Title: A Leap in the Dark
Series: Assassins of Youth MC #2
Author: Layla Wolfe
Genre: MC Romance
Release Date: March
7, 2016
Synopsis
Kiss slowly. Play hard.
Oaklyn: That arrogant, loathsome bastard had the nerve to
move to Avalanche. Levon left behind his empire of sleaze to invade the tiny,
sleepy town I’d decided to call home. I wanted to get away from smut and abuse
and into a fresh, innocent place where nobody knew my name, only to be followed
right into my very house by the King of Corruption himself.
I could handle it if he was physically gruesome. But he
struts around with his muscles bulging and his cornflower blue eyes sparkling.
I’m a nurse, a practical, sensible gal. But when Levon needs my help, I put
away my pride and come running. And he’s going to need a lot of help to go up
against the dirtbag Avalanche mayor, blackmailing him with his shameful past.
Levon: She’s proud, conceited, and holier-than-thou,
everything I hate in a woman. But maybe it’s been too long since I had one,
because when she steps up to the plate to help me, I’m doomed. I had to knock
her down a few pegs once she knew I wanted her. Joining the Assassins of Youth
motorcycle club and giving Oaklyn a few sessions over my knee just seemed to
increase her yearning, though.
She’s a sizzling hot tornado of a woman. I need her to fight
back against the fucking corrupt politicians in this town we’re trying to
transform. I might have come from a sordid, disgraceful background. But I’m
determined to move into the light and the purity that will make this town
great.
Publisher’s Note: This is a full-length, standalone novel
with a HEA and no cliffhanger. Possible triggers include male prostitution,
sexual abuse, gun running, and crooked municipal blackmail.
Purchase Links
Amazon US:
http://amzn.to/1p0RpOb
Amazon UK:
http://amzn.to/1RvICe0
“My parents, along with almost every other Lost Boys’
parents. Every parent who threw their son to the wolves. This is why a lot of
us learn to feel no emotion. I’m usually pretty emotionless, which is why I’m
thinking maybe I can deal with Gideon’s work inside the compound. Yesterday I
had to face this Parley Pipkin assbite who was one of the men in on the
ass-kicking I received from Zelpha Pratt’s dad. Like it takes ten men to kick the
ass of one teenager. I did all right, staring him in the fucking face.”
“You refrained from shooting him, anyway. That’s admirable.”
I hadn’t told anyone other than Gideon about Ladell Pratt
yet. Deloy probably suspected that he was one of my tormentors, but was polite
enough not to bring it up. “Fifteen years of controlling my emotions has taught
me well. That’s why I like your scientific way of looking at things. We have
more in common than you might suspect. Emotion is a defect in a perfectly logical
machine.”
“No, no, not at all,” she cried, loud enough for Nana to
hear. I moved closer to her, taking her by the upper arms to guide her into the
shadows of the kitchen wall, farther from Nana’s bedroom. “Reason alone,
without human emotion, has created more wretchedness than a zealot’s crusade.”
“You haven’t lived in Cornucopia.”
“Watching a Shakespeare performance informs us more about
the nature of jealousy, how it can infiltrate a man’s life and ruin his
marriage, than any textbook ever could. Harriet Beecher Stowe helped rouse
society against slavery more powerfully than any spreadsheet. Dickens did more
to prevent child abuse and institutional atrocity than any welfare society
report.”
I had to agree with her, because literature had replaced
emotion in my life. I could feel through works of art, music, and writing. I
allowed myself to feel outrage and indignation on their behalf—maybe because
they were “made up” works of art, and somewhat remotely removed from my own
carefully guarded cage of feelings. “Well, yes. Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ is still
played in about five hundred languages in ten billion elevators throughout the
world. I’m sure it’s managed to soothe many a savage beast. The photo of the
napalmed Vietnamese girl or Dorothea Lange’s Dust Bowl photos still resonate in
people’s hearts. Oaklyn, you don’t need to convince me. I feel deeply through
others’ creations. It’s just my real life where I have trouble knowing how to
feel.”
“And that’s where you’ll miss out. You have to feel direct
confrontations with people. There’s no sense in having pity for people if
you’re being ruled by performance and profit. There’s no point in being
charitable if you’re really not experiencing the compassion directly like a
stab to your heart. I have a shitty boyfriend, I’ll be the first to admit that.
But at least we have passion. We fight with passionate anger in our hearts.”
“That’s useless to me,” I said. It sounded heartless even as
I said it. When had I become such a callous, insensitive jerk? “I’ve had no
close relationships with anyone in my life—ever. Not since Zelpha Pratt.”
“You mean romantic. But you love your men.”
I stood tall and proud. “I love my men like a protective
mother hen. But passion with a woman? Nothing. At least you have that with your
idiotic boyfriend.” It irritated me that she had even an idiotic boyfriend. I’d
grown close to her the past week, strange to say. We sort of fit together like
hand in glove, though I knew she loathed me for my business practices. I was
used to that. I’d been denounced for my field of work for a long time now. It
was only because we serviced such a large denomination of pious men and women
in the community that no one had harassed us to move.
She said, “Decisions such as whom to fall in love with, how
to discipline a teenager, which beloved things to sacrifice, which dreams to
follow or abandon—all of these choices should be made with emotion ruling, not
wiped out and deadened by your logical thinking. If I let myself be ruled by
logic, I’d never have hooked up with my worthless Italian boyfriend.”
“And that’s a good thing?” I scoffed.
She shrugged. “I’m actually trying to get rid of him.
Emotion keeps drawing me back to him. But you see what I mean? You’re missing
out on such a broad array of human experiences if you don’t go through any of
those things.”
I was getting riled, maybe with the more Jim Beam I drank.
“You don’t understand. I was kicked out of the bosom of my family. I was told
that I was a thing, a bother, an inconvenience. I was a miniscule number in a
perpetual multitude of numbers—an ‘it,’ not even an ‘I.’”
She folded her hands in front of her soberly, though she had
drank as much as I had. “I understand. You won’t let yourself feel because that
would dredge up all those angry, bitter feelings.”
“But I am angry and bitter! ‘Angry and Bitter’ is my middle
name! It washes over me time and time again, trapping me in my bitterness, my
rage, my inability to even remotely forgive anyone connected to that incident.”
“You have to learn to forgive, Levon, or else you can’t move
on. Don’t you want to marry and have a regular wife? One that wasn’t chosen for
you by some moldy old elders? Don’t you want to feel regular, normal passion
and love for a woman—a woman you chose yourself?”
I don’t know what the fuck came over me. All at once, I knew
I had something to prove to Oaklyn. Suddenly her waist under the furry jacket
looked so small, so fragile, like she needed my big hands around it. When I
grabbed her, she jumped, as though I was going to hurt her. She held onto my
forearms as I lifted her onto the deck railing. She was so fucking light, with
bones like a little bird! I parted her thighs with my massive ones, feeling
like an ancient tree next to a swaying birch. I touched the tip of my nose to
hers, and she didn’t try to pull away.
“I might not know romantic feelings,” I murmured, “but I
know that sex can masquerade for emotions of that type.”
And I kissed her.
I gave it my all, letting my usual rage and indignation
stand in for passion. I bit her pouty, full lips over and over again until I
felt the breath of her sighs against my mouth. Her entire body did a full melt,
and she even wrapped her ankles around the back of my knees.
Something happened during that wild kiss. My asshole self,
who had never even really felt a passionate sexual urge—it was strictly
business with all of us—began to cave in. Just like Oaklyn was folding up,
dissolving like a sinkhole beneath my onslaught. Some of the walls I’d built up
carefully over fifteen years began to dissolve. I could almost feel it, at the
edges of my awareness, like a curtain someone was lifting on the two of us.
Like a spotlight shining on us coupling there on the deck
railing, I began to feel like the star of our show. Only there were two of us,
because it wasn’t just me performing like a trained seal. This was a woman who
wasn’t my client. I was voluntarily licking her lips of my own free will. My
cock was burgeoning, swelling against the wood railing, just an inch from her
pussy. It made a giant tent in the loose lounging pants I wore, but I wasn’t
embarrassed. Real feelings rushed through my lungs. Every breath I snorted
against her cheek, every intake of air was like breathing true, real emotion.
I didn’t hate Oaklyn. I sort of even liked her.
My hands moved up her ribcage, felt her bony shoulders,
cradled her strong jaw. Of course I never kissed clients, so I hadn’t kissed a
woman in a year, maybe even two. It just wasn’t in my wheelhouse—I didn’t have
the time. So feeling the true, hot, aroused sensuality of a woman beneath my
very palms, well, it was a fucking turn-on.
But I knew I had to break away. I was good at doing that.
“There,” I panted triumphantly, as if I’d just solved some
equation on a whiteboard. Oaklyn looked at me wide-eyed with wonder, her lower
lip shining as though stung by a bee. She clearly didn’t know what to say or
maybe even how to feel, so I helped her out. “How’s that for emotional
turmoil?”
I was going to stalk off jubilantly, but Oaklyn beat me to
it.
She leaped from the railing, shoving me out of the way. She
stormed off for a few steps, but then thought better of it, and twirled back to
face me. “You! Levon Rockwell. You’re the most infuriating, contrary man on the
face of the planet!”
Then she stormed off. I saw her go into the kitchen and grab
the bottle of Jim Beam off the counter without missing a beat, then continue to
her room.
Infuriating. I liked that. It meant I was getting to her.
Then I wondered why I wanted to get to her.
About the Author
Bestselling author Layla Wolfe likes to bring you alpha males--sometimes two at a time--and the kick-ass women who love them. Her BARE BONES MC series explores the dark, disturbing life of the biker club in Arizona. Her spinoff series THE BENT ZEALOTS MC is a gritty MM saga. She is currently at work on Book One of THE ASSASSINS OF YOUTH MC, another spinoff set in Utah.
Layla Wolfe is the pen name of multi-published erotic romance author Karen Mercury.
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