Claimed By My Biker Stalker

Chapter 5 — Black Dagger Curiosity

Nixx

The second I saw the guy put his hands on her, I knew exactly what he was.

Not because he hit her.

Men like that were usually smarter than that in public.

No, it was the little things.

The way his hand settled on the back of her neck instead of her waist. The way she smiled immediately after he told her to. The way her shoulders tightened before he even spoke, like her body had already learned to brace itself before her mind caught up.

Fear had patterns.

Most people missed them.

I didn’t.

The North Town bike fest was loud as hell around me. Music screaming through blown speakers. Burned grease and gasoline thick enough to taste. Drunk idiots stumbling between booths already sunburned by noon.

But the second I walked past that tattoo tent, the whole damn world narrowed down to one woman glaring at a tattoo machine like she wanted to stab somebody with it.

Long black hair.

Ice-blue eyes.

Ink crawling over pale skin.

Mean little mouth.

Pretty in the kind of way that usually came with problems.

Then the man I learned was her husband, grabbed her arm hard enough to make her stumble slightly, and suddenly I wasn’t thinking about how pretty she was anymore.

I was thinking about violence.

Not because I was some white knight bullshit savior. I’d met enough women who didn’t want rescuing to know better than that.

But I knew abuse when I saw it.

Special Forces had burned that ability into my nervous system years ago.

Tiny flinches.

Forced smiles.

Over-explaining.

Watching somebody’s mood before speaking.

The government might’ve decided I was too medically f****d to keep serving after the explosion in Kandahar shredded half my knee, but they didn’t erase the instincts. They didn’t erase twenty years of reading threats before they happened.

And that man?

That man was a threat.

The second she looked at me after he let her go, I saw it again.

Not weakness.

Control.

Careful control.

Like she was constantly holding herself together one stitch at a time.

Then she smiled at me anyway.

Fuck.

That was the real problem.

By the time I sat in her chair and she started sketching on my shoulder, I was already interested.

By the time she laughed at one of my smartass comments, I was in trouble.

It wasn’t even flirting exactly.

Not really.

It was the way she relaxed without realizing she was doing it.

The way her eyes stopped darting toward her husband every few seconds once she focused on the tattoo.

The way she got completely absorbed in the work, like tattooing was the only place she could breathe properly.

And Christ, those hands.

Steady.

Precise.

Confident.

A woman who looked terrified of her own husband somehow became completely fearless with a tattoo machine in her grip.

I liked that more than I should’ve. Maybe a lot more.

By the end of the tattoo, I knew three things.

One:

Her husband’s kutte said Havoc.

Two:

The blonde working the cash table had guilt written all over her face every time she looked at JJ.

And Havoc?

Yeah. He’d definitely f****d the blonde.

Or he was currently f*****g her.

The way he looked at her made that pretty goddamn obvious.

The real question was whether JJ knew.

Judging by the look on her face after the asshole winked across the tent?

Yeah. She knew.

And three:

I absolutely planned on learning everything I could about Jonnie Jo Harper.

Or JJ.

Cute nickname. Real cute.

I rode back toward Middle Town with the desert heat rolling off the pavement in waves sharp enough to blur the highway. Most people called this place Satan’s asshole because of the heat and the dust and the way the whole damn region looked half-abandoned once summer hit full force.

I liked it.

Always had.

Three years ago, I’d rolled through New Mexico on my bike with nowhere specific left to go after the discharge papers landed in my lap. The military called it medical retirement.

I called it bureaucratic bullshit.

Yeah, my knee was wrecked.

Yeah, sometimes it locked up when storms rolled in.

Didn’t stop me from shooting straight.

Didn’t stop me from tracking.

Didn’t stop me from dropping grown men twice my size.

But once the government decided you were damaged goods, that was it.

So I left.

Ended up drinking at the Black Daggers clubhouse for three straight nights before Jarek finally asked if I planned on becoming furniture or prospecting.

Turned out I was good for business.

Real good.

Tracking people.

Finding people.

Interrogating people.

Sometimes hurting people.

The Daggers figured out pretty fast I was useful.

And now here I was sitting at a red light with a fresh tattoo burning pleasantly beneath my sleeve while thinking about a married tattoo artist from North Town like a goddamn teenager.

Pathetic.

I parked outside my apartment above the old machine shop the Daggers used for overflow storage and headed upstairs, tossing my kutte across the couch before grabbing my laptop.

Twenty minutes.

That was all I’d spent around her.

Twenty f*****g minutes.

And I still couldn’t stop thinking about the look on her face when Havoc grabbed her arm.

I opened a browser and started digging.

Didn’t take long.

Marriage certificate databases were laughably easy to access if you knew where to look.

Jonnie Jo Harper.

Donald Harper.

I stared at the screen.

Donald?

I barked out a disbelieving laugh.

This asshole seriously went by Havoc voluntarily when his government name was Donald?

Unbelievable.

The certificate date made my amusement fade.

Six years ago.

Jesus Christ.

She looked young now. Mid-twenties maybe.

Which meant she’d been barely legal when she married that dirtbag.

“How the f**k did that happen?” I muttered.

Another search pulled up an old arrest report involving Donald Harper. Assault charges. Dismissed.

Of course they were.

Hell’s Fire had enough influence in North Town to bury almost anything.

I leaned back in my chair slowly, staring at JJ’s driver’s license photo pulled from another database. Same pale eyes. Same black hair.

But she looked softer there.

Happier.

That pissed me off more than it should have.

My phone buzzed across the desk.

Jarek:

You spot him yet?

Right.

Work.

I scrubbed a hand down my face before texting back:

Nothing yet. He’ll slip sooner or later.

Three dots appeared almost immediately:

Keep me posted.

Will do.

The phone fell silent again.

I looked back at the screen.

At JJ.

At the tiny thumbnail image of the woman pretending she wasn’t drowning.

“Alright, pretty girl,” I muttered quietly. “Back to work for now.”

But even while shutting the laptop, I already knew one thing for certain.

I wasn’t done learning about Jonnie Jo Harper.

Not even close.