Princess. A good word for Annabelle. A sweet innocent princess captured by the enemy, relying on her white knight to save her. She didn’t realize I was dark as they come.
She was so goddamn beautiful, sitting there in the moonlight. That hair! I’d never seen anything like it: a gleaming, silken curtain of warm copper that hung right down to her mid back. I wanted to sink my fingers into it and wrap it around my fists. I wanted to stroke my hands down it and feel her naked skin beneath. And then I wanted to kiss her.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d fantasized about kissing a girl instead of just fucking her. What’s going on?!
She was looking right into my eyes, waiting to see what I’d do next. Her breathing had sped up: I knew because, out of the corner of my eye, I could see those soft breasts rising and falling. She’s scared of me. Yeah. That had to be it.
I didn’t let myself consider the alternative.
At that moment, the sudden snarl of an engine split the air. One of the Blood Spiders was coming down the alley. Thanks to the shadows, he hadn’t seen us yet, but he sure as hell would as he got closer. The pile of boxes we were behind only came up to our shoulders. They wouldn’t hide us completely unless—
I swung my legs over the bike and twisted fully around so that I was straddling it backward, facing Annabelle. Then I clapped my palm over her mouth and pushed her down.
8
Annabelle
I fell back until I was lying on the seat, Carrick’s body pressed to mine all the way from shoulder to groin. Our faces were just a few inches apart but it was dark, down behind the boxes, and his face was in shadow, unreadable. My lips worked against his palm as I panicked. What the hell is he doing?!
Then I heard the bike engine and understood. It came closer and closer, until the vibrations were rattling my teeth. My feet were off the ground but Carrick’s were firmly planted and I could feel the low throb coming up through his legs, hips and groin and passing into me, both our bodies trembling together.
And then the biker stopped. Right on the far side of the boxes that screened us, no more than six feet away.
Oh. My. God.
I lay there, absolutely motionless, afraid to even breathe. If the biker saw us or heard us, I’d be taken back to Volos and Carrick would be killed.
The two of us were pressed so tightly together, I could hear every beat of his heart. I had to breathe, so I inhaled just a little through my nose...and felt my breasts lift and press against his chest.
I felt his heart speed up.
There was a scrape of rubber against concrete as the biker put his boot down to steady his bike. I imagined him looking around, searching the darkness. He was so close, I could hear his breathing.
Carrick slowly released the pressure on my mouth, lifting his hand a millimeter at a time. But as he did it, the moon hit a break in the clouds and I got a look at his expression for the first time.
As he looked towards the cartons and the biker they hid us from, he had that same look of furious, brutal determination I’d seen in the bar. He was ready to kill to protect me. But then his palm lifted just enough that only my lips were pressed against it, and when they finally broke contact it was almost a reverse kiss. I saw his whole body tense—
And when his gaze snapped back to me, he glared at me with such scalding lust that I felt the heat plunge straight down inside and turn to slick wetness at my groin. He looked as if he wanted to rip my panties off and fuck me right there on the saddle until I was just a twitching, gasping, limp mess. And he looked furious that I was tempting him into it.
I flushed deep scarlet. But I’m not doing anything! At the same time, my whole soul seemed to lift: after years of teenage fantasies, the idea that he might actually be attracted to me made me reel.
We stared at each other in the moonlight. I’d never looked at a man so closely in my life. I could have gazed at that face for years, like some professor in a museum who spends her entire career obsessing over one painting, one statue. He was a freakin’ violent work of art.
Black hair turned almost blue by the moonlight. Skin tanned by the sun and wind as he rode. Those heavy brows and that brutal jaw: he could have been some war-painted Irish barbarian from a thousand years ago. But his face had beauty, too, in the high cheekbones and those hard-soft lips.
A metal clank from the other side of the boxes—the biker had put his bike’s kickstand down. The rustle of leather as he dismounted. Shit! He was going to look around.
The hand Carrick had taken from my mouth started to move. My eyes locked onto it as it passed above my neck...my collar bone. I swallowed. Was he going to squeeze my breast? But he passed above it, then dipped down, reached across the bike for something fixed to its side by his leg—
His bicep brushed my breast, warm skin and hard muscle sliding against my pale skin. Unbidden, I felt my nipple pucker and harden. Both of us froze and we lay there, staring into each other’s eyes. I watched that magnificent, muscled chest move with every slow, silent intake of breath...and then I felt his cock, hot and weighty, pressing higher and higher on my inner thigh as he went rock hard against me.
On the far side of the boxes, I heard the biker take a step towards us. Metal jangled—the Blood spider on his cut. He’s going to find us!
Carrick leaned fractionally to the side, straining to reach whatever he was grasping for. His arm slid across my breast. I bit my lip to keep from crying out, streamers of pleasure rippling down from my pebble-hard nipple. Apparently, my body didn’t care how much danger we were in.
I watched as Carrick started to ease his arm silently back up. When his hand reappeared, it was holding that insane shotgun I’d seen at the bar. It looked even bigger, up close, the carvings on the barrels gleaming in the moonlight. He brought it up and across me and pointed it at the stack of cartons, ready to shoot if the biker appeared around the side.
At that second, the throb of the engine was joined by another. Shit! In my fear, I grabbed for something, anything...and my hands closed on Carrick’s shoulders. He tensed, too. The odds of us getting out of there were shrinking and shrinking.
The second bike stopped alongside the first, both of them keeping their bikes idling. The vibrations strummed through us, booming in my lungs, growling through my head, making it impossible to think. I could feel myself slipping towards panic. Even if Carrick could shoot both of them, the noise would bring every Blood Spider in the area down on us. My breathing started to speed up and, the more it did, the harder it was to stay silent.
“Anything?” One of the bikers, his voice horribly close.
“I ain’t seen shit.” The other one. I heard the snap of a lighter and then he took a drag on a cigarette.
“They’re in here. I saw ‘em come in.”
“Yeah, well we’d better find them. I called the bar and Hay’s going apeshit. That psycho Volos wants his woman. Now.”
Volos. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the words, but it was too late. I could see the mask’s twisted features looming closer and closer. I felt my whole body tense, my breathing growing ragged—
And then Carrick’s warm fingers were stroking my cheek. It was clumsy, as if he wasn’t used to tenderness. When I opened my eyes, he was glancing between the bikers and me, looking completely out of his comfort zone. He looked as if he’d happily start shooting, just so he could get away from comforting me. And yet….
And yet however awkward it was, it felt really freakin’ good. I felt safe, and my breathing slowed a little.
“Fuck it,” said one of the bikers. I heard him take a last drag on his cigarette and then the smoldering butt arced over the wall of boxes. It missed my ear by an inch and hit the ground in a shower of embers. “Maybe they made it past us. Let’s check the streets. You take Roosevelt, I’ll check Heatherton. Plenty of parking lots around there they could be hiding in.”
“What if they’re still in here? They could slip out behind us.”
“We got g
uys watching the highway. If they do make it out of town, we’ll run ‘em down.”
Both of them gunned their engines. The walls of the alley boomed and shook. The roar rose...and then died away as they sped off.
Carrick slowly straightened up. After what felt like an hour of having him pressed against me, I felt suddenly cold without him there. I straightened up as well, which left us sitting face-to-face with only a few inches between us.
That conflict in his eyes again, even clearer, now. Lust...lust so powerful it made my whole skin feel like it was on fire. But anger, too. Frustration. Anger at me, that I tempted him...but anger at himself, too. He was tearing himself apart. What the hell was going on?
He looked away, glaring off into the darkness. Then he shrugged out of his leather cut and handed it to me. “Here,” he muttered. “You can’t ride around like that.”
I took it, but his hand kept its grip on the leather for a second, as if letting it go felt wrong. It hit me that the cut was something he treasured. And he was lending it to me.
“Thank you,” I said.
He released it and I slipped it on. It felt good to have some of me covered, even if my legs were still bare. And the leather was warm from his body: it was almost like he was wrapped around me, keeping me safe. It even smelled of him, a little: leather and oil and the citrus tang of his cologne.
When I looked up again, he was gazing at me with such intensity I caught my breath. Not just lust. Something else. A breeze whipped my hair across my face and I brushed it back. “What?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nothin’.” His voice was gruff, almost deliberately so. He quickly climbed off the bike and climbed on again forwards, his back to me. “I can’t get you out of here tonight,” he said. “They’re watching the highway. They could be on us before we saw them, in the dark.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see it. “So what do we do?”
He didn’t answer for a second. Then, “We’re going to have to find a motel.”
9
Carrick
I hunched over the handlebars as we rode, silent and stoic. But inside, I was unleashing a string of curses that would have made even the filthiest fuckers in the MC wince.
She liked me. I’d seen it in her eyes. Only she didn’t like me: she liked the me she knew from over a decade ago, when I was still a good guy. When I didn’t have years of club dirty work on my soul. Before he turned me into a monster.
I couldn’t take advantage of her. Oh, Jesus, I wanted to. She was into me, and she was semi-naked and grateful and we were heading to a fucking motel…. The universe was handing me her on a silver platter.
But...something was going on. Something that twisted and wrenched at me from the inside. When she’d sat there wearing my cut, with that long red hair blowing in the wind...for the first time in years, I’d wanted something more than just hearing her moan and scream my name. Something I knew I couldn’t have, anymore, not even from one of the girls who hung around the club. Certainly not from a sweet girl like Annabelle.
She made me want to be with her. She made me want to sling her on the back of my bike and head off for a long ride. A really long one: just get lost for a week or two. With sunsets and kissing and—
Jesus, what’s the matter with me?
My life had been simple. Grim, but simple. The life I’d deserved. Only now Annabelle had brought home everything that I’d been missing and it was driving me crazy. I had to get the fuck away from this girl and instead I was going to have to spend the night locked in a room with her.
So I cursed. I cursed the Blood Spiders for locking their city down so tight.
I cursed Briggs, our former president, for turning me into this monster.
I cursed myself for suddenly developing a conscience instead of just fucking her.
I even cursed Ox for listening to that message. But as soon as that entered my head, I knew it wasn’t true. However painful this was, there was no way I could have lived with myself if she’d been sold. And there was no way I was abandoning her now. I had to make sure she was safe.
They were expecting us to head for the highway so I took us the opposite way, finally stopping at a tiny village just outside Teston, little more than a gas station, a motel and a couple of stores. I asked the motel manager for a ground floor room and then wheeled my bike right inside with us, so it couldn’t be seen from the road.
As soon as the door closed, I felt the tension start to build. She looked up at me with those big eyes….
I can’t. Each beating I’d handed out had made me heavier, darker, until I was like a lead slug of chaos my MC could fire into an enemy, knowing I’d rip them apart. That was what I was good at: scaring people. Hurting them. That was all I was good for. And the last person I wanted to hurt was her.
Then it got worse. She shrugged my cut off her shoulders, folded it carefully and held it out to me. “Here. I know you want this back. Thank you.”
I looked down at it...and her. The way she was holding it, her upper arms were squeezing her breasts together in her bra, like she was offering them up to me. Sweet Jesus. Didn’t she know how gorgeous she was?
I took it. What else could I do? Tell her to cover herself, because the sight of her in her underwear was driving me insane? I grunted something that might have been thanks.
I tried to find somewhere to look that wasn’t her boobs.
I looked down. That was worse. I was suddenly staring right at her groin, eyes locked on the little triangle of black fabric that was all that stood between me and the soft, warm folds I’d felt when she was pressed up against me.
I looked up. Even worse. Now I was gazing right into her eyes, so big and innocent, so...good. People say it’s the bad girls who have all the fun but a bad girl’s bad already and where’s the fun in that? A good girl, one who’s pure as driven snow, one you can turn bad...now that’s a fantasy. And Annabelle was as good as they came.
Which was why I had to keep the hell away from her. What life would she have with me? Sewing up my wounds? Waiting to get the phone call that I’d been shot or stabbed somewhere? Getting tangled up with the MC, drawn into a world that would likely get her killed?
No. No way. She’d saved my life. Now I had to save hers...by getting her as far from me, the MC and my whole way of life as possible.
I tore my eyes angrily away from her face. Her arms. I’d look at her arms. Arms that were so soft and pale, arms that would feel fucking terrific wrapped around me on long, dark nights….
Legs. Legs were even worse. Jesus, they were so long, so perfectly shaped, firm yet feminine, legs I wanted to run my tongue all the way up. I wanted those legs wrapped around me, too, but in a whole different way….
I turned away from her. “I’m going to take a shower,” I muttered, and stormed into the tiny bathroom. I had to put some distance between the two of us before I lost control and just grabbed her.
In the shower, I tried to convince myself that I was washing because I needed it, because I’d been riding all day and had road dust in my hair and oil under my fingernails. All of which was true, but….
But I hadn’t felt like I’d needed to clean up...not until I saw her.
And I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was right there, on the other side of a thin sheet of drywall, pacing around the room, long, pale legs flashing in the light of the room’s one bulb, all dressed up like a fucking Victoria’s Secret model in underwear and heels, and all that red hair—
I was no expert but her hair color looked natural. Did that mean that, under those panties….
My cock slapped against my stomach, achingly hard. My hand moved towards it...and then my hands tightened into fists. Fuck! I was not going to start stroking myself. What was I, a teenager?
I angrily toweled off and pulled on my jockey shorts and jeans, then stomped barefoot and topless into the bedroom, steam curling around me. Annabelle was sitting on the bed and she looked up at me as I walked in. In
stantly, the tension was back. The pull was so strong, I had to physically force myself to take a step back or I would have just dived on her, pushed her down on the bed and kissed her hard and deep. Damnit! How the hell am I going to get through ‘till morning?
Just be gruff. Be surly. That’s the answer. Don’t even speak to her. Sure, it felt wrong, but it would keep me from doing something we’d both regret. I’d make myself hard and cold as fucking stone, she wouldn’t even be able to—
“Thank you.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Thank you. For saving me.” She slowly stood up. “I didn’t have a chance to say it before.”
And suddenly, all my cold stone melted into warm Jell-O, like she’d taken a laser to me. “Yeah. Well.” I looked everywhere except her face. “I owed you, didn’t I?”
“I didn’t know if you’d even remember me.”
I stared at the TV. The remote for the TV. The little dish with the packets of sugar and Sweet n’ Low. I wanted to say that when I’d heard her voice on the message, it had triggered something deep inside me. Without even having seen her, without knowing she’d turned into this beauty, I’d just known I had to save her. But I just grunted, “Yeah. Yeah, I remembered you.” I meant it to sound throwaway, but it didn’t come out like that. I wound up catching her eye at the end, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t look away. Fuck!
“They made you a member,” she said, nodding at where my cut lay, carefully folded on the bed. “What else happened? What have you been doing?”
Scaring people. Hurting people. Sometimes, killing people. “MC stuff,” I muttered at last.
Annabelle walked closer. Even in her heels, she was a little shorter than me: I had to look down into her eyes. “Thank you for getting me out of there.” She was so close now that, when she breathed, her breasts almost brushed my chest.
Outlaw's Promise Page 5