Rider: An MC Club Alpha Male Romance by Helen Lucas Read Free Book Online Page A

tattoo shops later, we ended up at a surprisingly decent looking building—a three-flat with a backyard and a big driveway that Fang pulled into.
     
    “Home sweet home,” he said with a sigh as he heaved himself off his bike. He was agile and light on his feet, I could tell, but he also had pain when he moved—he just worked through it.
     
    I wasn’t sure how I knew that, but it was apparent to me. Maybe because it was something that so many of Fred’s friends from the service had after years of being wounded, of being wounded and then continuing on, continuing their battles, whether in the field or back in the civilian world.
     
    A world that could be just as brutal and ruthless and uncaring as the mountains of Afghanistan or the sands of Iraq.
     
    Fang unlocked the door and we entered his first floor place. It was, indeed, the consummate bachelor pad: a moth-eaten futon dominated the small living room, with a TV and an Xbox directly in front of it. No table.
     
    Was I seriously going to live here for the next few months?
     
    I must have given Fang a desperate, disgusted look, because he scowled.
     
    “Fuck, I knew this wasn’t going to work…” he growled, throwing my helmet down on the couch.
     
    “No… No, it’s fine,” I said, reluctantly, putting my things down.
     
    “Come with me—I’ll show you where you’re going to sleep.”
     
    I followed Fang into the next room (I was honestly surprised it had more than just a living room) where a twin bed greeted me, pressed up against the wall with a little night stand beside it.
     
    On the other side of the room was a bookshelf, absolutely stuffed. So. Fang was a reader.
     
    And not just the usual stuff. The classics. Thucydides. Herodotus. The Illiad. He was a veteran, after all—I wondered if he found something particularly stirring in those old books, those old tales of war and battle? Maybe, just maybe… There was more to Fang than what met the eye.
     
    And then, he also had children’s books: chapter books, picture books, Harry Potter. This was one hell of a weird mix of reading material. Maybe those other books—the old ones, the heavy classics—maybe that was all stuff he hoped to be able to read someday. Hell, for all I knew, he could be barely literate, just holding onto a bunch of books that he thought he might, someday, be able to get through.
     
    But what could be in those books that he wanted to read? It could be that he found, best expressed in those ancient texts, the things he had experienced overseas, fighting alongside other soldiers, other warriors.
     
    The things that Fred had experienced.
     
    “So,” Fang said from where he stood in the doorway. “I’m out of toilet paper, so I’m just going to leave a roll of paper towels on the bathroom counter. Hope that’s okay.”
     
    Okay, so maybe he wasn’t exactly a refined warrior poet.
     
    Still, as I turned to follow him into the kitchen, I couldn’t help but find myself watching his every movement, the way his shoulders and muscles moved beneath his jacket. He stripped it off, revealing his bare arms—he wore a tight wife beater that seemed to be a size or two too small for him.
     
    “You’ve got a lot of tattoos,” I murmured. “Did you get all of those in the service?”
     
    “Some,” he said with a shrug.
     
    On one arm was a Japanese warrior, a samurai, but with a skull for a head—a zombie warrior, skin stripped off, posed with a sword ready to strike. It was beautifully done, a rippling masterpiece of tightly wound art that hugged his muscles.
     
    The other arm depicted a carp—what the Japanese call koi—riding up splashing waves, seeming to disappear into the water, only to reappear as a dragon on his shoulder, snaking around to his collar bone.
     
    I couldn’t help myself. I reached out to touch the koi. He looked at me hard, with a serious gleam in his eyes.
     
    “Didn’t anyone ever teach you any manners?” he snarled. I withdrew my