Taming the Bad Boy (Heartless Bastards)

1. Ivy

1

IVY

The familiar smell of motor oil and tire rubber fills my lungs as I wipe my hands on the greasy rag hanging from my pocket. To most people, the scent would be harsh and repellent, but I’ve been around bikes for all eighteen years I’ve been alive, so it doesn’t bother me. In fact, it feels like home. The growl of a four-stroke engine is my version of a lullaby. The clang of metal on metal like chit-chat around the dinner table. This is old hat to me. Routine. But as I’m finishing up tonight, something’s different.

Or should I say, someone .

Slate.

He’s standing by the open garage door, muscled arms crossed over his thick chest, surveying the mechanics with an intensity that sends a shiver up my spine. His white, oil-stained Henley is stretched to the max over his brawny shoulders, his inked arms on full display. If there was ever a man who was the definition of raw, untamed masculinity, it would be him. He looks like the kind of guy who could break you in half and then put you back together again just to say he did it.

My dad taught me not to stare.

But I just can’t help it.

My eyes keep drifting to him like he’s some kind of magnet. There’s nothing I can do. I’m breathing heavily, my jaw open ever so slightly, like my tongue wants a taste of him.

Slate’s been coming in for months now, along with other members of the Heartless Bastards, the biker gang he’s part of who exclusively use my dad’s shop for tune-ups, oil changes, custom jobs, whatever. I’ve noticed him plenty of times, but he’s never noticed me.

Until today.

His eyes pass over the rest of the guys, all working hard on their projects, and land on me. His gaze locks on to mine, and suddenly it’s like the garage no longer exists. It’s just Slate and me, isolated in our own little world like two people safe in the eye of a hurricane. His face is unreadable but smolders with a fierce severity that causes my breath to catch in my throat. I reach for my water bottle, but that’s when he starts toward me.

Oh my God…

He moves slowly and deliberately, his heavy boots thudding against the concrete floor. The throttle on my heart revs past the redline, causing my pulse to throb hard and heavy in my ears. I need to look away. I can’t just stand here like a deer in headlights.

But I can’t.

I’ve lost control.

He stops in front of me and leans against the hydraulic lift, his pose accentuating the veins and striations that run through his biceps and forearms. He’s got to be in his late twenties or early thirties, and while that might bother some girls, it totally turns me on.

He smells like gasoline and oil–like he’s been out riding with the Bastards. That might as well be a tailor-made cologne to my nose. But beneath that, there’s something savage that lights me up. The smell of him that causes something to awaken inside me.

My head is swimming. I don’t even know what I’m doing with my face, but I must look silly as he smiles at me.

“Didn’t your daddy teach you not to stare?” he asks. Yes. He did actually . “Or do I have something on my face?” His voice is deep, raspy and powerful, and thrills me in a wonderfully frightening way.

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

I can’t speak.

Oh, no. This is a disaster. Humiliating. He caught me gawking, and we both know it. How am I going to salvage this?

A knowing smirk tugs the corner of his mouth. “I thought I washed this morning, but maybe I got some oil on me–”

“I–I wasn’t s–staring,” I manage to blurt out, stuttering through the entire sentence. Heat prickles through my cheeks. I’m blushing.

Slate chuckles. “Sure you weren’t, baby.”

Baby? Did he just call me baby?

And the way he said it too, like he’s familiar with me. Like I belong to him. It makes my knees go weak. I brace myself on the Harley I’ve been working on, playing it cool, trying not to act like I’m on the verge of fainting.

“You know who I am?” he asks as though the answer is self-evident.

I nod, keeping my chin up. “You’re Slate. You’re a Heartless Bastard.”

For some reason, he chuckles, as if my answer amuses him. “That’s right. And you are…?”

I can tell by his face that he already knows my name, but he wants to hear me say it. Normally, I wouldn’t play into this little game with anybody, but for some reason, I give him what he wants.

“Ivy.”

His expression shifts, like he’s just taken a sip of the world’s finest whiskey. “Ivy,” he repeats, rolling my name across his tongue as if he’s tasting it for the first time. “I’ve never seen a female mechanic before. Shouldn’t you be answering phones? Working the computers?”

He’s teasing me, goading me into a reaction. But I’m not falling for it. In fact, I just shrug and proudly brandish my wrench. “Bikes don’t fix themselves.”

He slowly nods, eyeing my wrench before very deliberately dragging his eyes up my body, causing my flesh to heat like a revving engine. “You like to get your hands dirty, little mechanic?”

Little mechanic?

His arrogance is overwhelming. It’s also sexy. “Only when there’s work needs doing.”

His smile widens. He likes that answer.

He also very obviously likes some other things about me…

And Lord save me, I like that he does.

“Speaking of work,” I say, fighting to change the subject before I lose myself in his eyes. “Did you need help with something?”

His smirk fades, and his eyes narrow in on me like two rifle scopes. “Yeah. I have a job needs doing.”

Relief floods through me, mixed with a dose if disappointment. So that’s why he’s here. He’s got a job for the shop.

Of course he does. It would be stupid to think he was here because of me.

His dirty-blond hair falls carelessly in unkempt waves from his forehead, just low enough that I’m aching to brush them back and expose those stormy blue eyes without anything in the way. They hang lose, wild and untamed, just like him.

I realize I’m staring again and snap myself out of it. “You need your bike looked at?”

Slate doesn’t answer right away. He just looks at me, studying me, his eyes tracing over my face, my lips, and my cheeks–which are no doubt completely red by now. The intensity he’s able to project with his gaze is overpowering. Almost too much.

Almost.

“Nope. I’m not here about my bike,” he finally says, his voice low. “I’m here about you .”

My breath catches in my throat, like I’ve got a frog in there doing his best to ribbit its way out and embarrass the hell out of me. “M–me?”

I’m stammering. Stuttering. I have to brace myself against the bike as he takes a step closer. So close that I realize how much I have to look up at him. He towers above me like a giant. He’s well over six-feet. An absolute Adonis. Even other men must be intimidated by his presence. “I want to take you out, Ivy.”

His words crash into me like an out of control sport bike. I was not expecting that.

He wants to take me out? I’d believe it more if someone just told me an alien spacecraft had landed out back.

I do my best to ignore my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest as I mutter, “Well…that can’t happen.”

His left eyebrow lifts, and he cocks his head to the side. “No? Why the hell not?”

I’m quivering as I glance through the window into the office where my dad is having a heated phone conversation. If he knew Slate was even thinking about doing what he just did, he’d erupt like a volcano.

“Because…my dad would kill you,” I whisper.

I shouldn’t have said that. You don’t talk like that to one of these guys.

But my dad, Hank Calloway, is different. He’s the kind of man who, when he speaks, people listen. No matter who they are. He’s solid and dependable, like the machines he works on. And although his hair, once dark, is now gray, he can still kick butt like a guy half his age.

He’s been running Calloway’s Bike and Auto for as long as I’ve been alive, and nobody–not even the Bastards–question his authority when it comes to his shop. He takes no shit. Not from anybody. And when it comes to me, he’s like a guard dog. Protective–maybe overly so–with a watchful eye, ready to tear into any guy who even looks my way.

It makes sense considering my past. My mom’s been out of the picture since I was eleven. She was reckless, addicted to bad men and worse behavior. And when she cheated on my dad with a member of another gang, I don’t know which one, she ended up in debt beyond anything she could pay. Instead of working it off herself, she tried to sell me into the gang’s trafficking ring.

Can you imagine? I’m convinced my mother was born with a piece of ice where her heart was meant to be.

Luckily, my dad found out just in time. He still won’t give me the full details of how he stopped those men from taking me, but I have a feeling he built most of his reputation on whatever went down that day.

I know he loves me. But sometimes it feels like he’s devoted his entire life to making sure I never get close to any of the men he gladly deals with on a daily basis. And I get it. I really do. But that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes I feel like a caged bird just desperate to fly.

Despite my warning, Slate doesn’t falter. He’s still smiling, his blue eyes blazing as if thrilled by my warning. “I’ll take my chances.”

I shake my head, my body trembling, already beginning to betray me as I step closer to him, drawn in by an invisible force. “No. You don’t get it,” I whisper. “He does not want me mixed up with any of you guys.”

Slate takes a deep breath, his chest expanding even wider than it already is. He reaches out and gently takes a strand of my hair in his fingers, tickling my scalp as he pulls it delicately–more delicately than I ever thought a man like him would be capable of.

“No, you don’t get it, Ivy,” he growls, like he’s barely holding himself back. “I don’t give a damn about your dad. When I was here yesterday, I saw you. And if we weren’t warring with The Reaper’s Oath crew, I would have been here then saying exactly what I’m saying now.”

My heart feels like an engine revved to the max, ready to explode if it beats any faster. My eyes drift down, trailing across the broad width of his chest and the fibers of his shirt, stretched to their breaking point across his layers of muscles. But it’s something lower that causes my breath to catch in my throat.

The thick bulge in his jeans is unmistakable and impossible to miss, straining hard against his buttoned fly, demanding my attention, an engorged and swollen mound that sends heat pooling low in my belly. I swallow hard against the sudden dryness in my mouth as I fight to come to terms with the reality of what this signifies.

Slate catches me looking, but instead of grinning or barking out some witty remark, he stands there strong and stoic, like he wants me to know exactly what effect I’m having on him.

“I’ve been watching you, Ivy,” he finally says, his voice taut. “And I know you’ve been watching me too.”

My lips part, and I go tense. My first instinct is to protest, but what would be the point?

I have nothing to say. He’s right.

I’ve seen Slate in here before, but I’m always working in the back of the shop, so it’s no surprise he never laid eyes on me until yesterday. But I have been watching him, drawn in by his rough good looks and commanding presence.

I’ve been off-limits my whole life.

I’ve never been kissed. Never been touched.

And I’m tired of being the good girl.

And now that Slate’s staring down at me like he wants to ruin me, I’m starting to wonder if maybe I want to be ruined…

“Let me take you out,” he says as his fingers close around my hand, sending a shiver through me. “I know you want to say yes, Ivy. So just say it.”

Can he read my mind? Or are my thoughts so obviously written across my face that how I’m feeling is no secret?

My stomach twists. I feel lightheaded. I know this is dangerous, and saying yes will change my life. But I don’t see what other choice I have. He’s so tall, so handsome, with a body that belongs in a men’s magazine and hair that any model would be jealous of. And he rides a bike like the ones I’ve been working on since I was old enough to hold a wrench. It’s almost like he was custom built for me.

“Okay, fine,” I say, forcing my tone to be firm. “But my dad cannot find out.”

Slate’s eyes blaze with triumph, victory, possession. And as if he doesn’t care who sees, he runs his fingers through my hair like a brush, causing a tickling sensation to awaken between my legs.

That’s new…

“Good girl,” he says softly, his voice warm like the seat of a bike on a cold night.

Racy thoughts fill my mind. The kind that dads never want to imagine their daughters being capable of thinking. Like how Slate would look without that Henley and without those oil- stained jeans…or how his rough, callused hands would feel tightly grasping my hips…or what it would be like to lie beneath him on a filthy floor while he tore at my clothes like the wild man he is…

“You like bowling?” His voice shakes me out of the hypnotic stupor I realize I was just in.

“Bowling?” I repeat, shaken.

He nods, smirking. “It’s a thing people do here on Earth.”

“Right,” I blurt out quickly, blushing even harder now. I’m making an ass of myself. “Yeah, I…bowl. Sure.”

“Great,” he replies. “Pick you up this evening.”

I open my mouth to protest. To tell him this evening isn’t good. How am I ever going to have the time to get myself ready after work and look even remotely decent? But before I can speak, he’s turned his back on me and is walking away, as if his word is final. And I guess it is, because I don’t yell after him. I just watch him go, the warm sensation between my thighs spreading as I lose myself in more naughty thoughts that my dad would never want me thinking.

I told him I would never let myself get involved with one of these biker guys. I promised.

But I never anticipated meeting a guy like Slate either.