Road Warriors (Motorcycle Club Romance Collection) (Bad Boy Collections Book 4)

by Faye, Amy

  Her body shivered and she forced herself to keep moving down the elevator, stopping to grab her usual evening cup of coffee. Shannen would be there any minute, and with any luck he'd tell her what the hell she was supposed to feel about the entire situation.

  Instead, she knew, she was just going to keep freaking out for no reason. If those were her two options, then she didn't much care which way it went as long as she could figure some part of it out.

  He was waiting outside when she got there, standing outside like usual. The expression on his face had returned to usual, whatever tenderness he had found inside himself now retreated back to whatever pit it had crawled out of. The part of her that enjoyed that predatory expression exulted.

  The rest of her sunk a little bit. More than she had necessarily expected, she thought with more disappointment in herself than she probably should have felt. Why was she so caught up on him anyways?

  He was exactly the wrong sort of guy, she knew. That was probably part of the allure, but somehow it didn't really make it feel any better in the end. She should have known better, and the fact that she did know better and didn't care didn't make her feel one bit better.

  There were a thousand other guys out there. Probably a million, two million, three million. She could find one of those. Find someone safe. Find someone who was a smarter choice than him. It wasn't like he was uniquely reliable, right?

  He wasn't reliable at all. He was a loose cannon, a ticking time machine, and probably several other cliches for a dangerous man as well that she hadn't thought of.

  As much as she kept telling herself that, in the hopes that eventually it would start to matter, she couldn't really make herself feel it. It was a mistake and a half, but it was one that she wasn't about to be able to turn off no matter how much she wished that she could.

  Her body reacted to him as he reached over and shifted the gears, even the few inches closer to her made her skin light up with anticipation of what was so close to happening before. What could still happen. What she still wanted to happen in spite of herself.

  She closed her eyes and swore. "Could you drop me off at the house?"

  "Sure," he said, not taking his eyes off the road. Not putting them on her. Thankfulness tried valiantly to drown out the disappointment from that. She pretended that the disappointment didn't win and almost felt better. "Everything okay? Not hungry?"

  "I'm just tired," she lied.

  Caroline Rice was a great many things, but the first and foremost among them was, she wasn't a slut, and she wasn't going to go around advertising that she felt as horny as… well, as horny as anything, and the closer that he got the more she felt it.

  There were a great many reasons for that, but she only needed one good one, and the fact that it was a bad idea came to her mind so fast that it was like a slap in the face.

  Her eyes shut and she forced herself to ignore the tingling between her thighs. She'd prove that she wasn't caught up on him. She'd prove it to herself, and then she'd prove it to him, too. He'd see then, and he'd finally learn that he shouldn't have gotten her all caught up in his talons.

  That was his mistake, and he was about to learn. Right?

  The car pulled up in front of the house, and she slipped out, pulling her purse out of the back along with it, and she ignored the sound of his car rumbling away. Doubly ignored how fucking sexy she found it.

  It was a car, and that was all it was. There was nothing remotely attractive about it and it was stupid to imagine that there was. She wasn't stupid, and she didn't think it. It was all an advertising campaign, and not one that she was going to fall for.

  The door unlocked easily with a turn of the key and she let herself inside. Most of her wardrobe was sensible clothing. There wasn't exactly a whole lot of need for anything else. After all, it wasn't like she was showing off for anyone.

  Half her time was spent in the hospital. The other half of the time was split between going to the hospital, going to school so that she can go to the hospital, and spending time at home reading about hospital-related subjects.

  Nobody needs to wear anything especially nice when they go to the hospital; the few doctors who bothered to wear particularly nice suits only wore them when there was something to commemorate. Dinners and awards ceremonies.

  That wasn't the sort of thing that nurses had to worry about. Nurses in training not only didn't need to worry about them, they didn't need to think about them. That was the reality and it was a reality she'd accepted before she even made it to high school.

  That being said, Caroline was still a woman, and she still had a woman's taste for clothing. It was rare that she let herself indulge that, but not nearly as rare as it probably should have been if she were being thrifty.

  She pulled her scrubs off and looked at herself in the mirror. It wasn't like she had a bad body, she thought. She'd been comfortable with it for a long time, and the less that she had to show it off to other people the more comfortable with it she was.

  She pulled out a dress that showed far, far too much of it, held it against herself and frowned. Yes, fine. It would do. She dressed herself quickly and then it was into the Toyota. There was a lot she had to prove to herself, and even more she had to prove to Shannen.

  She'd give it a few short hours, now. Then she'd be able to prove that he wasn't so special. There would be any number of guys on his level, and she didn't doubt for a moment that she could attract one of them.

  Particularly, she thought sourly, because in this dress she looked like they wouldn't have to make it past the parking lot to score. While she wasn't planning on just throwing herself at anyone, she wasn't sure that was the wrong impression.

  As long as it wasn't Shannen, she needed to get her mind off things, and almost anyone would do. She pulled into a crowded parking lot, swallowed her pride and pulled up to the valet, took the claim ticket, stuffed it into her bra, and stepped inside.

  It had been a long, long time since she'd been inside one of these places, she thought. Maybe it had been too long. After a few drinks she could make it onto the dance floor, find some perfect-looking stud, let him think that it was going to turn into something, and enjoy herself for once in her life.

  Needless to say, Caroline didn't believe any of that was going to happen.

  19

  Caroline's expression soured as she looked up at him. She didn't know his name, but she knew that he was six feet tall, he had the vaguest hints of a beard on his face, and that he wasn't any sort of man to be messed around with.

  She'd already looked down enough to see the bulge in his jeans, one that looked like he could club a baby seal with, and the metaphor had stuck with her. No fault of his, she knew. He wore thick glasses and looked like the kind of guy who was 'sensitive,' whether it was a ploy or not.

  The way that his tee-shirt fit around his upper arms, and the way that those arms had such carefully-defined slabs of muscle painted on them, seemed to suggest that sensitivity was one of the last things on his mind. She looked up at him sourly and forced herself to think rationally for a minute, which was the last thing that she had any interest in at all.

  "Can I help you?"

  He smiled down at her and she decided to change her assessment of him. He looked less like a sensitive urbanite kid and more like a gentle giant, when he smiled like that. The high cheekbones, the drawn cheeks, had fooled her for a minute, but even after two glasses of tequila, she wasn't fooled for long.

  "No," she said. The big man leaned against the bar beside her and looked her in the eyes. It must have been hard because he had almost a foot on her, and she was slouching over a drink that she was pretending she didn't want refilled.

  "You want me to leave you alone?"

  She didn't want to be left alone, but she wanted him to leave her alone, and she wasn't about to try to unpack the reasons why in her mind. "Yeah," she answered. "I do."

  He gave her a thumbs up, called the bartender to refill her drink on him, an
d said his name, which she ignored. The bartender did fill her drink, though, even as the guy who probably had a name walked away. She'd already forgotten that he was there by the time that she turned back to her now refilled drink.

  She took a drink of it and soured. She'd made a mistake coming here, that was sure. She didn't know why she had even bothered. There was so much else that she ought to have been worrying about tonight, but she wasn't thinking about any of it.

  The problem was that she should also have been distracted by something else. Instead, she was drinking in public with the intention to get drunk, and not the kind of fun drunk that she'd driven over thinking about.

  She took another swallow and set the cup down, vowing not to touch another drop. There would only be trouble if she did, she knew, and she wasn't looking for any trouble. Not that kind, and not any other kind.

  That was the third already. There were others, of course, who didn't even make the list. Men who hadn't bothered to come talk to her, or men who took the hint when she'd told them to buzz off.

  But some of them seemed to recognize some weakness inside her, some part of her that she knew, and they knew, was hoping for someone to come and talk to her.

  Those types were exactly who she wanted to be talking to her in the first place. Men with the sort of confident swagger that she was hoping to hell she could forget about as quickly as possible. Instead, they had all fallen flat.

  Why did she want this in the first place? She should have been home, trying to sleep. Tomorrow was a day off and she should have been at home to appreciate it before the evening classes began.

  Instead she was here, and she couldn't even bring herself to let a guy pick her up which was an embarrassment and a half all by itself. She wasn't that bad, was she?

  A voice made her turn before she could have a chance at recognizing it. He looked down at her with an expression she couldn't place. Shannen shouldn't have been in a place like this at all.

  "What are you doing here?"

  She frowned at him, drank deeply from her glass and stood up.

  "You're not in charge of me, you son of a bitch."

  He looked over at the bartender. "And how were you planning on paying for your tab without this?"

  He held up a long, slender leather wallet. One that she immediately recognized, but she opened her purse anyways, dug inside, and the surprise hit her hard.

  "How did you get that?"

  "I think you ought to be asking why you don't have it, instead."

  "Did you take it from me?"

  He rolled his eyes and wrapped one arm around her shoulder. She didn't fail to notice the man standing there watching the two of them; he was only a foot away, and he made no secret of looking at her as she was led away from the bar.

  "Sal, you want to take care of this? I can get you back tomorrow."

  The man shrugged. "I can make an exception for you, sure."

  Shannen smiled at him and Caroline pushed the big fighter back away. "You're not my Dad. You don't get to tell me what to do."

  "Caroline, you need to leave now."

  "What, you think you're so fuckin' great," she started, and didn't finish.

  The anger that burned in his eyes was hot enough to light up more than just the room. Her skin crawled under it, caught between desire and fear, not sure where one ended and the other began.

  "You're going home now," he growled. She didn't argue this time, and he pulled her through the crowd.

  She was drunker than she thought, she realized. At first she'd thought that it was going to be a couple of quick drinks; then it was more than that, but she'd been paying attention to the amount of drink, at least.

  "What are you doing here?"

  Shannen didn't answer her question until they were out the door, and he'd slid her into the passenger seat. Her feet didn't want to move right, and lifting them up even the few inches to get them into his low-slung coupe was a struggle.

  He eased himself into the car and the engine started with a growl that sent her skin aflame again. He pulled out, and she turned to him. She was awfully tired all of a sudden, without the pulse-pounding music to guide her to new heights of energy.

  "Wha-how did you foll-follow me?" Her brain wasn't working right, the words kept coming out wrong, and it was the best she could do to try and get it back on track. One of these times she was going to make a wrong guess at the right word and just roll with it.

  The effort of trying to train her eyes on him was too much.

  "You shouldn't drink alone," he said, his voice flat, whatever judgment that was inside him held to nothing audible, but she could see it in his eyes nonetheless. Seeing it made her angrier than maybe it should have.

  "You're not my Dad. It's none of your business what I do."

  "You're right, but you're under my protection now, aren't you?"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  He swore and said something about her not remembering the conversation in the morning. He was right: she forgot what he'd said a moment later.

  "What were you even drinking?"

  "Uh. Tequila," she offered. "But I'm a little tired."

  He swore again. "You kept an eye on your drink, right? Nobody slipped you anything?"

  It wasn't like that really happened, in the real world, she said. At least, she thought it. The words didn't really come out except as a mumble. She'd mostly looked at it, but it wasn't like she'd been obsessive about it. There was no reason to do it, anyways.

  "What… doing there?"

  He looked down at her hard for a moment before turning his eyes back on the road. She knew she was fading fast. It was hard to believe that someone might have put something in her drink, but some clinical part of her had to admit that the symptoms did seem to fit surprisingly well, considering that it pretty much never happened.

  Then he let out a long breath. "I guess it doesn't much matter. You're so far out of it, you won't remember your own name in the morning. I had business with the owner."

  "Oh," she answered, though none of it made a whole lot of sense. She was tired, and she had to sleep. If she didn't, well… that wasn't a choice. She was so tired. Keeping her eyes open even as long as she had was an incredible strain, and she wasn't sure that she could keep it up.

  But she wasn't going to let him win, and she wasn't about to admit that he might have saved her from a dangerous situation.

  If she fell asleep, he'd think it was because he was her savior. That he was protecting her. But he wasn't protecting her from anything except himself, and she wasn't ready for that.

  Her body did feel heavy, though. Her eyes stung so bad, and she wasn't sure that she could keep her eyes open if she wanted to. She was right, but she wasn't conscious to realize it, because Caroline was asleep before they even turned onto her street.

  20

  Caroline's head was pounding and there was nothing more than snippets of memory from the night before. She'd gone out drinking, wearing clothes that would have humiliated her if she weren't drunk on jealousy and being far, far too upset to make rational decisions.

  Then, after that, she started into her cups, and some time in the night she got home. Some part of the nurse vaguely recalled having been taken home by Shannen. She didn't know what had happened between getting in his car and getting into bed, but one hint screamed out at her right away.

  Her clothes, what little of them she had been wearing, were nowhere to be found. She slept in her underwear, underwear that she had selected to be as enticing as possible in case she had a chance to show it off.

  She didn't have to wonder who had undressed her. The list was too short, and the list of people who could have undressed her and left her sleeping in her own bed was shorter. The only thing she had to wonder about was whether or not she'd done something she was going to regret while she was out of it. That, of course, and whether or not he had been enticed if she hadn't.

  Her conscience gave her a mental slap on the wrist, but it
was lost in the screaming headache. She needed water, and she needed it immediately. The rest of her thoughts could wait.

  She poured a glass of water, drank it entirely in a few short gulps, and then poured out another, went hunting for the ibuprofen and took a small fistful of them.

  In a few hours, maybe the headache would go away, and she could go about her day. But right now it was so cripplingly bad that she was afraid she would have trouble if she tried something as complicated and unpleasant as trying to make it to the far wall and open the blinds.

  The lights were off in the apartment, and the only light that illuminated the room came in at the edge of the closed blinds, but it was still too much. She squinted into the dim light and tried to remind herself that it was just photo sensitivity from the long night she'd had the night before.

  It was true, but somehow Caroline didn't feel much better as a result of it.

  Instead, she forced herself to ignore the pain as much as she possibly could and crossed the room, her eyes searching the books until she came across the one she was supposed to be studying for her classes that evening.

  The thump it made as she laid it down was a hundred times too loud. She let out a long breath and resigned herself to only moving very slowly, looking away from the window, and waiting for the pain to subside, which it would have to do eventually if she had anything to say about it.

  The hours passed slowly, and just as slowly she felt the throbbing in her head go away. She could afford the day off of school, she told herself, so she stayed there and by the time that she was supposed to leave, the throbbing in her temple stopped.

  Shannen should have been home by now, she told herself. But the fact was that he wasn't, and she didn't know what to make of it. Caroline told herself to ignore it, but she didn't. She couldn't afford to.

  Her gut told her that things were going to be trouble if she let herself ignore his absence. She fished her phone out from under her pillow, where it had found itself some time in the black space where last night was in her mind.