The Billionaire's Dare (Book 4 - Billionaire Bodyguard Series) (8 page)

Would Marissa care if he came home to her every night? Before he stopped himself from asking the question, his conscience said
yes.

No. Hold up.

Fuck that nonsense. Stupid question.
Didn’t matter.

She wasn’t his goal. She’d hired him to help her achieve
her
goal.

Focus, asshole.
Those words sprang up to haunt him too often.

So far, Marissa had no idea he suspected her status in government protection. Even his cyber badass, Devon, couldn’t say, with all her insane connections, if Marissa belonged to witness protection.

But Marissa needed him. End of story.

Give him a dare, give him a challenge, and wait until hell froze over before he backed down.

Her safety equaled his end game. For better or worse. No matter what he sacrificed.
No matter what.

As usual, he threw up his
300
Spartan-movie shields, twelve-pack abs and all. Not like the shy-perfect schoolteacher would notice if she saw him without his shirt. Maybe with the prove-me-wrong kiss he’d shaken up her world a little. Good. He wanted her to prove him wrong. He wanted to be more than “Hot for Teacher.” He wanted to be her teacher’s pet. The thought of her unzipping his jeans, taking him out of his boxers, and stroking his hard shaft made his fists clench. Sweat break out on his forehead.

Back to the end goal,
he demanded of himself, corralling his rampant sexual thoughts.
She needs you. It’s about more than the usual. Be there for her. Do the right thing, for once, for fuck’s sake.

Yep, he had this covered. No problem.

“All good?” he asked when she walked out of the women’s restroom.

She refused to meet his eyes. “I guess.”

Instead of staring at her ass as she walked by him, he held open the door and considered how he might make her more comfortable on the eight hour journey. He was changing, and he’d prove it. “Marissa,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets as they walked back to his truck. “Did I tell you about the time, when I was a bounty hunter, I chased down this dude who let poisonous snakes roam around his house…?”

*

“Damn straight this looks like a freakin’ ghost town,” Adam muttered, eyeing the
warning
signs along the way, watching a pathetic, crumbling town come into view.

“The townspeople needed to come up with some reason to lure travelers,” she said, her face more animated than he’d seen since last week’s tutoring sessions.

“Uh-huh.”

Hell,
no.
His bounty hunter instincts screamed at him to peel off, turn around, and head back to Denver.
Nothing good can come of this place.

But for Marissa’s sake, he kept his foot steady on the gas pedal. Thank God they’d taken his truck. Anything less than a 4x4 had no business entering this slanted desert terrain.

Close-up, the town looked worse as they approached. Something resembling an old boarding house—or a prison—sagged down one steep cliff. He expected another sign declaring hitchhikers might be escaped convicts. But the building appeared too dilapidated to keep anyone dangerous inside its walls.

So where have the convicts gone?
he wondered, suspecting a town full of criminals.

Having chased down his fair share of the seedier type, he saw the old-fashioned building facades—with zero structure behind them—as a dead giveaway of hideouts where shit human beings hid. “For the record, I hate this place.”

She flicked her fingers across his arm. The flesh rose in bumps beneath his sleeve of tattoos, not in a good way. “The ghost stories about thousands of minors buried here are just rumors. Nothing to be afraid of,” she insisted.

“Ghosts are cool,” he said. “It’s the real-life threats I have issues with.”

Okay, so ghost stories creeped him out a little. If Trey were here, he’d laugh his head off, because Adam had hated the nights when he took a flashlight under a sheet and told stories that haunted him the next couple of days.

Freddie, Jason, all those stupid horror story assholes, whatever.
Totally fake. But if real men died in these mines and their ghosts haunted the land, yeah, he might have an issue. Give him badass thugs on the backstreets of Vegas, no problem. Real people, real fists, real weapons, he was solid. An old mining town from the gold-rush days, and all the spirits it contained, not so much. He could handle bad dudes he could punch in the face. But hoo-doo, voo-doo, ghost crap wasn’t his bag.

This place was spooky.

I mean, who lets the front of a building still stand, like a movie prop from the OK Corral gun fight, while the rest of the structure tumbles into ruin?

Yeah, totally creepy.

Had his sweet, innocent little schoolteacher really grown up in this hole? And he’d thought Las Vegas reserved its own private circle of hell. Damned if Satan hadn’t pulled out all the stops when he’d taken a pit-stop here.

Closed-off mines welcomed them like dark, gaping phantoms whose mouths had been boarded shut to cut off the screams. Fucking charming.

Hell, he applauded himself for taking on this job of protecting Marissa, instead of sending some rookie bodyguard to protect her.
Nothing good can come of this place,
the warning came from his gut a second time.

Too bad. He was here with her—for her. Sure as shit he wouldn’t leave her to her own devices now.

The street leading into town took them up and down several steep ridges. One sign they passed, stating the 30-mile-an-hour speed limit, lay at a cockeyed forty-five degree angle to the road.

Ah, home,
Marissa thought, almost excited to return to her roots. She glanced at Adam’s face, which registered thinly veiled horror. She stifled a laugh. Her big, badass, tough guy
might have once ruled the dark backstreets of Las Vegas, but he’d never taken on a spot quite like this. Robertstown offered the opposite of Vegas. No city. No bright, glaring lights. No excitement around every corner.

Still, his trepidation thrilled her. In a way, she’d faced more harrowing circumstances than him in this place. Pride overcame her worry.
Now do you see me for how I really am?
she boasted silently.
You thought taking me on a motorcycle ride in the mountains of Denver without a helmet was treacherous? Welcome to my world.

As they traveled along Main Street, and she directed Adam to turn into the left-hand lane up ahead, her proud moment faded. She heard them before she saw them. The painfully familiar blast of a posse of motorcycles, belonging to an MC.

No. Impossible.

She’d kept tabs. Since her testimony, she’d read the local paper online daily. The motorcycle gangs that once ruled this town had left for safer grounds—in her righteous mind, in fear of reprisal, because of her. 

How could they return? How dare they? How—?”

All thought ceased as she watched through the passenger side mirror. Paul Butcher approached on his motorcycle, cap helmet strapped beneath his rust-bearded chin, the stub of a cigar clamped between his yellow, rotting teeth.

“No…they can’t be back.”

“Old friend?” Adam asked casually.

She found no words to respond.

As the head of the gang formation, Paul Butcher pulled up first, alongside Adam’s truck in the left lane. He and his gang occupied the right, center lane.

With the window rolled down, she smelled Butcher’s cigar smoke and gagged out of reflex.

The instant he rotated his head in her direction, glancing around as if he owned the main stretch of road at the center of town, she shrieked and dove toward Adam’s lap. “Don’t let him see me.” She sucked in rapid breaths. “You’re the one in town for Tate. Make this normal!”

“That’s good. Oh, yeah, baby.” Adam fake-groaned. “Yeah, that’s it.” He bobbed his hand directly over her head without actually touching her. “Go down on me. Yeah. Make me come, baby,” he practically yelled so Butcher heard him over the rumble of a dozen idling motorcycles.

She slapped Adam’s thigh hard enough to sting. He flinched, yet her face remained close enough to his lap to see an impressive ridge form beneath the button fly of his jeans. “What are you—?”  she began, infuriated.

“Hang on, and stay low,” he muttered. “Oh, yeah, baby. So good.” He turned left, away from Butcher, and said, “Okay, you’re in the clear.”

Her anger sprang up as she resumed her upright position. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

“Hey, you went down-below when your biker boyfriend looked over at us. He saw you disappear into my lap. I just made it work.”

The shit-eating grin on his face infuriated her. “He’s not my boyfriend, he’s an asshole. And you couldn’t think of a better cover than pretending I gave you road head?”

Adam draped his hand conspicuously over his crotch, and adjusted himself. “You can’t say road head and expect me not to get hard.”

“I didn’t say it!” When she caught him shoving his erection downward, she exhaled and stared out the passenger window. “Okay, fine. You improvised. Don’t do it again.”

“Gladly,” he muttered, adjusting himself for a second time, his foot pressing on the gas pedal a little too heavily. “Trust me, I wouldn’t put myself through the torture on purpose.”

Liking his response more than she should, and feeling a bit guilty for putting him on the spot suddenly, she reined in her annoyance. “Thank you.” She glanced down at her tightly folded hands in her lap. “Sorry I didn’t give you a heads up.”

“Oh, you did. That wasn’t the problem,” he mumbled.

Another glance at his crotch revealed just how much she continued to affect him. A thick ridge lifted the front of his jeans, and showed no signs of backing down. Whoa. She bit back a pleased smile.

So she
did
turn him on. He was the first man in years she’d found herself insanely attracted to—nice to know the effect was mutual. “Sorry. Won’t happen again.”

He slid her a devilish grin. “I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”

Don’t go there,
she warned herself. Or she’d end up stripping off his shirt and unbuckling his belt at the side of the road…before they even made it to the motel room.

She knew how men like Adam operated.

A fling definitely boded well for their future—as long as she stayed detached, as she always had, when taking a lover.

Two. She’d slept with two men in ten years. Oh, how her body insisted on making Adam her third. And he fit the bill perfectly. He lived for anything fast, fierce, and noncommittal. Just the way she liked her men, because she had to keep things distant, make herself forgettable. Adam would sleep with her and forget about her in a heartbeat. Sad for a second, better for a lifetime.
God, she wanted him.

This whole charade of sharing a motel room he’d suggested, pretending to be lovers, proved the perfect opportunity to indulge in physical affection without regret. Over the years, there were nights desire lit her body on fire, her skin aching for touch, her soul desperate for connection. Adam seemed as happy to satisfy the lust/attraction experience as she was to take it from him. Her scalp tingled, her ears burned, and her core throbbed.

Yes…she could see herself sleeping with Adam, with sleep as the last thought on their minds. Tonight.
If not sooner…

“You want to go to his bar?”

Her head whipped around. “Tate’s?”

Adam spread his hands. “Obviously.”

“I don’t know…”

“It’s around the corner and fifty yards
from there, according to my GPS. We don’t need to go inside. Really, you shouldn’t. If you want to keep you cover,” he added casually.

“No, I’m fine. I don’t want to see it.”

“Okay.” He kept driving toward her grandfather’s bar. “Can’t help but think about the look your buddy Butcher gave me.”

“What look?”

“Like the kind of dude you don’t want to meet alone in an alley, even in broad daylight.” He grinned. “The type I loved hunting down in Vegas.”

“Too bad you aren’t still in the bounty hunter business,” she said. “I’m sure he has a warrant, or five, out for his arrest.”

“Huh. Ballsy to ride down Main Street like he’s wearing Teflon.”

“I know. He gets off on intimidation. That’s how he ruled these streets before. He bought the local cops. If he’s back, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s returned to his old ways.”

Adam sneered. “I never got that. Cops take an oath. Ninety-nine percent are hardworking, decent guys. But there’s always one or two crooked ones. They can operate nicely in a place like this. A two-cop, one-sheriff town.
No one to oversee where the cash in pockets comes from.
A shame.”

She frowned. “A shame it might grow worse since I testified—since I left,” she pushed, to cover her gaffe. “This town had potential.”

Adam hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “Yeah, the rundown trailer park we just passed looked homey.”