Okay.
I was okay.
My wrists hurt.
My cheek hurt.
But I was okay.
I needed to focus. I needed to...
“Fuck,” I said, my eyes going huge, my shock-suppressed heartbeat going into overdrive.
Because there was a light. A headlight. Coming toward me.
Fuck.
I needed to go.
And the car was totaled.
I reached over, wrenching the door open. Then I saw what I hit. A downed tree. Great.
But I had to go. The rumble of the bike was getting closer. I had to go.
So I did. I jumped over the tree and I hauled ass, my bare feet slapping against the ground as I went, my wet body somehow getting wetter. But all I could think of was escape.
It was them. It had to be them.
And they were coming for me.
I had to keep going. No matter how tired I was. How weak.
The growl of the bike got closer. Like it had somehow managed to skirt the tree and was coming up behind me.
Shit.
I broke my rule, looking over my shoulder.
I got to see the outline of a man on a bike before I felt myself falling.
Then I hit. Hard. Down one side, the road burning the skin down my arm and thigh, the impact knocking the wind out of me.
I groaned, trying to scramble because the bike's motor cut off. And that could only mean one thing. He was coming for me.
I had to go. I had to get away.
So I pushed up onto my hands and knees, trying to scramble away.
“Babe, what the fuck you doin'?”TwoReignWeird fuckin' night.
I tore out of the compound. Sick of the shit. Sick of the bitches. And the constant nagging feeling that Mo wasn't the only rat. He was gone. Taken care of. Dead. Body buried in the woods where no one would find him. Put there by me. And Cash, my brother. Literally. A blood brother. Not one of my MC brothers. But Cash didn't seem to be carrying around the heavy load. Which made sense. He was vice, I was prez. It was my fuckin' job to carry that burden.
And I had a feeling we weren't done with the blood spilling.
And I needed out.
So I went to the bar around the corner, breaking up some bullshit fight the Mallick brothers had gotten themselves into, had a couple rounds, the hit the road.
Only to find some bitch running down the road on skidrow.
Stopped to help her.
Wanted to fuck her.
Lost her to one of those Mallick's I had stepped between earlier.
Felt the unfulfilled desire stab through me.
But I wasn't fighting a friend for some random hot bitch.
Then the crash.
Even over the rain and wind and my bike... I could hear it. The metal crunching, the glass breaking.
It was no surprise. Out driving in a hurricane was stupid as fuck.
I drove up just seconds after, the slick silver late model hammered into a downed tree in the road.
And then the weirdest fucking thing happened.
The door opened.
And some bitch ran the fuck out.
Like I was the devil and she was trying to save her damn soul.
Why the fuck she would be running from a car accident was completely beyond me, so I followed. Wanted to make sure she was alright. See if she needed to call someone.
I might have been a viscous, often violent fuck, but I wasn't gonna leave some chick in the middle of the road in the middle of the damn night during a hurricane with her mangled, un-driveable car.
I pulled around the tree, closing in on her.
Then she looked over her shoulder at me. And if I wasn't mistaken (and I fuckin' never am) she looked terrified.
And, as if in slow motion, she fell. Right down on her side. Hitting the ground with a muffled groan.
I cut the engine and she was up on her hands and knees trying to scramble away.
What did I say?
Weird fuckin' night.
“Babe, what the fuck you doin'?” I asked, going up behind her, looking down at her scrambling body. And I mean body. Girl was fuckin' blessed. Tiny but with a nice plump ass, thin waist, slim legs. Short though. She was short enough to be mistaken for a kid if I hadn't gotten a glimpse of that ass and those hips.
“I'm not going back,” she said, her voice fierce, but it shook. “You'll have to kill me. I'm not going back.”
The fuck?
Kill her?
Bitch must have hit her head or something in the crash.
Great. I had a trip to the hospital ahead of me.
All I wanted was dry clothes and my fucking bed.
She finally stopped scrambling, moving to sit her nice ass on the wet ground to look up at me.
Fuck me.
Okay.
I needed to remind myself she had a head injury. Otherwise I'd have grabbed her and fucked her right there in the street. Right in the middle of a god damn hurricane.
She had one of those faces. Those delicate ones. All plump cheeks, soft chin, and big eyes. Big gray eyes to be exact. And her hair was long. And it was red. Soaked and darkened, but you could make out the red. There was no mistaking it.
She was fuckin' perfect.
And I had to be a damn gentleman because she might have brain damage.
Just my luck.
“I'm not going back,” she repeated, her voice close to hysterical this time.
“I ain't takin' you nowhere but maybe the hospital. Think you knocked your brain loose in that crash, darlin'.”
“I don't need a hospital,” she said, eyeing me funny. Like she was trying to figure something out. “And I haven't knocked my brain loose.”
That last part sounded almost haughty.
“Well I ain't leavin' you out here in the street so you're goin' somewhere.”
“With you?”
“Yeah, babe. With me.”
“On your bike?”
Jesus Christ. Was she dense or something?”
“Yeah. On my bike. See any other vehicles out here?”
“Where will you take me?”
“My place.”
Wait. What? What the fuck? I couldn't take her to my place. That was the stupidest fuckin' thing I could...
“Okay,” she said, her face looking... relieved? She was relieved to go to my place.
Seriously.
Brain damaged.ThreeSummerMaybe it was a stupid plan. Okay. It was totally a stupid plan. But I was in the middle of bumfuck nowhere next to a stolen car that belonged to a very dangerous man who would do anything in his power to get me back. To get his leverage back. So I needed to get gone. And Tall, Dark, And Deadly was really my only option.