All Dogs Bite (Club Chrome 2)

-1-

Fire wracked Bronx Harris’ body as he ran blindly away from the deadly zing and crack of gunfire, gripping his side as blood pumped from his body like an open faucet. Fuck! He wasn’t going to die face-down in a dirty alley, not like this! The shouts and screaming tires receded into the city night as he painfully climbed the first fire escape he could grab and pull down. The metal groaned in the night, echoing like a squealing narc pressed too hard by the cops but he couldn’t stop. If he stopped, they’d find him and if they found him — he was dead. Drops of rain began pelting him in an uncharacteristically cold storm as he made his way to a window cracked far enough to push through. Swallowing the agony from the gunshot wound leaking the life out of his body, he slid through the window and collapsed on the floor, black dots swimming in front of his eyes. Something crashed to the floor but he was too weak to climb to his feet and run before whoever lived in this apartment, came with a shotgun. Hell, this was better than the grime of an alley, right? He blinked against the coming darkness, his eyes adjusting to the gloom just as he was about to pass out from blood loss…whoever lived here liked quirky art. Not his scene but he supposed it wasn’t so bad if this was his last look around this thing called life. A delirious smile found his lips as a woman came into view. Hey, the devil had a sense of humor it seemed. Ahh, a strawberry blonde. His favorite. And looks like luscious tits beneath that sleep shirt…yeah, so maybe dying wasn’t going to be so bad…

Her mouth moved as if she were trying to say something but Bronx couldn’t hear her. Hell, he couldn’t hear anything.

***

Delainey Jones gasped as the hot stranger passed out on her carpet, all leather and bad attitude, as if conjured from her deepest, most secret fantasies. Should she call 911? The police? Zoe? She flipped the light and swallowed a shriek when she saw the blood trail leading from the window to where he’d stopped to pass out. He was hurt! Wasn’t it her moral obligation to help the poor man? What if he’s an axe murderer? Delainey paused and gave the area around him a quick look. Okay, no axe. Maybe not an axe murderer. But he could be a psychopath just the same. Maybe this was divine intervention and it was his time to go. Or maybe she’s supposed to help him because of all the windows he had to crawl through, it had to be hers because only she had the tools to save his life. She frowned, caught in her own web of indecision, chewing on her bottom lip as the moments ticked by. So, she couldn’t just stand there and watch him bleed, right? Right.

Many, many moons ago when she’d been trying to find a respectable, reliable career choice, she’d taken ROTC nursing classes her senior year in high school. It was there she learned she emphatically did not want to be a nurse and she’d rather wait tables or dance with pizza signs on the street corner than deal with sick people but she had managed to pick up a few skills that might come in handy at the moment. Time to get to it. She grunted with the effort it took to roll him out of his leather jacket and then gently pulled his shirt up to reveal a small, gaping wound in his side dribbling blood. Oh God — she straightened — that was a gunshot wound! This was a horse of a different color. Gunshot wound? Who’d been shooting at him, or rather, what’d he done to deserve getting shot? She surveyed him more critically. Jealous husband? Yes, she could definitely see that. The crimson smears did little to disguise the hard, chiseled abs of that physique. Yep. Jealous husband is totally believable. Maybe it served him right. No one liked to be cuckolded. He groaned in the most piteous of manners and she softened a bit more, realizing her moral compass wouldn’t allow her to sit and pass judgment on the poor man while he was grievously wounded. “You might’ve deserved what you got but I can’t just let you die on my floor. What if you came back and haunted me? Total disclosure, I’m scared of the paranormal so that just wouldn’t work for me, you haunting my ass because I was stuck in a moral quandary,” she muttered as she rolled him over to check for an exit wound. Hallelujah! An equally sized hole was punched through his backside, telling her that the bullet wasn’t still lodged in his guts somewhere. After further examination, Delainey concluded that the bullet had also missed every major organ — luck of the Irish, this one — but he could still die from blood loss if she didn’t get that wound to stop leaking.

She ran to her bathro

om, grabbing rubbing alcohol and butterfly bandages and then hustled back, still not quite sure she was doing the right thing — what if she made it worse? Maybe she ought to stop playing nurse and call 911? — but even with the doubts ringing in her head, she didn’t stop. “If I end up killing you, please remember that I was doing my best to help,” she said, hands shaking as she washed the wound on both sides and then with a silent prayer she pinched the skin together to apply the butterfly bandage. The wound was small enough but it probably could’ve used stitching — hell no, she wasn’t going to try that! — but she was relieved to see that the blood had stopped at the very least so maybe he was going to make it long enough to ask his name. She rocked back on her heels, slightly amazed that he’d slept through all of her clumsy ministrations and then, on impulse, pushed a lock of dirty blond hair from his face. Wow. He had the face of an angel. So pretty. What the heck had he gotten himself into? Delainey grabbed the leather jacket and examined it more closely. She squinted at the patch on his arm and then straightened with her mouth gaped. Oh heavens to Betsy! He was part of that awful Road Dog motorcycle gang. The one that The Kings were always at odds with. Maybe she ought to call Zoe after all. Delainey bit her lip with indecision. Zoe Delacourte was her best friend and currently off living la vida loca with her biker bad boys, Jax and Hunter, who just happened to be the leaders of The Kings, the rival motorcycle gang. Maybe she’d have some insight as to what to do with this particular bad boy. But then again, it didn’t seem right to rat the poor guy out when he was obviously having a terrible night. She could always call in the morning. Where was the harm in waiting a few hours? At the very least she could ask his name and find out what’d happened, right? Darn her innate nosiness. Zoe had always said her natural curiosity was wasted in her current career as a graphic artist. Delainey settled cautiously in the sofa nearest to the injured stranger and grabbed the throw blanket to gently place over him. Grannie Jane would turn over in her grave if she saw her crocheted masterpiece draped over a criminal or maybe she’d find it quite amusing. Grannie Jane had been an odd duck.

Sort of like her, she supposed.

***

Bronx groaned as the pain returned with a vengeance, slamming into him like a mack truck and leaving behind a mangled mess to contend with. He opened his eyes and blinked sluggishly, struggling to focus on the spinning room. Worse than a tequila hangover, he thought blearily to himself as he tried to keep it together. Where was he? Think, Bronx. Where the hell did you end up? His vision finally cleared and he heard light snoring to his left. Startled, he swiveled his head slowly to find a disheveled strawberry blond, tucked into a quilt, oblivious to the world and the fact that a bloody stranger had slept on her floor. He started to move and winced as the fresh searing pain of his wound reminded him that he wasn’t about to go partying anytime soon. His hand strayed gingerly to the wound and found bandages taped to his side. Had she done that? He couldn’t remember anything beyond crawling through that open window. He must’ve passed out from the blood loss. Ah hell, this was some shit to get himself into.

“Oh!” the soft, surprised, distinctly feminine gasp caused him to turn and run right into the blue-eyed gaze of the woman who’d saved his life. They locked stares and he was pinned by something he hadn’t felt in a long-ass time — hell, if ever — and it freaked him out more than a little.

“What the fuck you staring at?” he growled and she rose up on her elbow to scowl. “Stop fucking looking at me like that.”

“Like what? Like a wounded stranger who came barreling into my house to die in the middle of the night?” she said, scowling as she rose to a sitting position. Her hair — crazy, damn hair — was loosely piled on top of her head and all manner of bits and tendrils sprang free with wild abandon and he was briefly compelled to reach out and touch it to see if it was as soft as it looked but he caught himself before doing so. The woman continued to regard him with open curiosity and he supposed he didn’t have to be such a dick but the words had just come out. “Sorry,” he bit out, nearly choking on the words. “Caught me off guard. You got a cigarette? I could use one right about now.”

“A cigarette is the last thing you need,” she disagreed, rising to walk to the kitchen. He caught a glimpse of generous thigh and his imagination sent a vision of milky skin and strawberry curls on her pussy straight to his cock, proving that even shot up, he could still get it up — which was not something that was helpful right now. “I do have coffee, though. Want some?”

“If that’s all you’re offering,” he said grumpily, rubbing at the scruff on his chin. He rose stiffly from the floor and limped to the sofa where he surmised she’d slept — she’d slept beside him? Why hadn’t she just called the cops? — and fell into the soft cushions, swallowing an embarrassing, unmanly yelp as the pain sent stars flying behind his eyes. Fuck. A gunshot wound was serious shit. He supposed he ought to be thankful this was the first time he’d taken a bullet, considering the kind of people he ran with. “Black, no sugar or cream,” he told her as she brought him a steaming mug. His shaking fingers wrapped around the mug and he took a bracing sip. He risked a short, “Thanks” before going back to his coffee, not quite sure what to say given the situation but she didn’t seem to have any such reservations about jumping right in with the obvious.

“So…who shot you?”

“Better you keep your questions to yourself. Safer that way.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have climbed through my window,” she countered, her blue eyes dancing. “So…you’re a Road Dog?”

“How’d you know?” he asked and she pointed to his leather jacket. Ah, the patch. “Pretty observant. What else have you figured out?”

“I figured out that you probably didn’t get shot over Girl Scout cookies. Was it illegal?”

“What do you think?”

“I think it was.”

“Then you have your answer.”

“Did you deserve it?”

He shot her an irritated look. “You’re sure full of fucking questions and no, I didn’t deserve it. I got double-crossed and when I find who did this to me, I’m gonna fuck up their world. See? Better off that you stop asking questions.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Are you fucking deaf?” Who was this chick? And what the hell was she hoping to gain by asking all these questions. A sudden suspicion entered his mind. “You working for the Kings?”

She straightened and laughed as if the question was something silly to ask. Her laughter had a musical quality that he liked but didn’t fucking like being laughed at. “What’s so funny?”

“Just that you would think that I would run with a motorcycle gang. I mean, it’s kind of flattering, you know? I never imagined that someone might consider me a badass like that.”

He saw her point — she was wholesome, down to the white T-shirt and the white panties he could see through her shirt, which was fucking sexy, by the way — and grudgingly doused his quick fuse. “All right, you’re no motorcycle chick. So what’s your deal? Why didn’t you call the cops?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Should I have? I mean, are you going to hurt me?”

“If I were, do you think I would tell you?”

“Fair point.” A beat passed between them. “So…what happens now?”

He smirked. “We could fuck.”

She gasped and her cheeks colored even as her eyes widened with shock and maybe a little arousal. “Excuse me? Where I come from you don’t just throw out an invitation like that to a complete stranger. I mean, goodness! I’m not that kind of girl,” she finished primly.

“No? Too bad cuz I’m exactly that kind of man,” he said, sighing as he took another sip of the coffee, mildly enjoying the odd exchange between them. “But you’d have to expect something of the sort from someone who’d been shot doing something illegal, right?”

“Are you a bad man?”

He grinned in spite of the pain splitting his side.

“The worst.”

She drew back, not quite sure what to make of him, biting down on her lip in a way that made him want to do it for her. “I could call the cops.”

“You could but you won’t.”

“And why won’t I?”

“Because if you were going to, you would’ve already.”

She tucked her feet beneath her but not before he caught a tantalizing view of pretty pedicured toes. He swallowed, hiding the immediate, visceral shot to the groin seeing her painted toes caused, and realized he had two choices: one, he could leave and in his weakened state, be a sitting a duck for whomever had tried to put him down; or two, he could hide out with this odd but intriguing woman while he recovered, buying him some time to rest up and formulate a plan to find out who he was going to put in the ground for this betrayal. A quick look over the rim of his mug told him more about the woman — she was thick. Big tits, round hips and thick thighs. She’d be relatively easy to seduce. Fat chicks had terrible self-esteem, right? All he had to do was show her a little loving and she’d fall at his feet, ready to do whatever he needed her to do. Not a bad plan. Yeah, not bad at all. This place was a perfect hide-out, too. No one would ever think to look for him here. “So…my name’s Bronx…what’s yours?”

“Delainey but my friends call me Dee.”

He waited a moment, then asked in a low, teasing voice. “Are we going to be friends?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, watching him. “Logic tells me probably not but…there’s something about you that’s pretty exciting.”

“You mean, aside from the obvious?” He pointed at his bandaged wound and she grinned. Hell, she had a great smile — in fact, it light up her whole face and suddenly, she was almost pretty. Okay, he was downplaying things a bit. She wasn’t hard on the eyes. Everything about her was soft and sweet, a definite 180 from the chicks he usually fucked around with and his fat cock was nearly busting through his jeans, ready to agree with him.