Bit full of himself, old Radical the Bull was.
“Yeah. Just Rad for casual. You got a name?”
“Yeah, I do.”
When she didn’t provide it, his mouth slithered even higher. “Okay, darlin’. I came over to say Five-O wants to get the road open. They got us pickin’ up the wrecked Kawas. You want us to get yours, too?”
She hadn’t actually thought about her bike as something she needed to deal with. In her mind, it had been more like one of the injured than just a bent-up hunk of metal.
“Fuck.” She hopped carefully onto her feet—getting off them had stiffened her up some—and set the paper cup of tepid coffee on the bumper. “Fuck.”
“You local?”
She nodded.
“We got a shop over on Third. It’s no problem to haul it over there. Somebody’ll look it over, and we’ll let you know.”
He handed her a business card. She’d expected to see the bull of the club patch, but instead she saw the green dinosaur of the Sinclair logo and the words ‘Brian Delaney Auto Service’ in neat font. Under it, in italics, was the notation, Cars, Bikes, & Trucks Serviced. Below that, Conrad Jessup, ASE Certified Mechanic, and finally an address and phone number.
Conrad. Radical. Willa looked up. “Conrad?”
“Yeah, nobody calls me that, ‘less they’re lookin’ for a fight or lockin’ me up. Rad’ll do. You want me to give the go to take your little sportster with us?”
After hesitating without knowing why she was—she didn’t know where else she’d take her bike—Willa nodded. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, thanks.”
With that handled, she limped to the side of the road and scanned what was left of the cataclysm. Her poor bike still lay on the road, all alone now. Under her breath, she muttered, “how the fuck am I getting home?”
“I can help with that, too, if you want. I was far enough back not to get trapped in the wreck. You don’t mind ridin’ bitch—if you think your leg’ll take it—I’ll ride you home.”
Rad had followed her to the shoulder. He stood at her side, looking down at her without a smile now. Just an open, interested expression. The strobing flashes of emergency lights brought him into stark relief and then into shadow, again and again. He looked damn tired himself, now that she’d noticed. And grimy. Soot smeared his face.
It was a good face—too rough to be handsome, in the classic sense, anyway, but appealing. He was older than she, maybe ten-ish years, so about forty; his age showed. She could see in the formation of the creases around his nose and between his eyes that he was a man who scowled a lot, and she could imagine that expression being intimidating, and yet now, with weariness relaxing his features, she could see that he also laughed and showed love. She’d seen a few versions of his grin by now, too, and she had read in those brash expressions that he was a man who enjoyed a good time.
Willa blinked twice and looked away. She was still in a bit of a daze, she guessed, because this was a damn strange time to be checking out a guy. But doing so had been…soothing. Distracting in a way she’d needed.
He grinned, showing that cocky sumbitch side. “You like what you see?”
“Sorry. Just trying to get a read on you, Radical.”
“Rad. I pass muster?”
She looked back at the paramedic truck. Chase and his partner were packing up. Why was she not interested in handsome, clean-cut, heroic-type EMT Chase, but standing here getting all kinds of soft-focus over filthy, bearded, rough-hewn biker Rad? Hadn’t she learned her lesson? Wasn’t she a good student?
Apparently, her grades were slipping.
“Yeah, you do. A ride would be great. Thanks.”
His smile wasn’t serpentine now. He simply seemed pleased. “Good. Be nice to know your name.”
“Willa. I’m Willa.”
More pleasure shone from his face. “That was my granny’s name. It’s a good name.”
She thought so; it had been her grandmother’s name, too.
~oOo~
She went to collect her helmet—it was compromised now, and she’d need to buy a new one, but it would do to get her home—and limped back toward the cluster of bikes behind the crash site. The cops had finally cleared the scene and were opening the highway to traffic again.
Rad wasn’t around, and for a minute she stood like a guest at a party where she’d only known the host and had been abandoned by him. An older guy with a bushy beard and a thinning blonde ponytail came up to her. He wore a Bulls kutte, with a flash reading Vice President and another reading Dane. He had the Tested and True flash as well; not all of the Bulls on the scene wore that one, from what Willa could tell.
“Help ya, honey?” He nodded at the helmet in her hand. “You lookin’ for a ride?”
“Got her, Dane.” Rad trotted up. “Just gettin’ her bike on the flatbed.”
“Ah. Right. You’re the little sportster.” Dane cast his eyes up and down over her body, then gave her a paternal head tilt. “You took a spill. You good?”
“Yeah, I’m good. Thank you.”
“Alrighty then.” He turned to Rad and gave him a wry smirk. “Looks like you won’t be at the clubhouse tonight. Delaney wants us in church first thing in the morning, before the station opens. Seven.”
“Fuck, man.” Rad griped. But then he nodded. “Alright. See you then.”
Dane nodded, gave Willa something like a courtly bow, and then turned away, toward a small cluster of men in kuttes. Rad put his hand up in a stilted wave, and the men returned the gesture. A couple of them laughed, and Rad shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“You ready to ride?”
“Yeah. Thanks for this.” She put on her helmet. Rad didn’t seem to wear one. She thought that was dumb.
His Harley was a mammoth thing: big, black, highly customized. He walked it back onto the pavement and mounted. When the engine was running, he urged her to climb on with a nod of his head and an offer of his hand.
The passenger seat—Rad would, she was sure, call it a bitch seat—was elevated about four inches, so when she threw her sore leg over and settled behind him, she was too high to comfortably wrap her arms around his waist.
This was a good thing. She could tell simply by resting her hands on his sides that his body was carved from muscle as hard as granite, and she did not need to be feeling too much of him while they rode.
The engine thrummed under her ass and between her legs. Damn, she loved that feeling. On her own bike or riding with someone else, the sensation was deep and primal.
Rad turned and looked over his shoulder.
“Your leg gonna hold up okay?”
It was sore as hell but solid. She’d be able to keep it on the peg and move with him. “Yeah.”
He nodded but didn’t face away. “Need your address, darlin’.”
“Oh!” If one of the women at work were to tell her the story of having a night like this, here was the place where she’d interrupt and say, You told him where you lived? A guy you just met? A Bull? Were you high, or are you just stupid? Have you learned nothing?
But Willa couldn’t seem to feel worried or threatened. She was just tired and sore, her body ached and her brain reeled from the horrors of the night, and she felt a little better with her hands on this guy’s muscular body.
He and his club had spent the past five hours helping the cops and paramedics at the scene, making hurt people feel better. Was that something bad guys did? No, it was not.
“I’m on Vincent. On the corner at Elm. You know that area?”
“I know everywhere, darlin’. Hold on tight, now.” Facing forward, he goosed the throttle and pulled onto the highway.
Willa held on tight.
CHAPTER THREE
The last time a woman had been on Rad’s bike, it had been Dahlia, his ex-wife. Not this bike—he’d had his old Softail back then, and she’d ridden lower, made a habit of wrapping her arms around his waist and settling her hands over his crotch.
Sex on a st
ick, Dahlia was. Even now, after everything, he had to give her that much credit. She’d been a mighty fine fuck. A fact too many knew, he’d learned.
And yet he’d been the asshole in their relationship. Okey doke.
The woman riding behind him now, on his Dyna, wasn’t melting into him the way his wife had, and her hands were fists at his side, grasping hunks of his kutte. But she moved like the rider she was, and the trip was easy.
Rad had surprised himself, offering to take her home. It wasn’t that chivalrous behavior was beyond him, but he didn’t know this woman from Adam’s off ox—one of his grandmother’s many old turns of phrase he’d understood without understanding—and he wasn’t in the habit of going above and beyond for strangers.
Helping out in a crisis, sure. He’d never known a biker—a real biker, not just a jerk on two wheels—to ride past anyone in need. All the bikers on the road behind the wreck tonight had helped, and those who’d been close enough ahead to know it had happened had turned back to do the same.
It wasn’t pure altruism, of course. It was that—the code—but it was also a benefit to them. Bikers, especially patches, knew their reputation. Many of them earned that reputation. But when there was an opportunity to do good, to give aid, they took it. Goodwill among their neighbors made room to get work done.
But offering this woman a ride home, when she’d had plenty of other options, like the EMT who hadn’t been able to keeps his damn eyes off her…he wasn’t sure why he’d done it.
He’d watched her a little, throughout the night, as she’d helped the EMT crews and firefighters. After a while, as enough units finally arrived, uniforms had pushed volunteering civilians and patches off the scene, but this woman was a nurse, and she was folded into their work.
She was hurting, but she’d gone on helping people, keeping them focused on her and away from the death around them, getting them calm and talking normally. Rad had found her fascinating.
She was a pretty thing, too. Bright blonde hair cut short, big eyes and long lashes, lush lips around a wide, gleaming smile. The light hadn’t been good enough to know the color of those big eyes, but they weren’t dark. Green or blue, something like that.
The armored jacket hid any details about her top, but her leather riding pants wrapped that gorgeous ass up like a gift.
Turning onto Vincent Avenue, feeling Willa’s body lean with his, Rad chuckled to himself. Yeah, he was an asshole. Elbow deep in blood and body parts, he’d still managed to spend a minute or two checking a chick out.
Frankly, though, he’d needed that respite. Rad was used to blood, had spilled more than his share of it, and he’d made a mountain of gore in the nearly twenty years he’d been wearing a Bulls patch. But a scene like tonight’s, with innocents—including women and children, the elderly—dying and hurt, that was a different thing entirely. A scene like that stayed with a man, if he had any heart or soul at all.
He was hoping that Delaney wanted an early meet the next morning because he wanted to hunt down the road-rager who’d started that conflagration and then bolted away. Rad would relish the opportunity to chain that asshole down in the basement and spend some time getting to know his inner workings.
That was Rad’s job in the Brazen Bulls. As SAA, he was first line of defense for his president and his club. But defense was proactive as well as reactive. He’d made his rep, earned his Tested and True flash, because he was the man who got to know what people didn’t want known. The man who put the insides on the outside.
Three blocks down, coming up on Elm Street, Rad slowed. Willa pointed up and to the left, at a cute little bungalow atop a gentle rise, right on the corner. He goosed the throttle and swung around, pulling up at the curb, then dropped his feet to the pavement and held out his arm to help her dismount.
She eased herself off, favoring her right leg, and took off her helmet. Her hair was badly mussed and her eyes were tired; it made her look young, like a little girl who’d been woken from a nap. Cute as fuck.
“Thanks for the ride.”
He nodded. “You take care of that leg, now. Get some rest. Call the number on my card in the morning, and somebody at the shop’ll update you on your bike.”
“Not you?”
“Maybe me. Maybe not. Don’t know what tomorrow holds for me.”
She nodded, and then the scene froze. Willa stood on the grassy sward between the curb and the sidewalk, her helmet under her arm. Rad sat astride his bike, his boots on the street, the engine idling under him.
There was a short set of steps up from the sidewalk to her front walk, and another set up to her porch. He didn’t want to pull off until he saw her and her bum leg get up those steps. But she wasn’t moving. Or talking. Just standing there, looking like she had a big decision to make and was not up to the task.
“You need help up to your door, darlin’?”
Her eyes narrowed, and she studied him. Curious about what was going on in that blonde head, he withstood the scrutiny, cocking his brow up to show his bemusement.
Finally, she spoke. “I…you want to come in for a beer? After everything tonight, I guess I’m not ready to be alone with my brain just yet.”
Two equal and conflicting impulses yanked around inside Rad: the first was excitement. This chick was hot and interesting, and he had some adrenaline to burn off. Hell yeah, he’d like to come in ‘for a beer.’
But the second was caution. He remembered Kay Ann’s little snit earlier in the day. There was some kind of weird juju that happened when you banged a woman in her own house. He looked up at the little bungalow; the light on the wraparound porch glowed warmly.
He bet the house in the Hansel and Gretel story had a friendly little porch light, too.
“Rad?”
He opened his mouth to tell her thanks anyway, but she looked so sore and rumpled, and he realized two new things: she was probably too hurt for fucking, and he wasn’t ready to be alone with his brain, either.
Maybe just some companionship. No bad juju there, right?
“Yeah, sure. I’d like a beer.”
~oOo~
The steps caused her a little bit of trouble, and Rad swept his arm around her waist to give her support.
At her front door, a dog barked. One bark, and then silence. Rad tensed a little. He and animals generally had a good rapport, but that had been a big, deep bark, and it wouldn’t hurt to be ready. The front door had a narrow oval of leaded and beveled glass in the center, and a faint light glowed from within, but Rad couldn’t make out even the impression of a dog through it.
Willa had four locks on the door—the knob lock and three deadbolts. Her neighborhood was a decent one, a cozy little enclave on the north side of town, the kind of diverse, soundly middle-class area where everybody had jobs and kept up with their bills and spent their weekends working on the yard or the house, but nobody had a lot of money for extras or luxuries. Where vacations were camping trips and road trips, and a week at Disney World was a once-in-a-lifetime extravagance.
Not all areas in this part of Tulsa were so solid, but this was a place where you could trust the neighbors to water your plants and bring in your mail while you were off camping, where they’d mow your lawn for you if you were gone a while, not where you had to install extra locks on your doors.
As she got all the locks open and put her hand on the knob, she moved in front of him and eased the door ajar. “Ollie, sit,” she said into the slit she’d made. “Good boy. Stay.”
She opened the door and stepped in. Rad followed, half expecting to come face to face with a bear.
And he very nearly did. Sitting tense but pretty at the side of the door was a huge, gorgeous pit bull. Black with white markings. His tail thumped the wood floor once at Willa, and then he stared at Rad.
While Willa closed the door and locked all those locks—they were keyed on both sides, he noted, no thumbturn on the inside, and she had a security bar and a chain as well—Rad crouched before the dog.
Ollie, she’d said.
“Hey, Ollie.” He held his hand out a couple of inches. “How you doin’, buddy?”
Ollie stared.
“Okay, Ollie. Release. Good boy.” Granted permission, the dog stood, and his back end rocked wildly, yanked to and fro by his wagging tail as Willa leaned down and gave him the love he wanted.
Still crouching in place, Rad saw the dog keeping one eye on him even as he snuggled his person. That look said, Mom let you in, so you might be okay, but I’m watching. You hurt her, you even make a move I don’t like, and I will eat your face.
Crash (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 1) Page 3
