Chapter 2
SABER
Shelby is working the counter, same as every night this week. She’s got a rag in one hand and the coffee pot in the other, and she moves between the truckers and the regulars like she’s been here for years, not weeks.
She’s fucking beautiful, but she doesn’t know it. Brown hair pulled back in a messy knot, big green eyes, and a body that was built soft in all the places mine wasn’t. She barely comes up to my chest.
The top of her head would tuck right under my chin. I’ve thought about that more than once. How easy it would be to lift her. How her legs would have to wrap around my waist because there’d be nowhere else for them to go. How I’d only need one hand to pin both of hers above her head.
Fuck. She’s all I can think about lately.
Three weeks ago, I sat in this booth at seven in the morning, and a girl I’d never seen before poured my coffee and looked me dead in the eyes. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t flirt. Didn’t look away until she was good and ready.
I came back the next morning. And the one after that.
Three weeks of mornings, and I never made a move. I didn’t know what she was running from, until that asshole showed up. But I’ve been around enough people with ghosts on their heels to recognize the signs.
The way she checked the door every time the bell rang. The way she kept her bag behind the counter instead of in the back. The way she parked her car nose-out.
She was ready to bolt at any second.
The last thing a woman like that needs is a man like me crowding her.
So for three weeks, I drank my coffee. Left my money. Kept my mouth shut.
Then the man she’s running from showed up.
Razor called me. He’d had a prospect parked across the street from the diner every shift since I started showing up. The kid saw a man walk in, and Shelby went rigid behind the counter.
Took me four minutes to get there. I have never ridden faster in my life.
I don’t think about what I said to him. I don’t think about the piss running down his leg or the way he couldn’t get out the door fast enough. I think about the way she looked at me after.
Like I’d given her the safety she’d been craving.
I had Joker run his plates before he hit the highway. Name, phone number, and home address. Everything we needed. Razor called him from a blocked number and made sure the message stuck.
That was three days ago.
Now I visit the diner at night. Mornings were for watching her. Nights are for making sure nobody else is.
I’m in the booth at nine-thirty on a Tuesday, and there are four customers left in the diner. Shelby is wiping down the counter in circles that don’t accomplish anything. She’s been wiping the same spot for two minutes.
She’s thinking about me. I’d bet my bike on it.
I shouldn’t fucking want that. She’s got damage I can’t fix, and I’m the Prez of an outlaw MC. I’ve killed men. I’ve ordered hits over a phone call and slept like a baby after. My hands will never be clean.
And when she looks at me with those green eyes like I’m something safe, it makes me want to be the man she thinks I am.
I’m not that man. Not even close.
But I’m in the booth anyway.
She crosses the floor with the pot. I slide my mug forward and keep my eyes on the window. If I look at her while she’s this close, I’ll say something. If I say something, I’ll reach for her. If I reach for her, I won’t stop, and she deserves a man who asks before he takes.
Her knuckles brush mine on the mug. Same as every time. The same half-second of skin that gets my dick harder than any sweetbutt on her knees ever has.
She lingers. One beat longer than yesterday.
Then she’s gone, and I’m holding a cup of coffee that tastes like battery acid.
Closing is at ten. I walk out at nine-fifty-five and meet Razor at my bike in the back lot.
Razor is leaning against his Harley with a cigarette between his teeth. He’s my road captain, my right hand, and one of the only men in the club who’ll tell me when I’m being an asshole.
“You eat anything in there, or did you drink four cups of shitty coffee and stare at the waitress for an hour?”
“Three cups.”
“We’ve got a problem.” He drops the cigarette and crushes it under his boot. “Got word that two Crimson Warriors parked across the highway about twenty minutes ago. Haven’t moved.”
Crimson Warriors don’t come to Ash Valley to sightsee. “Who?”
“Bull. And some other asshole I don’t recognize.”
“They dismount?”
“Not yet. Joker’s got eyes on them from the gas station.”
I pull my phone and text Joker.
Me: They move toward the diner, contact me.
His reply comes in two seconds.
Joker: Copy.
Razor and I wait. The lot is gravel and shadow. Two streetlights throw orange over the pavement, and the diner’s neon shines pink through the kitchen window. I count the minutes between each opening and closing of the back door.
Tiffany leaves first. The cook leaves a few minutes later.
My phone buzzes.
Joker: They’re moving. Your direction.
Shelby is the last one out.
Shit. This is fucked up timing.
She pushes through the back door with her bag on her shoulder and her keys in her fist. She doesn’t see us. Her car is three spots away, and she’s walking fast.
Bikes roar as they move down the street.
“Front lot,” Razor says.
We move. Razor and I walk around the side of the building, boots on gravel.
Two bikes are parked nose-in at the front entrance. Bull is already off his. He’s a big, bald fucker with a gun on his hip. It’s not drawn, but his hand is resting on it, and that’s enough. The second one is leaning against his handlebars.
My boots hit the pavement, and both of them turn. “Wrong parking lot, boys.”
Bull grins, and he’s missing a tooth. “Saber. Relax, we’re just here to talk.”
“You’re in my territory. And I didn’t invite you here to talk.”
The second one puts his hands up. “Nitro wants a conversation. That’s all.”
“If your Prez wants to talk, he calls. He doesn’t send two armed men to my town at ten o’clock at night. I bet he doesn’t even know you’re here.”
Bull’s hand tightens on the gun. His lip curls. He raises it, and it’s aimed at my chest.
A crack.
Not the gun, but metal on skull. A dull, wet thud that drops Bull to one knee.
Shelby. Behind him. Stainless steel water bottle in both hands, arms shaking, eyes wild. She came out the back, heard us, came around the building, and hit a man with a gun because he pointed it at me.
Bull roars. Spins. The gun comes up toward her, but he’s dizzy and bleeding, and when it goes off, the shot goes wide. The second Warrior jerks sideways, takes two steps, and drops face down on the gravel.
Bull shot his own man.
Shelby is on the ground. Not hit, but her legs gave out. She’s sitting on the asphalt with the water bottle in her lap, and she’s not making any sound at all.
Razor has Bull. Knee in his spine, gun stripped, zip ties out of his back pocket. Bull is screaming into the gravel, but Razor doesn’t give a fuck. He ties the man’s wrists.
The other one isn’t moving. The blood pooling under him is black in the streetlight.
A car engine turns over somewhere down the highway. Headlights swing wide and peel away east, fast enough to kick gravel.
Razor’s head snaps up. “Tell me that was nothing.”
“Probably nothing. But if it’s more Crimson Warriors, they saw her.” My phone is already buzzing.
Joker: Car peeled east. Too far for plates. On it.
I kneel in front of Shelby. Her eyes are glassy. She’s looking through me.
“Hey.” I’m low and close, but I don’t touch her. “Look at me.”
Her green eyes find mine, and she’s terrified.
“Are you hit? Anywhere?”
She shakes her head.
“Okay. You’re okay.” I pull my phone and call backup. “Front lot of the diner. One body, one zip-tied. Bring the van. No cops.”
I hang up and look at her. She’s shivering in the eighty-degree Arizona heat.
She attacked an armed man to save my life.
This woman hit a Crimson Warrior in the back of the skull with a water bottle because he pointed a gun at me.
I’ve had women throw themselves at me since I patched in. Club girls who’d do anything I asked and half the shit I didn’t. Not one of them ever risked a goddamn thing for me. This woman just cracked a man’s skull open because he pointed a gun at my chest.
What the fuck do I do with that?
I hold out my hand. She stares at it for three seconds, and then she takes it, and I pull her to her feet and don’t let go.
I walk her around the building. My bike is where I left it in the back lot, and Razor can handle the rest.
“You’re coming with me.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere they can’t find you,” I tell her.
She looks at the body on the ground. At Bull, facedown and screaming. At the blood pooling on the ground. Then she looks at me.
She nods.
I put her on the back of my bike, and she wraps her arms around my waist, and I don’t think about how right it is. I don’t think about the way she presses her face between my shoulder blades or the way her fingers dig into my shirt like I’m the only solid thing left.
I think about the Crimson Warriors finding out that she was here, and what she witnessed.
I think about what Nitro will do when he finds out one of his men is dead.
And I think about the fact that I will stack every Crimson Warrior in a ditch and set them on fire before I let anyone put a hand on this woman. I’ve burned shit down for less. For her, I’d burn it all.
The engine catches. Her arms tighten. I don’t slow down.