"With me."

"Sleeping in your lap while you watch television?" There was a sharp, nasty sneer in Michael's voice.

"I told you, he's not well socialized."

"So you keep him penned up."

"He has a room of his own. Is there something you want?"

"I just want to sit here with him for a few minutes. That okay?"

The woman stared hard at him. Then she looked at Faith, who nodded. She had no idea what to think about any of it, but Michael wanted to sit with this apparently crazy cat, so she wasn't going to get in his way.

"Fine. Just...don't sue us if he slices you open. We don't have any money, anyway."

"Do I look like somebody who'd sue anybody, lady?"

Without another word, the woman turned and walked off toward friendlier people.

Faith sat down at Michael's side. The cat growled at her, too.

"It's okay, dude," Michael said, almost crooning the words. He put his hand flat on the side of the cage, near the cat. Immediately, a paw lashed out and left a long red seam on Michael's palm-but he didn't even flinch.

"Look at him. He's not mean. He's scared. G.o.d, I f.u.c.king hate people."

Without thinking about what she was doing, Faith put her hand on Michael's leg.

He stared down at it, his hand still flat on the cage. For maybe as long as a minute, the three of them were still and quiet. Then Michael said, "I was a foster kid."

She knew that. She'd overheard Aunt Bibi and Uncle Hooj talking about it. But that seemed a wrong thing to tell him. So she said only, "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I went in when I was two. I never got adopted or even had a family placement for very long. A couple times a year, though, they'd do this adoption fair thing. You know what that is?"

She didn't, so she shook her head. But he was still staring at her hand, so she said, "No."

"It's like this here-a bunch of foster kids get dressed up as good as they can and get taken to a park. People who are thinking about adopting go to the park and look over all the kids. If they see one they like, they take them home. It's more complicated than that, but that's basically it. A bunch of unwanted kids trying to be was wantable as they could be, a bunch of rich a.s.sholes walking around deciding which one matched their furniture the best. It f.u.c.king sucked."

Faith felt her eyes burning. She didn't know what to say or do-all of this was way heavier than she knew how to deal with. So she squeezed his leg a little. That felt silly, but she couldn't think of anything better.

He twitched under her touch and then went on with a story that wasn't yet finished. "People used to come up to me all the time. I guess I was a cute kid. I mean, I don't know. It's not like I have pictures. All I saw in the mirror was me. But people said all the time that I was...was...beautiful"-he flinched and almost spat out that word-"so lots of people would come up to me at those things. But I never got picked. Probably for the best."

While he'd been talking, the cat had inched closer to his hand. Michael had never moved it, even though blood was now dripping off the side of his palm from the slice the cat had made through it. Now, while they were quiet again, the cat stood and pressed his body against the side of the cage, against Michael's hand.

And started to purr like a motorboat.

Michael laughed. When the cat turned and put his head against the wire, he finally moved his hand, sliding his fingers into the cage and scratching furry black ears. Then he opened the cage and pulled the cat out.

"What are you doing?" The woman was back, but she pulled up short when she saw the cat draped over Michael's shoulder. He hissed at the woman and then turned his face toward Michael's neck.

"How much to adopt him?"

"What?"

"How much?"

The woman stood there with her mouth open, blinking. Faith's father would have said she was 'catching flies.' Then she closed her mouth and narrowed her eyes. "Take him. I'll waive the fee. You have to put him in a carrier to get him home, though, and he's not going to like that at all."

"It'll be okay. He knows I'm not gonna hurt him."

Faith didn't know how Michael thought he was going to be able to keep a cat in the clubhouse, which was where he lived. But she kept her mouth shut. It felt like something important was happening here, between Michael and this cat, and between Michael and her.

He was right about the carrier. The cat went from Michael's arms into the cardboard box without a fuss. And then they walked back down through the park.

He walked her to Dante, cradling the carrier at his chest, talking into the air holes.

"Tom is a stupid name for a cat. They didn't even care enough to give him a good name."

She smiled. There was a good chance that today her crush on Michael was turning into something more than that-which sucked extra hard, since nothing was going to happen as long as her father had anything to say about anything. "So give him a better name. What do you like better?"

Michael peered into the holes. Faith couldn't imagine he could see much in that dark s.p.a.ce, but it seemed like he could. "He looks like that cartoon cat. The one who's always chasing Tweety?"

"Sylvester? Yeah, he looks just like him. But I think he's tougher than that. More like Sylvester Stallone."

He turned to her and grinned. "Sly Stallone. Yeah. That's his name."

When they got to Dante, Michael handed her the box full of cat. "Happy birthday."

She stared at him. "What?"

"He's for you. Happy birthday."

"You're giving me a free, feral cat for my birthday?" She'd meant it as a joke, but she was sorry she'd said it, because he blushed, and hurt went through his eyes. He'd really thrown her, though. She didn't think she could go home with a cat any more than he could. Especially not a man-eating beast.

"He'll like you. I know." He set the box in Dante's bed, then opened the top. Lifting Faith's hand, he put it in the box with Sly-who immediately swiped at her, drawing blood.

But then he b.u.mped their joined hands and purred.

"See?" Michael closed the top of the box, and then he noticed that her hand was bleeding. "Oh, d.a.m.n. Sorry."

He lifted her hand again, and this time he took it all the way to his lips and kissed the new wound. Faith's heart raced.

And then he held her face in his hands like he'd done before, and he kissed her, and she was fairly certain she was going to pa.s.s out.

This time, she was determined not to pull away. The first time, she'd been overwhelmed and not sure how to kiss and breathe at the same time. This time, she'd just go ahead and pa.s.s out if she ran out of air, but she was not going to pull away, not ever.

His lips felt so fantastic. He needed to shave, too-there was bristle all around his mouth, like sandpaper. He was so blond she hadn't noticed the scruff until it was rubbing against her skin. But oh, she liked it. She liked the way it hurt a little. And she loved the way his tongue moved inside her mouth, soft but greedy, and the way his hands were tense around her face. If everybody kissed like this, Faith couldn't understand why people weren't doing it all day every day. Because this was the best thing ever.

Then one hand left her face, and she almost whined, but she was afraid to make any noise that might spook him and make him stop. She focused on their lips and tongues, on trying to learn what he was doing so she could do it, too.

His hand was on her waist. Moving up under her shirt. Oh, s.h.i.t, that felt good, just his hand on the skin over her ribs. Oh, s.h.i.t. She couldn't stop a little whimper.

He groaned in response and then turned them, pushing her back against her car. And then-oh s.h.i.t oh s.h.i.t-his hand was on her b.o.o.b. Over the bra, but still. No one had ever touched her there. The nerves in her b.o.o.b felt carbonated, billions of bubbles popping under her skin. She wanted him to move her bra. More than anything else in this life, she wanted him to get that stupid thing out of their way. She wanted his hot skin on hers.

Oh, she wanted that so bad! She'd thought she'd felt h.o.r.n.y before. She'd done some experimenting. She'd gotten one of the candles her mom kept stocked for the dining room centerpiece, and she'd...explored...a little and made herself feel pretty good. But she'd never felt anything like what she was feeling right now. If he threw her down on the sidewalk and just f.u.c.ked her, she wouldn't stop him. In fact, she'd cheer.

He groaned again, louder this time, and she realized she was moving, rocking her hips against him. She could feel that he wanted her. What she felt was big and scary, and she wanted that, too.

He was shaking. His whole body was shaking. His hand on her b.o.o.b was shaking, even as his thumb moved back and forth over her nipple, through her stupid bra which she was throwing away as soon as she got home, throwing all her bras away.

Then his fingers hooked into the top of the cup and started to pull, and she was so thrilled, so relieved, that she had to say something. She broke away from his mouth and gasped. "Yes! Oh please, yes!"

He jumped away from her so far and so fast, she might as well have had a cattle prod.

For maybe two seconds, he stared at her, his face red and his blue eyes vivid with what looked like bewilderment.

And then he ran. He turned and ran down the sidewalk, back toward the park.

She stood there, gasping, her top askew. She heard a strange sound and turned to see the box moving a little. Oh, right. She had a birthday cat. A crazy cat from a crazy guy.

Instead of crying or screaming or otherwise pitching a fit, though she really wanted to, she straightened herself out, caught her breath, picked up her new cat, set him on the pa.s.senger seat, and drove home.

Maybe the fight she was going to get from her mother about her new cat would take her mind off what had just happened.

Probably not.

CHAPTER SIX.

Demon woke and had no idea where he was at first. h.e.l.l, that sense of displacement was so strong he had no idea when he was. He sat up and reached for his piece.

A piece he no longer carried with him everywhere as a matter of course. Because he hadn't been a Nomad for years.

Sitting up on the side of the bed, life came back to him. He was in the clubhouse dorm. Okay. Okay.

All the single patches had rooms in the dorm, a place they could take the girls. Or more than that-Connor, Lakota, and P.B. all lived at the clubhouse. Demon had, too, until he'd hooked up with Dakota. She hadn't like it here.

Demon's room hadn't been getting much use of late. Not at all since Tucker had been placed with the Elliotts. His attention was on his kid, not his d.i.c.k.

He was there now because he'd gone for a ride after he'd put Tucker to bed the night before, and he hadn't been able to face the idea that Faith would be in Bibi and Hoosier's house when he got back.

Hoosier thought he had a second chance-that they had a second chance. But for what? They'd only ever been what could possibly be construed as 'together' for a few weeks, and she'd been just a kid. Hoosier had said he'd been just a kid, too, and maybe that was right. He'd known then that, for all the things he'd experienced growing up, his experiences hadn't been like those of normal kids. He'd been old in ways they were not, but he'd missed the things kids weren't supposed to miss.

He'd felt dumb a lot of the time, not catching jokes and references that people made. Maybe that had made him young. Maybe that was why he'd been so drawn to a teenage girl in the first place. She was so much more normal than he was, so strong and centered. Almost like she'd been the older one. But she was also a little weird, in a way he understood. He hadn't felt like a wrong piece in a puzzle when he was around her.

But that had been ten years ago. Ten long, important years, full of a lot of life. The things he'd done in those years hadn't made him any more normal. He didn't know what her life had been like, but it sounded like it had been good. She was making her art things. That was good. She was good in the life she had. It was probably better for the past to stay where it was, then.

And yet-when he'd seen her, he'd felt every single feeling he'd ever had for her, all at once, and in the same intensity they had ever had. No-stronger. He still loved her. He didn't think he could deal with knowing for a fact that they couldn't have a second chance. He couldn't deal with learning that she hadn't kept her feelings simmering the way he had. Even though he'd never thought to see her again, now that he had, everything in his head and heart was in turmoil, and he could feel the strands of his tenuous control snapping under the strain.

So he hadn't gone back to the Elliotts'.

He could have stayed in his trailer, but he barely went into that dump anymore. He kept the rent and utilities up, just to have an address that wasn't the clubhouse or somebody else's house, but that tin can was depressing. He'd lived with the Elliotts as long as Tucker had. That was where his family was.

So he'd come to the clubhouse. And he'd sat at the bar for a while with some of his brothers, drinking too much. He wasn't hung over-for whatever reason, his body didn't do hangovers, not physically-but there were fuzzy s.p.a.ces in his memory, so he knew he'd gotten pretty f.u.c.king drunk.

Demon didn't, as a rule, get drunk. He didn't do drugs at all. He drank, but he tried hard not to cross beyond the buzzed zone. A guy like him, with a faulty switch on his impulses even when he was sober, had no business putting things in his body that encouraged impulsive behavior. But a biker couldn't really be a teetotaler, so he drank with his brothers and tried to pay attention.

Last night, he'd missed the sign, that one drink that was the last chance to slow down. He looked at his hands-they were uninjured. Well, good. Then he hadn't started a brawl.

But when he got up, he dislodged a purple thong from a wad under his pillow. f.u.c.k. Then that part of his memory revived, and he remembered that he'd brought Coco back here last night. He looked frantically around the room but saw no other signs that he'd had a guest. Club girls knew to get moving when the fun was over, so she would have left, probably when he pa.s.sed out. Feeling a chemical surge of panic in his blood, he ran to his little closet of a bathroom and checked the wastebasket.

There were two used condoms and their wrappers in the bottom. Demon leaned his hands on the sink and blew out his relief. The club had all the girls tested regularly for creeping c.r.a.p, but Demon had himself an object lesson for forgetting about birth control.

He loved his boy with everything he had in him, but Tucker had an epically s.h.i.tty mother and had had an epically s.h.i.tty start in life, and that was Demon's fault. Getting carried away. Faulty switch.

Just faulty in general.

Since he was already naked and standing in the bathroom, he took a shower. He always felt better after a shower, like his bad feelings sloughed off in the spray of scalding water.

When he went out to the Hall, it was still early. But it looked like a Prospect had made a doughnut run, and there was fresh coffee. One of the great things about living at the clubhouse-there was always food and drink, right there waiting.

He was surprised to see Muse sitting at the bar so early. Muse didn't work in the shop. For his on-the-books job, he worked with the entertainment industry, managing the club's bike rental business and doing technical advising on movie and television sets. Several of the SoCal Horde worked with Hollywood, as TAs or stunt riders. A couple of them, Muse included, had even been in a movie scene once or twice. The Night Horde had a little fame, and a couple of their old ladies were famous, too.

Demon thought it was a little weird, all their connections to famous people, but it made some sense, too. They were in SoCal, after all. When Hollywood wanted bada.s.s bikers and 'authenticity,' they came waving stacks of cash. Plus, Virtuoso Cycles was widely considered the best custom bike shop in California, and they had a couple of wizard builders, so there were Hollywood types, the kind who considered themselves 'edgy,' around pretty often, commissioning builds or getting bling installed on their stock bikes. Or just getting maintenance done-none of those a.s.sholes could even change their own f.u.c.king oil.

Muse, though, wasn't usually in this early, unless he was taking bikes to a filming location somewhere. He'd been doing a lot less of that, leaving it more and more to Fargo, his a.s.sistant and one of the current batch of Prospects, because Muse was working the outlaw side, and that was really his main job.

Like Demon, Muse was an enforcer. But Muse still actually did that work. Demon was staying clean. So far, he'd been able to stay clear of their work with La Zorra, a chick cartel kingpin-or was it queenpin?-who was becoming a major player in the border drug trade.

He knew it was just a matter of time before his hands would be dirty, too. He hoped that he'd have custody of Tucker before that happened.

"Morning, brother."

Muse turned and raised his eyebrows. "Deme. You good? Saw your bike-there a problem at Hooj's? Tucker okay?"

Before Demon could answer, Muse's big, black German Shepherd, Cliff, trotted over. Muse brought him to hang at the clubhouse sometimes-usually when he was feeling guilty that he hadn't been able to spend time with him for a while.

Demon squatted down and gave his buddy some love. "Yeah. We're good. Just needed...I don't know. But I'm okay." He let Cliff lick his face, then ruffled his ears and stood up.

Muse's expression was skeptical. "Somethin' up?"

Demon considered Muse his best friend. Muse had a few stories about the foster care system himself, and he probably knew more than anybody else about Demon's childhood-not everything, but more. When Demon had been exiled to the Nomads, Muse, about a decade older and more experienced, had stepped in and helped him work out how to be homeless again. So he felt a real, deep, solid bond between them. But Demon had never talked about Faith with him or anybody who hadn't been around and known already. He didn't know what Muse might have heard over the grapevine-probably at least that he'd f.u.c.ked a brother's daughter-but he hadn't ever offered anything up, and Muse, a tightlipped motherf.u.c.ker anyway, had never asked.

So Demon wasn't going to start now.