Still, Tag wanted to fall for it. On paper Joe Beattie, the lawyer, was everything Tag wanted—professional, reasonable, the sort of man you could adopt a kid or a dog with—but it was Bass, with the old scar high on his cheekbone and the rough, affectionate edge he put onDocwho made Tag trip over his own tongue.
Maybe that was how Kieran felt about his hot nurse. Tag was surprised at the dry note of the thought, which had none of the old frothy bitterness to it.
Tag scratched his ribs through his T-shirt. The problem was that people didn’t change, and second chances always bit you in the ass eventually. Just because he wanted to believe something didn’t mean he could.
“Okay,” he said. “You wanted to say sorry. Now you have. So are we done?”
It wasn’t the reaction Bass expected. He narrowed his pale eyes and shifted his weight. His heavy boots scuffed against the concrete as he did.
“We could be,” Bass said. “Or not?”
Tag snorted as he yanked open the door. “One of the other bikers get stabbed? I don’t need this in my life, Bass. Just—” He twisted the key in the ignition as he talked. The engine growled to life, the revs low and strained, and then it coughed hard enough to rattle the whole frame of the car. Tag grimaced and pumped the gas, but the engine just wheezed and died. He smacked his palm against the steering wheel. “Son of a bitch.”
The engine ticked unrepentantly to itself under the hood, and the smell of burned newspaper and mildew leaked into the car through the vents. Bass draped himself over the open door, and his arms dangled down over the glass. Fresh ink chained his wrist—literally. Black and gray lines picked out a bracelet of thick links over his skin.
“Need a lift?” he asked.
Tag looked up and took in the satisfied cant to Bass’s mouth. He narrowed his eyes. “Did you do something to my car?”
Bass just snorted. “You think a lot of yourself,” he said. Tag clenched and tried the engine again. This time it barely turned over. Bass waited for the grate of it to rattle back into silence. His smirk widened into a grin that actually reached his eyes. “I didn’t need to do anything. Your crankshaft is broken, and from that smell, your clutch is on its last legs. I actually am a mechanic, remember? Come on. Let me give you a lift.”
“I’ll get a cab.”
Bass looked exasperated. He reached in, grabbed the keys before Tag could get them, and jingled them from his fingers as he held them out of reach.
“If I want to know where you live, Dr. Hayes, I can find out,” he said dryly. Then his voice dropped to a suggestive rasp. “Besides, I still owe you a ride, Doc. Remember?”
Tag had deleted the picture from that first night, but it didn’t make any difference. His memory conjured it back up in detail, from the threadbare seams of the jeans to the way Bass’s lean thighs straddled the black leather saddle, and his balls tightened in Pavlovian response.
It was still a bad idea.
“All right,” Tag said. “But that’s it. After tonight, you stay away from me.”
Bass gave him that slow, confident smile as he stepped back from the car. He tossed the keys to Tag, who caught them out of the air.
“If you’re sure that’s what you want,” Bass said. “You won’t see me again.”
Tag groaned under his breath and got out of the car. This time, he told himself as he slapped the door, he really would have to sell it and get something more practical—hybrid instead of a car with a bottomless fuel tank.
“It’s not about what I want,” Tag said. “It’s what I need.”
Bass bit his lower lip and glanced around. Then he stepped forward and twisted Tag’s T-shirt around his fist. Tag yelped as he was shoved back against the car, metal cold against his back and hips, and Bass pressed his knuckles against his chest. He had time to be surprised, but before he could work his way up to alarmed, Bass leaned in until his mouth was so close Tag could feel his breath.
“I think we both remember what you need,” he breathed out, his voice low and tight with control. “And it involves me.”
It would have been easy to blame it on Bass, on his cockiness and the knuckles pressed against Tag’s chest. He wasn’t to blame for his own bad choices at all. But it was Tag who wrapped his hand around the back of Bass’s neck to pull him closer, andhislips that closed the distance between them. The kiss was slow and lazy, spiced with a hint of teeth and old anger.
“See?” Bass said as he finally leaned back. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth for a moment and then slipped away. His face settled into serious lines as he reached up and cupped his hand around the back of Tag’s neck. “I meant what I said, Doc. You don’t need to be scared of Shepherd.”
He clearly meant to be reassuring, but Shepherd wasn’t what worried Tag. In the moment, he’d been scared, sure. He wasn’t an idiot. The leader of the local MC had thrown a pool ball at Tag’s head, after all.
But last week a teenage girl had gotten dosed with LSD at a party and tried to hit him with a bottle because she thought he was a lizard. Before that a drunk driver tried to choke him out with an IV stand because he wanted to get out of there before the police arrested him. Whenever he took a deep breath, he could feel the scar tissue under his ribs catch. After a while stuff like that got left at the door.
Shepherd wasn’t the one Tag couldn’t get out of his head.
“You know, we came to Plenty to get away from this sort of thing,” Tag said. “Violence, dangerous men, property prices.”
Bass laughed and pulled Tag back off the car. “You picked the wrong town, then,” he said as he casually tucked his hand into the back pocket of Tag’s jeans and led him across the road. A matte-black bike was parked under a streetlight in front of an open-late coffee shop. “Plenty’s always been a hole. Trust me, I grew up here. Come on. I’ll drive you home. And I promise I’ll leave you at the door… if that’s what you want.”
Tag licked his lips. They were warm and wet, with a hint of the fruit-cider sweetness from the expensive hops.
Right now the last thing he wanted was for Bass to leave. Maybe by the time they got home, he’d have reminded himself why that was a bad idea.
