by Meghan March
I was thinking about tossing back the liquor in front of me when the door opened and a gust of wind dragged everyone’s attention toward the door, including mine.
Ho. Ly. Fuck.
Hair as black as the night. Lips as red as sin. A body built for a man’s hands.
Jesus. Fuck.
I wasn’t drunk, but the whole world seemed to slow down as her hair blew around her shoulders as she strode inside. It was like a goddamned photo-shoot pose—but she was completely oblivious to the accidental effect.
The dull roar of the bar quieted as every man inside seemed to drop his jaw at her arrival. It was like we were all waiting in anticipation for her to lift her head. She shoved something in her purse and looked up.
Are you fucking serious?
Her vivid blue eyes kicked me in the gut, followed by a sucker punch from the way she pursed her lips as she surveyed the bar like it was her kingdom. She personified the saying walk in like you own the place. With her shoulders back, tits out, and chin pointed up, she walked toward the bar with her disinterested stare firmly in place as she ignored every single man in the room.
A woman on a mission. Fuck, that’s hot.
Confidence rolled off her as she took the seat two stools down from me and slapped a twenty on the bar. “Tequila. Straight up. ASAP.”
I was right about the woman-on-a-mission part. Some poor fuck must have pissed her off, and the fire barely banked beneath all that smooth skin was the most tempting thing I’d experienced in ages. The punch of lust that hit me made my dick shift in my jeans, and I sat forward. I’d never been the kind of man who would let an opportunity like her pass me by.
I slid the bottle of Patrón down the bar toward her. “Here you go.”
Those blue eyes grabbed me by the balls when she shifted her gaze toward me. “I’m not sleeping with you for buying me a drink.”
I like her style. A smile crossed my face for the first time since I got the call from my grandfather that it was time to trot along home.
“That won’t be why.” I turned on my stool and held out a hand, driven by pure habit. “I’m—”
“Save it, city boy. I don’t need to know your name to drink your tequila. I’m never going to see you again, anyway.”
She saved me from giving up my identity, which made her attitude even sexier—and made me want to prove her wrong. That was a special talent of mine.
“Why do you think I’m a city boy?”
She glanced down at my wrist. “Fancy watch.” Her gaze dropped to my shoes. “And those aren’t biker boots, hiking boots, or steel toes. You’re not from around here.”
She was wrong, but she was also right in a way. I was from Gable, but I wasn’t raised here. My parents hired private tutors for me until I turned twelve, and then I was sent to boarding school. The same for my brother, but not my sister. My parents didn’t think she needed a boarding school education because she could catch herself a husband in college. Thankfully, she was going to be a junior at Yale, and had more of a head for business than an eye for frat boys.
In the interest of maintaining my anonymity, I nodded in agreement before tilting my head to look at the worn heeled boots she was wearing with her short denim skirt.
“Do your boots mean you are from around here?”
Instead of answering my question, she stood up on the lower rung of the bar stool and reached over the bar to swipe a shot glass. The denim strained against her ass, and I knew I shouldn’t look, but there was no way to fight that losing battle.
Jesus Christ, she’s the full package.
As she sat, she splashed tequila out of the bottle until it filled her shot glass to the rim. “Born and raised, and all I want to do is get out of this town. I’ve had enough.”
I watched as she tipped the tequila back, shooting it like an expert before smacking the glass back on the scarred wood. My attention stuck on the red lipstick print on the glass. I knew where I’d rather see those red lips.
When my dick stiffened against my zipper, I cut off that line of thinking. I wasn’t about to sit in a biker bar with a hard-on like a thirteen-year-old boy.
I dragged my gaze to her face, which was no hardship at all. Every time I looked at her, I noticed something different. The little freckle above her red lips this time.
Fucking Christ, she’s gorgeous.
She raised an eyebrow, and I realized I’d been staring at her longer than I should have. I snapped myself out of her spell and tried to remember what the fuck we were talking about.
Oh, that’s right. She wants the fuck out of Gable. That makes two of us, and I’ve only been here a few days.
“Where would you go?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m not getting out yet. I’m stuck.” She opened her mouth to say something more, but then shook her head and snapped her mouth shut.
For some reason, I wanted to tell this girl—or by the looks of her, this woman—that I’d take her anywhere she wanted to go. But I didn’t.
“You can’t be truly stuck anywhere. You’ve got choices.”
Her blue gaze landed on me again, and I swore someone sucked all the air out of the room. Never in my life had I felt chemistry like this.
“Maybe you have choices. But all my plans went to hell tonight. The only upside? I dropped a hundred eighty pounds of dead weight.”
I was right in my initial assumption. Some asshole fucked up with this girl. His loss. My gain.
She reached for the neck of the bottle and poured another measure of tequila into her glass. When she lifted it to her lips this time, her gaze stayed locked on mine as she downed it. I lost the ability to form a complete sentence for the ten seconds it took for some douchebag to slide up next to her.
“You finally hear that asshole is fucking everything in sight? He dropped us like a bad habit when he got his chance. Shouldn’t be surprised that he dropped you too when he’s got every girl in LA trying to jump on his dick.”
The woman glanced over her shoulder at the douchebag, her shoulders stiffening. “Fuck off, Dave.”
“I’d rather fuck you, baby. Been waitin’ years for my chance to tap your sweet ass.”
“Not a chance in hell.”
Clearly these two had some kind of history, and it wasn’t my place to interfere. But when his hand shot out and wrapped around her elbow, I jumped off my stool.
“She didn’t ask you to touch her, so keep your hands off.”
Dave’s attention shifted to me, and while he was distracted, Blue jumped off her seat and slammed the heels of both her hands hard against his chest.
“Don’t ever touch me, you mother—” she started to yell, but went silent when Dave shoved her back and she tumbled against the bar stool.
Oh, hell no.
“You don’t ever put your fucking hands on a woman, you piece of shit.” I reached down and helped her to her feet before putting myself between her and Dave.
“Stay behind me.” Something flashed in her gaze as it collided with mine, and she opened her mouth to say something, but I cut her off. “It’s safer.”
Glass shattered, and I spun around to see Dave grasping a broken beer bottle by the neck.
I might have grown up with money, but that didn’t exempt me from having to defend myself if I wanted any respect in boarding school. I’d learned how to take a punch and how to deliver one by the time I was a teenager.
Dave waved the jagged glass at me, and I blocked with my forearm before landing a blow to his liver.
The broken bottle shattered when it hit the floor, and Dave dropped to his knees like a chump. Chairs scraped against the cement floor as the rest of the bar took notice, and bikers rose to their feet.
The other thing I learned? When to retreat.
I turned and faced the girl. “We’re getting the fuck out of here.”
Her head bobbed as she nodded, and her wide blue gaze darted over my shoulder as she slid her hand into mine. “Let’s go.”
I
curled my fingers around hers and we made a break for the back door. She was on my heels as I shoved it open and led her out into the cool spring night air.
“I don’t have a car.”
“My truck’s right here.” I’d grabbed the keys to one of the utility trucks the estate kept in the garage.
The door of the bar smacked against the black cinderblock wall as someone burst through the door after us. I turned around, using my body to shield her once more, but I was too slow to protect my own face as his fist flew.
It glanced off my cheekbone, and I dropped her hand to shoot out with a right hook, catching him on his jaw. He staggered back as blood roared in my veins.
“That should not be attractive. At all.” Her husky voice filtered in through the adrenaline charging through my system. “But that was hot.”
The guy came at me again, and I went for an uppercut. With a grunt, he dropped to his knees.
I stepped toward him, but a hand wrapped around my arm. Her gaze pleaded with mine.
“Let’s go. He’s not worth it. None of them are.”
Walking away from him was the easiest decision I’d ever made. Two minutes later, we were in my truck, hauling ass out of the parking lot and spraying gravel.
“I’m so sorry. That’s all my fault.”
I glanced across the cab at her face, but it was hidden by darkness. Out here, there were no streetlights to illuminate the road, only my high beams as they cut through the night heading back toward town.
“You didn’t ask him to put his hands on you, so I’d say it was Dave’s fault. Whoever the hell he is. You want to tell me what that was about?”
“No. I don’t want to think about it. Not tonight. Not ever. I just want to fucking forget about the whole mess.”
“Where do you need me to drop you off?” I hated asking the question, because I didn’t want to drop her off anywhere yet, especially on the off chance that it was her boyfriend’s place because she hadn’t moved out.
“No one has ever stood up for me. Never.”
“It was nothing.”
She turned in her seat. “Maybe to you, but not to me. It was everything.”
When her seat belt clicked and retracted, I glanced over at her. “What are you doing?”
She scooted over to the middle of the bench seat. “Saying thank you.” Her lips pressed against my cheek.
If I dropped her off tonight, I knew I’d never see her again, and something in my gut railed at the thought.
There was only one fucking place I wanted her to go—with me. And not to the estate. Never to the fucking estate. That place sucked the life out of everything the minute you walked in the door.
I spotted a turnoff up ahead and pulled over to the side of the road. When I flipped on the dome light, her chest was rising and falling, and her blue gaze was locked on me.
My blood, already raging from the fight, heated another hundred degrees. I saw the answering lust in her expression. She wanted me. I had enough experience to recognize it when I saw it.
She says she wants to forget? I can think of the perfect way to make that happen.
I turned in my seat. “You want to thank me, you kiss me right.”
Her eyes widened, the pupils dilating as she inhaled sharply. For a moment, I wondered if I pushed too hard, too fast, but instead of sliding back to her side of the truck, she scooted closer.
“I don’t normally do this. It probably makes me easy, but—”
“This doesn’t make you anything but perfect.” I barely recognized the growl in my voice as I gripped her by the hips and hauled her onto my lap.
Her mouth crushed against mine with more enthusiasm than skill, and something about that made it even hotter. I buried a hand in her hair and kept the other clamped around her hip as I took control of the kiss, turning her head so I could get deeper. Take more. Taste more.
She was fire and heat and spice. Tasted like trouble. And I wanted it all.
She knocked the hat off my head and grasped the back of my neck, kissing me with hunger I hadn’t felt in years.
“I want you.”
I forced myself to pull back at the words she breathed. I didn’t even know this girl’s name. I couldn’t fuck her in my truck.
Her gaze sharpened on me. “Don’t go backing down on me now, city boy.”
“Not here. We can both do better.”
I forced myself to lift her off my lap, but I didn’t let her go far. I curled my arm around her and tucked her next to me, ducking my head to steal another taste of her lips.
Fuck, she’s like a drug.
I had to have her.
“I know where we can go.”
* * *
The ride to the cabin was short, and we were lucky as hell I managed to keep the truck on the road rather than putting it in a ditch, because I was so distracted by the girl next to me.
She was quiet, but her hand hadn’t left my thigh, and the pads of her fingers might as well have burned holes through my jeans with the heat of just her touch.
When I pulled up in front of the small cabin, she turned to look at me, indecision lining her features.
“I need you to know something, and I need to know something from you before we go in there.”
As much as it would kill me for her to change her mind, I nodded, preparing myself to take her home instead.
“I don’t do this. I know that’s what girls who do this kinda thing say, but I need you to believe me when I say that’s the honest truth.” The vehemence in her tone underscored just how serious this was to her. “I’m not a whore or a slut or easy.”
“Stop,” I told her. “Just stop.”
Her red lips closed and she swallowed.
“I want you,” I said. “I wanted you the second you walked in that door. Why the fuck would I think badly of you when I’m in the same boat? No judgment necessary, okay? I believe you.”
She studied my face like she wasn’t sure if I was blowing smoke up her ass, and I truly wasn’t. Double standards were alive and well, but my perspective was a little different on the matter, given my father’s behavior.
“Okay,” she said with a nod.
“Now, what do you need to know about me?”
She stayed quiet.
“Ask away. Whatever you need.”
“You’re not a serial killer, are you?” Her brow furrowed, and I had a feeling her question was completely serious.
“No.” I shook my head as my laugh echoed in the cabin of the truck.
“Because if you are, I promise I’ll come back and haunt you for the rest of your life if you kill me. I might be little, but I’ll be full of rage.”
“I believe you,” I told her, the first smile in days tugging at the corners of my mouth. “I promise I’m not a serial killer. Shot a few deer in my day, and that’s it. You’ve got no reason to believe me, but you’re safe. Nothing is happening tonight that you don’t want or ask for.”
Her hesitation told me more than her words ever could. This was out of character for her. She didn’t go home with random guys from the bar. I was guessing, if she hadn’t broken up with her boyfriend, she probably wouldn’t have been at the bar.
“Good. I’ve been the queen of bad decisions in my life, and I don’t want this to be one of them.”
“You’re good. I give you my word as a—” I almost said Riscoff, but I stopped short.
Her brows went up. “Your word as what?”
“A man who would’ve been beaten for disrespecting a woman.”
It was the first thing that came to mind, and it was absolutely true. Commodore would kill me, and then my mother would bury me in the garden. That was one thing they both agreed on.
She looked out the windshield at the cabin, lit up by the brights of the truck. “This your place?”
I nodded and killed the engine. In the interest of keeping my identity out of the conversation, I didn’t tell her that it was a hunting cabin that had been in the family
for decades. It was normal, not too over-the-top, and I’d always been more comfortable here than at the estate.
I didn’t sense hesitation in her tone, but I still wanted to be sure she was on board as I pulled the keys out of the ignition. “You want to change your mind?”
She shook her head with a smile, and my body buzzed like I’d taken a hit of something strong.
Thank God. But I didn’t say that.
Instead, I said, “You’re something else, Blue.” I didn’t know why I gave her a nickname, but it rolled off my tongue so easily.
“I’m nobody,” she said as she looked away. “But tonight, I want to forget that.”
I reached out and stroked her cheek with my thumb. “You’re not nobody. I don’t need to know your name to know that. But tonight, I’ll make you forget everything that sent you into that bar, if you want.”
Her gaze lifted to mine. “That’s exactly what I want. Starting right now.” She turned toward me and threw a leg over, her skirt rolling up her thighs as she straddled my lap again. Her body practically vibrated with need.
Never in my life had a woman wanted me this badly without knowing who I was.
Panties usually flew when they find out my last name, but this girl lit up for me. Just me. That knowledge was more potent than an entire bottle of tequila.
Our lips collided, and her kiss was filled with hunger and desperation. I gave it right back to her. Whatever she was feeling, I was feeding off it, and it amplified everything.
I finally tore my mouth away. “We gotta get inside. I’m not fucking you for the first time in this truck. Not happening.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but my hand was already on the handle. I maneuvered us out of the cab and lifted her so I could carry her inside.
“You might be a city boy, but you don’t act like it.” Her hands gripped my shoulders.
A smile tugged at my lips as I stopped at the door and let her slide down my body until her feet hit the ground. There was no way she could miss the hard bulge in my jeans from the way she’d climbed on me in the truck.
“Glad you approve.”