my face. I love the heat, but not this fucking damp, muggy, clogging kind that chokes throats, overheating man and bike alike. The smog makes me want to cough. It’s worse up here than it is in the lower altitudes.
Emma leans against me, pressing her cheek to the back of my cut. She’s clutching my waist for dear life, still apparently not used to riding, and especially not at the roaring speed I like. I swear I can feel the begrudging in her grip, feel her glare at my back every time she lifts her head even though I can’t see her face.
I’ll probably fucking never stop loving her anger or her hatred for me. But then, that guy who took her from me is damn right; I’ve always liked my women spirited.
Impulsively, I reach down and cup her thigh, pressing it into my hip.
Unable to risk releasing me, Emma’s arms tense, as if she’s trying to choke me like a boa constrictor. I grunt a laugh.
Apparently, she’s realized her grip isn’t getting her anywhere, because she loosens her hold. She turns her face the other way, and the movement has the distinct feel of her trying desperately to shut me out.
I grin and pat her thigh, and swear I hear her teeth grinding even over my engine. Fuck, I can’t wait to be inside her, to feel her nails rake across my back and her pussy milking my cock.
And to dole out the kind of suffering that will make her realize she never even came close to seeing the monster in me up to now.
I’d nearly lost her today, and having her back causes triumph to roar through me like fire. It goes straight to my cock, and I love the almost painful need to possess her.
Damn. I feel like a conqueror, having stolen back his runaway bride, ready to reclaim her, remind her what it means to be owned by a fucking Outlaw.
A normal man would have probably felt remorse, self-loathing for having blown that piece of shit away. Not me. I feel a victorious rush of adrenaline. The fucker stole what’s mine, and now that I know he snatched her—that she didn’t ride off with him willingly—his death brings a satisfaction that would probably scare the shit out of her if she knew.
The savagery of his death makes me feel like an animal, like something out of one those movies Rat loves about barbarians who pillage villages and drag women off over their shoulders.
I’m glad I killed the fuck, but who was he? Why did he take her? So many questions, each as unanswerable as the last. I’m not convinced she doesn’t know the man, or at least who he was working for and what they want with her.
We’ll have to have another little chat about all the secrets she’s hiding.
My fists choke the handlebars in a white-knuckled grip. She had the fucking audacity to steal the guy’s wallet. She’d been planning to run again. Oh, is she going to hurt for this. Her time in that cell in Casper’s is going to look like a fucking walk in the park next to what happens to her tonight.
The thought of all the things I’ll do to her soothes the anger raging in me. Until I consider what happened between us in the nights after Cap was shot. I’d let myself get close to her. Won’t happen again.
Was it even real? Or was I imagining the warmth in her smiles, the soft sighs of contentment as her body pressed against mine throughout the night?
My lips actually peel back from my teeth. I almost stop the bike and drag her off to the nearest cavern. I almost bend her ass up, face down and plough into her then and there, and to hell with getting to Pops’. To hell with Prez waiting for us.
Club business always comes first. Only the knowledge of this fact holds off my wrath. But after…
A few minutes later, we top a hill, and Pops’ comes into view in the near distance.
Owned by an old biker we’ve always called Pops, the bar and grill that serves as our White Springs chapter sits at the foot of Arrowhead Peak, a mountain that casts long shadows over the nearby towns. It’s a two-story building complete with the usual neon sign and bright lights of a Vegas establishment, but it bears our coat of arms, the skull with the two guns drawn, Wild West style, between the words