Page 18 of Ride Hard
“Put your seatbelt on,” he ordered, reaching over me and tugging at the belt. His forearm brushed over my breasts, and I tensed, a rush of something I didn’t want to feel zapping through my nipples and into the dangerzone.
Slapping his arm away, I wrenched the seatbelt across my body and clipped it in place. “Happy?”
“I’m far from fuckin’ happy,” hedrawled.
Glaring at him, I studied the side of his face, searching for a flicker of something I could manipulate, but all I found was hostility. There was annoyance around the corners of his mouth but mainly hostility.Great.
“What are you looking at?” hesnapped.
“So if you work for my father, you’re in his gang of losers,” I declared. “You don’t look like abiker.”
“Looks can be deceiving. Who knew all that bitch was under all that?” He waved his hand at me, circling around andaround.
“This is a reaction to all that.” I made the same motion but ended with giving him the middle-fingersalute.
“How old areyou?”
“Why do you want to know? Guys like you who ride in biker gangs don’t have the word jailbait in your vocabulary. Any hole will do. Am Iright?”
“Underage pussy doesn’t do it forme.”
“Yeah,right.”
He narrowed his eyes and turned back to the road. “You’re twenty-five.”
I snorted and kicked my feet up onto thedash.
“Get your feet down,” he snapped, shoving my boots. “Last thing we need is the cops pulling usover.”
“Where’s your bike, huh? And your leathers? Since when do bikers ferry around cargo in a HondaAccord?”
“I know you’re trying to bait me, sweetheart,” he drawled, not taking his eyes off the road. “It won’t work, so do yourself a favor and shut yourmouth.”
“So?”
“Sowhat?”
“Where’s yourbike?”
He glanced at me from out the corner of his eye but didn’treply.
“Fortitude Motorcycle Club is full of shit. Do you even know what fortitude means?” I wenton.
“Courage in pain and adversity.” He deadpannedme.
“Are you really that brainwashed?” I asked, curling my lip. “You’re spouting off the company motto like it’sreligion.”
“It’s afamily.”
I snorted, then laughed. That was the most epic piece of shit I’d ever heard in my life. A motorcycle club was afamily. What kind of fucked up brotherhood that believed in shit like courage through adversity dealt drugs to addicts and broke up legitimate families through their need to pad their wallets? That wasn’t a family. Not by a longshot.
“Some family,” I declared, wiping a tear from my eye. “You’re all a bunch of hypocriticalbastards.”
“You wouldn’t know,sweetheart.”
“Yeah? I was forced to grow up with that shit. You aren’t a woman, so you would never understand what it’s like to be forced to run with the dickclub.”
He was grinding his teeth, signaling he didn’t agree with a word I wassaying.
