STARSTRUCK: A Dark Bad Boy Romance (The Destroyers MC)

by Zoey Parker

  “I promise you, I will protect you,” he told me seriously, his voice solemn as though he were taking a holy vow. “I will stand by you and make sure that you are safe no matter what. I won’t let anything happen to you, Abby, you have my word. But you’ve got to help me. You’ve gotta let me protect you. Won’t you let me do that?”

  I stared up into his dark eyes, mesmerized by them. I felt as though I were falling into their deep, dark pools, wrapped up in something as thick as tar and as warm and soft as a blanket. It was something I wasn’t sure I could ever get out of. Something that would trap me and keep me and damnit, I wanted to let it.

  Licking my lips, I finally nodded. “Yes, I’ll let you.”

  In that moment, all I wanted to do was reach up and kiss him. I wanted to tangle my hands in his hair and hold him against me until our bodies were so close that they were one. And I thought that maybe he was feeling that same thing—those smoldering eyes, the way they darted to my slightly parted lips—but then he swallowed heavily and nodded once. His full mouth dipped into a small smile.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Then he pulled away. I was left with a bereft feeling and at the same time like I was coming down off of one hell of a drug.

  Kade snatched up his phone and dialed Caleb’s number. It rang several times and then my uncle must have picked up because Caleb was talking. He was explaining what was going on and I winced, waiting for him to tell about the dangerous disaster that had been last night. But he didn’t. Instead, he focused on the letters and how he thought they might have been connected to the man who attacked me the other night.

  I folded my arms across my chest, waiting as he spoke. There were pauses where Uncle Caleb spoke and I couldn’t hear that, obviously, then Kade would answer again.

  “No, no name or address,” Kade said in a gruff voice. He was half turned away from me, but every so often he would look my way, his eyes a smoldering promise of what could be.

  I couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t kissed me.

  Doesn’t he want me? I wondered silently but didn’t like that thought at all, so I turned back to my coffee and waited for him to finish the conversation.

  I listened as Kade went on about the letters—and I could hear the strain in his voice. Whatever Caleb’s reaction, it was very obviously not good. Not even a little bit. Which I hadn’t expected it to be. At some point, I heard Kade say, “…she’s in the shower,” causing me to glance over at him. It was followed by a sly smile and a “Did you still want me to take the phone to her?”

  As I realized what he was saying, I felt a smile unfurl on my lips. Kade winked at me and I covered my mouth to hide a giggle. I watched him as he continued to talk to Caleb. I suddenly wanted to know what Caleb had to say to that, but not enough to actually speak to him. Kade’s smile flickered for an instant, but it was so quick that I might have imagined the whole thing.

  I watched him a while longer, then reached for my coffee again.

  They spoke for a while and I drank my coffee. It wasn’t hot enough to burn off my taste buds, but it was still plenty warm. When they were finally finished, I heard Kade’s boots on the floor as he approached me.

  He put a large, warm hand on my shoulder and when I turned to look at him my stomach did a flip-flop. I sucked in a quick breath, suddenly feeling deprived of oxygen, though that was utterly ridiculous. As I looked up at him now, I wondered what it was about him that made me want to curl up against him, to run my hands along those large, hard muscles. Why I wanted so desperately for him to kiss me and slide his tongue into my mouth.

  “I told Caleb,” he informed me, though of course I obviously already knew. His voice was deep and heady, his eyes twin dark pools. “He’s going to look into it, but I’ll have to get the letters to him.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t going to leave me?”

  No, that wasn’t exactly what he said. He had said that he would protect me against everything, but how was he going to do that if he wasn’t here with me?

  He frowned a little at that, but nodded. “I know. And I meant it. But we’ve got to find this asshole, Abby. Look, he said he’s going to call me back. We were interrupted and he still needs more info. I’ll see if someone else will pick up the letters.”

  He didn’t look wholly happy about that and it made me squirm a little. How could he already want so badly to leave? Hadn’t things shifted between us?

  But then I wondered if it wasn’t only me who had shifted. I remembered the passion of that kiss the night before and decided that, no, this was definitely not one sided. At least not entirely. He wanted me, that much I was ninety percent sure of.

  “Okay,” I told him in a small voice. “Good.”

  His eyes burned into mine and I wondered at how easily I found myself drawn to this dark, handsome man.

  Chapter Eight

  Kade

  When I called Caleb, I could see how much Abby didn’t want me to. It was written across her features, in her eyes. But I had to do it. I knew she was scared, understood that there was probably more to that, too, but it didn’t matter. The only way to make her permanently safe from this psychopath was to give Caleb all the information.

  “Hey, boss,” I’d said when he answered, trying to get up the courage because Caleb may not have been the type to kill the messenger, but he wasn’t exactly one to be thrilled with that messenger either. “I’ve got…I’ve got news.”

  “What is it, Kade? Is Abby alright?” I could hear by the cool, calm tone he used that if my answer wasn’t She’s fine, I was about to become very, very dead.

  “She’s fine,” I told him quickly. I debated telling him about last night and the incident with the man who assaulted her, but I figured it was unrelated to the letters and all that Abby was currently dealing with. That didn’t mean that the prick shouldn’t spend the next eternity burning in hell, but telling Caleb about that might throw him off the right track which was dealing with this stalker. More than that, I could guess that Abby didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Then what’s going on?”

  Already Caleb was starting to sound impatient with me and it was how I knew that he was pulling long hours. Most of them were probably related to the guy who had attacked Abby, but I was sure there was a chunk devoted to the business, too. He couldn’t close up shop just for this—though I was willing to bet he’d considered it. But in the end too many people’s livelihoods hung in the balance. He had to think of his men, too.

  “I’ve got some information on our guy,” I began, not sure how to really approach this.

  “A name? Address?”

  I shook my head, though of course he couldn’t see that, so I said aloud, “No, no name and no address.”

  “Then what have you got?” he snapped, sounding equal parts pissed and frustrated.

  I ran a hand through my hair, glancing over at Abby. She was staring at me with those big blue eyes, making me think things that I shouldn’t have been thinking. I looked away before I got too distracted. “Letters,” I said flatly, because I could feel anger boiling to the surface as I thought of what they said—and of how scared Abby truly was. Poor thing, I thought, wondering how she had kept it together for as long as she had—and how she thought she could possibly have continued to do so without telling anyone.

  “Letters?” Caleb repeated, and now he sounded genuinely confused. “What kind of letters?”

  I took a deep breath and dropped the bomb. “Letters that are threatening Abby.”

  There was a pause, then, “What do they say? How many? Do you think they’re related?” Just then, he sounded very calm, collected even, which had me a little worried. If he was snapping at me or joking with me, we were fine, but this? No, he was on the verge of blowing up and I had a feeling it was because he already knew or at the very least guessed what those letters were.

  I cleared my throat. “She has several.” More like a hundred, I thought darkly. “She’s been getting the
m…” I hesitated. Did I really want to tell him that she’d been getting them for a year and hadn’t told anyone? I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think that would go over well for Abby, so I simply said, “For a while. She said they started off like any fan mail, but they quickly digressed. He started saying specifics about events that they’d shared together, except that she swears he wasn’t there and that someone who wasn’t there couldn’t have known those details.”

  There was another pause, this one longer than the first. I heard breathing, the kind of deep, steady breaths that you took when you were either panicking or trying to tamper down a swell of intense anger.

  I could guess which of those he was working on right then.

  After a while, he spoke again. “A stalker.”

  “Yes.”

  “Abby, my niece, has a stalker.”

  “Yes.”

  There was a moment, then, “What the fuck? How long has she known about this? What the hell is going on there, Kade, goddamn it?”

  He continued to throw a litany of curses at me, yelling, and he was loud enough that I held the phone away from my ear so that I didn’t go deaf. I glanced over at Abby and found that she was thankfully staring down at her mug. I didn’t think she’d like Caleb’s reaction, though she had probably been anticipating it.

  When he’d stopped cursing, I put the phone back to my ear in time to hear him demand in a hot tone, “Put Abby on. I want to fucking talk to her.”

  I glanced again to Abby. She had stiffened, but was otherwise still looking at her coffee. I considered going over to her and letting her have the phone, but I could imagine what that would look like.

  Her eyes would be huge and watery, her full lips tugged down in a frown, her lower lip wobbling as she struggled to hold it together. And her cheeks would grow warm as she listened to her uncle tear into her for not telling him about the letters, the stalker. How awful she would feel, how she’d eventually let out a wrenching sob that would cut through my heart.

  “Sorry, she’s not here,” I finally lied to Caleb. And before he could jump on me and ask why the fuck I wasn’t with her, I added, “She’s in the shower right now.”

  Caleb cursed.

  For reasons I couldn’t say, but were probably the equivalent of having the desire to poke a sleeping bear just to see if it would come up roaring and tearing, I slyly added, “Do you still want me to take her the phone?”

  At this Abby glanced over at me and I saw her cover her mouth to hide the hiccup of giggles that managed to escape through her lips. I smiled at her and winked, like this was a shared secret or inside joke, just between us.

  It was all fun in games—until I heard Caleb’s low growl on the other end, “Don’t touch my niece, Kade. I trust you as one of my men, as family, but I won’t put up with that. Not from any of you mongrels, you hear me?”

  I sobered up instantly at his words, though I kept up a good face for Abby who was still watching me. I didn’t want her to know of Caleb’s sudden, not so veiled threat. As I instantly agreed with a “Yes, boss,” I told myself that it was for the best. I worked hard to convince myself that all this supposed chemistry was just nonsense and hormones and my desperate need to get laid. But even as I tried to tell myself that I didn’t want anything with the amazing woman sitting at that counter, staring at me with her huge blue eyes and her too baggy sweats, I couldn’t make myself believe it.

  Oh, you asshole, what are you doing to yourself? I wondered miserably, because I knew that as much as I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t thinking of starting something with her, I really had been thinking it. And I’d been wanting it.

  “I’ll deliver the letters,” I told him, then hung up the phone with a sigh.

  I didn’t like it and Abby didn’t either, but it couldn’t be helped. I had to catch this bastard before Abby got seriously hurt.

  # # #

  We spent the rest of the morning together talking about nothing in particular. I made her breakfast, which she seemed delighted by for reasons that were beyond me, even though it was only pancakes with some fruit. She had a bunch of fancy food in the fridge like caviar and a few other things that might have been cheese or baby food—either way I wasn’t interested in finding out. But pancakes were easy enough, even if I had to make them from scratch. She had all the fixings for it and I took advantage of the opportunity to do something with my hands. To keep myself busy.

  Because ever since my phone conversation with Caleb, she’d been sending me smoky looks. The kind a woman shot you at the bar because she had every intention of taking you home that night. Because she wanted something deep, dark, and dirty from you.

  Which I was usually all about providing, but circumstances were what they were with Abby. I’d been kidding myself, losing myself to her wiles and charms even though I knew it was a bad idea. But my little talk with Caleb set me straight right away. There was no uncertainty in his voice, no misunderstanding, no wishy-washy tones as he told me not to touch his niece. His little girl. His only family.

  It clenched at my heart something fierce because I now knew that I’d been walking a fine line that I’d been ready to cross. But I couldn’t do that now.

  Except that Abby kept sending me those damn fiery looks and I was at my wits’ end.

  How the hell was I supposed to turn down someone who looks like that?

  So I made pancakes.

  I piled several high on a plate for her, then slid it over with butter—which was unsalted and maybe was some low calorie alternative, I wasn’t sure—and jam and a bowl of fresh fruit. I’d been looking for the damn syrup since I started and wasn’t having an ounce of luck. Finally, I leaned on the counter toward her—which was a bad idea, because it put us closer and damnit she looked sexy even in those goddamn sweats—to ask where it was.

  “Syrup?” she repeated at me, and then laughed delightedly. The sound was so crisp, so clean and genuine, that it made me want to laugh, too. I resisted the urge, however, by mock scowling at her.

  “What?” I demanded.

  She shook her head, smiling warmly at me as she answered, “You’re lucky I have butter. And if I’d known how to make pancakes from scratch like that, I probably would have thrown out half the stuff you used in them.”

  I raised an eyebrow in question at her.

  Her smile turned sardonic and self-depreciating when she said, “You think it’s easy to look like this?” And she did some exaggerated model pose that was probably supposed to look ridiculous, but only made me look at her chest as she thrust it out and stare at those pouty lips that she pursed together.

  “Yes,” I told her simply.

  She relaxed from the pose, her smile turning soft. “Well, anyway, it’s actually a lot of hard work. I can’t go around eating pancakes all the time, you know. I’ve got to make sure I’ve got that perfect body that everyone always wants. I’ve only got a few years as a younger actress anyway, and it’ll blow up in my face if I let my weight become a problem.” She hesitated, glancing down at the fresh pancakes with a frown.

  I suddenly felt guilty for giving them to her, which was utterly ridiculous, but then she grabbed up the fork and stabbed them anyway, determinedly stuffing in a mouthful. She chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then let her eyes roll back up into her head, letting out a moan that was almost sexual.

  It made me half hard all by itself, and the long column of her neck did the rest.

  When she swallowed, she leveled her gaze at me and said, “Fuck it. I’ve earned some damn pancakes, right?” Before I could answer, she stabbed them again, viciously. “I’ll just do extra reps to work them off.”

  After she’d finished her pancakes—then ate the fruit, because she told me “It’s important to have something good for you in the mix to help balance it out”—she actually helped me clean up, which surprised the hell out of me. Then she informed me, “I’ve got to make a phone call to my agent—what a party pooper,” she said with an eye roll, “then I’ve g
ot my home workout. I cancelled the personal trainer today.”

  She frowned a little at that and I heard the unspoken words that hung in the air: Because I don’t trust anyone right now, not even the people I know.

  I wanted to reach out and comfort her, which was probably a really stupid idea, but thankfully she saved me from myself. She turned and walked away, throwing over her shoulder, “Do whatever you’d like. I’ll come back downstairs when I’m done.” Then she paused in the middle of the staircase and turned to look at me. “After all, I still have to thank you for saving me.”

  And with that, she turned and went the rest of the way upstairs without looking back. I was left with an aching hard-on and images of all of the things she could have possibly meant when she said, Thank you for saving me.

  Chapter Nine

  Abby