by April Lust
She nodded and plucked one of the little finger sandwiches off the table. “I do.”
“You trying to set us up?”
She snorted. “Please, that girl doesn’t need help getting set up. She is busty, blonde, and brainy. Which I’m sure you’ve noticed. But this isn’t about that. This is about the fact that her life just came crashing down around her at the worst moment, in the worst way. What she needs is someone to yell at, and someone to cry on.”
“Why me?”
“Because you know all about wanting to scream at a parent.”
“I was thinking something similar a moment ago.”
“Well, then.” She motioned him off. “Go on.”
# # #
“Why did he do it?” Emma asked. Her hands shook as she hit the lever to pour some hot water into a coffee cup. She plopped a tea sachet into the cup and waited. “What in his life was so much that he wanted to be a biker? What was so horrible, so terrible, that he put on a jacket with patches and broke the law? What the hell did he have to prove?”
“Have you ever been on a bike?” His voice was low, even. “Do you know what it means?”
“Means? It means my dad wanted to break the law more than he wanted to raise me, more than he wanted my mother. More than he wanted anything else.”
“I don’t know if I can explain.”
She knitted her brows. Turning off the water and adding sugar to the steadily browning hot water. “Try.”
He shook his head and took a long drag off the cigarette. The tip turned bright as flame, the smoke turned into a plume over his head. He blew the drag out of his nostrils. It formed around his face like mist. “It’s freedom.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Don’t give me that. Don’t—”
“Do you want to hear it? Or do you wanna keep snapping at me?” he asked. He leveled his eyes at her and waited.
She chewed her lip for a moment. “Yeah, I want to know.”
He took another long taste of his cigarette and then flicked it off. His next words came out in slow puffs of gray vapor. “Like I said, it’s freedom. You are used to this big car protecting you from the world. You get in it and you cut yourself off. Everything in there is all yours, your music, your AC, your whatever. It’s isolation. Nothing wrong with that, but isolation isn’t freedom.”
He has a good voice, she thought. There was a rhythm to it that made it easy to listen to. She found her legs relaxing. The cup wasn’t too hot in her hands, just warm enough for comfort. The taste of herbs and sweetness tongue set her at ease. She kept quiet and let him continue.
“You get on the bike and it starts off a little scary. What are you doing, how do you find your balance? It’s like that first time your daddy let’s go of a bike when you are learning to ride.” He paused. “Well, if you had a daddy who did that kind of thing, I guess. The wind slaps you in the face, too hot or too cold, hell, sometimes it’s even raining.”
“That doesn’t sound particularly freeing.”
“That’s just how it starts. After a little while it gets to be more. It becomes more. I mean at first, yeah, it’s pain. But then everything changes. Somewhere between shifting gears and leaning into turns you aren’t just someone riding a bike. You are part of the wind and the rain. You are flying, flying down the road at sixty, or seventy, or eighty. You are high and you are completely free. Nothing matters, not your bills, or your supposedly non-existent daddy issues.”
“You are surprisingly poetic.”
His mouth parted into a shy grin. “You surprised, Miss College?”
“A little,” she answered. She stood up slowly and wrapped a single arm around him. “I like it.”
He put an arm around her back. She leaned her head into the curve of his shoulder. The warm heat of the muscles beneath the denim and the leather sank into her skin. The scent of him beneath all that, Irish soap and some earthy aroma that was all Kellan, infiltrated her senses. For a moment, just a moment, she forgot he wasn’t hers.
She liked him now. No, that wasn’t fair. Emma had always liked Kellan. She had always been enamored of his dark hair and blue eyes, the bad boy swagger. The truth was she’d never really known him. She had just known what he looked like, not who he was. She had learned, over the weeks, that Kellan was a strong man, jagged around the edges, but soft in heart.
But he wasn’t hers. Not really.
There was a knock. Leon poked his head in the door. “Hey, I don’t mean to bug you two.”
“What’s up?” Kellan asked.
“The morgue guys are ready to load up Mac, and there is some paperwork issue that Emma needs to sign off on.”
She cleared her throat and stepped back. “All right, thanks, Leon.”
“I’ll make sure he gets loaded up safely while you sign off on things.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that.”
The guys from the morgue were navigating the hearse around the back of the bar. They gave her a wave as Kellan jogged over to them to help figure everything out. She watched him for just a moment before she saw the other man waving her over.
“Mrs. Mathers?” he asked. He was wearing a nice suit with sensible loafers. “I hate to be a bother. I’m Kyle Richards, I’m one of the lawyers down at Wesley & Manuel. I’m handling your father’s passing. And we have a few questions we’d like to run past you.”
He flicked out a card and passed it to her. She gave it a look and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you for a couple of days.”
And she wasn’t expecting him here at all. It bugged her that he had come to her father’s wake. It didn’t seem very professional. Maybe it was normal when you had the wake at the actual funeral home.
“Questions?” she asked, swallowing her frustration. “What kind of questions?”
“His last will and testament, for one. A few question about the dissolution of his business assets.” He motioned for her to follow as he headed towards a sleek-looking car.
“It won’t take long, will it? It’s been a long day.”
“I understand” He nodded. “No, it won’t take very long at all. If it would make things easier, I can meet you at another time?”
“No,” she sighed. “No, let’s get it done.”
He reached out to take her hand. She was reaching out to take his when she saw it. The sleeve slid up his wrist, exposing the very bottom of a tattoo. She couldn’t see the entire thing, but she could see a flare of blue cloth, the ink forming flowing fabric over the wrist, the outer edges had the pale tones of someone haloed in pure light.
She moved before she could think. She shoved the sleeve farther up. There the Virgin Mary was, splayed out across the man’s wrist, her demure face tilted to the right in maternal love. She shook her head. She drew in a breath to scream when the man opened his jacket to show the gun hidden there.
“Don’t scream, don’t you dare scream.”
“Who are you?”
He smiled, but there was no kindness in it. It was a mad smile, all teeth and no humor. “I’m a friend of Gabriel’s. Now get in the car. Don’t say anything. Don’t warn anyone.”
Emma’s heart was racing. She didn’t want to get in that car. There was no telling where it was going to go, but she was sure it wasn’t anywhere she wanted to be. She swallowed hard. She took a single step towards the car.
“There we go, nice and easy.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because Gabriel asked.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“Why should it?”
“I dunno,” she snapped back as they neared the car. “Because kidnapping is wrong?”
He made a shrug of one shoulder. “For me, sweetie, it’s all business. Your father caused us a big problem. Gabriel has decided that you are how we even things out.”
“Why?” she asked. “My father is dead. It’s not going to do anything to anyone to hurt me.”
“That’s a question you’ll
have to ask the man himself.”
She snorted. “What? You don’t rank high enough on the totem pole?”
His eyes flared. She saw his shoulder jerk beneath his jacket. He didn’t like being talked down to. That was interesting. It could work for her if she kept messing with that button.
“Get in the car.”
“No.”
“Bitch, I will shoot you.”
“Yeah.” She nodded, pretending she couldn’t taste fear in the back of her throat. “I’m sure you could. I mean, someone as low tier as you probably turns to his gun every second he gets, right? You gotta prove yourself to be a really tough guy.”
His hand flew out and connected with her face. Her head jerked to the side. The tips of his fingers had caught along her ear, causing them to ring. She let her body stumble more than necessary in the hopes of drawing attention.
“Hey!” someone shouted. She didn’t know the voice. “Kellan!”
She tried to take a step towards the voice, but her legs gave. Feet pounded towards her. Hands, strong and angry, hauled her backwards. She struggled, but his arm came across her neck and he hefted her upwards. He was stronger than he looked. She wiggled, but his arm tightened until she started to gasp. Her vision went blurry around the edges.
Another hand curled around her middle. Her mind filled with memories of being in her dorm room. Her body started to shake. She growled and snapped and clawed with her hands.
“No!” she shouted. She threw her weight forward and felt her feet hit the ground. Her Aikido took over and she jabbed backwards, trying to put a bit of space between her and her assailant. He jerked back, but his hand struck out once more. It had the same arcing style of someone who had a lot more training than she did. It struck against her collar. If she hadn’t known to roll back, it might have broken.
“No!” she said again. “I’m not going with you.”
A blur shot by her, and she heard the sickening crack of breaking bone. The arm released her and she collapsed to the ground. Strong arms hefted her up and she recognized the spice and herb scent of Kellan. She buried herself in it, wrapped herself in the comfort of it.
“He’s Gabriel’s,” she tried to explain, not sure why she still thought it was important to tell him. “He tried to take me.”
He nodded, “I know, I know.”
She heard another break, and that confused her. Hadn’t it been Kellan who freed her? She blinked open her eyes and looked over her shoulder. Phantom was there, pale and slender. Blood stood out on one cheek. He stood over the prone body of her would-be captor with a small blade in his delicate hand.
“Well?” he asked. And it was then that she realized it had been Phantom who had called out to Kellan.
“Send everyone home, bring him into the club,” Kellan ordered. “Find out what he knows.”
Phantom nodded his head.
Kellan picked Emma up. “Leon and Vinny, oversee everything else. Joe, deal with the man’s car.”
Orders given, everyone jumped to obey.
Hannah asked if Emma needed anything.
“Yeah,” Kellan said as he walked the two of them towards his bike. “Drop her car off later.”
Chapter 10
Kellan had been right: a bike was freedom. There was something about the rumble of it beneath her, and the feel of the wind against her skin that made her feel vibrantly alive. She didn’t just think it was the adrenaline wearing off, though she could feel her head spinning with that, it was the sensation of being utterly exposed to the world as it went by at sixty miles an hour.
In the past month she had been attacked not once, but twice. Her father had passed away. She had gotten married and moved in with a husband who kept claiming that he didn’t want her, but liked to grope her backside and came rushing to her rescue. Her mother had shown up out of nowhere. It was easily too much for any one person to take.
He didn’t take the straightest way home. She didn’t know if he was making sure they weren’t being followed, or that she had enough time to relax. Maybe both. She wrapped her hands tighter around his middle and leaned her cheek against his leather-clad back.
She loved him, and she knew it. When she had been afraid, it had been his presence she had turned to. She had known his arms, his scent. Maybe she’d always loved him; maybe she hadn’t loved him until that moment. She really couldn’t say. There was a small chance that she had loved him before he’d ever walked into her life. It didn’t matter, she knew it now, and she wasn’t going to let him go.
Too much in her life was easy to walk away from. Her father, school, and the not really friends she had made over the years. Hannah may one day be a friend; she was definitely trying.
When they turned down a familiar street she knew he was finally taking her home.
Rocco was bouncing from one side of the living room to the other when they walked in, clearly ready for a walk. Kellan gave him a perfunctory pat and moved past the spot where the leash was hanging and came back from his room with a pistol in his hand.
“This is for you.”
“You shouldn’t have.” She tried to keep her tone light. She didn’t reach for the gun.
“Emma, you’ve been attacked twice now. It’s time for you to be armed.”
“Statistically, a woman with little or no training with a weapon is more likely to have the weapon used against her than to use it well enough to be of help.”
“Where do you get all this?”
“I read.”
“Well, I can tell you from real experience that a chick with a gun can be scary enough to keep the bad guys back.”
She leveled her gaze at him. Her lips parted with every intention to explain how many women had been assaulted with their own guns, but he shoved it into her hands. The weight of it had her blinking. “It’s heavy!”
“It’s a weapon, not a feather. Keep it with you.”
“Fine,” she said, unwilling to argue. “Take the dog out before I have to clean up a mess.”
He gave her one final look before plucking up the leash and heading out the door.
She waited until he was gone to put the gun carefully on the table; images of it accidentally going off filled her head. Emma knew they were ridiculous, but she couldn’t stop them from happening anyway. She much preferred Aikido, or other forms of martial arts for self-protection. Guns were too easy to take away, too easy to use. It took passion to punch someone. It took a muscle jerk to pull a finger.
With a few minutes to herself she headed to the bedroom. Her funeral dress felt heavy as she tugged it off her shoulder and tossed it across the room like a memory she already wished she could forget. There were too many of those lately. With a careless gesture she undid her long hair, brushing it out as she mentally picked out pajamas.
Too many bad memories lately. Too many bad memories that made up her life. All she wanted, all she’d ever wanted, was a nice, quiet life. She wanted to not have to look out a window and worry. She wanted to find a good man, have a baby or two, and make a simple life.
She loved Kellan, but life with him could never be simple.
Emma sighed at herself and heard the beep of her phone. She glanced at the message. It was Kellan. Keep the gun with you, not sitting out somewhere.
She stuck her tongue out at the screen and typed back, How did you know?
He responded a few minutes later with, I’m not a college boy, but I can read you like a book.
It brought a smile to her face. With a dramatic sigh that no one heard she went into the living room and plucked the gun off the table. It was still heavy. She lugged it back to her room and put it on the table next to her bed. There, she thought, he can’t complain about the location now.
Emma didn’t want him to complain. She wanted him to like her. No, she amended, she wanted him to love her. Or at least admit that he felt something for her besides respect for her now deceased father.
She hadn’t even realized what she was planning until she pulled
on a red satin nightgown. The shade of it brought out the natural hue in her cheeks, made her skin look luminescent. The fabric was dark and clingy, cupping the natural shape of her breasts so her nipples stood out like thumb tips. The skirt wasn’t particularly long, but there were high slits that flashed a good amount of thigh every time she walked.
Emma had bought the nightgown as a joke. Today she wasn’t laughing. She let her hair fall around her face. She knew she looked good; it didn’t take much. She wondered how much it would take to seduce Kellan, her husband.
She’d never tried seducing a man before. The one or two who had fumbled their way into her pants hadn’t been all that interesting, and hadn’t sparked her desire to try again. But Kellan was different, his presence was magnetic. The touch of his lips had her toes curling in a way she had always thought was pure myth.
