by Dani Wyatt
Jesus, I can’t even identify what he smells like, except that’s it’s some sort of testosterone sex juice that has my head spinning and my heart in my throat.
He marches forward until we are half-way through the meat section before slowing his pace and finally putting my feet back on the ground. I glance back to see the three guys now standing, looking pissed, as they jerk their heads, swearing and stomp away in the opposite direction.
There’s a couple of twenty-something girls also watching them, and us, but they are doing more than watching. One has her phone up and from the looks of it, she’s recorded at least some of what happened, which may not bode well for Hammer.
“You just assaulted those guys, you know that, right? They’re probably calling the cops on you right now.”
I brush my hands down the front of my tank top and try to ignore the fact that my nipples are making a grand entrance—and it’s not because of the humming freezers all around us. I’m in my Saturday best. Khaki shorts about three sizes too big, a white tank top and my Tom’s with black and white cat faces I stamped all over them trying to be crafty.
“Doubt it,” he grunts back, not hiding that his eyes are stuck on my boobs and their protruding pebbles.
“Hey.” I snap my fingers in front of his face. “I’m up here, talking to you.”
He slowly raises his eyes, those green eyes that invade my dreams day and night thinking of him looking down at me from his position on top. Holding me there. Holding me down while he—
“So, talk,” he adds, and I shake away the fantasy, scratching my wrist as I try to re-claim my composure.
“I’m just saying, you didn’t need to do that and now you are probably going to be getting a visit from Sheriff Ramsey or one of the deputies any second. And I’m going to have to tell the truth. I wasn’t in danger, so what you did is assault.”
“I disagree.”
“With what?” I let out an exasperated sigh at his ridiculous calm.
“With most of it, but especially the part that you weren’t in danger. Matter of opinion.”
“No, it’s a matter of the law. Something I happen to know a thing or two about.”
He sniffs on a half-smile and it shoots bolts of anger and lust through me.
Anger because I don’t want to feel this for him. For anyone, for that matter.
“Maybe.” He nods. “But, they ain’t callin’ no cops. Not on me. If they know what’s good for them at least.”
“Well they should. I would.”
“Yeah, well, my money’s on they don’t.”
“Well, I’m not giving you legal advice, but I would probably recommend you learn to control yourself.”
Even as the words slip from my lips, my mind is spinning with thoughts of him losing control in a different way.
“Duly noted.”
As I push my cart forward, leaving him standing behind, my hands are shaking, my brain is buzzing and yes, I’m soaking wet.
Chapter 3
Hammer
It took all my strength to let her walk away pushing that fucking grocery cart.
But I did it for a couple reasons.
One, I made sure the fucks that messed with her got some choice words before I followed them out the door and made sure they were on their way elsewhere.
Second, I can’t risk getting close to her. I can’t risk I could bring any potential danger into her life.
Life has been quiet since I landed in Seneca, and as much as I hope that will continue, I’m always looking over my shoulder. Ready to bug out and re-invent myself yet again if needed.
Because there are people, bad people, that would love to know where I am and settle old debts.
But, the longer I’m here. The more time I spend watching her, the weaker I become.
We have a habit of turning up in the same places. It started that day at the courthouse and it’s like fate is doing a full court press to get us into the same space. Which I appreciate, but it hurts down deep not being able to have her. Take her. Give her everything I can.
But there’s the other problem. What can a biker on the run, occasionally going outside the law, living on cash and trying to leave no imprint, give to a girl like her?
She’s the entire package. Brains. Looks. Tough. Self-confident. Funny. Kind.
As much as I dream of her being mine, fuck all if I honestly know what I would do with her once I got her.
Since it’s three am and I can’t sleep, I shake away the near constant barrage of thoughts about her today at the grocery and grab my overfull laundry bag as I head out the door, strapping it to my bike and riding the half mile down the road to the twenty-four hour laundromat. I’m renovating the garage at my place, which contained the washer and dryer, so for the last couple months it’s been coin-op for me.
I like coming here in the middle of the night. There’s usually no one else around, so you get your choice of machines and I’m fucking picky about which ones I use. I always run my first load of whites through the same machine, making sure there’s enough bleach to kill any lingering whatever from anyone that may have used the machine since I was here last.
I’m sort of obsessively clean. Everyone at the club busts my chops about it. I never wear the same clothes two days in a row, even if it’s hard to tell because my wardrobe consists mainly of white t-shirts and Levi’s 505’s.
I’m a button-fly kind of guy.
I get my first load going and take a seat on the floor next to the washing machine, leaning against the cool metal as it shakes and lurches. The buzzing fluorescent lights above aren’t soothing but they are fucking bright enough for reading, so as usual I’ve brought a book. I’m about three quarters of the way through Pride & Prejudice, my mother’s favorite.
She read it to me the first time when I was probably ten and I groaned and complained every night. I’ve read it a couple times since, because it makes me feel close to her when we are so far apart. Fucking Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth can’t get the fuck out of their own way to make things happen.
My mother was a high school English teacher, and from as far back as I could remember, she always read to me. And not kids’ books, either, we’re talking classics. Adventures and angst. Love and betrayal. I’d battle with her to read me what I wanted—fun, kid stuff—but she always told me I was better than that.
If she could see me now, not sure she would still agree.
My father was a working guy and always said he married above his pay grade with my mom. He was crazy for her, and she was for him, even though their beginning was hard. She was from the other side of the tracks, the rich side as they say, and got pregnant with me when she was just seventeen.
Her family disowned her when she and my dad ran away and got married. I’ve never met them, and they never spoke to her again. The hatred I had for how they treated her was a ball of fire in my belly from when I was old enough to understand what happened.
What makes it worse, is I did the same thing. I bugged out. I had to, to protect them. I got caught up in a bad fucking deal with my former club, Satan’s Seminoles out of Philly. They were dirty and I’m no saint, but they got into some shit that didn’t sit right with me.
I tried to keep my distance, but when the President gives you an order, you either carry it out or suffer the consequences, which with my former club included threats to everything that mattered to you.
So, one night, I was supposed to be heading to a hit on some rival members that had disrespected the President’s old lady. It was just dumb ass shit to me, but Lukas, the President, was a rage case and took no shit.
He planned to take down the three dudes that set her up for embarrassment. They didn’t hurt her, but he wasn’t going to stop at that. He sent me and two other guys for their old ladies, and what he wanted us to do was not just embarrassing.
I knew if I bailed on the deal, as wrong as it was, I was out. And if I stuck around, went back home to Pittsburg to my family, he could well bring
them in and fuck them up, so I just took off. It was the only solution I could think of that would keep my family safe and save my ass at the same time.
I sent notes and postcards to Mom and Dad, and I call them now and then to check in. They don’t ask a lot of questions and I don’t know how I’m so lucky, because they always say they love me and as long as I’m safe and happy, that’s what matters.
Fuck. What is happy?
I settle into my reading, lost in that world, when I hear the bells jingle on the front door of Luann’s Laundra-Palace, and my heart rate doubles as I put my book down, peering around the corner of the washing machine and already reaching for the five-inch blade I keep in a special sheath inside my boot.
Without standing up, I can’t see anyone, but I hear steps and what sounds like the slap-slap of flip flops—which calms me a bit, because no one that would come looking for me would be wearing rubber sandals.
Then I hear it.
Humming.
Fuck, I know that sound.
It’s Robin.
I’m on my feet and scanning the bright room, and as soon as she sees me her eyes snap wide and a gasp releases from her lips as fear crosses her face.
Then fury.
“Seriously?” She shakes her head on a sneer. “Enough is enough! If I was interested in you, you’d know, okay? This following me everywhere and turning up all over is done, you understand?”
She shoves her robin’s-egg-blue laundry basket on top of one of the stainless steel tables, and starts grabbing things and sorting them with her brows drawn tight and her jaw clenched. When she looks pissed, my cock gets hard instantly. I love that she’s a take no shit kinda girl, and her pushing back on me only makes me more insane for her.
“I was here first.” I raise my eyebrows on a shrug and she shakes her head and keeps sorting. She’s wearing the same tank top as earlier but now has on a pair of tight jeans which show off her ass a little too well. Her red hair hangs down over one shoulder in waves, parted down the middle like she just fucking wakes up looking this way which she probably does.
“True.” She keeps her eyes down, taking her laundry out in already color-separated bunches, setting them next to each other on the tabletop. “But still. It’s getting creepy, you just sort of ‘showing up’ all the time.”
“Yeah, you sort of said that earlier today.”
I want to chastise her. I mean, fuck, it’s the middle of the night. Anyone could be in her or come in here and the thought of someone hurting her, especially after that shit earlier today, makes me more than on edge.
“Exactly.” She squints one eye at me, pointing a cute as fuck finger my way. “Earlier today. See? Creeper.”
I see her fight the smile as she calls me the name, and I sniff, fighting off my own inner conflict about making a hard move on this creature that’s invaded my heart.
The problem is, I’ve never felt this sort of tug towards anyone before. Like she is something I’ve been wishing for, but never believed would happen. Except, I’ve never wished for whatever this is. Romance and love were never on my radar, and since running from back east, they aren’t now for sure.
“You want me to change my name?”
“What?” She screws up her face, then gathers a pile of white clothes and shoves them into a washing machine, then tosses in her soap pod thing and shoves four quarters into the slot. A moment later, the hum of her machine joins mine.
“My name. From Hammer to Creeper.”
She releases this pseudo-exasperated huff but I see the sparkle in her golden brown eyes, and for fuck sake there’s this feeling in my gut like flickery or flippy, and I have to grit my teeth to distract myself. I’ve clearly been reading too much Jane Austen.
“I find both names a tad sophomoric.” She licks her bottom lip and the sight of her tongue swiping along the plump pink flesh only hardens me more.
Her eyes drift to where my hand is still holding onto my open book, and something changes in her face. There’s a recognition, then something pleasant happens.
She smiles, then says, “And I expect more from you.”
I pull my lips to my teeth then fight back my own smile, swiping my index finger under my eye on a nod. I could tell her my real name, which has its own irony. No one here in Seneca knows it but it’s too risky, so I deflect with an answer I hope will end the query on names. “I like that.”
I run my hand down my face and step in her direction, setting the book down on her table, then hop up and sit on the next sorting table, watching as she fills up four more machines, each with a pile of neatly separated color-specific piles of clothes.
After she gets all the machines running, she turns my way, meeting my eyes, then lets them run down my chest to my boots and back up.
“I like to come this time of night. I use a lot of washing machines and I don’t like waiting. I like to start them all at the same time, then put them in dryers at the same time and finish at the same time. There’s not enough machines in my building and I always have to wait for one. I like efficiency.”
I nod. “Lemme guess…Choleric?”
I watch her swallow as she tips her head and studies me for a moment.
“You study philosophy?”
“I just read. A lot.”
“I see.” She juts a hip out and crosses her arms, making her tits push upward and creasing her cleavage in the scoop neck of her white tank top. “You are a study in contradictions.”
“Don’t judge a book and all that.”
She rubs her lips together, then pushes the backs of her fingers to her mouth, but I see her cheeks rise and know she’s trying once again to hide her smile.
My stomach does that fucking thing again and I decide to quit dicking around. I know deep down it’s dangerous, but something is overriding my usual pragmatism and I hop off the table, close the space between us, lean down to her ear and hear her draw in a sharp breath.
Her hair smells like fucking sunshine or something and my head is spinning. My fingers twitch, along with my dick, and I want to drag her by the hair back to my place and never let her go.
Instead, I settle for another plan. I take one more deep breath, her scent making me half crazed before I stand and turn toward the door making my way outside.
“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
Chapter 4
Robin
Holy hell.
I turn to look at the washing machine containing all my pink and red clothing, and listen as the water gushes into the drum.
I’m nearly as wet as those clothes and I grit my teeth in a desperate attempt to stem the growing tension between my legs.
I fail, hard, as I turn to watch Hammer taking the last few steps out the front door of the laundromat and his ass is just…gah. Perfect.
Levi’s that fit like that should be outlawed, and I bring my fingers up and pinch the bridge of my nose until it hurts and stars flicker under my closed lids.
“Get a hold of yourself.” I whisper.
I have no idea who this guy really is but the effect he has on me is chemical. I remember in junior high, my science teacher, Mr. Riley, had us all gathered around a black slate-top table with a Bunsen burner under a glass container while he held another test tube filled with a clear blue liquid.
He droned on about the reaction of molecules, blah blah, and all I wanted to do was get out of there. Science wasn’t my thing. Even back then I knew I wanted to be an attorney, and biology and chemistry were not on my list of important subjects.
Anyway, as I stood there alternating between watching the white clock over the door of the classroom and looking at the steaming liquid on the burner, I daydreamed about standing in front of a judge, winning my first case. Righting some horrible wrong and the rush of righteousness I would feel.
Lost in my fantasy, my skin prickled, then I let out a yelp when there was a room shaking boom and the rest of my class shrieked and jumped all around me.
The two chemical
s combined, creating a cloud of blue smoke and an explosion, that although harmless, left me curious about how two seemingly unrelated, innocuous liquids could create such a powerful dynamic.
I place my hands down on the tabletop next to my laundry basket. The steel is cool on my hot palms and I take a deep breath, trying to center myself and dissipate this gnawing in my gut that has Hammer’s face written all over it.
I mean, really? Pride and Prejudice?
I clench my teeth until my jaw pops, irrationally angry at this man who looks like a Hell’s Angel but uses words like Choleric and reads Jane Austen for Christ’s sake.
When the bells on the front door jingle, I my throat is tight.
Whatever this is, isn’t. I don’t have time for anything distracting in my life right now. And Hammer is definitely distracting.
In a year, I plan to be somewhere else. Entrenched in a law firm, trying to effect real change in the world. My vision of starting my own philanthropic, pro-bono firm, serving those that feel invisible, powerless, will be more than a full time job. And a relationship, especially with a leather vest wearing, motorcycle-riding testosterone machine is out of the question.
I glance up, trying to be indifferent, but my stomach does a cartwheel when he flashes me a half smile and holds up a bottle full of clear liquid as he saunters back my way.
This isn’t good. Shut this down before it has a chance to start.
“What’s that?” I hear myself say while the voice in my head is screaming danger, danger.
“Something I’ve been saving for a special occasion.”
He sets the bottle down on the table as he steps next to me. He’s too close. I’m never going to be able to shut him down if he keeps standing next to me and smelling so damned good.
“You just carry around bottles of $250 tequila?” The front of the bottle is engraved Grand Patron Platinum.
“I like to be prepared.”
I nod, trying to seem uninterested. “Just like a good Boy Scout should.”