Rising Heat (6 page)

Did he do that on purpose? I glanced up into his face but couldn’t tell what he was thinking… but as he slightly turned his head and the lightbulb in the storage room illuminated his face, I saw that his pupils were dilated. Okay, he
was
doing it on purpose. The way his lips tilted upward was proof.

I should’ve protested. I should’ve smacked him, kneed him in the balls, given him a piece of my mind, a good tongue lashing— now there was a thought. I mentally shook myself. Standing there, my body pressed against his, feeling every ripple of muscle, the bulge in his pants, the hard length of his dick along the inside of his thigh, I knew exactly what I was thinking. I should’ve been ashamed of myself. I should’ve been outraged. I should’ve been appalled and shocked at his behavior, but I wasn’t. My hands still grasped his shoulders. Large, firm, muscular ones. I let go of those shoulders as if I’d just been scalded. The movement elicited the same reaction in him and he released his grip on me, backing up a step.

Neither one of us said anything for several moments. Finally, his deep voice broke the silence. “You okay?”

I nodded. Trying to reestablish my composure, I gestured toward the shelf. “You’re taller, you get it.”

We got past the incident, although I doubted it would be something I’d forget anytime soon. I didn’t know the guy, but during those brief seconds in his arms, I’d felt an immediate sense of protection, just as I had at his loft. Not that I needed a guy to protect me, far from it. Maybe it was instinctual, that reaction.

I got the impression that despite his outward appearance and that swagger of his, there was a lot more to Ash Bascom than he presented to the world. I stepped out of his way and watched as he pulled the enclosure from the top shelf. It was about four feet long, a foot or so wide, and a foot deep.

I tried not to stare at the rippling muscle fibers in his forearm as he clutched the enclosure, nor the area on the back of his arm where his triceps muscle made a dent just above his elbow. I tried to ignore the way his broad chest narrowed to a tight, narrow waist and hips. He had an incredible ass, not flat like a lot of guys, but not too big either — it filled his jeans perfectly. I had already gotten a distinct impression of the musculature in his legs.

My heart was pumping, my pulse trip-hammering. I forced my gaze away and tried to focus on the task at hand. So what, I had fallen into his arms? So what, I was obviously sexually attracted to him.
So what?
It didn’t mean I wanted to jump his bones for crying out loud. Okay, maybe I did, but I wasn’t going to.

“Can you hold the door open a little bit more so I can get this out of the room?”

He was speaking to me. I blinked, then nodded and stepped toward the storeroom door, which had half closed. I held it all the way open while he maneuvered his burden out of the room. He tilted the enclosure sideways as if it weighed nothing while he made his way down the short hallway toward the exit door.

“Wait a minute,” I said, squeezing past him. I pushed against the metal bar of the back door and held it open as he exited the pet shop and headed for my car. I quickly closed the heavy door, locked it, and then hurried toward my car, where he waited by the rear wheel well. I reached for the back door and he maneuvered the enclosure into the back seat. Thank goodness I had just cleaned my car out this past weekend or I would have been dealing with another bout of embarrassment.

“I don’t need anything else?”

“You’ll need an appropriate heat supply, as I mentioned earlier, but we don’t have any in stock. You’ll have to use the lamp you have at your house for now.”

“Okay, thanks. You remember how to get back to my loft? Or you can just follow me.”

I nodded, opened my car door and slid inside, latching my seatbelt while he straddled his bike. Less than a second later, my ears were filled with the sound of heavy rumbling. I felt it in the pit of my stomach. He pulled the handkerchief back up over his nose and mouth, transforming him again into one scary dude.

There wasn’t much traffic on the road for a Friday night, but I wasn’t usually out and about after I got off work to be able to gauge whether this was normal or not. I followed his bike as he made his way back toward the old warehouse. I was tired. Confused. I wanted to go home. I didn’t want to deal with these strange senses or feelings.

At a stoplight, I noticed the way people in nearby cars glanced at Ash and his chopper. An old man frowned. A young teenager in another car stared at him with unabashed curiosity. Did I appear like that when I looked at him? I couldn’t blame either one of them. The motorcycle was loud, as if shouting
look at me!
Ash definitely cut a striking figure, even with the skull faced bandanna. It gave the impression of a rebel living on the edge, a dangerous man, an outlaw. But I knew better now. He was also a gentleman. He was afraid of kittens for crying out loud.

The light turned green and he roared off, me following, once again contemplating my life. I tried to convince myself that I liked my dull existence. I’d had enough drama to last me a lifetime. I was busy working two jobs, going to school, trying to keep my head above water all on my own. After tonight, I would never see Ash Bascom again, which suited me just fine. Sure, he was tempting, but definitely not my type. Not someone I wanted to get tangled up with.

By the time we pulled back into his parking space at the warehouse, I was anxious to get rid of the enclosure and Ash. I put the car in park but left it running. I unlatched my seatbelt as he turned off his motorcycle. Blessed silence. He dismounted and headed in my direction.

I’d gotten out and was reaching for the back car door by the time he got there. “I’m not working tomorrow,” I informed him. “We’re closed on Sunday, but I’ll be at work Monday morning. Call the pet store and ask for me. We’ll make arrangements to get this enclosure back as soon as you get something permanent set up.”

He nodded. “Thanks for all the trouble you went to—”

“You didn’t give me much choice, did you?”

He made a face. “I didn’t and I apologize. I took my frustration out on you. You’ve been more than helpful.” He reached inside the car and maneuvered the enclosure out. Holding it in his arms, he looked down at me. His apology had taken me by surprise.

“Well, good luck—”

“Kathy,” he interrupted. “Would you let me buy you a cup of coffee or something tomorrow? Since it’s your day off? I’d like to do something to show my appreciation.”

“That’s not necessary, Mr., uh, Ash,” I stammered. He was asking me out?

“I disagree,” he said. “I behaved badly. I’d like you to give me a chance to make it up to you. What do you say? Tomorrow afternoon, one o’clock? The Starbuck’s catty-corner to the pet store?”

I thought about it. Public place. Coffee, not dinner, not a date. Finally, I nodded. “Okay, sure.” What was the harm in accepting a cup of coffee?

He grinned. My nerves tingled again. Such white teeth, I thought stupidly.

“Okay then, see you tomorrow.”

I nodded, shut the rear door and climbed back into the front seat. I watched him make his way toward his door, juggling the enclosure and fingering his keys to unlock the door at the same time. I pulled my seatbelt on. As I began to back out, he turned and lifted his chin in a gesture of goodbye. I lifted my hand, then pulled the car around and headed out of the parking lot, muttering to myself.

“Kathy Mason, you have completely lost your mind.”

Ash

I
t only took a few minutes for me to wrangle the enclosure up the narrow stairway and then juggle it while I strained to place the door key into the lock. I kicked open the door and headed in. As soon as I got Alice settled for the night, I would hit the sack, maybe watch some movies until I fell asleep. Maybe then I wouldn’t be so distracted. Kathy Mason kept appearing in my thoughts. I had definitely felt a physical attraction to her, but I hadn’t at all expected the emotional connection I experienced. Odd really, because I’d never responded to a woman that way. Usually, it was instant like or dislike. Instant physical attraction or not. With Kathy, it was different, although I couldn’t explain it or put it into words if I tried.

It wasn’t that she was drop dead gorgeous. She
was
pretty and had a pleasant face, structurally and well proportioned. Gorgeous baby blue eyes. But it was more than that. I sensed that beneath the surface there was a lot more to Kathy than one might expect. For some reason, I thought that my sisters, both of them, would have really liked her. She was firm but polite. Knowledgeable but not stuck up about it. She had gone out of her way to help me but had put me in my place a time or two. Even then, she wasn’t obnoxious or condescending when she did it.

I’m not sure which one of us was more surprised when I asked her to have a cup of coffee with me tomorrow. I was even more surprised by her response. I had seen her hesitance about accepting my offer. I think the only thing that made her feel a little better about it was that I suggested such a public place. Not so much of a date really, just a… just a what? What the hell had gotten into me? I had no business asking a girl like Kathy out. She was my complete opposite.

I got the impression that Kathy was all sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns. Me? I had been walking with one foot in hell for years. I imagined that her apartment was Martha Stewart bright while my converted loft was huge, dark, and, let’s face it, ugly.

At the moment, I had no job and no career aspirations, but that didn’t matter. I was loaded, so I didn’t have to worry about paying the bills, but—

“Where the hell have you been?”

I don’t startle easy, but the voice coming out of the shadows caused me to stiffen. My fingers tightened around the enclosure as I froze. “Shit. Bones, don’t do that.”

Bones was my best friend. At the moment, he sat casually on one end of the sofa, one leg crossed over the other, his booted foot jiggling with impatience. One arm was draped over the back of the couch while he held a bottle of beer in the other. Bones had a habit of appearing when you least expected him.

If you happened to see Bones walking down the street, his appearance wouldn’t ring any alarms. Well, aside from his recently shaved head. He didn’t wear rings in his lips, his eyebrows, or his ears. No visible tattoos. He only had one in the middle of his back between his shoulder blades. A seven-inch tall, four-inch wide intricate Celtic cross. While Bones had been raised Catholic, he wasn’t a practicing one, at least as far as I knew. After all, when you were part of a biker gang, you didn’t expect to get to church every Sunday.

I’d been friends with Bones for several years after meeting him in the gang. He too was trying to make some better choices in life. A former med school dropout — hence his nickname — he’d joined the gang just before I arrived in Denver. In the beginning, we mostly just rode around, visited bars, and raised some hell. Nothing too serious.

At first, I liked the feeling I got when we rode into town, the wary and often fearful stares of townspeople as we rumbled our way down their roads. It wasn’t like the Outlaw Biker Boys were in the same league as some of the bigger motorcycle gangs, but people were scared. And the Outlaws loved it. It went a long way to ramping their rep.

The Outlaws had grown since I first joined, now up to about thirty regular members plus their old ladies. Not even close to other gangs — the Hells Angels or the Mongols, or even the Banditos — that had a couple thousand members and were well known around the world. But their members weren’t in it for the fun. Beneath the leather, they were criminal organizations, who were also major transporters and distributors of drugs.

In comparison, the Outlaws were still in diapers. But an up and coming leader of the pack wanted to be taken more seriously. Spider wanted to cause a stir. I’d even heard that he was trying to make connections with the Juárez cartel still operating in El Paso, on both sides of the border. I was absolutely not up for that. In fact, it wasn’t long after the shootout in Waco last summer that I decided I didn’t like the direction the gang was going. Dealing with a cartel? No the fuck way.

Thinking back, I don’t even have a good reason why I joined the OB Boys. At the time, I was angry and disgruntled, feeling particularly anti-establishment and rebellious. To be really honest, I was just pissed off. Pissed off at my family, at the unfairness of life. I was so sick and tired of being judged. If my family thought I was so horrible, maybe I
would
be horrible.

Bottom line, I think I joined the gang because they didn’t give a damn about my history. Bones knew, but that was about it. They didn’t know about my money or family, and I wanted it kept that way.

“Where you been, bro?” Bones asked.

“Had to get a new enclosure for Alice,” I said, nodding down to the glass case in my hands.

“What happened to the other one?”

“She busted out.”

“Shit!” Doc exclaimed. More curses were followed by the thump of boots on my coffee table.

“Get your feet off,” I muttered, placing the new enclosure down on the floor. Like Kathy, Bones wasn’t exactly fond of snakes, but not bat shit afraid of them. Just cautious. I moved to the floor lamp near the couch and turned it on just as Bones warily placed his feet back on the floor. Only then did he glanced to his left and see that my snake was in a tank.

“Doesn’t look broken to me.”

“That’s because I made a lady from the pet store bring me a new one. Then while she was here—”

Bones chortled. “You made her come out here with a new tank?”

I nodded. “Why the hell not? I couldn’t very well just leave Alice roaming around, could I? She needs her heat lamp. Besides, I didn’t want her wrapping herself around my throat while I slept.”

“You’re so full of shit.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked as I pushed the temporary enclosure closer to the wall where I’d kept Alice’s older tank. As I re-situated things, I was distracted by the memory of Kathy Mason in my arms, not once, but twice. My balls tightened as I remembered how she’d looked up at me, those blue eyes flicking down to my lips. Shit. I adjusted my pants. I hadn’t been this affected by a woman in a long time.