“Look, we really don’t have time for this. I’ve tried to hold off my men as long as possible, but they are going to take things into their own hands. Your latest article… incited them.” He grimaced.
I heard the roar of engines outside and the low rumble of idling vehicles. They didn’t turn off, but a group of burly, dirty-looking men burst through the door. They were dressed mostly in leather and ripped denim.
“Shit,” he muttered, glancing over his shoulder. “Too late. You need to do exactly as I say, and you might live.”
He stood up, motioning for me to stay seated. A thrill ran through me. This was just the situation I needed to be on sight for. I quickly memorized the scene: the people there, the innocent college students obliviously chatting in a large booth, the tired-looking employees behind the counter, the four gang members at the door, Michael Lawrence, and myself tucked against one of the windows. I reached for my purse and wrapped my fingers around my gun. If he thought I was going to sit here and play damsel in distress, he had another thing coming to him.
“Boys. I see you also were craving some of the cheap, craving-satisfying goodness that is Taco Bell. I will confess, you have found out my guilty pleasure. Don’t tell the rest of the crew; they probably would never look at me the same way.”
“Who you sittin’ with boss?” one of the men asked.
“Oh, her? She was just here and I thought I’d be friendly and introduce myself. One shouldn’t let beautiful women eat alone, especially not in a forlorn place like this.” He gestured to his surroundings.
Was this guy for real? Who talked like that? These thugs actually were afraid of this fop?
“No, you ain’t. This is her, the Pruitt bitch.”
“Ray, it is rude to curse like that in front of ladies—and in public.”
“I’ll talk however the fuck I feel like.”
“And I feel like you need to settle down a bit.”
“Gentlemen, either take this off our premises or I’m calling the cops,” someone from behind the counter said.
Michael stared down the group of men. “Yes. Let’s take this outside.” Even though obviously at odds, the men listened to Michael and even held the door open for him. He didn’t make eye contact with me, but subtly motioned for me to leave through the other door as he walked away. I snuck out the side door and around to my car, ducking behind it to overhear the conversation. I was not going to let an opportunity like this go to waste.
“What do you plan to do? You can’t just let her keep writin’ this stuff about us!”
“Of course not, I’m going to get her to stop, but that doesn’t mean ending her life.”
“She deserves to have it ended, though.”
“No, no she doesn’t. She hadn’t done anything to anyone. Except maybe damage your pride a little bit, and perhaps that deserved to be knocked down a little. You know how I feel about the killings.”
“Killin’ is how you get stuff done though, boss, and you know that. There ain’t any better way of gettin’ your message across or making sure there are no unpleasant surprises at the end of the day.”
“You do realize we are in a public place and everyone can hear every word you are saying,” Michael said in a low voice. He glanced toward my car and I ducked back down. He couldn’t know this was my car. That would be impossible. Right? He had never seen my car before; I was just being paranoid. Although one look around the almost empty parking lot wouldn’t make it hard to deduce which car was mine.
“You ain’t tryin’ to protect her, are ya?”
Michael scoffed. “Why would I want to protect her? What has she done to benefit us? Nothing. I just don’t think you need to kill her.”
“Are ya getting’ soft on us, boss?”
“She’s still here somewhere.” One of them motioned to the window where I had been sitting. I cursed and tried to slip into my car without being noticed, but it was too late. They had seen me. “Get her!”
I dove into the car, seeing the flash of metal as a gun was pulled out from a jacket. The driver’s door was yanked from my grasp and I was pulled out on to the asphalt, hitting my head. The next few events passed in a dizzy haze, but a gunshot was fired, one of the thugs hit the ground next to me, and I was picked up.
When I next realized what was going on, I was on the back of a motorcycle. “What? Who? Where?” I muttered, clinging to whoever was sitting in front of me. I recognized his smell and could feel the ripple of muscle beneath leather and flannel. “Lawrence?” I muttered.
He didn’t respond and I realized he probably couldn’t hear me over the roar of the engine. I had no idea where he was taking me, but it wasn’t like I could escape now. I would just have to wait until we stopped.
The ride was a confusing mix of emotions. First and foremost, I was terrified. Not just a little apprehension about the situation, but complete utter terror. I was on the back of a motorcycle with a strange man who I had never met until now and who was I had been researching and trying to imprison for three years.
The more I thought about this situation, the worse it seemed. But if I drifted away from those thoughts, I found myself focused on my arms around his waist and my hands clasped over his abs, feeling them expand with his breaths.
The vibrating hum of the bike was soothing and I could almost see why people rode these things. My hair whipped behind, strands pulling loose from the braid. I reached up with one hand and pulled the hair tie out and wrapped it around my wrist. I then pressed my face into his back, letting the wind, the feel of the bike, the feel of him, take me away.
Then I remembered who it was and fear overtook me again—but almost a pleasant fear, the fear of the unknown and the exciting.
We arrived at an apartment building on the other side of town. It wasn’t anything particularly exciting or fancy. Just a normal building with normal apartments. A normal parking garage, a normal keypad entry, a normal everything, actually. I followed the elusive biker into his building and up to his apartment without question or comment, hoping everything would make sense in the near future.
He unlocked the door to apartment 30C and held the door open for me to enter first. I took a few hesitant steps in, pulling my wind-whipped bird’s nest of hair into a ponytail. He turned on the light to reveal a nice, but sparsely-furnished apartment. I was standing in a combined living/dining room.
I could see a kitchen in one corner and, through a door to my right, I assumed I would find a bedroom and bathroom. He hurried into the kitchen. “Make yourself comfortable. Can I get you anything to drink? Tea, water, beer, lemonade?”
“No, thanks,” I murmured. This whole situation felt completely surreal. Who actually gets whisked away by a wildly attractive man she hates on his motorcycle and taken to his apartment where he offers you a drink? No threatening, no raping, no murdering, no mugging. Did this man understand how things were supposed to work in this situation? I decided there was only one way to find out for sure. I came around the couch and into the kitchen. “What do you want with me?”
“I told you already. I want to keep you safe. I want to make sure the thugs who work for me don’t kill you.”
“If you are so considered with my safety, why do those thugs even work for you?” I demanded.
He sighed. “Because I don’t really have a choice. Would you rather have a large group of organized criminals, or a large group of unorganized, self-serving criminals? I have managed to convince them that they are best served staying in the group than going outside it so I can keep this crime to a minimum.”
“A minimum?” I scoffed. “Even one death is too many.”
“And I agree.”
“Even one crime is too many. No one should feel like they are in danger of anything in this city. Why can’t you set your men to doing things actually beneficial for the rest of the community instead of pillaging like highwaymen of time gone by?”
“Because they need to feed their families and honest work doesn’t make
them any money. These are men who couldn’t afford to get a college degree and do not have the history or knowledge to get a job that will support them, let alone their wives and children. At least this way, they can afford to care for themselves.”
“And I’m sure you take the biggest slice of the pie.”
He raised one eyebrow at me and gestured around his apartment. “And what, exactly, am I doing with all my criminally-gained wealth?”
I glared at him, not sure what else to do when I knew I had been beaten. He gave me a glass of ice water and sat down in the armchair. I took a seat on the couch and sipped at the water, continuing to glare at him over the edge of the glass. He rolled his eyes. “You do not need to be so afraid of me. I don’t think I’ve done anything to harm you, and in fact I shot a man in your defense, which, to be clear, is not something I’m in the habit of doing.”
“Why should I trust you? I’ve done all this research on you and I know what and who you are. I have no reason to trust you at all.” Before he could answer, my phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hello, I’m with emergency services. Miss Pruitt?”
“Yes?”
“You live at 517 Harrocourt Lane?”
“Yes, why? Who is this?”
“Are you safe right now?”
“Yes, why? What is going on?”
“A neighbor reported smoke and flames at your house and we wanted to make sure you are okay.”
“What? What is going on?”
“I don’t know much more besides that. I know the firefighters were able to put out the flames before the whole house was destroyed, but a lot of it was. I’m sorry for your loss. Is there anyone else living in the house?”
“No, just me. I live alone.”
“Very good then. Do you need transportation to your house?”
“No, I’m good. Thank you.” I hung up the phone and stared at Michael Lawrence.
“Your house?”
I nodded once, shoulders drooping. Two huge realizations crashing down on me: I had gotten myself in way over my head, and Lawrence had saved my life.
The next week passed in a blurry haze of talking to insurance people, trying to salvage things from my house, and buying what essentials I needed. Fortunately my bedroom had escaped the fire mostly unscathed, so I was able to get my laptop and some clothes that didn’t smell entirely of smoke. The charred remains of my life—my happy years, my childhood, Dad—lay scattered through the yard and house. I found the flag I received at my father’s funeral, mostly burned through.
I clutched it to my chest and looked up at Michael Lawrence, who had been around for this whole process, shirking his responsibilities as the king of a motorcycle gang. In the space of two days I came to depend on him—somehow. I told myself it was because he was indirectly responsible for this whole mess and therefore he needed to shoulder the backlash. Or that he was there when I heard the news, so he was in some way tied to this whole mess. But in my quiet, rational moments, I knew it was because I didn’t want him to leave me.
To make matters even worse, I had been staying at his apartment. He didn’t really give me the option of where to stay, and I didn’t question the situation. He was completely honorable and respectable. He made up the couch to be slept on, but let me use his bed. As soon as I shut the bedroom door he didn’t open it until I did so myself in the morning.
If my father could see me now.
I felt nothing but shame for the situation until I looked into his eyes and I couldn’t think of anything that could be more right. Sometimes I felt like I was this desperate high school student all over again, hung up on some guy without him even noticing me. Then I could catch him looking at me, hurriedly turning away when I saw him.
I even had the completely unholy thought one night that I was happy my house burned down so that I could spend time with him. Somehow my world spun on a dime and instead of being obsessed with the villainous Michael Lawrence, I was obsessed with the romantic, heroic Michael Lawrence. He was… charming, to put it mildly.
He somehow knew what I needed during this time. He gave me all the space and closeness and support I could need as I tried to readjust my thinking and figure out where to live, how to live, what my life meant anymore.
I realized that everything I thought I knew about my life and how it would play out was completely wrong. I was so far from right that I was falling for the guy I believed, up until then, had killed my father.
The more I got to know Michael, the more I realized he couldn’t hurt a fly. Hell, I had seen him capture a fly in the house with a plastic cup and release it outside. He had a tank of fish he cared for like a mother with her newborn. He complained that his apartment wouldn’t let him have anything except house plants and fish because he really wanted to rescue a puppy. And his greatest desire in life was to have a little girl he could dote on. This whole “tough guy biker boss” was just a front. I asked him about this persona once as we drank wine from the bottle and watched crappy sitcoms from our teenage years.
“Because of an accident more than anything. When I was seventeen I started working on my bike. I had somehow managed to convince my mother I could have a bike if I bought one cheap and fixed it up.
"It is the same bike I still have. I invested basically everything I saved into that hunk of metal. It was beautiful—still is beautiful—and when I rode it, other people took notice. Specifically the CCA.
"Soon I was approached by them. They were an unruly mess of men who didn’t seem to have any motive or idea of what they were doing with their lives or why they even existed. They were basically Vikings, or maybe pirates, and it disgusted me.
"I tried to reform them, shape them up a little, but because I was the newbie that didn’t go over so well. But being nineteen, I had a massive temper and I lost it one day and knocked their leader out with one punch. Since then, I’ve been the boss.” He sighed. “But because of that incident they think I’m some brute and if I don’t keep up that persona they will go on a rampage again.”
I wasn’t really surprised by this. After all, I had been living with him for the better part of two weeks now and not only was he supremely gentle, respectable, and honorable, but he was also one of the most bookish guys I had ever met.
He was working on his second bachelor’s degree online just because he could. I hadn’t seen anyone go through as many books in two weeks as this guy did. I didn’t even know it was possible to read that fast. No wonder he talked with the elegance and eloquence of a 19th century orator. Guy practically spoke like Shakespeare wrote sometimes. How could I have been so wrong about him? And how could this feel so right so immediately? Whatever “this” was.
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “So… What happened to my father?” I asked as calmly and carefully as I could.
He stared at his hands. “What I hope doesn’t happen to you.”
“What do you mean?”
He continued to stare at his hands, the floor, his feet, my feet, basically anywhere that wasn’t my eyes. “You probably know that he was investigating my gang, much like you are. Well, the men decided to take matters into their own hands to get him off their back. I told them to leave the man alone, he had a daughter and was a good man, but they didn’t listen to me at all.” His voice was low and anguished. I want to reach out and comfort him, but I didn’t know how, or if I should. “I don’t want that to happen to anyone, especially not you.”
A red flush crept my face and I stammered an excuse to head to bed and rushed out of the room as awkwardly as humanly possible.
I stumbled out of bed, buttoning up the oversized flannel shirt I was sleeping in a few nights later. I slipped out of the room in search of a glass of water, wearing nothing except panties and the flannel shirt.
The floor lamp in the living room was still on. That wasn’t unusual—Michael fell asleep all the time still reading. The guy even wore glasses when he was reading; how far from the stereotype was
he? I went over to the turn off the lamp and realized he was still awake. Immediately I pulled the flannel closed around my neck, hurriedly buttoning it up completely. We shared an awkward moment of avoiding each other’s gazes.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I was just sitting here thinking and got lost in thought. You need something?”
“I was, uh, just looking for some water. Got, uh, thirsty.”
“Sure let me get that for you.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said moving before he could get up. “You want anything?”
Masters of Menace: A Biker Erotic Romance Page 2
