31. Char
CHAR
Jesus, they didn’t even try to hide it.
“Plug figured out where the camera is sending information to.”
Cameras? What cameras?
I peered over my shoulder long enough to hear the closing door cut off Dallas’s voice. “I take it?—”
That is, until Deac’s voice wafted beneath my feet through the floor. “Son of a fucking motherfuck! God fucking damn it!”
Oh, boy. That didn’t sound good.
I wanted to keep following them. Even as their voices melted down the hallway, I wanted to throw that t-shirt on that Dallas had tossed me and figure out what the hell they were talking about.
But, the sound of a hot shower overrode my curiosity.
I let the sheet drop and slipped into the massive shower, praising the fact that it had a bench.
I was much too tired to stand on my own two feet.
My body ached in places I didn’t even realize had muscles that could ache in the first place.
I’d never felt anything more glorious than that first spurt of hot water against my throbbing back.
“Oooooh, yeah,” I groaned as I reached up toward the showerhead.
I pointed it toward the bench, then went and took a seat.
I hissed as I sat down on the welts Deac had left behind, and yet somehow, they still managed to make me smile.
He was a devil of a man, I’d give him that.
But, it suited him, in an odd way. Powerful, and gritty, but well-meaning.
Well-doing. Caring of the people around him and who he felt he needed to protect.
He reminded me a lot of, well, myself, in a way.
Kind of.
“Shut up, brain. I need to clean up,” I murmured.
I pushed all thoughts away and settled into the cool, frosted glass.
The steam from the hot water wrapped around me, blanketing me away from the world as it soothed my pains.
There wasn’t much in the way of toiletries, but with a quick look around I discovered a bottle of seven-in-one.
Body wash, shampoo, conditioner, face wash, and a host of other things, all wrapped up into one gigantic leaking bottle.
“Figures,” I murmured as I pumped some spurts into my palm.
I sat there and washed myself down. The water made me feel whole again, and it pulled me out of the foggy trance of the past couple of days. God, it had only been a couple of days? It felt like an entire lifetime had transpired since Miss Lilly pulled us in for that stupid fucking lunch meeting.
I almost got through my shower without being bothered.
Almost, anyway.
BOOM! BOOM!
Two heavy knocks came at the door, and I leapt to my feet. “Don’t come in!”
Deac’s voice sounded out from the great beyond. “You wanna work today?”
I paused. Did I? Would my body be up for it.
“It’s okay if you don’t,” he said through the door, “but we’ve decided last minute to open today. So, I gotta figure out who’s gonna be slinging drinks for the five people that might trickle in.”
I couldn’t help the giggle that fell from my lips. In fact, once they started, I couldn’t stop. The giggling turned to laughter, and the laughter pulled me back to the bench where I flopped down and tilted my head back.
“Five people!” I exclaimed through my laughter. “Hahahaaaaa!”
Even Deac chuckled along with me before I finally settled down.
“Honestly?” I asked as I regained my breath. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough to sling drinks.”
“That’s all I needed to know.”
The water turned lukewarm, so I forced myself up to turn it off. “But, there’s a ton of ordering for restocks and prep work that needs to happen. I could help with that.”
It was his turn to pause. “You sure?”
I snickered. “I wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t certain. That bar is everything to me. You know that now.”
He rapped his knuckles against the door. “Perfect, then get ready. You can ride with me.”
I blinked. “What?”
But, I heard his footsteps retreating as I scrambled out of the shower.
“What do you mean, ride with you?!” I called out.
I’d never been on the back of a bike before, but I wanted my home more than I wanted to stay there. I wanted my own bed and my own blankets and my own measly little shower, not cooped up wherever the fuck they’d taken me. So, I didn’t call out after him again when he didn’t respond.
I simply made quick work of my clothes and left Dallas’s shirt folded up neatly at the foot of his bed.
I hated the way two-day-old clothes felt against my body, but what the hell could I do? I’d be able to change once Deac got me back to the bar. After drying off my hair and gurgling with a bit of water to get rid of the taste of morning breath on my tongue, I lumbered downstairs.
Only for me to hear the guys shushing one another the second I appeared.
“Wow, way to not make it obvious,” I said as I touched down in the foyer.
A couple of chuckles rose up and I loved how Dallas smiled at me. It lit up his boyish features, despite the fact that when he frowned, he looked just as terrifying as Deacon. It lit up his eyes. They sparkled as his smile grew. I wanted to make him smile again.
Over and over.
Just so that he could light up the room.
“All right, let’s go,” Deac said as he swung open the front door.
I nodded toward Dallas. “Boys.”
“Char,” they all said in unison.
It stopped me in my tracks. “I could get used to that.”
More chuckles rose up, but Deac wasn’t having any of it. “Let’s go. No time to waste.”
“So impatient,” I said playfully as I passed through the threshold and outside into the harsh sunlight.
He guided me over to his bike and my brow ticked with confusion.
It wasn’t as if there was a second seat or anything.
I mean, there was, but it looked like it might cover one of my ass cheeks if I cocked myself in just the right way.
My body tensed at the pain I knew it would feel once I sat down. The leather looked unforgiving.
That is, until Deac shoved a helmet onto my head.
“Hey!” I exclaimed. “I can’t see!”
Suddenly, the tinted visor in front of me slid up. “Better?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
He flung his leg over the bike before offering me his hand. “Come on.”
“I’ve never ridden on a bike before.”
He wiggled his fingers. “First time for everything. Let’s go.”
To say I was nervous was an understatement, but my need for home was greater than that.
I slid my hand against his, and the fire that rose up my arm puckered my nipples.
I lunged my leg over the bike like I had watched him do, but it took some sliding around and a bit of tongue biting before I got myself situated.
“You good?” he asked.
“Don’t you have a helmet, too?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said as he struck up his bike.
“Wait, no, if we crash, you’ll?—”
He grabbed my hands and pulled me forward, pressing my tits flush with his back. He wrapped my arms around him before he pushed the bike with his feet, and it felt like I was going to fall off the bike and take him with me.
So, I sat back up.
Only for him to grab my arms and pull me back around him.
“Deac,” I said.
“Char,” he said back.
“This isn’t comfortable.”
“But, it’s safe.”
I rolled my eyes as I sat back up. “I’ll be fine. There are bars on the sides, anyway. Let’s just go.”
When he revved his engine, I was shocked. Deac had never once listened to anything. So, why the hell was he listening now? I figured out why, however, when he lurched the bike forward only to slam on the brakes.
And when I fell against his back, my arms wrapped their way around his waist so that I didn’t tumble to the ground.
He peeked over his shoulder and nodded. “Got it?”
How could I hate and enjoy a man all at once? “Yep. Got it.”
“There’s a good little one.”
Soaring through the desert was a feeling I knew I’d never be able to replicate.
The sand, battering my bare arms. The sun, beating down against the dirty strings of my tank top.
My breasts, filling the slats of the muscles in his back as dust kicked up behind us.
I felt powerful. Strong. As if nothing in this world could stop me.
The whole world at my disposal, and I wanted it for my taking.
Clinging to Deac felt like a slice of heaven that had dropped out of the sky just for me.
The way our bodies moved with the bike, sliding against one another and bowing to each other’s curves as the motorcycle dipped and bobbed?
It was a sensuous dance that my body wasn’t familiar with.
I understood something out there that I hadn’t before.
Why they rode. Why the leather and the bikes and the crew weren’t just a lifestyle but a whole language.
Out here, with nothing but open desert and the roar of an engine, you could leave everything behind.
All the damage. All the history. All the versions of yourself you’d been forced to become.
I got it now. I got why men like Deac needed this the way other men needed air.
I wanted more, though.
My body wanted more as we sped closer to the bar.
“Is there a long way around?” I asked.
Deac peered over his shoulder at me with that little smirk of his. “Always.”
He took a hard left, damn near tossing me off the bike, and I held on for dear life to his body as laughter fell from my mouth.
I felt free. Like I was flying. It felt like if we could keep up this pace, I might actually be able to outrun my nightmares.
It stoked a fire inside of me that I knew would never be put out.
The strength that riding on his bike gave me was unlike anything I’d ever experienced in life.
Everything was so new with them. So new, and fulfilling, and delicious.
I never wanted it to end.
And yet, as we pulled up to the stairs leading up to my studio apartment, I found that it wasn’t enough. Even with the long way around, it wasn’t enough.
“We’re here,” Deac said as he cut the engine to his bike.
I placed my helmeted cheek between his shoulder blades. “Are you sure we’re here?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Okay.”
And still, it took me a few seconds to move. To give up on living my life on the back of that bike just so I could feel powerful, for once. Not helpless, like I had my entire life.
But, when I unlocked my arms from around him, he grabbed my wrists and pulled me back against him.
“If you’re a good girl tonight,” he said as he tilted his words over his shoulder for only my ears to hear, “we’ll go on a night ride.”
My heart took flight. “Really? You’d do that for me?”
He nodded. “Yep. And Char?”
“Yeah?”
“You haven’t seen anything until you’ve been on a night ride.”
I smiled from ear to ear as I slid off the back of his bike. “Do you yank all your girls around like this?”
He raked his stare down my body before plucking his helmet off my head. “My girl, huh?”
I cleared my throat quickly and turned toward my wrought iron steps. “Better get ready for work. My bosses hate it when I’m late.”
He chuckled, and the velveteen sound followed me all the way to my front door. “If he fires you, let me at ’em. I know how to change people’s minds.”
My head fell back with laughter as I slid my key into my front door.
I couldn’t help but take one last look at Deac sitting on his bike with those strong, long legs of his spread.
He winked at me, and heat pooled between my legs.
It was all I could do to shove my door open so that I could put some distance between us.
And when I got inside, I drew in a deep breath as I closed the door with my back.
I was in a lot of trouble with these men.
The greatest kind of trouble imaginable.
I stood there for another second with my back against the door before I pushed off and headed toward my kitchen. I needed water, and a change of clothes, and approximately forty-five minutes before my shift started to pull myself together.
But something made me stop.
I turned back toward my window. The one that looked out over the parking lot and the thin stretch of road that ran along the front of the bar.
I wasn’t sure what had pulled my attention there.
Just something. A feeling, like the kind I used to get as a kid when I knew someone was in the hallway outside my bedroom door even before the handle turned.
I pressed my fingers to the glass and scanned the road.
Nothing. Just the empty lot, the heat shimmering off the asphalt, and a dark sedan parked half a block down that I didn’t recognize.
It had been there yesterday, too.
I told myself it was nothing. Someone visiting a neighbor. A broken down car waiting on a tow. My nerves, still shot from everything that had happened. I let the curtain fall and went to go find something clean to wear.
But I didn’t stop thinking about that car.