Yeah, you’re a freaking genius. Mensa would love to have you. Not.
I shivered, feeling like the biggest fool to ever draw breath. What had I been thinking? I hadn’t; that was my problem. I’d let my anger at Dad and at my own weakness get the better of me, and now I was here, being pressured into having sex with a drunken biker.
Awesome.
I pushed Crash’s hand away yet again, trying frantically to think of a solution to this particular problem. But sadly this was real life and it wasn’t quite as simple as a math equation. There were no rules I could apply here and way too many variables, and when you were battling panic, logic didn’t always work.
‘C-can’t we chat?’ I wriggled away from him. ‘Just while I finish my beer?’
But his hand was now sliding underneath my hoodie, over my bare stomach, and he was pulling me very close, his mouth at my neck. ‘Nah. I don’t wanna chat. C’mon, baby. Put those lips to work.’
I went rigid, my heart now climbing up into my throat. I could feel the strength in his arm going around me. I knew I couldn’t fight it.
Men, they were all the same. Even the ones who were supposed to be the good guys were assholes, and I knew that better than anyone.
In the corridor outside, a woman giggled, the deep voice of a man saying something in return.
‘Well, o-okay.’ I hated the way I couldn’t keep my voice from shaking. ‘But I’m a virgin, you know that, right?’ It had been my experience that once you said the ‘V’ word, men usually ran for the hills.
Sadly Crash didn’t run, though to be fair, there were no hills he could logically run to.
‘Mmm...’ he said. ‘Then maybe I can teach you.’ And he moved his hand up to cup my breast.
I don’t know what happened then. Something in me simply snapped, roaring in negation as his hand cupped me, and I found myself shoving him away hard before I could think better of it, yelling ‘No’ as loud as I could for good measure.
Then, as I was sitting there, trembling with anger and fear, the door to Crash’s room burst open with such force that it bounced back against the wall with a bang.
A man was standing in the doorway. A horribly familiar man.
‘What the fuck is going on?’ the man demanded, his voice deep and dark, rough and gritty. Then his strange amber eyes met mine and my heart clenched tight with a weird combination of absolute terror and utter relief.
Jake Clarke, aka Tiger.
I’d never forgotten the first day I’d met him. He’d been waiting for me outside my school one day, sitting astride his massive black Harley and smoking a cigarette. He’d worn battered blue jeans, a black T-shirt with a leather vest thrown over the top, and there were chains attached to his belt, huge motorcycle boots on his feet, brightly coloured tattoos wrapping around both his powerful arms.
He was as beautiful as the animal he was named for and twice as dangerous. Mean as hell and sexy as sin.
The sun had struck copper sparks from his dark hair, and when he’d seen that school was out, he’d thrown his cigarette down right there in the street and ground it under his heel. Then he’d looked straight at me.
And I’d forgotten where I was. I’d even forgotten who I was.
His eyes were amber, the colour of expensive whisky or newly minted gold coins, and they had pinned me to the spot. A golden arrow straight through my heart.
His face was all hard lines and arrogant angles, his brows slightly winged at the corners, and he had the hardest, sharpest jawline I’d ever seen. He didn’t smile. His mouth was wide and beautifully carved, and the rounded shape of his bottom lip was the softest part about him, but it didn’t curve.
All my friends had stared at him—hell, everyone had stared at him. No one in my exclusive girls’ school had ever seen a man like him.
‘There’ll be someone there to meet you after school today,’ Dad had told me that morning. ‘In fact, he’ll be taking you to and from school for a little while so be nice to him, okay?’
Tiger had been that someone. An enforcer for the Knights of Ruin MC, he’d been assigned to be my bodyguard to protect me from the death threats another MC had thrown at my father. And Dad, being canny, had decided that the best protection from one MC was a rival MC.
I’d been terrified of Tiger and excited by him in equal measure, and I’d fallen in love with him the moment I’d seen him. But back then I was only seventeen and a nerdy, tongue-tied little girl, while he was twenty-six and a full-grown man, and so far out of my league he might as well have been the sun to my Pluto.
He was a star while I...I was barely even a planet.
It had taken me years to get him out of my head and I’d thought I’d managed it while I’d been away at college. But one look at him was all it took for those feelings to come flooding back. The fear and the curiosity and the dry-mouthed excitement.
I’d thought my situation couldn’t get any worse.
I was wrong.
Tiger
THE SIGHT OF the girl sitting on Crash’s bed, staring at me with the biggest, deepest blue eyes I’d ever seen, hit me like a fucking brick to the head.
Not only because she was as white as a goddamn sheet, but also because I knew her.
Summer Grant. Daughter of that well-known asshole Campbell Grant, the police chief.
What the ever-loving fuck was she doing here?
I’d been enjoying the party, aka the usual Saturday night at the clubhouse, and had gone off to spend a little quality time with Mercy, one of the club girls, and hadn’t been in the mood to hear some girl shout ‘No’ from behind a closed bedroom door, and still less to do anything about it.
But I didn’t have much patience with brothers who didn’t treat the girls right, so I’d kicked the door open to check out what was going on, to make sure things were okay. Only to find Summer fucking Grant sitting there, shaking, on the bed with that dumbass Crash trying to get his hands all over her.
The brother was drunk as a fucking skunk and didn’t appear to notice that his door was currently hanging off its hinges. Or that I was standing there. Or even that I’d asked him a goddamn question.
He reached again for the police chief’s pretty little daughter.
Fuck. No.
I took two steps into the room, grabbed Crash by his collar, jerked him off the bed, then shoved him up against the wall. ‘You hurt her?’ I demanded, gripping him by the throat. ‘Say yes and I’ll punch your fucking face in.’
Couldn’t have brothers hurting the girls here. Made for a bad rep and brought trouble, and
