Chapter Three #3
out to other Bounty charters’ presidents sharing Chaos and its allies will not
be best pleased another woman gets caught in the crosshairs and he’s gonna expect a definitive indication from the other
charters they’re frowning on Bounty’s bullshit. To say Bounty, who have never
been one percenters, aren’t real thrilled Web took their shit in its current
direction is an understatement. Might not stop the locals but they’d have their
patches stripped, and no biker who’s earned his patch doesn’t take that
seriously. They’d have to start from fresh without a single ally, which is like
a newborn baby taking on a full grown bear.”
“It, uh…seems you all have this in hand,” I mumbled, and
that got me the fascinating show of his fabulous lips surrounded by his blond
beard twitching.
“Yeah, and if you’d had coffee with me a coupla
days ago, I coulda shared a few things and saved you
this trip.”
Hmm.
“You gonna have coffee with me
now?” he asked.
“Um…” I darted my eyes side to side, saying, “I probably
should get home. Mom doesn’t know I’m here. She went to the grocery store for
her weekly huge-ass shop and since this is lasting longer than I expected, she
might be back before I get home and she’s a little…” I searched for a word, “troubled
about all the stuff that’s swirling around me.”
“I bet she is,” he said quietly.
“So I should go home,” I reiterated.
“When you movin’ into my place?”
he asked.
“I’m under the impression I’m already moved in.”
“I mean, bodily.”
There was something about Snapper saying the word “bodily”
that also made parts of me tingle.
I refused to get caught up in the tingle.
“Didn’t all you just said mean I don’t really need the
fullness of the protection you and Chaos are offering me?” I asked.
“You think me or any of the brothers are leavin’
dick to chance with our women, you’d be thinkin’
wrong.”
Of course.
“Snap—”
“I know you love spending time with your mom but it’d
probably help her out to know you’re doin’ better in
your head that you move back into your life.”
This was probably true.
I huffed out a big sigh.
He wrapped a hand around the side of my neck, thumb extended
under my chin to push it up.
It was a sweet touch and a cool move.
More tingling.
Damn.
“I’ll move in tomorrow,” I said.
“Good,” he replied.
“Or the next day,” I went on.
The look in his eyes that had turned to snowy goodness
shifted back to frosty annoyance.
“Rosie, tomorrow,” he ordered. “You get in, settle in, we’ll
talk.”
I huffed out another big sigh.
“Face is lookin’ good,” he
muttered, reading accurately from my sigh I was giving in. “How’re your ribs?”
“Healing,” I muttered back.
“Glad to hear it, Rosie.”
The snowy goodness was back in his eyes and a different kind
of goodness was in his voice.
I needed to be careful.
“I can’t believe those cops just let you keep me pinned to
this railing,” I remarked.
“Cops aren’t big fans of a woman beat to shit by eight
motherfuckers,” he educated me.
“No one really is,” I educated him.
“They’re also not big fans of those women waltzing up to one
of the assholes who did that shit to have a futile conversation,” he shared.
“I didn’t know it was futile,” I told him.
“I did and they did and fortunately now so do you.”
I decided to shut up again.
“Colombo’s bein’ cool with you?”
he asked.
I nodded.
“Baby?” he called.
“Mm?” I answered.
His thumb swept along my jaw. “Go home to your mom before I
lose the fight I got goin’ with the urge to take you
home with me.”
Man, I wanted to go home with him.
No you don’t! my mind screamed. Get it
together, Rosalie!
“Maybe we should have coffee, Snapper. There might be a few
things you need to get straight too.”
He shook his head, his thumb now drawing circles on the
hinge of my jaw that caused reciprocal circles to be felt around both my
nipples, and I started kicking myself I didn’t sprint to my car the minute he
told me to go home.
“Unh-unh, coffee’s off the table,” he declared. “You’re
settled in, we’re havin’ dinner.”
I then shook my head. “I’m not going out to dinner
with my face like this.”
“I didn’t say we were goin’ out.”
Uh-oh.
“Snap—”
“Go home.”
“Snap!”
He bent in, pressing his lips to mine.
I felt those lips and the whiskers of his beard whispering
against my skin and I smelled him and I had to clench my hands not to reach out
and grab him like a child reaching to grasp hold of a candy bar that was not
good for them but they had to have.
It was our first kiss.
Well, kind-of kiss, it wasn’t gung ho.
Still, it was a kiss and even not gung ho, stupid, stupid
Rosalie, I wanted more.
And because he was wonderful, awesome Snapper, not pushing
it outside the press that ended in a soft brush of lips and whiskers, he pulled
away and whispered, “Go home to your mom, Rosie.”
I nodded because that was a really good idea.
“Talk to you later,” he said.
“Right,” I replied and nearly cleared my throat but the
damage was done, it had come out husky.
He grinned, swept my jaw with his thumb the other way, then
stepped back.
I started to sprint to my car but stopped myself before I
got in that first rush because I didn’t want him to see me doing it.
Once I made it to the bottom of the steps, though, I should
have stopped myself from looking back because badass Snapper had come to the
fore. He was standing at the top of the steps with his arms crossed on his
chest and his eyes on my ass.
Me being with Beck, he’d been holding back.
Now that the floodgates had been opened, he wasn’t going to
do that anymore.
I thought I had problems but I had a feeling I’d been tossed
out of the frying pan only to land in the fire.
I should have sprinted.
I decided to skip trot like I was semi in a hurry but hoping
he thought it was because I wanted to get back to Mom before she worried.
There were two good parts to me doing that. One, it got me
to my car faster and two, it didn’t hurt my ribs too much so I had indication
I’d be good to go soon with carting around trays full of food and beverage.
I’d hit my car, had the key in the ignition and was about to
turn it on when my phone chimed with a text.
Thinking it was Mom, home to find me gone, and worried about
me, I grabbed it.
It was a number I didn’t have programmed in, local, and I
didn’t have to wonder who it was because the text said, You’re so fucking
cute.
Snapper and I didn’t have each other’s real phone numbers.
Now, we did.
I felt instantly that life was right again after months,
no…years of feeling it was all wrong.
Yes, I had problems.
Because I’d fallen in love with a biker who’d dumped me.
Then I fell in love with a biker who went outlaw and then
laid the smackdown on me.
And now I was in love with a biker who knew where another
club did their wet work, was threatening war against that club, but was already
at war with a baddie that set his Club to breaking the biker code and working
with cops in order to use another club to take that baddie out.
I might be out of one set of crosshairs (maybe).
But everybody remotely involved with Chaos was in the other.
And that scared the hell out of me.