Strength & Courage (The Night Horde SoCal Book 1) Read online

  “I’m fine, Dina. I just want some quiet.” She grabbed her bag, shoved some files into it, and went through the office, trying not to think about how much she looked like a victim, in her bloody clothes, with her swollen face.

  ~oOo~

  One day a week, Sid taught a self-defense class at the Foothills Women’s Center. Mostly, it was stuff like how to hold keys in your hand to make them a weapon, and what to look out for when walking alone, but there were some defensive moves, too. Light stuff. She’d done martial arts through middle and high school, never with much commitment and never landing on any particular discipline for very long. But she had some moves. Enough to help a woman get some distance from an asshole in a dark alley.

  Or to back off an asshole who was pounding on his wife.

  She’d also signed on to teach on a monthly basis what the center called a ‘self-success’ class, an evening spent doing modules teaching women how to write résumés and cover letters, how to dress for and comport themselves in job interviews, even how to rent apartments and set up utilities and bank accounts. The center wasn’t specifically a shelter for battered women, but more than a few regular visitors had violent partners. The center also offered drug and psychological counseling, immigrant transition support, and a food and clothes bank. At another site nearby, they provided some temporary housing and a crisis nursery. All the women they served were in dire straits and trying to improve things.

  She was scheduled to teach her ‘self-success’ class on the evening of the day Kevin Green attacked her. Though she wasn’t feeling very ‘self-successful’ lately, those women had gone through a lot to be able to clear three and a half hours for the class and the little box dinner provided by Blue Sky, one of the nicer restaurants in Madrone. So she wasn’t going to cancel it.

  The class went fine. She got a lot of sympathetic looks for her face, and a few direct questions about it, and she realized that she was going to have to explain it in some kind of detail when she taught the self-defense class. That was going to suck. But this class went fine.

  She was the last one to leave, and as she turned out the lights and locked the door, she had her first feeling of real fear. She’d gone home early from the office and hadn’t called to find out if Green was on the streets again. She was driving her own car now, and Muse was right—it really stood out. Demon had found out where she lived in a matter of hours. What if Green could find out, too? What if he knew what she drove? What if he knew that she volunteered here?

  The center was in a big, old house on a corner in an older residential neighborhood in Madrone. The back yard had been converted into a parking lot, so she’d come out the back door to lock up. Now, feeling paralyzed, she stood on the wooden porch that led down several steps to the lot. The center had been crowded and busy when she’d arrived, and she’d parked near the alley, about as far from the house as it was possible to park. Out of the radius of the single sodium arc light.

  If she could get to her car, she’d feel better. She had a concealed carry permit and kept a little Sig Sauer P290 in the glove box.

  As she stood there, holding a key up between the fingers of her fist, she heard the clear crunch of someone walking over the gravel lot, but they were still shrouded by the gloom of a moonless night. Fuck! She wouldn’t have enough time to unlock the door and run back in, and, in order to try, she’d have to turn her back on whoever was coming. Her heart was beating so hard it was making her feel sick.

  And then he stepped into the circle of light.

  Muse.

  For a second, she thought she might really puke from sheer relief.

  “Hey, hon,” he called, smiling up as he approached. “You comin’ down, or are you sleeping on the porch tonight?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Been a bit. I’m starting to think you deleted my number.” He put his booted foot on the bottom step and leaned on the railing, looking a little smug and a lot handsome. The swelling from his altercation with Michael was gone, and from this distance, it looked like most of the bruising was gone, too.

  At that point, while she was checking him out, he must have gotten his first good look at her, because his expression changed and he trotted up the rest of the steps and took her head in his hand, gently but firmly, brushing her hair back from her bandaged cheek. “What the fuck happened? Who did this?”

  She pulled her head away. “It’s not your problem.”

  He reached for her again, because that was what guys did. They grabbed. But he stopped and let his hand fall. Frustration tensed his features. “Sid. Who hurt you?”

  “I’m not going to tell you. It’s not your business. Muse, why are you here?”

  He let his question drop, but she could see that he warred with himself to do it. “Wanted to see you.”

  “You could have called instead of stalking me.”

  “Not stalking. Just waiting.” He frowned. “You want me to go?”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d asked a question like that. The answer was always no. Even when she’d said yes, sent him away, the real answer had been no, she didn’t want him to go. And tonight, feeling tired and defeated, feeling afraid and vulnerable, she really didn’t want him to go. But, knowing the weakness of it, she couldn’t meet his eyes, and she couldn’t speak, so she just looked at her feet and shook her head.

  He responded by wrapping her up in his arms. He didn’t try to kiss her; he just held her, his cheek resting against her head. Just a hug. Comfort. And she was comforted. Almost to the point of tears. But there was no way she was going to cap off this shitty day by behaving like a weepy chick around a caveman biker who already thought she couldn’t handle herself.

  No matter how much she liked him. No matter how good it felt to be enclosed in his muscular arms and pressed to his sculpted chest.

  After a few minutes, still holding her, he asked, “You ever ride a Harley?”

  She shook her head.

  “You wanna?”

  She wanted to be where he was, wherever that was. Without lifting her head from his chest, she answered, “Um…I don’t know. Yeah. But I need a helmet, right?”

  He took a step back and lifted her chin. “I brought an extra. I came here to ask you to ride with me—hoping you were dressed for it.” He looked her over. Since this class had been about professional comportment, she dressed professionally to lead it. She was wearing a pair of dress pants, a knit wrap top, basic, mid-heel pumps, and a leather blazer to ward off the late October chill. “And you are, or close enough. C’mon. I want you to meet my best friend.”

  ~oOo~

  Muse’s bike was more old-fashioned than some of the other bikes Sid had seen at the clubhouse. He called it a “Knuckle,” but she didn’t know what that meant. It was black and chrome, with high handlebars, and the seat at the back seemed small and flimsy. But she got herself as close to Muse as she could and held him as tightly as she could. He’d told her, Just hold on and move with me, and that was what she did. Since she’d already met Michael and his other brothers in the club, she assumed that he was taking her to his house to meet his dog, and she was okay with that. Someplace quiet. Someplace safe.

  Most of the day, she’d wanted to be alone. Now, alone felt scary and, well, lonely. But she wanted to be with only Muse.

  Riding with him, once she got through the first couple of turns, Sid felt better than she had all day. They didn’t ride more than ten minutes, but the brisk wind soothed her face, and his strong body in her arms soothed the rest of her.

  He took her to a neighborhood on the far edge of Madrone, where the city’s irrigation system trickled off, and the pastoral sweeps of landscaped avenues and boulevards gave way to the natural scrub and dust of the desert. The streets here had no sidewalks, and only about half of the small houses had green lawns. Others were nothing but dirt and broken toys.

  Sid knew this neighborhood and others like it. For most of her cases, this was the best kind of neighborhood the
y could manage. And Muse lived here, too?

  The driveway he pulled into ran along the side of one of the well-tended little houses. The light over the front door was on, showing a narrow porch with a white spindle railing. Like most of the houses in the neighborhood, the windows of Muse’s bungalow were covered with decorative iron bars, these painted white. The lawn was green and neatly mown, and there was a bed that ran around the foundation of the house, framed in half-buried red bricks, in which some desert plants had been cultivated. Yucca and agave, Sid thought.

  He pulled up and killed the engine, and she heard a dog barking in the house—a big dog. As he had when she’d gotten on, he held his arm out, and she used it to steady herself while she put her foot on the driveway and swung the other leg off. He dismounted right behind her and helped her out of the helmet, being careful not to brush against her sore cheek.

  When he’d put the helmets away, he took her hands in his. His eyes fixed on her cheek, but he didn’t ask again what had happened. Instead, he said, “I want to kiss you, hon. But I don’t want to piss you off again.”

  What he’d said was really sweet to her in some way, and she smiled what felt like her first real smile all day, not minding the stretch of the stitches in her cheek. She pulled him close and wrapped his arms around her; then, with her hands on his chest, under his kutte, she rose up on her toes and tilted her head up. He smiled and met her the rest of the way.

  In the clubhouse, he’d kissed her almost savagely, both times, as if devouring her had been necessary to show his brothers she was his. Now, he was gentle, more than he’d yet been, his lips just brushing hers, his tongue barely tasting her skin.

  He pulled back. “Cliff’s big, but he’s friendly to friends. You afraid of dogs?”

  She’d never had a pet; her father couldn’t abide them. But she loved animals and had often spent more time at her friends’ houses playing with their animals than with her friends. “I love dogs. You named your dog Cliff? Like Clifford, the Big Red Dog?”

  “I don’t know who that is. Is it a kids’ show or somethin’?”

  “Sort of. Television and books and toys. You don’t know Clifford?”

  He shook his head. “His name’s Heathcliff. For a guy in a book.”

  Sid was well and truly shocked. “You named your dog after Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights? You know Wuthering Heights?”

  “Yeah. Is that bad?”

  She was delighted, honestly delighted, and she laughed. It felt good, like she was shaking off the rest of whatever shit Green had coated her psyche with. “No, it’s not bad at all. I love that book. I’m just surprised you like it, too.”

  The dog was still barking. Muse took Sid’s hand and led her to the porch as he answered. “I don’t. My sister does. It’s been her very favorite book since she was a kid. I don’t understand why a twisted love like that is supposed to be romantic. I get Heathcliff, though.”

  She wasn’t sure what to respond to in that little speech. Should she ask about his sister? Try to explain the romance of Heathcliff and Catherine? Or push him on the surprising point that he ‘got’ Heathcliff?

  As he slid his key into the lock on the metal mesh security door, she picked a topic and asked, “You get Heathcliff?”

  “Sure. People fucked him hard. When he could, he fucked them back. I get that. That book’s not a romance. It’s a revenge fantasy.”

  “Well, yeah. It’s both. But the revenge devours him, too.”

  “It always does. But some things need to be avenged, even so. Revenge isn’t about winning or justice. It’s about balance.” He opened the doors, and a huge black dog bounded off the couch to the right and nearly flew at them. A little anxious, after all, Sid took a step backward on the porch, but Muse went to his knees and embraced him. “Hey, buddy. Sorry I’m late.” He ruffled the dog’s thick coat. “Somebody I want you to meet.”

  Still reeling from the fresh thought that she and this biker with the neck tattoo had just analyzed a classic British novel, not to mention that she’d gotten some deeper insight into his moral code, Sid stepped back to the door and watched him love on his dog. He was unguarded and unabashed in the affection he showed the animal, and Sid realized that he was that way with her, too. He didn’t try to hold his feelings back, just like he didn’t play games or do the ritual dances of mating. He was comfortable in his skin, and he didn’t seem to fear that being open made him weak.

  He looked over his shoulder with a smile. “This is Cliff.”

  She held out her hand to Muse’s best friend. Cliff gave her a cautious sniff, his tail wagging slightly. “Hi, baby. You’re beautiful.”

  At her words, or her tone, or both, Cliff decided that she was welcome. His tail began to move more strongly back and forth, and he licked her hand.

  “C’mon in, hon. It’s not much, but this is where I live.”

  She stepped in as he hit a switch and turned on the overhead light in the living room.

  He was right. It wasn’t much. There was a long, worn couch and a black canvas director’s chair, and a Seventies-era coffee table in the narrow living room. The only adornment on the walls was a television, hanging opposite the couch, the wires hanging down from it and plugged into the wall without any effort to camouflage them. The windows were covered with white mini-blinds. The walls were white, the floors bare wood. The room was perfectly tidy, though.

  Muse took off his kutte and laid it over the arm of the couch. “I need to let Cliff out. He’s been cooped up for a while today. Can I get you anything? I got beer and Jack. Water, too. Or I can make coffee.”

  “Beer’s fine.” She followed him the short distance to the back of the house. In the kitchen, he opened a sliding door, and Cliff ran out.

  His kitchen was just as spare as the living room. The walls here were also white, as were the appliances. The countertops were common white tile, and the cabinets were the kind of plain oak veneer that showed up everywhere in apartments and rentals, the kind of homes that the owners didn’t much care about. Though there was a space for a table and chairs, that space was empty. A few clean dishes sat in a rubber-coated metal drainer on the counter next to the double sink, and there was a coffee machine and a microwave, and a blue towel hanging from the handle on the oven door, but otherwise, the walls and surfaces were blank.

  On the floor near the slider was a wrought-iron stand holding two large, glazed stoneware bowls, each one painted with the name ‘Cliff’ in black. So far, the dog had the nicest thing in the house.

  Muse opened the fridge and pulled out two bottles of Budweiser. He uncapped one and handed it to her, and she took a sip. It was good, and soothing, and she took several more sips—gulps, actually—and pulled the bottle away with a satisfied sigh.

  “Why’d you bring me here?”

  He took a long drink of his beer before he answered. “I wanted to see you. And I needed to be home for Cliff. If I went to yours, I didn’t know whether I’d be home tonight.”

  “Making a pretty enormous assumption, considering I threw you out last time.”

  “Not an assumption. Just playing out the possible scenarios.” He drank down the beer, rinsed out the empty bottle, and put it in a bin under the sink. “Usually I walk him when I get home. I at least need to throw his ball for a while. You want to come back with me?”

  She nodded, and they went through the slider and stepped onto a plain slab patio, on which sat two fold-up lounge chairs and a small Weber kettle grill. From a plastic laundry basket sitting just outside the door, Muse pulled a tennis ball.

  From seemingly out of nowhere, Cliff came barreling toward them, pulling up short as he hit the patio. Muse threw the ball, and the dog spun and tore after it. Sid thought she saw a cat in the yard, too, big and black, also chasing the ball. But it was dark not far past the patio, so maybe it was a trick of the light.

  “Do you have a cat, too?”

  “Nah. That’s just a neighborhood hobo. But Cliff likes him.” Cliff br
ought the ball back, and Muse threw it again. Yep. Definitely a cat running behind the dog.

  “He missed the memo on the whole dogs and cats thing, I guess.”

  Muse laughed. “I guess they both did.”

  After he threw the ball again, he said, “Sid. Tell me about your face. Please.” He didn’t turn to her. He’d spoken while he’d looked out into the dark of his yard.

  “Why?”

  “Can’t it just be because I want to know?”

  “Not if you’re just my latest fuck.”

  He turned at that, at the way she’d shaped the words of her sentence. She’d done it on purpose, made him the fuck, not her, because she wanted to see him react. He smiled and stepped toward her, but he didn’t touch her. “Is that what I am?”