Immortal Redeemed. Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

it, and when facing him, even before his understated commands had helped her to get on the bike. Maybe he didn’t come off as scary as he thought. Yet tugging an old soul free from someone unknowingly housing such a thing might change her mind about that. It wouldn’t be easy and could prove even tougher if he was up against someone trained to handle herself.

      “Turn again,” she said.

      Simply wrenching secrets from this woman would cost him less anxiety and get him to the end point quicker. The problem was that he already considered her special, and these days he reserved muscle work for dusting monsters.

      She had a death grip on him. If she truly was ignorant of the soul she housed, this woman couldn’t possibly see the irony in that.

      Fortunately, in this intricate game of hide-and-seek, he planned to come out the winner. That didn’t mean he didn’t like her arms around him and her heat. In fact, what he desired most right now was the time necessary for him to coax answers from her the old-fashioned way, by acting on an escalating physical attraction that would lead to sex. Nakedness and sex. Hard bodies on a soft bed that held lingering traces of this woman’s wonderful perfume.

      Hell, he amended. Sex on any surface would do. One last time. Would she allow him that? Could he get her to trust a stranger enough to invite him into her bed without using his influence?

      After coming all this way, was he going to wait for her to decide, or help her along?

      * * *

      “Almost there,” McKenna called out, and the handsome biker followed her directions without question.

      It was all she could do to hold on to the stranger doing her a favor. He hadn’t headed to the garage where her car was parked, so she opted for plan B. There was no way she’d let him know where she lived. In her present state she’d be an easy target for any pervert on the prowl, and he’d already had his hands on her.

      Didn’t matter that she’d liked it.

      What did matter was why she had allowed such a thing.

      “Fifth and G. Just a few more right turns and we’ll be there,” she said, not sure he’d hear that above the roar of the engine. But her gloriously muscled, incredibly handsome champion nodded his head.

      He was a good-looking bastard for sure, from his cropped auburn mane to his boots. Everything in between seemed to have been molded to perfection by someone paying strict attention to detail. The fitted leather getup he wore enhanced his superior shape and smelled sinfully earthy.

      She paid attention to the way he moved, and found him graceful and in complete control of the black custom Harley. With all his muscle and sinew, the guy was like a panther in motion. But he was too tall, too handsome and way too male. He might present himself as a white knight dipped in black leather, but in his presence she was experiencing a moment of moral and physical weakness.

      It was a well-known fact that looks could be deceiving, so why the hell was she on this bike?

      For the life of her, McKenna couldn’t find a reason for that.

      Her old partner at Seattle PD would have rolled his eyes mockingly when catching sight of this guy, suggesting that a package like this one was bound to be bad. The nurses on her shift at the hospital would have drooled.

      So, okay, he appeared to be physically perfect. The odds of this biker being merely a Good Samaritan without an agenda of his own rang in at about fifty-fifty. Granted, she’d been near enough to fainting on the street corner to have seen the lights dimming, and there was no way she could have made it to her car. But did that justify accepting aid from a stranger?

      Other then Derek Miller, her ex-partner both on the force and in her bed, she hadn’t allowed herself this close to a bad boy without flashing her badge. Yet McKenna was pretty sure she had never wrapped her arms around anything so fine as this specimen.

      “You can slow down now,” she called out, wondering if she had a subconscious motive for accepting this lift. Could she possibly use this stud to punish Derek for not being the right man for her? By flaunting someone in front of Derek who was in no way right? The exact opposite of right?

      No. That wasn’t it. She’d never been the type to rub things into a partially closed wound. And Derek had, at one time, professed to love her.

      “Fifth and G,” she repeated. “Half a block down.”

      The guy glanced at her when they stopped for a red light. “All right,” he said, rocking the windblown look with deep auburn hair only a few inches long that smelled like dangerous forbidden detours.

      His worn leather jacket, soft against her cheek, had a logo on the back that she was too tired to lean back and examine. Anyway, it was probably best if she didn’t know what he was up to when he wasn’t volunteering to help ladies in distress.

      Adding to the cliché of guys on bikes these days, her white knight had tattoos. Rounded edges of fine black scrolls were visible at the nape of his neck. Some sort of Celtic design, she guessed, and no big deal since she also had a tattoo.

      In spite of not quite believing that she had accepted this guy’s offer of assistance, she wasn’t a complete idiot. McKenna felt relatively safe on the bike. The knife in her pocket was for protection. She also knew how to get an arm around this guy’s throat if he misbehaved. For some reason, though, she had a feeling he was okay, and was sincere in his wish to help her out of a jam. In this case, McKenna preferred to trust her instincts.

      When the bike swerved to the right, she hung on. But after they reached her destination, getting away from him would be the smart thing to do. And also the sensible move, since she was already imagining what a night with him might be like, and how he’d look without the leather—buck naked, bronze, intimidatingly perfect.

      Would she stoop to that?

      If times were different... If she was different and didn’t know better, due to the things she’d witnessed both as a cop and in the ER, she might have taken this guy up on a night in the sack just for the hell of it. For reliving the thrill of her days on the force, when adrenaline surges were a coveted daily rush.

      For a minute, she wanted to forget about taboos and melt into a guy’s capable arms, free to express herself with a stranger in ways she never would have dared to address with Derek. She had been strong for so damn long. She wanted to experience what a man like this, with a body like this, could do to make her forget the nightmares. Only with a stranger could she indulge in that kind of vulnerability.

      Pressing her face against his broad back, McKenna shut her eyes, loving the feel of the wind in her hair, hoping her instincts were right. This really had been quite a night. She was holding on to the sexiest man on the planet, who was also the kind of man all mothers warned their daughters to avoid.

      Help was on hand, though. There would be plenty of cops to give reality a push when they reached the destination she’d chosen. She would wave goodbye to this guy, and he’d leave.

      “Thank you,” she shouted, leaning with him as the Harley swept around a curve. “I mean it.”

      He nodded.

      Fifth and G was the location of the latest crime—the place where the last poor young man in the emergency room had got his throat slashed. Detective Derek Miller, in his recent career advancement, would have taken charge of the scene, and he would see to it she ended the night without making a bigger fool of herself.

      With that in mind, McKenna almost regretted the thought that this handsome hunk of manhood, with his big serious eyes and body like leather-coated sin, might have given her a second wind on a mattress. And that he might have provided her with something to look forward to now that her more dangerous days had been left behind, along with her gun and her badge.

      “You’re sure this is the place?” he asked in a deep, silky tone as he pulled over to a curb marked off-limits by a length of yellow crime tape.

      “I’m sure,” McKenna replied. What she wasn’t sure about