The shaking started, deep in her bones, and spread to the rest of her. Her body trembled violently and she just about went down before Shawn wrapped his big arms around her and slammed her up against his side. It was like hitting a wall or being rammed into a pole. Kayla inhaled sharply, filling her lungs with the scent of blood and gas and smoke or leather. It was a confusing scent, dangerous, acrid, and not at all pleasant, but her body reacted and a wild pulsing started between her legs.
“Come on. We have to get out of here before the cops show up with a whole bunch of questions.” Shawn kept hold of her arm and started to drag her through the kitchen.
“But… but- we can’t just leave. This is my house- I…”
“The club will send someone down to take care of it. The only thing you need to do is trust me and do as I say. If we stay here, chances are, next time it won’t be a warning. We aren’t just going to wait around for someone to pump bullets into our brains.”
“But- I- where are we going? To- to my dad’s place?”
“Hell no.” Shawn shook his head and made a sound at the back of his throat like he couldn’t actually believe anyone would be that stupid.
“I have- the building I’m renovating for the restaurant. It’s old. Brick. We could go there.”
“Okay, since you’re a newbie, I’m going to spell this out,” Shawn responded calmly, but roughly, as he all but dragged her through the house. “We are not going to go to any place where those guys will obviously think to look for you first. The point is to stay alive, not sit there in the open with a giant fucking target on that pretty head of yours.”
Pretty. He called my head pretty. That should most definitely not matter. Her nipples should not be hard as the shards of glass sprayed over her kitchen and her panties should not be wet. What the hell was wrong with her? Am I one of those ultra-screwed up women that get turned on by danger and violence? Or is this just shock?
Definitely shock. The panty wetting kind of shock that hits a person right between the legs. Get a grip here.
Kayla dug her heels in hard, right by the front door. “We can’t just walk out of here through the front door. If those guys are out there still, we’ll be targets for real. They could be waiting out there, just to pick us off.”
Shawn rolled his eyes. “Sweetheart, I already said if we were meant to be dead, we’d be dead. That was a message without getting unkind about it. You know, what do they call it? Right. A euphemism.”
“A euphemism?”
“Like someone says ‘passed away’ instead of died. Just to be kind. Or- uh- ‘put to ground’ instead of, ‘had his throat slit and’… shit. Okay. Not what I meant.” Shawn cut himself off. He glanced around uncomfortably. “Let’s just get the fuck out of here, okay? Those guys aren’t the kind that operate by shooting people with a bunch of witnesses around. And I guarantee the parking lot is full of people by now. So just do what I say and walk out calmly. Assure your neighbors that you’re alright with nods and smiles, but don’t say a word. Blend into the crowd. Since you’re with me, people aren’t going to stop us.”
“How do you- you know?” Kayla stammered.
“Because I’m bleeding and I’m also scary looking as hell so no one stops to ask me questions. They’ll let us pass.” Shawn dug his phone out of his back pocket. “This is one time I wish I had my fucking bike. I left it at home to blend in. Fucking rookie mistake.”
“What are you doing? Calling a cab?”
“Of course I’m not calling a cab.” Shawn shook his head right before he barked some orders into the phone. It was just a few words, shooting, a street name a few blocks over, and that he had ‘the girl’ and they were both uninjured. He slammed his phone back into his pocket a second later.
The sound of sirens wailed in the distance.
“That’s our cue to get the fuck out of here,” he muttered. He faced her and those shocking blue eyes cut straight through her. “You ready?”
Kayla could only nod before Shawn took her arm and pulled her out into the night, into the buzzing crowd gathered around the parking lot and the street. She didn’t even have shoes on.
He was right about one thing though. No one fucked with him and they eased through the crowd and blended into the night like a couple of shadowy ghosts that had never been there at all.
Chapter 5
SHAWN
Well this is a real cluster-fuck if I do say so myself.
After Brick picked them up in a rusty piece of shit mini-van that looked more like a family trash-mobile than anything suspicious or club related, the guy took a call obviously from Kill, who had instructions about where they should lay low. They, meaning him and his charge. Not Brick. Brick was needed elsewhere.
Shit with Marcello, or whoever Kayla’s father had managed to piss off, just got real.
Brick actually looked a little apologetic as he pulled away from the piece of shit house in the one of the roughest parts of town. It was a good safe-house, as ugly and run down as the rest. Most of the windows were boarded up, which meant extra safety and that no one could see in. The place had a dingy basement that stank marginally worse than the rest of it, a tiny bedroom with a lumpy bed, a small kitchen with no windows- because there indeed existed small mercies in the world- and a living room that would have been more aptly termed a non-living room since not even roaches could make their home there.
“What is this place?” Kayla shuddered. She glanced around the tiny living room before her eyes trailed to the door, which just happened to be steel, and bolted up with no less than six different kinds of locks.
“Our safe-house,” Shawn stated the obvious. “It’s disgusting, but that’s the point. The point is to hide, not put up a beacon announcing that we’re here for the killing.”
The shiver that wracked Kayla was visible. She wrapped her hands around herself and chaffed them down her arms. Shawn could see the goosebumps on her skin from where he was standing. He had the oddest impulse to cross the room, wrap his arms around her, and ease those shivers away, but he remained rooted to the floor.
Just because she looked fucking beautiful when she was terrified didn’t mean she was his for the taking. And he was a piece of shit for even finding her pretty at the moment. It wasn’t just because she was terrified, he reasoned. She was the kind of woman who was beautiful all the time. Her wild tangled hair, pale face, and huge eyes, only made her look that much more innocent and otherworldly.
His cock just happened to agree.
Okay, so he was a shithead. He could live with that.
“It’s late,” he said, even though it really wasn’t. “Go lay down. Things will look better in the morning.”
Kayla actually snorted. Some of the fire came back into her eyes, and damn, that did nothing to deflate the huge boner he was currently sporting. “How will anything be better in the morning? That sounds like the kind of shit parents tell their kids at night when they know full well it isn’t true. Those guys will still be out there. They will still be after me and my father. I- oh god. My dad. How do I know he’s okay?”
“Trust me,” Shawn said. “Your dad is fine. Our guys have him.”
“Right. Because that makes me feel sooo much better.” Kayla using sarcasm was even hotter than the frightened Kayla from a minute before. His balls ached at her tone. He could think of some pretty good uses for those pouty lips that didn’t involve anymore talking, but he cut that shit off at the pass.
“It should. All I can tell you is that we’re paid protection for your dad’s- er- associate. The guy has the means to take care of what’s his. He’s not going down without a fight. Scratch that. He’s not going down, period. The reason he pays people like us- and we’re not the kind of people that other people should fuck with, is because he’s near the top of the food chain and he wants to stay there. Guys like Marcello, the prick who decided to pick a fight over stupid shit… he’s the one who should be worried. We’ll be gunning for him after this and there’s a
reason they use that term.”
Kayla shuddered again. Her eyes swept up to his face and he didn’t miss the disgust there. He was almost sorry that he couldn’t be less of a shit head and not say things that weren’t true. But they were. She was in the thick of it now and she needed to know the basics just to stay alive.
“Yeah, I know I disgust you. We probably all do. This was your dad’s doing though. He chose to head down this path. I’m not saying he wasn’t backed into a corner, or maybe he wasn’t. Don’t actually know. My point is, we’re not the only pieces of shit in the world and right now I’m the turd standing between you and Marcello’s men, so don’t look at me like I’m a bug you want to stomp to death.”
“I don’t stomp bugs,” Kayla said thickly. Her forehead wrinkled and her nostrils flared. He could tell he’d pissed her off.
“Great. I’ll just go get you the compassion of the year award and then you can head off to bed. Unless you’d rather have the couch and I’ll take the bed. It looks much, much more comfortable and a hell of a lot less bug riddled. I was just trying to be a gentleman.”
“No,” Kayla snapped. “I’m taking the bed.” She glanced once more at the sagging couch and shuddered. It was missing two out of three cushions and the one remaining cushion had dubious stains, like the rest of it. The house was clean on the inside, but the furniture were from another planet of misfit, fucked up, sagging, seventies, shagged on, puked on, and only god knew what more, beings. “Enjoy your night.” She took a few steps in the direction of the bedroom, but stopped and turned and god, the fire in her eyes hit him straight in the nuts. “And don’t even think about joining me when that couch gets too uncomfortable.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. You’re a little too high and mighty for my tastes. I like a woman who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go after it, if you know what I mean.” He sent her a wink that infuriated her further. Which was of course his objective.
The lines bracketing her mouth deepened and her lips pulled into a hard line. She looked adorable, but there was no way in hell he was going to tell her that. He barely managed to smother a laugh, which would have given him away.
“You’re disgusting. You know that? Just trash through and through. Bad trash. The kind of trash that a trash picker kicks aside to get to the good trash. The kind of trash that even the junkyard won’t take.”
Shawn winked. He brought his hand to his mouth and blew Kayla a kiss. “You’re not telling me nothing I don’t know already, darling, but thanks for noticing.”
“You’re disgusting,” Kayla muttered. “Why couldn’t the other guy stay? At least he looked like the kind who knew how to pleasure a woman.”
Shawn felt his cocky smile fade away. Something swift and savage hit him straight in the gut. It felt an awful lot like jealousy, though there was no way it could be. He didn’t want to think about a guy like Brick with Kayla. Ever. He didn’t want to think of any other guy touching her. Period. The protective instincts that roared to life shocked the hell out of him. His inner caveman woke up big time. He imagined himself clubbing Brick over the head with some huge rocky, spiky device and the satisfaction was so immense he nearly sighed in relief.
He realized that Kayla was just trying to get the last word in. She wanted to get a rise out of him, just like he was doing to her. She was trying to beat him at his own sarcastic, obnoxious game. He’d almost let his mask slip. Touché. It looked like he’d finally found a worthy opponent.
“If you want, I can call him up. Have him come back and you can test your theory.”
Kayla, who looked perfectly prim and proper, who looked like the sweetest angel, the juiciest, tastiest fruit of the bunch because it hung on the highest branches, untouched in the sun and sweetened by the early morning dew, actually flipped him off before she turned and stalked out of the room.
He was disappointed a second later when the door slammed off to the right and a lock slid in place. The damn door actually had a lock on it. There were no windows in the bedroom. He didn’t have to worry about someone getting to Kayla in the middle of the night.
Not unless that someone was him.
He had no doubt kicking down that door, busting that lock in two, getting in that bed and showing Kayla that he was indeed a gentleman and that he was far, far better at anything than Brick was, would be one of the most satisfying things he’d ever done in his life.
His dick liked that idea. A lot. The fucker stood up and did a salute in his pants. His balls begged him to act on it.
He glanced at the couch in question. There was no other furniture in the tiny room. Just the couch, some horribly stained red shag carpet, a low hanging popcorn ceiling with some of the popcorn missing where water had leaked in from the roof over the years, green flowered wallpaper, and a buzzing bare bulb hanging from some frayed wires. The kitchen had an ancient brown fridge and a stove, though neither of them were plugged in and it was doubtful they’d work if they were. There wasn’t a chair or a table or anything in the kitchen. Just some battered brown cupboards. No single other piece of furniture in the place.
There was no way he was sleeping on that shag carpet or on the worn out yellow vinyl in the kitchen. The place might have been cleaned up since Kill and the club acquired it, but it had obviously seen some dubious living in the past sixty odd years of its wretched existence.
So severely stained, one cushioned, alien couch it was. “It’s just you and me, baby,” Shawn muttered under his breath.
Sore, from his fucking face cut-up by the glass explosion earlier, achy and out of sorts because his baby-sitting assignment was a sassy piece with a pouty mouth, a perky set of tits, a tight round ass, and a fiery wit to match his own.
Shawn let out a pathetic sounding groan that changed and morphed into a frustrated, dangerous growl. He half hoped Kayla heard it from the bedroom and it put the fear of god back into her. Or rather, the fear of him. Because she wasn’t scared of him at all, and despite his assurances about how he was standing in the way of Marcello’s men and her, and how he was working to keep her safe and all of that bullshit, he had expected her to be more afraid.
He wasn’t the kind of man that people should let their guard down around. He might be one of the nicer ones of the bunch, but god, that wasn’t saying much. And he really wasn’t that nice. He wasn’t a gentleman. He wasn’t the kind of guy who did things right.
Fuck me, I should have rock papered scissored her for the bed.
Chapter 6
KAYLA
“Don’t let me go, Kay. I’m scared.”
Her mother’s voice was tiny, washed away the next second by an inhuman sounding moan that ripped through the room. Her mother’s wasted body curled in on itself, the ball fisting tight beneath the bed sheets. She was so small. So sunken. Her eyes were sunken in, smudged with black circles. Her face was hollowed out like the rest of her, as though the cancer was a giant scoop and it had come and taken away the best parts of her and left little more than a corpse like shell in its wake.
Kay reached out and gripped the bony skeletal hand. Her mother’s skin was paper thin and so, so cold.
“Please Kay, it hurts. It hurts so bad.”
“I can get the nurse to give you more morphine,” Kayla said, trying to grasp her mother’s hand without hurting her. Her hands were bruised and blotched. The veins were obvious through the transparent white skin.
She wished that her dad was there. He’d know what to say. What to do. She’d told him to go home and get some rest. He’d been there for six nights straight. Usually her mom didn’t wake during the night, but she must have sensed something was different. She’d been lucid shortly after her father left, through most of the night.
The pain she was in was obvious. It was destroying her, the pain, the torment of being trapped in a body that was failing her. She’d lost more than sixty pounds. She weighed little more than eighty. She was a husk, a tiny, frightened, painful husk.
Kayla gripped her mot
her’s hand too tight and her mom let out a hiss of pain. Her eyes, eyes that used to be honey colored and full of life, but were now just a watered down brown, glazed over from the morphine and the pain.
“No. No more,” her mother whispered, so soft that Kayla had to strain to hear it. She leaned forward in the chair she’d propped by her mom’s bed. She wanted so desperately to lie beside her, like she’d done so many times as a child and later, even as a teenager. Her mom was her best friend. She had no brothers or sisters. Her mom was her everything. “I’m sorry, honey, I should have fought harder.”
“No. Don’t say that. You’ve been fighting so hard. For so long. Anyone else would have given up a long time ago. You’re a fighter mom. You’re going to beat this. You’re going to get better. It’s- the doctor said just last week that he’s amazed at how well the new drugs are working. Don’t worry. We’ve got this. Me and you. And dad. All three of us. You’ll see.”
Kayla brushed her hand over her mother’s bald head. She wasn’t wearing a scarf like she did before, since she couldn’t stand the weight of it on her head and it was nighttime anyway.
Her mom’s eyes closed, and Kayla thought that she’d drifted off to sleep. They opened again and focused on Kayla’s face so intently that it took her breath away. She watched her mother’s lips, waiting for her to say something, to give her whatever message she needed to, but her lips remained still. When she glanced back up into her eyes, she realized, with dawning horror, that her mother was gone.
Lonely Rider - The Box Set: A Motorcycle Club Romance - The Complete Series Page 79
