Desire: Big Bear Outlaw MC Romance Book 1 Read online

  DESIRE: Big Bear Outlaw MC Romance 1

  Charlotte Byrd

  Description

  He shouldn’t have been an outlaw, I shouldn’t have fallen for him…

  EMMA

  Jack Hart was all wrong for me. He was in the Big Bear Outlaw Motorcycle Club. I was studying pre-med. He was a criminal, and I’ve never even jaywalked.

  After my mom had left, the last thing I wanted was a relationship.But then I started falling for Jack. Why did he have to have a girlfriend? Why did I have to go out with his brother?

  JACK

  My family ran the MC, but there was so much more to me than the MC. I was a writer and I didn’t belong. The only person who saw this was Emma.

  Why did I have to have a girlfriend? Why did she have to go out with my brother?

  Heat Level: Sensual and Hot!

  Desire is the first installment of a 3-part Big Bear Outlaw MC Romance series. It is a short read, and all three installments will come out a week apart. You won’t have to wait long to read the rest of the story!

  Copyright © 2015 by Charlotte Byrd.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction.

  All the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Wild Huckleberry Press

  Yucca Valley, California

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  Prologue

  EMMA

  When I saw him park his brand-new motorcycle, my palms grew cold, and I started to shiver. He took off his helmet, tossed his long blonde hair and nodded to me. I had seen him around campus. He was in my English class, but we’ve never spoken.

  Jack Hart was all wrong for me. We had nothing in common. He was in a motorcycle club, the Big Bear Outlaw MC. I was going to study pre-med at a real college next year (hopefully at the University of Southern California). He was probably a criminal, and I have never even jaywalked. Besides, I was stuck living at home with my father. He’s an alcoholic cop, who disapproved of guys, particularly those with criminal records.

  And yet, I couldn't stop thinking about how Jack's leather jacket hugged his broad shoulders. Or the way that his butt filled out his tight jeans.

  I desired him.

  “You’re Emma, right?” Jack turned to face me. Lost in thought, I hadn’t seen him approach me!

  “Emma Crawford, right? We have English together?”

  Jack stepped close to me. We were breathing the same air, and I wondered if he could hear my heartbeat through my shirt.

  “Yes,” I mumbled and nodded.

  “Nice to meet you,” he extended his strong, rough hand and flashed a wide open smile. “I’m Jack Hart.”

  I shook his hand, and my panties got wet.

  Chapter 1

  EMMA

  I came home from school to the perpetual smell of vomit, which permeated the house. Dad was drunk again, just as he had been every day since my mother left, a month ago.

  Mom had been threatening to leave for some time. I used to sit in my room listening to their fighting through my headphones - my parents could always scream louder than Taylor Swift. Mom had left before, but this time she packed her bags and even took the things from storage. She had left for good, and she wasn’t coming back.

  When Mom was still around, Dad had a reason to hide his drinking. He was embarrassed by what he was. But now that she was gone, he spent his days in a drunken stupor.

  I came home and went straight to my room. Dad and I were ships passing in the night. He was too wasted to notice me, and I was too angry to acknowledge the person whose vomit I had to clean up from the living room floor every evening.

  The only person who knew the truth was my friend Delilah. Her mother was an alcoholic too, and when she came over to my house to work on our biology project, she knew what was going on right away. She was the only one who understood why I never wanted to invite anyone over. Why I was reluctant about her coming, why I rarely wanted to be home and why I had to be there to make sure that he was okay.

  Delilah understood the confusing bundle of hate and love that I felt for my family and made me promise to call her if I ever needed anything. I didn’t want to make that promise, but I did.

  Delilah and I were unlikely friends. She was outgoing and adventuresome, and I was a recluse. I was shy and standoffish. When Mom was still around, we used to fight about what I did on my weekends: she wanted me to go out and party and I wanted to stay in and read.

  I was 20 when Mom left, old enough to both move out on my own and to take care of Dad.

  I was in conflict.

  On one hand, I wanted to go to my room and stay there, hidden away from the world forever. On the other hand, I wanted to get out of the house and away from the man who I was starting to hate more and more every day.

  And so I remained stuck here, in my parents’ house, attending community college even though I got into UCLA and Berkeley. The longer I stayed in the house, the more I hated Dad and hated myself for hating him. My only hope now was that they would accept me again when I submitted my transfer applications.

  Sitting in my room and painting my nails Damsel in Distress, a dark plum color that reflected the hopelessness that I felt inside, I had a realization. Dad spent his hours laying on the couch with a garbage can of throw up next to his head and the only way that I could escape that image was to escape.

  My hatred for my mother and what she had done and my hatred my father and the pathetic sight that he had become was leaking out of my pores, contaminating everything that I touched. The only way to break free was to avoid being alone.

  My phone rang.

  “Want to go to a party with me?” Delilah asked.

  I nodded yes, to the phone, but still asked, “What kind of party?”

  “Just some older guys, not from the school. I’m not sure exactly, but it should be fun.”

  Older guys sounded fun. Older guys typically had nice haircuts, jobs with steady paychecks, suits with dress shirts and ties and newer cars. Older guys would probably not know about my family situation, the news of which had already spread through our small town, and resulted in many uncalled-for sympathetic looks and occasional smirks.

  “That sounds good,” I said.

  I could use a night out with strangers who didn’t know anything about me. With them, I didn’t I didn’t have to be some sad girl with a mother who didn’t want her and a father who was killing himself in the slowest and most grotesque way possible.

  Chapter 2

  EMMA

  Delilah picked me up at seven. I got into her old red Mazda Miata, and we sped away from my small 1950s house with the falling fence and overgrown weeds. Watching the world that I was leaving behind in the side mirror, I imagined what it would be like to leave it for good. To get into a car and just drive away, far away from a place with so many bad memories.

  But to leave for good I had to be smart.

  I couldn't just drive away - I would just get stuck in another town like this one, working a job I hated. School was my way out, and I had submitted transfer applications to five schools, as far away as possible from Joshua Tree, California, this claustrophobic town in
the middle of the Mojave desert.

  “I met this guy at the gas station this afternoon, he’s really cute and drives a motorcycle,” Delilah was one of those people who was always in mid-sentence.

  “Have you ever been on a motorcycle?”

  I was going to nod, but she didn’t wait for my answer. “Me neither. I really want him to take me out on it.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t really know, his name is Carter Daniels, he’s a few years older. He’s a mechanic and works at that shop where all the bikers hang out, out on Highway 62.”

  I knew of the place. It was in the industrial part of town, surrounded by large flat warehouses with enormous parking lots. Without a single tree or shrub for nearly a square mile, the place felt like a concrete box.

  There was no life there – not one bird hopped around looking for crumbs, not one mouse or feral cat made a home there. There were only leather, motorcycles and car parts.

  I immediately regretted agreeing to go with Delilah to this party. It wasn't my scene. Even though I didn't have a specific scene, bikers definitely weren’t it.

  What did I have in common with a bunch of old men with long greasy hair and longer rap sheets? What did I have in common with men who wore matching leather jackets and liked women and girls who wore bras for tops?

  “I don’t know, Delilah. I’m not sure about this,” I tried to back out.

  “No, please, please, come. I don’t really know this guy and, honestly, this place seems a little scary to me.”

  “I know! Me too! So why are we going there?”

  “I like Carter, he’s really cute,” she blushed. “I just want someone to come with me, so I’m not all alone out there, in the land of bikers.”

  I still had my reservations, but she was right. It was better for us to go together. The last thing I wanted was to see her face on a missing poster on the ten o’clock news.

  When we pulled into the Hart’s Auto Repair parking lot, the party had already started, and the place looked even worse than I could’ve imagined. Girls in bikini tops and the shortest skirts I have ever seen – the ones with their butt cheeks hanging out – draped themselves over everything that moved – men, women, motorcycles. The girls were young, about our age, but the men were old, like my dad’s age.

  “How old is Carter again?” I asked looking around. I could barely see a single person who was under forty.

  “I don’t know, twenty-five? Twenty-eight?” Delilah asked me as if I knew. Delilah walked back and forth, in between the parked bikes and falling over couples, looking for Carter. I followed her.

  “Everyone here is very old,” I whispered.

  “Really?” she asked. “I didn’t notice.”

  How could she not notice? Many of the men had gray hair that they didn’t try to hide one bit. Most of them also had wrinkled necks, and one even had an oxygen tank like the one I had seen at the retirement home where my grandmother lived.

  Granted, most of the men here did look fit for their age, they probably lifted weights and worked out, but that didn’t change the fact that they were as old or older than my father.

  Finally, we spotted Carter. He stood around the grill laughing loudly with a group of younger guys. All of them wore leather jackets with the words Big Bear Motorcycle Club on the back.

  “Hey, you made it!” Carter wrapped his arm around Delilah’s neck and gave her a big friendly kiss on the cheek. I knew why Delilah liked him. Carter had dark jet black hair, pale skin, razor-sharp cheekbones, and a pronounced jaw. His hair wasn’t as long as the others’, but it was straight and fell into his face in a mesmerizing way that drew attention to his bright green eyes.

  “This is my friend, Emma,” she said.

  Carter introduced his friends. Kyle Hart had deep chocolate hair and earnest eyes, and Danny had long stringy hair, soft doughy features, and kind eyes. Danny was a tall guy who towered over the others, even though they were all about six feet tall.

  I faintly remembered Danny from high school. He had been a few years ahead of me. Kyle also went to my high school, but I didn’t remember him at all.

  “I graduated six years ago,” he said.

  “Me and Danny dropped out,” Carter laughed. “We got suspended for fighting.”

  “I got my GED, afterward,” Danny added.

  Carter was proud of dropping out, but the tone of Danny’s voice showed that he was embarrassed.

  It was probably wrong, but I felt myself judging. Some girls wore dating drop outs as a badge of honor, but to me, it was just sad. Right now, these guys had more money than most of us in college. They had time to work and make a good income and supplement it with who knows what else. In a few years that would all change. Everyone knew that dropouts didn’t have many prospects.

  “So, how does all this work?” I finally asked during a brief lull in the conversation about how much they hated school.

  “Emma, that’s rude,” Delilah hissed.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I just don’t know how this works.”

  “What exactly?” Kyle asked.

  “This whole gang, whatever you all do here. What is this exactly?”

  “It’s a motorcycle club,” Kyle said. “This isn’t a gang. My father started it with his friend in the early 80s. It’s a brotherhood.”

  “Like a religious order?” I laughed.

  “We’re not religious, but we do believe in this club. I guess Big Bear is our religion.”

  “And what does the Big Bear Motorcycle Club do?” I asked. “Besides, drink, party, and hang out with really young girls?”

  “Emma!” Delilah shook her head.

  “What? I’m just joking.” I said quickly, trying to laugh it off.

  A part of me was joking, but only a part. Kyle stepped closer to me, so close I felt his breath on my cheek. Maybe I had stepped over the line, I wanted to step back, but I didn’t dare give way to him.

  “You see that guy over there,” Kyle said, pointing to an older man with deeply set eyes and large overhanging brows that made him look like a villain.

  “He’s my stepfather. He’s the president of the club. He runs the show. And that’s my mom.”

  He pointed to a beautiful woman with long dark hair and thick blonde streaks. Her jewelry jingled as she laughed, and though she was in her fifties, she dressed as if she were in her mid-twenties. She wore tight jeans that accentuated her curves and a tight black wrap tank top.

  “The Big Bear MC isn’t anything sinister, Emma. We’re a family. Just a group of guys who work at the Hart repair shop and ride motorcycles and hang out on the weekends. Yes, we like pretty girls, and they like us, so what?”

  Kyle had an intensity to him. He was serious and standoffish, and it drew me closer to him.

  I shrugged and nodded. “I was just wondering,” I said quietly. He held my gaze without looking away, and a knot formed at the bottom of my stomach. My heart skipped a beat, and I tried to catch my breath. Finally, I looked away, and he turned back to Delilah.

  I took a sip of the beer that Danny had handed me and tried to join in the conversation. I nodded and laughed along with everyone else. And then out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a familiar face.

  Somewhere in the distance, I saw a flash of his long blonde hair.

  Jack Hart.

  He leaned back in a lounge chair laughing with his whole body. Loose strands of hair fell into his face as he rocked back and forth. He tucked them behind his ears, over and over, but they got untucked almost immediately. He was talking to a beautiful girl with long blonde hair and a snug crop top, the kind that I would never have the courage to wear.

  “That’s Jack Hart,” Delilah leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Kyle’s brother.”

  I nodded. I knew of him, but I didn’t know that he had a brother.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “He’s in my English class.”

  I had seen Jack at school, but I didn’t know how I felt abou
t him. He hung out with a completely different group of people than I did, and frankly I never thought much of any of them. Many were drops outs destined to bum around this town forever.

  Many were druggies. Druggies scared me, I’d never tried a single drug – not even a joint – and a huge part of me was embarrassed over my inexperience. I played it off as something that I just didn’t do, but I was secretly afraid. I was afraid of trying anything that had the power to make me lose control.

  Our eyes met across the parking lot. He spotted me and then took a double take as if he were wondering, is that you? I didn’t know why, but for some reason I shrugged.

  A beautiful blonde hung around his shoulders and kissed him on the neck. His eyes remained firmly on mine. Her kisses became intense and passionate. Her body started to move to the music pumping out of the boom box. She tried to get him to move his body along with hers, but he remained perfectly still, staring at me. Eventually, I looked away and turned back toward Carter, Delilah, and Danny.