But Lara Ashburn did not flutter. She didn’t blush. She only watched him approach like it was no big thing, the DKMC’s foremost enforcer rolling up on her. Like she had no idea—or didn’t care—that for many people, he was a death sentence.
“I’ll make a note,” was all she said. She nodded toward one of those shitty combination desks. “Why don’t you take a seat?”
“Is Kaylee dead by the side of a road?” He knew perfectly well she was fine. His smart, cute, manipulative as fuck daughter had texted him back rather than answer his call when he’d arrived in town—but he’d deal with her later. Right now it was time to go a few rounds with her deeply concerned, surprisingly hot teacher.
Chaser ignored the student desks and circled the big one instead, propping himself on a corner and stretching his legs out in front of him, effectively hemming Lara in between him and the chalkboard. He expected her to leap away from him and make a break for the side he’d left open, but once again, she surprised him. Her gaze got cooler, and she folded her arms beneath her tits, but that was all. She didn’t give an inch.
He kept going. “Is she in the hospital? Was she involved in an altercation and carted off to the police station?”
“Not to my knowledge, no. She seemed fine in fifth period, if a bit chastened today.”
“But you thought, what the hell, seven fucking phone calls? Are you insane, woman?”
“I prefer Ms. Ashburn, actually.”
“The last time someone called me seven times in a row, it was because shit was going down and lives were at risk.”
“That sounds suitably dramatic.” She nodded toward his cut. “No doubt that goes hand in hand with your, ah, costume. Maybe this provides a bit of an explanation as to why Kaylee thinks it’s appropriate to show up to school while intoxicated. To say nothing of where she found alcohol to consume in the first place, or why her default response to anything is one of deep disrespect.”
“This isn’t Halloween,” Chaser said mildly enough, though he could feel his temper kicking in, dark and mean. Which didn’t bode well for anyone, especially not a fragile little creature like this woman. “I’m not wearing a costume, babe. And maybe, if you want my kid to respect you, you should try reining in the disrespect yourself. She’s not big on hypocrites.” He kept his expression grim and trained on the teacher, who should have looked a lot more concerned than she did. “Neither am I.”
Lara only held his gaze coolly. “And this wasn’t the first time she turned up drunk. Something you were informed of previously, yet did nothing to curb.”
Chaser shrugged. He vaguely remembered some bullshit message awhile back that he’d ignored. The way he’d ignored the first six this woman had left him yesterday and today. It was apparently the seventh that had irritated him enough to show up. “She’s in high school. Kids do shit.”
“She’s sixteen years old.”
“When I was sixteen I was stealing cars from the high school parking lot and taking cheerleaders on joyrides.” Chaser kept his voice even. If forbidding. “The cars came back in one piece, the cheerleaders, not so much. From my perspective, Kaylee’s doing fine.”
“Here’s what will happen if I report this, the way I’m supposed to,” Lara said, her expression unreadable, which…poked at him. A lot. It was a little too much like a challenge. “Your daughter will get expelled, because drunkenness on school grounds will count as a third offense after an incident in gym class with a boy she didn’t like—”
“If you mean that punk bitch who put his hands on her, you’re lucky she handled it. Because if I had, he’d have lost a few fingers.”
“—and the first episode of drunkenness, which she claimed was migraine medication making her loopy, but I doubt anyone was taken in by this claim. Maybe you’re unaware that the principal has instituted a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy here at Lagrange High.”
“The principal? You mean that little douche Thierry Maitland?”
“That a member of the community finds Mr. Maitland a douche is something I can certainly bring up at the next school board meeting if you wish,” Lara said testily. As if—and it took Chaser a moment to place the unfamiliar expression on her face—she found him little more than annoying. Not scary. But irritating. Like a bug. “But that won’t help your daughter’s situation one way or the other. Which is why I called you in today.” She tilted her head slightly to one side with more of that same impatience. “What is Kaylee’s home life like? Does she have an adequate support system?” Another nod at his cut, which was starting to feel like an attack. A very, very unwise attack. “Is it possible that with all your activities, her cries for help might be going unheard?”
Chaser took a moment. It was that or put his hands on this woman who dared speak to him like this, which he knew was a terrible idea. He’d happily pistol-whip any man who spoke to him this way, no question. A tiny little woman like this, with more mouth than common sense? Hell. He’d end up fucking her against a wall, his second favorite form of anger management. And he suspected this was the sort of pissy, impossible woman who would come screaming his name and then actually call the cops on him. Him. Right here in Lagrange, where the cops were either really good friends with the Devil’s Keepers or really, really committed to staying the hell out of the club’s way.
“Did I fuck you and forget your name, babe?” he asked, in as insulting a drawl as he could manage. “Did you drag me in here so I could tell you it was good for me? If I came, it was great. Better now?”
It was worth it for the steam he could swear came out of her ears at that, and the sheer murder in her gaze.
“Over my dead body would I ever—ever—touch you,” she bit out, sounding straight-up furious instead of morally outraged, which was interesting. Like it wasn’t the idea of fucking itself that pissed her off—it was the idea of fucking him.
Not a response he was used to. Despite himself, Chaser found it fascinating. Her too, if he was honest. Most women weren’t all that interesting. Not like this. They were wet, they wanted him, they cried when he fucked them blind. Most women were interchangeable to him, not puzzles to solve.
It turned out he had a thing for puzzles.
“But I know you somehow?” His temper eased a little as he tried to figure out if she had an issue with him personally or bikers in general—and how quickly he could get inside her to find out if all that hate made her come harder. He bet it would. Hate fucking was the good stuff, blistering hot and wrong, guaranteed to take the top of his head off. He really, really wanted to find out what would make this starchy, uptight woman get soft and wet and greedy. Even better, what would make her beg.
“Mr. Frey,” she was saying, still with murder all over her face despite the smile she tried to aim at him, “I don’t think you understand why I called you in.”
“I understand that as far as I know, I never laid eyes on you before I walked into this school tonight. But I’ll be honest. Pussy is a blur. There’s just so much of it, who can keep track?”
She only stared back at him like he was an idiot, and not even a particularly insulting idiot. Just a straight-up dumbass. She didn’t give an inch. It was like he really, truly didn’t get to her—which he might have been tempted to believe, however astonishing and unusual that was, if he hadn’t been able to see her pulse going wild in that hollow at the base of her neck. It told him that she wasn’t as cool as she was pretending to be, but she was standing up to him anyway.
And the truth was, Chaser was hardwired to like that shit. To like it way more than he should. He wasn’t a fan of attitude for attitude’s sake in women. That was usually a whole lot of bravado and a calculated performance, and if there was going to be performing, he liked a stripper to show him a lot of skin, then shake her ass before she got down on her knees to suck him off. But a pretty little civilian thing who wasn’t afraid of him when she should have been cowering beneath her desk? Well, fuck him. She was basically his catnip.
He kept that to himself for the moment. He had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate his hard-on as the gift it was.
“You can’t have a problem with me,” he pointed out gently. Gently for him, anyway. “I got a reputation that precedes me, I grant you, but not generally into high schools. So that leaves the club.” He shook his head slowly. “I don’t want to think that someone who’s supposed to be teaching my kid is dumb enough to flash a grudge against the club around town. Much less in my face. It’s just not smart.”
“I don’t know anything about your club,” she retorted with a tight smile that went nowhere near her eyes. “Aside from any normal person’s reasonable concern about a group of seemingly unemployed adult men who like to hang around aimlessly in a secret clubhouse when they’re not prancing about in public wearing their little sew-on patches like Boy Scout merit badges.”
And Chaser couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him then. He couldn’t even be as angry as he should have been—because that was straight-up crazy. Was she suicidal? Had she called him in here so he could break her fucking neck for her? Because there were nicer DKMC brothers than him. A lot of them. But there were also much more fucking depraved ones who’d backhand her through a window for a crack like that without a second thought.
Chaser didn’t hit women. But this particular woman didn’t know that, and the fact she’d risk it pissed him off as much as it intrigued him.
“You know where you are, right? This is Lagrange, Louisiana. This is a biker town, babe. A Devil’s Keepers town, through and through. You new or just plain stupid?”
“I moved here a month ago, not that it’s relevant.”
“Oh, it’s relevant,” Chaser told her, his hands itching to do his talking for him, so they could get to the no talking, all action part and see if she was as mouthy with his cock between her lips. “Because if you’re new, I don’t have to take offense to the shit you just said. Which believe me, you don’t want.”
She laughed then. And he could tell it was a deliberate thing, not an expression of amusement. Who was this woman? There was having no particular fear of him—which was hot—and then there was asking for a serious problem with the club and poking at a brother like a lunatic. Which was significantly less so.
“I don’t care if you’re offended, Mr. Frey. My concern is the environment Kaylee lives in. The fact is, she’s started acting out in ways that will affect her entire future if we don’t find a way to nip it in the bud.”
“Her future is fine. She’s protected no matter what she does. Again, this is a club town, and she’s part of the club. Better than that, she’s mine.” His voice was low and hard. “And I protect what’s mine.”
Lara scoffed, like he hadn’t just ended the conversation with that little dose of reality. There was a part of him that almost admired it, it was so outside the normal way people treated him. Because most people realized he was death in steel-tipped boots and didn’t encourage him to bring it on any faster.
But not Ms. Lara Ashburn.
“I’ve seen the future on offer for girls like Kaylee who drop out of high school because no one bothers to pay attention to them,” she was saying, all fire and fury in that sleek, slender frame. “Is that what you want for her? If she’s lucky, she hooks up with one of your brothers and gets to be an old lady, right? But what does that look like? Babies and club drama if things go well. The bitter knowledge her man could be sleeping with every other woman in town and her father will take his side over hers, no questions asked, no matter what, because that’s the way a brotherhood works. That’s if things go well. If they don’t, he’s in jail or dead and what’s she supposed to do with a tenth-grade education and a bunch of kids to feed?”
Chaser eyed her narrowly then. Because that didn’t sound like a crusader, or not like the ones he’d known, hopped up on their version of Jesus and happy to bludgeon you with it if your take was different. That sounded like someone who had a problem with the club specifically.
“You don’t need to love the club,” he said quietly. “You don’t even need to like it. But you need to respect it. If you know all the shit you just spouted, then you know the club takes care of its own. And you should also know that there are consequences for the kind of disrespect you’re throwing around tonight. And, babe, hear me.” He shook his head. “I’m usually the consequence. Believe me when I tell you that you don’t want that.”
“But most of the girls in town don’t end up as old ladies, do they?” Lara asked as if she hadn’t heard him. Her blue eyes were burning and her mouth was a hard line, and Chaser figured they both knew the answer was no, most girls in town were not old ladies. “They end up dancing in that strip club or on their knees in your clubhouse. Tell me, what happens the night you look over from all that pussy you’re so proud of and see your own daughter down on her—”
“Shut your mouth.” Chaser didn’t yell. He didn’t have to. There was enough force and fury in those three single syllables to take out the wall of the school behind her. He was surprised it still stood. “Are you insane?”
“I’m a realist who’s seen girls like your daughter before and what happens to them,” she replied. Still without batting an eye. Like he was some toothless old fart, incapable of handling himself and about as threatening as a bedpan. No matter how wild her pulse beat in her throat. “Kaylee is a bright girl. She’s smart and quick. There’s absolutely no reason she should be condemned to spend her life on her knees servicing your biker buddies unless that’s what she wants.”
“I guess that answers the question. You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“Do you love your daughter, Mr. Frey?”
His temper was a pulse in his throat, his temples, his cock. He saw red and had to gulp it back down before it took him over. He didn’t know how he did it.
“My name is Chaser,” he gritted out, blinding rage somehow mixing with all that fury and dropping straight into his cock like a hit of the good shit. He wanted to rip her apart and do it balls deep inside her, until this conversation was nothing but a pale little memory obliterated by all the many ways he could make her come apart. “And if you keep asking me dumbass questions, you better not be surprised if I answer them in ways you’re not gonna like.”
“I don’t respond well to threats, Mr. Frey,” she snapped back at him, and then she astonished him by angling her tight little body closer to him, rather than away. Like she was straight-up daring him to do something about it. His hands actually twitched, happy to take that challenge. But she was still talking. “Do you want to help Kaylee achieve her potential? Do you want to make sure she has a little more to work with in life than your protection?”
“My protection is no small thing.” He considered her, his gaze focused and hot like he was considering sinking his teeth into her neck before he taught her exactly what her place was. Hell. He was more than considering it. He was considering how best to do it. “And what you should be worried about is the fact that you don’t have it.”
Chapter 2
Lara Ashburn knew perfectly well that it was not smart to taunt a man like this one. Not smart. Not wise. More than that, it was not in the least bit helpful to his poor daughter.
And she certainly knew better. Knowing better was burned into her blood and her memory through the questionable gift of her Ashburn genes and her own hard, bitter experiences growing up in her shitty family. The fact that she was getting in the face of a DKMC enforcer as if she wasn’t at all afraid of him was very likely going to keep her up at night for the foreseeable future, assuming she survived this little encounter. She suspected many did not.
And if she’d put together a composite drawing of precisely the sort of man she needed to stay the hell away from forever now that she’d escaped her own grim fate, the one lounging there at the end of her desk like he owned it and her and the whole goddamned school—menace and warning and something darker and more disruptive packed hard into a dangerously attractive package—would hav
e been what she’d come up with. Every inch of him was a serious freaking problem.
Ryan Frey—whatever the hell name he called himself—was exactly the kind of depraved criminal she’d left California to avoid.
But she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“You’re making this about you,” she informed him as if he hadn’t threatened her and more, as if she didn’t care whether or not he had. “It’s not.”
“It’s about respect,” Chaser replied in that gravel and velvet voice of his that held more than a hint of Georgia and rubbed all over her like he was buffing her with his own special chamois. She wanted to lean into it. And it was harder—much harder—than it should have been to keep herself from doing it.
Even with that clear sign of danger, she didn’t step away.
Lara didn’t back up so much as an inch even though Kaylee’s father—a parent like any other parent, she tried to tell herself, no matter that he was wearing a 1%-er patch on his cut that proclaimed his outlaw status loud and clear—made her fingers feel numb and her heart beat six times faster than usual, and that had been when he was all the way across the room. Up close, he was a whole lot worse. Long and tall and muscled everywhere, so roughly gorgeous she had to focus on the end of his nose instead of his actual face or she thought she might actually crumple where she stood.
Get a grip, Ashburn, she snapped at herself. Let a man like this see fear and he’ll destroy you.
Though there was a little part of her, deep inside and inching lower and lower in her belly by the second, that suggested the issue here wasn’t fear at all.
Lara chose to ignore that part. “You want me to respect you, your club, your fancy patches, whatever. I understand that it’s an issue for you.”