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Chapter 1
LIAM
She did it again.
There are plenty of other seats on the bus but for the third day in a row, this girl is sitting next to me. I’d think it’s because she’s attracted to me but I don’t think I’m the kind of guy she goes for. Judging only by her long dark hair, tipped in fire engine red, the tattoos up her arm, and the ring in her lush bottom lip. What would a girl like her want with a late-thirties, straight-laced, tattoo-free guy like me?
With Semisonic’s Closing Time blasting in my ears, I focus my attention out the window again. The vanilla and spice swirling in the air around her when she flips her hair over her shoulder washes over me as I focus on the moonlit buildings scrolling through the big bus window like frames of an old movie. An old western, set in our historic downtown of Noble, Nevada.
I’ve almost forgotten about the girl sitting next to me thinking about watching Once Upon a Time in the West or some other spaghetti western when I get home when the bus jerks for the next stop and her elbow digs into my ribs.
Turning toward her, I see her mouth moving but can’t hear her over the music. I can, however, read the panic in her eyes which has me popping out my earbuds in a hurry to ask her what’s wrong. Before a single word leaves my mouth, she’s covered it with her own.
I know I shouldn’t be okay with this but I’m more than okay with it. Especially the extra pressure of that thin gold ring on my lips that increases when she wraps her arms around my neck to hold me closer.
I have no idea what’s going on but I’m not about to let this moment just happen to me. I’m going to be a part of it. Make it last.
Wrapping my arms around her, getting my hands in her thick, black and red locks, I kiss her back. When I trace the curve of her lip ring with the tip of my tongue, her lips part and her tongue meets mine.
Like we’ve kissed a million times before, we fall into each other as our mouths slant to deepen the kiss to an obscene level.
“What the fuck, Candy?” A gruff, masculine voice breaks us apart but my eyes are glued to her.
“Leave me alone, Seth,” she says.
Candy.
The name bounces around in my head as I look at her more closely. Her jacket fell open as we kissed, no longer hiding the outfit underneath that’s little more than underwear. A kind of sports bra top and super-tight spandex boy shorts that conjure images of her doing lewd things with a pole.
And Seth…?
Oh, shit.
My fists tighten when I finally look up.
If I’d seen him—his Tarnished Kings cut—before she kissed me, I’d have grabbed her and gotten us off the bus the second he got on.
“Get your ass off this bus and back to the club right now,” Seth barks bringing my attention to the fact we haven’t moved.
The club? Does he mean the club house or—
“You didn’t hold up your end of the deal,” Candy bites back. “I’m never going back there to get felt up by a bunch of skeevy fucks every night.”
Yep. She’s a stripper. At the Cinnamon Mink, owned and operated by the Tarnished Kings motorcycle club.
“Oh, but you have no problem getting felt up by some skeevy fuck on a bus?” Seth challenges throwing his chin in my direction.
“Liam is not some skeevy fuck. He’smyskeevy fuck,” Candy says and I try not to act surprised about her knowing my name when she pulls me back in for a second kiss.
Something tells me Seth will not take kindly to finding out he’s been lied to. So, like the first time, I go with it, kissing her again like we’ve kissed too many times to care who’s watching. Even if the man watching could kill me in broad daylight with a dozen witnesses and get away with it.
“Oy, Duke.” Another dude in a Tarnished Kings’ cut leans through the bus door but I only get a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye since they’re locked with Candy’s baby blues as she slowly backs out of the kiss I never wanted to end.
“We gotta go,” the guy in the door says. “Fight broke out at the club. Cops are there.”
“This isn’t over,” Seth, Duke to his club, says through gritted teeth to Candy before throwing a murderous look my way.
As soon as Seth steps off the bus, the driver punches the gas putting us back in our seats.
