Riding Danger (10 page)

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Authors: Candice Owen

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Crime Fiction

BOOK: Riding Danger
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Jason Larson is back in town.

After a decade of prison you would think that Jason would play it safe; he wastes no time reclaiming the keys to his prized Harley Davidson as well as his battered Sergeant-at-Arms Rowdy
Riders MC jacket. A surprise inheritance means he can open his own gym, however, he has an old score to settle.

 

Sharon forgives but doesn’t forget.

After all of these years Sharon Steele still feels something for the biker that had left her in ruin. Gone are the dangerous days of drugs and violence. Sharon has learnt from her past and now earns a living as a successful personal trainer and remedial massage therapist.

 

Will the past repeat itself?

Jason cruises the streets of Melbourne on a courier job for the MC when he sees his old flame, Sharon, running a personal training session in the park. Excited and without thinking, Jason nearly runs Sharon and her clients over. As Jason goes to confess his undying love for Sharon she reveals that she is engaged to a rival MC President .

 

Jason and Sharon together could mean war

How far will Jason go to prove to Sharon that he is a changed man? Will he move on from the past or will his lust get in the way of business and threaten to spark a war between two MC clubs?

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

Ink’s was a no frills gym on Ellis Road amid the short, salt-air-worn rectangular buildings of the less glamorous section of Melbourne, Florida. A motorcycle club haven, Ink’s was one of the few places of neutrality, besides Lou's Blues, for the many clubs that made the beach their home. It was a place where the common value of fitness was more important than any rivalry motorcycle clubs may have had. The second rule for bikers, especially in a beach town, was to have their beach bodies.

 

Sharon Steele was a personal trainer and an achievement coach with a studio at Ink's. She also subscribed to the rule of being as perfectly fit as possible. With firm, full, natural breasts, sculpted arms and legs, and flat abs, she was in her mid-thirties and in perhaps the best shape of her life. At the moment, she was summing up her last session with a client suffering from gross self-esteem issues. Her genius was interrupted by the frantic buzzer of the gym receptionist.

 

Before Sharon could answer the intercom she had an unexpected intruder. She froze, shocked to see now standing before her Jason Larson, a man who had been the love of her life before he was hauled off to prison ten years prior. He stood on her Flotaki rug—a rug that she and he had had sex on many a morn, noon, and night—with wild pushed-back hair and his swagger: dark shades and the leather coat he wore as the sergeant at arms of Rowdy Riders Motorcycle Club. The black boot cut jeans did not disguise his extraordinary quadriceps. His muscles bulged despite the tight restriction of the dark denim.

 

Ten years. It felt like it had been that long since Sharon had had sex, though she was now an engaged woman. But damn if Jason Larson didn’t make her think of sex. Want sex. Need it. She was wet in the instant she saw him. He had been away for such an incredible period of time and yet now her mind was picking up where they left off. She didn’t know what seeing him made her feel more of: bitterness or arousal.

 

"Why did you come here?" she demanded.

 

"I'm out. I've come for what belongs to me."

 

"That wouldn’t be me," Sharon growled.

 

"Temper." Jason peeked above the rims of his sun glasses. "My goodness, you let your hair grow long.”

 

Sharon’s hair touched the beginning curve of her firm, round buttocks. Naturally streaked by the Florida sun, it fell perfectly straight in multicolor silky strands. She loved it. She got lots of compliments on it. It was a slight nuisance because it got in the way, but still she enjoyed it.

 

"What are you doing here? You know the manager will have you out of here when I tell him I want you out," she threatened, weak from the sight of him. She was so secretly enjoying the erotic surge he gave her. He had her all wound up. The phone rang and rattled her. She grabbed the receiver like she was wringing its neck.

 

"Hello!" she said, taking her annoyance out on the unwitting caller with a threatening tone. No response. She plugged her free ear and shouted, "Ink’s Gym!" Jason Larson coolly closed in on her and took the phone from her.

 

"We'll call you back," he said and hung up the phone. He lifted her hand gently to his nose. "Still wearing that honey scented lotion I introduced you to."

 

Jason Larson's eyes practically glittered. His dark, thick rim of lashes lined the greenest eyes Sharon had ever seen. If she looked up into them for much longer, she would cave and admit her utter weakness to him. All the years while he had been in prison and she had been convincing herself she couldn’t stand him just about evaporated now that he was standing right in front of her. "You have to go. The manager—"

 

"Is my employee," Jason finished, cutting her off. "Like I said, I am here to collect what is mine. Obviously you work here," he said.

 

"I have clients here," she replied, stunned at the turn of events. Jason arched an eyebrow at her. "Not those kind of clients. I don’t have any reason to have those. I am straight as an arrow. I am into health, not drugs. I’ve been clean since you left. I’ve gone to school. I am now a personal trainer and an achievement coach. Marty lets me work here."

 

"Okay, I’m impressed. Genuinely," he said in that tone Sharon used to crave so much. She was a person lived by her wits her entire life and Jason Larson was the first person who saw anything of value in her. In many ways, even though she educated herself, had quit the self-destructive lifestyle that she had caught herself up in, and was her own woman, she still was vulnerable to his assurances. "That doesn't have to change. Lots of things will change now that I am out, but your working here isn't one of them."

 

In a fit of craziness, overwhelmed by the completely unexpected change, Sharon picked up a rolled towel from a small pyramid the receptionist had created with them and hurled it at him. "Out! Until I have proof, out! You can't just walk in my job and tell me that you own the place!"

 

It was a ridiculous tirade, and a feeble one at that. No one at Ink's would normally answer to her, but because she was one of the few drug-free employees and was a good looking woman, Marty—the manager—let her stand in for him when he wanted to have some down time. Still, Sharon had little clout and Jason Larson was a mammoth of a man. She wasn't going to make him do anything he didn't want to do. His arms were as big around as her thighs and his reflexes, for all her fitness and all his prison time, were much swifter. He swept her up and shuffled her into the office just off to the side of the receptionist area.

 

Maybe she egged him on. If she wasn't sure before that she secretly wanted him to throw his arms around her, she was awfully sure now. The warmth and hardness of his body was intensely intoxicating. Her head went hazy with the magic of their chemistry. Apparently the same was true for him, for when they had the privacy of the closed office, he took her mouth for his.

 

He tasted her thoroughly, sweeping her mouth with his hot, wet tongue. Sharon heard herself moan. He was hungry. Ten years in prison. Sharon didn't know about things like consortium visits or how that all worked; she only knew she hadn't visited him. Sharon found herself yearning, though she had someone. She was engaged to be married—a decision she made as a way to get on with her life more than anything.

 

Unfortunately, if that someone found out she was in the office at work with his rival's tongue in her mouth, no one would walk away too happy. It didn't matter; these few seconds with Jason were worth it to Sharon. No one turned her on like this man did now. She realized, entwined with him the way she was, that she had been in a prison of her own all these years, starving for what he gave her every time he touched her body.

 

Jason pulled away and whispered to her, "I am back, Shari, baby. I am sorry if that puts a fly in your ointment but if you give me a rough time or hurl things at me, this is what’s going to happen—or more. I tamed you once. I will tame you again." Jason lowered his head for one more taste.

 

"Those days are gone," Sharon said after indulging him for a little longer. "I am not the same woman. I am not your woman. I belong to Lance Sanchez." At the mention of that name, Jason's whole body stiffened and his face threatened to split off his skull. It was rumored, but never confirmed, that Lance Sanchez was the one who framed Jason and cost him ten years of his life. "I'm engaged to be married to him."

 

"Hm," he said. "So you've been in his bed. How was it?" Sharon turned away, not even able to think about being with Lance while in Jason’s arms. He chuckled. “Kind of figured on that.”

 

"It's really none of your business."

 

"I wasn't asking. I was remarking." He regained himself and as quickly as that, grew very dark. "I am now the last man you've kissed. And I aim to keep it that way."

 

She wanted to scoff him but he could make his threat a reality. The second he said that, Sharon knew her happiness—or rather, the calm and orderliness of her life—were in peril and things would no longer be the same now that Jason Larson was out of prison and back to reclaim her.

 

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