Outside the armchair and some clothes, it was the only thing Bounty had left behind.

His mother had been beautiful.

But she looked sad.

She always looked sad.

Benito never understood that.

Now he did.

She saw his path, even that early.

And she spent her life trying to steer him from it.

He’d known better.

He’d been wrong.

As she knew he would be.

He put the frame on his nightstand.

He sat on the side of his bed.

He did not write a note.

He also did not hesitate.

He simply reached into his nightstand and took out his gun.

He put it to his head.

And he blew the bullet right through.

Tack

Two weeks later . . .

They rolled out of the forecourt as one.

They hit 25 North.

And kept going.

Past Fort Collins the road opened up and Tack looked right, toward his son, when Rebel, on the back of Rush’s bike, her long hair flying all around, arched her chest into his boy’s patch, lifted both arms up in the air and let out a rebel yell.

Even through his thick beard, Tack could see Rush was smiling.

His wife behind him did the same as Rebel.

Tack looked in his mirror and saw it happen down the line.

Tabby.

Lanie.

Carissa.

Millie.

Rosalie.

Keeley.

Sheila.

Renae.

All the men, all his brothers, all their lips curled up.

Tacked grinned at the open stretch of tarmac in front of him, glinting in the sun.

And Chaos rode.

The End

Dive into more from Kristen Ashley.

Discover The Hookup now!

When the new girl in town, Eliza “Izzy” Forrester decides to hit the local drinking hole, she’s not ready to meet the town’s good, solid guy. She’s definitely not prepared to engage in her very first hookup with him.

Then Izzy wakes up the next morning in Johnny Gamble’s bed and good girl Izzy finds she likes being bad for Johnny.

Even so, Izzy feels Johnny holding her at arm’s length. But Johnny makes it clear he wants more and Izzy already knows she wants as much of hot-in-bed, sweet-out-of-it Johnny Gamble.

Floating on air thinking this is going somewhere, Izzy quickly learns why Johnny holds distant.

He’s in love with someone else. Someone who left him and did it leaving him broken. Whoever was up next would be runner up, second best. Knowing the stakes, Izzy will take what she can get from the gentleman that’s Johnny Gamble. And even knowing his heart might never mend, Johnny can’t seem to stay away from Izzy.

Until out of nowhere, his lost love comes back to town. He’s not going back, but Johnny still knows the right thing to do is let Izzy go.

And Izzy knew the stakes, so she makes it easy and slips though his fingers.

But that’s before Johnny realizes Eliza moved to town to escape danger that’s been swirling around her.

And that’s why Johnny decides to wade in.

That and the fact Eliza Forrester makes breakfast with a canary singing on her shoulder and fills out tight dresses in a way Johnny Gamble cannot get out of his head.

Turn the page to read the first chapter now!

The Hookup

Panties

Izzy

I WOKE UP to the sound of a ceiling fan.

I did not have a ceiling fan.

Obviously, this made me open my eyes and do it fast.

Which brought to my brain the fact that I was lying on tan sheets. They had a slight sheen to them. I could feel them too, and they were soft. They looked and felt expensive.

But they were not my sheets.

The pillow my head was on was not my pillow.

And the nightstand next to the bed that had three used condom wrappers, some change, a cell phone, an alarm clock and a lamp was not my nightstand, my cell, my alarm clock or my lamp.

Stupidly, I stared at the alarm clock.

I still had the same alarm clock that my mom bought me when I went to college. It was square, pale pink and had a mirrored face. Even though it was over a decade old and it had been super cheap, it was still cool and better yet, girlie. Best of all, it still worked.

The alarm clock I was staring at looked modern, complicated and expensive.

I was not in my bed, in my home, with my alarm clock.

I pushed up to leaning on a hand, realizing I was naked (I never slept naked). I yanked up the sheet to cover me as it all came crashing in, even before my eyes swept the interesting (so interesting even in my state it had to be noted) space until it hit a wall of windows on the opposite side of the bed outside which stood a man.

Johnny.

Johnny Gamble.

My stomach pitched in an enjoyable way just at the sight of him.

But the sight of him also brought back memories of him and the night before.

His name was impossible. No man in real life had a name like that.

That was the name of the superhero in his everyday existence when he was not being a superhero. Or the suave, talented con artist who eventually falls for the girl and gives up the grift. Or the slick cat burglar who smiles into your eyes as he’s sliding the diamond off your finger.

But that was his name.

Even more, that man standing out there was not a John with the “ny.”

However, that was how he introduced himself.

“I’m Johnny. Gamble. Johnny Gamble,” he’d said last night at the bar, smiling into my eyes and not sliding a diamond off my finger, because I didn’t have a diamond on my finger, but more, he just wasn’t that guy.

That man outside might be a John or a Dirk or a Clint or an Adonis.

Johnny, no.

Except looking at him, having said his name repeatedly to him, moaned it while he was inside me (amongst other times), he was absolutely Johnny.

He was outside now, with his coffee.

No, he was outside now, standing on his balcony wearing nothing but a pair of gray sweats, so long they gathered at his ankles and covered his heels, the hems of them loose with notches at the sides. He was bent into his forearms on his balcony, holding a heavy white mug between his two hands. He was twisted partially at his trim waist so I had a clear view of his muscled lat and shoulder.

I also had a profile view of his face.

He had black hair, a great deal of it—thick with waves and flips and curls—and right now a lot of it was hanging over his forehead.

He also had a black beard. It was not bushy but groomed. Not trimmed close and overly groomed but it wasn’t lumbersexual or ZZ Top either. It stated he was a man who wore a beard before it was trendy, and he’d continue to have a beard when it was not.

I couldn’t see them from where I was, but he also had black eyes. Dark as tar.

The beard didn’t hide his strong jaw. And nothing hid his large, straight and aggressive but somehow classic and cultured nose. Or the heavy brow that shadowed his eyes, the thick black eyebrows that seemed at a glance to be ominous, but if you spoke ten words to him, you’d know they were anything but.

He was anything but.

He was tall. He was built. Broad shoulders. Veined forearms. Ridged stomach. Bulky thighs.

Last, he was the most handsome man I’d seen in my life. The kind of man you’d expect to turn on the TV and see. The kind of man you’d think you’d walk into a movie theater and he’d be even larger than life on the screen. The kind of man you’d open a magazine and expect to see pictured wearing fabulous clothes at the wheel of a sleek speedboat on the Mediterranean, advertising cologne.

Not the kind of man standing on a wooden balcony behind whom—I squinted—rotated a water wheel.

A water wheel!

This fact, the fact that he was that handsome, not the fact that he lived somewhere with the impossibility of a functioning water wheel, was not the reason I was in his bed in his home in the middle of nowhere, a home that had a water wheel.

To be honest, this was part of the reason.

But not all of it.

Bottom line, I didn’t do that kind of thing.

I wasn’t the kind of girl who had a hookup.

I didn’t frown on it. My mother taught me it was not my place to judge. Not anything. Not anyone.

“You never know, Izzy, what the story is,” she’d told me more than once. “You never know what’s deep inside a soul. You just never know. And since you don’t know, you’re never, not ever, in the position to judge.”