Her Hot Ride: A gripping and sexy biker mc romantic suspense novel Page 2

  “Nope.”

  “I swear to God…” Hawk growled. “You got a death wish or something?”

  Even from where I stood watching Biker hiding in the tall grass, digging his nose into whatever dirt hole he’d found, I could still hear the annoyance in Emily’s quiet words.

  “Just leave me alone, please. I’ve got a headache.”

  “But—”

  “I’m here, I’m alive, I’m fine,” she murmured. “So please stop with the annoying big-brother routine.”

  “You know the rules,” Hawk warned. “Yet you left without a tail. Again. Shit’s gotta change, Em. Starting today.”

  Emily growled. “I’m not a prisoner or a Red Dragon, so you’d do good remembering that, Hawk.”

  I froze, imagining her hands on her hips, her brown eyes rolling too, waiting for Hawk to strike. Not that he would. The guy walked on eggshells around this woman more than anyone else. Let things fly that he probably shouldn’t.

  For years I’d tried to figure out Emily. Her quirks and tells were minimal, which drove me batshit crazy. Body language was supposed to be my skill set. It’s what made me a damn good VP—and according to most of my partners, a fantastic lover too—but little lion Emily was impossible to read.

  “Give me some credit, alright? I didn’t go anywhere. I came back to your precious compound like a good girl.”

  “This is about your safety, damn it,” Hawk barked.

  “I have that… that gun in my glove compartment you make me carry too. What else do you want from me?” Emily groaned.

  “A little cooperation until we figure this shit out would be nice.”

  I got it. The RD world wasn’t her thing. But if she’d just wait it out a little longer, let us take down her father, then she could be free to do whatever the hell she wanted, wherever the hell she wanted to do it. Her not listening to the rules we put up for everyone at the club—not just for her—was only distracting us from doing what we needed to be doing. How could she not see that?

  I picked up Biker, who sat on the toe of my boot, his eyes shut, fuzzy ears bent to the side. “Let’s go, you little turd,” I whispered.

  “Well, excuse me if I don’t feel like I should follow your stupid rules, brother. Now if you’d get out of my face and leave me alone, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

  Hawk growled out something I couldn’t understand about the time I started toward the front of the garage. I wasn’t surprised when I heard his boots shuffle against the gravel drive, and the door to his house slam shut a minute later. The guy had the patience of a toddler most days.

  Thinking Emily would head inside too, I stood by the garage a few seconds more, waiting for another door to slam… a slam that never came. Instead, the noise of her creaky porch swing filled the air, followed a minute later by the sound of her mumbled curses.

  Apparently, Operation Babysit was starting now.

  I strode up the steps of the house and took a seat beside her on the swing without asking. If this was going to happen, then we needed to have a little chat first. Set some boundaries, so to speak.

  “You sick or something? Lack of sex eating at ya? I may not like you, but I’m good for a roll in the sheets,” I said, even though Hawk had made it clear she wasn’t to be touched.

  Emily pinched the bridge of her nose and rested her head back against the swing, all while Biker snuggled up next to her tits. “No. I am tired, I am stressed, and I have a headache. What I want is alone time. Which is apparently too much to ask for around here.”

  I studied her cheeks, how red they were. There were marks on her neck too. Scratches it looked like. I frowned. Had someone hurt her?

  “No offense, but you look like shit.”

  She opened one of her eyes, upper lip curling. This was the Emily I could deal with. The backbone-wearing hard-ass.

  “For the love of God, leave, Archer. Now.”

  I didn’t leave. Instead, I smiled wider, having way too much fun pissing her off. “You’re strung too tight, JP. Come to Flick’s welcome home party with me tonight. I’ll show you a good time.”

  “Yeah, no. Don’t think so.”

  “I can get you drunk on my whiskey, then we can explore the cuffs I got attached to my headboard in my room. It’ll be fun.”

  With an eyeroll, she lifted her middle finger and flipped me off.

  “I’m not in any real danger,” she said a minute later, surprising me. “If Pops wanted me gone, don’t you think he would have come for me a long time ago?”

  It was weird talking to a woman about club business. Still, this involved her more than it even did me in some respects, which was why I didn’t mind much.

  “Wish I had a manual for the inside of that fucker’s head, just so I could give you a real answer. Either way, is it worth it? Risking your life like this?”

  She stood and brushed her hands over the back of her khaki pants. “I’d probably be good bait, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe.” The thought had crossed my mind before. If Emily left, Pops might come for her, and we’d have the opportunity to take him down, to end this war before anyone else got hurt.

  Hawk had shut down that idea right away when I’d brought it up. But the thing was, I was tired of lying low and ready to end this once and for all. Probably more than anyone else in this club. Why? Because all this uncertainty left me unsettled. And as a man who couldn’t ever sit still, I needed some goddamn peace for just once in my life.

  Nobody listened to me though, despite my status as club VP. Which was why I was days, maybe even hours, from taking matters into my own hands, even if it meant sacrificing my life to make it happen. I would end this one way or another. I was just trying to figure out the hows and whens.

  I knew my reasoning, but what about her? Why in the hell was Emily okay with being the RDs’ bait when she didn’t even like any of us?

  “What’re you hiding?” I asked, watching as she walked toward her front door.

  From over her shoulder, her eyes narrowed back at me. “Nothing.” A clenched jaw, twitching lips.

  I stood and moved in closer. “Liar.”

  She turned around completely and folded her arms. “No. I’m not lying. I don’t lie.”

  “You sure about that?” I backed her up against the door, capturing her there with my chest. I set my hands on either side of her face and saw her flinch. The sight of it had me frowning and dropping my hands right away, but I didn’t move my feet.

  “Tell me what it is. Or I go to Hawk.”

  “I’m not hiding anything.” She blinked, face emptying of emotions.

  “Bullshit.”

  Another twitch of her eyes.

  Slowly, I stepped away and allowed her to turn around. Whether she realized it or not, she’d shown me too much. Now there was no way in hell I’d be letting her out of my sight. Hawk had been right to be worried.

  “Someone will be by tonight to get you at eight,” I called to her back.

  Her shoulders stiffened and the hand on the doorknob froze. “No. I said I’m not going.”

  “Aww, JP. See, that’s where you’re wrong. I asked you to come and you’ll come.”

  She lowered her forehead to the door. “Stop. Calling me. JP.”

  “You don’t like that name?” I gasped, a hand to my chest.

  “No.” She swiveled to face me again. “Because I have a feeling it’s insulting.”

  “What if I told you it’s kinda badass?”

  “Yeah right.” She rolled her eyes. “Because you’re always real nice to me. I’m supposed to believe the guy who once called me the ‘hot version of a table’.”

  “Because you were.” Then I looked her up and down, smirking. “Definitely not anymore though.”

  She flipped me off. “Go to hell.”

  Emily was sixteen or so when I’d first met her. A scrawny little thing with short legs and not a single curve. Brown bobbed hair, braces, full cheeks, and one hell of a sassy mouth that had ea
ten away at my nerves even when I was twenty. She and Hawk had never got along and were fighting long before they found out they shared both a ma and a dad. The second she’d opened her mouth, I could see why that was.

  “I was kidding, JP. Seriously. You should learn to lighten up a little.” I shrugged a shoulder.

  She shook her head, dark eyes filled with exasperation. “Call me Emily.” She poked me in the chest with her finger. “Or call me nothing.”

  “Nothing? That’s boring. How can I jerk off to that name, huh? Oh, God, Nothing, I’m gonna c—”

  She shoved me then, her face so red I thought she’d turned into a tomato. I almost called her that, but decided that maybe I needed to cut the dick routine. The problem was, though, I liked labeling people with nicknames and struggled most days not to do it. It was impulsive and blunt and, well, it was me. Who I was. If anything, I was like my old man in that sense. He’d been the same way when it came to nicknames, but for a different reason. I was creative, while he’d usually just been too drunk to remember real names.

  Emily’s latest nickname, JP, was my favorite, equating to the words Junk Puncher—like I said, total fucking badass. Last summer was the first time I’d seen her in four years, since I’d called her a hot table, and she’d remembered who I was just as much as I’d remembered myself. The guy who’d once teased her about looking twelve, not sixteen, and, well, “flat like a table” was apparently not forgiven. I’d been told to watch her, which she hadn’t liked, and it hadn’t taken much of my usual provocation before she’d kicked me in the nuts.

  Hence the name.

  “Sorry.” I took a step back, pretending to give her space. “It’s special to me.”

  “Special,” she deadpanned, eyes narrowing.

  “Oh, yeah. Very special.” I winked, sliding out from around her. She followed me with her eyes from over her shoulder again, but kept her body pointed toward the door, her hand grabbing the knob once more. “In fact, it’s so special it’ll likely break my cold, dead heart if I can’t keep using it. You understand, don’t you?”

  She turned her head away, her lips flattening. I couldn’t help but zero in on the things from the side, mostly because they were abnormally red, kinda like her cheeks. The bottom one was bigger than the top and suddenly an image of them wrapped around my cock had me swaying even closer, breathing in the scent of her perfume. Oranges mixed with vanilla was a damn nice combo. One I’d never smelled on a woman before.

  “Whatever, oh incorrigible one.” She turned the doorknob and stepped into her house. Then she turned to face me, smirking as she said, “But I’m still not going to that stupid party.”

  Two

  Emily

  I was anxious. Not to mention restless. I felt as if I was a ticking time bomb sitting around doing nothing.

  I would leave this place… even though I didn’t have a clue how. But I had a goal at least. A goal that had everything to do with the secret stash of letters hidden in my kitchen cabinets.

  God, what I wouldn’t give to go back to my old life. To the life I’d begun to build with Sam, my ex-fiancé. It wasn’t that I missed him as a person. More that I missed the stable world we’d built together. Our giant, two-story townhouse, which was about an hour from Rockford in St. Charles, had been the place where we were supposed to start a family together after we got married. Suburbanized, quiet at nights, especially during the weekends—other than the sound of kids running through the streets. The big backyard was the reason he’d wanted to buy it in the first place, but only because it was filled with tall oaks that grew past our rooftop. Big enough for shade and a treehouse for our future kids, he’d told me. Kids I would not, in fact, be having any time soon.

  Sam had put up a hammock a few weeks after we’d got back from our cruise last summer. I’d only laid in it a total of three times before my life had gone to hell and I’d had to basically start over.

  I was pretty sure he and his new girlfriend took it when they moved to Des Moines for his job last month. I may have been the one to break up with Sam, but that didn’t mean I was happy about it. He was too good for the trouble that seemed to come at me in the form of my family, which was why I’d ended it before it had truly begun. With things falling apart in my life, Sam didn’t deserve to go down with me. Not when he had real life goals that went beyond motorcycle clubs, deadbeat criminal dads, and moms who ran because they were too scared to stay put and fight for what really mattered.

  Either way, that part of my life was over now, and instead of planning future birthday parties for my and Sam’s future kids, I was planning an ingenious way to escape this godforsaken motorcycle club once and for all.

  Last month’s letter was the eleventh one I’d received from my mom since she’d taken off with Pops. It had appeared in my teacher’s mailbox at school in a plain, white envelope, alongside information about our summer work party, which was weird. The others had shown up in my PO box at the post office downtown. Why, now, would she send it to my work? Not only did it confuse me, it also wasn’t good for job security. I couldn’t imagine what the Rockford School District would think, not to mention do, if they figured out that I, a middle-school science teacher, had been associating with, not to mention living with, one of the worst-labeled MCs in all of the Midwest.

  God, my life was so messed up.

  I’d brought all the letters home with me and kept them under my kitchen sink. Nothing like hiding things in plain sight. If my brother, or any of the Red Dragons, found them—found out I’d been communicating with the enemy—then I was pretty sure they’d off me. Even with that knowledge, I couldn’t throw them away. As dumb as it sounded, they were like a kid’s stuffed teddy bear to me. Emotional support letters, really, proving that my mom wasn’t actually gone, but more like on an extended vacation that was meant to keep me and my brother alive, safe, and out of Pops’s clutches—not that the Red Dragons would ever see it like that.

  I blew my bangs from my forehead, using the foot hanging off the porch swing to rock myself back and forth. The calm before the storm, that’s what this all felt like now. Any day this week, another letter would show, this time with directions. When it did, I had my bag packed and ready, no second guesses.

  No matter what happened, I needed to go find my mom and get her away from Pops once and for all. Then after that, I’d get us both away from the MC life altogether. For good. Yes, the Red Dragons claimed to want the same thing I did, but not with the same intentions. If they found my mom before I did, they’d treat her as a traitor. Kill her without warning for going with Pops instead of staying here with them. I wouldn’t allow that to happen. Which was exactly why I had to find her first.

  I was tired of waiting around, bottom line. Especially after what had happened last week.

  At the thought, I couldn’t help but shudder. A bike roared from the road then, pulling up into the drive a second after. I turned my head just in time to see a familiar red helmet as Talker skidded to a stop in the driveway. He was one of those bikers that rubbed me in all the wrong ways, even more so than Archer Benedict. The memory of Archer’s hot body so close to mine lingered even hours later. I shook it off, not entirely sure I hated it as much as I pretended to.

  “Yo,” Talker said, kicking off his engine. He clicked his tongue, waving a finger gun at the same time. “We gotta go, woman.”

  I rolled my eyes and pulled my turtleneck up a little higher. The last thing I wanted was for rumors to start about me.

  “Yo,” I said back, mocking him without the finger guns. “I’m not going anywhere with you tonight. I’ve got a headache.”

  “You ain’t gotta choice. Got my orders from up top.”

  “And who would that be exactly?”

  “VP himself.”

  I rolled my eyes. Freaking Archer. He was worse than my brother. I wasn’t sure what kind of game he was playing.

  “What does he want?” I asked, rocking myself back and forth again.

 
“Dunno. I’m just the messenger. Now get up, throw on something short, and let’s go.”

  “Tell you what.” I paused. “If your VP gives you any crap about me not going with you, then feel free to send him my way.”

  Talker shook his head, long brown hair falling over one of his eyes. His face was a mask of thinly veiled disgust, reminding me of a rat. If I were being honest, most days he smelled like one too.

  “You don’t get nothing at all, do you?” Talker’s boots slid to a stop next to the porch. “None of you old ladies do.”

  I didn’t bother to correct him. I wasn’t anyone’s anything, especially an old lady.

  “That’s why I don’t believe in the sanctity of taking on an old woman.” Talker continued doing what he did best: talking. “My boy Archer’s got it just right.” He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, something he did a lot, even without the finger guns. “One pussy a month. One at a time.”

  “Barf,” I mumbled.

  Obviously not hearing me, he continued, “Hell, you’d be a good one to take on, temporarily. Especially with those tits of yours. Just a handful is right by me.” He whistled, eying my breasts.

  “Are you done insulting me yet?” I let my hand fall away and grabbed the back of the porch swing to sit up.

  He shrugged. “If you don’t show up with me, it’s your ass that’ll be handled.”

  “I’ll take my chances, thanks.” In other words, I’d rather die than show my face at the club right now.

  Forty minutes later there was a knock on my front door. “Open up, JP. I know you’re in there.”

  I kicked my feet up on my couch and turned the volume up louder on my TV, ignoring him. I wasn’t sure why Archer suddenly cared so much about my whereabouts. The two of us barely spoke.

  Another knock sounded, this one more forceful and with no words to accompany it. What did a girl have to do to get a little peace around this place? Silence came after his fourth knock, lasting an entire two minutes. But then I heard the lock engaging, followed by the crack of the door as it slammed against the wall. I squeaked, losing the bowl of popcorn on my lap, and struggled to pull the blanket up and over the pair of Sam’s old boxers I was wearing.