“Would you look at this,” a tall, dark haired boy grins. “A half-naked lady running around alone.”
Fuck me.
“If you so much as breathe in my direction, jerk, I’ll kick you in the balls,” I growl.
I keep walking, my stride getting faster and faster as I near closer to my side of the lot. The three men fall in step behind me. I should have turned and walked back to the club, I felt a whole lot safer there.
“She’s a feisty one. I like feisty ones.”
They’re getting too close, and I’m getting a little nervous.
One of them grabs my arm, and I spin without thought, lashing out with a closed fist and hitting him right in the nose. It’s a hard hit, and the cracking sound tells me I got the right spot. He bellows and stumbles backward. “I said don’t fucking touch me!” I growl.
“Bitch!” one of them shouts and then he hits me.
Well, it’s a half hit, half slap, but it’s hard enough to bust my lip and send my head swinging to the side.
Oh, hell fucking no.
I spin back around to throw another punch, but one of them grabs me from behind, pinning my arms against my back. I yell out loudly and fling my legs up, kicking the biggest of the three as he comes toward me.
“Let me go!” I yell.
“Nobody fucks with us,” the man holding me growls.
The one I punched storms over and grabs me by the hair. “We’re going to do bad things to you, bitch.”
“You fuckin’ put her down or so help me fuckin’ god I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains all over this pavement.”
The man holding me freezes, the man approaching me turns slowly, and I look up to see Riggs, Adan, and Remy all standing, facing the group. Riggs is holding out his gun, pointing it straight at the man approaching me. He immediately puts up his hands and backs off, the other man releases me.
“Sorry, man. We were just ... we were just playin’.”
“Her fuckin’ lip is bleedin’, does that sound like playing to you, Adan?”
Adan shakes his head. “Nah, boss, it doesn’t.”
“Sure as shit doesn’t,” Remy agrees.
“It was an accident, we were just messin’ with her. We weren’t goin’ to hurt her.”
“You owe her an apology,” Riggs orders, his voice a low whip. “Get on the ground, on your knees, and tell her how fuckin’ sorry you are.”
The men hesitate.
“I said fuckin’ now,” Riggs snarls and even my eyes widen as I take a step back.
He’s terrifying.
The men do as they’re told, getting on their knees. They look to me and all of them apologize.
I’m shaking. I didn’t realize I was shaking.
“Three seconds to get up and get the fuck out of here before I pull this trigger,” Riggs warns.
The men stand, and all of them scamper off without looking back.
I stare at the three bikers in front of me. It’s in this moment I truly see them for what they are. Dangerous. I haven’t seen this side to them, and now I have, I can see why people give them a wide berth.
“You good?” Riggs asks me, eyes scanning my face.
“Yeah,” I say. “I ... yeah.”
“You’re bleedin’, I’ll walk you back to make sure you get home safe. Adan, Remy, go and make sure them fuckers left.”
The two men disappear.
Riggs walks me back to the café.
“I have a first-aid kit in here,” I say. “I’ll go get the key.”
I rush off.
My heart is pounding.
What the hell just happened?
“YOU OPENED THIS JOINT all on your own?” Riggs asks, looking around as I open the first-aid kit. My mouth kind of hurts, but mostly my pride is blown out.
“Yeah,” I say, and watch as Riggs turns and takes over grabbing what he needs from the first-aid kit.
“It’s pretty impressive.”
I beam. “I know, it took everything for me to bring it to life, but I knew what I wanted, and I went for it.”
“Takes a lot at your age.”
“Yeah,” I say, looking around Wildflowers with pride.
Riggs leans forward and uses a saltwater gauze to wipe my lip. I try to do anything but make eye contact with him, because my heart is racing, and if he sees what he’s doing to me, he might just get up and run out of here.
It must be the adrenaline that’s making me act this way.
What happened out there was pretty intense. I need to come up with something real quick before he sees the affect he’s having on me.
“What made you become a biker?”
He pauses, and then shrugs. “I just liked the life. I joined the Soul Dividers when I was about eighteen. Stayed there for a good ten years, and then they wanted to open another chapter, so I took over. I’m President of this chapter, but we have eight other chapters spread out of the United States.”
“Eight?” I say, with wide eyes. “Why so many?”
“Big club, that’s how it works.”
“So you’re not even the top dog?”
He grins. “No, I’m not.”
“Why did you pick this tiny little town to bring your chapter to?”
He swabs at my lip, and god, it’s hard to stay in the moment and not get lost thinking about his touch.
“I don’t do cities. The other chapters all run in big cities, a few are in smaller ones, but that ain’t the life I want. I saw this garage, knew it was a good place for me, so we set it up.”
I laugh. “Lucky me.”
He keeps the grin.
“I had other reasons to disappear.”
“Let me guess,” I say, waving a finger. “A wife?”
He meets my eyes. “Yep.”
I blink. “Wait, seriously? You have a wife.”
“I did. Got a restrainin’ order against her and disappeared. So far, she doesn’t know where I am. Part of the reason I picked this place. She’d never step foot
