Cuffed: A Forbidden Romance Read online

  Cuffed

  Joanna Blake

  Contents

  Newsletter Signup

  Cuffed

  TOC Instructions

  Prologue

  1. Connor

  2. Cassandra

  3. Connor

  4. Cassandra

  5. Connor

  6. Cassandra

  7. Connor

  8. Cassandra

  9. Connor

  10. Cassandra

  11. Connor

  12. Cassandra

  13. Connor

  14. Cassandra

  15. Connor

  16. Cassandra

  17. Connor

  18. Cassandra

  19. Connor

  20. Cassandra

  21. Connor

  22. Cassandra

  23. Connor

  24. Cassandra

  25. Connor

  26. Cassandra

  27. Connor

  28. Cassandra

  29. Connor

  30. Cassandra

  31. Connor

  32. Cassandra

  33. Connor

  34. Cassandra

  35. Connor

  36. Cassandra

  37. Connor

  38. Cassandra

  39. Connor

  40. Cassandra

  41. Connor

  42. Cassandra

  43. Mason

  44. Connor

  45. Cassandra

  46. Connor

  47. Cassandra

  48. Connor

  49. Cassandra

  50. Connor

  51. Cassandra

  52. Connor

  53. Cassandra

  54. Connor

  55. Cassandra

  56. Connor

  57. Cassandra

  58. Connor

  59. Cassandra

  60. Connor

  61. Seven and a Half Months Later

  TOC Instructions

  About the Author

  Cockpit

  Grind

  Bro’

  A Bad Boy For Summer

  TOC Instructions

  Copyright © 2017 by Joanna Blake

  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.

  Created with Vellum

  For Casey and Michelle who were gone too soon

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  Xoxox,

  Joanna

  Cuffed

  I’ve got her under lock and key. It’s against the law to take advantage of the situation. But I’m about to break all the rules, just to make her mine.

  I’m a government agent assigned to take down a notorious biker gang. She’s just a girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I can’t bend the rules, even though I know she’s innocent.

  Casey Jones is a natural beauty with curves that won’t quit. With her big doe eyes and long legs, she’s pure temptation. She’s barely old enough to be working in a place that serves alcohol, but I can’t stop myself from wanting to make her a woman.

  My woman.

  She’s in the middle of something bad and too stubborn to see it. She owes these guys for giving her a job when she ran away from home as a kid.

  Now all I want to do is protect her.

  STOP!

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  Pincushion Press

  Prologue

  I stood on the street in the freezing rain, wondering if this was it. If I was going to end up sick or worse. In a ditch somewhere. I looked around for shelter but there was nothing.

  There wasn’t anywhere to go from here.

  I’d been heading down the coast, keeping mostly to the service roads. I was hoping to find someplace warm to wait out the winter.

  Or at least, warmer.

  I’d barely gotten fifteen miles from my last foster home before the rain started.

  Home. That was a laugh.

  My scrawny arms wrapped around my torso as I crossed the road . I hurried down the sidewalk past rows of small, somewhat rundown houses. The kind of neighborhood that wasn’t rich, but cared enough to plant a few flowers.

  Or at least that’s the impression I got through the freezing rain.

  I’d gone half a block when a door opened. I heard a gravelly voice say ‘hey kid.’’ I was about to run when a huge wall of a man stepped into my path.

  “You got someplace to go?”

  I stared up at him, the rain washing over both of us. He stared right back at me, absolutely impervious to the water. I was squinting but he looked like he was actually challenging the rain.

  Daring it to get him wet.

  He was big and tall, with long dark hair and piercing eyes. He was dressed in denim and leather, though he didn’t seem too worried about it getting ruined.

  I should have run. I was thinking about it, though he could have easily stopped me. But one thing stood out to me. The most surprising thing you could notice about a giant man who looked like a norse god and a badass from a Quentin Tarantino movie rolled into one.

  The giant had kind eyes.

  I’m not sure why but I shook my head in answer to his question. No, I definitely did not have someplace to go.

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  I chewed my lip, realizing I needed a new name.

  “Casey.” I lied. It was close enough to my real name. My old name. The one that didn’t matter anymore. The name of a girl who’d had parents. And lost them.

  Besides, I’d had a friend named Casey once.

  The man considered me, and then nodded.

  “Well, I guess you better come inside.”

  I hesitated.

  “You a pervert?”

  He laughed and shook his head.

  “No, hon. I got a thing for strays is all.”

  I followed him to the side door of the house. It was hard to see much in the torrential downpour but it looked well kept. It definitely wasn’t anything fancy.

  I stepped inside the kitchen and the smell of home cooking hit me. My stomach growled so loudly that the big man heard it. He raised an eyebrow.

  “That hungry, eh?”

  A scruffy looking dog and two fat cats stared at me from different spots in the kitchen. I stood near the door in case I had to run for it. But for some reason, the animals put me at ease.

  “Saw you out the window.”

  He ladled me out a bowl of stew and set in on the table. I shouldn’t have eaten it but my body took over. I moved so fast you would have thought I was starving.

  I was starving. And cold. And pissed off at the world.

  But for the first time in months, I wasn’t scared.

  He sat across from me and opened a beer.

  “Well, Casey, I’m Mason. And if you’ve got someplace you should be I’d surely like to hear about it.”

  I stopped eating for just long enough to answer him.

  “No place to b
e.”

  He scratched his chin as I shoveled food into my face. Good food. Magically delicious food.

  The broth was tomato-y but I tasted celery and onions and hmmm… potatoes.

  “How old are you, kid?”

  I glared at him a little.

  “Not a kid. Fifteen.”

  He grinned at me.

  “Is that so? My apologies young lady.”

  “Not a girl.”

  He laughed and shook his head.

  “Whatever you say, Casey.”

  How the hell had he known I was a girl? I’d tucked all my hair into a baseball cap. And I was wearing every t-shirt I owned under a hooded sweatshirt and a denim jacket.

  I was in disguise, dammit.

  “You need a place to stay?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t want to seem too eager. But I would have killed for a place to stay. After a handful of days on the run, I’d realized finding a safe place to sleep was next to impossible.

  You could doze with your back against a wall, but actual sleep? That was a joke.

  “I guess.”

  “Well, I got a spare bedroom in the back.”

  I looked at him, desperate to believe he was just a nice, big, tattoo covered man.

  “What’s the catch?”

  “No catch.”

  “Don’t like charity. Don’t need it.”

  “Fair enough. I got plenty of work for an enterprising young lady such as yourself.”

  I nodded. I didn’t bother telling him I was a boy again. The jig was up.

  “Deal.”

  He smiled at me as I held out my hand and shook it.

  “Deal.”

  I finished my stew and he gave me another bowl. And then another. He fed me until I was warm again. Until I was so full I was afraid I might burst. He gave me a place to sleep with a lock on the door and a set of clean clothes that were way too big.

  And the next day, he gave me a job.

  Connor

  Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Sixty. Sixty-one.

  I counted out the pushups in my head. It was the only thing that could clear my mind, other than a fifth of bourbon. And since I was on duty, pushing my body to the limit was the only option I had.

  I ignored the heavy, sore feeling in my muscles. I ignored the buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead. I ignored the steady stream of guys coming and going from the locker room.

  Most of all, I ignored the sting of my sweat as it slinked past the still tender bullet wound in my side. The one that had taken a harmless chunk out of me but hit someone else.

  Not just hit. Destroyed. Tore through flesh and bone.

  The bullet that had ended my partner’s life.

  I groaned and stood up as I finished the set. After five sets of a hundred pushups, I was sweaty enough to warrant a shower. Maybe it would wake me up too.

  It had been a long fucking day already and I wasn’t going home any time soon.

  Not that there was anything to go home to.

  Anything or anyone.

  We were working round the clock to close this one out, and it still felt like we were treading water. It was a tough case that had been going on for years. A local gang was dealing guns and drugs. The body count was high.

  Until they’d killed one of our own.

  Gang crime was nothing new but since my partner had been killed in the line of duty, it was personal for every federal agent on the East Coast.

  But mostly for me. I was consumed by the case. Consumed with finding justice.

  But what I really wanted to know was why not me?

  Danny was gone. I still couldn’t fucking believe it. He’d been more than my partner. He’d been my best friend.

  It almost seemed disrespectful to think about it now, but Danny had been the consummate joker. He hadn’t been the best at his job, but man, the guy made me laugh.

  I hadn’t laughed once in the six months since he got hit.

  We’d been partnered together for years. Where I was dark, he was light. Where he had off-the-wall ideas, I did everything by the numbers. Where he had a high tolerance for paperwork, I had a photographic memory and an uncanny sense for catching killers and scum of every kind.

  Where he was charming, I scared the living hell out of people.

  They called me the shark because I always smelled blood in the water. And I was getting that feeling tonight. It had me on edge.

  That and the nine cups of coffee I’d drank today so far. It was after five and I was still jangling. Didn’t matter though. It seemed like I slept only in short spurts these days.

  Some of the guys said that was what made me such a cranky bastard. They were too smart to say what we all knew was true. They all thought I was a mean sonofabitch because I was missing Danny.

  But I could have told them they were wrong.

  I was just born that way.

  Cassandra

  “Another round of shots, Saph.”

  “You got it.”

  I didn’t smile at Jimmy. He knew I hated it when he called me Saph. It was short for Saphire, on account of my eyes. Some of the old timers called me that, but only when Mason wasn’t around.

  If anyone so much as looked at me, he had a fit.

  Even though he wasn’t active, he was still an Untouchable. And no one fucked with the Untouchables.

  My guardian angel, the guy who had pulled me out of the rain and off the streets all those years ago, was an outlaw biker. Or he had been in his younger, wilder days.

  He still looked pretty wild with his tattoos and the giant Hog he rode to and from the joint. The ride I’d taken with him for years, until I’d saved enough for an old car of my own. The rust bucket, as Mason called it. He’d taken it apart and put it back together so that it ran like a dream.

  A dangerously fast dream.

  Mason James was the kindest man I’d ever met in my life. I’d been right to trust my instincts all those years ago.

  Not that I’d had much of a choice.

  Mason owned the bar that all the bikers came to. It was definitely badass central around here. The place smelled like leather and smoke and axel grease.

  It smelled like home.

  For the past three years I’d worked here. I’d run away from my fifth foster home. Like all the rest it had been a little too cold and a lot too dirty. And the woman who ‘kept’ it was constantly drunk, with a steady stream of on again off again boyfriends.

  A few of which had started to pay me a little too much attention.

  When one of them cornered me in the kitchen late one night, I’d known it was time to go. I’d kicked the guy where it counted and ran, stopping in my room to grab my few belongings. He’d stood in the hallway, jiggling my doorknob over and over. But the fucker didn’t know that I’d perfected my escape plan.

  I had fixed the lock weeks before.

  And I’d already climbed out the window and down the drain pipe. Twice. I’d hit the ground running and never looked back.

  So, here I was. And I could not be happier. Well, I could be happier, technically speaking. But I wasn’t too worried.

  I knew I was lucky to be alive, and in one piece. I had big plans for the future. I’d passed my GED, but I wanted more. Community college for starters. My own place nearby. And maybe, someday, I could actually have a boyfriend.

  If Mason didn’t scare the shit out of him first.

  I was pretty sure he’d threatened to slowly skin the last guy who’d shown an interest alive. Then he’d mentioned cutting off a few body parts. And all the guy had done was ask for my number.

  Yeah, Mason watched a lot of Game of Thrones.

  So far, I hadn’t been interested enough to argue with him. But I would, if I wanted to. I was over 18 now. I could date.

  Technically, I should be dating. But Mason was right about one thing.

  I probably shouldn’t date anyone who I met in the bar.

  Sure, regular people came in here sometimes. But they were tourists.
And that was mostly for lunch.

  Most of the time, it was ninety percent bikers. Some in gangs, some independent. Most of them were in or associated with Mason’s old gang, the Untouchables. Some were from the Hell Raisers, a gang from one town over.

  They were the ones who made me nervous.

  I knew most of the Untouchables. For the most part they were everything you would imagine when you thought of outlaw bikers. Mean, violent, and loud. They were loyal to a fault though, and they looked after me like one of their own.

  But it was the Hell Raisers who were downright scary.

  And after the stuff I’d seen, I didn’t scare all that easy.

  The worst part wasn’t that they didn’t seem to have a sense of loyalty to anything or anyone. Except for him. Tall, darkly handsome and casually cruel.

  The worst part was the he liked me.

  Dante, the leader of the Raisers, had taken a definite shine to me. He smiled, left outrageous tips, and kissed my hand. I always wanted to scrub my hand when he did that, and I did, still feeling his lips even when the skin was red and raw. I shivered at the thought of him kissing me anywhere else.

  Mason hadn’t noticed and I planned to keep it that way. If he did, there would be blood.

  And considering how crazy Dante was, I didn’t know whose blood it would be.

  Mase could hold his own with the best of them. I’d seen him crack skulls when things got rough in the bar. But Dante was younger and unpredictable. I’d seen him put a fork through someone’s hand once. He’d had his minions clean up the mess before anyone noticed.

  But I’d seen it, and he’d smiled at me, like nothing had happened. Like there wasn’t blood pouring off the table like cheap ketchup.

  Yeah, Dante was a special kind of crazy, and I didn’t want him and Mason tussling over me.

  So I just deflected, avoided and stayed well out of arm’s reach when the Raisers came in. Dante’s eyes might follow me constantly, but he hadn’t yet crossed any lines.

  At two AM the place was full and I was busy. The moment there was a break in the action I stepped outside to get some of the cool Spring air on my face. I inhaled deeply and froze.