Forbidden: Berserkers MC, #1

By APRIL LUST

Forbidden is book 1 of the Berserkers MC trilogy. Books 2 and 3, Outlawed and Banned are available everywhere now!

SHE'S GOING TO PAY FOR WHAT SHE DID.

I left jail with murder on my mind.
I wanted to kill the woman who'd betrayed me.

But then I came home to a brutal surprise:
She's sleeping with my enemy.

All of a sudden, the plan changes.
Death's too good for her.
I'm gonna get her back in my bed.
I'm gonna put a baby in her belly.

And then I'm gonna break her f**king heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sopris Page Press
• Release date: Jan 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386641186

Book preview

Forbidden: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Berserkers MC Book 1)

By April Lust

SHE’S GOING TO PAY FOR WHAT SHE DID.

I LEFT JAIL WITH MURDER on my mind.

I wanted to kill the woman who’d betrayed me.

But then I came home to a brutal surprise:

She’s sleeping with my enemy.

All of a sudden, the plan changes.

Death’s too good for her.

I’m gonna get her back in my bed.

I’m gonna put a baby in her belly.

And then I’m gonna break her f**king heart.

Chapter One

Nester

They let me out with a pair of blue jeans, a clean white shirt, a pair of loafers, and twenty bucks. And maybe some of them meant it when they told me, Keep your nose clean, kid. I don’t want to see you back here. Except I wasn’t a kid and I wasn’t about to keep my nose clean. Maybe I would feel worse about my plans after getting out of the slammer if I hadn’t lost it all when I went in. It was a short stint, all things considered, but not short enough for me to let bygones be bygones.

After all, five years was a long time to a man who went in at twenty-three.

I didn’t know what I was expecting when I walked out of the gates that had been closed to me for years now, but certainly something more exciting than the same damn bus that had dropped me off here. We’ll drop you off anywhere, they told me, though anywhere was a relative term. What they meant was, We’ll drop you off at your choice of the three closest major cities, all of which happen to be about fifty miles max. Granted, I should have been grateful for even that.

No one was coming to pick me up.

So I got on the bus with my starched jeans and my clean shirt and the loafers that were uglier than shit. I sat down and didn’t make conversation, didn’t ask questions, or tell the driver or the three other guys sitting with me what I’d be doing when I got out. All I did was sit and kept my head down, because inside I was boiling.

Five years ago, I had it all planned out. I had my life set—maybe not by other people’s standards, but I was that strange breed of man who couldn’t walk the straight and narrow path—my girl picked out, and enough earned friends to make a life and a living all at once. And then I was hit. Like a ton of bricks on my head, my entire world came crashing down and when things went from bad to worse, and I found myself clinging desperately to what I had left, and I lost that, too.

Once upon a time, I led the Berserkers MC. Like demon riders from hell, we were a force to be reckoned with. There were only a few meager lines we didn’t cross—mostly prostitution and anything to do with kids below eighteen—but the rest was fair game.

The Berserkers MC was my baby, built up from the ground. It started with me and a motorcycle when I was just seventeen, and by the time I was twenty, I had a half dozen decent guys. We were hellions and proud of it. Drugs, arms, boosting, didn’t matter what to us, we delved. At the time, I was under some sort of strange, youthful illusion that we were invincible. Like we couldn’t be touched. It fueled me and when we continued to grow, it was easier and easier to believe.

Then it happened. Five years wasted.

I clenched my hands against the stiff fabric of my jeans and focused on breathing, concentrated on how I was out, how I would make things right. No, not right. It couldn’t be made right again, not now, but I could get revenge. I could make things even.

And that started in a very particular place with a very particular person.

I sat back and forced myself to relax. I needed cool precision to make things work for me. If I was going to be a hothead, I’d lose track of myself and end up falling for the same tricks that screwed me over the first time.

Love? I could almost laugh at the concept now. What a joke.

It was still early enough in the morning that the heat hadn’t started to overtake me, but it was the end of June and fixing to be July in mere days. Already I could feel the coolness of night slipping away as the sun slowly rose higher and higher along the horizon. For one ridiculous moment I longed for the concrete cell that had been home for years now. I shook the thought away forcibly—I wouldn’t be one of those guys, the ones who couldn’t adjust to the real world again—but couldn’t deny that things would be difficult on the outside. Getting back on my feet, well, it would take time and patience, some determination.

Luckily, I had all of those things in spades.

Sinking lower into my chair, I tried to make myself nap. Not because I was tired, but because it was going to be hot soon and because it would be another forty-five minutes before we got anywhere, and I didn’t think I could wait like that for what was to come.

Patience was one of the few—maybe the only—virtues I had, but that didn’t mean I liked waiting. I could be patient when I had to be, and especially when I was actively doing something, but just sitting here on a bus? Not so much.

I didn’t sleep, despite my attempts, and ended up running through the same shit I always did in my cell.

Santos DeArma.

There were few men in this world who hated me more than Santos DeArma, and thanks to his latest attempt at revenge—successful, I would think—the feeling was more than mutual. If you asked me to pinpoint the moment where Santos and I became enemies, or the catalyst that started it, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. But I could list the moment we butted heads and the times when I was sure I would have to tear him apart or him me just to bring some sort of closure to the anger that was forged so solidly between us.

Santos was the leader of a rival motorcycle club. Not that the idea could have been his own, I was sure, because he’d been a nobody when I first met him. Even more of a nobody than I was.

I shoved him into the fence, anger fueling me. I was too young, too stupid, to think that this was school property and if we got caught fighting, we’d be expelled. And then where would we be?

But Santos knew just how to get to me and the bastard was even grinning as blood gushed from his nose. Some of it dipped onto his lips and it grossed me out when he licked it, though I wouldn’t let him see that. Santos would use anything he could against me.

The hell’s your problem anyway? I asked him angrily, my hands still fisted in his shirt, holding him against the chain link fence that separated the currently empty playground from the dilapidated road that would eventually lead to downtown.

Santos attempted a shrug, which looked awkward and sort of dumb since I had him pinned, but