Original Sin (Dark Saints Motorcycle Club Book 1) (9 page)

As soon as they left, she let into Liam. “What the hell were you thinking?” she hissed, incensed. “Challenging him to tell Darren like that? He might fucking do it, Liam!”

Instead of being angry at her outburst, he only shot her a winning smile that spoke nothing of the frightening expression he'd hosted only moments before. “Relax, Vicky. We’re rival gangs. When is the last time you heard of even the lowest Black Eagles lackey making contact with someone from the Saints?”

At the question, Vicky lost some of her steam, knowing he had a point.

Darren's paranoia and hair-trigger temper were enough to keep most of their competitors away; but, those few organizations bold enough to come close were usually annihilated. Her brother didn't take any chances.

“Well,
you're
going to have to be careful.” Trying to regain some of her sternness, she moved onto a subject nearly as serious as the exposure of their psuedo-relationship. “That guy is fucking out for your blood. You need to start moving with a crew. You never know when you might wake up to a knife in your back.”

“So, you want me to travel with some of the brothers? That means less time alone.”

Christ, those eyes.

This shouldn't be about the time they spend together. She and Liam were bedmates—nothing more. When they got tired of one another, they'd part ways, and it would be infinitely better for both of them not to have Darren breathing down their necks.

Right?
Right?

When Liam looked at her with those devastating green eyes, it seemed that maybe he wanted her for something more than the sex. True, they had excellent times outside the bedroom—almost as much as they did within it, and the man was more entertaining than anyone with a Y chromosome she'd met in her life.

But actual
feelings
?

Vicky had long learned that feelings were dangerous. She'd loved her mother and father, and they'd been taken from her. She'd loved her brother, and now he was almost like a stranger to her. She had crushes on boys growing up, certainly; but, Darren had sent each and every one of them away screaming for mercy.

She was a marked woman.

As long as she carried the same name of the President of the Dark Saints, romance and emotional entanglement were just pretty thing she could read about in sappy books. She was lucky that Liam was willing to put his life on the line simply for her body; but, that was about all that she should reasonably hope for.

Then, why the
hell
did she find herself imagining something more?

“I think the waitress is afraid of us.” Liam's low, amused statement had her glancing at the wait station. Sure enough, a group of girls seemed to be arguing about who was going to attend their table. While a part of her was annoyed, there was another portion that sympathized with them. The poor things were probably scared that coming into contact with her was a direct line into a world of gang violence.

Well, they wouldn't be far off the mark. “Let's get out of here.” Sliding from the booth, Liam tossed a few dollars on the table as a tip before holding a hand out to her with a small smile. “I know a great taco place around the corner with a more intimate atmosphere.”

His joke drew her lips into curving upward.

Taking his hand, she let him help her from the booth, and they left the restaurant to walk down the well-lit street, past the hustle and bustle of the neighborhood around them. As they neared a boulevard famous for its plethora of food trucks, Vicky found herself pausing at the corner, her hand still in Liam's. When he realized she wasn't moving forward, he stopped as well, gazing back at her with a brow arched.

She shouldn't.

She shouldn't break his calm by interrogating him now, but Vicky had to know. If she was going to continue to be with a hunted man, she needed to know why the Eagles were after him. If Darren ever found out that he was a former member of a gang that had stolen Saints’ weaponry, burned their warehouses, and personally taken out more than twenty of their members, he would, quite literally, blow a fuse.

Plus, at the end of that madly jerking electrical connection would be Liam, his body burned to a crisp.

The thought made her queasy, and she swayed slightly on her feet.

“What's wrong?” Liam was at her side, her arm in his strong, gentle grip.

When Vicky gazed up at him, she saw a blinding hope for her future. Did she really want it dashed by delving into his past? There was an overwhelming possibility that he had a vendetta against Darren or the Saints and had joined them as some sort of perverse way to carry out his revenge. Maybe she herself was even part of the plotting.

“The Saints,” she found herself demanding lowly, insistent over the traffic that passed them, “why did you join them? Why do you need protection?”

At her inquiry, Liam's face fell. His green gaze immediately became serious, and he let go of her hand to expel a long breath, running his hands through his hair in distress. “Well, fuck. I should have known this was coming.”

“You should have,” she agreed neutrally, continuing to stare at him in expectation.

When her gray gaze didn't waver, Liam knew that he was stuck. His expression grim, he turned back in the opposite direction, gesturing for her to follow him. “Not here.” His request was simple and short. Without any further explanation, he simply made back for the restaurant's parking lot to retrieve his bike.

When he handed her his spare helmet, she put it on and straddled the hulking behemoth of a machine. Surprisingly, though her brother was the head of the most bad-ass motorcycle club on the West Coast, Vicky had never ridden a bike until Liam.

The thrill couldn't be described in words.

She knew that when they got to wherever they were going, he would tell her something that perhaps she didn't want to know.  However, as she clung to him, the engine of the Harley roaring between her legs as they sped through the streets, she'd freely admit that she'd never known any greater exhilaration. It had been wrong of Darren to rob her of this. Perhaps he wanted to protect her from the drug busts, the guns, and the perversion of his men, but the pure joy of clinging to a hard man and zipping through the streets with the world at your feet? There wasn't one iota of harm in that.

Liam drove them through the busy streets of LA until high rises and apartments turned into suburban neighborhoods. They kept going until the streets grew quiet and you could hear the crashing of the nearby ocean beneath the darkening sky.

Then, before an overgrown path leading through a growth of brush, he stopped.

Parking and locking the bike, he removed his helmet first. Then, to Vicky's surprise, he took off his boots and socks. His lips curving slightly, he held out his hands for her to do the same. It was with no small amount of reluctance that she stepped out of her heels to feel the warm pavement beneath her feet. She could only hope there wasn't glass or tapeworms lurking.

“You know, for the sister of such a violent man, you're squeamish as fuck.” Liam's teasing statement made her scowl. As he moved to the path between the foliage, she followed him with her nose in the air.

The clearance on either side of the sandy trail was perhaps only a few inches, the growth around them curtaining them from the world as they moved through it. In under a minute, they found themselves faced with a length of deserted beach and an amazing view of the sun sinking below the horizon. For a moment, Vicky just stared, giving Liam new opportunity to bait her.

“I didn't bring you here to be romantic, you know.”

She glared at him, rolling her eyes at the mirth in his gaze. However, when he sobered, she did as well. “I brought us here to be sure that we could talk without being overheard. We may have been lucky so far, but I'd be a fool to think that Darren still isn't waiting for the slightest snippet of adverse information about you and a man. I've never been followed here.”

Taking her hand, he led her over a sand dune to walk across sand that had fallen victim to the rising tide. Warm water lapped over their feet as they strolled down the beach. For a moment the beauty of the scene made her forget how dangerous it was for them to be together.

“So, yeah...” Liam started casually enough, the wind tousling his dark hair, “You want to know about me and the Eagles.”

Vicky nodded, hesitant to speak, lest he suddenly decide that he didn't want to be so talkative. “Well, to be honest, there's not that much to tell. I'll spare you the details of my childhood. I was a kid with a drunk dad. I got beat, and it pissed me off.” He shrugged. “Typical sob story. When I got out of the house and went away to school, the Eagles were there. They promised a kind of power I'd never had. They promised carefree times, a brotherhood, and trust; all things I didn't have much experience with. So, as you can imagine, I fucking jumped at the chance. I joined, and I found out the good times they were talking about were just getting high, smashing the shit out of store fronts, and getting kids high. There was a brotherhood, but it relied on the idea that a brother was a brother until shit got to be too much. Then, you could be dumped like a bad meatball sub. Trust...well, trust got me into a fucking mess.”

Staring off into the distance, Liam fell silent for a moment, simply staring at the ebb and flow of the waves beneath the horizon.  “I trusted the wrong guy. A cop. He'd infiltrated the den, and I was completely taken in—maybe because it seemed like he was more willing to be a true brother to me than any of those idiots. I liked him. I dished every secret to him, and when he had enough information, the LAPD raided the Eagles' headquarters and took ten of the guys. Charges like murder, drug trafficking, shit like that. I was immune because I'd been an unwitting participant, but I'm sure you can imagine that Reggie didn't believe that.” Sighing, he kicked at the shallow water at their feet. “You know what's funny? I don't even fucking regret those bastards getting locked up. At least the Saints have the decency not to push drugs on kids or fucking go to town on girls in the middle of bars.”

The Saints did neither of these things, but if Liam thought that they truly lived up to their namesake, he had another thing coming. The Dark Saints were still big and still bad, and every other club in Cali knew it. “So you ran.” Vicky's statement was less accusatory than it was surprised.

Liam scowled. “If you have to call it that, yeah, I did. They wanted to put me away because their dumb asses couldn't see through the ruse. I wasn't the guy who brought the cop in. I just tried to make him feel at home. Pinning that shit on me made less sense than you might imagine. The Saints…the Saints is a new beginning for me. I'm untouchable for the first time in a long time. That's why I couldn't give it up, Vicky.” His lips curved into a wry little smile. “Even though I'm playing with fire dancing around Darren like this.”

Surprisingly, Vicky found herself smiling, as well.

So he'd been a scapegoat.

That was all.

The relief was so intense, her legs actually wobbled slightly beneath her. He hadn't been against Darren or the Saints, and he certainly hadn't told his story with any tell-tale sort of nervousness that might suggest that he was willing to whip the rug from under their little relationship. Vicky had never been as paranoid as her brother, but she had a skeptic streak.

And so far, Liam hadn't triggered it.

So far, he'd only proved himself to be a man unlike any she had ever known and a window into a world long forbidden to her.

The sudden freedom was intoxicating.

Suddenly, turning to the man, Vicky threw her arms around his neck in an uncharacteristic display of affection. Liam seemed just as shocked by the gesture as she was; but, nonetheless, he simply folded his arms around her to hold her close before pressing his lips briefly to the top of her head.

“So, I take it that was the answer you were looking for?”

Pulling back, Vicky gazed up at him in a new light, taking in his tousled brown locks, day old stubble, full mouth, and entrancing green eyes. “Whatever it was,” she breathed, “it was honest. That's all that matters.”