Strength & Courage (The Night Horde SoCal Book 1) (16 page)

“Forty-two. You?”

“Thirty-two. Thirty-three next month.”

He smiled. She really liked his smile; it was wry and sweet in equal measure. “I’m forty-three next month. That too much difference for you?”

“No. I’ve been with older guys before. I think I’m figuring out that I prefer older men.”

Now he touched her. He put his hands on her waist, his fingers squeezing gently. “You’re figuring that out, huh? Right now?” He kissed her. This time, though he was still gentle, the kiss had more intent, more promise than the soft tickle of lips from earlier. When he pulled back, he only moved an inch or so. He brought his hand up and cupped her face and neck, his thumb resting just below the bandage on her cheek. “Whatever I am to you, I care. Who hurt you, hon?”

She almost asked him why again. But she shut her teeth and dammed up the word. Would it be so bad to tell him? Even if he puffed his chest and got all male and protective, would it be so bad to have somebody like Muse in her corner? Maybe it was the weight of the day on her back, or maybe it was the warm, wonderful presence of him looming over her, his eyes serious and fixed on hers, but the thought of not having to defend herself all the time caught Sid in its thrall.

“Home visit this morning. Their kids were pulled on an abuse complaint a couple of months ago, and they’ve been in a program to reunite the family. Part of the program is random visits, so they weren’t expecting me. When I got there, the father was beating on the mother, in the living room, in clear sight of the screen door. I tried to stop him. He turned on me.”

He didn’t throw a tantrum. As far as Sid could tell, he didn’t even get tense. He simply asked, “Who?”

In that word, and in the flat tone with which it had been said, she knew that Muse would go for Kevin Green and hurt him badly. The thought didn’t offend her like it should have.

But she wouldn’t tell him. She didn’t want to make trouble for him. “No. I filed a report. The Sheriff’s office is on it. They arrested him on the scene. You don’t need to do anything about it.”

“If the guy makes bail, he’ll come for you. You took his kids and got him arrested.”

And now she was pissed. “What? I didn’t take his kids. They were pulled before I took the case, and they were pulled because the oldest boy was in school with belt marks on his neck and arms, and when they looked him over at the ER, his whole body was crisscrossed with marks. He’d been lashed at least thirty times. Naked. Because he’d forgotten to take out the trash. He’s eight. And his asshole father got arrested today because he was beating on two wom—two people.”

“I’m not saying it’s your fault, hon. I’m saying he’ll blame you. I know guys like that. He’ll come for you.”

She knew. And it sucked. She wanted to do this job because she wanted to make a difference. She’d grown up in a life of privilege. Her childhood had had its challenges, but food, shelter, and safety had not been among them. She wanted to balance the scales a little and help children be safe. It had taken her a few years after getting her Bachelor’s to know exactly how she wanted to direct her efforts, but when she had, she’d felt a real, pure sense of mission and purpose. But she’d been in the field a few lousy weeks and already she was feeling beaten down. She had been beaten down. Literally.

“I don’t care.”

“What?”

“No—I don’t mean I don’t care if he hurts me again. I don’t want to get hurt. I’m just not going to crawl around town like a mouse because he might want to hurt me. I can’t live like that. I’m just going to do my thing.”

“Is that why you were alone at the women’s center so late? Because you don’t want to act scared?”

She nodded. “I guess.”

“But you were trapped on the porch, weren’t you? You didn’t want to come down. You were afraid.”

“Fuck you.” She stepped back, out of his hold. At first, he tensed, as if he meant to keep her where she was, but then he relaxed and let her step back.

“It doesn’t make you weak to be concerned about a viable threat. It makes you stupid to pretend it doesn’t exist.”

“Now I’m stupid. Fuck. YOU.” She turned and took a step toward his door. This had been a huge mistake.

“Sid.” He didn’t grab at her; she didn’t think he’d moved at all. He’d simply said her name. She stopped, her fingers around the door handle. “Don’t. I’m just talking. You’re not stupid. Far from it. I’m saying it’s smart to be afraid. And I’m offering to make it so you don’t have to be. Just tell me his name.”

She spun back around. “No. I don’t want you to fix this for me. I don’t need that. If you’re not just a fuck, then I need your respect. That’s what I need.”

He closed the distance between them again. “You have my respect. And you’re not just a fuck to me, so I hope it’s the same for you. I don’t like the thought that there’s someone out there looking to hurt you. You want me to ignore that?”

“You don’t know he’s coming for me. He wants his kids back. If he’s smart, he’ll stay away.”

“Any chance he’ll get his kids after today—or that she will, if he’s living there?”

No. There was no chance. She didn’t answer, because he knew the answer.

“Who is he, Sid?”

She shook her head. “No. No. Muse, no. I have it handled. And I’m finished with this conversation. Change the subject, or I’m calling a cab.”

For a few infinite seconds, they stared at each other. Then Muse whistled through his teeth, and Cliff trotted to his side. “Let’s go in. I’d like you to stay with me tonight. But I’ll take you home, if that’s what you want.”

Sid was exhausted and confused as hell. Talking about what had happened had not eased her mind. She was more frightened now, and more angry because she was. She wanted to tell Muse Green’s name and send him out to take her problem away, and she was angry at herself and him, both, for it. But she didn’t want to be alone. More than that, she didn’t want to be without him. Not tonight. But she felt too raw and vulnerable for sex.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m…I don’t…” She stomped her foot in frustration. Why couldn’t she just say she didn’t want to fuck tonight? He didn’t want to be just a fuck, right? Hadn’t he just said that?

He smiled and brushed a knuckle over her unhurt cheek. “Just to sleep, hon. You had enough of a day, I think.”

“You want me to spend the night and just sleep?”

He nodded.

“I have work in the morning.”

Now a frown creased his forehead. “You’re going in?”

“I have a ton of work. I can’t get more behind.”

“Okay. I’ll get you to your car early enough.” She was glad he hadn’t started a fight about that.

“Yeah. I’ll stay. I’d like to.”

He smiled and took her hand, and she followed him and his dog back into his monastic little house.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Muse sat up in bed, his back against the wall, and watched Sid sleep. Dawn had come, and the light was pale grey and brightening quickly. He looked around his room. She’d teased him last night, seeing it, and called him an ascetic. And then she’d been surprised when he’d known what that was.

She was right—he didn’t have a lot of shit. In this room, he had a queen-size mattress and box spring, but no frame. He had a four-drawer dresser he’d built from a box, and a cheap floor lamp he’d picked up at Walmart or somewhere. Against one wall, he had four stacks of paperbacks, each stack about three feet high. And a vinyl and metal kitchen chair, probably from the Fifties or Sixties. That had been in the house when he’d signed the lease.

It wasn’t some philosophy of abstinence that kept him from buying shit. He had three custom, vintage bikes locked in his garage with his beater pickup, at least sixty grand worth of metal back there. He didn’t have furniture because he’d lived almost all of his adult life on the road. For long years, his permanent address had been a PO box and a storage locker. Habits of a lifetime died hard. He bought only what he needed. He was broke these days—not yet broke enough to sell his bikes, but nearly—so when he needed something, he bought cheap.

But yeah, her house was cozy and cheerful, cluttered in a warm, intentional way that made it clear the space was loved. His sterile hovel was almost uninhabitable by comparison.

He wasn’t sure what time she wanted to get up, and he was battling himself over the urge to let her sleep as long as she needed to. He didn’t want her going to work. He didn’t want her going anywhere, not alone. Not until she told him who’d hurt her, or he found out another way, and he handled the problem.

Her cheek and eye were badly bruised, and he could tell by the size of the bandage that she had more than one or two stitches under there. There was more she wasn’t telling him—fuck, she’d barely told him anything. But he was trying not to push her. The effort was driving him mad, but he was trying.

In the days since the vote that took the Horde SoCal back across the line, Muse had been staying clear of the clubhouse as much as he could. He wasn’t avoiding his brothers—not out of shame or cowardice, anyway. It was just a shitty place to be right now. The vote could not have been more split, and the men on the losing side of it were pissed. He understood why. The vote was changing the club fundamentally. With such high reward came even higher risk.

Demon had been just fucking mental since. He took a swing at Muse at every opportunity.

Worse—Bart and Hoosier weren’t speaking. Bart had called Missouri and told Showdown, the mother charter President, about the vote, and it looked like Missouri was preparing to ride two thousand miles to talk it out with the club. Bart hadn’t ratted—they had the right to govern their own charter as they saw fit, within the bylaws, but they had to inform Missouri about their business arrangements. But Bart had jumped over Hoosier by calling Showdown himself, and that, especially coupled with his leaving the meeting in session, was a tall mountain of disrespect.

The top of the club leadership was refusing to be in the same room together.

Hoosier and Bart had always gotten along well and worked well together, but Muse would not have called their relationship really close or symbiotic. There was a distance between them, not obvious, but perceptible. If someone had asked Muse why he thought that was the case, and if he’d been inclined to share his opinion, he would have said that Bart had been Horde even when he’d worn another patch. Muse had been Nomad back in those days and didn’t know the specifics of Bart coming to Southern California, but he knew that Bart had been thrust upon Hoosier, and that he had been the engineer of the plan that created the SoCal charter of the Night Horde. And Bart talked a lot about the mother charter. He talked a lot about Isaac Lunden and Showdown Ryan, their Presidents, past and present.

Muse’s opinion was that Hoosier thought Bart’s real home was still in Missouri.

But Bart had shown his loyalty again and again, and the vote to go outlaw again was the first time in Muse’s knowledge that they had not voted in accord. They’d work this out. They had to. Hoosier wouldn’t let the club fall apart over a vote he’d made with the express intent to keep them stable.

They were riding up the mountain soon to sit down with Ferguson and set the details, and they needed to at least look whole by then.

All of that was crap to deal with later. Right now, he was looking at Sid’s sleeping face and feeling a need to get violent on the asshole who’d hurt her and made her afraid. He was going to try to get her to call in for the day. If he failed at that, then he was going to shadow her. He could make himself free to spend the day either with her or behind her. Until he could handle the guy or be assured that he was out of reach, he would make sure somebody had her back. If not him, then somebody he trusted.

If she found out, she’d probably throw him out again. He didn’t want that, but it wouldn’t stop him from trying to protect her. But damn. He’d never been with a woman who wouldn’t just do what he said. Not only did Sid do what she wanted, she got in his face for even trying to handle a situation. He found himself feeling hesitant, trying to think about how to say things or do things in a way that didn’t make her feel like he was being pushy. Or a ‘caveman.’ Which was pretty fucking offensive, frankly.

But she liked him just fine when he was taking control of sex. It was confusing.

He was struggling to figure her out, but he knew why he was trying. She had him. Whether she’d hooked his cock or his heart, he wasn’t quite sure, but he was hooked. Well and truly. When she’d made him leave the week before, when he hadn’t been able to make right what had gone wrong—or even fully understand what had gone wrong—he’d been deeply disappointed. Depressed, even. The next day had been the club vote, and he’d wanted to go to her afterward. But in the mood he’d been in, he wouldn’t have handled another rejection well. So he’d stayed away, expecting her to call when she calmed down. But she hadn’t.

He hadn’t wanted to call her—too easy for her to just hang up. So he’d gone to find her. And he’d found her hurt.

So no more days apart. Nope. She wasn’t a fuck. He wasn’t a fuck. Whatever that made them, she was going to have to get used to having somebody stronger than her there to protect her. A club full of somebodies stronger than her.

Cliff whimpered at the side of the bed and lifted his head onto the mattress. He usually slept on the bed with Muse, and he had not been happy about being displaced. Muse had expected him to slink off to sleep on the couch, but he’d instead lain at the side of the bed, on the hard floor, making his sense of betrayal vividly apparent.

Easing off the bed, he muttered, “C’mon, bud. Let’s go out.” Cliff followed him out of the room. Muse opened the slider and let him out. He left the slider open, then filled Cliff’s dishes with his breakfast and refreshed his water. As an afterthought, he reached into the fridge and grabbed the baggie with the last couple of pieces of bacon from yesterday’s breakfast and broke them up over Cliff’s kibble. A little bribery wouldn’t hurt. Then he went to the bathroom himself, washed his hands, and went back to bed.

She hadn’t moved, was still lying on her side with her back to the half of the bed he’d slept on, her blonde hair trailing over the pillows. He’d given her one of his t-shirts to sleep in, which he thought was about ten times sexier than any lacy tidbit she might own. He’d slept in a pair of gym shorts, because he didn’t have underwear and he was trying to be a gentleman, or at least not an animal. He’d told her they’d just sleep.

But now it was morning, and he had a tree branch sticking up in his shorts, and she was so fucking gorgeous in his bed.

A thought occurred to him then, for the first time. He’d never before had a woman in this house. The next thought that occurred to him was that he’d never before had a woman at his place at all. This was the first ‘place’ he’d ever had. When he’d spent the night with a woman in the past, he’d either stayed over with her, or they’d slept at whatever clubhouse he’d been camping at.

Sid was the first woman he’d brought home. And that possibly momentous fact hadn’t even occurred to him until now.

That thought didn’t freak him out. It didn’t scare him. It didn’t make him wonder what the hell was wrong with him. It made him harder. It made his heart race in a way that made him feel powerful.

Hearing Cliff nosing around in his food dish, he closed the bedroom door. He dropped his gym shorts and slid back into bed, under the covers, pulling up snugly behind Sid and wrapping her up. He pressed his cock against her ass. She was wearing a black lace thong—a sight he hadn’t missed last night—and he slid easily against the crack of her ass.

“Wake up, hon,” he murmured in her ear. He flexed again, groaning at the pressure of her sweet cheeks on his cock.

She stirred, waking, and stretched. “Hey,” she purred sleepily.

“Good morning.” He hooked his hand around her thigh, bringing it up, making her more accessible. “Sleep well?” He flexed again, his cock now sliding against her pussy, just the wisp of her thong between them. Fuck, that felt so good.

She went tense, and then she flailed sharply, out of his arms, jumping off the bed and turning around. Her back hit the wall, and she clutched her arms around her torso as if to cover herself.

He sat up, shocked and worried, his cock deflating. Now what had he done? “Sid? Fuck, hon. I’m sorry. I thought—”

“No.” She cut him off. As soon as she’d hit the wall, her composure had begun to return. “I’m…sorry. It’s not you.” She took a breath, and with it she relaxed enough to release her arms from their protective clutch of the t-shirt she was wearing. His shirt. “I just…I don’t want…I don’t fuck that way. From behind. I don’t like it. You just startled me.”

Oh, there was so much more to that story than simple preference. Her eyes still had the wild look of real fear. He had a pretty clear idea what would make her react like that to what he’d done, and that idea sat in his gut like hot lead. But he was learning, and he knew not to ask. Not now.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

She smiled, and it looked pretty convincing. “It’s okay. Of course you didn’t. I’m sorry I freaked.”

“I understand. Do you just want to take a shower while I put some breakfast together?”

That made her smile more, but she winced when it grew to the point that it hurt her cheek. “You cook?”

“Little bit. I can make eggs and toast. You want that? Good towels in the bathroom. Big and fluffy.”

“You like your good linens, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Sure. Thanks—oh. I’m not supposed to get the stitches wet. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to keep my face dry and also shower and wash my hair. Fuck.”

He stood and went to her, wanting to touch her, but prepared for her to shrink back from his naked body, which had recovered from its shock and was back on the fact that there was a gorgeous woman, for whom he might or might not be falling, standing in his bedroom wearing nothing but his t-shirt and a black lace thong.

He laid his hands on her shoulders. “Call in sick today, Sid. Take a day. You don’t want to go out in the field looking like you do today.”

She put her hand to her face. “Is it bad?”

It wasn’t good. In the usual way of bruises, this one looked much nastier after a day spent getting settled in her tissue. Half the side of her face was purple and red. That fucker had hit her hard, and Muse didn’t think he’d done it with just his fist—or if he had, he’d been wearing a ring, the kind of ring Muse and his brothers wore, chosen for their facility as weapons as much as for their look or meaning.

Muse had little patience for men who hurt women. A man who’d hit a woman while he was wearing a ring as a weapon was a special kind of shitstain.

“Is the guy who did it a biker? Or in a gang?” There were two other MCs with charters in the county—and several gangs, representing about every possible cultural or ethnic affiliation.

“Muse, stop.” She was a stubborn little chick. But he’d seen the spark of the answer in her eyes. He’d landed on something. So he dropped it. He didn’t need Sid’s cooperation to find out who’d done it. He would hit up Sherlock.