Christ.
He pulled another U-turn and sped off, trying to ignore the introductions going on behind him. When Hudson leaned forward to shake hands with Kade, her arm brushed Connor’s shoulder and he nearly jumped out of his seat.
He kept his eyes on the road, cursing himself for the stupid decision he’d just made. Inviting a total stranger back to their camp. What the hell was he thinking?
“Let me see.”
Hudson’s soft demand had him glancing at the rearview mirror. His jaw tensed when he saw her reach for Rylan, whose face was looking dangerously pale. Well, no kidding. His neck had been grazed by a bullet. Said a lot about Ry that he was only now starting to show signs of it.
“Gorgeous, I’ve had a lot worse than this,” he told her, his Southern accent flaring as he got his flirt on. Rylan’s ancestors had once lived in Texas, and although the state was now underwater, some remnants of the South still existed, at least in the form of Rylan’s easy drawl.
“Well, good for you. But humor me. You look like you’re about to pass out any second.”
With a sigh, Rylan capitulated.
Using the mirror, Connor watched Hudson examine his friend’s wound. She leaned in so close that her hair fell over his chest and her breasts pressed up against his arm, and from the way Rylan’s eyes twinkled, Connor could tell the bastard was enjoying every second of it.
“It’s still bleeding,” she chided. “You’re not putting enough pressure on it. And I think you’ll need some stitches.”
Connor had just refocused his attention on the road, but his gaze darted back to the mirror when he heard a rustling noise. His throat turned to dust. Hudson was wiggling out of her jacket. She dropped it on the seat, then reached for the hem of her tank top.
He was so busy watching her strip he failed to notice the pothole, a deep depression that made the vehicle bounce like a rubber ball. The Jeep wasn’t the only thing bouncing, either. Nope, Hudson’s mouthwatering tits bounced too, emphasizing the cleavage spilling out of her black bra.
Rylan’s gaze met his in the mirror. “Eyes on the road,” his friend said in a singsong voice.
Connor’s fingers clenched around the wheel.
“There,” Hudson said, pleased. She’d balled up her shirt and was holding it tightly to Rylan’s neck. “I can take a better look when we get to your camp. You have supplies, right?”
As Kade turned to tell their guest about what she could find at their camp, Connor blocked out their voices. This whole night had been nothing but a major headache, starting with the bandits who’d decided to cause trouble in the only bar in the area and ending with the mysterious woman in his backseat.
Too many questions ran through his head. Who was she? What was she running from?
And more important, how the hell was he going to get rid of her?
One look at the men’s camp and Hudson knew she’d made the right decision by imposing her presence on them.
Their place was as secure as the Enforcers’ compound, with trip wires and motion sensors set up around the perimeter and C-4 strung through every inch of the place. She didn’t bother asking where they’d gotten the equipment. She was simply glad they had it.
Still holding her shirt to Rylan’s neck, she studied their surroundings as they drove through the camp. She spotted a dozen small A-frame cabins on the left and several more of them deeper in the forest, their wooden roofs peeking out from the trees. The buildings were old and shabby, boasting paint-chipped doors, broken porches, and boarded-up windows. The men hadn’t tried to pretty the place up, but at least they’d secured the hell out of it.
“How long have you lived here?” she asked curiously.
“About a year,” Rylan answered. “We stumbled on it after a group of Enforcers ambushed us on the Utah coast.”
If Hudson’s father were alive, he would have shaken his head at those words – the Utah coast. He was one of the rare people who’d been around when America had been divided into states, when the word coast referred to places like California and Oregon and somewhere else she was forgetting. But those areas were gone now – underwater, thanks to the earthquakes that had ravaged the country after the bombs were dropped.
Utah, she mused. Five hundred miles west of where they were. Dominik had visited that area a few months ago, and the Enforcers didn’t sweep a region again until they’d worked their way through the entire colony first. If she went west, chances were she’d be able to evade Dominik for a while. Maybe forever.