House of payne loki, p.1
House of Payne: Loki, page 1
HOUSE OF PAYNE: LOKI
(House of Payne #10)
Stacy Gail
HOUSE OF PAYNE: LOKI
Alice’s life…
…is falling apart. She’s penniless, jobless, and a week away from being evicted. Every last ounce of her misery can be dropped on the doorstep of one man—Loki, legacy member of the Gravediggers MC and tattooist at House Of Payne. One way or another, she’s going to make that monster pay.
Loki’s life…
…turns upside down when a long-legged beauty flips him onto his ass like she’s an escapee from a bad kung-fu flick. He has no clue who Alice Halliday is, but he’s determined to change that.
Their lives…
…are getting complicated. The vulnerable woman Loki sees hiding beneath a tough exterior fires up his protective instincts, and when he realizes Alice is up to her neck in all kinds of trouble, he’s determined to save the day. Sure, Gravediggers aren’t the usual kind of knight in shining armor, but Alice isn’t the usual kind of damsel in distress.
And damn, her distress is something else again.
Alice knows there are no heroes in real life, but Loki seems to be on a mission to prove her wrong. At every turn, he takes the pieces of her shattered world and builds a new one that revolves around him. But just as she begins to trust him to be the hero she needs, is he willing to let go of his Gravedigger ways to deal with the responsibility of taking care of all of her, including her heart?
101,000 words
***This standalone contemporary romance contains violence, salty talk from both the hero and heroine, multiple sex scenes, and ultimately some serious Alpha male groveling. No cheating, no love triangles, no cliffhangers (but maybe a teensy glimpse of the start of a new series, heh). HEA guaranteed. Due to adult language and sexual content, this book is not intended for people under the age of eighteen***
Discover Other Titles by Stacy Gail:
Bitterthorn, Texas Series (Carina Press):
Ugly Ducklings Finish First
Starting from Scratch (novella)
One Hot Second
Where There’s A Will
Earth Angels Series (Carina Press):
Nobody’s Angel
Savage Angel
Wounded Angel
Dangerous Angel
House Of Payne Series:
House of Payne: Payne
House of Payne: Scout
House of Payne: Twist
House of Payne: Rude
House of Payne: Steele
House of Payne: Max
House of Payne: Tag
House of Payne: Ice
House of Payne: Styx
House of Payne: Loki
Scorpio Duology:
Year of the Scorpio: Part One
Year of the Scorpio: Part Two
Brody Brothers Series (Carina Press):
Branded
Braced
Bruised (Indie published)
Novellas:
Crime Wave in a Corset (Part of the steampunk holiday anthology, A Clockwork Christmas)
How the Glitch Saved Christmas (Part of the Sci-Fi holiday anthology, A Galactic Holiday
Connect with Stacy Gail
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Website:
https://thestacygail.com/
Copyright
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. Characters and names of real persons who appear in the book are used fictitiously.
Copyright ©2020 Stacy Gail
Cover image ©2020 by FXQuadro. Shutterstock photo ID: 793229656
Acknowledgments
Thanks so much to everyone online who answered my IG question of what to name Loki’s brother. Those of you who voted for the name Tyr are too many to mention, so this is a blanket statement to you all—THANK YOU! *blows kisses*
Also, thanks to all who offered an opinion on the cover of this book. As you can see, I went with another image entirely! Thanks for the feedback!
As always, I’d like to send a big thank-you to the sister of my heart, the talented and generous author, Jade C. Jamison. Without Jade’s encouragement, I never would have written the House of Payne series. Thank you, Jade! LYLAS!
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Epilogue
Note From The Author
About the Author
Connect With Stacy Gail
Chapter One
Slow boil. Usually Alice prided herself in being the epitome of caution, refusing to give in to that legendary Halliday rage that burned so easily inside.
But now?
If she made it through the day without strangling someone, it’d be a miracle.
“Welcome to House Of Payne.” A tall woman approached, decked out in a ‘50s-style dress with petticoats for days, and hair as bright fuchsia as her dress. “Are you here for a tattoo? If so, I can get you checked in over there at the front desk.”
Alice didn’t bother glancing in the direction the shockingly pink woman indicated. “I’m not here for a tattoo. I’m here because I want to kill someone with my bare hands. Or at the very least, talk to him. Is a guy by the name of Loki in?”
She had to hand it to the pink lady. Her spectacularly made-up eyes barely widened. “Are you armed?”
For crying out loud. “Of course not.”
The pink woman seemed unimpressed with her indignation. “You did say you wanted to kill someone.”
“With my freaking hands, not with a gun. Guns are barbaric.” Then she took a deep breath and gripped her hands together, grappling with the horrible fury thrumming inside. Wanting to kill someone with her bare hands wasn’t cool. Saying she wanted to kill someone with her bare hands was even worse.
Considering that she was the child of a man who’d died as a rage monster, she seriously needed to get her shit together.
“Are you a woman he’s done wrong?” Understandably, the pink woman didn’t appear to be overly anxious to let Alice enter any deeper into the building, much less talk to one of their employees. “Because if you are, my sympathies, sister, and I sincerely mean that. But this is a place of business. That kind of soap-opera bullshit doesn’t get played out under this roof. You can wait to uncork whatever can of whoop-ass you want on Loki in the privacy of your own home. Dirty laundry doesn’t get aired here in the lobby, you understand me?”
“I don’t know him.” Nor did she want to, but by damn, someone had to hold the bastard accountable. “I’m not going to ask again. Is. Loki. Here?”
The pink lady took her time looking her over, and Alice was more than happy to shoot that look back in spades. They were almost the same height, though the pink chick had an inch or so on her, thanks to some wicked-looking stilettos. Flower tattoos decorated her upper chest and shoulders exposed by the dress’s scoop collar, as well as down the upper part of her arms. But, despite all the girly frills of pretty flower tats, spiky heels, cat’s eye makeup and ruffled petticoats, the set of the woman’s jaw and hard look in her eyes told Alice this woman had never been a pushover in her life. Not even in her diaper days.
“Yeah, you’ve got trouble written all over you,” the pink lady announced, and Alice blinked. It was like she was reading her mind. “You wanna know what I see when I look at you?”
“No offense, but I don’t actually care what you see.”
“I see a hardcore, cast-iron bitch who gives zero fucks when it comes to playing nice with others,” the pink lady went on, clearly ignoring her. “How close am I?”
Alice gripped her hands that much tighter. “It’s like you’ve known me since birth. Do you have a point?”
“Yeah, you definitely don’t play nice,” she muttered, as if to herself. “Fact is, I spotted you from all the way across the lobby. That’s why I came over. Is there any point in trying to talk you out of this?”
“This is happening, one way or another.”
“Figured.” She studied Alice through narrowed eyes. “Before I say whether or not Loki is here, I’m going to give you some advice.”
Ugh. “Must you?”
“Yeah. I must.” The woman threw out a sassy hip and planted a man
“No.”
Pinkie’s mouth tightened. “He’s also about twice your size and weight, so that means the only person who’s going to get hurt around here is you if you keep bearing down on whatever problem it is you’ve got with him. Walk away now while you still can.”
“I get what it is to have family you find along the way.” Alice struggled to swallow the simple fuck you that desperately wanted to come out. Pinkie wasn’t the target of her anger, after all. “Loki busted up my foster brother, landed him in the hospital, and took the payroll he’d had with him. That, in turn, lost me my job at my foster brother’s gym, because he’s decided the only thing left for him to do is declare bankruptcy and crawl away with his tail tucked between his legs.”
Her eyes widened. “Why haven’t you gone to the police?”
“My foster brother won’t go. Out of all the injuries Loki gave him, the injury to his pride seems to be the most crippling.”
Pinkie waited a beat. “And you believe him?”
What the hell. “I believe my foster brother has a broken jaw and eight teeth he’s never going to see again. I believe I have an empty bank account and can’t make rent, just like all the other gym employees, because the payroll was taken by Loki. I believe this Loki asshole needs to give that money back before we’re all out on the streets, and I believe that I can persuade him to do it. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I won’t give up until I find a way to make him do what’s right.”
“Not under this roof, you won’t,” came the flat reply, and there was no softening in the other woman’s eyes. “Under this roof, it’s nothing but calm professionalism that caters solely to our clientele. I take great pleasure in crushing troublemakers like bugs if they come in here trying to disrupt that peace.”
Fuck. “Great. Thanks for wasting my time.”
“But,” the woman went on when Alice started to stomp away, “whatever happens beyond these walls isn’t my problem. You’re on a mission, I can see that. Gotta say, it’s an unbelievably stupid mission, because it won’t fix whatever actually happened to your foster brother and his money. Nor is it going to bring your job back, and it’ll likely get you landed in a hospital bed right next to your foster brother. So, yeah—stupid. But I can also see nothing is going to stop you until you land your stupid ass in that hospital bed, so I might as well try to minimize your damage as much as I can and keep some kind of control over this crappy situation.”
Alice scowled. How many times had she been called stupid? “Besides calling me stupid three times over, what exactly are you saying?”
“Loki parks his chopper out back in the employee parking lot.” The woman ignored her comment—no doubt Pinkie deemed it as stupid as the rest of her—and pulled a phone from her skirt’s slash pocket to tap on it. “It’s the only Harley out there, and he loves it more than anything. In fact, it’s probably the only thing in the world he’s ever loved, which tells you a lot about what kind of person he is, but whatever.” Clearing her throat, she brought the phone up, but didn’t put it to her ear like Alice had expected. Instead, she put it to her mouth, looking up toward the second-floor level. “Attention, House employees. Attention.”
Alice’s eyes widened as the woman’s voice sounded throughout the building over some internal PA system.
“Loki, your presence is required downstairs. It seems someone is messing with your bike.” With that, the woman pointed toward a metal door partially hidden beneath a set of glass block and metal stairs. “Employee parking lot’s through there. You have about thirty seconds to get there. Try not to die. I’d hate to have you on my conscience for the rest of my life.”
“Thanks.” Alice paused just long enough to give her a tight smile. “Seriously. Thank you.”
“Lady, I just organized your death, so don’t thank me for it. Oh, but I should probably know your name. You know, for your epitaph.”
“Alice Halliday. Feel free to donate my body to science.” With a curt nod, she moved through the door and into the parking lot.
All she needed to do was convince this Loki asshole to return the money, she thought, moving past the railing that outlined a nearly full parking lot. She would do whatever it took to make that happen. Threaten to go to the police. Appeal to his sense of compassion—if he had any—about the many lives he’d hurt with his selfish actions. Beat the shit out of him.
No, she chided herself, clamping down on the errant thought like the rabid thing it was. No violence. No matter how desperate her situation was, she wouldn’t give in to that horrible Halliday temper she’d inherited. No matter what, she was going to be the cautious, logically detached person she always tried to be. All she had to do was remember what her first taekwondo instructor had taught her when it came to self-discipline—he who loses control, loses.
Or, in her case, she.
She wasn’t going to lose control. She never lost control. It was a point of pride for her. From the age of twelve, she’d never lost control of her emotions. Not once. She was calm. She was careful. She was detached. Hell, she hadn’t even cried at her father’s funeral. She had this.
She had this.
The Harley was near the back and parked next to a pole bristling with security cameras that swiveled to track her movements. Eyeing the one that homed in on her first, she gave it a little wave.
It was always nice to be noticed.
The door exploded open, and a nightmarish beast of a man surged through.
Holy.
Fucking.
Shit.
Pinkie hadn’t been kidding about the man’s size. Most North American bears were smaller than this guy. He had the dangerous look down pat, too. Biker boots, a patch-covered jeans jacket with the arms cut off, or kutte, ripped jeans, Harley T-shirt and skull rings on several fingers. His close-cropped beard was a darker shade of blonde than his hair that glinted like hammered gold in the sun. He wore that hammered-gold hair longer than chin length, parted down the middle, with the sides tucked behind his multi-pierced ears in a way that should have lessened his overall masculine impact, but instead it only intensified it. She couldn’t tell what color his eyes were from that far away, but that was fine with her. She didn’t care.
The only thing she cared about was taking everything that had gone wrong in her life because of this bastard, and putting it right.
She could do this.
And yet…
Something told her that appealing to this hulk of a man’s compassion was going to be about as effective as asking water to not be wet.
“Get away from that bike, bitch,” he roared, his long legs eating up the distance at an alarming rate. Impossibly he seemed to increase in size as he went. The pink woman’s remark that she’d just arranged Alice’s funeral echoed through her head, but the memory of what this monster had done to poor Felix—and to her and the other gym employees—drowned it out.
No.
Survival instinct be damned.
No way was she running.
“I haven’t touched your dumbass, I’m-overcompensating-for-my-tiny-dick bike. But if you don’t like where I’m standing, why don’t you come over here and fucking move me, bitch?”
His fast roll came to such an abrupt stop it was like he hit an invisible wall. “What the fuck did you just say?”
Ha. “Oh. You don’t like being called bitch? I’ve been called that my whole life, so take it from an expert. Learn to embrace the label…bitch.”
