Page 62 of Dirty Salvation

“Well. I should be getting back…” she told no one in particular but hoped Rider heard her, she sneaked a new look and sure enough, his blue eyes were watching her, drawing up and down so slowly she felt intimately touched.

“Thanks, Icy.” His voice smoldered, giving a wink. His eyes spoke dirty things.Slam. Heat dove between her legs, instantly damp. He smiled and her inner muscles all clenched as one. God.I saw him naked the other day and didn’t even take a lick of notice.

Stupid.Stupid.

Hey, even a frightened bird could appreciate eye-candy.

She knew she was crazy contradictory, but she blamed Rider.

He needed to stop making her need him. It was never going to work and she kind of wished she could have at least one friend and she'd kind of … maybe latched onto him to be that friend.

He and his dangerous sexual allure and tight jeans and devastating smiles and don't get her started on his beard, were ruining what could be a wonderful friendship!

Damn the bad biker man.

Oh boy, his smile. She physically felt herself becoming wetter. She turned and got out of there and was that his laugh she heard behind her? Zara didn't stop to look back. She was mortified at her reactions.

His smile was disarming to all women in a fifty-mile radius, not least of all her. Panties dropped. Women became pregnant. Men even turned gay. Or so that was her guess and she was pretty sure she was right about that. There was something infinitely attractive about Rider that drew people towards him. She was drawn even as she fought against the feeling. He was too handsome for words and twice as bad; instant aphrodisiac.

The abstract attention of his smile gave a jolt to Zara knocking her off her feet, figuratively. So powerful was his smile that she had to look down to check she was still inside her Converse.Yep, still there. The earth was spinning, his look at eye-fucked her good. She was still feeling it.

I do want him. She thought. And felt violently ill for it. Maybe she had reverse Stockholm syndrome. Falling for her rescuer. It was not a very smart decision. It would never work, she had to keep reminding herself.

Emotional cutters cut where it caused the deepest wound. Rider would be a deep cut if she even gave herself permission to feel. The man was a wind speed 260 tornado to her system.

Would she be using him?

Couldshe use him to make herself better?

God. She was considering it.

Shaking her head of any fantasies that included and was not solely focused on Rider being naked again in the same shower as her, but was a major component to her minute by minute thoughts, she hurried across the forecourt, her shoes slipping on the crystallized frost gathering on the ground.

The air crisper as the day had gone by, so fresh the cold tickled her nose, she took a last long draw into her lungs luxuriating in how it stung her face, she'd stay outside all day if she could, but frostbite wasn't on her Christmas list. Avoiding everyone around the main room, merging into the furniture was a trick of hers.

"Drink, girlie?" she kept on walking. "Hey, girlie?"

Was that her? Zara's head rose, turned around to the voice. The guy behind the bar holding a glass bottle of pink lemonade and a tall glass motioning her over with his gnarled hand had to be breaching Seventy years old and yet with his pure white old man spiked hair and his trim build encased in a black T-shirt with a pair of shades hooked in the collar he was effortlessly cool.

"Me?"

"I don't see any other girlies here. Yeah, you. Come and have a drink with an old man so I have something pretty to look at." Zara hesitated, looked the few feet across the room to where three men were sitting, she'd forgotten their names, but none were paying her attention, they were all eyes on the Broncos game, from their level of noise the Broncos were winning.

She could have a drink.

The pink soda was poured and waiting for her when she perched herself up on one of the tall bar stools. "Thank you…" her voice soft, reticent. Except for Rider she hadn’t really spoken much besides a word here and there to anyone else. It was her fault; she was the unfriendly one. She just didn’t know how tobe…anymore. She was the interloper in their place. She'd make more of a conscious effort, she mused, to talk to who was around. (again, she discounted Hawk from that)

"Call me Uncle Jed. I'm Rider's uncle on his mama's side, but it’s what everyone calls me nowadays. And you're my boy's girl are you." said without question.

Blood drained out of Zara's face. She coughed back a choke almost dying on a long sip of the too sweet soda. As she spluttered, Jed reached over and thumped her back. She didn't think it helped at all. She might be missing a lung now.

She liked the twinkle in his piercing gray eyes.

"No--- I-- I'm not Rider's … anything. He's just letting me stay here a while until--" she returned weakly. Did she even believe that? But then how polite would it be to tell Rider's uncle Rider wanted to do nasty shit to her of a sexual nature?

"Until those monkey-assRebelsare all taken care of." He finished for her.

His voice was smoke rough like he had a hundred cigarettes a day, and so kind with it mirrored from his eyes Zara blinked back a rush of inappropriate tears.