Rampage Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons--living or dead--is entirely coincidental.

  Rampage: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Filthy Fools MC) copyright 2017 by Naomi West. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.

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  Contents

  Rampage: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Filthy Fools MC)

  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

  Epilogue

  Books by Naomi West

  Ravage: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Demon Riders MC)

  Ruin: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Butchers MC)

  Ryder: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Midnight Hunters MC) (Dirty Daring Devils Book 3)

  Xavier: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Reaper’s Hearts MC) (Dirty Daring Devils Book 2)

  Wheeler: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Satan’s Sons MC) (Dirty Daring Devils Book 1)

  Stolen Chopper: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Devil’s Wings MC) (Rebel Biker Nomads Book 3)

  Stolen Ride: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Sons of Wolves MC) (Rebel Biker Nomads Book 2)

  Stolen Patch: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Satan’s Legion MC) (Rebel Biker Nomads Book 1)

  Mailing List

  Rampage: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Filthy Fools MC)

  By Naomi West

  He’s the most dangerous man I’ve ever met… but I just can’t say no.

  All I ever wanted was to escape.

  My alcoholic stepfather has made my life a living hell for as long as I can remember.

  But running away would mean leaving behind my mother and brother.

  I can’t abandon them.

  They need me too bad.

  So I escape for one night… into the arms of a biker.

  He’s not gentle or nice.

  In fact, our night together is a brutal, sweaty rampage.

  But it was everything I ever dreamed of.

  When it was over, I thought that would be the end of things.

  Back to my regularly scheduled programming of shielding my family from a drunken beast.

  But I was dead wrong.

  Because the biker wasn’t done with me yet.

  And he isn’t going anywhere…

  As long as I’m pregnant with his baby.

  Chapter One

  Marilee

  “What does a man have to do around here to get a goddamn drink?” Greg’s voice is like a growling engine, tearing through the house and out onto the porch, where I sit seeking the only solace available to me right now: a menthol cigarette, cool and refreshing in my lungs. Of course, I know that darkness lurks in the sense of relief, but the darkness in the house is much worse. I take another drag as Greg goes on, stomping his feet: “Shall I sing you a fucking song, Dana? Will that make you get off your fat ass and get me a goddamn drink?”

  I imagine Mom becoming strong and brave as she was once upon a time, before Dad was killed in some village overseas that nobody can quite remember the name of. I imagine her rising up and screaming at him, filling with fire and blowing some his way. I smile at the phantom. But phantoms and reality rarely match up. Mom mutters, just loud enough for me to hear: “We’re out of beer, but there’s some whisky in the cupboard.”

  “Whisky?” Greg roars, as he would have roared no matter what Mom said. “What am I, some drunk? It’s four in the afternoon!”

  The Texan late-autumn sun hangs low in the sky, as swollen and purple as the bruises both Mom and I sport. I take another long drag of the cigarette, drawing in as deeply as I can, as though drawing the smoke will block out my hearing.

  “Whisky . . . you really are a piece of work, Dana.”

  The door opens behind me and Travis walks out, wearing his Minecraft T-shirt and holding his cellphone. He’s ten but he has older eyes, the same light-blue-turned-gray as mine. Sometimes I have to remind myself that he’s my little brother; there’s too much adulthood in his face.

  “He sure is loud,” he says quietly, and then looks down at his cellphone. “You shouldn’t be smoking.” His fingers tap-tap-tap away. He has the speakers turned down, but the alien zapping and “ahhhhhh” of his enemies is still audible. “Smoking hurts your lungs.”

  “That’s true,” I agree, and then take a super-long drag just to annoy him.

  He glances up and smiles, just a small smile. I can’t remember the last time he smiled widely like a carefree kid. “Your hair looks funny.”

  I glance at myself in the reflection of the downstairs window, twisting around in the wicker chair. He’s right. My hair does look funny. It’s choppy from where I tried to cut it myself, and singed on one side from where Greg swung at me with a cigarette in his hand. My eyes are big, a bit too deer-like sometimes. And I’m skinny from five years of volleyball.

  “Thanks.”

  “This game is hard.”

  “Is it?” I make to drag my cigarette and then realize that I’ve smoked it down to the stub. I reach into my pocket for another.

  “Are you chain-smoking now?” Travis drops his phone into his pocket.

  “Tell me about school,” I say.

  “You only graduated in the summer.”

  “I’m not asking you to tell me what school is, dumbass. Tell me how you’re doing at school.”

  “You shouldn’t call me dumbass.” He flashes me a toothy scowl, half sweet and half cunning. “You might turn me into a bad person.”

  “You’re too smart for your own good, you know that?”

  “School is fine. The counselor keeps asking me about Dad. When I see him in the hallways he comes up to me and asks me in that tone. I just look at him and tell him that Dad died when I was five and I don’t feel sad anymore, but he won’t leave me alone.”

  “Maybe he senses that you might have other problems.” I nod toward the house, where Greg has quieted now. But Greg is never truly quiet, because we’re always waiting for the next explosion.

  “Maybe.” Travis shrugs. “He still hasn’t hit me. Is that funny? That I feel like I’m waiting for him to hit me, I mean.”

  “I don’t know if funny is the word.”

  I try to light my cigarette, but all I get for my trouble is a grazed thumb and a tiny spark which vanishes before I can bring it to my lips. “Dammit.”

  Travis opens his mouth to speak, but the growl of twenty engines comes out instead of words. For a moment we meet eyes, sharing a silent joke; he opens his mouth wider and vibrates his body as though the engines are inside of him. Giggling together, we turn to the road. The bikers normally growl by quickly, passing through our street once or twice a week. But today one of them slows down, glances our way, and then stops completely. I glance at Travis and he shrugs.

&
nbsp; The man is tall and very heavily muscled, so much so that it’s obvious even beneath his leathers that his muscles are tight and imposing. I can’t tell how old he is, though I’d guess early thirties, which makes him a full decade older than me and then some. His expression is dead serious, his jet-black hair cropped close to his face, his face clean-shaven and devastatingly strong. His eyes—I notice as he gets closer, because he walks straight at us—are a shade of green that makes me think of a cold sea somewhere, eyes which look right through a person. He stops at the bottom of the porch steps, playing with a Zippo lighter, flicking it open and closed and making it dance across his fingertips. He does this absentmindedly, like a trick learned in a different life.

  “Hello,” he says.

  I wriggle under the weight of those dark green eyes. Suddenly I wish I was dressed in something more presentable than ragged pajamas and an old brown blanket.

  “Uh, hi.”

  “That’s cool.” Travis nods at the Zippo lighter. “Is it hard?”

  When the man smiles, he becomes a boy. Then his serious expression returns. “Everything’s hard at first, kid, but once you learn a thing you never really forget it. My momma told me that when I was about your age. Or maybe I was younger.”

  “My age? How old do you think I am?”

  “Well, let me guess.” The man tilts his head, taking the business very seriously, and since nobody usually takes this much interest in Travis I don’t feel uncomfortable about this stranger being here, unexplained. “I’d say you were a seventy-five year old man, in the twilight of his life, waiting for the car to take you to the old folks’ home.”

  Travis giggles, covering his mouth. Then he lets his hand fall. “No!”

  “My name’s Dusty Ripton.” He offers his hand through the porch beams.

  I stare at it dumbly. He has a snake tattoo on his wrist, wrapping around and biting its own tail, as well as skulls and crossbones on his knuckles. It’s the roughest hand I’ve ever seen, and the most alluring. I take it. He squeezes just enough for me to sense the immense power he’s capable of. We shake for a second, and then two, and then three, and just keep on shaking while he looks at me expectantly.

  “I can do this all day, miss,” he says.

  “Your name,” Travis whispers.

  Oh!

  “I’m Marilee Milford. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “A pleasure.” He removes his hand and tucks his thumbs through his belt loops. Most men would look ridiculous, but he somehow pulls it off. The bruised sunlight rests on his face. “It’s not every day you see a lady with a cigarette hanging from her mouth like that, especially when it’s not even lit.”

  I open my mouth in surprise, giving the cigarette the encouragement it needs to drop into my lap. Dusty smiles and I smile too, though there’s more than a little nervousness in mine. “Let me help you,” he says, handing me his Zippo lighter.

  I take it—our hands brush, the hairs on my forearm pricking—and then light the cigarette.

  “She just smoked one,” Travis says. “She’s a chain-smoker now.”

  “We’ve all got our vices, kid.”

  “What’s a vice?” Travis asks.

  Part of me wishes he’d go away so I can be alone with Dusty, but another part is thrilled to see him speaking to a grownup who isn’t me or Mom or Greg or one of his overworked teachers.

  “It’s something you do even though you know you shouldn’t, ’cause it feels too good.”

  “Do you have any vices?” Travis asks.

  “Don’t ask so many questions,” I mutter.

  “It’s no problem. Vices, me? No, I’m the most well-behaved man in the whole U S of A. And that’s a fact.”

  “Somehow I doubt that.” The words come out of my mouth without me telling them to. I’m shocked by my forwardness. I’m usually quiet and shy, but there’s something about Dusty. Even so, I can’t meet his eye once I realize what I’ve said.

  “Maybe not,” Dusty says. “You’ve got me there.”

  “Do you always come up to strangers and give them your lighter?”

  “Only when they’re as pretty as your sister.”

  I can’t help but blush. My cheeks fill and I wonder how obvious the burning redness is. I resist the urge to twist around in the chair and glance at my reflection.

  “What’s going on out there?” Greg roars from the living room.

  Travis looks at me and I look at him. We both know that whatever freedom this brief exchange afforded us is spent now. Dusty tilts his head like a predator listening to far-off prey. “He doesn’t sound too pleased,” he notes.

  “You have to go now,” Travis says, glancing at me urgently. I read the message: If Greg finds a guy out here . . .

  “He’s right.” I blow out a lungful of smoke and reach through the porch beams with his lighter. “You need to go.”

  “I suppose I do,” he says. “There isn’t much use in a man getting involved in family drama, especially when the family isn’t his.” He nudges the lighter away. Again, our hands touch. I’m starting to think he’s doing it on purpose. “Keep it. But I have to say, Marilee Milford, I don’t like the sound of his voice.”

  “Do I have to come out there and see what’s going on? Are you gonna make me stand up? Fuckin’ idiots! A house full of fuckin’ idiots!”

  “Please,” I urge, tucking the lighter into my pocket

  He shrugs. “All right, then. I’ve never been accused of overstaying my welcome, and I won’t start now. But it was nice meeting you, Marilee. And it was nice meeting you, kid.”

  “Travis. My name is Travis!” He sticks his hand out.

  Dusty grins, looking almost boyish again. He shakes Travis’s hand. “See you around.”

  “See you,” I say, mouth dry and not just from the smoking.

  Dusty swaggers to his bike, moving with a calm confidence that is incredibly attractive. He doesn’t walk like Greg, all wide shoulders and intimidation, or like the boys at high school, nerves or bravado. He moves like a lion, lazy but with an undertone of strength. He kicks his bike-stand, nods to us, and then purrs away.

  “Did that just happen?” I turn to Travis.

  “Yeah. That was weird, right?”

  “Weird,” I agree. And then I add: “I should have got his number. Why didn’t I ask? Why didn’t he ask?”

  “Whose number is that, then?” Greg stomps onto the porch. That’s the trouble with Greg: he’s as fat as a bull but as quiet as a wolf when he wants to be. Travis retreats underfoot, disappearing into the shadows as Greg looms over me. “I asked you a question.”

  He’s wearing a stained T-shirt that was white once. His graying beard covers his mouth like cobwebs, and his head shines in the fading sunlight. His belly hangs over his grubby jeans.

  “We’re just talking,” I say, hating how quiet my voice goes, how timid.

  “Just talking about what?”

  “Just talking.” I’m whining. I hear it, as though it’s somebody else’s voice. Whiny bitch. Whiny loser. I hate that other woman.

  Greg leans down, his breath reeking of stale beer and cigarettes and whisky. “Do you think I’m stupid? Is that it? You think I’m a fucking moron. Everyone in this godforsaken house thinks I’m a fucking moron. I’m sick and tired of it, girl. Do you understand? Although . . .” He squints at me. “I guess I shouldn’t be calling you girl anymore, should I?”

  “You leave her alone.” Travis stands up straight, arms hanging at his sides. He looks brave and scared and strong and weak all at the same time.

  “Travis, don’t,” I warn.

  “What did you say?” Greg lumbers over to him, looking like a silverback gorilla standing opposite a tiny newborn.

  I don’t move, can’t move, because it might make things worse. Travis just stands there, lower lip juddering. Violence quivers under the surface like a plucked string; it could snap anytime. Then Mom walks out of the house holding a four-pack of beer. “It was under the bed!”
she squeals in her scared, pretending-everything-is-okay voice. “Who would think it, beer under the bed!”

  Greg looks at Travis a few seconds longer as though weighing the pros and cons of hitting him, and then tussles his hair. “Brave little bastard.” He snatches the beer and stomps into the house.

  “Home sweet home,” I whisper, smoking half the cigarette in one giant drag.

  Travis walks over to me and rests his head on my shoulder. “I love you,” he whispers.

  “I love you, too.”

  Chapter Two

  Dusty

  I ride back to the Filthy Fools’ clubhouse feeling pretty damn strange. It isn’t often a woman gets to me like that: gets to me so that I have to stop my bike and go and talk to her, gets to me so that even at fifty miles per hour she’s beautiful. I just couldn’t keep going when I saw her, legs tucked underneath, with a cigarette in her mouth, looking beautiful and strong and cute and scared. And talking to her was something else altogether. It was a short conversation but there was something there. I don’t know what folks call it. A spark, or some romantic-comedy shit like that. Whatever it was, it was real. I felt it. I felt it in my goddamn gut.