Wild Rider (Bad Boy Bikers Book 2) (6 page)

His cock was straining hard now after that kiss. It had woken something in him—something fierce and protective. Goddammit, she was gorgeous. Too gorgeous to kill. To gorgeous to ever die.

She'd never been mad at him when he'd known her before. They hadn't had much of a relationship outside of brilliantly fucking every time they met. There had always felt like there was some emotional depth there, some way they connected more than just that primal, biological need to mate and rut, but Beretta had always pushed that away. If she probed for details about him, he would deflect.

Deflect, deflect, deflect. He didn't want her or anyone to know the real him. That was how people got hurt.

He didn’t know if he truly wanted to fuck her—if he wanted that kind of complication in his life. But there was a part of him, growing fast, that
needed
that complication and needed it more than anything else.

He breathed in, and he breathed in her scent. He breathed out, and there was a part of him that left that had never known her—and he was glad it was gone.

She sat down, her scrubs sliding across the bed, and he took another breath. She smelled fresh, even after all of that mess.

“Here’s what we do. You can be my old lady. You know what that means?”

Her eyes went wide. “Fuck you.”

“So you do know what it means?”

“I grew up in Marlowe, Beretta. You know I did. I've been around bikers like you my whole life. I'm not going to be your property.”

Her saying it like that—knowing what it was—made his cock feel even harder.

My property
.

Imagining her as that was a hard image to let go of. Owning her. Protecting her.

“You are if you want to live.”

“You can't be serious.”

“I’m as serious as the death threat hanging over your head. If you want to get out of this place alive—you’ll do it. It’s the only way.”

“What if I just...just steal your gun or put a knife to Locke’s throat and walk out of here with a hostage? It seemed to work pretty well for you.”

“You’re welcome to try. But we’ll find you. And then we’ll kill you.”

He could see her thinking, turning over the gears in her head.

“I’m not an object. I’m not
property
.”

“You don’t have to be. You just have to act like it. Say you’re my old lady. That I’m your man. If you’re my girl, they can’t touch you. It’s the only protection you’re going to get.”

“And then?”

“Then...”

Then I get to see you safe.

“Then,” he said. “This blows over. We let you go. Copperheads ain’t on the ropes yet, but they’ll be there soon. Once they’re there, it won’t take much to put them down for good.”

At least, that's the hope
.

He had no idea if that was true. But a half-truth seemed like a good idea for now.

Her face scrunched up, thinking deliberately.

“What do you get out of this?” she demanded. “You could just leave me in the dirt and that would be the end of it. You could let me die. What’s it to you? You want to fuck me again, is that it? Well, I’ll tell you right now, that’s not going to happen. That’s—”

Beretta had heard enough. He grabbed her by the throat, pushing her down on the cot.

“The second I want to fuck you, that’s what happens. Make no mistake. The only thing stopping me is me. You don’t get a say in it. None at all.”

There was fear in her eyes. Stark, hot, and realized. Fear, yes—but desire, too. He could see it, the flash on her face when he grabbed her throat. She
liked
that kind of manhandling—he remembered she did. He hadn't recalled until just that point, until right before touching her like that.

It went straight to the core of her. The first time he'd done it, in a shadowy apartment in Marlowe, she'd moaned his name all night long.

Lucky for him.

It was an empty threat. He’d never actually forced anyone; never come close. Frankly, he just didn't need to—women came to him whenever he wanted.

But she had to believe that he could, that he would, or else she’d keep arguing with him and then Ace would kill her for sure. Sometimes—only sometimes—the ends justified the means. And if he had to play this role for her to believe him, for her to cooperate, then he’d do it.

He’d be the bastard, he’d have a hard-on the whole time, he wouldn’t fuck her no matter how bad he wanted to, and then he’d send her back out into the wild once everything smoothed over. He wouldn't even ask her why she left him in the first place. That was the right thing to do.

Keeping her alive was the right thing to do.

“You’re a monster,” she choked out.

He released his grip on her throat and slid back. “That’s right. I’m a fucking monster. But I’m all you have.”

This was the right thing to do, he told himself again.

He wasn’t doing it because of how much she reminded him of all his mistakes with Madeline. Not because of how much he resented the way she had ended things with him months ago. Not because he wanted a shot at redemption. Not because in the middle of all the violence and killing and shitty dealings of his life, he wanted the chance to save at least one person.

No. It wasn’t selfish. It was the right thing to do.

“Fine,” she spat. “But touch me like that again, and I’m going to do everything I can to rip your balls off.”

Fire in this one. That was what had drawn him to her originally. That was good. Maybe she’d make it. Maybe he wouldn’t have to do all the work for her.

“Whatever,” he said, sliding down onto the bed. “You sleep on the floor, then.”

––––––––

S
he woke up on the floor, sore and confused. For a moment she thought she had drunk too much the night before and passed out in the living room. She’d done that from time to time shortly after everything exploded with Randall, and then again when she hated herself for ending the wild fling with Beretta, though it had been awhile.

There was a time when having a few hard drinks was what it took to calm her. With therapy and a lot of meditation, she’d gotten better.

Reality suspended above her like a tight roper, walking along the fragile surface of her semi-conscious mind. As she woke more, then, reality crashed and the half-dreams evaporated.

She was not at home.

She had not had a drink the night before.

She had not passed out somewhere in her living room.

Indeed, instead of anything as benignly embarrassing as all of that, she was caught as a hostage to a biker gang. And what was worse—she was now the
old lady
of the worst of the lot.

Was he really the worst of the lot, this Beretta? He was certainly the one who had gotten her into this mess, and that made him bad enough in her book. He was trying to keep her alive, so points back there, but if it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t even have been there in the first place.

What made her even more furious about all of it was how fucking hot he was. How hot he
still
was after completely disrupting her life. She could remember so much about him...

His cock, sliding up my thighs, right over my pussy. Hands like hot steel on my breasts, my nipples erect, waiting. Every breath like a miracle, his hand sliding up to wrap around my throat...

That
made this situation all the more unfair. Oh, no, she couldn’t find a strong, tough, no-nonsense motherfucker like him chilling out at the county fair or strolling through the mall. Couldn’t get picked up by him at a club or run into him randomly on the highway when her car broke down.

No, this fucking hunk who had a body that made her body's center turn into a total supernova had to
kidnap
her.

Bad enough that she'd already had him once and convinced herself that she was better off without him. Now he was back to twist her head into even more knots.

Helen was no stranger to fantasies—to fantasizing. Certainly she’d allowed herself in the past to be taken away on little trips to pleasant dreamscapes where there was no pain, no hurt, only pleasure and sensation and taboo.

So, falling for a kidnapper? Being taken by someone huge, strong, handsome, who didn't even comprehend the word “no?” Shit yeah, that was up there on the fantasy list. Especially with the way that Beretta had grabbed her last night—taken her by the
throat
...she was sure he saw her desire flashing for him in that instant, and she hated him for it.

She hated him for knowing what that did to her, being grabbed like that—hated him for using it against her.

The real life was
no
fantasy. There was no turning it off. No guarantee she could just walk out alive.

This was all brought home as Beretta poked her in the back with his boot.

“Time to get up,” he said. “You awake?”

She slid up onto her forearms, wishing for a change of clothes. For a shower. Every part of her felt dirty.

“You remember what we decided, right?”

As she stood up, she nodded, stretching and yawning. “Old lady. I got it.”

Above her, he was a monolith of muscle and bone. It was easy to imagine rubbing her hands over the surface of his inked torso again. She remembered him more and more as time went on. Hair in all the right places, leading down from a thick patch on his chest to his crotch below. Unbidden, the thought of his cock arrived at the front door of her mind's eye.

She knew it was huge. Knew how it had filled her up like no one before or since.

She turned away, feeling herself blush. What a stupid thing to think.

“That means you don’t talk back,” he said. “You don’t question me in front of the others. You don’t question them. In fact, the less you do, the better. Is that clear?”

She gritted her teeth. “Yes.”

Instructions. Following instructions from a stupid man too stubborn to know how stupid he was.

That brought back up a bilious set of memories from Randall.

Goddamn, you talk too much.

Wear this. You’ll look pretty on my arm.

Who the fuck said you could go out with them, huh? Answer me, girl!

For almost all her life she'd wanted to grow up to be a biker's girl. Then she took up with a man she thought had been tough and strong in Randall, and he had just been an insecure bully.

Then she met Beretta—who she thought had been exactly the kind of tough and strong she'd wanted her whole life. But his strength scared her; his furious passion, the ease with which he burned away all her resistance. It had terrified her the way she had come to depend on him in such a short amount of time after Randall had abused her trust so completely.

And so she had left him.

“Good,” he said. “Well. Freshen up how you want. There’s some stuff there.” He pointed to a small pile. “I’ll take you around to a place I know and you can wash off, later on. For now there’s that sink on the far end of the warehouse. You come join us when you’re ready.”

At least Beretta was nicer to look at than Randall had been. Far and away nicer, and Randall wasn't exactly ugly. She had counted herself so damn lucky for a time when her affair with Beretta began. And while Beretta was cruel now, even heartless, there was something about it that seemed put-on.

With Randall, every time she suffered from those indignities, those little abuses, it had felt more like a revelation of what was powering through his sick core inside.

Beretta was too direct to have secrets. Not for long, anyway.

I’m a man of my word, Helen. You’ll see.

So, there was that, at least.

That’s right. I’m a fucking monster. But I’m all you have.

And that, too.

She sighed and walked to the other end of the warehouse for the sink. It was still as dirty as the day before, covered in old rust, particles of steel flaking away like dirt off a stone. Again, she checked the door—just in case. But it was still chained shut.

The outlaws had the entrances and exits pretty well controlled. For a moment, she felt almost flattered that they had taken the trouble just for her. Then she remembered that it had probably always been that way because they needed to keep the Copperheads out.

There was not a whole lot she knew about this gang war that they had going on. She hadn't lived in Stockland long enough, moving from Marlowe just half a year before. The Copperheads had been in Stockland for several years, maybe close to ten. At first, they had only been a nuisance. If they killed someone, it was just someone else in their game—someone dealing, someone stealing.

Lately, though, over the past two or three years, the Copperheads had grown bolder. Their meth traffic had gotten bigger and bigger, and no one seemed to be able to do anything about it. Corruption in the police department was the biggest shared, unspoken secret in the town.

It didn’t take a lot to keep a man on a cop’s salary quiet, especially in a small city like Stockland, so far outside and away from the rest of civilization.

Stockland was located deep in West Texas. Far from the border, but not so far that there was no opportunity to traffic drugs back and forth across it. Far enough, instead, for the Copperheads not to be at war with any gangs down south of the border.

Helen wasn’t an expert, no. She just read the papers. The rest, she could put together on her own from overhearing conversations between gangbangers and outlaws and the like during her shifts.

They spoke in broken, jerry-rigged versions of Spanish and English; hard to follow, but once you got the cadence down, you could understand everything they said even if maybe you missed a word here and there.

She returned to Beretta and the rest, putting on her best meek face. They stood in the small area around the office. The concrete was strangely damp. There were plastic lawn chairs arranged in a circle, like men had been conspiring there earlier. Above them, a lamp swung like someone had hit it. They were all quiet, and Ace was pacing and fuming.

“You’re his old lady, is that right?”

Helen looked up at Beretta. She assumed that was the thing to do.

Beretta waved his hand. “Answer the man.”