Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(32)

She palpated his face and found nothing broken there, either. This guy must have had iron-clad bones, because the tissue damage was extensive, but overall he wasn’t seriously injured. Simon’s wound had been far more dire.

“This all hurts more than the beating,” he groused as she stood straight again.

“Sorry. I’ll sew up your eyebrow, and you should take it easy for a couple of weeks until your ribs knit up. But I think you’re generally okay. Not pretty, but okay.”

“You were nicer to Si,” Gunner pouted.

Willa smiled and patted his head. “I’m here for you, Gunner. But something tells me Simon deserves more nice than you do tonight.”

“That’s a damn fact,” Delaney said. “Rad—a minute.”

As he followed his president, Rad put his hand on Willa’s shoulder and kissed her cheek. “You’re a helluva woman. Hot as all f*ck.”

She smiled and watched him go after Delaney. They went behind a double door. The guy with the blond ponytail, who’d spoken to her briefly at the wreck site the night before, followed them in.

“Okay, Gunner. Let’s get your eyebrow closed up. This is gonna hurt a little.”

“Usually when a chick says that to me, I’m havin’ more fun.”

She grinned. “You want me to clamp your nipples or something while I do it?”

A couple of other men nearby laughed.

It was hard to tell through the ground meat of his face, but Willa thought Gunner looked surprised and delighted. “Well, well, look at you. Rad caught a good one. Spicy. Would ya?”

“Sorry, Gunner. We just met. Anyway, I’m here with Rad.”

“Well, I like a tease. But I don’t think I can take another beatdown tonight, so I won’t get in a brother’s way. I’ll just close my eyes and imagine it.”

“You do that.” She got to work.

He grinned through the whole thing.



oOo



When Rad pulled up at the front of her house, it was past three in the morning, but Willa wasn’t tired. She was twanging with electric energy. She’d liked those guys, and she’d liked being able to help. There in the belly of the beast, the clubhouse of Tulsa’s outlaw MC, surrounded by men she knew had done all sorts of bad and dangerous shit—helping them clean up after doing bad and dangerous shit—she’d met a bunch of people she liked. Maureen, Gunner and Simon, Delaney and Dane, Eight Ball, Ox…and some others whose names she’d already lost. They all looked like dangerous men and the women who could handle them, but none of them had frightened her. Once she was there, getting to work, talking with them during and after, listening to their banter, she thought they were like Rad—decent people who lived outside the law.

She hadn’t been with Jesse since he’d been a Dirty Rat, but she had done a lot of research on that club. That had been all she’d known of outlaw bikers. Now she had some more knowledge and a different perspective. Rad had said the Rats were a different kind of club from the Bulls, and now she believed him.

“I’ll help you up the steps.”

Her leg. She’d forgotten about her own pain until Rad had helped her into the truck. Even now, it wasn’t bothering her like it had been. Her head was too full of other things to give it much notice.

Her body thrummed and thrummed. She could barely sit still.

Shit—she was horny. That was it.

Emboldened by the most recent events of this incredibly bizarre couple of days, Willa blurted out, “I still want you to stay. I want to sleep with you. I want to…I want…to feel you.”

“Fuck, baby.” The words came out on a guttural groan. “What about your leg?”

“We’ll work it out. Rad—I feel like I’m ten feet deep here already. I need to stop f*cking talking and just feel you. I don’t even know what I’m saying. I just…I want you.”

She could read his expression perfectly now, even in the dim glow of his dash lights. He wanted her, too.

He dragged his hand through his hair and looked over her shoulder, out the window, for a second. Then his eyes came to hers, dark and hot. “Let’s get inside.”





CHAPTER NINE



This time, when Rad came into Willa’s house, Ollie wagged his tail at him and, when Willa released him, he came right up for some love while his mom locked up the front door.

“I need to take him outside for a while,” she said as she went to put her keys in their box. Her limp was less pronounced, but her step was slow. She had to be exhausted. Rad was more than a little surprised to find himself standing here again, after everything, and anticipating more adventure before this day finally ended.

“I’ll take him out. You relax.”

“Yeah? Thanks.”

“C’mon, boy.” He patted his thigh and headed toward the kitchen. Ollie didn’t move. He watched Rad, then swiveled his thick head and looked up at Willa, then back to Rad.

“Go, Ollie. Okay.” She made a short, underhand sweep with her hand, and Ollie whined a little—which sounded to Rad like okay, if you’re sure—and followed him.

Outside, while Ollie did his business, Rad walked the perimeter of the yard, which was both wide and long on this corner lot. She had an old-fashioned basement, the kind without interior access, with a trap door leading down from the yard. The latch was secured with a thick Master key padlock.