RIDING DIRTY (Steel Titans MC Book 4) by Franca Storm (best books for students to read txt) 📗

I couldn’t be staying here with her hating on me for what went down earlier. Or what hadn’t gone down. Again.

I’d been ready to give her the fucking of her life. And then I’d seen that look in her eyes, took in everything her body had been telling me. The same thing I’d noticed last time.

It weren’t gonna be simple.

She weren’t like the others, women wanting to slum it with a big, bad biker, wanting a brief taste of the dark and wild, just a one-shot experience.

Nah, Willa was the dark.

And I fucking loved that. It was a part of me. If I went there with somebody like her, like me, I wasn’t sure if I could stay closed the way I had been for so long now, the way I had to be.

I couldn’t risk that kind of connection. I couldn’t let that vulnerability in, that weakness.

“Jeez,” I groused, shaking my head to myself, as I snatched my dirtied and bloodied clothes off the floor and headed on out of the bathroom.

The second I stepped into the hallway just outside, there she was. It pulled me up short, as I took her in leaning against the opposite wall, her arms folded across her chest, a gym bag at her feet.

Before I could get a word out, she kicked the bag toward me. “The drop off I requested arrived ten minutes ago.”

“Drop off?”

“Clothing and essentials for your stay here.”

She was beyond prepared. She was a fucking goddess standing above all of us dumbass mortal men.

Her gaze dropped to my clothes clutched in my hand. “There’s a hamper in your room. Just toss them in there for now.”

My room? She’d already organized all of that? I’d been gone for thirty-minutes. Damn her, she must’ve engineered all of this even before she’d shown up at Indulge and saved my ass. She’d known she was gonna bring me here and make me stay here, the moment she’d discovered I was going after Nolan tonight.

She was too fucking good, and I couldn’t let her rule me.

She needed some unsettling.

I looked her up and down, making damn sure she knew I was eye-fucking her.

Sure enough, she blushed a little and shifted her weight uneasily. I was being a shit, using her desire for me against her. But I had to do whatever I could, use any means necessary, to even out the balance of power. She was dangerous, I couldn’t have her topping me in any way.

I pushed it further, stepping up closer and asking, “You been waiting on me all this time? Couldn’t pass up a chance to see me wet and naked, yeah?”

Her blush deepened.

As I watched her unease grow, some nasty-ass feeling crept over me, something I weren’t used to.

Guilt.

Sure, I’d felt it before, but I always dragged it down to the darkest depths of my mind and left it buried deep there. It never got enough time to breathe.

This time, though, I couldn’t seem to do it, to shake it off. It just wouldn’t work.

That look on her face, knowing I was causing her shame and some pain… it hurt me right back.

Goddamn it.

I stepped up to her and reached out real gentle, gentler than I was used to being with anybody. I tipped her chin up with my index finger, drawing her eyes to mine. Those sexy blue orbs burned into mine and I swallowed hard as the intensity between us got to me. “Sorry, darlin'. I appreciate you doing this, all right?”

She cracked a smile. “Apology accepted.”

“Yeah? We good here then?”

“About this, yes. About the other thing… not so much.”

I shifted my weight. “Listen—”

She batted my hand away. “I’m nobody’s plaything. I don’t like being left high and dry.” A dirty smirk crept over her lips, as she added, “Especially not dry.”

I should’ve never backed down! Goddamn her! “Don’t gotta worry your pretty head about it, darlin', because it ain’t gonna happen again.”

I saw her flinch. Quickly, though, it turned into a sneer. “You’re afraid.”

“That right?” I asked, more amused than anything else. Nice fucking try, though, going for my ego and thinking it would get under my skin enough to rile me up and make me react in some intense way. I knew that was what she wanted from me. That intensity that I’d brought earlier, when we’d been on the verge of fucking.

Well, it weren’t gonna work.

“You’ve got barriers in place to prevent anybody from getting close to you. You won’t let yourself make a connection, nothing lasting and real, anyway. Not even to your own club brothers. You hold yourself at a distance. It’s a tried and true survival tactic. I know, because I employ it myself.”

“You get it and live it, then why are you coming at me?”

“Because, it’s incredibly arrogant of you to assume that I want that kind of connection with you.” She stepped up close. Her sweet vanilla scent filled the space between us. Damn, that was an alluring smell. I was breathing deeper, trying to savor it, before I could get a grip. I should’ve been pushing her away, putting some distance between us. But as she got right up in my space, I just let her. Her hot breath was at my ear in the next second. “Just like back then, Slade, I just wanted to scratch an itch and you were the tool to accomplish that.”

“Tool?” I snarled.

She pulled back to look me in the eye. “That’s right. Plain and simple. And, just so you know, it’s been a while for me, so it would’ve been absolutely explosive.”

With that, she turned on her heel and sauntered away down the hall.

“Hey! Hold up, woman! Where’s my room at?” I called after her.

“Seeing as though you seem to know everything, you figure it out!” she yelled back.

I growled under my breath, and heard a door slam in the next second, making it clear she was done with me for the night.

Fucking devil woman!

So much for keeping