“Yeah, babe. That would be a great start. Because people who don’t respect the Devil’s Keepers don’t do too well in Lagrange. You should ask around about our former mayor.” His hard mouth moved in something far too deadly to be a smile. “You can ask him yourself. He’s not in jail or dead. Yet.”
She risked glaring straight into his noticeably startling eyes then. They were a dark and smoky whiskey color, much like the drinks he no doubt poured down his throat nightly while choosing between the various anonymous women he’d forget before he sobered up. And the shock of meeting that steadily condemning, highly alcoholic stare of his was intense. More than intense. Lara found she had to lock her knees beneath her to keep herself standing straight and tall. Well. As tall as it was possible to feel next to a man this relentlessly huge, all of it solid muscle, and that height of his that made her belly feel hollow.
“I have an idea,” she said coolly. Deliberately. As if she was made of the same steel her desk was. Or that he was. “How about we respect Kaylee for a change and see how that goes?”
Chaser’s hundred-proof eyes seemed to flash bright with a kind of terrifying internal lightning that sizzled all over her and through her, too, and no. This really wasn’t smart.
In fact, it was pretty much the textbook definition of dumb—which was exactly what she’d sworn to herself she’d avoid. Lara had chosen a biker town deliberately, but she’d had a plan. She’d been so sure that she, with her unique perspective, could help the kids here who couldn’t see any life beyond the local club. And she’d promised herself that she’d stay the hell away from the club itself—which shouldn’t have been hard, as she’d had her fill of biker clubs, outlaw or otherwise. It was the kids swept up in the destructive wake of these clubs that interested her.
She wanted nothing at all to do with bikers like the one before her, a ruthless threat made flesh like he was more wolf than man. The fine hairs on the back of her neck had been prickling since she’d looked up and found him in her doorway. She didn’t need to study his cut to know he was dangerous. It emanated from him like a force field, daring her to keep needling him.
You have to stop poking at him, she snapped at herself.
Lara knew better than to poke sticks, however sharp, at ruinous men. She’d grown up surrounded on all sides by feral creatures exactly like this one. Bloodthirsty and lethal. The bane of many an existence and proud of it. Crafted into a rough kind of cruelty from his head to his feet, with a dark power that seemed to hum around him, changing the air near him. He didn’t have to do anything to prove how dangerous he was. It was written on him. Literally. It was in the tattoos that she could see on him, one climbing up to grip his throat in case she missed the whole sleeve down his left arm and the others marking his right forearm and bicep beneath the battered old T-shirt and leather cut he wore so proudly, proclaiming his identity and associations to all and sundry.
Marking him an outlaw at a glance.
Lara knew what all those patches on his black leather cut meant, and they weren’t Boy Scout troop merit badges. She could see in them that he took pride in the fact that he lived outside the bounds of normal life, that he’d killed for his club, that he was an enforcer—not a position a soft, easygoing man ever reached in a biker club. Not that soft and easygoing men tended to join outlaw organizations in the first place. She saw the names of the dead he mourned, to be distinguished from those he’d delivered into the afterlife himself, and she’d bet that if she asked him about his work over a few beers he’d wax emotional about the former and be cold and uncaring about the latter because in his world, each man made his own bloody end, one hard choice at a time.
Oh yeah. She knew men like him.
Lara thought of her stone-faced, pitiless monster of an uncle who’d thought nothing of the hundreds of different ways he’d destroyed their family piece by piece—because what was family to a man like Ray Ashburn, proud president of the Brothers of Goliath Motorcycle Club, out in the endless arid wastes east of Palm Desert and west of Blythe, California, on the Arizona border? Family had only ever been secondary to him. A breeding ground for more minions, if anything. Blood was useful for manipulation purposes and claims of obligation when it suited him, but it wasn’t blood that mattered to her uncle. It was the club he wore stamped deep into his skin and breathed like air out there in the red-hot middle of nowhere where his word was the only law that mattered.
Uncle Ray had raised Lara and her brother, Mikey, after their father had died, another victim to the goddamned club and its endless wars. Their mother had moved on to a civilian, leaving her kids behind to grow up in the life under Ray’s tender supervision. Not because Donna Ashburn had wanted to make that choice, Lara knew—or told herself, anyway. But because Donna had wanted out and no way in hell would Uncle Ray, known as California Ray to everyone with a Harley and a cut and feared by many more than that, hear of his dead brother’s kids being raised soft in some green, pleasant suburb with some dickwad stepdad he couldn’t control.
Lara couldn’t let herself think too much about Mikey. Not now. It would make her sloppy and emotional to think of her only brother locked up like an animal, or that he’d already served three years on a manslaughter charge. That was another wound she could lay straight at her uncle’s feet. He’d sacrifice anyone and anything for his precious club. He had.
Lara was uniquely positioned to know better than most how little outlaw bikers should be pushed. And how little she, personally, should push them. She had the scars to prove it.
But she couldn’t seem to help herself.
Especially when Ryan Frey, who had told her more than once to call him Chaser, stood up from the corner of the desk where he’d been lounging all this time, getting increasingly scarier about respect.
The part of her that didn’t care who he was or what he did, because at heart bikers were all the same kind of scum, didn’t care. Because it didn’t make a difference. It shouldn’t. He was as big and scary and threatening leaning there against the corner of her desk as he was looming over her.
But there was a feminine part of her that hummed to life and kicked into high gear as he stood there. If she was brutally honest, it had started when she’d calmed down enough to realize that the biker in the doorway had not been sent by her uncle, but was a part of this strange new life she’d carved out for herself across the country. Far away from Uncle Ray and his notions of family. And more to the point, only a few hours south of the Mississippi jail where Mikey had been transferred to serve out his sentence. This way she could see him on the weekends without having to live in a prison town, which was the only thing she could think of that was worse than a biker town.
Lara hated herself for the fact that she’d noticed the way this man commanded her classroom simply by standing on the outskirts of it, and she loathed herself for her reaction to the low, powerful way he’d moved through the desks with his dark attention sharp and focused. On her. Her wiring was all messed up; she knew that. She’d spent enough time in therapy to understand that she’d imprinted on terrible men at a young age. That in some ways she was doomed to always find that kind of rough and tragic man attractive. She couldn’t help it.
But like all addicts, she could decide—day by day, minute by minute—not to indulge in the things she knew were going to kill her, sooner or later. She could control herself. Just because she wanted something didn’t mean she needed to indulge that want. She’d accepted that nice sheriff’s invitation to dinner just yesterday and had every intention of going out with him, no matter that he smiled too easily and seemed kind, which didn’t do much for that dark and greedy part of her that she was trying so hard to ignore. Still, she’d keep right on ignoring it, the same way she ignored the urge to chain-smoke cigarettes or pound tequila, because she knew how that ended, too. She could live her life the way she wanted to live it, no longer subject to the whims of a very, very bad man who would ultimately think only of himself, never of her. She was determined to do
just that.
No matter how screaming hot the bad man in question was.
She let herself notice that Chaser was shockingly attractive for a stone-cold killer and conscience-less outlaw. It was impossible not to notice. He was rangy and solid, built to cause a whole lot of damage, and her entire body shivered with electric delight when he moved closer. It forced her to tip her head back to keep her wary gaze on his. She allowed herself to notice that the dark expression he wore matched his brown hair and unshaven jaw, but that his mouth was far too wide and tempting for something so hard. She permitted herself a brief, searing hot appreciation of those damned tattoos, especially the one that wrapped around his strong throat and made her want to press her mouth just there. He smelled like leather and the road, and she acknowledged how restless and wet and needy that made her, entirely against her will.
He looked like he could break her in half with one hand, and all she wanted to know was if he was big like that everywhere. She wanted to melt against his wide, tough shoulders and let him take her over.
Lara acknowledged all those things, understood what they said about her, then let them go. Shoved them right out.
“You going to keep maddogging me?” he asked, that voice of his setting fires all up and down her spine, which she opted to ignore. “Because I got to tell you, I have two ways of dealing with assholes who eye-fuck me. If they have a dick, they’re going down. If they don’t—”
Lara roused herself from the spell she’d lapsed into this close to his wall of a chest and rolled her eyes.
“Insert blow job joke here. Yes, I get it. You’re big and bad and scary.” She sighed. “What about your daughter, Mr. Frey?”
His mouth kicked up in the corner and he shifted his stance, moving closer still. Every alarm inside her body shrieked at her, but she held her ground. Because running from a man like this was just as good as begging to be chased.
“I’ll have a talk with Kaylee,” he told her, and she didn’t know why she believed him. It was that gravel certainty in his voice. That unwavering way he held her gaze, whether she wanted him to or not. “Is that what you wanted to hear, Ms. Ashburn?”
“It’s certainly a start. But you must understand that girls like Kaylee are at risk.”
“She’s not at risk. She’s a teenage girl. Jesus Christ. Did you skip that step? Jump straight to tight-assed teacher instead?”
Lara smiled. Blandly. “Teenage girls are particularly at risk, especially in situations like hers. What sort of role models does she have? Is she even aware that there are choices in life other than the ones she sees on the backs of all the Harleys roaring in her face?”
“I told you I’ll talk to her,” he growled at her. “Anything else? You want to lecture me on how you think I should do that?”
“Of course not.” She ran her tongue over her teeth and really should have bitten it while she was at it. But she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. “I can’t help wondering how much good it will do. You’ve presumably talked to her before, and yet here we are. Maybe she has problems you can’t solve.”
His eyes glittered then, and she was far too close to them for comfort. All that smoky, tempting whiskey. And heat. She could see, with perfect clarity, the mix of astonishment and temper that moved over his face, and that wasn’t much better, given how starkly, menacingly beautiful he was.
“I get that you think I’m a crappy parent. If I gave a shit what every asshole thought of me, I’m sure that would bother me. Of course, it would also make me one of those assholes myself. I’ll pass.” Chaser’s voice wasn’t even a growl then. There was nothing warning about it. It was a straight-up assault. “Are you done?”
“I’m sorry that you find my concern for your daughter’s welfare upsetting.” She kept her voice cool. “Perhaps we’re narrowing in on the actual issues here.”
He didn’t react to that. He didn’t change expression at all.
“You’re apparently still not done. What else?”
Her stomach flipped over, though Lara couldn’t have said why. She felt more unsteady than before, though she held her ground. It felt as if her life depended on it.
“A talking-to may not be what’s needed here. I hope you realize that. Kaylee is showing classic signs of someone who wants help but doesn’t know how to ask for it. If she doesn’t feel that she can come to you with her problems, who does she have? I wasn’t asking about her support system to make you feel bad about your parenting.” That was not entirely true. But she kept on. “I was hoping that between the two of us, we could figure out a plan to help her no matter what.”
His head tilted slightly to one side, but his gaze stayed hard on hers.
“Let me tell you something, babe.”
“I prefer ‘Ms. Ashburn,’ but if you can’t manage that, try ‘Lara.’ It’s my name. ‘Babe’ is condescending at best.”
His hard mouth crooked in one corner. “Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t care enough about you or your opinion to condescend to you.”
There was no reason that should bite at her. The last thing on earth she wanted was a man like this to care about her one way or another or at all. She lifted her chin. “Noted.”
“Kaylee is smart enough to know she got lucky when I tracked her down,” Chaser said shortly. “We’ve weathered shit you couldn’t begin to understand. She might be going through something, but she’s not at risk of anything beyond getting her ass locked in her room if she can’t behave—or stop getting caught. And if that dumb fuck Thierry Maitland tries to expel her, I’ll kick his ass myself.”
“I’m not sure it’s wise to issue threats like that.”
“It’s not a threat. I won’t even have to hunt him down. He spends every Thursday night at Petit Joe’s, watching the strippers and paying the girls to suck his dick when they’re done. Especially if they went to this school. And the more recently they were students here, the better.”
Lara managed not to make a face at that. Barely. She personally found Principal Maitland a little too damp and sweaty for her taste, especially his too-soft hands, but she’d tried to ignore that in the interest of keeping her job here stress-free. Now she’d be thinking about nasty strip-club blow jobs every time she saw him. Or worse, his wife.
“I think you’ll find I can understand Kaylee’s situation better than you think,” she said instead.
“Yeah, about that.” He shook his head, and his entire body changed. He went taut. Harder, somehow. His smoke and whiskey gaze turned…predatory. “Who do you belong to?”
“What?” Her heart hammered at her. She could feel it like an actual kick in her pussy. Her temples. Her throat. “I’m not married. I’m barely even dating. I belong to myself.”
“That’s not what I asked you.” He didn’t move any closer. And still it felt like he had his big hand wrapped around her throat. “If I strip you down, whose mark am I gonna find on you?”
Lara went numb for an instant. Then something a lot like panic—only much hotter, much brighter—streaked through her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Which club, babe?” His voice was like steel. Lara didn’t realize she’d backed away from him until her butt came up hard against her chalkboard. And Chaser was right there in front of her, blocking her escape. Blocking the whole world. “You ran your mouth pretty convincingly there. What the fuck do you know about the life?”
“I teach high school history. I have an imagination. The end.”
“Try again.”
She made as if to move and his hands shot out instead, each one flattening on either side of her head, trapping her between him and the chalkboard. And the impossible, immovable wall of his big, tough frame.
Her hands were useless, hanging at her sides in pointless fists. “You’re insane.”
“I don’t think so. Why did you move to Lagrange?”
“There was an open position at the high school here,” she snapped at him. “Very nefarious, I know. I applied.
When they offered me the position, I got an out-of-state certification. Would you like me to tell you more about the teacher certification process in the state of Louisiana? Because I’m betting you actually don’t care all that much.”
“I don’t believe you.” He practically whispered it. “The thing about coincidences is that pretty much? They’re bullshit.”
“I watched Sons of Anarchy,” she told him. “Religiously. Still not a fan of the ending.”
His mouth curved again, deadlier than before. “You’re full of shit.”
He moved his hand then. It was the one connected to that wildly illustrated arm, and Lara could only seem to stand there and watch, frozen, as he dropped it down to her hip. His hand was much too big. It wrapped over her hip bone and made her legs feel like jelly, and then he made it worse by yanking her an inch closer to him.
She hardly had time to bite back a telling little yelp at that, and then he slid his hand around to hold it flat against the small of her back. And god help her, but she felt it all over her body, inside and out. His palm was hot. Hard. And somehow connected to every last nerve in her body.
Worse, she was trembling. She couldn’t help it. He was everywhere and he was touching her and sensation swept through her, shaking her, no matter how she tried to lock her own reactions down.
“You got a tramp stamp, Lara?” he asked, dipping his head so he asked that question the way other men might kiss, a whisper that almost touched her lips. “What does it say?”
He was her heroin. And he was right in her face.
And she knew men like him. That was the trouble, wasn’t it? That was how this had happened. She’d been so busy trying to mess with him that she hadn’t stopped to think what might happen if she was successful. Of course he suspected she had a past in the life. She’d basically erected a neon sign and directed him to the sunbaked deserts of inland Southern California and the Brothers of Goliath MC. She shouldn’t be surprised that he suspected she’d tattooed herself in support of the club, or that he’d effortlessly picked the location of that awful tattoo she viewed as her unpleasant reminder of past stupidity.