“Take them off or I’ll fuck them off you,” he ground out again, feeling his patience fraying despite how hot it was making him. Yes, he wasn’t the scrawny besotted teenager anymore, staring from the shadows. He was the big, bad biker who was going to save her ass. She eyed him up. Clearly despite her wishes, he presented her only option out of this mess, so she obliged, untying the gold strap that looped up her ankle.
“Fine but you can carry them.” She shoved them toward him, into the pocket of his cut. Her fingers fumbling on his torso made his breath hitch. The presumptuous minx. He was to carry her shoes now? Fuck it. He would, of course he would. They had to get out of there.
He backed off, away from her, and beckoned her over to the window. “We climb up the drainpipe, over the roof, and basically down the other side, simple enough. Follow me exactly,” he said. She nodded and pursed her lips. She grabbed her leather jacket and reached inside, pulling out her phone. She tapped away on it.
He frowned. Firstly, surprised they didn’t search her and take her phone off her, and secondly surprised she was calmly on her phone. “Kitten, this isn’t the time for updating your social media status or taking a photo for the ‘gram’,” he drawled.
She stuck her tongue out at him but slipped her phone back into her jacket pocket and zipped it up, as if she were preparing to go out into the cold. It was a hot July day outside.
He almost smiled. He crouched on the window ledge, indicating to her to be quiet with a finger to his lips. Damn, he was still hard. Now she was barefoot and wearing the tiny dress, miles of slender leg on display. He refocused. He lifted himself up, grabbed the drainpipe to the right of the window, and scrambled up onto the roof. It was too high to pull himself up the way he’d dropped down. He turned. Would she have the strength to pull herself up? She was already shimmying up the pipe, her feet able to squeeze in the gap between the brickwork, pulling herself up with her forearms. Great. Once he was standing at the top and looking down, he held out a hand for her which she took, after a fierce look. He pulled her up onto the roof. She followed him silently, he ducked and then hurried. She did the same. It wouldn’t be long until they found her gone, the window open. They’d be able to find her pretty soon.
He wordlessly dropped down onto the kitchen roof, turning to help her, offering her his knee as a place to put her foot to help her down. She flashed him another fierce look. Like she didn’t want to be helped, she resented him for helping, but she knew she didn’t have a choice. He bit his cheek to stop himself from chuckling at her attitude. He’d be enjoying this so much more if they weren’t in imminent danger. Hell, who was he kidding, he was enjoying this a lot even though they were in danger. Then onto the dumpster, and down onto the concrete. He turned again to help her, but she’d already landed on the balls of her bare little feet, cat-like. Kitten-like, he corrected himself. His little drowned, spitting kitten.
He licked his lips. They were nearly there. Nearly free. He whispered to her as they cut across the yard, his eyes darting around to see if anyone was watching them. He hopped on the bike.
“Put your shoes back on and we’ll ride out,” he said, thrusting her shoes back at her.
“I’m not getting on the back of a bike with you,” she declared cuttingly.
Colt faltered. “What? So you’d rather stay, get tied up again and-”
“No! Sorry, but… I don’t really do this-” She waved her hand at him like she was talking about an object. “This isn’t how my life normally goes. I don’t know you, you’re a convict, you’re a biker… why would I go anywhere with you, what have you got to offer a girl like me?” She finished haughtily.
He should have known. He felt the pinch of rejection bite him. Deep. “I can get us outta here.”
“That’s it? You haven’t got a plan, money? Any allies to help? It’s just you and that bike?”
“...Yup.”
“No, I’m not… this is not…”
He felt the pull of sucking despair, watching everything he wanted slip through his fingers. But his mask didn’t slip, he did what any self respecting, cocky MC Prez would do, he rolled the dice, playing his final hand.
“Look, I get it, I’m not the usual white knight prince charming shit, the only relevant skill I can offer right now, the only thing I can put on the table... I can drive fast, that’s all I got.” He cleared his throat. “And a hot, hard fuck.” He felt dizzy saying it, but he held her gaze. “That’s what else I can offer. A fast, dangerous ride out of here, wherever you want to go, and a fucking hot as hell ride on my cock. That, I can guarantee.”
He watched her face. She considered it for about half a second. Then she laughed out loud. Fuck, that hurt. That would echo around inside his brain for the rest of his miserable fucking life.
She shook her head, almost like he’d told a funny joke. “I ordered an Uber before we climbed out the window. Look, I’m sorry, but I’m not hanging around with a no-hoper ex convict like you, inviting more trouble-”
He continued nonetheless. You could say many things about Colt, but that he gave up easily was not one of them. “Both of us have a price on our heads, if we both go on the run together-”
“I’m not running anywhere, I’m going back to my fiancé, to my life-” She backed away now, heading toward the gate, barely flicking a half-hearted backwards glance at him.
He stood by the bike he’d planned to use as their getaway ride. The poor young kid he’d punched was still out cold. He wordlessly watched her walk away. From him. As he always knew she would. April. Better than him, not looking for him, never going to be his. He watched her slide into the black sedan that had just pulled up by the open gate. She didn’t even look back. He stared, wondering if she’d look out the tinted black windows on the passenger side to watch him as she rode off into the sunset, happily ever after. With some fiancé. That wasn’t him. That would never be him.
She’d left him. He wanted to howl and rage against the stars that had dictated that this was his fate. His eyes caught something shining on the ground, by the gate. Her shoes. Had she dropped them or dumped them? He stooped, picked them up. The car sailed away, he couldn’t even see into the blacked out windows. He realized he probably had an open mouthed stare on his face, watching her go. Fucking great, he was left at the side of the road, staring after her, holding her shoes. What a class A chump he was. He thought about dumping them again right there in the yard. He didn’t, of course, they were April’s shoes. He slumped over to the bike, and shoved the shoes in the saddle bag. He straddled it, fired it up, shoved the helmet back on his head, and rode out of the yard. He looked left, the way the taxi had just driven. He could catch up to them in no time, he knew. He looked right, the road that led out of town. Away from all the drama, toward his sunset and his happily ever after. Except it wasn’t happy at all. He looked left, then right again. Which way should he go? He was screwed either way.
April stared into her vast closet in despair. It was a walk-in, and she had filled it; dresses, trousers, tops, coats, shoes… but she was paralyzed with indecision. What should she wear? It was her fiancé’s business launch night. She had to be there, looking good. The culmination of months of hard work and planning for him. He wanted her there to support him. She had to go and stand at his side as he introduced her to all of his investors and potential clients, to look like the smiling, adoring wife-to-be she was. She wanted to go, she shook herself a little, of course she did. She had been looking forward to this night for months. Not only for the night out, in the Creekdale Hotel, no less, the fancy spa and golf resort outside of town.
The night would consist of canapés, champagne, glitz and glamour. But also so she could get her fiancé back, get on with their life together. He’d been working long, late hours for months, for years, really the whole time she’d known him. He’d had this idea in college, he’d told her all about it on their first date in fact. And he’d been so passionate and driven. She’d admired that about him. But it had turned into him putting the business first, always, every time. And she was second. She shouldn’t complain, she never complained, it was the right thing to do. But there were nights when she wished he’d just come home, perhaps with a bottle of wine or a bunch of roses, or whisk her out for an unexpected dinner. Or drop everything for a cozy night in. Some impulsive romance. That’s what they were missing. That’s what they had never really had. Spirit, soul, life. The relationship felt very… on ice. As cool as the champagne she would soon be sipping on. She couldn’t bear to think about what had been happening in the bedroom more often than not. She winced. Precisely nothing. Every evening, every minute, every move he made was planned around what would look good for the business.
She had to go tonight, of course she did, but she didn’t feel any of her clothes matched her current mood. And all she could think about was a pair of searching brown eyes. And a torso chiseled from rock. And that voice. His husky, gravelly voice, calling her kitten. It was like it had never happened. Like it was a dream. A moment she had snagged, a wrinkle in the space-time continuum and slipped into a parallel universe.
She skimmed the beautiful clothes in her wardrobe absently with her hands. Silk, velvet, cotton, linen, all of it ran through her hands but she didn’t really see them. She cocked her head, suddenly remembering something that would fit her mood perfectly. Did she still have them? It had been years since she’d last worn them. She ran her hands through the curtains of various trouser legs, against all the colors, all different cuts, all the materials. Until her hand hit one. Yes. Leather. Here they were. She grabbed onto a pair of leather trousers. Tight leather trousers. They were dark burgundy in color. They had been a very expensive present from her father. She pursed her lips. Who she now realized was a biker. A leader in an outlaw motorcycle club. She’d honestly believed he worked for the government. That’s why he was never around, that’s why she lived with her grandparents during the summer and went to boarding school. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around it. But now the leather jacket made sense. The gift he’d given her for her fifteenth birthday. And these burgundy leather trousers. High waisted, they fit like a glove. She’d only worn them a few times. She had loads of other gifts from him, too. Her father, an omnipotent stranger.
Her last twenty-four hours flashed in front of her eyes. She’d need time to process it all. She’d think of it later, she told herself. She’d lied to Hugo, her fiancé, she said she’d been out late and decided to stay over at a friend’s house. She had hoped to assign it all to a crazy, silly dream and forget it had happened and move on with her life. She didn’t need to think about the biker who’d rescued her. The guy who had apparently been some sort of bodyguard to her all throughout her teenage years. Jeez. She didn’t recognize him. But he seemed to recognize her.
It had started out as a nightmare, taken, roughly manhandled, blindfolded. She felt blinding panic and she couldn’t breathe. And then he had been there, and he had rescued her, and she was saved. The look in the eyes of the man at the bar. His smoldering brown eyes, clocking her. Gosh, she had been scared until that point. But she saw him and... her fight returned. Her resolve. Her strength. He looked at her and she had almost melted at his feet. Melted and reformed again. Hell, to be with a man like that. What a woman she would be if she was with a man like that. He’d puffed on a cigarette, something she hated, but he’d made it look delicious. He’d smiled, said something to the others in the room. If she’d been kidnapped to spend a night with a man like him, then maybe she wouldn’t have fought so hard in the van. He was solid muscle. Tall, he had shoulders that could hold a woman up and worship her without getting sore arms, and thighs that could drill into her all night without getting a cramp. Two of the things her fiancé had complained about the last time they had been intimate a few months ago. When Colt had thudded down into the room wearing that leather cut on his torso… it was too much. The biker had a chest to die for, abs, that ‘V’ of muscle that sat above the hips, leading the eye down, down to his lower region. And he’d probably be massive down there, too. God, her thoughts spiraled.