BILLIONAIRE BIKERS: 3 MC Romance Books (38 page)

              "Can you stop staring?" I gripe as I pull open another box. I'm starving, and it's making me cranky. I even wish I had eaten one of those stupid donuts.

             
"You don't know that I'm staring."

             
"Men always stare at me." It's not my egotism rearing its head—it's a statement of fact, and something I've had to put up with since I was a teenager.

             
"I can believe that."

              "Granted, you're not like most men," I mutter as I sort through the crate's contents. "I wasn't even sure you
were
a man for a while. You would always come out at night to drive circles around us, so I couldn't see you well… I actually got into an argument once with Rodney about why the whole department just assumed you were a man. I feel pretty stupid about it in hindsight; I guess when they accuse me of having a chip on my shoulder about my gender, they aren't always wrong."

              My fingers roll across something at the bottom of the crate, and it shuts me up, which is probably a good thing. I'm yammering too much, using words to erect a shield between me and the all-too-male presence I don't want to admit my attraction to. I mean, I don't even know what he looks like! I have no business feeling this way.

              It's the heat. It's got to be.

              I pull my ponytail back behind my sweat-soaked shoulder blade and plunge back into the box, easily relocating what I'm certain I've found. I grope a bit before pulling out one of the long red cylinders.

              "Flares," I mutter. I rock back on my heels and sit for a minute, racking my brain for what I could possibly use them for. There's no doubt in my mind that they
will
prove useful, I just have to think…and the oppressive heat is starting to make that feel like a Herculean effort.

              I cast my eyes to the water bottle, but I hold myself back.

              "Houdini?" I say. "I hate to do this to you, but I'm not drinking until you drink. Just a little and I'll quit hounding you about it for at least another few hours, I promise."

              No response.

              I rotate around onto my haunches, but it's hard to see that far back into the shadows. Thankfully, my eyes had adjusted since his headlight went out, and I can see his body slumped oddly against the wall.

              Shit.

              I get to my feet and hurry into the back. I can hear the biker breathing shallowly, raggedly. I reach out for him, pausing for a split second. My hand hovers above one of his broad, bowed shoulders.

              "Houdini!" I whisper ferociously. "Come on! I need you to respond!"

              Nothing.

              "You idiot." I can feel small tears of desperation threatening to leak out the corners of my eyes. I don't know when the last time I actually cried was, but I’m not going to break the streak now. I'm frustrated and helpless, and for all I know, this man I'm supposed to look after—even if he does belong behind bars—is expiring right in front of me.

              "You idiot!" I repeat. "You must be roasting in that thing. Come on. I need you to take the helmet off. Don't make me break my promise."

             
Don't leave me alone here.

             
My private plea settles things. This man has certainly been dishonest in his life more than once, so I can afford to breach a little trust now. I reach up to unsecure the inner clasp of his helmet, my fingers fumbling with the unfamiliar workings. Houdini shifts beneath me, almost as if he wants to put up a protest, but it's too late. Things are already in motion. I hear a click; I lift the helmet off his head; and…

              It's all I can do to keep from braining him against the floor of the truck bed.

              "Surprise," Wolf Larson croaks.

              I back away from him, momentarily forgetting the whole reason why I accosted him in the first place. It's dark. It's possible I'm not seeing the face in front of me correctly. I whirl around, hands skittering across the floor until I locate one of the flares. I strike it and look again.

              Wolf doesn't even shield his eyes from the rude red light; he just turns his head away and blinks rapidly. It's all there, every infuriating, dangerously attractive detail: strong jaw, intelligent furrowed brows, dark curls matted in slick spirals and plastered to his flushed face. At least, I imagine it must be flushed—I am looking at him through a red light, after all.

              "You…
You're
Houdini?" I demand. I try to stay angry, which is easy enough, considering how furious I am at myself for not figuring it out sooner. Meeting Wolf correlated exactly with heightened activity from my biker nemesis. They don't even
act
that differently.

              I really cannot believe how stupid I've been this entire time.

              Wolf's chin hangs down to his chest, which I think is meant to be a nod, although he doesn't raise it back up. "Guess the cat's out of the bag. Definitely never thought it would happen like this. So, how about that water?"

              I bring him the water, approaching as warily as I did the first time. I slide down beside him and offer him the bottle. When it looks like it might require more effort than I want to see him expend to lift his arms, I press the opening of the bottle against his lips.

              He drinks. I watch his Adam's apple bob: once, twice, three times. I would let him keep going, but with his revitalized energy he puts a hand up to push the bottle away. I withdraw.

              "Feel better?" I ask him. My heart thuds. Why can't I look at him directly? Is it embarrassment? Embarrassment that I didn't figure it out sooner? Or is the way his untamed helmet hair makes it appear as if he's been up to other activities?

              He nods in answer to my question, and a dark corkscrew curl of his hair falls between his eyes.

"Good. Now. Do you think I'm an idiot?" I exclaim as I set the bottle aside. "Is that why you decided to, what? Spy on me, figure out when I was going undercover, and follow me out to the bar? Was it some kind of sport to you, trying to pick me up at Mal's Dive, knowing you were distracting me from work?"

"I knew I wasn't going to succeed," Wolf replies. He flexes a weak copy of his lopsided grin at me, and my heart clenches to see it. I try to offer him the bottle again, but he puts a hand out to push it away. "No. Now you," he says.

I take as long a drink as I'll allow myself, meditating on my next question before asking: "What makes you think you weren't going to succeed?"

Patient gray eyes meet mine. "Because I know you, Lane."

I shake my head. "How? How the hell can you say you know me? We hadn't even spoken before..."

"I don't know how to say it and not sound like some idiot biker, so I think I'm just going to say it," Wolf determines. "You can tell a lot by the way a person drives. How they perceive the world; what their opinion of themselves is, and their opinion of the people around them. You can tell their insecurities by how many patches or chains or bumper stickers they decide to plaster on themselves and their property; or by how long and how far they drive to pursue the thing they want."

His eyes burn into mine. I didn't know that light eyes could burn so brilliantly, but Wolf's eyes are like molten silver in his head.

"So I know you, Officer Elizabeth Lane. Also, I have a radio in my helmet that lets me eavesdrop on everything you guys are transmitting between your cars."

"You bastard!" I punch him in the shoulder without thinking, and Wolf half winces, half grins mischievously at my reaction

"I thought we established already that I'm not," he reminds me.

"Not a Devil’s Bastard, maybe. But there's plenty of evidence that you're a definite bastard."

"A bastard, who it now seems to me, might have actually stood a chance of taking you home the other night." Wolf rearranges himself against the wall, and I feel his leg press against mine. I'm sitting closer to him now than I have since we found ourselves in this mess. Closer than we were even sitting together at the bar.

"Am I wrong?" Wolf's voice sounds strangely serious for once, with a huskiness to it that makes me shiver. Maybe his throat's still parched. "Or am I your type after all, Laney?"

              "Don't call me that." Grateful to have been given an out in his questioning, I rise from the wall and move back toward the crates. "Glad you're feeling more yourself," I add as I reorganize the flares.

              "More than I have in a long time." Wolf sighs as he leans his head back against the wall. "You have
no
idea."

#

The water bottle is empty.

              The water bottle is empty, and our clothes are off.

              … well,
most
of our clothes. Wolf still has his pants on, but we both shed our shoes and socks hours ago.

I've been sweating so hard that I don't think I could get my jeans off at this point if I wanted to. I bundled my blond locks off my neck a while ago, fighting to keep them constrained to a ballerina burn and certain that I've settled for something much messier, although there's obviously no mirror to double-check my work. My outer T-shirt is gone, my undershirt, little more than a thin white tank top, is plastered against my toned frame. I'm certain the outline of the black bra I wear beneath it is no secret to outside eyes, even in the dark.

              To his credit, Wolf doesn't look at the obvious silhouette of my breasts—or if he does, he makes sure to politely avert his eyes as soon as I turn back around again. He lost the thick jacket and gloves around the time he lost his boots.

              I watch him now, trying not to nervously lick the perspiration from my lips in the same moment I see his arms cross around the front of his chest. He hikes his T-shirt up over his abdominals and peels it off his frame, shedding it thoughtlessly and throwing it into a pile with every other article of clothing we've deemed unnecessary. His chain necklace swings back into place around his bared clavicle.

              My eyes rake his frame. From where I sit across from him, I feel confident he can't see me checking him out—but then again, he can see
me
, can't he? It's too hot to think, and there's nothing else to look at. I feel like my own lingering glances can be excused.

              Wolf is ripped. Not through any conscious effort of going to the gym and trying to bulk up, but from lifestyle choices: he's lean, perfectly proportioned, and cut with washboard abs. Even though he's sitting, I can clearly see the definition in his stomach, the coiled power behind his abdominals. The upper part of his chest is devoid of hair, but I can see now the full reach of the black tribal tattoo; it curls sensuously along his glistening pectorals like smoke.

              I feel great. Giddy, even. I know that it's only a momentary illusion, probably some sort of dehydration-induced delirium. I can hear my own pulse pounding sluggishly in my head, as loud as the bass beat in a Portland club.

              Not that I've been to a club in a long, long time.

              "Like what you see?" Wolf jokes when he notices me looking. I quickly school my expression.

              "I can't see in anything in here." It's a lie and we both know it. We both have adjusted almost completely to the gloom of the back of the trailer, and slivers of sunlight filter in here and there through cracks in the shipping container. It must be mid or late afternoon outside.

              "You know what we could do with an empty bottle?" he asks me.

              I pull my knees in against my chest. The less surface area I take up, the less likely I am to be touching a warm-to-hot surface in this baking oven. I shake my head.

              "Come on!" Wolf goads me as he leans forward and grasps the water bottle. I hate the way the plastic crinkles in his hand, indicating how completely devoid of water it actually is. "Don't tell me you never played spin the bottle in middle school!"

              "This sounds like a terrible idea," I reply as he rotates it experimentally on the floor between us.

              "So you do know the game."

              My knees come down and cross beneath me, and I fold my arms in staunch refusal to put up with this. "I know that it requires more than two people to play, otherwise there's no point. And I know that it's ridiculous to play games right now when we should be thinking about
escaping."

             
"The harder you keep thinking about things, the more energy you're going to expend," Wolf says as he rotates his own black-clad legs beneath him and sits up across from me. "And the more energy you expend, the more likely you are to pass out from the heat or hunger. I'm just trying to keep this party going a while longer. So stop thinking, Lane." He levels a look at me.

              I scoff. "As opposed to you, who hasn't been thinking at all this entire time!"