Forbidden Crush

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Books by Cassie Cole

  1 - Hawk

  2 - Charlotte

  3 - Charlotte

  4 - Hawk

  5 - Charlotte

  6 - Charlotte

  7 - Charlotte

  8 - Charlotte

  9 - Hawk

  10 - Charlotte

  11 - Hawk

  12 - Charlotte

  13 - Charlotte

  14 - Hawk

  15 - Charlotte

  16 - Charlotte

  17 - Charlotte

  18 - Hawk

  19 - Charlotte

  20 - Charlotte

  21 - Hawk

  22 - Hawk

  23 - Charlotte

  24 - Charlotte

  25 - Hawk

  26 - Charlotte

  27 - Charlotte

  28 - Charlotte

  29 - Charlotte

  30 - Hawk

  31 - Charlotte

  32 - Charlotte

  33 - Charlotte

  34 - Hawk

  35 - Charlotte

  36 - Charlotte

  37 - Charlotte

  38 - Hawk

  39 - Charlotte

  40 - Charlotte

  41 - Charlotte

  42 - Hawk

  43 - Charlotte

  44 - Hawk

  45 - Charlotte

  46 - Hawk

  47 - Charlotte

  48 - Charlotte

  Epilogue

  Forbidden Crush

  By Cassie Cole

  Copyright © 2019 Juicy Gems Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without prior consent of the author.

  Edited by Robin Morris

  Follow me on social media to stay up-to-date on new releases, announcements, and prize giveaways!

  www.cassiecoleromance.com

  Books by Cassie Cole

  Broken In

  Drilled

  Five Alarm Christmas

  All In

  Triple Team

  Shared by her Bodyguards

  Saved by the SEALs

  Forbidden Crush

  1

  Hawk

  I was a dead man, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  I braced as the next punch hit me in the gut. One Copperhead punk held my arms behind my back while his buddy pummeled me in the ribs. One, two, three smashed fists, the last one finally knocking the wind out of me. The other four Copperheads watching by the wall roared with approval as I doubled over and collapsed to the ground, their laughter echoing through the cramped jail cell.

  “Tell us where it is,” said the ugly one. They were all ugly as fuck, but this guy more than the rest. “That’s all Sid wants.”

  I wheezed as I tried to breathe. It was like trying to suck air in through a straw. The sheriff’s deputy watched outside the bars, his arms crossed and a look on his young face that might’ve been disappointment. He and the sheriff weren’t the law in this town. Sid was. Sid and the Copperheads, the motorcycle gang that controlled everything from Macon to Savannah. They were the ones with all the power in this town.

  Until last week, I had been one of them.

  “Sid can go fuck himself,” I managed to say, spitting on the ugly one’s shoe.

  His face twisted with anger.

  I suffered several more kicks, and then he bent down to throw punches into my gut. Each one hurt more than the last. A boot from one of the others flashed out, catching me in the ribs. I felt something crack.

  I wasn’t going to tell them anything, even if they killed me for it. Which was probably what was eventually going to happen.

  “You made us ride out on a nasty night like this,” the ugly one said. “The least you could do is send us home happy. Give us what we want.”

  “Nothing to give,” I said simply. “I told Sid the same when he asked me yesterday. And the day before that.”

  For a moment, I thought they were going to beat me some more. That’s what usually happened. Instead, the ugly Copperhead shrugged and adjusted his leather vest.

  “Sid’s gonna give you some time to come to your senses. But he ain’t a patient man.”

  He gestured, and the sheriff’s deputy rushed to open the cell. The six Copperheads filed out and down the hall. The sound of iron bars slamming back into place echoed throughout the jail.

  The deputy lingered by the cell. “You ought to give Sid what he wants. He always gets it in the end.”

  “No,” I said.

  The young deputy sucked in a breath and let it out his nose. “Then what are you still doin’ in Eastland? If you was smart, you’d get out of town quicker than you could pack your bags.”

  It was a good question. One I’d asked myself half a dozen times already. I could skip town, ride north as far as my bike would take me. Ride until I saw snow.

  But I couldn’t do that.

  Not after what Sid had taken from me.

  “You could stand up to the Copperheads,” I suggested.

  I’d intended it as a joke, and the deputy took it that way. “No I can’t,” he chuckled as he walked away. “No sir.”

  He was one of two cops in this small town. Them against three dozen heavily armed bikers wouldn’t be a fight. It’d be a slaughter.

  I lay on the floor for a few seconds, collecting myself. My stomach ached too much to sit up, so I rolled over onto my belly and used my hands to push me to my knees. Even that small motion sent jolts of pain through my ribs. I was pretty sure one was cracked.

  Sid had taken almost everything from me. My life, my job, my purpose. He’d even taken my love. But he couldn’t take the one thing he wanted. The one thing he needed more than anything in the world.

  Information.

  I sat on the bench and chuckled to myself in the empty jail. I was the most dangerous kind of man in the world: a man with nothing more to lose. No matter how many beatings I took, Sid and the Copperheads wouldn’t get what they wanted. They had no leverage over me because I had nothing more they could take.

  I was as certain of that as I was of anything in this shitty world.

  And then she walked into the jail.

  2

  Charlotte

  I made it 10 miles outside Savannah before I finally broke down and cried.

  “Dang it, no! Stop!” I told myself, but it was useless. Once the dam broke there was no putting any of the tears back.

  The rain on the windshield matched my face as I drove west on I-16.

  I hated girls who cried. They seemed so weak to me, reacting to every little thing with an emotional outburst. It was the stereotypical thing to do. It was the kind of thing people expected a 24 year old woman to do when things didn’t go her way.

  But the week I’d had would’ve brought anyone to tears.

  My cell phone rang on the console. A shot of fear ran through my body. If it was him, I didn’t know if I could answer it. I wasn’t ready to face him.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw who it was. I waited two more rings to collect myself and then put the phone to my ear.

  “Hi, Momma.”

  “Oh, sweet pea,” my mom’s soothing voice said. “I got your message! What happened?”

  I told her everything I’d kept from her over the past month. How my boyfriend Scott had told me he wanted to take a break four weeks ago. Which would have been fine, except we worked together in Savannah. No, that was an understatement. We’d started our own business together—a food truck. Which meant the last four weeks had been the two of us working together, and living together, in a weird pseudo-partnership where I didn’t know where we stood or what was goi
ng to happen. Scott was a good guy. I thought some time would help him figure things out.

  I was so naive.

  “We were at a dinner with the editor of a food magazine,” I told Momma. “Scott’s phone was on the table, and he got a message. I glanced at it.”

  “Oh, honey…”

  “I couldn’t help it! Some girl named Tammy was asking if he would be able to come by her place for drinks.”

  That wasn’t entirely accurate. The exact text was:

  TAMMY: Hey baby, let me know if you’re coming over for COCKtails. I need something to stir mine with.

  She’d capitalized the COCK in cocktails, and ended it with an eggplant emoji. The sluttiest of the emojis.

  But if I told my momma that on the phone I’d probably start crying again.

  “What’d you do, Charlotte?”

  The rain was coming down so hard on the windshield I could barely hear her. “I excused myself to the bathroom, took an Uber home, and packed my bags as quick as I could.”

  Some mothers might have tried to look on the bright side of the situation, or insisted that maybe it was all some hilarious misunderstanding. But my momma was a realist. She didn’t raise me to be a fool.

  “I’m sorry, sweet pea,” she said. “You’re on the road now?”

  “Should be home in three hours. Sorry this is all last-minute…”

  My momma made a noise that meant, forget about it. “I’ll have fresh sheets on the bed and a warm pie in the oven.”

  I stifled a sniffle. “I love you, Momma.”

  “Love you too, sweet pea. Be safe.”

  I felt a great deal better after talking to her. Like I wasn’t so alone anymore. Saying the words out loud took the sting out of them. In my head they could fester, but out loud they had no power.

  The interstate ahead was closed for construction, so I followed the cones to the exit on the right, then turned down the next road. The sign said, “Detour 4 miles.” A few moments later I passed a more permanent sign that said, “Welcome to Eastland. Population: 944.” Next to it was a strange piece of metal art. Like a biology skeleton, but made of rusted metal twisted and warped. It gave me the creeps as I drove past.

  I hadn’t been single in a long time. Scott and I dated through college and then moved to Savannah when we graduated. We did everything together. We started a business together, lived together, worked together day-in and day-out on the food truck. I didn’t know what to do with myself now.

  Having a supportive family helped, at least. Whatever happened, they’d be on my side and help me get back on my feet. And God help Scott if he tried crawling back to me. Momma would beat him senseless with a rolling pin if he showed his face within a mile of our house.

  I was starting to feel good about myself when the police lights flashed in my rear-view mirror.

  They scared me, causing me to jerk the wheel before steadying out. The small road had a sizable shoulder, so I pulled over and prayed he was just flashing his lights so he could pass me.

  No such luck. He pulled onto the shoulder behind me and stopped his car.

  “Crap. Crapola!” I cursed. Then, realizing I was alone and nobody could scold me, I muttered, “Shit.” The satisfaction lasted a few seconds.

  I grabbed my car registration out of the glove box and pulled my license from my purse, then held them both on the steering wheel. The rain hammered the roof of my car while I waited.

  It took the officer a while to get out of his car and approach. He wore a long rain jacket, slick and shiny with water. When he reached my car he shone a bright flashlight through my window, temporarily blinding me.

  Tap tap tap, went his knuckle on the window.

  I rolled it down. Water began blowing inside the car, but I ignored it. “Hello officer—”

  “License and registration, ma’am.”

  I shoved the waiting documents in his direction. He shone the flashlight on them but made no attempt to take them from me. If anything, he seemed annoyed that I’d had them ready. He shone the flashlight past me to the backpack on the passenger seat, then at the three suitcases in my back seat.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “Yes, sir. Home to Atlanta. Well, a little town south of Atlanta, but no one’s ever heard of it so we always just tell people Atlanta to make it easy.”

  The rain pattered on his jacket. “You picked a heck of a night to do it.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, since I hadn’t really picked the night at tall. “Can’t choose the weather,” I said with a chuckle.

  His head whipped around. “Excuse me?”

  “I—I was making a joke. Sorry, officer.”

  “You in a hurry?”

  “No sir—”

  “Then why are you on my road on a night like this driving like the devil’s chasing you?”

  I frowned. The moment I exited the interstate I saw the speed limit on the detour: 35 mph. And if anything, thanks to the crazy rain, I’d been driving under the speed limit.

  But this cop looked like he was upset at having to work on a night like tonight.

  “Officer, the speed limit sign when I exited the highway said—”

  “Step out of the vehicle,” he snapped.

  I wanted to argue, but I had a sinking sense of dread that this was escalating beyond my control. I opened the door and stepped out into the rain. I was still wearing the high heels and black-checkered skirt I’d been wearing to the dinner meeting with Scott and the food magazine. The officer looked even more pissed to see that.

  “Hands on the car, ma’am.”

  I gave him my most disarming smile. “Officer, I want to apologize if I said anything to upset you. I know you don’t want to be out here on such a nasty night, and whatever I did—”

  He grabbed my arm and spun me around. His hand pressed on the back of my head, smushing my face against the car window and giving me a view of my suitcases in the back seat. Everything I owned in the world crammed into three rectangles.

  “Suspect is resisting arrest,” he said into his shoulder radio. “Taking her into custody.”

  “Resisting arrest!” I tried shouting, but with my mouth pressed against the car window it came out as a garbled mess of words.

  Handcuffs slapped on my wrists, and then he turned me back around. He didn’t bother patting me down, for which I was grateful. He stuck his face very close to mine. He was older. Bitter.

  “Ma’am,” he said in a thick Georgia accent. “If you keep jawing, I’m gonna keep finding things to write up.”

  As he led me to the car, which said Eastland Sheriff’s Department on the side, I was grateful that the rain hid my tears.

  3

  Charlotte

  I felt mighty sorry for myself on the drive to the sheriff’s office. I’d lost my boyfriend to a skank named Tammy. I’d abandoned my job, my business that I’d sunk countless hours into. The apartment I’d been slowly adding things to was now Scott’s, since I was fleeing back home.

  And now I’d been arrested.

  It was almost to the point where it was funny.

  The sheriff was silent during the ride. I mimicked him, since clearly anything I said was just going to tick him off more. I could hear my dad’s voice in the back of my head: never upset a small-town sheriff. They’re always looking for an excuse to take someone in.

  My dad knew that because he was a small-town sheriff.

  But even he would’ve thought this was bullcrap. On nights like tonight, most cops would’ve looked away from all but the most reckless offenses in order to remain dry in their cruisers. For this sheriff to trudge out in the rain and pull me over for no reason, and then haul me in, he must have had a really bad day.

  Not as bad as mine, I thought with a sigh.

  The police station was a structure so small it might’ve been the same building used 100 years ago. Six motorcycles were parked in a row outside the station, blocking the road into the parking lot. When the sheriff saw this, he cursed, a
nd then drove around them through the mud. When the car was parked he got out, opened the back door, and pulled me out.

  “Let’s go.”

  I’m going, I thought, but didn’t say.

  The front of the police station had a single desk—which was currently unoccupied—and four chairs against one wall. The room was about the size of the pizza joint I used to pick up pizza from every Friday, which was just a pick-up window without seating. The sheriff began leading me down the hall to the back, but then stopped and stood aside.

  Six men came marching down the hall toward us. All of them wore dark jeans, black shirts, and black leather vests covered with faded patches. Between the six of them they had two dozen piercings, and there was more tattooed skin than bare skin. One guy’s head was totally shaved and covered with dark ink of images of death: bones, fire, and roses with decaying petals.

  The sheriff tensed as they came toward us, and I prepared for an altercation. Was this a jail break? At the very least the sheriff would give them an earful for blocking the road with their bikes. I cringed at the idea of having to share a cell with these men if the sheriff decided to arrest them.

  But all he did was nod politely and say, “Give Sid my best.”

  The biker gang laughed as if it was the funniest joke in the world. They ogled me in passing, eyes raking my body like broken fingernails at the end of disgusting fingers.

  “New one turning tricks?” the biker at the back said. “Wish I’d found her before you snatched her up, sheriff.”

  I realized what he meant: he thought I was a prostitute. I felt a pang of annoyance. I looked much nicer than any random hooker. The biker gang roared with laughter as they headed out into the rain, pulling on jackets and throwing hoods over their heads.

  The sheriff breathed a sigh of relief as soon as they were gone, then led me down the hall. The sheriff’s deputy waited there with his thumbs tucked into his belt.

  “What’d they want with him?” the sheriff asked.

  “Same as before. Just talkin’.”