Tempting Trouble (Highway Reapers Motorcycle Club Book 1)

  This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons--living or dead--is entirely coincidental.

  Tempting Trouble copyright @ 2015 by Sophia Hampton. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

  Part 1 of the Highway Reapers Motorcycle Club trilogy

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ella Louise had walked out of one piece of trouble to another piece all her life. Sometimes it had done well by her, and sometimes she got bent over and fucked by life without lube or a condom. What this time would bring she didn’t know, but she’d been fucked enough, and it had to be about time for her luck to change. She stood outside of Sammy’s Café and looked up at the run down sign that had seen better days. Debating on whether she should go in or not, she took a minute to think about the choices she had available to her right now. In one hand, she had a barrel of nothing, and in the other she had zilch. At least the assessment hadn’t taken that long.

  She took a deep breath, opened the door, and walked in. The place didn’t look much better on the inside than it did from the street, but she really couldn’t complain about appearances. Ella knew that she appeared to have it all together, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.

  “Ella baby, come on over here,” Bruce called out from a table at the back of the café. Ella had known Bruce for a good long while, and there were times she didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. Trouble ran to her as if she was a mother and it a small child, and the smile on Bruce’s face, all charming and carefree, set her hackles on edge.

  She walked over to the table and saw that he only had coffee and toast, but it looked like a banquet to a woman who’d only been able to score a dirty one room efficiency to keep her from sleeping on the street. Unfortunately, the luxury of shelter didn’t afford her the ability to buy food, but she was working on it.

  “Hand me your jacket and have a seat,” he said with a pleasant look on his face that should have made her feel more comfortable but didn’t. She handed over her jacket and sat down across from the mistake she didn’t know she could deal with.

  Bruce must have noticed the lust in her eye as she stared at the last piece of toast and crumbs on his plate. “Here’s a menu. Order yourself something to eat… on me.”

  Ella didn’t think she’d ever snatched something away from anyone as quickly as she had that crinkled piece of paper that had coffee stains and jam marks on it. The waitress was at the table before she’d looked at all the options, but Ella didn’t want to wait a minute more than she had to for something in her belly.

  “What can I get you, doll face?” The name tag said Princess and Ella wondered for a second if that was her real name, but figured it really wasn’t any of her business. If that woman wanted people to call her princess she was fine with it.

  “I’ll have the three egg omelet with bacon, cheddar cheese, onions, peppers and mushrooms. A cheeseburger with fries, a strawberry milkshake, and a large diet soda,” Ella told the woman who did a good job of keeping up with her requests on her pad of paper.

  “Is that all?” The waitress smiled at her, and Ella wondered if she looked as hungry as she felt.

  “Yes. Thank you, Princess,” Ella said, and the woman’s smile got even bigger. She probably wasn’t called by the name on her tag very often, but she nodded and walked off.

  “It’s good being on the outside of prison isn’t it?” Bruce said, and she returned her attention to the man who was setting her up for something. She could feel it. The man had never been mean or rude, but this was uncharacteristically nicer than how the man normally acted

  “It is good. No one is happier than me to be able to walk around without having to ask for permission.” She would stay for the breakfast and see what service she could do, but that’s it. If this was about a party, a drug score, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he could forget it.

  Princess set Ella’s milkshake in front of her with a few pieces of toast. “Just a little something to get you started,” the waitress said with a wink, and that answered Ella’s question to if she looked as hungry as she felt. She must look starved.

  “I know you got a bum rap. Going to jail for a drug charge that wasn’t on you was pretty shitty, but since it was your first offense you didn’t get much time. If it wasn’t for the fact you had the drugs in your system, you may have been able to say it wasn’t yours at all.”

  She listened to him explain why his club had allowed her to go down for their shit when she’d only been there to score a bit of coke to celebrate her getting her life together. That probably wasn’t the best way to celebrate, but what could she say? She was young, dumb, and wanted to have fun.

  “Are you trying to excuse your gang for letting me float down the river alone on a raft you built?” She probably would have been able to sound more indignant if she weren’t saying it around a mouth full of toast and jam.

  “Yeah, I knew you’d probably be mad about that, but we want to help you,” Bruce said as he leaned in with his elbows on the table and the look of a man in the business of dealing out trouble in his eye.

  Ella didn’t know if she should have taken the free meal because if she’d learned anything, she knew that there was no such thing as a free lunch. It may look free and it may seem free, but there was a cost, and now she had to wait to see if she was going to deal with the devil or if she was going to try to find the money to pay for the large amount of food she’d ordered.

  “What do you want me to do, Bruce? Please know that I have no intention of doing anything that even looks like I could go back to that metal box.” She didn’t give a damn how much this meal was worth; she wasn’t going back to prison for anyone or anything. When she was there she’d done a lot of thinking, and while some of her cell mates had found religion, she’d found her senses. She wasn’t going to be running around in the streets doing any and every thing that could be done. Her desire was to live her live honestly and with integrity so she could be proud of the life she was living. Ella was counting on herself because she knew she couldn’t count on anyone else.

  Bruce studied her like she was a science project, and she knew that he was the person who could see what people needed and give it to them, but there was going to be a price.

  Princess chose that moment to come with her arms filled with plates that she set down in front of Ella like she knew they would be appreciated. The smells that wafted up to her nose made her mouth water, and she was happy that regardless of how this turned out she would have the first full belly she’d had since she’d been out of prison.

  Ella didn’t have time for lady like behavior as she tucked into her food and all but forgot about why she was here and who was holding the strings waiting for her to dance. She didn’t know if the food had been well prepared or if she were just hungry as all hell, but she couldn’t remember having a more delicious meal.

  She finally sat back in her seat feeling satisfied and wondered if they had pie. As the petite woman she had always been, she’d surprised many of people with how much she could pack away. No one believed that she could eat as much as she did, and it had been helpful in many a wager. The restaurants in the area hated to see her coming because she would eat almost any special they had and get it for free. They were mostly one time offers or she’d have eaten like a quee
n when she’d gotten out of prison… or at least like the queen’s soldiers since she’d been on the outside of prison with no money.

  “Good, huh?” Bruce was a patient man; she’d give him that because he had sat there and watched her engulf her food without a peep, sigh, or hiss. That was something that was rare, in her estimation, when it came to men.

  “Delicious. Thanks, Bruce. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten you didn’t tell me what you think you and your gang—”

  “Motorcycle club,” Bruce interrupted.

  “—want from me?” Ella finished as if he hadn’t even spoken. She decided that she wasn’t going to pay for this meal because it had been offered, and she’d taken it.

  They stared at each other, and she didn’t know what her face said, but by the look on Bruce’s, it must have said “you’re going to have to work hard for this one buddy.” He didn’t look uncomfortable, but he did look like he was trying to pretty up the crappy package he was coming up with.

  “It’s really nothing much for a pretty young thing for you to accomplish,” Bruce started off with charm, but if he could read people like she’d heard he could, he would be moving on to the no bull shit approach, because she’d seen and heard a lot of charming stuff that didn’t end up well.

  Was she a cute, sweet looking little thing? That’s what people thought when they met her, and she could see how they’d come up with that. She had big green eyes she thought looked too big for her face and long brown hair that curled uncontrollably if she let it. Time and time again, people told her she looked like a doll, and it had come in handy while she was in prison. The rough, tough Magdalene who ran the prison with an iron fist took her under her wing from the very first day. While most people thought they spent their nights tasting each other’s pussies, the truth was Ella reminded the jaded woman -- who was never getting out of prison -- of her daughter. Magdalene had promised Ella that no one would bother her as long as she was breathing, and the woman’s reputation for violence and revenge kept her out of most of the trouble she would have gotten in on her own.

  On the last day of her prison sentence, the guard let the two of them meet for an hour before she left. That was how much power Magdalene had inside, as prisoners weren’t allowed to have visits with each other. Ella had been in an exit cell the two weeks prior to her release so she didn’t get to see her friend, and she would admit she missed her since she’d been gone. The visit was filled with information, and it wasn’t as sappy as she thought it would be. She’d been set up with a small amount of money by her friend and was told where it was and how to get it. The visit ended in a hug and the big woman who scared the prison thanking her for allowing her to feel like she had done something for her daughter. For years when Ella tried to talk about Magdalene’s daughter, the woman had said that the little girl had been killed because of something she’d been into on the outside. Then she confided that Ella had looked so much like her lost daughter with her curly hair and green eyes that the first moment she’d seen her, she swore it was her child that had come back to her. Magdalene knew that it wasn’t true, but it gave her some piece of closure, and Ella was glad she could be a part of it.

  That small amount of money hadn’t lasted long and was gone with the purchase of a few outfits and a place to stay, so that brought her back to this conversation with Bruce.

  “I don’t deal with bullshit, Bruce. If you want something, tell me what it is, and I’ll decide if I’m going to do it. None of this pretty little thing like you shit.” With a full belly she could feel her confidence and her strength building back up.

  Bruce laughed. “I should have asked before you ate. You seemed more pliable when you were hungry.”

  “That was your choice to wait, but I do appreciate it.” She liked that he was a smart man, but it made her step up her game too. It was easy when someone underestimated you, but Bruce didn’t seem the type to do that. He was a calculating man, and he knew what he wanted; she just hoped it was what she wanted too.

  “Haven’t had a good meal in a while?”

  She didn’t want to play the small chat game. One of the things she didn’t do anymore was waste time. If she wanted something, she tried to obtain it, if she wanted to say something, she said it, and if she wanted to do something and it wasn’t going to land her back in prison, she did it. Life was too short to be chicken shit; she found the will to slice through all that, and she didn’t let people pigeon hole her into petty things.

  “Now you’re going to ask me questions that I know you have the answer to? I know you’ve checked me out, and I know you have details about the situation I’m in. That’s why you think I’m going to jump at whatever chance you throw in front of me, but I’m not that same girl who went into the joint, Bruce. You’d do well to remember that.”

  “I know who you are Ella, and I respect the hell out of you for it. You need money to get back on your feet. You’ve had everything taken from you, and that’s what they do when they think you’re selling cocaine. Figure all you have has been illegally purchased, and that’s the end of you and your stuff.”

  “Is there a reason for the reminiscing of my missing belongings?” Ella wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but if he was going to sit there looking smug, she was going to find it very simple to walk out of this place and not think about the money he’d just spent on her.

  “If there was an easy way for you to make fifty thousand dollars what would you say?” Bruce was acting like this was a game show and he was the host, but she was going to nip that shit right in the bud.

  “I’d say that there was no easy way to make that kind of money legally, and I think I already told you that I won’t be going back to prison.” Ella sucked her straw into her mouth enjoying the cool sweetness of the milkshake sliding down her throat. She watched him swallow a few times as he took in how sensually she was sucking on her straw, and she figured she’d stop playing because this guy wasn’t ever going to get anything from her; she wasn’t a tease.

  “I can see where you’d say that, Ella, but you didn’t hear me out yet.” Bruce cleared his throat like his first attempt didn’t go well and he was adjusting for round two.

  “I’m still sitting here.” Ella looked around and found most of the people gone, so she must have been better than she thought she was at blocking people out or maybe her food had just been that good.

  “There’s a guy we’re looking for named Tyson Adler. We have to have a little discussion with him, but he has been very clever getting away from us.” Bruce looked like he was a bit annoyed at the fortunate man who seemed to lose Bruce and his happy troop of men. It wasn’t often that she got to witness Bruce looking pissy, but she figured that he probably deserved to feel that way every once in a while.

  “I don’t do hits. I thought you’d know that, because murder is one of the most illegal things you can do.” Ella had been excited with the prospect of money, but now she was thinking she was stupid for getting excited about something she knew was going to be too hard or too illegal.

  “No, no, no,” Bruce said trying assure her this was just a little something that was nothing, but she’d already been bitten by the bear, and she was very wary of him and his ‘Motorcycle Club’ like gang. “You have the wrong idea. All you need to do is get him to a certain location and then tell us where we can find him. He owes us a good deal of money, and when we get it back from him, we’ll give you half.”

  “So what if I give the guy to you, and he doesn’t have the money? That would leave me out of any money and my time wasted,” Ella was thinking this through, and although it didn’t seem like too bad a deal, she wanted to make sure she had the particulars all worked out.

  “What I meant to say is that we will give you the money that he is going to give us, but you don’t have to wait. As soon as you tell us where he is, I’ll get the money to you.” He took an envelope out of his pocket and placed it on the table. She wanted to tell him no, but she was curious about wha
t he had in the envelope. Her mother had always told her that her curiosity would get her ass in a sling one day. Well, she’d been there and done that, and she still wanted to know what was in the fucking envelope.

  “Just because I open this doesn’t mean I’ll do it. I just want to see how sweet you are trying to make this pot.” She stared at him as she reached for the envelope, and Ella knew that whatever he’d put inside would be hell to turn down. The smirk on his face said “Gotcha” and that was before she saw the check book and the wad of hundred dollar bills.

  “That’s five thousand dollars Ella. A lot of people thought I was crazy to trust an ex con with that much money, but they don’t know you like I do. I know you don’t have a lot right now, but I want to change that. There are a lot of us with the Reapers that feel bad about you going down for our mess, but there was nothing we could do once the ball was rollin’. Do you know what I mean?”

  Ella could barely hear what he was saying with the wad of money in her hand yelling at her. She wanted to say no, because the “talk” they were going to have with whoever they were looking for wasn’t a “Let’s have a beer, friend” or even a “What do you think you were doing” talk. It was going to be a beat down at best, a murder at worst, and she didn’t want to be involved with anything like that.