Six months ago.
STANDING OUTSIDE MY OWN DAMN place, not even one foot in the door of my penthouse, and she was already fucking with my head. Mother of God, this woman. Sighing, I punched in my security code, then pushed open my steel-reinforced front door.
I didn’t know what hit me first, her scent or the sight of her standing in front of the wall of windows overlooking a Miami Beach sunrise.
“He returns.” In a little silk number barely covering her ass, Kendall didn’t even spare me a glance as she dished out her own special brand of charm.
“Afraid I wouldn’t, chica?” Tired as fuck from a rescue mission last night, I unholstered my guns and set them on the kitchen counter.
She turned with a drink in her hand. “I’m not your chica. You can drop the bullshit, Cuban Boy.” Her lips touched the glass, but her gaze zeroed in on me.
Half my mouth tipped up because that’s what her attitude did to me. Jesucristo, she was gorgeous. And a fucking handful. “Hitting it early, aren’t you?” I inclined my head at her glass to give her shit, but in truth, I’d have liked to see her a few drinks in. See what happened when she let her guard down, because even at sunrise, her dark, straight hair was picture-perfect.
“I’m not hitting anything.” She spun back around. “Yet.”
I let the smile go wide and shook my head. “But just give it time, right?” I shrugged out of my vest and tossed it on a chair.
She ignored my question. “How long are you going to keep me locked up here?”
I stepped up next to her as she stared out at the view. “You’re free to go.” Now. Yesterday had been a different story.
“Right.” She snorted. “Like I’m free to live with who I want?”
Sunlight hit her face, and I sobered. “Never said you couldn’t.” I didn’t want her going home. I wanted to wrestle her sexy ass down and cuff her to keep her from going back to him.
She swirled the ice in her glass. “Then why am I here?”
I looked down at her. Most biker chicks I’d met weren’t like her. Yeah, she had the attitude, but she was something else too. I couldn’t put my finger on it. “You know why.” She was there yesterday when I’d extracted her from a bar full of bikers. I’d walked in like I owned the damn place, grabbed her and walked the fuck out because that’s what her biker boyfriend, Candle Scott, had wanted, and that’s what I did. Personal security.
This time when she turned to face me, there was something different in her expression. The distance, the aloofness, it was there, but there was also something close to desperation, and it immediately put me on high alert.
Every ounce of hostility disappeared from her tone. “Where’s Candle?”
“No clue.” But if I had to guess? Neck-deep in shit. The ex-Army Ranger turned biker was always in the middle of it. I just couldn’t figure out what he was doing with Kendall. Both of them denied being a couple, but I didn’t buy it. “Who is he to you?” I’d checked every thread on her background I could get my hands on, looking for information about her or Candle, but his records were sealed because he was a former ranger and hers were clean. So fucking clean in fact, it was almost as if someone had made the whole thing up. Nothing about the woman standing next to me fit the trail I’d found. She wasn’t a small-town girl from a stable family who played team sports. I’d bet my business on it. But I’d found it all, including a high school yearbook picture that looked like it’d been taken yesterday, not five years ago. None of her background added up to the mouthy woman in front of me who was shacked up with south Florida’s most notorious motorcycle gang’s sergeant at arms.
Her attitude came back. “Why? You jealous?”
“I don’t get jealous.” Because I didn’t get involved with women. Ever. Except here she was, holed up at my place because I’d stupidly convinced myself it was a favor for a biker.
I could’ve had one of my men drive her home hours ago. I owned the best personal security business in the country. Every one of my twenty-seven employees was a military-trained ex-marine. Any of them could’ve gotten her home safely, and I never would’ve had to see her again. But she was still in my fucking penthouse, because I’d stupidly wanted to see her sexy ass one more time before I let her go.
“Lucky me.” She downed her drink and moved past me in a wave of exotic perfume and attitude. “But now that I’m free to go”—she said free just sarcastically enough that I took notice—“I’ll be on my way.” She spared me a glance as she set her glass down and hefted her bag over her shoulder. “How am I getting back to Daytona?”
Stalling, I tipped my chin at her lack of clothing. “You leaving in that?”
All of a sudden, her body language changed. The angle of her head tilted, and the usually proud set to her shoulders took on a fake relaxed pose as her voice went deceptively soft. “You don’t like my outfit?” Despite her tone, the words were exactly as she intended them to be. A dare.
Schooling my expression, wanting to see if she’d squirm, I didn’t say shit. I stared at her.
She didn’t even blink.
Damn, this woman was a dangerous fixation. “I didn’t say one way or another. I only asked if you were leaving like that.” I stuck to the script because I was quickly learning that any information you fed her, she used against you.
“Like what?” Her voice still quiet, her body language was submissive as hell.
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew her intent wasn’t seduction. Hell no, this woman was throwing down a challenge. I just couldn’t figure out why. She’d been nothing but cold to me since I’d met her yesterday, and this felt like a test where touching was a guaranteed failure. I wasn’t gonna engage in this shit, but, damn, I wanted to fail her test. “Nice try, chica.”
“That wasn’t trying.” She dropped her bag and reached for the hem of her dress, whipping the flimsy material over her head so fucking fast, I never saw it coming. “How about this? You like this better?”
Jesucristo. I forced my eyes to stay on hers, but I still caught a glimpse of the see-through lace barely covering her sexy rack. It took every ounce of my military training to keep my expression neutral and not grin like a fucking niño on Navidad. “You want me to like it?”
“Cute.” She stepped forward and dragged a finger down my chest. “Answering a question with a question. Did they teach you that in the Marines?”
“Did your boyfriend teach you to strip in front of other men?” Because I was damn sure Scott would kill me if he saw us right now.
She repeated the same thing she’d already told me. “Candle’s not my boyfriend.”
Fuck, she was gorgeous, but only an idiot would mess with a Lone Coaster’s woman. “He know that?” Men like Scott didn’t protect women they didn’t give a shit about.
“I have no fucking clue what Candle thinks.”
I fought a smile. “You’ve got a mouth on you, woman.” It shouldn’t have been hot, but it was. Sexy as fuck, hot.
She tilted her head and her black silky hair swayed away from her face. “You want to know what my mouth’s good for?” Her finger coasted over my junk.
I grabbed her wrist, but not before my traitorous cock jumped to attention. “How much have you had to drink?” Her blatant come-on was a one-eighty from last night. I wasn’t gonna judge, nothing wrong with wanting to get fucked, but this woman had something else going on. I could smell it as sure as I could smell the fear of my brothers downrange. “You’re not a woman who throws herself at a man.”
The attitude, the disdain, it immediately came back. “You don’t know me at all.” She tried to jerk her hand back. “Let go.”
I held on tight. “Not until you tell me what this is about.”
“Fuck you, Cuban Boy.” She spat the nickname out like an insult.
I ignored it. “You looking to get out from under Candle?” All she had to do was say the word, and God help me, I’d fucking do it. LCMCs be damned, this woman had lit a fire in me.
“Unlike you, Candle lets go when I tell him.” She kicked me.
She fucking kicked me.
The blow smarted on my shin and I let go of her wrist, but I didn’t give her the satisfaction of a reaction. “You didn’t want anything to do with me yesterday. Now you’re stripping in front of me?”
She snatched her dress—nightgown—whatever the fuck it was off the floor, and yanked it over her head. “Fuck you.” She grabbed her bag, stepped into heels worthy of a stripper, then glared at me. “Take me home.”
Her eyebrows drawn together, her hands shaking, her movements jerky, she didn’t look like a woman scorned. She looked scared as fuck.
The overwhelming urge to protect her hit me square in the chest. “Chica—”
A knock sounded on the front door.
She stomped to the door and yanked it open while I stood there trying to figure out what the fuck just happened.
My right-hand man, Tyler, glanced at her. “Ma’am.” Then he looked at me. “Am I—”
“Take me home,” Kendall demanded, pushing past him.
Tyler looked over his shoulder at her, then raised his eyebrows at me. “Boss?”
I nodded.