Chapter Ten
BASS SLOUCHEDforward, arms braced on the handlebars of his bike, and watched Tag lope up the steps into the hospital. The rumble of the engine vibrated up his bones into his shoulders, and the memory of the night before tugged pleasantly at his balls.
He’d lied, of course.
Tag was definitely a soft touch. Look at who he’d spent the night under. Bass knew he was hot, but he wasn’tthathot. He wasn’t going to look his gift second chance in the mouth, but he still knew he didn’t deserve it.
That was what soft touches did. They just-one-more-chanced their way into bankruptcy. Bass had watched his dad pour their lives down the drain after an ex-wife, two girlfriends, and one best friend whose new business idea would make them a mint. It never did, and his dad never learned.
“People want to be good,” he’d always told Bass. “You just have to give them the chance.”
It was a good thing that turned out to be bullshit, otherwise Bass would be out of work. Somebody like Tag, though, however much they played the cynic, always kind of wanted to believe that.
The fact that Bass was still pretty damn hot was just the sweetener.
“Excuse me.” Someone stepped into view, a blur of gray and white in the corner of his eye, and interrupted his train of thought. “Do I know you?”
Bass supposed it was possible. Although most people who recognized him sounded a lot more pissed off about it. He pushed himself up off the bike, scratched his stubble-rough jaw, and turned his head to bring the blur into focus. The man had red hair styled back from a square, handsome face with green eyes and a wide, mobile mouth and wore a gray shirt and trousers under a white coat.
“Can’t say you ring a bell,” Bass said. He flexed his hands absently, working the buzz of the bike’s engine out of his bones. “Last time I went to a doctor, it was for the clap, so—”
Two swatches of pink flushed over the man’s cheeks, and he pressed his lips together in a thin, annoyed line. Bass assumed that was enough to discourage conversation and turned his attention back to his bike. He braced his foot against the pavement as he pushed it up off the kickstand.
It turned out Red wasn’t so easy to put off. He stepped in front of Bass.
“That was Dr. Hayes I just saw go inside?”
“That?” Bass asked as he nodded toward the doors Tag had just disappeared through. His temper caught in his jaw with an ache that made him want to clench his teeth. “That was none of your fucking business.”
The blond behind Red, with a party-boy pallor and a hard, pettish edge to his prettiness, leaned in.
“More or less what I said,” he pointed out into Red’s ear. “This is nothing to do with you. Not anymore.”
Huh.
The ex? Bass wracked his brain for anything Tag had shared about his old boyfriend. There wasn’t much. Either Tag hadn’t talked about him much, or Bass hadn’t listened. Maybe a bit of both. The only details Bass could swear to were that there was an ex, and Bass was hotter than him.
He gave Red—Dr. K. Reynolds, now that Bass cared enough to check the name embroidered on his jacket—a second look. Existed and no competition. This guy fit the bill.
“Not now, Freddie,” Dr. Reynolds said, an exasperated sigh under the words. He shrugged off the younger man and stepped forward, one hand extended toward Bass’s handlebars. “I just wasn’t aware that Tag knew any bikers.”
Behind him, Freddie rolled his eyes. “So he made a new friend. About time he stopped hanging around your place.”
“Fuck off, Freddie,” Bass said. He slid enough of a rasp into the words that Freddie backed up a wary step. Then he turned to Dr. Reynolds and smiled his best empty grin. “Don’t touch my bike, and I won’t touch your face. I just gave Doc a lift, because after I blew him in the shower, he was running late. Anything else you want to know?”
From the way Dr. Reynolds spluttered, there was, but Bass didn’t wait to find out. He smirked at Reynolds, gunned his bike, and left him wreathed in exhaust fumes as Bass peeled away from the hospital.
Satisfying, but he knew he’d pay for it later when Tag got pissed off. It wasn’t something they’d specifically discussed, but “no strings” could be assumed to mean that Tag wasn’t Bass’s territory to piss on in the first place.
Or, Bass corrected himself with a snort, at all. He might hang out with criminals and bikers, but he didn’t have to pick up their screwed-up attitudes toward sex.
But if the ex had second thoughts about the breakup, Bass wanted him to know it wasn’t that simple. Even though it should be. Bass needed to prove himself to Shepherd, get into his good graces as his go-to boy. The last thing he needed was to get into a dick-measuring contest with his hookup’s ex… even though he’d win.
The problem was, good idea or not, he wasn’t about to let Tag go that easily. Maybe they weren’t built for the long haul, but Bass wanted more than what he’d gotten.
He laughed mirthlessly to himself as he took the on-ramp onto the freeway. That was the story of his life, wasn’t it?
THE TRAILERsmelled like a frat boy’s armpit—scotch, sex, and sweat. A blond woman with a hint of mouse-colored roots sprawled on a chair with her legs spread wide enough to flash the stained panties under her leather miniskirt and the bruised injection site in the crease of her thigh. It could have been on purpose, although she’d have been barking up the wrong tree, but Bass doubted it. Her bloodshot eyes, the pupils shrunk to pinholes, tracked him as he moved around the space. But that was just mechanical. There was no one at the wheel.
