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  Ride Forever

  (Fortitude MC #3)

  Amity Cross

  Ride Forever (Fortitude MC #3) by Amity Cross

  Copyright © 2018 by Amity Cross

  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.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All song titles, song lyrics, products, networks and brand names mentioned in this book are the property of the sole copyright owners.

  Cover Design © Amity Cross / Nicole R. Taylor

  Contents

  1. Sloane

  2. Sloane

  3. Chaser

  4. Sloane

  5. Chaser

  6. Sloane

  7. Chaser

  8. Sloane

  9. Chaser

  10. Sloane

  11. Chaser

  12. Sloane

  13. Sloane

  14. Sloane

  15. Chaser

  16. Sloane

  17. Chaser

  18. Sloane

  19. Sloane

  20. Sloane

  21. Chaser

  22. Sloane

  23. Sloane

  24. Sloane

  25. Chaser

  26. Sloane

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  Chapter 1

  Sloane

  The sun was hot on my shoulders, the rays frying my skin to a crisp.

  Pressing my fingers on the arms of my aviator sunglasses behind my ears, I angled them up so I could take a look at the horizon without the polarized filter. There was a hazy brown smudge breaking up the expanse of blue. Wildfires, I thought. I’d had enough of the dry furnace heat of burning buildings and was glad we were in the desert away from all of that.

  I allowed my sunglasses to fall back into place, and I rubbed my eyes, trying to forcibly remove the images of flames roaring toward the sky. The smoke and the stench had blotted out the stars… It’d been unbelievable.

  The roof of the motel was empty, the high heat keeping most people away from the lackluster patio area. Behind me, broken and faded lawn chairs were scattered across the tarred surface and tattered beach umbrellas cast mediocre shade. At some point, someone had the foresight to blow up an inflatable wading pool, but it had long since burst from neglect. Chaser sure knew how to find the shittiest shithole this side of the desert oasis.

  My feet dangled over the side of the building, my ass firmly behind the lip of the flimsy railing my arms were threaded through. Staring at my boots, I closed one eye then the other, focusing on the car park below. The right toe had a deep gouge mark across the leather that hadn’t been there two nights ago.

  A gust of wind stirred my hair, and a tumbleweed bounced across the street. The Santa Ana winds are whipping up, I thought. Sucks for those wildfires.

  There were lots of things I should’ve been thinking about, but I couldn’t focus. It wasn’t the heat or my exhaustion, it was just…trauma, I guessed. Ever since I’d woken up in the motel room downstairs, I hadn’t closed my eyes. I couldn’t.

  Reaching into the pocket of my jeans shorts, I pulled out the ring I’d stolen from Marini’s bedside table back at the Fortitude compound.

  My fingers worried the gold band, and my fingernail dragged along the ridges of the diamond setting. It was the only thing I had of my mom’s, and before the other day, I’d had nothing at all. I didn’t like what it stood for, but it was hers, and it was all that mattered. Daddy gave that to me on the beach, she’d said. I hated that he’d kept it.

  “All right?”

  Closing my fist around the ring, I glanced up at Chaser. His left eye was swollen and slightly bloodshot, and his entire face was mottled black and blue with added scratches. He’d really taken a pounding the night we’d faced off against the Fortitude renegades.

  “I’ve got a headache,” I replied, leaning my head against the railing.

  “You should drink more water.” He sat beside me and wiped the back of his arm across his brow.

  “You should put ice on your face. It’s the perfect weather for it.”

  He shrugged, and I glanced at his leg. The stab wound he’d gotten on the train had been bothering him, but he seemed okay today. Either he was hiding the pain or it was finally getting better.

  “There are wildfires near Santa Clarita,” he said after a moment.

  I didn’t like the mention of fire. We still hadn’t heard from Gasket, who, Chaser said, had ridden off with the rest of Fortitude to hunt down the remaining renegades. That was two nights ago.

  “At night, I can see the light from the Strip,” I said absently. “The entire horizon glows this strange bluish orange, like a neon explosion.”

  When Chaser had let slip that the Best Western from hell was sitting on the outer rim of actual Hell—aka Hollow Men ground central, aka Las Vegas—I wasn’t sure how to take it. On the one hand, I wanted to run in the other direction, the thought of more heartache and pain too much to handle. On the other appendage, nothing would be as satisfying as murdering King, the head honcho of the desert mafia. The man I was going to be sold to as a sex slave, and the man who was responsible for killing Chaser’s wife. I had promised revenge, after all.

  “We’re safe here,” Chaser said. “I made sure of it.”

  I grunted, turning my head so I was staring at the desert.

  “Sloane.”

  “We should be planning, not sitting in a musty motel room,” I said, unable to hold onto my annoyance a second longer. “Can you get a respiratory disease from mold? Because I feel like I’m getting one.”

  Chaser just gave me his trademark blank look. He was a master at hiding his emotions, which mainly pissed me off but must have been a riot when he was out on a job. Until recently, he’d been my father’s executioner. An image of Marini’s vacant eyes appeared in my mind, and I shook my head. I didn’t know how Chaser did it.

  If things had just gone the way they were supposed to, I’d have an entire motorcycle club riding into battle behind me, but the coup had been screwed before it had even gone down, and now I was here with Chaser in hiding. The two of us against a criminal organization that had its claws sunk into every major law enforcement agency? I may as well fling myself off the side of this shitty motel right now and be done with it.

  “You are not alone,” Chaser said, reading my mind with uncanny accuracy.

  “What? Are you a psychic now?”

  “Having the plan go off without a hitch was a dream, Sloane,” he replied. “They know we’re out there, planning something, so we may as well take our time.”

  Take our time? I wanted to scream into the void until my brain exploded. It had only been three months of this…and seven years of hiding. My whole life had been a joke. Thinking about my unfinished online university degree, everything seemed an epic waste of time.

  “I don’t want to live like this,” I muttered, my heart sinking.

  “Neither do I,” Chaser agreed. “That’s why we have to plan better this time. We went into Fortitude grossly unprepared.”

  I grunted, not wanting to acknowledge he was right.

  “We had passion but lacked proper strategy.”

  “We winged it,” I said.

  Chaser nodded. “This time, we figure it out. The Hollow
Men aren’t Fortitude.”

  “No, they aren’t…”

  “Besides…” He trailed off, his brow creasing. Plucking his sunglasses from his shirt pocket, he slid them on and gazed out at the horizon.

  “Besides what?” I asked, lifting my head.

  He shrugged, folding his arms on top of the railing.

  “Chaser.”

  “Besides…” He sighed, then tilted his head toward me. “You haven’t talked about what happened.”

  “I don’t need to talk about what happened.” I scowled, any ease our conversation had instilled in my heart evaporating. “It’s in the past.”

  “Sloane, you shot your own father.”

  “Glad to see you used the word shot rather than killed,” I drawled, wriggling away from the edge of the roof. Rising to my feet, I brushed my palms over my ass, dusting off the grit from the flaky, tarred surface.

  “Sloane,” Chaser exclaimed, standing. He grabbed my arm and pulled, yanking me around. “You have to face it at some point, and I’d rather it wasn’t with a gun in your hand.”

  “Let me go.” I wrenched myself free. “I don’t need to face anything. I knew who he was, Chaser, and I damn well know the world is a better place without him in it. He’s not the first man I killed, remember? There was the guy who tried to kill you on the side of the road in Texas. I shot him, and it did nothing to my mental wellbeing.”

  “Sloane… You collapsed. You dragged your dead father through the desert, and you collapsed.”

  “So? He was fucking heavy!” I scoffed and gestured at him. “And what about you? I hardly know anything about you, and I have these…feelings. I’d go so far as to say the l-word, but how could I when I don’t know…” I let out a frustrated cry.

  “Don’t turn this back on me. I’m trying to help you.”

  “Maybe I’m just that indifferent about it,” I said, knowing it was a lie. I hadn’t slept a wink because I was afraid of what my dreams would reveal.

  Chaser pursed his lips. “I know we haven’t had time,” he said after a moment’s silence. “I know there are things you don’t know about my past, but know this, I’m standing here as a free man because of you. I’m no longer indentured to Fortitude. I no longer have to kill on command. And I sure as hell don’t have to answer to anyone I don’t want to. You gave that to me.”

  “So now, you owe me,” I said, jutting out my chin.

  “I won’t help you further in your denial.”

  I tensed, steeling myself to shout at him again, but he fisted his hands in my hair and pulled me close, his lips crushing mine. My body flared at his touch, my clit rubbing painfully on the inner seam of my shorts as he rubbed his crotch against me. His tongue swirled with mine, deep and hard, then he tore away with a gasp etched with longing.

  “You want to believe in something?” he murmured, his breath hot against my skin. “Something that’s good?” His body curved as if he was sheltering me from the world. “Then, believe in us.”

  “Chaser…”

  “I only just started,” he whispered. “Don’t leave me now.”

  I rubbed my palms over his chest, feeling the warmth of his body underneath the fabric of his shirt. I explored my way upward until my hands circled his neck. They were far too small to close the entire way around, but I felt the thrum of his pulse. It was thrumming fast, and I didn’t need the evidence pressing into me through his jeans to verify it, either. With Chaser, I could tell when he was hard by simply looking at him.

  He had a vulnerable glint in his eyes, and Chaser was never vulnerable. That was how I knew he was telling me the truth. He believed I needed to grieve my murderous, psychopathic father. I believed I should’ve fired sooner. The point was, Chaser was right. This time, we needed to plot. The Hollow Men weren’t the prior version of Fortitude we fought at the cabin.

  “Fine,” I said. “We do it your way. We plan.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “And don’t you dare talk to me about him again,” I added, my lip curling. “I hope they left him out in the sun to rot.”

  Chaser nodded and glanced at the sky. “Either way, you need to get out of the sun.”

  “I hope that wasn’t a metaphor because I’m all out of patience for thinly veiled attacks on my personal decisions.”

  “Dehydration is known to turn people into raging bitches,” he said with a smirk.

  I rolled my eyes and let his neck go before I actually throttled him. Backing away, I screwed up my face.

  “Are you coming?” I asked, beckoning Chaser to follow. “There’s no time to waste. We’ve got to start planning our forever, you know.”

  Chapter 2

  Sloane

  The revolver was sitting on the table when I stepped into the motel room.

  The mother-of-pearl grip shimmered in the light, and I shivered despite the heat. I didn’t know why Chaser brought it with us. Now I knew what the gun symbolized, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to keep it. Then there was the fact I’d killed Marini with it.

  “You haven’t heard from Gasket?” I asked, sitting on the end of the bed.

  “No. It’s only a matter of time,” he replied, filling a glass with water from the bathroom sink.

  “Is that safe to drink?” I grimaced as Chaser handed me the glass. Lifting it up to the light, I checked for floaties. “I heard there was uranium in Las Vegas water. You know, from all the nuclear tests the army did out in the desert.”

  “Seriously? That’s what you’re worried about?”

  “Radiation poisoning is no laughing matter.”

  Chaser raised an eyebrow and fished around in the plastic bag hanging off the corner of one of the chairs. After a moment of annoying plastic crinkling, he tossed me a packet of Advil. “Here, take some for your headache.”

  Shrugging, I slipped two pills into my mouth and chased them down with some water. Seriously, worse things had happened to me, so what was a little radiation? I rubbed my temple as Chaser sat beside me, the mattress dipping.

  He took the sheet of pills from my hand and popped two out onto his palm. I watched him down them dry with utter fascination. It wasn’t only his acknowledgment of pain that had me rattled, it was also wondering how the tablets went down without getting stuck in his throat.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, realizing I hadn’t asked. I didn’t think I had to, but every day held a new surprise for us.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Your leg…”

  “It took a hit, but it held.” He plucked the glass from my hand and took a sip of tepid water before placing it on the floor.

  “We can’t do anything until your face heals, can we?”

  “The bruising will be gone in a week or two,” he replied. “That’s no time at all.”

  “So we have to wait until then to make a move?”

  “Bruises draw attention. Unless you want to dab a bit of makeup on my face, we’re better off sticking around. No one’s caught our scent yet.”

  “You want me to put foundation on your face?” I laughed and couldn’t imagine it. Chaser’s skin was perfection…usually. “I can put a little mascara on your lashes. It would really make your eyes pop.”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you.” He reached over and grasped my face, then twisted his body over mine, forcing me down onto the bed.

  “Why not?” I murmured, allowing my legs to open as he moved over me. “You have lashes a woman would die for.”

  “Eyelashes are a stupid thing to bleed over.”

  “It’s metaphoric,” I drawled.

  He grunted, tracing a path along my neck with his lips.

  “Hey, Chaser?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Wanna do me? I hear orgasms are great for headaches.”

  His fingers found the zipper on my jeans shorts. “Thought you’d never ask.”

  As soon as he’d removed all of the clothing from my bottom half, he knelt over me, dropped his jeans, and his cock sprang free, standing t
all and hard. Spreading my legs, he rubbed his tip through my slickness, then thrust, driving into me with a grunt. What an animal.

  His palms rested on either side of my head, and his knees propped his body above mine, giving him the perfect angle for powerful fucking. I arched my back, lifting my hips off the mattress so he could delve deeper inside me. Chaser lifted his head as a moan of pleasure tore from his throat. I tensed, clenching around his shaft, my hands grasping his forearms.

  He drove into me, thrusting with reckless abandon. It seemed as if he was taking out some of his stress on me, but I didn’t mind. I loved it when we fucked like this. It was our…thing.

  All too soon, my body broke underneath the onslaught, bringing Chaser down with me. He came, spilling into my body in hot spurts, and I moaned, riding the wave the best I could.

  A shrill ringing sound punctuated my orgasm, and I gasped.

  “The cell’s ringing,” Chaser said, grunting.

  “You better answer it. Some fuck’s on top of me.”

  Chaser grunted and pulled out. Rolling over, he picked up the cell and checked the screen.

  “It’s Gasket.” He answered the call, put it on speaker, and then set it on the bed.

  “Yeah,” he barked, pulling up his jeans.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Gasket asked, sounding confused.

  “Putting my cock away.”

  I snorted and rolled my eyes.

  “Glad to see you’re making good use of your downtime,” the old man drawled. “You got a slot for me in your busy schedule?”

  “Gasket,” I said, relieved to hear his voice. “You’ve got news?”