a vise.”
He and a few of the other guys near him laugh. Dragon snorts.
I give a listless smile and head back to the bar, finding Gin serving up beers.
“Hey, Gin, you mind if I borrow that shirt of yours after all?”
“Sure.” She disappears and comes back with a short sleeved dark tee.
Without a bra, it’ll be uncomfortable, but it’s clean, and it’ll be the first shirt I’ve worn since I’ve met Spider that doesn’t make me feel like a Jezebel.
I go up to Spider’s room and change into the tee, leaving the wretched shirt he made me wear on the bathroom counter, resisting the urge to burn the thing out of spite.
Gin’s shirt is about two sizes too big, but that helps to hide the lack of a bra underneath. It also reaches past my hips, which means it covers up the waist of the low-rise jeans. Now my sex isn’t almost showing, and my backside isn’t practically spilling out for the whole clubhouse to see every time I bend over.
“Thanks,” I tell her, when I return to the bar. I pick up another tray for the patio, feeling a sneaky sense of victory, as though I’ve gotten one over on Spider.
“Any time,” she says.
Out on the patio, the roar of bike engines fills the air and four motorcycles roll into the lot.
One look at the rider in the lead, and a jolt shoots through me, dancing along my spine. The rush makes my hands shake as I set the orders down on the table, not paying attention to who I’m serving.
Spider pulls up to within a few feet of the railing that runs along the deck, turns off the engine and toes the bike’s kickstand down. Reaper and Striker pull up on either side of him and do the same. Rat pulls in last behind them.
Rat takes off his goggles and hangs them on the handlebars of his bike, and Striker and Reaper do the same with their helmets before both of them dismount. Reaper and Striker start up a conversation with Snake, Arson and Cap nearby, while Rat claps Spider on the shoulder.
“Catch up with you later, man. I gotta go help Wire. These guys want those hidden cameras installed. And I gotta look into that shit we found.”
Cameras again. More of them. I shudder.
Spider nods, wiping sweat off of his face with his palm.
Spider’s only got one helmet, and he always gives it to me when I ride with him, but he’s not wearing it now, either. I hate the twinge of annoyance and concern that prick me for this, as I picture him wiping out and cracking his fool head open while he’s out on the road. It bothers me that I even noticed at all.
He swings off his bike, lithe and amazingly graceful despite his size and muscled bulk. The summer sun makes his slicked back hair look like a halo of gold. He approaches the railing.
“How did it go?” Dragon calls from his seat. He must be referring to whatever business Spider and the others were out on. “Find anything useful?”
“I’m not sure what we found. It was fucking weird. Goddamned waste of time.” Frustration roughens Spider’s tone. “We won’t know much until Rat looks into it.”
If Dragon responds, I don’t take it in.
The deep timbre of Spider his voice wrests me from my stupor. Shaking myself, I realize I’ve been standing there staring at him like an idiot with my empty tray dangling from my hand.
“Wildcat,” he adds to me. His gaze flicks over my shirt, and a muscle in his jaw ticks. “Come here.”
My heart batters my chest. What was it Dee said when Gin offered me a different shirt? That’s the shirt Spider wants her to wear.
I draw an unsteady breath and set the tray down, my hands shaking. It had seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing, changing out of a shirt soiled with beer. I’d thought he couldn’t possibly find fault with it. Now, I’m starting to wish I hadn’t changed out of it. Spider’s glaring at the shirt, his eyes burning so intensely that I’m surprised the cloth doesn’t burn away to nothing.
Around a couple of tables and to the stairs I walk, feeling a rush of adrenaline the closer I get to him. My fists twist the bottom of the far less revealing tee, my palms sweating.
It takes everything to keep my eyes on his, to force aside my fear and walk, head high, toward him.
As soon as