Steel Knights MC Romance Series: The Complete Collection (5 books)

Angel’s Phantom: Chapter Two

Lockjaw, my beefy, all-white pit bull, had gotten used to sensing danger whenever my gun clicked. The second I set the barrel to the back of the head of the man following me, Lockjaw let out a low, menacing growl. Unbeknownst to my pursuer, I’d unlatched Lockjaw’s harness when I climbed off my bike, just in case. All it would take was one word, and he’d be out of his seat and latched onto whichever body part he could get to first.

Unfortunately for me, the typically simple task of speaking was eluding me for the time being. The confidence I’d just had when I slunk behind the alley’s dumpsters to get the jump on my stalker abated in an instant. His dirty-blond hair was a bit longer, even a bit unkempt, and the clean, baby face I had etched in my brain was hidden behind a growing scruff of a goatee, but there was no denying the voice or those emerald eyes.

Colin, my childhood love, was the man at the other end of my gun.

I kept the barrel against his head as I sidestepped him slowly and paced to his front to view his face better. What wasn’t covered in facial hair was covered in various scrapes and scratches, along with a couple of places that looked like someone had held a lighter against his skin. I studied him closely, making sure I wasn’t projecting one of my lingering high-school dreams, but as I locked my eyes on his, it felt like being suddenly thrust backward in time.

It was him.

“Colin?”

He tilted his head with a crooked smile. “A decade made you forget me? It’s CJ.”

I furrowed my brow. I wasn’t misremembering the name of the first guy I’d ever fallen in love with. I had half a dozen notebooks still packed in storage at my parents’ house with his name scribbled all over them. The boy I was infatuated with was named Colin.

“CJ?” I asked.

“Yeah. Blue house four doors down. I accidentally broke your front window, trying to get your attention,” he responded.

That was definitely Colin. I smiled as I remembered the silly, nine-year-old boy. A failed attempt to pull the romantic rocks-at-my-window cliché ended with a rather large stone in my living room and my dad loading up a shotgun because he thought someone was trying to break in. He was so terrified when my dad came storming out of the house that he bolted and jumped into a nearby trash can. I had to wait for my dad to calm down before I could go and coax him out. He was the cutest Oscar the Grouch I’d ever seen.

First name Colin, last name Jones. I would never forget it.

Colin’s presence halted my typical tendency to fly on the defensive. Was it just because I was so happy to see him again? Were those intoxicating green eyes working me over the same way they always had?

I tried to understand the name change. Maybe he was abbreviating it for some reason? I’d known plenty of people who stopped letting people refer to them by a childhood name and picked a different name to live with for the rest of their days. CJ was different enough, I supposed, and it distanced him from his childhood, which I knew was rough.

It would also explain why I could never find Colin Jones on social media when I searched. If he’d stopped going by the name on his birth certificate in lieu of something more concise, he’d probably be using that name on social media. I wanted to continue to poke at it for the full truth, but my inner eleven-year-old was berating me for not already having kissed him.

I couldn’t justify continuing to press when he seemed like he was on the verge of death. Gorgeous though his face still was, he looked worse for wear. It wasn’t just the abrasions on his face, either. His clothes seemed ragged and looked like he’d been wearing them for multiple days in a row, and he was holding his left arm against his stomach, with blood-soaked bandages visible through the holes in his gloves. He was hurting—badly.

“CJ, of course,” I said finally. “How could I ever forget?”

Colin smirked, seemingly unbothered by the state he was in. “No idea.”

“Ten plus years will do that to you,” I responded.

Colin eyed my gun before slowly turning his gaze to Lockjaw. “Are you gonna pull away your weapons?”

“Should I?” I let out a sharp whistle, and Lockjaw hopped out of his seat and bounded over to my side, his snarl worsening as he prepared to attack on my behalf. “Old friend or not, you were following me, and it’s been longer than thirty seconds.”

Colin’s smirk pursed a little. It wasn’t fear, but something else. Intrigue? “I need your help. My house caught fire, and someone is trying to kill me.”

It was almost humorous that Colin tried to pass off such an outrageous statement as a satisfactory excuse without further explanation. Colin had always been laconic, but that was too much, even for him—or too little.

“That’s all I get? Your house caught fire, and someone’s trying to kill you?”

Colin shrugged and glanced down at himself as if to say, “It’s obviously true.”

“Why is someone trying to kill you?”

Devil’s Bullet: Chapter Three

Any excitement that Colin turning back up in my life gave me bled out when I saw my dad and brother. I deliberately asked the doctor not to contact my dad because I knew that there was a pretty good chance Taylor was still with him. I could explain certain things to my dad, not just because I was a bit of a daddy’s girl, but also because I was his vice president and noted right hand. He’d listen to me if I told him to trust me and that I was taking care of an old friend.

Taylor, however—well, he was a different story.

I couldn’t pinpoint exactly when Taylor lost his mind. Our mother died before either of us was really old enough to remember her, so my dad had raised us by himself and did a hell of a job at it. I distinctly remembered having a normal, loving brother as a little girl, but then it suddenly seemed like any guy that even looked in my direction got his head bitten off. Figuratively, at first, but as he got older, he started to get slowly more physical and violent. I tried to call his bluff with my first boyfriend after I pledged for the Steel Knights, and it turned out to be a huge mistake. Taylor broke into my house while we were having sex, dragged my boyfriend out into the backyard, and shot him before I could get a word in edgewise. My dad had it covered up like a break-in gone bad. To say it traumatized me would be an understatement.

After that, I committed myself to never doing anything other than letting the odd, wavering guy take me home for a one-night stand, and even those encounters were treated like such a big secret that they could have been stored in Area 51. I imagined Colin’s crooked grin and green eyes, and my stomach twisted into a knot. Adulthood had been good to him, and he still had his brother to think about. I couldn’t get him killed by trying to rekindle an old flame, even if he still looked at me like I was the most important thing in the world. Now that Taylor was aware he existed or would be aware soon, I had to make sure that nothing happened between us.

For a really long time, my dad tried to convince me that Taylor was just being overprotective—it’s what a brother is supposed to do—but somewhere along the way, I realized that Taylor didn’t have much other than blind aggression inside his body. Sometimes, I felt like he was doing it because he felt more like I was his property than his sister, and someone who touched his property had to die. Most of the time, though, I thought it was just because Taylor was crazy. Around five years ago, my dad had stopped defending his behavior and just tried to steady the waters. He was starting to realize his son was unhinged, too, even if he didn’t want to accept it.

“Hi, Daddy,” I finally greeted him. I reserved familial association for when we weren’t around the other members of the brotherhood. Otherwise, I called him Squared or Nick like everyone else.

My dad, a man with short brown hair, a severe jawline, and several scars across his stubbled skin, gave me a smirk. “Hey, baby. Working late, I see?”

“A friend of mine needed some help,” I replied. “I told Marteau not to bother you with it.”

My dad chuckled. “You know good and well that everyone has orders to tell me everything. Big or small, if it’s worth your time, it’s worth mine.” That was my dad’s way of saying that he was paranoid about everything that happened without him, but I’d never dare say that out loud. “We were still at the Taphouse when he called. Taylor was right there with me, so we both decided to come and make sure you were okay.”

I sat down in one of the armchairs that sat perpendicular to the couch and tapped my leg, and Lockjaw finally tore himself away from my dad and came to me, setting his head in my lap and waiting patiently for scratches.

I set a hand on his head and rubbed for a few seconds silently before continuing. “I’m okay, Daddy. Really. A friend came to me and was a little banged up, and I called Dr. Marteau to get him a little help.”

Taylor raised an eyebrow immediately. “Him?”

“Yes. A friend from high school. CJ.” I locked eyes with Taylor. “Just a friend.” I decided to omit the fact that it was Colin from my childhood that was in the other room. I wasn’t sure what my dad or Taylor would do if they knew it was my childhood crush, but I was hoping they wouldn’t put two and two together so that I didn’t have to find out. I shifted my gaze from Taylor to my dad. “I’d like a private audience.”

Taylor was the spitting image of my dad apart from his auburn hair that was closer to mine. When he scoffed, he and my dad were nearly indistinguishable. “Aw, come on. We’re all family here. Why the secrecy?”

“This isn’t a family matter,” I responded, but I directed the comment to my dad. “I’m asking for a private audience as your vice president.”

The smirk that Taylor had turned into a scowl. “That’s low.”

My dad tapped his fist against Taylor’s arm. “It’s fine, Taylor. Why don’t you head home? We’ll talk tomorrow.” Taylor didn’t move. I shifted my attention toward him and saw that he was staring at me like he wanted to set me on fire. My dad cleared his throat and turned to look at Taylor. “Leave. Now.”