His Little Secret Read online

  “Too. Bad.” Fully dressed now, he turns and jabs a finger at me. But his ire slowly dies, replaced by nothing but remorse—and I think that’s worse than seeing him pissed. “Listen to me. I’ve got no business putting my cock in a sweet thing like you. You’re going to college. You’ve got a bright future ahead of you. Don’t you dare fuck it up for someone like me.”

  “I wouldn’t be!”

  “Oh no?” He glances down at the bed, the bulge in his pants seeming to grow impossibly larger. “I’d have knocked you right the hell up, Ripley.”

  “We can be more careful,” I whisper, a happy tingle going through my system at the idea of being pregnant with Mase’s child.

  He shuts down, lips clamping together. “Go to school. Forget this ever happened.”

  Before I can say another word or tell him I’ll never, ever forget, he turns and slams out of the bedroom, leaving me in open-mouthed shock on the bed. How did I manage to win him and lose him in the space of five minutes? I thought this was it. We’d finally be together, but I was stupidly naïve, wasn’t I?

  I’m sitting there for a good five minutes with tears streaming down my face before I realize Mase’s cell phone is face down in front of me. It must have fallen out of his pocket.

  With a frown, I pick it up and swipe a thumb across the screen.

  No lock.

  A single eyebrow goes up, my curiosity buzzing, and I navigate to the contacts section. Maybe I’ll just delete every single female name I come across. How about that? I’m feeling pretty scorned and depressed at the moment. It might go a long way toward improving my mood. But all I can find are Mikes and Johns and a Gavin.

  “All male names,” I murmur after a thorough search. “Not a single female?”

  Despite its fracture, my heart starts to pound happily—until I find a contact with no name attached. Who could it belong to? Before I can talk myself out of it, I hit dial.

  “Hello, this is Estelle,” says an elderly female voice. “I don’t recognize this number. Are you calling to schedule services with one of our escorts?”

  Ice fills my veins.

  An escort service?

  Mase has the number to an escort service in his phone? Does he go to them?

  Fresh tears well in my eyes at the thought of his hands on anyone else. I mean, he’s a virile thirty-eight-year-old man. I never assumed he was celibate, but the proof that he’s been with other woman sets off a landslide in my chest.

  But I’m not a quitter. My mother always says I’d make an excellent chess player because I think three moves ahead of everyone else. I prove that when I say, “Actually, I’m calling about scheduling a job interview.”

  When Mase reenters the room a few minutes later, I hold the phone out to him with an innocent smile. He looks at me suspiciously for a moment, his eyes sweeping me with a wealth of hunger and regret, before he curses gutturally, turns and stalks back out.

  With a new plan giving me purpose, I spring off the bed and call my best friend, Alana.

  “Hey, are you home? I have an idea.”

  Alana groans, well used to me and my schemes. “Uh oh.”

  3

  Mase

  I throw a wrench down into my toolbox with more force than is necessary.

  My plan to focus on building the new custom bike order to distract myself isn’t helping. I’ve been in one hell of a mood since yesterday. No amount of work or whiskey can blur the memory of Ripley spreading her thighs and inviting me between them. I might have Motorhead turned up to ten decibels on the garage stereo, but all I hear is her breathy, little whine.

  I don’t want to wait anymore to be filled up. I need it now.

  Reaching down, I adjust my miserable dick, once again reminding myself of all the reasons I can’t return to my brother’s house, lock Ripley in her pretty pink bedroom and bang her brains out.

  Number one is always the same.

  She deserves better than some low-down murderer like me.

  Murder isn’t what got me sent to prison, but I was a member of the local MC for five in my early twenties and these hands ended plenty of lives. Rival club members. Hell, anyone who got in my way. I was a ruthless son of a bitch. A lost cause—and I still am. But none of the offenses I’ve committed in my life would compare to locking down my perfect, bright, mischievous Ripley.

  My possessiveness of her is already a hair’s breadth from running wild. If I let this attraction grow into something real, I’d ruin her. I’d get her pregnant immediately, do bodily harm to any man who breathed in her direction and I’d never want her out of my sight. My obsession would make her miserable. Instead of going to college, making friends and having a normal life like she should, she’d spent it with a man with a prison record and a temper.

  I’m not going to let that happen.

  The sound of motorcycle engines pulling up outside my shop brings my head up. Wiping my hands on a grease rag, I go to investigate, although I already suspect who is stopping by for a visit. My suspicions are confirmed when I look through the glass of the front entrance and find two members of the Mountain Men MC climbing off their bikes.

  I push open the door with my elbow with a grunt. “The bike isn’t ready yet.”

  Chavez strolls toward the shop adjusting his leather cut. “Thought we’d stop by and check on the progress,” he drawls.

  We lean in and slap each other on the back.

  Clint moves in and does the same, all while laughing at my skeptical expression. “Ah, this man isn’t stupid, Chavez. He knows we’re here to lure him back to the club. Again.”

  Already shaking my head, I head back into my work area, both men laughing in my wake. “Not happening.”

  When I got out of prison, it was a given that I would rejoin the club. The men who rode alongside me were my family. My life. They had my loyalty.

  Then I went to my brother’s house to visit him after a decade in the slammer.

  And everything changed in the blink of an eye.

  She changed everything with one smile.

  It’s not easy getting out of an MC. Once you’re in, it’s a lifetime commitment. You’ve seen too much, known too much. If you’re not sinning alongside them, you’re nothing but a liability. A potential witness to all the ways they ignore the law and live by their own.

  When you take the fall for the club president and spend ten years locked up for your trouble, though, certain exceptions are made.

  “We need your kind of loyalty around the table, Mase,” Chavez calls over the loud music, but he quiets his voice when I turn down the volume. “These fucking newbies wouldn’t understand commitment if it bit them in the ass.”

  “Amen to that,” Clint mutters, walking down my row of custom bikes and whistling with approval at what he sees. “They’re good for beer runs and that’s about it.”

  “None of this is my problem anymore,” I say, crossing my arms. “I did my time for the prez and I don’t regret it, but nothing you say will get me back.”

  Chavez spots something over my shoulder, a smile curving his lips. “Is that her?”

  Knowing exactly what he’s referring to, dangerous heat permeates my gut. There’s a framed picture of Ripley on my work table. “Don’t.”

  “Come on, man. You leave the club because your niece made you want to be a better man,” Clint says. “You expect nobody to be curious about her?”

  I regret a lot of things in my life, but number one is telling the club members about Ripley. My confession happened by accident. Four years ago, the day I rode to club headquarters to turn over my patch, a picture of Ripley fell out of my helmet. They asked me where I’d been and I told them. I’d just come from visiting my brother’s house.

  They knew it couldn’t be a coincidence that I decided to exit the MC the same day.

  These men were smart. They knew me.

  And hell, I’d been off balance after meeting the purest form of joy in the world.

  Ripley.

&nbs
p; After ten years in an ugly pit of despair, I sat in my brother’s professionally decorated dining room, feeling so out of place it was painful. I worried I was going to break the fragile chair beneath me or eat like an animal in front of his new, visibly disapproving wife.

  Then Ripley came twirling into the room talking a hundred miles an hour about boys and homework and cheerleading tryouts. When she’d spotted me, the big, nasty motherfucker sitting in her expensive dining room, she hadn’t been scared. She’d smiled with all of her teeth and said welcome home. Never once that day—or ever—did Ripley make me feel anything but…important. Like I belonged. Like I could be more than an ex-convict who dropped right back into a life of crime and pain.

  She changed me.

  And as she changed over the years, my feelings for her became more complex, more inexcusable. They became what they are now.

  Infatuated turmoil.

  Chavez is still looking at Ripley’s picture, curiosity lining his face. “How old is she now?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I growl, purposefully letting my arms drop so he can see my tightening fists. “Don’t you dare speak her name.”

  “I wouldn’t piss him off,” Clint says, coming up beside Chavez. “They still tell stories about how Mase used to handle people who got on his bad side.”

  Chavez shrugs a shoulder. “Yet another reason we’d like you back.”

  For a moment, I consider it. Rejoining the club would be a distraction from thinking about my niece. From remembering the way her body felt under mine, sweet and limber and perfect. If I wore the Mountain Man patch once again, I’d be back in that lifestyle of mayhem and it would be a valuable reminder to keep my distance from Ripley.

  But I can’t do it.

  Through her, I’ve glimpsed the goodness in this world. Because of her, I opened my own successful custom bike shop. And thanks to her, I’ve become more.

  Not good enough to have her, but not so irredeemable that I have to go back to a life of crime. Ripley will never know I gave up the club for her. But if she did, and she knew I went back, she’d be disappointed. That’s enough to have me shaking my head.

  “I’m out and I’m staying out.” I clear my throat and pick my wrench back up. “Your bike will be ready by Friday.”

  A few minutes later, Clint and Chavez are gone and I find myself wandering over to the framed picture of Ripley. It was taken in her backyard. She’s wearing an innocent sundress, her arms thrown out wide, her face turned up toward the sunshine. The definition of purity. And yet, I’ve beat off to this picture more times than I can count, my hand caked in motor oil and grease, moving angrily up and down my cock. I’m ashamed of myself.

  I need to let the girl go to college and start her life.

  I need to move on for her sake. Next time she pursues me, I’ll be too weak to say no and then it’ll be over. I’ll be her jealous, obsessive, criminal boyfriend. Oh, and also her uncle. Her reputation would be burned and I’d be to blame.

  I’m older, dammit. I’m supposed to know better.

  A while back, one of my customers told me about a brothel in Julian. I put the number in my phone, positive I would never call. But maybe this is the only way. Forcing myself to be with someone that isn’t Ripley. Maybe if I force my body to let go of the possibility of having her, my brain will follow suit.

  With lead in my throat, I take my phone out of my pocket and hit dial on the number.

  “Hello, this is Estelle,” says an older woman. “Would you like to schedule a service with one of our escorts?”

  “Yes,” I croak, guilt causing me to turn away from the picture of Ripley. “You wouldn’t happen to have any redheads, would you?”

  She laughs. “As a matter of fact, we just hired a stunning redhead.” She drops her voice to a whisper. “A virgin. How would you like to be her first? It’ll cost you, but she’s worth it.”

  You can imagine she’s Ripley.

  Okay, picturing my niece while I get rid of this pent-up sexual frustration isn’t the best way to get over her, but I don’t know if I’m capable of going cold turkey, anyway. Once again swallowing my guilt, I say, “I’ll pay whatever it is.” No way I’m going to negotiate terms when this stranger is giving up something as important as her virginity. “Tomorrow.”

  “Consider it scheduled,” she purrs. “As luck would have it, actually, we have two virgins on staff. You wouldn’t happen to know anyone else who’s interested, would you?”

  I think of my buddy, Gavin, who has been going through a self-imposed dry spell lately. Spending too much time focused on his work as a professor and taking no time for anything else. I’m kind of reluctant to tell him I’m visiting a brothel, but he doesn’t have know the sordid details. That I’ll be envisioning my niece. Plus, he’s not the type to ask too many questions. “Yeah. I might know someone.”

  4

  Ripley

  “Holy shit.” I dance in a circle in front of my best friend, Alana. “We’re doing this.”

  “Are we? I mean…” My best friend since forever paces the room in her short, white silk robe, wringing her hands. “Who profits off their virginity? That’s crazy, right?”

  “Is it? Ask any woman, she’ll tell you her first time having sex was horrible,” I say, matter-of-factly, though I’ve mostly garnered this knowledge via Netflix and viral memes. “This way, we’re guaranteed to get something out of it.”

  Two days ago, after I found the number to this place in my Uncle Mase’s phone, I swung by Alana’s house in my purple Volkswagen Bug—which my parents like to call gauche—and told her what I’d discovered. The town bed and breakfast is operating a brothel in the basement right under everyone’s noses and I just Nancy Drew’d my way into the know.

  Alana is an aspiring photographer and has been mega-stressed out about not being able to afford tuition for art school. We’re supposed to move up the coast next week and attend the university together. It’s our dream. She refuses to accept a loan from my parents, even though I’ve offered ninety-nine times and now the window is closing. A payday like the owner of this place offered us could be her last chance to make tuition by the beginning of the semester.

  We’ve done everything together since we met.

  And now, it appears we’re both going to trade our hymens for money.

  If that doesn’t bond two girls, I’m not sure anything will.

  The madam of this hidden establishment is a seventy-year-old widow named Estelle. When her husband died in the nineties and she couldn’t make ends meet, apparently she entered the sex-for-cash game. When we walked through the door, she all but pounced.

  Apparently virgins are the brothel jackpot.

  Estelle found us both clients in a matter of hours. Alana doesn’t know who she’s meeting in her respective room tonight…but I do. I needed to be one hundred percent positive that Estelle matched me with Mase, so I did some recon in the parking lot and just moments ago, he pulled up on his Harley, those long, thick legs straddling the seat, his long, midnight hair messy from the wind. After the usual wave of worship and yearning rode over me, I almost jumped out of my hiding space and kicked him in the shin. How dare he visit a brothel when he has a perfectly good niece waiting right down the street?

  Listen to yourself, crazy pants.

  A lump forms in my throat. Mase paying for intimacy from other women is definitely a major concern, but my current worry is the confession I have to make to Alana. Our scheduled times are almost here and that means the moment of truth has arrived.

  Taking a deep breath, I slide a mask out of the pocket of my royal-blue robe and tie it behind my head, concealing the top half of my face.

  “Why do you have a mask?” Alana complains. “I didn’t get a mask.”

  I square my shoulders. My poor best friend. I can see it in her eyes that she knows the other shoe is about to drop. She had the misfortune of taking up with me, a full-fledged troublemaker. I can’t stay out of mischief and I’m startin
g to think it’s a serious medical condition. “I have to tell you something,” I say quietly. “I’m invoking the no judgment clause.”

  After a beat, she nods dutifully. “I solemnly swear not to laugh, gasp or lecture you.”

  “Don’t even change your facial expression.”

  “I won’t! Tell me.” We both glance at the clock on the wall. “We only have, like, five minutes until we can officially start complaining about our first times.”

  My palms start to sweat. “Here’s the thing. I don’t know if I’m going to be complaining.” I close my eyes and blurt the rest. “I know who my customer is.”

  “What? How? Estelle didn’t tell us.” She gapes at me. “Who is it?”

  “This is where the no judgment part is critical,” I whisper, watching her face carefully. Perhaps for confirmation that I am, indeed, nutso. “It’s my step-uncle Mase.”

  I’m really asking a lot of our no judgment clause here.

  Alana’s face turns bright red. She’s become a human pressure cooker.

  “How did you know that?” she asks, her voice strangled.

  My nerves cause me to pace. “He was over at my house for dinner and I might have snuck a peek at his iPhone contacts. I, um…might have been looking for women’s number to delete. Weirdly, there weren’t any. But anyway. I found the number to this place, but there was no name. Mysterious. So I called it and…” She stops and turns on a heel, smacking her palms together. “Bam. I find the brothel that has been operating under our small-town noses this whole time.”

  “Okay,” she says slowly. “Please don’t tell me you’re wearing that mask because…”

  “I don’t want him to know it’s me.” I throw another glance at the clock. “It’s a long story. I’ve been in love with him for years and…look, we’ll talk about it after.”

  “After you bugger your uncle!?”

  My mouth falls open on a gasp. “That sounds like judgment.” Lamely, I add, “And he’s my step-uncle.”