Chapter 11
BISHOP
What the hell am I doing?
I follow Gage’s motorcycle up the cracked driveway of the small, two-story building. The word “mechanic” across the top of the garage door, barely visible in peeling paint, is the only sign that this must be his shop.
And apparently where he lives, too.
He climbs off his bike, pulls off his helmet, sending his golden locks flying around his face, and manually rolls up the garage door, then glances back at me as if making sure I’m not going to drive away.
Fuck.
His blue eyes pierce me even from there. The windshield doesn’t offer me any protection. The intensity of his gaze still raises goosebumps across my skin.
I grip the wheel tighter, my foot still depressing the brake while I debate making a run for it.
Why the hell did I agree to follow him back here?
Deep down, in the places I don’t like to think about, I know why.
Because I was a hot fucking mess after that meeting, and he wasn’t going to let me just walk away when he could see how shaken I was by what we discussed. By what is coming.
Even more so, I agreed to come because he would’ve followed me if I hadn’t to ensure I was all right, and I do not need that man knowing where I live any more than I need to hear his thoughts about my work ethic.
If I try to leave, he’ll just come after me.
It’s what he was trained for. Laser focus. Completing tasks. Hunting down people. Ensuring his target doesn’t slip away.
Especially now that he revealed he was a Ranger, I understand his earlier quip about me not knowing it if he were actually stalking me. He certainly possesses the skills to stay in the shadows, to remain undetected, even by someone as observant as I am, if he really wanted to.
But Gage has been very direct and public about his intentions with me.
The only thing clouding it has been my inability to accept him at face value. That nagging feeling that he’s keeping things from me. But tonight, he was forced to drop some of that facade.
What’s holding you back, Bishop?
He watches me now from the open garage door, my headlights shining directly on him, illuminating his broad, muscular frame and the set of his shoulders that suggests he absolutely will drag me back here kicking and screaming if I leave before he says whatever he needed so badly to say in private. Or he’ll try, at least.
Now that I know what type of training he’s had, it would certainly be entertaining to try. But there isn’t any point fighting it tonight.
I don’t think I have the energy to. This lack of sleep and constantly being on edge has frayed my nerves more than I ever knew possible. It feels like teetering on the edge of an abyss, which I am one exhausted misstep from falling into, with shaking legs.
The arms of the man standing in front of me would be a much better option.
I release a long, heavy breath and throw the car into park, shutting off the engine. He finally looks away and moves his bike inside while I climb out and slowly follow him into the historic building.
Given the ancient brick and peeling paint everywhere I look, I would guess it must have stood here for at least a hundred years.
Big enough to hold two vehicles at a time, it currently houses his Harley that he just rolled in and another bike up on a stand.
A long table filled with tools stands along one wall near a door in the corner, and a set of metal stairs leads up to a second-floor loft.
The smell of motor oil, gasoline, and metal permeates the air, along with a hint of the leather and spice scent that Gage always carries with him.
I move toward the bike up on the rack, examining the frame lines and the old, rusted tank. “Is this an Indian?”
Gage’s brows rise as he nods. “It’s my current project.”
“What year?”
His lips twitch, as if he’s fighting a grin. “You think you can guess?”
I run my fingers across the tank. “If I guess the year correctly, do I win something?”
“Maybe.”
He leans back against a counter behind him, watching me take in everything I can see in the dim lighting provided by a single overhead bulb.
“Well…” I glance up at him. “It’s a Chief.” He grins. “I’d say it’s a ‘47, but it might be a ‘48.”
His grin grows, as does the heat emanating from his appreciative gaze. “Impressive. But I shouldn’t be surprised. Everything about you is.”
My cheeks heat at the compliment, and I look away from him, concentrating on examining the repairs he’s done to the bike. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”
“Do what?”
“Constantly compliment me.” I peek at him over the bike. “I have good self-esteem.”
He barks out a laugh. “Believe me, I know you do, but that’s not why I do it.”
“Why, then? Because you’re trying to get in my pants?”
He raises a blond brow and wiggles his fingers. “Wasn’t I already in them?”
Hell…
My pussy throbs at the memory of him getting me off in the park, and I press my thighs together to try to ease the ache without being obvious about it. “That’s not what I meant.”
He smirks and pushes off the counter to move toward me. I stay frozen in place, watching him approach like a deer caught in the headlights of a Mustang Fastback barreling down on it. He rounds the bike, and I turn so it’s at my back and I’m facing him.
Bad idea.
Gage slowly cages me in so I have nowhere left to go, my butt bumping the bike stand. He captures my face in his palm, the rough callouses brushing against my skin, sending a little shiver through me. “Do you really not know why I always say you’re impressive?”
I thought I did.
Men aren’t generally very hard to figure out. They’re usually motivated by one thing and one thing only. But staring into his warm blue eyes, there is far more than just sexual attraction and need burning there.
He tilts my face up toward him. “I tell you you’re impressive because I am constantly in awe of you, and apparently, I really suck at expressing that with words.”
Could have fooled me…
I don’t even know how to respond to that, or really to anything Gage says or does because he doesn’t fit into any of the boxes I’ve always shoved other men into. Boxes that served their purpose and then were easily tossed away when I was done with them.
His thumb brushes lazily over my cheek, sending another shiver through me. “God, I would love to fuck you right here, up against this bike.” He leans in, feathering his lips over mine. “But for what I have planned, I need something much sturdier.”
Jesus Christ…
My knees start to give out, but I lock them, keeping myself upright because I refuse to do anything embarrassing like collapse into this man’s arms. Instead, I force myself to take a breath and meet his gaze with one I hope doesn’t make me look like the quivering, needy mess I’m becoming. “What do you have planned?”
He grins. “Come upstairs with me and I’ll show you.”
It’s the type of invitation I normally wouldn’t refuse; a handsome man who’s clearly very talented with his hands, and probably would be with everything else, is offering me a night in his bed. One I desperately need to work out all this tension.
But something holds me back from immediately jumping on his offer.
The fact that I was right.
Gage Newhart has secrets, things that he was keeping from me.
“Why didn’t you tell me about being a Ranger?”
His hand freezes on my cheek. “Because it wasn’t relevant to any of the conversations we were having.”
I narrow my gaze on him. Though he’s technically correct, he had plenty of opportunity to reveal something that was such a major part of his life and molded him into who he is today. And he didn’t. “Is there anything else important I need to know?”
He shakes his head and leans in, his warm breath fanning across my cheek as he makes his way over to my ear and presses his lips to it. “At the moment, all you need to know is that the plans I have will be quite beneficial to you.”
That throbbing heat returns in my core, and he presses against me tighter, until I can feel the hard line of his cock on my leg.
Shit…
I swallow thickly, trying to gather some semblance of self-control that seems to have fled the moment he touched me.
It’s pathetic, really.
How quickly I melt into him.
I hate that he affects me like this. That I seem to lose all sense of command over my body when I feel the scrape of his callouses along my skin or the brush of his lips over mine.
No one has ever done that before—made me forget myself and the world around me like this.
It simultaneously makes me want to shove him away so I can flee and drag him even closer so I can experience everything he’s promising. So I can have a taste of that kind of freedom, even if only for one night.
I slide my hands inside the unzipped sides of his leather jacket and across the white T-shirt stretching over his hard chest. “If I come upstairs with you…” He raises a brow, waiting for me to continue. “I want you to promise me no more secrets.”
Gage searches my face for a moment. “That goes both ways, Hellcat.”
I shake my head. “I haven’t kept anything from you.”
He leans in and nips at my bottom lip. “We both know that’s a lie, but I’ll let it go for now.”
Just like I’m going to let the Hellcat thing go for now, too. Because this time, when he said it, the flare of heat through my body wasn’t anger. It was the driving need to touch him and have him touch me that I’ve felt since I pinned him to the club floor.
He reaches down and grasps my hips, lifting me easily to wrap my legs around his waist. My pussy centers directly along his hard length, and I groan at the sensation and instinctively roll my hips against it.
He sucks in a sharp breath, then presses his lips to mine, kissing me long and slow and deep as he pulls away from the bike and stalks across the shop to the metal staircase.
Somehow, he doesn’t even break stride or stop kissing me as he climbs each tread and steps up onto the second-floor loft.