She washed her work with antiseptic and covered the wound in clean gauze. She yanked the gloves off with a snap and dropped them onto a pile of used gauze. “He needs antibiotics, and he’ll probably need enough Percocet for a day or two. Iron pills, too, until his color is better.”
Maureen nodded and pulled off her own gloves. She rooted in the tackle box and came up with a bottle of five-hundred milligram caplets of penicillin.
“I think one of those three times a day for a week should do it.” That was an educated guess, based on years of administering doctors’ orders. Most of this had been educated guesses.
Simon flailed out his arm and grabbed her hand. “Thanks, Doc,” he rasped.
She patted his hand and set it back on the pool table. “You’re welcome, but I’m not a doctor. Just a nurse.”
He grinned weakly. “No ‘just’ about it. You’re an angel.”
She smiled. “Take your pills and get some rest.”
Rad continued to regard her with that odd, dark light in his eyes.
“He shouldn’t move from here tonight, but it’d be good to make him more comfortable.”
At her side, Maureen said, “I’m on that. Pillows, blankets, we’ll get the tarp out from under him. Slick, help me out. Tyra! Get over here!”
A blonde in lace-up leggings tottered over on stiletto heels. “Yeah, Mo?”
Willa got out of the way and let Maureen take over Simon’s care. She had another patient.
Rad pushed the cart of supplies as he walked with her to the man in the recliner.
“This mess of a human is Gunner. Gunner, this is Willa. She’s gonna check you out.”
“Hey, blondie,” Gunner slurred, trying to curve his ruined mouth up in a grin. He smoothed a hand over his chest. “You like what you see?”
“Can’t say I do,” she answered as she snapped on a fresh pair of gloves. To Rad she asked, “There a penlight in that box?”
He handed her a small light, and she flicked it on. “Okay, Gunner. Open your eyes up for me as much as you can.”
One eye went fairly wide. The other was too swollen. She used her fingers to push the swelling out of her way enough to see that his pupils were responsive.
“Ow!” Gunner groaned. “Easy now.”
“Sorry. Rad said you passed out, so I’m guessing you have a mild concussion, but I don’t think it’s a bad one. Guess you got a hard head.”
Rad chuckled.
Gunner pushed his split bottom lip out in a caricature of a pout. “You’re not gonna whisper sweeties in my ear like you did Si?”
She wasn’t; her read on this guy was that he was full of shit. Banter was better for him. “Don’t think I am. If I ask you to tell me where it hurts, are you gonna get dirty?”
“You want me to get dirty?”
“No, I do not. I want to know if you have pain.”
“Blondie, you got no idea.”
That answer seemed more serious than his playful delivery of it suggested.
“Gun. Answer straight.” Rad cuffed him on his shoulder.
“Fuck, Rad.” He rubbed his shoulder and came back to Willa. “Chest is fucked. I know that pain. Broke a couple ribs. Face hurts like a fucker. I took a beating, blondie. Take ‘em all the time. I don’t need your fuss.”
“Let her look, Gunner.”
Willa didn’t recognize that voice. She turned to see an older man, in about his late fifties, with disheveled, shoulder-length dark hair and a goatee, coming their way. On his kutte was a flash that read President. Brian Delaney, then.
“Hey, sweetheart. I’m Delaney.” He held out his hand, but she was wearing gloves, so she lifted her hand to point that out. He dropped his with a courtly nod. “Gun, shut up and get care. I’m close to puttin’ your goddamn kutte on the table as it is, after all this shit, so do what I fuckin’ say.”
Gunner scowled like a chastised teen, but he moved his hands out of the way so she could feel his chest.
“Fuck!” he barked, almost like a laugh, when she pushed on the right side of his chest. It was hard to determine rib fractures without an X-ray, but there wasn’t much to be done about them in any case. If there wasn’t a full break or a lung puncture, he’d just have to ride out the pain.
She put the stethoscope in her ears and listened to his chest. “Take the deepest breath you can for me.”
His attempt cut off midway with a grunt, but she didn’t hear anything untoward except that grunt. No fluid in his lungs. She listened to the left side and then helped him sit forward so she could listen at the back, too. Clear. Strong heartbeat.
She palpated his face and found nothing broken there, either. This guy must have had iron-clad bones, because the tissue damage was extensive, but overall he wasn’t seriously injured. Simon’s wound had been far more dire.
“This all hurts more than the beating,” he groused as she stood straight again.
“Sorry. I’ll sew up your eyebrow, and you should take it easy for a couple of weeks until your ribs knit up. But I think you’re generally okay. Not pretty, but okay.”
“You were nicer to Si,” Gunner pouted.
Willa smiled and patted his head. “I’m here for you, Gunner. But something tells me Simon deserves more nice than you do tonight.”
“That’s a damn fact,” Delaney said. “Rad—a minute.”
As he followed his president, Rad put his hand on Willa’s shoulder and kissed her cheek. “You’re a helluva woman. Hot as all fuck.”
She smiled and watched him go after Delaney. They went behind a double door. The guy with the blond ponytail, who’d spoken to her briefly at the wreck site the night before, followed them in.
“Okay, Gunner. Let’s get your eyebrow closed up. This is gonna hurt a little.”
“Usually when a chick says that to me, I’m havin’ more fun.”
She grinned. “You want me to clamp your nipples or something while I do it?”
A couple of other men nearby laughed.
It was hard to tell through the ground meat of his face, but Willa thought Gunner looked surprised and delighted. “Well, well, look at you. Rad caught a good one. Spicy. Would ya?”
“Sorry, Gunner. We just met. Anyway, I’m here with Rad.”
“Well, I like a tease. But I don’t think I can take another beatdown tonight, so I won’t get in a brother’s way. I’ll just close my eyes and imagine it.”
“You do that.” She got to work.
He grinned through the whole thing.
~oOo~
When Rad pulled up at the front of her house, it was past three in the morning, but Willa wasn’t tired. She was twanging with electric energy. She’d liked those guys, and she’d liked being able to help. There in the belly of the beast, the clubhouse of Tulsa’s outlaw MC, surrounded by men she knew had done all sorts of bad and dangerous shit—helping them clean up after doing bad and dangerous shit—she’d met a bunch of people she liked. Maureen, Gunner and Simon, Delaney and Dane, Eight Ball, Ox…and some others whose names she’d already lost. They all looked like dangerous men and the women who could handle them, but none of them had frightened her. Once she was there, getting to work, talking with them during and after, listening to their banter, she thought they were like Rad—decent people who lived outside the law.
She hadn’t been with Jesse since he’d been a Dirty Rat, but she had done a lot of research on that club. That had been all she’d known of outlaw bikers. Now she had some more knowledge and a different perspective. Rad had said the Rats were a different kind of club from the Bulls, and now she believed him.
“I’ll help you up the steps.”
Her leg. She’d forgotten about her own pain until Rad had helped her into the truck. Even now, it wasn’t bothering her like it had been. Her head was too full of other things to give it much notice.
Her body thrummed and thrummed. She could barely sit still.
Shit—she was horny. That was it.
Emboldened by the mos
t recent events of this incredibly bizarre couple of days, Willa blurted out, “I still want you to stay. I want to sleep with you. I want to…I want…to feel you.”
“Fuck, baby.” The words came out on a guttural groan. “What about your leg?”
“We’ll work it out. Rad—I feel like I’m ten feet deep here already. I need to stop fucking talking and just feel you. I don’t even know what I’m saying. I just…I want you.”
She could read his expression perfectly now, even in the dim glow of his dash lights. He wanted her, too.
He dragged his hand through his hair and looked over her shoulder, out the window, for a second. Then his eyes came to hers, dark and hot. “Let’s get inside.”
CHAPTER NINE
This time, when Rad came into Willa’s house, Ollie wagged his tail at him and, when Willa released him, he came right up for some love while his mom locked up the front door.
“I need to take him outside for a while,” she said as she went to put her keys in their box. Her limp was less pronounced, but her step was slow. She had to be exhausted. Rad was more than a little surprised to find himself standing here again, after everything, and anticipating more adventure before this day finally ended.
“I’ll take him out. You relax.”
“Yeah? Thanks.”
“C’mon, boy.” He patted his thigh and headed toward the kitchen. Ollie didn’t move. He watched Rad, then swiveled his thick head and looked up at Willa, then back to Rad.
“Go, Ollie. Okay.” She made a short, underhand sweep with her hand, and Ollie whined a little—which sounded to Rad like okay, if you’re sure—and followed him.
Outside, while Ollie did his business, Rad walked the perimeter of the yard, which was both wide and long on this corner lot. She had an old-fashioned basement, the kind without interior access, with a trap door leading down from the yard. The latch was secured with a thick Master key padlock.
Circling all the pretty little plantings and meandering paths was a six-foot wood fence. The gates, front and back, were padlocked at the latch with the same heavy Master locks. Still, a fence like this wouldn’t be tough to jump for someone with enough interest in getting on the other side. It was difficult to make residential yards secure.
Then he noticed that, except for the property line she shared with her neighbor, where a row of fragrant, flowering bushes nearly as tall as the fence provided a decent obstacle, Willa had planted decorative shrubs with nasty, inch-long thorns. Rad discovered that the hard way. Also a decent obstacle.
Sucking the blood from his thumb, he continued his survey, coming upon Ollie tugging on a knot of heavy cotton rope that was attached to a chain hanging from a thick metal pole, like the tetherball setups on the playground of his grade school. He smiled. She’d fixed it so her dog could play tug-of-war with himself, whenever he wanted.
This little area was set up like a doggie playground—the tug-of-war pole, a plastic tube he could run through, a jump, and to the side, a heavy plastic chest that Rad assumed held toys.
Rad had grown up with dogs. He loved animals of all kinds but knew dogs to be the best damn creatures on the planet. They were loyal and protective and just…easy. Uncomplicated. All they wanted was someone of their own, and when they had that person, they’d go through fire for him. Or her.
He understood that impulse.
Willa had said last night that animals were great judges of character, and Rad believed it to be true. She’d said it when Ollie had been willing to accept Rad in the house. But he saw Ollie’s perfect, wholehearted devotion to her and knew she was worth his own as well.
Maybe he and ol’ Ollie here had both found the same somebody. It was sure starting to feel that way.
Ollie had the chain wrapped around the pole, shortening it so that his front paws came off the ground as he yanked on the rope. He was wholly focused on his task; beyond briefly rolling his eyes Rad’s way, he hadn’t paid him much mind.
Curious, Rad tried something. Knowing better than to put his hands on that rope while Ollie was on it, he crouched close by and said, in a firm voice without threat, “Ollie, off.”
The dog stilled, black eyes on Rad, but didn’t let go.
“Off,” he said, more firmly.
Ollie growled, a deep rumble in his chest. He didn’t snarl, though, and Rad understood it as a test.
“Off.”
Another growl. Rad hunkered down a bit more and leaned in just slightly, his eyes steady on the dog’s. “Off.”
Ollie let go. He dropped his head, keeping his eyes on Rad.
“Good boy.” Rad held out his hand but didn’t try to touch him. Ollie came the rest of the way, butting his head into Rad’s palm. With that, Rad relaxed and gave the dog a rough, tousling hug. “Good buddy. You take care of your ma just fine, dontcha?”
He got a slobbery lick for an answer. Damn, what a dog—and now they were friends.
When they got back into the kitchen, Rad noticed that Ollie’s water bowl—a big metal thing in a stand with his food bowl—was empty. He filled it and, seeing a canister of Milk-Bones on the counter, tossed one Ollie’s way. The dog had sat neatly as soon as Rad had lifted the lid from the canister, and he caught it with a snap of those powerful jaws.
Ollie made a slobbery mess of his biscuit and then went to inhale his water. Rad walked into the front rooms of the house, expecting to find Willa on the sofa. She wasn’t there, but when he widened his attention, he heard running water. Her shower.
A brilliant image of Willa, naked and gleaming wet, her hair slicked back, her hands smoothing silky soap over her skin, burned itself into his brain, and his cock bounced and stretched. He didn’t even know what she looked like naked, but his hands had briefly held the firm, satiny skin of her thigh, her hip, his lips had tasted her neck, her mouth, and his need had filled in all the details.
He followed the sound of the water, turning into a short hallway. A narrow flight of stairs led steeply upward. On this level were four doors. Two were closed, and Rad guessed them for closets. The door at the back was open, the room beyond it lit with a dim, rosy glow. Rad saw a chest of drawers and guessed that to be her bedroom.
The other door was obviously her bathroom. That door was open as well, sharing bright light with the hallway.
Rad considered that open door.
Willa had asked him in again, this time expressly to get raunchy together. And that open door seemed like an invitation to do so.
He was not a man who asked for permission. He didn’t force himself, but he went for what he wanted, and the woman had to tell him no to back him off. At any other time, with any other woman, he’d be naked already and stepping into that shower.
But, as far as he knew, he’d never been with a woman who’d been raped—certainly not one who’d told him as much. He didn’t even know if she’d had sex since then. She’d had to, right? Smithers had raped her eight years ago. Or had he raped her again five years ago? She hadn’t been as specific about that attack. But she was a gorgeous, strong, desirable woman. She’d been forward with him about what she wanted, and they’d known each other less than two days. She couldn’t possibly have been celibate all these years. Right?
His doubt on the point, and the protective fury that caught fire in his gut when he thought about what she’d told him, locked his legs in an unfamiliar hesitation. He stood just beyond the doorway, feeling the kiss of steam from her hot shower, trapped in a tempestuous limbo between the wild need to have her in his arms and the fiery need to protect her.
He’d stopped worrying about what was happening between them. He’d stopped second-guessing his impulses. He’d always been better going with his gut, anyway, and his gut wanted this woman. But his gut also wanted her safe.
Finally, he went to the doorway.
Her bathroom looked exactly as he’d expected without thinking about it: Classic. Old-fashioned but precisely decorated. Black and white octagon tiles on the floor, probably original. The origin
al porcelain fixtures, in white. A window at the far end, with filmy white curtains. Walls painted in a pale blue, like a robin’s egg. A white shower curtain with thin blue stripes billowed gently out from the water and steam.
In a little pile on the floor between the toilet and the sink were the clothes she’d been wearing. The elastic bandage sat in a loose wad on top.
There were two thick, blue towels stacked neatly on the closed toilet seat.
Two towels.
Crash (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 1) Page 11