It seemed to her that there were vibes of hostility where ever they went, but it also seemed to be directed primarily, if not entirely, toward the bikers—not her. She didn't quite understand that, either. They didn't seem confrontational. Of course, she had no idea how they behaved when she wasn't around, and they were rarely at the cabin they'd rented. Anything could've happened.
She frowned. Well, not just anything. They would've landed in jail, surely, if they'd been running around picking fights and thoroughly disrupting the peace. So they couldn't have done anything blatant, she was fairly certain, to have incurred the hostility of the locals.
Maybe they just felt threatened by the long hair, leather, and motorcycles? Maybe they just disapproved of the biker gang, fearing they meant to settle in the area and cause trouble?
The hostility still seemed a little excessive to her, but that didn't necessarily mean she was wrong about the reason behind it.
It also didn't explain why the biker gang appeared to think she needed to be protected. They hadn't arrived together. There was no reason for the locals to associate her with them—or hadn't been before the incident in the diner.
She didn't entirely understand that either. Unfortunately, she'd been upset
before
it had all started and she hadn't really had her wits about her, which meant she couldn't recall it with any real clarity. The main thing that stuck in her mind was the way Balin and Claude had bowed up at one another, had almost seemed to be trying to goad one another into a fight.
Claude, she finally remembered, had flirted with her several times since she'd arrived. She supposed ‘flirting’ was a little presumptuous, but he'd certainly seemed to notice her, seemed to be checking her out.
Regardless, it seemed indisputable that he was a local which also seemed to preclude any possibility of some sort of history between him and Balin.
They'd
seemed
to be bristling at one another over her. She was inclined to put that down to wishful thinking on her part but, despite the undercurrents, they'd certainly given her that impression.
Why had Claude called Balin prince? Just to bait him? Implying that Balin was acting like he was better than everyone else?
Maybe, but she couldn't think of anything Balin had said or done to give that impression. Besides, it was a really
odd
thing to call him. She could've seen it if he'd called him an asshole, or something in that vein. Even if Claude had decided Balin must be the leader of the gang—and she couldn't really see that that impression was strong enough others would've noticed—why not King Asshole or something of that nature? Why Prince?
And what the hell had he meant by her not being ‘marked'? It seemed obvious he'd meant claimed, but why hadn't he said that? That he didn't see that she'd been claimed? Why ‘marked'? What kind of ‘mark’ did he expect to see? Bruises and black eyes? Chains? A collar around her neck?
He'd said ‘detect', she remembered abruptly. He hadn't said he hadn't
seen
that she was marked. He'd said he hadn't
detected
that she had been.
That was just
too
bizarre!
Maybe she was just reading all sorts of things into the incident she shouldn't because Claude was just plain weird.
She should've known, if he was interested in her, he must be weird, she thought wryly. Not that she cared. He'd sort of given her the creeps the first time she'd run into him. She wasn't sure why. He was attractive enough—not to her taste, but he wasn't a bad looking man for all that, certainly not scary looking. There was just something about him, about the way he looked at her, that made her skin crawl.
She was perverse, she decided when she'd finally identified it—possessive. He'd looked at her like he owned her and was just waiting for the right moment to lay claim and it had made her feel hostile toward him. Ironically, she'd seen very similar looks in the eyes of the biker gang—certainly in both Con and Balin and she thought the others, too—and her reaction had been the complete opposite. Whenever any of them looked at her like that she had bad, bad thoughts, became weak kneed, and weak headed,
hoping
any one of them, or even all of them, would act on the promise in their eyes.
Of course, Con had, and she was miffed with him—mostly because he had steered clear of her since.
She shouldn't have even wanted him to try again after the dirty trick he'd pulled, but she could lie to herself all she wanted to. If he tried again she was going to be putty in his hands just like she had been the first time around.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Chapter Eight
Danika felt like part of a motorcade as they headed back to the campgrounds. Con and Balin zipped around her and led the way. Jared, Dakota, and Xavier took up the rear. Not surprisingly, it attracted a lot of attention Danika didn't relish. She felt silly.
She had no idea, though, that the ‘escort’ was leading up to a confrontation between her and her self-proclaimed watch dogs until they'd reached her cabin. Instead of pulling over to their own and parking, they pulled up in formation and got off their bikes as she switched off her engine, dismounting and following her inside.
Disconcerted, Danika didn't even attempt to exert her own will, but irritation flickered to life as she surveyed the men and saw disapproval in every face.
"What's going on?"
The men all looked at one another. “It'd be better if you didn't go into town right now—especially by yourself,” Dakota said finally.
Danika gaped at him in disbelief. “Why?” she asked finally.
Dakota's lips tightened, but instead of saying anything else, he slid a look at Balin. “You had no real need to go, did you?"
Danika's lips tightened with irritation. “That's beside the point."
"That's exactly the point,” Con ground out. “We had business in town, you didn't."
Danika gaped at him for a moment before she clamped her lips together again. “Oh yes, I saw the business!” she said sarcastically before she thought better of it.
Con flushed. “That wasn't what it looked like."
Balin sent him a warning look.
"How do you know what it looked like?” Danika snapped, irritated with herself for giving away just how much it bothered her, knowing she had absolutely no reason to feel possessive of any of them—not even Con—but unable to control her brainless tongue.
"There are things going on here that you don't understand,” Xavier put in. “It'll be better if you just stay close where we can keep an eye on you."
Dakota rolled his eyes. Con looked like he was considering throttling Xavier. Jared and Balin merely glared at him.
"What things?"
Jared shook his head. “Don't pay him any attention. He's just talking."
"About what?” Danika insisted, holding his gaze a moment before she looked at the others.
"Isn't it enough to know it isn't ... safe at the moment?"
She turned her attention to Balin when he spoke. “You're saying I should trust you to know what's best for me?"
He held her gaze a long moment. “Yes."
Oddly enough, she realized she did. She shouldn't have. She barely knew them and yet somehow she felt like they
were
protecting her. Despite the fact that she trusted their intentions, though, she didn't like being left in the dark. “I'd be a hell of a lot safer if I knew what sort of threat there was."
"Ordinarily, that would probably be true,” Balin said.
"But not in this case?” They were really starting to scare her with their cryptic allusions to some unseen threat, particularly since she'd already felt it herself.
"No."
Danika folded her arms over her chest. “What was that between you and Claude all about?"
Balin's gaze flickered over her face assessingly. “He was bothering you, wasn't he?"
Danika gave him a look. “How would you know? You'd just gotten there. Maybe I didn't want to be rescued."
His eyes narrowed. “No?"
"You're saying you're interested in that piece of shit?” Con growled angrily.
The anger abruptly radiating off the entire group unnerved her, but Danika lifted her chin. “I'm saying it's my business—not yours. Not any of yours!"
"Like hell!” Con snarled.
"Then that would make it my business that the five of you were wallowing all over those teenyboppers, wouldn't it?"
"
They
were doing all the wallowing!” Con ground out. “If you'd actually been paying any attention instead of just getting pissed off and leaving you'd have noticed that!
We
were just standing there—had just arrived a few minutes before you did. We hadn't even gotten off the damned bikes!"
Danika didn't know whether she was more surprised by Con's denial or the fact that not one of the men around her had taken exception to the fact that she'd included them. She studied their faces, fully expecting them to inform her she was sticking her nose in their business when she had no right to.
"It's the full moon,” Xavier said, nodding when she finally looked at him and deftly sidestepping when Dakota aimed an elbow at his midsection.
Danika looked at him blankly. “The moon isn't full,” she said pointedly.
"Not yet,” Xavier agreed. “It's still a few days away, but you know people act weird when the moon's full."
Danika frowned at him. “When it's full—not days before that. And, anyway, that's an old theory that didn't hold water. Nobody's been able to prove there's more violence or more accidents on the night of a full moon than any other night. And I don't see how that explains you drooling all over that blond that was waving her boobs in your face!"
"I was not!” he denied indignantly. “Anyway Jared figured they'd been sent to distract us."
He didn't manage to dodge the elbow Dakota slammed into his ribs that time.
"It looked to me like they were doing a good job of it!” Danika responded tartly. “What were they supposed to be distracting you from?"
"Our business there,” Balin responded implacably. He jerked his head toward the door. After staring at him a moment, the others began to move to the door with obvious reluctance. Balin followed them, turning when he reached it. “I assume you got what you went to town for?"
Danika eyed him irritably. “Yes."
He nodded. “Good. Then you won't need to go again for a while."
She whirled away from the door angrily when he'd left, flouncing down on the couch to sulk. They hadn't told her a damned thing! She brooded over it a while, wondering if what they'd claimed was true—that they hadn't come on to the girls and it had, in fact, been the other way around. It didn't seem to her that they'd been
discouraging
the attention, but when she did recall the images she realized that it was the young women who'd had their hands all over the guys. She somehow doubted the women had ulterior motives and she wasn't sure the guys believed that. It seemed very likely to her that they were used to that kind of attention.