I stopped between the beds and sat down, eyes to the floor, elbows on my knees. The second I heard her mumble something in her sleep though, I lifted my chin and allowed myself to look. My gut hardened the second I laid eyes on her. Moonlight from the window above her bunk shadowed her cheek, and my weird mood got only weirder right then. It was like someone had sucker-punched me in the chest and stolen all the air from my lungs at the same time. It hurt to breathe, really.
Long hair hung over her cheeks and her shoulder as she lay curled in a ball, no blanket, hands beneath her chin like she was praying in her sleep. Emily looked so innocent and sweet. No way could a person tell by her sleeping face that she had the mouth of a witch and had put a spell on me with her inability to stand down from a challenge.
Without taking my eyes off her, I lay down on my side over my elbow. Like that, I studied her until my eyes got heavy. Studied her lashes against her cheeks, memorized the purse of her lips—lips that were more tempting than any other set before.
That alone should’ve been a warning. But I was too blinded for once to see.
“Archer. Archer, please. Wake up. Please.” Hands shook me later that night. That morning. Whatever the fuck time it was.
I opened one lid, wondering if I was dreaming, eyes widening when I realized Emily was on the floor between the beds, shaking in panic and fear.
“What the hell?” Disoriented, I sat up, wondering if she’d had a bad dream.
She opened her mouth to say something, only for two pops to fill the air outside the caboose. Gunfire?
“What the hell?” I tackled her to the floor, my arm over her head, my body on hers as another three filled the air outside. Emily screeched but didn’t shove me away, and I held her there, sucking in a sharp breath when a crash came from outside—metal upon metal. Two minutes later, the roar of a bike engine filled the air, echoing in the distance as whoever the driver was took off.
We’d been ambushed.
Or warned off, I was guessing, since they’d done a shitty job of trying to off us.
“You okay?” I whispered into Emily’s ear.
“Yes. I… I tried to wake you when I heard the bike pull up.”
“It’s fine. You did good.” I leaned back, taking in her wide, terrified eyes.
“Who was that?”
I shrugged and sat up. “Don’t know. But I need to make sure nobody else is out there.”
She tugged on my arm when I got on all fours to crawl to the table.
“I’m going with you.”
“The hell you are,” I hissed and reached up to grab my gun off the wood.
“Archer. Please. Don’t leave without me.”
“I’m not leaving you.” I lowered my voice, my throat closing at the vulnerability in her words, her face.
“But you’re…” She trailed off when she spotted the gun on my lap, bottom lip tugged between her teeth.
At least she didn’t freak out at the sight of it this time, but she did keep quiet.
“Emily.” I stuffed it into the front of my jeans then set a hand on her shoulder. I took her face in my other hand and urged her eyes to stay on me while I spoke. “I’m not leaving. I just need to go look and see if there’s anyone else out there we gotta worry about.”
“And if there is?”
I pointed to my gun. “Then this will take care of them.”
Surprisingly, she didn’t flinch. Instead she nodded and launched herself at me, hugging me again. Trusting me most of all, it seemed.
“Please be careful.”
My throat grew tight. I didn’t wrap my arms around her back in return though. “I’ll be fine.”
She nodded against my neck, sniffling. “You have to be.”
I shut my eyes, wondering why she seemed to trust me so much when it was obvious I still didn’t trust her… even if it was getting harder not to.
“Just tell me if you need me, alright?” she asked, pulling back.
Despite everything, I couldn’t stop the slow grin from spreading on my mouth as I crawled to the front door. She couldn’t do shit for me if something went down. But the sentiment meant more than any other I’d heard before.
Once I was by the front door, I pushed to my feet and snuck a look out of the glass pane.
“Get under the table till I give the all clear,” I told her, our eyes locked across the space.
She nodded and did as I asked for once. I took her in, the panic in her wide eyes, my chest tightening and squeezing at the same time. She wasn’t in the mood for dying this morning, apparently, and honestly? Neither was I.
Slowly, I slid open the door, heart racing with adrenaline, not nerves. Never nerves. Fighting didn’t scare me. Protecting didn’t either. It’s what I did as a Red Dragon. As a man. Made no difference who they were. An old lady, a brother’s niece, or a woman who I couldn’t keep from thinking about.
The sun was just rising and the first thing I noticed was a shit ton of buffalo outside strolling the field. The second: my bike.
Or what was left of it.
“Shit,” I hissed.
“What’s wrong?” Emily called out.
I held a hand up to keep her quiet, eyes scanning the almost lighted field. We were so far removed from any other cabin or caboose that I was sure the gunshots could’ve been blown off as hunters. They had grounds set up for hunting nearby. Fucked up if you asked me. A wildlife preservation park close to hunting grounds.
“Archer?”
“It’s all clear,” I told her.
My shoulders slumped as I opened the door and stepped outside. Tire marks led away from the scene, and mud was splattered everywhere along the caboose and covering my damn bike. Whoever had done this didn’t want to hurt us. They wanted us to stay put. A warning for sure that said, Stay away. But from who?
My first instinct was to call or text Slade, ask if any of the RDs had been sent our direction. But my brothers weren’t stupid enough to mess with my bike. And if they knew where we were, they’d have our asses back on the road toward Rockford in no time.
A gasp sounded from the doorway behind me. I didn’t look to see what was wrong because I already knew. My bike was fucking wrecked. Tires blown out, seat smashed, chrome pipes dented in…
If I was a crier, I’d be bawling right now.
My precious fucking bike.
“Archer, look!” Emily said, the creak of the steps proving she was coming out.
I turned to look at her, spotted the black leather cut on the ground a few feet away.
“Is that…?” she asked.
“Sure the hell is.” I walked toward it and pulled it from the mud, frowning at the emblem on the back as I lifted it in the air.
A red dragon.
“Shit.”
“Is there a name on it?” She crouched next to me, pointing at it.
I turned it over to look, but whoever it belonged to had ripped the name patch off the front. It was all the proof I needed to know that whoever had done this was too chickenshit to say who they were, but big enough to say they were done with the RDs.
It looked like we had ourselves an official rogue in the mix.
A rogue that I could almost bet was now working for Pops.
Bags on our shoulders, one mutual goal in mind, Emily and I set off twenty minutes later. We needed to find another bike or vehicle even. I didn’t want questions from the law when they found the caboose shot up, which meant I was walking my bike to the closest town, hoping someone might buy the parts, or work through a trade with us. Fat chance of that happening, seeing how this was farm-town Indiana. But I had names and contacts all over the state. Someone had to know somebody, right?
“You don’t have as many tattoos on your body as your brothers. I noticed last night.” It was the first thing Emily’d said since we’d left. Weird thing to bring up right now, but maybe this was how she handled stress. By talking about random stuff, ignoring the tension between us, what had happened and the fact that
I’d run away…
“I only tat myself with shit that means something.”
“Oh. I gotcha. Makes sense, I suppose.”
I nodded and continued through the fields, one hand on my bike handle and the other on the seat. Sweat dripped down my temples, the side of my face too. It was humid, muddy as hell. But it wasn’t raining at least.
“The one on your chest,” she continued. “Is that a raven?”
“Yup.”
A beat passed. “What does it mean?”
I didn’t hesitate to say, “Bad luck.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “I lost a lot in the span of three years. From the time I was twelve to fifteen. My ma first, then my old man…” I shrugged, thankful when we finally made it to a road.
With a grunt, I pushed the bike up the hill, only for it to drive deeper into the mud and get stuck. “Damn it.”
Without me asking for help, Emily hustled up to the other side, taking the same position as me—one hand on the bike seat, the other on the handlebar.
“On three?” she asked.
I nodded.
Emily counted.
With the both of us grunting and groaning, we pushed until we got it to the road. Our eyes met from over my bike, holding longer than I wanted to. She smiled shyly at me. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling back.
When the shared stare got to be too much, I cleared my throat and looked down the road. “Thanks.” Then I nodded toward a sign listing the nearest towns. “Five miles. You good with that?”
“Yeah. I’ll be fine,” she said, keeping pace as we started walking again.
For some reason, I wanted to keep the tat conversation going. Like bikes, I loved talking tattoos.
“First tat I ever got was the raven,” I told her.
“Oh yeah?”
“I wanted to remind myself never to be too comfortable with one thing, ya know? That it’s best to just move on with shit, otherwise bad luck is gonna strike.” It was how I’d lived my life, especially when it came to women.
Emily hummed thoughtfully and hiked her duffel up higher onto her shoulder. I’d been calling it a duffel because that’s what it was to me, but the damn thing had fancy-ass Ds and Bs covering the surface, so I was sure it was expensive.
“You think loving someone is a curse, then?” she asked a second later. “Including your family, right?”
“I do.”
Another minute passed. “And the one on your arm, under the barbed wire. What does that mean?”
I didn’t have to look to know which tat she was referring to. Written in old Gaelic, a tribute to my Irish heritage, the memories of losing my ma so early on, too.
Pain becomes strength.
Too personal. Too real. I didn’t do real unless it was within my own head. And God knew that was a scary place to be in.
“That, JP, is for me to know and for you to never find out.”
She didn’t push. Didn’t give me snark either. I looked at her for a second, curious what she was thinking, not that I was good at reading her. Emily’s eyes were locked ahead, but there was tension at the corners. I knew she was trying to distract herself here. So, for her help with my bike, I’d throw her a bone.
“You got any tats?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I wouldn’t know what to get.” She shrugged. “And, like you, I’m not going to throw random things on my body either.”
“Not even a tramp stamp?”
She laughed. “Not even one of those.”
Her words made me grin a little. Smart girl, she was. “You ever do anything reckless?”
She looked at me from out of the corner of her eye. “Is that a trick question?” She was clearly remembering last night.
I looked at her mouth. The way it twitched a little as if she was fighting another grin. “Nope. Not this time.”
She lost her smile, looked at me full on. Her face was serious now. There was no light in her eyes, not a twitch to her lips either.
“If you’re reckless you don’t have a plan.” She shuddered. “It’s scary. And it’s also why the last several months of my life have been nothing but miserable because every day I never knew what to expect.”
“Because of the club?”
The RDs weren’t reckless or unknown. We ran on control and order. People saw cuts and assumed we were outlaws, but that wasn’t the case anymore. We were good men and wanted order and peace. Happiness and a brotherhood. Hell, we’d been trying to get that exact thing for over a year now. The thing was, in order to find peace, we’d likely have to do some really bad shit—me especially. But in the end, I’d be doing the world a favor by offing that man and his little crew. Doing my brothers a good deed most of all.
“No. Not the club…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “More so because my mom lied to me all those years about who my father was, and now I don’t know if I can trust her anymore.”
“Then why the hell are you going to her at all?”
“Because I don’t have another choice. She’s my mom, and even though she’s not who I thought she was, I can’t help but think that she needs me, despite her never asking me for help.”
It was stupid of her to go, thinking she could fix things without knowing it was possible. But that was also exactly what I was trying to do, but for my brothers and the club, nobody else.
Emily pursed her lips, continuing. “Do you know what it’s like to not be able to trust the one person in your life who’s supposed to be your solid ground to walk on?”
“No. I don’t, actually.” Because my brothers didn’t lie to me. My own ma and dad never held back their truths either. That was also why I kept my trust circle small. Letting people get close to me, only so they could turn on me in the end—or worse, die… No. I wasn’t having it.
“You’re lucky.” She sighed.
I didn’t deny it. But I didn’t agree with her either. I was a lucky bastard in the sense that the people I did love and trust had been true and real, but an unlucky bastard because I’d lost some of those people in the end.
“So, everything’s been about your ma, then?” I asked, steering the question back to her. “You being cold to everyone was because you didn’t want to let anyone in?”
“Yep.”
In other words, Emily was me.
Jesus, that was… weird.
She looked to the road as she spoke this time. “Could you, maybe, tell everyone that when you go home? Apologize for me?”
“Why?” I frowned, not sure if I’d even make it home myself. I didn’t say that though.
She shrugged. And I didn’t push for once.
“Fine. I’ll try to. But I’m not sure it’ll help.” Plus, if my brothers didn’t hate her before, then they sure as hell would after finding out what she’d done. What I’d done, most of all.
Emily cringed and looked the other way. I didn’t say sorry. She needed to know what was to come if she did get her ma away from Pops in the end. If she or Lisa ever crossed paths with any of my brothers, they’d end them without blinking an eye. Her and her mom.
“Running’s only one part of this equation, Emily. You know that, right?”
“I do,” she whispered.
I cleared my throat. “I get it, though.” More than she probably knew.
She looked at me and frowned a little. “What do you get?”
“I get what it’s like to have to start over when it’s the last thing you want.”
Her eyes widened. “You do?”
“Yep.” I looked ahead, tensing when a car grew closer, releasing a deep breath when they passed without interest. “Change is good. Letting go of the past to rebuild a future isn’t so bad either. It’s dangerous and scary as fuck. But it’s doable if it’s done the right way. Just be smart about this. Make sure you know what you’re doing.”
Emily went quiet. So much so that I wanted to look at her, but I couldn’t bring
myself to do it because I was scared of what I might see. Her words when she did speak, though? They messed with me, with my head.
“You’re a beautiful soul, Archer, despite the playboy mentality you choose to live by. I just want you to know that.”
“There’s not a thing about me that’s beautiful.” My throat tightened. “Except for my dick maybe.”
“You’re the king of deflection.” She laughed. “Why is that?”
“Not deflecting. I’m just the kinda man who hates serious shit.”
Emily stopped moving then. Stopped talking too. I stopped myself, hands tensing around my broken machine. Frowning, I turned to look at her, but she was already on the move around the front of my bike until she stood in front of me five seconds later.
“What are you doing?” I asked, tensing when she lifted her hand to put it over my heart.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, searching my face.
“What the hell do you have to be sorry about now? We’re in the middle of a road and—”
“Stop talking.” She covered my mouth with her free palm. “Seriously. Let me get this out.”
I rolled my eyes, pretending that my heart wasn’t racing like a fucking bandit in my chest.
She lowered her hand. “I’m sorry for not believing you’re more than this.” She gestured at my body. Then she smoothed her palm down the front of my shirt, in between my pecs.
“What, that I’m more than a hot piece of ass you can never have?” I only half joked. Because right then, I didn’t think I’d ever wanted to give my body to a woman more than I did Emily. Fuck if I knew what that meant.
Despite everything that might be ahead of us, being real with this woman in any shape or form, even if it was alongside some random farm road, scared me more than death itself.
Fifteen
Emily
We made it to a gas station an hour or so later, neither of us really speaking words that weren’t grunts, yeses, or noes. I think I’d officially freaked Archer out with my confession. He finally had nothing to say.
Her Hot Ride: A gripping and sexy biker mc romantic suspense novel Page 14