Twisted Steel: An MC Anthology: Second Edition by Elizabeth Knox (top 5 ebook reader txt) 📕

needed, but it’s who I am. I pushed people to their limits and then some, but unlike the majority of guys with personalities like mine, I could back up my shit talk.

Being a reaper for the Chained Rebels Motorcycle Club fit me perfectly. Of course, we had bylaws that I could recite word for word that kept me out of some shit, but that didn’t mean I didn’t raise hell. We all did, and thanks to Skillet, the local law is in our pocket. I thought for sure I would be doing time for what went down with Memphis, but that isn’t what happened. Some other junkie got stuck with those charges, and I didn’t ask questions of how or why. There were a few of the older brothers in the club, none of us questioned them, or how they made things happen, Skillet is one of them.

4

Quinn

“Cobra, I just need some time,” I explain, telling my wandering eyes to focus on anything other than the gorgeous man walking toward me.

“How much time, Quinn? I’m sorry, okay?” His green eyes widen, and his biceps are covered with tattoos flex as his palms flatten against the wall, pinning his body against mine.

“Tell me what to do.”

“I don’t know.” My eyelids close tightly, and I pray I will remain strong. The other brothers call me Mouse. It’s about a fifty-fifty toss-up which he will use. When he uses my legal name, he’s being sincere. It’s something I want to ignore but can’t.

“I promise they were the last ones.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Jude.” My eyes dart open, and heat radiates from my body. He thinks he means it, and at this moment, he does, but it won’t last. It never does. I duck under his arms, needing to put some distance between us, and suck a deep cleansing breath into my body.

He bangs his forehead against the wall a few times and then stills. “I’ll quit drinking. I’ll change.”

“Bullshit. Neither of us will do either of those things.”

“You’re right.”

“Of course I am.” Disappointment surges so easily through my veins as if it’s the only thing my body needs to live. Truthfully, I don’t know how I still have some type of faith in him, but I do. I always will.

“They don’t mean anything to me.” He pries himself off the wall and joins me. “They’re just a means to an end.”

“They mean something to me.” The words rattle through my dry throat as a hopeless whisper. The air is so thin between us that I can barely breathe it without choking on the repetitiveness of it. This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about this, and I can guarantee it won’t be the last. When the sun meets the horizon and the moon crests, we both will be the same people as we were when we awoke today. If there’s only one thing true about us, it would be that we are consistent. Neither one of us has changed a whole lot over the years, other than the fact of being divorced. The sexual tension between us is still as strong as the day we met. Although I might be pissed at the moment, we always run back to the other in one form or another—case in point, this instant.

“Let’s just get this over with, Jude,” I remind him with a huff. We have a reason for being together right now and it isn’t a social visit. We are meeting Glas, the other reaper of the chapter, and his old lady, Scar, for a little recon mission of sorts soon. A new MC is hanging around Blackwell and Thing, the chapter prez, and the rest of the brothers want to know if they’re friends or foes before the guys’ act.

“I didn’t forget, Mouse.” His wide devious smile spreads across his face, and his snakebite piercings disappear beneath his tongue as he licks them. This drives me wild, and he knows it.

I glare at him before my eyes close momentarily. I just need a minute. I wouldn’t let him in again. It had taken this long for us to get to a place where we could be around each other for a while without screaming at one another. We were the epitome of a toxic relationship, but there’s one thing no one tells you about those types of relationships. You can’t just end them. It isn’t that easy. The reason people in them fight so hard is because they love each other even harder. At least, that is the case when it comes to us. I am a damn fool for loving him, but I did and always would in some form or another.

He brushes the pad of his thumb across my bottom lip, and fire rages throughout me. Before I realize what I’m doing, my arms extend, and my palms land against his chest, and he falls backward a few steps. “I hate you, Jude,” my lips barely whisper, awakening the history swirling between us.

His head drops as if the words physically hurt. “I hate me, too.”

They aren’t pleasant. They are the blatant, ugly truth, but I don’t always mean them. This is my biggest downfall. I’m the type to speak my mind in the heat of the moment without thinking and regret them later, knowing I don’t always mean them. I do not have much of a filter, and usually, it isn’t a problem. Something like this, telling someone you hate them, is like a cancer that slowly grows and eventually festers from the inside out, though. I know all too well because I watched my mom tell my dad it every time before she took him back. It never failed. She always took him back, regardless of what he had done. I’m not proud to fill those same shoes, but each time this happens between Cobra and me, I understand my mom a little more.

Remorse blankets my body as soon as our eyes connect, and just like that,