“Shut up!” she yelled, her arm shaking with the effort to keep the Taser pointed at his chest when all twenty bazillion pounds of her purse were tugging her elbow in the opposite direction.
Sweetheart? Sweetheart? He’d never used an endearment on her before, but he whipped one out now? She tried to wrap her mind around the disparity between his mouth, which dripped honey, and his heart, which was as black as the ace of spades. She couldn’t do it.
How could you? she wanted to scream at him. The words burned the edge of her tongue, sharp and bitter, but she bit them back.
Looking at him standing there reminded her of the time he had taken her to a concert in Millennium Park. She had danced her ass off to the blues band, and he had stood watching her, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket, a bright twinkle in his blue eyes and a sexy smirk on his mouth.
He wasn’t smirking now. But his eyes were certainly twinkling in the glow of the streetlights.
“Samantha, I—”
That’s all she heard. That’s all he managed to say. Because he started to lift his hands, and her gaze snagged on the matte-black metal of his handgun. These past few months, she had convinced herself that she had imagined the glimpse of that shoulder holster the first night she met him. She hadn’t seen a trace of it since. Of course, now she understood that the biker jacket he always sported helped to put the word concealed in the phrase concealed carry.
She didn’t hesitate.
She squeezed the Taser’s trigger, releasing the barbs attached to the wires, and let him have all fifty thousand volts.
*
During his thirty years, Ozzie had taken a baseball bat to the back of his head, been shot in the gut, and had his leg nearly blown off. But being tased was its own special brand of misery.
As he flopped on the ground, his muscles spasming and his brain frying inside his skull, he vaguely registered the sound of Samantha’s muscle car rumbling to life and the feel of flying gravel pelting him as she fishtailed her way out of the parking lot.
When the spasms subsided, he found himself on his back, staring up at the few stars that managed to shine through the city’s constant glow. He wasn’t big on heaven or the afterlife, but for a brief moment, he wondered if his mother might be looking down on him. He hoped not. Because the sensation he was experiencing was similar to the one he felt after vomiting…shaken and weak and so glad that was over.
“Shit yourself?” Christian’s voice sounded like it was coming from a great distance. But when Ozzie lifted his chin, he discovered his teammate standing by his feet.
“Hope not,” he admitted. Then he realized Fugly wasn’t with Christian, and his heart started beating faster than the Starship Enterprise at warp nine. He glanced around. “What the hell happened to the biker?”
“The tosser set off two seconds after you did. And I couldn’t shoot an unarmed bloke in the back.”
At least Samantha is hell and gone from him, Ozzie thought, relief washing through him as he let his head fall back against the gravel. “He wasn’t unarmed. He had his dick, remember?”
“Delighted Samantha didn’t fry your sense of humor, Ozzie ol’ boy.” Christian squatted near his shoulder. “And I take back what I said about the two of you not being enemies. The look on her face when she pulled that trigger was positively exuberant.”
Ozzie was having trouble concentrating. His brains were scrambled. The only thought that seemed to have any consistency was I cannot believe she tased me! And that was quickly followed by Why the hell did she tase me?
Before he could begin to figure it out, Delilah came barreling through the front door of the bar, wild-eyed and blowing like a spooked horse. She had the sawed-off in one hand and Fido’s collar in the other. Sensing his owner’s distress, the dog had his lips pulled back in a snarl. Considering he was a soft-eyed, floppy-eared, veering-precariously-toward-chubby Labrador, the sight struck Ozzie as funny. It was like a bunny trying to look badass.
“I thought I told her to duck behind the bar and stay there until we said we needed help.” He watched her and the dog make their way toward him.
“Telling one of the BKI women not to do something is as effective as telling Fido there not to lick his balls,” Christian observed, the last word sounding more like bohls. Christian had lived and worked with the Black Knights long enough that his syntax and slang had become Americanized, but there was no getting rid of that London drawl.
“I can freakin’ hear you,” Delilah huffed, coming to stand beside Ozzie’s head. “How many times tonight am I going to have to say that?”
“Maybe just once or twice more.” Ozzie grinned up at her, hoping to allay the deep scowl of concern knitting her brow.
It worked. Her expression relaxed, and the instant the tension drained from her shoulders, Fido slipped from watchdog back to his happy-go-lucky self. He plopped onto his haunches, pink tongue lolling, and grinned up at Delilah with dopey doggy adoration.
“What are you doing laid out in my parking lot?” she inquired with a raised brow.
“Samantha tased him.” Christian picked up one of the wires still attached to Ozzie’s T-shirt.
“You might try saying that without a note of glee.” Ozzie scowled, ripping the probes from the fabric of his shirt and tossing them aside. I cannot believe she tased me. Why the hell did she tase me?
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. What did you do to deserve that?” Delilah asked suspiciously.
Ozzie pushed up to his elbows. The world did a quick spin. “Why do you automatically take her side and assume I did something wrong?”
“Puh-lease. It’s one of the rules of the sisterhood. When in doubt, blame the man.”
“Good to know.” He nodded. “Is there a copy of this rule book somewhere? I’d love to thumb through it. I suspect so much about life would be clearer afterward.”
“Undoubtedly,” Delilah agreed. “Alas, the first rule of the sisterhood—”
“Is there’s no talking about the sisterhood?”
“Is that all rules will remain unwritten,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken.
“Figures.”
“So what happened to Samantha and the Basilisk?”
“Samantha sped away in her car,” Christian said, helping Ozzie struggle to stand. His bad leg hummed with pain. The electricity Samantha had shot through his body had forced injured muscles to contract.
Speaking of contracting muscles, amazingly, Ozzie’s Beretta was still in his hand. He thanked his lucky stars for the training the navy had ingrained in him, especially the part about never curling his finger around the trigger until he was ready to pull it. If he hadn’t been holding the trigger guard when Samantha tased him, there would have been nothing he could do to keep from firing off a wild shot. “The biker knocked off down the alley and—”