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That was a very good question. And one I didn’t want to find out the answer to. Maybe if I told him I only wanted to hide out here for a while, he’d let me?
I cleared my throat, trying to get the words out. ‘I...um...well...there’s kind of a reason.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Crash sat down heavily next to me on the bed, making me aware of him in a way I didn’t like. He was in the usual biker uniform of jeans, a T-shirt and the leather vest they called a ‘cut’ worn over the top, and I could feel the heat of his body next to mine. He wore a lot of aftershave and that combined with the reek of alcohol coming off him made me want to cringe. ‘If that reason is to suck my cock, then, baby, I’m here for that.’
Fear fluttered in my gut.
Yeah, I didn’t want to do that. Even the thought of it made me feel ill. I’d never done it before and I certainly didn’t want to start with some drunken biker, just because I’d apparently lost my mind and made a decision that was, in retrospect, looking to be the stupidest decision in the history of creation.
‘W-what if it’s...not that?’ I asked hesitantly.
‘Oh, come on...’ He leaned in, nuzzling against my ear, his beer breath wafting over me, deepening my discomfort with the whole situation. ‘Uh...what did you say your name was again?’
I hadn’t told him, and what’s more, I couldn’t. Because although he might not have known who Summer Grant was, I was pretty sure he was familiar with Campbell Grant, the police chief and my dad. Not that he’d necessarily draw a link between the names, at least not in his current state, but I couldn’t risk it.
Desperately I tried to think of another name I could give him, but for once my dumb brain was empty. ‘Do you really need to know that?’
He left a wet kiss beneath my ear that made my skin crawl. ‘Nah. Couldn’t give a shit. Just gimme a taste of that pussy.’
I cringed again, both at the crass way he was talking and at how he was leaning over me. ‘Hey.’ I tried to pull away from him. ‘What would you say if I...uh...didn’t want to have sex with you?’
He gave a drunken laugh, reaching for my hand. ‘Are you kidding me? Then what the hell am I supposed to do with this?’ And he pressed my hand right down over his fly, where I could feel him already as hard as a rock.
Wonderful. This situation was getting better and better.
I swallowed, my mouth dry, trying to resist the urge to jerk my hand away since I was pretty sure that would offend him and I didn’t want to risk that, not when I wasn’t sure what he’d do.
Instead, I left my hand there for a second, then carefully drew it back. ‘That’s, um...very impressive.’ I took a quick sip of my beer, grabbing a bit of that liquid courage and trying not to pull a face at the taste. ‘But maybe you could get someone else to do something about it?’
He shook his head and put a hand on my knee, sliding it up to the hem of my skirt. ‘Oh, no, baby. It’s a party and you’re the one in my room. You know what that means.’
I shifted my leg away, attempting to put some distance between us. ‘No. I have no idea what that means.’ Because, although I knew what it was that he wanted, I didn’t know how it being a party made any difference.
Outside, the thumping of the music had increased in volume, and there was lots of loud shouting and laughter. More immediate were the rhythmic noises coming from the room next door and someone moaning, while someone else cursed.
I could feel my face flushing.
‘Well,’ Crash mumbled, trying to slide his fingers beneath my skirt yet again. ‘Girls only go into a brother’s room for one reason and here’s a hint. It’s not to chat.’
I knew that. Of course I knew that.
But you didn’t think it through first so now you have to deal.
My heart shuddered in my chest, the fear inside me getting wider, deeper. Would he even let me go if I didn’t want to have sex with him? And if I got out of Crash’s room, what would happen then? I’d have to run the gauntlet of those men outside all the way back to the entrance of the club.
Yeah, you’re a freaking genius. Mensa would love to have you. Not.
I shivered, feeling like the biggest fool to ever draw breath. What had I been thinking? I hadn’t; that was my problem. I’d let my anger at Dad and at my own weakness get the better of me, and now I was here, being pressured into having sex with a drunken biker.
Awesome.
I pushed Crash’s hand away yet again, trying frantically to think of a solution to this particular problem. But sadly this was real life and it wasn’t quite as simple as a math equation. There were no rules I could apply here and way too many variables, and when you were battling panic, logic didn’t always work.
‘C-can’t we chat?’ I wriggled away from him. ‘Just while I finish my beer?’
But his hand was now sliding underneath my hoodie, over my bare stomach, and he was pulling me very close, his mouth at my neck. ‘Nah. I don’t wanna chat. C’mon, baby. Put those lips to work.’
I went rigid, my heart now climbing up into my throat. I could feel the strength in his arm going around me. I knew I couldn’t fight it.
Men, they were all the same. Even the ones who were supposed to be the good guys were assholes, and I knew that better than anyone.
In the corridor outside, a woman giggled, the deep voice of a man saying something in return.
‘Well, o-okay.’ I hated the way I couldn’t keep my voice from shaking. ‘But I’m a virgin, you know that, right?’ It had been my experience that once you said the ‘V’ word, men usually ran for the hills.
Sadly Crash didn’t run, though to be fair, there were no hills he could logically run to.
‘Mmm...’ he said. ‘Then maybe I can teach you.’ And he moved his hand up to cup my breast.
I don’t know what happened then. Something in me simply snapped, roaring in negation as his hand cupped me, and I found myself shoving him away hard before I could think better of it, yelling ‘No’ as loud as I could for good measure.
Then, as I was sitting there, trembling with anger and fear, the door to Crash’s room burst open with such force that it bounced back against the wall with a bang.
A man was standing in the doorway. A horribly familiar man.
‘What the fuck is going on?’ the man demanded, his voice deep and dark, rough and gritty. Then his strange amber eyes met mine and my heart clenched tight with a weird combination of absolute terror and utter relief.
Jake Clarke, aka Tiger.
I’d never forgotten the first day I’d met him. He’d been waiting for me outside my school one day, sitting astride his massive black Harley and smoking a cigarette. He’d worn battered blue jeans, a black T-shirt with a leather vest thrown over the top, and there were chains attached to his belt, huge motorcycle boots on his feet, brightly coloured tattoos wrapping around both his powerful arms.
He was as beautiful as the animal he was named for and twice as dangerous. Mean as hell and sexy as sin.
The sun had struck copper sparks from his dark hair, and when he’d seen that school was out, he’d thrown his cigarette down right there in the street and ground it under his heel. Then he’d looked straight at me.
And I’d forgotten where I was. I’d even forgotten who I was.
His eyes were amber, the colour of expensive whisky or newly minted gold coins, and they had pinned me to the spot. A golden arrow straight through my heart.
His face was all hard lines and arrogant angles, his brows slightly winged at the corners, and he had the hardest, sharpest jawline I’d ever seen. He didn’t smile. His mouth was wide and beautifully carved, and the rounded shape of his bottom lip was the softest part about him, but it didn’t curve.
All my friends had stared at him—hell, everyone had stared at him. No one in my exclusive girls’ school had ever seen a man like him.
‘There’ll be someone there to meet you after school today,’ Dad had told me that morning. ‘In fact, he’ll be taking you to and from school for a little while so be nice to him, okay?’
Tiger had been that someone. An enforcer for the Knights of Ruin MC, he’d been assigned to be my bodyguard to protect me from the death threats another MC had thrown at my father. And Dad, being canny, had decided that the best protection from one MC was a rival MC.
I’d been terrified of Tiger and excited by him in equal measure, and I’d fallen in love with him the moment I’d seen him. But back then I was only seventeen and a nerdy, tongue-tied little girl, while he was twenty-six and a full-grown man, and so far out of my league he might as well have been the sun to my Pluto.
He was a star while I...I was barely even a planet.
It had taken me years to get him out of my head and I’d thought I’d managed it while I’d been away at college. But one look at him was all it took for those feelings to come flooding back. The fear and the curiosity and the dry-mouthed excitement.
I’d thought my situation couldn’t get any worse.
I was wrong.
CHAPTER TWO (#u1937e0c4-b091-5eed-9b0b-da27b043c3f6)
Tiger
THE SIGHT OF the girl sitting on Crash’s bed, staring at me with the biggest, deepest blue eyes I’d ever seen, hit me like a fucking brick to the head.
Not only because she was as white as a goddamn sheet, but also because I knew her.
Summer Grant. Daughter of that well-known asshole Campbell Grant, the police chief.
What the ever-loving fuck was she doing here?
I’d been enjoying the party, aka the usual Saturday night at the clubhouse, and had gone off to spend a little quality time with Mercy, one of the club girls, and hadn’t been in the mood to hear some girl shout ‘No’ from behind a closed bedroom door, and still less to do anything about it.
But I didn’t have much patience with brothers who didn’t treat the girls right, so I’d kicked the door open to check out what was going on, to make sure things were okay. Only to find Summer fucking Grant sitting there, shaking, on the bed with that dumbass Crash trying to get his hands all over her.
The brother was drunk as a fucking skunk and didn’t appear to notice that his door was currently hanging off its hinges. Or that I was standing there. Or even that I’d asked him a goddamn question.
He reached again for the police chief’s pretty little daughter.
Fuck. No.
I took two steps into the room, grabbed Crash by his collar, jerked him off the bed, then shoved him up against the wall. ‘You hurt her?’ I demanded, gripping him by the throat. ‘Say yes and I’ll punch your fucking face in.’
Couldn’t have brothers hurting the girls here. Made for a bad rep and brought trouble, and if there was one thing the Knights didn’t need right now it was trouble.
Crash blinked at me, choking slightly in my hold. ‘No,’ he managed to get out, but I gave him a cuff over the face all the same, because he was an asshole and needed to learn a lesson.
I took my hand away and left him to drop in a heap on the floor, then I turned around to see how Summer was doing.
She was sitting on the bed, giving me big eyes and fear and not saying a fucking word.
‘Want to tell me what you’re doing here, baby?’ I asked her.
Crash croaked something from the floor, but I stuck my boot in his gut as a warning. ‘Didn’t ask you, dumbass.’ This time he must have found some brains from somewhere because he closed his mouth again pretty quickly.
Summer still didn’t say a word, hunching over and looking down at her hands like they were the most fascinating things she’d ever seen her life.
Fuck. Looked like my evening of beer, a smoke and a couple of relaxing blow jobs was toast.
‘Summer,’ I said, keeping things mild because it was clear she was shit-scared, ‘let’s start again from the top. What the fuck are you doing here?’
At that point there came a loud burst of noise from the corridor outside and I glanced towards the doorway, catching a glimpse of some shrieking girls and a couple of the brothers laughing as they all came in from the living area, obviously in search of some bedrooms.
Mercy, hanging around by the broken door, gave me a pointed look.
Christ. I needed to lock this shit down before someone going past got a look at Summer and recognised her, and started wondering what the hell the police chief’s daughter was doing hanging around the clubhouse.
‘Sorry, Merc.’ I gestured to the girl on the bed, who was hunching her shoulders and generally trying to make herself invisible. A bit of an impossibility when she was wearing a miniskirt that barely covered her pussy and left a pair of long slender legs very, very bare. ‘Got a situation I have to handle. Maybe we’ll have some fun later.’
And I did have to handle it. If Summer decided to make a complaint about Crash to her dad, things could go badly for the Knights. We’d already had some drama with the chief’s son and we did not need any more with his daughter.
Mercy made a pouty face, but she was a good girl who knew when to back off. ‘Yeah, okay, but I’m holding you to that.’
I didn’t look after her as she disappeared back down the corridor. Instead, I took a step over to where Summer was sitting with her head bowed. Crash made another sound, but I didn’t want to hear it, especially not from him. ‘Shut the fuck up,’ I warned him, not even bothering to look at him. ‘You try forcing a girl again and I won’t just punch you in the face. I’ll cut off your cock and make you suck it. Understand?’
He didn’t say anything, which was just as well since my evening was starting to look less like blow jobs and beer and more like complicated bullshit.
Annoyed, I kicked aside the clothing lying across the floor and came over to the bed where Summer was sitting. ‘Baby,’ I said again, ‘talk to me.’
But she just shook her head and hunched her shoulders even more.
It made me remember when I used to bodyguard for her. She’d been a little scaredy-cat even then, perpetually treating me like I’d frighten her to death if I even looked at her funny.
What was she doing here? And what had Crash done to her to scare her like this?
I crouched in front of her and reached out to grab one of her hands. Her fingers were icy in mine. ‘Hey.’ I tried to keep my voice gentle, which was difficult since I wasn’t a gentle guy by any stretch of the imagination. ‘You okay?’
A brother’s voice sounded from close to the doorway. Big Red, the VP, from the sounds of things.
Jesus, I really needed to get her out of here.
I rose to my feet and carefully pulled Summer off the bed so she was standing in front of me, her hand still cold in mine.
Her chin came up, her eyes blinking in shock, her hoodie falling back a little, giving me a better look at her face. Yeah, I remembered her all right. Couldn’t forget eyes that blue, or that huge and dark. They seemed black beneath her fair, almost colourless brows, and then there was that determined, pointed chin. I remembered trying to tease her out of her constant terrified silence a couple of times, a tactic that had never worked. But that chin of hers used to jut in a way that made me wonder if she wasn’t as scared as she seemed, more like pissed instead. And then there was her luscious mouth, all soft and pink and pouty...
Something punched me hard, right in the gut, and since it was pretty much the last thing I expected to feel when looking at Summer Grant, it took me a second to realise that my cock, the impatient motherfucker, was very, very interested in that mouth.
Fuck. This was all I needed. Getting inexplicably hard for Campbell Grant’s daughter, which was so not happening. Jesus Christ, I’d be lucky if Keep didn’t kick my ass from here to fucking Florida if he ever found out.
Not that I’d do anything about it. I hadn’t been into jailbait back when she’d been seventeen and I wasn’t into it now. Though I guessed she wasn’t seventeen any more. More like...twenty-two maybe? Except she didn’t look it, not with those big, frightened eyes. She looked like a kid who’d just woken up from a really bad nightmare.
I didn’t mind a bit of fear to get a chick turned on, as long as she was into it. But if she wasn’t, then neither was I, and as for outright terror... Yeah, that wasn’t hot as far as I was concerned and it pretty much killed the burgeoning hard-on in my jeans. Good fucking job.
‘Come on,’ I told her, impatient now to get this mess sorted out. ‘Party’s over.’
I began to move back to the doorway, pulling her with me, but she’d gone rigid, freezing like a block of wood, staring at me like I was some kind of serial killer.
Christ. Please don’t tell me I was going to have to haul a terrified girl through the clubhouse in the middle of a party. Knowing my fucking luck, she’d start screaming and then the shit would hit the fan. Especially if Keep spotted me and got the wrong idea.
Yeah, that wasn’t happening. Except the problem was that I didn’t have time to calm her down now, not with a whole lot of brothers out in the corridor. I needed to get her somewhere private, then maybe get her to quit being so scared and tell me what the hell she was doing here. If it was to take a walk on the wild side with some bikers—which a lot of girls did—then I needed to point out what a stupid fucking idea that was. And then I’d tell her exactly what it meant for the club to have the chief of police’s daughter found screaming in a brother’s bedroom.
