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He looked at her carefully. “You’re sure you weren’t followed?”
“I wasn’t followed.”
He nodded. “Then we’re all clear.”
Even as he said the words, his overly concerned expression melted away, the upraised eyebrows and wrinkled brow returning to neutral. His entire posture began to change; the shoulders came back, the spine got straight, and he went from a slightly bent-over, kindly father to an all-business supervisor in the manner of seconds.
“Very well, then,” he finally said. “What is your report, Special Agent Marino?”
2
Pony leaned in hard to his bike as he took the curve in the road, never slowing down a bit. It wasn’t his Harley he rode; this time, it was a racing bike, an Aprilla RSV4, built for speed and maneuverability.
It was the kind of bike he’d gotten his start on, way back when he’d first joined the Army. Later, he’d eased away from the racing bikes and switched over to heavy cruisers like his Harley, especially once he’d gotten involved with the MC, but there was always a little place in his heart for the sleek speed machines.
He wasn’t riding it as a random kick. Devil had brought the bike to the clubhouse and asked him to try it out, put it through its paces, and report back to him what he thought of it.
Pony couldn’t imagine why. He’d never seen Devil ride anything but a Harley like his, and nobody else in the club, for that matter, either. There was a sort of unwritten rule against racing bikes; riding one wasn’t so much a serious infraction as it was an invitation for mockery from the other brothers.
So Devil’s request was a little strange. But then again, a lot of what Devil did was a little strange, or more than a little strange, and as a prospect, Pony more or less had to put up with it with a grin.
This request was no chore to fulfill. The Aprilla handled great; even on tight corners, Pony was able to lean his weight in hard and keep his speed up while navigating through the curves.
He found himself pushing the bike harder and harder, faster and faster, losing himself to the speed and becoming one with the road. His mind went away at times like this. All of the chatter that normally filled a person’s thoughts disappeared into the flow state of keeping the motorcycle moving along, and with that quiet mind, came a sort of peace.
It was a strange combination. The adrenaline of hurtling through space on an unstable two wheeled vehicle, matched with the calm of having a quiet mind completely absorbed with a difficult task. And it was what Pony loved most about riding.
The road straightened out and Pony didn’t have to focus quite so much, and now, some thoughts from the past came back in. Riding like this took him all the way back to those early days on a bike, back to those days with the Army Rangers, back to the night when he’d gotten the scar on his hand that Piper had asked him about.
She’d been bad news, the woman who had given him that scar. Her name was Scarlet, and she was everything a man should avoid in his twenties but didn’t; beautiful, manipulative, and borderline psychotic.
She’d been working as a dancer in a strip club located just a few miles outside of the Army base in which he’d been stationed at the time. No end of young soldiers had wasted every last dollar trying to get her attention, but for some reason, Pony had caught her eye.
At the time, he’d thought himself lucky. A smokeshow of a dancer, the object of every soldier’s attention, and he was the one she’d chosen. And at first, it was all wild times and sexual gymnastics.
It didn’t take long, though, for the cracks to appear. To say that Scarlet was unstable was an understatement; one second, he was her hero, the next, he couldn’t even breathe right in her eyes.
For months on end, he’d meant to end it. Every day was the day he would tell her to get lost, but his young dumb twentysomething brain had been too cunt-struck to pull the trigger. She’d drive him to the edge of dumping her, and then she’d screw his brains out, and he’d say, one more day. One more day.
It had ended poorly. Her shouting, screaming, and finally attacking him with a kitchen knife. The only reason the scar was on his hand and not on his stomach was thanks to his military training.
He’d had to break her wrist to disarm her. When the cops came, at first, he was the one they put in handcuffs, thanks to Scarlet’s big eyes and easy charm. It was only after they saw the blood dripping off his hands and the knife on the floor that they realized who the real aggressor was. And even then, they seemed disappointed that the pretty girl with the bright smile and push-up bra was the bad guy.
Ever since then, he’d had trouble trusting women. Every time he started getting close, he found himself holding back, looking down at that scar and remembering what happened when he let himself get exposed.
It was a sense of betrayal. And it wasn’t the last time.
He’d been looking for someone to attach himself to, someone to connect with, to belong to. Instead, his dick had done the thinking, with results that now seemed obvious and inevitable now that he was older and wiser.
It seemed like his whole life had been like that, a search for someplace to belong, something he could be a part of, someone worth his loyalty.
He’d joined the Army to fight terrorism, to protect innocent people from the monsters who prowled in the dark corners of the world. It had been a noble cause, one that he felt confident in pursuing and giving himself over to fully.
The reality had been less than what he’d hoped. His noble cause ended up having flaws that scarred him different ways, ways that he still didn’t like to think about.
Then he’d left the Army, and there had been a hole left in his life. He didn’t have any purpose. No driving reason to keep getting up in the morning and dealing with the troubles of the world.
Not only that, but he’d missed having a group of like-minded people around him, a brotherhood like he’d had with the Army. In the Rangers, he had no doubt that any one of the men around him would lay down their life for him, or he for them.
