Her head shot up at that. "What for?"
"For whatever we fought about." He stared at her lush pink lips until she blushed deeper and ran her tongue over them. "I'm sorry for something else, too."
"What?" Her lips were wet and luscious where she'd licked them.
"You're so mad at me, I didn't even get a good morning kiss."
"Oh, well … you're not really well enough…" She ran a hand through her hair making a mess of it. He bet she looked exactly like that when they made love. Damn, he was a lucky man.
He spooned into the oatmeal, so she'd stay, trying not to gag. He gulped orange juice to help it down. "Talk to me," he said. "Take my mind off this stuff."
"Talk to you…"
"What do I do? What do you do? How did we meet? Basic stuff. I'm trying to figure out who I am."
"Oh. I keep forgetting I know more about you than you know about yourself. Well, let's see. You're a member of the Hog Squad."
The spoon hit the oatmeal with a wet slap. "The what?"
"It's a motorcycle, um, club."
He was getting a bad feeling in his gut. "You mean a gang?"
She nodded.
"I'm a gang member?"
"Yes."
It didn't sit well, but he'd think about that later. "What do you do?"
"I'm unemployed. I'm spending the summer with my great-aunt until I decide what I want to do. I was working as a publicist in LA but I … got tired of it."
There was a story there, but he'd pursue that later as well. Right now he wanted to know what a woman like her was doing with a loser like him, though he was pretty certain it was the animal attraction thrumming between them that was responsible. He didn't care who or what she was. He wanted her. No wonder images of their love life were the single thing his mind had brought with him from the accident.
Having scraped his bowl clean and swallowed the last of the juice, he pushed the tray away and grinned at her. "Doesn't sound like we have a thing in common."
She rose and came toward him, presumably for the tray. "Not really."
"The sex must sure be hot, then."
She looked at him and her mouth opened and closed once, then twice. "You'd be better off using your energy getting your health back." She reached for the tray, then paused, head lifted, and turned to the window. He heard it too. The ominous sound of a herd of small engines getting louder by the second.
Motorcycles.
A gang of them.
He kept his ears cocked. Nell had her face pressed to the window. As he'd feared and dreaded, the engines changed timbre and one by one fell quiet outside. Nell glanced at him, a worried frown in her eyes. "I don't want your … associates here bothering Gertie."
He nodded, thinking he didn't want them here either. "They know about us?"
"No."
In spite of the knot in his stomach, he forced himself to remain calm. A fist banged on the front door and Nell flinched then moved toward the bedroom door.
"Let Gertie answer it," he ordered. "You stay here."
She seemed about to argue, but he knew his instincts were right. "Trust me," he said.
After a strained moment, she nodded and moved back to the bedside. He had an odd feeling she was standing between him and the door in a bid to protect him, which made him smile and reach out to pull her close.
They heard Gertie's voice, and it was none too polite, then the thud of boots coming up the stairs. Nell shuddered and, without thinking why, he pulled her off balance so she sprawled on the bed beside him.
"What are you—" Her furious words were cut off by a louder voice.
"Wes, buddy. What's happening, dude?"
A massive bald man in a leather vest, chaps, and boots clomped into the room. With him were three others. They shuffled in and said, "Hey, man," then left the talking to baldy, who was clearly the leader.
"Hey," said Wes, his arm tightening around Nell as she tried to wriggle out of his grasp.
"You didn't call home," Baldy said with a grin that did nothing to hide the cold anger in his pale blue eyes.
"He's got amnesia. He doesn't know who he is," Nell explained in a firm tone at odds with the trembling he felt running through her.
"Looks like he knows who you are fine," the massive man ran his eyes up and down Nell's body as though they were his filthy hands.
Anger simmered in the pit of Wes's belly. "Nell's my lady," he said, putting a slight emphasis on "my" just to make his position clear.
"Thought you had amnesia."
"Some things you don't forget."
After a tense moment, Baldy laughed. "Gals down at the roadhouse are going to be disappointed to hear you got a regular squeeze. Kept her real quiet, didn't you?"
"That's right. I don't like sharing." To make his proprietary claim clear, he slipped a hand under her shirt, holding her so his thumb rubbed the underside of her breast. Warm and firm, her flesh delighted him. He caressed her both to reassure Nell and to place a KEEP OFF sign on her body, just so his buddies didn't get any ideas.
She stiffened for a moment, then relaxed, snuggling up against him. He stared into her green eyes and felt the warmth build. "I was just reminding Nell she forgot to give me a good morning kiss," he said, then dipped his head and took her mouth.
His hair fell forward to provide a scanty privacy screen while his lips played over hers. Desire punched through his system as he tasted her, his arms tightening to bring her in closer. He wanted to delve in and continue the love play, but he never forgot his audience. He intended to stake his claim, not get them so turned on they gave these losers a peep show, so he dragged his mouth away from hers, winking down into her desire-clouded gaze then turning back to his visitors.
"Haven't forgotten old Louie, have you?" the bald man asked.
"Who's Louie?"
There was a short burst of laughter, quickly stifled, from the henchmen. "I'm Louie. I need to talk to you. Alone."
He didn't like the way Nell was being eyed by the other bikers so he shook his head. "She stays."
Louie came forward. "You have something that's mine. You better get your memory back, fast. I'll be watching you."
He strode for the door and Wes stopped him. "How did you know I was here?"
Louie snorted. "It's a small town. News travels fast. I'll be back in a week. You better have my stuff."
Chapter Three
Nell scooted out of his arms and off the bed the second the front door slammed. She went to the window and he watched her watch their unwelcome visitors leave in a roar of engines.
"Do you have any idea what stuff Louie was talking about?" he asked her.
She shook her head.
So far the knowledge he had about himself wasn't immensely reassuring. He was a biker in a gang and he didn't think the "stuff" Louie referred to was cotton candy.
Damn. How did a guy like him ever get an uptown girl like Nell to look at him twice? "How did we meet?" he asked her.
She smiled faintly. "You dropped by one day while I was in the garden and … one thing led to another."
He let his gaze roam her body, wishing his memory would give him a picture of her naked. What color were her nipples? Did they crinkle when she was aroused? The milky skin of her throat and collarbone had intrigued him while he was kissing her. Was her skin as pale all over?
He wanted to remember with a fierceness that made him flinch.
"What's the matter?"
"I'm trying to remember how you look naked."
She rolled her eyes but her pebbling nipples gave her away. "You must be feeling better."
"Well enough to get out of bed," he insisted even as she protested. He couldn't laze around while big guys in leather were threatening him and eyeing his girl.
He made it to his feet and swayed. She rushed forward and, even though his head had cleared, he let throw her arms around him and prop him up. He was naked but for cotton briefs so he felt the rub of her silky shirt against his naked torso. Her
hands were small but strong as she clutched at his back. Her breath stirred the hair on his chest and where her legs were bare below her shorts, they rubbed against his own.
He rested his chin on her head, wondering if an artistic tumble back into the bed, taking Nell with him, wouldn't be a better start to the day. Except he had a feeling he was going to have to find out what he had that belonged to Louie and where the hell it was.
Still, he indulged in another moment snuggled up to Nell enjoying the contact and the almond smell of her shampoo. It reminded him that he didn't smell nearly as good. "I need a shower."
"You could hurt yourself."
"Not if you come in with me."
She glared up at him and he grinned down into her gorgeous face. "Just to hold me up."
"Gertie doesn't have a shower. You can take a bath. I went out this morning and got you a few things."
"Thanks. I still probably need you in there with me."
She tried to look stern but he saw her lips twitch. "To hold you upright?"
"No. To wash my back." He did his best to look innocent but he had a sneaking feeling it had been a lot of years since he'd pulled that off. "Very hard to reach back there because of my injuries."
* * *
"You're just in time for lunch," Gertie remarked as Wes came through the door, hair still damp from the bath. Now that his hair was clean it hung thick and dark, forming loose waves as it dried.
Nell couldn't say anything at all. She felt as though her darkest fantasy had come to life before her eyes.
Without the stubble and grime, his face was lean and hard, all angles and planes except where his chin was softened by a dimple. His eyes were the hazel of a forest at sunset, full of secrets and mystery. His body was solid, long limbed, and muscular beneath the soft gray T-shirt she'd bought this morning and his own freshly washed jeans.
His gaze caught hers and she recalled how he felt when she grabbed him that morning, strong and hard, every inch of him potent, sexual male. She felt as though he saw right through to her secret self, the part of her no one knew existed. The part that was lured helplessly. For the first time she understood the term "animal magnetism." In his presence she became the zoological equivalent to an iron filing.
"You shaved," she finally managed to blurt.
His hand rubbed his strong jaw line. "Yeah. I found a pink plastic razor on the side of the tub."
"I'm sorry, I forgot to buy you a razor." Her pulse was leaping about shamelessly, which annoyed Nell, but how could she have known a member of the Hog Squad would clean up so well or gaze at her in that devastatingly intimate way? As though he planned to devote himself to discovering all her secrets.
The way he gazed at her, so still and serious, had her heart hammering in her chest and her mind flooding with memories of how she'd felt tucked against his body, his thumb teasing her breast, his lips taunting her, while his buddies had stared at them.
She should have been outraged, but she hadn't been. She'd liked being kissed by Wes. She'd liked it the way she liked a drink before dinner to whet her appetite for a gourmet meal. Except she had a strong feeling she ought to be resisting this particular meal. Still, she could look couldn't she?
He surprised her by showing perfectly good table manners while they ate lunch, and then she was ashamed of herself for assuming that a motorcycle gang member must be an uncouth thug. Thug he most certainly was, though, and she had to remember that. She'd found a knife tucked into his boot.
His gaze strayed to hers while they ate, and each time she recalled his words about seeing her naked.
The man was a stranger with no memory who appeared to be a criminal. And she'd never, ever been so hot for any man in her entire life.
Maybe that was why she'd driven an extra ten minutes to a drugstore she never frequented to buy condoms. Even knowing they were tucked into her bedside table underneath the novel she was reading, she grew warm every time she thought of what she was contemplating.
But why shouldn't she, for once in her life, throw caution to the wind? She'd lived with caution too long and it had turned out to be a lousy roommate. With her long-term relationship over and a break from her workaholic ways, she felt as alive as a young tree in springtime. Damn it, her sap was rising.
In fact, her sap wasn't just rising, it was heating, simmering, settling in her breasts and her womb, hot and heavy. She felt bold and alive and more womanly than ever before.
For some reason, this rough, scary stranger made her feel things she'd never felt in five years with Peter, who scheduled sex into his Palm Pilot along with all the other obligations of his busy life.
"Nell, go get mystery boy here his pills," Gertie said, breaking into her reverie. "Then he ought to take a nap."
"His name's Wes," she replied, knowing her aunt hadn't yet recovered from having four gang members tramp through her house without a single one of them removing his boots.
She fetched the pills and without much protest they did get him up for a nap.
* * *
Nell glanced at her bedside clock as she leaned over to turn out the light. It was after eleven.
She was physically tired, but mentally jittery. Her book hadn't been able to hold her attention, and as she settled under the covers she found herself practically vibrating with tension.
Downstairs, in her own room, Gertie, whose farmer's genes had her rising with the crows and bedding down by nine, slept like the dead, but Nell hadn't yet reverted from an LA night owl to a Kansas early bird.
As she turned grumpily in bed, she accepted it wasn't simply the early hours she was keeping that were affecting her like this. It was the thinly veiled threat of the gang member, Louie.
She thumped her pillow, knowing she was still lying to herself. She felt as though her body were crying out for fulfillment. Out here, in the middle of Hicksville, where she'd come to get away from all the pressures and demands of her former life, her body suddenly craved sex.
She throbbed with unfulfilled needs, right to the end of her fingertips.
She flipped to her side facing the window, trying to find a comfortable spot. Moonlight filtered between a gap in the curtains upping her irritation a notch. Moonlight meant romance and romance made her starved body think of sex and sex made her think of…
The man in bed across the hall. Oh, how she wished she'd bought him a pair of pajamas. He hadn't struck her as the pajama type, but at least she could have imagined him in them. As it was, she pictured him naked.
Naked and fully aroused.
She tossed and turned some more, cursing her vivid imagination, wondering if she should go downstairs for a glass of milk. Or an ice pack for certain overheated body parts.
A board creaked in the hallway and she held her breath, listening. She'd left her bedroom door ajar, refusing to think about why, and she heard the quiet shush as it opened into the room.
She didn't turn her head, or make a sound, simply waited, her body all but wriggling with anticipation while her conscious mind was appalled at what she was contemplating.
Even though she'd expected it, her body quivered with shock when he touched her. It was only a hand on her shoulder, but she felt it, warm and tingling, all the way to her toes.
The leathery pads of his fingertips traced the scoop neck of the stretchy cotton designer nightshirt that clung to her curves. She hadn't let herself ponder why she'd slipped it on earlier, or the number of times she'd run the brush through her hair, or the tiny dab of perfume she'd touched behind her ears and between her breasts.
A woman was allowed to look nice and smell nice simply for her own company wasn't she? She was certain she'd read that in a magazine article. Making herself pretty and scented for bed wasn't about a man. It was about self-love.
Except it wasn't self-love she craved tonight.
It wasn't even love she wanted, it was pure, uncomplicated down and dirty sex, and she had her sights on a prime specimen. He might be a thug, but he was sexy and ea
rthy and everything her previous men were not. Besides, whatever her mind thought, her body was in charge tonight. Perhaps if they didn't speak she could pass it off as a dream.
Dreamlike was exactly how it felt when his fingers reached the vee between her breasts. She trembled at their slight roughness against the sensitive spot, and the way he took brazen ownership of her body.
There was no conversation, no "do you feel like it tonight," no hurrying because of an early morning meeting. There were just the two of them, two bodies as highly tuned to each other as the people inhabiting them were worlds apart.
He turned her so she was flat on her back and she gazed up at him, so very foreign and yet somehow so familiar. He wore nothing but the new white briefs she'd bought him, and in the near dark he seemed both sinister and exciting. His hair hung free to just past his shoulders, shadowing his face so all she could see was the predatory gleam of his eyes.
She looked into them and began to tremble.
With one knee on the bed, he knelt over her and, when his mouth was only a breath away, whispered, "I forgot to kiss you good night."
A tiny sound broke from her throat, part acceptance, part plea as her lips opened in anticipation. The second their mouths met she felt his passion and hunger. This was no gentle caress but a fierce and hungry possession of her mouth. She tasted frustration and felt his desire keen and barely restrained as his tongue delved into her mouth as though ready to drag forth a response. He'd been thinking about this all day, she realized with a dash of smug vanity, holding himself in check until nighttime.
Then all thoughts, smug and otherwise, flew out of her head as he shucked his briefs and climbed into bed.
He went back to her mouth, but with the impatience of a man who wants everything at once, broke off to trail kisses down her throat. He traced the edge of her nightshirt with his tongue, then breathed warm, moist air through the cotton onto her nipples. She gasped at the sensation, feeling the tingle as her nipples tightened beneath the now damp cotton. His palms followed his mouth to brush over the sensitive peaks until she was squirming.
BAD BOYS ON BOARD Page 19