Though I begin to rethink that sentiment when Vlad stalks back over to where I sit, confused at the scowl on his sexy biker face. “Up. We’re out of here.”
“I can’t leave yet. Greer.”
“Were you not paying attention? That whole scene was bad. I told you Rage got away and now this asshole comes sniffing around. How much more bad you want to layer on this shitshow? Maybe we can alert the pricks who busted up your safehouse. Should we do that? Bring them here to party, too?”
“You don’t have to be a dick. I’m worried about my friend with good reason—pretty much all the reasons you just gave. No, I don’t want to be found, but I want it less for her. She was innocent.”
“Why the fuck would you want it less for her than yourself and what’s with the innocent bit?”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I can’t leave her, though. I can’t leave her unprotected.”
“I’ll put a guy on her. He’s my VP and ex-Force Recon. He can protect her.” Vlad pulls a phone from his pocket, swiping up to unlock the screen. He makes his call. Ex-Force Recon? I’m not one hundred percent sure what that even is, but I think it has something to do with the Marines. Like, a Special Forces detachment? What I do know is that is sounds impressive and probably means he’s still strong, brave and he knows how to use a gun. What choice do I have but to trust him, too? I know it’s not safe for me to be so exposed.
With my head so messed up, I’m unsure as to exactly how much time passes before this inhumanly beautiful man wearing a Horde cut walks into the emergency room. Vlad and I both stand from our seats to greet him. He’s even taller than Vlad, and I already have to look up to see his face when I’m talking to him. Military cut. Clean shaven. Holy-ever-loving-wow.
I feel a finger touching the bottom of my chin and realize it’s Vlad’s finger pushing my mouth closed. “You might want to close your mouth, sweetheart. The drool’s unsightly.”
Shoot. My face begins to heat. I can’t believe I got caught ogling his friend. “What?” I try to cover. “He’s really… tall.”
“Brother,” the tall biker greets Vlad while giving me a slow onceover.
“Sarge.” Vlad drops his hand to the small of my back. “This is Nicola.”
I notice Sarge’s eyes wander between me and Vlad’s hand as he snickers. What’s funny? What am I missing? Sarge lifts his chin to me. “Good to meet you,” he says, and yeah, that man gets laid—a lot. Whisper a girl’s name and her panties are coming off.
“Good to meet you, too,” I reply, oddly to Vlad moving me back from his friend. Is he not safe?
“I texted Caitlin.” Vlad then gets down to the reason he brought Sarge in. “She’s in back with the doctors looking after Nic’s friend Greer. We had a run-in here with Chit. I had to run him off.”
Sarge narrows his gorgeous face to an angry scowl. “What the fuck Chit doing up here?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. What I know is that we can’t leave Greer without a guard and I’ve got to get Nic out of here.”
His words are clear, but all I can think about is that dirty biker was named Chit? Really? Who chose that name?
“That bad, eh?” Sarge asks.
“He about lost his life in a waiting room.”
“Fuck, get your woman home.”
His woman? Did Sarge just seriously call me Vlad’s woman? And why isn’t Vlad correcting him? Maybe for anyone who might overhear our conversation. Another layer of protection?
“You don’t mind staying?” I ask Sarge.
“My president gives the order; I do what I need to do. My best friend asks me for help, I don’t hesitate—ever.” So Sarge is Vlad’s best friend. All right. Okay. I feel better about leaving Greer in his hands now.
“C’mon, Nic.” Vlad presses that hand he still hasn’t moved from my back a little harder to get me moving. “We need to go.”
“Okay. Thank you, Sarge, for helping.”
He nods and I can’t help but wonder how either of these men wound up in a club like the Horde. They just don’t seem anything like Chit. Then I can’t help but wonder, is Chit going to be a problem for us?
9
Vlad
I know I’ve got to get away from this woman because having her at my back, on my bike, with her arms holding me tight—Christ, every breath I breathe in the smell of her lotion, the feel of her soft skin. I want her. The fact that she needs protection means I can’t leave, but it’s more than that. She’s mine to protect.
She’s beautiful, she’s got a smart mouth, and she’s so fucking brave. I tap her hands to get her to let go once I’ve parked in front of the cabin. She smiles at me as she uses me for balance while climbing off the back. And then, because I’m a fucking glutton for punishment, I take her hand to lead her up to the door. Worse than letting me take her hand, she laces her goddamn fingers through mine. I can’t take the contact, but at the same time, I can’t pull away. Women don’t affect me like this. I give them what they need, they give me what I need, then we go our separate ways. Period.
Is this what happens when you start letting yourself get close to women in other ways? This is Frankie’s fault, right? I made friends with her and it made me vulnerable to the sneak attacks of other women.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Nic says and I startle.
“What?”
“You went somewhere else. Where’d you go? Is everything all right?”
“It’s fine, just thinking on things,” I answer, continuing to pout as I unlock the front door for us, holding it open for her to enter inside first.
“Is it that Chit guy? Because I get you with that one. He gave me a bad feeling.” She shudders exaggeratedly for effect, and god help me, she’s so fucking cute, being around her just gets harder.
“Yeah, Chit’s an asshole.” I walk over to the refrigerator to grab a bottle of water, twisting off the cap and taking a long pull, wishing it were amber and full of alcohol.
“Are you hungry? We had to leave here in such a hurry I didn’t—”
I cut her off. “I could eat.” Then I shake my head, laughing at my own stupid statement because she has no idea what I feel like feasting on at the moment.
Nicola moves to join me in the kitchen. I move over to the table because being close brings me to an edge she’s in no way prepared for. She glances at me as I walk away but doesn’t comment, instead she pulls the ingredients for sandwiches from the refrigerator. “So tell me about Chit. Is he going to be a problem for us?”
The only thing I want to think about less than bending her over this table and taking her from behind is anything to do with Chit or Rage. “I don’t think he’ll be an issue. None of us knows where Rage is, but unless he’s got a death wish, he’s not hanging around. With the exception of Chit having a lead on the man that we don’t, there’s not much he can do.”
“Tell me about the Horde… You know, what’s life like in the club? I’ve got a pretty good idea of how things work with the Lords.”
I laugh at that. “We’re not the Lords, sweetheart.”
“Then tell me who you are. Who am I dealing with? How’d you end up in the Horde?”
This bitch holds some sort of magic because the next thing I know, I’m spilling my guts. “The Horde are the Horde. We’re not vigilantes like the Lords, we’re just bad. I think you know what I mean.”
Nic walks two plates over to the table, setting one down in front of me. The other she places on a spot kitty-corner and sits. She crosses her shapely legs and watches me.
“Thanks.” I point to the sandwich, to which she responds with a gorgeous fucking smile. “My mom was killed by her boyfriend.”
She gasps. Yeah, exactly.
“He came after me, too. I was fifteen. It would’ve been self-defense, but I was so angry that I didn’t let up, even when his back was turned and the coward was running away. The judge gave me four years. When I got out, there wasn’t anything left of my old life. My grandfather left me this place
in his will. The only thing he owned outright. So I came here. The Horde was an angry club. The perfect place for an angry kid. Though once the pussies who hung around the club discovered me, I stopped being angry and became all about my dick. It worked for a lot of years, until Rage started getting us involved in shit I wasn’t okay with. You know the rest.”
When I look down at my plate because I don’t want to deal with her judgement, I’m surprised to see I’ve eaten my entire sandwich.
“Want another?” she asks.
“That’d be good.”
I watch her curvy ass sway as she walks our plates back over to the kitchen counter. Damn, I want to sink my teeth in that rounded globe right before I feast on her. I scrub my hand over my face making an extreme effort to remove those depraved thoughts from my brain. Sex is not what she needs from me. Next subject. “How’d you end up running a safehouse?”
“I don’t really want to tell you that.”
“Why not?” I ask to her back because she refuses to even peek at me over her shoulder, meticulously assembling sandwiches as if one mistake would mean the end of the world. Fuck me, that’s as troubling as it is interesting. Could she be worried about spilling her secrets to me? Because I wouldn’t repeat any of this to a goddamned soul. What happens in the cabin stays in the cabin or something like that.
She wipes her bent wrist at her eyes but from where I’m seated, I can’t tell if she’s crying or if her eyes are simply watering from slicing the onion for our sandwiches. Tears from this woman of any kind has me losing what’s left of my rational mind. With that gone, there’s nothing stopping me from going to her. No override button I can press to stay my actions.
And that’s it. I shove my chair back from the table, the scraping sound against the floor is loud enough that she should’ve at least glanced this way. When she doesn’t, I stand to stalk over to her, pressing the front of her body against the counter as I press the front of mine to her back. She gasps but not in a bad way. She doesn’t order me to back up. I take that as her agreement and wrap my arms around her waist, pressing my lips to her ear. “Why don’t you want to tell me?” I whisper there.
“Because I don’t want you to think less of me.” Think less… of her? I just told her that I killed the man who killed my mom, at fifteen.
“I can honestly say there’s nothing you can tell me that’ll make me think less of you, sweetheart.”
“You say that now.” Her voice is thick. She swallows.
Using the tip of my nose, I trail it up the skin of her neck for my mouth to find her ear again. “Go on,” I urge. That’s said in another whisper, but I have to clear my throat after. It appears she’s not the only one affected, here.
She nods, only slightly. “I went away to college. There was crap going on with my job. My classes were difficult that semester and the finals were killing me. I went to a bar with some girlfriends. Swear, I’d never done anything like it before. I just wanted to let my hair down a little, you know?”
“What didn’t you do before?”
“I met this hot guy. He bought me drinks. We spent the evening talking. My girlfriends were hooking up with guys they knew, leaving me alone. He dared me to take a walk on the wild side. I was drunk and suggested a quickie in the bathroom. He got this wicked glint in his eye that I’ll never forget and held his hand out to me.”
“Fuck,” I grumble, knowing exactly where this story is going, and she flinches.
“See,” she says, her head hanging. “Exactly what I didn’t want.”
No fucking way. I spin her so she’s in my arms looking up at me. “Hear this, Nic. I don’t think less of you. I’m pissed for you. Now tell me, what happened after he held his hand out?”
Her body melts against mine and damn does it feel good. Too good. Uncomfortably so for my dick. “I started to walk us toward the bathroom and felt a jab of a needle,” she says. “When I woke up, I was nowhere near my college campus.”
“You want to talk about what happened to you?”
“Not really. Not right now. I don’t like going back there; it leaves me in a dark mood.”
“Right, so tell me how you escaped, then.”
“One of the other girls, her family hired a private contractor. They tracked her down and liberated us. I couldn’t go back to my old life. That’d been taken away from me. What I could do is help other girls, so that’s what I set out to do. One of the men who liberated us, he put me in contact with an organization.”
“You are so fucking brave,” I whisper, unable to speak any louder and unable to look anywhere else but at her face, those deep, soulful eyes. Without second-guessing myself, I give in to the urge I’ve been fighting since I met her and bend in, brushing my lips to hers.
I close my eyes, soaking up all the goodness Nicola has to offer a man like me. She doesn’t slap me or push away but instead she takes over kissing me with a passion that I never expected from a tiny thing like her.
Nicola gives me everything in that kiss. Every thought and feeling. And because she does, I give it back.
10
Nicola
With my background, it’s not like I have a world of experience, but this kiss is the best kiss of my life. Vlad scoops me up into his arms, carrying me over to the bed, never breaking our connection. Not even when he gently sets me down and immediately sits next to me. He pulls me onto his lap, allowing me to straddle him, not caging me in, but giving me the control and I have a feeling he doesn’t give up control often.
We press harder. His soft, sweet groans mix with mine. Who is this woman willingly making out with a biker? Because she can’t be me. He runs his hand up my back, over my neck to grasp a fistful of my hair. It’s the sexiest thing a man has ever done to me. I could stay locked in his embrace with his lips pressed to mine for the next month and never grow tired. Until he tears them from mine, pressing his forehead to mine, the tips of our noses touching. He lets loose my hair to hold me again, wrapping his arms around me, our heavy breaths mixing while we wait for our heartbeats to calm down.
“Sorry,” he whispers gruffly. “I shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t you dare apologize.”
“Baby,” he grumbles again. I always thought of baby as an empty endearment. A throwaway word said patronizingly. Not now. Not from him, because his ‘baby’ says more than I think he even means it to.
I push him to lie back with his head on the pillow and I lie next to him, wrapping my arm loosely around his waist while resting my head on the pillow with my cheek pushed into the crook of his neck.
“Is this something you want?” he asks, and there’s real vulnerability in his voice.
“Is… Is it something you want or am I just a passing fascination?”
“Nic, passing fascination? Never—not once in my life—do I remember wanting a woman to take her place at my side. I never thought I’d meet a woman I wouldn’t lose interest in five minutes after fucking.”
“We haven’t fucked, Vlad. What if—”
“I don’t kiss,” he says, cutting me off.
“What?”
“I don’t kiss. Not like that. Never kissed a woman who wasn’t in the middle of taking my cock. What was the point? Now I know the point.”
“You know the point?”
“Baby,” he says again. “You’ve got to let me know if you don’t want this because otherwise, you’re mine. In my life. In my bed.”
“In your heart?” I dare ask. We’re not in love, not yet, not even close. It’s way too soon to even consider such a thing, but god help me, I want to start down that road with him. There’s not been another man to get under my skin the way he does. My hormones ratchet up to minimum DEFCON two when he walks into a room, but it’s more than that. When we first met, I couldn’t have pictured these words coming out of my mouth, but I like him. From the way he tried to ease Greer’s worries about knocking him out with a fry pan to the way he turned all protective with me in the emergency room, then
there was the way he’d opened up to me about his life before becoming a Horde. I get the feeling he hasn’t shared that with too many people, but he’d shared it with me.
“Already started digging your way in there, woman. That’s why we’re having this conversation. You keep being you, it won’t take long until you’re there. Beautiful women are a dime a dozen, but finding a woman with your strength, your compassion and loyalty, your obvious intelligence, too, it’s a rarity in my life. I’m willing to see how far we can take this thing if you are.”
“Then kiss me again,” I demand. Vlad draws in a deep breath, leaning up to meet my mouth, when we hear a noise that we shouldn’t be hearing, as in, a bike engine. I check my phone to see if I missed a call from Blood or Blue and no. He checks his phone for missed calls.
“None of my Horde brothers know about this place, or know exactly where it is.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, swallowing back the ball of fear forming in my throat.
“It means you hide—where’s the Baby Glock? I forgot to arm myself when I was racing out of the compound this morning.”
I open the drawer of the bedside table where I keep it put away and hand it off to Vlad. He clearly knows how to handle a weapon. Then he pulls me into his arms, pressing a hard kiss to my lips. “Hide, baby. Now. Whatever you hear, do not come out.”
If he has the gun, then I need something, too. Before hiding, I run to the kitchen to grab the cast iron skillet and then run to the bathroom, slamming and locking the door. With my ear pressed up against the wood, I swear I hear Vlad mumble, “I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”
My heart thumps hard enough against my ribcage to hurt. Wetness dampens my eyes while I cower, and it’s not from fear for myself. My life has been made up thus far of one mistake after another, leading me here to this moment, and I can’t let myself make another one. I can’t let Vlad face whatever’s out there without a man at his back. He might not have a man to take his back, but he has me. I look down at the skillet clutched tightly in my fists.
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