Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 104403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 522(@200wpm)___ 418(@250wpm)___ 348(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104403 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 522(@200wpm)___ 418(@250wpm)___ 348(@300wpm)
At least it was a hundred times better than the memory of Jason’s hand around her throat.
CHAPTER FIVE
“YEAH, PREZ, I expect we’ll pull into town early this evening.”
Saint leaned against the cement wall outside their motel room. The early morning sun warmed his face and boded well for another good day of traveling weather.
“Why don’t you come straight to the clubhouse. Shell and I will be here all day,” Copper said.
Saint rolled a small rock back and forth beneath his boot as his suspicions rose. Straight to the clubhouse, huh? “Uh, Prez, Shell isn’t planning some big welcome home thing for Beth, is she?”
Copper grunted. “Nah. She wanted to, but I managed to talk her out of it. Figured y’all would be tired from the trip and whatever the fuck else you’re not telling me. Wasn’t sure Beth would be up for it.”
Yeah, that sounded like Copper. Grumbling and suspicious but not pushing, yet.
Saint still didn’t know Beth all too well. Most of their time had been spent in peaceful riding, and even when they’d been in the motel rooms, Beth had stayed quiet for the most part, processing the shift in her life. They’d chatted, but mostly surface level, and mostly him filling her in on the tea back at home. He hadn’t tried to force her to open up, mostly because he hated when someone did that shit to him. What she needed was time, and he was happy to be a silent supporter if that was what she needed or to fill the silence with clubhouse gossip.
A rowdy party with all the attention on her didn’t seem like it would go over too well, given her current introspective state.
“Yeah, good call,” Saint said. “I think she’ll need some time to adjust to being back home and might not be ready for a big party.”
His stomach twisted. Copper wasn’t a fool. He’d played along when Beth called yesterday, telling him she was overworked and under-rested and that was why she’d been off lately, but he sure as hell didn’t buy it. A man didn’t run a group of outlaw bikers for two decades without developing a Grade-A bullshit detector. Still, Saint had made her a promise and wouldn’t break it unless absolutely necessary.
“Fine,” Copper said with a rumbled sigh. “Keep your secrets. I appreciate you heading out there and convincing my daughter to come home more than fucking anything, which is why I’m not pushing you on this.”
“I get that.”
“But if I find out you’re keeping shit from me that I need to know…”
Fuck. He didn’t need to finish the sentence to make the Hell’s Handlers brand on Saint’s forearm tingle. The patch meant more to him than anything, but the thought of his family, his place in the club, and the risk of jeopardizing those relationships was like a knife to the gut.
Yet there he was hiding something he knew Copper would want to know.
Beth’s bruises weren’t as spectacular as they’d been that first night, but she’d need a good deal of makeup or a goddamn turtleneck in the middle of the summer to hide them from her father’s savvy gaze.
Or her mother’s.
Hell, sometimes Shell scared him more than Copper. His president might be lethal as fuck, but Shell handled the big guy with the ease of a knife gliding through melted butter.
“I hear you loud and clear,” he said. Once Copper found out how Jason had abused Beth, and he would find out, Saint was fucked.
“All right. Just making sure. Back to tonight, we are doing a barbecue, but it’s super casual, typical weekend shit with no focus on Beth.”
Saint nodded as though Copper could see him. “Yeah, that should work.”
The motel door opened, and Beth popped her freshly washed and dried head out. “That my dad?”
Saint nodded, then passed her the phone when she held out her hand.
She stepped outside, and his eyes nearly fell out of their sockets. Dressed in baggy jeans and a tiny fucking tank top that hugged her like a second skin and left enough skin on display to be nearly obscene, she looked like temptation wrapped in sin.
He had to press his tongue to the roof of his mouth to keep from trying to lick her. How the fuck was he supposed to survive a whole day on his bike knowing the body pressed against his back was a few severed threads away from being naked?
“Dad, Saint is being a perfect gentleman, so you can stop threatening him,” she said into the phone, utterly oblivious to the growing problem in his jeans.
Why did she have to be so damn sexy?
If she’d been any other woman in any other circumstances, he’d have backed her into that motel room and fucked her until they were both too exhausted to ride a few hundred miles on a motorcycle. Instead, he’d get to feel those full tits on his back all day while he fought to keep his blood circulating through his entire body.