Sinner's Steel (Sinner's Tribe Motorcycle Club #3)(11)
Her lips parted and she pressed her free hand against his chest, then bunched his shirt in her fist, as if undecided whether she wanted to pull him forward or push him away. Zane took advantage of her indecision to lean closer. She smelled of jasmine and the warm summer nights when they lay in the grass and looked up at the stars. The world faded beneath the pounding of his heart and the raging desire to taste her again.
“Zane. Please…”
But he was already moving, his head dipping down, his body unable to resist the pull of yearning … And then she stiffened and shoved him away.
“Behind you! It’s Axle. He’s got a gun!”
“Leave her alone, Sinner,” Axle shouted. “She’s not yours to take.”
Fucking Axle.
“It’s okay, Axle,” Evie said. “He’s a friend.”
What the f*ck?
Axle’s bitter laughter rang out around them. “Not to me, and definitely not to Viper.”
“Don’t move until I turn around.” Zane slid his free hand beneath his cut. “Then get the hell out of here. That your car parked out front?”
Her eyes darted over his shoulder, and then she nodded. “But what about you?”
“I’ll be cleaning up the mess.” His hand closed over the weapon holstered at his side, and he loosened his grip on her wrist. “Ready?”
“Ready. But … you can’t kill him, Zane. He’s not here to … You’re not a…” She choked on the last word, and he knew right then why she hadn’t waited for him. She thought what all of Stanton thought. Zane was nothing. He’d come from nothing. Worthless. No good. And a killer.
Her lack of trust was a sledgehammer to his gut, and the heat between them gave way to a chill that froze his heart.
“Go. I don’t know what the hell is going on with you and the Jacks, but Axle betrayed the Sinners and killed one of my brothers. His life is forfeit and we’ve been after him a long time.”
He spun and fired, covering her escape around the side of the building, but Axle had anticipated his move. He dove behind the shed and returned fire. Unprotected, with nowhere to take cover, Zane pulled the trigger again and again, dodging Axle’s return fire. Bullets pinged off the concrete beside him as he reached for the door. Finally, he felt the smooth surface of the handle beneath his palm. Wrenching the door open, he stepped inside and leaned against the wall to catch his breath.
“You’re going down, Zane!” Axle shouted. “I know you were the one who held the torch that burned off my tat, and you were the one who f*cking shot me in the leg up at Whitefish last year. You don’t know whose girl you’re messing with.”
Zane peered out from behind the wall and pumped bullets at the shed. Dammit. Axle had more lives than one hundred frickin’ cats. They’d kicked him out of the club, beaten him, taken his bike, burned off his tat, wounded him in a gunfight, and hunted him relentlessly for over a year all to avenge the disrespect he had done to the Sinners. And he just came back, again and again, first as a thieving contractor, then as a member of the Jacks, and now …
Now he had some kind of mark on Evie.
Mark. If not for the bullets flying at his head, he might have pondered the irony. Instead, he shoved a new magazine in his gun. He couldn’t get rid of Mark, but he sure as hell could get rid of Axle.
*
“So … when is your date with old Vipe?” Connie leaned against her car, a red Pontiac G6 convertible that she had financed to the hilt. She’d promised Ty a ride home from summer camp in style and that didn’t mean chugging through Conundrum in Evie’s beat-up Ford Focus.
Evie waved to one of the mums waiting in the school parking lot for the camp bus. “Don’t call him Vipe. His name is Viper.”
“That can’t be his real name. His momma didn’t pick him up from the cradle all bundled in a blue teddy bear blankie and say, ‘He’s so cute. Let’s name him Viper.’”
Evie’s cheeks heated and she twirled a strand of hair around her fingers. “It never came up. Bill brought him around to the shop and introduced him as Viper, said he wanted some detail work and that was it. He never told me any other name and after our second date, I was too embarrassed to ask.”
Still, she couldn’t deny her attraction to the president of the Black Jacks. Tall, with a barrel chest, two full sleeves of tats, and a cut worn and heavy with patches, Viper screamed danger with every stride of his long legs. Although he was almost twenty years older than her, hardened by life on the street, and striking rather than handsome with his long black hair fading to gray, and a broad scarred face, weathered and worn, he dominated every room with the force of his presence alone. And when he focused all that power on her, Evangeline Monroe, single mom and custom painter, he was difficult to resist.
“So you call him Viper? How’s that gonna go down in the sack? Give it to me hard, Viper? Lick me there, Viper? Although snakes do have forked tongues…” Connie pushed up her enormous sunglasses, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the bright sunshine glaring off the asphalt. “Come to think of it, Viper does have a bit of a badass ring to it.”
“I don’t know if it will get that far,” Evie said, blushing. “I’m not sure where things are going with him anymore.”
A grin split Connie’s face. “’Cause of the ex of sex? Mr. Deep, Dark, and Delicious? You gonna get back together?” Connie knew all about Evie’s recent encounter with Zane and their past together. She was the sister Evie always wished she had, although with a bigger mouth and a sharper tongue.