Midnight Desire: A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 1 (2 page)

As for me, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I was used to seeing pretty boys all the time in LA. It took me a little by surprise to see a hot-as-hell, grown-ass
man.

Then he was past, and he and the mechanic sat in a far booth. Vera, one of the older waitresses, went over to take their orders. The blond Viking was still cold and aloof, but the brown-haired guy was courteous, if not exactly talkative. Once their orders were in, they hunched over the table and talked in whispers, as though they were planning something momentous.

I kept my eyes on them, especially on Mr. Spartan – mostly because I couldn’t tear them away. The leader (that’s how I thought of the older guy, and that’s how the younger guy treated him) was just too damn hot, and the rest of my existence just too damn boring, to do anything else.

He even caught me checking him out a couple of times. Every single time, I quickly turned away like I was back in 7th grade and the popular boy had caught me staring. I even blushed a little, but I think having my back turned hid that.

I tried to keep my mind on other things, but there weren’t any Midnight Riders club members to spy on, and any other lowlifes in the joint were spectacularly uninteresting.

Especially the one who was currently irritating me the most.

“Hey sugar tits,” he drawled, “gimme some damn coffee.”

As the new girl, I had to work the counter. The counter was usually single men, the tips were crap, and you tended to draw the most charming elements of the human species. This particular Neanderthal was an overweight trucker with greasy hair and a nose redder than Rudolph’s, probably from rotgut whiskey. He smelled like he hadn’t had a shower in weeks. His baseball cap sported the silhouette of one of those mudflap stripper girls next to the words I’D RATHER BE FUCKIN’.

I walked over and grabbed the coffee pot off the burner. “My name’s not Sugar Tits. Anything else?”

“Yeah,” he leered as he chewed with his mouth open. “Where’s a good place to get me some strange?”

For any of you not conversant in Lowlife, he was inquiring where he could hire a female companion by the hour.

“I wouldn’t know,” I said.

I could feel his gaze roving up and down me like something cold and slimy. “I’m thinkin’ I could maybe get it right here.”

I gave him the same look I’d give a dog licking its own butt. “You’d be wrong.”

“Don’t be like that – I know you like what you see,” he said, some of his over-easy eggs dribbling out onto his beard.

I’d like to cold-cock you with this coffee pot,
I wanted to say.
I’d LOVE to see THAT.

But I didn’t make any comment, just finished filling his cup. I was about to move on when he grabbed my wrist in his ham-sized fist.

“I’d show you a good time,” he grinned.

I got perilously close to slamming him upside the head with the pot, just like in my fantasy, but instead I used my Krav Maga training. Krav Maga is a martial art invented for the Israeli army and Mossad (Israel’s equivalent of the CIA), and it was designed to be fast and lethal. The national training center is in LA. Once I decided on a part-time gig as a private investigator, I took classes for two years… just in case.

Never actually used it on the PI job – but it came in handy here.

The problem with trying to get out of the trucker’s grip was that he was as big as an ox, and I was small – especially compared to him. My arm wasn’t going to be able to overcome his gorilla-like grip. But when I put my arm against my body and used my upper torso as leverage, I was able to break against his fingers – which were much weaker. Especially when I dipped down and used the counter as an obstacle against him. His forearm couldn’t go lower than the counter, but
I
could.

I braced my arm against my body, dipped, and spun. Came out of his grasp like a newly caught fish slipping out of a greasy hand.

“No thanks,” I said, and moved past.

I’d apparently bruised his ego.

“You uppity little bitch,” he snarled, and stood up on the other side of the counter. “Think you’re hot shit? You’re ugly as fuck, you stupid – ”

And then he called me the See You Next Tuesday word.

I spun around, about to douse him with 150 degree liquid, job or no job –

But King Leonidas was already there.

I hadn’t seen him walk up, but as soon as I turned around, he was standing behind the trucker.

He didn’t put a hand on the Neanderthal, but his presence was overpowering. Like the Grim Reaper had suddenly decided to make an appearance.

“That’s it, friend. Time to go,” he said.

Damn, that
voice.

Low, rumbling, powerful. Authority personified.

The voice of a king.

Sexy as hell.

The trucker turned in surprise, then scowled in contempt. He
was
a good hundred pounds heavier, if an inch or two shorter. “Get the fuck outta my face, asswipe.”

The entire diner went quiet. I mean,
silent.
A pin drop would have sounded like a crowbar on china.

Over at the booth, the blond mechanic got up from his seat.

Leonidas put up a hand without looking behind him.
Be cool.

The blond guy stood but didn’t move from his spot… though he focused on the trucker like a Secret Service agent watching a jittery meth head at a presidential rally.

“I don’t want any trouble,” I said aloud. My voice was calm, though adrenaline was pumping through my veins.

“No trouble, miss,” the king said, though he didn’t take his eyes off the trucker. “But nobody disrespects a lady like that in my presence.”

Okay, I’m a modern woman, with modern sensibilities. I don’t think anybody’s ever called me a lady unless they were twelve years old or younger. And then it was,
Hey lady, you dropped somethin’!

Half of me – the feminist half – was like,
Don’t call me ‘lady,’ and I can take care of myself.

The other half was like,
Swoon!

The king took no notice. He just stood there, expressionless, staring at the trucker. Without looking, he pulled a fat wad of bills wrapped in a rubber band out of his pocket, stripped off two twenties, and set them on the counter.

“There,” he said, cool as ice. “You’re all paid for. Time to move on.”

“Fuck you, jack,” the trucker spat. “I’ll leave when I wanna fuckin’ leave.”

“You’ll leave now,” the king said, and put one hand on the trucker’s arm.

That did it.

The trucker reared his arm back and swung –

The king sidestepped easily and punched the trucker right in his oversized gut.

Mr. Neanderthal doubled over. From the way his eyes bugged out, it seemed like his eggs over easy were about to come up.

But that wasn’t the end of it.
Oh
no.

The tattooed king grabbed the trucker by his greasy hair, spun him around, and SLAMMED his head down on the counter – once, twice, three times.

BAM, BAM, BAM!

Dude’s baseball cap came off in his plate of eggs.

The king grabbed the hat, wrenched the trucker around, and frog-marched him out of the diner’s front door. As a final send-off, Leonidas kicked the trucker right in the ass and sent him sprawling onto the asphalt parking lot. For good measure, he flicked the eggy baseball cap on top of the trucker’s body.

“Don’t come back,” the king ordered, then turned around and headed inside to raucous applause from everyone inside – except me and the blond Viking.

Leonidas nodded to the diners, accepting their show of approval but tacitly letting them know
Show’s over.
Everybody turned back to their bacon and eggs, their mood much improved.

He walked over to the counter, grabbed a couple of napkins out of the dispenser, and wiped his hands like he’d touched something distasteful. Which he had.

“Thank you,” I said coolly. “But I could have handled it.”

He looked up at me and grinned. The crinkle at the corner of his eyes – the slight smirk in his lips – the twinkle of those baby blues –

Damn if it didn’t make me weak-kneed.

“I’m sure you could have,” he said, not mocking me, just agreeing.

“You overpaid,” I said, sliding his two twenties towards him across the counter.

“Keep it,” he said, still smiling merrily, and turned to the door. By now the stone-faced blond guy had walked up.

“It’s too much,” I called after him.

“Not for having to put up with assholes,” he said, throwing me one last smile over his shoulder –

And a wink.

My heart skipped a beat.

And then he and his right-hand man were gone.

As they walked across the parking lot, the trucker scrabbled away from them across the asphalt like a rat afraid of a wolf.

I watched them go, waaaay more turned on than was appropriate.

“Damn, honey,” sassy 50-year-old Vera said at my elbow. “When life goes handin’ you chocolate, don’t go makin’ lemonade.”

I frowned at her. “What the hell does
that
mean?”

“It means, when Jack Pollari steps up like a white knight, don’t go throwin’ it back in his face.”

“Who the hell’s Jack Pollari?” I asked.

Another waitress named Rose shook her head as she walked past. “Dumb as a thumb.”

I scowled at the comment and looked back at Vera. “What was
that
all about?”

Vera sighed. “The guy who just stepped up for you was Jack Pollari.”

“So?”

Vera leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “So he’s probably the most powerful man in this town.”

I did a double-take at the two figures crossing the street. They were walking towards a parking lot and one-story building filled with mechanic’s bays. All around the parking lot was a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Not coincidentally, the sign out front said “Pollari’s Body Shop.”

“
That
guy?” I scoffed. “
That
guy’s a mechanic.”

Vera’s lowered voice dropped to a whisper. “
That
guy’s the head of the Midnight Riders motorcycle gang, and you’d be wise not to cross him.”

Holy shit.

Jackpot.

Fate – or maybe Ali, lending a helping hand – had put me in
exactly
the right place at the right time.

Now all I had to do was figure out how to use it to my advantage.

As Kade and I walked back from Charlie’s Diner, I couldn’t get that brunette out of my mind.

She’d been a hot little number. Tall, lithe, firm where it was good and soft where it was better. Great ass, better rack. Even her waitress uniform hadn’t been able to hide
that.

Loved her hair. It looked long and thick, but she’d worn it pinned up on top of her head, exposing that gorgeous neck.

And her face… Jesus. Perfect. Beautiful grey eyes, long lashes, pouty lips. Minimal makeup, which is how I like ‘em. I see too many chicks – Seven Veils girls and the bimbos hanging out at the Roadhouse – tarted up like streetwalkers.

Sloane was like that. Wore her makeup like a battle mask.

Thank God I didn’t have to see it anymore. Or at least not often.

Me, give me a natural beauty any day.

Specifically, a natural beauty like that brunette.

But what I liked even more was her sass. She’d been eyeing me on the down-low the entire time I was in the joint, which I liked. But whereas most women would have fallen all over themselves when I laid down the law on the trucker, she was cool and distant.

Thank you. But I could have handled it.

The most interesting thing about her?

I believed she could have.

More than that, I liked that she hadn’t kowtowed to me. No deference at all.

Which led me to believe that she was new in town and hadn’t heard about me yet.

I was sure one of the waitresses was schooling her even now.

Which would make our next meeting even
more
interesting.

I was hoping she wouldn’t change a single bit.

Kade interrupted my thoughts. “You’re not thinking about that chick, are you?”

I grinned at him. “So what if I am?”

Kade just sighed and shook his head. Like he was an old, old man who had seen too much foolishness from youngsters, but knew better than to try to interfere. Which was hilarious, since he was almost ten years younger than me.

Lots of people see Kade from the outside and totally read him wrong. Most think he’s cold as a stone, totally devoid of feeling. The chicks don’t seem to mind too much since he looks like a pretty boy fashion model, and most of ‘em seem to take his apparent lack of interest as a challenge.

What they
don’t
see is what’s buried beneath the surface: unbending loyalty. Razor-sharp smarts. And astounding courage in the face of overwhelming odds – especially when something’s violated his sense of right and wrong.

He’s an old soul. One who made peace with his own mortality a long time ago, and having done that, fears nothing.

Buried even deeper than that, though, is a lava-hot vein of emotion – sleeping at the moment, but liable to turn into a volcano with the right provocation.

Assholes who provoke him live to regret it.

I like doing it just for the hell of it, though.

“You should get yourself an old lady, Kade. Settle down, have a bunch of blond-haired babies just as stoic as you.”

“Hm,” was all he replied before he was back onto business. “What about that other issue?”

‘That other issue’ was the thing we’d been discussing right before the greasy trucker decided to go to 11 on the asshole meter.

Louis Shaw was the Vice President of the Midnight Riders – my second-in-command, though in name only. Kade was my
real
right-hand man. As the Sergeant-At-Arms, I depended on Kade to get his hands dirty in those situations where I couldn’t.

Lou didn’t particularly like that. At 41, he was older than me, and sported a kind of friendly antagonism about being passed over as President. He’d been the Sergeant-At-Arms under the former regime, and was far more inclined towards the old-timers’ views on what constituted acceptable forms of revenue for the club.