Page 14 of The Opposite Effect

I stand frozen at the bus stop in absolute shock. I’m not just surprised by her stubbornness but astounded by how fucking hard her feistiness has made my cock.

I’ve never been so damn hard.

Yeah, not happening, buddy. You’d need a cool million in the bank to ever get the chance of unclamping those legs.

Clara’s smug eyes glower into mine when the bus chugs down the road, leaving a throat-clogging puff of smoke in its wake. She thinks she can take care of herself, but she’s swimming way out of her depth. But fuck it. If she wants to be stupid, so be it. It isn’t my place to play babysitter to a spoiled little rich bitch who would cut off her nose to spite her face. Besides, although the bus company advises their drivers not to engage in any domestic situations, the moral obligation of any man would outweigh corporate propaganda, wouldn’t it?

While cursing under my breath, I charge for my bike and throw my leg over it. The big rumble of my engine scares a group of feral cats out of the dumpster at the side when I kick over themotor. My heart beats double time when my departure from the alley has me narrowly missing a handful of motorists. When they honk their horns and yell obscenities out their windows, I flip the bird before pulling back on my throttle. My excessive speed has my front tire lifting off the pavement and the coolness of a late February wind pelting my chest.

Weaving my bike in and out of the heavy traffic, I locate bus 57 a mile out from Inked. When I pull my bike along the right-hand side of the bus, I scan the seats lining the edge, seeking any signs of Clara. When I fail to locate her, I lower my speed and slip my bike to the other side. A moment of reprieve pummels into me when I spot her sitting two seats behind the male driver.

At least she was smart enough to sit close to the driver.

Ignoring the absurdness of the situation, I continue to follow the bus as it makes its way across Ravenshoe. Even though she acts like she hasn’t noticed my presence, I catch Clara occasionally glancing my way.

I’ll admit, even pissed beyond hell that I’ve rode ten miles in the wrong direction and am wasting precious minutes of my days off tailing a lady who infuriates me more than any woman before her, the hardness of my cock hasn’t lessened a smidge. If anything, her blatant refusal to acknowledge my presence has increased its thickness, not lessened it.

“What’s wrong with you? You want some Grade-A pussy?”I mumble to myself while peering down at the crotch of my jeans.

My attention diverts from reprimanding my cock for its unattainable goals when I notice a group of gangbangers at the back of the bus have locked their sights on Clara. If I had to guess their ages, I’d say late teens, early twenties. I’ve seen them hanging around Inked a few times the past month, but we haven’t officially met.

After doing a hand gesture with two of his pimple-faced friends, the approximately six-foot boy with pasty skin and a red bandana wrapped around his grease-slicked hair moves down the aisle, his gangbanger swagger in full force. His wonky grin enlarges the closer he gets to Clara, as does his grip on his crotch.

Blood roars into my ears from the gleam in his eyes. I slam my hand on the bus’s window, endeavoring to secure his attention. The glass rattles under the impact of my fist, but he doesn’t look my way. My heart rate climbs into dangerous territory when I glance sideways to check my location.

Fuck!

I’m two seconds away from being splattered onto the back of a four-thousand-pound sedan.

Gritting my teeth, I release the throttle and pull back on the brake before veering my bike onto the sidewalk. A delivery driver stacking the morning papers on the curb squeals like a girl when I narrowly miss hitting him. Scraps of newspaper fly into the air, and the scent of fear filters into my nose as I zip past a newspaper stand.

Once the delivery driver gathers his scattered composure, he yells out a string of obscenities. His voice is as shaky as my hands.

I raise my arm into the air in silent apology before continuing with my original endeavor. A rutted grunt escapes my lips when my bike leaves the sidewalk with an almighty thud. I pull back the throttle and catch up with the bus, swerving in and out of the traffic like a mad man.

When I glide up next to the bus, my jaw muscle tenses. The young gangbanger is sitting in the seat behind Clara, twirling a lock of her glossy hair around his index finger.

I bang my fist on the glass once more. My thump is so hard, the glass wobbles under my force. Hearing my commotion, the gangbanger twists his neck to the side and eyes me curiously. Hisostentatious grin amplifies when I stare him straight in the face while pointing to Clara.

After removing his hand from Clara’s hair, he grabs his crotch while mouthing, “She’s fine.”

His cocky grin is wiped straight off his face when I use the same finger I pointed at Clara to make a throat-slitting gesture, wordlessly warning him if he touches another hair on her head, I will ruin him.

He balks as his eyes widen. He nudges his head to Clara as if to ask, “Is she yours, Brax?”

When I nod, he holds his hands out in front of his body like he didn’t mean her any harm before he stumbles back to his original seat.

If I didn’t arrive when I did, I’d hate to think of how far he was planning to take this. The good kids in Ravenshoe are slowly outweighing the bad, but there’s still a bunch of rotten eggs tainting the batch.

The tick impinging my jaw lessens when the fear-faced teen returns to his original spot at the back of the bus. Although I’ve never been an overly violent man, I was born and raised in this area of Ravenshoe. That alone warrants me a fierce enough reputation that I’m not to be messed with.

When the gangbanger takes a seat next to his two male compadres, I swing my eyes back to Clara. For the first time in the past twelve miles, she isn’t facing the front of the bus. Her eyes are locked on me, and all the smugness on her face has vanished, replaced with a look of a woman who is acutely aware of how close her stubbornness had her treading into shark-infested waters.

After issuing me a hesitant smirk, she returns her eyes front and center. Thankfully, the last ten minutes of her brush with the wild side is made without incident. I won’t lie, a conceited grincurls on my lips when the young gangbangers bolt off the bus at the stop following our exchange.

Without a backward glance, they hightail it down the alleyway as quick as their quivering legs can take them. If Clara wasn’t still sitting two seats behind the driver with a terrified gleam in her eyes, I would have had a goodtalkwith them. But since my priorities remain with Clara, thattalkis being held for a later date.

The instant the bus rolls into the good half of Ravenshoe, I could stop following Clara, but for some reason unbeknownst to me, I continue tailing her for the next five miles.

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