10. Cam

ten

Cam

Bringing Krystal and her friend home with me had been the biggest act of self-sabotage I'd executed in a year or more. Shaking Krystal would have been impossible if I'd followed through. I should thank Riley for the interruption.

Every notification from the camera drew my attention, even with Krystal and her friend trying their best to distract me.

Letting Riley walk away down those steps had been impossible.

Hell, even two chicks hadn't stopped me from thinking of her. I'd been good before, but fuck…this was hard. There'd been women I desired that I didn't fuck. I could stop thinking of them, bang someone else, and soothe the itch.

This was different. She was different. The look on her face when I'd asked her to go for a ride was unexpected and hit me like knuckles to the gut. Instantaneous excitement and pleasure. I knew the feeling well. But damn, when it came from her, it left me half hard. Which was more than Krystal had managed with her mouth all over me.

And then there was Archer's cut.

I laid it lovingly across my small kitchen table, folded to show his well-earned center patch. I had to fight back the emotion as I yanked a clean shirt out and jerked it over my head, then shouldered into my own.

"Never ride without it." The ghost of Archer's words the day he'd handed me my first cut echoed in the small apartment. "It's more than leather, Prospect."

I'd lived the life every day since and never questioned it. Not even when he'd had me ride with him to keep tabs on his kid.

She'd always been pretty, smart, everything I couldn't have. I'd known it then, but attraction was easy to ignore from a distance.

Not when she was right in front of me.

I grabbed a Kings hoodie and jogged down the steps. She stood under the carport. I braced myself to see her. I moved with the stab of lust that rocketed from my chest to my crotch instead of having it stop me short.

This was Archer's kid he'd fought so hard to protect, to shield from the world we lived in—the one he'd created. Here I was, pulling her further into it.

But would he have wanted me to shuffle her along, homeless and alone?

No.

She wore long sleeves, but when I held the hoodie to her, she smiled with relief. "All my cool weather stuff is in storage." She pulled it over her head.

I bit my lip. She looked fuck-all delicious in something that I'd worn, that I knew smelled like me, with the Club's insignia all over it.

I could march her up the stairs and not leave for a full ass week.

Instead, I behaved. Or as well as I could as I popped the lid onto her head, strapped it under her chin, and grabbed her a pair of safety glasses.

She looked at the clear plastic glasses like I'd given her a handful of worms.

"More bugs at night, sweetheart. Attracted to the light. I'd keep your mouth shut, too."

Or not . The thought of that sent a rush of blood to my balls.

Her smile was amused and warm. The sort of thing that should put a man at ease. Instead, it felt so intimate that it twisted my gut around.

I climbed on first and watched over my shoulder as she got on. "My bike is a different animal from Archer's. You need to hang on tight…" I gestured around my waist as I explained. "…especially when I get on it, or you'll come off."

Not that I'd ever thrown anyone off my bike. Maybe I just wanted her close.

She eyed me dubiously and scooted closer as I fired it up. Her body was warm, her touch tentative as she wrapped her arms around my middle.

I idled out of the driveway, careful not to rev the engine too much until we throttled out of the neighborhood. At the last stop sign, I grabbed her hands and tugged her arms tighter around me—forcing her even closer. My palms lingered on her soft skin, the warmth of it drawing my attention, and the rest of my body reacted.

If she'd dropped her hands, I'd have embarrassed myself.

I cautioned a glance at her through my mirror.

"You ready?" I shouted over the throttle pop and watched her eyes light up in anticipation.

But it was the way her tongue darted out between her lips that sent me roaring off into the night. I grinned when I hit second gear hot and she squeezed so hard it felt as though she might crawl into my cut with me.

Archer's place was near two separate highways. We were out of Dry Valley in less than ten minutes. I didn't relax until I was hitting eighty and the city lights faded behind me. The more distance I put between us and my problems, the more like myself I felt.

I slowed when we crossed the county line. My reach out here if I got pulled over would only go so far without calling Preacher or AP. I damn sure didn't want Preacher to know I was out like this, riding with Riley.

He didn't need to know shit about her.

The defiant protective streak shot through me like a forty-five, ripping at ideals that had been all but pounded into every fiber of my being. No woman before the club. Brotherhood above all else.

I'd only known her a week. The reaction was stupid. I put a few miles of deserted interstate between myself and that feeling. Archer would expect me to protect Riley and I would. The quicker I could get her out of here, the easier all our lives would be.

She shifted behind me, laying her helmet against the back of my shoulder. We'd been riding for a while and were in familiar territory, so I took the next exit and headed toward a diner that meant something to me and might mean something to her.

I recognized the little red sedan parked out back and couldn't help the little niggle of pleasure. Sometimes—like Archer's funeral—official club shit got in the way of things. Like spending time with the people who came that were important to me.

Riley didn't need my help to crawl off the bike when I parked, and she was smirking when I moved to help her with her helmet.

"Hang on? You didn't tell me riding with you would be like having my stomach sucked out through my throat. It definitely didn't feel like that during the funeral." Her hazel eyes twinkled with flecks of green and gold like the river over rocks after a rain.

Everything here was so dry and barren in the urge to dive in jarred me.

Fuck. This bitch made me poetic.

I laughed anyway, enjoying the happiness riding with her made her feel. My knuckles brushed against her throat as I popped the snaps and dropped the helmet on the seat.

"She's fast."

"I hope you mean the bike." She tossed me a snark-filled side eye that made me want to kiss it off her. "Because I saw what you sent packing, and I don't have the gear-ratio for that."

I laughed again. Who was this woman? "Where the—"

"Archer has all these bike magazines everywhere; I've been reading them." She blushed a little and looked away. "It helps since you guys speak such a different language."

She wanted to know. It was cute. And more, she was still talking about me kicking out Krystal and the other chick. Man, the things I could tell Riley—but she might hate me.

Could be a good thing.

I smiled to myself and held the door to the diner open. No one else was around—too early yet for the working people and too late for the drunks.

"Boy, you're the best-looking thing I've seen all day." A chirpy woman's voice blurted out across the empty restaurant.

The tall, skinny woman with dyed red hair and dark eye shadow wrapped me in a hug that took me back to the only good memories I had of being a kid.

"Ro." I squeezed her tight. She wasn't as frail as she had been last time. "It's good to see you."

"I wish you saw me more," she choked out but didn't cry. "Who's this?"

I pulled from her embrace to introduce them. "Riley, this stunning woman is Robbie. Ro, this is Riley Bowman." I gave her a minute for that to sink in. "Ro was my mom's best friend back in the day. Helped raise me and introduced me to Archer."

Robbie rolled her eyes. "I never should have."

I could tell by the way she kept glancing at Riley and the emotion in her voice, I'd made the right decision coming here.

"It worked out." I gave her a look. This argument was old, she never won, and things were better this way. There hadn't been many other options.

"Well, nice to meet you, Riley. Hungry? What do you like? I can have Sam make anything…take a look at the menu. Breakfast and dinner served all day." She seated us and turned back to me. "Coffee?"

"Yes, ma'am." I told her.

"What to drink, hon?" She looked at Riley.

Riley rattled off a soda and when she glanced back down to the menu, Ro's glance darted from my bike to my guest and her brow lifted in question. I shook my head no and checked the menu myself. Another argument I wasn't going to have.

Ro was well versed in the rules of the MC. Riding with Riley on the back of my bike meant I was staking a claim to her.

"My mom was a junkie." I spoke without looking up. "She and Ro went to school together. Ro never had any kids, so I was her fill-in."

Riley caught my gaze and pursed her lips with an annoyed tsk. "You're nobody's fill-in."

I shrugged. "You know what I mean. She got to take me to do the fun things, like buy me school clothes, carnivals, shit like that. When I was in middle school, my mom had a revolving door of new guys—some of them more violent than others. I stayed with Ro a lot back then." There was something about Riley that made me keep talking, no matter how many times I tried to shut up.

I'd never told anyone this shit. Some of this I doubted even Merc or Dylan would know.

"Figure out what you want?" Ro set down the coffee and Riley's soda.

"Pancakes." I grinned. I'd never eaten anything else here.

"With bacon, extra crispy." She finished with a coral-colored grin before looking at Riley.

"I'll do the same." She snapped the menu shut and spoke in a mock whisper to Ro. "Do we tell him I was going to order that anyway, or let him keep thinking he did something special?"

Ro seemed to contemplate it. "Eh, he's too cute. We let him think whatever he wants." Then she grinned and walked away.

"Why do I feel like you're both making fun of me?"

With a solemn, beautiful face, Riley grinned. "Aw, isn't he cute?"

I tossed a sugar packet at her and was rewarded with a bright smile as she snatched the little white packet from the air and laughed. I was so caught up in her beauty, I didn't dodge it when a quick flick of her wrist sent the packet smacking against the side of my face.

She could make fun of me for that too and I wouldn't care.