most in the world.

I’m proud of this story. I think it’s one of the best things I’ve written, and not simply because it’s intensely personal to me. Ox and Maddie’s love gives me hope, and their strength makes me feel strong.

I hope you’ll join me here, at the end of their journey.

xoxo
Susan

© 2017 Susan Fanetti

Since I’m publishing my post-apocalyptic work under a different variation of my name, head on over to the S.E. Fanetti blog to read more about my next release, going live on 7 April!

Cheers!
s–

 

It’s time for the cover and synopsis reveal for Honor, the Brazen Bulls MC #5! Honor is Apollo’s story.

I’ve got also Chapter Four for you as a preview—when Apollo and his love, Jacinda, first meet.

Honor goes live on Saturday, 24 February—4 weeks from today!

Because I’ll be away at an academic conference during the week that I would normally set up the preorder for an upcoming release, I’m going to set this one up a few days earlier than usual—the preorder will be up next weekend. And, of course, I’ll let you know when it’s live.

Meanwhile, you can add it to your TBR.

Synopsis:

Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1999.

Born on the day after the moon landing to a father with his head in the stars, Neil “Apollo” Armstrong has never felt that he could reach as high as his father’s dreams. He got as far as Tulsa, and there, with the Brazen Bulls MC, he found a way to fly on wheels. But he’s worried now that the club has lost its way.

The Bulls are reeling from a bloody, blazing street war that tore through the heart of the club. Their brotherhood has been badly damaged, and the trust among them is fragile.

Jacinda Durham doesn’t have a lot of trust to give. With a painful past still weighing on her present, she keeps people at a distance, preferring inconsequential encounters, to guard against the chance of being hurt. The career she’s chosen is another piece of her armor; she makes a living of suspicion.

After a blistering-hot night together, Apollo and Jacinda go their separate ways, despite a mutual sense that their attraction is deeper than skin. Then a fateful coincidence throws them violently back together, and Apollo finds himself standing between his club and a woman he barely knows, each a possible threat to the other. Where his loyalty lies should be clear, but his trust in the Bulls is shaken, and he can’t allow another innocent to be hurt.

It’s more than a question of loyalty. It’s love as well, a deeply rooted love for his club, and a powerful new love growing between him and this tough, beautiful woman who’s offered him her precious trust.

To save all he loves, Apollo must put everything on the line—his honor, his love, his life. He will have to pay the price that settles all their debts.

Note: explicit sex and violence.

Preview:

CHAPTER FOUR

“You have Adonis’s complete attention now,” Ryan said with a snort.

Jacinda didn’t look. She’d noticed the guy because the couple farther down on her side of the bar had had a spat about him, and her brain was wired to notice domestic spats and investigate. So she’d tagged him as he’d made his way around to the far side of the bar, the last seat, where the bartender had set his Guinness, and pose himself on the stool like the lord of the realm. Her job was to observe discreetly and see everything, so she’d observed and seen this guy.

His attitude was pure cock, straight-backed and strutting, but there was a dash of sweet in it, too, somewhere. Probably a blend he’d concocted to perfection by years of unbridled success with the ladies—because he was absurdly good looking. Easily the best-looking guy at Donovan’s, possibly the best-looking guy in Tulsa. A contender for the whole state of Oklahoma.

Handsome like Michelangelo had chiseled him from marble. Short blond hair, trim blond beard, cheekbones etched to precision. Big, too—over six feet, carved muscle from his neck down. He wore a blue and white checked shirt that strained against his substantial form. On her way to and from the bathroom, she’d seen faded jeans fitting nicely over solid thighs and slim hips, and black, square-toed cowboy boots on big feet.

Seriously. He was ridiculously hot.

She also saw a bit of smooth, contoured chest with an edge of ink showing under his shirt (three buttons open) and the white beater under it, and more ink on his arms, showing beneath his turned-up sleeves. She hadn’t been able to make out the images themselves. There might also have been a burn scar on an arm, or it had been a weird trick of the light. She hoped it was a scar. The dude needed a flaw.

That was all she’d been able to take note of without stopping and simply staring.

The bartender came over and set a fresh drink she hadn’t ordered on a green cocktail napkin before her. “From the guy at the end of the bar.” With his head, he indicated Adonis.

She looked, and he lifted his Guinness at her with a smile that must have been rehearsed in the mirror for hours until it had been perfected.

That was cocky as hell, seeing as fifteen seconds of noticing her would have produced the information that she was here with a man. That Ryan was gay and they were here because he had a crush on the grey-haired fiddle player was irrelevant; Adonis over there couldn’t know that.

She pushed the drink away. “No, thank you.”

With a wry smirk, the bartender took the drink away.

“So this is the dance tonight?” Ryan asked, finishing his beer and gesturing for a new round for both of them—making a statement of his own. The bartender set the drink he’d made in front of Jacinda again, and this time she didn’t refuse it.

“What do you mean?” she picked up the drink she’d already had.

“Please. I saw you Sherlocking the guy, and he sure as hell noticed you. Hottest guy and girl around notice each other across a crowded pub. Hottest guy buys hottest girl a drink. Hottest girl refuses it, plays hard to get. It’s like the opening of a romance novel. Or Cinemax After Dark. Next, he’ll get up, push himself in next to you, and ask why you turned down a free drink. I give it ninety minutes before you’re shagging in his…Jeep Wrangler. He looks like a Jeep Wrangler.”

“I’m not playing hard to get, and I absolutely will not be shagging anyone in a Wrangler. Ever in my life.”

Ryan simply grinned and paid for their drinks. Sidelong, Jacinda noticed Adonis notice that. If he got up and came over now, then he was either a glutton for punishment or pathologically confident.

He got up. And headed over.

Ryan, the turd, picked up his beer and pushed his chair back. “The band is back. I’m gonna go talk to Jimmy.” The fiddler.

He was leaving her with an empty seat at her side, all warmed up for Adonis. “You asshole.”

“Play nice, now. I’ll watch from afar and make sure you don’t break him.”

“Har har, asshole. This friendship’s over.”

Chuckling, he kissed her head and left, passing Adonis with a nod.

As expected, Adonis made himself comfortable in the seat of her betraying friend. “This seat taken?”

Of course he had a great voice, too. Deep and smooth, like velvet soaked in whiskey, rolling over the air.

Jacinda sipped her drink. “I thought it was, but apparently not.”

He nodded in the direction Ryan had gone, toward the stage. “You with that guy?”

She turned to look him in the—bright blue—eyes. Jesus, was this guy built in a lab or something? “You know I am.”

He grinned. Straight, white teeth, too. “I mean, are you with him?”

“Why would you think I’m not?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Just not the vibe I’m getting.”

“You do that a lot, get ‘vibes’?”

“I’m pretty good at understanding the things I see, yeah.”

That was a surprisingly interesting answer, and Jacinda gave him another hard look.

Ryan knew her well. The truth was, this guy here was hot beyond all reason and had the makings of a very nice fuck. She was into him, no denying it. For years, Jacinda had avoided relationships with men, but a harmless, meaningless good time was another matter. Maybe it seemed upside down, to trust strangers more than lovers, but she knew how to defend herself against strangers. It was lovers who came up from behind while her guard was down and did real harm.

She turned away from the blond god’s sapphire stare and sought out Ryan. She found him standing beside the stage, grinning and laughing like a schoolgirl while he chatted up his crush.

“Ryan’s a friend,” she answered, turning back to the guy she might or might not be shagging later on. But not in his Wrangler. They’d do it in a cheap motel, where meaningless fucks and illicit liaisons were meant to be done.

“As I thought. So, then, I have a question. Why’d you turn down my drink?” As he spoke, he watched her mouth; she’d used the stirrer straw because the drink was more ice than liquid now, and she didn’t like the ice dumping against her mouth when she tipped the glass.

She set the glass down. “Why’d you think I’d accept? I don’t know you.”

“In civilized societies, buying a lady a drink is an accepted means of getting to know her.”

“That’s what you are? Civilized?”

“I am if you’re a lady.”

“And if I’m not?”

His confident grin widened to unrehearsed enjoyment, and he leaned in close. “Then I’m anything you want me to be.”

He smelled good, too.

She laughed and shook her head. “You think you’re God’s gift, don’t ya?”

“I think we’re all God’s gift.” He nodded at her nearly empty drink. “Offer’s still good.”

“One drink. And I’ll buy the next round. Keep things even.”

“Free drink from a beautiful woman? Sounds great to me.” He waved for the bartender. “Bobby! ‘Nother round over here—and send one to her friend over there—and the band, too.”

The bartender took in the scene at the stage, and her and Adonis, and gave him a smile she couldn’t quite read.

“Spending money isn’t gonna impress me, if that’s your gambit.”

“No gambit. Just a nice guy is all.” He held out a large hand adorned with two heavy rings. “I’m Apollo.”

Sweet baby Jesus, he was an actual Greek god. She choked on the last sip of her current Sea Breeze. When she’d coughed her throat clear, she gasped, “You have got to be shitting me.”

“Nope. Apollo.” His offered hand hovered between them. “In civilized societies, it’s also accepted that you shake a hand when it’s offered.”

She shook his hand. Rough, like he did manual labor. She could feel the strength in it, but he didn’t squeeze hard. Before she let his hand go, she turned it and noted his rings—an intricate bull’s head on his middle finger, and a thick, solid band on his ring finger, etched with letters. She leaned in and saw icent desol. “Magnificent desolation?”

“Yeah.” She could hear in his tone that she’d pleasantly surprised him. “It’s a quote. You know it?”

“Buzz Aldrin said it from the moon. About the view from there. Is that why your parents named you Apollo? They’re space nuts?”

He gave her hand a gentle squeeze, and she realized she was still holding him. She let go. As he pulled his arm back, she saw the ink on his forearm in better detail: a bull, breathing fire.

Bull ring, bull ink, rough hands, cocky—fuck, he was a Brazen Bull.

He confirmed it with his answer. “My dad’s a space nut. They didn’t name me Apollo, but yeah, that’s why I’m called that. I was born the day after the moon landing, to folks named Armstrong. Guess what they named me.”

“Not Neil.” Nobody would really do that, right? That was worse than naming him Apollo—which was obviously his road name.

His sardonic grin was answer enough. Jacinda had a strong urge to offer condolences, and might even have done so, but Bobby the Bartender brought over their new round of drinks just then. Jacinda thanked him with a smile.

“You’ve got a great smile. Don’t suppose I could get one turned my way.” Apollo said, leaning close again. “Or at least your name.”

“I’m not a trained poodle. I don’t do shit on command.”

“I’ll earn the smile, then. But it’s only fair you tell me your name. You got my whole name and a story.”

She’d gotten more than that. Sitting here with him, she’d also learned that he was a patched member of the Brazen Bulls MC. She’d lived in Tulsa her whole life, so she knew the Bulls, and last year, she and her parents had paid very close attention to what had gone down between the Bulls and the Street Hounds. It had been hard to miss for even the most casual viewer of the ten o’clock news, but people in their line of work had contacts with more information than the average Tulsan. Jacinda had good information about exactly what both sides of that war had done.

Before last year, she would have said that she didn’t have a problem with the Bulls. They stayed on their playing field and didn’t cause trouble for regular citizens, and Jacinda herself had wobbled on the fine line between legal and expedient more than once. It was part of the job. Sometimes law had to be pushed out of the way a little bit to reach justice.

But last year—that was something else. Innocent people had gotten hurt. Lives and livelihoods had been destroyed. After the war between the Bulls and the Hounds, the racial line between black and white, always solid in Tulsa, now had barbed wire.

They hadn’t pushed the law out of the way, they’d obliterated it. If they’d found justice, it wasn’t for Tulsa.

The question now before her, as Neil ‘Apollo’ Armstrong of the Brazen Bulls MC awaited her name, was whether it mattered to this moment and, if so, how much. Not at all, for a meaningless fuck at the Osage Motor Inn. But she’d be careful what she told him about herself.

And it probably wasn’t a Jeep Wrangler he’d ridden in on.

The band began their next set, filling the pub with folk music. She turned and sought out Ryan, who’d taken up a seat at a tall two-top near the stage. Seeming to sense her attention, he turned and smiled at her, lifting his hands in a question. She sent back a subtle thumbs-up, and he laughed. Cocky fucker.

Turning back to the cocky fucker at her side, she said, raising her voice above the music, “Jacinda.”

“That’s beautiful. Never known a Jacinda before.”

“You don’t know one now.”

He laughed, his confidence unshaken. “I’d like to.”

Every time he parried one of her barbs, she liked him more. He flew by all her checkpoints, never turning into an asshole, never getting hurt and then pissy. Just evaded the blow of her snark, or absorbed it, and kept moving.

“Do women ever tell you no?”

“Sure. You’ve told me no several times already.”

“Do you ever take no for an answer?”

“Sure. But I told you, I’m pretty good at reading situations, and your nos don’t seem firm. Tell me I’m reading this wrong, and you want me to go, and I’m gone.”

He wasn’t reading it wrong. She sipped her drink and said nothing, until he laughed and picked up his glass.

“You are an interesting woman, Jacinda.”

“How do you know? Maybe I’m just a secretary who lives alone with her cat.”

“I know a lot of secretaries. Never met one who wore black leather pants and boots like that.”

“You have now.” Not a lie, strictly speaking. She did all the administrative work of the agency, including answering the phones most of the time. And she lived alone. With a cat.

He cocked a blond eyebrow at her over his glass. “A secretary, huh? What kind of secretary?”

“I work at a company that does insurance work.” Also true. They got a lot of business from insurance companies investigating claims. It seemed prudent to keep the specific nature of Durham & Associates Detection Services’ work to herself while talking to a Brazen Bull.

“Well color me surprised. Are you like Catwoman, meek and mild by day, pouncing on unsuspecting men by night?”

She laughed. “Sure. We’ll go with that.” As she sipped the last of her drink, Apollo brushed a finger along her cheek.

“Damn, it is a gorgeous smile.”

She tipped her head out of his reach and focused on getting the attention of Bobby the Bartender so she could order another round and square things up between her and the Greek god who was making a claim on her.

Bobby came over, and she ordered. That would make five drinks for her in—she checked her watch—less than two hours. Shit, when she stood up, the room would spin. She’d be too drunk to drive. She might already be.

Okay. That meant making conversation for a while until she could get some water in herself and have another pee, too.

“So what is it you do, Apollo?”

“Mechanic.”

Of course he was. At Brian Delaney Auto Service, no doubt. She let him dissemble, as she had. There was no need for full disclosure between them.

Bobby brought their drinks. As Jacinda reached for hers, Apollo laid his hand on her arm. Yeah, that was a burn scar, dark and smooth. At the same time, he held Bobby up with a gesture of his other hand. “Hold up.” He turned to Jacinda. “You’ve been pounding those back. How about we get something to eat?”

He wanted to sober her up? “You want to sober me up? I thought you had designs.”

“Basket of chips,” he ordered, “with salt and vinegar, and a cheeseburger for the lady.”

“I’m a vegetarian.”

That was a pants-on-fire kind of lie that had come out of nowhere, probably because she didn’t like him ordering for her, but Apollo simply said, “Make it a garden burger.” Bobby made a note and handed it to a bar-back.

When the bartender was gone again, Apollo leaned in close. “Never in my life have I needed to get a chick drunk.”

Of course not. They probably passed out from the sheer power of his pheromones. “Point of pride?” she asked, adding a little stinger to her tone.

“Point of human decency.” He sat back and picked up his glass.

Well, shit. That was a good answer. She was starting to like this guy, and not just because he was beautiful and she was—yes, getting drunk.

She watched him while he poured Guinness down his throat. Even the cadence of his swallows, the flex of those muscles, showed his strength. An urge grabbed her to press her fingers against his pulse point and feel that strength; she quelled it and sipped her own drink.

Setting his glass down abruptly, Apollo leaned toward her and fished in his jeans pocket. He pulled out a cellphone. “’Scuse me,” he said and answered. “Yeah. … Hey, Ox, there trouble?”

He turned away and pushed his chair back, as if he meant to get up, but stopped, leaning forward. Jacinda couldn’t help but listen. Eavesdropping was a professional skill that became an unavoidable personal habit.

“Slick and Fitz are on that.”

Apollo. Ox. Slick. Only big bad bikers could get away with calling themselves such ridiculous names without being ridiculed.

“Yeah, that’s right. You need me to come in? … Okay, man. Call again if you don’t get him. Yeah, ‘night.” He ended the call and pushed the phone back into his pocket, then turned to her with that well-rehearsed smile. “Sorry about that.”

“Trouble?”

“Nothing I have to deal with.”

“You and your friends have interesting names. Is that a thing with…mechanics?”

He shrugged. “It’s a thing with my friends, how ‘bout that.” Shifting his chair to face hers, he leaned in, so close that she felt his beard on her cheek, a sensation that tripped wires all the way through her, tightening her nipples and clenching her pussy, and murmured in her ear, “It’s not nice to listen to other people’s conversations.”

Turning her head slowly so the touch continued, her cheek slipping against his beard, her nose brushing his, their mouths close enough that his breath tickled her lips, she whispered back, “In civilized societies? I thought we’d established that we weren’t civilized.”

When he smiled, his beard brushed her lips, they were that close. “I guess we’re not. I like you, Jacinda the Catwoman.”

Though they were already practically mouth to mouth, and the magnetic fields of their bodies drew them to close the infinitesimal distance remaining, they didn’t. Jacinda liked that zing of the pull, the way the chemistry between them tingled all through her, too much to give into it, and Apollo seemed to like it just as much. So they hovered there, quivering on the fulcrum of potential, and everything around them dimmed to an inconsequential hum.

Until a broad shadow loomed over them and parked itself there. Reluctantly, Jacinda leaned back and looked up into Ryan’s smug face.

“Hello, kids.”

Jacinda sighed. “Ryan, meet Apollo. Apollo, Ryan.”

To her friend’s credit, though his eyes narrowed at the name, he kept his snark about Greek gods to himself and shook Apollo’s hand.

“Don’t mind me. I just want to let Jacinda here know that she doesn’t have to wait on me. I’m going upstairs to hang with the band after last call, and I’ll call a cab after.” Donovan’s kept an apartment above the pub to house talent while in town. Ryan shifted his friendly grin to one with some edge. “But until then, I’m just over there if you need anything.”

“I got it. Thanks. Have fun!”

Ryan blew her a kiss and wended his way back to the band’s table.

“Your friend dating the singer?” Apollo asked.

The singer was a waifish woman named Nuala. Ryan was out, but Jacinda made a point to let him deliver word of his outness to the people he met. This time, however, the words coasted out on a Sea Breeze wave. “The fiddler.”

“Oh. Ah.” Apollo shot a glance over her shoulder, toward the stage.

“You have a problem with that?”

“Why would I? Where he puts his dick is his business, as long as he has permission to put it there.”

Again, this guy surprised her. Not only for his lack of judgment, but for the oddly astute and precise way he had of explaining his reasoning. She liked it. She liked him.

So she kissed him.

She’d surprised him, but he recovered quickly and opened his mouth for her, letting her find his tongue. Oh, she liked that, too, how he didn’t take over and try to dominate her. This guy was smooth as glass. The rich taste of Guinness lingered on his tongue and rolled over hers. His lips were soft and full, and his beard was just rough enough to electrify the contrast of sensation. He smelled—God, what was that? He didn’t smell overly chemical or like she’d just dodged the cologne gauntlet at Dillard’s.

God, it was good, whatever it was.

She lifted her hand and hooked it around his neck—so solid and firm—and that touch charged through him somehow. Without ending the kiss or pulling back at all, he gripped the arms of her chair and yanked it around so that she faced him directly.

That surprise really hit her, and she turned away from his mouth with a gasp she couldn’t hold back. But he was right there, his hot breath skimming over her flushed cheek.

“Food’s here, Catwoman,” he murmured, his lips caressing her skin as he spoke.

Jacinda swallowed and tried to focus, no longer clear on whether she was drunk on vodka or on the god whose tongue had just memorized her mouth.

© 2017 Susan Fanetti