His Forbidden Bride: 50 Loving States, West Virginia by Theodora Taylor

now, one you’ll eventually remember—”
    “No, Doc, there’s only you,” he says. “I’m brain damaged and confused. But you…” He pats his heart with his good hand. “You fill up my chest, and I know there ain’t anybody else but you in here.”
    I swallow. Wanting to believe him. Upset because I’m even thinking about taking the word of a man who can’t so much as remember his name.
    “Okay,” I say. Voice small. Agreeing with him just to get out of a conversation about disagreeing.
    It’s been a long day and I barely have the energy to climb out of bed and go to the bathroom to wash away all the things he’s done to me.
    He lets me clean up. But he says, “No pajamas,” his voice sharp, when I return and start to head to the dresser drawer.
    I simply reverse direction and climb into the bed without a word of protest. Trusting him to keep me warm. Trusting him more than any woman has any business trusting a man she barely knows. A man who barely knows himself.
    No, he definitely doesn’t have to keep me home from work tomorrow. He’s already fucked me out of thinking too much. But still…
    I go to bed wondering how bad or possibly good it will be when he finally remembers who he really is.

Chapter Ten
    M ASON

    S hitty little state . Shitty little warehouse packed with SFK’s guns. Shitty MC’s standing around while Mason “questions” their prospect.
    Mason’s becoming more pissed off by the second that D’s put him in this position. Somebody’s going to pay. Mason doesn’t know who, but somebody’s definitely going to pay.
    Maybe it’ll be the guy hanging in chains in front of him, while the rest of his motorcycle club, including the prez, watches.
    “Where is he?” Mason demands, stabbing his bowie knife through the prospect’s shoulder. A family heirloom, passed down from a grandpa who would definitely approve of the way Mason was using it now.
    The biker screams, but none of his fellow MCs step forward to help him. They know better. Know who Mason’s family is, and what they’ll do if any of these West Virginia fuckers so much as raises a finger to help this guy.
    New Rebels, his ass. Mason wouldn’t be at all surprised if a few of these pussies peed themselves watching his bowie go into the prospect’s shoulder, then come back out with the sickening squelch of skin and muscle losing against steel.
    In fact, the Rebel’s prez looks like he’s going to lose his dinner as he snivels, “I swear on my mother, man! I don’t know where he is. This prospect and the old sarge did the deal with him and he left with the money. We ain’t heard from him or seen him since. I swear!”
    The old sergeant at arms, the New Rebel Mason questioned last month. Meanwhile, the prospect hanging from the chains starts full on sobbing.
    Oh for fucking…
    Mason studies the prez, then the prospect. Decides. They’re telling the truth. They don’t know anything.
    Which means D. is either dead or hiding. Mason has not one ounce of Native American blood in him, but he senses it’s the latter. Which only makes shit worse. Hiding is way worse than dead in Mason’s opinion. One earned a little bit of Mason’s respect. The other earned his bullet.
    If D. is hiding from him, ignoring all Mason’s calls to his burner phone…
    Mason’s hand clenches and unclenches around the bowie’s wooden handle, and he suddenly decides to put it back in his waist holster. Not because he has to, but because D’s been missing near three months now, and these New Rebels fuckers have no clue where he went.
    These baby motorcycle clubs that keep springing up all over the country make him sick. Bunch of wannabe bad-asses who’d let anybody in, and when push really came to shove, you got a lot of them crying like pussies instead of taking a beating like a man.
    Mason puts the knife away.
    Then he pulls out something else his grandpa gave him before he died. A Beretta .92 compact. Now the prospect really starts