Wild Rider (Bad Boy Bikers Book 2) (9 page)

“Fuck, Helen,” he said, breathing across her mouth. “You’re so goddamn pretty.”

She moaned again, her lips sliding against his chin, his jaw, his lips, wet and willing and aching. Both of them scared, hungry, desperate for a release. Her hand, sliding over his abs and chest, suddenly sank down and slipped to his pants.

Inside, it was nothing to reach his straining erection, already pushing up and to the side. Hot essence began to flow from the tip at the second of her touch, and she moaned again—god, that moan, like the humming of the world, filling up his being—and slowly stroked him.

His hand in turn pushed against her breasts, tweaking her nipples. The other came against her throat, following his memory from the night before—and he was rewarded again with another moan and a soft, throaty laugh as she kissed him deeper than before.

She
wanted
him. Wanted him like he wanted her. And here was all the proof he needed.

Outside, the thunder of gathering motorcycles ruined their brief reverie.

“Shit,” he said, pulling away from Helen. “Shit, shit.”

His heart pumped fast. Trouble. Danger. Arriving now, coming for them.

This was why she wasn't in the plan. If he let himself be distracted by her, it all went to hell.

“Dress,” he said, rushing to the window. “
Now
.”

He was glad he parked on the back of the building. Through the window, he could see the Copperheads outside were looking for bikes and had knives and guns in their hands. It wouldn’t have been anything for them to have slashed his tires, put a hole in his gas tank or his engine.

How did they know to come here?

He wanted to puzzle at it—to think on it until he had every angle sussed out. But there wasn't time. The thing to do now was to leave.

“Ready,” said Helen, behind him.

She was barefoot, holding her shoes in one hand and a suitcase in the other. In her haste, she had put on a pair of tight shorts and a tank top. She looked hotter than ever and the thought struck him very strong that maybe it was possible to fuck her hard enough to make every one of those problems outside go away.

But his cock couldn’t win that fight. There were men with guns coming, and he had to control himself.

“Time to go, then,” he said. “Stay close and don’t make a sound.”

She nodded and they swept quickly out the door onto the walkway.

There was a man there already, knife in his hand. He lunged at Helen, swiping and slashing. Beretta pulled her back against the wall and snapped his fist across the man's face, sending him sprawling over the railing. His spine landed hard on the platform below, a sudden snap, and then he dropped to the concrete.

Another man was right behind him, gun ready, coming up the steps. Beretta rushed forward and kicked him in the chest, sending him flying backwards down the staircase and into the attackers gathering below.

That bought them a little time.

“Sh-shit,” said Helen, her eyes wide, jaw chattering. “You just—I think you k-
killed
them—”

“We can hope.” Beretta took her hand. “Come on.”

The third floor of this set of apartments was interconnected to another apartment building by a concrete platform where inhabitants could walk and stand, open to the sky. As the Copperheads were coming up the stairs, Beretta and Helen rushed across the platform and took the opposite building’s flight of stairs down.

The Copperheads found them again when they were almost at the bottom and began to open fire from across the complex. Bullets rained down on the two, shattering concrete and spraying hard, hot shards into their skin.

Helen still did not scream, but she did push hard into Beretta’s body as they scrambled around the side of the building. Seconds after getting on Beretta’s bike, they were on their way, roaring back down across the parking lot and through the gate—luckily just opened from another resident rolling in—and bouncing hard across the grass and thumping up over onto the entrance ramp onto the highway.

He could still hear gunfire, but it was in the distance and growing more distant by the second.

After a few minutes on the highway with no more gunfire audible, Beretta let out a sigh of relief. It felt like they lost them.

What made his heart continue to pound, though, was not the thought of the Copperheads catching up to him.

No, all it took for that was the feel of Helen’s hands wrapped around his body and squeezing tighter than ever. Her fingers sliding over his abs, through his shirt, tugging on him, her face squeezing against his back harder than she needed to. The Copperheads would kill him in a second of catching him—no prisoners.

But who he was riding with was more dangerous for Beretta than a thousand Copperheads, and the more he remembered that, the better.

––––––––

T
hey didn’t go straight back to the motel. From one frying pan to another, skipping through the fire in between. It was dark in the evening now and getting colder outside. There would be rain later tonight and the cold front was moving in with it. She was grateful to be close to Beretta’s body and the warmth that poured off from him like an oven.

Helen was not used to this kind of excitement. That’s how she explained away the kiss with Beretta in her apartment.

He was the first man she had brought to her mostly-empty home. It had embarrassed her at first, how little there was in there. It was a safety measure, though. If Randall showed up in her life again—really showed up, really went after her—she wanted to be able to run away and not leave anything important behind.

She wanted to do a little more than that. After all, she had bought a gun and had taken lessons to know how to shoot it. Randall—the types like him—scared her.

Briefly she had considered rushing for the gun during the visit, but there hadn't been a chance. Beretta watched her like a hawk. It didn't do her much good stashed away in her gun safe in her closet. By the time she would have been able to remember the combination and pull it out, Beretta would have been on her in a dozen different ways.

Not that she had been entirely upset that Beretta was in her apartment at all. God, but he made her head all mixed up.

He was the pleasant opposite of Randall in a thousand different ways. Alone with Beretta and his handsome, scarred face, his tremendous body, she got swept away. She was simply being affected by the danger of the situation, that was all—the wrongness of everything got to her head.

She was susceptible to such things, she knew. Growing up, she had idolized the badass warriors of the Wrecking Crew MC. That melded easily into crushes on all things masculine and badass.

That’s how it had moved so fast, so poorly with Randall. He had preyed on her desire to jump in, to not ask too many questions, to be led.

So, if her fear of dying wasn’t enough, or being some insane outlaw’s property for the rest of her life wasn’t doing it, she also had to be afraid of her own emotions dominating every rational bone in her body.

It was rough luck, being a Helen.

Still, the danger had passed now. They were safe on the highway, headed toward some bar to meet up with the rest of the crew. And yet her grip was so much tighter on Beretta's thick, muscular torso than it needed to be. She pressed the side of her face against his back, reveling in the easy, animalistic strength he possessed to control his powerful bike with so much ease.

A simple confusion of desires didn’t explain why her hands dug deep into his shirt, her fingers sliding up against his abs in wonderment at their cheese-grater-like cut.

Some part of her explained it away—the ride was part of a different reality. He and she would both forget about what she touched, how she touched during the ride. There was all that noise, after all, and all that wind ripping at them. Who was to say what she touched, truly?

But she could feel—when her hands dropped to readjust—she
felt
his excitement at her touch. His cock stirring, pushing forward, straining still. Just feeling it like that brought back a flood of memories—all their torrential sex, their late nights without saying a word to each other, the early mornings so they could sneak one more go at each other in before leaving.

Beretta's erection was growing—and so was her own heat as she leaned in deeper and let her palm slide over that thick totem for several long moments.

Was it the motor purring, or was it him? Both were such huge, powerful machines.

Even though Beretta had initiated the kiss in the apartment, she didn’t feel like he was preying on her. It was different than that. It didn’t feel like taking advantage.

In fact, that was the strange thing about it all. It felt more like
she
was taking advantage of
him
.

There had been, after all, no real affection from him besides those strange, charged moments when he had kissed her. Maybe he called her his old lady now, but she would be stupid to believe that was due to anything other than him trying to relieve himself of a guilty conscience.

And sure, it was nice that he felt guilty, kind of like the way that it was nice when a politician apologized for trading government secrets to other countries. But the deed was still done.

She had kissed him for herself—and damn his feelings, if he truly had any at all.

The ride, brief interruption of reality that it was, couldn't last forever. They re-entered the streets of the city from the highway. Downtown bustled with young people—men in cowboy hats and boots, and women in short skirts and tall heels. Country music twanged out from bars and glasses full of margaritas clinked together. They met with the crew in the parking lot behind a bar called
The Last Stand
.

Tank and Ace stood next to their van, waiting and smoking cigarettes in their civvies near the wall of the bar. Their colors were stashed back at the motel. This was a covert mission. Beretta had taken his off at a stoplight in town after they fled the apartment complex.

Normally, an outlaw would never take his colors off his back. It was dishonorable and tantamount to being exiled from the brotherhood altogether. This was especially true when riding on his bike. But these were extraordinary circumstances and required extraordinary measures.

“How’d it go?” asked Ace.

Beretta shrugged. “Some trouble. Copperheads found Helen. We got out of it.”

“They follow you?”

“No.” Beretta shook his head.

“You sure?”

“I mean I didn’t read their minds, but I didn’t see anyone behind me, and the bullets stopped landing around us, so yeah, I think we lost ‘em. I'm more concerned with how they knew how to find Helen there in the first place.”

“I think we know the answer to that already,” said Tank. “The Copperheads are going on a tear.”

“So what?”

“They hit
Calcutta
. That's the bar where Ace's bookie works. Smashed the windows and took out some of the cars outside. Locke's women? Two got cornered and slapped around, their purses robbed. He heard about it and warned off the rest.”

“What about you?” Beretta asked Tank. “Anything for you?”

“Grocery store. The nice one with the poultry I like. They drove a car into the front window. Glass everywhere. It's a goddamn crime spree.”

“How did they know what we do? Who we're with?”

“The warehouse,” said Ace. “They must have searched it before burning it down. Address books. Papers. Receipts. Trash. They put it together.”

And Helen's ID had been there at the warehouse too, with her address right on it. This was getting more than personal—this was getting downright intimate.

“Goddamn,” said Beretta. “We just left it right out in the open, didn't we?”

“We did,” said Ace. “And why do you think Rattler thought it was a good idea to come and hit us, huh? You think he just happened upon that thought?”

“Hey,” said Beretta. “Maybe you—”

Beretta looked like he had more to say, but thought better of it as Locke came out of the bar and met them.

Those two need to get along.

Then she thought—
the hell do I care if they get along or not?

Because if they don’t
, came the answer,
then the probability goes up that I’m a dead woman
.

“He’s in there,” said Locke, coming out with a smile on his face, pulling his hoodie back. “By himself. Goes by the name of Damage. I figure he’s about two drinks away from getting kicked out.”

“They can kick a Copperhead out?”

Locke shrugged. “He’s barely a patch holder. Only held it for about two months. Long enough for him to know stuff he shouldn’t. Not long enough to have any clout with the populace all by his lonesome.”

“Also not long enough to know that he only ought to drink with his friends during wartime,” said Tank.

“Damage?” asked Ace. “That was his name?”

“Yeah,” said Locke. “You know him?”

“I think so. Smaller guy? Weird sort of elf ears? Long crook in his lips?”

“That’s the one. When did you meet him?”

“I didn’t meet him. I saw him in the mall a little while back. Had his vest on, name on the shoulder. I thought it was...I don’t know, a division or something at first. Damage, you know.” Ace sniffed, snuffing out his cigarette under his boot. “He was with his kid. Smacked him around when he wouldn’t put down a toy. Smacked him again when he wouldn’t stop crying. Smacked him hard.”

Beretta raised an eyebrow. “You’re not bullshitting to push my buttons?”

Ace raised a hand. “On my honor, it’s what I saw.”

“Not much of that to go around.” Locke snorted.  “But I believe you. I’ve heard similar stuff about him. My informants—”

Tank leaned in to Helen’s ear and whispered loudly, “
Whores
.”

“
Informants
,” Locke insisted, “don’t like him much either. That’s why they gave up his location to me. They didn’t know what we were about, but they knew, you know?”

Beretta slowly appeared to be getting larger and larger. Helen wasn't sure how he did it—he was already so big—but his frame was expanding outward and his face was trembling with rage. The bikers waited in the darkness of the alley, quiet.