Unplugged: A Bad Boy Rockstar Romance (22 page)

Maggie waited and saw the biker pass by
in the dark and park out of view. She gave herself a quick check in the visor
mirror. She was not terribly pleased with the tired, vaguely dusty reflection
that stared back at her but a bit of lipstick she foun
d
in the console seemed to brighten her up enough. By the time she opened her
door and hopped out of the SUV, a huge dark figure was already leaning against
the end of her car, waiting.

She jumped a little.
“Oh, hi,”
she said as soon as she saw the MC cut.
Backlit from the bright pink glow of the sign, she
couldn’t make him out.
“I
’
m
Maggie. I guess you
’
re
my bodyguard.”

“
Yeah, no shit.
”
It was a familiar voice from the dark.
The man put a cigarette to his lips and lit it, his familiar silhouette framed
beh
ind the flame of the lighter.

Maggie
’
s heart stopped. She felt a jolt run up
her spine and down her legs, so strong she thought she might take a tumble
right there in the lot of Hot Tamales. Her left hand instinctively shot out and
grasped the SUV.  There was no recovering composure after tha
t.

“Jumpy?”
said Jase. There was nothing playful in
his voice, though. It was all brutish and bitter.

“
Well, I
am
on the run, so that typically comes
with the territory, yeah,
”
said Maggie, drudging up a bit of acid from her tired soul.

“
I wouldn’t
know.
I’ve never run from anything.
”

Before, at the clubhouse, Maggie had
felt scared. Her empathy for Jase overflowed in that moment their eyes met in
the den. Ridden with guilt for having to come back and interrupt his life again
after what she did, she
couldn’t find room to be
angry with him for being so cold in front of the other Black Dogs. But the
mental pressure of the past few hours had worn her down. Drowning in emotions
she neither understood nor controlled, she felt like little more than a tired,
cornered animal.

Jase had every right to be hurt by her
presence, and she would never argue that. But right there, at that moment, in
the dark of night outside Hot Tamales, she wasn’t going to take anything she
didn’t deserve. She had never asked him to
follow
her. She hadn’t begged Henry for Jase as her detail. And she wasn’t about to
take the shit for its consequences.

“
Paragon of virtue, Mister Jase Campbell,
everyone,
”
said Maggie to the imaginary audience
around them. She even mustered up a sarcasti
c little
curtsey to top it off with.

Jase blew out his cigarette smoke in a
mean scoff.
“You
’
re still a fucking piece of work, I see.
You come crawling back here asking for help and you
’
re gonna give me this attitude?
”

“
I came back to ask for
Henry
’
s
help
,”
said Maggie, her voice an angry hiss.
“It
’
s not my fault he put you on bitch duty.
”

“
You can say that again,
”
said Jase.

Maggie rolled her eyes. Already she felt
that tiny hope for a restful evening spinning out of control.
“
Look, I just came here to g
et a fucking drink. So why don’t you and your brooding just
stay the hell out of my way and let me get one in peace. I
’
m sure you can do your job from across
the room.
”

“
What would you know about my
‘job
’
?”
said Jase. He threw the cigarette butt to the ground near
her feet and used it as an excuse to come a few steps closer as he snuffed it
out with his boot. Now he was a mere foot away from her, and she had to crane
her neck to look up at him. He smelled lik
e musk and
gasoline.
“
What would you know about a fucking
thing around here, Maggie?
”

Maggie
’
s heart pounded, and it wasn’t just from
her anger. It was the sudden shock of having Jase so close to her, of smelling
his distinctive musk once again. It flooded
her
emotions in slow, fat waves, until she felt nearly consumed by a distant
longing. Her feet wouldn’t move, rooted in place. She tried to draw strength
from that knowledge, because she neither wanted to move away from him, nor did
she want to move close
r. She wanted both. She wanted
neither.

She must have been lost in her thoughts
for longer than a moment, because through the muffled sound of blood crashing
in her ears, she heard him ask if she was ignoring him.

“No,”
she responded, coming back to herse
lf. She centered the moment by holding on to her anger.
“
Just stay the hell away from me, Jase.
”

Before he could respond, Maggie stormed
around his big frame and headed for the roadhouse. The silence in the gravel
behind her betrayed that Jase didn’t follo
w right
away. Maggie was glad for it.

By the time she got the bartender to
serve her, Maggie
’
s anger had died a bit. The roadhouse jumped with line
dancers, dart-throwers, mechanical bull-riders, and a crowd of frat boys
celebrating something or other wit
h endless pitchers
of cheap draft beer. They co-mingled with bikers from at least three MCs that
Maggie could recognize, including a few Black Dogs from a chapter north of
Howlett. The room was a smoky, noisy mess, and perfect for the restless part of
Magg
ie
’
s soul that needed care now more than
ever. She loved the way she could melt anonymously into a place like this. She
downed her first shot of whiskey and pint of beer in a rush, and then ordered
another pair immediately.

Maggie tried her damnedest
to g
et lost
in the moment and mood of the bar, but as hard as she tried, she couldn’t sink
into it. She hoped Jase had decided to stay outside to attend to his guard
duties, even though she could feel his eyes on her back as she sat at the bar.
This was such a
fucked-up development. She laughed
coldly to herself when she wondered how Henry would feel after her bodyguard
killed her before her hunters got the chance.

Jase would never hurt me
. The thought came out of nowhere from
the quiet part of her mind, but it
made Maggie roll
her eyes at her own naivety and order another shot. Drake wasn’t the only one
who had never seen Jase as angry as he had been that moment at the den. Maggie
would never admit to anyone how truly scared she had been when he stepped up to
h
er.

Still, his anger felt so unfair. Was she
the first woman to break a man
’
s heart? Or the first restless teenage girl, torn between
two different longings? Didn’t he know that she had broken her own heart, too?
She was barely 19 when she left, practical
ly still a
kid. Jase wasn’t much older. Kids make mistakes.
God knows I’ve made more than my fair
share.

He wasn’t there to see the long and
torturous nights those first few months in Eagleton. He didn’t hear the
neighbors knocking on her apartment door to check on her because her
heartbroken sobbing was loud enough to penetrate the walls. He never had to fee
l the deep loneliness of being in a new place, without so
much as a friend to call on the phone for
familiar comfort.

Maggie felt all that pain rushing back,
but it was mixed with a strange sensation, a pull to turn and see the man she
had been missing fo
r so many years, who was finally
in the same room with her again. She missed Jase. She had always missed Jase.

This can’t
keep up
, she realized. Jase as her bodyguard
was only going to end in pure agony. She had to find a way to get rid of him.
His loyalty
to the MC was obviously strong enough to
override his hatred of Maggie, but if his anger reached a tipping point, maybe
he would demand a different duty from Henry himself.

Maggie looked down both sides of the
huge oak bar. The few faces she could see wer
e not
ideal for her needs. She picked up her beer and took a walkabout into the dark
edges of the roadhouse, sliding around tables and pushing through groups of
drunk, happy people. On the dance floor, people were lit up like little disco
balls from the pu
lsing lights above. She couldn’t see
Jase, but she knew he was watching her, stalking her like a hawk. She was
counting on it.

Maggie headed over to the corner filled
with drunk frat boys. She ignored the drinking games and bad karaoke and
chugging contes
ts and walked over to one who was
leaning against a wall, eyeballing the girls on the dance floor. He was blonde
and tan and had probably never touched an engine or a gun in his short, dull
life. He was Jase
’
s
opposite. 

“Hey,”
said Maggie as she walked u
p within a foot of him. At first, he seemed surprised, but
that melted quickly into a seductive warmness when he saw the look in her eyes.

“
Hi there,
”
he said.

“
Looking for something?
”
she nodded her head back towards the
dance floor, then put one hand on
his chest as the
other tipped the rest of her beer into her mouth.

“
I think I just found it,
”
he said with a grin. His hands snaked
around her waist and one wasted no time getting a good handful of her ample ass
and thighs.  She tipped her head up to him and he obliged her with a deep but
sloppy French kiss. Already she could feel his growing hardn
ess as he pressed her against his body.

She had obviously found the horniest
frat boy in the group; within seconds he was practically groping her right out
in the middle of the bar. She stopped him just before he tried to sneak a peek
down her shirt, slow
ed him down a bit with some
sensual kisses that ended with his lip between her teeth. Once she was certain
her point had been made to anyone who may have been watching them, she took the
frat boy
’
s hand and led him through the maze of
the roadhouse, headin
g for the bathrooms at the back.
She could’ve just stopped the charade there and sent him on his way, but Maggie
figured she deserved a good fuck after a day like today.

Maggie and the frat boy stumbled into
the handicapped stall at the end of the row, mak
ing
out along the way. She managed to lock the stall door before he tugged her
shirt over her head and began greedily cupping her breasts, sticking a hand
into her bra. The feel of his mouth and tongue on her neck was too much
pleasure, and Maggie moaned o
ut loud, eliciting
giggles from someone in another stall. She reached down and wrapped her hand
around a hard, thick erection begging to be released from the board shorts it
was trapped in.

When his hand appeared between her legs,
rubbing, Maggie felt lik
e she might come right then
and there. It had been so long since she was touched that way
—
with actual longing and desire. She
closed her eyes and got lost in the moment until she heard the front door of
the bathroom pushed open hard enough to hit the wall.
A woman
’
s protests went ignored. The hand
between her legs was rubbing, making her wet. It was all she wanted to think
about. But what was wrong? What
—