Fire Inside (Chaos #2)(24)

His head dipped and his mouth went to my neck. I felt his tongue, damp and sloppy there.

At that, I also felt bile slide up my throat and pushed harder, definitely deciding to scream.

“You danced close,” he muttered against my neck, pushing me further into the tire, which didn’t feel real great.

“I did not.” And I hadn’t. We were line dancing, for goodness’ sakes!

His hand was gliding up my side and getting close to my breast.

Okay. Time to scream.

And, possibly, engage my fingernails.

I opened my mouth to do just that, heaving at the same time when, suddenly, his face was not in my neck and his body was not pressing me into the tire.

No, I watched with some fascination, some awe, and some queasiness as his head snapped back unnaturally and his body went with it. The former did this because Hop had his fist in the guy’s hair and the latter did this because Hop had his arm around the guy’s chest.

Although I was thrilled beyond belief that I was no longer against the tire and someone was there to save me (although I wouldn’t have picked Hopper for obvious reasons, at that point, I was also not going to quibble), I wasn’t sure this was good. The guy was a jerk. Not to mention, he was huge. He had to have three inches and fifty pounds on Hop.

It was then I watched with some fascination, a lot more awe and no queasiness—because there was so much awe there wasn’t room for queasiness—as Hop beat the absolute crap out of the guy.

He did this swiftly, methodically, effortlessly, viciously, and with what appeared a good deal of practice.

It took him, maybe, three minutes.

I watched the whole thing, frozen, with my mouth open.

When the bloodied, unconscious mountain of beefy jerk dropped to the pavement of the dark parking lot, I stared at him lying there, not moving.

“You. Bike. Now.”

The queasiness came back but it was different. This time it came in the form of fear. Fear caused simply by the low, lethal, enraged tone of Hopper’s voice.

Slowly, my eyes rose to his.

Yes, enraged.

And lethal.

Oh dear.

“Hop—”

“Lanie, swear to God, swear to God… ” he trailed off, lifted a hand in my direction, palm up, and scowled at me. Then he dropped his hand and bit off, “You. Bike. Fucking now.”

I decided it might be prudent to go with him to his bike even though my car was right here in the parking lot.

The problem was, I didn’t know which one was his bike. There were around seven thousand of them lined up outside the bar.

“Uh…” I mumbled. He lunged toward me and I found myself back against the tire again but this time I’d pressed myself there.

I wasn’t there long.

Hop clamped his hand around mine. He yanked me away from the tire, pulled me three steps, stopped only to bend and snatch up my purse, twist around and toss it at me. Luckily, I caught it. Then I and my platform sandals teetered unsteadily but very quickly behind Hop as his ground-eating strides took us to a black Harley.

He let me go and threw a leg over.

As he did this, still being prudent (belatedly), I studied his movements.

Big Petey, a member of Chaos, a founding member, thus not a spring chicken, had taken me out on his Harley Trike and he’d done this numerous times.

Big Petey was in his sixties and a Harley Trike was not even close to what this sleek, kickass machine was in front of me.

Big Petey was nice and he cared about me.

He was not lean, mean Hopper Kincaid, who might want to kill me but was definitely furious enough to do it.

I had never ridden on a Harley that had only two wheels. I’d never ridden on any motorcycle that had only two wheels.

Necessity, the mother of invention and the savior of stupid women in biker bar parking lots, came to my rescue. I found the foothold, told myself it was good no one was around to catch a glimpse of me not being a lady as I swung my leg over to get my short, jeans skirt-clad booty on the seat behind Hop and I settled in, hands on his waist.

The instant I settled, bike already growling, he backed it out. Then his hands came to my wrists, yanked them roughly around his middle so my front slammed into his back, and I had no time to say or do anything, just hold on, as we shot from the parking lot.

The wind in my hair, a monkey on my back, I didn’t enjoy the ride.

I fretted the entire way from the bar to Ride Auto Supply Store, otherwise known to those in the know simply as “Chaos”. The store, the big-bayed garage behind it where they built custom cars and bikes, the massive forecourt of tarmac in front of it, the large building beside it, known as the Compound, was all Chaos. The boys owned Chaos collectively. The boys were Chaos.

And, according to Big Petey, five square miles around it was known as Chaos territory.

But we weren’t just in Chaos territory.

We were on Chaos, an island of land in the city of Denver that was biker-controlled.

This was not good.

You could get lost on Chaos. It was theirs. They owned it. They ruled it. They didn’t let in anyone they didn’t want there. They also didn’t let out anyone they didn’t want to go.

Tug, another one of the members, told me even cops knew that unless they had to turn into the forecourt and onto Chaos, they didn’t. It was sacrosanct. It was its own little mini-nation, ruled by Tack. The knights at his rectangular table wore leather cuts with Chaos patches sewn on the back.