Madeline Sheehan - Unattainable

I’ve got a lot to say, so bear with me…

I want to thank my street team: Ellie, Heather, Hillary, Virginia, Courtney, Shorty, and Karinna. You girls aren’t just my cheerleaders and my support system, you are the very best friends a girl could have. Thank you for everything. What would this crazy writer do without you? I really don’t want to find out.

And to my editor, Pam Berehulke, my very favorite grammar, caps, and tenses Nazi, who takes my filthy, ellipses-ridden manuscripts, dumps them into a washbasin and, with her bar of soap and washboard in hand, scrubs the holy fuck out of them until they’re oh-so-pretty, shiny, and, most importantly, clean enough to eat off of.

And to Jovana, Pam, and Alyssa, who drop everything for me, who are always available at any hour of the day to answer all my stupid questions, and who put every bit as much energy and love into my books as I do; I got nothin’ but love for ya.

And to my friends and family, to my husband and my son, I know how much it sucks when I’m absent from the world, day after day, staring at a computer screen, immersed in the lives of my fictional characters, but I also know that you know how important that part of my life is, that I wouldn’t be me without it. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart, for accepting me and all my flaws, for watching over me and taking care of me while I knock these screaming stories from my system. And thanks for picking up all my slack as well. No one likes a dirty house.

And to my girls, my fellow authors, to Gail, Karina, Claribel, Emmy, Cindy, Syreeta, and Trevlyn. What in the fuck would I do without you? Who knows better than you the trials and tribulations? So thank you, thank you, thank you, for the hours upon hours spent listening, commiserating, complaining, shit talking, pumping each other up, planning, and plotting, thank you for all of it. Thank you for being the kindest, most caring, heart-driven women in this industry. I’m lucky to know you; I’m even luckier to have become your friend.

And to Deuce’s Babes, to all my readers, past, present and future, to the wonderful, kind, caring, funny, fun-loving women and men I’ve had the pleasure of meeting through my books, THANK YOU. What an incredible journey this has been and what an honor it is to know my words are being read by YOU. My gratitude is all yours.

Last, but not at all least, thank you to Cole “Deuce” West. Deuce and I have spent many late coffee-glugging nights together, many early bleary-eyed mornings, and many long, boring afternoons spent staring out the window, and yet I’m still every bit as in love with him as the day I met him. Actually, with each passing book, I fall that much more in love with him. He’s not an easy man to love, he makes a lot of mistakes, and he pisses me off more than he makes me smile. But at the end of the day, despite his age, he’s still a beast in bed, and really, who would I be without him? I’m glad I’ll never have to know.

Long live the Hell’s Horsemen!

“Biker Born, Biker Bred and when I die, I’ll be Biker Dead.”

All my love,

Madeline Sheehan xx

For Christina Collie

Ripper in the front,

ZZ in the back,

Dirty in the mouth.

This book is all yours…with love.

I’ll always remember the first time I laid eyes on him; the bane of my entire existence . I was eight years old and he was eleven—tall, blond, with deep brown eyes, and when he smiled…dimples.

Most importantly, he’d been sweet to me. He paid attention to me when no one else did.

“ Hey,” he said, bending down beside me, smiling. I smiled back. He was the first kid I’d seen since my mom had started bringing me to the club. He looked older than me, but only a few years or so, and he was so cute. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“ Tegen Louise Matthews,” I said, offering him the teacup I’d just snatched from the lap of my stuffed teddy bear. “You can join us,” I told him, gesturing to my circle of stuffed animals.

“ A tea party with Tegen Louise Matthews,” he said, his smile growing even wider. “I’d love to.” He settled down beside me and crossed his legs into a pretzel. “You got a nickname, Tegen?” he asked. “Or are you just plain Tegen?”

“ Just plain Tegen,” I said, lifting up my teapot and pouring him a generous amount of invisible tea. When I finished pouring my own cup, I lifted it to my lips.

“ Wait,” he said. “You forgot to cheers.”

I wrinkled up my nose. “Cheers?”

“ Yeah, with your teacup. My little sister always makes me ‘cheers’ before tea. Like this.” Lightly he clicked his plastic cup with mine. “Cheers,” he said, glancing down at his cup then looking back to me. “…Teacup,” he finished, grinning.

“ What?”

“ Teacup,” he repeated. “That’s what I’ll call you. I mean, what other nickname can you give a girl named Tegen who likes to have tea parties with teacups?” He frowned. “Unless you don’t like it?”

My eyes went wide. “No!” I cried excitedly. “I’ve never had a nickname before and I love it!”

“ Then it’s settled,” he said, holding out his free hand. “Nice to meet you, Teacup. My name is Cage.”

Despite his young age, he was the lone male figure that actively participated in my life on a regular basis from that point forward.

But eight-year-old feelings eventually turned into twelve-year-old feelings, and twelve-year-old feelings turned into fourteen-year-old feelings.

The older I grew, the more I grew to love him until I no longer looked to him as the one stable figurehead in my life, but instead loved him with an intensity that at times bordered on madness.

Love, they say, has the potential to kill a person if they aren’t careful.

I wasn’t careful. I let that love blossom uncontrollably until it was in full bloom, exploding from within me, with nowhere to go.

It wasn’t the same for him. The older he grew, the more he changed.

Gone was the sweet, caring boy he’d been, and his place…

He became the cockiest, most self-centered, self-serving, egotistical, narcissistic, and depraved motherfucker I’d ever met in my entire life.

Which, when I think back on it, is probably why I fell even more in love with him.

Girls are stupid like that. Falling in love with what they can never have—the untouchable, the seemingly larger than life, the unattainable.

However, I wasn’t alone in my stupidity.

Nearly every female that crossed Cage’s path fell immediately into a big bucket of fucking stupid. Young, old, and everything in between, it didn’t matter. The minute they saw his smile, heard his smooth-as-whiskey drawl, watched the fluid way he moved, they went instantly stupid.

As more time passed, my feelings, unreciprocated and with nowhere to go, began to fester and rot until I couldn’t take it anymore and took matters into my own hands.

And did something really, really stupid.

I bit down on my lip as my body burned, trying to adjust to his harsh entrance.

“ Fuck, you’re tight,” Cage mumbled drunkenly, pulling nearly all the way out of me. As hard as I fought it, his movements hurt and a whimper escaped me.