LAWLESS.

T.M. FRAZIER.

Acknowledgements.

Thank you so much to my husband for making this dream of mine a possibility. I honestly can't tell you enough how much I love you and without you I'd never have typed the first word of my first book. Forever and ever my love. In you I've found a friend, a husband, and my soul mate. Not to mention you are a kickass dad to the most kickass baby in the world. #TEAMTLC To all the members of my TM Frazierland Facebook group, you guys are amazing and give me reason each and every day to keep typing away. You are the reasons I write, you are the people I write for. I love all of you.

To my agent Kimberly Brower, thank you for all you do for me. I appreciate you more than you could ever know. Thank you for believing in me and taking a chance on me.

To my parents, Anne & Paul, thanks for understanding that I needed to pursue this craziness and thanks for accepting my resignation. I miss seeing you guys every day and no, Dad, Matt Lauer hasn't called yet.

Thanks to my sister Cindy for reading Lawless and for cheering me on and for always telling me I can do it.

Thank you to my editor Ellie for understanding my last minute tendencies and for loving me anyway.

Thank you to Julie Vaden, my assistant, beta reader, and first and foremost, my friend. This book wouldn't exist without you and I'm not sure I would either. Love you hard.

To Monica, Rochelle, Jenny, Joanne, Bri, and all my other beta readers who read parts of Lawless completely out of order and suffered through my craziness as I loved and labored my way through Bear and Thia's story.

To the blogs, both big and small, for supporting me and cheering me on, thank you for sharing your love of my books. Thank you for bringing your love of reading to others. You are my superheroes.

To Milasy, love your face.

To Crystal, I love you. By the time you read this you might have Baby M in your arms already. I am so honored to call you my friend.

Thank you to photographer Lane Dorsey and model Josh Mario John for an amazing cover and giving me a fabulous physical concept for Bear.

Dedication.

For Logan & Charley.

For teaching me what real love is...

Note to Readers.

This is Bear's story and book three in the King series. It is recommended that you read both King and Tyrant in order to fully understand and enjoy all that goes on in Lawless. I hope you enjoy reading LAWLESS as much as I loved writing it.

-T.M.

"We're lawless my friend.

Civilians can't wrap their little fucking brains around that without getting their frilly panties in a fucking twist."

-Bear, TYRANT.

PROLOGUE.

Bear.

I was born a Bastard.

A soldier, in the lawless army of the Beach Bastards Motorcycle Club. Groomed to one day take the gavel from my old man.

Duty came before my conscience, before family, before everything.

I didn't choose the life, it chose me, and living it came with knowing, and accepting, that every morning I got up to take a piss, could be my very last day above ground.

Or, depending on my orders...someone else's last.

Being a biker, a Bastard, wasn't just in my blood. I didn't just live it.

I breathed it.

I drank it.

I fucking loved it.

It was everything.

Until it wasn't.

I don't remember the exact moment it happened, maybe after my first kill, maybe on the day I was patched in, but it happened. Motor oil, leather, violence, and a penchant for laying down enemies of the club, replaced the blood in my veins.

I became more biker than man.

And I was proud.

I never thought of it as a problem, but I also never thought there would come a day when I wouldn't be a Beach Bastard anymore.

But it came.

And I wasn't.

On the day I laid down my cut and walked out the door of the MC, I'd turned my own hourglass and set the expiration on my life.

Once a Bastard, you were always a Bastard.

Or you were dead.

They'd come for me. But the fucked up thing was that it wasn't the thought of my brothers trying to put me to ground that bothered me most, it was the uncertainty.

I knew everything about being a biker.

I didn't know shit about being a man.

I've been tortured and on the verge of death, violated for the amusement of my captors. Through it all I'd never lost that edge that kept me alive. That fight. The thing inside that makes your heart beat so fast it feels like it's going to beat its way right through your chest, and tells you that no matter the situation, you'll not only get the fuck out of it, but that you're going to burn every motherfucker alive who tried to take you down.

I've been beaten, but I'd never been broken.

Until Thia...

CHAPTER ONE.

Thia.

Ten years old...

I don't know where it all went wrong.

I never understood that saying. Because looking back on my life I can pinpoint the exact day, the exact hour, when it all changed and took a turn that no one could have predicted.

Especially me.

Three weeks away from my eleventh birthday, I had just ridden my little red bicycle the three miles to the Stop-n-Go. Dad wanted me to drop off a crate of oranges so I'd tied them to a skateboard and tied a rope from the front wheels to the seat of my bike with a rope I'd found in my dad's old boat. "Will you watch the counter, Cindy?" Emma May asked, swaying her hips from side to side, she shimmied her way over to the door, clutching her little square purse in her hand. "I'm just going to pop next door to the salon for a bit. No one will probably even come in," she added, leaning over the counter she opened the antique cash register using a series of button pushes and a slam of her fist on a spot at the bottom. She removed some cash and smiled back at me, pushing through the glass door that chimed when she opened it and again when it swung shut.

Emma May was right. She'd asked me to watch the store before and no one had ever come in.

Until that day.

It's not like I was eager to get home. Mom had started acting weird. Cleaning the floors for hours until the wood lost its shine. Talking to herself in the kitchen. Anytime I asked her about it, she acted like she didn't know what I was talking about. Dad told me that it would be okay and to just stay out of her way and give her some space.

I did what he said and stayed away as much as possible, most of the time not getting home until just after the sun set.

Watching the store was a good reason as any to prolong going home.

After an hour I got fidgety. I straightened the wall of cigarettes behind the register, turned the hot dogs on the rollers that didn't work, and tried to read a magazine, but I didn't understand what 'Seventeen Positions to Make Him Ache' even meant.

If someone was aching why didn't they just go see a doctor? Or a dentist? That's where I went when I had a toothache.

I'd given up on magazines and was leaning back on an old bar stool that creaked every time I swiveled on it. With my feet up on the counter, I turned the channel dial on the little black and white TV that was propped up on a phone book sitting on the corner of the counter. The only two channels that came in was some western one and the weather channel. Both pictures were fuzzy and the only sound coming out of the speakers was the sound of static and white noise. I tried to turn the entire thing off but nothing was working, if anything I'd only managed to make it louder. It became so loud that I didn't hear the motorcycles pull in the parking lot or the chime of the door bells against the glass.

I pulled the plug from the outlet. I was still holding the cord when I looked up into the eyes of a dark-haired stranger.

And his gun.

"Everything you've got," he ordered, pointing with his gun to the register. He was swaying from side to side and his eyes were rimmed in red.

"I don't know how..." I started, but the man interrupted.

"Just fucking do it!" he ordered, making the gun click, he hopped up so that his chest was resting on the counter and the gun was only inches from the side of my head. I slid off the stool and pushed it over to the register, climbing on it I sat back on my knees and attempted the complicated combination of buttons that Emma had used when she'd opened it.

Nothing.

"Come on! Now kid!" The man yelled, growing impatient.

"I'm trying, maybe I'm hitting it in the wrong spot." I tried again, this time hitting it more at the bottom than the top. The man came over to my side of the register. He smelt like the time my baby brother got sick in the backseat of the truck on our way to Savannah.

"You listen here you little bitch," he said, raising his gun in the air like he was going to hit me with it. I jumped off the stool and wedged myself under the counter.

The front door chimes announced the door had opened and a voice boomed through the room, rattling the display case filled with glass jars of homemade beef jerky. "What the fuck are you doing?" The voice asked. The man with the gun froze with his hand still in the air.

"I'm getting paid, motherfucker," the man slurred.

A colorful arm came across the counter and grabbed the man by the neck pulling him over the counter like he weighed no more than a bug. There was a commotion and again the bells announced the door opening and closing.

It was another few minutes before I came out of my hiding spot from under the counter, crawling back onto the barstool I leaned across just as the doors opened. In walked a blond man wearing the same type of leather vest as the man with the gun, except he wasn't wearing a shirt underneath. He had muscles you could see under his skin like the wrestlers on TV, except not as enormous, his skin was decorated with tattoos, one large one across his shoulder and down one arm. The same colorful tattoos on the arm that had just pulled away the guy with the gun.

His bright eyes were the same shade as the Maxwell's new above ground swimming pool. A deep shining blue. His sandy blond hair was slicked backwards, longer on the top and shaved on the sides. A Mohawk I think they called it in the movies. "Are you the only one here?" he asked, scanning the room, peering into all three of the little aisles.

I nodded.

"You are the one that Skid just..." he didn't finish his sentence. Leaning forward he braced his hands on the counter and took a deep breath. His colorful tattoos extended to the tops of his hands and his fingers. He wore three big silver rings on each of his hands. He had hair on his face and up until that moment, when someone talked about beards, I'd always imagined the long white wire hair growing from the chins of old and ugly wizards wearing long robes and huge blue pointed hats. This man's beard was a little darker than his hair and only an inch or so long.

He was no wizard. Or old.

Or ugly.

"You have cool hair," I said. He had cool everything. More than cool he was...

Pretty? Could a guy be pretty?

No, he wasn't pretty.

He was beautiful.

"Thank you, Darlin'," he said, leaning on the counter. He smelled like my father's truck when he was changing the oil and the lilac soap Mrs. Kitchener made from scratch every summer. "Your hair is pretty cool too." It was the first time in my life I think I blushed. My cheeks got hot and when the man noticed, he just smiled brighter and leaned in closer.