BILLIONAIRE BIKERS: 3 MC Romance Books (20 page)

              "You're right," Lesher says after a moment. He crosses his arms and leans against the desk; I try to hide my fascination at the way his tattoos twist and seem to ripple with a life of their own. Their dark artistry perfectly complements the tone of his muscles. I've never known anyone with sleeves before—hell, I'm not sure I can safely say I've ever known anyone with a tattoo.

              I shift uncomfortably. "Well…thank you," I say.

              "It is my call," he corrects. "And I'm calling it now. You're my hostage—a bargaining chip to be used by me as I see fit. And these…" He dangles my heels from the fingers of one hand. My ruined stockings lie discarded on the floor. "… are just pointed enough to be a very real threat to someone, yourself included. I'll be taking them."

              "So you're going to leave me in here—defenseless?" I ask. "Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that you're not the one I have to worry about. What happens if someone else finds me in here?"

              "I'll protect you."

              His response startles me, and I can clearly see it was automatic enough to take him by surprise as well. His face twists in momentary, self-directed confusion. Maybe he's having as much trouble figuring out the rules of our strange new relationship as I am.

              "I don't take lives into my hands lightly," Lesher surmises. "At present, I have just as much responsibility to you as I do to my men—maybe more—because unlike them, you didn't ask to be here. Yet here we are."

              He turns to leave, and I find myself stepping off the cot after him. He's already halfway out the door before he turns to notice me following; I freeze, embarrassed. He might mistake my move for another act of aggression, when in reality I…what? Want to keep him here with me? Want to continue our discussion?

              No. There's something else. I know it's going to sound outlandish even before I open my mouth, but it has to be said.

              "Lesher…" I say. "That man…Marcus. I don't think it was an accident when he pulled his gun on you in the vault. I think he really was going to shoot you."

              Lesher stares at me levelly. I wonder if this is something he has suspected all along, or if I am only just now reminding him of it. So much happened back at the bank, but of one thing I'm certain: Marcus can't be trusted. Not by me, and not by the man he claims allegiance to. I've seen enough sharks from corporate coming in and out of the bank to know when someone's circling for blood. Marcus bears all the warning signs of being an opportunist, on top of obviously being a loose cannon. I can imagine how these traits might translate well into a life of crime, but when they translate into someone you're entrusting your life and mission to…

              "Just…be careful," I continue with an uneasy blush. "I'm relying on you to get me out of this alive, remember? Having you dead would really throw a wrench in that plan."

              "Duly noted." Lesher forks a hand through his hair, and I realize it's just as disheveled as mine is after our earlier encounter. I think for a moment that he might say more, that he might at least acknowledge I'm not being paranoid, but he turns and exits, shutting the door closed forcefully behind him.

              I expel a long breath and slide to the floor, my naked legs splayed out before me, my skirt still rucked up around my waist. I sit like that for I don't know how long, too overwhelmed and confused by my situation—and the man responsible for it—to think straight.

Everything is so hot and cold, terrifying and exhilarating, that it takes me an embarrassingly long time to get my head on straight enough to notice the door.

It's cracked. Not deliberately, but enough for the light from the hallway to filter in and call my attention to the fact.

It's another long moment as I sit there, stunned by my luck. Surely this can't be the case. Surely Lesher would have noticed that when he half-slammed the door, it bounced back on its frame and fell open. Surely he would have double-checked to insure it was secure and that his prisoner was safely locked away.

Then again, I hadn't noticed it in the ten, perhaps twenty, minutes I sat here feeling sorry for myself. If he was as emotionally mixed-up as I was when he departed, why wouldn't momentary carelessness present itself as an opportunity for me now?

I'm relying on you to get me out of this alive.

I can see now how ridiculous my own words were. Lesher was the one who got me into this, after all. He whisked me away from my ordinary life and plunged me right into the danger he claims he will protect me from. For a moment, locked inside his arms, beholden to the passion of his kiss, I lost track of my priorities. My number one priority is to get away, with or without waiting for
his
decision on the matter. My freedom has nothing to do with him—my continued captivity does.

And I don't want to be a captive. Not of this gang, and not of this warehouse. I certainly don't intend to let my heart be held captive by a man who increasingly stirs me while he continues to put me in dangerous situation after dangerous situation.

I crawl halfway across the room, pausing hesitantly, before rising to my feet and finally making it to the door. I push at the crack experimentally, and it widens. Drawing in a breath, I poke my head out into the hallway.

The corridor is empty in both directions. I can't guarantee how long it will be so. I have to act now or never. I have to get away from the warehouse.

I spy my shoes, placed carefully with their heels to the wall. I reach down to snatch them up, and now I'm in the hallway proper. I've left my prison cell behind me. Anyone might turn the corner at any moment and find me here.

"It's go time," I mutter to myself. Time to get pumped. Time to make my break for it.

I sprint hastily down the hall in the opposite direction of the way we came, hopping to pull on one shoe after the other. Never stopping to look back.

LESHER

I can't stop thinking about Nancy. And it's not just the girl's warning to me.

              It's her hair, her lips, the way that she allowed me to partially undress her, the tantalizing, even forbidden aspect of what has grown unchecked between us. For all intents and purposes, she's completely unassuming, but there is something indefinable I haven't been able to resist about her from the beginning. I have never felt an attraction this powerful to any woman that has come before her—unfortunately for us both, I let that attraction draw me in, when I should have been focusing entirely on a heist I have been planning for years.

Both of us understand this can't happen. It's patently obvious. I inhabit a position of power over her that, if I am anything resembling a decent man, requires me to respect that advantage.

Unfortunately for us both, I am not a decent man. I'm a criminal. And when something isn't mine, I don't wait to earn it fairly. I take it.

Thoughts of what I could have done to her in that room dog me down the stairs to the floor of the warehouse. Better to get it all out before I have to face the Marcus problem.

Besides, I find myself enjoying, maybe even regretting, the thought of what I might have let happen had our molten-hot interrogation session spun deliciously out of control. If she hadn't rejected my advance—which ultimately, I have to admit was the case, even if it stings my ego a bit to recall—I would have never stopped stripping her clothes off.

It would have been all too easy to continue. Every male brain is wired with a road map, the fastest track to undressing a woman in a time of sexual crisis. With the shoes and stockings gone, few obstacles remained to my sampling of the sexy, brave woman who had stood up to me when more dominant personalities than hers had balked.

Next on my radar had been the panties, moist and clinging to that ultimate prize. I had nearly hooked my fingers in them, the pads of my fingers so close to petting and stroking and having her writhing beneath me. Those would have been as easy to strip from those maddeningly long legs as all the rest. And those legs…clean and bare and squirming with half-resistance, half-anticipation of what my thieving fingers would next have in store for her.

And the skirt? We'd keep it on. I liked from the beginning the way the over-starched fabric clung to her assets, accentuating the dip in her petite waist and the swell of her ass and hips. I never pegged myself for the sort of man who would go in for a woman in conservative dress, but there is something about the thought of pushing and tearing and wrinkling beyond repair a classy presentation that a man like me can't help but find appealing. It's the idea of bringing such a woman down to a baser and far more pleasurable level than she has ever known that turns me on almost more than I can describe.

And Nancy...she isn't sexy like the sort of women I'm used to seeing hanging around the biker bars. She's discreet, understated. I wasn't even sure she was a woman aware of her own sexuality until we got started. I like to think I was partially responsible for the untempered heat of her response to me; I like to think that she felt the attraction as powerfully as I did in that moment and felt herself helpless to resist the explosive chemistry. Together, we create a force neither of us are prepared to reckon with.

I would have, should have, yanked my gloves off and plunged my fingers inside her tight, eager and untested folds. I should have swallowed the issuing cry of pleasure with my hard and silencing lips, and tasted every inch of that fast-talking mouth until I left her without words to protest. The blouse would have come next; with her hands bound between us, getting it off her by conventional means would have been impossible. I should have torn it down the front of her heaving bosom, sending her faux pearl buttons firing and spinning off into other parts of the room. I'm not even sure what she's wearing underneath that ensemble, but I can let myself imagine now.

After I had pleasured her to the point of bursting with my hand alone, I would haul her up out of the chair and carry her over to the cot. Unlike Nancy, I couldn't care less about where or when I get off with the woman I’ve chosen; I would have had her then and there on the stripped-down mattress, making her as much a prisoner beneath me as she was to the room I had relegated for her. I would have thrown her bound wrists over my head, as I had before, and thrust myself into her ready rim and buried my rigid cock deep inside her, right where we both knew it belonged.

And Nancy...she would have let me give her the release that she so craved. The line between captor and captive was already blurred. She would have ridden every pulverizing, impassioned thrust as I breached her own private vault; she would have shouted every name she had ever known me by in an effort to pin me down and claim me in equal measure as hers. I would have rolled to lay myself out beneath her, forcing her to top me, to achieve that promised release by any means necessary, even if it meant ultimately betraying herself and giving the last vestiges of her will over to pure, wild bliss. Yes, I would make her prove it to us both just how much she wanted it, and I know she wouldn't disappoint me in the end.

So no, I am not a decent man.

Decent men don't have the kinds of thoughts about Nancy that I do. Decent men remove the zip ties without dramatics and let the gentler members of the opposite sex go on their way. Decent men don't see women as means to their own ends, carnal or otherwise. She had been right about everything in that room, and every word that had passed between us.

And she had been right about Marcus.

              I shove Nancy's stockings into my back pocket as I descend to the bottom of the stairs. The men are lounging around, listless and completely useless now that the job is finished. Some of them have cracked open cheap cans of beer, and one of them is shooting pool on the ragged old table they had found in the basement and hauled up earlier in the week.

              "By all means, make yourselves at home you lousy bastards." The remark comes out much colder than I expected; then again, I have never been a paragon of comradery and warmth. These men are slacking on my dollar, as far as I'm concerned, when there's still work to be done in tying up the day's loose ends.

              I push Nancy from my mind—and it definitely won't help for me to think of her now in terms of
tying up
and
loose ends.
I've got an operation to run, and dangerous men to take to task.

              "Hey, 'Lousy Bastards.' I like it!" one of said dangerous men crows. This particular specimen goes by the name Dent, if I'm not mistaken. I assume he was named for a childhood impact to his skull, because he has always stood out as the most cretinous of the dumb bunch I hired to do this job. He stops shooting pool and leans back against the table. "Now we all just gotta get a bike like you, Lesh! Then we'd be in business!"

              "Not looking to join a gang, much less start one," I intone as I pull my jacket back on. No one's asked me about the grinning skull insignia I wear on my back, but I'm sure most of my lackeys with brains have figured out by now that I don't ride alone. Whether or not I work within the confines of the club I belong to is a different story.

              "You sure took your sweet time getting back here," Marcus comments. He stands near the long table butted up against the side of the stairs, polishing his gun. It's a completely unnecessary gesture, considering that despite his best efforts he’s failed to find an occasion to use it. It's understated, but it's an intimidation tactic that I know is meant for me. "How's the little bank teller? You get your dick wet?"

              I don't react. It would be easy to feel disgust at how close to the truth Marcus' accusation strikes, but I don't give him anything to go off; besides, I know what it is he's really implying. A man like Marcus doesn't factor things like
consent
into their own sexual encounters—he thinks I would take Nancy against her will, as I had back in the parking lot of the bank.

But there's no sense in setting him straight. He wouldn't follow my lead now if he thought I was a man with morals slightly a cut above his own…which, unfortunately for me, I can see that he is starting to suspect. Violence and mutiny simmers just below the surface, like heat radiating off the pavement of a long, inhospitable road.

The other men don't appear to notice the tension between Marcus and myself. Hell, I'm not beyond admitting it might have been there all along. Only Nancy's words of warning had pulled my focus back to it now and made me look for the signs.

"If any of you so much as goes looking for the hostage, you'll have me to answer to." I cross my arms as I address the room.

That
gets their attention. All five of the men scattered about the warehouse glance up suddenly as one. Apparently they had been waiting for my verdict on the matter.

"Aw, c'mon, Lesh," Dent whines. "Can't we at least invite her down for a drink?"

The men chuckle uncertainly. I notice Marcus in particular is looking at me with thinly-veiled derision. I wonder if this latest decision will be enough to break him open and expose what I suspect lurks beneath. It may not be wise to dangle Nancy in front of the men like bait, but I have no choice. I need to know who is loyal to me.

"Yeah,
Lesh."
Marcus stresses the nickname in an effort to mock us both. "Why are you keeping date night to yourself?"

"Is that what this is?" I bark at them, again not addressing Marcus' comments specifically. I can tell my lack of attention is starting to wear on him. He's stopped cleaning the gun and is staring hard at me. "Date night? Because let me tell you gentlemen, from my perspective, that's what it's starting to fucking look like. I said to get a move on counting out the money, and I come back to find you assholes drinking beers and patting yourselves on the back with your dicks in your free hand."

Two of them immediately move to the duffle bag on the table to start in on counting. A third crosses to start unpacking the equipment that will help weigh and validate the bills.

I stare at Marcus, and he returns my stare. I watch as the skin around his eyes tightens in an unconscious, unhappy micro-expression. I'm good at reading people, while not allowing myself to be read in turn. It's how I got this far in the underbelly of civilized society. I keep my face impassive.

"You still refuse to take a cut, huh?" Marcus asks. It's not really a question, and we both know it. "That's awful fucking heroic. Unless the whole point of today was to get you inside the vault." Marcus leans back against the table and raises his gun casually towards the ceiling. The men's belated attempt at counting is delayed yet again as they watch our exchange. They know a pissing contest when they see one. And in this context, they know what's at stake.

"But I wonder why that would be?" Marcus continues. "I wonder. You hire us to pull off this heist with the promise there's a fortune to be made, but whose fortune are we talkin' about, Lesher? Yours? It's certainly not ours." Marcus redirects his aim, sweeping the muzzle of the gun across the room to indicate the other men. I watch them all tense, and then relax with relief, when the barrel of his firearm passes them by without a misfire. "Because by my calculations, a five-way split ain't exactly a fortune."

"You knew exactly how much you would be profiting when you took this on," I state coldly. "And at the time of your hiring, you weren't even aware that it wasn't a six-way split, as I recall. What you're coming out with at the end of the day is more than what I promised you, so…"

As I trail off, I take a step toward Marcus across the dirt floor of the warehouse. I can feel the heat of five pairs of eyes all trained on me. I sense the stale air of the compound stop moving altogether as everyone else forgets to breathe.

"…what's the fucking problem?" I prompt. I think I have a very clear idea of what Marcus' problem is, but I want to hear him say it himself.

The man chuckles, and the gun comes home to retire back against his shoulder once more. "Like I said: it ain't a fortune. And I've been thinking."

"Surprise me." No mirth bleeds into my coaxing. From the corner of my eye, I can see Dent attempt to exchange looks with some of the others in an effort to get a laugh going. No one obliges him.

"I've been thinking that after all this, I want a raise," Marcus drawls. "But I've also been thinking that I'm willing to take one by way of
information.
I want to know what it is you stole off that workbench. I want to know what you're keeping in your back pocket."

There's something else going on here. I can practically smell it in the air, and it's not just mutiny. I hold Marcus' gaze as my hand eases back behind me. He must have been monitoring my movements in the vault on a security camera…viewing me from a feed that I had expressly instructed be interrupted remotely.

What else had been viewed or recorded without my knowledge?

"Any other information you require?" I ask Marcus, as my hand bypasses my pocket and delves into my waistband. A nasty grin stretches across his face by degrees, and I have my answer before he's even put in the request.

"Yeah. Enough with the joking and secrecy. I think we'd all like to know where you're keeping the pretty little lady. Right, gentlemen?" Marcus takes a step out from the table and turns to the room at large, his arms held high and wide. "We'd like to have us an after party, wouldn't we?"