Chapter Eight

Yeah. She looked happy and whole, just sitting there in that perfect red dress and she was the brightest damn thing in the room.

His silver eyes fixed on the empty seat across from her and without a single conscious thought, he started to move towards it. Aiming to get his ass in that chair, any which way he had to. He had to hear her voice, even if she was super-shy and all she said to him was hello. Though he definitely hoped for more than just a ‘hello’ with her this evening.

Silver was a man who respected rules, who believed in discipline. He had a code that he lived by and that code was non-negotiable, its tenets unbreakable. And one thing that he never, ever did was hook up with women close to his life back in Denver. He’d learned the hard way to not mix work and pleasure, or The Road Devils and pleasure, or the day-to-day with pleasure. In short, Silver kept his sex life in its own little box, on a shelf way up high and far away from his normal life.

He wasn’t crazy about the coldness of random one-night-stands, though, and really preferred to have friends with benefits in the different cities and towns where he travelled often when scouting bike parts. Nothing too serious, nothing too casual – a perfect balance of great sex with women that he genuinely knew and liked, and the freedom to leave the next morning with no hurt feelings and zero expectations, except that he’d call the next time he was up that way, if he had time.

It worked out pretty well, mostly because he never told the women that he was in an MC. That was too visible and distinctive, too easy to be tracked or held over his head somehow, especially lately, with all the troubles back in Denver that had made the news out-of-state. He took some preventative steps to ensure the division between worlds, then: introduced himself with his citizen name Zeke, and said that he was a custom motorcycle builder from Arizona. None of that was a lie, of course, but it certainly wasn’t anything like the whole truth. Normally, he hid his cut in his hotel room closet, but luckily it was at Lev’s and he wasn’t wearing it tonight, so no need to make a quick dash to cabin two to ditch any evidence of his ties to The Road Devils.

Silver was planning several trips back up here to Nebraska over the next year, and if this woman lived locally, he’d maybe enjoy spending time with her. Assuming she was funny, sweet and clever, of course; he had no real time for women who were unkind, dull, unambitious. He knew that he wasn’t looking for a girlfriend or even a relationship beyond mutually-satisfying sex… but he did want to like the talking as much as the fucking.

Back in his real life, the one in Denver, Silver didn’t do much talking. Oh, sure, he talked to his brothers in The Road Devils, he talked to his customers at The Garage, he talked to suppliers and repair guys and his garage staff. But he was always in a rush, always short and curt, not terrifically friendly or relaxed.

The truth was that life as the member of an MC meant a certain persona. Less so now that the club was out of the criminal one-percenter life, brut still… Silver had a reputation for being gruff and growly and he could pull it off, no problem. He even liked it.

OK, so, really, the truth was that back in Denver, he was kind of a dickhead quite a bit of the time. Never with his MC family, but with everyone else, everyone outside of his trusted and safe little circle… yeah. He was kind of a prick.

But on his road trips, with women in bars and bedrooms, he could be whoever he wanted to be, not what his cut and personal history demanded that he be. And it had been with nothing but amazement that Silver had discovered that he was, in truth, a guy who liked teasing and being teased. Banter and flirting and some back-and-forth witty conversation was all fun – and he had a serious weakness for a woman with a quick mind, great sense of humor and a smart mouth. He had zero use for pretty young things who sat there and agreed with everything that he said, or who made cow eyes at him while he did all the talking, or who had a hot ass but offered nothing in the way of a brain.

He looked at the woman in the red dress and wondered if she had sweetness and sass, and if so, if she’d go for a friends with benefits arrangement kept locally, if she’d be okay with flying visits and long breaks. Well – assuming that she found him even slightly attractive, that is. He knew the effect that he had on women, but that didn’t mean that every single one of them wanted more than to just look.

But if all she wanted was to have a drink with him, spend some time talking and laughing in this bar for this one night… hell, he’d take that too. He’d enjoy just gazing at her lush beauty, talking to a woman who wasn’t still at school, a woman who maybe had some interesting life experience and great stories. There were far worse ways to spend a night away from home, for damn sure.

The black-haired woman glanced up now, met his eyes. She blinked, maybe startled at the intensity of his stare and stride, dropped her dark gaze back to her almost-empty glass. But lighting-quick, she looked at him again. She tilted her head, and he almost licked his lips as a curly tendril of hair fell over her shoulder at the movement.

Then she smiled at him. Just a small smile, an uncertain one, like she was carefully reaching out and testing the waters, but Silver was still damn near knocked over backwards at its shining, joyful undercurrents.

Goddamn. Never thought I’d see an angel in red.