by Megan Crane
He hadn’t been looking for her, he hadn’t been looking for anything, and he’d found her anyway.
And the truth was, Chaser had never been very good at letting go. It wasn’t in his nature. Then again, he would have said that nothing he’d felt around this woman was in his nature, either, and here he was.
He let the road take it. He tried to work it out on the long stretches of country, with nothing between them but the wind and the roar of the bike. He wanted to hold on. Hell, he wanted to keep her.
But when he pulled up into the alley beside the bakery, nothing had changed. She was the kind of person who made the people around her better. She wanted to help his kid and she had. She’d helped him while she was at it. And he was the sort of man who dragged her into a junkie’s depressing squat in a falling-down trailer covered in drug paraphernalia, then aired out his own nasty history with the junkie in question.
He was tainted. Corrupt. Most of the time he reveled in that. But how could he claim this woman when all he was going to do—all he knew how to do—was get that same stain all over her?
“Why did you bring me back here?” Lara asked when she climbed off the bike behind him, peeling that soft helmet from her head and handing it to him as if she did that without thought now. As if they were a hell of a lot more intimate with each other than these few, compressed days suggested.
There were so many things he wanted to say to her. But he didn’t know how. Or where to start. Or how he could possibly tell her how she’d lodged herself inside of him and wrecked him. Made him a better person, maybe, but that only showed him he wasn’t much of a man to begin with.
And there was no time for this. He needed to extract his VP from whatever bullshit Digger was making him do back at the clubhouse, and head back out to see what that Black Dog asshole had to say about all the things that had been going on lately. Especially the relationship between the Black Dogs president and Digger. He needed to stand up for Uptown and his brothers the way he always did, and these days that could mean when real shit went down, not just a handshake over a friendly beer. In the middle of all of that he had to figure out how to take a little bit better care of his kid, so maybe next time around she’d come to him when something happened to her instead of acting out.
But most of all, he had to set Lara Ashburn free, because she didn’t deserve any of that crap. He’d heard the way her jackhole uncle had talked to her. And he knew what she’d lived through already. Which made him even more of an asshole for dragging her straight back into her family shit.
Any way he looked at it, she deserved better than him. No question.
“Chaser.” She was already frowning in concern. Already reading his mind. She was already moving closer, her hand out to touch him. “Are you okay?”
“Listen to me,” he gritted out. He turned off the bike’s rumbly engine, but he didn’t get off. And he told himself to ignore the way her hand felt when she set it against his side. “We have to talk about something and I don’t want you to argue with me about it. Can you do that? For once?”
“You know that no conversation that starts that way has ever ended well, right? In the history of the world?”
“You should never have set foot in that place tonight,” he told her, letting his disgust and fury pour out of him. “It was revolting. She was worse.”
“She’s an addict.” Lara shrugged. “I’ve seen addicts before. Some a lot worse than that.”
“Not with me.” He shook his head, and that dark, grimy thing that had taken hold of him in that trailer crashed back into him then, like the storm that had never come breaking free of the clouds at last. “You wanted to get away from the life and I dragged you back into it. And look at what you get. Locked up in my house with my crazy sister. Dragged out to a flophouse to listen to the rantings of a woman I fucked sixteen years ago because all I cared about was pussy, not whether or not she was right in the head. Why aren’t you mad about that, Lara? Why aren’t you insulted?”
“Because I asked to go.” She let out a laugh, though there was nothing but that same concern in her wide blue eyes. “I demanded it, in fact.”
“Maybe you’re as fucked in the head as I am,” he growled at her. “But that just makes it worse. You deserve a different life than this. You deserve a shiny do-gooder sheriff, a couple of rowdy kids, a goddamned white picket fence, whatever. Not this.” He made himself keep going, even though his throat felt scraped raw and his chest ached. Everything hurt, and he didn’t think that was going to change any time soon. He figured it was one more thing he’d have to live with—but she wouldn’t. That was the point. Keeping her safe was what mattered. Chaser was a lot of things, but he wasn’t safe. “And not me.”
Chapter 13
Lara couldn’t breathe. It was like all the times her uncle had shoved her down, knocking the air right out of her body. She wanted to gasp, cry, scream—but she knew, somehow, that if she did it would somehow make everything worse.
Chaser was sitting astride his bike with that hard, unyielding look on his face and sheer torture in his eyes. And she could see that he meant every word that he said. Each awful, unexpected word that was so far from what she felt inside that she could hardly process it.
“I think you’ve had a long night,” she managed to say.
“All my nights are long,” he growled at her. “What the fuck do you think I do?”
“I know what you do.” Her voice was a low throb, almost lost in the constriction in her throat.
“You don’t know me at all,” he said, and he seemed too calm. Too sure. Not furious and veering a little too close to unhinged the way he had outside his house. “And you know too much about the life. That’s a bad combination, babe.”
“Or the exact right combination.”
“This isn’t a discussion,” he said shortly. But he didn’t look indifferent. Quite the opposite, and Lara didn’t understand how her heart could be carrying on against her ribs like that at the sight of him when he was saying he didn’t want her anymore. “It’s been a fun week, but I’m out. You’re a high school teacher who had a little walk on the wild side, but come Monday morning, you need to strap that prissy armor of yours back on and get back to reality.”
Lara took a step back because that felt like a blow, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him.
“You’re scraping me off?” She didn’t sound upset because she wasn’t. She was far too numb to be upset.
Chaser shifted in his seat. “Go live your life, Lara. When your uncle shows his face—”
“He might not. If Uncle Ray made good decisions he wouldn’t be, you know, him.”
“He’ll come.” Chaser’s voice was dark. And absolutely certain. “Little shitheads like him always come. He likes power and wants more of it, so he’ll come running to try to take a little of ours. And he’ll know exactly where to find you, thanks to me.” He rubbed a hand over his unshaven jaw and her eyes were drawn to that sleeve of tattoos down his arm. He was brutal and beautiful and she had no doubt whatsoever that he was hers. And that her uncle had nothing to do with it. “I’ll make it clear he needs to leave you alone, whatever happens with business shit. You’ll have full club support no matter what.”
“But I won’t have you.” She lifted one shoulder, then dropped it. “What’s the point?”
He shook his head at her as if she was trying to hurt him with this. As if he didn’t understand. He started to speak, then stopped.
When he finally pushed words out, he sounded as close to bewildered as she thought a man like him, so elemental and sure, ever could. “Why would you want me?”
She wanted to go to him then, but she knew he wouldn’t allow it. She could see it in every tense line of his big, hard body.
“Why do you think I moved here?” Lara asked, trying to force air into her lungs while all that numbness bled away into something much sharper. But she wouldn’t let it take her down. Hell no. She’d use it.
Chaser
only moved his big shoulders in a kind of shrug. “To do your biker-kid ministry or whatever the hell you’re doing at the high school. Saving one girl at a time from a future of sucking dick and riding on the back of a bike, which is what you saw tonight in all its glory. Or babies and club drama if she’s lucky enough to be an old lady, isn’t that what you said?”
Lara could hardly remember the person she’d been the night she’d met him, much less what she’d said. But there was a familiar echo to those words. And it certainly sounded like the kind of thing she’d say. And had said a thousand times to her friends over the years. And her brother.
“My brother, Mikey, is in prison up in Mississippi,” she said after a moment. There was nothing around them but the shadows of the alley and the moon up above. It cast them both in a silvery light, but it did nothing at all to take away from the power that came off Chaser like heat. Or the distance he was putting between them. “He’s two years younger than me. When we were little our dad died and then Mom left us with Uncle Ray, so really, we were all we had. But then he got older, and the club took him.” She let out a laugh. “I shouldn’t put it that way. He wouldn’t. He patched in young and he never looked back. But I never got over it. And when he got sent away because of the usual Brothers of Goliath nonsense, it was easy to blame that on the club, too. They took everything from me, even my brother.”
“All the more reason you should stay away from me, then.” Chaser looked like stone. “I’ll take a whole lot more.”
She told herself to ignore that, even as her body shifted into a different kind of awareness. It wanted to sign up for that more right now. Right here, in an alley. That was how shameless she was when it came to this man. When before him, she’d been tied in a thousand knots of shame, for so many different reasons.
“But when Mikey was shipped out here from California, I didn’t find myself a nice, normal place to live. I didn’t teach at some sweet suburban high school in a pretty little town filled with live oaks and the Junior League. I scoured the countryside until I found this place. And the minute I drove into Lagrange, I felt at home.” Lara’s hands were in fists at her sides as she told him this thing she’d never admitted out loud before. Hell, she hadn’t even truly admitted it to herself. “I told myself a lot of lies about that feeling. That recognition. I told myself that I was all fired up to save people from my own fate, that was all. That was what that feeling was all about. But then you walked into my classroom, and what did I do?”
“Lara.” His voice was much too dark, but he didn’t shift that brooding gaze off her. “This isn’t going to help anything.”
“Right after Mikey got arrested, I visited him in jail,” Lara told him. “I hadn’t seen him in a long time. I’d left that entire life behind me when I moved to San Diego. So I walked in expecting to see the brother I remembered, the one I talked to on the phone, and instead I saw this…biker.” She could remember that day all too well. The shock of seeing how her baby brother had grown into a big, hard, dangerous man while she’d been off pretending that couldn’t happen. That it would somehow never happen, despite the vows he’d made of his own free will. “I think that up until then, I really thought he’d grow out of it.”
She expected Chaser to throw something else at her then, to shut her down, but he didn’t. Which wasn’t exactly encouragement, but she took it. She’d take what she could, and use it, too.
“And I was mad about everything. I thought his attorney sucked. I was furious with our uncle. I thought Mikey was innocent even though he never said he was. I hated the club. I ranted at him for a good twenty minutes.” She swallowed, unable to look away from Chaser in that deserted alley, with all that moonlight dancing down around them. “And do you know what he said?”
“To go home,” Chaser said darkly. “Just like I’m telling you. Your brother sounds like a smart man, babe.”
“He listened to me rant and rave like someone had just killed my dog in front of me and then he leaned in really close. ‘Your problem is you want to leave the life but you don’t have a fucking clue how else to live.’ That’s what he told me.” She tried to mimic Mikey’s deep, faintly rough voice as she continued. “ ‘It’s in your blood. You can change the way you live, but you can’t change that.’ ”
Chaser let out a short little noise, too harsh to be a laugh. “And let me guess, you saw the light. You ran right back to your uncle and begged for a way back into the club’s good graces.”
“Certainly not,” Lara said sternly. “I thought he was crazy and I told him so. And I believed it, until I came here. I was so self-righteous about how I’d got out and what I’d made of myself and how above all that biker shit I was.” She ignored the scowl on his face and moved closer, pushing into him so she could put her hands on him, and she was well aware that he let her do it. But then again, since he could stop her anytime he wanted, wasn’t his failure to do so basically an invitation? “And you looked right at me and you knew. You knew exactly who I was. You knew I had a club tattoo. You knew.”
“I should have returned one of those phone calls and let you have your little parent meeting with someone else,” he muttered, but he didn’t pull away. He didn’t push her off him. “It would have been kinder.”
“Since when are you kind?” she whispered.
“That’s the point I’m trying to make.” His voice was low and urgent, and his hands came around to hold her there against him, leaning into his lap as he straddled his powerful Harley. “I’m not. But you deserve to be with someone who is.”
“Too late, Chaser.” And there was too much emotion in her voice then. In her eyes, threatening to spill over into tears. But she made no attempt to hide it from him. “I want you. I love you.”
“It’s been a week,” he growled at her. “Not even.”
“And despite that, I know you love me, too, jackass,” she said quietly, holding his dark gaze. Because she still had no doubt. Not a shred. “You claimed me. It’s crazy and too fast and probably stupid, but so what? It’s already happening. This is the ride, Chaser. Are you really going to jump off now?”
He muttered something she didn’t quite catch, and then he devoured her.
His mouth came down on hers even as he lifted her up to meet him, and Lara threw herself into the kiss with everything she was, everything she had. His tongue tangled with hers and she fought to meet him. To go deeper, harder, better.
He angled his jaw over hers and hauled her up farther until she was sprawled across his lap up there on that bike, and then he ate at her like a starving man.
Like he could never, ever get enough.
And she kissed him back the same way because she knew she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. There was no enough. There was only Chaser.
And this bright, wild heat that had taken them both out at the knees.
When he pulled his head back they were both breathing hard, and one of his hands had snuck beneath her tank top to curve around her rib cage, just a hair beneath her breast. Both of her fists were gripping his T-shirt.
“I don’t play games,” he told her harshly, something untamed and predatory in his gaze. It made her shiver. “I’m not a casual man when it comes to the things I actually care about. I don’t fucking throw words around like that, and I don’t take challenges I don’t expect to win.”
“Chaser…”
But he pulled his hand out from beneath her tank top, and he set her on her feet next to his bike. Then he let go of her, and did nothing but watch her when she swayed on her own unsteady legs.
“I’m a greedy bastard, Lara,” he told her when she was solid again, a kind of dark, thrilling fury in his gaze and all over his face. “I want to chain you to my bed and keep you there a good, long while, and I don’t think you have any idea what that means. If I get my hooks in you, I’m never letting you go. Shut up,” he growled when she started to speak. “You should think about that. Because if you don’t, and you rethink this shit later, tough.”
> “Chaser,” she said again, with a little more asperity this time, as if she didn’t thrill at every word. “Just say you love me. You don’t have to be such a drama queen.”
“This is your opportunity to escape this life.” His expression was serious, and his voice seemed to echo all the way through her until her bones rattled with the force of it. “Take it. Go somewhere safe and pretty. Live oaks and whatever the hell you just said. Meet somebody nice. Make your tattoo into something girlie with flowers and shit. Build a new life and don’t come back and waste yours here. Do it, Lara.”
He started his engine then, but he was still looking at her as he did. And he didn’t speed off into the night.
“Is that what you want me to do?” she asked over the roar.
Chaser’s beautiful mouth pulled to one side while his dark whiskey gaze made her feel drunk.
“No,” he said, his voice bleeding into the shout of the bike, the deep bass rumble. “Which is why you should.”
—
Dawn was starting to poke her ass up in the east when they finally finished with Chew, the fat fuck Black Dog. It took four of them to handle him when it was done, dragging him deeper into the bayou. And another two to throw gasoline all over the trailer. When everything was done but the burning, they stood around the little clearing where the double-wide stood, sunk into the mud.
Chaser figured they were all a little shell-shocked. Especially Butler and Tick, who might have had some suspicions about Digger—but not proof. They hadn’t even heard all the shit the rest of them had.
Until now.
“Three months ago Benny Chambless, that gutless wonder of a douchebag mayor, told us Digger was making deals with his one-eyed, patch-wearing jackhole friend,” Uptown said into the silence, his voice hard. “We all knew he meant Fat Irish. We all knew that our president was in bed with the goddamned president of the Black Dogs, and we didn’t do a goddamned thing.”
