Dirty Salvation (Renegade Souls MC Romance Saga Book 1)

by V. Theia

  Smiling with his wicked mouth to the lip of the mug. As if just waiting for her to glance his way. Fire instantly rushed to her cheeks. How beautiful he was. Handsome and perfect as a European model. As much as she got the tummy flips for how Rider treated her, she wanted to know why.

  She was damaged goods. Spoiled meat.

  Why would he want her? He could have his pick of many.

  Untouchable. Unreachable. If she was a household appliance she’d ask for the warranty.

  Her walls had been erected in forged iron. Unless he had good climbing boots there was no getting over it. It confused her, even more, when he persisted.

  She wasn't sexy, or gorgeous, quite plain when you put her up against some of the women she'd seen coming and going this week, and she hadn't had a decent haircut in far too long, she was pale with freckles, and her boobs were disappearing, what on earth could he possibly see in her?

  Shit, it was possible Rider had a freaky poor girl lost fetish?

  He had the choice of women, and he wanted the one broken beyond repair.

  Maybe Zara wasn’t the only unstable one. She smiled to herself.

  There had to be a reason. She was just too afraid to ask him. Fear of the unknown was a terrible thing. And just one more that weighed her down.

  “Well. I should be getting back…” she told no one in particular but hoped Rider heard her, she sneaked a new look and sure enough, his blue eyes were watching her, drawing up and down so slowly she felt intimately touched.

  “Thanks, Icy.” His voice smoldered, giving a wink. His eyes spoke dirty things. Slam. Heat dove between her legs, instantly damp. He smiled and her inner muscles all clenched as one. God. I saw him naked the other day and didn’t even take a lick of notice.

  Stupid. Stupid.

  Hey, even a frightened bird could appreciate eye-candy.

  She knew she was crazy contradictory, but she blamed Rider.

  He needed to stop making her need him. It was never going to work and she kind of wished she could have at least one friend and she'd kind of … maybe latched onto him to be that friend.

  He and his dangerous sexual allure and tight jeans and devastating smiles and don't get her started on his beard, were ruining what could be a wonderful friendship!

  Damn the bad biker man.

  Oh boy, his smile. She physically felt herself becoming wetter. She turned and got out of there and was that his laugh she heard behind her? Zara didn't stop to look back. She was mortified at her reactions.

  His smile was disarming to all women in a fifty-mile radius, not least of all her. Panties dropped. Women became pregnant. Men even turned gay. Or so that was her guess and she was pretty sure she was right about that. There was something infinitely attractive about Rider that drew people towards him. She was drawn even as she fought against the feeling. He was too handsome for words and twice as bad; instant aphrodisiac.

  The abstract attention of his smile gave a jolt to Zara knocking her off her feet, figuratively. So powerful was his smile that she had to look down to check she was still inside her Converse. Yep, still there. The earth was spinning, his look at eye-fucked her good. She was still feeling it.

  I do want him. She thought. And felt violently ill for it. Maybe she had reverse Stockholm syndrome. Falling for her rescuer. It was not a very smart decision. It would never work, she had to keep reminding herself.

  Emotional cutters cut where it caused the deepest wound. Rider would be a deep cut if she even gave herself permission to feel. The man was a wind speed 260 tornado to her system.

  Would she be using him?

  Could she use him to make herself better?

  God. She was considering it.

  Shaking her head of any fantasies that included and was not solely focused on Rider being naked again in the same shower as her, but was a major component to her minute by minute thoughts, she hurried across the forecourt, her shoes slipping on the crystallized frost gathering on the ground.

  The air crisper as the day had gone by, so fresh the cold tickled her nose, she took a last long draw into her lungs luxuriating in how it stung her face, she'd stay outside all day if she could, but frostbite wasn't on her Christmas list. Avoiding everyone around the main room, merging into the furniture was a trick of hers.

  "Drink, girlie?" she kept on walking. "Hey, girlie?"

  Was that her? Zara's head rose, turned around to the voice. The guy behind the bar holding a glass bottle of pink lemonade and a tall glass motioning her over with his gnarled hand had to be breaching Seventy years old and yet with his pure white old man spiked hair and his trim build encased in a black T-shirt with a pair of shades hooked in the collar he was effortlessly cool.

  "Me?"

  "I don't see any other girlies here. Yeah, you. Come and have a drink with an old man so I have something pretty to look at." Zara hesitated, looked the few feet across the room to where three men were sitting, she'd forgotten their names, but none were paying her attention, they were all eyes on the Broncos game, from their level of noise the Broncos were winning.

  She could have a drink.

  The pink soda was poured and waiting for her when she perched herself up on one of the tall bar stools. "Thank you…" her voice soft, reticent. Except for Rider she hadn’t really spoken much besides a word here and there to anyone else. It was her fault; she was the unfriendly one. She just didn’t know how to be…anymore. She was the interloper in their place. She'd make more of a conscious effort, she mused, to talk to who was around. (again, she discounted Hawk from that)

  "Call me Uncle Jed. I'm Rider's uncle on his mama's side, but it’s what everyone calls me nowadays. And you're my boy's girl are you." said without question.

  Blood drained out of Zara's face. She coughed back a choke almost dying on a long sip of the too sweet soda. As she spluttered, Jed reached over and thumped her back. She didn't think it helped at all. She might be missing a lung now.

  She liked the twinkle in his piercing gray eyes.

  "No--- I-- I'm not Rider's … anything. He's just letting me stay here a while until--" she returned weakly. Did she even believe that? But then how polite would it be to tell Rider's uncle Rider wanted to do nasty shit to her of a sexual nature?

  "Until those monkey-ass Rebels are all taken care of." He finished for her.

  His voice was smoke rough like he had a hundred cigarettes a day, and so kind with it mirrored from his eyes Zara blinked back a rush of inappropriate tears.

  She buried her face in the glass, drinking slowly. "And after that's done. You'll be Rider's girl." Again, it wasn't a question. The old man polished the length of the bar, rearranged bottles of booze behind him. What was she meant to say when he seemed so adamant what her role was? She was glad it seemed obvious to someone. Could she be Rider's woman? Impossible. She shut down the thought before it sprouted wings and flew into territories Zara refused to venture into it. A long time ago she’d wanted that. But now. No. Besides, friends, she thought. She could be a good friend.

  She wouldn't think of anything else.

  Nope. Not at all.

  Hope was right below wishful thinking and above a rain fucking dance. Call her cynical but Zara had lost hope a long time ago. Sure, she was 'free' she'd exchanged one biker home for another, Oh Jesus, one so much better than the last but still, that was the truth of it. She had no hope for her and not for stupid unreachable fairy tales of happy ever after, she'd had that bubble burst in the worse possible way. She couldn't let hope in, the moment she'd allow it a slither of daylight she'd sign herself up for disappointment to come-a-calling and if that cruel jerk knocked on her door once more she would scream so hard so loud she'd shatter crystal glasses. Not today, Satan.

  Sometimes you couldn’t have what you wanted just because.

  Too many obstacles, for one.

  Once upon a nasty time ago she'd had hope for weeks, months. It was around the first-year mark of her being an unpaid captive dogsbody when it just slipped
away, washed out by the rain and utter despair, she'd known then you played the cards you were dealt if all she did was hope every day she would have died long ago.

  Her deck had been stacked and she'd fought against the house ever since, one beating at a time.

  Jed wasn't to know she was hardened against any real connection now.

  It was safer that way.

  Hard lessons came with harder lessons. Call her pessimistic. Hope being the hardest of all. She sighed into her soda, aware the old man was watching her. She saw pity from his eyes. In another life, she would have peed with excitement to be Rider's girl.

  She cut just once, that emotional slash to her heart, and let herself think about it for a second, placing herself right there. Rider's girl.

  "I got eyes in my old head, girlie.” Jed’s voice pierced her thoughts. “My nephew isn't going to just let you waltz your pretty self out of the door... now, don't look like that, he ain't some kidnapper, you want to be here as much as he wants you here, whether you admit it to a wizened aged man with 20/20 vision or not." A blush began to creep up onto Zara's face.

  She was that obvious, was she? Damn.

  Mercy was a drug, she gravitated towards Rider's protection because it was safe, even as she fought against it, and knew it couldn't go anywhere.

  Giving herself time to put the pieces back together and then ... then ... her brows dropped down in concentration, aware Jed was right there with a smile around his stubbled mouth. She assumed she would leave soon enough; what else could she do?

  "Rider has been very nice to me, but really, Jed. That's all it is, all it can be. Rider knows it as well."

  "Helen, my old lady, the sweetest grouch you ever wished to meet, she's twenty years younger than me, she fancied herself a sugar-daddy, and I wasn't so dumb to let that pass me by, with a mean right hook if you take her pecan pies before they cooled, she'd say, girlie, the heart makes up its mind long before the head does and at the end of the day the heart knows. Wise is my Helen. You'll meet her when the weather turns nice again and we have the annual cookouts, she makes her famous popovers, that is if you're still around not being Rider's girl," Smiling, Jed winked at her and refilled her now empty glass.

  His affable tone made her want to laugh.

  Yes, she did gravitate towards kindness a moth to the flame that would eventually burn her. But boy, Rider's warmth was appealing. Addicting.

  Could she use him?

  Rider's girl ... she might not have hope left in her, but she could still feel want. It pounded in her chest. Stroked between her legs

  Could she?

  For the first time in weeks, Zara felt the knot in her belly loosen a fraction, enough so she could smile back at the old man. “I like the sound of your Helen.” She told him and meant it. Plus, she liked popovers with maple syrup.

  She settled by passing more than an hours’ worth of time chatting to Uncle Jed. Mostly listening to him and interjecting 'mmhmm's' now and then. She liked him by the finish of the conversation. It was only when she next saw Rider that the knot tightened again. The Souls President had a visible effect on her.

  Hope might be gone. But she was slowly ensnared in his bad boy thrall.

  Zara knew she was in trouble all over again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “We’re not in a fuckin’ episode of Friends, Icy…” Rider

  Was Rider in one of those bad B movies with the shit plot? He was being punked. Maybe he'd lost his hearing in the last minute 'cause he was sure as shit he did not just hear Zara use the F-word to him.

  Things had ticked along quietly for the last few hours, biding time until he joined his boys up at the shed to deal with the bastards he left stewing and waiting for death to come to them, Rider was knocking heads and ideas around to drag another chapter out of the shit that he hadn’t squared away any time to make sure she understood him clearly, what he wanted, what he intended to happen between them.

  Maybe he’d been speaking Greek, a word of which he knew fucking none, because what in the Zeus-fuck did she just say to him…

  He was up and out of his office chair, stalking her, his eyes never leaving her face and even as caution passed through those same eyes locked on him, she never backed up. His Icy-girl was learning to trust him.

  He used his hand around the top of her arm to draw her fully into the cab office and slammed the door to keep out the bracing wind howling through the compound.

  "Don't get me wrong, pleased as fuck you hunted me down to come and see me, I like it a lot. You're startin' to trust me, like that as well. But you wanna repeat that to me, 'cause I think you mixed some words up there..." If Zara was put off by the warning in his tone she didn't show it and Rider approved that, too.

  He guided her over, sat her in the chair opposite the desk overflowing with shit for the shop he'd been ignoring. He needed a damn secretary, he was gonna see to that asap tomorrow when a little murdering was dealt with.

  Until then he shelved the secretary, the paperwork and the thoughts of murder, cause the fucking shit Zara just said to him with that sweet angelic smile playing on her mouth, if he wasn't hearing things then Rider was about to start the murdering early. Beginning with the woman who was driving his dick crazy.

  Even now he grew hard.

  "It was just something I was thinking about and--" cute as hell she wrinkled her nose.

  Rider parked his ass on the edge of the desk to better hear this, legs spread he rested his flat palms to his thighs leaning over to pin her pale eyes, oh yes, she really had his attention 'cause if she said it again he was going to fuck her on this desk until she took it back.

  Rider inhaled hard. "Go on. Say it."

  "You've done so much for me, and----"

  "Quit stallin', baby. Repeat what you just said." she squirmed, crossed one leg over the other, his eyes tracked the movements as she fussed with her hair. She was looking beautiful, he wanted to suck on the side of her neck she exposed.

  He liked she'd come to the shop earlier and brought him and his boys a drink. He liked that his Uncle Jed told him Zara had sat and talked to him for a while.

  "I don't have anything to offer you as thanks, but I. Well." Rider's eyes narrowed. Waiting. "I think we should be friends, Rider. I've never had a biker outlaw for a friend, but I can be a good one to you, I know I can." She had the audacity to sit in his chair, fingers laced together on her lap like a prim lady going to tea, a smile in her eyes, and say that shit to him.

  Right to his fucking face without a hint of a joke.

  Friends. She wanted to be his fucking friend.

  His sweet baby had just stepped her pretty little ass onto a minefield and she didn't have a clue.

  "No." was his simple response to that nonsense.

  His tone even.

  His dick harder.

  She was throwing the ridiculous F-word in his face and he still wanted to fuck her rotten.

  "No?" Those long lashes of hers blinked slowly.

  She had her hair tied back in some kind of knot at the base of her neck. Rider closed his fingers around it and used it to steer her face closer.

  "What--- what are you doing, Rider? Sheesh. I didn't ask you to swallow live snakes. Backup. Maybe I don't want to be your friend after all if you're going to go around grabbing my hair. I mean that's kind of rude, biker man."

  "Stop talkin’, before that pretty pink mouth I want to devour gets you into more trouble." He gave her a dirty grin when she gasped turning pink. Rider knew he’d sunk to low levels of lust when that noise she makes while she’s stretching her arms over her head, her body contorting her muscles turns him on.

  He needed pussy and he needed it now. The kinda pussy he can slam into, make it creamy, make it vise him. Enjoying being squeezed tight, not only ‘cause it gets him off, what guy would say no to tight and wet, but it’s the signal she’s getting off as well. Rider was never greedy giving it good to a pussy.

  Only now the only pussy he wanted was sh
oving him into a friend box.

  Base hunger clouded his features.

  "I'm--- I'm in trouble? for wanting to become friends? You're nuts!" Rider was deep into her personal space a second later, almost nose to nose, he could mount her right on the chair and be fucking orgasms into her in minutes, his dick was that in need of her.

  Fingers flexed against her hair drawing over the skin on her neck. He felt her shiver.

  "That's ridiculous but now I regret it and I take it back, no friends for you."

  The huskiness in her voice was the best friction, it weaved lust around Rider’s dick, seducing and hardening him to the point of pain.

  "Good. And I'ma tell you why that's not happenin', any day soon or ever, Zara. But first if I don't have that mouth I'm gonna fuckin' die, so open those sweet lips and let me inside you." Smokey. His voice even to his own ears sounded thick as molasses, taking the few inches that separated them he closed it by crashing his mouth down on hers before she could protest.

  So. Fucking. Sweet.

  She tasted better than he'd remembered. Heat pumped his cock until it felt as though it would snap off inside his jeans. He let go of her hair, but wrapped that same hand around the back of her neck, holding her steady. She'd gone deathly still. Keeping his lips to hers, licking that bottom one, tasting only sugar, he groaned "Open up for me. Let me inside you, wanna taste deeper."

  "Rider..." air brushed his mouth. He caressed fingers on her neck, her pulse was heavy, erratic. He was used to fucking and fucking hard, but he realized he wanted this kiss more than anything.

  "Baby. Open."

  If Rider thought his dick was done getting any stiffer, he was wrong the second her lips parted and let him in. His tongue got inside licking over hers, there was no waiting, no gentle coaxing, he kissed and kissed Zara deeply. She kissed him back. Tentatively, but there was definitely a movement of her lips and tongue inside his mouth.

  His head threatened to fucking explode all over the office.