Tastes Like Candy (Lean Dogs Legacy Book 2) (8 page)

              “Like what?”

              “Like…” He gestured helplessly. “Well, whatever, have a nice ride back.” And he retreated to the table.

              “Candy?” Trina asked, coming up behind him. “What’s going on? Aren’t we going back to my place?”

              He didn’t spare her a glance, but Michelle sure did, eyes narrowing, expression disgusted.

              “No, we’re not, sorry.”

              Instead, he was prepared to fling this mouthy little brat over his shoulder if he had to.

              And he had absolutely no idea why.

~*~

Michelle

Michelle realized three things about herself in the span of their argument.

              One: a part of her would always be her daddy’s good little soldier girl, who took orders from figures of MC authority. That was why she went back to the table, picked up her satchel, and drained half her beer in a few long gulps before following Candy to the door without a parting word for any of the other boys.

              Two: she hated herself for taking those orders. Absolutely loathed the human she was in that moment, following Candyman’s wide shoulders through the crowd. She wanted to scream, wanted to burst into tears, wanted to kick him in the back of the knee and then step on his back when he fell. She wanted to go home to London; wanted to be brave enough to sever ties with the club as Raven had suggested. Wanted to wake up and find that this was all a bad dream.

              And three: she had never wanted anyone to kiss her so badly in her life. He looked terrifying and huge when he was glowering at her, and to her horror, she realized she’d wanted him to grab her face, drag her up on her toes, and absolutely assault her mouth.

             
God help me
, she thought. And for added luck:
There’s no place like home.

              But there was no intervention, whether divine or good-witchy, and she followed Candy out into the dark parking lot.

Six

Michelle

The last thing she needed, given her kissing realization, was to be pressed up against the man on the back of his bike. But she didn’t feel like testing him. Any faint illusions she’d held about him respecting women or being a secret gentleman were shredded at this point. She didn’t trust him not to tie her to his bike. So she fetched her helmet from the seat of Fox’s Harley, snapped it on, and obediently settled onto the bump seat behind her tormentor.

              Not a good idea.

              There was an immediate stirring just beneath her skin, an electric crackle of awareness. It was one thing to see him, another to be right up against him, feel the heat radiating through his clothes and cut, have the security lamps blotted out by his shoulders, smell the smoke and salt of his skin.

              She didn’t want to put her arms around him. She wanted to keep her distance. She was furious with him, offended, upset, homesick, and the last thing she needed was to fall into the old trap of seeking comfort from the one who’d caused her strife.

              But he twisted around and said, “We can’t go until you hold on.” It was an order.

              So fine. She’d have to do it.

              It was like hugging a tree trunk, the shocking hardness and solidity of him. She felt the contours of pecs and abs through his shirt, warm against her palms.

              The bike started with a sharp growl, and they were off.

~*~

The bike had always held a special magic for her. All bikes. The overpowering spell of motorcycles. Her mother had ridden behind her father when she was in the womb, and she’d been born with a sensitivity for the vibrations of the machines, the friction of tires on pavement. And so, though she was angry with the man she clung to, she felt the red wash of emotion ebb to low tide, overtaken by the familiar peace of the road.

              The wind brushed cool fingers against her cheeks; the sky fell in plum and midnight waves overhead, netted with stars, brushed with soft wisps of cloud, gray against the dark of night. She pressed her face to Candy’s shoulder and breathed the smell of the desert, so different from the moss and damp and city-stink of home. Loneliness swelled in her chest, pricked her eyes with tears.

              She wanted home so badly. Wanted a pint with Tommy. Wanted to sit and watch Albie make his beautiful furniture. Wanted to people-watch with Raven at their favorite café while Cassandra played with her phone. Wanted to catch up with Miles on one of his infrequent visits. She wanted to carry flowers to her mother’s grave, and have dinner with her dad.

              She thought of Paul, yet again. Why was the homesickness bringing him to mind again and again? In absence of love, she was craving something like passion.

              The bike dipped and then stopped. Candy killed the engine, and she realized, with alarm, that they were nowhere near the clubhouse.

              They were parked on the shoulder, at the edge of an open field of scrub grasses and sand; she watched the stalks bow in the moonlight, saw the sand glimmer faintly.

              She tensed. “Where are we?”

              “Somewhere alone.” He had his composure back, his tone soft, calm.

              All the fight had gone out of her voice, too. It was just a whisper when she said, “And why would we want to be alone?”

              When he turned to her, she slid off the bike, so she was on her feet and facing him.

              He stayed straddling the bike, and folded his arms, looking settled, unbothered. “I figure you want to scream at me. And you can. But I’d rather not do it back home in front of everybody.” He grinned; she saw the gleam of his teeth. “No sense having you embarrass the shit out of me.”

              Michelle studied him – what she could see of him – for a long beat, full of doubt. “You’re not serious.”

              “As a heart attack, baby doll. Let ‘er rip. I earned it.”

              “I don’t scream, as a general rule.”

              “Well that’s good to know.”

              “And there’s that word again.”

              “Which one?”

              “’Baby.’”

              “Ah.” He breathed a sound like a laugh. “You don’t want to be anybody’s baby?”

              Rattled from the honky-tonk, and then soothed by the ride, in her current strange mood, she could be nothing less than honest. “I want that very badly, in fact. Sometimes it’s the thing I want most.”

              He stiffened, drawing upright on the seat of the bike.

              “But we both know that’s not what you mean by ‘baby.’”

              “Maybe it is.”

              “But it isn’t.”

              “You’re wasting valuable screaming time, sweetheart.”

              She sighed. “I told you. I’m not going to scream.”

              “Hmph.”

              “Mainly because I don’t do that. And partly because I think you want me to. To absolve you, maybe, because you know you were a brute back there. Or maybe because you want, for some reason, to think that I’m just an emotional, silly little girl, and you can write me off.”

              “Why would I want to do that?”

              “You tell me. It’s something I’ve been wondering for years now. Why it isn’t okay to be a woman who isn’t silly, flighty, or all that feminine.” She shook her head, regretting what she’d just said. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

              He was silent, and it needled at her.

              “Why did you insist on dragging me away?” she asked, some of the anger returning. “Am I not allowed to leave the compound? Can I not have a drink? What is it? What are your rules, Candyman, and I’ll be sure to follow them.”

              More silence.

              “Well, say something.”

              He cleared his throat. “You’re very young.” When she started to retort, he pressed on. “You are. I’m your elder, I can say that, and I don’t mean it as an insult. It is what it is. You’re young, and something bad happened back home, and you’re all shook up about it. I watched my sister go through something bad.” His voice lowered, heavy with memory. “And she wasn’t much like herself anymore.

              “You’re a little legend, Miss Michelle,” he continued. “What your daddy had you do hasn’t been done by anyone else in this club. You’re impressive as hell, whether I call you ‘baby doll’ or not. And I don’t want to see you lose your head and fuck around with idiots you’ll regret just because you’re sad, and everything’s upside down. I’ve got a lot of regrets in my life. No sense sitting back and watching somebody young start racking them up, when I could have said something.”

              She blinked and…was stunned. Completely. “Did you make all of that up just now?”

              “No comment.”

              She sighed again, and massaged her aching forehead. “God. Everything is terrible,” she muttered. She had no idea what to make of the man in front of her now, but she knew she had no friends here, save Uncle Charlie, who didn’t count for much.

              “You’re worse than my father,” she admitted. “Much worse. He would never have done that to me.”

              “Well…you’re always more careful with other people’s property than you are with your own.”

              “Oh, Jesus…” She put her back to him and walked away into the darkness. How lovely it would be to keep walking. Walk through rock formations and prickly scrub plants, walk until she hit the sunrise.

              She got about ten strides before an arm banded like iron around her waist and she was hoisted up in the air.

              “Ahh!”

              “I wanted to do this earlier,” Candy said in her ear. “Thanks for the second chance.”

              “Put me down!”

              “There’s the scream.”

              “This is
not
a scream, this is a
forceful demand
. What the
bloody hell
is wrong with you?”

              “Lots of things,” he said, and carried her back to the bike. He set her back on her feet, but his large hands were locked on her arms. Michelle knew without trying that she wouldn’t be able to break away from him.

              “Let go,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster.

              “Not unless your promise not to go running off into the desert.”

              “Fine.”

              His hands lifted, hovering near her shoulders.

              The absurdity of the situation struck her all at once, and she turned so she faced him, his features veiled by the dark, nothing but a glimmer of eyes and a faint outline of his nose. “This isn’t chivalry.”

              “What?”

              “You dragging me out of that place. Making a scene. Treating me like baggage you can throw over your shoulder.” She grew more upset the longer she talked. “That doesn’t have anything to do with protecting me.”

              He didn’t reply; she felt the weight of his gaze and shivered beneath it.

              “I know why I’m angry. But why are you?”

              “I…don’t know, actually.” He rolled his shoulders. “I just am.”

              “Well…I suppose I have to give you credit for admitting it.”

              He made an amused sound in his throat. “I guess I just don’t know what to do with you. I don’t understand why you didn’t want to go away to school, or get a life outside the club. Or why you didn’t settle down and marry one of your dad’s boys.”

              The same old clichés again. She hated them…but she did understand them. For all their claims to outlawry, these biker boys lived by strict codes and worked within a terribly rigid social structure. Some of them resented her; but others – Candy, obviously – were simply flummoxed.

              “Are those my only options?” she asked. “A schoolgirl, a typist, or a wife?”

              “There are powerful women in this club,” he consented. “But they’re all old ladies. Nobody’s ever done it the way you’re trying to. All by your little self. I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish.”

              She thought she’d gotten past his presidential veneer; she was inside his head now, and the view was giving her a whole new perspective of the man. “Does life have to be about accomplishment?”

              “Yes. Yes it does. Everyone’s trying to accomplish something, sweetheart. I’m trying to keep all our asses outta jail.”

              “And your personal accomplishments?”

              “Don’t have any. Don’t need any. This is my club; I belong to it. I owe it everything I’ve got. I’m not a pretty girl with a bright future who could get the hell out.”

              “Out?” Her throat constricted painfully. “My mother was an outsider. She walked the line between Dad’s world and her own. And she got killed. On the outside. The club didn’t hurt her; the world did.”

              She could still remember the phone call, the way Phillip had fallen down into a chair, breathless and weak, the phone pressed to his ear. She remembered – five and playing on the rug with Tommy – the indescribable expression on her father’s face. She’d never seen grief before; had no point of reference for the cartwheeling shock and devastation in his eyes.

              Her hands were numb, not with cold, but with memory, and she rubbed them together.

              Candy’s voice was soft. “You can’t walk away from the life, can you?”

              “No.” She was afraid she’d cry, and bit her lip. “And all anyone ever tells me is that I don’t belong. So where does that leave me?”

              “Then get married,” he urged.

              “Marry who? Someone like your boy Gringo?” She breathed a harsh laugh. “Do you think Phillip Calloway raised me to lose my head over some idiot like that? Every pretty boy who winks at me? Your worry was wasted tonight. You couldn’t pay me to touch that man.”

              “Okay…”

              “Maybe there are women who want to be property. Maybe it’s easier not to have to think for yourself. But I’m not one of them. If I belong to him, then he has to belong to me. I’ll accept nothing less.”

              “Damn. I take back what I said about you being a baby.”

              She released a deep breath, tired now, eyes aching with unshed tears, wanting some sort of physical comfort more than ever. “Thank you.”

              The wind pulsed quietly around them, a clean, crisp, desert wind that held no secrets, gentle against her face.

              “Your Barbie’s probably still back at the Armadillo wondering where you went,” Michelle said, and hated the words immediately. Why had she said that? Why push him toward another woman?

             
Because you can’t handle him, or this situation
, a small voice in the back of her head whispered.