Page 51 of Fire Meets Fire

“Do you mind me calling you Queenie?” he asks when we’re about halfway down.

His expression shows me it’s been on his mind. Handles that come by honestly are to be proud of, and I always thought I’d hang on to mine. But he’d put it in a different perspective. Helo is my past. Maybe being Queenie would help me leave that baggage behind. But there are limits.

“Only you, Chaz.”

“Fair.”

We take another couple of steps. “Why haven’t you got a road name?”

He snorts. “I have, babe.”

I stop him. “You’re not Chaz?”

“Until I joined the MC, I was Charlie. I preferred that.” A wide grin appears, and he chuckles. “Made a rookie mistake as a prospect when a full member shortened it to Chaz, and I corrected him.” He pauses at my confusion and shrugs. “You’ve met Shitface? Prospects can’t complain, whatever we call them.”

“So it stuck?” I smile.

“Yeah, it stuck. When I got patched in, the same member pushed for me keeping the road name.”

“Charlie.” I try it on for size, not sure whether it suits the man I’ve become so used to calling Chaz.

But I make a mental note to remember it when he rewards me with a wide smile. “Like my name on your lips.”

“You fucked and got shit sorted?” Slugger roars out, letting me know we’ve neared the cabin once more.

Slugger, along with some of the other men, are out smoking by their bikes. Others not partaking in the same habit are stamping their feet or showing other symptoms of being ready to get on the move.

It seems neither of us are the type to kiss and tell—not that there’s anything to say—as neither Chaz nor I deign to answer his question.

“Thank fuck you don’t last long,” their road captain states as he swaggers out of the cabin, pointedly holding his bike key in his hand.

“Shut it, Weasel,” Chaz growls, then approaches Slugger. “You got a plan?”

“Yeah.” Slugger smirks. “While you two have been coming to your fuckin’ senses, we’ve planned how it will all go down. You,” he points a finger at Chaz, then shoots his thumb sideways at me, “and her will play your parts just as we decided.”

“What fucking parts?”

“Now, now, Chaz. You going to give us reason to think you don’t trust your brothers?”

Chaz shoots a suspicious look around the assembled group who refuse to meet his eye or shrug as if they’ve no clue what anyone’s talking about.

“Prez,” Bull states. “We’re gonna go back to the clubhouse and get things in motion.”

“Yeah, like building a bomb for her for a start,” the man who doesn’t seem to have a clue about body odour states, then laughs.

Chaz swings around but before he can get a word out of his mouth, Slugger shouts out, “Mount up. Now.”

Whatever Chaz had been about to say is lost in the roar of motorcycles. Slugger positions himself at the front, then Weasel gives his prez a pointed look and then jerks his head toward his bike.

“Fuck it,” the man with his arm around me growls, then leads me to the bike I’d ridden here on only the day before. I get on behind but before he starts the engine, he turns his head. “We’ll sort this out back at the clubhouse. There’s no fuckin’ way you’re going to be a human bomb.”

Frowning at his back, I wonder if he had all this planned. I’d steeled myself to have a quick fuck, something to try to get him out of my mind. Been there, done that, move on. But the fact that he’d denied me only seems to make me want him more. Now,damn it, instead of accepting the inevitable, I’m working on how to get out of this alive so I can take him up on all that he promised.

A new life.Sure, I wouldn’t be Helo, Night Stalker anymore. But somehow I know Chaz and his club would be able to give me a life worth living for.

Fuck the man.I grin into his back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE