Retribution: A Motorcycle Club Romance (9 page)

Eva moaned, her hips bucking under
his touch. Will’s cock pushed against his jeans, already painfully erect. Just
as he felt the soft skin of her ass under his fingers, the sound of a door
shutting and shuffling footsteps interrupted from the hallway.

Will yanked his hand back, and Eva
went pale and stepped back until she was practically against the kitchen wall.
Charlie must have been too tired to notice how odd it looked when he came into
the kitchen. “Morning,” he said, heading straight for the coffee pot with a
yawn.

“Morning,” said Will. He looked up at
Eva, saw the heat flush still on her pale cheeks, and he grinned at her
wickedly. He saw her struggling, trying to decide if she wanted to return it or
not, still fighting the clear attraction she had to him.

I know you want me
,
he thought.
I know it for sure, now. I felt the way you moved under my hand.

Eva and Will’s moment ended
unceremoniously as Charlie joined them at the kitchen table. Eva went back to
her book, ignoring Will for as long as it took her to finish her second cup of
joe, then she disappeared into her bedroom. When they were alone, Will admitted
to Charlie that he had been right about Eva not wanting to stay in the house.

“She does not like to feel confined,”
said Charlie with a shake of his head. “Blame it on her ex-husband. He pretty
much kept her trapped like a rat.”

Will raised an eyebrow, a bit of
anger bubbling in his gut. “Is that right?”

“Yeah, that guy was a piece of shit.”

“Well, maybe I can find something
safe for her to do, then.”

“As long as it keeps her out of
harm’s way,” Charlie agreed.

After breakfast, Will waited
patiently for the Murdocks to finish their morning routines. On his second
extended intelligence-gathering mission ever for the MC, Will had learned the
enormous benefit of keeping a compact travel toothbrush nearby, and he used the
one he kept stashed in his saddle bags over the kitchen sink.

Eva met him first, coming out of the
bedroom in a beautiful white dress that fell to her knees, sleeves halfway down
her arms. He couldn’t remember the last time he met a woman who always looked
so put together. She carried
Coriolanus
in her arms; the smile she gave
Will when she saw him had a glint of mischief to it.

“Where is it you think you’re going?”
he said.

“To help open the bar,” said Eva. In
her eyes was a challenge, a dare for him to keep to his word from the night
before and drag her back to the house for her insolence.

Oh, honey, you are definitely
asking for more than that
. “You can help open. But
you’re coming back up here as soon as that neon sign gets turned on.”

“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” she
said, brushing past him and out the front door. He followed her out the door
and through the forest meadow, trailing her like he was hunting a deer, smiling
as he watched her move through the wildflowers like she belonged there.

Opening the bar didn’t consist of
much except getting the daily ledgers cleared and ready, turning over stools,
and making sure the front door was unlocked. At least, that was all Eva did as
Will sat at the bar and watched her scurry around. Charlie came in after a few
minutes and began doing heavier work, something with the keg connections under
the counter and in the back. After an hour or so, when he was finished, Charlie
asked Will if he wouldn’t mind holding things down for a bit while he finished
the oak branches he had been working on the day before.

“I don’t want Eva in here alone,” he
told him quietly in the kitchen.

Will nodded in agreement and patted
him on the back. “I got you. I’m going to try and get her back up to the house,
anyway.”

Charlie took off out the back door
and Will watched him go before turning to watch Eva. She was sitting at a messy
old desk stuffed into an ill-fitting office space to the side of the door,
rustling through paperwork in a focused way.

“All right,” he said to her, leaning
in the door way. “Time to go.”

“See ya,” she said without pausing or
looking up.

Will snorted, folding his arms. “I
mean it’s time for
you
to go back up to the house, out of the way.”

“I’m not in your way
now
,”
said Eva, giving him a face. “You’re in mine.”

Something in her tone gave Will a
little shot of heat, and he decided to tempt her a little. He stepped into the
cramped office space and put one hand on the corner of the desk. “I’m in your
what?”

Eva stopped rummaging through the
papers and froze. Her gaze ran up Will’s body, starting with the bulge that was
more or less at her eye level and begging to be noticed. Will enjoyed the
feeling of her staring at his body until her gaze stopped on his face. “My
way,” she spat out, flustered. “You’re in my way.”

“I can think of better things I can
be in,” he said, taking another step toward her chair.

Red heat flushed over Eva’s face, and
Will saw her lick her lips. For a moment, he thought he had her, but she stood
up from the chair. He didn’t move; she was nearly pressed up against his body.

“Like a muddy ditch, somewhere?” she
offered. “Or how about anywhere but in my face?”

Will smiled down at her wickedly. His
voice came out a whisper. “But I like the idea of being in your face.”

Eva’s lips pursed open in shock and
arousal, her chest heaving with a thick breath. She stared at him for a few
tense moments before she huffed, frustrated, and pushed past him out of the
office.

Will chuckled to himself, enjoying
the feeling of her hand on his chest as she passed, even if it wasn’t meant to
be tender. He followed out toward the kitchen with his hands in his pockets,
and a half-hard dick in his pants.

Before he could tease her again, the
rumble of an engine came from outside before stopping abruptly. A few seconds
later, the door to the bar swung open and a familiar face walked in.

Of all the gin joints in
all of the towns in all of the world
,
Will thought bitterly from the back as he watched Jase walk into the bar. Jase
removed his sunglasses and looked around, an ugly look on his face. Before Jase
could spot him, Will ducked behind the wall to the back room. Next to him, Eva
gave him a quizzical expression.

“Oh, God, is it…” she whispered as
fear washed over her face.

“No, no,” said Will. “It’s something
else.”

“Are we in danger?”

You two aren’t; I’m not
so sure about me.
“No. But listen, I need
you to do exactly as I say.” Will grabbed Eva by both shoulders and looked
straight down into her eyes. The feel of the warm skin of her arms beneath his
hands made his heart race. Her pupils dilated when he touched her. “Go out and
serve him. I need you to act like we don’t know each other. Don’t say a word
about what’s happening or why I’m here. Got it?”

“Why don’t you just go out the back?
You can wait in the house until he leaves.”

“He had to have seen my bike, he
knows I’m here. We just have to go with it.”

Eva nodded, and then licked her lips.
“Okay, sure.”

“Go on out, I have to fake like I’m
coming from the restroom,” said Will. He waited until Eva had Jase’s attention
at the bar before he came walking out from behind the wall, thumbing absently
at the fly on his jeans. He did a decent job coming to a surprised stop when he
looked at Jase, as if he was seeing him there at the bar for the first time.

Jase straightened in his stool, his
expression grim. He spread out his arms and shifted a bit. Will knew the man
well enough to know by his body language, Jase was daring him to run.

A shameful sting pierced his chest;
it was like seeing just how far he had fallen in Jase’s eyes. He didn’t have to
fake the anger rising under his skin as he took a stool next to his MC brother,
although Jase would never guess the source was more from shame than fury.

Eva put a full stein in front of Jase
and wiped the glass with a rag before she turned to Will. “Did you need another
drink?”

Pushing against all his instincts to
look at her face as long as he could, Will only flicked his eyes up at her a
moment as he ordered a beer and a shot of whiskey. Eva nodded and bent to pull
glasses up from under the counter.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding
out,” said Jase. He took a big gulp of beer.

Will took the shot that Eva put in
front of him. “I’m not hiding.”

“Not answering your phone, not being
where anyone but me can find you… what else would you call it?”

“How
did
you find me?” said
Will.

Jase rolled his eyes and shook his
head. “I know you, man. I’m not blind to what’s been going on with you.”

Will took a deep drink of his beer
and looked up at Eva. She sat near the other end of the bar, trying to busy
herself with organizing. Jase probably didn’t notice how she was trying to
listen without being obvious, but Will did. He waited until she looked up and
caught his eye, and gave her a very slight nod toward the back room.

Eva froze for a few seconds, as if
considering whether to follow his unspoken command. But when she finally moved
to follow his direction, she did it with such nervous speed that she knocked
her leg hard into a stack of boxed beer sitting on the floor. A jolting sound
of glass rattling against glass made both he and Jase look over curiously.

Eva went red with embarrassment and
gave them a small smile. She kept her eyes down as she moved past and
disappeared into the back room.

Will took a quick, clean side glance
at Jase. He frowned at Eva as his eyes followed her out, but nothing on his
face said he was suspicious.

Jase cleared his throat. “So, are you
just going to spiral downward until someone kills you, or you kill yourself?”

“Fuck you,” said Will. He could feel
the blackness rising from the back of his mind and realized he had actually
been feeling better the past little while—until this moment. “I don’t need your
self-righteous bullshit, Jase.”

From the moment Will spotted him, he
could see the anger boiling under the surface of Jase’s skin, and it took no
time at all for that kettle to start steaming. “Self-righteous? What part of me
driving around the pass, searching for my asshole of a best friend who can’t
answer his fucking phone… What part of that is for me?” said Jase. “I
should
be home with Maggie, getting my brains fucked out. Instead, I try to help out,
and I get this shit.”

“No one asked you to come looking for
me,” said Will, turning to him with a sour expression. He could feel a tension
rising between them, the opposite of the tension he felt with Eva—this was the rage
he was used to, all the earlier shame had dissipated against it. “Don’t nail
yourself up on the cross and expect me to start wailing for you.”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,”
said Jase. “What the fuck has happened to you, Will? I’ve known you half my
life, and you’ve never fucking talked to me like this. You’ve never bailed on a
community event; hell you’ve never bailed on anything the MC has asked of you.
Now it’s like you’re begging us to take your cut.”

Will finished his beer in a few
chugs, wiping the spill from his scruff. “Yeah, well, maybe it’s fucking time.”

Jase fell silent. When Will looked
over, he saw a hooded darkness over Jase’s eyes, and pain on his face. “You
don’t mean that.”

“Don’t fucking tell me what I mean,”
said Will. Some tiny voice was screaming out from deep in Will’s mind that Jase
was trying to help him, begging him to take the hand being offered. Will
smothered it with a wash of anger. “The club has made your life better. It
fucking ruined mine.”