Nitro (Reckless Kings MC #9)

Prologue

Nitro

The music hit you in the chest before it hit your ears -- bass rolling through the floorboards, up through your boots, into your ribs.

I’d been at enough of these parties to feel them from the inside out, to know the rhythm of a night like this the way I knew my own heartbeat.

The Reckless Kings knew how to throw a party.

Knew how to end one too, when things went sideways.

But tonight was clean. Tonight was just noise and heat and brothers blowing off steam, and I was fine with that.

I stood at the far end of the bar with a whiskey I wasn’t in a hurry to finish, one shoulder to the wall, watching the room.

Bodies pressed close, voices pitched to cut through the music, laughter sharp as breaking glass.

The air smelled of spilled beer and cigarette smoke and something sweeter underneath -- perfume or candle wax, hard to tell.

The overhead lights were low, the neon from the bar sign bleeding red and blue across faces I knew by name, by road name, by the stories they carried in their skin.

I wasn’t looking for trouble. I wasn’t looking for anything, really. Old habit -- scanning a room, cataloguing exits and angles. Nearly two decades in this life had made it automatic, like breathing. You stopped paying attention, you ended up hurt or dead or both.

That was how I found her.

She was near the hallway entrance, far enough from the main press of people to have breathing room, close enough to the rear exit that she could reach it in four strides if she needed to.

I noticed the positioning first. Then the stillness.

In a room where everyone was moving -- swaying, gesturing, leaning into whoever was closest -- she was completely still.

Not frozen. Not afraid. Still the way a person gets when they’re paying very close attention to everything around them while showing as little of themselves as possible.

Her gaze moved in a pattern. Door. Crowd. Bar. Back to the crowd. She wasn’t drunk. She wasn’t looking for someone she knew. She was reading the room the same way I was and doing it well enough that I’d almost missed her.

Almost.

I finished what was left of my whiskey and set the glass down.

She was mid-twenties at most, dark hair pulled back in a careless knot, wearing jeans and a jacket she’d clearly thrown on in a hurry.

Nothing about her look screamed club-adjacent.

No property cut, no patch, no ease in her posture that said she’d spent time around men like the ones filling this room.

But she wasn’t spooked either, and that was the part that caught me.

A civilian stumbling into a Reckless Kings party usually had one of two reactions -- they either leaned in hard, trying to impress, or they got wide-eyed and stayed close to whoever brought them.

She was doing neither. She was standing on her own, taking stock, and looking like she’d already decided exactly how much of herself she was going to give this situation.

I started moving before I’d fully decided to.

The crowd split for me without much effort -- I’d earned that particular courtesy years ago, and it held whether I was in the middle of club business or just crossing a room.

A few brothers nodded. One of the girls who’d been draped across a pool table for the better part of an hour gave me a slow look I didn’t return.

I wasn’t interested in easy tonight. I didn’t know what I was interested in until I was close enough to see the line of her jaw, the flat, controlled set of her mouth, and the way her gaze cut to me the second I entered her orbit.

She didn’t look away. Most people did, even men who had no reason to be nervous. She just shifted her weight slightly and watched me, the same way she’d been watching everything else -- like I was data she hadn’t finished processing yet.

I stopped with maybe two feet between us. Close enough to talk without shouting over the music, far enough to give her the choice to hold her ground or step back.

She held it.

“You’re not having a good time,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

She blinked once -- the only tell -- and then the corner of her mouth pulled just slightly, not quite a smile. “What gave me away?”

Her voice was lower than I expected. Measured. Like she chose words the way some people chose weapons. “You’ve checked the exit four times since I started watching you. That’s either habit or planning.”

Something shifted in her gaze. Not alarm -- recognition, maybe. Like she hadn’t expected to be read that accurately and was recalibrating how careful she needed to be. “Maybe I just don’t like crowds.”

“Maybe.” I let a beat pass. “But you’re still here.”

She held my gaze, and I felt the pull of it more sharply than I’d expected.

There was intelligence there, and stubbornness, and something else underneath both -- a kind of tension, like a wire drawn too tight.

Whatever had brought her here, it hadn’t been the party.

And whatever was keeping her hadn’t been resolved yet.

The music shifted, something harder and louder dropping in from the speakers, and the crowd surged with it.

Someone bumped into her from behind -- a brother who didn’t see her standing there, too deep into his own night to notice -- and she stepped forward instinctively, closing the gap between us by half.

For one second we were close enough that I could catch the clean scent of her over the smell of everything else in the room.

She looked up at me. I looked down at her. Neither of us moved back.

I didn’t ask her name right away. I let the moment breathe, let her get used to the fact that I wasn’t moving on.

She did a good job not showing that it bothered her.

After about ten seconds she looked away first, but only toward the bar -- a casual glance that said she was deciding whether to want a drink or use it as an exit strategy.

“You don’t have to explain yourself,” I said. “I’m not asking.”

She looked back at me. “Then what are you doing?”

“Talking to you.”

“You don’t usually just talk to women at parties.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You know me?”

“I know the type.” She said it without edge, just matter-of-fact, and somehow that was worse than if she’d tried to insult me. She’d put me in a category and was watching to see if I’d prove her wrong or right.

“Willa,” she said, before I could decide how to respond. Just the name, nothing attached to it.

“Nitro.”

She nodded, like she’d already known. Maybe she had. My face was known around here -- around most places in a three-state radius, if I was being honest. Being part of the Reckless Kings had a way of making you visible whether you wanted it or not.

“Why are you here, Willa?” I asked.

“Someone invited me.”

“Someone I know?”

“Probably.” She wasn’t going to give me more than that, and she wasn’t apologetic about it. She just looked at me with those careful eyes and waited to see what I’d do with the nothing she was handing me.

Most women, when they realized they had my attention, changed. Something softened, or something sharpened in a different direction -- the performance of being worth wanting. Willa didn’t perform. She stood there exactly as she had before I crossed the room.

I waited, watching her eyes, to see if she’d retreat or recalibrate. She didn’t do either. Her chin came up by maybe half an inch, that small involuntary tell, and she kept her gaze on mine.

“You’re not what I expected,” I said.

“You didn’t know I existed ten minutes ago.”

“No,” I agreed. “But I’ve been at enough of these parties to have expectations.” I let my gaze move over her face -- slow, unhurried. “You don’t fit any of them.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It was one.”

The music was still too loud for comfort, the bass a constant pressure at the base of my skull, but I’d stopped noticing the rest of the room.

It had narrowed down to the small space between us and the precise way she was holding herself -- not stiff, not uncomfortable, just contained.

Everything about her was contained, and I found myself wanting to find the one thing that would undo it.

I reached out and touched her wrist. Just my thumb, pressing lightly to the inside where her pulse ran close to the surface. A question more than a move. She went very still, not pulling away, and I felt it -- the quick, involuntary jump of her heartbeat against my skin.

She didn’t look down at my hand. She kept her gaze on my face, which told me she’d already decided how she was going to handle this, and looking down would be acknowledging something she wasn’t ready to concede.

I leaned in close, angling my head so my mouth was near her ear. “You’ve been deciding since I walked over here whether you’re going to let this go anywhere,” I said quietly. “I figure you’re about halfway to a decision.”

She didn’t pull away. She also didn’t answer immediately, which meant she was listening instead of reflexively denying it, which meant I was right.

“And if I decide no?” she said. Her voice was steady, but I was still close enough to catch the slight unevenness in her breath.

“Then I go get another drink and we both go on with our nights.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that.” I pulled back enough to read her face. “I’m not interested in convincing you of anything you don’t already want. That’s not the game I play.”

She studied me for a moment -- that same careful, cataloguing look she’d been using on everything in the room. I let her look. I had nothing to hide and nothing to perform. What she saw was what I was: a man who found her interesting and was willing to say so plainly.

“What game do you play?” she asked.

“Honest ones.” I paused. “When possible.”

From her expression, I could tell the wall had come down an inch or two. Enough to let something through without fully opening the door.

“The rest of the club is like this?” she asked. “This direct?”

“Some of them. I’m better at it than most.”