Page 8 of Tracking Luxe

“I’m a civilized outlaw, Luxe, but you don’t want to test my patience on this, not when I’ve been pissed off for a year. I can be reasonable … to a point, if you do as I say, when I say and not give me any of that lip. This can be painless and we can forget it ever happened.”

“Forget you took me against my will? Ha. Nice try with that, you don’t even know what trouble you’ve caused, mister bearded outlaw. You probably should have killed me for all the hurt that’s going to come your way.”

She was brave for a woman trembling. He suspected not from fear. Leaning in to test his theory, she smelled like summer, and though she didn’t back up, brave little thing, she did tense as he drew his nose up the curve of her cheek. “Trouble is my middle name. Now be a good girl before I forget why we’re here and I shut you up.”

Hands came up between them and Luxe tried to push him back. Grinder didn’t budge. She huffed a breath and tried again, this time her hands flattened on his chest.

“What the fuck, are you made from, steel? Move back, outlaw, I don’t want you this close. You said you wouldn’t hurt me, prove it.” Grinder moved deeper into her space, his arms sliding across the bed, touching both of her hips with his fingertips.

“You aren’t in charge.”

Awareness.

There it was flashing through her vision.

Her felt a sharp stab of guilt that he was making her feel vulnerable but he couldn’t waver, she was a criminal thief he had to remember that, this was no accident, she’d taken from him, keep it in the front part of his brain, the part his dick didn’t control. As sweet and innocent as she looked she was sharp and cunning as a blade, hadn’t she swanned into his life and stole out from under his nose and left just as graceful. But there was something else in her eyes ….Need. She was raking her gaze over his face and he could swear he felt it as if she were running her fingers over his skin.

She turned a scowl on him. “It’s a little man who gets off bullying a woman.”

“Is that what I’m doing, bullying you?”

“You’re not letting me go, what do you call it?”

“Negotiating.”

“Ha. And here I must be having hearing problems. Will you move back?”

Staying on his haunches he gave her a few inches of space, moving his chest from touching her knees, Grinder held her stare. She really was a spectacular woman. In any other circumstance once he’d slaked his need of her he would have been fascinated to hear her thieving stories, to know how she walked up to someone and stole without them realizing, he suspected he would be impressed as fuck.

“How long are you planning to keep me here? You know you took me from an MC gathering,sí? Jamie Steele is-------”

Grinder’s jaw went granite tight, his eyelids closing to nasty slits, he got back into her face, their noses brushing, her short sharp breath coasting over his cheeks he watched the flash of surprise, the way she stared at him seared his skin. “He’s what,bebé?” he held no personal grudge against the man whatsoever, not that his sudden burst backed up that claim, unless another MC crossed over into RS territory he didn’t give any of them another thought and still he could picture himself putting a really bad hurt on that fucking pretty boy for putting the smug look of satisfaction on Luxe’s face as she pushed against his chest once more.

He didn’t like it.

Didn’t want to know she had history… or present … with the guy.

It was irrational, diverting his mind from what he’d set out to do.

But nothing about this situation had him on steady ground, he admitted. Nothing. The moment he knew he was closing in on her it was as if he’d lost all semblance of sanity and he was running on pure adrenaline to catch the woman. He didn’t like to lose, hated it in fact. She stirred him up more than he cared to admit.

There was no time at all between thinking he was going to kiss her to the millisecond he crushed his lips down over hers. He swallowed her gasp, cupping around the back of her head he kissed the ever-loving fuck out of Luxe.

With no participation from Luxe at all, Grinder moved his mouth left then dipped to the right, nipping her lower lip, angered into forcing her to respond even just slightly, to coax her lips into opening for him, she’d once almost swallowed him whole in her ardent rush to kiss him, pushed him against the bar booth and climbed him like a tree, her skinny legs had wrapped around him and she’d gone at his mouth with a hunger he’d never witnessed before, stunned the hell out of him before he let his tongue in on the game and tangled around hers.

He wanted that same heat, he growled against her lips, deepened, pressing harder, licking the seam of her closed lips,kiss me back. She didn’t do anything except sit limply, but when he drew back he saw her eyes were closed and pink stained under her skin, her tongue darted out to lick the very corner, Grinder didn’t even try to contain his groan.

Fuck. Shit. He was increasing his jail time by the second.

CHAPTER THREE

“He wants a kiss and I want to be free. I also want a kiss. Dammit.” – Luxe.

“You were the one that broke into my room several days ago, things were moved subtly, I knew someone had been in here. Nice going, stalker.” Arrogance was that bikers best friend as she watched his eyebrow arch and disappear under his wool cap, other than that there was no flicker of emotion on his face, not as if he’d kissed the hell out of her hours ago and then not spoken a word to her since, just sat brooding over in the chair.

Luxe hadn’t talked either, she’d pulled clean clothes from her rucksack and stormed into the bathroom where she showered for an incessantly long time, expecting him to bark for her to hurry up, it had stayed eerily silent. At one point during the next few hours she presumed he’d left, she pressed her ear to the back of the bathroom door, listening to the stillness, her heart palpable.

Was she disappointed when she’d pulled open the door and saw him there, his gaze coming immediately to her? The bees in her abdomen, she admitted, had nothing to with the negative emotion and all to do with the way he canted his head and stared at her letting his moody eyes sweep slowly down her body like he had the right to look at that way. Was he recounting that weird kiss where she’d been dying to open her mouth and stroke her tongue against his? Her head of steam disappeared, forced down by sheer will, she needed to get out of here, and while she no longer felt fear, she was irritated and faced with a man more stubborn than her grandmother.

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