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

hand but he grabbed it and forced it to his shoulder.
     
    I felt his tight, tense muscle, barely contained within his warm flesh. But I also felt…
     
    “Scars,” he said, simply. “I got that one done after I came back. To hide the scars.”
     
    “You’re probably tired of hearing people thank you for your service.”
     
    “No one thanks me for my service. No one thanks any of the Damned—we’re all the rejects, the misfits. The ones who got chewed up and spit out. The ones you’d rather forget about.”
     
    “So, why are you turning on them?” I asked, meeting his steely glare. “We should be enemies, but you’re welcoming me into your home.”
     
    Honestly, ‘welcoming’ was a stretch. But here we were.
     
    Fang’s hand shot out, grabbed me by my collar and forced me close. I gasped, feeling his strength, the way he moved me through the air as if I weighed nothing.
     
    “What…” I started to say but he cut me off.
     
    “You want to know why I’m selling out those sons of bitches?” he growled. I could smell his breath, smell the cigarettes and whiskey that clung to his lips. He wanted me to flinch, to fear him, but I had already stared death in the eyes only a few days ago, and nothing could make me flinch.
     
    “That’s right,” I whispered, letting the words slip out of my lips like water whipping along over pebbles in a stream. “I want to know why you’re selling out those sons of bitches. Actually, I don’t give a damn. But what I want to know is this: if you’re the type to sell our your sworn brothers in crime, what’s to keep you from fucking me over at the last minute?”
     
    He snarled, rage barely contained. I thought for a moment he was going to throw me across the kitchen, but he controlled himself.
     
    “Because I don’t want to die with those bastards. I’m tired of this life, but I don’t want to give up on living. I just want a different life.”
     
    “So, why don’t you leave?”
     
    The look in his eyes all but broke my heart—the look of a boxer, cornered in the ring and weathering blow after blow. A bead of sweat formed over his eyebrow and I saw the tendons in his well-muscled shoulders tense.
     
    “Because they’d kill me. The only way you get out of the Damned is in a body bag or a coffin. You die in a shoot out with another gang or some coked up addicts or the cops—or you’ll die when the other Damned murder you for looking at condo prices.”
     
    “So, your life is in our hands,” I concluded, still holding his unblinking gaze. He nodded curtly.
     
    “Looks that way.”
     
    “So, I guess you’d better be nicer to me.”
     
    He let me go and I felt like I was descending back to earth. My head felt whoozy and I wanted to sit down, but I couldn’t let myself look weak or fragile in front of Fang.
     
    The fact was… I was kind of turned on. It seemed so wrong, so terrible and unprofessional and even—unfaithful. But if I were being honest, in my heart of hearts, I could have torn that wife beater off Fang’s chiseled flesh and used my lips to catalog every single turn and flourish of the tattoo artist’s needle.
     
    “You’ll sleep in my bed,” he murmured, breaking my reverie.
     
    “You don’t have to do that. I’m happy to take the couch.”
     
    “Couch is more comfortable. I sleep on the couch all the time myself,” he said with a wry grin. I could tell he was lying. I liked the way his face moved, twisted, and contorted when he smiled.
     
    I unpacked the small backpack of things I had brought with me, setting them in the bathroom and on the nightstand next to his bed. It was made, but the sheets hadn’t been washed for a while. They smelled like a man—the scent of sweat, tobacco, and strength clung to them, entered deep into the fibers and I couldn’t help but take it in.
     
    It was a scent I hadn’t experienced since Fred died. Since before, in fact. Since he had gone, since he had been deployed the last