Black Dogs Motorcycle Club: Full Series Box Set (32 page)

Eva moaned, her hips
bucking under his touch. Will’s cock pushed against his jeans, already
painfully erect. Just as he felt the soft skin of her ass under his fingers,
the sound of a door shutting and shuffling footsteps interrupted from the
hallway.

Will yanked his hand back,
and Eva went pale and stepped back until she was practically against the
kitchen wall. Charlie must have been too tired to notice how odd it looked when
he came into the kitchen. “Morning,” he said, heading straight for the coffee
pot with a yawn.

“Morning,” said Will. He
looked up at Eva, saw the heat flush still on her pale cheeks, and he grinned
at her wickedly. He saw her struggling, trying to decide if she wanted to
return it or not, still fighting the clear attraction she had to him.

I know you want me
, he thought.
I know it
for sure, now. I felt the way you moved under my hand.

Eva and Will’s moment
ended unceremoniously as Charlie joined them at the kitchen table. Eva went
back to her book, ignoring Will for as long as it took her to finish her second
cup of joe, then she disappeared into her bedroom. When they were alone, Will
admitted to Charlie that he had been right about Eva not wanting to stay in the
house.

“She does not like to feel
confined,” said Charlie with a shake of his head. “Blame it on her ex-husband.
He pretty much kept her trapped like a rat.”

Will raised an eyebrow, a
bit of anger bubbling in his gut. “Is that right?”

“Yeah, that guy was a
piece of shit.”

“Well, maybe I can find
something safe for her to do, then.”

“As long as it keeps her
out of harm’s way,” Charlie agreed.

After breakfast, Will
waited patiently for the Murdocks to finish their morning routines. On his
second extended intelligence-gathering mission ever for the MC, Will had
learned the enormous benefit of keeping a compact travel toothbrush nearby, and
he used the one he kept stashed in his saddle bags over the kitchen sink.

Eva met him first, coming
out of the bedroom in a beautiful white dress that fell to her knees, sleeves
halfway down her arms. He couldn’t remember the last time he met a woman who
always looked so put together. She carried
Coriolanus
in her arms; the
smile she gave Will when she saw him had a glint of mischief to it.

“Where is it you think
you’re going?” he said.

“To help open the bar,”
said Eva. In her eyes was a challenge, a dare for him to keep to his word from
the night before and drag her back to the house for her insolence.

Oh, honey, you are
definitely asking for more than that
. “You can help open. But you’re
coming back up here as soon as that neon sign gets turned on.”

“Yeah, we’ll see about
that,” she said, brushing past him and out the front door. He followed her out
the door and through the forest meadow, trailing her like he was hunting a
deer, smiling as he watched her move through the wildflowers like she belonged
there.

Opening the bar didn’t
consist of much except getting the daily ledgers cleared and ready, turning
over stools, and making sure the front door was unlocked. At least, that was
all Eva did as Will sat at the bar and watched her scurry around. Charlie came
in after a few minutes and began doing heavier work, something with the keg
connections under the counter and in the back. After an hour or so, when he was
finished, Charlie asked Will if he wouldn’t mind holding things down for a bit
while he finished the oak branches he had been working on the day before.

“I don’t want Eva in here
alone,” he told him quietly in the kitchen.

Will nodded in agreement
and patted him on the back. “I got you. I’m going to try and get her back up to
the house, anyway.”

Charlie took off out the
back door and Will watched him go before turning to watch Eva. She was sitting
at a messy old desk stuffed into an ill-fitting office space to the side of the
door, rustling through paperwork in a focused way.

“All right,” he said to
her, leaning in the door way. “Time to go.”

“See ya,” she said without
pausing or looking up.

Will snorted, folding his
arms. “I mean it’s time for
you
to go back up to the house, out of the
way.”

“I’m not in your way
now
,”
said Eva, giving him a face. “You’re in mine.”

Something in her tone gave
Will a little shot of heat, and he decided to tempt her a little. He stepped
into the cramped office space and put one hand on the corner of the desk. “I’m
in your what?”

Eva stopped rummaging
through the papers and froze. Her gaze ran up Will’s body, starting with the
bulge that was more or less at her eye level and begging to be noticed. Will
enjoyed the feeling of her staring at his body until her gaze stopped on his
face. “My way,” she spat out, flustered. “You’re in my way.”

“I can think of better
things I can be in,” he said, taking another step toward her chair.

Red heat flushed over
Eva’s face, and Will saw her lick her lips. For a moment, he thought he had
her, but she stood up from the chair. He didn’t move; she was nearly pressed up
against his body.

“Like a muddy ditch,
somewhere?” she offered. “Or how about anywhere but in my face?”

Will smiled down at her
wickedly. His voice came out a whisper. “But I like the idea of being in your
face.”

Eva’s lips pursed open in
shock and arousal, her chest heaving with a thick breath. She stared at him for
a few tense moments before she huffed, frustrated, and pushed past him out of the
office.

Will chuckled to himself,
enjoying the feeling of her hand on his chest as she passed, even if it wasn’t
meant to be tender. He followed out toward the kitchen with his hands in his
pockets, and a half-hard dick in his pants.

Before he could tease her
again, the rumble of an engine came from outside before stopping abruptly. A
few seconds later, the door to the bar swung open and a familiar face walked
in.

Of all the gin joints in
all of the towns in all of the world
, Will thought bitterly from the back
as he watched Jase walk into the bar. Jase removed his sunglasses and looked
around, an ugly look on his face. Before Jase could spot him, Will ducked
behind the wall to the back room. Next to him, Eva gave him a quizzical
expression.

“Oh, God, is it…” she
whispered as fear washed over her face.

“No, no,” said Will. “It’s
something else.”

“Are we in danger?”

You two aren’t; I’m not so
sure about me.
“No. But listen, I need you to do exactly as I say.” Will grabbed Eva by
both shoulders and looked straight down into her eyes. The feel of the warm
skin of her arms beneath his hands made his heart race. Her pupils dilated when
he touched her. “Go out and serve him. I need you to act like we don’t know
each other. Don’t say a word about what’s happening or why I’m here. Got it?”

“Why don’t you just go out
the back? You can wait in the house until he leaves.”

“He had to have seen my
bike, he knows I’m here. We just have to go with it.”

Eva nodded, and then
licked her lips. “Okay, sure.”

“Go on out, I have to fake
like I’m coming from the restroom,” said Will. He waited until Eva had Jase’s
attention at the bar before he came walking out from behind the wall, thumbing
absently at the fly on his jeans. He did a decent job coming to a surprised
stop when he looked at Jase, as if he was seeing him there at the bar for the
first time.

Jase straightened in his
stool, his expression grim. He spread out his arms and shifted a bit. Will knew
the man well enough to know by his body language, Jase was daring him to run.

A shameful sting pierced
his chest; it was like seeing just how far he had fallen in Jase’s eyes. He
didn’t have to fake the anger rising under his skin as he took a stool next to
his MC brother, although Jase would never guess the source was more from shame
than fury.

Eva put a full stein in
front of Jase and wiped the glass with a rag before she turned to Will. “Did
you need another drink?”

Pushing against all his
instincts to look at her face as long as he could, Will only flicked his eyes
up at her a moment as he ordered a beer and a shot of whiskey. Eva nodded and
bent to pull glasses up from under the counter.

“So this is where you’ve
been hiding out,” said Jase. He took a big gulp of beer.

Will took the shot that
Eva put in front of him. “I’m not hiding.”

“Not answering your phone,
not being where anyone but me can find you… what else would you call it?”

“How
did
you find
me?” said Will.

Jase rolled his eyes and
shook his head. “I know you, man. I’m not blind to what’s been going on with
you.”

Will took a deep drink of
his beer and looked up at Eva. She sat near the other end of the bar, trying to
busy herself with organizing. Jase probably didn’t notice how she was trying to
listen without being obvious, but Will did. He waited until she looked up and
caught his eye, and gave her a very slight nod toward the back room.

Eva froze for a few
seconds, as if considering whether to follow his unspoken command. But when she
finally moved to follow his direction, she did it with such nervous speed that
she knocked her leg hard into a stack of boxed beer sitting on the floor. A
jolting sound of glass rattling against glass made both he and Jase look over
curiously.

Eva went red with
embarrassment and gave them a small smile. She kept her eyes down as she moved
past and disappeared into the back room.

Will took a quick, clean
side glance at Jase. He frowned at Eva as his eyes followed her out, but
nothing on his face said he was suspicious.

Jase cleared his throat.
“So, are you just going to spiral downward until someone kills you, or you kill
yourself?”

“Fuck you,” said Will. He
could feel the blackness rising from the back of his mind and realized he had
actually been feeling better the past little while—until this moment. “I don’t
need your self-righteous bullshit, Jase.”

From the moment Will
spotted him, he could see the anger boiling under the surface of Jase’s skin,
and it took no time at all for that kettle to start steaming. “Self-righteous?
What part of me driving around the pass, searching for my asshole of a best
friend who can’t answer his fucking phone… What part of that is for me?” said
Jase. “I
should
be home with Maggie, getting my brains fucked out.
Instead, I try to help out, and I get this shit.”

“No one asked you to come
looking for me,” said Will, turning to him with a sour expression. He could
feel a tension rising between them, the opposite of the tension he felt with
Eva—this was the rage he was used to, all the earlier shame had dissipated
against it. “Don’t nail yourself up on the cross and expect me to start wailing
for you.”

“I can’t believe what I’m
hearing,” said Jase. “What the fuck has happened to you, Will? I’ve known you
half my life, and you’ve never fucking talked to me like this. You’ve never
bailed on a community event; hell you’ve never bailed on anything the MC has
asked of you. Now it’s like you’re begging us to take your cut.”

Will finished his beer in
a few chugs, wiping the spill from his scruff. “Yeah, well, maybe it’s fucking time.”

Jase fell silent. When
Will looked over, he saw a hooded darkness over Jase’s eyes, and pain on his
face. “You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t fucking tell me
what I mean,” said Will. Some tiny voice was screaming out from deep in Will’s
mind that Jase was trying to help him, begging him to take the hand being
offered. Will smothered it with a wash of anger. “The club has made your life
better. It fucking ruined mine.”