Rush - Blue Devils MC Book 2 (Book 1 Included FREE for a short time only!) (30 page)

~ Ella ~

“I’m ready whenever you are,” Ella said. She wanted to embrace this adventure. She’d never even gotten on a motorcycle until she met Lain, and now she was going to be gone on a two-day camping trip on one. The thought seemed ridiculous to her, but at the same time, with Lain by her side, absolutely right.

They walked out of the garage and into the thick of things - people shouting at Lain, asking questions, chaos everywhere. As she watched him get to work in his element, she realized that by all rights, she should be terrified of him. He was huge, and muscular, and could break her in half with no more effort than it took for him to break a tree limb, and he was covered in tats, and he was wearing his leather vest with a Blue Devil mascot on the back, which was terrifying all on its own.

But from the moment they’d made eye contact in the airport, she knew he was one of the good guys. She’d be okay. He’d protect her from the assholes of the world, including Brock. This desire to be protected was surprising to her - she’d grown up in the country in New York state, and had learned how to take care of herself from a young age. She wasn’t someone who wanted to be coddled or protected.

There was something about Lain, though, that made her relax into him. That made her realize that it was okay to trust and rely on someone else.

She loved how close his mother and he seemed to be. When she first laid eyes on his mom, she knew instantly what happened, and she also knew why Lain hadn’t told her. It was a test to see how she’d react to the disfiguring scars on his mother’s face and arm, to the limp, to the weight. His mother hadn’t been the heaviest person Ella had ever seen, but she knew the doctors had to be pestering her about losing some of it, especially with her diabetes.

Ella also knew that she passed Lain’s test. It wasn’t hard to do - his mother was a sweetie and Ella had felt an instant connection with her. But introducing Ella to his mother had taken their relationship to a whole new level, even more of a change than had happened from their lovemaking last night.

Lovemaking? Since when the fuck did you start calling fucking ‘lovemaking’?

But with Lain, it had been so much more than fucking.

Pushing all of it out of her mind, she searched out Lain in the crowd. Although not the tallest man there, his hulking size made him easy to spot. He looked up and caught her eye and she smiled and waved at him. He quirked up a corner of his mouth at her and she knew he was inwardly laughing at her juvenile greeting, as if they hadn’t just spent the last 24 hours together.

She crossed through the crowds to reach Lain and then stopped, panicked. Lain had not said anything about how to treat their relationship in public. More specifically, around the club. Even after his thawing yesterday, she doubted that Brock wanted anyone else talking to her and she sincerely doubted he wanted his VP sleeping with her. This would be considered sleeping with the enemy, no doubt about it.

“Hi,” Brock said in her ear. She gave a small yelp of surprise and did this half jump turn maneuver that ended with her facing him with her hand over her heart, gasping for breath.

Perhaps her 5th grade ballet teacher should have reconsidered her assessment that Ella possessed no athletic talent whatsoever.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you come up,” she said, plastering a smile on her face. Considering the rumbling of the motorcycles, the people talking, and the music blaring, it was surprising she could hear anything at all and hadn’t just gone deaf instead.

Brock’s eyes ran up and down her body and Ella fought down the urge to cover her boobs from his gaze. How the hell a lecherous asshole like him had ended up the president instead of Lain was beyond her. She should ask Lain sometime how the fuck that one happened, since Brock obviously wasn’t going to tell her.

“You look like you’re ready to ride,” he finally said, ending his blatant assessment of her body.

“Lain’s mother lent these chaps to me,” Ella said, attempting to be as polite as possible while still holding him at arm’s length. Last time she’d been around this asshat, she had practically felt him up because she’d been so pissed at Lain. She should at least attempt to be civil today.

“Well, they fit you real fine,” he said, glancing back down at her hips. “You know, if you want to continue that interview we had the other day, I’m sure I could schedule some private time, just you and I.”

Her smile felt as stiff as dried clay, and as brittle. “If I think of more questions to ask, I’ll be sure to ask you.”

With Lain standing by my side
.

The idea of going
anywhere
private with this man was ludicrous.

“Fuck, you could think while you ride bitch on my bike today. I had some other…gal I was going to ask but if you think that it’d be helpful for your article, I’d be happy to oblige.”

Ella’s stomach dropped and twisted in revulsion at the idea of snuggling up against this man for miles on end.

Hell no!

She was saved from having to come up with a suitable reply that didn’t include “fuck” and “you” in it when Lain appeared at her elbow.

“Hey, how you doing over here?” he asked, smiling down at her. There was a faint echo of worry in his eyes that he attempted to cover up with studied cheerfulness.

“Oh, everything’s great,” Ella said smoothly. “Brock here was just offering to answer more questions for me for the article but I was just telling him that I didn’t have any for him at the moment. Thanks again for the offer,” Ella said to Brock, giving him a small smile and then turned away, dismissing him with her body language. She didn’t care if she pissed him off or not - she was done playing games with Brock Whitson.

“So, are we about to ready to roll out?” she asked Lain.

“Yup. You and I are going to ride out right now so you can get set up for your camera shoot on the side of the ro—” the blast of a whistle cut him off, and then whoops and hollers filled the air. She smiled up at him, her body filling with the excitement of the moment, pushing the dread and worry away.

“We better hurry,” he urged her, and they headed back to the garage, where the bike was safely hidden away from the morning heat, and strapped their helmets on. Ella raised the visor of her helmet so he could hear her speak.

“This is going to be fun!” she shouted over the rumble of the motorcycles in the parking lot.

“Yeah,” he grinned back. “I think you’re going to love it.” She nodded and clicked her visor back down into place, swung her leg over behind him, and snuggled against his back.

Oh yeah, this was going to be one hell of a ride.

Chapter 14

~ Ella ~

The Harley slowed down and then coasted to a stop, then shut off completely. Ella slowly opened her eyes and pulled away from Lain. She’d fallen into a trance from the rumbling of the motor and the wind buffeting against her body as they’d flown down the highway. Lain waited patiently for her to get her bearings back and remove her helmet before she swung her leg off from the bike. This was a step too far, literally - she partially collapsed, her legs unsteady beneath her. She felt like she had when she was a child after she’d jumped on the trampoline for hours on end.

“Whoa, you okay?” Lain asked, grabbing her arm before she could complete her inelegant and completely unsexy fall to the ground.

“Yeah,” she said, smiling up at him through a haze. She just felt a little off-kilter. “Are we…are we there yet? Are we at the Coronado National Forest?”

“No, we won’t get there until this evening. We’re eating lunch here at Tombstone.”

For the first time, Ella looked around her, past the bikers and Old Ladies milling around in the parking lot, to the buildings in the distance. “O.K. Corral” and “Boothill Graveyard” signs jumped out at her.

“What??” she squealed, her brain finally putting everything together. “We’re in Tombstone, where there was the shootout at the O.K. Corral?!” She’d known - vaguely - that O.K. Corral was in the southwestern region of the United States, but somehow in her research into Copper Lode before she left New York, she hadn’t realized just how close it was.

“Yup,” Lain said with a laugh. “Remember how I told you that we stop in the afternoon on our rides because of the monsoons? Tombstone is the perfect stopping place - about halfway through our journey, and lots of places to eat and check out while we wait for the rains to hit. Once they’re passed, then we hit the road again.”

Ella grabbed her camera from the saddlebags and turned it on. “This is perfect for the story - Dan wanted lots of pictures of tough, sexy bikers doing sweet, likable things. I don’t think you can get much better than a bunch of hardened bikers playing the tourist.”

They walked towards the tourist portion of Tombstone that had been preserved through the years. Dirt roads, wooden sidewalks, saloons everywhere - it was just like she’d expected, except for the fact that they had to walk to get there. She looked around and didn’t see a vehicle in sight. “Where are all of the cars?” she asked Lain.

“Dirt roads are hard to maintain, and they sure as hell can’t maintain them if they have semis rolling through, or cars on the roads 24/7. So you have to park in a parking lot on the edge of town, and walk in. It also helps maintain the illusion that you’re back in the 1800s.”

“Except the fact that every person here has a cell phone,” Ella laughed.

“Yeah, there is that,” Lain said, smiling down at her.

She began wandering around, snapping pictures and asking questions of bikers - why they did this ride and if they knew Lain’s dad, John Abernathy. She was surprised by how many bikers remembered John and had something nice to say about him - the biker community seemed so tight-knit, much more so than she’d expected.

It seemed like it was a sea of Blue Devil cuts and blue bandanas everywhere she looked, but a lot of other clubs were there too. She was surprised by how many different MCs there were - this was a whole culture she’d only had the most basic of knowledge about two weeks previous, but to these bikers, it was their whole world. It was a bit mind-boggling to think about.

Although Lain seemed to know every biker there, he was careful to keep up with Ella and would often break off conversations partway through so he could keep up with her as she moved on. He didn’t say it, but Ella knew he was protecting her. Ella wondered if his constantly watchful attitude was because he was always on high alert, or if he thought someone in the group was going to cause a problem. She wanted to ask him exactly that, but wasn’t sure if he’d tell her, or just hedge his answers like he always did when she broached a topic he didn’t want to discuss. She filed the question away to ask later, around less strangers.

Pointing at the roiling dark purple clouds heading their way, Lain convinced Ella that right about
now
was a good time to go find something to eat. They needed to get to cover before the monsoon hit. Ella reluctantly agreed, and they went into a restored 1800s saloon, complete with a huge mirror behind the bar, wooden paneling on the walls, a bartender dressed as an old-time saloon bartender, and ragtime music piped out of tiny speakers strategically placed around the bar. She looked around, expecting to find someone banging away at a high-backed piano, but found no one. Apparently the replication efforts only went so far, and didn’t include a salary for a full-time piano player.

They ordered their food at the long, polished bar and then sat down at a small table at the back. As they started into their food, Ella asked him, “Isn’t this rather depressing?”

“Depressing? What do you mean?”

“Well, this is a charity ride for your dad. And here we are, in Tombstone, eating lunch. It just seems…a little too apropos.”

Lain stared at her wide-eyed for a moment, and then bust out laughing. “Oh God, all the times we’ve done this, and it never crossed my mind. I…just don’t even know what to say to that.”

She smiled back at him and bit her lower lip in consternation. “Well, hopefully your father had a good sense of humor!”

“That he did,” Lain said, still chuckling. “I think he’d get a kick outta it.”

Their lunch went quickly - most of the saloon was filled with bikers and many of them drifted past Ella and Lain’s table to greet Lain. Ella couldn’t shake the feeling that they were also sizing her up, trying to figure out what the hell she was doing with Lain. Finally, between bites of food and visits from fellow bikers, Ella leaned forward and whispered, “Be honest, Lain - how many women have you taken on this charity ride with you in the past?”

He grinned, embarrassed, and said, “None. The members from the other clubs don’t realize you’re just here to do an article, so they’re trying to figure out how serious I am about you.”

Like a pin to a balloon, Ella felt herself deflating at his words. She was
just
here to do an article. Nothing more. Lain was pretty blunt about that fact, and she needed to be, too. Especially with herself. She had to stop allowing herself to feel…anything for Lain.

She forced a stilted smile onto her face and let the topic drop.

After the rain and thunder passed, the bikers began to file out of the saloon. It was time to hit the road again. This time, Ella wasn’t nearly as happy to plaster herself against Lain as she had been. There wasn’t a real good way for her to keep her distance from this man who was destined to break her heart into little tiny pieces, and so she miserably attempted to hold on tight, while also letting go.

Fucking bikers and Arizona and lovemaking and sexy tattoos. In that moment, Ella hated it all…almost as much as she was beginning to love Lain.