He wasn’t quite finished with me.
“Only thing you don’t know about me that means anything is the way my cock feels buried inside you and only thing I don’t know about you is how sweet you’ll feel, closed tight around me.”
Oh man.
That sweet he’d feel started for me to feel tingly.
“Snapper,” I whispered.
“And you’re not my woman?”
“I—”
“You been my woman for months and I don’t give a shit that happened when you were with another man.”
It was me shutting my mouth during this conversation.
“And you just visited that man in jail, a man that delivered a beat down that put you in the goddamned hospital,” he stated infuriatedly.
“I was warning him off me,” I explained.
He dipped the half an inch he needed for the tip of his nose to brush mine (something it did).
“Rosalie, I’ll repeat, that motherfucker is not gonna touch you. Not ever a-fuckin’-gain.”
“You good, hoss?”
Snap’s head jerked around. I looked past his shoulder. And there stood two uniformed officers who weren’t real thrilled a man in a motorcycle cut with his colors stitched to the back had a woman pinned to the railing outside a police station.
“Snapper. Chaos. This is Rosalie. The woman Bounty beat to shit. She just visited Throttle to warn him off. She’s mine. I didn’t know she was up to that shit. And we’re havin’ a discussion about how that doesn’t make me happy.”
Masculine understanding dawned in both officers’ eyes. One gave Snapper a chin lift and moved toward the front door. The other gave him a look of beleaguered male camaraderie and then he moved toward the front door.
I tracked them, losing both between Snapper’s broad shoulders, getting them back only to lose them again when the men and the coffees they were carrying disappeared inside the police station.
Did that just happen?
“Rosie,” Snapper growled.
My eyes drifted back to him.
“We need to talk,” he declared, again.
“I’m not ready for that.”
“I’m sorry, baby, but I no longer give a shit.”
Now it was me who was getting angry.
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Rosalie, you just visited fuckin’ Throttle in jail.”
“Yes, to tell him to leave me and Mom alone!” I snapped.
“Right, let me explain this to you thoroughly,” he bit back. “Communication between you and any member of Bounty, especially Throttle, is done. Over. Not fucking happening. There’s a message to deliver, Chaos delivers it. If they already haven’t learned that you’ve ceased to exist, we’ll share that with them as many times as we got to until they get it. You have nothing to fear from them because every brother who’s earned the Chaos patch will go down before they hurt you again. You don’t have to do dick to make that happen, the brotherhood will bleed themselves dry for you to make you safe. Now, are you getting me?”
“I—”
He cut me off before I could say more.
“Before you get worked up any of that shit will happen, Tack has gotten word to Web that we know they got a beef, they can’t be under any impression other than the fact we feel after what they did to you that we got a beef, but how that’s gonna work out is however it works out between brothers. Women are off limits, you’ve been claimed by Chaos, and if dick happens to you, or your mom, it isn’t gonna make it a bigger beef. It’s gonna be Chaos declaring war and they’re vulnerable, so they got this shot bein’ incarcerated to get their shit together or we’ll dismantle their charter. Now you getting me?”
“Whoa,” I whispered.
“You’re getting me,” he muttered.
“How would you even do that?” I asked curiously.
“With surgical precision, considering Tack’s already reached out to other Bounty charters’ presidents sharing Chaos and its allies will not be best pleased another woman gets caught in the crosshairs and he’s gonna expect a definitive indication from the other charters they’re frowning on Bounty’s bullshit. To say Bounty, who have never been one percenters, aren’t real thrilled Web took their shit in its current direction is an understatement. Might not stop the locals but they’d have their patches stripped, and no biker who’s earned his patch doesn’t take that seriously. They’d have to start from fresh without a single ally, which is like a newborn baby taking on a full grown bear.”
“It, uh…seems you all have this in hand,” I mumbled, and that got me the fascinating show of his fabulous lips surrounded by his blond beard twitching.
“Yeah, and if you’d had coffee with me a coupla days ago, I coulda shared a few things and saved you this trip.”
Hmm.
“You gonna have coffee with me now?” he asked.
“Um…” I darted my eyes side to side, saying, “I probably should get home. Mom doesn’t know I’m here. She went to the grocery store for her weekly huge-ass shop and since this is lasting longer than I expected, she might be back before I get home and she’s a little…” I searched for a word, “troubled about all the stuff that’s swirling around me.”
“I bet she is,” he said quietly.
“So I should go home,” I reiterated.
“When you movin’ into my place?” he asked.
“I’m under the impression I’m already moved in.”
“I mean, bodily.”
There was something about Snapper saying the word “bodily” that also made parts of me tingle.
I refused to get caught up in the tingle.
“Didn’t all you just said mean I don’t really need the fullness of the protection you and Chaos are offering me?” I asked.
“You think me or any of the brothers are leavin’ dick to chance with our women, you’d be thinkin’ wrong.”
Of course.
“Snap—”
“I know you love spending time with your mom but it’d probably help her out to know you’re doin’ better in your head that you move back into your life.”
This was probably true.
I huffed out a big sigh.
He wrapped a hand around the side of my neck, thumb extended under my chin to push it up.
It was a sweet touch and a cool move.
More tingling.
Damn.
“I’ll move in tomorrow,” I said.
“Good,” he replied.
“Or the next day,” I went on.
The look in his eyes that had turned to snowy goodness shifted back to frosty annoyance.
“Rosie, tomorrow,” he ordered. “You get in, settle in, we’ll talk.”
I huffed out another big sigh.
“Face is lookin’ good,” he muttered, reading accurately from my sigh I was giving in. “How’re your ribs?”
“Healing,” I muttered back.
“Glad to hear it, Rosie.”
The snowy goodness was back in his eyes and a different kind of goodness was in his voice.
I needed to be careful.
“I can’t believe those cops just let you keep me pinned to this railing,” I remarked.
“Cops aren’t big fans of a woman beat to shit by eight motherfuckers,” he educated me.
“No one really is,” I educated him.
“They’re also not big fans of those women waltzing up to one of the assholes who did that shit to have a futile conversation,” he shared.
“I didn’t know it was futile,” I told him.
“I did and they did and fortunately now so do you.”
I decided to shut up again.
“Colombo’s bein’ cool with you?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Baby?” he called.
“Mm?” I answered.
His thumb swept along my jaw. “Go home to your mom before I lose the fight I got goin’ with the urge to take you home with me.”
Man, I wanted to
go home with him.
No you don’t! my mind screamed. Get it together, Rosalie!
“Maybe we should have coffee, Snapper. There might be a few things you need to get straight too.”
He shook his head, his thumb now drawing circles on the hinge of my jaw that caused reciprocal circles to be felt around both my nipples, and I started kicking myself I didn’t sprint to my car the minute he told me to go home.
“Unh-unh, coffee’s off the table,” he declared. “You’re settled in, we’re havin’ dinner.”
I then shook my head. “I’m not going out to dinner with my face like this.”
“I didn’t say we were goin’ out.”
Uh-oh.
“Snap—”
“Go home.”
“Snap!”
He bent in, pressing his lips to mine.
I felt those lips and the whiskers of his beard whispering against my skin and I smelled him and I had to clench my hands not to reach out and grab him like a child reaching to grasp hold of a candy bar that was not good for them but they had to have.
It was our first kiss.
Well, kind-of kiss, it wasn’t gung ho.
Still, it was a kiss and even not gung ho, stupid, stupid Rosalie, I wanted more.
And because he was wonderful, awesome Snapper, not pushing it outside the press that ended in a soft brush of lips and whiskers, he pulled away and whispered, “Go home to your mom, Rosie.”
I nodded because that was a really good idea.
“Talk to you later,” he said.
“Right,” I replied and nearly cleared my throat but the damage was done, it had come out husky.
He grinned, swept my jaw with his thumb the other way, then stepped back.
I started to sprint to my car but stopped myself before I got in that first rush because I didn’t want him to see me doing it.
Once I made it to the bottom of the steps, though, I should have stopped myself from looking back because badass Snapper had come to the fore. He was standing at the top of the steps with his arms crossed on his chest and his eyes on my ass.
Me being with Beck, he’d been holding back.
Now that the floodgates had been opened, he wasn’t going to do that anymore.
I thought I had problems but I had a feeling I’d been tossed out of the frying pan only to land in the fire.
I should have sprinted.
I decided to skip trot like I was semi in a hurry but hoping he thought it was because I wanted to get back to Mom before she worried.
There were two good parts to me doing that. One, it got me to my car faster and two, it didn’t hurt my ribs too much so I had indication I’d be good to go soon with carting around trays full of food and beverage.
I’d hit my car, had the key in the ignition and was about to turn it on when my phone chimed with a text.
Thinking it was Mom, home to find me gone, and worried about me, I grabbed it.
It was a number I didn’t have programmed in, local, and I didn’t have to wonder who it was because the text said, You’re so fucking cute.
Snapper and I didn’t have each other’s real phone numbers.
Now, we did.
I felt instantly that life was right again after months, no…years of feeling it was all wrong.
Yes, I had problems.
Because I’d fallen in love with a biker who’d dumped me.
Then I fell in love with a biker who went outlaw and then laid the smackdown on me.
And now I was in love with a biker who knew where another club did their wet work, was threatening war against that club, but was already at war with a baddie that set his Club to breaking the biker code and working with cops in order to use another club to take that baddie out.
I might be out of one set of crosshairs (maybe).
But everybody remotely involved with Chaos was in the other.
And that scared the hell out of me.
Chapter Four
Paint
Rosalie
“This place is so cute,” Mom practically squealed.
I stood in the living room of the house Snap and Chaos moved me into.
She was not wrong.
It was cute.
Clean, cozy, cute.
And gorgeous.
It also smelled faintly of paint.
Which meant they’d painted it between Snapper’s renters moving out and them moving me in so that they could move me into a pad that was fresh and felt new.
I touched my couch, which had its back to the door and was facing a freestanding fireplace, allowing my head to move slowly around to take in the space.
Beck and I had lived in a nice apartment complex in Aurora. It had some personality but it was a modern complex, built within the last ten years. Not exactly an architectural masterpiece or having had the time to be quaint or historically appealing or having so much of its style demolished around it that it was now unusual.
This place of Snapper’s was obviously an old carriage house that sometime along the way had the mansion it had been attached to disappear.
It also had been added on to.
Giving it a sense of privacy and serenity, it was set far back from the curb, much farther back than the other houses on the block, seeing as it once sat behind the house it had served.
It now, amusingly, since it used to be the same thing, had a large two-car garage with the doors of the garage facing the side of the property so the garage looked like an extension of the little house, not a monstrosity of what was essentially storage space almost as big as the living space it had been tacked onto.
The garage was accessed through the kitchen.
We’d walked in the front door.
And the front door led to a living room that was relatively spacious, but definitely well lit with an abundance of beautiful, old-fashioned, multi-paned windows at the front and side of the house.
The walls were creamy white and had my Toulouse-Lautrec prints and other wall stuff already up on them. My flat screen had been mounted on the creamy-painted brick above the freestanding fireplace. And that fireplace was set in a wall of that brick that sat in the middle of the living room with a spiral staircase off to the side.
My furniture, that was in yellows (couch) and denims (armchair and some of the toss pillows on the couch), which I’d always thought was awesome, but had never looked like much in the pad I shared with Beck, looked amazing against the buttery-white walls and the hardwood floors (though I now needed a rug).
To the left, there was a dining area that led off from a kitchen (which meant I also needed a dining room table).
The hardwood floors stretched everywhere, including the kitchen that was open to the space entirely, didn’t even have an island or bar. But the big window at the back, the pearly-tiled backsplash, the window-fronted, milky-painted cupboards and the uninterrupted space made it seem bright, crisp and airy, but also warm and welcoming. All this juxtaposed with some sharply angled parts of the ceiling just made it interesting.
I wandered the kitchen then came out and moved between the fireplace and the spiral staircase. I saw a little alcove at the back that was somewhat roomy but mostly snug that could be a reading nook. But Chaos (or their old ladies) had set it up with my desk and laptop, making it my office.
And again, my white, sectional corner desk with its long arm and the kickass wicker rolling chair I’d found hadn’t seemed like much in Beck and my extra bedroom in our apartment, but there it looked crazy-cool.
Also, with the desk fit into the corner and down the wall, I could still fit an armchair and ottoman in there, making it a dual-purpose space, adding the little reading nook.
Some of this space was an addition, definitely the powder room I saw through an open doorway at the back.
I knew this because it jutted out past the kitchen and had French doors at the side aimed toward the corner of the jut made from mini-den and kitchen that created a little courtyard.
This w
as covered in a vine-festooned pergola. It had a wood deck and some big glossy pots, but since it was February, there was nothing much there. However, in the summer it could be a riot of flowers interspersed with the garden furniture I right then decided to buy, a little piece of outside tranquility in the heart of the city.
“Rosalie?” Mom called.
I drifted down the kind of hall formed by the wall of the kitchen and the fireplace, back through the living room, and up the spiral stairs.
I stopped right at the top.
The ceilings were low, beamed, some of them angled, all painted that creamy white.
And in a dormer sat a beautiful scroll-backed, king-size bed covered with white and yellow bedclothes.
None of that mine.
Beck and I had a queen-size bed, and from what I could tell, Chaos had cleaned out our apartment so if he ever got out of jail, he’d come back to it empty.
Except our bed.
Even as I wandered the bedroom area that covered the entire house (outside the sharp eaves that cut into the space, but even so, they made it all the more awesome), I stared at that bed until I hit the master bath that was not enormous but it did have a crazy-cool soaking tub and a double-bowled vanity.
Through that was a walk-in closet that had one wall slanted but ran the length of the house. The other wall was filled with shelves, rods and drawers. It wasn’t every woman’s fantasy closet but it was better than I’d had and would more than do the trick.
“Rosie,” Mom said softly.
She’d entered the closet with me.
My clothes were hanging there.
I opened a drawer to find my panties, closed it and stared at a shelf where my collection of enameled jewelry boxes had been arranged.
“Honeypot.”
It was a one-bedroom house, essentially.
But it had been entirely renovated and it had been that beautifully. It had a two-car garage and a huge front yard. It was in a good part of Denver. So the rent was probably, but deservedly, crazy.
What could Snap possibly have to give the renters to lure them out of here?
Mom’s hand fell on my arm and I finally looked at her.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“That’s not my bed,” I told her.
“I know,” she said carefully.
Rough Ride: A Chaos Novella Page 8