Page 2 of Her Feral Biker
She worked in mostly dim lighting, flitting about inside the shop, redecorating or whatever the fuck she did on her own, with only her phone lit up as she rehung stock. Sometimes she sat on the floor, sorting things out.
By the time she left, it was close to midnight. Then she closed up everything and fuckingwalkedhome—halfway across town.
I followed her then, too. On foot, because my bike would be a damn giveaway.
Keeping my distance, my anger at her for not taking more precaution mounting at the fact that she didn’t take better care of herself, I tracked her all the way back to where she shared a house with her parents and her sister and sister’s family. The place was big enough to be a damn hotel on its own.
What the hell was I doing? I’d exceeded my orders hours ago. And now, watching her outside her business to her home? This was beyond anything I’d done before. I jammed my hands into my pockets. The irony that I was the one who usually laughed at my brothers when they were the ones tied themselves up with pussy, or couldn’t see beyond the girl they were fucking, didn’t escape me.
None of that made me want to turn around and leave her alone, not until I saw she was safe inside the white washed prison she lived in. But at her door, even though I waitedbehind a stand of blue spruce, she turned and looked back, right at where I stood. Those blue-green eyes that had watched me earlier flickered in the reflected house lights. For a moment, I thought she smiled.
Like she looked for me.
I stared, but she was already gone.
Some of the anger that had grown while I followed her dissipated. Maybe she was a little more street smart than I thought.
Which meant it was time for me to head back to the Savage Kings and work out what the hell sort of penance I’d earned for myself either for not returning when I should have, like a good dog, or owing Nomad for covering my ass when he wasn’t really a part of the club anyway. Either way, I couldn’t stay here no matter how much I wanted to watch the house and see which window was hers.
And work out why in the hell a girl like her who owned a business still lived in her father’s house, no matter how big it was or how pretty it looked.
No, I had my own shit to deal with. But maybe tomorrow night, I’d pay her a real visit.
CHAPTER TWO
ANNALISE
He followed me home, the leather clad man who watched me from across the street while I worked. He watched me after I shut the shop up, too, and made up my decorations for the next day. And when I unpacked my stock a few days early, putting out unseasonably warm weather clothing for the kids that their parents probably wouldn't want to buy just yet.
But I wanted to see how long he’d stay watching me for. How long he would wait.
If him being there would keep the other monsters who visited me during the night at bay.
Because the man dressed all in leather who stood next to the black motorbike that lacked the showy chrome all the other bikes in town seemed to have in excess, that man, he never moved. Not for all the hours as the sun beat down on him. Not after it set and left him and the bike in the darkness, both of them blending into the shadows all too well like they belonged within their shroud. But I knew he was there.
Watching. And waiting.
The other monsters who visited stayed away wherever he was present.
For once, I closed up my shop and walked home unaccosted. It took everything I had not to peek out my window that night and see how long he waited outside the house, but something told me that he wouldn't stay. Not once I stepped through that door.
And…out again.
Because I walked into the house, avoided everyone because they were asleep, and walked back out before they were awake the next morning.
The life of an overworked avoidance insomniac.
I cracked open the door on the shop to the first flicker of sunrise the next day, my legs aching almost as much as my eyeballs, and found a card wedged into the doorframe.
Missed you last night.
Nothing else. That was it. The entire message.
I stared at the printed—the freakingprinted—card, aware who it was from. My breath stalled, knowing the monsters who loitered in the darkest shadows were only afraid of the things they couldn’t see. I crumpled the card in my hand and kicked the door shut behind me, staring at the carnage of my midnight crafting session the night before.
My unaccosted crafting session, because of my watchman.
Some monsters are scarier than others.
