Marked By The Devil (Devil's Riders 5)

“Giving you a ride.”

He held out the helmet, offering it to me. I stared dumbly at it, then back at his handsome face.

“Where to?”

“Huh?”

“You said you got off early, so I came back. You want breakfast? I know a good spot.”

Oh, how I wanted to say yes. He made me nervous. But he was being so nice. And he was so very, very nice to look at.

But I didn’t have time. I had to get to my day job. And I was so tired. I didn’t have any room for distractions, especially one that looked like trouble.

Callaway looked like he knew everything about women and sex and lots of other things I should definitely stay away from. Meanwhile, I hadn’t gone out with a boy since ninth grade. The year my folks died in an accident. The same accident that put my little brother into a coma. A coma he woke from briefly now and then and then almost immediately went back under.

My aunt had taken me in and helped with the paperwork to take care of Tommy. But when I turned eighteen, he had become my responsibility and my aunt had washed her hands of us.

She wasn’t unkind. She just hadn’t ever wanted kids of her own. And she had done her best for us without any actual enthusiasm.

After I moved out, she sold her little house and moved down south. She wanted to be warm all year. She told me I had an open invitation to visit her.

A small, unkind voice in the back of my mind told me that she knew I never would.

She knew I would never leave Tommy. Never risk his waking up and my being so far away, not being there when he needed me.

All these thoughts passed through my overtired brain as the gorgeous, somewhat disreputable-looking man waited patiently for me to respond. It was probably less than a minute, but it felt like a lot longer to me.

“Oh. No. That’s okay.”

He tilted his head to the side.

“You got a ride? I can follow you to Mae’s diner. It’s real good.”

I shook my head swiftly. I wished I had a car! It would have made my eighteen-hour workday a lot easier. Then again, I was usually so tired I was delirious. I caught lots of cat naps on the bus.

“No. No car.”

His head remained tilted to the side, his eyes raking over me. But he didn’t leer, like so many men did. He drank me in like his eyeballs had straws in them.

He was . . . intense. But not scary, which was odd, considering how he looked.

He stepped closer and I realized how tall he was. How big and how strong. He probably could have broken me in two. I still wasn’t afraid.

Wary, yes. Skittish, but not frightened.

“Is it the bike? Is that what’s bothering you?”

He ran his hand through his hair.

“No. I mean, yes.”

He cracked a smile, and I was once again struck by how insanely attractive he was. The man oozed sex appeal. Not that I actually knew a thing about sex!

“Which is it?”

“It’s . . . I have to go.”

“Okay. I’ll drop you anywhere you want.”

“I have to go to work. I—”

“Like I said, I’ll take you. We can catch a raincheck on the food.”

I had no answer for that. I stood perfectly still as he came closer, lowering the helmet onto my head. I broke out in chills at the gentle way he pushed my hair away and fastened the chin strap. I was mesmerized by the look in his eyes.

It wasn’t just warm. It was blazing hot.

He took my hand and rubbed his cheek on it. I got shivers from the feeling of his skin on mine. It was so strangely intimate. Almost like he was a cat, wanting to be petted. He smiled at me, this time looking like a wolf. He squeezed my hand and tugged me toward the bike. ‘Bike’ was a laughably soft word for the giant metal machine he rode. I tried not to shiver when I saw the Devil’s pitchfork emblazoned on the fuel tank.

“Where are we going?”

“Oakley’s.”

He nodded.

“I know where that is.” He helped me onto the bike. “You always pull back-to-back shifts?”

“Yes. I mean, I take every shift I can get.”

He frowned a little bit, then shook his head.

“That’s a lot of work for a little girl like you.”

He climbed on in front of me, then reached back to drag me against him. I gasped at the feeling of our bodies pressing together. It was by far the most intimate thing I’d felt in my life. And the smell of him . . . leather and oil and something else. Pine. He smelled like the woods on a cool autumn night.

I shook my head at that fanciful thought. Like I’d ever been in the woods at night!