RIDING ROUGH (Hard Leather, #1)

by Franca Storm

  “Won’t be long,” I said, reaching for the door to close it.

  “You know I can pick locks,” she threatened.

  I scoffed. “You forget that I’m the one who taught you.”

  She frowned, looking worried. “What does that mean?”

  “These aren’t ordinary cuffs. They’re specially made. Can’t be picked by amateurs.”

  “I’m no amateur.”

  “You are compared to me.”

  She just glared at me. We both knew there was nothing she could say. I was the master when it came to that particular skill and she knew it. No contest.

  I slammed the door closed, locked up, pocketed my keys and sprinted back to Liam. He was still waiting at the back gate, pacing up and down now.

  “Hey, brother.”

  “She all right?” he asked, glancing behind me at my truck in the distance.

  “Pissed, but she’s gonna be fine, yeah.”

  “Good. Could’ve been a lot worse.” He shoved a hand through his thick, dark hair. “Fucking Abi,” he muttered.

  “Where’s she at?”

  “Had one of the prospects take her home.”

  The bitterness in his voice and the hard look in his eyes told me to drop the subject right there and then. Whatever had gone down inside that house since I’d left to take care of Luce had worked him up something fierce. The thing was, Liam wasn’t normally that sort of man. He was known for being stoic and keeping his shit locked up tight. Outside of Prez, he was the most patient club brother with me coming in as a close third. A good quality in a VP. The two of us were one in the same. Level-headed. We didn’t allow emotion to impact our actions.

  But all of that had been destabilized like it’d never stood on firm fucking ground to begin with, then blown to bits without warning. By women, of all things. The both of us had somehow let women who weren’t even really ours twist us up so much that we couldn’t even see straight. Jesus Christ.

  I scrubbed my hand over my face, forcing my focus back to business. “So, what are we looking at in there?”

  Liam shifted his weight. “We got some hard shit, brother. Good thing your GPS tracker brought us up here, cuz having it hit the streets woulda been a nightmare.”

  “All right. Let me take a look. I want to rule out local dealers. If it’s just coming from the kids, we just need to shut down one source.”

  “Scare tactics?”

  I nodded. “I’ve already got Billy bringing in a couple of them for fucking with Luce. I want the head of this shit show too.”

  His face hardened. “Already on it.”

  The frat head must’ve messed with Abi in some way. Is that how I had been acting, cuz of Luce? That brazenly obvious? If so, I needed to get a hold on it. Fast.

  “Let’s get this done,” I muttered, pushing through the gate.

  7

  ~Lucy~

  Well, this is awkward.

  I could feel them watching me intently.

  Talk about unnerving.

  When it’d first started as a half dozen of them had burst on into the modest-sized mess hall, laughing and chatting rowdily, it’d ramped up my nerves. My stomach had clenched, my throat tightening, making it difficult to eat the plate of meatloaf in front of me that Mason had heated up for me in the microwave before leaving for a meeting with Slade Mitchell, the President of the MC.

  I wasn’t used to overt male attention. I’d been protected from it all my life, after all, by my brother, so to say I was ill-equipped to deal with it was a major understatement. I could just about handle it in a one-on-one situation, such as during a date, but from a group of men? No, absolutely not. The evidence of that could be found in what happened earlier with those asshole college guys, where I’d jumped straight to violence in reaction to their unwanted attention.

  What was taking Mason so long?

  At first, I’d thought the club members had been looking my way, because they’d been unsettled at having an outsider encroaching on their territory. Well, it wasn’t even just on their territory. They allowed certain types of women into their bar and lounge area. Loose women who came to party with them and what Mason called club whores too. But Mason had brought me several security checkpoints beyond the lounge and right into their inner sanctum where only club members and close family were allowed.

  As I’d looked up at them to offer a polite smile so as not to come off as rude or ungrateful that they’d allowed me into their home, I’d caught the meaning behind their looks. And they had nothing to do with them being unsettled by my presence. No, they were checking me out. No question. Their eyes were roaming over every inch of my skin exposed in the ridiculously embarrassing outfit of Abi’s that I wished for the millionth time I hadn’t allowed myself to put on. Mason’s leather jacket hung off the high-backed wooden chair beside me. He’d grabbed it from his room before his meeting and told me to cover myself up with it. But after he’d taken off, I’d just hung it on the chair. I didn’t want anything of his or smelling like him wrapped around me. I was still pissed at him—beyond pissed—for everything he’d done to me tonight. Although, with the tension in the mess hall reaching fever-pitch, part of me regretted leaving my body so exposed. I just hadn’t expected the guys to come into the mess hall. At least I was sitting off in the corner table, several feet away from the rest of them.

  Shit. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t focus on my food. I needed to break the tension.

  I rose to my feet and just went for it, blurting out to the room, “These aren’t my clothes. I’m wearing them as a favor to a friend. But would it help if I stripped down to my birthday suit? You think one good look would get it out of your systems then?” I couldn’t help my lips from curling into a smile.

  The entire room fell into shocked silence for several seconds.

  And then a chorus of deep, raucous laughter erupted, filling the room.

  “Damn,” I heard one of them utter.

  “Definitely Cole’s baby sister,” another commented. “Real fucking blunt.”

  I grinned at that one, as I sank back down in my chair. It was very true.

  After the laughter died down, the prospect I recognized as Billy who’d helped Mason out earlier with the two college guys I’d fought with, leaned forward and gave me a flirty smile. With a sexy growl, he said, “So, about you stripping, sweetheart? That offer still on the table?”

  “No it fucking isn’t,” a familiar voice thundered from the open door.

  All heads, including mine, swung around to see Mason storming into the mess hall, his heavy motorcycle boots thumping on the linoleum, every step echoing hauntingly through the dead silence that’d suddenly fallen.

  Billy’s eyes looked like they were going to explode right out of his head, they were so wide with fear, as Mason headed right for him. He came to a sudden stop right behind him, leaning over him menacingly as he gripped the back of his chair in a white-hot grip that gave away the burning anger he was barely managing to hold at bay. Oh shit. What the hell had gotten into him tonight? Why was he being such a bastard?

  All the guys around Billy and Mason watched silently, seeming to know better than to interfere, even though a couple of them were as huge and as built as Mason. They actually looked shocked by his behavior, like they couldn’t believe what was happening.

  “Didn’t mean it,” Billy croaked out. “Just messing.”

  “Sounded like disrespect to me.”

  “Nah, it weren’t meant that way. Swear it, Mason.”

  Mason maintained his intimidating position over Billy for several long moments, before finally pulling back and straightening to his full height.

  He pulled a piece of paper from the inside pocket of his cut and pushed it at Billy who just managed to grab hold of it, his hands trembling.

  “You just volunteered for pick-up duty.”

  Billy’s eyes darted across the paper then over to me quickly, before settling on Mason in question. “You want me to—?”
/>   “Now.”

  What was going on?

  Billy scrambled to his feet. “Sure. You got it.”

  “Good.” Mason slapped his back. “Then we’ll forget your fuck up.”

  “Thanks, bro.”

  Mason grunted and walked over to me, commanding, “Come with me.”

  It grated on my last nerve that he dared to bark an order at me. But with how unhinged he was acting, I knew it wasn’t the right time for me to make a fuss.

  I stood up and pushed my chair in.

  “My jacket. On. Now,” he ordered.

  I glared at him. He glared back, his eyes boring fiercely into mine, warning me that he wasn’t going to back down. Argh! I snatched it up and sank my arms into the sleeves and shrugged it on. I made my way across the room and when I reached him, I couldn’t stop myself from roughly brushing past him on my way out the door. I heard him grunt a curse under his breath, before his heavy footsteps sounded behind me.

  ***

  “I assume you brought me up to your room for a reason? Knowing you, to give me a lecture before you send me on my way? So, are we going to get on with it, or are you going to continue ignoring me as you play on your fucking phone?” I snapped, glaring at Mason as he sat on the foot of his king-sized bed, tapping away rapidly on the keys of his smartphone. For the last ten minutes it was like I didn’t even exist, or he’d simply forgotten I was even in his room. I’d been sitting on the windowsill staring down at the clubhouse yard below, trying to summon my patience to allow him time to calm down from earlier. But he hadn’t spoken a single word since we’d left the mess hall and now I was starting to get riled up. Enough was enough.

  Without bothering to look at me, he commented, “Wow, full out cursing. Thought you’d got that out of your system earlier.”

  Asshole. “What can I say? You keep bringing it out in me.”

  He grunted.

  And that was that. End of conversation apparently.

  “What is your problem?” I demanded, shooting to my feet.

  In a split second, his phone was flying across the room, making me cringe as it smacked into the wall, and he was bolting from the bed and storming over to me. “My problem?” he thundered.

  Before I could get a word out, he was in my space, glowering down at me. He lowered his voice, because that was Mason. Even when he was pissed, he wouldn’t shout in my face. But he ground his teeth with every few words, his voice a vehement rumble that betrayed just how pissed he was. “You break our deal by taking off to that fucking party without giving me a heads up, forcing me to drop what I was doing to come get you, cuz I didn’t know what the hell was going on, if you were really safe. And by the way, I already had to rework my schedule so I could act as your personal security, so you pulling shit like this really pisses me off. Then you get into a fight with two assholes where you would’ve ended up with a broken jaw if I’d shown up a second later. On top of that, you give me hell for helping you out and you disrespect me over and over. Plus, you let Abi talk you into dressing like a fucking club whore, putting everything on display for everybody to damn well see!”

  The way he perceived the situation really got under my skin. He was basically painting me as an unruly, irresponsible teenager who needed round-the-clock supervision and, on top of that, rescuing for stepping beyond the boundaries my controlling brother had enforced. Not only was it the precise perception I was trying so hard to squash, but it was one I really didn’t want him believing in. I couldn’t bear the idea of Mason Cross seeing me that way. After our night together, how could he?

  Shit, it was a lost cause. All because of Cole and his years of overprotective, suffocating bullshit. He’d infected his club brothers and, especially Mason, with that mentality. They would never see me any other way. He would never see me any other way.

  All that frustration combined with the fuckfest that was tonight exploded out of me and I slammed my hands into Mason’s chest. Not expecting it, he actually stumbled back, despite his mammoth size, his back hitting the wall behind him.

  I fisted my hand in his black muscle tee and hissed up at him, “You dragged me behind you like a frigging child. Then you threw me over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes. If that wasn’t degrading and humiliating enough, you then cuffed me to your truck where I was forced to wait for over an hour while you dealt with club business inside that house! So, I don’t think you’re in any position to level charges of disrespect at me. I guess we’ll be calling it even there, won’t we?” I jerked on his shirt. “As for my actions, I didn’t plan on going out, but Abi needed me.” I stepped closer. “And I didn’t call you to let you know, because that seems to be the way we’re doing things now, ever since last week.”

  His eyes flashed at my mention of last week and then he was gripping my arms, flipping our positions around and pushing me up against the wall.

  “There it is,” he said. “Finally we get to the goddamn truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “You pulled this shit tonight to punish me, Luce.”

  “I—what?”

  His eyes burned into mine. “Cuz I took off before you woke up last week.”

  I scoffed. “Please.”

  “I know you.”

  Dammit. How could I continue to deny it? It would’ve been so easy to simply text or call him to let him know about the change of plans tonight. I had been pissed at him. Hell, I still was. But had I wanted to punish him? Punish wasn’t the word I’d use, but, yeah, a part of me had wanted to hurt him back for the way his actions had hurt me.

  I sure wasn’t going to offer up an apology though. He owed me one for making me feel like one of his whores, abandoned in my bed the next day like a cheap fuck ‘n’ chuck. I knew my worth. I wasn’t one of those lost young women suffering from low self-esteem. That was the one good thing to come out of my screwed up childhood. It’d molded me into a tough, resilient person who didn’t take bullshit from anyone. Not even the almighty Mason Cross.

  “Why did you do it?” I demanded.

  His fingers tightened around my arms, his jaw tightening. “Needed to think,” he ground out.

  “Think?” I spat, my eyes narrowing. “About what? If I was worth a second go, Mason? Was that what required an entire week of radio silence between us to figure out?”

  “No.”

  “I’m a big girl. You could’ve just told me the truth. It was just a one-night-stand to you, right? You didn’t need to spew all those claiming lines at me. I wanted you, regardless. But you disappearing in the middle of the night like that… you hurt me!”

  “You lied to me!”

  I jolted at his outburst. “What? Lied? What did I lie about?”

  “I asked you and you looked me right in the fucking eyes and lied about it.”

  I frowned in confusion even as I tried to recall that night and what the hell he was getting at.

  He blew out a frustrated breath and shook his head at me, looking me over. “You’re a virgin.” He rolled his eyes. “Were.”

  Oh crap. “I…” My cheeks heated as I realized how he must’ve figured it out.

  He pulled away from me and turned, throwing his hands up in the air. “Fuck, Luce. You have no idea how pissed I am about this.”

  “It’s not a big deal!”

  He spun back around, his face twisted in anger. “You have no idea, woman.”

  “Oh, I think I do. Let me guess, this is about Cole again, right? Some bull about how major it is that you deflowered his little sister?”

  He was on me before I could blink, his hands slapping against the wall either side of my head. “Wrong,” he growled. “If I’d known, I never would’ve fucked you the way I did. Dirty, raw and way too hard for a virgin.”

  “It’s why I didn’t tell you. You would’ve stopped it before it’d begun.”

  His voice softened abruptly. “Nah. There was no stopping once my mouth claimed yours up against that wall.” His hand sank into my hair as he told me, �
��I would’ve taken my time with you, little darlin’.”

  I sucked in a breath, his words catching me off guard.

  “If I’d stayed the night, I would’ve never been able to keep my hands off you.”

  His hands left my hair and he pulled back, putting a couple of inches of distance between us. Despite how pissed I was at him for his actions tonight and that night, regret pierced me. The urge to grab him and yank him back against me was overwhelming. My fingers tingled with a pins and needles sensation to reach out and touch him, to feel him, skin-to-skin. God, my body craved him. Unbearably. I’d never felt anything like it before. Did he feel it too? Urgh, why would he? It hadn’t been his first time. He was probably just able to brush it off, if he even noticed anything at all to begin with.

  “And, like I said, I needed to think. Clear my head,” he went on. He scrubbed his hand over his stubbly chin. “With you, it’s all a clusterfuck of complications. Cuz of my duty to you. Cuz of Cole. The history between the three of us.”

  I didn’t want to hear it. The complications, all the obstacles standing in our way, that had always been standing in the way of any possibility of us. They’d existed between us as unspoken issues, but hearing him throw them out into the open… it was brutal as well as pretty fucking redundant too.

  “Mason—” I tried, holding up my hand.

  But then he was there, grasping it and causing my words to get stuck in my throat.

  “That night did a number on me, Luce. I’m not used to… feeling… period. But, shit, you got inside my fucking head. You’re making me into a crazed bastard.” His fingers tightened around mine and I swallowed hard as the intensity in his whiskey eyes burned into mine. “Fuck, woman, I almost put some punk kid to ground tonight, cuz I couldn’t keep my head straight. I had you twisting me up.”

  “You were worried he was going to hurt me, that’s why. It’s called caring about someone, Mason.”

  “I’ve always cared, Luce. You know that. Nah, this shit is way more than caring.”

  My pulse picked up, a staccato-like rhythm reverberating throughout my body that had me more than a little unsettled. Not to mention, a little light-headed. The slight haze that overtook me just made the situation all the more surreal. I couldn’t count the number of times over the years that I’d fantasized about Mason Cross professing his love for me. Sure, he wasn’t uttering those three infamous words, but it was still a hell of a thing coming from a hard-ass like him. Even before he’d severed our friendship and we’d been close, he’d always had a wall up. Just like I did with everyone around me now. I’d just never had it with him or Cole. But Mason… he’d had that extra layer of protection. I wasn’t sure if he intended it as such, or whether it was just a result of the tough edge that’d been ingrained into him since he was a young boy, due to his brutal upbringing. Either way, that wall was always there.