“Why did you let me sleep so long?” I ease toward the edge of the bed then stand, reaching for the ceiling.
Ryker clears his throat. I stop what I’m doing and glare at him. “What?”
The man is staring at my stomach where my T-shirt is riding up.Damn creeper.I yank the hem of my shirt down. “Get a good look?”
He rolls his eyes and shakes out his shirt. And holy shoulder muscles. I didn’t get a good look yesterday when I was ogling him outside the diner. Now, I can see there isn’t an ounce of body fat on the guy.
But he’s not a gym rat. Far from it. He’s lean. And cut.Every-fucking-where.Like a warrior.
A tattooed warrior.
I’ve never been a fan of that much ink, wondering what was wrong with women who drooled over tattoos. I mean, do they have some sort of fantasy about a motorcycle club kidnapping them, dragging them off by the hair, having dirty-hot sex with them, and slapping a property patch on them?
What? I read.
It’s not the number of tattoos that catch my attention, however. It’s the story they tell. Ryker’s tats link together in the progressive tale of his life. And there’s a suspiciously empty spot right over his heart. Right next to ink that plucks a string in my memory.
I frown and lean closer.
“Get a good look?”
My eyes snap to his, and I realize I’m dangerously close to planting my face in Ryker’s shoulder.
“Whatever.”
Before I pull back, I get a good whiff of the man. It’s a heady aroma of leather, gasoline, and kick-assedness.
There’s something about that combination that gets my Coochie Mama dancing this Tuesday morning. And causes me to pull away from him like I’ve been burned.
Because now I’m the damn creeper.
“We have about fifteen minutes for you to clean up before we hit the road,” Ryker pulls on his shirt, putting the Tattoo Road Show on pause for right now.
Maybe I could binge a few episodes later.
“I only need ten,” I grab my toiletries and clean clothes on the way into the bathroom. “Then, coffee.”
???
For some reason, I expected Tova Norton, a.k.a. Tova Rose, to live in a fairy cottage in the middle of a suburban neighborhood full of soccer moms. I didn’t expect the two-story McMansion on a 55-acre horse ranch in the middle of Florida.
“Plenty of room here to hide fugitives,” Ryker remarks as we get off the bike.
I nod.
The visit to Jeffrey Rose’s soul-wife is already unnerving. But I feel like we’re walking into an ambush without intel ahead of time.
“I don’t like this,” I clock the lone vehicle in the driveway. There are no other signs of life around the property. Even the horse barn is empty. We checked before rolling up to the house.
“You take the front,” Ryker nods to the front porch. “I’ll slip around back.”
“That’s what he said,” I snort.
He frowns at me.
“Sorry,” I shrug. “Old habit.”
He grunts. But before I can make a joke, he disappears. One minute he’s there. The next, he’s not.
