Sexy Bastards Anthology: Bad Boy, Biker, Alpha, Motorcycle Club, Contemporary Romance Collection (76 page)

Chapter 8

Crystal

I pulled Talon quickly down the hallway of my dorm, not looking left or right into the open doors of my friends on the floor. I just hoped no one would see us. I'd put away all of my pictures of him because girls would come into my room just to look at him. Especially the one of him in his Army uniform, holding his sniper rifle, smiling into the camera, the Afghan desert stark and lonely behind him. Sloane especially had loved that picture and the thought of Sloane looking at Talon with lust in her eye made me go bonkers. I'd seen Talon with other girls before in high school, when he barely knew I existed, and I knew he could have any woman he wanted at the club, but this was different. This was my turf. He was here to see me.

My room was the last one on the right. I put my key in the lock and pushed inside, thrilled when the room seemed empty. But then Sloane appeared from behind the room divider, her snotty little nose upturned like normal.

She saw Talon behind me and changed in an instant. A smile I'm sure she thought was sexy crossed her face. All I saw was her scheming bullshit. She lifted her chin. "Hi Crystal, who's this?"

"None of your fucking business, bitch," I said, having had enough of her, of the day, of everything. She hadn't called me Crystal in months. In order to call me by name she would have had to speak to me, and that's something she hadn't done in forever either. Fuck her. "We're just grabbing something and leaving so you don't need to know his name."

Talon squeezed my hand and Sloane looked like I'd punched her right in her lying, lipsticked mouth. The hurt-bunny look disappeared in an instant and I knew she was going to be trouble. How much, I couldn't have imagined. She stepped backwards and disappeared behind the divider.

I let go of Talon's hand and hurried to the closet to grab a bag and some clothes. "We'll try to find a hotel," I muttered to Talon, who was looking around the room, a bewildered expression on his face. "If we can't then we'll go home."

I stopped what I was doing and looked straight at him. "Do you have money for a hotel?" I was broke and I knew Talon had spent every cent he had on his surgery, and then on getting his brothers a place to live. Maybe my dad had gotten him some money, but if not, I didn't want to be a hardship to him.

A strange smile spread over his face, a lot like the one he'd given Officer Turner. It made my heart glad to see it. Like some of the gloom that had surrounded him since he was wounded and then the Army had kicked him out had left him. That made me think of something else. He hadn't limped at all since he'd shown up. Just like when I'd seen him on the TV. I grabbed his arm before he could answer. "Hey, you're not limping. I just realized."

His smile widened, making my heart hurt.

"The last surgery was a complete success. My knee works as well as if it was all my bone in there."

"Does it still hurt?" I whispered, knowing Sloane was listening.

"Sometimes. The scars ache. Therapy hurts every time I go, but I can walk and even run a little without very much pain."

I squeezed his arm and felt my eyes water. I was just so happy for him. I'd cried a thousand tears for him that he never knew about in the almost two years since his injuries. I hated that he'd had to go through it. But he was home now, and mostly in one piece. I could be grateful for that.

"That's so great," I said, then turned quickly and let the tears fall down my face where he wouldn't see them. I shoved a pair of jeans into my backpack and dropped to my knees to dig my riding boots and my leather jacket out of the back corner of the closet. If we were going to ride back to Rosemill on his bike, I would need them.

Then I heard what could only be Sloane deciding she wanted to die.

"I recognize you now! You're the soldier from Crystal's picture." Her voice took on a sickening syrupy quality like she was talking to Bambi in the woods after the hunter shot his mother. "Were you injured?"

Talon didn't say anything and I stayed completely still, not trusting myself to move. Talon cleared his throat like he was uncomfortable and I whirled around. Sloane was standing next to him, her hand caressing his arm, her heavily-lined eyes staring up at him.

It was too much. I launched myself at her like some jealous sixteen-year-old. She had no fucking right and she knew it! I didn't know how much of this was her wanting to mess with me and how much was her genuinely being interested in Talon, but it didn't matter. She'd had this coming since the day she'd borrowed my laptop without asking me and
accidentally
deleted all my pictures and music. That wasn't the worst she'd done to me, but it had been the first.

I caught her around her shoulders, my weight propelling us both to the ground. I pulled my fist back, prepared to slam it into her pretty face but something caught me around the elbow. Something solid and completely unmovable.

"Gidge, what the hell!" Talon shouted at me while hauling me off of Sloane by my waist. I kicked and tried to get away until my heel connected with Talon's knee and he grunted. Hot regret flooded my face and I stilled, my feet a good foot above the carpet.

"Oh my God, I'm sorry, Talon. Are you ok?"

"Fine," he said and relief filled me when I heard his voice. He didn't sound like he was lying.

Sloane scrambled to her feet and backed away from us. "Crazy cunt," she said under her breath. From the way Talon was holding me up, I could see over the room divider. She went to her desk, grabbed her purse and her phone, and stomped to the door. "I'll be glad when I get my new room," she spit at me. "You were the worst roommate in history and you're going to be a shitty fucking doctor."

"Back at you, Princess," I sneered. She pushed out the door and slammed it behind her, cutting off the rest of what I was going to say. Something biting about her boyfriend and skid marks in her underwear. I didn't have it all worked out so it was probably better that she was gone.

Talon put me down on the floor. "What was that about?"

"Sorry," I said, feeling ashamed. She really knew how to push my buttons but still, I should have more control than that. Doctors didn't physically attack people who pissed them off. "She's really hard to get along with. Thanks for stopping me though, I didn't want to end up back at the police station."

Talon nodded, eyeing me like he'd never seen me before. "Now I see why you petitioned for a new roommate next semester."

I smiled, pleased. "You read my letters!"

"I did." A look crossed his face. Guilt? He'd written me back sometimes when he'd been deployed and once from the Army hospital, but I hadn't gotten anything while he was in Mexico. I didn't mind. I knew he didn't like writing letters.

I turned back to the closet and kept shoving things in my bag.

I heard Talon moving things around on my desk behind me. "Think she's coming back tonight?"

"Nah, she usually sleeps at her boyfriend's place."

I closed my bag and turned around, just as Talon dropped into my desk chair. "Staying here might be easiest, then, if you feel comfortable. I can sleep on the floor."

He gestured to the patch of carpet next to my tiny bed and my heart sped up again. No way was I letting him sleep on the floor. But not having to ride home now on the back of his bike sounded great. My stomach woke up and rumbled loud enough that he laughed.

"We can get some dinner too. Delivery."

He was going to stay with me tonight? That sounded heavenly, even if it did scare the crap out of me.

Chapter 9

Talon

I sat on the floor next to Crystal's bed chewing my New York Style pizza slice and trying not to feel like a dirty fucking traitor. Crystal deserved to know that her brother was missing. I would tell her, the second she took her final. It had been Whip's place to tell her, but he'd chickened out. I wouldn't.

My thoughts drifted and I let them. Now that Crystal was safe, I could turn my thoughts back to what the fuck could possibly be going on with Whip. I knew I hadn't heard all the stories about the club over the years, but the ones I had heard told me they'd been into some outlaw shit for a long time. Whip had enemies for sure, or at least he used to. But I didn't know who any of them were. I would have to have a talk with Whitey maybe. Whitey had been there from the beginning. He had founded the club with Whip and four other guys, and he would be the best one to ask since Whip wouldn't tell me shit.

I worked on another piece of pizza and followed each thread of my thoughts, making silent mental checklists of what I could do tomorrow to figure this thing out. If Whip wanted to bury himself that was fine, but his past and silence might have already buried Jaze. There was no way I was letting it bury Crystal too. I would get proactive as soon as we got back to the clubhouse. All I had done so far was contact Knox and ask him to look into a few things, and ask around about Jaze to his friends.

  I glanced at Crystal, sitting at her desk, looking over a text book. She was rubbing her right shoulder.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

She shrugged and stretched her neck. "I don't know. It's sore. Tight all of a sudden."

I tossed my last bite into my mouth and stood up, then approached her, my eyes checking her exposed skin for bruises or redness. "Did he hit you here?" I asked, touching my fingers to her shoulder and applying a bit of pressure where she'd been rubbing.

Crystal stiffened under my hands and I almost pulled away, but then she relaxed. "Yeah, he full-on tackled me on that side. Pinned my arm against my body and propelled me into the trees."

Fucker. If I ever found him I'd fucking kill him. I'd killed a few men on government orders, and it wouldn't bother me a bit to kill one more on my orders. Some people didn't deserve to live, and I knew how to cover my tracks.

"What did he look like?"

She shrugged. "I never saw his face. Big dude. Short, brown hair. Black shirt. Black pants."

Sounded like half of the men in California.
I palpated the muscles in Crystal's neck, then up and down her arm, then checked her back. During my own rehabilitation exercises and therapy for my shrapnel wounds, I'd learned more than I ever wanted to know about what a tight muscle group felt like and how to fix it. My fingers crept over her shoulder, following a rope of tissue down the front of her body, onto her chest. My eyes fell down the front of her shirt, where the tops of her small but perfect breasts were visible. My dick hardened in my jeans at once, making its wishes known. Fuck.

I pulled my fingers back up to her shoulder. I could work on the muscle from there. I pressed into it, squeezing and releasing, ignoring my dick. It had no idea what complexities were, what loyalty was, what forbidden meant. It had always been partial to Crystal, even when she'd only been fourteen, a whip-thin girl, all legs and hair and big brown eyes. When her breasts had come in, I couldn't even look at my best friend's little sister if I wanted to make it through the day without a raging hard on.

Crystal leaned her head to the left and sighed, then moaned out loud. "Feels good."

My defector dick swelled until I could feel my fucking heartbeat in it. It wanted to make her feel a hell of a lot better than just what a shoulder rub could do. I swallowed and willed it to calm down.
She's off-fucking-limits.

I worked the muscle until I could feel a bit of give and then I backed up. My dick wasn't softening and I knew it wouldn't until I stopped touching her. Got my mind on something else. I turned towards the door, angling my body away from her. "Hey, is there something I can block that door with?"

Crystal stood up. "Yeah, I've got the perfect thing, actually." She went to the closet and rummaged through a few drawers, opening and searching each one in turn. I kept my eyes away from Crystal until I didn't feel like I could punch holes in the wall with my hard-on.

I took off my cut and draped it over Crystal's desk chair, then shrugged out of my holster, draping it over the chair also.

"Here!" Crystal stood and handed me something. A small wedge that looked like a doorstop with a metal flange on the top. "Press that down," she said, nodding her head at the metal piece.

I did and a piercing alarm filled the room making me let go immediately.

Crystal put a hand on her ear and winced. "Still works," she said.

"Perfect." I walked to the door and shoved the wedge as close as I could to the space under the door without triggering the alarm. It would keep the door from opening and alert us if anyone tried to come in.

"It's Sloane's," Crystal said from behind me. "She transferred here from Mills. Apparently they have a security issue there and—"

I straightened and turned around as her words cut off.

"What the hell is this?" she asked, pointing to her chair.

"You know what it is."

"Whose is it?"

"Your dad's."

She dropped both hands to her hips and cocked her head to the side. "Great, so you brought an illegal handgun to my dorm room? What if you got pulled over on the way here, huh? How were you planning on explaining the lack of a serial number on the gun? I swear, you and my brother are determined to land in jail. I don't understand why! You're too smart to follow in my father's footsteps."

"I wasn't pulled over." I shot her a look that said
enough already
, but Crystal had never been one to listen to anyone. She opened her mouth, ready for another blast at me, but I cut her off, curling my hands into my pockets first to try to keep my energy down. "Look Gidge, I don't think you understand what is going on here. That guy today didn't want to tickle you, or ask you about your recipe for Stanford's prize-winning split pea soup. We don't know exactly what he wanted, but there's a chance that if he had his way, you woulda ended up dead. So why don't you shut your mouth and give it a rest, ok? He's not playing around, so neither am I."

Crystal blinked. I saw hurt creep into her eyes and I bit back my regret for talking to her like that. She needed to hear it. The information I was withholding from her about her brother burned me like a welder's torch to the soles of my feet but I didn't spill it. Her future depended on her grades, and I would not be the one to fuck up her future.

You probably killed her brother. You don't think that will fuck up her future?

I shook my head and turned around, putting a hand on the door behind me, cursing Whip for not telling me shit, for choosing me to go with him that night, for ever fucking coming into my life.

A soft hand touched my back. "Hey, I'm sorry, you're right," Crystal said, her touch dangerously close to igniting me again. My cock had no civility when it came to her.

I stepped away. "It's fine. Don't worry about it." I went back to the pizza box, just to have something to do that didn't involve looking at her. I pulled out a slice and sat in her chair. She came close to me, putting me on high alert, but all she did was grab her textbook and take it to her bed. She lay down and propped the book up so she could read it.

I chewed my pizza and tried not to think about her, about Jaze, about anything.

The next time I looked back at her, her eyes were closing and her book was drooping dangerously close to her nose. I stood and took the book from her. "Hey, you got an extra pillow?"

She shook her head sleepily and patted the spot next to her. "This is my only one."

"How about a blanket?"

"No, sorry," she said, looking suddenly like she was exhausted. Who could blame her? It had been a hell of a day.

She flipped her blanket up and patted the spot next to her again, her voice heavy. "Share mine."

I eyed her in her tiny bed. No way we would even fit in it together without touching. A lot. I would never be able to sleep with her that close to me.

"I'll find something," I said, walking to her closet.

"You can't sleep on the floor, Talon. I won't let you," she called softly.

"Watch me."

I heard her move behind me and turned around. She was on the floor in the spot I had picked out for me, curling her arms under her head.

"Crystal, no."

"Yes. If you sleep on the floor, I sleep on the floor."

"Stubborn fucking woman," I muttered and walked back over to her. "Fine, get in the bed."

She smiled like I had paid her a compliment, her eyes mostly closed. I could see the exhaustion settling on her.

A moment later, I was in bed with Crystal. She turned on her side and scooched all the way over to the wall to give me room. I perched on the far edge of her bed, trying not to touch her. My dick still knew she was there though.

It was gonna be a long night.

***

Crystal

Talon, in my bed. It had been my steady fantasy for the last seven years, long before I ever had any idea what I would do with him if I got him in there.

Fatigue weighed me down, confusing my thoughts. Everything was crashing on me at once and I just needed sleep. But I
wanted
to stay awake to smell his masculine scent, maybe ask him to rub my shoulder again, enjoy his proximity. What I wanted to do even more was roll over to face him, then beg him to tear my clothes off and make love to me.

Yeah right
.
He wouldn't make love to you, he would fuck you,
a small part of me chided, the part that knew Talon well, the part that had seen him melt women with just a glance, always wishing it was me he was looking at.

A good fuck would be even better
.

But I didn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to say a word, move a muscle. Because the worst thing that could happen to me was definitely not getting fucked instead of made love to. It was being told no, nothing will ever happen between us, you're nothing but a sister to me.

That would kill me.

I burrowed deeper into my covers. Best to forget about it for now. I was so exhausted I couldn't do anything even if I wanted to. My body angled backwards on its own, seeking out comfort, touch. If all I got was brotherly concern I would take it. It would rip my heart in two, but it would be better than nothing.

As I felt myself floating downwards into sleep I snuggled into him and dreamed that I felt his body respond to me.

In my dream, at least, he wanted me.