Free Tease: Mojave Boys MC by Carmen Faye Page A

going to give her something in return. “One of my friends convinced me to come with her to an audition, and the recruiter begged me to sign on. There was a $5,000 signing bonus, and I wanted the money to finish paying for school. It was only supposed to be a six-month contract. It turned into a very lucrative career.”
     
    Vance shook his head. “Just how famous are you?”
     
    She shrugged. “I don’t know how to quantify that. The requests keep coming, and so does the money. When I’m too wrinkled or washed up, I have options. I can choose my projects, move around whenever I want, and turn down jobs at will. It gives me a lot of freedom.” It sounded peachy on the surface, but it wasn’t particularly fulfilling in her eyes.
     
    She finished administering the paste and excused herself to wash her hands before they went numb from the medicine on them. She took that time to reset, not wanting the lost dreams to bring her down. She already had enough worries right now and didn’t need to dwell on past disappointments. It was difficult enough to think about how much the thought of Vance being injured bothered her. Her feelings were twisted into a mess, and she needed to work out the knots. If she was stuck in the past, she sure as hell couldn’t figure out the present or the future.
     
    Back in the office, Vance lounged shirtless on the loveseat, looking delectable, despite the cuts on his face and the bruised upper lip. His nose was almost back to normal already and wouldn’t be a problem. He wouldn’t even have a shiner from the punch. His side looked a little worse for the wear, but it didn’t take away from the beauty of his hard muscle.
     
    He reached out to her with one arm, and she took his hand, letting him guide her down to sit with him. She was pressed tighter against his side than was probably advisable, considering the way her heart started to pound, but she certainly didn’t want to move away from the warmth of his body. It went a long way in soothing her nerves. But in the silence, she found herself wanting to fill the silence and asked, “What about you? Did you grow up planning to join a motorcycle club, or did you aspire to some other passion?”
     
    He seemed to consider the question as he casually draped his arm around her shoulders, assuring she wouldn’t pull away from him. “As a kid, I thought like all kids. I wanted to be a fireman or an astronaut or a football player. When I had a grasp on reality, I considered being a pilot or maybe a high school coach.” He shook his head, his gaze focused far away on some memory. “I gave those ideas up before I turned fifteen. I didn’t have the resources or the support to pull it off, so I knew I’d have to try something else. Something a little less professional.”
     
    She nodded. The story he’d told earlier had blank spots, but she filled them in. His mother had either been on drugs or selling them. And whether for that or something else, she’d gone to jail. He’d probably done something stupid out of anger that landed him with the Mojave Boys, and he considered them to be his saviors, having rescued him from a bad situation. She didn’t say any of this and didn’t ask any other questions about it. She didn’t want to embarrass or upset him.
     
    Instead, she reached up to comb her fingers through his hair, liking the way his soft locks felt and curled around her hand. She took in the small lines around the corners of his eyes, noting that some were obvious laugh lines while others were worry lines caused by stress and loss. The same was true around his savory lips, with a few curves from a smile but mostly crinkles from frowning and being overly serious. The line above his nose was deep from scowling and spending too much time deep in thought.
     
    She felt his hand curl around her shoulder an instant before he pulled her in for the kiss that had been so rudely and frighteningly interrupted earlier. She didn’t allow the kiss