DAX: Southside Skulls Motorcycle Club (Southside Skulls MC Romance Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Description

  WIN Prizes

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Excerpt from Cody

  Acknowledgments

  Latest Updates

  DAX: Southside Skulls Motorcycle Club

  (Southside Skulls MC Romance Book 1)

  Jessie Cooke

  J. S. Cooke

  Redline Publishing

  Contents

  Description

  WIN Prizes

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Excerpt from Cody

  Acknowledgments

  Latest Updates

  Other Books by Jessie Cooke

  Copyright © 2017 by Jessie Cooke

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Description

  Dax Marshall is six foot four of hard muscle and raw animal magnetism.

  As president of the Southside Skulls Outlaw Biker Club, he’s had his share of women, but never one who meant more to him than his Harley or the brotherhood. That was before she walked into the Spirits Bar and told him her name—Angel.

  Angel Brady went searching for something she would only find by hiding who she really was. But she found much more than she was looking for, and now her secret stands between her and what matters most.

  Can Dax and Angel overcome the other dangers lurking in the shadows that threaten everything they live for? Secrets that even Angel never knew.

  This is the first book in the Southside Skulls MC Series. This is a Standalone Romance Novel, with HEA and No Cliffhangers. Intended for Mature Readers.

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  1

  “How, Angel? I don’t understand!” Micah was dragging his hand through his hair the way he always did when he was upset. That was normal. She was used to that gesture. What scared Angel the most and tugged at her heart were the tears building in his eyes. Micah had been a homicide detective for ten years. He was a street cop for five years before that. At thirty-five years old he had probably seen almost everything there was to see, and somehow, she had been the one to make him cry. Fuck.

  “I don’t know.” She was whispering and her voice was shaky. She had just killed her career and destroyed the rest of her future with the same figurative bullet. Micah was looking at her like she was an alien with two heads. Sadly, she couldn’t blame him. She was happy she was merely getting that look, and not the one of pure hatred that she had thought he’d have for her.

  “You’re just confused, that’s all. Have you been using drugs with them? That’s probably what happened. You got in too deep. The drugs and the alcohol and…”

  “I’m stone cold sober. The most I’ve indulged in is a few beers at a time and a hit or two of a blunt, you know that. I showed up for every one of my mandatory drug tests. Micah, I’m not confused. I’m in love…with Dax Marshall.” There it was…that look of disgust that would quickly turn into hate, she was sure. She knew that he was wondering if she had been sleeping with Dax and him at the same time, when they last made love. He’d have to go way back. It was months ago. They had both been so wrapped up in this case…and then what happened to her dad…that he hadn’t really questioned it, at least not to her, out loud.

  “You’re screwing him?”

  “I prefer not to call it that, but yes.”

  He snorted. “Should I say, making love? Jesus fuck, Angel. What a fucking mess. I knew this was a bad idea. I told them when they set this up. It was a bad, fucking idea.”

  Angel came out of the Hartford Police Academy two days after her twenty-first birthday. She was fresh-faced and filled with excitement for her future. Her dad was a cop as well as two of her brothers. Angel had four brothers. Two of them had bought a fishing boat together and gone in a wholly different direction. But she had always wanted to be a cop, just like her dad. Dad was her hero from the moment they laid eyes on each other and she wanted him to be proud of her more than she wanted anything in her life. She had worked on the streets for five years now and had just taken the test for her detective shield. A few days after that, her captain pulled her into his office and told her that he wanted to send her in to infiltrate one of the most lethal motorcycle clubs on the East Coast. She’d been scared to death, but thrilled at the same time. It was going to give her career wings if she handled it right. Her dad had been so proud then, but she was pretty sure he wouldn’t be now.

  “Is this about your dad, Angel?” Her dad was the one that gave her the name “Angel.” Angel’s real name was Cecelia Brady. Her dad had called her Angel her entire life and that was what she had always told people that her name was. It stuck, and her dad even had it tattooed, along with a pair of whi
te wings, on the top of his right arm.

  Angel had leaned into his coffin three weeks ago, just before they closed the lid and put him in the ground, and pressed her lips to it. She looked down at him that day and found it hard to believe that she’d never hear his voice again, or see him smile. She would never forget how he lit up a room when he walked into it. Everyone loved him. After he died, Angel and her brothers were heartbroken. But this wasn’t about her dad. She was devastated about his death, but she wasn’t so depressed that it had made her suicidal the way she knew Micah thought she was. A cop that comes from a family of cops, in love with the president of an outlaw biker club…she has to be suicidal, or just plain crazy. She knew that was what he was thinking. But this wasn’t about any of that. It was simply about Angel and Dax. It was her life and she was taking control of it once and for all. “I fell in love, Micah. Why is that so hard to get?”

  He actually snorted. “Well, for starters, because this whole time I was under the impression that you loved me.”

  “I’m sorry.” She whispered that too. She was sorry and so ashamed of what she was doing to him. Micah and Angel had been together for three years. She did love him, but lately it had felt more like the love she had for her brothers rather than the kind that she should have had for him. She just couldn’t deny how she felt any longer. “I’m sorry I hurt you. That was never my intention.”

  “Damn it, Angel! Don’t you see that it’s not me I’m worried about? I mean…hell yes, it hurts. I feel like you reached into my fucking chest and ripped my heart right out. But I’ll get over it. I’ll live. I can’t say the same for you if you hook up with this guy. He’s dangerous, Angel. He’s the main reason why you were put there to infiltrate this club. He was our number one suspect, you remember that, right? You remember all of those bodies…the burnt and mutilated bodies?” Angel shuddered. She remembered them. The smell of those bodies in that shallow grave behind the big old farmhouse in the country would be burnt into her nostrils and her memory forever. It was the most horrible thing that she’d ever seen, or smelled. She had wanted to catch whoever had done that and see that they paid for it, worse than she’d ever wanted anything, and she had helped that happen. They had two men in custody and if they kept digging, she was sure they’d have more. For six months, as she was falling in love with the president of the Southside Skulls, she was doing her job. Her job was done and now she had every right to move on with her life.

  “We have the perps in custody, Micah. The Sinners were responsible for that hit on Mayhem. Now Mayhem is pretty much wiped out and the Sinners have gone back to their own territory. The Skulls don’t have any arguments with them, and they had nothing to do with what went down that night.”

  “The Sinners are a spin-off of your boyfriend’s club.” He spat out boyfriend. “If they took on a hit as big as the bulk of the members of one of the most dangerous MC’s in Massachusetts, they did it at the behest of Dax Marshall.”

  “Grant Benning is the president of the Sinners, not Dax. Dax only calls the shots for the Skulls.”

  Micah bent forward in his chair and put his head in his hands. When he looked back up at her, the angry look was gone and it had been replaced by a sad one that made her heart feel like it was breaking. “So let’s put all of the police business aside for a minute, Angel. Where do you go from here? Are you really, honestly prepared to walk away from everything, to be with this…biker? You’re going to give up your family, your job, us…to be what? An old lady? Jesus Angel, I can’t even wrap my head around that.”

  “Do you love me, Micah?”

  “Of course I do; it’s not my feelings that are in question here.”

  “Neither are mine. But my point is, if I wanted to say, move to California, you’d go…right?”

  He shrugged. “You want to go to California?”

  “No. I’m trying to get you to understand. You love me, so you’d be willing to change your life for me. I love Dax. I’m sorry to keep saying that, I know it hurts you. But you want me to explain this, so I have to tell you the truth. I love him and yes, my family is not going to understand that any more than you do. But I’m twenty-six years old and the bottom line is that it’s my choice. I’m making the choice to be with him, whatever else I have to give up.”

  “Does he know that you’re a cop, Angel?”

  She resisted the urge to put her hands across her aching belly. She didn’t want Micah to know that it was hurting. She had ulcers already at the age of twenty-six. She worried way too much about everything. “No, and he doesn’t have to know. I’m going to see the captain this afternoon and resign. I won’t be a cop any longer.”

  “This is insane, it’s dangerous. Angel, if he finds out that you were a cop, or that you come from a family of cops…”

  “Dax would never hurt me.” Micah was looking at her like she had completely lost it. She knew that he thought she was being naïve, but the connection she has with Dax went deeper than anything that she’d ever experienced and as impossible as it was to explain, she knew it was real.

  “Assuming that you’re right about that, it’s not the only risk. We’re not going to stop going after them, Angel. You’re just as likely to get caught in the crossfire as anyone else. You know as well as I do that it happens all the time. They’re out of control and this community is demanding we do something about it. You know all of this. Are you willing to risk your freedom if you get caught up in a sweep? Or, God help you, your life?”

  God help her but she was willing to risk everything to be with Dax. This was no impulsive decision. She had lain awake night after night agonizing over the consequences of it. But when the sun came up the next morning, every one of those nights had something in common…the final decision was that she’d do anything to be with him. She didn’t answer Micah’s questions. Instead, she managed to usher him out of the apartment and even secured a promise from him not to tell her family or captain until she had a chance to talk to them. Micah loved Angel the way she loved Dax and that was the only saving grace in this situation. He might never forgive her for hurting him, but she still trusted that he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. It took about ten minutes after he left for her to find out how wrong she was. She had picked up her phone to call the captain and arrange a meeting, and it began to ring. It was her brother Kyle’s ringtone, and as soon as she heard his voice on the other end of the line she knew that Micah hadn’t kept his promise.

  2

  Seven Months Earlier

  “Dispatch, show us 10-24 on that 211 in progress.” Angel and her partner had gotten called to a home that was being burglarized. The owner came home from work early and walked in on his brother-in-law cleaning out the silver. He used his own gun to keep the brother-in-law from leaving before they got there. It was a pretty easy bust and since they were ready to go off shift they didn’t even end up having to transport the fool, and that made them both happy. “I’m starving,” Kelly said.

  Angel looked at her watch. It was six-thirty a.m., half an hour after they should have gotten off-shift. Micah would probably be expecting her to be there when he woke up, and have breakfast with him before he went into the station. He’d also be expecting her to have sex with him and lately, for some reason, she just hadn’t been interested. That was new and strange to her for more reasons than one. Angel loved sex. She had never been one of those women that did it out of obligation. She genuinely loved it…but, not lately. “You want to go to Denny’s after we sign out?”

  “Hell, yeah. I could use me a Grand Slam!”

  She shook her head at him and smiled. Kelly had been on the force for almost twenty years. He was divorced and his kids were grown and the only thing it seemed he had to live for any longer was his job…and food. He loved to eat, and Angel didn’t want to be the one to tell him, but it was starting to show. The last time they’d had a foot chase, she had actually been afraid he was going to have a heart attack because he was huffing and puffing so hard. “Okay th
en…”

  “62, this is dispatch. Captain Banks would like a 10-21 from Officer Brady…ASAP.”

  Angel looked at Kelly with wide eyes as he confirmed back to dispatch. What the hell does the captain want with me? She took out her phone and as Kelly started the squad car and pointed it toward the station, she waited for the call to Captain Banks to go through. She spoke to his assistant first and told her who she was and then seconds later she heard the gravelly voice of her captain over the line: “Brady, what’s your 10-20?”

  “We’re headed back into the station, ETA about five minutes. What’s up, Captain?”

  “I need you to report to my office before you sign out.”

  “Okay, sir…can I ask what this is about?”

  “Nope. I’ll see you in four?”

  “Yes, sir.” She ended the call and realized Kelly was staring at her as he turned the corner onto the street where the police station was. “Look where you’re going! You know most accidents happen within a mile of home.”

  He laughed. “Shut up. What did he want?”

  “Me, in his office in four.”

  “Hmm…what did you do?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Kelly pulled into the parking lot and parked the squad car. “I guess this means no Denny’s.”

  Shaking her head at him, she got out of the car and headed inside. She knew that she hadn’t done anything wrong, but getting called to see the captain was as nerve-wracking as facing her father when she was a kid and had done something wrong. She had butterflies in her belly as she passed through the outer office where his assistant usually sat. The woman was missing, so Angel just knocked on his inner door. He yelled at her to come in and her mouth fell open when she opened the door to find her father, her oldest brother Kyle, and Micah on one side of the small conference table and the captain and his assistant on the other. There was another man there as well that she didn’t recognize, but she knew that whatever this was, it was big.