“It’s last minute,” said Maggie for him with a wave of her hand. “I understand. As long as I have a bed to sleep on that preferably hasn’t been died in, I’ll be settled.”
“We’ll get you set up. It’s gonna take about an hour or so, though.”
Fuck, thought Maggie. She was over this day, through and through. She had faced her father, and practically bent at the knee to him; she had faced Jase and his anger, even if just for a moment. Maggie was exhausted, but it wasn’t necessarily just sleep that would fix her. She really needed some time to step outside of the darkness for a little while. Since sleep was off the table for the time being, she decided on a new course of action.
“I really need a drink,” said Maggie.
Drake leaned on the counter and lit up a cigarette. “There’s a Sev just up the street, we could head over and grab something.”
“No, I need to get out. I just feel… cooped,” said Maggie. She wanted to say trapped, but she didn’t want to give this new guy the wrong impression. She was going to need allies in the MC to survive this. Drake offered his box of smokes to her and she pulled one out slowly. “Is the roadhouse still open? The one with the neon-pink cowgirl sign?”
Drake’s silver lighter flipped open in front of her face. “Hot Tamales? Yeah, of course they’re open.”
“I think I’m gonna head over and grab a drink there.”
Maggie took a long first exhale of smoke. She expected him to be more resistant to her plan, but he was already half on his phone again, texting someone. “Okay girl. Well, look, if I head out to Tamales with you, I will almost certainly lose track of time, and I don’t trust Joey as far as I can throw him. He won’t wait for us if he gets here and we ain’t here.”
“I don’t mind going on my own.” In fact, I prefer it.
“That’s fine,” said Drake. “I can wait here for Joey. I’ve been relieved of duty anyhow.” He looked up with a grin.
Before she could ask him what that was supposed to mean, Drake’s phone erupted in the light and sound of an incoming call. He accepted it and immediately began berating whoever was on the other end as he walked off out the front door and into the yard.
Maggie figured this was as good a chance as any. Leaving Drake in a corner of the yard hollering into his phone, she climbed in her car and configured her phone GPS to find Hot Tamales. She was tired, it was dark, and she wasn’t sure she could find her way even through familiar territory.
Construction on Spruce Avenue sent Maggie on a GPS-guided detour through a relatively quiet neighborhood of the town. Houses sat dark and soft, nestled in the early night. It was almost peaceful until she heard the sound of a motorcycle a few cars behind her coming up loud as a lion’s roar through her open windows. It was moving fast by the sounds of it, almost as if she were a gazelle it was chasing.
Relieved of duty, she thought to herself, and rolled her eyes. That’s what Drake had meant. My next “escort” has arrived. She was so overcome with the anxiety of the day that she hadn’t realized how fully her father would react to her request for help. She was in danger, so of course he wasn’t going to let her out of sight of the MC.
She pulled up to a stoplight and seethed to herself. Knowing she had no choice but to accept this provision didn’t do very much to lessen the weight of it on her shoulders; that feeling of being treated like a child; of being powerless against the whims of powerful men. She couldn’t get it to sit right in her stomach.
When Maggie finally got back on-route to the roadhouse, she made a promise to herself that she would not take out her aggression on whoever was unlucky enough to have been given “first watch” by her father. She had likely never met him and none of this was his fault. She would swallow the fact that she had a babysitter for the time being.
Hot Tamales was right where Maggie had left it, so to speak. The roadhouse had been built as one of the first structures connecting LeBeau with the nearby town of Howlett, and had for decades been a popular destination for bikers, truckers, and other professional nomads and adventurers. The long flat building sprawled across what had once been a verdant meadow tucked up against the foothills. While most of the meadow was now under the building or the huge gravel parking lot, tufts of wildflowers still bloomed in the spaces surrounding the dive. The hot pink outline of a sexy cowgirl riding a bull had been the roadhouse’s calling card since Maggie could remember, and the sign buzzed in the dark night as she pulled up and parked her car. A few other cars were pulling in from the opposite side of the lot, coming from the direction of Howlett. She heard some of the cars behind her pass by with a whoosh, continuing down the highway without pausing. The motorcycle driver was clearly breaking, however, and pulling into the Tamales lot behind her. She sighed to herself. Part of her had still been hoping it was a coincidence.
Maggie waited and saw the biker pass by in the dark and park out of view. She gave herself a quick check in the visor mirror. She was not terribly pleased with the tired, vaguely dusty reflection that stared back at her but a bit of lipstick she found in the console seemed to brighten her up enough. By the time she opened her door and hopped out of the SUV, a huge dark figure was already leaning against the end of her car, waiting.
She jumped a little. “Oh, hi,” she said as soon as she saw the MC cut. Backlit from the bright pink glow of the sign, she couldn’t make him out. “I’m Maggie. I guess you’re my bodyguard.”
“Yeah, no shit.” It was a familiar voice from the dark. The man put a cigarette to his lips and lit it, his familiar silhouette framed behind the flame of the lighter.
Maggie’s heart stopped. She felt a jolt run up her spine and down her legs, so strong she thought she might take a tumble right there in the lot of Hot Tamales. Her left hand instinctively shot out and grasped the SUV. There was no recovering composure after that.
“Jumpy?” said Jase. There was nothing playful in his voice, though. It was all brutish and bitter.
“Well, I am on the run, so that typically comes with the territory, yeah,” said Maggie, drudging up a bit of acid from her tired soul.
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never run from anything.”
Before, at the clubhouse, Maggie had felt scared. Her empathy for Jase overflowed in that moment their eyes met in the den. Ridden with guilt for having to come back and interrupt his life again after what she did, she couldn’t find room to be angry with him for being so cold in front of the other Black Dogs. But the mental pressure of the past few hours had worn her down. Drowning in emotions she neither understood nor controlled, she felt like little more than a tired, cornered animal.
Jase had every right to be hurt by her presence, and she would never argue that. But right there, at that moment, in the dark of night outside Hot Tamales, she wasn’t going to take anything she didn’t deserve. She had never asked him to follow her. She hadn’t begged Henry for Jase as her detail. And she wasn’t about to take the shit for its consequences.
“Paragon of virtue, Mister Jase Campbell, everyone,” said Maggie to the imaginary audience around them. She even mustered up a sarcastic little curtsey to top it off with.
Jase blew out his cigarette smoke in a mean scoff. “You’re still a fucking piece of work, I see. You come crawling back here asking for help and you’re gonna give me this attitude?”
“I came back to ask for Henry’s help,” said Maggie, her voice an angry hiss. “It’s not my fault he put you on bitch duty.”
“You can say that again,” said Jase.
Maggie rolled her eyes. Already she felt that tiny hope for a restful evening spinning out of control. “Look, I just came here to get a fucking drink. So why don’t you and your brooding just stay the hell out of my way and let me get one in peace. I’m sure you can do your job from across the room.”
“What would you know about my ‘job’?” said Jase. He threw the cigarette butt to the ground near her feet and used it as an excuse to come a few steps closer as he snuffed it out with his boot. Now he
was a mere foot away from her, and she had to crane her neck to look up at him. He smelled like musk and gasoline. “What would you know about a fucking thing around here, Maggie?”
Maggie’s heart pounded, and it wasn’t just from her anger. It was the sudden shock of having Jase so close to her, of smelling his distinctive musk once again. It flooded her emotions in slow, fat waves, until she felt nearly consumed by a distant longing. Her feet wouldn’t move, rooted in place. She tried to draw strength from that knowledge, because she neither wanted to move away from him, nor did she want to move closer. She wanted both. She wanted neither.
She must have been lost in her thoughts for longer than a moment, because through the muffled sound of blood crashing in her ears, she heard him ask if she was ignoring him.
“No,” she responded, coming back to herself. She centered the moment by holding on to her anger. “Just stay the hell away from me, Jase.”
Before he could respond, Maggie stormed around his big frame and headed for the roadhouse. The silence in the gravel behind her betrayed that Jase didn’t follow right away. Maggie was glad for it.
By the time she got the bartender to serve her, Maggie’s anger had died a bit. The roadhouse jumped with line dancers, dart-throwers, mechanical bull-riders, and a crowd of frat boys celebrating something or other with endless pitchers of cheap draft beer. They co-mingled with bikers from at least three MCs that Maggie could recognize, including a few Black Dogs from a chapter north of Howlett. The room was a smoky, noisy mess, and perfect for the restless part of Maggie’s soul that needed care now more than ever. She loved the way she could melt anonymously into a place like this. She downed her first shot of whiskey and pint of beer in a rush, and then ordered another pair immediately.
Maggie tried her damnedest to get lost in the moment and mood of the bar, but as hard as she tried, she couldn’t sink into it. She hoped Jase had decided to stay outside to attend to his guard duties, even though she could feel his eyes on her back as she sat at the bar. This was such a fucked-up development. She laughed coldly to herself when she wondered how Henry would feel after her bodyguard killed her before her hunters got the chance.
Jase would never hurt me. The thought came out of nowhere from the quiet part of her mind, but it made Maggie roll her eyes at her own naivety and order another shot. Drake wasn’t the only one who had never seen Jase as angry as he had been that moment at the den. Maggie would never admit to anyone how truly scared she had been when he stepped up to her.
Still, his anger felt so unfair. Was she the first woman to break a man’s heart? Or the first restless teenage girl, torn between two different longings? Didn’t he know that she had broken her own heart, too? She was barely 19 when she left, practically still a kid. Jase wasn’t much older. Kids make mistakes. God knows I’ve made more than my fair share.
He wasn’t there to see the long and torturous nights those first few months in Eagleton. He didn’t hear the neighbors knocking on her apartment door to check on her because her heartbroken sobbing was loud enough to penetrate the walls. He never had to feel the deep loneliness of being in a new place, without so much as a friend to call on the phone for familiar comfort.
Maggie felt all that pain rushing back, but it was mixed with a strange sensation, a pull to turn and see the man she had been missing for so many years, who was finally in the same room with her again. She missed Jase. She had always missed Jase.
This can’t keep up, she realized. Jase as her bodyguard was only going to end in pure agony. She had to find a way to get rid of him. His loyalty to the MC was obviously strong enough to override his hatred of Maggie, but if his anger reached a tipping point, maybe he would demand a different duty from Henry himself.
Maggie looked down both sides of the huge oak bar. The few faces she could see were not ideal for her needs. She picked up her beer and took a walkabout into the dark edges of the roadhouse, sliding around tables and pushing through groups of drunk, happy people. On the dance floor, people were lit up like little disco balls from the pulsing lights above. She couldn’t see Jase, but she knew he was watching her, stalking her like a hawk. She was counting on it.
Maggie headed over to the corner filled with drunk frat boys. She ignored the drinking games and bad karaoke and chugging contests and walked over to one who was leaning against a wall, eyeballing the girls on the dance floor. He was blonde and tan and had probably never touched an engine or a gun in his short, dull life. He was Jase’s opposite.
“Hey,” said Maggie as she walked up within a foot of him. At first, he seemed surprised, but that melted quickly into a seductive warmness when he saw the look in her eyes.
“Hi there,” he said.
“Looking for something?” she nodded her head back towards the dance floor, then put one hand on his chest as the other tipped the rest of her beer into her mouth.
“I think I just found it,” he said with a grin. His hands snaked around her waist and one wasted no time getting a good handful of her ample ass and thighs. She tipped her head up to him and he obliged her with a deep but sloppy French kiss. Already she could feel his growing hardness as he pressed her against his body.
She had obviously found the horniest frat boy in the group; within seconds he was practically groping her right out in the middle of the bar. She stopped him just before he tried to sneak a peek down her shirt, slowed him down a bit with some sensual kisses that ended with his lip between her teeth. Once she was certain her point had been made to anyone who may have been watching them, she took the frat boy’s hand and led him through the maze of the roadhouse, heading for the bathrooms at the back. She could’ve just stopped the charade there and sent him on his way, but Maggie figured she deserved a good fuck after a day like today.
Maggie and the frat boy stumbled into the handicapped stall at the end of the row, making out along the way. She managed to lock the stall door before he tugged her shirt over her head and began greedily cupping her breasts, sticking a hand into her bra. The feel of his mouth and tongue on her neck was too much pleasure, and Maggie moaned out loud, eliciting giggles from someone in another stall. She reached down and wrapped her hand around a hard, thick erection begging to be released from the board shorts it was trapped in.
When his hand appeared between her legs, rubbing, Maggie felt like she might come right then and there. It had been so long since she was touched that way—with actual longing and desire. She closed her eyes and got lost in the moment until she heard the front door of the bathroom pushed open hard enough to hit the wall. A woman’s protests went ignored. The hand between her legs was rubbing, making her wet. It was all she wanted to think about. But what was wrong? What—
“Maggie!” Jase’s voice echoed through the bathroom. Before she could react, the stall door exploded inward with enough force to bend the latch beyond repair. She and the frat boy both let out a surprised cry, and he did his best to shield her from the shrapnel that came flying in.
Jase stood in the doorway, a hulking figure of rage and jealousy. He was twice the size of the college kid who didn’t put up an ounce of resistance when Jase reached in and grabbed him by his polo collar. He growled in his face to get the fuck out, and then pushed him hard towards the bathroom door. The frat boy hesitated just a minute as he looked at Maggie before he fled. A woman with golden hair watched the whole thing as she huddled in a corner near the sink, then boldly told Jase she was going to get the manager before she fled.
They stood there staring at each other for what felt like an eternity. Maggie didn’t even remember that she was shirtless, standing in front of her ex in just a bra and jeans, trying to slow down her heart and her breathing.
She had figured Jase would seethe quietly to himself all night at the bar and demand a transfer from Henry in the morning. She looked at the dangling, broken latch, realizing she had misjudged the hell out of the situation.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she said with deep anger.
“I could ask you the same thing! Some assholes are hunting you and your bright idea is to fuck some rando at the roadhouse? Do you care about your own life or not?”
“Oh please!” said Maggie, finally noticing her shirt on the floor and trying to act casual as she bent to gather it up. “Don’t act like this is some concern for my safety, Saint Jase. You could have waited at the fucking door. We both know you tossed that kid out of here because you don’t want anyone else down my pants.”
Jase’s face turned red and he stepped towards her a few feet. Maggie was far too angry to back down. She stood in front of him, shirtless and vulnerable, her pale skin probably still bearing the red marks from the frat boy’s eager hands and lips. In a bitter internal monologue, she hoped Jase saw them, too.
“I don’t give a fuck about your pants and who might be in them. I have a job to do, and I’m going to do it whether you like it or not,” he retorted.
“Keeping me from getting dick is not your job,” said Maggie, throwing her shirt over her head.
The muscles in his jaw clenched. “Well it sure as shit isn’t my job to help you get dick, either,” said Jase.
Maggie rolled her eyes and pushed past him just as the golden-haired woman and a round man in a dress shirt entered the ladies room. The man gave Jase a shocked look.
“Since you’re on the clock, you can deal with this,” said Maggie as she thumbed at who she assumed was the manager. “I’ll be waiting at the bar.”
“The hell you will,” said Jase. As she left the restroom, she heard him speak to the manager. “I don’t have time for this. Put it on the MC’s tab.”
“Look, you fellas are great customers but you can’t just be busting up my equipment!” said the manager.
“Did you hear me?” said Jase, his voice getting louder. “Charge it to the fucking MC.”
Maggie was halfway down the hall before he caught up with her bee-lining for the bar. Jase grabbed her arm and began to pull her towards the front door. “We’re fucking done with playtime, Maggie.”
Unplugged: A Bad Boy Rockstar Romance Page 20
