by Alyssa Day
“Who the fuck are you?”
Behind him, she could see people grinning. Okay. Intimidate the outsider. Well, that was fine. She’d been the outsider a lot in her life. Never mind that this behemoth had a good foot of height and at least a hundred pounds of weight over her.
She smiled up at Bigfoot. “I’m Dr. Ryan St. Cloud. Who the fuck are you?”
He scowled down at her for a long moment, and then he threw his head back and laughed. “Good one, Doc. I’m Jenks. Welcome to the VMC. Beer?”
She glanced over at the clock on the wall, surprised. “It’s seven-thirty in the morning!”
“Right. Whiskey?”
A tall woman with short brown hair, golden-brown skin, and the muscular physique of an athlete elbowed Jenks out of the way. “She doesn’t want whiskey for breakfast, you dunderhead. Don’t give our guest the wrong impression of us.”
The Amazon held out her hand. “I’m Marisela Torres. Welcome. Coffee?”
Ryan shook her hand and smiled. “I’d love a cup of coffee. Hold the whiskey. And it’s nice to meet you both.”
Marisela flashed a gorgeous smile. “Same. The dunderhead is my husband. And you’re here with?”
A rush of wind and a chill in the air warned Ryan that Bane had arrived, so she wasn’t surprised when he put an arm around her shoulder. “She’s here with me.”
She knew that voice—or was it Voice? He was projecting his compulsion out to the entire room.
And it pissed her off.
“Maybe you could just pee on my shoe next time,” she said sweetly, moving out from beneath his arm. “I’m sure that would mark your territory.”
Bane slowly turned his head and pinned her with a slightly wide-eyed gaze, which, coming from Mr. Stone Face, must signify total shock.
Marisela burst out laughing. “Guess she told you, Boss. Now stand aside while I get the doc some coffee.”
When the woman strode off toward the bar, Ryan leaned closer to Bane to whisper in his ear. “Are they human or vampires? And you named your club the Vampire Motorcycle Club but you’ll kill me if I give away your secret?”
He casually dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “These are all humans, because having human members is a good front if anyone ever starts to get suspicious,” he murmured, his breath in her ear causing shock waves of pure lust to sizzle down her nerve endings. “And the name? The best place to hide anything is in plain sight.”
Ryan blinked. “Your brain works in fascinating and mysterious ways, doesn’t it?”
Bane didn’t respond but simply stared at her as if she were an especially intriguing puzzle he needed to work out. She shook her head and walked off to join Marisela, who reached over the polished wood and plucked a coffee pot off a warmer, pulled two mugs down from an overhead rack, and poured coffee for them both.
While Marisela did that, Ryan studied the place. It was a large, high-ceilinged room decorated in what she thought of as Ye Old English Pub. Tables with chairs were scattered about, there was a huge stone fireplace, a couple of pool tables, and two dart boards. The twenty or so people in the room were drinking coffee and sitting around in small groups, chatting. Two of the men were playing pool, and two women and a man were shooting darts.
It was the least motorcycle clubby scene she could ever have imagined.
“Not really Sons of Anarchy, is it?” Marisela said, smiling and holding a mug of coffee out to Ryan. “There’s cream and sugar there.”
“Thanks.” Ryan added both sugar and cream and then took a long sip before responding. “I guess so. I don’t know anything about motorcycle gangs—”
“Clubs.”
“I—what?”
Marisela put her mug down on a coaster on the gleaming wood surface of the bar. “Club. We’re a motorcycle club, not a gang. You’re thinking of Hell’s Angels and the scary criminals in movies, right?”
Ryan slowly nodded. “Yeah. I guess I was. But—”
“But?” Marisela’s deep brown eyes studied her.
Ryan leaned closer and spoke very quietly. “I know about the drugs. That’s actually illegal, right?”
“No. It’s heroic,” Marisela said, her smile fading. “Which you’d realize, if you weren’t a rich doctor.”
“Rich?” Ryan’s first impulse was to laugh, thinking of her massive student loan debt, but then she thought about it. It was true, she’d never had to worry about money, or food, or health care.
Her gaze involuntarily went to Bane, who was deep in discussion with Jenks and a few other club members. He glanced up at her and smiled, and the men around him fell silent with varying looks of shock on their faces.
Guess he wasn’t the type to smile much.
Or ever.
She didn’t know how to feel about that. About any of it. So she decided to ignore it.
“Maybe you’re right,” she finally said, turning back to Marisela. “What do you do when you’re not here?”
“I’m a professor at SCAD. Painting and portraits.”
“That’s wonderful! Maybe I’ve seen some of your work at one of the shows?” The Savannah College of Art and Design was an integral part of the city, and Ryan had always loved the annual film festival and attended as many of the art shows as she could.
“I had a self-portrait in the Perspectives show a couple of weeks ago,” Marisela said, suddenly looking a little shy. “I’m sure you didn’t—”
“Oh my God! That was you!” Ryan put her mug down, studying the other woman’s features. “The six-foot-long nude of you reading in the window seat? I loved that painting. You’re so talented.”
Marisela’s smile was blinding. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Not me,” Jenks called across the room, but he was grinning. “I don’t love other men looking at my beautiful naked wife.”
Bane met Ryan’s gaze and started prowling toward her, dangerously graceful. She suddenly realized that his eyes, although still beautiful, weren’t glowing anymore. He must be able to control that, to hide it from the humans?
“You love it, you Neanderthal,” Marisela told Jenks, laughing. “He kept saying, ‘That’s my wife,’ until I made him leave,” she confided to Ryan.
“He should be proud. It’s amazing, and you’re so beautiful in it. I could almost feel the sadness—”
Marisela’s eyes clouded.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Ryan stammered. “I didn’t mean to bring up—”
“No. You pour your soul into your art, and if you’re brave enough to put it out into the world, your truest wish is to make people feel when they encounter it. Thank you for telling me.” Marisela lightly touched her arm.
Bane didn’t stop his approach until he was standing only inches from Ryan. “I would not be happy if other men saw your nude body,” he growled.
Ryan blinked, speechless. This was not the kind of conversation she’d ever had in her life.
Marisela shook her head. “Peeing on shoes again, Boss?”
That snapped her out of it. “You—” She elbowed Bane in the side. Hard. “You don’t get a say in anything I do with my body, nude or otherwise.”
He leaned closer and put his cheek on the top of her head, inhaling deeply. “You smell like sunlight,” he murmured. “It makes me want to do many things with your body, naked and otherwise.”
Jenks, who’d walked over to join them, grinned at Bane. “So, you’re letting us meet your old lady?”
“Hey!” Ryan narrowed her eyes. “I’m not old!”
Most of the people in the room, many who’d been watching Ryan surreptitiously or openly, started laughing, and she was caught off guard for a second, but then she started to laugh, too.
Bane, however, didn’t. His hand shot out, and he grabbed Jenks by the shirtfront and lifted him so high into the air that the man’s shoes
barely touched the floor, as casually as if he were picking up a napkin. Then he locked his gaze on Ryan.
“He insulted you. Do you want me to kill him?”
Chapter Twenty-One
A red sheen washed over Bane’s vision, and he had to turn his head so the humans wouldn’t see it. The humans other than Ryan, who was looking at him with some concern, her lovely eyes gone dark and questioning.
She put a hand on his arm—the arm that wasn’t lifting one of his trusted club members into the air; what the fuck was happening to him?—and shook her head.
“Seems a little extreme,” she said dryly. “Maybe you could just arm wrestle.”
He released Jenks, who, luckily, took it as a great joke and started laughing. “I always knew that when you finally fell, you’d fall hard. No insult to your lady, my friend.” He clapped Bane so hard on the back with one giant hand that the blow would have knocked a human a few feet across the floor. “Been working out, huh?”
“Men. Am I right?” Marisela’s expression was wary as she flicked her gaze between Bane and Ryan. “Can’t live with them, can’t take them out back and beat some sense into them. Wait! Maybe we could…”
Ryan smiled and moved subtly to position herself between Bane and the other two. “Maybe. But other things are much more fun. Bane, are you ready to go?”
Shock froze him in place for a moment. The doctor had just placed herself between him and perceived danger—he’d been a warrior long enough to recognize the move.
She was trying to protect him.
Her instinct was to protect him from other humans, even though she knew he was a vampire.
Heat smashed through him at the realization that this small human was trying to fucking protect him. Beauty trying to protect the beast.
She was a goddess. A warrior goddess.
“Yes,” he managed to rasp out. “Yes, let’s go now. I called Mr. C from the office. He should be here now.”
Marisela tilted her head. “When did you get here? I didn’t see your car or any of your bikes when we arrived.”
“Tommy dropped us off around six,” he said, figuring none of them would have been here that early.
Marisela nodded, but her eyes had a speculative look in them that he didn’t like. She was very smart—maybe too smart. If she discovered too much about him, he’d have to compel her to forget.
Luckily, Ryan was the only human he’d ever met with total resistance to compulsion, although it did wear off after long periods of time on some people. Those were the ones he’d had to kill. He didn’t want to have to kill Marisela.
Or Jenks.
“You should bring her on one of our rides,” Jenks offered, rocking back on the heels of his boots and grinning like a fool. As usual, the big man was completely oblivious to any undercurrents in the conversation. Subtlety was not his forte. “Has he shown you, Doc? The prez has a sweet collection of rides.”
Marisela smacked her husband lightly on the side of his head. “You know Bane doesn’t ride during the day with his eyesight.”
“Oh, yeah. Hey, Doc! You can fix his eyes, right?”
“I’m not an ophthalmologist,” Ryan said, smoothly covering up the fact that she’d had no idea he’d told them his eyes were too light-sensitive for daylight. “But I can certainly see what we can figure out.”
“We should go now,” Bane said, taking her hand in his and managing not to reveal how the electricity in that simple touch flared throughout his body.
“You come back anytime, Doc,” Marisela said. “I’ll buy you a drink, and we’ll make fun of the men in our lives.”
Ryan’s smile transformed her face—what he’d stupidly thought of as her rather ordinary, everyday human face—into a picture of such beauty that Bane had no idea how every man she’d ever met wasn’t following her around, begging for her attention.
And then, just like that, the idea of such a trail of men flashed a searing arrow of rage through him.
Wrong.
He wasn’t angry. He was jealous.
Jealous?
In a daze, he nodded to the club members as he led Ryan through the room to the doorway, still holding her hand as if he had any right to do so.
Right to do so? He’d be damned if anybody could stop him from holding her hand, or holding any other part of her luscious body, and oh, sweet fuck, he was actually jealous.
Still in shock over the fierce and conflicting emotions he was feeling—about a human he’d just met—he sent his senses out ahead of them and was relieved to feel Mr. C’s solid presence and hear the purr of the limo. He led Ryan through the inner door and then, just as he put a hand on the door to the parking lot, she stopped walking. “Wait! It’s past dawn! We can’t—won’t you burn up?”
“And again you try to protect me.” He swung around and pulled her into his arms, surprising a delightful squeaking noise from her. “Who sent you to be my temptation, Dr. Ryan St. Cloud?”
Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and she licked her lips, which made his cock instantly harden. “I don’t—I don’t know what that means.”
“It means you’re my miracle, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with that,” he muttered, releasing her and taking a deep breath. “We should go before Jenks follows us out into the parking lot. He likes you.”
“I like him, too.” She caught her breath when the door opened, allowing the dawn sun to wash into the dark space, but when he didn’t immediately explode into flames, she relaxed her tight grip on his hand and followed him out of the club.
Wasting no time, Bane strode the three paces to the limo, which was waiting between neatly parked rows of Harleys, and yanked the back door open for her. Ryan, true to her stubborn nature, stopped short and shoved his shoulder. “You first, please.”
He ignored his first instinct, which was to pick her up and toss her in the damn car, and gave in. As soon as he folded his frame into the backseat, she climbed in next to him.
“Home, sir?” Mr. C said, smiling at him in the rearview mirror. “You must be getting tired.”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Hello, Mr. Cassidy,” Ryan said.
“Hello, Dr. St. Cloud. Lovely day, isn’t it?” With that, Mr. C started to whistle and then pushed the button that raised the darkened glass—sun-proofed like the windows—between the seats, something he’d never done before in the decades that he’d been driving for Bane. “Just for a bit of privacy, sir.”
“Whatever you’re doing to me, you’re clearly doing to my staff, too,” he told Ryan, shaking his head. Bit of privacy? Did the man think Bane was going to jump her in the backseat in the fifteen-minute drive to the mansion?
Actually, the jumping was a good idea, but the fifteen minutes part was just insulting.
“I was worried about you catching on fire,” Ryan said. “You need to tell me more about what being a vampire actually means. I saw that you can eat food and drink coffee. Now you can go out in the daylight. I’m guessing you don’t sparkle?”
Her lips quirked, as if she fought against smiling, so he pretended to glare at her. “Meara told us about that craze. Trust me, I’m not Edgar Cullen.”
“Edward.”
“What?” The glimmer of amusement in her eyes had distracted him into losing track of the conversation.
“It’s Edward Cullen, not Edgar. Edgar was the poet with the decidedly dark imagination.”
He watched her lips move as carefully as he’d once watched the coast from his ship for signs of English soldiers. So lush, those lips. If she’d only wrap them around his cock…
He groaned. Loudly.
“What? Did the sun hurt you after all?”
When she leaned forward in alarm, he shifted in his seat to relieve the pressure from his pants.
“No. I just—never mind. I met Poe once. Odd guy.�
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“You met Edgar Allan Poe?”
“In a bar. He was babbling on about some raven, so drunk he couldn’t stand upright. Good poet, though.”
“Creepy guy. Didn’t he marry his cousin when she was just a child?” She wrinkled her nose in a grimace.
He shrugged. “In those days—”
“No. Don’t ‘in those days’ me. Marrying a girl that young was never right.” She pointed at him, her eyes narrowed. “Don’t even try to argue this one.”
He grabbed her hand and kissed it, loving the way her eyelids fluttered at his touch. “I was going to say that in those days, people married their cousins. It was legal. I don’t think anyone knew enough about genetics to be concerned. The pharaohs used to marry their siblings, after all.”
She sat back and folded her arms. “Right. So now you’re telling me that you were around for the early days of ancient Egypt.”
“I do read books, Doctor,” he said, amused. “You’re not the only educated one in this car. Mr. C has a degree in botany, for example.”
“And you? Did you go to school?”
His amusement faded. “No. No, I was more of a school of hard knocks graduate, as you—”
“Don’t say humans!”
“As you Americans would say.”
“But—you’re not American? Your accent is, well, not Southern so much as vaguely New England boarding school, but not British.” She tilted her head and stared at him, as if a closer perusal would prove the truth of his origins.
“I was born in the British countryside, and you’ve already heard about Jane. My childhood is an ugly story I don’t care to share any more of,” he said abruptly, looking away from the trace of hurt that briefly shadowed her face. “About vampires. Some basics. We can’t bear the sun at all for the first hundred years or so. The older we get, the more…not immunity, but defense, perhaps, we have. Meara is more able to stand exposure than I am, but only for a few minutes at a time, in the early morning or late afternoon. Direct exposure to the noon sun for longer than maybe ten minutes would kill us. And, most of the time, we must sleep during the daylight hours. Just after Turning, we can’t be awake at all when the sun is up. Now, I can stay awake, but it’s really tough and it makes me weak.”