Kinsmen MC (Complete Series) Read online

  Kinsmen: The Complete Series

  Kinsmen MC

  J.C. Allen

  Contents

  Jaxson

  1. Jaxson

  2. Isabelle

  3. Jaxson

  4. Isabelle

  5. Jaxson

  6. Isabelle

  7. Jaxson

  8. Isabelle

  9. Jaxson

  10. Isabelle

  11. Jaxson

  12. Isabelle

  13. Jaxson

  14. Isabelle

  15. Jaxson

  16. Isabelle

  Epilogue

  Simon

  1. Simon

  2. Rosella

  3. Simon

  4. Rosella

  5. Simon

  6. Rosella

  7. Simon

  8. Rosella

  9. Simon

  10. Rosella

  11. Simon

  12. Rosella

  13. Simon

  14. Rosella

  15. Simon

  16. Rosella

  17. Simon

  18. Rosella

  19. Simon

  Epilogue

  Matthew

  1. Matthew

  2. Grace

  3. Matthew

  4. Grace

  5. Matthew

  6. Grace

  7. Matthew

  8. Grace

  9. Matthew

  10. Grace

  11. Matthew

  12. Grace

  13. Matthew

  14. Grace

  15. Matthew

  16. Grace

  17. Matthew

  18. Grace

  19. Matthew

  20. Grace

  21. Matthew

  22. Grace

  Epilogue

  Zeke

  1. Zeke

  2. Allison

  3. Zeke

  4. Allison

  5. Zeke

  6. Allison

  7. Zeke

  8. Allison

  9. Zeke

  10. Allison

  11. Zeke

  12. Allison

  13. Zeke

  14. Allison

  15. Zeke

  16. Allison

  17. Zeke

  18. Allison

  19. Zeke

  20. Allison

  21. Zeke

  22. Allison

  23. Zeke

  24. Allison

  Epilogue

  Also by J.C. Allen

  Jaxson

  1

  Jaxson

  The stretch of the open road was this only thing I could enjoy these days.

  The feeling of my bike riding across the asphalt, winding down the road, with only me in control of it… I wanted to have the control.

  No, I needed that control. I craved it, yearned for it, begged for it like a junkie.

  Unfortunately, that got interrupted for me when I reach the club entrance, because a life of craving and a life of excitement faded in favor of a life of haunting reality with my club—the Kinsmen.

  The Kinsmen has been in my life longer than I can remember, but after Dad passed, it’s only been haunting me every day I show up.

  I parked my bike in its usual spot in the back and kicked my leg over the bike before the engine had even shut off. Walking inside, I greeted the usual people that I saw everyday. Joe, the mechanic and “veteran” prospect; Sean, our bouncer and Sergeant-in-Arms; and Frank, the cook and occasional server when people actually order food. The club had always moonlighted as a bar and tap room, allowing all of them to also have “night jobs.”

  I walked to the back to start what I had come to do in the first place—my everyday task of pretending to work in the office before I ended up kicking back with one of my brothers. Today was different, though, because Mom walked in with her usual smile a few hours before her usual lunch time drop off—and Mom knew that oftentimes, lunch for her was early-morning breakfast for us.

  “Jaxson, I brought you some breakfast,” she said.

  Her smile widened as she set down an ordinary plastic container. I smiled back at her, still finding it hard to believe why people said I was a spitting image of her. With our same brown hair and brown eyes, I suppose they might be right, but there was a whole lot more reason to consider it slightly crazy.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  It was only just after eleven, and I already could smell that she brought me her signature biscuit recipe—and let’s just say since I had the looks of youth and exercise, I wasn’t about to wonder if I would exceed my daily calorie goal or not.

  “You’re welcome. Try not to work too hard today.”

  “You’re telling me?” I asked her, raising my brow as I looked down at her, a full foot taller than her.

  “I have the safest job in the world,” she said sarcastically.

  In the literal sense, she’s right—she worked as an emergency room nurse, and let’s just say with the club in town, she would never have a shortage of wounds and injuries she’d have to treat. In fact, she had shown up in her scrubs and leather jacket to drop off her morning biscuits.

  But in the sense of being the old lady of the club? That was even safer.

  “I’ll be back before dinner tonight though. You and your brothers should come. I haven’t seen you all together in a long time.”

  She sighed. In the past year, it was getting harder to see the light go out in her eyes a little bit every day after our father died. I didn’t want to think about the day it went out completely, but…

  “Well, sadly, we aren’t in high school anymore, Mom. We won’t be together everyday.”

  She smiled at that, but it’s one of her sad ones. It was never a good feeling to know you just disappointed Mom.

  “Fine. Just ask them.”

  We said our goodbyes, and then, just like that, she was gone.

  I was now alone in my office for the better part of the afternoon, again avoiding doing any actual work. The biscuits only kept me occupied for so long. I answered some of the phone calls from the local businesses that we worked with for support, but being a part of the community was actually the easiest part of the club. People had their misconceptions about us, but for the most part, they smartly just let us do our thing, and we didn’t cause any shit if they respected our space.

  After that, I started looking over the new prospects in a little journal I kept. It was nothing official; just notes that I kept, detailing how much I did and did not like certain people. While most prospects were good people who just needed an initiation into the rules—and a little bit of hazing—a few morons thought being a Kinsmen meant they could just wreck shit in the city. I’d be fucked if I let anyone join, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to disappoint the legend of my father. There was zero chance that I was going to be anything but zealous about this.

  That was especially true because our clubs weren’t like the others. We were of Irish origin in a small town in Minnesota, so we kind of got to make our own rules. But “our own rules” still had a certain discipline and respect to them—and as a result, I’d already had to cut about two different prospects in the last year for thinking that being in an MC meant being a jackass to everyone in the city. Not everyone is a Kinsmen.

  In fact, most people shouldn’t be, and not because we’re too tough to handle.

  It got to three pm before I even thought about calling my brothers. We all grew up together, my three brothers and I, but Simon distanced himself as we got older and then completely left the club last year when Dad died. Zeke was the youngest and still followed everyone around; that was fine for the time being, given he was only twenty one. But Matthew has been in for a while and has always been there if I ne
ed him.

  And today and any day, I knew where Matthew would be, because he was fully devoted to the club, even more so than me.

  Sure enough, I found Matthew exactly where I suspected, under the hood of his Mustang he never drove—because like the rest of us, bikes were what we knew. We might take a van for a run or a car if our bike was in the shop, but all things being equal, there was literally never a reason to not ride a bike.

  I threw a wrench at him to get his attention, which landed on the back of his jean-clad thigh. Tough guy that he was, he barely winced as he looked up.

  “Fuck off,” he said with a smile as he straightened out.

  Matthew was just as tall as me, but way beefier; we looked just about the same and were only a year apart. We got into the most trouble growing up, which was probably the least surprising part of the Kinsmen family.

  “Mom wants us to have dinner with her.”

  He rolled his eyes as hard as possible. He wiped his hands off on the rag and leaned on the hood of the car. Matthew may have been devoted to the club, but that didn’t always translate to being open with family.

  “Are we twelve?” he sighed.

  I just laughed but knew I couldn’t let him off the hook so easily.

  “Might as well be. We should go, she’s lonely. Especially after Dad.”

  I looked off past him. Silence ensued as it always does with the mention of Dad.

  Jay Kinsmen was a legend in the MC community, everyone’s hero around here. To the club, to the area, and to the far reaches of Kinsmen influence, Jay Kinsmen was a man among boys, practically a god.

  But to us, he was just our Dad.

  “Yeah, true. We should probably do whatever she wants us to do. I suppose I’ll fucking take a bed time story if needed for her.”

  Matthew weakly chuckled under his breath and scratched at his beard, which was so long it took up half his face and made him look like a fucking lumberjack on a motorcycle.

  “I’m with you there,” I said before deciding to distribute some work. “You gotta call Simon though.”

  He groaned the same way I do. Simon was… hard to deal with. Always had been, but he had only gotten worse. I didn’t know how else to describe my older brother other than in one simple word.

  Asshole.

  “I’ll call him. He’s probably at one of his sites anyway.”

  Matthew nodded to himself and got his phone out of his pocket, wiping the screen on his gray tee shirt, spotted with oil. Probably just made it worse, but fuck it, let him do it his way.

  “What are you working on out here anyway?”

  “Just tuning the engine.”

  “Is there really that much more you can do to it?” I said, circling around the car. “It seems like any more you do to it will make it fall apart.”

  “Yeah right. It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “Have a little faith in your bro—”

  He cut off to answer the phone. I briefly heard him ask Simon about dinner and then have to curse him out—probably because Simon said some stupid shit all the time. Goddamnit, Simon, for once in your life just don’t be a fucking dick to your mother.

  “Yeah, yeah, see you, uh huh, no, fuck you!”

  Matthew hung up. I couldn’t help but chuckle at them. Although Simon was kind of the douche of the family, him and Matthew actually got along pretty well growing up. Their differences in their feelings on the club had gotten in the way a bit, but there was a certain understanding that this was just how the two of them interacted.

  “Is he coming?”

  “Should be.” Matthew said.

  We’ll see how he actually does, I thought with a smirk. But at least Matthew got something out of him. Mom should be somewhat happy.

  I hung out in the garage until he finished his tinkering. We walked back in to see a few patrons at the bar, all regulars. It was an incredibly rare occurrence for someone new to show up here, so we all take notice when they do.

  And then, as if to drive the point, someone none of us recognized walked in.

  And.

  Ho.

  Ly.

  Shit.

  She sat at the end of the bar. In a place of gruff men, men without hope, and men without censors, she stuck out like a sore thumb.

  Except… she wasn’t, because something about her just made her…so…

  I couldn’t place it. I tried my damndest, but I just couldn’t. So, I just walked by and tried not to stare so that Matthew wouldn’t dog me about it. Not that that would prevent him from doing so otherwise.

  We stopped at the closest end of the bar, where Frank offered us beers. While they chatted, I took the chance to look over at her again. It might have reeked of desperation, but it wasn’t every day that we got a new girl in, let alone a new person.

  She was sitting at the far end of the bar, her striking brown hair shining under the dim lighting that’s usually unflattering over the bar. But on her, it just set her on fire. Her big, soft brown eyes blinked up at the television screen as she slowly sipped on her straw, drinking up what looked like a plain vodka cranberry. I realized I was staring, but that was only because she looked my direction was I gazed at her.

  I glanced off. At the risk of hyperbole, it was probably the most awkward thing to happen to me since high school, and in a small town, no one ever forgets the awkward things. I mean, I was the fucking son of the president of the Kinsmen, it was hard to be caught in embarrassing spots. But this—

  “Jax?”

  “Huh?”

  I brought myself back to the situation as Matthew stared at me expectantly. I had gotten caught in my head and I tried not to show it, but that was like trying not to show a towering grizzly bear that you were scared.

  “What?”

  “We need another bar night for the prospects and such.”

  I glanced at Frank, who only shrugged like it was official business and up to us. Well, shit, OK then.

  “Let’s, uh…”

  I was distracted by the scratch of a bar stool and coins clattering on the wood bar top. It’s her, the woman… and she was leaving.

  I watched her walk out the door without being able to say or do anything. Such a thing, a paralysis by fear, shouldn’t happen, not to me.

  But, well, fuck, it did.

  It wasn’t the swing in her hips or drop of her shoulders, long hair flowing down her back, although that certainly didn’t help matters. It was… it’s just something else.

  “Talk in the office.”

  Matthew nodded, and we walked through to the back, Matthew either none the wise or just not caring. We sat in a makeshift conference room with an oval table and chairs, our symbol cut over the table, a Celtic cross wrapped with skulls and a ribbon that says Kinsmen on it. The symbol was green in the center, except for the black and white on our jackets. No one who walked in here would ever mistake it for anything other than a Kinsmen office, which was exactly how I wanted it to be.

  “I don’t want them to think all we do is party.” I said. “I’m fine with a little something, but we can’t just give the impression of being a rager. That’s why we had to kick out Darts and Knuckles, remember?”

  “It’s not a party, man. It’s drinks at the bar. Pool, darts. No big deal.”

  I sighed and rubbed at my forehead. These debates never went easily because it never felt like we quite understood the other. I wanted us to be a little more serious, and Matthew wanted to be a little more playful, and no matter how hard we tried to bridge the gap, we could never quite connect.

  “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”

  “Hardass,” he said.

  “Fuck off,” I said, briefly glaring at him before we both laugh about it. “Let’s discuss some of the prospects.”

  The conversation, however, was incomplete, as we needed Zeke’s opinion. We could have done it at dinner, but Mom hated having business at the table—it was pretty much her only rule for home dinners. We could have thought of Simon, but we
knew he would probably avoid the conversation all together. Someday, brother, you’re going to join in.

  Too bad “someday” apparently isn’t on the calendar for another few years.

  Eventually, Matthew and I rode back to the house together, riding behind each other on the road. Some people honked at us on the opposite side, which sometimes was a hello and sometimes a “I hate bikers.”

  Not that I gave a shit; I was never giving up the chopper. I’ve always had the same bike, and the only thing I changed was the seat when I got taller and the handle bars. Otherwise, there was never going to be a day I wouldn’t ride—and if such a day came, I’d fucking quit the MCs forever and let someone more capable take over.

  But thoughts about the bike and the future faded in favor of something else—that girl at the bar.

  I kept having images of the mystery girl flashing in my head. I was almost glad she didn’t pay with a credit card, as I didn’t think I could have stopped myself from looking at her name. Just to have something to put with the face. Her pretty fucking perfect face.