Arianne tore away the paper and pulled out a leather vest.
“A Sinner’s Tribe cut.” She let out a relieved breath and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be proud to wear it.” She spun it around amid the cheers, and then her smile faded. “Property of Jagger?” She read the lettering stitched on the back out loud, and then lowered her voice below the excited murmur of the crowd. “You know how I feel about being property.”
“I know how you feel about me, so I know you’ll wear it.” A self-satisfied grin played across his lips.
Arianne lifted an eyebrow. “How do I feel about you?”
“You love me.”
She wanted nothing more than to wipe that grin off his face, but she couldn’t deny he was right. “Usually people wait until they are told they’re loved. They don’t make the declaration themselves.”
“Why waste time? You’ve loved me since the moment you laid eyes on me.”
A smile tugged at her lips. “And how would you know that?”
“Because that’s when it happened for me.”
Read on for an excerpt from the next book by
SARAH CASTILLE
BEYOND THE CUT
Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks
Dawn bolted awake when someone banged on her door.
Heart pounding, she reached under her bed for the .22 Arianne had given her as a birthday present. Trust Arianne to give her a gun. Although she had often talked about living in the civilian world, Arianne was a biker through and through. And no American biker would ever leave his or her house unarmed.
Well, Dawn wasn’t a biker. And the two weeks of lessons at the shooting range with Arianne hadn’t changed her mind. Still, it was a comfort to know that she’d be able to defend herself from the crazy person trying to break down her door at three in the morning. Or, at least threaten them. She never loaded the gun because she wasn’t prepared to kill anyone.
Weapon in hand, she raced through the living room and stood on tip-toe to peer through the peep hole.
At first she didn’t recognize the man standing in front of her door, his face all swollen and bloody, his shirt in tatters but it was his hair, golden strands matted with blood, glinting in the semi-darkness, that made her look again.
Her breath caught. She undid the dead bolt and threw the door open.
“Oh God, Cade. What happened?”
“Jesus, Dawn. Put the gun away.” He pushed her aside and stalked into her tiny apartment, his clothes rank with blood and covered in dirt. “What the fuck were you doing with a piece of shit like him?”
Stunned, Dawn could only stare. “You almost break down my door at three in the morning, looking like you need to get to a hospital, to ask me that?”
“Yeah.”
“If we knew each other better,” she said, her voice tight. “If we were friends, or actually seeing each other, maybe I wouldn’t be so pissed off at being pulled out of bed and ordered to explain my life choices. But we’re not. We’ve slept together twice. We’ve never had a conversation that lasted more than five minutes, four minutes of which consisted of deciding where we were going to have sex next. So you don’t have the right to ask me that question, and unless you’re in dire need of medical attention, I suggest you leave.”
By way of answer, Cade took a step forward, staggered to the side and grabbed the back of her sofa for support. “Damn. Gimme a minute.”
With a sigh, Dawn closed and locked the door, then put the gun in her purse. “I see you’ve chosen door number three, ‘dire need of medical assistance.’ You want me to call the Sinners’s doctor or take you to the local hospital?”
“No hospital.”
Dawn snorted. “Right. I forgot. Too manly for the hospital. You got a number for the club doctor?”
Cade shook his head. “No doctor. Just … water … bandages … maybe some whiskey. I’ll be fine.”
Hmmm. Fine was obviously a relative word. To her nonmedical eye, he certainly didn’t look fine. In fact, he looked like he was about to collapse, and from the way he was holding himself, he was clearly injured far beyond the cuts and bruises she could see on his face. But that was always the way with biker beatings. Why go for the small target when you could go for the big one?
“Kitchen. Now.” Dawn gestured to the small kitchen area visible through the open breakfast bar behind the couch. Living on her own, the cozy space suited her fine although the pastel décor and white rattan furniture was not really to her taste. But the rent was cheap for a two bedroom bungalow, so she really couldn’t complain, and there was an extra bedroom if … No … when the girls came home.
Cade followed her to the small kitchen, decorated in country chic pink and mint green tiles, and pulled out a white wicker chair from the breakfast nook. As he lowered himself to sit, Dawn grabbed a tea towel and threw it over the seat.