Chapter 7

Axel

Dan backed the tow truck up in the driveway and across the gravel lot. Once it was in park, he hopped out and shook my hand as he always did and fixed the orange and brown beanie on his head. It came past the tops of his ears, pushing his earlobes out in a cartoonish sort of way. He gave me a broad smile and nodded at the four bikes standing in a line out front of the closed shop doors.

“Just the four?” Dan asked.

“Yeah. For now. Thanks for coming to pick them up. You’re saving me a real fucking headache, man.”

“Whatever I can do to help. You and your boys have had my back plenty of times. I’m happy to repay the favor. Speaking of which,” he dropped his voice and shot Ellie a suspicious look. I suppose he wasn’t sure if I trusted her or not. “A couple of guys stopped by my place two nights ago asking if I had been doing any business with some local boys. They specifically mentioned old bikes like these. Didn’t like the looks of them, Ax. They gave me a bad feeling.”

“And what did you tell them?” I asked. I didn’t like that someone had gone out of their way to ask Dan about me and my crew. It unsettled me. And it reminded me that we weren’t any closer to being out of the fire.

“I told them business was slow, and I’d be lucky to have anyone who needed my truck.” Dan patted the side of the trailer. “They fucked off after that. Didn’t seem too interested in a tow truck driver who was down on his luck.”

“Thanks for covering for me, Dan.”

Dan smiled, and I knew he didn’t see it as a burden. He liked having one toe in the deep end. I had promised myself a long time ago that was as far in as he would ever get, just one toe.

“You’d better hit the road.” I nodded to Ellie who got on one of the bikes and started it up. The engine roared as she played with the throttle and then rode the monster up the ramp onto the back of the truck. I couldn’t take my eyes off her the whole way.

Dan was suffering alongside me.

“Damn,” he breathed.

“I know,” I said.

“How the fuck did you get any work done?”

“Leave it alone.”

Dan instantly retreated from the conversation and put his back to Ellie. He was a man who never needed to be warned twice. I liked that about him.

I helped Ellie with the remaining three bikes, and twenty minutes after he arrived, Dan was pulling out of the driveway and I was closing the gate behind him. Ellie was standing behind me, and she gave me a bright smile when I began making my way back up the driveway.

“Now what?” she asked cheerfully.

“Now, we have a lot of cleaning on our hands.”

Her smile fell, and she scrunched her nose. “I miss the old shop. We never cleaned as much then as we do now.”

I chuckled. “Well, it wasn’t entirely mine, so I didn’t care as much. Now, get your ass back in that shop and hop to it.”

Ellie hurried up the driveway ahead of me, her hips swaying with every step. I watched her back and her ass, despite my best efforts not to, until she spun around and clasped her hands in front of her. The stance pushed her tits closer together, and her cleavage had me biting down hard.

“I noticed the speakers you have in there,” Ellie said slowly. “Can we put on some music while we clean?”

We both stepped through the side door, and I flicked on the lights. “Sure. Whatever you want to listen to is fine with me.”

“Really?” Her eyes went wide, and I sensed the joke coming before it left her lips. “So, you won’t object to some preppy boy band stuff?”

She was the only person who could take teasing jabs at me that didn’t get on my nerves. “Maybe I should pick the tunes.”

Ellie giggled, and I opened the garage doors. Cool evening air drifted in, and Ellie plucked a broom from its place against the wall. She set to pushing it across the shop floor until she had built a pile of dust and dirt and debris in the corner by the open doors.

I began putting stray tools away. After placing each one in its rightful place in one of my numerous tool boxes, I found my gaze drawn to Ellie, regardless of what she was doing. She was captivating. She had no fucking clue what she was doing to me.

At least, I didn’t think she did.

Working at the old shop with her hadn’t been so tricky. With the constant presence of customers or other MC members, I was able to always have a buffer between us. But now things were different. Now, it was just the two of us, and she was pulling me closer and closer to her like an undertow.

I was aware of the smallest things she did, the way she crinkled her nose before she sneezed or how she bit her bottom lip when she was nervous. She also had an infuriating habit of tucking loose strands of hair behind her ear, which only drew my attention to her neck. I wanted to kiss her throat and nibble her earlobes.

I wanted to bend her over my workbench and show her the way a real man could make her feel.

There was a reason I hadn’t already done it. I wasn’t the sort of man who didn’t go after what I wanted. I had wanted Ellie for a while. The only person who knew was Johnny. He could read me like an open book, and he loved pointing out how I should just fuck Ellie and get it over with. But I didn’t want to.

I didn’t want to bring her into our mess any further. Keeping her an arm’s length away seemed like the right thing to do, despite how many times it had given me blue balls.

But now, after working so closely with her, all those old stirrings had come back with a vengeance. She had told me that she thought of us, the MC, as her family. If that was true, then she was already deep in our shit. We already considered her family. We were all on the same page.

She was one of us regardless whether or not it was something I wanted.

So maybe it was time that I felt her around my cock.

I reached for the handle of a flex-head ratchet and found my fingers wrapped around something warm and soft. Ellie’s hand.

She had the ratchet in her grip, and her eyes were slowly following the line of my arm upward until, finally, she was looking up into my eyes. Her lips were slightly parted, and if music hadn’t been playing, I would have heard the soft breath that escaped from between her teeth.

Her cheeks and nose were pink, and I saw freckles over the bridge of her nose that I hadn’t noticed in a long time. Maybe because it had been a while since I was this close to her.

A breeze blew in through the open bay doors, and her perfume filled my nose. She smelled like flowers after rain.

“S-sorry,” she said quietly, trying to pull her hand out from mine. “I guess we both had the same thing in mind. Great minds.” She laughed nervously and managed to pull her hand free. She clasped it to her chest and bit her bottom lip. “You know, I guess we’re almost done here. I should probably get going soon. Unless, of course, you need my help with anything else. Do you? Need my help I mean?”

She was rambling. She was nervous.

So, I wasn’t the only one whose blood was rushing to their crotch.

Then she pushed me over the edge by tucking a loose strand of blond hair behind her ear. She fell back a step and giggled nervously.

I grabbed her wrist and, with a sharp tug, pulled her to me. She fell forward into my arms. Her hands braced herself against my chest, and she lifted her chin to look back up at me.

Fuck. She would be my undoing. I rested a hand at the base of her neck and traced a thumb over her collarbone. She trembled in my arms, but I knew she wasn’t scared. Not of me, anyway.

“Why haven’t we ever done anything about this?” she whispered. Her eyes left mine and settled on my lips. I felt her swallow beneath my hand.

I wasn’t going to tell her why. She didn’t need to know. She’d be mad at me for keeping her at arm’s length.

So instead, I lifted her chin with one hand and dropped my face to meet hers.

I crushed my lips against hers, and she sighed into me. Her hands tightened into fists in my shirt as she took a sharp breath and somehow managed to press her body more firmly to mine. Her breasts were flat against my chest, and I became irritated with the fact that she was still wearing clothes.

So, I pushed her away and pulled her shirt over her head. She let out a surprised gasp that sounded like lust to me, and I pulled my own shirt off. She fell silent, and I let her eyes take in the sight of me. I knew there were scars there that she didn’t know about. She saw them, but she didn’t ask any questions. Instead, she undid her jeans and shimmied them down her strong thighs.

“Come here,” I said.

Ellie gave me an innocent look and cocked her head to the side. Then her hand went to her hair, and she let her hair down. It fell in thick curls around her shoulders. I heard myself growl.

“I said come here, woman. Now.”

She stayed where she was.

So I went and got her.