JUSTIFIED (Motorcycle Club Romance) by Brynn Bekkwith Page A

daddy would freak if he knew you were talking to Tripp.”
     
    I wiped a rogue tear from my cheek and tried to fight the wave of emotions flooding my body in that moment. I couldn’t focus on one thing. I couldn’t focus on the fact that Tripp had almost assaulted me or that Ash had just murdered him for laying a finger on me or that life as we knew it was officially over. My mind was on overload, and all I wanted to do was go back in time and do it all differently.
     
    Tripp had been eyeing me from the moment I arrived at the bonfire. His blue eyes virtually undressed me, and I was secretly proud of wearing my cute little floral sundress with the low cut top. I’d been crushing on Tripp all summer, and he’d completely ignored me until that night.
     
    “Wanna go for a walk?” he asked me after we’d been sipping frosty beers for an hour. There was something different behind those icy blue eyes of his, and I was determined to find out what it was. His thick, broad shoulders, his devious smirk, and his magnetic personality drew the girls to him like moths to flames. He was larger than life and always the life of the party.
     
    “Sure,” I replied. My heart raced at the thought of kissing him.
     
    As we walked further away from the bonfire, the air around us was ripe with tension and the summer symphony of chirping crickets.
     
    “So what took you so long to talk to me?” Tripp teased as he walked alongside me. He leaned his arm into mine, keeping his hands locked in his jeans pockets. His thick, brown boots kicked the gravel beneath him.
     
     
    “I was just waiting for you to make the move I guess,” I said, shyly. “I’ve been crushing on you all summer. You wouldn’t even look at me.”
     
    His lips curled into a devilish grin, and he stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the gravel road. “I’m lookin’ at you now.”
     
    My cheeks burned red, and I was thankful for the shade of night around us so he couldn’t see them. He placed his hands on my hips and pulled me in close, planting a kiss on my lips. We’d been talking all night, and I knew he was bound to make a move eventually.
     
    As his lips left my mouth and trailed soft kisses down my neck, his hand left my hip and tugged up the bottom hemline of my skirt. Before I had time to react, he’d tugged at my dress so hard the hemline ripped.
     
    “Tripp!” I yelled as I took a step back. “No. Not here. Not now. We can’t.”
     
    Tripp had black in his eyes, and he didn’t seem to be listening to me. The magnetic and charming blue-eyed boy I’d been talking to by the fire all night had disappeared and left a monster in his place.
     
    “You know you want it,” he replied. His opposite hand gripped my wrist, tight, and he forced me down onto the gravel. “Keep your mouth shut and do what I tell you.”
     
    I must have blacked out for a bit because the next thing I remembered was seeing Ash’s face.
     
    “Marina,” he said. “Marina, can you hear me?”
     
    My eyes fluttered open. I was so exhausted I couldn’t mutter a single word.
     
    “Who did this?” he asked. “Was it Cotton?”
     
    I licked my dry lips and parted them in an attempt to answer, but nothing came out. I simply nodded.
     
    “God damn it, mother fucker,” Ash said. His hands were on his hips, and I watched as he scanned the perimeter. “There he is. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to fucking murder him.”
     
    “No…” I managed to cough out. “Ash…”
     
    It was too late. Ash was gone. The thunder of his feet as they pounded the gravel grew more distant as he chased after Tripp.
     

CHAPTER 2
 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    “What the hell happened to you?” my father asked. It was well past midnight by the time Ash and I made it to my house.
     
    “Oh, my goodness,” my mom said. In her housedress and slippers, hair pulled back in a ponytail, and glasses on, she could see we were both in poor