Beast an age gap romance.., p.1
Beast: An Age Gap Romance (Ruthless Kings Houston Book 1), page 1
BEAST
RUTHLESS KINGS HOUSTON
BOOK 1
K.L. SAVAGE
Copyright © 2024 by K.L. Savage
All rights reserved. Except as permitted by U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, establishments, or organizations, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously to give a sense of authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. BEAST is intended for 18+ older, and for mature audiences only.
Content Warning:
This book deals with some dark topics, violence, including physical and mental abuse, and the suggestion of rape (not the main characters).
CONTENTS
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
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Epilogue
Also by K.L. Savage
CHAPTER 1
Slot machines clang and crash. Coins clatter into trays. A dark jacket whips around a corner. My vision goes red. My world narrows to me and the bastard I’m hunting.
“Jackpot!” somebody hollers. I feel the same way when I see him.
He bolts the opposite way. I charge after him, past the slot machines and into the pit. I’ve always been faster than his punk ass, and he’s given up cover.
I snag the collar of his cut and stare down into the blue eyes of Dallas, my best friend in the Ruthless Kings. That is, my best friend until yesterday, when we found out he was a fucking rat.
He stares back at me, but doesn’t say anything. He knows there ain’t nothing he could say.
Reaper steps up on Dallas’ other side. “Well?”
I stare at our musclebound Prez.
“You vouched.” Reaper crosses his arms. “Clean it up.”
Crow. Ironhead. Riffraff. All dead because of Dallas. I look down at him again and see myself reflected in his eyes.
I rub my eyes and smooth down the worn leather of my cut, shaking the memory away. That was over a decade ago, the day before I left Vegas and headed home to the Lone Star State. I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, scrub a hand over my wavy hair and meet my own dark eyes. Despite the thick scar running from my left eyebrow down to my cheek, a knife wound I got so long ago I barely remember the motherfucker who gave it to me, I don’t look half as tough as I need to today.
I look tired. More tired than I did in that memory, and older too.
I’m not tired of the life. I’ll be Prez for another decade before I even think of giving it up. I’m just tired of calling meetings like this.
But dragging my feet won’t make the news any sweeter, and I didn’t get here by indulging my every goddamn whim. I stalk down the hall from my bedroom, out the front door, and across the scrub grass of the compound to the clubhouse at its center. I asked my top men to meet in the reinforced war room there five minutes ago. I storm down the main hall and kick open the door. It crashes into the wall, and I march in.
Course, these are my top guys because they don’t jump that easy. Only Storm and Blue even look up. Storm catches himself quickly and looks back down, but I know him better than that. He’s been twitchy ever since he got back from Iraq. Blue’s just twitchy by nature.
The rest sit at the long, wooden table I pulled out of the burning wreck of the very first MC I took down in varying states of attentiveness.
Thor, my VP, sits still as a statue with his arms crossed to show off his ink and the muscles underneath. Sin, my sergeant-at-arms, eyes me as he runs a hand through his dark hair. Normally, I’d just pull the two of them into my office and talk alone, but this problem’s starting to spin out of control. Having a couple of enforcers around settles our next steps before the question’s even asked. I also called Harley, my daughter, in tonight. She sprawls in one of the high wooden chairs, looking for all the world like she couldn’t care less as she trims the ends off her dark hair with a pocket knife, but I know better. I didn’t raise a kid who shows up anywhere unprepared.
“Mac’s missing.” I slam the door shut behind me.
Thor leans back in his chair and stares at me. “Three runners in three months.”
His steely gray eyes reflect my own frustration, but there’s a reason only one of us got the name Beast. I’m the motherfucker who makes sure our concerns get heard.
“Three enforcers in a month.” Reaper stares at me with hard eyes. “That doesn’t happen unless we’ve got a rat.”
Desert heat pounds down on my shoulders. I glance at Tongue, his VP, and wonder why I’m in this meeting. I’ve been working my way up, but nothing like this.
“It’s not me,” I say.
Reaper laughs, loud and long. “Shithead. If it was you, you’d already be rotting in a shallow grave.”
Tongue crosses his arms. “We think it’s your buddy, Dallas.”
“Mac was new, right?” Sin frowns. “And the other two, Buzz and Rubble, them as well?”
“New enough.” I sink into my deep red leather chair at the head of the table, a present to myself for my fortieth birthday. Harley calls it my throne, but that’s just because she’s still jealous that I got myself a better present than she did that year.
“Could they just’ve run?” Rebel ruffles his golden hair. “That ain’t half as hard as people think it’s gonna be.”
“Running from your daddy was easy.” Blade spins a throwing knife on the dark tabletop. “Running from us?”
“We’d have heard something by now,” Thor notes as he looks to me. “And we haven’t heard shit on any of them.”
I sigh. “They got their colors six months back or less. They don’t have the skills to disappear like that without help.”
“Help?” Sin asks. “Or help?”
“That’s what I’m looking to find out.” I meet each man’s gaze in turn. “Mac was eighteen. The other two, not much older. We owe them better than a missing poster.”
Everyone nods. The Kings might be the sort of motorcycle club cagers tell their kids scary stories about, but we protect our own.
I pace back and forth in the crappy motel room I got for the night. Game shows blare from every other room on the hall, and a couple laughs drunkenly as they struggle with their key.
Couldn’t be Dallas. He wouldn’t turn on us, on me, like this. No fucking way. I’m gonna be Prez someday, and he’s gonna be my VP.
Someone pounds on my door. “Beast! I gotta explain!”
I grab my .45 and let him in. “Is it you?”
He swallows. “You gotta listen to me. It’s not like Reaper says it is.”
I cock the hammer and point the barrel at his skull. “Is it fucking you?”
He won’t meet my eyes. “I needed the money.”
“Thor, Sin, Storm. I want y’all on this.” I pull a USB drive out of my pocket and slide it across the table to Sin. “Supplier reports he picked the shipment up, but we lost him before the drop. That’s his bike GPS data. It cuts off suddenly, like somebody trashed the receiver. Trace him from there, if you can.”
Sin snatches the drive, plugs it into the laptop he always seems to have on hand, and puffs out a breath. “This is downtown.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I slam my hands on the table. “I gave the kid an easy run. He was a drag racer before he came to us, so I figured dodging fucking cops would be the one thing he could do. Instead, he got snatched in the middle of goddamn Houston. I didn’t say it’d be a cake walk, I said find him.”
&nbs
I take a deep breath. My temper doesn’t flare quite as easily as it used to, but these disappearances have me on edge. They shouldn’t be possible, unless my men missed something big.
I run a hand over my short, graying hair and steady myself. I should’ve caught it as much as everyone else in this goddamn room.
“Now the room knows why I’m putting the whole club on red alert, and this house double.” I stare down at my daughter. “That includes you, Harley.”
She grins and lifts her pocket knife. “Ready to join the front lines, Pops.”
“Slow your roll.” I shake my head. “I meant I’m putting a detail on your free-wheeling ass, and a curfew.”
She lodges her knife into the tabletop. “Fuck no! A couple kids walk, and you put me under house arrest? I can take care of myself.”
“You know good and well they didn’t walk, and Mac was a year younger than you, so I’d watch who you’re calling kids.” I sigh. “You can still go to class, I just want you to come home right after.”
“Oh, how merciful.” She rolls her eyes. “I’m allowed to go to the college down the fucking road for a couple hours a day, I didn’t realize.”
I cross my arms and sink back into my throne. Harley can’t contradict me here and win. That’s why I invited her. If I told her about the detail anywhere else, I wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Sometimes I wonder what she inherited from whichever club slut dropped her off on my doorstep in the dead of night nineteen years ago. Her deep brown hair, maybe, though I half-remember my own mama having something like that before she disappeared in the night. Or her laughing brown eyes. Mine might be brown, but nobody’s ever been stupid enough to accuse me of laughing.
Regardless, there’s no denying her pigheadedness comes straight from me.
I cradle my phone against my ear, my gun still pointed at Dallas, fucking Dallas. “It’s not like that!”
Reaper sighs heavily. “You disrespecting an order from your Prez, Beast?”
“You disrespecting an order from your Prez, Harley?” I ask quietly.
She screws up her mouth, glares at the table, and finally spits, “No.”
“Good.” I grin. “That’s what I like to hear. Malo, Rook, Blade, she’s all yours.”
Harley glares at each of them. “Good luck.”
“Chingada.” Malo makes the sign of the cross and raises his tawny brown hand up to God. “Thanks, boss.”
“Seconded.” Blade glares at me through a face even more scarred than my own. “You know I have a show this weekend.”
Rook merely sighs and looks at his watch. “I can take 2400 to 0800 hours.”
I smirk. I knew they’d bitch, but I picked those three for good reasons. Malo cooks when he’s not needed for anything more important, so he spends most of the time around the compound and knows the place like the back of his hand. Rook’s the most perceptive motherfucker I could spare, and all his chess-playing sharpened his wits to a fine point. And Blade? Best case, he keeps Harley distracted by talking knives with her. Worst case, I’ve watched him put one of those little throwing daggers in somebody’s shirt from a hundred feet off. If Harley runs, I trust him to catch her before she makes it to the chain link fence around the edge of my property.
“I’ll consider this settled. Any other business?”
Harley raises her hand. “I motion to lift the red alert.”
“Denied.” I frown.
She grins and shrugs. “Seemed worth a shot.”
I roll my eyes. More trouble than she’s worth, but I don’t know what I’d do without her.
The rest of the table sits in silence for a long moment. That means it’s time for an old Ruthless King tradition.
In the silence between Reaper’s question and my reply, I make eye contact with Dallas. Fucking traitor. Never should’ve listened to a goddamn word he said. Should’ve known from the first second we met in that bar on the way here.
But I didn’t. And that’s why, when I meet his eye, I nod instead of pulling the trigger.
He bolts.
I reach behind me toward the mini-fridge I had installed in here for occasions like this, open it up, and start sliding cold ones down the table. The glass bottles slip silently across the finely polished surface. Nobody misses their catch.
I set three on the table in front of me and stare at the homemade label for a moment. No point toasting with anything but the hops we brew ourselves on the edge of the property. Then, I grab one for myself and stand.
“Mac, Buzz, Rubble,” I say. “Gone but not forgotten.”
“Gone but not forgotten,” everyone choruses.
We chug. I don’t drink beer, especially not light crap like this, unless I’m doing a tribute anymore. I can’t stand the taste. It’s too much a reminder of moments like this. Moments we’ll keep having as long as we don’t run this town.
Everyone slides their empty bottles into the middle of the table when they’re done, in front of the three unopened cans.
“Get to it.” I wipe my mouth. “We need new prospects, but don’t get serious on anyone ’til we know what’s happening.”
My men file out slowly. Harley lingers.
“You’re kidding about the curfew, right?” she asks once everyone is gone.
“Not a chance in hell,” I reply. “They’re picking our people off the streets. Crowded streets, Harley, the sort we can count on not to look twice at us.”
She huffs out a breath. “But I’m not some random runner. You trained me yourself. Isn’t that enough?”
I take her chin in my hand, and her eyes go wide for a moment before softening. Dammit. She might’ve just seen that tiredness I tried to chase away in the mirror.
“I’m not losing you to some punks,” I say. “I don’t care how mad it makes you.”
“I hear you, Pops.” She pulls out of my grasp and kisses me on the cheek. “But you know I wouldn’t be your daughter if I didn’t try to get around this.”
She waltzes out of the room, and I rub my eyes again. I know that far better than I’d like.
I head for my office behind the war room, sit down at the massive, mahogany desk the guys made fun of me for until I turned the Ruthless Kings into an MC with real potential, and pour myself a double of the bourbon I keep in the drawer just for myself. It burns down my throat as I sip it, chasing away the last of the hops.
I open the window and lean out into the night air. When I was picking a spot for the compound, I wanted to be near enough to the city to get there in times of trouble, but not so close I couldn’t hear the bugs at night. I grew up too lonely near the Oklahoma border not to miss it. It flows over me now, cicadas and katydids and god only knows what else. The lights of Houston shine to the east.
Harley’s gonna bitch until this is over, and that’s if she doesn’t slip her guard, so I need to end it as quickly as possible. I can’t have her disappearing on me, and I owe those kids better. Thor’s supposed to be my ear on the streets. If he’s not hearing shit, maybe there isn’t shit to hear.
I shake my head. Three runners in three months. It’s starting to look less like there isn’t shit to hear and more like someone’s operating quietly enough to slip under our radar.
And I don’t intend to get tricked like that again.
“You dumb sonofabitch, of course he didn’t leave the city!” Reaper hollers. “He turned right the fuck around and handed in a couple more of our names, yours included. Why the hell did you do that?”
I stare up into his eyes, hard with rage, and I know it’s over. I can’t come back from a fuckup like this. I figured I owed the bastard a head start for all our years together, and he used it to turn me over. It doesn’t matter what I say anymore. My days in Vegas are done.
“Trusted him too long.” I stand. “Don’t worry, boss, that’s a mistake I won’t make again. You said you had a lead?”
I chug the rest of my bourbon and set the glass on my desk. I can’t solve this staring out my window. Maybe some sleep’ll make me look more like a Prez my men can rely on.
