I can’t remember the last time I felt this way. I feel like I’m glowing, and every muscle in my body feels refreshed at a deep, almost cellular level. Every second she was around me felt like bliss, and when I turn my head to watch her get up, I feel my insides get all warm and fuzzy at the sight of that ass and the way her hips—
“Shit,” I curse as I see her start to wobble on her feet in a way I know all too well.
I jump up off the couch in time for her limp weight to fall back my arms. I catch her with one hand supporting the space between her shoulders and the other holding her at the hips, and effortlessly, I lift her up bridal-style and stare down at the blank, unconscious non-expression on her face.
She’s out cold, no doubt about it. I grit my teeth and look around the apartment, wondering what the odds are she really does have any roommates that are just holed up in their rooms hiding. But no, I know on a gut level she was being honest. We’re alone out here, and this house is just me, my bike, and a passed-out girl who just gave me the best oral I’ve had in my life. She’s needed my help twice tonight, but she’s more than made it up, as far as I’m concerned.
“Shit, girl, did you take a sip of that drink anyway while you were enjoying the show?” I murmured to her under my breath as I carried her toward the hallway, peeking down it for a light switch.
Seeing one, I awkwardly turn and walk sideways down the hallway, flicking on the light. I almost pause for a moment, because the light floods the narrow passage and shows me the handful of picture frames hanging up.
They’re all landscape pictures.
I recognize a few of them from the local area, but there’s a striking absence of people in any of the pictures in the hallway. No family, no friends, none of her. I don’t waste time trying to make heads or tails of that information. I check the first door and find a small closet, and the second is a bathroom. That leaves the third door at the end of the hall, and that door swings open to reveal a tidy master bedroom.
I flick the light on and carry her inside, and I’m grateful it looks like she didn’t make the bed this morning before getting up and going. I don’t have any free hands, so I have to slide her in legs-first and lay her on her back before folding her hands over her stomach and pulling the blankets over her gently.
Once she’s tucked in as well as I can manage, I stand back and look down at her. I suddenly realize I should feel like an intruder here, but I don’t. Her head falls to the side, facing me, and her features look more peaceful and relaxed than I’ve ever seen in a sleeping woman before. I watch her chest rising and falling with her steady, tranquil breaths, and every one of those breaths makes the soft curls of her blonde hair flicker beside her in the moving air. She’s naked, and I’ve only known her for about an hour, if that.
It’s just me and this woman who gets more interesting every minute I spend with her, out in the middle of nowhere. A lesser man might take advantage of the situation, and I’ve gotta say, I’m glad I’m the one out of all the bikers in that bar who saved her ass from that chickenshit rapist.
I take a moment to look around the room, and I have to admit, I’m not someone who lives extravagantly or who’d know “contemporary tastes” if they hit me in the face, but the room looks remarkably simple. She looks about the age that she might be a student, but the only colleges around here aren’t the kind you come in from out of county to attend, much less out of state. And I definitely haven’t seen this girl around, so I can only imagine she blew into town recently.
Then again, this is the kind of place you stay if you want to get away from the world, not live neck-deep in it like you’d think a twenty-something young woman would be doing. But this woman isn’t like most. That much is becoming clear, I just can’t put my finger on the how or why.
Once she’s tucked in and decent under the covers, I make my way back through the hallway into the kitchen. I stop at the closet to poke my head in, and after a quick search, I find a small hand towel that feels freshly washed and folded. She lives neatly, whoever she is.
I take it into the kitchen, find a bag of frozen peas in the freezer, dust the freezer burn off, and wrap the cloth around it before rinsing it in cold water to make a cold compress. It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing, and it might help in combination with an aspirin.
Why the girl fainted is still a mystery to me. My best guess is that she had too much to drink and just managed to hide it somehow until the excitement on the couch got to be too much for her. I sigh and look around the room, noting how simple and unlived-in the house looks, furrowing my brow. Or maybe this girl just escaped some kind of crazy repressed family, and she’s trying to throw herself headlong into as much vice as she can handle. Going from zero to having your lips wrapped around a biker’s cock after almost getting roofied would be overwhelming to anyone.
But girls who just got out from under an oppressive wing don’t dress like this girl is dressed. She knows what she’s doing, at least to some degree. I don’t have a wilting flower on my hands. I can sense the thorns on this rose a mile away, she just hasn’t shown them yet.
Rummaging around her kitchen doesn’t yield any aspirin. She must keep it somewhere besides the kitchen. Not wanting to let the cold compress start to melt, I make my way back to the bedroom and find her right where I left her, still dozing peacefully. It’s like she laid down for a portrait, her body looks so picturesque. I sit down beside her and check her pulse to make sure nothing is seriously wrong, and when that feels fine, I press the ice to her forehead.
After a few minutes of watching her like that, I start searching the room for aspirin. Maybe it’s in a nightstand or a dresser. Even though she’s out cold, I move carefully and quietly, because I don’t want her to wake up and panic at the sight of a biker who’s a head taller than her rummaging through her underwear drawer.
The first drawer is just folded shirts, and the second I slide open looks like storage for either important documents or junk mail she hasn’t gotten around to sorting through and throwing out yet. Sure, that might be just me projecting why I have a huge stack of unopened mail in a drawer at my place, but you never know.
I wish I could say I’m looking for aspirin when I reach down to push some of the envelopes aside, but honestly, I’m being nosy. I want to see if I can catch her last name. I already know this girl is worth trying to stay in touch with, if she still wants that when she wakes up. And something in my gut is still telling me there’s more to this woman than meets the eye.
It almost makes me feel more guilty when my curiosity pays off.
As soon as I push the top layer of mail out of the way, I lay eyes on a newspaper clipping that looks aged as hell. I glance at the date at the top, which she—assuming she’s the one who clipped the newspaper—went out of her way to preserve. It’s dated over a decade ago. I don’t know her exact age, but she can’t have been more than a young girl that long ago, or a teenager at most. And that gets my attention only because of what the headline on the article itself says:
“Child Abducted by Wyoming Man Found Safe!”
Glimpses of the article give more details. A twelve year old girl found kidnapped and chained up by a man old enough to be a father. The implications of something terrible happening to her, or about to have happened to her. It wasn’t clear at the time they ran this article, and they probably wanted to respect the poor girl’s privacy. But with this timeline...I glance back at the slumbering form on the bed and furrow my brow.
There’s no way the woman passed out on the bed right now is the same girl from this news story who suffered so much at such a young age, is there?
“Christ,” I murmur, sliding the drawer shut.
Before it closes, I see the woman’s name on a piece of junk mail: Lauren Lockett. I silently mouth the name and feel my heart rate pick up briefly. It’s a pretty name. Real pretty. I’m a simple man, but I appreciate the little things like that. Lauren Lockett. It’s more whimsical and innocent than the leather-clad bombshell seems, but it suits her, somehow.
I pull my phone out to text Breaker. I can’t find any aspirin, but it just hit me that the rush of the past hour probably has the rest of the MC wondering where the fuck I am. Well, they can probably figure it out, but I went and ruined their night by doing what I did.
The rest of my motorcycle club—the Wyoming Heartbreakers, whose kutte I’ll proudly wear until the day I die—was playing pool when I started that fight. They weren’t involved, and even though I didn’t check on them when I was in the middle of the fight, I don’t think they would have gotten in the way unless the would-be rapist had buddies with him to outnumber me.
We Heartbreakers like a fair fight.
The texts are about what I’d expect: mostly wondering where the fuck I am, and letting me know that they all rode back to the clubhouse after I left. I chuckle at the way some of the guys phrase it, but I go straight to Breaker’s messages first to touch base with him.
Hey Prez. Had to get the girl home. Taking care of her. Anything happen after I left? Asshole not dead is he?
It’s only a second before I hear back, which tells me the guys are probably at the clubhouse already, having a few drinks and gossiping about whether I fought well with that asshole. At least, I’d like to think that’s what they’re doing, and that they’re not all hanging out in county jail if that bartender called the cops. But biker bartenders are usually alright about fights, so I’m not sweating it. I make my way back to the bedside, taking a seat on it carefully as I carry on the rest of the conversation.
His ego’s bruised, says Breaker. He was military, bartender said locals love him. Might be some blowback. You sure he was trying to drug her, brother?
POSITIVE. Girl can back me up. Saw the powder on the counter, so did the bartender.
Hey I believe you, just giving heads up. How’s the girl?
She was fine for a while, til she passed out. Keeping an eye on her. Did you see her drink any of the spiked drink?
No, not after you punched the guy at least. Doesn’t make sense, she’d have been loopy earlier.
See her drinking at all?
No
I furrow my brow and look down at Lauren, worried.
“Damn, girl, are you just sick?” I murmur as I text Breaker once more to let him know I’ll probably be staying the night but that I’ll keep them posted, and I thank the MC for cleaning up after me. Breaker doesn’t mind me doing what I did. He expects us to watch out for people who can’t watch out for themselves. That’s what the Heartbreakers are about, and that’s not changing anytime soon.
I reach down and brush some hair out of the girl’s face and pull some of the sheets further up her collar, covering her a little more uniformly. I can’t get over how serene she looks, and it makes me wish I had more to offer her. But the nearest store is a gas station miles away, and by the time I’d get back from a run like that, she’d be alone almost a full hour, and I don’t feel good about that. Not right now, at least. For all I know, Mr. Military Hero might have her address.
But just five minutes of peaceful silence later, I hear a soft murmur from her, and I look away from my phone down at her and see her starting to stir ever so faintly. Her eyes crack open, and as she stares up at the ceiling in the brief moment before all her senses and memories come back to her...I see deep emptiness in those eyes.
She’s awake, and after a moment of watching her chest rising and falling at a different rate, I can tell it hasn’t taken her long to come to. After the initial sadness in her expression passes, her eyes flutter open, and then she gasps at the sight of me looming over her. I hold up my hands inoffensively as she clutches her chest, but then she recognizes me, and I see the fear replaced with a sudden blush as memory floods back to her.
She even cracks a smile, which touches me so much that I can’t help but return it. That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting from a girl waking up to the sight of me.
“Hey,” my husky voice says in the dim light of the room.
“Hey,” she replies, just before a soft, embarrassed laugh. “Um...god, I’m sorry,” she murmurs, rubbing her eyes.
“I’m just gonna keep saying ‘don’t mention it’ until you get the message,” I chuckle, shaking my head.
“What even happened?” she asks, noticing the cold pack on her head and putting it aside on the nightstand. “Wait, was that you?”
“I was hoping you’d be able to answer that,” I say, scratching my head. “And yeah, hope you weren’t planning on using those peas for anything important. I just got you to bed and wrapped that up for you in case it was a hangover hitting early. Should I take you to the hospital? My ride’s got plenty of gas in it.”
At this point, she’s rubbing her face more to save herself the embarrassment of looking back up at me, but the gratitude in her eyes when she does look at me is radiant as it is obvious.
“No, no, I’m good,” she says, smiling. “But thank you. I just feel bad for keeping you here all night.”
“Hey, you can keep me here as long as you like,” I tease, giving her a gruff grin that makes her blush satisfyingly before my expression grows more serious. “You...remember all that, too?”
“Yeah, that’s all pretty clear, don’t worry,” she says, smile growing as she gives a more sincere laugh that puts my nerves at ease. “I...needed that, after that kind of night out.”
“Look who’s talking,” I laugh, squeezing her hand, and she squeezes it back as our eyes go lidded. “And hey, I’ll beat it if you really want, but I’d feel better hanging out here tonight in case that asshole from the bar happened to tail us. We’d probably know by now, but just in case. I think I saw some blankets in the closet, I can crash on the couch.”
“I’d like that,” she says, not letting go of my hand as her tentative, cautious voice speaks against her better judgment. “But I’d like it more if you stayed a little closer,” she adds with a faint nod toward the other side of the bed.
I’d be out of my mind to say no, even if my cock weren’t already starting to swell in anticipation. I stare down at her with a hundred questions on my mind. Who the hell is she? Why does she have that article in her drawer? Is this place as much of a safehouse as it looks like? What the fuck was I getting myself into?
But right then, there was only one response either of us wanted to hear from my lips.
“That sounds great.”