Authors: Miss Merikan
Split - Coffin Nails MC (Contemporary New Adult Erotic Dark Romance) (Sex & Mayhem Book 7)
SPLIT
Miss Merikan
---
Split between a lust for life and a
craving for death.
---
Astaroth.
Motorcycle club president’s
daughter. Virgin. Occultist.
Hunter.
Outlaw biker. Loves a challenge.
Ex-Christian.
Hunter knew he was in deep shit when a patch over
went sideways, ending up with his prez dead, and him and his cousin becoming
live-in hostages at the Coffin Nails MC clubhouse. What he didn’t know though,
was that the girl he fucked just a few days before was the Coffin Nails club
president’s daughter, set on having nothing to do with him after a creepy
one-night stand in an abandoned church. Tough luck, because Hunter is not a
quitter, even if getting involved with the prez's hot daughter could get him
killed.
Astaroth is devastated after losing the two
people closest to her. Unable to connect with her grieving father, she believes
that a ritual described in her late mother’s notes might hold the key to bringing
back the balance in her family. During the ceremony, she needs to get pregnant
by the demon she summons, but why does he have to appear in the form of a
handsome, long-haired, asshole of a biker, who just doesn’t know when to give
up? She never intended to see him again, but there he is, a new member of her
dad’s club.
And worst of all, the other man who appeared that
fateful night, Hunter’s cousin, is also up for seconds.
Astaroth was supposed to die in nine months, but
instead, she is only beginning to feel truly alive for the first time. But no
matter what she feels for the man who crashed into her life so unexpectedly, if
she ever wants her family to be whole again, she needs to finish what she
started.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS:
Themes:
Outlaw motorcycle club, criminal activity, forbidden
love, overprotective father, secret baby, revenge, occult
Genre:
New Adult erotic contemporary romance, suspense (NOT
paranormal)
Length:
~93,000 words (STANDALONE novel)
WARNING:
Adult content. Explicit sexual content, strong
language, violence, and topics that might be considered taboo. Reader
discretion advised.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of
characters to actual persons, living, dead, or undead, events, places or names
is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or
transferred in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the
publisher. Uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any
other means without a permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by
law.
Text copyright © 2016 Miss Merikan
All Rights Reserved
Editing by Kelly Hartigan (Xterra Web)
Cover design by
Natasha Snow
Table of contents
Foreword
We are so happy to finally publish Asty’s
story. She started off as a secondary character in our M/M book,
The Devil’s
Ride
, and we immediately knew she was just the kind of girl who we wanted
to write about. And indeed, the book wrote itself. We came up with the story on
a long walk through a forest in the Polish countryside, and everything just
fell into place. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did writing it :)
While we sometimes jokingly referred to
Split
as an inspirational book, it really is not intended as one. We think any
religious affiliation, or lack thereof, is equally valid as long as it benefits
the person and doesn’t create unnecessary conflict or hate. Fiction is often
about exploring how other people think and feel. Every time we create
characters, we want to convey
their
truth, whether it coincides with
ours or not, and we hope you can enjoy the tale of Asty and Hunter whatever
your personal beliefs are.
A lot of people question religion
throughout life, and this is especially true for young adults, who, among other
things, have to re-evaluate the faith they’ve been brought up with as they gain
confidence and become independent. Is it helpful or a burden? Does it align
with their values and morals? It is such a potent topic we could not shy away
from it when writing about Asty. Like many people, she is seeking solace in her
faith after great loss, but it’s up to her to realize whether her actions are
actually helping her cope. This novel is really about the journey of two people
who are forced to discover what they really need in life, both physically and
spiritually. Even though they come from very different backgrounds, they both
search for answers.
Asty identifies as a demonolater, which
means that for her—demons are gods. We did research this belief system, but it
is a faith that is not ritualized in the same way most mainstream religions
are, so a lot depends on the individual and their own interpretation. And since
Asty learned most of what she knows about the religion from her mother, the
practices mentioned in this book don’t necessarily reflect the rituals of the
majority of real-life demonolaters, so do take the occult content with a grain
of salt.
We hope you enjoy the wild ride with Asty
and Hunter.
Kat & Agnes Merikan
a.k.a.
K.A. Merikan
Death was following Asty, as if he chose
her for his bride and wouldn’t take no for an answer. First, her older brother,
Bell, was shot during a routine job for the motorcycle club. Then, her mother
succumbed to cancer less than a month ago, and now Asty watched her pet goat
struggle to get up and greet her. She had no idea how old Beast really was,
because he was a rescue animal, but he had been showing signs of rapid aging in
the last few months, and it hurt Asty to see the discolored fur in his coat and
the difficulty with which her pet was now moving.
She entered the enclosure and offered Beast
a carrot, scooting down and petting him over the protruding ridge along his
spine. Every time she watched him try to run or do other things that used to
come so easy to him, she was reminded Beast was closer to death than she would
have wished. Everything she loved was sooner or later taken away from her.
Her father used to forbid Asty from coming
to the club parties, but after her mother passed away just a few weeks ago, all
of a sudden, she was not only welcome, but also encouraged to participate in a patch
over. Asty was dubious about accepting the allegiance of men who had been
brutally pacified by her father’s club not that long ago, but she was never all
that interested in motorcycle club politics. It was almost as if he didn’t want
her around his boys’ club too much. Dad had always favored the company of
Asty’s older brother, but after they lost him, the rift in Asty’s family grew,
with her father spending even less time at home, as if he were scared of the
silence. Yet another part of her family taken away. It was as if their blood
was cursed.
“Hey! There you are,” her remaining
brother, Lucky, said as he entered Beast’s enclosure. “I was worried you might have
bailed. You wanna smell of goat when the new biker meat arrives?”
She didn’t even have to look over her
shoulder to know he was wiggling his eyebrows. Of course, he would be trying to
push her at some sexy leather-scented caveman. Lucky had been trying to set her
up with someone for quite a while now, and she was getting increasingly
agitated about it. She wasn’t looking for a man anymore. There were more
important tasks in her life now, and none of them included getting involved in
a relationship.
“You’re one to talk. Tooth better not hear
you saying that,” she muttered, placing a kiss by Beast’s horn.
Lucky approached the goat from the other
side and shrugged with a wide smile. “What my man doesn’t know doesn’t hurt
him. Besides, it’s you we’re talking about. If you’d rather hook up with a good
Christian boy, you better change your outfit.” He pushed back some of his long
blond hair, and seeing it so shiny and straight reminded Asty of the time when
they had been apprenticing in her mother’s salon.
Lucky was only two years older than her,
still barely old enough to drink. He had arrived at the MC looking like a
clueless teen after being on the run for several years, and now
he
was
the one trying to give her advice, just because things fell into place for him?
Having a steady boyfriend was a matter of the stars aligning well for you, and
Lucky practically fell into the arms of his man, the current vice president of
the Coffin Nails.
But she couldn’t be angry with him. With
her father not coping well with Mom’s death, Lucky was like a ray of sunshine
in the gloom of her life. They had known one another for less than three years,
but she had quickly become so close to him that it felt as if he’d been a part
of her family forever. And yet, his presence stirred ground that should have
been left untouched. Dad had Lucky with another woman, and while Mom forgave
him for the lapse of judgment before Asty had even been born, Lucky’s return
reopened old wounds. Until the day she died, Mother refused to bury the hatchet
with Lucky, no matter how nice he was and how little he could do about the
circumstances under which he had been born.
Asty scowled and looked down at the black
fishnet stockings covering her legs below the leather hot pants she wore with a
thick studded belt and an oversized sweater. If the pentagram printed at the
front of her top wasn’t enough to scare off a “good Christian boy,” the ones
dangling around her neck surely would, as would the skeleton rings or the bird
skull hairclip. But a guy could still imagine removing those. Usually her
makeup and piercings truly scared most guys off. One person told her she looked
like Satan’s bride, and Asty took that as a compliment. More often she’d hear “slut,”
“devil worshipper,” or even just that she looked ”evil.” She didn’t mind.
Scaring off idiots was part of the fun in dressing the way she did. And when
someone was interested in her despite the piercings in her lips, nose, and
cheeks, they would usually give up once she casually showed off her split tongue.
“I’m not interested in bikers,” she
eventually moaned. “Some of our guys are ancient, some cheat on their
girlfriends, and then there’s the gay one.” She rolled her eyes, watching
Lucky’s eyes sparkle at the mention of his boyfriend, Tooth.
“The gay one’s taken.” Lucky grinned and
patted Beast’s back before stretching, as if to show off the property patch on
the back of his vest. “I mean the new ones. They’re not only getting patched
over, but they will live at this clubhouse for a while. Isn’t that the perfect
opportunity to get out there a bit more?”
Asty let Beast have the last of the carrot
and brushed her fingers over his horns. “Come on, Lucky, they used to be called
the Rabid
Hogs
. I can’t see how a guy wearing that kind of patch could
be any good.”
“Maybe they’d be good enough to lose the
V.” Lucky smirked, looking like a sneaky little imp.
“Not everyone’s into sleeping with someone
just because they’re hot,” she groaned, but truth be told, she had already “lost
the V.” Lucky just didn’t need to know about that.
Lucky waved his hand dismissively. “I’m a
homemaker now.”
“You’ve been saved,” she said and got up.
Lucky raised his hands to the stars.
“Praise the Lord!”
Asty pushed her long hair back, watching
his smile, and it felt just as exotic as observing killer spiders at the zoo.
She shouldn’t be expected to party so soon after her mother’s death. Her father
had his obligations as the president of the club, but she wasn’t needed here
nor did she want to be around all the booze, loud music, and public humping.
“Lord of Anal.”
Lucky slapped her ass as they were leaving
the goat shed. “Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.” The amount of energy he
was bursting with was just immoral.
She opened her mouth, unsure whether she
wanted to share intimate experiences with her bubbly brother, but the roar of
motorcycles on the other side of the building relieved her of the need to
continue their conversation.
“There they are,” she muttered. If all went
well, she could probably sneak out after an hour or two and go home. She still
needed to prepare many things for the next steps of her mother’s ritual, and it
almost felt as if time were sliding through her fingers like fine sand. Sure,
she’d taken the first step, but she still needed to study Mother’s diary and notebooks
to make sure she hadn’t missed any important details.
Lucky grinned and pulled her toward the
clubhouse from the backyard. “Exciting!”
Asty didn’t object and let him swipe her
inside, resigned to her fate. She didn’t want her father to feel bad or make a
scene. If the club was fine with housing her pet goat, then she was ready to
give back once in a while.
The music was off inside, and the air
filled with laughs, friendly tones, and clapping noises she presumed
accompanied the kind of awkward back-patting that men so frequently did. As
soon as Asty and Lucky entered the lounge, the biggest space in the clubhouse
that was often used for parties, she was confronted with a crowd of men in
leather cuts.
Her dad, Priest, was talking to an elderly
biker with very thick-lensed glasses, his sharply arched grey eyebrows
twitching in understanding as the visitor spoke. Very few women were around,
and Asty suspected they were all in the large kitchen nearby, unpacking food
and keeping away from the necessary formalities, exchanges of vests during the patch
over, and other things that were as natural to Asty as going to church on
Sunday was for so many other people her age. That was a part of life when you
grew up around a motorcycle club. She acknowledged familiar faces with curt
nods. Don, the oldest member of the Detroit chapter, was the easiest to find.
Big, gloomy, and with a cloud of smoke dancing through his thinning grey hair,
he nodded back. Then there was Milk, slim, with a large nose and lively eyes
that were always ready to ogle Asty’s legs whenever he thought nobody was
looking—especially his wife.
Blitz, their newest full patch, was already
getting friendly with their guests, while Prince, the prospect, rushed around
carrying beer kegs and breathing so hard his moustache twitched. The only smile
Asty had was for Tooth, Lucky’s big bad boyfriend and vice president of the
chapter. She had always thought of him as an older brother, not only because of
his size, but also for the way he’d eagerly helped her out whenever it was
needed. Maybe Lucky was right. Maybe this place did need some fresh blood. She
had all the Coffin Nails’ faces memorized so well she could draw them from
memory.
When Tooth moved toward the bar where Lucky
started making drinks for their guests, a tall man with long dark hair looked
straight at Asty, and she froze on the spot, realizing she knew those dark
green eyes. They belonged to a demon, not to a real man standing right in front
of her. She didn’t know his name, and she had been sure she’d never need to,
but she remembered the hellscape of tattoos on his body and the force with
which he had pinned down her wrists. His spike-studded belt and black leather
jacket made him seem even bigger and more intimidating than the last time she’d
seen him.
Her cheeks went aflame when images of
that
night flooded her mind, and all of a sudden, a ritual transcending the edges of
sanity was becoming all too real, carnal, and not spiritual at all.
When the demon’s lips curved up into a
smile, it was as if the devil himself had carved out that handsome face.