“Guess I’m not getting a quiet morning after all,” he muttered.
He swung a leg over his Harley, the seat creaking under his weight, leather cool against his palms as he gripped the handlebars.The familiar vibration of the engine settled deep in his bones.
Usually, the rumble helped quiet the noise in his head.The ghosts, the memories, the restlessness that clung like smoke.Not this time.
Because when he blinked, he didn’t see the road in front of him.He saw her.
The girl with the wild hair and those stubborn, ocean-blue eyes that had looked at him like she was seeing straight through the cut, the scars, the years of violence he wore like armor.
Hell if he knew what to make of that.
Viper wasn’t a man who wondered about women after a first meeting.He didn’t wonder about anyone, period.He took what he wanted, walked away before morning, and didn’t look back.It was easier that way, but she was sticking in his head like a splinter he couldn’t dig out.
Maybe it was the way she’d looked as she stood there, small but refusing to cower.Or maybe it was how she’d still managed to glare at him after he’d saved her ass.Like she didn’t want saving and she hated needing anyone.
He understood that.Too damn well.
Viper revved the throttle once, twice, trying to drown the thought, but it didn’t help. He glanced in his side mirror, half-expecting her to reappear, running for whatever life she had left.The motel was empty now, the sun cutting sharp across the parking lot.
She was gone.Good.That’s what he told himself, anyway.
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the folded photo he’d taken from the Vulture’s wallet.Her hair was pulled back, her smile uncertain, like whoever took it caught her off guard.
What the hell was she doing mixed up with the Vultures?And why the hell did they want her bad enough to chase her into another club’s backyard?
Questions he didn’t need.Questions that burned anyway.
Viper crumpled the photo in his fist, meaning to toss it, but his hand didn’t move.He should ride back to the clubhouse.Check in with King, maybe help with the new shipment coming in from Arizona.Do his job.Keep his head down.
But he didn’t start the engine.Not yet.Instead, he sat there with the morning sun glinting off his handlebars, jaw clenched, heart doing that strange uneven thing it hadn’t done in a long damn time.
It wasn’t attraction, he told himself.Couldn’t be.He’d had plenty of women.Easy company, no strings, no reason to remember their names.He knew what attraction felt like.Fast, sharp, over before sunrise.This wasn’t that.This felt ...different.Unwanted.
Mara was a complete stranger, but the thought of her walking off alone with the Vultures prowling nearby left a knot in his gut he couldn’t untangle.
That confused the hell out of him.
He didn’t care about strays.He didn’t save people.He’d stopped trying to do that a long time ago, back when saving one meant losing five.
Mara’s face kept flashing behind his eyes.He drew in a slow breath, the air sharp and dry in his lungs.
“Don’t be stupid,” he muttered under his breath.“She’s not your problem.”
Still, he didn’t start the bike.He hovered his thumb over the ignition, hesitation burning through him like a live wire.
He told himself he’d just make a loop around the area.Just to be sure those Vulture bastards didn’t crawl back out of whatever ditch he’d left them in.That was all.
Protect the territory.Keep things quiet.Nothing more.
As he turned the bike toward the road that wound past the diner, he couldn’t help glancing east, the direction she’d gone.
He hated that he noticed the small details.The sway of her hair when she moved, the bruise forming on her wrist from where that asshole grabbed her, the way her hands had trembled, but her spine had stayed straight.
He shouldn’t care.He didn’t care.At least, that’s what he kept repeating as he pulled out of the lot and into the sun.
