Eighteen
There was a real good chance this had been a terrible idea. Holly glanced down at herself, what little she could see in the shadows, second-guessing her jeans, her boots, her sweater, the $7.99 drugstore hoop earrings. Michael had been no help when she’d asked him what she ought to wear. “Whatever you want to,” he’d said, and she was uncertain now.
The innumerable rumors about the Lean Dogs that circled through the bar had left her with the impression that this would be a wild, wild night for the MC. She wanted no part of wild. She didn’t want to be around any of the alcohol-filled men she saw moving in and out of the main door of the clubhouse, smoke blooming in clouds over their shoulders as they puffed on cigarettes. She didn’t want to be some sort of cheaply-dressed laughingstock among the women. She knew nothing of them, save that Ava had been kind enough to have lunch with her. She didn’t want to be crushed among so many people.
But she wanted to be with Michael. And his arm was around her waist, as they stood at the dark outskirts of the indoor/outdoor party that raged against the night.
It was a spectacle.
The clubhouse was a low, gray building, a hybrid of home and warehouse in its aesthetics. Beneath its expansive steel portico, colored and white Christmas lights were strung in thick tangles, and the glow radiated out with the power of sunlight and the punch of Mardi Gras. Fires blazed in fifty-five gallon steel drums, crackling, filling the air with the tang of wood smoke. Plastic cloths draped the outdoor tables. There were people seated at some of them, Dogs and women drinking beer out of longnecked bottles.
Holly didn’t recognize Ava or her mother among the females outside; these women were in painted-on jeans and sleeveless tops, despite the weather, throwing back their heads to expose their throats as they laughed, tidying their hair with lacquered nails.
There were bikes, so many bikes, lined up like dominos, black paint reflecting the Christmas lights in brilliant pinpricks that turned fuel tanks and fenders to shiny, insectile shells.
“There’s out of town guys here,” Michael said, and didn’t sound happy about it.
“It looks crowded.” Holly let her weight rest against his side, shivering inside her sweater, the backs of her knees and the creases of her elbows clammy with nervous perspiration. Her pulse was a high flutter in her throat; she was lightheaded; she wished her stomach had been calm enough to handle lunch, so she wasn’t queasy now.
She felt Michael’s face against her hair as he turned his head to look down at her. “You’re nervous.”
She nodded. “Not for any specific reason. I’m…I’m just always nervous,” she admitted in a whisper. “Michael, I’m scared.” It caused her physical pain to say it. “I’m sorry that I am, and I don’t want to be, because I wanted to come with you tonight, but I’m scared.”
He held her a moment, keeping still, letting the tremors pass through her. He said, “Listen to me. They don’t like me, most of ‘em, but they’ll like you. Everyone who’s been to Bell Bar likes you, Hol. So no worries there. And if you’re scared, just stay right with me. And we can leave whenever you want.”
She let out a shaky breath and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
He kept his arm around her was they walked toward the door.
They stepped into a narrow entry hall with a linoleum floor. Two passing Dogs ducked their heads once in emotionless, silent greeting to Michael, and kept moving.
They don’t like me, most of ‘em.
Holly felt a sharp pang of sympathetic loneliness for him. He was trying to find her a friend, and the man had none of his own. Which wasn’t a bit fair; the dormant sweetness, the automatic chivalry lurking beneath the silent exterior – that warranted friends. Good, loyal friends.
The thought distracted her, and for a moment, when the hall opened up to a massive hardwood-floored space, she forgot to be nervous.
There were more lights here, strung up along the ceiling, and opaque clouds of cigarette smoke, the smell burning her nostrils on the first breath. She spotted a horseshoe-shaped bar off to the left, with overhead racks dripping wineglasses and beer mugs. She had glimpses of furniture: couches, round dining tables, chairs, rugs, conversation groupings and a wall-mounted flat screen.
The music was loud, some sort of classic rock that she hadn’t yet discovered in her self-education in all things pop culture. It had a squealing guitar line, and a deep, throbbing bass line, and it pulsed through the wide, human-packed room in a way that was almost drugging. She felt it in her temples, in her throat, trying to force the beat of her heart into submission.
On a small raised platform in the back left corner, a girl in a bikini danced above a knot of watching, admiring men in Dogs cuts. She was pretty, but not professional, her movements inexpert. She swayed back and forth in time to the music, working her hips, pitching forward now as Holly watched and shaking her shoulders so her breasts threatened to spill out of her bikini top.
Holly swallowed hard and glanced away from her. Through the smoke and incandescent light, she began to notice the other women. Halter tops, tube topes, miniskirts, leather pants; cigarettes and beers in their hands, smiles on their painted faces.
A Dog she’d never seen before sat in an easy chair, a woman on his lap. She was in jeans and mid-calf boots, and a black bra with little rhinestones sewn onto the cups. She was kissing the side of the man’s neck and he was pulling down one of her bra straps, baring her breast, covering it with his hand.
Sex. This party was nothing but sex, thinly veiled by club leather. It rushed across the boards to her, tunneled down into her lungs on the currents of acrid smoke, assaulted her eyes and ears and overwhelmed all her fragile nerves, reminding her that those old tattered ends might never heal.
What would have caused a regular woman off the street to blush was threatening to send her into a full-blown panic attack.
She turned and pressed her face into the cool leather over Michael’s shoulder, drawing in deep breaths of his personal scent, trying to blot out everything else with it.
His stubbly cheek brushed hers. His mouth was against her ear, and he said, “You’re here with me. With me, Hol. Nothing’s going to happen.”
She lifted her head as he pulled back, meeting his gaze, the bright security of his eyes, promising her a dozen unsaid things. He tilted his head, gesturing toward the Dog in the easy chair – the girl’s rhinestone-studded bra was around her waist now; her mouth was stretched wide with laughter as she used both hands to urge the man’s face down between her breasts – and frowned. “Just ignore it. It can’t touch you.” His hand closed gently on her waist, a fast reassurance.
Holly nodded, forcing her mouth into a shaky semblance of a smile. “I’ll be okay.”
He watched her a moment, looking unconvinced, but finally gave a sharp nod of assent. “Let’s go get a drink.”
“Where’s Jackie?” Mina asked, leaning low over the table so she could be heard. Rottie’s wife had taken extra care with her hair and wardrobe tonight; they were using the excuse of a club party to have a date night, a babysitter at home with their boys. Mina was in a stiff blue cotton dress with a leather jacket over it, her hair curled and sprayed and held back at the crown with silver clips. She was drinking vodka rocks out of a short, wide glass, fishing out a piece of ice between manicured fingers to crunch it between her teeth.
Maggie sighed. “I don’t know. I left her a few messages, and then gave up.”
“She came to your house for Christmas, right?” Nell asked. Her throaty, smoke-ravaged voice carried, despite the din around them.
Maggie shook her head. “She called last minute and said she was going to see her folks. Haven’t heard from her since then.”
Mina’s china doll face plucked with worry. “She has to know we still want to include her, even with Collier…” She gestured helplessly.
“That’s what I’ve told her,” Maggie said. “But if I’m being honest, I think I might be doing exactly what she’s doing. Withdrawing.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Ava said, drawing all their eyes. She still didn’t have the hang of this old lady thing, participating as the pathetically youngest member of the circle.
“You have Aidan,” Ava said. “And Tango, and Carter now…you have other attachments.”
Maggie gave her a consenting glance. “Yeah. Jackie doesn’t have any, though.”
Their small, out of the way table fell silent a moment, as they grieved the loss of one of their own, and the party raged on around them.
If she was honest with herself, Ava didn’t like these parties. The raucous, out of control ones; the debauched ones. She always felt safe, because the club was her home, her upbringing, the life she knew best. But there was no appeal in watching her brother fondle a stripper, or having her eardrums blasted out, or worrying – like tonight – that she looked pregnant and ungainly in the midst of such a sex-charged throng, in which she wanted to look beautiful and desirous to her mate.
She’d left off the baggy sweaters for the night, opting instead for jeans and a clinging black top beneath her favorite leather jacket. She sipped water and wondered how damaging all this secondhand smoke was for the baby.
“Ava Rose!” Mercy boomed behind her, his accent extra Cajun. Either he was drunk, or she was in trouble, or he was super excited.
She twisted around as he came up to their table, resting his hip against the edge beside her drink. Super excited, she decided, judging by his bright, glowing face, and she couldn’t help but smile.
“That’s my name,” she said, dryly, biting back a wider, truer grin.
“Do you know who’s here tonight?” he asked.
“I’m gonna guess everyone.”
He opened his mouth to correct her, and before he could speak, a shout came from the other side of the table. A loud, irreverent, jubilant call, also accented, but in a very different way.
“Swamp Thing!” the call came, and bodies parted to reveal Mercy’s Texan bookend: Candyman.
“You son of a bitch,” Mercy shouted back, laughing.
Maggie waved her hands, strong shooing motions. “How ‘bout you both go hug it out and quit screaming over the table, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Mercy moved around them.
Candy gave Maggie an exaggerated bow, grinning broadly at her as he straightened. “Queen Mags. Beautiful as ever.”
Maggie smiled. “Hi, Candy.”
Then the big Texan’s eyes came to Ava, a light pearly blue that gleamed bright in the dim clubhouse. “I understand you got married, Miss Ava. Congrats, darlin’.”
“Thanks.”
“You got bad taste in men, though,” he said, just before Mercy reached him and pulled him into a back-slapping man-hug that was more of an assault than an embrace.
Ava shook her head.
At six-four, Candyman was the only other Lean Dog with Mercy’s towering height, though Mercy liked to hold his own extra inch over the man’s head. He didn’t have Mercy’s exotic, obvious Frenchness, was instead fair-haired, tan, blue-eyed, the long and lean picture of a Texas working man. He was the sergeant at arms for the Texas chapter, and his reputation for violence was rivaled only by his reputation for burning through women faster than cigarettes. Womanizer wasn’t the right word, because he could charm a nun out of her habit. He was more like an addict. A cheerful one.
“Texas is in town?” Ava asked her mom.
“Some of them, apparently.”
Candy drew Mercy back into the thick of the crowd, an arm slung across his shoulders. They were like two giant little boys separated over the summer, coming back together at the beginning of the school year and anxious to swap stories.
They left a gap behind, an opening in the crush, and Ava felt her brows go up when she saw Michael step into it, heading for the table. And then she saw that he had his arm around Holly, and was towing her along with him.
Under the table, Ava touched her mom’s boot with her own, catching her attention, asking for her cooperation.
Michael reached the table, standing behind Nell, his face harsh and tight. He spared all of them a blank glance, then settled his eyes on Ava. The stress in his gaze told her the true story of his expression: he was anxious and nervous as hell about having Holly here. He was pleading for her help and cooperation.
“Holly,” Ava said, getting to her feet. “Hi. You made it.” She stepped around Nell and pulled the other girl into a fast hug.
Holly’s smile was wobbly and appreciative. “Hi.”
“You wanna hang out with us?” Ava asked. In a conspiratorial stage whisper, she said, “Those of us who don’t care about the strip show try to stay out of the way and not get stepped on.”
Holly looked uncertain, but she nodded. “Yeah, that sounds great.”
Over Holly’s head, Ava didn’t miss the look Michael shot her. Silently, he mouthed, Thank you.
Holly longed for her journal, so she could take notes, so she wouldn’t forget any of the important details.
Ava’s mother, Maggie, she already knew was married to Ghost, the club president. The other two women she hadn’t seen before at the bar. Nell – a blonde who wasn’t aging gracefully, but who had an infectious confidence and good humor – was married to a Dog named Hound. They had three children, all girls, all grown.
A Dog Hound had brought up from a prospect, grooming him to take over his duties someday, Rottie, was married to Mina, with a pretty, innocent face and a wealth of long black hair.
All of them were kind to her. None of them questioned her presence.
Until…
“So you came with Michael,” Nell said, and there was nothing sinister about her tone.
Still, Holly was cautious. She figured Michael had said nothing of her to them – that would have involved talking to humans – but she didn’t want to overstep her bounds. She wasn’t going to assert herself as anything other than what she knew to be true.
“I did,” she said. She traced the condensation on her tumbler of Crown and Coke with her fingertips; the drink was doing its job, easing the tightness in her chest. The table was helping, being tucked away from the crush at the center of the room.
“I can’t say I’ve ever seen him bring anyone around.” Nell glanced at the other women. “Y’all?”
“No.” Mina shook her head. “I don’t even see him with the girls much.”
Holly took a large swallow of her drink and wondered what that meant.
“He must really like you,” Maggie said, giving her a smile that was friendly in essence…but assessing too. A deft, perfected dichotomy that was as intimidating as it was inviting.
“Well, I…” She had no experience with this kind of feminine game-playing. “I don’t know if he does. I like him. Hopefully that counts for something.”
Like. What a terribly stupid, inadequate word for almost anything.
Maggie’s smile twitched. “Hopefully.”
“So,” Ava said with a deep breath, and sounded like she was trying to change the subject. “Did he warn you that things would be so crazy tonight?”
There was a collective cheer from the corner where the girl had been dancing before. Holly had some colorful ideas why.
“No,” she said, wincing. “I guess I should have expected it, but I just…”
“It’s a lot to take in,” Ava said, understanding. “Trust me, I’ve been around it my whole life, and it’s still grating.”
Holly returned her small smile, grateful for the friendly gesture.
“Aw, that’s ‘cause you’re young,” Nell said, waving away Ava’s assertion. “And ‘cause your man’s young, and all these Lean Bitches wouldn’t mind taking him home. It gets easier the older you get. You stop worrying so much.”
Ava frowned, clearly wanting to argue, but keeping quiet.
Holly took another sip of her drink and said, “Excuse me. I’m going to go find the restroom.”
“It’s down that hall,” Ava said. “First on the left. Don’t go farther than that, or you’ll be in the dorms.”
Holly had no idea what she meant, but it sounded ominous. “Thanks.”
She didn’t head for the hallway. Once she’d slipped between two Dogs and was out of sight of the table, she made a beeline for the front door. She tried to scan for Michael, but there were just too many people, and too much smoke. She dodged elbows and tripped over boots, coughing into her hand against the burn in her lungs. The farther she progressed through the tangle of bodies, the more desperate she became. Too much smoke, too much sweat-smell in the air, too much sex, sex, sex, all but punching her in the face each direction she looked. Like an explorer navigating the Amazon, she forced her way through the jungle of arms and legs.
And then suddenly she was free, going down the entry hall, bursting out into the cold night air.
Holly dragged in a huge, ragged breath and staggered to one of the steel support columns of the portico, a slender pole she wrapped an arm around and leaned against, pressing her hot forehead to the freezing metal.
“God,” she breathed, panting. Her heartrate was uneven, her pulse skittering in her ears.
She wanted to leave.
She wanted to be stronger than this.
She wanted Michael.
When she closed her eyes, it wasn’t this raucous party that filled her mind, but the old bedroom in the farmhouse. She felt the phantom ropes at her wrists, smelled the musty tang of sweat, heard the bed groan as another faceless worshipper climbed up and settled between her trembling legs.
Sex and terror were linked for her. She’d thought she would be less nervous now, after all that Michael had shown her, but tonight was setting her back, shoving her back, and she didn’t know how to stop it.
“Hey, are you alright?” a female voice asked.
Holly opened her eyes and saw that she was now surrounded. Three women stood around her, spaced loosely, posture casual. Non-threatening. One was the girl in the rhinestone bra from inside, the garment secured once more. Another was a thick-waisted redhead in a pleated Catholic schoolgirl skirt and fishnets, her white shirt knotted and unbuttoned to reveal the red bra underneath.
The third stood in the center, directly in front of Holly, a tan blonde with a black minidress and a dazzling smile. She had freckles on her chest, and chill bumps too, out here sleeveless in the cold.
She was the one who’d spoken. “You okay, hon?” she repeated, still smiling.
Holly nodded and straightened, still holding onto the pole for support. “Just overheated, I think. I’m fine.”
The redhead grinned. “Overheated’s the only way to be around here.”
The blonde said, “You’re new, aren’t you? Yeah, I haven’t seen you around.” She gestured to herself. “I’m Jasmine.” There were faint lines around her mouth and eyes that revealed she was older than she looked. “This is Chanel” – the redhead – “and Heather” – the one with the bra.
“Holly,” she said.
“Holly. That’s pretty,” Jasmine said. She stepped closer, into Holly’s personal space. “You’re pretty.” She reached and took a thick lock of Holly’s dark hair between her fingers. Her eyes lit up. “Ooh, you’d be perfect for baby boy. You know Tango? Have you met him? Come on, I’ll introduce you.” She reached for Holly’s hand. “I keep telling him he needs to try that whole ‘sweet girl’ thing, just to see if he likes it. I can come with you, get you two acquainted.” She winked, and the other two girls smiled. Her fingers latched onto Holly’s wrist and she tugged. “Don’t be nervous. He’s really sweet. Come on.”
Holly yanked her hand away, digging her heels in against the concrete. “I’m not here to sleep with anyone,” she said, horrified, stomach clenching so tight she thought she’d be sick.
Jasmine laughed. “No, hon, you for sure won’t be sleeping.”
Jesus, all these girls thought she was one of them. That she was some kind of biker groupie who’d come to get laid.
“Hey, Holly!” someone called, and she was saved…but only for a moment.
RJ appeared, striding out the front door and heading for them.
Jasmine and the other girls stepped back, giving him space – and her, by default.
“RJ. Hi.” She breathed a deep, shaking sigh of relief as he came to her. “I was trying to explain to them that–”
He didn’t wait for her to finish, but turned, and frowned at the three women over his shoulder. “You three get lost.”
They obeyed without question or protest, Jasmine ducking her head in a fast show of deference before they high heel sashayed their way back into the clubhouse.
Holly was stunned. “You can just order them around like that?” It was the first she’d seen anything like it in the world outside her old farmhouse prison.
RJ shrugged as he faced her again. “They’re Lean Bitches. They come here for one reason, and they know their place, most of the time.” When Holly continued to stare at him, horror-stricken, he said, “They’re groupies.”
She couldn’t suppress a shudder. “How terrible for them.”
He laughed. “They don’t think so.” He shifted closer, pushing into her bubble of personal space. “But who wants to talk about them, huh? I can’t believe you came. I’m glad you did” – another half-step closer – “but I’m surprised.”
Holly didn’t like his nearness. Or the way he was smiling at her. He seemed harmless enough…but then so had Dewey. Any man with any interest in her was anything but harmless. Michal was actively harmful – to other people – and that was the rare comfort of him.
She swallowed against her nerves. “I’m here with Michael.”
RJ pretended to take a look at their surroundings. “Really? I don’t see him.” He turned a kind, sympathetic look down to her; sad for her, understanding, pitying. “Did you mean that you’re trying to find him? Ah, doll, he…how can I say this? He doesn’t bring people to parties. I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, but you’re wasting your time with him.”
Holly kicked up her chin. “He brought me to this party. We came on his bike.”
It had been terrifying and thrilling, the wind funneling around her, his lean waist solid and comforting in the small circle of her arms.
RJ laughed. “That’s a real cute story.” He dropped an arm across her shoulders. “Come on inside. We can have a drink.” His eyes caught the Christmas lights, gleaming with obvious excitement.
He tried to tow her forward, and every particle of Holly’s being rejected the weight of his arm across her shoulders. The sirens went off in her head: Danger, danger, danger. The assumed intimacy of a man, any man who wasn’t Michael, was like a razorblade down all her tender nerve endings. Her pulse became high and light in her throat. Her lungs tightened until it was painful to breathe.
“I-I-I can’t…” She stammered.
“Sure you can.” RJ steered her one step, and then two, trying to urge her back into that awful crowd inside the clubhouse. “Just one little drink. And you and me can get to know each oth–”
His words dissolved into a grunt as a fist impacted the side of his face.
Holly ducked away as he went staggering back, ripping his arm from around her shoulders. RJ caught himself against the support pole, struggling to regain his bearings. But his attacker was on him again, and he wasn’t going to give him a fighting chance.
Michael.
His fury was a visible whipcord of energy, snapping through him, tightening his face into the most blank, expressionless mask. Holly could see the tension in him, in his arms and torso, even through his clothes, the way each stride was longer than the one before it.
Without slowing, he closed the gap and he struck RJ again. This was no brotherly boxing match, nor a warning; not even a point to be made. Before RJ had a chance to collect himself, Michael’s punch caught him in the face, in the delicate bone structure to the side of his nose, with all of Michael’s weight behind it.
Dogs were spilling out of the clubhouse. “Jesus, he’s trying to kill him!” someone said.
RJ was on the ground, and if he was still conscious, it wasn’t by much.
Michael was closing in for a third assault when Mercy and another tall Dog, this one blonde, reached him.
Mercy caught Michael from behind with both arms and dragged him back. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “You plan on him being able to use his jaw for the next six weeks? Or should I let you finish breaking it?”
Michael had no choice but to shuffle backward as the big Cajun hauled him off his quarry, but he didn’t answer.
The blonde was crouched beside RJ, lightly touching his face; Holly saw his finger lift up each eyelid, and check for pupil reaction. “He’s out,” he announced, and gathered the smaller man to his chest before he stood, lifting him up in his arms.
Michael struggled against Mercy’s grip. “Let go of me,” he said through his teeth.
“Why? So you can finish him off?”
It seemed the whole party was emptying out of the clubhouse, men and women. The questions they passed back and forth became a low, insistent humming of sound.
“Let go,” Michael repeated, and his eyes came to Holly.
She didn’t want to imagine the pitiable state of her composure, what she must look like to him. But when his eyes landed on her, the rigid tension left his jaw. His lips parted as he pulled in a deep breath through his mouth, and his always-narrowed, carefully hooded eyes were wide and wild and hot with fear. It was fear that he turned toward her. Fear that he was held captive, and couldn’t get to her.
Oh, Michael.
Mercy followed Michael’s gaze, glancing over at her, too. His lips pressed together, a fast look of understanding. He leaned forward and whispered something in Michael’s ear, to which he responded with a fast, jerky nod.
Mercy released him.
People were still talking, asking questions, some demanding answers, speculating. RJ had been laid on a picnic table and many were hovering around him. Many more were shooting Michael dark looks.
Holly ignored all of it. She allowed him, as he walked toward her, to fill up every corner of her awareness, everything and everyone else fading to the black edges beyond her periphery. She wrapped all her sight around him, let him push back against her panic.
She fell into step beside him as he caught her around the waist and kept walking. A protest formed and died in her throat when they entered the clubhouse; she was with him, she would not worry.
Through the common room, now mostly empty, he towed her, down the hallway Ava had mentioned before. Both sides were flanked with dark wooden doors, and he pounded on three with the side of his fist before he found one that someone didn’t shout “Occupied!” from the other side of.
He pulled her inside, shut and locked the door behind them, and only then did his arm leave her.
The room reminded her of a one of those two-story, side of the highway motels. A double bed with a dark comforter pulled up over the pillows, orange carpet, paneling on the walls. There was a Dog pennant above the bed. Light issued from two lamps, one on the nightstand, the other on a wide dressing table with a mirror, the light reflecting off it and back into the room. There was an open door on the other side of the bed, and she could see a vanity and sink beyond it: en suite bathroom.
She turned to Michael, and there were deep lines pressed around his mouth, his expression grim. Holly wanted to trace them with her fingertips, smooth them away.
“What did he do to you?” His voice was low and furious. “Did he touch you?”
She shook her head. “He was just being friendly. All he did was put his arm around me. I overreacted. I was too nervous, and…” She shook her head, feeling the burn of tears at the backs of her eyes. She hated that she was like this, that the night had taken this turn.
“Don’t cover for him. Tell me the truth, Hol. Because I need to know right now if I’m going to have to go back out there and bounce his head off the asphalt.”
Her eyes flew wide with shock. “Why would you do that?”
Without flinching, his gaze unwavering, he said, “Because he scared you.”
The breath went out of her. Exhausted from nerves, strung-out on spent adrenaline, she took a step back and sank down onto the edge of the bed. She swallowed. “It’s not RJ’s fault. It’s mine. All of this” – she gestured to the walls, the clubhouse around them – “scared me. I…” She didn’t know what to tell him. How could she explain how crushing it felt to realize that she might never be normal?
He stood by the door a long moment, studying her. “Do you not trust me?” he asked. “You don’t think I can keep you safe?”
“No! No, that’s not it at all.”
“Then why did you leave?” He scowled at her, and something about the tension in his brows made her think he was trying desperately to understand. “I went back to the table, and you were gone.”
“I wanted some air.” She glanced away from him, ashamed. “I just wanted to be alone for a little bit, and then those girls…and then RJ…I don’t know why they couldn’t leave me alone.”
Soft sound of him snorting through his nostrils. Light tread of his boots across the carpet. Then he was crouched in front of her, and his hands were on her thighs, warm against the chilled skin of her legs through the denim.
“Hol.”
She lifted her head, and saw, to her absolute shock, that he was smiling at her. A small, but true smile, his lips curved, little lines gathering at the corners of his eyes. “You don’t know why they couldn’t leave you alone?”
She didn’t answer.
“There’s gotta be lots of people who look at you and don’t want to leave you alone,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean they want to hurt you.”
“They just want to sleep with me,” she said in a small, miserable voice.
“Yeah. Not tie you up, not hurt you. Just be with you. Because they want you.”
“And that’s not supposed to scare me?”
“No.”
“Then why did you try to kill RJ just now?”
His frown was black with anger, harsh lines pressing between his brows, around his mouth. “Because he shouldn’t have touched you.”
Faintly amused by his flip-flop logic, she said, “Why not?”
“Because it frightened you,” he snapped, getting to his feet, pacing at the foot of the bed.
“But I thought I wasn’t supposed to be frightened.”
“I lied. You should be. The world’s full of bastards.”
“Michael.”
He halted, his hands on his hips, aggression shimmering off him in invisible heat currents. “What?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
She swallowed against the rising lump in her throat. “Well, if we’re talking just in general, that would be a long list. But right now – thank you for coming to my rescue. I thought the best way to get past some of the old fears would be to face them…” She bowed her head again, blinking. “But I was wrong.”
It was silent a beat, and then he came to her again, kneeling once more on the carpet, his arms folded over her legs this time, so even with her head down, she could see his face. She loved his face, every unforgiving angle of it.
“Mirrors, right?” he asked, and his voice was the low, velvet sound of midnight under the covers.
She was startled. “What?”
“Sometimes…it was in front of a mirror, wasn’t it? So you had to watch.” The gentlest, gentlest voice, his breath warm and smelling of whiskey where it stirred against her face.
Mirrors, yes, she’d told him about the mirrors. About her father, and the cruel bite of his fingers against her cheeks as he turned her head and forced her to watch. She shuddered hard at the memory, and nodded.
His arms shifted, so his hands were on her hips, thumbs pressing at the points of bone. “Stand up,” he said, softly. “Come face one of those fears.”
Her throat tightened at the prospect. She lived now in a constant state of wanting him, a low-level energy that cycled through her. But here, now, as rattled as she was…she could muster no heat or desire. All she wanted was to fold herself against his chest and sleep.
“Here?”
He stood, pulling her up to her feet with him. “Here.”
“Michael…” She pushed lightly at his chest as he walked them to the dressing table, resisting, but still compliant. Caught between abject terror and the familiar warm strength of his arms. “Michael, please, I don’t think I can…”
There they were, in the mirror, and as always, she was surprised by how small she looked. He seemed tall and stern by contrast, even if his face was at its gentlest and sweetest – somewhere in the neighborhood of terrifying for a regular man who made regular faces. She’d seen the lines, the weathering of his face so many times, but never alongside her own smooth complexion like this. Suddenly, she realized that she’d never asked his age, but that he must be ten, fifteen years older than her.
One of his arms was around her middle in front, the other across her shoulders. He raked his hand through her hair; it rippled and shimmered in the lamplight.
“It’s just us, see?” His eyes touched hers through the mirror. The lamp turned the colors to vivid jewel tones – hers bright emerald, his tiger’s-eye amber. “Just you and me.”
She watched their reflections as he brushed her hair back, exposing the pale line of her throat, and kissed her there, his mouth opening against her skipping pulse. It transfixed her: to feel the warmth of his lips, the hot wet stroke of his tongue, and see it too. They were separate things: the sight and the feel.
His lips skimmed up her jaw and then his hand cupped the back of her head and he turned her, so he could kiss her mouth. Then she could see nothing, and closed her eyes, sighing through her nose and opening to him, letting the warm stroke of his lips and tongue begin to thaw the cold tremors running beneath her skin.
He kissed her with languid thoroughness, until she felt the warming in the pit of her stomach, and everything had faded save the continuous, slick mating of their mouths.
When his hands eased her jacket off her shoulders, she helped him. She lifted her sweater off, let it fall, and then stepped into his arms, sliding her own around his neck, pressing herself to him. She liked the smooth leather against her skin, but she liked his skin better.
She ran down the zipper, and he shrugged out of jacket and cut, let them hit the floor. His shirt was black, with little white buttons, and she broke the kiss so she could see to slip all of them free.
She slid her hands between the parted halves, over the smooth stretch of his chest, fingertips sliding through the crinkly dusting of hair. His muscles tensed beneath her touch, excited and stimulated. Much like the man himself, who ditched the shirt with an impatient move and gathered her against him again.
He kissed her…and then he turned her, and there was the dreaded mirror again.
She’d worn the red bra, because it was the only one she owned that wasn’t threadbare and plain. It shaped her breasts so they were high and round. Above the waistband of her jeans, she could just see the red ribbon at the waist of the matching panties.
Michael stood behind her, the lamplight gilding his skin, highlighting a faint silver scar at the top of his shoulder, carving hollows in the grooves between muscles.
The skin of his hands was dull with accumulated roughness – calluses, old scars, the split knuckles of a mechanic and a biker. The contrast between them and the smooth flat of her stomach was stark, as he touched her.
“Watch,” he urged, against her ear.
Then his hands were at her back, at her bra clasp, and then the band was slackening, the cups falling away.
She saw herself every day in the shower, in her own mirror, in her bathroom, and never had she looked like this. The girl in the mirror seemed a different creature entirely as Michael’s hands covered her naked breasts, thumbs finding the straining rosy nipples.
She inhaled, lifting her chest on instinct into the subtle rasping of his calluses against her soft pale skin. And in the mirror she watched him cup her, weigh her, pet her in an artful, deliberate flexing of his strong fingers that reminded her nothing of all those other times in front of a mirror. He traced her budded nipples, pinched them lightly.
One of his hands slid down her belly, fingertips sliding just inside the waistband of her jeans. Her spine flexed in helpless reaction, her hips thrusting forward, searching for greater contact with his hand.
“Are you afraid?” he asked. His hand shoved down, diving inside her jeans, cupping her through the warm satin of her panties.
“No.” Her neck was weakening, and she let her head fall back against his shoulder as his fingers worked against her, and with his other hand he molded her breasts, one and then the other.
“Look at you,” he said. “No wonder they want you.”
It was shocking to her, to see the low-lidded, arching creature in his arms, shamelessly moving her hips as he stroked her, lifting into the hand at her breasts. The sight of his arm lying against her belly, his hand disappearing down into her jeans, was doing relentless things to her pulse. She was gasping. Her skin was superheated, feverish, hyper sensitive to every brush of his body against it.
“Are you afraid?” he asked her again.
“No,” she said, stronger this time. Sure. No, she wasn’t at all afraid.
Her eyes stayed glued to the mirror as Michael unbuttoned her jeans and shoved them down her hips, taking the panties with them. She lifted her feet, one at a time, pliant and entranced, as he tugged off one boot and then the other, rolled her socks down. And then she was stark naked: tiny feet and tiny hands, the hourglass curves of hips and waist and shoulders, the heaviness of her breasts, and the glazed green of her drugged eyes.
Michael stripped off his own jeans in one economic movement, and he stepped up behind her again.
He had never looked more perfect to her, and she felt his rigid cock at her back; felt the liquid heat between her legs and was ready for him.
There was a pull-out bench seat beneath the dresser, and he urged her up onto it, on her knees. He stroked her sides, her waist, her belly, and then his fingers found her sex, and he was spreading her. The head of his cock at her entrance. The slow entry. The rasp of her breath striking the mirror in front of her, and she couldn’t have looked away if she’d wanted to.
“Watch,” he told her again, and sank the last inch, fully seated inside her, his hips held tight at her ass.
“God,” she whispered.
His hands found her hips, flexing until her skin dimpled beneath the fingertips. And he started to move, drawing back and thrusting forward again.
For one hideous flash of memory, she was back at the kitchen sink in the farmhouse, her Uncle Jacob behind her. The rending pain. The dim reflection in the window, as she rocked in time to his rhythm.
But Michael said, “It’s me, honey,” in a strained voice. His hands slid forward, smoothed across her belly, held her back against him as he stilled for a moment. Almost choking on the words, fighting his own restraint: “It’s me.”
Holly saw the stricken look that had overtaken her face as the past closed over her. She saw too the brilliant contrasts in his face: the harsh need, and the liquid softness in his eyes as he waited for her, pleading silently for her to shake off the memories and be with him in this moment.
Tears filled her eyes, as she looked at him. Tears of the most emotional thanks, that he could be so careful with her, tears of joy because he cared this much.
Her hands braced on the dresser, she leaned back against him, her inner muscles tightening around his cock.
“I’m okay,” she said. “Come on, let’s–”
He groaned as his face dropped into the crook of her neck, complete relief. His hips surged and his hands locked onto her tight, and it was the most violent thrusting as he drove inside her again and again, building a rhythm that coursed through her, made it difficult to keep her balance.
In the mirror, she watched the powerful movement of him behind her. She watched her cheeks flush deep pink. Watched her breasts swing as he pounded into her.
Her orgasm was shattering. It went on and on, and beneath its crush, she was aware of Michael taking hold of her, lifting her up into his arms, and stretching out on the bed with her. He laid her on her side, so she faced him. In her delirium of burning skin and rippling pulses, she clutched at his biceps and pressed her face to his hot chest.
She loved him. Loved him in a way that was both a white hot burn and a balm to soothe it.
He loved her.
From the moment of his birth to the moment of her death, he’d loved his mother. Camilla had been the sort of mother who loved without reservation; lullabies and stories and warm lipstick kisses. And after Mama was gone, he’d loved Uncle Wynn. He still did; the only father he’d ever known.
And now he loved Holly and he hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about keeping her.
She lay damp and flushed against him, her breath like the sound of wings beating as she sought to regain it.
He wanted to ease her onto her back, and have her again. He wanted to sleep, the soft shape of her fitted against him. He wanted to stop time, and keep things this simple. All women were complicated in his experience – but not Holly. She was bright, and sharp, and sweet, and he could feel the emotion pouring out of her, emotion she held for him. The irony – that she would ever be self-conscious, when she was incalculably smarter and kinder than the women he’d known. Her acceptance had been immediate and total.
And two murders lay ahead of him, and any number of awful things could happen to her before he’d finished them.
The idea terrified him.
For the first time, since the night his father bludgeoned his mother to death with a table lamp, he felt terror.
He felt her lips against his chest, a soft kiss she pressed over his heart.
He stroked her hair back off her face, feeling the fragile round shape of her skull, crushable and delicate. Yes, terrifying. “You wanna go home?”
His place, her place – it didn’t matter. Whichever one would be “home.”
“Yes.”
“He’s coming around.”
Ava peeked over Nell’s shoulder and saw RJ’s eyes flutter. He groaned, and if nothing else, he was conscious. His face looked like it’d taken on the business end of a baseball bat.
Nell dipped a cloth napkin in a cup of water and blotted his face with it again, eliciting a wince. His left eye was already swollen shut, the flesh around the socket puffed-up and rapidly discoloring. The orbital bones had to be broken.
“Man, what the hell did you do?” Aidan demanded of the half-comatose Dog laid out on the picnic table. “I think he was trying to kill you.”
“He was messing with Holly,” Ava said, and felt a dozen pairs of eyes swing toward her. She shrugged. “Well he was.”
“Did you see it?” Mercy asked.
“By the time I got out here, RJ was already on the ground, but Michael, plus Holly, plus RJ, plus TKO equals RJ got too friendly, in my estimation.”
Tango frowned. “RJ’s been sweet on her since she started working at Bell Bar.”
“Who the hell is Holly?” Ghost asked.
“Michael’s girlfriend,” Ava said. “He brought her with him tonight.”
“He has a girlfriend?”
She nodded.
“Jesus, what kinda chick willingly spends time with him?” Candy asked with a chuckle.
“She’s hot, man,” Aidan said. “But insane, obviously.”
“She’s not,” Ava said, frowning, earning censorious glances from all males present save her husband and Tango, who didn’t do censorious on any occasion. “She’s sweet,” she said. “And he’s really serious about her.”
“How would you know?” Ghost asked.
“I had lunch with her.”
Mercy frowned but said nothing, still concerned about the situation.
Maggie said, “Whatever she is, I take it Michael doesn’t want anyone laying hands on her. Did you figure that out tonight, RJ? Don’t touch other people’s dates.”
He mumbled a response.
Movement behind the crowd, at the front door, drew Ava’s attention. Michael and Holly leaving.
Ava said nothing. Let them escape, she thought. She would have wanted someone to do the same for her, years ago, when she was wildly in love with a dangerous man she couldn’t have.
“I want to ask you something, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to answer.”
Michael considered the cards laid out before him on the carpet. They were at his house, and they’d both showered, and were in sweats, and were exhausted and enjoying the warm crackle of the fire. Tomorrow, he’d have an angry president to answer to, but right now, he didn’t care about much of anything besides their game of solitaire and the way the fire danced across her fresh-scrubbed face.
“Shoot,” he said, laying the five of spades up on the appropriate stack they’d built between them.
She nibbled at her lip a moment, studying her cards, then lifted her eyes to his. “I’ve been wondering how you came to be a part of the Lean Dogs, when you…well, you don’t seem to like the rest of them that much.”
A simple question. Not a simple answer. And unfortunately for him, he didn’t speak in subtleties.
“I didn’t set out to join,” he said. “It ended up happening, ‘cause I was well-suited for it. It’s a long story.”
She smiled at him. “I’ve got nowhere to be.”
He gave her a discouraging look, but of course she wasn’t deterred.
“It can’t be any more embarrassing than my story,” she said in a light voice that belied the tiny tremor in her hands.
And it wasn’t, was it? No part of his history was as repulsive as the tale she’d told him.
So he took a deep breath and said, “My uncle raises hunting dogs. Blueticks and Great Danes.”
Her brows went up. “Great Danes are hunting dogs?”
He nodded. “Uncle Wynn uses them for boar hunting. They’re the kill dogs. The hounds do the tracking, and then you pull them back. And the Dane goes in with Kevlar” – he gestured to his own chest – “and holds down the hog while the hunter goes in with the knife.”
She watched him curiously, no trace of revulsion on her delicate features. She looked fascinated.
“It’s a real old fashioned way to hunt. Most people use rifles, or bows. They get in blinds and wait for the pig to show. Wynn’s always done it the mountain man way, like they did it a hundred years ago. Lots of people use pitbulls, but I’ve never liked them. The Dane’s got the size and the smarts, and the trainability.”
Holly nodded.
“Uncle Wynn used to sell to people all over the southeast. He was real picky about who he sold his dogs to. And we never used a shipper; I always did the delivery.
“This guy in Arkansas wanted to buy an adult dog, one we’d already trained. So I took the dog, met the guy, and he asked if I’d stay on a few days and show him how to work with the dog. We did that a lot, with the adults we sold, so I said I would.”
He still remembered the moment he’d found the mailbox with the number he was looking for and turned up the driveway. The house had been a rambling brick number with Spanish arches leading into front courtyards, and shiny black double front doors. Between two windows, a massive circle of laser-cut metal adorned a section of front wall. Lean Dogs, Arkansas, on top and bottom, and the silhouette of a running dog in the center. The design was repeated on a snapping white flag that flew just beneath the Stars and Stripes on a tall pole out front. The yard was large, well-landscaped, brick-lined beds bursting with flowers. And everywhere there were bikes. Heavy, black, sinister Harleys, and a few old Indians.
Michael had stopped the truck in front of the garage doors, between a double column of parked motorcycles, and whistled softly to himself. The black and white Dane he’d brought, Ramses, had licked his face and whined from his spot in the passenger seat.
“Yeah,” Michael said. “I hear ya.”
The man who’d come out of the house to shake his hand had been slender and small-boned, with a hawkish face by contrast and small dark eyes that missed nothing. He’d introduced himself as Curtis, and while he spoke, Michael was taking note of all the tattoos going up his arms. Again, he saw the running dog silhouette, this time in solid black ink. And above the breast pocket of Curtis’s black leather vest was a narrow patch that declared him “President.”
“I spent the weekend showing Curtis and his crew the finer points of hog killing – they’d never got in that close to one before. They let me do the knife work till they got more comfortable,” he told Holly.
Sunday night, before Michael headed back to Tennessee, Curtis grabbed two beers from the fridge and walked Michael out to one of the courtyards. There was a fountain tucked into the corner, a concrete casting of vases spilling the water from one down into the next, into the next, and into a pool at its base. Japanese maples dappled the moonlight. The smell of honeysuckle was sweetened by the dew.
Curtis urged him to sit at an iron table, took a long pull off his beer, and said, “So what is it you do for a living, son?”
Michael hadn’t liked to talk, even then, and he’d given a brief description of the odd jobs he did, the handyman work, the occasional backyard car repair, to supplement what he made delivering and training dogs.
Curtis had smiled – a threatening sort of smile Michael would remember forever – and said, “I like the way you handle a knife. I like it so much, I’m thinking about offering you a job.”
He hadn’t accepted. Not then.
But two months later, when he and Uncle Wynn were eating ramen for dinner and rationing the Dog Chow, Michael answered the phone on the first ring, and immediately agreed to bring Curtis another dog.
After that trip, and that beer by the courtyard fountain, he’d accepted a job working at Curtis’s very lucrative car and bike shop. He’d shipped half of each paycheck to Wynn. And he’d quickly learned that this business was run by and peopled with Lean Dogs, that this was a motorcycle club endeavor.
When they asked him to prospect, he accepted.
When they patched him in, they told him why they’d wanted him in the first place: his knife, and what he could do with it. Only now…it wouldn’t he hogs he was slicing into in the dark.
Michael shrugged. “Eventually, there was an opening for someone like me here in Knoxville, and I put in my paperwork. I wanted to come home to Tennessee.” He shrugged again. “That’s it. That’s how it happened.”
Holly started to smile, and then smoothed her lips. “After all the buildup, I was expecting major drama.”
He glanced back at his cards.
“You don’t do drama, though. You’re too solid for that.”
It felt like a compliment. He took it as one.
In a quiet, feather-light voice, she said, “Your uncle raised you?”
He didn’t look at her. “Yeah.”
“All those dogs. That must have been fun growing up.”
“He has a farm, ‘bout an hour from here.”
“How nice.”
“It is.”
“Why don’t you have a dog now?”
“I travel too much. It wouldn’t be fair to a dog.” When he glanced up at her, wondering how many more questions he’d have to field, he found her gazing at him with warm reverence.
He had no delusions about her feelings for him anymore. They were stuck, the two of them. For better, probably for worse.
“You don’t want to talk about it,” she said.
He shrugged.
“So I’ve been thinking,” she went on brightly, “that I ought to be practicing with the gun, like you said.”
“Yeah, you do.”
He wanted her proficient with it.
A chill slid down his spine like the touch of a finger. For a little while, amid the snow, and the lulling drowsy beat of the holidays, he’d allowed himself to stop thinking so much about the fact that she was a hunted woman. He couldn’t afford to be so lax. Not when she was the third person in his life that he’d loved.