Chapter 16 Tex
TEX
For a second the whole world went quiet.
Rowan stood in front of me, chest rising and falling fast, her eyes wide as she stared up at me, like she couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.
My hands were still on her waist. I hadn’t meant to grab her like that, but the moment I’d seen that guy touch her, grab her arm like he had any right to, it was like something in my brain had snapped clean in half.
And now here we were.
Too close.
Way too damn close.
The parking lot lights cast a soft glow over her face, catching in her hair and the faint flush across her cheeks. Her lips were parted slightly, like she’d been about to say something but forgot the words.
I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to.
Something about her pulled at me in a way no woman ever had before.
I’d had women before. Plenty of them. Way more than my fair share of them.
Club girls. Women in bars. Women who knew exactly what they were getting when they hooked up with a biker. But Rowan wasn’t like any of them, and I couldn’t figure out why.
She just made me feel different. Like there was something at stake. Like losing her would actually matter.
It wasn’t about the sex. Hell, I would have given anything to see this woman naked and writhing beneath me as I worked her body into a frenzy, but this was more than that.
Something deeper.
That thought alone should’ve been enough to scare me off. Instead, my eyes drifted to her mouth, again. To her perfect, pink heart-shaped lips that I wanted to kiss, and suck, and nibble on, and damn.
When I’d seen that guy laughing with her at the bar, I’d felt a type of anger build inside me that I hadn’t ever felt before. A type of feral protectiveness that I’d heard Bear and Moose talk about. The kind of rage and possessiveness that made a man want to kill.
But she wasn’t mine.
I didn’t want her to be mine.
I was good and fine being free and single.
Wasn’t I?
At first I told myself it was nothing. He was just some local asshole friend getting a bit too close and friendly, and so what? What did it matter to me? It was none of my business who she fucked or flirted with.
But then he leaned in closer to her, whispering something in her ear that made her already flushed cheeks turn even pinker. She’d laughed, and suddenly my chest had felt tight in a way I didn’t like. In a way that made my whole body roar…mine.
Outside when he’d grabbed her arm, a feral, hungry look in his eye, a look I’d seen in a man’s eyes before, something darker had taken over me. Something possessive and protective. Something dangerous.
The kind of feeling that got men into trouble.
My grip on her waist loosened slightly.
“Are you okay?” I asked, my voice rougher than usual.
She blinked like she’d been pulled out of a trance. “I… You just knocked him out.”
“Well, he shouldn’t have put his hands on you.”
“That’s not…that’s not how it was. He wasn’t,” she groaned, “that wasn’t your decision to make.”
Her words snapped something in my chest.
I stepped back half a pace, my palm aching when I let her go. “You sure about that?”
Her eyes flashed with defiance. “Yes!”
I ran a hand through my hair, my frustration building. “You think I’m just gonna stand there while some guy drags you around a parking lot?”
“He wasn’t dragging me.”
“He grabbed you, Rowan.”
“And I could’ve handled it, Tex.”
I shook my head. “You don’t know guys like him.”
Her jaw tightened. “And you do?”
“Yeah,” I said flatly. “I do.”
She crossed her arms. “You don’t get to decide what’s best for me. I get to make that choice. I’m yours to protect, but I’m not yours, or whatever.”
Every nerve ending came alive at the sound of those words and I bit back the urge to tell her that she should be mine.
That if she was mine, no one would ever treat her like that.
That they’d be fucking dead in the ground if they did.
But she was right—she wasn’t mine. And deep down I knew that was a good thing. She shouldn’t be mine.
So instead of saying the right thing, I said the wrong thing. And I knew it was wrong as soon as I said it.
“Yeah, well, maybe if you didn’t lead guys on—”
Her face changed instantly. It went from shock to anger. Real fucking anger.
She shoved my chest hard with both hands and stepped away from me like I’d burned her.
“Are you serious? Now you sound just like the asshole you just knocked on his ass!”
I realized what I’d just said, too late.
“That’s not what I meant,” I started, but we both knew that was what I meant, and we both knew that I was wrong. She hadn’t led me on any more than she’d led the unconscious asshole on. I was just being a typical guy that threw around my own insecurities like fucking confetti.
I dragged a hand down my face. “Rowan, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“Oh really?” she snapped. Her voice shook slightly. “I can’t believe I actually wanted to kiss you just now.”
The words hit harder than any punch I’d ever taken. It was a one-two jab and an uppercut to boot. Her words knocked me out cold, because I hadn’t known until that very second how much I had wanted to kiss her too.
Somewhere in the background I could hear my brothers laughing and joking, and I wanted to pull out my gun and shoot it in the air to get them to shut the fuck up. It felt like everything hinged on this moment and they were acting like this was some big fucking joke. My anger grew.
“Can you just calm down? For fuck’s sake, Rowan.”
She shook her head, furious. “I am not one of those women who throw themselves at the feet of every biker in a leather vest. And I sure as shit won’t be spoken to like one.”
“I know that. That’s not what I said.” I grabbed my head, feeling like it was going to explode. No woman had ever brought me to my knees, and yet Rowan could cut me with her tongue right now and I knew I’d still go back for more.
How could I have let anyone have so much power over me?
How the hell had that happened?
“It’s exactly what you implied,” she said, her eyes narrowing.
We were both breathing hard now, the tension between us crackling like electric currents. And I knew if I were to reach out I’d get an electric shock just from touching her.
“I thought you were different,” she said bitterly.
“I am,” I growled, not knowing if that was true or not.
“Yeah, well you could’ve fooled me.”
“You’re being impossible, Rowan.” I glared at her.
“And you’re being an asshole!” she said, glaring right back. Defiance shone in her eyes and damn it if it only made me want to kiss her even more.
To throw her down on my bed and worship every inch of her beautiful body with my tongue and my teeth.
Every time she opened her mouth and snapped at me, I grew angrier and more frustrated, my dick growing harder and pressing against the front of my jeans like she was offering up a blow job and not going to war with her words.
Behind us, boots pounded across the gravel.
“Tex!” Moose’s voice cut through the night.
I turned halfway toward him. “What—”
“GET DOWN!”
Everything happened at once.
Headlights suddenly flooded the parking lot as a dark sedan screeched to a stop near the edge of the gravel and the passenger window rolled down.
And Moose shouted again. “DOWN!”