Dangerously Fierce (The Broken Riders Book 3)
Deborah Blake
To the real Bethany, who is the most courageous and dangerously fierce woman I have ever met. You are my hero, and I hope you don’t mind my borrowing your name for my heroine. Nobody could fight harder or do so more gracefully than you. (And your love story is more romantic than anything I could write. Jarrod is pretty damned fierce too.) FGBVs forever.
Acknowledgments
I am deeply appreciative of Berkley/Penguin for publishing the Baba Yaga series and the first two books in the Broken Rider series. Sadly, publishing is a numbers game, and in this tough new world, the numbers just weren’t good enough for them to justify giving me a contract for the third one. But there was no way I was going to deprive my readers of Alexei’s story, so I decided to go ahead and write it anyway and self-publish, in the hopes that those who had loved these series would follow me on the next part of this journey.
Self-publishing is a whole different endeavor than traditional publishing, and although I still wrote the book the same as I would have otherwise, I would never have been able to get it into the readers’ hands without a little bit of help from my friends. Okay, a lot of help. A LOT OF HELP.
Huge thanks to the amazing Sierra Newburn for formatting and brainstorming and general assistance above and beyond the call of duty. Without you, this book never would have seen the light of day. And kudos to cover artist Su from Earthly Charms for doing such a great job matching the style of the previous covers. It wasn’t easy even coming close to how Alexei was supposed to look (especially since we couldn’t get Jason Momoa to pose, darn it), but she did remarkably well.
Big thanks and much gratitude to Karen Buys for the brilliant revision notes, which helped make the book much better, and to her and Judy Levine for proofreading and letting me know about the zillion tiny errors I’d made so I could fix them before anyone else saw them. You ladies rock.
More gratitude to my lovely agent Elaine Spencer, who was totally supportive of this project, despite the fact that it took me away from writing the next book for her to sell. The truly good agents care about their client’s total careers, not just the next deal, and I am fortunate to have one of the best.
Thanks to Mindy Klasky for the self-publishing advice and general cheerleading, and to everyone else who knew I was working on this and said, “YES, go for it!” You know who you are.
Most of all, thanks to you, my readers, for taking this amazing journey with me from the first Baba Yaga novel through to this one. Believe me, we’re only just getting started.
Chapter 1
Alexei Knight swallowed the last of his beer, hid a grin in his beard, and aimed his pool cue at an innocent looking nine ball. The ball caromed across the felt to tap in three of its fellows before swishing into the corner pocket with an almost smug-sounding sigh. Across the table, his opponent let out a curse.
“Too bad,” Alexei said, plucking the twenty dollar bill off the edge of the table. “Want to go again?” His slight Russian accent, stronger after an afternoon of drinking at a slow but steady rate, made the first word sound like “Vant.” But his hands were still rock steady. When you were six feet, eight inches tall and weighed two hundred and seventy pounds, it took a lot of alcohol to made an impression, even if you didn’t have the metabolism of a formerly immortal Rider.
While the man he’d beaten conferred with his companion, Alexei let his gaze swing idly around the room. He’d been in so many bars over the last year they were all starting to look alike. This one, The Hook and Anchor, was someplace in Cape Cod, although he wasn’t sure exactly where. He’d started out in California, methodically drinking and fighting his way across the country, hitting every state other than Alaska or Hawaii. (The thought of flying made him shudder, and there was no way he was leaving his beloved Harley behind.)
But eventually he’d run out of land, ending up here in this nautical themed bar, whose sign bore an anchor crossed with a pirate’s hook. It wasn’t too bad; clearly aimed more at the locals than the tourists, and slightly threadbare at the edges, which was just the way he liked them.
The floors were wooden planks, worn down by time and use, and the walls were hung with battered fishing gear - old harpoons, frayed netting, empty lobster traps, and the like. The lighting was dim and the music a low throb of jazz that would have seemed better suited to a more upscale establishment. But as long as the beer kept coming, he was happy to hang around for another few hours and use his considerable skills to separate his fellow drinkers from their money at the pool table. It wasn’t as though he had any other place to be. Ever.
The two men came around the table, glowering, their ruddy faces alike enough to mark them as brothers. The one Alexei had just beaten clenched callused hands. “You’re cheating,” he said in a low voice. “You suckered us.”
Alexei shrugged. “No. And yes,” he said. “But nobody forced you to play. If you don’t have the stomach for the game, run along and let somebody else have a chance.”
The second brother growled and waved his pool cue threateningly in Alexei’s direction, and a couple of other men who had been leaning against the wall and watching started to drift in their direction. “Give us back our money,” the man demanded. “Or you’ll be sorry.”
Alexei grinned, large even teeth gleaming whitely in his brown beard. This was more like it. He’d been getting bored with pool anyway. “Not going to happen,” he said, and as the others started closing in, he lifted his own stick in both hands, getting ready to break it over his knee to make it into a better weapon. But for some reason, the stick didn’t move.
He blinked, looking down. A small, surprisingly strong hand hung on to the middle of the cue, pulling it downward and him along with it until his eyes were looking into the steely-eyed glare of a petite red-headed woman.
“NOT IN MY BAR,” she said with the hint of a Scottish accent. “And not with my pool cue. Those things aren’t cheap, you know.” She plucked the stick out of his grasp and leaned it against the wall before turning her glare on the other men. “Tommy and Jonah, I think I’ve made my feelings clear on the subject of fighting in this bar. You’ve had enough. Go home.”
“But he stole our money!” Tommy whined. Or maybe it was Jonah.