Gravel (MC Biker Romance)

Copyright 2014
– ALICIA TELL

All Rights Reserved

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher or
author. If you are reading this book and you have not purchased it or received
an advanced copy directly from the author, this book has been pirated.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or, if an actual
place, are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The
publisher does not have any control and does not assume any responsibility for
author or third-party websites or their content.

DESCRIPTION

“I killed him,
Marina,” Ash said, his hands covered in blood and dust. “I killed him with my
bare hands.”

Ash Decker never
intended on killing anyone, but when he saw the love of his life lying battered
and mangled on a gravel road, he knew what he had to do. When someone hurt a
member of the Black Dogs MC, there was no stopping his inner beast from seeking
justice.

But when Ash’s
justice-seeking ways force him to kill a prized member of a rival club, there
are dire consequences.
Consequences that will haunt him the
rest of his life.

As he tries to build
a life with Marina and their son by his side, the demons from his past threaten
to take away everything – and everyone – he’s ever loved…

DEDICATION

To
you.
Yes,
you
! The one reading
this book right now. I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed
writing it. Life can get pretty crazy sometimes, and every once in a while we
all just need a little bit of an escape.

Love,

‘
Leesh
’

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

BONUS STORY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“Oh, my God, Ash,” I heaved, my hands
still raw and pitted from the gravel beneath them. “What did you do?”

“Let’s go,” he said. His lips were pursed
and his body language screamed a mix of fear and adrenaline.

“What’d you do?” I begged him to tell me.

His hands, scraped and bloody, reached
down to help me up. I straightened my dress which was twisted and tangled
around my body and straightened the hemline. My underwear was lying somewhere
in the cornfield and my bare feet ached once pressed against the gravel.

“I fucking killed him, Marina,” he said.
His bottom lip quivered, and his eyes began to mist. “I killed him.”

I hobbled over and wrapped my arms around
him. Ash was such a gentle soul. He wasn’t a killer. “You didn’t have to do
that for me. Why’d you do that, Ash?”

He buried his head in the crook of my
shoulder,
my hair matted and stuck to my neck, and began to
sob. He only allowed himself to sob for a minute before finally gaining
composure. He wiped his tears, cleared his throat, and took a deep breath.

His eyes glanced over my shoulder to
where the rest of the party was. Not even a half-mile away our friends were
sharing drinks and laughing over a bonfire in the middle of a dirt field under
a pale, full moon. We were hardly out of high school. We shouldn’t have been
drinking let alone lighting bonfires amongst acres of precious
Midwestern
farmland.

“We have to get out of here before anyone
sees,” I said, looking him straight in the eyes. “I’m taking you home with me.”

Ash nodded as he stared at my sullen
face. Smears of dirt across my cheeks and swollen eyes told a story no man
should ever have to see on the face of the girl he loves.

“Ouch,” I said as I hobbled along the
gravel, linked onto Ash’s arm. The soreness that came with every barefoot step
on the country road was nothing compared to the pain that radiated from between
my legs.

“Stop,” Ash said.

“What?” I asked, obeying.

He slipped his hand down around my waist
and hooked it around my hips. His other hand swept up the bottom of my skirt
before he hoisted me up and carried me. His skin was moist, covered in a thin
layer of blood and sweat.

“Thank you,” I whispered as I laid my
head down on his shoulder.

He carried me, quietly, to his truck, which
was parked down the road from the bonfire.

“What are we going to do, Ash?” I asked
as he helped me into his car. “They’re going to know it was us.”

“It wasn’t you,” he said through gritted
teeth. “You did nothing.”

My heart ached for him. At eighteen years
old, he had his entire life ahead of him…until me. Ash Decker had loved the
hell out of me since we were kids. While I chased after every blue-eyed,
bad-intentioned boy I ever met, Ash Decker chased after me. By the time we hit
high school, he settled for the role of my best friend. Somewhere inside he
always hoped I’d come around. I just didn’t think it was going to take him
murdering my attacker for me to see him in a completely different light.

“I have to turn myself in,” he said. His
lip quivered once again. Knowing him, the thought of never having a chance to
be with me was more of a death sentence than anything the judicial system could
sentence him to.

“No,” I said. I shook my head. “There’s
got to be another option.”

Ash’s truck came to a screeching halt at
a blinking red light in the middle of a country intersection. Streaks of dried
blood on his face revealed themselves under the moonlight that spilled in
through the cracked windshield.

“Why’d you run off with Tripp Cotton?” He
asked. His voice was low and his eyes burned into mine as he turned to face me.
“I told you to stay away from him. He’s nothing but trouble. You do realize his
club is a rival club, right? Your daddy would freak if he knew you were talking
to Tripp.”

I wiped a rogue tear from my cheek and
tried to fight the wave of emotions flooding my body in that moment. I couldn’t
focus on one thing. I couldn’t focus on the fact that Tripp had just assaulted
me or that Ash had just murdered him or that
life
as
we knew it was officially over. My mind was on overload, and all I wanted to do
was go back in time and do it all differently.

Tripp had been eyeing me from the moment
I arrived at the bonfire. His blue eyes virtually undressed me, and I was
secretly proud of wearing my cute little floral sundress with the low cut top.
I’d been crushing on Tripp all summer, and he’d completely ignored me until
that night.

“
Wanna
go for a
walk?” he asked me after we’d been sipping frosty beers for an hour. There was
something different behind those icy blue eyes of his, and I was determined to
find out what it was. His thick, broad shoulders, his devious smirk, and his
magnetic personality drew everyone to him like moths to flames. He was larger
than life and always the life of the party.

“Sure,” I replied. My heart raced at the
thought of kissing him.

As we walked further away from the
bonfire, the air around us was ripe with tension and the summer symphony of
chirping crickets.

“So what took you so long to talk to me?”
Tripp teased as he walked alongside me. He leaned his arm into mine, keeping
his hands locked in his jeans pockets. His thick, brown boots kicked the gravel
beneath him.

“I was just waiting for you to make the
move I guess,” I said, shyly. “I’ve been crushing on you all summer. You
wouldn’t even look at me.”

His lips curled into a devilish grin, and
he stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the gravel road. “I’m
lookin
’ at you now.”

My cheeks burned red, and I was thankful
for the shade of night around us so he couldn’t see them. He placed his hands
on my hips and pulled me in close, planting a kiss on my lips. We’d been
talking all night, and I knew he was bound to make a move eventually.

As his lips left my mouth and trailed
soft kisses down my neck, his hand left my hip and tugged up the bottom hemline
of my skirt. Before I had time to react, he’d reached up and tugged my panties
off.

“Tripp!” I yelled as I took a step back.
“No. Not here. Not now. We can’t.”

Tripp had black in his eyes, and he
didn’t seem to be listening to me. The magnetic and charming blue-eyed boy I’d
been talking to by the fire all night had disappeared and left a monster in his
place.

“You know you want it,” he replied. His
opposite hand gripped my wrist, tight, and he forced me down onto the gravel.
“Keep your mouth shut and do what I tell you.”

I must have blacked out for a bit because
the next thing I remembered was seeing Ash’s face.

“Marina,” he said. “Marina, can you hear
me?”

My eyes fluttered open. I was so
exhausted I couldn’t mutter a single word.

“Who did this?” he asked. “Was it
Cotton?”

I licked my dry lips and parted them in
an attempt to answer, but nothing came out. I simply nodded.

“God damn it, mother fucker,” Ash said.
His hands were on his hips, and I watched as he scanned the perimeter. “There
he is. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to fucking murder him.”

“No…” I managed to cough out. “Ash…”

It was too late. Ash was gone. The thunder
of his feet as they pounded the gravel grew more distant as he chased after
Tripp.