Junkyard Cats - Faith Hunter Page 0,19

the confines of the office, he was taller than I had thought, broader. His scruff of beard was maybe two days old. And bloody hell, that achingly familiar scent. His hand lifted and I thought he might remove my orange glasses. Something inside my chest did somersaults as my entire system responded to a man I didn’t even know. Carefully, deliberately, I stepped back and didn’t touch him.

“I respect that,” he said, dropping his hand. “Warrior honor.”

Unsettled, I bumped into the fridge, used it as an excuse, opened two more beers, wiped them both with a skin wand, and set one for him on the table at the dining booth.

I had stripped the booth from a high-end RV and it, along with the RV bed, were intended to hide what the office really was. From Jagger’s reaction, I wasn’t sure I had succeeded. Taking the beer, Jagger stood beside the leather bench at one side of the booth, opened the bottle, and took a swig. Then took a step toward me. And another.

“Well, you gave me a couple beers and entertainment.” His eyes sparkled, like milk-chocolate fireworks. “Best battle I’ve been part of in weeks. As first dates go it’s been pretty good.”

He stopped in front of me. Close. Too close. The progression of the bottle to my mouth didn’t stutter but it was a near thing. Bottle rim at my lips, I said, “Date? Kinda presumptuous there, Asshole.”

Jagger laughed, the sound filling the office, vibrating in my chest and lower, into the part of me that felt . . . something. Something full of need and loneliness.

“When your kutte’s tracking sensor went off, we took bets if it was really you. Shared photos from back then. Told stories. I can see the twelve-year-old Shining in your grown-up features. Pointed chin, high cheekbones. Eyes.”

This time he did reach for my glasses. I seized his wrist with a gloved hand, stopping him. His hand was tanned and dark and had long black hairs that curled at the knuckles. He stopped, his hand only centimeters from my face.

“Seeing as Shining Smith just won me a month’s wages, I figured least I could do is buy you dinner and a movie,” he finished.

“Not my name,” I said, ignoring the kutte situation, and pushing at his mind with my blood. If he was already being infected with my own special nanobots, I’d be able to alter his thoughts.

Into my earbud, Mateo said, “Setting the screens for auto-load so you can follow the cats. Consider it entertainment on your date.” And, yeah. There was some major snark this time.

“I don’t date Outlaws,” I said, pushing harder. “I remember Mama’s boyfriend too much.”

I didn’t date, period. Not in years, not that I’d say that. It would come across as even more of a challenge. Outlaws did love a challenge, and being told “no” was a major dare. I didn’t know him at all, but somehow, I knew Jagger wouldn’t use force. Instead I would become his goal, to wheedle, charm, pursue, stalk, and court—what an OMW made-man would do to get whatever or whomever they had been denied.

Jagger pulled from my grip, walked back, and sprawled on the bench seat, one knee bent, his boot heel on the wood beneath the leather cushion. Another man might have put his boot on the leather itself. Something about the consideration made me like him and I couldn’t afford to like him.

“Ladies tell me I’m adorable,” he said.

“Old Ladies are biker chicks. Not me.” I wasn’t and never would be an Old Lady. That was a term for one of the women who married into the Outlaws or became a longtime girlfriend. I was not a goal to win or a woman to pursue. I was way more than that.

His expression shifted and he sat upright, sliding his hand along my table, where my own hands had been at breakfast. Oh, bugger. It had been less than twelve hours since I sat there, ate there, my hands on the surface. And I hadn’t wiped it down.

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah. I never thought about how that might sound to you. You did what the rest of us couldn’t. You stopped the Mama-Bot. You saved our butts and earned the patches to prove it. Sorry.”

“Don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.” But I did. I was Little Girl. I was the only living female made-man in the Company at the time. I’d paid my dues. Lost everything. Nearly died.