She watched the fiery ball of the sun begin its drop into the sea. The sky turned all shades of golden, and then orange spread through the low clouds drifting overhead. She had to admit, as sunsets went, it was pretty spectacular. She could have settled here in Northern California. She didn’t like big cities and this area was far from that. Truthfully, she needed to be in a city, to disappear. There, no one cared or noticed a waitress working in a diner. In a smaller town, like Caspar or Sea Haven, everyone would notice.
She had been so careful, keeping her head down, working, nothing else. Just staying off the radar and as far from the club life as possible. Still, she’d been pulled back despite everything she’d tried to do to prevent that from happening. The life was insidious, and once in, it seemed there was no way out.
She was crying again and that always gave her a vicious headache and annoyed her. She had stopped crying three years earlier after she’d spent weeks giving herself a headache and little else. She’d stopped, gotten on her feet and taken care of business. She’d been proud of herself for every accomplishment. Then her world had fallen apart and she’d had no choice but to make certain Steele got that letter. Everything depended on him getting it and following the instructions. That was important and yet, she knew, following instructions was very unlike Steele. She didn’t even know for certain if it would matter enough to him that he’d do it for her.
The sun plunged into the sea and she immediately began preparations for leaving. It was nearly time. She climbed out of the window and began removing the branches and vines from around her pickup. She had to back the truck straight along the road for a good thirty feet before there was a wide enough area for her to turn around.
She made it the thirty feet without using lights as the darkness was only just becoming, inky streaks running through the very dim light. As she started up the road, heading away from the ocean and toward the main highway, she saw that a small tree had fallen across the dirt track. It didn’t surprise her, given the wind. Fortunately, the round trunk looked more like a sapling than a mature tree, one she could handle by herself.
Sighing, she turned on her headlights to illuminate the area, so it would be easier to shift the fallen tree. Pulling gloves out of her glove compartment she pushed open her door with the soles of her boots and slid out. She was tired, afraid and anxious to be gone from Torpedo Ink territory. Just the thought of that dangerous ride along the highway was terrifying. She planned to take the Comptche-Ukiah road leading away from the coast. It would take her off the highway. They probably thought she hadn’t done any research or planned ahead—after all, she was a stupid female to be used for carrying drugs or weapons or prostituted out on behalf of the club. She couldn’t actually think.
Bitterness nearly choked her. She detested MCs and all they stood for. She crouched, took a breath and reached down for the trunk. The moment she had her hands on the tree, arms reached around her, caught her wrists and yanked them behind her back. She rose up fast, throwing her head back to try to come in contact with her attacker’s head. He grunted when she smashed into his chest, but he had already secured her wrists with zip ties.
“How many times did I tell you to look around? You forgot all my training, babe.”
Furious, and more than a little scared, she spun around and tried to kick him the moment he let her go. She had forgotten, damn him. He blocked the kick hard, numbing her leg when he defended himself by striking down on her shin to deflect the blow. She tried again, and he blocked a second time with equal power.
The breath hissed out of her lungs and she bent forward as far as she could, drawing her hands up as high as possible, intending to slam them back down as she came upright fast in order to break the zip ties. He’d taught her that as well. Before she could straighten, his hand was on her back, holding her down.
“Breezy, you’d better calm down before you get hurt.”
Her breath hissed out of her lungs. “Go to hell, Steele. You have no right to lay one finger on me.”
“That’s not exactly true, sweetheart, and you know it,” he said.
“I’m not part of your club. I’m not part of your life in any way. Just get the hell away from me.”
He didn’t let her up, his palm pressing her down while he texted one-handed. “You always were a smart little thing. I looked at the tapes we had of your ride.” He sounded derisive. “Babe. Really. You’re driving a shit truck. It’s a rust bucket if I ever saw one. There was no way it could have gotten that far ahead of us, even if we were a minute or two behind, which the prospects were. That meant it was a process of elimination on which road you’d turned off onto. I also remembered you as being extremely patient when you needed to be. That meant you were going to hide out until nightfall. It gave me plenty of time to track you down.”
“Let me up.”
“Ask nice.”
For one moment, she was afraid she might spontaneously combust—and not in a good way. She stayed quiet. He had to let her up sometime.
“I’m not real happy with you.”
Staying quiet went right out the window at the bite in his voice. “I really don’t care whether you’re happy or not. Let. Me. Up.”
“You ask nice. You don’t want to play hardball with me, Breezy, because you won’t win. Not when I’m this pissed. Didn’t have much to do when I found the truck but wait for you to wake up, so I read the fuckin’ letter.”
Her heart jerked hard. Fear shot through her and she went very still, no longer resisting or struggling to get free. If anything, she tried to make herself smaller, frozen like a little mouse with a big predator about to pounce.
“I read that fuckin’ letter eighteen times, Breezy. Eighteen. I showed some restraint by not going near the truck because I might have strangled you. I still might.”
His palm moved up her back to settle slowly around the nape of her neck, his long fingers curling around either side of her throat. “You get how really fuckin’ pissed I am with you?”
“You get how I really fucking don’t care?” she spat back. Let him kill her. She was dead anyway. “You threw me out, Steele. I begged you to let me stay with you. It was humiliating, and I still did it. Then I begged you to go with me when it was obvious you wanted me gone. You made it abundantly clear that I was nothing to you. A whore for the club that kept you warm at night. I can repeat verbatim what you said to me if you’d like. So don’t get all self-righteous on me.”
The fingers tightened, digging into her throat. The thumb pressed into her chin. His other hand bunched her hair in his fist and slowly pulled her to a standing position. She stared up at his set features. He was even more gorgeous than she remembered, and she dreamt of him every night. Every night. That made her a masochist.
Unlike most of the others he rode with, he had few scars on his face. They were mostly on his body, covered with ink. She knew every scar, every tattoo. She had traced every one of those scars and tattoos with her tongue. With her fingertips. She’d memorized them until they were etched so deeply in her brain, she could have drawn them and gotten every detail perfect.
She wore his tattoo on her skin. He’d had his friend ink her for him, a tattoo of his design, right across the top curve of her butt, an intricate pattern that she always thought was beautiful. She had a love/hate relationship with that tattoo. The ink beads dripped down onto her buttocks, both cheeks, but high up, the intertwining lace wove his name there declaring her his property. His. She’d loved that. It had meant something back then. Now, not so much.
She’d been shaking, and he’d held her hand and whispered to her, beautiful, loving things, things that had made her laugh or want to cry with happiness. All the while his friend Ink had tattooed the custom design on her. It had felt intimate. Loving. She often thought of that day and the way, for the first time in her life, she’d felt important and loved by someone.
“Untie me.”
He shook his head slowly. “You’re coming back to the clubhouse with me.”
She flinched. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to go anywhere near that place again. “Once was enough, Steele.” There was sarcasm in her voice. Maybe bitterness. “One look, one smell and I knew I was so finished with that life. You managed to fall right back into it once I was gone, or were you still participating while we were together? I should have known it would take more than one woman to satisfy you. You always had such an appetite.” She made that as nasty as she could manage.