Page 36 of Dirty Salvation

Oh god. What was happening? Hot shivers slid down her back. Dreaded emotions.

Maybe she was wrong. She reached up to fidget with her hair, brushing the strands into place, though after her boiled shower, no hair dryer in sight, though she’d searched the cabinets under the sink, there was no taming the humidity locks. She pulled the whole sweep of blond over one shoulder, unsure how to proceed next.

Men continued to eat, to talk, to make their usual breakfast time noises. She heard “fuck you” laughed more than three times in the space of a minute. More curses exchange, only she was stuck on looking at Rider who didn't say a word to anyone.

If there was one thing she could recognize in his otherwise unrecognizable features, was that she knew when a guy wanted to claim her.

Riderwantedher. Clear as day there it was in his gaze.

And what he'd do with his wants was anyone's guess, she felt powerless to do anything even as her belly warmed at the thought of that want. Had one gilded cage been exchanged for another?

“You can come in,cariño. The toast is pretty safe and I vouch for the café ‘cause yours truly brewed it.” One accented appealing voice among the small crowd reached out to her. “I’m Capone. This ugly shit here is…” the cropped dark haired man with the thin accent and goatee went around the table introducing men to her.

Most nodded and saidhey.

Only one looked blankly at her, his lips thinning, before returning to his eggs.Jesus hairwas still here.

And he was looking shabbier than the first sight she’d had of him at that party. Long muddy blond hair, a beard in desperate need of a trim with a weed whacker.

Stillscary.

She stopped breathing for a second then tried desperately to rein in the overwhelming panic to turn around and leave them to their breakfast, it was an unnecessary emotion wasted on her, what would happen would go ahead no matter what she was feeling, hadn’t she learned that lesson the hard way.

Rider maintained his eye contact waiting for her to come to him.

The draw to him was there like he was willing her to go to him without a word, just the power of those deep-set eyes shadowed in even darker lashes.

With a mental head shake, feeling every pair of eyes boring into her back, Zara pushed back her shoulders not feeling a lick of the confidence she was trying to convey, wearing a too long Renegade Souls black sweatshirt, she'd tucked it into the pair of track pants at first but there was so much material she'd looked twenty months pregnant. Now it flapped around her thighs.

It wasn't as though she wanted to appeal to any of these guys so what did it matter what she looked like.

She was a walking bruise taking the steps over to Rider, every bone hurt, her skin sore from beatings and the second harsh scrubbing she'd given herself in the shower.

Showers had been a luxury Hades hadn't let her indulge in too often, more mornings that she could count she'd just had a stand-up wash either in the small bathroom sink with frigid water and the scrap of soap she'd tried to use sparingly, or using some of the face wipes she'd stolen from one of the club whores.

Either way, Zara had never felt fully clean, even now her body itched to turn back around and submerge again in the hot steam and four shower heads.

She was unclean inside and out. No amount of soap could scrub her kind of dirt.

You're trash and you'll always be trash, sweet love.He might not be around, but Hades' presence wasn't far from Zara's self-flagellation.

He'd taunted her so much that maybe what he said wasn't altogether false. She'd done a lot of trashy shit to survive, you couldn't put a halo on a demon and expect him to be an angel. It just didn't wash that way.

She passed by the table of bikers, all wearing their club leather cuts, expecting jeers, she braced for it, her hearing almost tuning out the din of noise as she'd done countless times, usually those jeers came with large rough hands slapping her butt, pulling her onto their laps to paw with disgusting hands or vile tongues ramming into her mouth, if she let herself think about it, she could still taste that same vileness. Tobacco, halitosis, and evil.

She'd woken up finally but was still trapped in the nightmare of expecting the worse.

Nothing happened.

They went about their eating, leaving Zara to make the fast walk over to the only safe haven she’d known in the last twenty-four hours.

Whether Rider was going to use her for his own needs, was left in the air, but her heart beat faster finally reaching him as if her body only recognized the man who had saved her from a life of pain.Safe now.The urge to really move into his space was overwhelming, somehow, she ignored it.

"I thought I was gonna need to send out a search and rescue dog for you. You've been out for sixteen hours, darlin'. You slept well I take it?"

Rider spoke before she'd fully reached him. His eyes stopped their assessment yet she still felt the heat tracking over her.

To stop her hands from shaking, she laced her fingers tightly together, concentrated on inhaling her feelings away.