“If you’ll excuse us, we were dancing.” She turned away from me and continued to rub herself against the man. Yeah, okay, I saw red. If I was mad, if I wanted to kick his ass, it was only because I’d inherited some of Morgan’s protectiveness.
“Nico!” I reached for her, but she danced out of my reach. Immediately, the bear was in my face.
“Fuck off before I make you.”
I almost laughed. It had been years since I’d been in a street fight, but I was pretty sure I could take him, no problem. “Oh, you’re gonna make me, huh? Let’s see you try.” I fisted my hands and suddenly, Nico was between us.
“Could you excuse us for a moment?” she told the bear before dragging me to the edge of the dance floor. She rounded on me, hazel eyes sparking. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
I opened my mouth to snark back but then couldn’t think of anything to say. “He’s a biker!”
“And?”
“And? And?” It was my turn to get in her face. “Those guys are dangerous.”
She crossed her arms in a rather mutinous manner. “I thought you and Morgan used to be bikers.”
“Used to be. As in past tense. So I know exactly what I’m talking about. Besides, what happened to wanting to marry me?”
She turned away, lips pursed. “We haven’t agreed to anything yet, so I’m still a free person.”
“Yeah, okay, but could you spend your independence in a less stupid manner?”
“You’re calling me stupid?”
I could see that this conversation was going nowhere fast. Taking a deep breath, I tried again. “Listen, could you come with me? We could go upstairs where it’s not so loud and have a conversation. Morgan’s here. You can say hi.”
“I didn’t come here to hang out with my brother.”
“Fair enough, but…can we talk?”
She was already shaking her head before I’d finished. “Not today. Right now, I’m here to celebrate the prospect of crushing defeat. As a matter of fact, I might back out of this whole marriage of convenience thing. It might be too late to help me.”
She made as if to return to the dance floor and I tightened my hold on her wrist. “What does that mean?”
I noticed that while she was gaily made up, all dark eyeshadow and ruby red lips, her eyes spoke of misery. Taking a step closer, I met her gaze earnestly. “Hey, talk to me.”
“My advisor called me this evening.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “And?”
“He told me he was very impressed with the work and any other year, I might have had a good chance. But this year…” She stopped biting her bottom lip clearly to keep it from trembling. She dashed away tears. I found myself curiously wanting to slay all her dragons for her. “This year, one of the entrants is the child of a huge benefactor of the awarding body and so the grant is likely to go to them.”
“Likely to, which means it hasn’t happened yet.”
She tried to pull her arm out of my hand. “Just let me go, Domenic.”
No.
I tightened my hold on her hand, which I admit was a mistake. From one moment to the next she went from upset to annoyed. Next thing I knew, she’d kneed me in the groin, snatched her hand out of mine, and walked away.
By the time I straightened up and stopped seeing stars, she’d disappeared with the biker. I crab walked to the bar and dug out my phone to text Morgan. “Hey, man, you alright?”
I looked up at the bartender. He looked somewhere between amused and concerned. “Yeah, I’m great. Hey, did you see where that girl went?”
“The one that got you in the nuts?” He grinned and I glared. “Yeah, she left with the huge biker dude.”
That had me stiffening, the pain in my groin forgotten. I sent Morgan another text and limped as fast as I could to my bike. Hopefully, I could catch up to them soon. Nico was a stubborn cuss, but even she wasn’t ready for one of the Satanists. I had recognized the guy’s patch, including the fact that he was a sergeant-at-arms. Those guys were bad news. They controlled the gun and drug trade all along the Eastern seaboard with connections all the way from Canada to Mexico.
To rise up to sergeant-at-arms in such an outfit, that guy had to be some bad news. I rode around looking to pick up their trail. Luckily, they didn’t have such a long head start and I quickly spotted them heading towards Queens. I heard the roar of an engine behind me and turned slightly to check who it was. My shoulders slumped with relief to see Morgan’s broad-shouldered, stiff-backed silhouette quickly catching up to me. He slid alongside me and we exchanged glances even through our helmets. We needed to find a way to extract Nico from this situation without starting a war.
Nicolette might think she was just making some stupid point, but these people did not play like that. They also had a minimum amount of respect for women and would likely not care about her wants and needs in any situation. It wasn’t just her virtue that was in danger, but also, very likely, knowing how smart her mouth was, probably her life.
We let the throttle out and rode faster.
6
Nicolette
Almost as soon as I stepped out into the cool night air with the big guy, I knew I’d made a mistake. I might have been reacting in upset inside, not really thinking, but I wasn’t stupid. Domenic was right; bikers were dangerous and I didn’t even like this one. I don’t know why I left with him.
Okay, maybe I do know why.
Maybe I wanted to get under Domenic’s skin for some unknown reason. And maybe I was tired of having everything out of my control. Waiting for other people to make decisions which might affect my whole life.
When my advisor had called earlier, I had
