Chapter 3
Callie
The Protector didn’t say anything as he moved around the room. He pulled two hoodies out of a duffel bag at the foot of the bed and handed me one as he pulled off his vest.
“Put that on. It’s gonna be cold on the bike,” he instructed, most of his words muffled as he pulled the sweatshirt over his head and then threaded his arms back through the vest. When he lifted his arms, his black Metallica t-shirt raised just enough that I could see some sort of tattoo across the bottom of his stomach. I quickly looked away before he could catch me staring.
I put the sweatshirt on and took a deep breath, noticing it smelled like him. His scent was a mixture of leather and surprisingly, Armani cologne. It was almost ironic, those two scents mixed together. Who was this guy?
As soon as I had the sweatshirt on, I stood up and he handed me my purse so I could sling it over my shoulder. I knew that I should check my cell phone for messages, but I just didn’t think I could take any more drama. I decided to wait and see who had called once I was safe at Gram’s; I’d deal with everything then.
I was lost in my head, trying to decide how I was going to explain everything to my parents when the Protector’s voice cut through the silence in the room. Half of his mouth was pulled up in a smile, his eyes were crinkled at the corners when he looked at me, and I just knew I’d been thinking out loud.
My face burned in mortification as they watched me, but I straightened my shoulders and tilted my chin up as if they hadn’t just heard me talking to myself.
“I’m Grease,” he mumbled, lifting his arm out to shake my hand. As soon as I took hold, he gestured with his other to the men in the room. “That’s Dragon by the dresser.”
“Hey,” Dragon called out quietly, busy messing with the phone in his hands.
“His voice isn’t usually like that,” Grease shared, a genuine full-blown smile on his face. “Got strep-throat from some chick with kids.”
“Shut the f*ck up,” Dragon spat back, looking up from his phone.
With a smile in his voice, he introduced the last two in the room. “That’s Tommy Gun by the door. The guy with the Mohawk is my brother Deke.”
The men both lifted their chins at me, watching me from their sides of the room, but didn’t say a word.
He stopped talking as I nodded to the guys around the room, but he never let go of my hand, and I didn’t try to pull away.
“I’m Calliope. Callie,” I replied nervously, wondering if I should have given them a fake name. It’s not like Calliope is a popular name, it wouldn’t be hard to find me if they were looking. Then I realized that Grease would be driving me to my Gram’s house, so it’s not like giving them my real name would’ve mattered anyway.
“What kind of name is Grease?” I asked as he pulled me out of the room, following the other men as they strode down the stairs to the back parking lot. He was pulling me quickly, and my legs weren’t quite up to the pace he was keeping, so I kept stumbling over nonexistent dips in the concrete.
“Only name you’re gonna get,” he answered, pausing for a second so I could catch up with his long strides.
As we made our way out to the bikes, Grease never let go of my hand. I thought that maybe he was afraid I’d take off if he didn’t have a hold on me, but when I glanced up at the expression on his face, I knew differently. I wasn’t sure what happened in the room that I didn’t notice, but the hand-holding was for the men’s benefit, not mine. He was staking his claim.
“Stand right here. Don’t move,” he ordered, placing me next to a big black Harley.
“Um, okay…” I answered, wondering why we weren’t getting on the bike.
He answered the question in my voice by walking six feet away to where the rest of the men were huddled at the far end of the bikes. I couldn’t hear a word they were saying, but the body language of Dragon and Tommy Gun led me to believe that they weren’t happy with whatever Grease was telling them. When my eyes moved to Deke, I noticed he was watching me, completely ignoring the conversation going on around him. When he smiled at me, his entire face changed and I smiled back, wondering why he’d given me such a weird feeling before. He seemed nice enough.
Grease caught our little interaction and slapped Deke on the back of his head, breaking our eye contact. After a few more words, he broke away from the group and walked toward me.
While I stood waiting for him, I finally grasped how very bad this could potentially go for me. I was climbing on the back of a motorcycle with a man I’d never met before. The whole night had turned into some after school special, a warning for kids who disobeyed their parents and drank alcohol. My hands started to shake, so I stuffed them in the front pocket of the hoodie that was hanging down covering my shorts. If there was any question about how I could handle myself against these men, the fact that the sweatshirt I borrowed hung to the middle of my thighs gave a pretty clear answer. If any of them decided that I was easy pickings, they would be correct. I was completely defenseless.
Before I could open my mouth to tell Grease I’d just call my parents, he spoke, and my apprehension started to fade.
“You ever been on a bike before?” he asked, pulling a helmet off the back of the bike and putting it on my head.
“No. My uncle had a motorcycle when I was little, but he died before I was old enough to ride it,” I overshared, watching his face as he scowled at the helmet. Suddenly, he pulled it off my head, causing my hair to fly in all different static-filled directions.
I startled when his hands came up to both sides of my face, but stilled when he gently began pulling my hair back. He brushed it with his fingers, grabbing it in his fist before pulling a hair tie off his wrist. He tied it back and then ran his hands down my neck as I stopped breathing altogether. His eyes weren’t on my face, they were on my throat, and the look in his eyes was one I’d never seen before. I couldn’t decide if I should pull away or not, and before I could make my decision, his hands had made it to the nape of my neck and he was pulling the hood of the sweatshirt over my head.
He acted like he hadn’t been just ogling my neck—he was all business as he plopped the helmet back over my hood-covered head and buckled the strap.
I took the time while he was situating the helmet to explain where my Gram lived and asked if he needed directions, but he seemed to know the area pretty well. I wasn’t sure where he was from, but I wasn’t about to ask him if he lived in San Diego. If he did, I would have to decide whether I wanted to try and see him again, and if he didn’t, I would have to deal with the disappointment. I didn’t want to do either.
“Helmet’s still a little big, but that should help a bit,” he told me with a nod before he started messing with his bike. I just stood there like an idiot, wondering if that look he’d given me had meant something. Was he into me? It was a ridiculous question, I knew he was older than me and completely out of my league, but I couldn’t help but feel like he’d been checking me out.
He climbed on to the bike, settling in, and I just stood there staring. He had long hair. How had I missed that before? It wasn’t super long like the guy on the front of Gram’s romance novels, but it was long enough to put in a hair tie at the back of his head. Normally, I would’ve laughed at a guy with long hair, I mean, really? But he worked it. The fact that he didn’t seem to care how long it was, and the ponytail was more of a completely tangled bun than a slick ponytail… it was hot.
His back was slightly toward me, giving me a good glimpse of his broad shoulders and his jeans pulled tight across his thighs in a way that made my heart speed up. Holy shit. I’d never even noticed a guy’s thighs before. They were just a part of someone’s legs, right? No big deal, nothing particularly special about them. But for some reason, looking at this guy’s thighs made my stomach clench.
I was snapped out of my perusal by the clearing of his throat. When I cut my eyes quickly toward his face, I knew he hadn’t missed the way I’d been staring at him. Half of his mouth was pulled up in a grin and his voice was laced with humor as he spoke.
“Well? Climb on.”