RIDING ROUGH (Hard Leather, #1)

by Franca Storm

  I only just managed to maintain my grip on the bottle. Hastily, I pulled it from my robe and quickly fixed myself, before spinning around.

  I felt my cheeks heating with embarrassment by the time I laid eyes on the person who’d witnessed my private moment.

  Abi stood there leaning against the kitchen counter, eyeing me with amusement. “Hey.”

  “I… uh… I was overheated. The water bottles were nice and cool. It wasn’t what it looked like, I swear,” I babbled.

  She laughed and held up her hand. “Totally get it. No worries. Relax, babe.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Chill.”

  I blew out a breath. “Thank God.”

  “So, you and biker boy are finally taking an intermission. I’ve gotta give him his due… he’s got some crazy stamina.”

  I couldn’t stop the girlish giggle that came out of me. “God, yes, he does.”

  She grinned. “I’m happy for you.”

  I cocked a skeptical eyebrow.

  “For you,” she clarified. “Not for his moody ass.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Abi.”

  She blew out a breath and pushed off the counter with both hands. “All right. I know he was just freaked about that night, because you ended up in danger. Liam made sure I knew every detail of what happened.”

  “I was fine.” I cringed. “I’m sorry you got laid into.”

  “No. I was out of control.” She fluffed out her long, red hair and went on, “I never would’ve dragged you there, or gone myself if I’d known about the threat though.”

  Threat? “What are you talking about?”

  “You know, the one Liam had been going on about when he came back here to ream me out? He wanted me to come back to the clubhouse with him. But I’m not the family of a club member and I wouldn’t accept his claim on me, as he called it. So, he had to settle for stationing one of his guys outside our place for the night, instead of putting me on lockdown at the clubhouse, like Mason had done with you.”

  “What?” I fumed.

  “You didn’t know?”

  I brushed past her. “I… uh… I’ll see you later, okay?”

  “Lu Lu, do you need me?” she called after me, worriedly.

  All I could manage was a shake of my head. My thoughts were elsewhere now.

  How could he do this to me? Keep all of that from me?

  I’d really thought he was different from my brother, yet he’d acted exactly like him… and without me knowing… behind my back. It was actually so much worse!

  I threw open my bedroom door, giving it a violent kick shut behind me, ready to lay into Mason, when the sight right before my eyes brought me up short.

  He was hunched over a bunch of my half-packed boxes, clutching his gray t-shirt, his head jerked my way with a fierce, pissed expression on his face.

  “What the fuck is all this?” he demanded with a wild gesture at the boxes with his free hand.

  He was mad at me? Seriously?

  “You told me the first night I was here that they were supplies for your jewelry business. But you’ve got personal items in here. Clothing. Books. Toiletries.” His eyes narrowed. “Are you taking off?”

  “It’s complicated. I’m not getting into that right now. Not until you explain what the hell you think you were playing at locking me down in the clubhouse without even telling me!”

  His face paled. Guilty as charged then.

  “How could you?”

  “It’s complicated,” he gritted out, throwing my own words back at me.

  I shook my head with disbelief. “You’re just like him.” Hurt poured from my words.

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “Do I? You pulled exactly what he would’ve pulled.”

  “It’s what anybody would’ve done in the same situation, woman! You just can’t get your head around that, given what a stubborn-ass, immature brat you are about this!”

  “How dare you?” I screamed, taking a threatening step towards him.

  He roughly pulled his t-shirt on over his naked chest, then zipped the fly of his jeans, not at all intimidated by my aggressive move. “You need to get a fucking grip, Luce! I did what I had to do to protect you. And I didn’t tell you, cuz there was no need, as you ended up staying over with me in my bed anyway. It all worked out, so calm down.”

  “Is that what all of that was? Just a manipulation to put me under lockdown?”

  He stared at me like I was a foreign object he was seeing for the first time. And then pain took root, traversing over his facial features until it consumed them. “If that’s what you think, why are we doing this thing?”

  “You can’t blame me for asking.”

  He stepped up close and glowering down at me, told me in a low tone, “You should know me by now. Everything that happened in that bed was goddamn real.”

  “Mason, I—”

  He cleared his throat and pulled back quickly, looking away from me and back at the boxes. “What’s all that then? You taking off, or not?”

  “I’ve been wrestling with the decision for months. There’s an opportunity a couple of towns away. A boutique.”

  “Cole was the reason for you looking elsewhere to settle down?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This opportunity? Is it a good one?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Then why the indecision? What’s holding you back?”

  “My roots here. And I guess I was waiting on… you know?” I flashed him a knowing look.

  He nodded, getting that I meant something happening between the two of us one day. “Ah.” He looked away again, shoving his hands in his pockets as he muttered, “Shouldn’t let that stop you.”

  What the hell? Talk about a dismissal. It was like a punch in the gut.

  “Fine,” I snapped. “I won’t.”

  “All right. Good.”

  “Yeah, good,” I seethed. “Time for you to go.”

  He finally graced me with his eye contact. “Can’t do that. There’s a threat, remember? I need to stick close to you, step up protection detail.”

  “No.”

  “It’s not up for debate.”

  “The hell, it isn’t.”

  A flash of his eyes told me he’d graduated from extreme agitation to verging on losing his temper completely. He opened his mouth to speak then closed it again quickly, instead scrubbing his hand over his scruffy chin. I knew the only thing holding him back from an outright explosion was that innate white-knight complex he had with me. He’d never explode and lose it on me. I knew it in my bones. The extent of it would be comparable to him raising his voice.

  “Listen,” he said, blowing out a heavy sigh. “I’m gonna tell you exactly what’s going on.”

  “What?” I was shocked. He was gonna let me in on club business?

  “It’s the only way you’re gonna listen and let me protect you.”

  I folded my arms across my chest and mentally braced myself. “Okay.”

  A high-pitched beeping cut through the tense silence filling the room. It didn’t sound like a phone ringer. It certainly wasn’t mine anyway. An alarm of some sort?

  “Fuck,” Mason exclaimed, pulling his phone from the back pocket of his jeans.

  I watched him scroll through it rapidly, his eyes wide when he finally settled on something. He cursed again.

  “What was that noise?”

  “An alert I set up years ago,” he answered distractedly, not bothering to look up from it.

  A similar beeping sounded again, this one a slightly deeper tone.

  “What the fuck is happening? Jesus.” He started to move then, snatching his cut off the back of my desk chair and shrugging it on. The next thing I knew, he had his phone pressed to his ear, calling somebody.

  “Potential hostile activity. East and west access points. Mobilize meet ‘n’ greets ASAP. Good. Yeah, on my way to HQ now, Prez.”

  He hung up and turned to me. “I need to go. T
here’s potential of danger, so I can’t take you with me. Stay here until I get back. We’ll talk more then.” He strode to the door. “Okay?” he called over his shoulder.

  “Yeah.”

  With that, he burst through the door like a bat out of hell.

  What had just happened? Was it more bullshit to do with the supposed threat he’d been going on about?

  I hated being kept in the dark. It was more than that. It was the role that I was always forced into when any sort of danger cropped up. The helpless damsel in distress. It was the opposite of who I was. So, it didn’t fit and I rebelled. Unfortunately, that rebellion always made me come off as a spoiled bitch, instead of the confident woman that I was going for. It was a vicious circle, really.

  It had become clear to me that the only way to break out of it was to shatter it completely.

  In literal terms… to leave.

  To turn my back on Warlow and on them all. Even Mason.

  Because, if our fight a few moments ago had shown me anything, it was that even he would never see me any other way. Never as the strong, capable woman that I was. Never as an equal, a partner. No, just like Cole, Mason saw me as a fragile thing that needed to be protected.

  I eyed one of my suitcases in the corner of the room.

  Things were suddenly all too clear.

  13

  ~Mason~

  Our rapid steps thundered down the corridor, leaving a trail of mud and God only knew what else in their wake. It was pissing down outside. It had been pretty much since the moment I’d left Luce’s place almost an hour ago. I’d switched to my leather jacket once I’d made it to the clubhouse—a great rain repellant. But the rest of me was drenched and caked in mud from what I’d had to deal with. Not to mention the blood staining both my clothing and my skin. Yeah, I was a fucking mess. We all were.

  I eyed Liam beside me. He was barking orders into his cell at our Road Captain, Van. Relaying what we’d discussed with Prez just before we’d left to deal with the near-security breaches at the east and west borders. Thanks to the systems I had in place, we had a ten-minute warning in place, so we’d stopped the bastards before they’d made it onto Warlow territory.

  They were Nik Stone’s men. A little persuasion from me of one of the guys at the east border and enacted by Tank at the west border told us that those attacks were intended as distractions from Stone’s plan to intercept Cole’s return with Natasha along the south route into Warlow. So far, Van and a team we’d sent out with him had discovered that Stone had stationed his guys every ten miles along that route. We’d had them working on taking out the enemy and Liam was currently trying to get confirmation that they’d all been taken out. That Cole would be able to get through unharmed.

  Something was still nagging at me, though.

  The north border had been left untouched. Why hadn’t Stone tried anything there? Of course, we were going to check it out. It was where we were headed next, once we checked in on the girls and Liam drove them to the clubhouse for protection until all of this was over and done with. But why the delay so far? It was unnerving.

  “All right,” Liam said, pocketing his phone, as we reached the girls’ apartment door. “Van says he’s got all the hostiles.”

  I nodded. “ETA on Cole’s arrival?” Van was Road Captain. He knew all the routes in and around Warlow for miles, like the back of his hand. And Prez had told us Cole’s departure time and the circumventing route the asshole had taken to avoid being tailed by the Strikers MC.

  “Twenty minutes, or so, he says.”

  “Okay. Let’s get the girls.”

  Liam rapped on the door, real aggressively. No wonder he was having so many problems trying to win Abi over, if that was how he handled things with her. He needed to tone it down.

  The door was ripped open suddenly, and a shrill voice assaulted us. “What the fuck are you playing at?” Abi stood there, her arm a barrier between the door and the inside of the apartment. “Next time, why don’t you just knock it down, huh, you animal? It sounded like you were almost there anyway. I heard the wood cracking.”

  “Drama queen as usual,” Liam muttered. “We don’t have time for that. There’s a situation.”

  Her attitude shifted so swiftly, it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d given herself emotional whiplash. Her eyes went wild as they roamed over us frantically, no doubt finally noticing the state we were in. She stepped back from the door, her body trembling in fear and murmuring something about blood. Great. She was slipping into shock. Typical outsider reaction.

  I’d hoped Luce would’ve answered the door, then we wouldn’t have had to deal with any of this. She was hardened to this sort of thing. Growing up on the streets we’d seen a lot. She knew how to handle herself and she was fucking impressive while doing it too.

  “Fuck,” I grumbled. “We don’t have time.”

  “All right. Give her a break.” He wrapped his arms around her and led her into the apartment, murmuring words of comfort to her, trying to bring her back into focus.

  “Where’s Luce?” I demanded, striding over. It was strange that she hadn’t come to the door by now.

  “Tone it the fuck down, Mason!” Liam hissed at me, easing Abi onto the couch. “You wanna get outta here fast, then let me get through to her without you scaring the shit outta her.”

  Fine. He was the guy who knew what he was doing when it came to that after all. I sucked in a breath and told him, “I need to know where Luce is. We saw her bike and her Jeep outside, but there’s no sign of her here. Ask her gently for me, okay?”

  He nodded and went about trying to get the intel. Meanwhile, I paced up and down beside them like a caged beast.

  It was taking too long and I didn’t trust myself to keep my mouth shut and not to upset Abi. I could barely keep my aggression leashed, cuz I was so worked up. So, I strode over to Luce’s room. I tried the doorknob, only to find that the thing was locked. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to force it open.

  Where the hell was she? I’d asked her to wait here for me. Had she purposely done the opposite, cuz we’d had a fight? If that was the case, it was extremely immature. And right now it was causing problems and a delay to our plans in the midst of a dangerous situation. I wanted to believe she wouldn’t stoop to that level of stupidity and immaturity. She knew better than that. Something else had to be going on. I had to believe that about my girl.

  “Mason.”

  I spun around to see Liam jogging up to me.

  The look in his eyes sent a chill down my spine. I had to clear my throat to force the words out of my mouth. “Where is she?”

  “She’s gone, brother.”

  ***

  Fucking woman was too smart for her own good.

  And too street-smart as well.

  Switching out her Jeep for Abi’s brand new pickup truck, which she knew hadn’t been tagged on my security system yet was a genius move. It meant it wouldn’t be flagged leaving Warlow’s borders, so she wouldn’t be flagged leaving Warlow as long as she kept her face hidden when she passed by my cameras.

  “Jesus,” I cursed as my front wheel lost traction on the mud-slicked back road.

  Before I’d blown out of Luce and Abi’s place, Liam had asked me if I’d had a death wish by intending to head down the North Road on my Harley in the middle of a storm. None of us ever risked it. It was considered a suicide mission.

  The plan for securing the Northern border had been to wait for the transport trucks to arrive from the clubhouse. But now, knowing Luce had headed in that direction, I’d revised it and gone on ahead.

  The risks to me were the least of my concerns. Even the fucking ache in my gut that I just couldn’t seem to get rid of had to take a backseat. That hurt knowing that she’d actually left me. Sure, I’d basically pushed her through the door, told her to go. Cuz I’d made a promise to myself that I’d never hold her back. It didn’t mean that a part of me hoped that she could do what she needed to do
, be who she needed to be while also being by my side here in Warlow. Guess I couldn’t have been more fucking wrong.

  But all of that paled in comparison to the terror that currently had me in a boa-constrictor-like hold. The danger she’d gotten herself into. Was she in a ditch, cuz of the storm? Hurt? Needing medical attention? Had the Strikers touched her, messed with her? Was she still breathing? It was a real bad sign that she hadn’t answered my half a dozen calls before I’d climbed onto my bike earlier.

  Jesus Christ. I had to keep my thoughts off of her. Stay focused. If I was gonna help her and do my job for the club, I needed to have my head in the game and stay alive. It was one of the assets I was known for—until she’d come into the picture as my girl.

  I managed to get a grip and hold the bike steady through the storm.

  Until I spotted Abi’s truck in a ditch, just over the official border. The strange thing was, it was facing towards town, not headed out of town. I tabled that thought and roared towards it, straining through the heavy downpour to see what the fuck was going on. To see any sign of her.

  A sudden sharp flash of light caught my eye. Over and over it flashed. Not right in my eye line though. Like it was purposely being careful not to blind me as I rode. Knowing exactly how to send a rider a safe signal.

  It had to be another rider.

  I pulled off to the side of the road, a few feet back from Abi’s truck, just to be safe, cuz I didn’t know what I was walking into. Same with the flashing signal. Ripping off my helmet and hanging it off the handlebars, I swung my leg over the bike. Drawing my gun, I strode cautiously towards the light.

  “Mason!”

  Was I imagining things through the reverberating downpour? Imagining what I wanted to hear so desperately?

  “Put that fucking thing away, you idiot! We might be in a fight, but that’s a little overkill, don’t you think?”

  Definitely her. Nobody else would dare to bust my balls.

  I holstered my piece. And then I ran, sprinting for the light. Visibility was so poor that I couldn’t make her out until I was about two feet away. Standing there, a flashlight in hand. She was drenched, looking like a drowned rat, her black leather jacket zipped up to her chin and a pair of blue jeans stuck to her legs. She was wearing her motorcycle boots, so at least they’d be keeping her feet protected.