«Cross» by Lena Bourne

Cross: I'm the guy whose name brings fear into the hearts of even the hardest men. They call me Cross, because I've killed enough men to fill a cemetery, and I never saw any problem with that. Until a woman I hardly remember brought my eleven-year-old daughter that I didn't know existed, to my doorstep and left her for me to take care of.

At first my daughter was a complication I didn't need, but now I'll do everything I can to raise her right. I'll even stay away from her hot-as-sin guidance counselor Roxanne, who makes me feel like I'm twenty again, and not pushing forty. Which isn't to say I wouldn't show her what a real man can do with a woman like her.

Roxie: My father was the president of an outlaw MC, and until I turned twenty-one a world of bikers, mayhem, and crime was all I knew. Then a rival gang destroyed it all, killed my family and everyone I held dear, and made me the property of a brutal, ruthless man. I ran away, got an education, and haven't looked back.

Now I'm the guidance counselor at a small-town junior high school, my old life so far behind me it might as well be someone else's past, and I was happy to leave it there. But then I met Cross, the bad-boy biker father of one of my wayward students. He makes me yearn for the life I lost, crave all the excitement that used to be my everyday. Makes me want to be a bad girl again, if only for one night.

But I won't go down that road again. It doesn't lead anywhere good.

Contains mature themes.