Title: Ruthless
Series: Nomad Outlaw
Trilogy #1
Author: Tory Richards
Release Date: December
27, 2017
Published By: Author
Category: Erotic –
Suspense – Romance – MC
Type: Digital –
Paperback
Rating:
Heat:
Blurb:
He's a dangerous killer and nomad but he's her addiction and she's his!
Four years ago Rebel ruined Ginger by claiming her to keep them both alive, and then she disappeared. Bike Week at Daytona Beach brings them back together. He's a dangerous nomad. A ruthless killer. But he's her addiction, and she's his. Can they keep the past where it belongs and move forward, or is it too late?
By reading any further, you are stating that
you are at least 18 years of age.
If you are under the age of 18,
please exit this site.
Favorite Lines:
He may as well have run a
match down my body, because I was suddenly on fire, recalling how good his
hands and mouth had felt on me. ~ Ginger
Hell, I didn’t know why
or what made her different, but something about her had gotten into my blood.
Not my heart. Because I knew better.
~ Rebel
My woman. Ginger may not
have known it yet, but she was mine. I’d laid claim to her four years ago. ~
Rebel
Vocabulary Word:
Marauder
ma·raud·er | \ mə-ˈrȯ-dər \
plural marauders
Definition of marauder
: one who roams from place to
place making attacks and raids in search of plunder : one that marauds
Excerpt:
With him you never knew. He was unpredictable, and he never reacted to the same type of situation in the same way. That's what made him dangerous.
Just as I’d expected, Wildman threw back his head and roared with the mad kind of laughter one might hear in an asylum, but there was little humor in his eyes when he put them back on me. I felt the woman next to me stir, but I ignored her, knowing that only a fool would take their eyes off Wildman. I'd seen him attack a man when he'd least expected it.
"So give her a shower before you fuck her, I don't give a shit. But until you bloody that little virgin pussy, your place in the Red Devils stays on the table." He pulled the door shut on his way out.
Sick fuck. I couldn't wait for my club to end him. If Stone didn't do it, I would, and with fucking pleasure.
"Baby?"
I felt a hand moving under the sheet, and the next thing I knew, the club whore that had been sleeping in the bed was groping my dick and balls. She was apparently oblivious to what had just occurred, still hung over. I could smell the stench of her sour breath. I pulled the covers back, took her hand, and threw it back at her, then left the bed. "Get the fuck out."
The girl that Wildman had brought in hadn't moved from her spot. I went to her and pushed back the curtain of flaxen hair that covered her face. She kept her eyes lowered as I took in her delicate features, noting the bruises, and the blood at the corner of her lip. Even through the abuse I could see how stunningly beautiful she was, all over, but it was her full, Angelina Jolie lips that caused my dick to take notice.
"Look at me," I demanded softly, keeping my hands on either side of her face where I held her hair. When she ignored me, I gave her a little shake. Finally, she raised her gaze to mine, and a pair of the brightest, bluest eyes I'd ever seen looked into mine. "How old are you?" There was no way that she was legal. She swallowed before answering, "Twenty-one." Her voice was so small that I had a hard time hearing her.
There was no fucking way! I narrowed my eyes, searching for the truth. "And you're still a virgin?" I had a hard time believing that a woman who looked like her hadn't been touched. She nodded, and I gave her a little shake. "I want the words when I ask you a question."
"Y-yes!" she responded, her bottom lip trembling.
"Who the hell are you?" I scowled.
She wet her lips before replying softly, "Ginger Pruitt."
I snorted. I could care less about last names. "How did you come to be here?" I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing when I should have just fucked her and got on with the program. My job had been to infiltrate the Red Devils, which I'd done. Now I had to go through Wildman's sick demands to stay in the club, or weeks of shit-work would all be for nothing. Stone would not be happy if I screwed this up now. Hell, more than just Dark Menace wanted the Red Devils gone.
"Answer me!" I knew that I shouldn't care, but my gut told me that she wasn't a hang around or any other kind of MC groupie looking to take a walk on the wild side. The fact that she'd been abused led me to believe that she'd been taken against her will.
"I was walking home from work when two men in a van forced me to get inside. I-I fought them." My lips quirked at that, and then she surprised me by adding with sudden grit, "I'm going to fight you, too."
I laughed gruffly and turned toward the bed, only to see that the whore had fallen back to sleep. I stared down at her for a minute, taking in her snarly blonde hair and black roots, and the smear of makeup surrounding her eyes and lips. She wasn't as attractive this morning as she'd been the night before, after I'd downed a bottle of whiskey. In fact, she was drooling. Her ass was nicer than her tits--I never had liked the things women did to them when they added too much of that silicone shit.
I reached for my jeans and gave the snoring woman a hard slap on the ass. She jumped awake, bitching and scowling, her hand flying back to the abused area. "Get out!"
"What the fuck!" She left the bed mumbling. "You said you were going to do me this morning."
I snorted, slipping into my pants. Do her nasty snatch? I'd seen her fucking several brothers before she’d come with me to my room. I’d gotten what I'd wanted. "Why would I do you when I can have this fresh little virgin?" I zipped up my pants, but left the snap undone.
The whore, who'd been in the process of searching for the only piece of clothing she'd been wearing the night before--a thong--stopped to look up. Her gaze ran over Ginger with disdain. She half laughed, half snorted. "I was her once. Wildman's initiation, right?" She giggled like a mad woman, finally locating her thong. "He makes all his men do it." She walked around the bed and stopped in front of Ginger. "A word of advice, honey: when it's over, you'll be given a choice--become a club whore, or go home." She snorted before continuing. "It’s a stupid choice. They want you to say that you want to go home so they have a reason to pull a train on you and then kill you."
They could do that anyway, I thought.
She left my room stark naked. Ginger's gaze came back to me, and I could see the horror in her eyes. I had no doubt that what the whore had said was true.
"What is a train?"
Her innocence was starting to piss me off. She shouldn't be there. She shouldn't have put herself in a situation where she could be snatched up off the street. Christ, she wasn't a kid. She should have been protecting herself better. As far as I was concerned, it was her fault that she was in this mess. "A train is where all the men in the club line up and take turns fucking you." With each word, her eyes grew bigger.
"All of them?"
I could see her mind working as if she was trying to figure out how many men that might be. She wouldn't survive it. There were too many of them, and they were ruthless, cruel bastards. She'd be ripped apart and would probably die on the table. Jesus, this whole fucking mess was starting to get to me. I was in a one percent MC, and we did shit for the club in order to survive and to take care of our families. We didn't involve innocents or civilians just for the thrill of it. This whole club, and everyone in it, needed to die.
When I saw tears fill her blue eyes, I lost patience. "For fuck’s sake, don't start crying! It won't solve anything." I knew I was being insensitive, but if she was going to survive this she needed to suck it up, and I didn't know how she was going to do that if I coddled her. It was a fact that anger had a way of turning weakness into strength, frustration into determination, and fear into perseverance.
I knew what I had to do, and by the time I was done with little miss innocent Ginger she was going to hate me enough to survive.
Highlight:
Our eyes locked. I couldn't read anything from his expression. As hopelessness overwhelmed me I made a mad dash for the door. He caught me, as I’d known he would. I was able to let out a scream before he slapped a hand over my mouth, and then he was dragging me back into the shadows with him. I struggled against him with the fear of an animal that was trapped with nowhere to go.
"Ssshhh!" he shushed me in my ear, the powerful arms surrounding me like an inescapable vice. "I'm not going to hurt you, angel."
"I'm not going back with you!" I hated the fear in my voice, I hated giving him that. With his powerful arms locked around me he easily kept me subdued.
He grunted when one of my elbows jabbed him in the ribs. "I've been looking for you for four years."
Oh, God! I closed my eyes, trembling at the soft words he'd uttered into my ear, the warmth and solidness of his hard body seeping into me. Infuriatingly, I was reminded of the way he'd made me feel all those years ago, and how quickly he'd turned an innocent girl into a wild and wanton whore. He'd had that powerful effect on me. No other man ever had. I'd been helpless against his experience, and he'd known exactly how to play my body.
"I mean it, Rebel." I’d never thought that I would see him again, and his name sounded strange on my lips. "You'll have to kill me before I let you drag me back to the Red Devils!" I dug my nails into his arms, hoping that he would release me, but all he did was grunt and tighten his arms around me until I could barely breathe. When I threw my head back he snarled, spun me around, and grabbed me by the hair, walking me backwards to the side of the building, where he crushed me with his much larger body.
"Did you forget that I was the one who got you out of there? I didn't come here to take you back," he rasped, pinning me easily. "Now stop!"
I remembered that, but why was he here then? His sudden appearance rendered me unable to think clearly. "I don't believe you!" I whispered, my panic growing as everything I'd been forced to go through at the Red Devils’clubhouse came back to me full force. "You're one of them!"
"I was never one of them," he said roughly. "Why do you think I helped you escape?"
He had helped me escape. He'd snuck me out of the Red Devils' clubhouse and taken me to his place, telling me to wait for his return. I would have followed his instructions if some of the Red Devils hadn't shown up. I'd been forced to sneak out of a back window and run. I'd gone straight to the bus station.
But that was then, and this was now, and I was convinced that he was here to take me back. "Then why have you come for me if not to bring me back to Wildman?"
"There is no more Wildman, or the Red Devils," he gritted out, trapping my legs between his when I made an attempt to raise my knee. "Wildman's dead, and so is his club."
Dead? I slowly ceased my struggles as I took that in. Was this a trick, or had the rumors that I'd heard actually been true? Had I been running from them all this time for nothing? I wanted to believe Rebel, I wanted to believe that I didn't need to look over my shoulder anymore, that I didn't need to keep running. "How . . . why . . . " I couldn't seem to form a coherent sentence.
He laughed at my expense, but I was more concerned about why he was there. Suddenly it occurred to me that he was probably looking for the money I'd stolen. I'd found it as I’d snooped around his apartment, and had left it alone at first, until the Red Devils had shown up. Then I'd needed it to get away. "You're here for the money I borrowed." I let myself relax against him. It couldn't be for anything else.
He snorted. "Yeah, borrowed." There was a slight pause before he murmured, "Among other things."
I wondered what those “other things”could be before I shifted my thoughts back to the money that I owed Rebel. The money that I'd been squirreling away since I’d made my escape was only about half of the four thousand that I'd taken.
After a few minutes of silence I began to notice things about him that seemed way too intimate in the moment--the feel of his warm, whiskey-scented breath against my face; the scent of leather and smoke that clung to his large and threatening body, mixed with something else, something that was all Rebel, his personal essence and my personal drug.
Four years hadn't done anything to diminish his appeal to me.
I closed my eyes, thankful that he couldn't see me clearly. I had to get a grip and ignore how easily he had made me want him again. All those years ago, when he'd been forced to take my virginity, it had been too easy for Rebel. I'd barely put up a resistance when he'd seduced me with his experience and the unspoken promise that he wouldn't hurt me. I'd lost myself to him the instant that he'd put his rough hands on me.
"I don't have all of your money," I finally said, deciding to be honest with him.
"We can talk about that later. Is this where you work?"
"Yes."
"What time do you get off?"
"As soon as I'm done cleaning up."
"Do you have a way home?"
I shook my head. "No."
"Good. I'll wait for you here and take you home." He released a tired breath. "I need a place to crash and get some sleep."
I stiffened, realizing that he intended to go home with me. "What about my boyfriend?" I didn't have a boyfriend, but I didn't want Rebel to think that he could just come into my life and take over. I wasn't ready to trust him.
"You don't have a boyfriend," he said, surprising me. "If you did he'd be here to pick you up." I could detect the mild amusement in his tone. "Now go inside and finish up so we can get the hell out of here."
I resisted his attempt to pull me away from the wall, tugging back. "You can't just show up after four years and start ordering me around. We're nothing to each other." I may have been a frightened virgin when we’d met, but the last few years had taught me how to stand up and fight for myself. "I'm not afraid of you, Rebel."
His gruff laugh sent chills down my spine. "I can see that."
"And I don't want anything to do with you." That was a lie, but a necessary one. How many times had I found myself yearning to see him? To be with him again?
"Are you forgetting about the money you took?"
God, I had! "I only have half right now." I'd always known that there was a possibility that he would come after me for the money, but as more time had gone by, I'd convinced myself that he was either dead or he just didn't care. I was relieved that he was still alive, but it meant that he was going to take every penny that I'd managed to put away for an emergency.
"That's too bad, I want it all."
Review:
Ginger met Rebel due to circumstances
beyond her control. Kidnapped by a nefarious MC and forced to obey their
commands, she ends up in Rebel’s care. But she doesn’t know Rebel is a member
of another MC and has infiltrated the evil group to take them
down. She ends up in the best possible situation even though she is unaware of
it at the time. And his expert assault on her senses creates an addiction that
cannot be fulfilled by any other. She isn’t aware of how deep her feelings run
until Rebel makes an attempt to save her and she unexpectedly has to run for
her life, separating them for 4 long years. Unaware of the status of the club
who kidnapped her, she is constantly looking behind her back, expecting that
one day they will find her and force her back. Or Rebel will find her and
demand his money back that she stole from him. The later happens and suddenly
she is completely consumed by those old feelings only he fires in her blood. It
isn’t long before danger crosses their paths and both of them end up fighting
common enemies. Ginger may harbor unspoken wishes for a future with the
untameable nomad, but realistically she knows it isn’t possible. With Rebel
continually rushing to her aid each time she needs it, effortlessly caring for
her in every possible way, soon hope flares bright. But threats must be thwarted and
as soon as one knocks out, another appears. If they can ever reach some level
of normalcy, maybe then the slightest possibility of a future could be
explored. And Ginger would be in for that scenario, one hundred percent, no
questions asked.
Rebel claimed Ginger four years ago when
he was ordered to brutalize her. Except he didn’t brutalize her, he seduced her
instead as a way to protect her. He’s been looking for her since he lost her
and now that he’s found her, he isn’t letting her go. But his mind and heart
are at war with one another. His heart knows what it wants, but his mind keeps
insisting he isn’t the type to settle down. More than that, he doesn’t deserve
the happiness Ginger inspires within him. And still, he can’t let her go. When
her life is endangered multiple times he has no choice but to react and that
means calling in his brothers. Fighting an unknown villain and unmasking a
couple of other mutual enemies is a lot to deal with in a short amount of time.
But if Rebel and his brothers are anything, they are relentless and none of
them will back down until justice has been served on a platter. Another thing
those brothers are good for besides having your back … pulling one stubborn man’s
head out of a dark place and providing a swift kick to the nuts. Maybe then
he’ll see just how right his beautiful spitfire is for him – bruises, baggage,
brotherhood, and all.
For those of you who follow my reviews,
you are aware just how much I loved DARK MENACE MC: STONE! And praise the Lord,
Hallelujah … Stone returns! It’s just for a bit and is basically revisiting
events that have already happened, but I cannot describe to you the huge grin
that spread across my face when I realized what was happening. I should have
caught on from the beginning given Rebel is the male lead in this thrilling
read, but I was unaware of the time frame initially. It didn’t take me long to
decipher the events as they unfolded though. This book begins with about the first
quarter toggling back and forth from four years ago to the present. The events of four
years ago is also parallel to the aforementioned book in which Rebel was deep
undercover within the rival MC under the control of the nauseating Wildman. I
won’t get into a retelling as most everything occurs within Stone’s book, but
it was exciting for me to be able to see the other side of things. I was always
a bit curious as to what Rebel was going through undercover and very little was
mentioned in the other book. Rebel meets Ginger during that parallel time he was deep undercover, somewhat controlled by Wildman, but carefully speaking and acting in
loyalty to Stone. He had to participate in some horrific events, but when he
was able to tread on the lighter side of the darkness he was surrounded by, he
did and Ginger, luckily, fell into that category. Claiming her began an
addiction for them both that four years apart had little effect on. I do
wonder what happened after Rebel’s time with Dark Menace. Stone got him out
from the Wild Marauders, but he seems to have gone nomad after that. Little to
nothing was explained regarding his departure from Dark Menace, so that would
be my complaint with the book. What the heck happened? Stone is a terrific
leader and cared about his brothers, so why would anyone leave that MC? Now
some of you may be wondering if you have to read DARK MENACE MC: STONE prior to
this book, given my comments. However, that is not the case. You can read
either one of them at any time without interfering with the other, or fearing
that anything will be missed. Each of these books is a fabulous effort by Ms.
Richards. She has her shit together writing within the world of these
enthralling MCs and I highly recommend both this book as well as Stone’s book.
I did not notice many editing errors,
but there was one oddity that continually popped up. Several words ended with
the letter “y”. Why? I have no idea. Something like lety, or noy, or mey – the
words were let, no, and me so just dropping the “y” corrected the issue. It was
only slightly distracting and occurred maybe fifteen times or so. I did convert
the file from a pdf to my kindle though, so maybe that caused the error? I am
unsure but curious if anyone else noticed it. If it was meant to be a form of
dialect, it was completely lost on me.
Also brought into this story were
several other Mc brothers – some from the same MC – some nomads like Rebel.
Enter Jace and Moody. Jace, I immediately took a liking to. This was likely
because he was given a bit more character than Moody was, but the mystery of
Moody also caught me. This book is the first in a trilogy about the nomad
bikers, so assuming I am correct, and I am sure I am, then their books will
follow. My hope is that Jace is first and that Moody will be given more depth
before digging into his story. We will see when I get a chance to work my way
through the next two books. Speaking of character, I do not have an
overwhelming amount of experience with Ms. Richards beyond the 3 books I have
read. However, so far I have yet to encounter someone I could describe as a
strong female lead. While Ginger initially presents as somewhat weak and
feeble and obviously possesses a weakness with capital letters where Rebel is
concerned (Who wouldn’t? He’s yummy!), I was pleasantly surprised to see her
keep her head level and actually make a lot of progress in rescuing herself
within some of her debacles. She’s a magnet for danger, that’s undeniable. But
her will to live and survive and not just crumble in the corner while waiting
for Rebel to heroically show up on his metal steed was both inspiring and
empowering. So thank you, Ms. Richards, for creating a woman who has enough
grit to keep from falling to pieces as well as handle this rough and damaged
biker. As far as Rebel? Damn! He’s perfectly ripped, perfectly capable, and
perfectly tortured. What’s not to love? I’m a sucker for alphas though, so he
appeals in every way. Even the almost endearing way he admits he loves Ginger
but denies it within the same breath is fantastic. It’s actually a bit comical
when you think about it. Both of these survivors who have made their way
through obstacles in life that others would run screaming from are too scared
to voice their feelings, thereby giving their deepest desires some level of
tangibility, fearing possible rejection. And – true to form – this book is
packed full of thrillingly hard-core sex. From their first meeting to the
feeble attempts to resist after their separation, to the explosive reignition,
the passion exhibited between Ginger and Rebel is off the charts hot. It’s rough
and real, much like our main characters are. Fairly new to the MC romance
genre, I find myself pulled deeper and deeper under within this enigmatic world
with each new acquisition and I have absolutely no plan to come up for air
anytime soon. For those of you who enjoy a little bit of dirty tossed in with a
touch of suspense and a whole lot of erotica, this is a world you must
experience. It may be ruthless in many ways, but it hurts so good.
Kindle
version provided by Author in exchange for an honest review.
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