Joyride: (Beautiful Biker MC Romance Series) Read online

  Joyride

  A

  Beautiful Biker

  Romance

  Book 2 in the Beautiful Biker series

  by

  DD Prince

  While this is book two in the Beautiful Biker series, it can be read as a stand-alone.

  It will, however, be a richer reading experience if you read these books in order.

  Book one in this series is called Detour and it’s available through Amazon & Kindle Unlimited.

  (Link: http://bit.ly/deaconandella)

  Copyright: DD Prince http://ddprince.com. 2018.

  This book is fictional and the product of the author’s imagination. Copyrights are the property of their respective owners.

  The digital version of this book is licensed exclusively through Amazon. If you did not buy it through Amazon or are not reading it through an Amazon reading subscription, you have an unlicensed pirated copy. Please destroy it and purchase the book through Amazon. Thank you for respecting the author’s work and copyright.

  Thank you very much for reading my work! If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a review, even a short one. It’s like tipping your server. Cheers :)

  NOTICE:

  This book is not intended for those under the age of 18. It contains strong language, violence, and explicit sexual content. If you do not enjoy such books, this might not be the book for you.

  Dedication:

  To Bertha Prince, my grandmother.

  She’s still here in body, but Alzheimer’s Disease has taken most of her essence away from us.

  She always had a stash of romance novels and a half-eaten bag of spearmint leaf candies in her room when I was a little girl.

  Thank you for all you’ve done for me, my siblings, and my cousins, Grandma Prince.

  1

  I might be a little bit in love. Okay, lust?

  I was definitely leaning in the direction of an L word.

  I was also leaning against the bar, because I was a little bit tipsy and needed the support.

  Who was the object of an L-word? A biker. And this was totally unlike me. I went for the opposite of a biker, usually.

  I’d only ever crushed on one biker in my life, but the crush didn’t go far, could not go far --- because the guy, my best friend’s cousin, is a jerk. He’s hot. But he’s also a Grade-A certified alpha-hole.

  Alpha-hole definition: A hot alpha-male who is also an asshole.

  And Jenna (a.k.a. moi)? Jenna don’t play dat.

  But, this object of my fascination? He was about 6’1” or 6’2”, which was a good thing because at 5’7” and liking heels a lot, I went for guys at least six feet tall. I rarely wore flats other than at work or around the house and having to lean down to kiss a guy somehow took some of the magic out of the moment for me. Just my personal preference.

  So, why a biker? Why this biker?

  This biker had medium brown hair just past his shoulders. It was wavy, like mine, but not as dark or as long as mine.

  It was clean. It shone from across the room. It was the kind of hair that would lighten in the summer sun with the sort of natural highlights that made people who paid me a lot of money for that shit jealous.

  I can also spot split ends from across the room and I’d need a closer look, but this guy didn’t look like he had any. None.

  Many guys his age with long hair refused to trim it, so had split ends. Most of them adapted the grunge look, but no chick wants to see all sorts of hair on a man if she doesn’t also want to run her fingers through that hair. I should know; I deal with hair for a living. I can look at a dirty-pretty guy, but do I want to touch him? Not especially. Especially not his dirty hair.

  I have a thing about hair.

  I’ve had to sift my fingers through all types of hair. Dirty, clean, long, short, soft, coarse --- you name it, I’ve probably trimmed it. I dated a guy with dreadlocks once, for about three days. It looked great. It did not feel great. Some girls would still dig it, but with my hair fetish, it just didn’t work for me.

  Then again, if Jason Momoa, à la Stargate era, wanted to date me, I might just have to deal with coarse dreads.

  For a bit.

  Then, I’d convince him to let me give him a haircut. I can be pretty persuasive. The guy with the dreads wasn’t worth my persuasive skills. He might’ve been even more high-maintenance than me. And that’s saying something.

  I don’t have a whole lot of choice about the hair I touch at my beauty salon. A customer is a customer and they all deserve to leave my chair feeling great about themselves, so I’m the consummate professional. But outside of business hours, I want to touch hair that feels great.

  Anyhoo…

  When the biker stepped into the bar, you couldn’t help but notice him. He just had that ‘it’ factor. Tall, fit, piercing eyes, sexy smile. Swagger. Like he owned the joint. But not douche-y, from what I could gather. And believe me, my douche radar is almost always spot-on.

  And he had even more going for him than great hair. He had a bit of a sexy Jesus vibe going on. Oh, I know—blasphemous - but this was like a Jared Leto Jesus thing. And we all know there’s nothing unholy about the beauty of Jared Leto. Jared was divinely created by a benevolent God. And would our Creator be so benevolent if he didn’t want us to appreciate it? I think not.

  Those piercing eyes and that long hair? Put sandals on this biker with a flowy white cloak and he could be in an Easter pageant. But, making women swoon and simultaneously repenting because they’d feel bad for how they felt gazing at their Lord and Savior.

  This guy was bigger than Jared. Taller. Lean but broad-shouldered. Muscled, but not bulky. And this guy’s eyes were piercing. His eyes were green. Blue-green. More green than blue, I think. I decided I had to get closer to tell for sure. And his lips? They were like pillows. His bottom lip had one of those sexy slits in it. Kind of like Angelina Jolie’s, but on a man.

  I chewed my own lip, practically salivating at the idea of licking that slit. And, of course that got me thinking about him licking my slit. Lawd!

  Was it hot in here? Definitely. Hot, indeed.

  Alas, he was dressed like a biker. And that kind of sucked, because he was hot and there would be even more hotness potential if he’d put on something decent instead of jeans and a leather biker jacket vest thingy with the sleeves cut off. Or never sewn on. I don’t know. I know next to nothing about the specifics of biker culture. Though, I probably should. I live in South Dakota and our small city is often crawling with bikers.

  But, he had potential because if you likened him to Jared Leto in his Jesus-phase and then Jared Leto with short hair in a suit? You could see that he could work either look. This guy was like that. I’d love to cut his hair and take him shopping for a suit.

  He wore a navy-blue Henley and jeans that were previously black, now a washed out charcoal grey, and frayed all over the place.

  He caught me looking. Damn. I usually preferred that I caught them looking.

  His eyes traveled from my ankles up to my face. Slowly. Thoroughly. A leg man. For sure. This was a good thing. Not to brag or anything, but I had legs for days. My boobs were smallish, but that was okay, they were perky and as they say, more than a mouthful is a waste. At least that’s what I told myself to compensate for my lack of boobage.

  I could almost get away without a bra, which I sometimes decided to do, and often to great effect. I had decent hair and big cornflower-blue eyes that looked amazeballs with winged eyeliner. And I knew how to do make-up. Having my own hair salon, I was well-versed in primping. My friend Pippa, also my roommate, rented space there from me to do nails and waxing. She kept me hairle
ss where it counted, and my brow game was strong.

  At Jenna’s House of Allure, you can come in and get your hair chopped off and /or styled, or get extensions. You can buy all your hair products and tools and top-shelf make-up as well as get all your girlie bits waxed and your ears, eyebrow, or your belly button pierced, too. I’d only had the salon not quite two years, but it was going pretty well, turning a profit.

  I’d tried my hand in business. I got a four-year business degree and did time as a teller at Mom’s bank, but I absolutely hated it (as can likely be surmised by my referring to it as if it was a jail sentence). I lasted two months. Two excruciatingly long months.

  When that went south, Mom was pissed to near-lethal levels, because she’d gotten me “in” there and I’d only worked two months with two weeks’ notice when I just couldn’t take any more of it and handed in my letter of resignation. Dad did some fancy footwork to calm her down and hired me to work in his real estate office.

  I only lasted three months and seventeen days there. And it was longer than I wanted to stay, but I wanted Mom to lose the bet to Dad that “She won’t last three months.”

  It wouldn’t have been horrible, but Mom drove me crazy about it. She tried to micro-manage me when she didn’t even work there. When I told Dad I couldn’t do it any longer, he asked me to give him an extra week before telling Mom I was quitting and going to beauty school, and that was when he came up with the salon idea.

  I think I hated working in the same building with either of my parents, because Mom was smothering, and Dad just always seemed like he’d prefer that I weren’t me. They were always giving me those looks, the looks that made me know they wished I was more like they were. Especially Mom.

  Dad joked almost all my life that my favorite thing to do was do make-up and hair and yak with my friends, and that gave me the idea to go to beauty school. As soon as I told him that I was interested in that, Dad did the legwork and presented his salon plan to me and Mom.

  I was shocked. In a good way. Mom was pissed, at first, feeling railroaded, but once she got the chance to think about it and mull over all the ways she could use the shop to pull her puppet strings, she was all over it.

  They gave me the keys to the salon, which was established and ready to roll, and it had a vacant remodeled two-bedroom apartment upstairs, getting me out of their house, too. Perfect.

  I moved in, moved Pippa in, too. We met at beauty school. We painted and redecorated and made our apartment even more awesome. The salon was already awesome, but I’ve been slowly making changes to make it more me.

  The deal was that if I make a success of the salon in five years, it’s mine. They’ll gift half of it to me and deduct the second half of the original price they paid from my trust fund. If my balance sheets aren’t healthy by then, we’ll have to talk about whether or not I’d have to pay full value or leave it to them to sell.

  Dad is trying to empower me. Mom would hate her friends to think of her daughter as a “lowly hair servant” (Mom’s thoughts, not mine). Better that she can say I’m an entrepreneur with a beauty company. But, I’m pretty sure that Mom not only thinks I’ll fail, she wants me to fail.

  Either way, I was happy to have the option. I don’t take for granted the fact that most girls at my age don’t have their own businesses where they can do what they want, plus have their own rent-free place to live. And my apartment is fantastic. Big, over the shop, with a back terrace that’s connected to the other above-a-store dwellers on the block. All twenty or early thirty somethings, and almost all of us, like-minded.

  I am lucky. I can afford to party, have a laugh, and be fairly carefree. I buy expensive clothes, go out as often as I can, and try to extract joy from every situation I can. I’m a good-time girl. My mentality is that I might only get to live once and I ain’t Benjamin Button, aging backwards, so might as well live it up while I can look semi-decent doing it. I’m 24 and life is good.

  I’ve been called high-maintenance by guys, it was a sore point with my last two boyfriends, but that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with having expectations. I want to have fun. I like nice things. I deserve to be treated well by the person I’m treating well.

  I don’t date assholes. First sign of assholery and I am outta there. And, I treat the guys in my life well. Really well. Gifts, compliments, attention. I want the same in return. If that’s high-maintenance, then it’s what I am and what I’ll always be.

  And, I’m a good friend. My friends are everything to me. I’ll give the shirt off my back for them. I have no siblings, but my best friend is my sister-of-the-heart. She lives next door to my childhood home and while she’s a lot more conservative in almost everything (except sex. Ella is a total she-perv), she is the best friend I could ever ask for. If I push, she’ll usually come along for any ride-or-die Thelma and Louise type gig I’m pushing for. She might not like it, it might be kicking and screaming, but rarely will she leave me hanging. Okay, so I usually have to push. But, Ella’s awesome.

  She’s also my Jiminy Cricket --- my conscience.

  “Jenna,” Ella will say. “Shouldn’t you save some money? You’ve gone shopping five times this month already.”

  “Jenna, why don’t we have a quiet night instead of going to the bar? You’ve gone to the bar three times this week already.”

  Growing up, I’d hang at Ella’s place as often as I could. It was like the anti-Murdochs. My parents (the Murdochs) used coasters on the table. At Ella’s, if you noticed a ring on the coffee table from your can of Pepsi, you’d just sop it up with your sleeve. Or not. Or you’d make a new ring overlapping that ring and create a new design. Nobody would flip their lid.

  There was definite contrast between my parents and Ella’s folks.

  Her parents are cool, almost like hippies. My parents are a banker and a real estate broker.

  Her mom wears flowy skirts and sandals with rings on her toes. She dyes her hands with cool henna designs. My mom wears business suits and wouldn’t be caught dead wearing white after Labor Day.

  My mom followed the rule of having to cut your hair above your shoulders when you hit 40. Ella’s mom is late 40s and her hair almost touches her ass. I don’t know who made that rule, but I don’t plan to follow it.

  I’ve never even seen my mom’s cleavage. Ella’s mom is boobalicious and not afraid to show it.

  Ella’s dad regularly pinches Ella’s mom’s ass. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen him grope her by the boob, thinking no one was looking, or having a few drinks and not caring who was looking. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my parents kiss one another on the mouth, except in their wedding pictures. When I was a kid, I’d see him lean over to kiss her mouth and she’d present him with her cheek. Nowadays, I don’t think he even bothers to try. When they renewed their vows for their 25th wedding anniversary, he kissed her cheek, for Heaven’s sake.

  They have side-by-side double beds like 1950s TV parents because my father tosses and turns too much, and it affects Mom’s sleep.

  My parents believed in diversifying your portfolio from a young age, never missing church on Sundays, and never letting anyone see you sweat.

  At Ella’s, I could fall on my ass and we’d all laugh together. The Forker clan might go to church, on occasion, but they’d prefer an outdoor revival with people being slain in the spirit surrounded by the glorious music of a huge Southern gospel choir instead of a monotone hymn singalong with no eye contact inside a stuffy church with starched collars.

  My family was crust-less sandwiches and tiny china teacups. Ella’s family was fried chicken and red Solo cups.

  Ella was often embarrassed by her parents and their lifestyle. Her shabby mis-matched mish-mashed house. I loved it over there. I loved that I was free to be me.

  Not long after Ella and her family moved in, my parents had a rip-roaring fight. It might’ve been the only time I ever heard my Dad raise his voice. Mom wanted to move away, not liking Ella’s parents or how they kept
the property. I was mortified and pleaded with Dad not to let her take my best friend away. I loved having Ella next door. I even snuck over sometimes and slept over, filling my bed with pillows.

  Dad assured me that we would not be moving. This was the house he’d grown up in, the house his parents had willed to him. It was a beautiful Victorian style century-home in pristine condition. I never met my grandparents, but Dad talked fondly of them and the house. It was the only thing I’d ever seen my father fight her on. Usually, he let her have her way. He promised me we weren’t moving and told me it’d be my house someday.

  Ella’s family went camping. Mine went to stuffy resorts. We had linen napkins. They tore off a square of paper towel. My house wasn’t touchy feely. Ella’s house was.

  Of course I loved my folks, even if I couldn’t express it and rarely got it back, particularly from my mother. I felt like I had to be on my best behavior with them; I couldn’t just be me. And I preferred to be badly behaved. I had champagne tastes and expensive towels in my bathroom that were just for show, but I also had no qualms about getting my Manolos muddy. Like I said, I’m kind of high maintenance. But, I don’t think I’m unreasonable. And I don’t give birth to kittens when something perfectly washable gets dirty, like my mother does.

  Ella didn’t want to come out tonight. It was a rare ‘leave me hanging’ moment, which she was more capable of because she couldn’t see my pout through the phone. If I’d Facetimed her, she probably would’ve caved.

  Just before I’d spotted the biker eye-candy, I’d called and tried to coax her out with us. She made an excuse and hung up on me. And then she stopped answering her phone.

  I’m not shocked. I’m sort of famous for blowing up her phone when she won’t indulge me. She eventually gives in. Unless she turns the phone off, which she’s been doing lately.

  It was me, Pippa (roommate and the esthetician at my salon), and our friend Andie, who lived next door to us. Her parents owned the bakery next to my salon. Two of our other friends, Stef and Clare, were going to meet us later on. It was early. Way early. And I was already feeling the shooters we’d downed. I forgot to eat that day, the salon was so busy. Clare and Stef had both come in to buy shampoo and chatting with them was what led to tonight. I forgot the fact that I’d skipped food until I’d had two shooters and a vodka and cranberry. I asked the bartender for fifteen to twenty cherries in my drink, so I could say I’d eaten that day, and chased the drink with some peanuts. He was a big burly biker old enough to be my father and he started calling me Cherry after that.