Free Sinner (MC Club Biker Urban Alpha Male Erotic Romance) by Billie Kasper Page B

face.
     
    He was handsome, with a chiseled jaw covered in a thin blonde beard, and blonde hair that he kept closely shaved on the sides of his head but had let grow out on the top. He had blue eyes, too—sparkling blue eyes, like the sea. God, but it had been a long time since I had seen the ocean…
     
    I had to admit he didn’t look okay. I could forgive his blaspheming, considering the circumstances.
     
    “I’m a sister at the convent just beyond this clearing. If you can walk, I’ll get you over there and we’ll call you an ambulance. Or, you know… You just stay here. I have water,” I said, my words spilling out of my mouth in a mixed jumble of syllables that barely seemed to have any meaning. I was nervous and not just because of the gravity of the situation. This was the first man who wasn’t my father or a priest that I had seen since… Christ, since only God knows when. And he was a hottie, at that.
     
    He had to have been under thirty. It looked like he worked out. His biceps and shoulders looked like something that belong on a comic book superhero instead of on a bloodied wretch in my vegetable garden.
     
    His arms were covered in an intricate patchwork of tattoos: they seemed to portray a man’s descent into hell on a motorcycle. I knew my Dante and I rapidly identified each circle of that fiery pit.
     
    “No, no, no…” he said finally, cutting me off. “Don’t call an ambulance. Don’t call the cops. Just…”
     
    And then, more thrashing in the bushes. The blooded man froze and then his hand shot to his hip. He had a pistol. How had I not seen that before? He drew it fast and leveled with a shaky arm on the bushes. He had only held it for a minute before his hand was trembling bad, looking like he might drop the gun.
     
    “Can you…” he started but I was already moving. I grabbed his arm and held it steady for him. He gave me a look, a look of solidarity and thanks, and my heart all but ascended to heaven at that look.
     
    But any moment we might have had was interrupted by the crashing in the bushes. Finally, two men burst into my garden: both fat, both clad head to toe in leather like this man, both holding guns.
     
    “Put ‘em down, boys, or I bury you here,” the bloodied wretch in my garden screamed. The others started to raise their own guns but my shooter roared his warning again.
     
    “Now, you turn tail and you run, and you tell your bosses than Dario Jameson is harder to kill than just that. Do you hear me?”
     
    The interlopers hesitated, exchanging a look and then glancing at me. I didn’t know what to do or say, so I just shrugged.
     
    “You’d better do what he says,” I screamed, suddenly, not knowing where it came from. “He’s crazy!”
     
    “I’ll give you five seconds. Five seconds till I end you mother fuckers… Five…”
     
    The two didn’t move.
     
    “Four… Three… Two…”
     
    And then they were off, into the bushes, charging back towards the highway.
     
    “One…” Dario murmured. He titled the gun up toward the sky and pulled the trigger. I winced but it clicked empty.
     
    “Dumbasses,” he grunted. “I can’t believe that actually worked.”
     
    “Were they the ones that shot you?”
     
    Dario gave me a disbelieving look.
     
    “No, I shot myself to garner their sympathy. Of course, they were.”
     
    “Why?”
     
    “It’s a long, stupid story. Do you think you could get me out of the sun?”
     
    I realized that where he lay, he was directly in the path of the brutal Louisiana sun. I dragged him to the side of the garden and cradled his head in my lap as I tipped my water bottle into his mouth.
     
    “Goddamn, but that’s good…” he sighed as the water dribbled out of his mouth.
     
    “Well, there’s more where that came from,” I said. “If you come back to the convent with me…”
     
    He shook his head.
     
    “No, no, no. I won’t go to no convent. And you won’t call no ambulance for