Read Noose: SEALs of Road Kill MC :: Rose

Wind.

Noise.

Smells.

The temperature drops as we move through a swale in the winding country road. The heat of his body seeps into mine, providing warmth. My hands tighten around his narrow waist. The smell of WD-40, mint, smoke, and bike wafts from his leather coat. It's his smell.

I don't even know his name.

He could be a murderer.

But my heart says no.

We're way east of Kent, almost to Ravensdale, by the time the bike slows, and we're rolling to a stop in front of a little cabin. The pipes rumble, their heat warming my left leg.

I glance at my sports watch.

I'm late―because I'm on the back of a bike with a man I don't know, in a place I've never been.

I slip off the seat. I'm so cold, my teeth chatter. I was smart enough to put my hair back in a semblance of a bun, but my fingers were shaking so badly that I did a crappy job.

He gets off and turns around as the kickstand sinks into the sparse gravel that blankets the dirt road.

The sun has fallen low and burns red across the trees, coating them like spilt blood. Fingers of the seeping light trail over his skin, drenching it in tangerine edged by scarlet.

I think he'll come for me, peppering me with more questions. Instead, he leans back against the seat of the bike and crosses his feet at the ankles.

He digs inside a little pouch attached to the front of the bike between the handlebars and jerks out a pack of cigarettes, forearm muscles rippling with the movement. He flicks one out the top and clamps his lips around it.

A lighter appears, and the flame is a spot of gold in the dying light surrounding us.

“I don't even know your name,” I say quietly, trying to look everywhere but at him.

Impossible.

Like a magnet, his gaze seizes me again. All of me. To all of him.

“Noose,” he replies, blowing smoke rings at the sky. The twilight closes around the pale ring of smoke, darkening it to nothing as the breeze carries it away.

Noose. That's not a name, but an object.

My disquiet returns. “I guess you know my name.” My voice sounds disgruntled. I cross my arms, which are still warm from the heat of his body, but chilled by the ride.

His chin kicks up. “I know everything about you.”

I retreat a step.

His eyes narrow at my tense body as he takes another drag of his cigarette. “Not gonna hurt you. Thought we figured that part out.”

I blow out the oxygen I've been storing up in a shaky exhale. “I want to believe you.” I do. So much. “I have to text my parents. They have―”

“Charles?” His eyebrow quirks.

My breath stills again. “You scare me,” I admit, cupping my elbows.

He straightens from the seat, flicking the cigarette. He moves toward me like a big prowling cat.

“I scare a lot of people, but I―” Noose comes to stand in front of me. His finger trails down my neck. Each time he finds a mark on my throat, the movement stalls. The rough caress of his skin hesitates at each spot Drake's fingers choked me. “I'm not someone you need to be scared of, Rose.”

The way he says my name… I close my eyes at his touch and the deep rumble of his voice.

Remember Charlie. I step away, and Noose just watches, his hand falling away from me.

I take my cell from my hoodie pocket and quickly text Dad to say that I ran into a friend. My eyes move to Noose's face. Bathed in low red light, he’s sinister.

Swallowing hard, I tap out the message, asking if they can keep Charlie a little longer.

Their answer rises to the top of my cell screen like trapped smoke under glass.

Yes.

Noose is observant. “Your parents cool to watch the kid longer?”

“Yes.”

He holds out his hand, and after a heartbeat's hesitation, I take it.

Noose moves toward the front door of what looks like a little homesteader's cabin. He turns at the last second, and the last piece of daylight catches his eyes just perfectly.

They're gray, a shade so translucent they're opaque ice.

* * *

“What is this?” I ask as he stokes wood in a fireplace bordered by huge mottled river stones of beige and charcoal, with veins of black.

“Us or the place?” Noose asks, his broad back facing me as he expertly prepares the wood to burn.

Both. Instead, I answer, “This place.” That's easier.

“Belongs to the club. Place to crash. Thought we had more shit to discuss.”

He's a tough man. I knew that when we stared across the bank counter at each other the day before yesterday.

Noose stands from the fireplace, and I take him in, from the bright-white T-shirt to the tips of his black thick-tread boots.

He's covered in ink, some of it colorful, some of it pure black against his light skin. His beard is long, square, and well-manicured. It’s slightly red, I think, but the glowing light of the fire and a kerosene lantern lick strange shadows across the battered floor, making everything muted and uncertain. His hair is spun dark gold in this light, but I remember in daylight, it was light brown.

All my checking him out ends at his hands, his thighs, and the breadth of his chest. He's such a large guy, so strong that everything else is just icing on top of the man cake.

He knows it, but he's not cocky, just sure of himself.

I've seen muscular guys before, as well as tall guys and handsome men. Noose is all this but somehow more. There's a vibrating energy to him, a substance. I don't know what it is, but that wonderful intensity responds to mine like a harmony to melody.

I want to run my hands along every ink mark on his body. I've never followed a crazy impulse in my life. But here I am.

Noose smolders under my silent observation.

My insides cook as he stares back at me. “I want to talk.” I lick my lips.

A slow smile turns his face from hard to handsome before I take my next breath.

“But you want to fuck me more,” he says like a statement, no intro or thought as to why we're here. I’m struck by the coincidence of him showing up when Drake was going rape me, though he doesn't know that.

He offers no explanation as to why some biker I met two days ago knows everything about me―and about Charlie.

I shake my head when what I really want to do is launch myself at him like a monkey and sink myself on top of him.

I shut my eyes against the vision I have of us together.

When I open them, Noose is standing in front of me.

I startle. I didn’t hear him move. When I open my mouth to ask the questions that really matter, he takes my lips with his own.

I expect him to ravage me, but it's a brush of lips. His fingers bite into the flesh of my shoulders, cupping them forward as if he'll fold me into him, and I’ll disappear.

* * *

Noose

My dick's gone somewhere from stiff to fucking agony. If my wood had claws, it would be digging its way out of my jeans. Trying to ease my suffering, I shift while Rose stares at me. No dice.

Her eyes are deep moving pools of brown as they travel over my body. Rose's eyes are like a physical touch everywhere they move.

I don't feel like smoking, talking, or other bullshit. I want to be inside her.

That's the only thing I want.

But I let her look.

Finally, her gaze hits my eyes. “I want to talk.”

Nope. Conversation sounds like a shit idea at the moment. I have to touch her, have a taste. Anything. Then we can talk.

I take a chance. “But you want to fuck me more.”

A fine blush spreads across her face, and she shakes her head.

Bullshit. Rose feels this―whatever the fuck it is―just as much as I do. She's resisting it, though.

Rose closes her eyes as if she can't stand looking at me anymore. I stalk to her and grab her shoulders, gentleness gone before it began.

Her eyes pop open, startled.

I brush my lips above hers when what I really want to do is fuck her mouth with my tongue. But I won't force a woman. I don't have to. Still, I can't deny I'm desperate for this woman.

Rose stills, and I deepen the kiss.

I suck and peck at her lips, tasting sweat and sweet flesh. Rose moves against me, finally. Her hands clutch the side of my T-shirt and my boner nudges her in the stomach. I draw her against me, and our heartbeats thump together as I release the hard hold of her shoulders and let one hand glide to the small of her back. She opens her mouth, and my tongue glides in as though it's always belonged there. I loop it inside, our tongues twisting as my other hand goes to her head, tearing the bun apart. All that hair spreads between my fingers. I wrap my hand in its silk and park my fist at her nape.

Rose groans, and I come apart. Tender isn't part of me.

I yank her against me, moving my hips against her slit, splitting it apart with my prick through the thin material of her yoga pants.

“I―”

I eat the word Rose tries to say. Sucking her bottom lip into my mouth, I nip it, growling low in my throat. Why Rose would instantly make me an animal is a question I don't take time to answer.

My cock throbs against her pussy, banging for entry with each pulse of my boiling blood. My hold on her hair tightens, and a little pain noise mixed with pleasure slips between us.

I loosen my grip, working my lips down her neck.

I pull back to study the evidence of another man's fingers on her throat.

To my surprise, I kiss each one.

“No one”―peck, suck, lick―“will ever touch you in violence again.”

Her knees give, and I swing her into my arms. Her eyes sparkle like ebony gems as I carry her to the first surface that presents itself.

I spread Rose on a banquet-length table.

It's hard.

I rip a blanket off the back of a beat-up rocking chair and stuff it underneath her hips.

“I'm not screwing you,” she says in a breathy voice.

I can work with that. For now. Saying nothing, I jerk down her yoga pants.

She plants her knees together like a rubber band snapping into place.

“I won't fuck you until you beg for it, baby.”