Baby For The Biker Bad Boy (Bad Boy MC Romance) (2 page)

There was something intimate about sitting so close to another person. Nola liked the feel of his ribs under her hands, liked the steady pulse of his breaths. She moved her hands over his abdomen, almost unconsciously, the sharp zipper of his jacket biting into her skin as her hold tightened and her hands discovered things she never should have known about this stranger.

It was a long time before she realized that she had never told him where she lived. They were headed in the complete opposite direction of her house. The thing was: she didn’t really care. She had not felt this carefree in a very long time. Suddenly, the pressures of school, the burden of fixing her father’s mistakes, the need to be perfect…it was all gone. Nothing mattered but this moment, this feeling of flight, this sense of freedom.

She hadn’t realized how much she craved something like this until she had it.

They rode for a long time, transecting the city several times before he pointed the bike toward the city limits. He took her to Buffalo Springs Lake east of Lubbock. There was a state parks, recreation areas, and lovely neighborhoods all along the lake, but he managed to find a quiet shoreline that was unoccupied by anything more than a few discarded beer cans and the distant rumble of the highway.

The world seemed overwhelmingly silent without the noise of the bike’s engine. Nola reluctantly released her hold on his waist and reached up to remove the helmet. He offered his help, deftly releasing the complicated straps in half the time she’d already applied to the effort.

She stepped off the bike and shed her backpack, strolling to the water’s edge as he stowed his gear. And then he was behind her, his shadow mingling with hers over the water.

“Should I be worried that you never asked me where I wanted to go?”

She saw his shadow shrug. “Depends if you’re the kind of girl who finds it difficult to trust other people.”

“Do you often pick up innocent college girls and take them off to secluded spots?”

“Only ones who look like they’re having a really bad day.”

Touché.

“I don’t even know your name.”

“I’m Scribe.”

Nola glanced back at him. “Scribe?”

He touched a patch on his jacket. “It’s a nickname.”

“Did they know what it meant when they gave it to you?”

His eyes—which she could see now were a clear, almost pure blue—narrowed a little. “Yeah, I think they did.”

Touchy.

“I’m Nola.” She crouched and ran her fingers through the water, the coolness of it a wonderful contrast to her burning cheeks. “Nola Grant.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Grant.”

She smiled, struck by the impression that he was rarely this polite. It sounded a little unnatural as it fell from his lips. She pressed both hands into the water and then lifted them and ran her fingers through her hair, pushing the moisture into a few clumps here and there. Then she stood and found he had moved even closer to her, his chest like a solid wall inches from her face.

She couldn’t resist the desire to touch the patch he had touched himself a moment before. And then her fingers fell to the next patch—“Sergeant at Arms” it read—and the next and the next.

“You’re part of a gang.”

“A club,” he corrected.

She looked up, those blue eyes turning her bones to melted butter. “What’s the difference?”

“The Bandidos were founded in 1966. We’re an organization with multiple charters all over the state.”

“Oh. So you have a president and all that?”

“Yeah. Just like
Sons of Anarchy
.”

Nola smiled, she couldn’t help herself. It seemed that he saw exactly where her thoughts were going. He’d probably heard it before.

As though to confirm her thoughts, he touched her chin and asked, “Does that turn you on? The idea of being alone with someone like Jax Teller?”

“No,” she shook her head slowly, “I always kind of preferred Bobby Elvis.”

His eyes widened slightly and then he began to laugh. “You are a firecracker, aren’t you?”

Nola shrugged. “I used to be.”

She pulled away and walked along the shore, kicking the toe of her tennis shoe into the soft soil. Her father used to call her a firecracker, back when she was a precocious middle school student who liked to argue Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson over his love for Jack Kerouac and Ernest Hemingway. What had happened to those long, drawn out discussions? What happened to the easiness that once existed between them? Did her father know how much she loved him? Did she call him often enough in those weeks and months before his death?

She wasn’t sure.

She missed him. It was like a physical absence that the most benign things could bring to the surface of her thoughts. Like a cute guy calling her a firecracker…

“You a student at Tech?”

She glanced back at him. “A transfer.”

“From where?”

“BU.”

She could feel his surprise without looking at him. But she looked anyway, finding it hard not to spend long minutes staring into his handsome face. His eyebrows were cocked, his body twisted slightly away from her as though he couldn’t make himself believe her. Or as if the thought there was something wrong with being near her.

“That’s a pretty fancy school.”

“It’s not Harvard or Princeton.”

“No, but it’s right up there with them.”

Nola shrugged. “Yeah, well, it’s in the past now.”

“Why?”

That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? She picked up a pebble and tossed it out over the water, watching it skip two or three times before it sank below the surface.

“I don’t suppose you brought me out here to hear my sob story, did you?”

“I’m not sure why I brought you here.”

That seemed about right. He didn’t know why he brought her here, and she had no idea why she’d come with him.

“Do you have a girlfriend back in that club of yours?”

“No.”

She glanced at him. “I bet you’re a favorite with the girls. You probably never have to sleep alone unless you want to.”

“You’re probably right.”

She chuckled. “You’re so humble too.”

He shrugged. “Why deny the truth.”

“What were you doing at Tech?”

“Maybe I’m a student there too.”

Nola nodded slowly, though that idea had never occurred to her.

He pushed his hands into his pocket and rolled back on his heels. “I was there to pick something up for a friend.”

“Your name,” she asked, gesturing at his jacket, “is it because you like to read? Or does it have something to do with actual scribing?”

Again he rolled back on his heels. Then he came toward her, grabbing her jaw with a vise-like grip. “You ask an awful lot of questions.”

“I’m curious.”

“Yeah, well, curiosity can get a girl in trouble.”

Nola began to say something, but she quickly forgot what it was when he kissed her. There was no gentleness to his kiss. There was urgency, need like nothing she had ever experienced before. She dated good boys, boys who were marriage material. Scribe was none of that.

And it was the most exciting thing she had ever known.

She stepped into him, responding to his kiss like a girl who’d been there a million times before. She was someone else in his arms. She wasn’t the good girl who came home to help her mother survive after her dad’s death. She wasn’t the girl who had a 4.0 GPA at BU. She was a girl who threw caution to the wind and kissed a man who would sooner rip her heart to shreds than marry her and give her the white picket fence that had turned out to be nothing more than a lie for her mother.

Scribe pushed his fingers into her hair and tilted her head upward, clearly a man who knew what he wanted and was determined to get it. She couldn’t imagine how she could open up more to him, but his manipulations allowed him to explore pieces of her she’d never realized existed. She pressed her hand to his chest, loving the pounding of his heart, the form and movement of his impressive pecs. Her other hand slipped around his waist, her fingers aching to touch places she never would have imagined touching in another life.

But that was it, wasn’t it? She knew living the “other” life wouldn’t be the same anymore.

Chapter 3

Nola was slow to get out of bed the next morning. She’d gone to bed with thoughts of Scribe on her mind, the feel of him on her skin. For a brief moment, she had thought her whole world would change there by the lake, but then he silently led her back to the bike and drove her home. Who would have thought that some motorcycle gang member would be the only gentleman—other than her father—she’d ever met?

And now…now it was back to life as normal.

She went down the hall to check on her mother and found her already dressed.

“I have to be at work in twenty minutes.”

Nola nodded. “Did you do well yesterday?”

Her mother smiled softly. “It was nice to be busy.”

“This is going to be good for us.” Maybe if she kept repeating it, she would eventually begin to believe it.

She watched her mother leave before she climbed into the shower and prepared for her own day. Her car was still sitting in the parking lot at Tech, so she’d have to leave a little early to give herself time to take the bus. Not that she was exciting to get to class.

Classes began last week, so Nola was already behind. She wasn’t looking forward to having to approach each of her professors to get the syllabuses they handed out on the first day of class and arrange to make up any assignments already completed by her fellow students. She hated starting anything new on a bad foot—that never would have happened at BU.

She pulled on a fitted tank top and a long peasant’s skirt, with a beaded pair of sandals. Her hair twisted into a braid and she was ready for the day. On the outside, anyway.

Grabbing her bag and checking to make sure her keys were there somewhere, she stepped out of the house as she ticked off a growing to-do list in her mind: she needed to call a mechanic to look at the car, needed to find a grocery store within walking distance of the house, needed to call the landlord to deal with the leak in the kitchen faucet, needed to…and then she realized Scribe was sitting at the curb astride his bike.

“Hey,” he said, that deep growl to his voice causing shivers to run up and down the length of her spine. “I thought you might need a ride this morning.”

“I do.”

She walked toward him, purposely slowing her pace so he wouldn’t guess just how thrilled she was to see him. She wasn’t sure what to do once she reached him. Would he be expecting a kiss? Or would that be presumptuous on her part? But he answered the question for her by sliding his hand over the curve of her jaw and offering her a heart-stopping kiss the moment she was close enough for him to reach her.

She liked a decisive man.

He sat back and reached for the spare helmet that she already thought of it as hers. Nola heard whispers behind her and turned to find a couple of women, middle-aged busybodies, walking not far from them, staring and gesturing in a way that left no question as to the subject of their conversation. Nola caught a couple of other people watching them too, from across the street.

“Ignore them,” Scribe said as he pulled her close to fasten the helmet under her chin.

Looking into those blue eyes—how could she think of anything but the sensual fantasies those eyes and lips had created in her overstressed mind?

The moment he was finished, Nola bunched her skirt up around her thighs and climbed onto the bike behind him. He ran one hand slowly over her bare thigh before he started the motor and they rushed off in a roar that silenced even the loudest voices.

Nola molded her body to Scribe’s, wrapping her arms tight around his waist and pressing her cheek to his shoulder. She closed her eyes, less interested in where they were going as she was in the feel of flying that came with rushing through traffic on the back of his bike. It briefly crossed her mind to wonder what her mother would think if she could see her now. Her old mom—the mom before everything fell apart—would be outraged. She wasn’t sure her new mom could muster that much emotion.

They arrived at the school much too soon. The parking lot was overflowing, people wandering everywhere on a campus that served more than thirty-five thousand students. Nola hesitated in releasing her hold on Scribe. She liked school, she liked the challenge of learning something difficult. But that was before…

It seemed like everything was now divided into before and after—Before Daddy died and After Daddy died.

Scribe twisted around and helped her off with the helmet.

“A friend of mine came and got your car. It should be ready tomorrow.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

He ran his thumb over her chin. “You’re new to town. You don’t know who you can trust yet, and I didn’t want you to get screwed.”

“Thanks.”

“What time will you be done? I’ll pick you up.”

Nola glanced at the buildings spread out around them. She couldn’t remember what day it was, let alone what her schedule was. She really just didn’t want to do this.

“I have this thing,” Scribe said, sliding close to her. “I should be done by two. Is that too early?”

“No. That’s perfect.”

He inclined his head slightly. “I’ll see you then.”

He kissed her again, his touch as new as it had been the first time. Their kiss lingered, neither of them in a hurry to part. But it couldn’t last forever.

Nola slid off the bike. “See you.”

***

Nola found her schedule buried in her backpack. Her first class of the day was Calculus 3. The class was packed. She slid into a seat at the back of the room seconds before the professor came in and began his lecture on the same breath in which he chastised a student in the front row for putting his feet up on a neighboring seat.

“He’s a real ass,” the girl behind Nola whispered.

Nola glanced at her. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “This is my second time taking this class because he failed me over a stupid problem on the final exam. It was ridiculous. Just because he didn’t like the way I worked it out. I had the right answer, but he said my method was flawed.”