Page 17 of Burning Ember

Dozer pushes the door open further, and we walk into the small office.

A cloud of smoke swirls around the room. It sets off alarm bells in my head. I grew up in a home that always had mysterious clouds of smoke, and knowing I can’t afford to be anything but clear headed today, I don’t dare inhale. Not until I notice the smoke is coming from a cigarette resting in the overflowing ashtray on the desk.

A man with dark hair is leaning over the desk, sketching something on a large white sheet of paper.

His eyes don’t swing up to us, not right away. But his shoulders tense, and the pencil in his hand stops. After a second, he slowly sits back in his chair, sets down his pencil, and reaches forward for the cigarette. Pinching it, he brings it to his lips. His scruff-covered cheeks hollow out as he sucks in a drag. When he finally turns to face us, his gaze passes over Dozer as if he wasn’t even standing there and lands on me.

The oxygen sheltered in my lungs whooshes out. And for endless moments, I’m breathless. Frozen.

Captivated by the dark and arresting biker before me.

My mind goes on a vacation as I take in his amber eyes. The same color as the Pacific Coast sand. The sand I lazed in for days as a teenager and built sand castles in as a little girl.

He’s dark though and reminds me more of a hot summer’s night than a hot summer’s day. With his inky, closely cropped hair, thick lashes, and black stubble on the lower half of his face, so black it’s almost blue. Like the ocean at night.

His heated gaze sends a rush of warmth through me, and at the same time chills spread over my skin.

Hot and cold.

He expels a puff of smoke in my direction. And though it disrupts my clear view of him, I can still see that’s he’s perfectly made, clearly growing angrier by the second, and unequivocally the sexiest man I’ve ever seen.

I study him. His leather vest and the way it’s cluttered with pins and patches, fitting over his nice, wide shoulders. Around his neck hangs a silver chain and I’m curious to know what hangs at the end. But it disappears beneath his fitted black T-shirt. His jeans are faded, dirty, and sexy as hell. Threadbare spots reveal delicious bits of tan skin. The hand resting on his thigh is large and manly. He wears one ring where most bikers wear many, a silver H that transforms into wings. His arms are veiny and one is unmarked, where the other is a sleeve of colorful images.

A darkness hovers around him like a shroud, and the tension in the room rises, as if it vibrates off his very skin.

I’m brought back to reality as Mav, Maverick, Rick the Dick, Ricky Boy, whoever in the hell he is, reaches forward and flicks his cigarette over the ashtray. His eyes, which stay locked on my face, narrow, the skin around them wrinkles and the muscles in his jaw tighten and then ticks. Further proof that Goose, Dozer, and the blond biker Dozer referred to as Bodie were right. He doesn’t like what he sees.

I gnaw on my lip and try to figure out if it’s my red hair or something else about me that sets him off.

For some reason he’s looking at me as if I stole his hopes and dreams and I have no idea why.

His gaze leaves my face and trails down over my body. It’s like a living, breathing thing as it descends, touching my chest as if it were a finger drawing down over my cleavage, my stomach, two hands running over my thighs.

An achy, needy sensation sparks between my legs. Something I haven’t felt for a long time. It was there in the beginning with Warner, but nowhere near this magnitude. I’ve been worried Warner ruined my desire for men, for sex. But obviously, that’s not the case because my body’s lighting up at the mere sight of Mav. A man I just met. A man who, for some reason, starts a fire inside me. One that grows with every bit of oxygen I take in.

It doesn’t take a genius to see this biker is the last person I need to be attracted to. He’s undoubtedly hazardous to my health. Because not only does he look at me like he wants to kill me, I’m quite certain he’s capable of doing so.

God . . . Have I fled from one monster, only to land in the lair of the devil?

A resoundingyes!has my heart beating faster.

He may appear to be the exact opposite of Warner physically. But he’s equally as beautiful, just in a different way.

Warner was blond, blue-eyed, and at first, I thought he was an angel. He swept me out of the hovel I lived in with Sundown and Will, and helped me support them. He treated me as if I meant the world to him. He bought me things and took me everywhere. I thought he was an answer to my prayers. Proof that God did actually care about me.

But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Soon after I moved in with him, he showed me the monster he’d hidden from me while we were dating. The darkness I couldn’t tame and he couldn’t contain. The one that had me living with a good large dose of fear running through my veins every day. Expecting the worst, and praying for the best.

Mav has the same inner turmoil churning in his eyes. It’s unmistakable once you know what it looks like. He comes in a similar delicious packaging. Only he’s dark where Warner was light, and he’s not masking who he really is. His darkness shows plain as day on the outside. It’s not hidden. It’s out there for all the world to see.

Like Lucifer, his presence is rife with malevolence. The very image of him screams DANGER. He’s utterly tempting, a delicious looking bad-boy in leather and a vision of sin in the best of ways. A stealer of hearts and souls, no doubt.

The warning signs are right there for me to see, and this time, I can’t afford to ignore them.

MAVERICK

I can tell by the look on Dozer’s face when he peeks his head into my office, he’s about to make my already shitty day worse.