Amy

My father is a terrible man. He claimed a demon lived inside me and imprisoned me for months in his torture chamber. Then, one fateful day, he found himself on the bitter end of a curse, and he offered me in exchange for his freedom. I thought my life was over, but I was wrong. While trapped in the curse creator's ancient castle, phantoms begin speaking to me. They caress me with invisible hands, and proclaim I’m theirs. At night, however, when the phantoms leave, terrifying beasts emerge. Their snarls and roars awaken something dark in me, and their pull is impossible to resist.

I’m Decker “Venom” Pruitt - President for the Ankeny RBMC. I'm a fair man, but those who've crossed me know my retaliation is swift and lethal. Venom runs through my veins. After the army, all I needed was my club. Emotionally bankrupt, I had nothing to offer a woman. She wanted me to show her who I really was, but that was impossible. I was her worst nightmare. Two pink lines changed everything.

I can’t have Elijah Iverson. I can’t have him because he’s my older brother’s best friend. I can’t have him because I broke his heart five years ago; because he’s now engaged to someone else - someone kind and dependable who deserves his whiskey eyes, his soft mouth, his fierce intellect.

My story? It’s wrought with violence. Strewn with blood. Dominated by desire. My stepmother, the evil queen, hates me. She wants me dead but hasn’t killed me yet. At her insistence, a never-ending line of repugnant suitors vie for my hand, but when I decline each and every one, the evil queen punishes me...severely. She will stop at nothing until I’m sold or dead.

As President of the Demented Sons MC, I don’t have time in my life for a woman. It’s not easy running a chapter and raising a teenager alone. Except sometimes life nails you like a freight train. Nothing prepared me for her. A ghost from the past, she barreled in wanting something from me I wasn’t prepared to give. Trying to keep my club together and my daughter from going off the rails, while staying under my enemy’s radar had me wound tight. Haunted by icy blue eyes and a sexy smile, I caved...Now I’m caught in a web that’s destined to get me killed.

Headed for some well-deserved shore leave, Shepard is gunned down in the streets of Seattle, a victim of "a mugging gone stupid." He awakens, not in a hospital bed, but in the surreal world of Purgatory. Within seconds of his arrival, he is saved from a gruesome and painful end by his new best friend, Horace. That's Quintus Horatius Flaccus the philosopher, to you Roman history buffs. Horace explains to Shepard the cold, hard rules for surviving in Purgatory. More than just the walls have ears, and he's not sure how long Shepard will last.

"My good intentions always led to disaster. The cold hard truth is that I was never meant to be a father to Lily. Staying in Treepoint, Kentucky for a few weeks to get to know my daughter was meant to be a time of discovery; instead, I find out that she's married to a killer and living in a sex club. I'm going to find out how to destroy the Last Riders and give Lily the future she deserves."

In Memphis, Tennessee, Satan's Fury MC had become the most notorious MC in the city. That recognition hadn't come easy. While people were visiting Graceland and walking down on Beale Street, my brothers and I were at war, fighting rival MCs and gangs who were trying to take control of our territory. We had staked our claim, but when a new threat arrived, everything we had worked for would be put in jeopardy.

She was the one piece of his past he'd never put behind him. I'd spent years trying to put the past behind me. I wanted to forget the mistakes I'd made and the dreams I'd lost, but they were a part of me. They'd made me into the man I'd become - a brother of Satan's Fury. I thought I'd put the strong-willed, foulmouthed beauty behind me. I was wrong. I'd learned to fight for what I wanted, and I wanted her.

One day you held my hand. One day you loved me. Then you were gone. At sixteen, I lost the only love I'd ever known. Thrown back into the foster system, pregnant and alone, I prayed that you'd come for me and save me from life's cruelties. Only the next time I saw you, it was too late.