Caorthannach looks like someone’s fever dream of a double-barreled shotgun. Her barrels are twice as wide as a standard one, the metal silver-green and covered in carvings showing lost souls being devoured. Her stock is solid Irish oak, polished glass-smooth by a century of hands. All good weapons deserve a name and I named her after a fire-spitting demon. She’s scary enough that I rarely have to fire her.
The Blood Spider president looked down those enormous barrels and went pale. He made a gentle down motion with both hands and his men stopped moving. “Don’t do this,” he muttered to me. “We can work something out.”
I shoved the gun right up against his cheek, pressing the metal into his skin. The temptation to shoot the bastard was almost unbearable. “Believe me,” I snarled. “We can’t.”
I walked across the stage, pushing him ahead of me until we were looking down at the two guys in suits holding Annabelle. Professional bodyguards, probably ex-military, from the look of them. Whoever they worked for had serious money...and from the looks of it, he’d bought her. Bought this sweet woman who’d never hurt anyone. The rage was expanding in my chest, swelling to fill every inch of me. “Let her go,” I grated. “Or Blood Spiders MC is going to need a new president.”
The two guys in suits looked at each other uneasily. The tension in the room built and built. I glowered down the barrels at the president and gave a low growl.
“Do it!” snapped the president. “He’s crazy!”
The suits looked at each other again but then released her. Nobody wants the death of an MC’s president on their hands. Annabelle ran to me, grabbed my arm and pressed her body tight to mine.
Damn. For a second, the rest of the room faded out. All I could think about was the way her warm skin felt against my bare forearm and the smell of her hair, like honeysuckle on a warm day. This is Annabelle?! She was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen.
I backed towards the door. The two guys in suits glared at me, eyes hard, lips pressed into tight little lines. “You’ve got no fucking idea what you’ve done,” said one. “Volos will kill you for this.”
Who the fuck is Volos? “He can join the fuckin’ queue,” I said.
I kept backing towards the door. Halfway there, I realized my mistake: distracted by the feminine wonder pressed against my left hip, I hadn’t taken the president with me as a hostage. The further I got from him, the less threat I was. I could feel the bikers start to shuffle towards me as they realized the same thing. Shit. Just another ten feet and we’ll be out of here. Five feet. Three feet.
Someone smashed a bottle over my head.
And then everything went to hell.
6
Annabelle
I’d convinced myself that my memory of Carrick was exaggerated. After all, when you’re a kid, everyone seems big. So I wasn’t ready for the size of him. I wasn’t ready for his height, or the way his shoulders stretched the back of his leather cut to its limits: a back you could break a two-by-four across and he wouldn’t even notice. I wasn’t ready for the bulk of his chest under that tight white t-shirt, for the sheer intimidating presence of him as he yelled at the men holding me.
His voice, though...that was the same. Ancient dark rocks grinding together, each rough impact throwing out silver sparks. Except it had a whole different effect on me, now. The low, throaty rasp of it seemed to vibrate through my whole body; the sparks raced down my spine to finish in a silver crackle of heat that blossomed through my groin.
Then the men finally let go of my arms and I ran to him, crushing myself against the big, solid mass of him, like hugging a rock face to shelter from the elements. God, he was even bigger than I remembered and everything was so hard: his tanned forearms, criss-crossed with thick veins, were like warm steel. And the touch of him...it was so familiar, even after twelve years, and yet so new. I felt...right, pressed up against him, even with the hell we were still in. As if I was finally in my proper place.
I looked up at his face and my breath hitched. As a kid, I hadn’t appreciated that he was absolutely freakin’ gorgeous. I thought I’d invented that as a teen, twisted my memories into some idealized Irishman. But no exaggeration was necessary: that hard jaw covered in black stubble; those dark brows that gave him a brooding, are you looking at me? glare; the wide, full lips... He’d lost a little of the boy over the years and gained a whole heap of the man, and the result was the hottest guy I’d ever seen. Hot and mean. Savage and hard-bitten, one of those men who’d been hardened by years of fighting. I saw scars on his neck that didn’t used to be there and the raw, violent menace rolled off him in waves, pushing even the bikers back. I’d never in my life seen anyone do intimidating like Carrick.
Then I looked closer and frowned. I still remembered his eyes from that night twelve years ago: the blue of a sky just after a storm has cleared. Now they were different, as if the storm wouldn’t let go. I could glimpse the blue but it was struggling to pierce the darkness. The change made my chest ache: what had he been through, to lose that innocence?
Just as I thought it, he glanced down at me...and suddenly the blue seemed to open up, pushing back the clouds. For a second, he looked how he had that night. Was that...me that was doing that to him?
He shifted the shotgun to one hand and his other arm wound around my waist and snugged me protectively closer. It was just about the best thing I’d ever felt.
We backed up another foot. Then I screamed as I was showered with warm beer and shards of green glass. Carrick’s arm was torn from my waist as he fell and then I was jerked away by one of Volos’s bodyguards.
My head whipped around to look at Carrick. He was on his knees. As I watched, a biker kicked his oversize shotgun out of his reach, sending it spinning across the floor. The other bodyguard grabbed my other wrist and together they started to haul me across the room.
Panting with fear, I craned over my shoulder to watch Carrick. Bikers surrounded him: six or seven at least, blocking my view. Legs drew back and they started to kick him. My heart clenched into a tight little ball. No! They were going to kill him and it was all my fault! I’d drawn him into this!
I kicked and thrashed as I was dragged along but I couldn’t get any traction. I was pulled into the hallway and towards the rear door. The whole time, I was staring back at Carrick, tears in my eyes. All I could see were bikers kicking him and raining down punches: he was still down on the floor. “Stop hitting him!” I sobbed. But they didn’t.
Ahead of me, I felt a sudden, cool breeze. I turned to face front and saw a biker holding the rear door open ahead of us. Volos’s car was waiting right outside, the door open and the engine running. No!
And then from behind us came the roar of a man who’s reached his limit.
The room went silent. The men dragging me stopped and we all turned to look. The kicking and punching stopped and then the circle of bikers around Carrick all took a step back.
I saw Carrick’s head emerge above the circle as he got to his feet. “Is that the best you’ve fuckin’ got?” he yelled.
The room was so quiet, I heard one biker mutter, “Shit.” His voice had that sickly tone of someone who’s just realized they’ve made a massive mistake.
Then Carrick picked him up by the front of his leather cut and flung him across the room, right at one of the men holding me. He went down like a skittle. The other man let go of my arm in shock and suddenly I was free.
I ran. I sure as hell wasn’t going out the back of the bar, towards Volos, and there were too many bikers between me and the front door. The only hiding place was behind the bar. I dived behind it and huddled there, watching the fight play out in the mirror above the bottles.
When some men fight, it’s almost like art: a ballet of spins and flips, punches and kicks.
Carrick was not one of those men.
He wasn’t showy and he certainly wasn’t elegant. He didn’t fight like someone who’d trained in a dojo; he fought like someone who’d found himself in a b
arroom brawl every night of his life. And that was exactly what we needed.
He waded through the bikers like they were nothing: a headbutt, a punch, a knee to the groin and he was onto the next one. He was outnumbered but he just didn’t care, too angry and stubborn to let something like logic get in his way. And while the bikers were just doing their job, protecting the bar and their president. Carrick fought as if he was fighting for something, like some ancient Celt warrior on a holy mission. As if he was fighting for—
His eyes met mine in the mirror and I swallowed.
But then I saw the men in suits draw their handguns and take aim at him. They didn’t have a clear shot: the fighting was too close and chaotic. But any second now, they’d find an opening and Carrick would go down: even he couldn’t survive a hail of bullets.
All I wanted to do was hunker down behind the bar and wait for it to be safe, but there was no way I was letting him die. I searched behind the bar, frantic: maybe there was a shotgun or a baseball bat. But there was nothing.
Then, as my desperate eyes ran over the bottles, my weird brain did its thing. The whiskey and vodka and rum stopped being drinks and became chemicals.
I grabbed a bottle of vodka, unscrewed the cap and rolled it out across the floor towards Volos’s men, letting it glug a trail of liquid behind it. I hurled a bottle of rum as hard as I could and heard it smash against the far wall. I emptied the whiskey over the edge of the bar, making a spreading amber pool.
Then I found a matchbook, lit a match and tossed it towards the alcohol, shying away and closing my eyes as it landed.
There was a wumf and a barrage of cursing. When I looked in the mirror, half the bar was on fire. Volos’s men were backing away, the floor in front of them a carpet of flame. “Fuck this,” I heard one of them say, and they started to retreat down the hallway towards the rear door.
Carrick punched another biker to the ground. There were plenty left but the fire had broken up the fight. It was already licking up the wooden walls and the air was filling with thick white smoke. Some of the bikers started to panic and run for the nearest door.
I ran to Carrick and pressed myself to his side again. The instant our bodies touched, I felt better. I felt not alone. This time, I took hold of his bicep with both hands and clung on for dear life: no one was separating us again. He grabbed his shotgun as we passed it and brandished it again, swinging it towards anyone who came towards us. Then we were backing out of the main door and into the blessedly cool night air. Smoke was pouring out of the door in an almost solid stream. “Get on the bike!” yelled Carrick.
I would have recognized the big Harley anywhere. As a kid, I must have sketched it a thousand times in my school books. I’d dreamed of someday riding it and, even with all that was going on, I got a little giddy as I swung my leg over the saddle. It was only when my ass hit the leather that I remembered I was still in my underwear.
Carrick got on in front of me, his broad back filling my vision. He’d been patched in, now: his cut had lost the Prospect. The Princes of Hell skull grinned at me from the badge..
“Hold onto me,” he growled over his shoulder. That accent. That growl. It made me resonate like a tuning fork, as if I’d been needing to hear it my entire life. I flung my arms around him, then swallowed as my palms brushed warm, washboard abs under soft cotton.
“Closer!”
I shuffled my ass along the saddle. My thighs opened a little more and my groin kissed up against his ass, the muscles hard through the denim. I leaned forward and pressed my chest against him. My breasts pillowed against his back. It would have been intimate even in clothes but I could feel my nipples stroking against his leather cut through my bra. I swallowed again.
He started the engine and the whole bike came to life, throbbing and growling like a beast. My whole life, I’d always known when a machine wasn’t working properly: I’d gotten used to that edgy feeling I get when something’s not quite right. I’d never known the flipside: the sudden rush of deep satisfaction when you touch a machine that’s loved and cared for, every gear meshing as it should, every piston smoothly pumping. And with the bike, the sensation was even stronger because I was on it, almost part of it. It was glorious.
Carrick twisted the throttle and we roared off into the night.
7
Carrick
To get to the highway, we had to ride right through the center of Teston: exactly where I didn’t want to be. It was Blood Spiders territory and the word would already be getting out. Harleys aren’t exactly stealthy and we were hard to miss with a half-naked woman on the back.
Half-naked. Every time I turned the handlebars, every time I changed gear, my back shifted in new and interesting ways against her breasts. Jesus, that body! I’d only had time for glimpses during the chaos of the fight but they were burned into my mind: full, ripe breasts bouncing and swaying in a black bra. Long, toned legs and that ass...my mind was already running through all the ways I wanted to fuck her.
Right. Like a sweet thing like her would want a monster like me. I felt the first stirrings of anger in the pit of my stomach, the sour regret at what I’d become. If my life had worked out different….
But that way lay madness. Just get her out of town and drop her off somewhere. My debt would be repaid. Then I could go back to the clubhouse and drink until I forgot those big, green eyes and that perfect pale body.
But by the time we hit the center of Teston, I could hear the thump of other Harleys. Shit. At the next intersection I throttled back, slowed to a stop and peeked around the corner into Teston’s main street.
It wasn’t good. I counted three—no, four Blood Spiders cruising up and down. They knew we had to cross the street to get out of the city. As soon as we did, they’d see us and chase us down. A few quick gunshots and the bike would be on its side, I’d be bleeding out and Annabelle….
Annabelle would be back in their hands.
My fingers tightened on the handlebars. Not going to happen. Whenever I thought of her being auctioned off, a deep, hot wave of protective anger flooded through me, so strong it almost scared me. I’d never felt anything like it before.
I hung back, waiting for something big to come by. When a cement truck rolled up at the intersection, I swung the bike alongside it, cozying up to it like a minnow next to a whale. Hopefully, the rattle of its engine would cover the throb of ours and the bulk of it would block us from view from one side. The other side? We’d have to hope we got lucky.
The truck moved off. I gunned the throttle hard and then backed right off, letting the bike roll across the street as quietly as a big Harley can. The cement truck hid us completely to my right. I checked to the left and caught my breath. One Blood Spider was heading away from us but another was just turning to come back towards us.
Sweat broke out along my neck. I could speed up and get off the intersection in time but make more noise, or I could keep cruising and hope he was too far away to make us out against the dark wheels of the truck. I felt Annabelle suddenly grip me hard: she must have seen the guy too.
I decided to keep going. We were nearly through the intersection. Another few seconds….
A shout went up. Shit! I gunned the throttle hard and we sped into the next street, but I could already hear bike engines behind us. I turned into an alley and then into a narrower one, only a few feet wider than the bike. We blasted through cardboard cartons and other trash, Annabelle pressing herself in tight behind me so she could use me as a shield. I turned another corner and then quickly killed the engine, rolling to a stop behind a pile of discarded cartons. I listened. Had they seen where we went? Would they follow us in?
The thump of bike engines came closer and closer. I heard at least two of them turn into the first alley. It was like listening to a couple of huge beasts approaching, the low throb of their engines like heartbeats that shook the alley walls. There was nothing we could do: if we moved, they’d hear us. Our best chance was to sit tight in the darkness
and hoped they missed us, then escape when they’d gone.
I twisted around in the saddle to explain that to Annabelle but, as soon as I saw her, fuck me if I didn’t forget how to speak.
It was dark in the alley but there was enough moonlight to make her pale skin glow, her black underwear adding to the effect. She was looking up at me with those big, moss-green eyes, willing me to get her out of there, willing me to know what I was doing.
It hit me like a sledgehammer. Fuck: she believed in me.
Her hands had slid from around my waist when I twisted around and now they were on my hips, cool fingers in the creases of my thighs. If she slid them forward even a few inches, she’d be caressing my cock and just the thought of it had me rock hard. If it had been one of the girls who hung around the club, I would have grabbed her wrists and damn well pulled her hands to my crotch myself. But just thinking about Annabelle grabbing me there made me feel guilty.
Since when did I feel guilty?
One of the bikes was getting closer. I tensed, ready to start the bike and tear off if the guy found our hiding place. Annabelle’s eyes went wide and she grabbed hold of my upper arms, squeezing my biceps tight. “Please don’t let them take me!” she said in a hoarse little whisper.
Jesus. She thought I was her hero.
Part of me gave a bitter little laugh inside. Another part grew harder and colder, like coal crushed into diamonds by the weight of everything I’d done. She has no fuckin’ idea.
But there was one tiny, rogue part of me that flared bright, in all that darkness. One stupid, childish part of me that wanted to be her hero. Her words made that part of me swell with pride, like I was some medieval knight being given a quest by a princess.
Outlaw's Promise Page 4
