Pursuit: Blood Bandits MC Read online

  “You not man enough to deal with a little food poisoning?” Chase asked. That started even more laughter. “Remind me not to ride next to you when we’re in a tough spot. You might puss out on me.”

  “Aw, come on!” We laughed at Rex’s reaction. “Sorry if I don’t like pissing outta my ass, Chase. Jesus.”

  “Baby.” Chase smirked.

  “Whatever,” Jax said, looking in the direction of the kitchen. “I’d piss outta my ass for days if that little cutie would take care of me. You think she’d take care of me if she felt bad ’cause her food got me sick?”

  I snorted. “Yeah, ’cause men with food poisoning are so hot. You’re not man enough to get a woman like her now, while you’re healthy.” She was the hottest thing I’d seen in a long time. The way she filled out that uniform was a crime. And I hated the others talking about her like that, but I couldn’t overplay my hand. They’d start thinking I liked her or something.

  “It was a good run tonight, boys.” Chase lifted his coffee cup, and we all joined him. “You all did good for the club.” We toasted to that. It hadn’t been easy, convincing our connections to bring in a shipment of drugs twice the usual amount, but they had come through. We’d gotten the shipment into the hands of our distributors with no problems or setbacks. It didn’t always go so well—there were greedy people in our world, people who wanted what we had. Chase was a good leader and a fair man. He made sure he protected us and our interests.

  Spike stole a handful of my fries, and I pushed him away. We were all in a good mood, a little high off our big run. Not really high, just the sort of natural high we felt when we had a good night. It was the only kind of high I cared about. I was never into drugs—I had seen what they did to people from the time I was pretty small. I tried not to think about the way we ran drugs to make money, and the way my mom’s addiction had ruined both our lives. Sometimes it bothered me, though. Wondering if there was another kid out there just like I used to be, wishing his mom would stop using.

  Chase saw the way my mood sank. “You okay?”

  I tried to smile and enjoy the night. “Yeah, sure. Just don’t know if I want any more fries after this asshole stuck his nasty hand in them.”

  “Don’t you wish you knew where this hand has been?” Spike asked, laughing as he tried to stick it in my face. I shrugged him off, chuckling.

  “You’re sure?” Chase asked. He wasn’t fooled the way the rest of them were. It was his job to pay attention. Always watching.

  “Yeah, really. Just tired. It’s been a long night.”

  “You should find something to help you sleep once you get home.” He nodded back toward the kitchen with a grin. “I bet she’d do the trick.”

  “What are you, a matchmaker now? Or a pimp?”

  He laughed. “Neither. I saw the way you looked at her is all. You don’t ever tell the guys to shut the hell up when they’re messing around with a chick. What gives?”

  “I don’t know. I felt sorry for her.” I shrugged. Why did he have to bring it up? I glanced around the table, making sure nobody was listening in.

  “Since when? She’s just a chick. So what? You know how these guys have fun. Why don’t you admit you want her?”

  “Because I don’t wanna hear it from the rest of them.”

  “They all miss your girl, Dom.”

  I bristled when he mentioned her. “I don’t wanna talk about her.”

  “I know, but maybe you have to. It’s been long enough, son.”

  “I’m not your son.” I didn’t mean to come off like an asshole, but I couldn’t help it. Why couldn’t he see I wasn’t up to talking about Lauren? She was off-limits to everyone, including Chase. It didn’t matter that he was club president or that I was supposedly next in line. It didn’t give him the right.

  “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to rub you the wrong way. I just hate to see you pushing other things away is all.”

  “I don’t have any trouble finding women, thanks.” I smirked.

  “Yeah, I know. There oughta be a turnstile outside your bedroom. But that ain’t the same as having a good old lady. The kind you need when you take control of the club.”

  His words weighed on my mind. It wasn’t like I never thought about that. I thought about it all the time, actually. Chase had a great old lady, the kind who made a man feel like a king. The way a man in that position needed to feel if he was going to be a leader—especially in a dangerous world like ours.

  I couldn’t make myself go through it all again. Certain things in a man’s life changed him forever. I would never be the man I used to be before that night.

  “Do you blame me for what happened?” My blood ran cold as Chase’s eyes bored holes into me from behind the dark lenses.

  “Never. I never have.” I was totally honest. I had never once thought about him in connection with that night.

  “I sometimes do,” he admitted. “I made a mistake, and I’ll never not be sorry. I don’t know…I guess it would just make me happy if I saw you happy. That’s all.”

  Or it would make you feel less guilty. I wished he would say what he really felt. He was all broken up inside after what happened. He could join the club.

  He looked over the table. Nobody even listened to us, which wasn’t a bad thing at all. “You ready for all this?” he asked.

  “I won’t have to be for a long time,” I joked. “So I don’t think too much about it.”

  “Liar.” He smirked. “You know the time’s gonna come.” It wasn’t the first time he’d made a crack like that. It was enough to make me wonder if he wasn’t in bad health or something. Did he know something I didn’t know? Chase was only in his mid-fifties. Hardly ancient.

  “You’ve got what it takes,” he said, nodding. “You’re a born leader, just like me. You think about everybody else first, then yourself. That’s the kind of person you need to be.” He took a sip from his coffee, nodding toward the other guys. “They’re all good men. Your brothers. But none of them have that special something. You do. You’ll make a good president one day.”

  “You’re freaking me out,” I admitted.

  “Sorry.” He grinned. “I don’t mean to. I guess I start thinking about my mortality on nights like this. I’ve had a lotta good nights, and a lotta bad nights. Nights when I made it out by the skin of my teeth. I know how lucky I’ve been. There are times like right now when I wonder how much longer that luck’s gonna last is all.”

  So that was it. That was why he thought about Lauren, too. What happened that night was an example of a bad night. Shit went south real fast, worse than anything I’d ever seen before or since. He wondered how many more nights like that were to come, and which side he’d end up on when they did. So far he’d been on the living side.

  I clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ve got a lot more good nights ahead of ya. You’d better, because I don’t feel like settling down into your job anytime soon. I have a lot more whoring and partying to do before that time comes.” I grinned.

  “Bringing us back to our delicious waitress. What do you think about her? Just come out and say it. You want her. It’s okay. The rest of ’em will back off, just like they did when you told them to lay off. I know you didn’t like them thinking about her that way because you wanted her for yourself. Why not just say that? You would any other time. Why not now?”

  “I don’t know.” I really didn’t. I did want her, more than anything I had wanted in a long time. It wasn’t just physical—I’d had physical stuff with plenty of women in the last two years. I didn’t just wanna fuck her. I wanted to take her home and keep her there, just for me. The thought of other men walking into the diner and saying the sort of shit my friends did made me want to put somebody’s head through a wall. I hated knowing that anybody else might talk to her that way. It freaked me out a little bit, how strongly I felt.

  She was just my type, for sure. The curves on her, the full tits. I wanted to bury my face in them just like I wanted to
bury my cock in her sweetness. I wanted to take her and make her mine, make her scream for me. I saw the way she looked at us, like we were garbage, and I wanted to wipe that look off her face.

  I looked around, realizing I hadn’t seen her in a while. “Where’d she go?” I muttered.

  Spike heard me. “Yeah, I want some more coffee.”

  I picked up the carafe, handing it to him without saying anything. The weight of it in my hand told me there was plenty left inside. That wasn’t good enough, though. We were finishing up. I knew I felt like a thick slice of pie from the dessert case, too. I wasn’t alone.

  “She sorta disappeared, didn’t she?” Jax asked. “A shame. I liked looking at her ass. And those tits. Jesus Christ.”

  “Shut up about her,” I warned. “I want her for myself.”

  I sensed the pride Chase felt. Jax stepped down. “Hey, brother, whatever you say. You’ll make a cute couple.”

  “Shut the fuck up.” I grinned, showing him there weren’t any hard feelings. He smiled back. Chase was right. I had to take what I wanted. I wanted her, if only for the night. It wasn’t like I was looking for anything long-term…even though I wondered before I ever touched her if just one night would be enough. From what I’d already experienced with women, it was the ones who pretended they weren’t into the motorcycle club life who had the best time in bed.

  There was only one waitress on the floor, the older chick who had seated us. I went over to her, catching her eye. “We were looking for our waitress. What’s her name again?”

  “Kara.” She looked scared. Why did she look scared?

  “Right. Kara. Where is she? We wanted dessert, and our table needs clearing.”

  “I can help you with that. She’s busy at the moment.” Her nametag said Darlene. I wondered what Darlene wasn’t telling me. She had no way of knowing that I’d worked my way up in the club by finding people and asking them questions until they finally answered. I had ways of knowing who was lying and who wasn’t.

  “Is she all right?”

  Darlene frowned. “Why do you ask? What do you care?” She didn’t look offended, more like surprised.

  “I don’t know. You look like you’re pretty shaken up.”

  She looked at me, like she tried to figure out if she should tell me the truth or not. “Did you see that man who came in a little while ago? The one in the suit and trench coat?”

  “Oh, yeah, I did. He looked like a smug bastard.”

  She snickered. “You got the bastard part right. He needed to talk to her, and I don’t think it was such a good idea.” She looked at the kitchen doors again, chewing on her lip. I put two and two together pretty fast.

  “Who is he?”

  “Her ex.” Just then, as she said those very words, there was a crash from the kitchen. I acted before I thought, pushing my way through the swinging doors to see what the hell was happening.

  Chapter Three

  Kara

  My blood ran cold when Eric followed me to the back of the kitchen, where I had just been sitting and relaxing. Relaxation was the last thing on my mind thanks to his presence. It had been weeks since I’d last seen him, glorious weeks. There was always the threat of him showing up, however. The shoe had to drop sometime.

  I turned to face him, putting on my bravest attitude. “What is it?” I asked. “I have a table full of people out there, and there’s a pretty big tip riding on it. I don’t want to make them upset.”

  He snickered. “A tip. That’s what you care about now? Look how low you’ve fallen. When we were together, you didn’t have to worry about things like that. You had everything you could’ve ever wanted, didn’t you?”

  Yes. Everything. Except for a loving, respectful husband who didn’t hit me and hurt me whenever he had a bad day. Except for a husband who did his share around the house, his share with the baby. “Monetarily, yes.”

  “Yes. You didn’t have to work then, did you? I provided everything. I made life easy for you. All you had to do was sit on your ass all day and let other people do the work for you.”

  That old argument again. “Eric, I don’t know how you think the cooking and cleaning got done around the house. I really don’t.”

  “The housekeeper.”

  “Who only came in three days a week. I kept it spotless for you because it was how you wanted it. I cooked your favorite foods every day because that was how you wanted it, too. I raised our daughter virtually alone. Do you think it’s easy wrangling a toddler and keeping the house clean when she was hell-bent on destruction all the time? Yes, you made it so I could stay home with our daughter, and I’m grateful. But there was a lot more to it than that, and you can’t keep using that old argument over and over.”

  He bristled. “No court will ever believe that you left for no reason. And they won’t award full custody to a woman who relies on tips from bikers to support her daughter.”

  I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself as if for protection. “There’s no way I’ll let you twist this around,” I whispered.

  “I don’t have to. The facts are plain. You ran off, took my daughter, and you can’t support her as well as I can. I mean, come on, Kara. Everybody in town knows me. Hell, I have lunch scheduled with the district attorney next week. You don’t have a chance.”

  He was right. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I had no way of winning against him if he took me to court. I was barely able to keep a roof over our heads and food in our mouths, but I was determined. I’d work twenty-four hours a day if it meant my daughter could be out of the clutches of an abusive narcissist like her father.

  “You’re bluffing. You know there are stories I can tell that wouldn’t paint you in a very flattering light.”

  “Oh please.” He waved a dismissive hand. “You have no proof of any of this so-called abuse. I’m tired of hearing you talk about it that way, too. Abuse. Couples fight, Kara. Just because you grew up thinking life was like it was on Leave It To Beaver…”

  I resented the way he talked about my parents. Just because they were loving and happy and respectful of each other, he tried to make it sound as though I were completely out of touch as to how normal couples behaved. It was his primary fallback.

  “Couples fight, Eric, but they don’t hit each other.” I lowered my voice to a fierce whisper, keeping one eye on Charlie at all times. He stood at the other end of the kitchen, staring at me from over Eric’s shoulder. I willed him to stay where he was. All he needed was to have one of Eric’s high-powered friends swoop down and close the diner. It was all the sweet-natured man had in the world. “Men don’t hit. They don’t choke their wives. They don’t knock them down and scream at them. They don’t kick. They don’t make them crawl around, crying, while they laugh and call them names. That’s not what men do when they love a woman. You did all those things to me. Remember? Don’t tell me it didn’t mean anything to you.”

  He sneered, his gray eyes nearly disappearing as he narrowed his eyes. “If it was so bad, why did you stay as long as you did, then? Why didn’t you leave a long time ago?”

  How many times had I asked myself that question? Why didn’t I have the strength to leave him when I knew I should? Every time he hit me, I told myself it was the last time. Every time he degraded me by coming home with another woman’s perfume on his clothing, or laughed at me when I found another woman sending sexy photos to his phone, I wondered what it would take to finally walk away. Every single time for years. I’d put up with it, though, all if it and then some.

  “I finally grew the balls to walk out on you because I realized it was worth working my fingers to the bone if it meant raising Emma far, far away from you and your nasty, filthy ways. I won’t have a man like you raising her. Hell, Eric, you never cared a damned thing about her until I left, and you know it.”

  “How dare you.” He advanced one step, then another, cornering me. I felt distinctly nauseated. Charlie made a move as though to stop him, but I held up one han
d just high enough for him to see. He couldn’t get in the middle of the fight. Eric was a man of deep, hidden evil. He would stop at nothing to have revenge, no matter who it destroyed. There were times when I wondered if he even had a conscience, or whether he was a complete sociopath.

  I couldn’t stop myself, though. He’d unlocked everything I’d held inside myself for a long time, and I couldn’t help but let it all out. “How dare I? You weren’t there for anything, Eric.”

  “Right, because I was working to support you. To keep you driving a fucking Lexus, Kara. To keep you living in that insane condo you loved so much.” I couldn’t pretend I didn’t like those creature comforts, but it wasn’t for the reason he thought. I needed them as a way to keep myself sane while living with him. I was in hell through those long, lonely years. I needed something to make it all worthwhile—a beautiful car, a comfortable home I could at least feel proud of. I sure didn’t feel proud of myself.