Taming Blaze (9 page)

Heat rose to my cheeks at the thought of what had happened with Blaze, his hands on my body, mouth on my lips, on my breasts
.  The image of him looking down at me, urging me to open my eyes and look at him while he came flashed through my head.  I immediately felt arousal, like a reflex, in the pit of my stomach and radiating through my hips. 

Stop,
I thought. 
He's gone, and it was nothing.  It was a one night stand with someone you don't even know.  Get him out of your head.  It didn't mean anything.

I looked up at Martin, one of my father’s bodyguards, standing with his back against the door.  Unwavering, expressionless Martin.  He was like a guard at the Tower of London or something.  I wondered if he ever laughed.

"Do you ever smile, Martin?"

"Ma'am?"
he asked, looking down at me.

"I mean, does my father pay you
specifically not to smile?"

"I don't know what you mean, ma'am."  The door opened, and Martin took my elbow, guiding me inside.  "Ma'am."  No change in expression.  The door shu
t behind him, and I stood there, gathering all the strength I had left for one final protest.  I didn’t expect it to matter, but it felt stupid to simply acquiesce without letting my father know I was still pissed off about this whole thing.

"Daddy, I told you I'm not going anywhere.  I'm not a fucking prisoner
-"

My father cut me off.  "Dani," he said.  "This is the gentleman who will be accomp
anying you to the safe house."

I spun around to see an older biker
with leathery skin and a face like a horse, standing at my father's desk.  This was the guy I was going with?
No fucking way. 
Behind him, there was movement, and the other guy stood.

"Dani," he said.  I would have recognized the voice anywhere.

I stared at him, suddenly mute, my heart threatening to leap out of my throat.  It was him. 
Blaze.
  He was wearing his jeans and leather cut, looking at me like he had at the hotel.  It was like I'd never left him.  I felt the same heat in my body, the same desire to fling myself at him, to let him rip off my clothes.  It was like every cell in my body was screaming for him to throw me over his shoulder and carry me out of here.  I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry like the Sahara.  Blaze was involved with my father.

No, no, no.
  It's not possible.

It felt like some kind of
betrayal, but I didn’t know Blaze, so it couldn't be considered a betrayal, not really.  There was no betraying someone you didn't know, someone who didn't know you.

M
y father spoke.  "I apologize for my daughter's rudeness.  As I said, she's not entirely happy with this arrangement."

The older biker nodded.  “
Understood.  Blaze will provide protection, keep you at the safe house until everything’s clear.”

"Dani," Blaze said.

Dani, Dani.

I heard him saying my name, his mouth close to my ear,
still felt him inside me.

Look at me, Dani.

I opened my mouth to speak, to say anything, but I felt paralyzed. 
Say something.  You look like an idiot, standing here saying nothing.

"Nice to meet you.  I'm Blaze," he said.

Blaze.
Why was he involved with my father?  I stared at him, my blood pumping in my ears.  It was all I could do not to scream.

"
I'm Dani," I said.  I was inexplicably angry with him.  Did he not know who my father was, what my father did?  I had this strange impulse to protect Blaze.  Everything my father touched was dirty.  Blaze would be contaminated by him, just like everyone else.  Or destroyed, like my mother.  He just didn’t know it yet.

"Nope, that's not going to work."  Blaze pointed at my bags
on the ground in the driveway.

"What do you mean, it's not going to work?" I asked.

"It’s too much stuff.  You’re going to have to pare down."

Now I was pissed.  "What do you mean, pare down?  I don't know how long I'm going to be gone.  No one is telling me anything.
I need some fucking clothes."

Blaze sighed.  "Your sh
-" He started to say "shit," then stopped, looking up at the bodyguard watching us.  "Your stuff has to fit on the bike.  That's too much stuff."

"If we're going somewhere to stay for a while
, why don’t we just take a car?  That way we can take everything," I said, arms folded over my chest.

"No cars."  Blaze shook his head.

I sighed.  I knew I sounded like a petulant child, but I just didn't care.  Besides, I was allowed to be a little petulant, given the circumstances, right?  I couldn't really be faulted for that.  "Whatever.  How much can I take?"

"He
re."  He tossed me a backpack.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."  He said it, his tone all business.  "Plus whatever can fit in the saddlebags."

"Fine."  I was exasperated.  I opened my suitcase in the middle of the driveway, digging through my carefully packed bag, pulling out panties and bras, stuffing them in the backpack.  I was aware of Blaze's eyes on me, and I looked up at him.  "What?  Are you going to just stand there and stare at me?  You want to see what kind of underwear I'm bringing?"  I didn't give a shit if we’d had sex.  He was the one conspiring with my father, and now he was getting on my nerves.

Blaze raised his eyebrows.  "Nope."   He walked off, standing by his bike, looking out onto the front lawn.

Screw him.  And screw my father.

I pulled out what I needed, and tossed the backpack at him when I was done.  As I stuffed my shoes in one of the saddlebags, I looked at him.  "Where are you taking me?"

"You’ll see when we get there."  H
is voice was cold.  “It’s not like you’re going to be wearing a blindfold or anything.”

"How do I know you're not going to chain me to the radiator in some shithole somewhere?”

The corners of his mouth turned up, and he leaned in close to me, breath hot on my ear.  "You should be so lucky."

"Fuck you," I said. 
Blaze was treating this like a joke, and it wasn't funny.  He didn't have the capacity to understand the stupid shit he had gotten into here by aligning with my father.  I'd pegged him as smarter than that.

He drew ba
ck sharply, his face stony.  "Go tell your father goodbye,” he said.

"We're not speaking."

"Go tell him goodbye.  He's standing right there."

I looked at Blaze, my eyes burning with hatred.  How dare he tell me what to do?  He was exactly like my father.  I don't know what I saw in him back at the diner, or at the hotel.  But whatever it was, it was gone now.  The person who stood in front of me now, the one who was complicit with my father, was not the same one who had held me in the
hotel bathtub the other night.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I said.  But I did it anyway, stomping back over to my father.

"It won't be for long," my father said.

"When I get back, I'm not staying here anymore."  It was my last act of defiance before I left.

My father nodded.  "You can go somewhere else."

"Good."  I turned, walking back to Blaze.  I hadn't expected my father to roll over like that when I said I wasn't coming back to him.  I'd expected more of a reaction from him.  It was the truth, though. 
After this, I was done with him and done with his lifestyle.  It had caused me nothing but heartache.  I would rather drop out of school and become a bartender than keep getting involved in this crap.

Blaze handed me a helmet.  "Put it on."  Then the backpack. 

I rode, hands wrapped around him.  My heart skipped as I held him tightly, my body molded to his.  Just like before.

No.  Not just like before.

What wasn't like before was that I was being kidnapped by this man who was in collusion with my father.  So, no it wasn’t the same.  Last time, I had chosen to go with him.  That was not true this time.

I recognized less and less
of the scenery as we wound through back roads out of Los Angeles.  I watched exits, tried to memorize the path we took.  Then I gave up, realizing he was taking me on some circuitous path out of the city, either to keep me from memorizing the route or to throw off a tail.  I suspected it was the latter.  I had driven enough with my father to recognize evasive maneuvers.  Even so, it made me worried.  I didn’t really know anything about this man.  Sure, it was supposed to be protection, but it felt a hell of a lot more like a kidnapping.  Did I really know what he was capable of?  He was one of my father’s henchmen, so it couldn’t be anything good.

We pulled over at a tiny gas station to pee, not the same kind of place where we had eaten in the diner.  This building looked like part of a gho
st town, the shell of a place left from its heyday in the fifties.

“Is this even
open?” I asked.  “It looks abandoned.”

“It’s just old.”  Blaze stood outside the restroom while I used the ancient facilities, waiting for me, silent.  Guarding me, or holding me prisoner
.  Two sides of the same coin.

"So are you going to tell me where we’re going now?" I asked, wiping my hands on my jeans as we walked back to the bike.

"I told you.  We’re going to a safe house.  You can read the road signs.  I’m not keeping the location from you or anything."

"Whose safe house?"

Blaze sighed.  "Let's just go."

The safe house was up near Big Bear, tucked away from all the little camps and nice vacation homes, down a long undeveloped road.  I hadn't seen another house, or a store, in at least twenty minutes.  My heart sank.  When they said safe house, I thought they meant some nondescript
place in the suburbs, somewhere not connected to my father.  Somewhere connected to civilization at least.  Not this.  This was in the middle of nowhere.  It didn't matter whether I knew where we were or what towns we passed through on the way.  There was nothing out here.

I was completely cut off from everything.  There would be no cell reception, and it wasn't like I could jump on his bike and ride away.  I'd been a passenger on motorcycles, but never driven them myself.  I wondered whether Blaze knew that, if that was the reason for no car. 
Shit.
Blaze was less and less my hero, the biker who was kind and gentle with me in the hotel.  No, he was becoming more and more like one of my father's hired thugs. 
Just another asshole.

I watched her
standing in front of the house, taking it all in, and I searched her expression for any sign of disdain.  I was just waiting for a condescending remark, something she would do or say that would make me hate her.  Right now, I wanted to pick her up, throw her over my shoulder, and take her to the bedroom.  Christ, on the bike when we were riding over here, I couldn’t stop thinking about her and her hands wrapped around me.  When we pulled over at the gas station, it was all I could do to stand with my feet planted in the ground outside the door and just wait, to keep myself from going in there and having my way with her. 
That would have been really classy, Blaze, taking her in a dirty gas station bathroom.  That would have been a great way to show her you’re not just some thug.

I c
ould not stop thinking about Dani, not since that night.  I had never before been so distracted by a girl.  And when she walked in the door of Guillermo’s house, the only thing I could think about that I was going to see her again.  But in this scenario?  No matter how much I wanted to throw her on the bed, put my mouth on her pussy, I couldn’t.  Not with Guillermo Arias’ daughter.  He would kill me, and maybe even her.

If I was reluctant to ge
t involved with Guillermo before, strictly from a business perspective, that feeling was a million times stronger now.  He was not some mid-level criminal.  It was hard to get good intel on the guy because he laid low, but what I’d gotten said he was running one of the biggest smuggling operations in the country, if not the continent.  Rumor had it he trafficked in a lot of things, and I suspected that included women and kids.  I just couldn’t get anyone to confirm anything, only that he was ruthless when it came to his enemies.  And I had no interest in being one of his enemies.

The fact that I’d been unable to get much reliable information about him made me more unsettled.  Whispered rumors weren’t a good sign. This was a guy I
wasn't sure about dealing with already, and now I'd gone and bedded his daughter.  If a guy like this found out...I didn’t want to think about what he would do to me or to the club.  Or to her.

Dani was angry with me.  She had every right to be.  Her father had dropped this bomb on her, and here I was, the one taking her here against her will. 
But she had to understand I was just doing my job.  It wasn’t like I had run off with her on my bike the night we screwed and taken her up here to the cabin.  Although I had to admit, the thought of doing that wasn’t completely unappealing.

No, this girl is off limits.
I needed to remember that if I wanted to survive- and if I wanted her to survive.  Her father was dangerous.

Then Dani looked at me with those big eyes, and I melted inside. 
Shit, this was going to be hard.

“This is
the safe house?”  Dani asked.

I nodded.  “It’s my place.” 
Say something snide,
I thought. 
Something about this shitty little cabin.  Something I can hate you for saying.
 
I felt vulnerable bringing her here and showing her the house.  It was personal, and it felt too much like letting her into a part of myself I was sure she didn’t belong.  She was from a different world, one that had no place in it for me.  This cabin was mine, the only place where I could be away from all the other dirty shit in my life.  Letting her intrude on this might be a huge mistake.

“It’s really quiet up he
re,” she said, looking around.

“It’s why I like it.”  I didn’t just like it- I loved it.  There was no one around, not for miles.  I had saved for years to buy my patch of dirt up here in the middle of nowhere.  The nearest neighbor was ten miles away.  Almost all of this was forest.  The road that ran through her
e was a dirt one, and there was no internet, no cable, no cell phone connectivity.  It was away from the tourist crap, and that made it perfect for me.

“Listen to that,” Dani said. 

“What?”  I looked over my shoulder.  I’d been careful about checking for a tail on the way up here.  I thought I’d spotted one when we left Guillermo’s place, but I couldn’t be sure.  The car had disappeared before we got too far, and I was confident we hadn’t been made coming up here.

“There’s nothing,” she said.  “Absolutely nothing.  It’s completely still.  No honking, no traffic.”

“Yeah, just the sounds of birds and the wind rustling through the trees.  It’s why I love it here.”

“So, this is yours?”  Dani ran her hands along the porch railing.  “It’s a real log cabin.”

“It is.  Built it myself.”  In fact, I had spent two years constructing this place, little by little.

“No white picket fence?”  She smiled, for the first time since we’d met again, and I felt my heart melt.  God, this girl was going to break me.

“Not yet.”

Dani touched
the rocking chair on the porch and set it in motion.  I couldn't stop myself from picturing her sitting in it, reading a book or drinking her coffee.

“So you really built all of this yourself?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Built it by hand.”  I was unable to keep the pride out of my voice.  This house was my baby.  At the same time, I was waiting for her to say something snide or condescending about my little cabin.  After all, my cabin wasn’t exactly in the same zip code as her father’s multi-million dollar home.  Hell, it wasn’t on the same fucking continent as what she was used to.  What was I thinking, bringing her here?

“You built this c
ompletely by yourself?”

“Not totally,” I said.  “I had to hire out a couple of things I could
n’t figure out how to do.”   I had sourced as much as I could from the land, taught myself construction along the way.  The few things I hadn’t been able to do, I’d contracted out, but I was careful about it.  I’d paid cash, paid for confidentiality.  You couldn’t be too careful.

“So you’re a biker and a carpenter.” 
Was that a compliment?
  I wasn't sure how to take it.

I shrugged.  “I figure, there are some things in life you should know how to do for yourself.”  I loved my club, but growing up the way I did, you learned real quick that backup plans were a necessity if you wanted to survive.  This place was my backup plan.  If shit went wrong, I could always bail and come here.  I didn’t have to rely on anyone else.

“This isn’t a safe house, is it?” Dani asked.

“No,” I said.  “The club thinks I’m bringing you to one of our places.  So does your father.”

“So no one knows I’m here with you.”

“No.”  The way she said it made me feel like some kind of creep.  “I thought it was safer this way, better that I’m the only one who knows where you are.”

“Great,” she said.  “I don’t know if I feel safe or scared you’re going to chop me up in pieces and bury me in the backyard.”

“I’d never chop you up into pieces.  It’s easier to get rid of a body whole.  There’s a lake nearby.  I’d just dump you in it.”  I grinned.

“Great.”  She turned away, her voice flat, and I felt the tension between us again.  So much for trying to add a little humor to the situation.  All business, that’s what I needed to be.

“Come on.  I’ll show you around.”  I escorted her inside, my eyes never leaving her as she walked around, silently surveying the place.  This was a girl used to the best of everything, and here she was, examining my things, evaluating this part of me I had not shown anyone.  I didn’t want her judging me.

Dani put her palm flat against the stone on the fireplace, and I remembered the way she had put her palm against my chest, the heat from her hand warming me. 
No, get her out of your head. 
I cleared my throat.  “It’s stone from the riverbed,” I said, before she asked.  “There’s a creek that runs back behind the house.”

“It’s beautiful,” she said.  “The whole place is gorgeous, Blaze.”  She looked up at the ceiling, at the beams that ran the length.  It took me forever to figure out how to put those in.  “You’re really talented,” she said, and I felt warmth run through my chest at her words, then a flash of anger at myself for the reaction.  I needed to not give a shit what she thou
ght, even if it was positive.

“Thanks.”  I walked into the kitchen.  I needed a beer.  Dani fol
lowed me, still poking around.

“Did you do all this yourself, too?”  She touched the granite counter
, her eyes wide.  "If you ever decide not to be a criminal, you could totally be a carpenter.”

If I ever decided not to be a criminal.
  There is was, the condescension I was waiting for.  She was exactly what I’d figured her for, a spoiled little princess who was slumming it by screwing the dirty biker.  I pulled out a beer and opened it, consciously not offering her anything.  “Thanks for the career advice.”

Her expression said she knew she’d overstepped her bounds.  “I’m just sa
ying, if you went legitimate.”

“Noted.  Thanks for your opinion.”  I walked down the hall toward the bedr
oom and she trailed behind me.

“So what’s the pla
n here?” she asked.

"We lay low a
nd wait to hear from Mad Dog."

“Who’s Mad Dog?”

“The club president,” I said.  “The other guy with me at your father’s house.”

"Do I even need to ask if we have cell reception or anything?"

"You can ask.  The answer is no.  Everything is cut off."

"Awesome.  So basically I'm stuck here w
ith you and no entertainment."

"Yep."  The way she said it made it
sound like the worst thing in the world.  She was making it easier and easier to dislike her.  I should be grateful for that.  At least there would be no temptation to fuck her again.

“Great.  So is this my bedroom or are you goin
g to suggest sharing the bed?”

It sounded snide
, the way she put it.  It was a huge mistake bringing her here.  Obviously, I wasn’t going to share the bed with her.  I wasn’t a total douchebag.  Just because I’d screwed her back there didn’t mean I thought I was entitled to screw her again.  This was all business now that I knew she was Guillermo’s daughter.  Maybe I wasn’t clear enough about that.  I’d have to make myself clearer.

“There you go, Your Highness,” I said, opening the door to the bedroom.  “And trust me, I have no intention of sharing any bed with you.”  I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind before, but I’d already made it up well before she got here.  I wasn’t about to cross that line again.  I’d be sleeping on the couch.

Dani walked inside, looking around, touching the edge of the bed.  No more than two seconds ago had I resolved to be a hundred percent professional with her, and all it took was her touching the edge of the bed for me to picture myself grabbing her, pulling her jeans down over her ass, and spanking her for all the attitude she was giving me. I definitely needed to get that image out of my head.  There was no sense giving her the satisfaction of seeing me get a hard on for her.

“The bathro
om’s right there.”  I pointed.

Dani's back was
to me.  “Well, anything else?”

I felt my face tighten.  “Nope, not at al
l.”  I closed the door. 
It’s going to be a lot easier to dislike her than I thought.