Holy shit, she’d kept it. All these years and she’d kept it.
The desire inside him began to gather and rush like a heavy rain down a dry riverbed. Collecting with his anger, getting heavier, forming a flash flood.
He’d had plenty of women over the years, went through ’em like a wolf through a flock of sheep, letting none of them touch him, letting none of them matter. And he’d felt just fine about that five minutes ago.
Now he felt starved. Like he hadn’t had sex in decades.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Nora dragged her gaze up from his patch, back to his face. “President, huh? Well, alrighty then.” There was an acid bite to the words. “Shall we get the ‘hi, how are yous’ out of the way first before you break into Humphrey Bogart from Casablanca? No, I’m not married. Yes, I really am a fugitive recovery agent. No, my dad doesn’t approve. And no, I haven’t seen him in years.” Her lovely mouth curved in a brief, wholly professional smile. “So, now that’s over and done with, that man beside you has skipped bail and I’ve been sent to retrieve him. So if you could hand him over to me, that’d be great.”
A thick, uncomfortable tension descended on the room like a heavy blanket. The rest of the brothers were silent, watching him, gauging him.
Well, this was shitty timing. For Nora. And for a number of reasons. First, he wasn’t handing his VP over to anyone—Dust wasn’t just a friend, he’d been with Smith in Afghanistan, and even if he hadn’t been a brother, ratting out an army buddy just wasn’t happening, not in any universe. Second, demanding he hand over a brother in front of the whole damn club was tantamount to a challenge and no MC president worth his salt would allow that, especially not a president in the middle of forcing an entire club of badasses and criminals to go straight.
Third, no one told him what to do. Ever.
Behind him, Dust shifted on his feet and opened his mouth to say something, but Smith gave him a warning glance, causing him to shut it again almost instantly.
Yeah, good plan. His temper was not improved by the fact that this was the first Smith had heard about Dust getting arrested, not to mention skipping bail. That it probably had something to do with the custody hearing Dust had coming up in a few weeks for his son didn’t make any difference. What had the stupid fuck been thinking, getting arrested? Now? When he goddamn knew what Smith was trying to accomplish with the chapter, too? And, more to the fucking point, why hadn’t Dust told him about it?
Shit, he was going to have to deal with that later. Right now, he had more important things to handle. Such as one sassy blond bounty hunter giving him lip.
Smith glanced back at Nora, holding her gaze again, letting the silence sit there because sometimes silence was a useful tool when it came to unsettling people and he sure as hell liked unsettling people.
Clearly she was unsettled since her hand had come to rest on the butt of the pistol at her hip. The pistol that sat beside the badge that said Fugitive Recovery Agent.
Good. His little ex-debutante could use some unsettling.
He handed his cue to Dust without looking and folded his arms, keeping a lid on the worst of his anger for the moment. “Not sure if you’re aware, sweetheart, but the Ministry president answers to no one but himself.”
She gave him a look of polite regret. “Sadly for you, Ace, the law would disagree.”
“I was just trying to—” Dust began from beside him.
“Dust.” Smith didn’t raise his voice, he didn’t have to. The brothers knew what it meant when he spoke in that tone. “Shut the fuck up.”
Nora rolled her eyes. “Look, I don’t care why he skipped bail. Fact is he did, and it’s my job to bring him in. If you get in the way, then you’re breaking the law too.”
Smith didn’t give a fuck about the law or about breaking it, at least not when it came to stupid shit. Sure, he was aiming to get his club on the straight and narrow, but not because it was the right thing to do. He was doing it because he was goddamn sick of the relentless police attention that came their way, and an MC was all about freedom from the civilian world, not being hassled incessantly by it.
This isn’t going to help.
No, it fucking wasn’t. Dust getting arrested, then skipping bail, and drawing unwanted legal attention was definitely not helping. Looked like he was due a serious talk with his VP later.
Now, though, if Nora thought she could come in here and start demanding shit from him, in front of his own damn club, she had another think coming.
Maybe she needs the “who’s in charge” lesson.
Interesting thought. In fact, it was starting to give him ideas.
Smith gave her another long look, examining all the changes the years had made. The faint lines at the corners of her eyes, the firm set of her mouth. The way her face had thinned out, her features becoming more distinct, less pretty, settling into stunning.
Hot day, the sun beating down as he’d helped old Pete lay the foundations on the Sutcliffes’ new pool house. And he’d seen her, lying on a sun lounger in a tiny white bikini. Golden-haired and golden-skinned, humming tunelessly along to whatever was playing on her iPod, not even knowing he was there. As the concrete was poured, he’d stood and watched her, completely unable to look away. He’d never seen anything so beautiful in all his fucking life….
Someone coughed behind him. The brothers were getting antsy and he was fucking daydreaming. Christ. Time to show them and this little girl standing in front of him who the fuck was president.
“Well,” Nora said impatiently into the silence, “you can continue the staring competition on your own. Don’t mind me. I’ll just go get Brook here and we can—”
“No.” Smith kept his voice flat and hard.
Her eyes widened. “No?”
“You actually think you can come into Ministry territory and start ordering me around? That I’m actually going to do whatever you say?”
She tilted her head, gave him a long look of her own. “Oh, I don’t know. I thought if I asked nicely enough…”
“Then ask me nicely.”
“He broke the law, Smith.”
“So?”
Nora blinked. “So…I’m guessing you don’t want legal trouble, right?”
He said nothing, staring at her, looking deep into the warm brown and gold of her eyes, letting the silence answer for him.
Of course he didn’t want legal trouble, not while he was still in the process of shutting down the various illegal businesses the Ministry had once been involved with.
But by coming in here and doing this publicly, little Miss Nora had put him between a rock and a hard place.
“No,” she answered for him, holding his gaze in a way very few people ever did. Man, she hadn’t done that when she’d been eighteen, either. “I’m guessing you don’t. In fact, I’m guessing there’s a whole world of legal trouble that you don’t want, that could potentially become a problem if you don’t give the son of a bitch to me.”
Smart girl. She’d given him the rock, now she was reminding him of the hard place.
Too bad for her that he tended to blow both rocks and hard places the hell up.
Electricity sparked along his nerve endings, a primitive response to the challenge she presented. A sharp jolt he hadn’t felt for years, not since he’d come back from Afghanistan, looking to rebuild the life he’d lost after Nora and war had destroyed it.
Well, he had rebuilt it and now he was just fitting the last few remaining bricks to it, and he was not going to let her mess with it a second time.
Hell fucking yeah, let’s blow this shit up.
Nora’s firm chin was lifted high, her shoulders square, and there was absolutely no fear in those pretty eyes, no fear at all. As if she routinely faced down presidents of motorcycle clubs who were fully a head taller than she was and armed to the fucking teeth.
This was not the debutante he’d once known, the spoiled, pampered good girl who’d been the apple of her father’
s eye.
The electricity in his veins became lightning. Because, hell, he wasn’t the twenty-three-year-old builder’s laborer she’d dumped in the shit either. Not anymore.
“Everyone get the fuck out,” he said, not raising his voice. “And don’t come in until I say.”
There was a silence.
“Prez?” Dust asked, sounding uncertain.
“I’ve never had to repeat myself before.” Smith didn’t take his gaze from Nora’s. “You wouldn’t want to break a perfect record, would you, Dust?”
Another silence.
“Fuck, you heard him!” Dust roared. “Everyone get outta here!”
Within seconds, the bar was completely empty except for Lemmy screaming from the jukebox.
“Now,” Smith said. “You and I are gonna have a little chat.”
Chapter 2
Nora didn’t move. Outwardly she made sure she showed nothing but her usual cocky confidence, her breathing level and calm. Inwardly, though, her heart was racing around inside her chest like an escaped racehorse.
Goddamn Smith.
Okay, so maybe coming in here and challenging him in front of his brothers had been a bad idea. Motorcycle clubs were tricky, outlaw clubs even more so, and she’d thought that being a woman and by herself might help, but that might have been naïve. Add their ancient history, not to mention her skip being his VP, and you had a situation so damn prickly you could put a tail on it and call it a porcupine.
Nora swallowed, grabbing onto the core of titanium she’d gradually built up over the years in bail enforcement; the hard-won, tough part of her that kept her strong even when shit hit the fan. Especially when shit hit the fan.
Smith had his arms folded across his impressive chest, a bearded, powerful monolith of a man in a black T-shirt and worn jeans, tattoos flowing along his forearms and curling around his biceps. Dark eyes like a midnight sky, the expression on his roughly carved features absolutely unreadable as the bar emptied around him.
But he didn’t need to speak for her to know what he was feeling. It was all around her in the sticky air of the bar, filling up the space around them, a raw, humming, violent charge of energy that made her want to fight for breath.
He was angry. So fucking angry. It had been eight years, though. Guy could sure hold a grudge.
He has reason, remember?
Well, okay, he did. But it wasn’t her fault that their little summer affair had been discovered by her dad coming home unexpectedly one night. And sure, when her father had complained to Smith’s boss, accusing Smith of seducing her, she hadn’t exactly protested. She’d been young and stupid and terrified of her father’s anger, and she’d thought Smith would have…
But no, all that aside…Eight freaking years, man. That was a long time. Hadn’t he put it behind him the way she had?
Except the man standing in front of her right now did not look like a man who’d gotten over anything. Or who forgave or let things go. There was a presence to him, though charisma was too bland a word for it. It was like a blast wave before a detonation, a force of nature, intensely compelling, fiercely dominant, and wholly dangerous.
A total turn-on, in other words.
Nora sucked in a silent breath, willing herself to calm the hell down. No, Christ, it was not a turn-on. She wasn’t into a-holes. She liked men who didn’t want anything from her, just like she didn’t want anything from them, and that suited her down to the ground. Not that she was in the market anyway. Guys hadn’t featured on her radar in any great capacity for years and she wasn’t about to start letting them show up now.
“I’m not interested in a chat.” She hooked her thumbs through her belt loops, cool and casual. “I’m only interested in bringing that skip in. Now, if you think you can afford to go up against the law, then be my guest.” Another direct challenge, which was, again, not a good idea. But what the hell. She was done being intimidated.
Smith didn’t say anything. Instead his gaze moved in a slow, lazy scan all the way down her body to her boots, before moving just as slowly all the way back up to the hat on her head.
His hat, remember?
Oh. Shit.
“You kept my hat.” He said the words in that thick, syrupy drawl that had made her melt back when she’d been a teenager, mixing with the gravel-and-velvet timbre of his voice to make a sound that was nearly as physical as a caress.
It made her want to arch her back like a goddamn cat.
Even more irritating, she could feel heat creeping into her cheeks. God, she was a dumb-ass. What was she doing getting all hung up on his voice and blushing like a teenager about his stupid hat? So she’d kept it. Big deal. It was too good to throw away and she wore it to keep the sun off. That was the only reason.
“It’s a good hat,” she said, trying not to sound defensive and failing. “Didn’t seem worth getting rid of, so don’t read anything into it.”
Smith’s black gaze glittered and she thought it was probably fury. No, not probably. It was fury. “Don’t recall saying you could keep it.”
“Yeah, well, since possession is nine-tenths of the law, I guess it’s mine now.”
His arms dropped and without any warning, he moved around the side of the pool table, coming toward her with all the loose-limbed, predatory grace of a born hunter.
Nora froze. Somewhere in the back of her head, a small voice, primitive and female, told her to run, to escape, because there was a threat coming. And Smith was nothing if not a threat. Danger preceded him like a wave of heat before a brush fire.
But she couldn’t seem to shift her feet, couldn’t stop staring at him, watching him move….
He worked with his shirt off in the midday sun and she couldn’t take her eyes off him as he went up the ladder into the roof beams of the new pool house. He seemed a few years older than she was and hot, his bronzed skin was oiled with sweat, the hard, cut muscles of his chest and shoulders like one of the works of art she’d been studying in school. He moved along a beam, surefooted as a cat, then crouched in a fluid movement to take out his hammer….
She hadn’t thought about that in a long time and the memory struck her with the same force he’d used to hammer those nails in, stunning her, making her feel like an animal standing in the middle of the road watching a truck bearing down, unable to escape because the asphalt was melting in the sun and the soles of her boots were stuck….
Her heartbeat was way too fast and she had the weird thought that if he got too close something would happen. Something she really wasn’t going to like.
Hell if she would run, though. She was the best fugitive recovery agent in the business and anyway, she’d dealt with men worse than Smith on a regular basis. He wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle.
She lifted her chin as he approached, squaring her shoulders, trying not to give away the fact that her mouth had gone dry and it felt like someone had taken a jackhammer to the inside of her chest. “What?” She made the word belligerent. “Geez, if you want the stupid hat back, just take it. I don’t need it that badly.”
Smith said nothing, kept right on walking, his eyes glittering sharp and black as obsidian. And she found she’d taken a couple of steps back before she could stop herself.
Weren’t you not going to be intimidated by men anymore?
Shit. That’s right. She damn well wasn’t.
Pulling herself together, Nora dug her heels in and stuck out a hand, her palm connecting with his rock-hard chest. And nearly gasped as a pulse of electricity leapt between them, a hard charge of energy that jolted from their point of contact, a great leaping rush that bolted up her arm and exploded through her entire body.
She tensed in shock and jerked her hand away.
Or at least she tried to jerk her hand away. But before she could, Smith wrapped his long, scarred fingers around her wrist and kept it exactly where it was.
She snapped her head back to look up at him. Another mistake.
As soon as her gaze
met his, the electricity arcing between them seemed to double in voltage, stealing all the breath from her lungs and all the moisture from her throat. She was frozen, paralyzed.
There were black flames in his eyes, so much fury and desire burning there she wanted to hide.
“You don’t get to waltz in here and give me orders, golden girl,” he said softly, menacingly. “You don’t get to show me no goddamn respect in front of my fucking club.”
Golden girl…He’d called her that the night she’d finally convinced him to stop being such a good boy and take her. He’d made her feel golden too, like she was special in a way her father and all his money hadn’t.
There was a roaring in her head, all her senses in free fall. Her palm felt seared by the heat of his skin, even through the cotton of his T-shirt, and she could smell him too, leather and engine oil, plus something else she couldn’t identify….
She’d snuck out of the house to meet him in the dark, bringing the cushions from the sun loungers into the half-built pool house to create a makeshift bed. She’d given him her virginity that night and for days afterward she’d been able to smell him on her, sun and sweat and a spicy, masculine scent that had always made her want to rub her face against his neck and inhale him….
God, she hadn’t thought about that in years and she should not be thinking about it now, not when he was still moving, walking forward, pushing against her palm and forcing her backward, her boots sliding on the cracked and sticky linoleum of the floor.
“And most especially,” he went on relentlessly, “you don’t get to walk away as if what you did to me eight years ago meant fucking nothing.”
Ugh. So he was still pissed about that. A damn shame, since she had no idea what he expected her to do about it now.
Digging her heels in harder, she exerted pressure against the mountain of six-foot-four male currently trying to bulldoze her, shoving at him as hard as she could. But it was like trying to move Mt. Everest.
“Smith, you prick!” She shoved again. “Stop!”
Make It Hurt (Texas Bounty) Page 2
