Risking It All: A Hellfire Riders MC Romance (The Motorcycle Clubs Book 14)

• • •

A month ago, I risked everything with a bet that should have made Jack Hayden mine. But now I think I’ve truly lost…

All my life, I’ve fought for everything I want. That’s earned me a place as the only female member of the Hellfire Riders MC. It’s given me thirty nights with the Riders’ dangerous warlord. It’s given me hope for so much more.

Yet when Jack abandons my bed before the thirty nights are up, the pain of fighting for more time in Jack’s arms just isn’t worth the risk anymore. Because I can’t expose any vulnerability, especially now that the Devil’s Hangmen are making a play for Rider territory—and Jack can lay my heart wide open so easily...

THE MOTORCYCLE CLUBS • THE HELLFIRE RIDERS #5

The Motorcycle Clubs Series

His Wild Desire by Ella Goode

Off Limits by Ruby Dixon

Wanting It All by Kati Wilde

Her Secret Pleasure by Ella Goode

Packing Double by Ruby Dixon

Taking It All by Kati Wilde

Their Private Need by Ella Goode

Double Trouble by Ruby Dixon

Having It All by Kati Wilde

Their Fierce Need by Ella Goode

Betting It All by Kati Wilde

Double Down by Ruby Dixon

Their Lasting Claim by Ella Goode

Risking It All by Kati Wilde

Coming Next

Double or Nothing by Ruby Dixon

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Acknowledgements

Thank you to all of the readers who waited so patiently when life intruded and delayed this release — and thank you to Ruby and Ella for holding my hand as it was all going down.

Lily

“You look like shit, Lily,” Jenny says when I slide into the booth across from her.

“Good freaking morning to you, too.” I don’t say she’s looking a little tired herself. Her dad’s sick. Dying. Jenny’s got a good reason to lie awake half the night. She just did a better job of concealing the damage than I did.

So did Anna, who’s yawning even as she crowds in beside Jenny. She was slinging drinks at the Wolf Den until closing—then after her shift was over, she had to drive me home because I was too wasted to ride. Thirty minutes ago, I woke up sprawled on the floor of my living room with Anna pounding on my front door and shouting something about brunch at Willy’s Pancake House, and how we’d be total assholes if we didn’t meet Jenny and help get her mind off her dad for a while. I was still trying to slit my eyes open when I folded myself into her Prius.

That’s me. The tough biker who gets her wheels taken away because she can’t hold her whiskey.

Except that’s bullshit. I can hold my whiskey. I can hold a lot of whiskey.

I just drink more than a lot when my heart’s hurting. And that? Is a crappy thing to discover about myself at this stage of the game. All these years, I’ve gotten along so well. Whenever I got drunk it was for fun. No moping, no crying. I thought my heart was pretty damn impervious. But, nope. Apparently all it takes to lay my heart to waste is one big, dangerous, completely fucked up warlord.

But I’m not going to think about Jack Hayden right now. I’m going to have a good day, damn it.

I grab the laminated brunch menu and read through it, even though the options at Willy’s haven’t changed in years and I order the same thing whenever I’m here. Though maybe this time I’ll order more. When I woke up, with my mouth tasting like dead rat and my stomach still deciding whether I was going to live or die, I never wanted to eat again. Now I’m desperate to shove something down my throat and everything looks good.

Over the top of the menu, I eye Anna and Jenny. They’re both tiny. No way are they going to finish whatever they order. Which means I can steal anything left over. “What are you guys having?”

“French toast,” Jenny says, her dark head bowed as she fishes through her purse. She comes up with a single dose packet of ibuprofen and gives me a look. “Need this?”

Wow. I must
really
look like shit. “I’m covered. Anna showed up with a bottle of water and Advil.”

Anna doesn’t glance up from the menu. “Because I’m the hangover fairy.”

She has the face for it—all cheekbones and pointed chin. If her hair was short and blond instead of brunette and long, she’d be Tinkerbell. “Do you flit around on sparkly wings?”

“No. I just hand out pills. And sometimes I shit glitter.”

“Only sometimes?” Jenny frowns at her. “I do all the time.”

“Me, too,” I say. “Jesus, Anna. You gotta step up your game.”

“God. It’s easy for both of you to say. You’re club princesses. You were born with glitter powers.”

“Aw.” I lean forward and pat her hand. “You can be a princess, too. You just have to
believe
.”

“Okay. I’ll believe.” She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes like she’s making a wish. “Now I’ll order the blueberry pancakes and see what happens.”

“Just don’t share the results,” Jenny says.

“Oh, I’m going to share the results with both of you bitches. A special-delivery photo straight to your phones.”

She probably would, too. Once Anna gets something into her head she usually follows it through. But we’re saved when the waitress shows up before any plan can solidify.

I ask for the big platter combo and wait for them to finish their orders before saying, “This is on me, by the way.”

Of course Jenny protests. “You don’t have to—”

“I do,” I interrupt. “Anna saved my drunk ass last night and this morning, and I’m still borrowing your bike. So let me pay you back.”

Though the cost of a breakfast doesn’t come close to settling the debt I’m accumulating with them. I don’t even have to ask for anything; they just help me out when I need it, though we haven’t been friends that long. We’ve known each other forever, growing up in the same town and with only a year separating me from them, but we just started hanging out in the past few months. Yet they’re already covering my ass. And I don’t do much for them. Not really. So if I have to toss a few dollars on the table to keep myself from becoming the dead weight in this friendship, that’s the least I can do.

They exchange a glance I can’t read but which seems to speak volumes—two long-time BFFs having a conversation without saying a word. Probably a rehash of a real conversation about me that they’ve had before. It ends with Jenny sighing and nodding.

“Okay,” she says. “I won’t argue—though you know my bike was just sitting in the garage for years, so you riding her means she’s actually useful to someone. If anything, I should be paying you for taking care of her.”

As if I’d ever let her do that. “That sounds like arguing.”

“I’m not—” Abruptly she closes her mouth, clears her throat. “So…any word on your new ride?”

“The insurance just came through.” A fat six-figure check. But the money isn’t nearly as pretty as my custom ride was before a skinhead worked it over with a sledgehammer.

The waitress swings by with the coffee carafe and Anna adds about a thousand sugars to her mug. “You gonna go with Wheels Up again?”

Jenny’s brows shoot high. “Isn’t the wait list about two years long?”

“That’s just for a car. The wait’s even longer for a custom chopper, unless you’re a Death Lord. But when I told Judge how the Eighty-Eight busted up the bike he made me before, he said he’d try to move me up. I don’t know, though…” I shrug and stir half-and-half into my coffee until it’s a pale caramel. “I’m thinking maybe I’ll just buy a standard workhorse, then find some vintage ride to restore.”

“And pocket the rest?”

“Yeah. Put it into savings, maybe invest some of it.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Jenny says and I know she’s not just being nice about it. She’s never just nice when she’s talking money.

I don’t really care about the money, though. Sure, it’s great to have such a big cushion. But my job as a helicopter pilot and part-time mechanic at the airfield pays for everything I need and I love flying, so the insurance money is all extra.

It was extra five years ago, too, when the original money came to me out of my dad’s life insurance. I’d hoped to buy the Hellfire Riders’ clubhouse with the cash but my mom wouldn’t sell to me, because my dad wouldn’t have approved. He sure as hell wouldn’t have approved of my wearing the Riders’ colors, either. According to him, women were good for four things: fucking, cooking, cleaning, and raising brats. And for a woman to become a full member of the Hellfire Riders? Not while he drew breath.

And no matter what I did, he never changed his mind. I can rebuild an engine with my eyes closed, I can fight, I can ride—but I could never be good enough because I could never be the son he wanted. So I didn’t become a Rider until after he drew that last breath.

I’d be lying if I said that using his life insurance to buy the sweetest bike any Rider ever straddled wasn’t a big “Fuck you” to my dear departed dad. It wasn’t
just
that, of course—Jesus, she really was a sweet ride and I loved her—but a “Fuck you” was definitely part of it.

Five years on…I just don’t care anymore. He’s dead. I’ll never be anything to him except the daughter who didn’t know her place and who should have become a Rider’s old lady. Instead, I’ve earned my place as a patchholder. Now I’d rather restore or build my ride than have one made for me. It won’t be the sweetest ride ever seen, but I think it’ll
feel
sweeter.

Even if Jack isn’t around to work on it with me.

And shit.
Shit.
I’m not thinking of Jack fucking Hayden today. I’m not. But my chest is as tight as hell and every sip of coffee hurts going down. Luckily the waitress arrives with our plates so I don’t need to talk for a few seconds, but that luck doesn’t hold when two Riders show up right behind her.

That’s the problem with small towns like Pine Valley. You can never really get away from people. There’s not a lot of choices if you’re looking for a restaurant where you can sit down for breakfast on a Saturday morning, so even if you hope to just hang out with your girls, someone you know is inevitably going to crash the next booth.

At least it’s just Picasso and Spiral. They can both be assholes, but I can be, too. So we get along most of the time.

“Hey, Zoomie.” Spiral—as in
downward
—stops beside my seat. He’s wearing the same T-shirt and jeans he was in last night. He’s looking as hungover as I feel, too. The only difference? He looks well-fucked and loose, as if he just crawled out of someone’s bed. I don’t. “You hear about Valentine?”

“No.”

I don’t really want to hear, either. A little over a month ago, Valentine turned in his colors after I beat him in the ring, because he couldn’t handle being tossed onto his ass by a girl. After that blow to his ego, he figured that I must have fucked and sucked my way into the club, and told the executive board as much. So as far as I’m concerned, Val is the equivalent of dog shit. I’ve scraped him off my boot; I’m not going back for another sniff.

“Zoomie.” Picasso joins us, nodding at me before looking to Anna and Jenny. “Ladies. You doing all right?”

As the son of an original Rider, Picasso and I go way back, though he was known as Scout for most of that time. Then about ten years ago, while he was sleeping off a bender in the county jail, a tweaker jumped him and rearranged his face. Now his features seem like puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together, so some joker in the club started calling him Picasso. Of course the name stuck.

“We’re doing great,” Jenny says with a pretty smile. “What’s this about Valentine?”

Spiral’s expression looks easy but his eyes are iced over when he zeroes in on me again. “He joined the Devil’s Hangmen.”

Holy shit. Okay, I
do
want to know that. The Hangmen just moved into the state—and the first night they showed up, they practically spit into our faces. Within a week, the Hangmen’s prez sent their enforcer to kill Jack, trying to deliver the message that we all need to fall in line.

Jack killed the enforcer, instead, then arranged for his death to look like an accident. That’s probably why a war between the clubs hasn’t started yet. But we’ve been waiting; it’s just a matter of time before the Hangmen try to push into our territory. That’s the way the Hangmen roll. They come into a region, try to take it over by recruiting the strongest patchholders from local clubs, and by making everyone else too afraid to challenge them.

So how did the Hangmen get Valentine? Did he go them? Or did they lean on him until he joined up?

Val is stupid enough I can believe he went to them. And he’s cowardly enough I can believe he caved after the first threat.

I just can’t believe the Hangmen would want the Riders’ leavings. But maybe they aren’t too picky about who wears their colors. “How’d you hear?”

“From Maurice.” Picasso names another Rider before sliding a pointed glance at Jenny and Anna.
Can’t tell you any more while they’re listening,
that look says.
It’s club business.

I barely stop myself from rolling my eyes. These guys have no idea. Whenever Anna’s working the bar at the Wolf Den, she hears more about club business than most of its members. By the end of the night, she’ll probably know more about how our prez intends to take care of Valentine than Spiral and Picasso do.

“Anyway. We’re gonna get some grub.” Spiral bumps his fist again mine. “We’ll see you at the Barracks tonight, yeah? You cut out early last night.”

“And Blowback showed up about a half hour after you left,” Picasso adds, and he’s watching me close as he asks, “So are you two not hooking up anymore?”

All at once my stomach tangles up in a painful, rotted knot. Around midnight—about the time I assumed Jack wasn’t going to show—I left the strip joint. But I didn’t want to be alone, so I stopped at the Wolf Den and got smashed.

At the Barracks, Jack must have heard I’d been and gone. He could have tracked me down easily. He just didn’t bother.

Now I’m too ripped up to answer. Anna saves me, her eyes going wide as she focuses in on Picasso. “Oooh, you want to chat about boys?” She pats the seat. “You slide right in, and we’ll paint your nails and do your hair and talk about which Rider is the best kisser.”

“Saxon is.” Jenny sighs the prez’s name like he’s Prince Charming instead of a big, mean motherfucker. “His kisses are
so
dreamy.”

“Yeah, well.” Clearly recognizing the danger, Spiral backs away, his hands going up in surrender. “I’d like to prove my candidacy for the top spot, but the prez would kill me if I gave you a kiss to compare his with, so…” He cocks his fingers into a pair of guns and shoots me. “See you tonight, Zoomie.”

“Tonight,” I echo as they head off toward their own booth. I reach for my coffee, wishing it were whiskey. Aware of Jenny and Anna trying to look everywhere but at me, I power through the ache. “For the record, I’m the club’s best kisser.”

Anna grins, but after a second, concern creases her expression. “So Blowback never showed up?”

God. I really don’t want to talk about this. But of course I already did. I spilled my guts all over her counter last night because when I’m drunk enough, I start running my mouth.

And I know better. Jesus, running my mouth is why I’m in this situation. I was drunk and made a stupid bet—then lost that bet—which landed me in bed with the Hellfire Riders’ warlord, where he tied me up and fucked my brains out. It was supposed to be one time only. But I ended up wanting more.

I got more, too. I made another bet and Jack won thirty more nights.

Today is day thirty-one, and Jack didn’t spend last night with me. He stayed at the Barracks, instead, even though there were plenty of Riders to hold down the fort if the Devil’s Hangmen tried crowding into our territory.