We filed out. Mac and I trailed behind everyone else and walked in silence all the way back to our bikes, not even looking at each other. I kept replaying the scene in my head. What the hell had gotten into me?
I stopped beside my bike and turned to Mac. “I’m sorry,” I said.
He stared deep into my eyes. Mac was always so damn good at reading people—that’s what made him such a good leader. “You ever do that again,” he told me, “I’ll put you down. And then I’ll take your patch.”
I nodded. “I know.” Then I shook my head. “I don’t know what got into me.”
Mac sighed. “I do.” He grabbed me and pulled me into a hug, holding me tight and slapping my back. “And you’ll figure it out too.”
He got onto his bike and roared off, leaving me alone.
I swung my leg over my bike and settled in the saddle, but didn’t start the engine. That was the second time I’d defied Mac in as many days. Yet he and the club were the most important thing in the world to me….
Until now.
That’s when it hit me. I’d been fighting so hard to stay away from Annabelle because I knew I couldn’t change. But she’d already changed me. She’d gotten deep inside me, right down in my soul, and I couldn’t get her out no matter how hard I tried. Without her, there was no way I would have lost control like that and no way I would have defied Mac.
But there was no way I would have left Hay alive, either. It was thinking of Annabelle that had stopped me pulling the trigger. She was becoming my conscience.
Keeping my distance from her wasn’t an option anymore. Things couldn’t stay as they were.
I started my bike and gunned the throttle.
I knew what I had to do.
23
Annabelle
I was in heaven. Scooter had shown me how to disassemble the engine and now it lay in gleaming pieces around me as I sat cross-legged on the floor. He’d been cautious at first, maybe having second thoughts about letting a woman into his precious workshop. But the more we talked, the more he relaxed. The language we talked wouldn’t have been intelligible to anyone else: it was pressures and ratios, cycles and strokes. He had the knowledge but I had the enthusiasm and I soaked up everything he told me like a sponge. By noon, he trusted me enough to leave me tinkering while he wandered into town to get us a couple of sandwiches.
And yet despite being exactly where I wanted to be, despite all the wondrous, shining parts around me, I couldn’t fully focus on the engine. I couldn’t stop thinking about Carrick and what he’d told me. Could I be with a man who did things like that? A criminal whose job it was to scare, to hurt, even to kill? I remembered what Mom had told me: did the angel outweigh the demon?
As the hours passed, my thoughts changed. They’ve been gone too long. What if he’s been shot? What if he’s—
I closed my eyes for a second, trying to push that thought away. What made it worse was knowing that any danger he was in was because of me. I felt something hard between my fingers and realized I was stroking the shamrock necklace.
I wished I’d asked Mom how to cope with this part of it. I tried to imagine never seeing him again and couldn’t. Just the thought of it made my chest ache. I remembered the feel of his body against mine, when he’d first rescued me at the auction. The way he’d told me I was priceless, his tenderness all the sweeter because he was normally so gruff. The way he’d pushed me away so hard, just to protect me….#p#分页标题#e#
And suddenly, I knew.
It wasn’t that I didn’t care about what he’d done. The violence sickened me but...it was part of him. The club was part of him. The demon came along with the angel.
And the angel was worth it.
At that moment, I heard the roar of a bike. My heart leapt and I ran for the door but I didn’t even make it out of the workshop before Carrick pulled up right outside and jumped off his bike.
For a heartbeat, we just looked at each other. Long enough for me to see in his eyes that the battle was over...and for him to see in mine that I wanted him, demon and angel together.
Then we ran at each other, our bodies slammed together and his lips came down on mine.
24
Annabelle
I was panting. I couldn’t stop panting. It was the adrenaline of finally kissing him after all this time: we’d kiss and then come up for air and I’d barely have time to gulp in oxygen before we kissed again.
His lips were demanding, forcing me open, as strong and determined as he was in everything else. But my lips were at least as desperate as his, open to drink in as much of him as possible, then closing to kiss him back, my softness against his hardness. He growled low in his throat, stroked both hands through my hair and kissed down into me, tilting my head back. His tongue traced my lips and then sought me out, finding my tongue and dancing with it, and I moaned. I’d been dreaming of this kiss for years and it was even better than I’d imagined.