Chapter One

Hawk

"O h shit, sorry, man," a half-drunk man wearing a crooked smile said after bumping into me.

"No problem," I assured him, even though that one bump nearly brought a fucking tear to my eyes. Not that I'm some weakling, far from it, but the slash in my side—earned from stepping up to protect a brand-new Steel Demon, thank you very fucking much—hurt a hell of a lot more than it should. I smiled through clenched teeth.

The drunk guy stood with both of his hands held out, still apologizing. "I'll see if the nurse is ready to see you." His gaze flickered to my side, where blood soaked my t-shirt.

Should've left my leather vest on. But I didn't want the hospital staff asking questions, so I left it behind.

"It's all right," I assured him. "She'll get to me soon." At least I hoped she would. It was Tuesday night, and the emergency room was packed as it usually was. I reached for every ounce of patience I could find while an old lady limped behind the coveted door, followed by a pregnant teenager and then a kid who damn near sliced off his fingers. They were all a higher priority than I was, and even though I was doing an admirable job hiding my pain, it was starting to hurt like a motherfucker.

It was no less than I deserved. I should have told the newbie to keep his fucking mouth shut, but I never could resist a fight, not even when I was a barely five-foot-tall pipsqueak just looking for a place to belong. That hasn't changed in my thirty-two years, and it probably wouldn't in another thirty. I wasn't just the secretary for the Steel Demons MC, I was also a brawler, and when my club brother was in trouble, I didn't hesitate to step in and help him out.

And I got stuck in my guts for my efforts.

"Dominic Bennett." The voice is ultra feminine, deep and husky with a slight lilt that says she's not from around here. "Dominic Bennett." And there was a hint of annoyance.

I slapped a smile on my face as I pushed out of the uncomfortable seat and ambled over to the pretty nurse. No, fuck that. She wasn't pretty. She was a fucking knockout, with thick blonde hair that tried like hell to break free of the bun it was wrapped in. Her gray eyes took me in carefully. She studied me and I wondered what she saw beyond a man in need of medical assistance. "That's me."

She nodded and motioned with her head for me to follow her, which I did happily. The dark blue scrubs hugged her ass sinfully and showed off long, shapely legs on one end and a nipped in waist on the other. She opened the door to an exam room, and when she turned to me, her bun finally gave up the ghost. A low growl escaped, and she rolled those gray eyes.

I couldn't look away from the sight she made when all that thick, honey-colored hair cascaded around her shoulders. Instantly my mind conjured up an image of that hair wrapped around my fist while I fucked her from behind.

"Have a seat, Mr. Bennett." Her tone was bland, matter-of-fact.

Of course it is, she's on duty, dumbass.

"Call me, Hawk," I said with a smile as I dropped my big body onto the tiny bed covered in white paper.

Her gray gaze flicked to mine, her expression filled with irritation. "What seems to be the problem, Mr. Bennett?"

I lifted up the right side of my t-shirt, working like hell not to show any signs of pain for some reason. "Problem is I picked up a gash that's not supposed to be here."

Her eyes, lined with smoky black liner, lasered in on my wound and then crawled up to my face. "You wanna tell me how you got that?"

"Not particularly, no."

She sighed and tilted her head back, the expression on her face clearly said she was reaching for patience. "Look, Mr. Bennett, if you're afraid or if someone is threatening you, don't be scared to speak up. As a medical professional I have a duty of care to my patients to report all suspicious knife wounds to the authorities, we can help you." She was so damn earnest, and instead of turning me off, I liked it.

I held up a hand to stop the spiel. "I'm not afraid of anyone or anything, that's for damn sure." I flashed a smile and leaned forward. "When was the last time someone came to see you and they weren't in tears over a little bit of pain?" It was a lame attempt, but she was beautiful, and the truth was my pain was getting worse.

She didn't answer right away, instead she focused on opening the sterile medical instruments and laying them out on light blue napkins on top of a stainless-steel tray. "I've seen enough, that attempts like yours don't impress me much."

A laugh escaped. This nurse wasn't an easy woman, which I kind of dug, but more than that I wasn't deterred. "Not much, but you are a little impressed. Right?"

Her lips twitched, but this woman wasn't like any other woman I'd ever met, and I knew it immediately. She didn't give in to the need to smile in reply, to flirt to ease my nonexistent anxiety. She bit back the smile and arched one golden brow at me. "Tell me what happened. I have to know for your treatment. Was it with a piece of broken glass? A knife? What kind of knife? You might need x-rays if it's a penetrating wound—though given the fact you seem more interested in flirting than being treated, I'm assuming it's superficial."

Ouch.

Yes, it was a knife, a ten-inch hunting knife, but I just got nicked by the blade rather than slashed. It's not deep enough to have caused major damage, but it's deep enough to require stitches or else I'd have patched myself up.

"Box cutter," I said. Then added, "My hand slipped."

She gave me a long and thoughtful look, I wasn't sure if she bought it, but she reached over for the local anesthetic and started to draw it up into a syringe. "I'm just going to numb the area—"

"Just stitch me up without," I flashed her a smile.

"Mr. Bennett, it's not a contest of who's the toughest. If you want to avoid an infection after being cut with a box cutter , then I need to clean the laceration properly. And I can't do that if you're wriggling around."

With that, she jabbed me around the wound and fuck me, if that didn't sting more than the damn injury itself.

After that she worked silently, I tried making conversation, but she was laser focused on her work. I didn't feel a thing as she flushed out the wound and then sutured it closed.

"All done," she said as she peeled off her gloves and threw them in the trash. She then rattled off some instructions for showering and cleaning the wound and I nodded in all the right places.

I wanted to tell her that this wasn't my first rodeo, but she wouldn't be impressed by that either. "Nurse…" I began.

"Laura." She supplied her first name without a smile, but without any annoyance either.

"Laura, I would love to take you out to dinner tonight." My heart pounded in my chest, and it had nothing to do with the stitches or the lidocaine.

The apologetic look on her face told me what her answer would be. "My evening is booked, Mr. Bennett. Besides, I don't date patients. Be more careful next time you're using a box cutter ."

I bit my lip to stop the laugh, she really wasn't buying my story. But at least she hadn't gotten the cops involved.

"How about tomorrow night? I stop being your patient the moment I'm out the door," I was nothing if not a persistent fucker, and when she showed the barest hint of a smile, I was sure I had her. "I promise," I said with one hand over my heart and the other raised to swear an oath, "that I will avoid any sharp household implements before our date tomorrow night."

"Busy tomorrow night too."

Damn, that was strike two, and I wasn't ready for strike three yet. "Fair enough." I jumped from the exam table as if my side wasn't fucking killing me. "Enjoy your evening, Laura. All of ‘em."

"Thank you, Mr. Bennett. Be more careful in the future."

I grabbed the instructions and prescriptions from the doctor who hadn't bothered to show his face and marched out of the office. I felt worse after her rejection than the damn knife wound.

A slow smile spread across my face as I crossed the hospital parking lot. Laura the nurse was something else. She had nerves of steel, she was fucking unflappable, and she wasn't easily impressed. Typically, I preferred my women easy, but maybe Diesel and Rocky were right and there was something to be said for a woman who wasn't easy—in or out of the bedroom.

I shook off that thought because I must be some kind of sick fuck to want more from a woman who couldn't even smile at me when there were tons of total fucking smoke shows who would happily warm my bed for a few hours. But my mind was stuck on a woman who was clearly not interested.

For now.

Like I said, I was a persistent fucker when I wanted to be, and by the time I arrived back at the Steel Demons clubhouse, I decided that I wanted to be.

Very fucking much.