Page 18 of The Devil's Viking

Despite being exhausted from two days of no sleep, Viking just couldn’t seem to go home. After talking to Arrow and Saint over at the tattoo parlour, he headed down to one of the crash rooms at the back of Satan’s and slept for about two hours, then got up and went back to the bar again. He felt like he had to be here – in the same building that the woman was in – but he couldn’t figure outwhyhe had to be close.

It wasn’t that he was worried that she’d escape somehow. Ex-bouncer and -bodyguard Holt was upstairs watching her door right now, so she wouldn’t be able to set one toe out of her room without two-hundred-plus pounds of pure muscle standing between her and the top of the stairs… andthenshe’d have to get through the massive bar to the front door. The tiny little thing didn’t have a prayer, unless she could teleport.

Viking sat at the bar and Cole came over to him, his dark eyes sparkling with their usual teasing good humor.

“The wanderer returns,” Cole said. “You ready for a drink, man?”

“Ummm.” Viking glanced at the clock on his cell phone. “Jesus. Is it really only three o’clock in the goddamn afternoon? From the state of these old bones, it feels like it should be midnight.”

“Ah, yes,” Cole pronounced. “The joys of screwing up your body’s time clock by staying up all night doing bad, criminal shit. I remember it well.Also, as the only other forty-five-plus Road Devils guy running around this joint, I sympathize with the ‘old’ part of ‘old bones’.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Though the twins will be forty-five in six months, won’t they?”

“Yep, and Silver’s only two years behind them. Maybe we should start an Oldies Club. I can print off membership cards with big type.”

“Ha!” Viking huffed out a genuine laugh; Cole always made him feel better. “I’m in.”

“So? Drink?”

“Yeah, what the hell. Whisky please.”

“Coming right up, old man. Anything to eat?”

“Not right now.” Viking tried to sound casual as he formulated his next question. “Does Wolf know anything more about our guest upstairs?”

“Not one damn thing.” Expertly, Cole poured a shot of JD, paused, added a second shot before Viking could protest. “She’s been in the bedroom since Zoe dropped her off there, and she hasn’t so much as poked her head out. Holt’s so bored he’s actuallyreading a bookup there.”

“Fuck off.”

“Truth. At this rate, I think he’ll even finish it before Cain comes and takes over from him in four hours.”

“Huh.” Viking threw his drink back, then nodded when Cole lifted the bottle to pour another one. “He did tell me once that being a bodyguard is a whole lot of standing around doing not much… until the shit hits the fan and then you wish you were bored again.”

“Such is life,” Cole said. “You’re either flat-out busy or flat-out on the sofa.”

“Yep.”

Cole caught the eye of one of the waitresses, and headed over to that side of the bar to take the table order. Viking sipped his second shot – the first one had already kind of gone to his head and he chalked it up to being tired – and allowed his body to relax and his mind to wander.

And bang on cue, it wandered to the woman upstairs again… and all Viking could think about was the heart-breaking, heart-stopping expression on her beautiful face when she’d been standing there in that van in that thin nightgown, vulnerable and exposed.

It had been fear – pure, stark, unadulteratedfear.

Fear of what? Fear of who? Of what she’d left behind? Or of Viking and his brothers? Both?

The thought that this woman was afraid of him rattled him far more than he could even begin to understand. He hated that she felt that way, and as he drank he tried to get to grips why he was so upset about it.

OK, sure, he was fearsome and terrifying at first glance. He knew that good and well: he was six-foot-seven, he was built like an NFL linebacker on steroids, he was heavily-tattooed and had a wild beard – but he was also a former doctor and an ex-combat medic. His whole life had been about helping people, saving them, doing his best for them.

Yes, he’d left the medical profession when he’d joined the MC and started at the tattoo parlour, and he’d done his share of illegal shit for the Road Devils, but the one thing that he’d never,everdone was hurt an innocent woman. He hadn’t hurt an innocentanyone, to be scrupulously correct; it just wasn’t in his nature.

The truth was that everything in him was saying to go and check on her. Maybe she was hurt, maybe she had frostbite on her extremities, maybe she was hiding injuries from a group of strangers who’d stuck her in a room and shut the door. She hadn’t shown any pain so far, but if there was one thing that Viking knew about people, it was that admitting an injury meant admitting weakness or vulnerability… and why would a terrified woman give a bunch of unknown men any ammunition that could possibly be used against her?

His mind made up, he finished his drink and went upstairs. He nodded at Holt.

“Hey, man,” Holt drawled, getting to his feet and setting down his book on the sofa. “Come to give me some company?”

“Nope, sorry. I was just thinking that I should check her over physically. I mean, she might be hurt but God knows none of us would have a clue. She’s not proving to be the chatty type.”

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