by Violet Blaze
“Violet?” he asked me, that vague hint of a messy Southern accent in the word. “Just the one name? Did you drop what your mama gave you to name yourself after your hair?”
“Wouldn't you like to know?” I asked, playing coy, pausing at the edge of the slope that lead down to the parking lot. A sea of shining cars reflected back the streetlamps above the pavement, partially obscuring our view of the city. I ignored Dash for a moment, playing hard to get and feeling strangely like I wasn't entirely in control of this interaction anymore.
My pulse was humming in my throat, so fast and quick that when he stepped up to me and swept some loose curls away from my neck, I was afraid he'd be able to read my deception—and my sudden, unexpected need.
“You've got a bead of sweat on your neck, Miss Violet,” he said, tracing a finger along my skin and capturing a tiny bead of moisture on the tip. I felt a lake of fire develop beneath his touch, dripping through me, drowning my body in lust. It'd been … well, never since I'd felt this way about a man. “Are you nervous, sugar?”
“It's the desert; it's hot out.”
“Not anymore,” he said with this triumphant satisfaction in his voice. Here was a man that loved women—probably way too many women—and enjoyed the hell out of the chase. I'd met plenty of guys like this before, and they didn't interest me. So what was different about Dash Buchanan?
Really, he was a complete and total douche.
“Fifty degrees out and you're sweatin' up a storm.”
“It was hot inside,” I told him, crossing one arm over my chest, resting my elbow in my hand and smoking the cigarette. The smoke tickled my lungs as I breathed in the scent of an incoming storm. I'd lived in the desert my whole life; I always knew when it was about to rain. There was this crackling energy to the air, this freshness to the wind that reeked of change and clean slates. My sisters thought I was crazy because I liked to go outside and stand barefoot in the wind, listening to the sky crackle and growl with an impending thunderstorm. My favorite was when lightning would snap and fall in the distance, like an ancient god tossing his displeasure at the earth.
“Hot as hell,” Dash said, his voice low and slow and dripping. He was inviting me with every syllable to fuck him. The invitation was strangely tempting. Of course, I'd say yes to him like I had a half-dozen other men—but I wasn't going to actually do the deed.
There was no way I was fucking a dead man.
“You want to get out of here?” I asked him, dropping the cigarette to the dusty pavement and crushing it out dramatically with my thick soled boot. The tooled purple leather was impressive, even in the shadowy half-light outside of the venue. Above our heads, a ten foot sign buzzed, letters as big as my face spelling out the name of Dash's band in black. Moths flickered around us in a small cloud.
I smiled at Dash with my dark purple lipstick as I waved them away.
“I could think of a couple places we could go,” he said as he leaned in close and smiled at me, his tattoos this twisting mess of color down his arm as he raised his hand behind his head and mussed up his hair. “How much time you got, Violet?”
“You've got me until the sun comes up,” I said, but I didn't intend for this to take more than an hour. By then, Dash Buchanan would be dead.
“You've got a bike,” I said, genuinely surprised. For a man that was being hunted by an outlaw motorcycle club, it was pretty goddamn ballsy of him to ride one of his own. Then again, his father did own a multibillion-dollar motorcycle and parts manufacturing business, so why wouldn't he ride one? He probably had bodyguards by the dozen, something that I was on the lookout for as he led me to the black and purple beast behind the venue.
“Hope you're okay with a little joyride through the desert?” he asked as he handed me a helmet and I took it carefully, making sure our fingers brushed again. But hell if the sensation wasn't having as much of an effect on me as it was on him.
“I've never ridden a motorcycle before,” I lied, tugging the helmet over my hair and smiling at him.
“Bullshit,” Dash said, turning around and leaning against the bike with his muscular arms crossed over his chest. For a second there I almost panicked, thinking that he might recognize me. But if I hadn't known who he was, I never would've guessed that he was the boy that got in trouble for picking the blossoms off my mother's apricot mallow bush and giving the bouquet to me.
I hadn't seen Dash Buchanan since he was thirteen and I was nine.
With my hair, my makeup, the curvy body I'd grown into, no way would he guess that I was Adelaide Vaughn. Poor Dash. He never should've accepted my invitation. His dick was going to get him killed.
“You're all dressed for a ride—leather pants, leather boots, leather jacket. Are you sure didn't have this whole thing planned?”
I smiled when I realized he was just flirting with me.
“Are you going to be gentle for my first time?” I asked, laying it on thick. He stood up, running his tongue along his lower lip. His brown eyes oddly warm and inviting. I'm sure it was all just a whore's trick to lure women into his web, but I liked the way they crinkled at the edges when he smiled at me.
“Darlin', I will take it slow and easy”—Dash trailed a finger across my collarbone and stepped in close to me, close enough that the toes of our boots touched—“or hard and fast. Or both if we've got time.”
“Where are you taking me?” I asked, the weight of my Ruger Lady Lilac comforting beneath my jacket. I'd stashed it outside the venue, gone in to watch Dash play and retrieved it on my way out. Doubtful that I'd end up using it tonight, but it was there if I needed it.
“The Hard Sell,” he said with another slow, easy grin, like he had all the time in the world to woo me, “it's a bar just off the Strip. You heard of it?”
Yeah. I had. But I shook my head anyway.
The Hard Sell was owned by the CEO of Buchanan Bikes; it was a notorious hangout spot for his fucking cronies and the bullshit MC he ran with money instead of loyalty and dedication. They called themselves World's End MC and Xavier Buchanan was their president. If I'd seen Dash wearing one of their cuts, I'd have probably killed him already.
I glanced over my shoulder as a couple of roadies rushed by, making their way between the trailers parked near the fence and the venue.
Going to the Hard Sell was a seriously risky proposition. If anyone there recognized me—which they shouldn't—I'd be killed immediately. No, no, probably something worse than death awaited me if I got caught there.
“I was hoping we'd be going somewhere a bit more … intimate,” I said as I stepped up close to Dash and put my palms flat on his chest. The touch seemed to trigger something in him, and his lip curled, his own hands finding their way to my hips, his mouth suddenly close enough to my ear that I could feel his breath.
“Oh, I'll bet,” he said, moving even closer, putting his lips to my earlobe. “I have an apartment over the bar.”
Fuck.
Okay.
I could do this—and I wasn't just talking about the difficulties of killing a man above a bar full of hired criminals. I was technically a hired criminal, too, wasn't I? That part I could manage.
I was talking about the way Dash's touch melted my skin, made it feel like we were blurring together into one person, shifting and melding and merging.
“You look awful familiar there, Violet. Are you sure we don't know each other?”
“Don't you think you'd remember a girl like me?” I asked coyly, pulling the helmet's visor down over my eyes before Dash could look too deeply into them. The last thing I needed was for him to start putting pieces of the puzzle together. Stringing Dash along like this wasn't easy, but I consoled myself with the fact that I didn't have to do it for long.
“I suppose so,” he said with a deep, warm chuckle, grabbing a leather jacket from the seat of his bike that I hadn't noticed before. As he slung it over his shoulders and turned away, I looked for rockers—patches—on the back, but there was nothing but
worn leather. I didn't even see that obnoxious Buchanan Bikes logo, the one with the backward facing B and the skulls.
Good for Dash. Maybe he wasn't a complete tool?
I swung up onto the bike behind him, his scent overwhelming me. Dash Buchanan … he smelled like warm leather and lazy summer days, cigarettes and Scotch. I wanted to close my eyes and drink him in, let the heady masculine scent wash through me.
I settled for just closing my eyes.
But then I also had to lean in and wrap my arms around his muscular body.
Fuck.
Dash kick-started the engine with this fierce, proud purr from his machine and took off toward the security gates. He didn't even bother to slow down, confident that they'd spread wide and open for him. Please. I'm sure that's what most girls did for this guy. I used that thought to make myself feel better about what I was supposed to do, like Dash being a whore was reason enough for him to die.
What a bunch of bullshit.
We headed down the long sweeping road of the venue and into the traffic of the city, thick even at this time of night. Hell, there was always traffic in Las Vegas.
At least for right now, I didn't have to talk to Dash, didn't have to smile at him and flirt, watch his brown eyes take me in like I was a tall drink of water.
I sighed.
Layla was going to be pissed when she realized I'd disappeared from the concert. But by now there was a pretty good chance she was already drunk on mixed drinks bought for her by boys who didn't know any better—they had zero shot at Layla with my brother, Maverick around. Once, he'd caught some guy with his hands up Layla's shirt in high school and he'd beat him to a quivering pulp on the floor. I remember coming home to dark brown spatters dried on the wall in our bedroom. I remember, too, that it stank like stale urine. The kid had pissed himself in fear. And rightfully he should have.
My dad and brothers were strict as hell, old-fashioned and backwards as fuck sometimes. I loved them with all my heart, but Jesus they could get scary. I always found it sort of ironic that they let me—encouraged me—to take an accident and turn it into some kind of fucked-up career.
Thirty-six people dead because of me.
My head count was in the double digits and I was only halfway through my twenties.
I needed to get the hell away from the club before I got buried any deeper under their shit.
Dash took us to the Hard Sell in a pretty roundabout way. I couldn't figure out if he was just wanting to avoid the Strip or if he was enjoying having my body pressed up against his as much as I was. Between my thighs, my desire was liquid, the need as vibrant in my head as the color of my leather boots, like a violet starburst beckoning me to take the plunge.
The man in front of me was clearly interested and we had a history together, so why not? That's what my body, my heart, were telling me.
My brain had a different narrative: because you're going to kill him.
We pulled up to the Hard Sell, moving through the parking lot and past a sign that declared Private Parking around the back. There was a small space with the words Tenants Only painted on the cracked pavement in faded white letters. Honestly, for a billionaire's son, I'd expected Dash to have a posh penthouse apartment or something, not a parking space next to a dumpster outside of a dive bar.
“It looks a hell of a lot better on the inside,” he promised me, letting me slide off the bike first while he lit up a cigarette and watched me remove the helmet, running my fingers through my hair and trying to get it under control. I had to look the part or I'd never be able to go through with it. It was like the clothes, the makeup, the attitude, they were my uniform against my own emotions.
Truth be told, I didn't like to kill people.
But after that first time, the accident that changed my life, I had little choice. My dad and my brothers—and their brothers in the club—had done me a big favor. I felt like I owed them. They might've paid me in cash, but the more jobs I did for them, somehow the more indebted I felt.
“Let's stop by the bar first and I'll buy you a drink, Miss Violet,” Dash drawled, rising to his feet and climbing off the bike. He took the helmet and draped it over his ride. Nobody in their right mind would be stupid enough to try to steal something as dumb as a helmet from a biker bar—even one filled with bullshit posers like World's End.
“Sounds great,” I replied, trying not to love the way Dash said the words Misz Vylit. Fuck. I should've told Maverick no this time, told him the club could handle its own shit. But now I was on retainer and I had a job to do that seemed to pale in importance when the man on my right slipped his arm around my waist. I tensed up a little, worried he might find the gun beneath my jacket, but his hand curled around my hip, fingertips teasing that little ribbon of skin above my leather pants and beneath the longer of my two tank tops.
“How about I order you a One-Night Stand?” Dash asked as he reached to hold open the door for me, his gentlemanly manners strangely off-putting. I wanted him to be more of a jerk, more like the asshole who had a guitar and a bike painted to match the logo of his bullshit band. But then, he was trying to woo me and damn, he was doing a fine job.
“I thought that was the plan all along,” I purred as I stepped into the hazy darkness of the bar, the smell of booze and cigarette smoke and men washing over me. Holy hell. I'd grown up around bikers my entire life, but this place … it was something else. The walls and floor and ceiling were covered in murals and stickers and flyers; there wasn't a single spot that was left empty. To my left was the bar, this long, curved piece of metal and glass with several bartenders behind it trying to catch up with the rush. The Hard Sell was absolutely packed.
A live band played on the low stage in the corner, but after seeing Dash's show, they were less than impressive. I had to at least admit that the man could sing and put on a performance.
Dash's smile was wicked, sultry sex when I turned to look back at him. He'd found a small space in the crowd at the bar and was leaning against it, looking me up and down again like he couldn't get enough. I tried not to let the attention get to me, but for some reason … it did.
“A One-Night Stand is Liv's specialty around here,” he said, nodding his chin at the gorgeous tattooed brunette behind the counter. She was putting on a show, mixing drinks for the club whores and groupies and general idiots that thought coming to a biker bar would be a cool, fun thing to do. The men didn't mind the female gawkers so much, but the male ones? There were a couple kids at a table in the corner getting the eye from some of the older men. Surprisingly, there were a few I recognized and a nasty chill traced down my spine.
I looked away quickly, back to Dash's arduous slice of a smile.
“What's in it?” I asked as the bartender made her way over to us and leaned on the bar, her large breasts pressed together in a long enticing line that drew the eyes of the men on either side of us. Dash kept his gaze on her face when he looked over at her which shocked the hell out of me.
“That's a secret, babycakes,” she said with a magnanimous smile. “My recipe, my drink. You want one? Dash is paying.”
“Damn straight I am,” he said, turning toward her but glancing back at me, his tongue playing across his lower lip. I had a hard time not looking at his mouth which drove me completely crazy. I was not myself tonight, not at all. I had to resist the urge to run my hands down my face, tapping the toe of my leather boot against the sticker plastered cement floors beneath my feet. “A One-Night Stand for my friend here, and get me some Tennessee whiskey with water.”
“A little bit of please, Liv here and there might do you some good, Mr. Buchanan.”
“Fuck, I hate when you call me that,” Dash said, reaching into his pocket for a black leather wallet. When he opened it, I saw a massive amount of cash inside. He tossed a wad of green onto the counter and tucked the wallet away, turning his attention to me again as I watched Liv make up my drink like an artist in a studio. She didn't measure anything, counting all her pou
rs as she made a drink that looked purple-black in the bar's dim lighting. It was basically the same color as my hair when she slapped a Hard Sell napkin onto the counter and set my drink on top of it.
Ice cubes clinked as I reached out and put the tiny red straw to my lips, a sprig of something that looked like lavender was stuck into the side with a plastic stirrer in the shape of a black skull. Liv sauntered to the back bar, grabbed some Prichard's and sloshed a healthy amount into a glass tumbler for Dash, the amount of ass sticking out of the back of her leather pants almost as long as the line of cleavage she'd flashed us just before.
“Keep the change,” Dash called out when she took the hundred from the counter and tucked it into her apron. “Jesus Christ,” he said as he stood up with his drink and gestured with his chin toward the back of the building. “Ain't no tables down here, so let's head upstairs.”
“Okay,” I said, smiling at him, feeling my pulse skyrocket. I almost wanted to lie and say I was curious about the band or the slot machines in the back corner, people glued to their glittering lighted surfaces like those moths outside were glued to the establishment's flashing sign. As soon as we went up there, my job would really start. I had to convince my target that he was safe, that I was safe, that I was a sure thing, but I also had to be careful not to let things get too far.
Normally, that wasn't a problem for me, but with Dash … it felt like it could be a huge problem.
We moved through the crowd, and I noticed that people scattered for him, like he was a prince or something. I pursed my lips, but by the time he was leading me out a back entrance and up a set of stairs to the second floor, I'd schooled my expression into something more pleasant.
I sipped my drink, intending to spit it out over the railing before Dash looked back at me, but … it was delicious. And probably dangerous, too, considering the amount of alcohol in it. I drank a little more, hoping to take some of this awful edge off.