Burning Ember (7 page)

Approvals ring out.

An older red-haired biker with a long red beard pats Dozer on the back. He reminds me of the lead guitarist for ZZ Top. “You give him hell, D. Tell him we’re sick of being on pussy lockdown. You need us, holler. We always got your back.”

Dozer walks us down a hallway. He takes me to the third door on the right. Before he knocks, he looks down at me. There’s an apologetic look in his eyes, “Gotta warn ya, babe. This isn’t gonna be pretty. I’ll handle it though, okay?”

I nod as my insides knot up. Honestly, how much uglier can this day possibly get?

There is beauty in a broken heart, and undeniable allure to a damaged soul. And in an instant, our ideals of perfection are both shredded and rebuilt.

I wipe my sweaty palms feverishly on my shorts then tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

Breathe, Em, breathe. It’s going to be fine.

Dozer raps three times on the door.

A whiskey rough voice with a bit of an accent snarls, “I swear to God, if you fuckers don’t leave me alone so I can get some work done today, I’m gonna ram someone’s head through the goddamn wall.”

Dozer’s arm tightens around me. “It’s okay, babe, he’s always like that. Got a perpetual stick up his ass. He’s gonna freak the fuck out. That’s inevitable, but I’ll talk him down, yeah?”

I nod and tell myself that no matter what, I will not open my mouth. I won’t let this guy get to me. I need to be prepared. He’s going to be a dick . . . that’s a given. Biting the inside of my cheek, I inwardly scold . . .
don’t let your temper get the best of you. Or you can kiss your freedom goodbye.

Dozer removes his arm from around me, opens the door, and sticks his head in. “Mav, I need a word.”

A moment later, the same gruff voice answers, “Come in.”

Dozer pushes the door open further, and we walk into the small office.

A cloud of smoke swirls around the room. It sets off alarm bells in my head. I grew up in a home that always had mysterious clouds of smoke, and knowing I can’t afford to be anything but clear headed today, I don’t dare inhale. Not until I notice the smoke is coming from a cigarette resting in the overflowing ashtray on the desk.

A man with dark hair is leaning over the desk, sketching something on a large white sheet of paper.

His eyes don’t swing up to us, not right away. But his shoulders tense, and the pencil in his hand stops. After a second, he slowly sits back in his chair, sets down his pencil, and reaches forward for the cigarette. Pinching it, he brings it to his lips. His scruff-covered cheeks hollow out as he sucks in a drag. When he finally turns to face us, his gaze passes over Dozer as if he wasn’t even standing there and lands on me.

The oxygen sheltered in my lungs whooshes out. And for endless moments, I’m breathless. Frozen.

Captivated by the dark and arresting biker before me.

My mind goes on a vacation as I take in his amber eyes. The same color as the Pacific Coast sand. The sand I lazed in for days as a teenager and built sand castles in as a little girl.

He’s dark though and reminds me more of a hot summer’s night than a hot summer’s day. With his inky, closely cropped hair, thick lashes, and black stubble on the lower half of his face, so black it’s almost blue. Like the ocean at night.

His heated gaze sends a rush of warmth through me, and at the same time chills spread over my skin.

Hot and cold.

He expels a puff of smoke in my direction. And though it disrupts my clear view of him, I can still see that’s he’s perfectly made, clearly growing angrier by the second, and unequivocally the sexiest man I’ve ever seen.

I study him. His leather vest and the way it’s cluttered with pins and patches, fitting over his nice, wide shoulders. Around his neck hangs a silver chain and I’m curious to know what hangs at the end. But it disappears beneath his fitted black T-shirt. His jeans are faded, dirty, and sexy as hell. Threadbare spots reveal delicious bits of tan skin. The hand resting on his thigh is large and manly. He wears one ring where most bikers wear many, a silver H that transforms into wings. His arms are veiny and one is unmarked, where the other is a sleeve of colorful images.

A darkness hovers around him like a shroud, and the tension in the room rises, as if it vibrates off his very skin.

I’m brought back to reality as Mav, Maverick, Rick the Dick, Ricky Boy, whoever in the hell he is, reaches forward and flicks his cigarette over the ashtray. His eyes, which stay locked on my face, narrow, the skin around them wrinkles and the muscles in his jaw tighten and then ticks. Further proof that Goose, Dozer, and the blond biker Dozer referred to as Bodie were right. He doesn’t like what he sees.

I gnaw on my lip and try to figure out if it’s my red hair or something else about me that sets him off.

For some reason he’s looking at me as if I stole his hopes and dreams and I have no idea why.

His gaze leaves my face and trails down over my body. It’s like a living, breathing thing as it descends, touching my chest as if it were a finger drawing down over my cleavage, my stomach, two hands running over my thighs.

An achy, needy sensation sparks between my legs. Something I haven’t felt for a long time. It was there in the beginning with Warner, but nowhere near this magnitude. I’ve been worried Warner ruined my desire for men, for sex. But obviously, that’s not the case because my body’s lighting up at the mere sight of Mav. A man I just met. A man who, for some reason, starts a fire inside me. One that grows with every bit of oxygen I take in.

It doesn’t take a genius to see this biker is the last person I need to be attracted to. He’s undoubtedly hazardous to my health. Because not only does he look at me like he wants to kill me, I’m quite certain he’s capable of doing so.

God . . . Have I fled from one monster, only to land in the lair of the devil?

A resounding
yes!
has my heart beating faster.

He may appear to be the exact opposite of Warner physically. But he’s equally as beautiful, just in a different way.

Warner was blond, blue-eyed, and at first, I thought he was an angel. He swept me out of the hovel I lived in with Sundown and Will, and helped me support them. He treated me as if I meant the world to him. He bought me things and took me everywhere. I thought he was an answer to my prayers. Proof that God did actually care about me.

But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Soon after I moved in with him, he showed me the monster he’d hidden from me while we were dating. The darkness I couldn’t tame and he couldn’t contain. The one that had me living with a good large dose of fear running through my veins every day. Expecting the worst, and praying for the best.

Mav has the same inner turmoil churning in his eyes. It’s unmistakable once you know what it looks like. He comes in a similar delicious packaging. Only he’s dark where Warner was light, and he’s not masking who he really is. His darkness shows plain as day on the outside. It’s not hidden. It’s out there for all the world to see.

Like Lucifer, his presence is rife with malevolence. The very image of him screams DANGER. He’s utterly tempting, a delicious looking bad-boy in leather and a vision of sin in the best of ways. A stealer of hearts and souls, no doubt.

The warning signs are right there for me to see, and this time, I can’t afford to ignore them.

MAVERICK

I can tell by the look on Dozer’s face when he peeks his head into my office, he’s about to make my already shitty day worse.

With a dower expression, he says, “Mav, need a word.”

I rarely find time these days to catch up on work. In fact, I’m a week late on this current project. And today is the first day since Cap was shot that I’m not letting club business take precedence. I can’t keep letting the continual shit-storm, which seems to be circling the club, distract me, and put my own responsibilities off any longer. I hate disappointing clients, breaking my word, and missing deadlines.

It makes me look like a lazy, no good biker, and I hate that stigma.

So today, I’m not a HOC. I’m simply Maverick Gunn with my own shit to take care of before I go back to running the club in Cap’s absence.

I’m pissed off further because it’s Dozer interrupting me. Dozer, as Cap’s son and the club V.P. before he stepped down, should be the one dealing with the club shit right now. Not me.

I never aspired to be club president. Nah. I’m happy being a patch member and the Sergeant-at-Arms, or I was until everything went to hell. I’m the right hand man, the one who gets his hands dirty, not the leader who makes others do it for him.

Edge’s release can’t come soon enough. Then we’ll take a vote and put in a new president. Which should fall to Edge. However, some members want Griz to take up the gavel. Though Griz, himself, isn’t one of them. But only Cap and I know why.

I’m still uneasy about Edge’s return. I can’t sleep for shit lately. I don’t know how he can forgive me so easily for what happened. Since my actions, my decisions stole five years of his life. He swears we’re good though. Every time I’ve visited him in the pen, he’s told me I need to let that shit go. Move on.

But I can’t.

I can’t move on until I’ve made amends. Might take five fucking more years or my whole goddamn life, but I’ll do it somehow.

I hope that Dozer’s here because he’s had a change of heart. And he’s ready to man up, put his pride aside, and help me take care of business.

Without lifting my head from the sketch, I tell him to come in.

He enters and out of the corner of my eye, I see the color of crimson beside him. That color makes my blood run cold. My chest instantly aches. The color of something . . . someone . . . I never want to lay eyes on again. Lower, I see a pair of feminine legs and confirm it’s her.

The woman I hate with every beat of my blackened and damaged heart.

White-hot rage fills me, rushes through my body like water down a river filling every part of me. A barrel of emotions I’ve long kept at bay threatens to break the dam I’ve forged to hold them back. For the last five years, the ever-present ache in my chest, which has been plaguing me on and off, is now throbbing and screaming for attention.

I envision exploding out of my seat and lunging toward her, choking the life out of her with my bare hands. Or using the knife on my belt to mar up her alabaster skin.

I reach for my cigarette knowing it will help calm me the fuck down.

How dare she fucking come here. How dare she show her face and breathe the same air I breathe. After what she stole from me. From Edge.

Just thinking about it causes more murderous thoughts to run wild through my mind. Does she not realize I’ve fantasized about delivering her death a thousand times? That I’ve strangled her and buried her in my dreams? Thrown dirt over her cold, dead body? For the last five years, every waking moment of my life has been poisoned by this bitch. Now she’s here. Why? To stomp on what little is left of my heart? To snuff out what’s left of my soul? To send Edge back to prison the second he gets out?

Slowly, while trying to contain the rage I feel, I sit up, turn, and face her. Only my eyes find slightly tanned and freckled skin, not white alabaster. My gaze lands on eyes the color of the sea, teal, not the deep brown I anticipated. A pretty face sans make-up.

The ache in my chest cools for an instant.

Who the fuck is this?

Confusion floods through me, and I take in the girl standing beside Dozer. She’s not Dana, but there are similarities. The hair for one. The state of desperation another.

The blistering hatred for Dana is all I feel though, and I can’t help but cringe at the sight of this girl. A reminder of all that I’ve lost. Of who I was, and what I am now. All because of one fucking redheaded girl.

I can’t help but see every woman with hair like fire as poison ivy in disguise. A disease. A fire starter. A plague ruining all it touches. Not something I want within ten feet of me.

As my eyes travel down her body, I take in her cheap and ragged clothing. She’s short, and thin, but tan for a ginger. I can’t deny she’s attractive. She’s everything I’ve always been attracted to, long red hair, toned petite body, beautiful innocent face, and a nice handful of curves.