They made him who he was.
No smart-mouthed teacher was going to sneak in through a killer orgasm, no matter how hot and flexible she was.
“You don’t seem to understand the precariousness of your position, babe,” he told her, and maybe he let a little too much temper into his voice. Or his expression. But he made no attempt to soften his tone, because he wanted to scare her a little. Or more than a little. Whatever worked.
Her fists were still pressed into his stomach and her blue eyes were spitting mad, but she didn’t do anything stupid, like hit him or try to yank her chin out of his grip. Chaser kind of wished she would. He hadn’t spanked a woman in a while. He found his palms were a little itchy to get Lara’s high, round ass nice and red.
“You mean that I just banged a dickhead criminal biker asshole in my history classroom?” she asked in that same pissy, irritated teacher voice that he could feel all over his cock, like her tongue. “I think you’ll find I understand it perfectly.”
“Your shit just got complicated,” he told her, keeping his voice serious. Pissed. “You’re in Devil’s Keepers territory with another club’s colors on your back. Which means you should know better. You should definitely know that this cocky attitude and all the shit-talking won’t fly.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her eyes were cool again, and on some level he admired her bold attempt to lie her way out of this. “I like gorillas. A lot of girls have tramp stamps. I can’t think of anything that has less to do with you or your club than a tattoo I got when I was a little bit drunk. And all of eighteen years old.”
Chaser shook his head. He moved his hand from her chin and ran both his thumbs beneath her eyes to clean off some of that black shit. He couldn’t have said where the urge came from, especially when he usually drop-kicked pussy straight out the door when he was done. He wasn’t a cuddler. He liked to get his dick wet and then get a good night’s sleep, without any whining or hustling to ruin the glow of busting a good nut.
But Lara hadn’t indicated that she knew what whining was, and she was looking at him like if she could, she’d get her hands on his piece and blow his fucking head off. Not exactly the usual groupie hustle. No hints for some help with her bills, or more protection than he wanted to give.
Everything about this woman was a problem. Obviously, Chaser thought it was hot as hell.
“You’re cute when you lie to me, babe.” He pulled his hands back slowly. So slowly, in fact, that it was more like, instead of letting go of her, he was memorizing her too-warm cheeks and the flush across them that made her eyes seem even bluer than they were. But that wasn’t the kind of thing he did. He wasn’t that guy. “Really, you are. But that’s not gonna help you.”
Chaser wanted to fuck her again. Now. As hard and as desperately as if he hadn’t just done it.
Which was pretty much the only thing that could have gotten him to let go of her. He didn’t mind a repeat. But an instant replay when he was all…weird inside, suddenly? When every alarm he had inside was going off, telling him she wasn’t just some easy lay?
He watched, narrow-eyed, as she moved away from him the instant he released her. Jumped away from him, in fact. And then she held herself a little too stiffly, almost as if she thought she might break apart if she didn’t keep herself together. Her arms seemed jerky as she stepped to the desk and started tossing the papers—a little crushed from what had happened on top of them—into her bag. Then she swiped a tissue from the box on her desk, scowled at him over her shoulder like she had no fear of him whatsoever, and reached down into the wastebasket to grab the condom he’d thrown there.
“This isn’t a biker clubhouse,” she muttered in one of those loud-ass undertones she clearly wanted him to hear. “It’s a high school. You can’t litter condoms around.”
“The next time I fuck you here I’ll be sure to do it bareback. Problem solved.” She balled the tissue up in her hand, then shoved it into the outside pocket of her bag. With, Chaser noticed, more than a little violence. Like she was as opposed to the idea of going another round with him as he was. Which, naturally, made him want to get inside her here and now. “You got something to say about that?”
Lara took her time turning back to face him, hauling the strap of her bag over her shoulder as she moved. Her face was expressionless again—her teacher face, he thought. Her armor, not that it would protect her. Not from him.
Still, he liked it better when she was cracked wide open and soft, making those greedy little noises into his skin.
“What do you want?” she asked with a certain matter-of-factness that made something unfamiliar crawl through him. It felt a little too much like need, so he ignored it. “I’m not going to stand around here playing games of threat and misdirection with you. My concerns about your daughter stand. I hope you don’t think that a rash encounter that should never have happened somehow erases the fact that she’s on a collision course with a pretty bleak future.”
Chaser studied her a minute. “That what happened to you?”
He was pretty sure he watched the progression on her pretty face, from the urge to keep stonewalling him into a sort of simmering, furious acceptance that doing so wasn’t smart. Then again, maybe he was just making shit up to explain away his fucking hard-on. And worse than that, the weird thing like longing in his gut that he refused to identify, much less indulge.
“Nothing happened to me.”
“Wrong answer.”
“I’m sorry you think so, but that doesn’t make it any less true.” Lara shrugged, her gaze chilly again, which he basically felt was a straight-up challenge at this point. He figured she had to know that. “Yes, I grew up near some bikers. And yes, I had a regrettable period where I thought they were cool. It’s called being eighteen. But I’m not eighteen anymore. I now have to explain to everyone who sees that tattoo that no, I don’t have an unhealthy obsession with King Kong. And I learned some valuable lessons about permanently altering my body based on the whims of the moment. The end. I don’t know what you wanted to hear, but that’s my story. It’s not all that fascinating. Just embarrassing.”
“So if I start making a few calls about a Ms. Lara Ashburn, no Brothers of Goliath clubs are gonna know your name?”
“Do you know the names of every woman you fuck?” she asked. Chaser discovered that he really didn’t like the idea of his prim and dirty teacher as a regular old biker whore. Even though he’d known that’s what she had to be. He didn’t like it at all, and he had no idea what the hell to do with that. She was still flashing that smile of hers like a weapon. “I’m shocked you remember mine.”
Chaser wanted to dig into her and find out what she was hiding, because he knew she was hiding something. But the very fact he had that urge bothered him. Everything about her—and his reaction to her—bothered him. He wasn’t a fucking detective. He’d never been possessive of anything in his life except his kid and the bikes he’d built from parts because he liked putting them back together and making them run smooth. He had better shit to do—like try to mend what was broken in his own damned club, not to mention have a little talk with Kaylee about whatever the hell she thought she was doing these days.
And he couldn’t figure out why he was standing here prolonging this encounter.
“If I were you,” he told her, “I’d find a way to get in a different mind frame about the club. Real fast.”
“Or?”
Of course she threw that back at him like yet another challenge. She looked half prim and half freshly fucked and it was messing with his head. Not the point, asshole, he growled at himself.
“You’re a hot fuck,” he told her, dark and grim to make his point, and part of him liked that she flinched a little. But he liked it even more that she didn’t crumple. His own sister got tense and quiet every time he looked at her, but Lara only glared at him. Because she might look fragile, but she wasn’t. He imagined her pussy was melting down her legs but still, s
he stood there straight and a little bit elegant and like she could stare him down all night. Chaser thought he might actually like her. He hardly knew what to do with that. “I’m gonna want to tap that again.”
“Be still my heart,” she said acidly. “And also, I’ll pass.”
“But I don’t like surprises,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I don’t like coincidental strangers who show up and are all over my kid, especially when they got another club’s shit plastered on their back.”
“Maybe your kid needs this kind of attention,” Lara replied tartly. “Or any attention at all. Just a guess.”
“And that mouth of yours just doesn’t make sense when we both know you know better.” He shook his head. “If you’re gonna stay in this town, babe, you better clean up your act.”
“I’m not sure I know how,” she threw right back at him. Then managed to look down her nose at him even though she was shorter by almost a foot. “How could I possibly ascend to your exalted level?”
Chaser found he was grinning, which was the biggest mind fuck yet.
“You better watch yourself, Lara,” he said quietly. “I’m not messing around.”
She didn’t actually roll her eyes at him. Not quite. “Or what?”
He let his grin go a little dark and enjoyed the shiver he saw go through her, though she tried to hide it. Tried and failed. Like she was more his already than either one of them wanted to admit.
“Or I will,” he told her. “And I’ll enjoy it. But I should warn you, baby. You might not.”
—
It had seemed like a terrific idea to rent an apartment up above the bakery on what passed for Lagrange’s main drag. Lara could walk the five minutes to the high school every day and get a feel for the town while she did it. How convenient, she’d thought when she’d signed the lease. She could really be a part of the fabric of this tucked-away little bayou town, and quickly. How perfect.
Tonight, however, she felt nothing but exposed as she walked down the front steps of the high school and started for home.
She knew bikers. Chaser had stalked off into the night, but she hadn’t heard his bike. That meant he could be anywhere, and if he was lurking around watching her the last thing she wanted to do was let him see how shaken she was. How appalled at herself she was and how she really wanted nothing more than to climb in her bathtub and drown herself in sea salts and shame, right after she scrubbed every trace of that man off her body.
Lara forced herself to walk to her apartment slowly. Easily and casually. Like anyone would on a hot Louisiana night, when the air felt thick enough to chew. She’d spent most of her life in the blistering hot California desert, so she’d rashly imagined there was no amount of heat she couldn’t handle. But the desert was its own thing, breathless and arid, with that wind hot enough to light you on fire as it blew. Louisiana, on the other hand, was like being quietly and comprehensively smothered to death in a great big, sopping wet hug that never ended.
The bayou was everywhere in this town. Still, secretive rivers alive with birds and bugs and all kinds of things she didn’t want to identify. Everything smelled muddy green, like steeped water, and it should have disgusted her. But there was something about the intense richness in every breath that got to her instead. It eased itself beneath her skin, as if the endless murmurs of the bayou didn’t limit themselves to the water but were colonizing her more every day she stayed here. It made her feel edgy. It haunted her a little bit, even when she was locked up tight inside her air-conditioning, pretending there was some small escape from all that relentless wet heat and the oddly seductive cypress trees sunk deep in the muck, like invitations.
Tonight she felt as if she had that same muck all over her. Lara wanted to run the rest of the way home, but she was sure, somehow, that having tripped Chaser’s suspicions he was more likely to be watching her than not. So she made herself saunter along as if she didn’t have a care in the world. As if she hadn’t just betrayed herself in every possible way, and in the most inappropriate place imaginable, surrendering to the worst of her addictions like a junkie on a bender. And as if her own ecstatic response to that insanely hot hit of her very own heroin wasn’t still so soft and much too sensitive between her legs.
She’d sworn off bikers a long time ago. First as romantic prospects of any kind, after Brothers of Goliath prospect Denny “Lowdown” Johansen had shown her exactly how much his declarations of love stood up against the lure of the club. Her uncle had told him he could have Lara or his patch. Denny had taken the patch without blinking, the asshole. Then she’d watched the club take her brother, Mikey, away, bit by bit. First they’d changed him, making him nearly unrecognizable to a sister who’d loved him all his life, then they’d sacrificed him after a skirmish with a rival gang went bad.
Her hatred of the biker culture and all the thugs who claimed to love its harsh grip ran so deep she’d dedicated her life to trying to help other girls caught up in it. And still, all it took was one particularly dangerous and swaggering biker in her face, and she abandoned herself and everything she believed for a few crazy orgasms.
The term “self-loathing” hardly began to scratch the surface of her feelings tonight.
She turned the corner onto Main Street and saw the bakery down the block; only then did she let herself walk a little faster. She could already envision the exquisite relief she’d feel when she walked down the little alley on one side of her building, let herself in the door beneath the fire escape, then ran up the stairs that led to her safe and cheery little apartment. She could already imagine how much better she’d feel when she stripped off these clothes, perhaps ritually burned them on her stove to get the evil out, and then showered every last trace of this evening off herself.
And maybe also let herself cry, while she was at it. In her shower, where no one could see. Where Lara could pretend it wasn’t one more form of self-betrayal in a night chock full of them.
She was about to start down the alley when a car pulled up beside her. And it took everything she had not to jump and run, to steel herself instead—but that was the trouble. She knew bikers too well. They were basically wild animals. Run from them and you could be certain they’d chase you down—and enjoy it.
But when she turned, bracing herself, it wasn’t Chaser or any of his buddies. It was Grady Archer, the sheriff of St. Germain Parish, in his gleaming police cruiser. The man who’d asked her out to dinner with a friendly smile on his sculpted, handsome face just yesterday.
It was not exactly a relief to see him, if she was honest. Lara thought she very likely smelled like a whorehouse and looked like one, too, while Grady looked like Captain fucking America, exuding lawful goodness with every breath.
“Grady,” she said with a smile that hurt her mouth once he rolled down his window. “How are you?”
He eyed her. She reminded herself that he was a cop. Then smiled a little harder. “Are you all right, Lara?” he asked.
So nice. So polite. What was the matter with her that all she wanted to do was run away? And not just tonight, with a biker all over her like a bright shame tattoo. She’d felt the same urge to take off all those times he’d sat down with her in the nearby diner, when she’d gone in to have coffee and a little conversation, like the lonely person she pretended she wasn’t. She kept telling herself she just didn’t know how normal, decent people interacted. She was used to rough, brutal men. She’d come to imagine that sort of behavior was normal, but it wasn’t. Having sex with a man she’d never laid eyes on before, five minutes after he walked into her classroom to talk about his daughter, was crazy. This—a nice man like Grady, polite and careful and friendly—was normal. Easing into something good with conversation. A cup of coffee. A lot of smiling and listening with no rude comments or inappropriate touching.
Not an out-of-control bang on a pile of her students’ disappointing essays about the industrial revolution, for god’s sake.
If she wanted things to
change, she had to change them. Lara knew that—tonight’s reckless, asinine behavior notwithstanding. She’d made her life a monument to that change. She’d left her uncle—just like your cunt of a mother, Uncle Ray had sneered as a typically lovely goodbye—and she had no intention of ever going back to that desperate, dirty town he ruled like it was his own little cactus-studded fiefdom. She’d gotten a degree—the first Ashburn to go to college at all, much less graduate—then her teaching credentials. She’d lived a real, fulfilling civilian life outside the biker world. She’d dated nice, nonviolent men. She’d gone to freaking therapy. She was supposed to be cured.
That she so obviously wasn’t—that she could still feel Chaser between her legs and feel his gloriously rough touch hum through her like an electrical current—made her eyes feel entirely too glassy.
Everybody relapses, she told herself fiercely. What matters is what you do now. Do you pick yourself up and start again? Or do you backslide straight into the life like you never fought your way out of it?
Lara shoved Chaser, big and mean and gorgeous, out of her head as best she could. She focused on the good, nice, decent man in front of her with his absurdly chiseled chin and intelligent green eyes. She reminded herself that she wanted a new life. A good, clean, happy life. With no bikers, who were pretty much anathema to all that. No bikers no matter what. That was what she’d promised herself when she’d left her uncle’s tender care.
“Oh, I’m fine,” she said to the nice, handsome sheriff. She made sure her voice was light, easy. No matter what it cost her, she smiled even wider. “Why? Do I look wrecked? It’s this humidity. I don’t know why I’m the only one wilting.”
Grady smiled, though Lara thought maybe he looked at her a little too closely. Or, an acerbic voice piped up from within, you’re just paranoid he can see the biker whore all over you.