Tonight, however, she felt nothing but exposed as she walked down the front steps of the high school and started for home.
She knew bikers. Chaser had stalked off into the night, but she hadn't heard his bike. That meant he could be anywhere, and if he was lurking around watching her the last thing she wanted to do was let him see how shaken she was. How appalled at herself she was and how she really wanted nothing more than to climb in her bathtub and drown herself in sea salts and shame, right after she scrubbed every trace of that man off her body.
Lara forced herself to walk to her apartment slowly. Easily and casually. Like anyone would on a hot Louisiana night, when the air felt thick enough to chew. She'd spent most of her life in the blistering hot California desert, so she'd rashly imagined there was no amount of heat she couldn't handle. But the desert was its own thing, breathless and arid, with that wind hot enough to light you on fire as it blew. Louisiana, on the other hand, was like being quietly and comprehensively smothered to death in a great big, sopping wet hug that never ended.
The bayou was everywhere in this town. Still, secretive rivers alive with birds and bugs and all kinds of things she didn't want to identify. Everything smelled muddy green, like steeped water, and it should have disgusted her. But there was something about the intense richness in every breath that got to her instead. It eased itself beneath her skin, as if the endless murmurs of the bayou didn't limit themselves to the water but were colonizing her more every day she stayed here. It made her feel edgy. It haunted her a little bit, even when she was locked up tight inside her air-conditioning, pretending there was some small escape from all that relentless wet heat and the oddly seductive cypress trees sunk deep in the muck, like invitations.
Tonight she felt as if she had that same muck all over her. Lara wanted to run the rest of the way home, but she was sure, somehow, that having tripped Chaser's suspicions he was more likely to be watching her than not. So she made herself saunter along as if she didn't have a care in the world. As if she hadn't just betrayed herself in every possible way, and in the most inappropriate place imaginable, surrendering to the worst of her addictions like a junkie on a bender. And as if her own ecstatic response to that insanely hot hit of her very own heroin wasn't still so soft and much too sensitive between her legs.
She'd sworn off bikers a long time ago. First as romantic prospects of any kind, after Brothers of Goliath prospect Denny "Lowdown" Johansen had shown her exactly how much his declarations of love stood up against the lure of the club. Her uncle had told him he could have Lara or his patch. Denny had taken the patch without blinking, the asshole. Then she'd watched the club take her brother, Mikey, away, bit by bit. First they'd changed him, making him nearly unrecognizable to a sister who'd loved him all his life, then they'd sacrificed him after a skirmish with a rival gang went bad.
Her hatred of the biker culture and all the thugs who claimed to love its harsh grip ran so deep she'd dedicated her life to trying to help other girls caught up in it. And still, all it took was one particularly dangerous and swaggering biker in her face, and she abandoned herself and everything she believed for a few crazy orgasms.
The term "self-loathing" hardly began to scratch the surface of her feelings tonight.
She turned the corner onto Main Street and saw the bakery down the block; only then did she let herself walk a little faster. She could already envision the exquisite relief she'd feel when she walked down the little alley on one side of her building, let herself in the door beneath the fire escape, then ran up the stairs that led to her safe and cheery little apartment. She could already imagine how much better she'd feel when she stripped off these clothes, perhaps ritually burned them on her stove to get the evil out, and then showered every last trace of this evening off herself.
And maybe also let herself cry, while she was at it. In her shower, where no one could see. Where Lara could pretend it wasn't one more form of self-betrayal in a night chock full of them.
She was about to start down the alley when a car pulled up beside her. And it took everything she had not to jump and run, to steel herself instead-but that was the trouble. She knew bikers too well. They were basically wild animals. Run from them and you could be certain they'd chase you down-and enjoy it.
But when she turned, bracing herself, it wasn't Chaser or any of his buddies. It was Grady Archer, the sheriff of St. Germain Parish, in his gleaming police cruiser. The man who'd asked her out to dinner with a friendly smile on his sculpted, handsome face just yesterday.