Chapter 10
Rue
Groaning, I pried my eyes open. The alarm clock next to the bed read three in the morning. Frowning, I wondered how it’d gotten over on the other side of my bed.
My bladder didn’t allow me to keep wondering. It was urgently letting me know that I needed to use the bathroom. I got up, then swore as I tripped over something. Peering through the darkness, I frowned at a pair of work boots.
“What the-” Then it all came back to me. I was still a little drunk from all the alcohol the guys had given me at the clubhouse, but I’d slept enough off to remember Rhino.
Swallowing back bile, I made my way into Overdrive’s bathroom. He’d brought me back to his place. It was a small little one-bedroom house. A bachelor pad of the highest order with only one bedroom, one bath, a kitchen and a living room. I was thankful that there were walls separating the rooms.
He wasn’t in the bed with me. I finished my business, washed my hands, and went in search of him.
I bit my lip to keep a smile from forming when I saw him on the couch.
He didn’t look comfortable at all. His feet were up on the arm rest and a thin blanket was tossed over him.
But his chest was bare and my eyes wandered over the dark shapes imprinted on his skin.
I wished the lights were on so I could see his tattoos better.
He sucked in a heavy breath, letting me know he was stirring, so I tiptoed back to the bedroom. My eyes drifted closed and I was just about back to sleep when a noise caught my attention.
A yelp jerked out of me before I had a chance to hold it back because a man was in the doorway of the bedroom. If I’d been thinking logically I would have assumed it was OD, but after the night I’d just had, and having Rhino sneak up on me in a shadowy parking garage, I couldn’t help my reaction.
My heart was pounding hard in my chest as I tried to convince my mind and body that it wasn’t Rhino. That he wasn’t here to kill me.
“Shit!” OD barked. “Sorry, I was just checking on you.” He came over and sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s just me.”
My eyes slammed closed while he turned on the bedside lamp, flooding the room with light. “I know. Sorry. I just…” I didn’t really know how to explain my overreaction to seeing his shadow in the doorway. I peeked an eye open, then let the other adjust to the light as well and opened it, too.
He chuckled. “Thought I heard you moving around.”
“Bathroom.”
“Right.” He studied me. “You look better.”
My eyebrows shot up at that and I swore he might have reddened a little under the scruff on his face. “Thanks?”
“I mean you’re not as pale,” he explained. “You want to talk about what happened tonight?”
Opening my mouth, I considered it, then shook my head. “Not yet.”
“Not every day you see someone get tortured.”
I blew out a breath and shook my head. “Not every day I get attacked like that either. Though that was the second time.”
He waited to see if I was going to talk more.
Instead, I let my eyes search over him. He had tattoos everywhere.
They were gorgeous. It was clear he’d spent good money on them and found himself a really good artist. Almost every inch of skin I could see was covered.
His throat, his arms, chest, abs, they even disappeared down below the waist band of his boxer briefs.
My eyes widened as I realized where my gaze had gone and I looked quickly away from him.
“I think I just need to sleep. We can talk about it tomorrow.”
“Sounds good. Let me know if you need anything.” He stood up.
“OD?”
“Yeah?” He had turned and was heading for the door. Now he paused, and was looking back at me.
“Thank you for helping me.”
“No problem.”
“Um…”
He arched a brow at me, waiting.
“You don’t have to sleep on the couch.”
Now both brows were raised.
“You’re too tall for it,” I explained. “You can sleep here.” It was his bed after all. “Just…no funny business.”
His lips twitched at that. “Alright. No funny business,” he agreed.
I watched as he crossed the room and got in on the other side of the bed. His house was small, though clean, and well maintained from what I could see. But his bed was a king size. It wasn’t like we were going to be sleeping on top of each other.
Shame.
I shushed the little voice in my head and rolled onto my side facing away from him. Waiting until he settled, I studied the wall until he let out a heavy breath, then I turned the light off.
I came back to consciousness slowly, but my core was throbbing and my nipples were tightly beaded.
Frowning as I realized those things simultaneously, I struggled to wake up.
I was like any other healthy hot blooded woman, but I didn’t normally wake up horny.
I wasn’t exactly at peak efficiency before I had coffee.
A soft moan escaped my lips as something squeezed my breast and my eyes widened in shock.
A muscular body was wrapped up with mine.
My back was to his chest, my ass cradling a rather impressive, and inviting, hard-on, and his hand was over top of me, cupping my breast. My nipples weren’t just beaded, they could cut glass.
My core was screaming at me for a certain hard-on, wanting to be filled.
Shifting my head, I looked over my shoulder. OD was still asleep, his face relaxed. That wasn’t keeping him from groping me. It also wasn’t keeping me from enjoying it.
Oh my God, if this is my reaction now what would happen if he actually tried?
Facing forward, I let my eyes close as his fingers moved restlessly over my nipple. It’d been some time since I’d slept with a man. Raising a teenager hadn’t been conducive to relationships. Though I had a couple anyway.
Wow. That felt good.
I didn’t make the decision to arch into him and rub my ass against him so much as I did it subconsciously, but it was enough to wake him up.
He sucked in a breath and I froze, waiting to see what he’d do.
This wasn’t the time for sex. We had a lot to talk about and Rhino, or whatever was left of him, to deal with.
Still, OD was incredibly attractive. And he’d just helped me out of a tough situation.
And…I was feeling connected to him in a way that was quickly becoming dangerous for my rational thinking.
I considered rolling over and kissing him, but didn’t want to seem too forward.
I hated the indecision and rules that surrounded dating and sex. I wasn’t good at them.
In the end, he made the decision for me by untangling himself from me and rolling off the bed. He left the room and disappeared into the bathroom in the hallway.
Huffing out a breath, I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. “It’s better this way,” I said quietly. Though my aching body didn’t seem to agree. My irrational brain was annoyed with him, as if he had rejected me, and not sleep groped me.
By the time he came out of the bathroom I’d managed to pull myself together.
He was tugging on a pair of sweats and I tried not to drool.
Sure he’d shown interest when we first met, but torturing and killing a man could change the way a guy felt about you and now I was a bit self-conscious of what was going on between the two of us.
“Why don’t we have some breakfast?” he asked, smiling at me. “And talk.”
I followed him out into his kitchen and watched as he pulled an egg carton and package of bacon from his fridge.
“I’m not much of a cook, but I can manage this. You like eggs?”
“Yeah,” I replied with a grin. “Eggs are fine.”
“Good.” He took a pan out and put it on his stove. “Figured we should go over the plan,” he said, looking over at me as I watched him crack eggs into a bowl.
“Plan?”
“For finding out what Rhino was involved in. He didn’t give us much.”
I sighed, wiping a hand over my face. “What if he wasn’t involved?”
OD snorted in derision. “You have good instincts. He knew exactly what you were talking about. He’s involved.”
“How do you know?” I asked, dropping my hand. “If he didn’t tell you anything-”
“He gave us a couple names. But it was more what he refused to tell us that lets me know he was wrapped up in all of this.”
“Is he…”
“He’s dead,” he said, looking at me with those penetrating dark eyes. “He’ll never hurt you. No one will.”
I swallowed, wondering why this man I’d just barely met made me feel so safe. “Okay.”
“You good?”
“Yeah,” I said in a soft voice. A man was dead because of me. I wasn’t fully sure how I felt about that.
He must have sensed my unease because he sat down with me at the table and put his hand over mine. There were tattoos of bones over the backs of his hands and down his fingers. On someone else that might’ve been creepy, for some reason on him, I found it attractive. “Hey.”
I met his gaze.
“This isn’t your fault.”
Sighing, I admitted, “It is though. I went snooping-”
“Because your brother took off,” he pointed out. “That’s a natural response.”
“Is it?” I asked. “Because no one I work with would think that.”
He shrugged. “Okay, fine. Maybe it’s only natural for some people. But if it’d been one of my brothers? I’d be hunting him down, too, and fuck anyone who got in my way.”
He would. He was definitely the protector type. He was proving that more and more by the day. “Thanks. I guess I’m just so used to helping people…saving their lives, the idea of taking one for me is…horrible.”
“I get that. You rescue people. You should stick to that. Let me and my club take care of the rest.”
Tilting my head, I studied his handsome face. “Why?”
He frowned, dark brows pulling together. “Why what?”
“Why would you help me with this? You don’t even know me, Overdrive.”
He nodded. “True, but you helped me with Camila.”
I scoffed. “That was my job.”
He arched a brow. “So if you’d been walking by and saw her sitting there, you wouldn’t have stopped to check on her?”
“Well…of course. But only because it’s my job-”
“Bullshit.”
“What?” I asked with a small laugh.
He motioned toward me. “You’re like…this shining beacon.”
Blinking at him, I tried to figure him out. “I don’t know what that means.”
“You’re like…a light.”
My brows shot up because that was probably the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me. “A light…”
He chuckled and shrugged. “I’m going to stop before I sound like a fucking idiot, but yeah. You’re one of those people who would wade into the middle of battle to help another person.”
I would. I had before. Well, not battle, but car accidents.
I’d stopped to help a family who’d been T-boned in the middle of an intersection and nearly gotten hit by oncoming traffic for my trouble.
That’d been before I’d gotten started with EMS. That was part of the reason I’d decided to go that route.
Watching the first responders working on the family, helping them, had made me yearn to do the same. “How do you know that?” I asked.
He shrugged again, standing up and going back to the stove. “I have good instincts, too, Little Light.”
I sat there stunned. Whether it was because he could read me so well, or by the nickname, I wasn’t sure. Most people didn’t know that my mother had named me Rue because she’d mourned the day I was born. I’d messed up her life. Or so she’d loved to tell me over and over.
Hadn’t stopped her from making that mistake again with having my brother.
Not that I considered him a mistake. Even after taking care of him by myself, I only considered him a joy.
I loved him so much. That was why it was killing me that he would rather stay with some predatory group than come home.
Than live with me again. Mom had stuck around as long as she could, but I hadn’t been completely surprised that she’d abandoned us.
Shaking away the dark times from my past, I focused on the man who I’d only known a handful of days but had somehow managed to put a warm feeling in my chest just because he seemed to appreciate me.
I needed to be careful because the way he was making me feel was dangerous. “What exactly is your plan, OD?”
He looked at me over his shoulder. “Help you find your brother. Bring him home. Stop this group from hurting other people.” He seemed to consider his response. “Take care of anyone who tries to stop me from doing that.”
I wondered if he realized that, in a way, he was the beacon of light.
He was hope for me right now. It sounded too cheesy to say out loud though, so I kept quiet.
When he’d said it my insides had melted a little.
Okay, completely. But I didn’t feel confident enough to repeat that back to him.
Besides, something told me he wouldn’t accept the compliment anyway. “How do we do any of that?”
He poured the eggs into the pan and turned to face me, crossing his muscular arms over his chest. I really needed him to put a shirt on. He was so distracting. I was going to make a voraciously bad decision here really soon. “We’re going to check out those names that Rhino gave us.”
“How?”
“We have a friend who can track them down. And we’re heading to Rhino’s place to look around today.”
“What can I do?”
He studied me for a long, silent moment. “You could stay out of this. If you wanted to.”
“I don’t,” I said, voice firm. “I want to help. If we find Ryan, I might be able to talk some sense into him.”
“Figured you’d say that.” He sighed and raked a hand through his dark hair. “Then how about you and a couple of my brothers head over and talk to Teddy?”
“I’ve tried,” I replied with a sigh. “He’s too scared to say anything. Probably promised Ryan he wouldn’t.”
“Why is he not as integrated with this crew as Ryan?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“Maybe with Rhino gone he’ll be more willing. Either way, we need to try again.”
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll try.”
“Good.” He smiled at me.
Fighting back the urge to just melt in my chair, I watched as he cooked us breakfast. I wasn’t a religious person, but somehow, something had sent this man in my direction. How else could I have ended up meeting someone who would so willingly help me in this messed up situation?
This wasn’t normal for anyone. I could probably approach one hundred men on the street and ask them to help me and try to explain and one hundred of them would probably hand me over to an insane asylum. Not OD. He’d taken one look at Rhino and shoved him into the back of an SUV.
How was it possible to have found someone like him? The odds were slim, but I was just damn grateful.
He set a plate in front of me and sat with his own and we ate breakfast together as though we hadn’t just killed a man together last night. As though we weren’t going to go off later today to play detective and figure out a mystery. When had my life gotten so weird?