Page 16 of Dark Biker Protector

Abbey snuggled against me on the couch, laying her head against my shoulder as the credits for the movie rolled in front of me. She flashed me a warm grin, and raised her eyebrows, biting her lip.

"So?" she asked. "What did you think?"

"I think...I think you’re going to need to explain it to me," I told her, and she laughed, shaking her head.

"It wasn’t that confusing, was it?" she asked, pulling a face as she sprang to her feet to get us another couple of beers. I didn’t know where she got all this damn energy, but she was always rushing around like her ass was on fire; even still, sometimes a kiss was all it took to bring her back down to earth, and the feel of her sinking into me when I gave her an unexpected kiss was the most delicious thing in the world.

I knew we were very much in the honeymoon phase right now. The phase where everything seemed to make sense, the phase when it all slotted in to place – the phase where every single thing she did was sexy to me, and it took all the strength I could must not to just pull her into the bedroom and fuck her senseless every time I laid eyes on her.

She slid back on to the couch next to me, pressing a beer into my hand, and I took a long sip. I hadn’t been drinking as much since the two of us had started spending all of our time together, and I was sure it was doing me good to lay off the booze for a while. Of course, it meant I wasn’t spending as much time at the Kennels with the rest of the Dogs, but Lee could handle everything while I was gone. I had told him this was important, and that was all I had to say to convince him that I needed some time to clear my head and get my shit together.

"You know, it’s a lot more complicated than I remembered it being," she remarked, frowning. The movie was another one of her picks, a foreign film that had made no sense to me at all. Might have been because the girl sitting next to me was distracting me from the subtitles by the girl sitting next to me, or maybe just because I didn’t exactly have the mind for pretentious film.

"Oh, so even you can’t explain it," I teased her. She laughed, shaking her head, taking a sip of her beer.

"I guess not," she agreed. "I’m going to pick something a little easier next time. It’s way too easy to get distracted when you’re around."

"Mmm, I can get behind that," I replied, sliding a hand to her thigh and giving it a squeeze. I just couldn’t get over how fucking sexy she was – it was everything about her, the way she talked, the way she laughed, the way she came, her arms wrapped around me and her whole body trembling like she was shuddering from some place deep inside of her. I didn’t know exactly what she saw in someone like me, but there was no way in hell I was going to go asking too many questions about it.

She grinned at me and lifted her beer to her lips, her mouth gliding across the top of the glass for a moment. Fuck, was everything about her meant to be this distracting? I felt as though I should be over this kind of flood of attraction at every little thing she did, I wasn’t a teenager anymore, after all, but it felt as though it just got more and more intense every passing day.

Maybe because it was more than attraction. Maybe...maybe because I was starting to develop feelings for her. I was trying not to let my mind go down that path, but it was difficult when I was this into her, when I felt like I couldn’t get enough of her. Cinnamon was curled against my legs, comfortable with my presence, and I knew this place was getting a little too familiar to me. I should have been more careful.

And yet, I didn’t give a damn.

I noticed her picking at a spot on the couch, her lips turned downward, like something was bothering her.

"You okay?" I asked. She pulled a face, waving her hand.

"Ugh, one of those actors in it, he looked a bit like Franco," she remarked. "I know I shouldn’t let it get to me, but I just...I hate being reminded of him, you know?”

She didn’t talk much about her ex. By the sounds of the way he had acted with her, it was likely for the best. She hadn’t told me a whole lot about him, a whole lot about what had gone down in their relationship, and I had to admit, I was curious.

"How long were the two of you together?" I wondered aloud.

"Just under a year," she replied, with a sigh. "I know, I know, I should have gotten out of there way sooner, I just...I think I convinced myself that I could make it work with him, even though I just obviously couldn’t."

"Why do you say that?"

"Oh, God, he was such a mess," she replied, laughing slightly, though it was clear there was nothing actually funny to her about what she was saying here. "I just...I thought that there was a chance I could make things better for him. He was always so nervous, so worried that I was going to go off with someone else, and I...I figured it was just insecurity. That it would get better the longer we were together, and he saw that I wasn’t going to leave with anyone. You know?"

I nodded. I couldn’t help but think back to Anna – to everything she had told me about that bastard Liam before he had attacked her for the last time. How he would change, he just needed time, he just needed a chance, he just needed someone who would believe in him, no matter how hard things got, no matter how tough it might have seemed. That he had potential, and she was the one who could see it – and if she just stuck around long enough, it wouldn’t be long until he started to come into his own, and that would be it. He would be the man she had always wanted him to be.

Of course, it had never happened. The more she had put up with from him, the more he had pushed his luck, made it so that she had no choice but to spend all of her time apologizing for what he was doing and everything he was putting her through. The thought of it, even now, made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. He had played her for a fool the entire time, making her look like an idiot for believing in him, until her trust was so beaten-down she didn’t know if she could even believe a word out of her mouth anymore. It made me so mad, but I knew there was no point in obsessing over those details, not so long after it had all gone down.

"I know what that’s like," I muttered, and she stared at me for a moment.

"You do?" she asked softly, sounding surprised. I realized I had edged far too close to giving something away – I didn’t want to dump all of this on her, not after everything she had been through. She didn’t deserve to deal with all of that mess. I didn’t want her to know the truth of what had happened to my sister, not now, not so soon into all of this. She would have freaked. And she would have known, all at once, exactly why I had chosen to do all of this – why I had chosen to get involved with her like this. Even though my sister had no bearing on the attraction and desire I felt for her, if it hadn’t been for what had happened to Anna, I knew I would never have gotten involved with Abbey’s shit.

"Yeah, I’ve heard about guys who’ve acted that way," I replied, ducking out of the way of the question before she could read too much into it. I could tell from the look on her face that she didn’t believe me – she was smart, incisive, and she didn’t let anything escape her notice. No matter how cool I tried to play it, she always seemed to know what was going on inside my head.

"Yeah, I guess it’s a lot more common than I ever imagined," she agreed, with a sigh. "I just...I don’t know, I thought we were past that now. Guys who acted like that, just getting away with it, being able to do anything they want without any kind of reprimand. I even went to the cops about Franco a few times, but they pretty much told me that unless he had actually laid a hand on me, there was nothing they could do about it. Can you believe that?"

"Oh, I can believe that," I muttered. "The cops don’t give a fuck about any of that shit. As long as they can get away with whatever they want, they don’t care about what’s going on behind closed doors."

"Yeah, so I discovered," she replied, with a grimace. "I was doing some research into it, too – can you believe how many of those cops are involved in that stuff themselves? I mean, that kind of violence..."

"I wish I couldn’t," I admitted. "But that’s why I got involved with the Dogs. I knew at least I could trust people like that to do what they said they were going to do, even if it wasn’t always above-board."

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