Still, she looked kind of pissed off. The string of swear words that were clearly poised on her tongue in that moment would have shocked a priest to death, judging by the look on her face. She opened her mouth to say just that, but fell silent as I wrapped my arms around her. A second later another guy from a nearby fight came stumbling into us, elbows out.
I took the blow, keeping her safely shielded in my arms. I grunted from the impact.
“I’ve got you,” I said into her neck, continuing to guide her through the fights. “Just keep moving.”
She continued to move, but she couldn’t disguise the way her body shivered as my breath hit her neck. Interesting.
“Ryder!” Jair, my third, yelled, running up. His chest was heaving, and his eyebrow was bleeding from a recent blow. “I saw Tyler.”
His tone wasn’t accusatory, but if anything, impressed.
“I need to get the fuck out of here before the cops show up,” I replied. The sound of flying fists and crashing chairs resonated around us so loudly we were nearly yelling. “I’ll need you to keep me informed on what happens, Jair. Do not contact me unless it is absolutely necessary.”
The girl visibly blanched at the mention of police.
“Who is she?” Jair asked, nodding in her direction.
“Tyler’s victim of the night,” I responded, my voice terse. “She’s coming with me.”
The girl seemed to bristle at those words.
“I’m not going with you!” she said, forcefully. “I just need to get out of here and find my friends.”
I pierced her with my eyes, eyebrow raised. My voice was low and firm as I spoke, knowing her friends were already long gone.
“Your friends left you for dead in here, and, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t one of them actually set you up with a guy who just tried to assault you?” I didn’t hold back the sharpness in my tongue at all.
She was coming with me whether she wanted to or not. Going to jail was not an option right now.
She held her breath for a minute, her body tensing. I watched her resolve dwindle under the intensity of my gaze. She knew I was right, but clearly didn’t want to believe that her friend could have known. What I didn’t say was that her friend had been around here a lot lately. I’d seen her.
I undoubtedly knew that the blonde girl was aware of Tyler’s actions. Besides, rumor had it that Tyler fucked every girl his boys dated. It was a show of dominance in his gang, a way he demanded their allegiance.
In retrospect, I hoped I had killed that piece of shit.
The image of his face covered in blood flashed across mine and I recalled the satisfying crunch of my fist colliding with his face.
“Alright, it’s time to go,” I said, meeting her gaze again.
For a minute, she looked like she wanted to fight me on it. I felt bad. Forcing this girl to do anything after what she had been through felt wrong, but there was absolutely no way for me to avoid it. She was a liability at this point, and until I was certain that she wouldn’t be talking to the cops, she was going to be stuck with me.
After a minute, she nodded. She clearly didn’t want to be here when the cops showed up either. I wasn’t surprised. She probably didn’t want to have to testify in court. If that was the case, maybe we could wrap this up quickly and go our separate ways. At least then I could get together with my boys to make a plan.
Immediately, I set into motion, nodding to Jair before pulling her through the bar with renewed vigor. We made our way to the exit, just as the police pulled up to the other one. I could feel her heartbeat thrumming in the pulse of her wrist.
We were running from the police. This wasn’t my first time, but it clearly was for her. She looked ready to vomit.
I felt bad. She certainly did not look like she was prepared to be doing anything like this. She was a girl who had probably never spoken with cops for any reason other than breaking curfew.
For a moment, we watched as the police pulled up to the opposite exit of the bar and began filing in. I’m sure it wouldn’t take them long to find Tyler and get him to a hospital. They would no doubt be locking down the scene any moment. Tyler would be saved.
If he’s alive, a voice whispered in my mind.
The girl shuddered as if she had heard.
“Come on,” I said, pulling her into a nearby alleyway and pressing her against the wall. We listened to the scene from the shadows as it exploded. The sounds of the chaos shifting in a new direction met our ears.
In a brief second, she tensed. She looked up at me, I saw out of the corner of my eye. I was listening to the scene with the police. I could hear their shouts for order and the sound of the fights being replaced with the sounds of people trying to flee.
We needed to get as far away from her as we could.
Making a plan was important and it needed to expand beyond merely running, but I couldn’t think beyond the feeling of her delicate frame pressed against my body. She was warm and flighty, and god that cleavage…
If I were Tyler, I would be taking her right there.
Three
Sara
“The police are going to lock down the surrounding area soon,” Ryder said, glancing back in her direction. “We need to get out of here before they do.”
I nodded. Clearly finding my friends was not going to be an option, and now I couldn’t think past the nagging suspicion that Haley might have known.
His words continued to ring through my mind about my friends leaving. I mean, what had I expected them to do? When everything broke out, they had to get themselves out of there. I could respect that.
And surely Haley hadn’t known what a psycho Tyler was, right? We were friends. She would never walk me into a situation where I might get hurt, would she?
“Which way are we going?” I asked calmly, as if this wasn’t absolutely insane. As if I wasn’t running from the cops with a leader of a legitimate gang.
A sexy leader, the traitorous voice in my head said.
“Follow me,” Ryder said, the words coming out like a command comparable to the tone he had used with Tyler, but softer. He was clearly used to giving orders, and I wasn’t sure if it made me angry or relieved. He spoke in a way that indicated he expected people to listen. It was equal parts hot and maddening.
I followed him, not knowing what else to do. He kept a brisk pace, but never started actually running. I was amazed by the control and fluidity with which he moved. His motions were deliberate and calculated. I was stumbling and shaking from the sheer amount of adrenaline coursing through my veins, but he moved like a lion with predatory intent.
He was seriously hot. Even in the midst of all this craziness, I couldn’t look away from him. Everything about him begged to be studied.
As we continued to flee in silence, the adrenaline slowly faded into a numb cold, and the reality that I was running through a bunch of alleys with the leader of a gang in order to avoid the police actually hit me for the first time. Fear, sharp and icy, pierced the numbness in my mind.
I stopped running. I couldn’t go on like this. Things were too crazy.
What was I doing? I couldn’t run from the police. I had to go back. I had witnessed a crime. I mean, I might have even witnessed a murder…
This wasn’t the sort of thing sensible people did. This was something crazy people did.
The pounding of my heart thudded strongly in my ears. I leaned into the wall of the closest building for support. There was no other option. Going back was the right thing to do. I didn’t have to say anything about Ryder. I didn’t even know him.
He could be anyone, I told myself, as my eyes glanced over his body.
“We need to keep moving,” Ryder said, as he turned to face me, obviously wondering why I wasn’t pacing him anymore.
The way his face softened when his gaze landed on me made my heart beat in an entirely new way. The anguish must have been clear on my face because he was undoubtedly responding to it.
> “I know that this probably feels like the wrong thing to do, but I promise it’s for the better. You don’t want to be involved with the cops. Not after dealing with this crowd.” He said, sympathy softening every edge of his face. “You need to lay low for a while. Do you understand?”
The gentle nature with which he was regarding me contrasted so wholly with the image of him beating Tyler into submission that I was taken aback. How could a man capable of such violence look at me with such kindness?
“Did you kill him?” I asked, quietly. I needed to know. Never in my life had I seen someone take a beating like that, and I didn’t know how to tell if Tyler was going to live or not.
“What was that?” Ryder asked. He hadn’t heard.
He was looking around distractedly, as if someone might be pursuing us already. I hope it was just paranoia, but after the way this night had unfolded, it seemed incredibly possible that this wasn’t the case.
“Did you kill Tyler?” I asked again, louder. Bolder.
“I don’t know,” Ryder responded, with dead honesty, his eyes betraying something open and raw.
In the moment, Ryder had seemed like he enjoyed the violence. I had watched as primal ferocity overtook him, an unsung song of the wild compelling him to land blow after blow. Yet now, he seemed almost mournful. Not like he regretted what he did, but like he felt he had no other option and wasn’t going to waste time on what-ifs. I envied it.
Did he? I wondered. What was his other option? To just let me be assaulted?
My mouth went dry at the thought of what might have happened had Tyler been left unchecked. I shuddered, starting to feel nauseous again.
“I’m Ryder, by the way,” he said. It took me a minute to realize we were never technically introduced. I looked at him, my eyes trailing from his narrow hips to his broad shoulders, down the curvature of toned muscle in his arms, and back up to his squared off jaw, lightly covered in scruff.
My shaking compounded between the adrenaline and the thought of those muscles rippling beneath me.
“I’m Sara,” I replied weakly, placing my tiny hand in his large one. He shook it firmly, but gently. My resolve melted away under the sincerity of his gaze.
He genuinely looked kind, despite what he had just done.
“We need to keep moving, Sara, okay?” He asked, his voice nothing more than a soft caress, a blanket of words that wrapped themselves around me.
I nodded as he released my hand, sliding his hand to my wrist before pulling me forward from behind him. I let him lead me, trying to ignore the fire emanating from my wrist in response to his touch even though the sensation was fighting for all of my attention.
“Do you really not know if you killed him?” I asked, somehow finding the courage to press the issue further. It was obvious that Ryder wanted me to go with him, but I wasn’t entirely sure if I could trust him. It seemed unlikely that he would hurt me, but assuming that Tyler was harmless had gotten me into more than enough trouble.
I refused to make that mistake with this guy as well.
Ryder continued to keep up his brisk pace. At first, it seemed like he might not have heard me. Or he was ignoring me. I wasn’t sure which would be worse.
Finally, after a few moments, he released my wrist, coming to a stop and facing me. The vibrant green of his eyes pinned me in place and I felt my stomach do a nervous flip for the millionth time tonight.
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know if I killed him or not,” Ryder said. His voice was calm, and his gaze was steady. I wondered if he had killed anyone before.
“Do you think that you killed him?” I asked, squaring my shoulders and matching his gaze. I was done buckling for the night. I wanted answers and I wanted them now.
“It’s possible,” Ryder said. I raised my eyebrows. “I hit him in the temple, and it is definitely possible that I hit him hard enough to kill him.”
He said it matter-of-factly, as if there was a possibility of it, and he wouldn't deny that possibility, even if he wanted to. Ryder had made peace with this option already in his own way. The weight of the possibility was incredibly heavy. Suddenly, I found myself wishing I hadn’t asked. This was too much.
Taking a deep breath, I nodded.
I wasn’t surprised by his words, but the idea of someone dying over me was almost too much to handle. Of course Tyler needed to pay for what he had done, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe that he deserved to die because of it.
I mean, could I bear to live with the knowledge that I had bore witness to someone being killed before me? Especially in such a brutal and animalistic way? Ryder had possibly beaten Tyler to death with his bare hands. It was the most intimate way to kill someone, and that made it even more frightening.
“Did you want to kill him?” I asked. I needed a better gauge on Ryder. I needed to know if I was in more danger and had just followed a violent monster into the dark alleys of a city. The possibilities for my evening had grown exponentially since I had left my house, and I was sick of being caught off guard.
God, my judgment tonight was awful. The more the adrenaline faded, the more I realized that I was still drunk. My legs felt wild and tipsy.
“It wasn’t my intent,” Ryder replied. “But I won’t regret it if I did.” His voice was level. His gaze was firm.
The image of him perched atop Tyler, after I had cried out and Ryder had stopped beating him burned in my mind. He looked like a Spartan warrior, covered in a sheer glean of sweat from the exertion of demolishing Tyler.
That particular vision burned somewhere else too, much to my dismay. I felt my cheeks grow hot under his gaze. Why did he have to be so attractive?
“Okay then,” I said, mentally chastising myself for being so inarticulate. More importantly, for running through the streets with a gang leader and potential murderer, and for incessantly recalling the feeling of his breathe on my neck.
Something told me he would pull the same trick if he was trying to seduce me. My face flushed at the thought of it.
He looked me over and I could see the wheels turning. I could also see when something clicked. “You have something else you want to say?” Ryder asked, the left side of his mouth slipping into a cocky grin. My cheeks burned.
“No, uh,” I said, swallowing the embarrassment flooding my system. “Let’s just keep moving.”
His gaze burned through me as it leveled the full length of my body before meeting my eyes once more. Ryder stood, staring at me in complete silence. He looked as if he was ready to push me against the wall and take me. Not like Tyler. Not in a voracious, greedy way. He looked like he had so much to give - to fill me up with.
“Come on then,” he said, finally, pulling his smoldering gaze away.
Ryder turned, moving down the street in silence. This time he didn’t pull me along. He expected me to follow.
I did.
Four
Ryder
Nothing could stop the smile from crossing my face as I heard Sara walking behind me. It meant that she was starting to trust me, and judging by the way her face had grown red as she had stared at me, I was pretty sure she wanted to fuck me too.
If that was the case, she would be learning to trust me in a lot of different ways later.
I grinned.
The ideas of what I could do with her started drifting through my mind. I needed to focus, and all I could do was think about her pinned underneath me. If this escalated, I made a mental note to punish her for being a distraction later.
If she was going to be with me, she was going to have to learn how to stop distracting me with her flushed cheeks and tight jeans. And god, the cleavage.
Yeah, she had a lot of lessons to learn. Fortunately, I was a patient teacher.
My reverie of Sara tied up and splayed across my lap was interrupted by the sound of my phone going off.
Focus, I commanded myself, as I pulled out my phone. The screen lit up with a text message from Jair. Fuck, something must h
ave happened after they left.
Tyler is in the hospital with a concussion. He’s going to recover.
I took a deep, grounding breath. That was good news and bad news. At least now if the cops came for me, it would be for battery charges instead of murder. Still, the idea of Tyler being dead had been nice for a while.
My phone went off again. Another message.
Mark is hurt bad -- stabbed. He’s in the hospital. Not sure if he will make it.
The world blurred into red as the anger poured into my veins. Mark was my second. He was my right-hand man, and some fucking hound from Tyler’s gang had stabbed him.
The streets were going to run with the blood of that gang, I would make absolute certain of it.
“What is it?” Sara asked, her voice small. I looked up, realizing that she must have seen the murder in my eyes.
“One of my boys got stabbed,” I said, feeling my fist clench around my phone. “They don’t know if he’s going to make it.”
Heat spread through my body as the anger built. Mark was practically my brother. He was family to me, always had been.
My phone went off again.
Stay hidden. Cops looking for whoever took down Tyler.
The desire to break something came on strong. If the cops were looking for me, I couldn’t even go visit Mark in the hospital.
Another sound.
One more thing…
The words hung heavily in the air. What else could have happened?
They saw the girl leave with you. Tyler ordered his boys to find her and bring her to him so she can pay for rejecting him.
It took every ounce of power within my body to refrain from shattering the phone against the brick walls on either side of me.
I was going to fucking kill him. Tyler deserved to be dead. I never should have stopped hitting him. I should have hit him until I was absolutely certain that he would never get up again.
You know what? I thought. Let him come for her.
If Tyler wanted Sara, he was going to have to go through me. I would not let her suffer anymore at his hands, and the rumors of what Tyler did to girls who rejected him were so bad I refused to even let me crew talk about them.
Midnight Ryde: A Bad Boy MC Romance Page 3
