Page 14 of Jacob

Not with his habit. “Well, until then, I have a backup plan.”

She turned, yanked the door to the bar open, and the whole world stopped spinning.

The heat inhisglacial eyes melted her down to the core. Those blue eyes which had mesmerized her since she was thirteen. The ones which haunted her dreams. Holding her breath, and the door, she felt as though she’d spontaneously combust whilehestared down at her. Unable to move, she wasn’t sure if she blocked Jacob’s way out or he blocked her way in.

“Sparrow!” Kimber called from the bar.

“I gotta—” She broke the stare between them, lowered her eyes, and tried to duck under his arm, and slip along his side. She had to get away from him. She had to go back to work.

The heat coming off his body and the heat of the bar wafted over her. Creedence Clearwater Revival’sI Put a Spell on Youplayed over the mixture of conversations. The bar had gotten significantly busier since she’d gone outside. She hadn’t even been out there that long. That’s the thing about bars, one minute dead, the next minute slammed.

As she moved away, his hand went to her arm and yanked her back. Startled, Sparrow looked up into his profile.

He hadn’t quite turned toward her and thus kept his eyes off her. If he had met her head-on, he’d meet her eye with those ice blues again. She wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have begged him to take her to the stock room if she had to look into his eyes again.

“I’m gonna be around a while. I’d like to talk some more,” he said before letting her go.

She hesitated a moment, pondering responding. If she knew bikers, he didn’t expect one. He may not have ordered her to talk to him again, but he didn’t exactly ask her either. Over her shoulder, she watched him walk out the front door. He didn’t stick around and wait for her to agree to it either.

“Fucking bikers,” she hissed under her breath as she headed to the bar to check in and see where she needed to go first.

Chapter 9

Jacob

Pulling up to the Roughneck Riders’ territory, Jacob shook his head. Cleaning their house didn’t just mean cutting out all the cancerous members in the club. It also meant upgrading the outdated security and repairing all the damage to the building.

The difference between the two clubs started at the gate. To be fair, on the night of a party, Odin’s Fury would have theirs open too, but back in Montana, they had an electronic gate with a keypad. Meaning the gate opened and closed only with the correct code. A padlock locked the gate here in Ohio.

Riding behind a sedan full of women, Jacob had to be sure to mind the cracks in the asphalt. He and Dash swerved a few times to avoid large potholes. He winced when the car in front of them hit a particularly deep divot with a thunk. Perhaps they used it as a way to drum up business for their auto repair shop.

They found the smoothest patch of concrete they could and cut their engines. Off with the helmets and out came the cigarettes. They moved in an unpracticed unison as they pulled out the packs, shook out Marlboros, and then placed the smokes to their own lips. They flicked their lighters, sparked flames, and dipped their heads until their cigarettes were lit.

“How does a club get like this?” Jacob asked as he exhaled, watching the car they’d followed belch out the parade of giggling, scantily clad women.

Dash dismounted his bike and stretched, exhaling the smoke around the cigarette hanging on his lip. “What do you mean ‘get like?’” he asked. “What makes you think it wasn’t always like this? Not everyone has the same values as Odin’s Fury.”

As he pinched the Marlboro between his fingers, Jacob took a deep drag. Yes. He knew that. He knew that bikers were different. On a level. He’d just never seen an entire club be a fucking shit show. “Why is Monty even bothering? This shit is FUBAR.” Fucked up beyond any repair. “Just fucking take it. They wouldn’t know what hit them.”

Dash laughed, shaking his head as two streams of smoke came out of his nose. “Why risk any loss or injury if we can just have them give the gun connection to us?”

“One’s quicker than the other.”

“This impatience is coming from the guy who waited, what? Three years to see a woman?” Dash countered with a chuckle.

“Not the same thing.”

“Yeah, one is business and one is pussy.” Dash straightened and took his smoke from his lips, examining the cherry. “For good deals, both have to be done just the right way, or shit goes sour.”

Jacob shifted his focus away from his club brother to the gaggle going to the door. The women preened, flirted, and showed their IDs to the man working the door. Almost every club put a prospect at the door to act as a bouncer. For Odin’s Fury, his role was to screen out anyone who might be underage—no use taking chances—and to give a heads up for any sort of police activity or any other trouble.

Recalling having the annoying job himself, almost every woman entering the clubhouse either joked that he used the position as an excuse to feel them up—or tried to get him to do just that while he checked for weapons. Most of the women coming to the clubhouse hadn’t an iota of shame for anyone in a vest, full patch or not.

The women hanging around the Roughneck Riders appeared no different. Sighing, he thought of Sparrow and took his final inhale off the butt. “She’s a good deal.” He knew it in his bones she was different. Between how she slithered around the bar, expertly avoiding groping hands to how Bowie spoke about her. She wasn’t a club whore. She was better than that.

“Who?” Dash asked, sounding disinterested. “Lollipop Girl?”

Twisting the cherry off the end of his cigarette, Jacob didn’t dignify the question with a response.

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