CHAPTER 2: Rough Ride Rescue

Betty's POV

Panic shot through my veins. So much for my husband’s terrifying reputation. It apparently had a very strict geographical limit that ended at our rusty-ass gate!

Another one of them stepped out of the shadows in front of me and grinned, showing off a gold tooth. “Looks like it’s our lucky night. Time for that fun we was talkin’ about.”

“Let me go,” I demanded with my voice muffled by the hand. It came out as a pathetic, “Mmphff gmph!”

The guy behind me just laughed. “Hear that, Mikey? She’s gettin’ feisty.”

Weasel-Face... Mikey... stepped closer. “Oh, we like feisty.” His hand shot out, grabbing my breast and giving it a rough painful squeeze.

I jerked, trying to knee backwards but the guy holding me was too strong. He just tightened his grip. “Whoa there, hellcat. Save that energy.”

“Yeah,” Mikey sneered, his other hand sliding down to my hip. “We’re gonna have a real good time with you. A real party. Just us and you.”

This was bad.. this was so very very bad!

I stopped struggling, going still in his arms and the guy holding me loosened his grip just a fraction, maybe thinking I’d given up.

I took my chance. I wrenched my head to the side, my mouth clearing part of his hand.

“You have any idea who my husband is?” I snarled, putting every ounce of fake bravado I had into it. “You touch me and my husband will hunt you down and use your spines for backscratchers!”

There was a moment of silence and for a glorious second, I thought it had worked. Then they all burst out laughing.

“Lady, your old man ain’t shit,” the raspy voice chuckled in my ear. “It’s the other three we were worried about. And you ain’t on their property now, are ya?”

They knew the only thing that made Travis scary was who he rode with!

“Please,” I pleaded. The fight drained out of me, replaced by terror. “Please just let me go. I won’t say anything.”

“Oh, you’ll be sayin’ plenty,” Mikey leered, his fingers fumbling with the buttons on my blouse. “You’ll be screamin’ our names.”

Tears of frustration and fear welled in my eyes. I was out of threats, out of pleas and this was it. The fabric of my blouse tore at the collar with a sickening rip.. and then… light.

Blinding beautiful light flooded the alley, swallowing the shadows whole. It was so sudden and so absolute that everyone froze. Mikey’s hand stopped its groping and the guy behind me went stiff.

I squinted against the glare, making out three hulking shapes blocking the alley’s entrance. The light was coming from behind them.. from three sets of motorcycle headlights. The engines cut off and the sudden silence was even more loud than the roar had been.

The punks recovered first.

“The hell is this?” my captor growled, finally releasing me to shove me towards his friends. I stumbled, catching myself on the grimy wall.

The three figures started walking towards us slowly and deliberately.. the way predators move. As my eyes adjusted, I could make them out.

Oh, thank god.

It was them. Damon, Colt and Blaze! Travis’s biker brothers! The actual reason I hadn’t been mugged or worse a hundred times over…!

The punks puffed up, ready for a fight.

“This is a private party, assholes,” the leader spat, pulling a switchblade. “Piss off.”

Damon took another step into the light. I saw the moment they recognized him and their bravado shattered into a million pieces as the switchblade wavered. Mikey took a step back, his weaselly face pale.

“The lady. Now.” Damon spoke curtly.

Blaze just cracked his knuckles while Colt stepped forward.

My eyes.. I couldn’t help it.. went straight to him. It was always like that.. If Damon was the scary one and Blaze was the quiet one, Colt was the… damn. He was the one who looked like he’d just walked off the set of some hot lumberjack calendar!

He was tall and built like he could chop down a tree with his bare hands with that same kind of wild hair that you just wanted to run your fingers through.

Travis’s so-called friendship with them had always been the most confusing part of my marriage. How did a worm like him end up with brothers like this?!

“Come on, Betty,” Colt said. He didn’t even look at the punks. His eyes were on me.

Damon didn’t turn around.

“Colt. Get her out of here. We’ll deal with this.”

A new kind of fear spiked in me.

“Deal with it?” I asked shakingly. “How? I don’t… I don’t want anyone…”

Colt was already beside me, his hand gentle but firm on my elbow, guiding me away from the scene.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.

I glanced back at his face and he gave me a small tight smirk. It didn’t reach his eyes. My stomach lurched. He was not going to just give them a stern talking-to.

He led me to his bike, a Harley that looked as powerful as he did and handed me a helmet.

“Get on.”

I numbly put it on and climbed on behind him and the engine roared to life, vibrating through my entire body.

I wrapped my arms around his waist, my hands splaying across the hard planes of his stomach. Heat radiated off him through his leather cut and for a second, I forgot to be terrified.. I just felt… safe.

The feeling lasted about two blocks. He was heading toward my street! Toward Travis!

“Stop!” I yelled over the wind.

He tilted his head back.

“What?”

“Stop the bike, Colt! Now!”

He pulled over to the curb, killing the engine. 

“What’s wrong? You’re hurt? Did those scumbags–”

“I can’t go back there,” I blurted out, the words tumbling out in a rush. “I can’t go back to him.”

Colt turned on the seat to look at me, his brow furrowed.

“Betty, what are you talking about? He’s your husband.”

That did it.. the dam broke. The whole awful humiliating painful evening came crashing down on me and the tears I’d been holding back finally fell.

“He was… I caught him… with Lana. His stepsister, Colt!”

His expression shifted from confusion to grim understanding.

“And when I confronted him…”

I was sobbing so hard I could barely get the words out. I shoved the torn collar of my blouse aside, showing the angry red mark on my cheek where Travis’s ring had caught my skin. Then I lifted my shirt just enough to show the brutal darkening bruise already blossoming on my stomach.

I expected pity.. maybe some awkward sympathy.

I did not expect the rage that contorted Colt’s face.

“He did that to you? That spineless piece of shit laid hands on you?!”

The ferocity of his anger stunned me into silence. I just nodded, wiping my nose with the back of my hand like a kid.

Colt stared off into the night, his jaw working and he took a deep steadying breath.

“Okay. Okay. You got someplace to go? A friend’s? Your mom’s?”

I shook my head.

“No. No one.”

He hesitated for a long moment, conflict warring in his eyes.. then he nodded, more to himself than to me.

“Alright. Hang on.”

He started the bike again and didn’t turn back toward my street.

We rode for what felt like forever, leaving the town lights behind, heading deep into the woods. Finally, he turned down a narrow, almost hidden dirt track and pulled up in front of a small cabin.

“This is mine,” he said, getting off and helping me stand. My legs were wobbly. “No one knows about it. You’ll be safe here. At least for tonight.”

He walked me to the door, unlocked it and flipped on a light inside. It was simple, clean and obviously a guy’s place with a couch, a small kitchenette and a door that probably led to a bedroom.

“Get some sleep,” he said, his voice softer now and he turned to leave.

A branch snapped in the woods.. then another. A haunting howl echoed in the distance way too close for comfort and every horror movie I’d ever seen flashed through my mind.

“Wait!” The word burst out of me with panic. “You’re not… you’re leaving me here? Alone?”

He paused.

“It’s just the forest, Betty. It’s nothing.”

Another howl amd this one answered by a second.. that was not nothing.. that was a chorus of ‘we-eat-pretty-ladies-for-dinner’.

“Please,” I whispered, my voice trembling.

I couldn’t be alone.. not now.

I stepped forward and did the only thing my brain could think of. I wrapped my arms around him in a desperate clinging hug, pressing my face against him.

He went still.. totally rigid and I could feel the hard wall of his chest against mine, could hear the quickening of his breath.

All the anger and betrayal and hurt from Travis boiled over, mixing with the pulsing attraction I’d always tried to ignore around Colt. He was everything Travis wasn’t.. strong, loyal, fiercely protective and so damn sexy it should be illegal.

I suddenly tilted my head up, found his lips in the dim light and kissed him.

A big ‘screw you’ to Travis and my miserable marriage.. it was me, biting back.

For a heart-stopping second, he didn’t move. I was a complete idiot.. I was going to die of humiliation alone in the woods.. and then he responded.

His arms came around me with one hand tangling in my hair and the other splaying against the small of my back, pulling me flush against him.

He kissed me back with a hunger that stole the air from my lungs and it was nothing like the dutiful, boring kisses from Travis.

His hand suddenly slid down my side, over the curve of my hip and up to cup my breast, his thumb rubbing roughly over my nipple through my blouse…!