“I'm never desperate,” he said, narrowing his gaze on me, causing my skin to flush. There was something in his eyes that said he wasn't talking about the bag full of drugs I was waving around in front of him. “But I would appreciate it if you handed over what's rightfully mine. I really don't want things to get unpleasant.”
“Don't you dare threaten me, you fucking cretin. And what are you talking about? What's rightfully yours?” I laughed, rolling my eyes. “Unbelievable. You slipped this into my bag without my consent and now you're acting like I stole something from you.”
“Look,” he said. “I just want to – ”
“I don't give a shit what you want,” I hissed. “You're not in control here. I am. You are going to apologize to me and then you are going to give me your word that you and your asshole buddies are never going to darken my doorstep again.”
“Yeah, that's not going to – ”
“Listen here, asshole,” I snapped, cutting him off again, “you may be king of your band of assholes, but you're not king of the world. So fuck off already. And since possession is nine-tenths of the law, it looks like this bag of shit is mine to do with as I wish. In fact, I may go back upstairs and just flush this all down the toilet. What would you think about that, King Asshole?”
His eyes narrowed and I saw anger flash through them. He took a step toward me and without thinking about it, I turned and as hard as I could, I threw the bag over the chain link fence that was off to my right. It felt so good to throw it; it was almost cathartic. And I was proud of myself for my act of defiance. There was no way in hell I was letting that prick push me around.
I'd been so caught up in my little triumph that I wasn't even paying attention to where the bag landed until I heard the splash and saw the look in King's eyes. Turning, I saw the black baggie sink to the bottom of the apartment swimming pool. Fear flashed through me for a moment, but a current of righteous anger and indignation replaced it.
“Serves you right, dickhead,” I said, giving him the finger. “Go get what's rightfully yours now.”
I turned on my heels and marched back up the stairs to my apartment. The entire time, I felt his eyes on me, burning through me. Was he angry? Not that I cared, but I had to wonder. Any sane man would want to kill me right about now, but King seemed sort of amused by me. At least on the outside, he remained as calm and unflappable as ever. Before I'd walked away, I'd even seen that goddamn infuriating smile on his face. I walked into my apartment and slammed my door for good measure.
“Serves him right,” I muttered again, beaming with pride at what I'd just done. “Try to pull one over on me, you'll get what's coming to you. I showed that arrogant asshole that I'm not going to be pushed around.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
KING
She hade spirit, that one. I had to give her credit for that. Not many people – man or woman – would have had the balls to do what she just did to me. Very few men had the nerve to stand up to me like Abbie just had, and certainly no woman had ever stood up to me like that. And I had to admit I was slightly impressed. She was damn fine, but that attitude – man, someone needed to tame her before she got herself in trouble.
Not all of the guys out there were as nice as I was. And that went double for guys who belonged to a club. Standing up to men like me was a dangerous prospect to begin with. I knew guys who would have popped anybody – man or woman – for mouthing off like she had. And when you were barely five feet tall and couldn't have weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, it was even more dangerous and the chances of being hurt went up exponentially.
Mouthing off and reading me the riot act was one thing, but throwing expensive dope into a swimming pool was something else entirely. I was pissed, but refused to give into it. I wasn't like that. Some guys had no problem with hitting a woman, but I had a rule against hurting innocent people. And I never, ever hit a woman. It was something I took seriously and was a rule I wouldn't ever violate. Ever. Not even after watching my dope – my future, really – sail through the air and sink to the bottom of a swimming pool.
She was mouthy and she was irritating, but damn, she was a hottie. The reason I laughed when she threw the dope into the pool was because there was no way I could take her anger so seriously. Not with her sweet, innocent face and daring green eyes staring daggers through me. It was, in a way, adorable. And the angrier she got, the more adorable she became. It was like getting pissed off at a kitten that bit your finger – it just didn't work and you couldn't stay mad.
Not that any of that mattered. I had a job to do – that baggie wasn't going to pull itself out of the pool. I needed to get it quickly and hope nobody in Abbie's complex would come out and question why I was in their pool. But I needed to get them out and get home so I could change before our meeting with the Incas later tonight.
Looking at the fence, I saw that it wasn't very high and knew I probably wouldn't have much trouble getting over it. Then I looked at the gate and saw it was locked. But the lock was pretty damn flimsy. Of course, it was a pool and not a vault of gold, so I wasn't entirely surprised it had a cheap lock on the gate. I had two choices – hop over the fence or merely break the gate's latch and walk right in. I chose the former only because I wanted to avoid giving little miss Apartment Association any more trouble than I'd already caused her. I could, at least, do her that solid.
I climbed up the chain link and threw my body over the fence, landing softly on my feet. The swimming pool was filled with leaves and debris. I didn't think anybody had gone swimming in a while because the water was a bright shade of puke green. It looked more like a swamp than a pool.
“Well, shit,” I muttered to myself as I searched for something long I could fish the bag out with. Looking at the water, getting into it was the last thing I wanted to do. Given its color – and texture – I couldn't be positive that there weren't leeches, alligators, or some strange, exotic diseases below the surface.
I looked around and saw there was a net for cleaning the pool, sitting, mostly unused, in the corner. It looked brand new – which explained the leaves and other crap that had accumulated in the swimming pool.
I was sure Abbie was looking down on me from her apartment upstairs and was having a nice laugh at my expense. Here was a big, bad biker guy using a net, trying to fish a pound of dope out of a cesspool. And it was all because she'd thrown it in there just to spite me. I looked up at the apartments but didn't see her in any of the windows.
Part of me would have liked to see that pretty little face staring back at me. I would have smiled, maybe even given her the finger since she obviously loved to throw it around herself. But it would have all been in jest. There was just no way I could be genuinely mad at her. Annoyed as hell? Sure. And I was, trust me. Feeling around in the bottom of some murky swamp was irritating as hell. But I knew I'd brought it upon myself. At least partially so.
Eventually, I felt the net bump against something solid. That had to be it. I turned the net to act as a scoop and tried to hook what I hoped was the bag of dope. I scooted it along the bottom of the pool until I got it to the shallow end. Then, I continued to pull on it, dragging it along the bottom before getting it to the steps. I used my scoop and drag method until I'd gotten it to the top step. Suppressing a shudder, I reached into that green, soupy shit and pulled the bag out. It was covered in moss and was dripping with water. Looking around, I didn't see anything I could use, so I was forced to dry it off on my pants. Damn that woman.
I was peeved, but I knew I couldn't be too mad. In fact, I was still kinda, sorta amused by her antics. Never before had I met such a naïve, but brave ass, woman. I'd seriously never met anybody like her. She was tiny but fierce. Though she was obviously not quite street smart enough to know when to stop pushing. If she pulled the same shit with somebody like Eduardo that she'd pulled with me, she very well may have ended up in the bottom of that pool with two in the back of her head. If she weren’t more careful, she would wind up ge
tting herself in trouble, I feared. A lot of trouble.
I shook my head and wanted to kick myself. Why did I care about what happened to her so much? Hell if I knew. But as I climbed back out of the swimming pool area and headed for my bike, a thought crossed my mind. A crazy thought, too, considering the fact that she wasn't my type at all.
A smile spread across my face as I turned around and walked toward her apartment building. I knew she wouldn't let me in if I knocked on her door and, besides, if I just showed up, she might just call the cops on me. So instead of knocking on her door, I found a rock and aimed it right at her window – the same window she stuck her head out of to yell at us night after night – and tossed it.
I waited for a few moments and got no response. So I picked up another rock and tossed it at the window with a little more force. It hit the window with a loud crack and bounced off. I thought I'd hit it so hard that, perhaps, I'd shattered the glass. But I breathed a small sigh of relief seeing that it was still intact.
She must have thought I'd broken her window, too, because her face suddenly appeared – with a look of absolute rage painted upon it. Seeing me down below, she opened up the window and stared daggers at me. “What in the hell are you doing, you asshole?” she screamed. “You almost broke my damn window!”
Even though she was yelling at me, there was something in her face that wasn't matching up. She most certainly projected an air of anger, but I watched the way she stared at me. The way her eyes moved over my body. She looked at me with a gaze I was familiar with – lust. She seemed angry, sure, but she also acted as if she were in heat. She wanted me, yet she'd never admit to it. I wasn't too crazy about her leaning out of the window yelling at me. The last thing I wanted was for more attention and possibly a return trip down to the police station – which was all but guaranteed if they rolled up and I still had the bag of dope in my hand. I figured it would probably be in my best interest to try and calm her down a bit, all things considered.
“Sorry! I didn't mean to startle you,” I called up to her.
“What in the hell do you want?”
I shuffled my feet and felt a little awkward and foolish all of the sudden. But in for a penny, in for a pound. I cleared my throat and tried to sound a little more confident than I felt in that moment. “I wanted to ask if you'd like to go on a ride with me,” I said, running a hand through my hair and shooting her my best smile. “You know, to try and make it all up to you.”
“Make it up to me?” she snorted.
She rolled her eyes and for a moment, I figured she'd turn me down, closing the window – possibly even shoot me the finger once more for good measure – and shut me out for good.
“Yeah, I was a shithead. I know I was, and I'm sorry,” I said. “And I think you deserve some fun. So what do you say? Just a quick little ride down the coast?”
She shook her head as if she couldn't believe the stones on me. But her gaze still weighed down on me and had a physical substance to it. I could tell she was thinking about it. If only because she found me attractive. She seemed like the type of girl who'd be drawn to the bad boy type. She was, after all, a little too feisty for the quiet, shy type of man. They wouldn't know how to handle her. Fortunately, I wasn't one of those types.
But she shut her window without saying another word, and I assumed that was it. Abbie was gone from my life. Not that I could entirely blame her. We had been assholes. And the least I could do for the trouble we'd caused her was to make sure we didn't bother her again. She would probably never believe it, but I did feel badly about planting the drugs on her. I'd hoped to have a chance to make it up to her, but it was apparently not to be. I turned and walked toward my bike, but her voice caused me to turn around again. I was surprised to find her standing behind me with a smile on her face. Happily so.
“For the record, you are a shithead,” she said. “Don't think this means I'm saying yes – ”
“Of course not,” I said, turning around and trying to hide the grin that said I was right about her all along.
“I just figured if you were offering to make it up to me, well, that might be nice. All things considered.” She smiled back at me, but her face was flushed ever so slightly.
Her eyes were wide, and for a moment, I saw something softer within her, something not so bossy and dominant. Something that really appealed to me.
That was the girl I'd been looking for right there. And she was damn right about me making it up to her, too. I would make sure to do that in spades.
CHAPTER NINE
ABBIE
He's smoother than he looks. There's something about him that's absolutely compelling. Either that or I'm just easy to persuade. But when someone looks as good as King does in a pair of tight jeans, can you blame me for not putting up more of a fight? Sure, I was still pissed about the drugs he'd planted on me. But nothing had come of it and I wasn't in any trouble. Plus, he'd promised to make it all up to me. I was curious what that was going to look like.
I had no idea and though there was a piece of me that was hesitant, I was willing to give him the opportunity to try. I was intrigued and was allowing him to make good on that promise. I climbed onto the back of his motorcycle and wrapped my arms around him tightly.
His back was massive. Strong. Powerful. Yes, it was obvious he worked out when you looked at him, but touching him was an entirely different story. His body was harder, stronger, and more angular than I thought. Not that I'd spent a lot of time thinking about how his body might have felt. But there was no denying he was larger than life and, I had to admit, having my arms wrapped around his body, touching him like that – it was exciting. Not to mention the fact that the vibration from his bike that was reverberating between my legs – it made me slightly lightheaded.
King's good looks and the feelings that bike inspired – it was a deadly combination. It was even worse given that it had been way too long since I'd been with a man. Most of the men I interacted with on a daily basis were like Asher – weak, cowardly, passive. Too soft for me. They most definitely weren't my type.
But King wasn't my type either. He was at the completely opposite side of the spectrum. Too large, too rough around the edges, and far too dangerous. Very, very dangerous. The only positive was that he wasn't weak. He wasn't soft. And he wasn't passive. Hell no. There was nothing passive about this man. If anything, he came on a bit strong. Truthfully, he came on way too strong. Again, not usually my type.
As I rode on the back of his bike, with my arms around him and the wind whipping through my hair, I could almost forget about all of King's shortcomings. I could almost forget about all of the things about him that turned me off. His bike thundered as we drove down the coast, the view of the rocky shore on one side, tall trees on the other. In the middle of nowhere. Just him and me on the open road.
And I loved it. I loved every minute of it.
We pulled off on to a one-lane road, turning away from the coast and going inland. But we didn't go far. King pulled into a parking lot filled with bikes as gnarly as his. We parked and he helped me hop off the bike. I looked around at the grimy building and then turned my eyes to him.
“This is how you're going to make it up to me?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “A biker bar?”
The building was a ramshackle old warehouse, or at least it appeared to be. It was dingy, dirty, and was out in the middle of almost nowhere. Sure, civilization was nearby, but we were surrounded by nature and trees – and were well off the open road. If he planned on killing me for tossing his drugs into the pool, this was probably a good place to do it.
The music coming out of the bar was loud – too loud for my liking – and we could hear it outside. Every note, every syllable of the lyrics – we could hear it perfectly clear. The front door swung open and two men walked out wearing jeans and leather vests – with no shirt beneath them. Their arms were covered in tattoos in designs that went down to their ripped chests.
They nodded at King k
nowingly. He nodded back at them.
“Be safe out there,” King said, watching the two men hop on the back of their Harleys.
“You too, King,” the older man said; he had greying hair and a grimy looking bandana wrapped around his head.
The other man turned to me and winked, giving me a salacious smile that made me feel very out of place.
King never answered my question, never told me how bringing me to this place was “making it all up to me.” Instead, he just walked toward the door, looking back at me as if to ask if I were coming or not. What choice did I have? I couldn't drive myself back home. It was a long walk and I wasn't sure I could catch a ride with anyone else – not anyone I trusted, that was.
With a sigh and a growing feeling of trepidation, I followed him inside. The place smelled of stale cigarette smoke and I fought hard not to gag when I walked in. It was the type of smell that would cling to my hair and clothes, making me feel dirty as soon as I stepped inside. I knew within a minute of being there that I was going to need a hot, hot shower. The music was louder and way more obnoxious inside than it had been in the parking lot. It was so loud, I could feel the bass vibrating in my bones and it nearly made my eardrums burst. Music I'd never heard before in my life – and not music I'd voluntarily listen to. It was some sort of hard rock and wasn't my type of music, so I wouldn't know who the band was. But it sounded a lot more like screaming than it did music to me.
HANDS OFF MY WOMAN: Padre Knights MC Page 27
