Showing posts with label Westside Skulls MC series. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Westside Skulls MC series. Show all posts
Ash by Jessie Cooke
Title: Ash: Westside Skulls Motorcycle Club
Series: Westside Skulls MC Romance Book 4
Author: Jessie Cooke
Genre: MC Romance
Release Date: August 20, 2018
Ash, an enforcer for the Westside Skulls, returns home to New York for his father's funeral. He hadn't seen him in five years thanks to a combination of events that sent him out to California and a whole new life. Ash...or Asher Bennett IV, as he was known in New York, hailed from an uber-rich family and for a few years after graduating for college, worked on Wall Street...before ending up in California, in a leather kutte on the back of a Harley. Ash just wanted his father's funeral to be over so he could escape his gold-digging stepmother, his snobby teenaged sister and the plastic, fake people of his childhood once more.
The past hurts, and it only gets more painful at the graveside when he comes face to face with his past…Mackenzie, or Mack as he always called her.
Mack was the girl he'd loved since he was thirteen years old, and the woman who had stood him up at the altar five years ago.
Ash's father's death leaves him juggling his life as a Skull, his past with Mack, and the possibility of a future with his teenaged sister who wants nothing more than to escape...the same way he did, and a stepmother who will do anything she can to make his life hell.
Of course, when it rains, it pours and in the course of dealing with club business...tragedy strikes, and Ash has to either learn to reign in his notorious temper...or risk losing everything.
Climb on the Harley with Ash and Mack and take a wild ride that will leave you wondering what's around the next bend in the road...and gasping for breath when you get there.
* * *
Book 4 in the Westside Skulls MC Series.
This is a Standalone Romance Novel but characters from the previous stories in this series appear in this and future books in the series.
HEA and No cliffhanger.
Intended for Mature Readers.
* * *
The Westside Skulls MC Series is about members of the MC club, their friends and associates.
Each story, while focused around one main character, is not necessarily about a Westside Skulls club member, but the story is related to Skulls members and the club.
The early morning light streamed in through the beautiful stained glass of the cathedral windows and the sun’s rays bounced off the white and gold coffin, making it look almost ethereal. Ash sat stoically, hating the tie that was choking him, the suit he hadn’t worn in over five years, the shoes that were pinching his toes...but most of all, hating the fact that his father was inside of the coffin. It was a beautiful coffin, made to impress...not the dead guy of course, but everyone else. That was what his stepmother Allison did best...impress. She’d impressed his father when she was just a twenty-five-year-old barista and he was a forty-year-old multi-millionaire, recently widowed and left alone to raise a twelve-year-old boy. Asher Michael Bennett III had been a hard man to impress, so Ash supposed he should give her credit for that at least.
He wondered what his father was wearing inside that fancy coffin. He’d be willing to bet the old man was the best-dressed man in the room. Allison would know that everyone who was anyone in Manhattan would be at the funeral, and it would never do for the guest of honor to be wearing anything less than Armani’s finest.
Ash could hear the whispering and shuffling as the cathedral filled up behind him. He didn’t need to turn around to know that the guest list would read like the who’s who of Manhattan Island, and he didn’t care to see any of those faces. It was why he lived in California, in the Central Valley...in a motorcycle club. He’d had his fill of these people for the first twenty-three years of his life, and the only person he still had any respect for after all those years was the man who was lying in the casket up at the altar. That respect was the only thing that brought him back...that, and Sledge. He smiled when he thought about his oversized friend. Sledge had ridden hard with him for three days so they could get there on time. He’d set his alarm and woke Ash up that morning. He’d ordered Ash a beer from room service with his breakfast because even though Ash wasn’t much of a drinker...he was going to need at least one to get through the day. And then, he’d gone back to his own room to spend the day sleeping, watching television, and smoking. Sledge wasn’t about to show up in a church full of what he still referred to as his “mortal enemies.” They were a clique of rich kids that they had both gone to private school with their entire lives. They were the bitches and bastards that had terrorized Sledge almost to the point of causing his suicide. Sledge told people that Ash saved his life in high school, but in Asher Michael Bennett IV’s mind, it was the other way around.
Ash’s blue eyes left the coffin and moved to the flowers...thousands of them that would all be carried out to the gravesite and left to die alongside the man being buried today. Tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of flowers. He wondered if anyone there found it the ridiculous and practically obscene waste of money that it was. His father wasn’t impressed with things like that...but this party wasn’t really about him. This party was about Allison...and of course, Charlie. Charlie might be the only person there that Ash was interested in seeing. He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t seen her in five years and then she’d been a cute little ten-year-old with pigtails. She was fifteen now and sadly, according to the emails and phone calls from his father, Charlotte Joanne Bennett was rapidly becoming as superficial as her mother Allison. Ash supposed he was partly to blame for that. The day he’d left New York, his little sister had begged him to take her with him. She’d cried and held onto him until his father had to peel her off. Ash tried to maintain a relationship with her after that, but she refused to talk to him on the phone and she hadn’t answered a single one of his text messages or emails.
Ash reached up and tugged at the Windsor knot that felt like it was choking the life out of him. But in truth, it wasn’t the knot or the tie...it was this place and the people, and the thought of the best man he ever knew being closed inside of a box and put into the ground. He hated that, and he just wanted it to be over. He wished that he’d stayed behind at the hotel with Sledge. His big friend had always been the smarter of the two of them.
Somehow, he made it through the church service. It was long and drawn out, and there were way too many speeches. These people loved to hear themselves talk and they loved showing off their new designer funeral clothes even more. He managed to sneak out of the church and into the family limousine without having to come face to face with anyone. He knew his time was coming, though. He’d have to stand in a line at the graveyard to receive condolences and then he’d have to suffer through the reception afterward at the mansion, but then it would be over, and he could go back to California and his real life and his real family.
The door to the limousine was pulled open and a teenage girl with long, straight blonde hair and crystal blue eyes slid in. She was dressed to kill in a navy-blue Burberry suit and she was on her phone. She didn’t even look across the seat at her brother and Ash had no idea if she even knew he was in the car. Seconds after Charlie, Allison entered, riding high on a wave of Gucci perfume...and on her phone as well. Allison, unlike Charlie, did make eye contact with Ash, and her dark green eyes, which used to be brown before the contacts, said everything he needed to know about how happy she was that he showed up.
The door was closed, the limo started up, and Ash sat in silence on his side of the huge car, practically melting into the soft leather. Finally tiring of the sight of the two women chatting on their phones like they were on their way to a party, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back into the seat. He tried to draw up images of things that made him happy. His Harley, his brothers, the club, and the gym where Wolf had begun letting him take boxing lessons from one of Jacob Wright’s teammates, a guy named Jagger who played a guitar and sang like his namesake Mick Jagger and fought like a champ in the cage. The guy was fun as hell to be around and since things had been quiet around the club for a few months, Ash was enjoying the larger-than-life stories Jagger had to tell.
He felt the limousine slowing down and he opened his eyes. His sister’s large blue ones were locked into his as soon as he did. He managed to find a smile and he said, “Hey, Charlie.”
With no expression at all on her beautiful face she said, “It’s Charlotte.”
“Sorry. Hi, Charlotte.” She stared at him, like she was studying his face and then turned to her mother, who was still on her phone and said:
“Is this dolt going to open the door and let us out of here or what?”
Ash felt a pang in his chest. He blamed himself for Charlie, at least a little bit. He reached across the table in front of him and using the handle that was within her reach, he opened the door and pushed it open. His little sister looked at him like he was a circus freak with two heads and then looked at her mother, who sighed and rolled her eyes. The driver appeared in the doorway then, but not soon enough to escape the wrath of the spoiled teenager.
“Jeez, thanks for showing up,” she said, to the man that was old enough to be her grandfather. Ash’s dad insisted on manners from the time that Ash was old enough to remember. When he was four years old he was taught to say please and thank you to the staff. He knew that Charlie had been taught the same. Somewhere along the way she’d decided that she was above all of that, and Ash was sad for her because of it.
The driver helped her out of the car and Allison finally ended the call that she was on by saying, “Gotta go, I’ll call you later. Of course we can do lunch tomorrow. Mwah!” As she slid toward the door she looked at Ash and said, “Your tie is crooked.” The Gucci perfume that had wafted in with her didn’t leave when she did, and Ash felt like he might gag on it before he hit the fresh, cold air and sucked in a lungful. The limousine was the first in line of many and the rest of the guests seemed to be holding back until the “family” made their way to the huge canopy and took their seats in the front row. Ash sat next to Charlie, but she looked straight ahead, not just ignoring him, but going out of her way to do so.
The graveside services were as long and boring as the church service had been. His father would have hated it. He would have thrown a joke or two into one of his speeches and he would have jazzed up the music. He would have made people feel like no matter how sad they were that their loved one was gone, there was hope left for the future. That was what his father did, he lifted people up. The one mistake that he’d made in his life was sitting two seats away, and although she was a bad one, Ash couldn’t hold it against him. He’d made a bad choice in women a time or two himself.
The priest finally stopped talking, the boring music quit playing, the boring people stopped giving their fake speeches, and it was at last time to stand in line and accept their fake regrets. It was the first real look that Ash had gotten of the guests. Up front and moving through the reception line like royalty were the “society people.” There wasn’t a wet eye in the bunch as they offered their stiff handshakes and stiffer condolences. A little further back were the executives that worked for his father in his textile company. The Bennett money went back for centuries and the company was almost as old as that. Those gentlemen, and one lady at least, seemed genuine in their grief and condolences. The next wave of people was extended family members, cousins and aunts and uncles that Ash hadn’t seen in years if at all. They weren’t much looser than the first wave of rich people had been...at least not with him. He did notice a few of them being overly friendly with Allison. That probably meant his father had left her in charge of the fortune and they were hoping to get what they likely thought of as their fair share.
The last wave was a mixture of loyal staff and old friends that didn’t fit in the society set. As Ash was accepting the condolences from the first one, a man who had served as his father’s mechanic for as long as Ash could remember, he suddenly realized that Charlie and Allison were no longer standing next to him. He glanced to his right and saw them being escorted back to the limousine by the driver. Words couldn’t describe the sheer disgust he felt for them both at that moment. He swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth and continued accepting condolences until the line was gone and so was the limousine. Chuckling to himself at the stupidity of it all, he walked over to where his father’s white casket now sat, waiting to be lowered into the ground. He put his hand on top of the blanket of flowers that covered it and finally let the tears that he’d been holding back all day, fill his eyes.
“I’m pissed at you, old man. You were too fucking young to die. Who has a fucking stroke and dies at fifty-six years old? You were Asher Michael Bennett the fucking Third, man! You were supposed to live forever. You were at least supposed to live until I found the right woman and had you a couple of grandkids...until I finally did something worth all that pride you always had in me.” He reached up and wiped a tear off his face. “I love you, old man. You won’t be forgotten, I promise you that. I know you’re in heaven so I’m not sure if we’ll be meeting up again someday...but if I don’t make it up there, I’ll be drinking a toast to you where I’m at.”
“And where might that be?” Ash froze at the sound of the voice. It was soft, sultry and the last voice he ever wanted to hear again in his life. Even Allison’s was preferable, and that was saying a lot. He ground his jaw and turned slowly around with his eyes still on the ground. As he moved them up past a pair of black-and-white heels, delicate white ankles with a blue rose tattooed on the outside of the right one, sculpted calves, sexy knees, and three inches of muscular thigh before the bottom of her black skirt interrupted them, he realized that even now she still set his blood on fire. Her hips were still wide and her waist small. Her breasts were perfect. He couldn’t see that in the coat she wore over her suit now, but he knew what they looked like...and they were perfect. The skin on her neck and face was still flawless. Her golden-brown hair lay in waves all over her head and down her back and her hazel eyes were still the prettiest thing on the east coast. But when Ash looked at her now, it was like staring into the eyes of a snake.
“Hello, Asher.”
“Mack.” Mackenzie Foster had at one time been the love of Asher’s life. She was the basket that he’d put all of his eggs in...and then that basket had fallen to the cement and it was all over. He’d found himself sifting through the slimy shells, and trying to find the pieces of his life. Like Humpty Dumpty, he’d never been able to put them back together again...so he’d done the next best thing, he’d left.
“I’m sorry about your dad.”
“Thanks, but not to be rude...why are you here?”
She flinched, almost like he’d hit her in the face. “I cared a lot about your dad.”
“Oh...I didn’t know that caring about people meant showing up to you.” He hadn’t meant to do this. Hell, he just hadn’t expected her to show up. The one time he’d staked his whole future on her showing up, she’d bailed. His rudeness wasn’t driving her away, though; instead she nodded, like she understood, and said:
“I’ve missed you, Ash. I tried to call you after you left...”
“Changed my number.”
“Yeah, anyways. It’s good to see you, I’m just sorry it’s under these circumstances.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry too. Look, I better get to the reception...” He realized as he was talking that all of the cars had left. Allison...the bitch...had left him stranded in a graveyard.
“I can give you a ride,” Mackenzie said, as if reading his mind. He used to think she could do that since she always seemed to know what he was thinking, or how he was feeling. It used to give him a warm, comforting feeling, like they were soulmates. Now, it just felt intrusive and it annoyed him.
“I’ll call an Uber.”
She looked hurt again. Too fucking bad. “Ash, it’s been a long time...are you ever going to forgive me?”
“No. I’m not.” He took out his phone and as he headed toward the road where his ride should still be parked he texted Sledge. “At the cemetery. Heading to Last Call in the Village. Meet me there?”
The text he got back in return was swift and to the point. “OMW.”
Ash ordered an Uber on his app and then stuck the phone into his suit jacket. He was almost to the pavement when curiosity got the better of him and he looked back over his shoulder. Mackenzie was still under the canopy, standing next to the coffin with her face buried in her hands. There was still a piece of his heart that beat for her; it pissed him off, but he’d learned to live with it. What he couldn’t learn to live with was the woman who abandoned him at the altar on the very day their life together was supposed to begin.
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Bruf by Jessie Cooke
Title: Bruf: Out of the Darkness
Series: Westside Skulls MC
Author: Jessie Cooke
Genre: MC Romance
Release Date: July 31, 2018
Growing up wasn't easy for Bruf. At ten years old he watched his parent's be murdered. From there, he spent time in foster care...and then in the care of his much older brother. Being with family should have been preferable to foster care, but when your brother is the leader of the largest White Supremacist group in the state, life can get pretty confusing...and dangerous, especially for a teenager who falls in love with a mixed-race girl. His brother made that relationship impossible, so Bruf escaped as quickly as he could to the security of the United States Army. At home on leave, Bruf encounters the wrath of his anti-government brother and his crew and that leads him to a new discovery...The Westside Skulls. It's been a decade since Bruf joined up with them and life has been good. But when circumstances dictate that Bruf reconnect with his brother, things begin to go sideways...and of course, falling in love with the club president's sister Sabrina didn't do him any favors either.
Sabrina left California to travel to Haiti with a group of doctor's who dedicate their time and skills to people in need. While believing in the cause, her motivation was more about putting distance between herself, and the man she was in love with. Sabrina wants Bruf, and she knows he wants her, but his loyalty to her brother is like a brick wall that she knows she can't penetrate...so she has to move on.
When she returns to California over a year later, an almost married woman with an explosive secret, things heat up in more ways than one. Ride along with The Westside Skulls and see how this gruff, sexy, loyal, sergeant-at-arms fares in both love and war.
Book 3 in the Westside Skulls MC Series.
This is a Standalone Romance Novel but characters from the previous novels, Wolf Prequel and Wolf 2, are in this story, and will appear in future books in the series.
HEA and No cliffhanger.
Intended for Mature Readers.
* * *
The Westside Skulls MC Series is about members of the MC club, their friends and associates.
Each story, while focused around one main character, is not necessarily about a Westside Skulls club member, but the story is related to Skulls members and the club.
“So, are we finally going to talk about this?”
Wolf was staring at Bruf in the intimidating way that he didn’t even realize he had about him. Bruf didn’t want to talk about it. He’d gone most of his life not talking about it, and he’d even made up some stupid-ass story about his father being in the service and the family being stationed in England when he was born. That story was what he told the kids at school when he finally started at the age of ten years old...barely able to read and write at a kindergarten level. The other kids accepted that he was behind because he was a foreigner, and he didn’t get the same kind of torture he might have if he were just “slow” or if they knew the real story. His brother never went to school, and had his parents lived, Bruf wouldn’t have either.
At times he was able to go days or even weeks without thinking about the past. As he got older, it hurt less, and the rage that consumed him when he thought about his parents had begun to lessen. But since Wolf was cleared of murder charges thanks to the efforts of his brother...the General, aka Commander in Chief of the Brotherhood of the White Owls...he supposed he wasn’t going to be able to get out of talking about it any longer. The last time he talked about it was with Coyote, when he was eighteen years old and wanted nothing more in his life than to become a prospect for the Westside Skulls.
Bruf sat in the chair across from Wolf’s desk in the clubhouse office and stretched his long legs out in front of him. He sat there silently for a few minutes and then drew up his legs, rested his elbows on his knees, and rubbed his face like he was trying to wake himself up. “What do you want to know?”
Wolf cocked an eyebrow at him, folded his arms and said, “How about you just start at the beginning...”
Bruf chuckled and said, “Okay, in 1990 a child was born...”
“Spare me the smartass.”
“Sorry, Boss.” He sighed. “I hate this shit. My parents were...different. They lived off the grid, paranoid about everything...the government, school, fucking everything. My brother was ten years old when I was born. He was the only child for a long time. He grew up in the fog of all the pot they were smoking and acid they were dropping. It sounds bad, and I guess it was, but the thing is, they really weren’t bad people. They weren’t mean, and they loved us. Some people just aren’t cut out to be parents, and there were no two people that were cut out for it less than mine. The thing was, they were just scared of life and confused about how to integrate into society. I’m sure all the drugs didn’t help, but that was how they coped. We lived up in the mountains around Squaw Valley and my brother spent most of his time just running free in the woods. He was wild, like he’d been raised by wolves. By the time I came along, our parents had aged, and calmed down some. They’d stopped using the hard drugs, but they still supported us by growing some good weed, and they were smoking plenty of it. It was ultimately what killed them.”
He stopped talking. That was the easy part of the story. He had to delve down deep to get the rest out. Before he started talking again Wolf said, “Weed killed them?”
“Sort of. My dad invented this solar panel watering system for their greenhouse. It was revolutionary, really...if he’d sold it, they would have been rich. The weed grew something like three times faster than normal, and Mom and me, and sometimes my brother when he was around, would harvest and package it when it was ready. Dad would take it down the hill and sell it. I never knew who he sold it to, but one day, they followed him home. And that night, the whole crew showed up with a van and started emptying out the greenhouse. Dad got up in time to catch them loading the last of the plants. My parents were hippies and even though they didn’t trust anyone, they were very nonviolent. They didn’t have a gun and to this day I don’t know what he was thinking. He confronted them, unarmed, and they shot him...in the face. Mom ran out screaming and they shot her too. They never saw me, or I’m sure they would have killed me as well.”
“Oh fuck, brother, I’m sorry.” Wolf had a deep crease between his brows and it was evident that his heart hurt for his sergeant at arms. That was exactly what Bruf didn’t want. He didn’t want sympathy. He didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him. Despite the way he’d been raised and what he’d seen that night, he had managed to grow up, do a short stint in the army, and find a home with the Skulls. He was content with his life, for the most part.
“Thanks,” Bruf said. “It was a long time ago.”
“How old were you?”
“About nine. I sat there with their bodies until my brother showed back up three days later. I told him we should call somebody, but he was as paranoid, if not more so, as they were. We dug two holes...”
“Ah Jesus...fuck, man...I’m sorry I made you talk about this...”
Bruf waved him off. “It’s okay, I should have told you a long time ago. We buried them and then my brother sat me down and made me tell him everything I saw. It wasn’t much. There were five guys, they were all black, and they were wearing red bandannas underneath their ball caps, and red or white t-shirts...My brother took that, and his paranoia warped further into a racist hate. He gathered his friends, all a bunch of mountain people and of the same mind as he was, and they went looking for these guys. Back in the 90s the gangs in Fresno were bad. I heard there were something like thirty-two gangs at that time...well, you lived it; the MC was right in the middle of a lot of those turf wars.”
Wolf nodded. “Yeah, there were something like six to seven hundred gang members back in the 90s and that’s not counting us.”
Bruf winked and grinned. “That’s because we’re a club, not a gang.”
“Damn straight,” Wolf said with a smile.
Bruf’s smile fell then and he said:
“My brother lost it. He started killing black guys...any black guy he saw dressed in red, whether he was a gang-banger or not. His friends were like a little militia and they backed him up and did some killing of their own. Ediger...”
“Is that his first name?” Wolf interrupted. “I’m sorry, this whole time I thought it was his last name.”
“Yeah, he just goes by ‘Ediger’ now...thinks he’s too fucking famous for a last name. Anyways, Ediger and a few of the guys got arrested one night. They got picked up on a routine traffic stop with a lot of drugs on them and automatic weapons and shit. He did time and I ended up in the foster care system. By the time he got out, I was sixteen, and he had built one hell of a following. He took me out of the foster home and out of school. We moved up to this big-ass piece of land way up in the Sierras. Ediger said it was his, that he’d bought it. I had no idea where or how he came up with the money to buy a piece of real estate like that but he kind of scared me back then, so I didn’t ask. For a couple of years, I played the role of the general’s brother. They taught me how to shoot to kill, how to wire explosives, grow my own food...and a lot of other things you can only imagine. Ediger wasn’t happy when I joined the army...and that’s putting it mildly. I ran off and did it, without telling him, but the first time I came home on leave...well, let’s just say I was lucky to still be breathing when they got done with me.”
“Your brother let them beat you up?”
Bruf chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “Hell, Ediger never has anyone do anything he’s not willing to do himself. He got in some of the better shots. They dumped me behind the recruiting office in town and left me there, either for dead or to be found. I was found, spent about a month in the hospital, and got a medical discharge from the army. I was out about two days when I met Coyote and some of the guys at Spirits one night. Coyote and I played a few rounds of pool and I just remember thinking that maybe the MC life was my calling. They were anti-government involvement in their lives, but not so paranoid that they couldn’t function in society. They grouped together by race but weren’t so bigoted that they couldn’t tolerate another race. It was some of what I was taught, but much milder.
“That night I told Coyote my story and he invited me to the clubhouse. I think that next day was when I met you...and you know the rest of my story. As far as my brother and that mess up there goes, their goal is to become independent of the government and society...but Ediger hasn’t figured out quite how to cut the rest of the world off completely yet. Sometimes I think about Jim Jones and Guyana when I talk to my brother. That crazy preacher got those people to drink the Kool-Aid because he knew they’d never be able to escape completely any other way. My brother is smart, practically a genius...but his fuse is about a millimeter long and if it gets lit, look out, because there’s gonna be one hell of an explosion.”
“They ever get any of them for the gang murders? I was just a kid, but I seem to remember when all that was going on...the gang wars...Coyote had the club lying low during that time.”
“Nah, never could pin anything on any of them. They’ve had them on all the watch lists for years, but haven’t ever been able to get them on anything; it’s why that DA got so excited at the idea you might have been able to get something on them.”
“So why did your brother help? I mean, he has to know that...how bad she wants them, right?”
Bruf nodded. “He said he’d give me that information...and then I’d owe him something in return.”
“Fuck,” Wolf said, running his hand through his beard. “Brother or not, that’s not a guy I’d want to be indebted to.”
Bruf laughed softly again and said, “Me neither, and he’s my own blood.”
“You should have told me that before I accepted the deal.”
“Nah, because then you wouldn’t have accepted.”
“Damn right. I wasn’t lookin’ to make any trouble for you.”
“And you didn’t. I’ll weigh whatever favor Ediger ends up asking me for, before I agree to his terms, or make any kind of decision...and I’ll run it by you first, Boss. It could be years before he comes up with something.” Wolf looked worried, but he nodded and said:
“Did they ever get the right guys? The ones that killed your parents?”
“They got one of them, the one that shot our dad. The other one, the one that killed Mom...he’s still out there.”
“Can I ask how you know that for sure?”
“Because he had a tattoo of a bulldog on his neck. I saw it plain as day the night he killed her...and then I saw it again, just a few weeks ago.”
Wolf raised an eyebrow but waited for Bruf to go on. When he didn’t, Wolf finally asked him, “Did you tell your brother you saw him?”
Bruf shook his head, slowly and then with an intense look of his own he said, “No. That one’s mine.”
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