Craving It All (The Hellfire Riders Book 5)

by Kati Wilde

  I really don’t want that. “You couldn’t push too hard.”

  “All right,” he says and now his gaze holding mine isn’t wary, but hot and hungry. “Then you make my lunch. I’ll feed you dinner. But my dessert afterward is going to be your sweet pussy.”

  I stop breathing, stop backing away from the counter. Just stare at him with that sweet pussy already aching for his touch, already hot and liquid and I’ve got the feeling it’s just going to get hotter all day, because I won’t do anything but think of it.

  I can’t think of anything else now.

  As if he didn’t suggest anything more than a kiss on my front porch, he casually raises his coffee to his mouth, drains the mug before saying, “Too much?”

  “No,” I whisper hoarsely. “I think that’s just right.”

  Satisfaction gleams in his eyes. “Good,” he says and rises to his feet. Trembling all over with tension and anticipation and desire, I head into the back and pull together the box for his lunch, then toss in a chocolate chunk cookie for his dessert.

  Tonight that dessert will be me, spread out beneath him.

  At the register he pays cash, like he always does. His callused fingers slide over mine when I hand over his lunch, as they always do.

  But nothing’s the same. And as I watch him head for the door, it occurs to me that there’s something I’ve never asked him before.

  “Bull,” I call out and he turns smoothly, walking backward. “What’s your name?”

  He grins. “David. But since my pop is the only one who uses it, you might as well keep calling me Bull.”

  I probably will, though I like his real name as much. But he’s been Bull to me for so long I can’t think of him as anyone else.

  “Just David?”

  “Masters,” he adds, then his gaze darkens and turns speculative. “And come to think of it, maybe you shouldn’t bother getting new identification. If you’re going to be changing your name, Sara Masters sounds like a damn good one to me.”

  With that, he heads out and I’m left staring after him with my jaw dropped.

  Because he really moves fast.

  I get off work as soon as lunch rush ends. I’ve been floating all day, thinking of Bull and everything I need to do before I see him again at seven.

  The first thing will be to go home and nap. Every morning, I’m up at three a.m., so I’m not used to late hours and I don’t want to fall asleep halfway through our date—or halfway through dessert.

  Just the thought of Bull’s tongue on me sends a delicious shiver racing over my skin. All day, I’ve been wet with anticipation and aching from the memory of our kiss. His mouth on mine made me hotter and needier than I’ve ever been. So imagining his mouth anywhere else?

  Nuclear meltdown.

  And on second thought—maybe the first thing I should do is take a bath and shave everything.

  But it doesn’t really matter what I do, because the best part of it all is that I’m actually looking forward to spending time with a man. Take that, Raphael Wainwright. That bastard could have so easily ruined me. Instead he only hurt me.

  He hurt me deeply. So deeply. But he didn’t break me. Maybe because I was never in love with him, and he didn’t have that power over me.

  Instead he took everything I did love.

  But I’m not letting him take anything more. And I won’t let thoughts of Raphael dim my happiness now.

  Still, I can’t get away from him. When I leave Reggie’s through the back entrance, I don’t breathe easily until my gaze scans the parking lot and finds it empty. No Raphael waiting by my car, a smile on his lips but his eyes telling me that I’m a bad, bad girl as he asks whether I’ve been deliberately avoiding his calls.

  At the drugstore, I can’t shake the feeling of being watched and followed. I force myself not to look over my shoulder. He’s not there, asking why I’m buying condoms and new razors and don’t I know that I’m his? That I’ll always be his?

  And a part of me wants to use my old credit card, hoping that he’ll see the purchases listed there. That he’ll see the condoms and razors I bought, and know that I’m tidying up my pussy so that another man can lick it.

  But I defied him before and he destroyed everything. I’m not going to let him touch Bull.

  Because that’s what Raphael would do. He wouldn’t hurt me. Not physically. At least, he never has before. I wouldn’t take bets on what he might do now. I disappeared six months ago and in that time, maybe his love has transformed into something else. It was a pretty sick version of love to begin with.

  So I don’t know if he would hurt me. But I know he would destroy anyone who stood between us. Anyone who tried to protect me from him. He’d burn down their house while they’re sleeping in it.

  He’s done it before.

  And as much as I’d love to throw a ‘fuck you’ into his face, I can’t risk him finding me.

  So I’ll change my name. And one day, I’ll stop feeling as if someone is always watching me. One day when I get home from work, I won’t sit in my driveway, scanning all the cars parked on the street, looking extra hard at any I don’t recognize as belonging to my neighbors. I won’t stare at my living room window, watching for any hint of movement and desperately wondering if I’ll find him waiting inside, as he waited for me before. More than once.

  But that day isn’t today. When I pull into my driveway and hit the garage door opener, I watch the window. The curtains are just as I left them—open wide. I care less about my privacy than not being surprised.

  Everything looks okay.

  I pull into the garage, grabbing my purse and the bag from the pharmacy before opening the car door.

  And I fucked up. I fucked up so bad. Because I should have closed the overhead garage door right away. But I didn’t. So my hands are full and I’m half in and half out of my seat when, out of the corner of my eye, I see the figure slip around the back of my car.

  My heart leaps in terror, ready to run.

  But it’s too damn late.

  4

  Bull

  A workday never seemed so long. And it’s not over yet, because the work doesn’t stop at the job. There’s Hellfire Riders’ business to take care of.

  This morning I left a message for the prez, letting him know tonight’s plans had changed. I didn’t send details, nothing that can be traced back to us later. So I’m not surprised when he says he’ll stop by my place around six. He’ll want a face to face for a more thorough update.

  Which ought to give me just enough time to fill him in, then shower and stroke one out to take the edge off before changing into something clean and heading to Sara’s.

  And I was right—it is just like rolling out of bed early. I hate changing and getting ready twice in a day. But knowing that I’ll be with her, I don’t hate the thought of it so much.

  Shit. I’m not hating anything today.

  I moved in hard on her. Maybe too hard. But she seemed to take it all right.

  And, hell. I wouldn’t have moved at all—at least not yet—if she hadn’t moved first.

  Just flat out asked me to kiss her.

  No way I could have held back. I’m a patient man. I’m a damn patient man. When I want something, I can wait forever for it.

  Until I’ve actually got what I want right in my hands. Then holding back isn’t exactly the strongest part of my personality.

  But I’ll try to go easy on Sara. Eat her pussy tonight, show her a real good time. Maybe wait until tomorrow before getting her sexy little body under me and my thick cock deep inside her.

  And if our date runs past midnight tonight, hell—that’s technically tomorrow.

  It’s blistering hot when I leave the job site at four, but on the bike the rush of wind makes for a sweet and cool ride. My place is a few miles out of town, up a long driveway shrouded with dried pine needles. The house is a big log cabin that my dad built for my mom, though she only lived there about a year before taking off. The
house wasn’t the problem—it’s a beaut, set in an isolated clearing with a back porch overlooking a sparkling creek. It was my dad who sent her running.

  I might have run, too, if I hadn’t grown up with him and gotten real comfortable with his idiosyncrasies.

  Pop’s a bit paranoid—and a bit of a survivalist. Half the time he lives in a little shack deeper up in the mountains, so the government won’t find him. The past few years, though, he’s been spending more and more time at home. Those creature comforts calling to him, I suppose—though he says it’s to keep an eye on me. To make sure I don’t get into any trouble.

  He’s not real good at it, because I get into plenty of trouble while running with the Hellfire Riders. The trick is, just don’t get caught.

  Anyway, I figure some of his tendencies rubbed off on me. I’m not holing up in a shack or stockpiling MREs anytime soon, but sometimes being a Hellfire Rider means walking outside the line of the law, and that don’t bother me none. The government’s got its uses, like helping and protecting those who need help and protection. And, shit—we pay taxes, because we sure as hell love riding those government roads.

  But the Hellfire Riders, we help and protect our own. And the law can stay the fuck out of our business.

  So, yeah. Pop’s rubbed off on me some.

  Though some days I wish he’d take it easy on the stockpiling shit. I roll up closer to the house and see he’s been at it again. A huge fucking pile of wood is sitting beside the house, as if a dump truck backed up into the clearing and just shat out a few cut-up trees.

  He’s already at the chopping block, cutting the logs into wedges with a maul. His dark hair started running to gray a few years back, and his body’s a string of lean, wiry muscle. He’s got his shirt off and sweat running down the back of the tan Carhartts that hang off his skinny ass.

  Don’t know where I got my size, but it wasn’t from him. Maybe from my mom, though he says she was a little thing. Since I was about three months old when she took off, I don’t remember her—and he doesn’t keep any pictures around. For all I know, he went truly crazy for a while and fucked a she-bear.

  “David, my boy!” Wiping his brow on his forearm, Pop tosses a split log onto the pile forming beside him. “You got time?”

  “A little.”

  “Split or stack?”

  I hate stacking wood. “Split,” I say and he hands over the maul and throws a pair of leather gloves after it. “Where the hell did this come from?”

  “Old Barker’s clearing out his back property. Most of it he sold to the mill, but I talked him into a deal for this and another load that’ll be coming tomorrow.” He pours himself a lemonade from the pitcher sitting on the porch. “I figure we’ll get six or seven cords out it.”

  For the wood stove and the fireplace I barely ever use. And that’s in addition to the twelve cords he’s already got stacked in the big barn out behind the house.

  That’s why he’s stacking these here. There’s no more room in the damn barn.

  But if I say we don’t need this, he’ll tell me a million reasons why having a ten-year supply of firewood might save our asses one day. And more wood doesn’t hurt anything, so I strip off my kutte and T-shirt, pull on my gloves, and start splitting the damn logs.

  An hour later, we’ve got a sizable row split and stacked when I hear motorcycles coming up the driveway. Two or three.

  Tensing a little, Pop looks down that way. “You expecting friends?”

  “Yup.”

  His tension eases. “You need me to get out of here?”

  “We can talk somewhere else.”

  “Nah, I’ll head in and rest for a bit.” My dad grins a little. “That way you can just keep splitting.”

  As long as it’s not stacking. “Will do.”

  He heads for the stairs. “You want beers?”

  “It’d be nice.”

  “Too bad I’m an asshole, then. Come in and grab them your damn self.”

  The screen door slams shut behind him, but I’m grinning when I set the next log on the chopping block. I won’t go in for beers, and he’ll eventually bring some out, grumbling about how I wasn’t raised right without a mother.

  And he enjoys it all as much as I do.

  The prez rolls in, flanked by Blowback, the Riders’ warlord, and Thorne, the Riders’ VP—and who’s also my boss at T&E. Shit. I set down the maul and pull my T-shirt over my sweaty skin, because half-naked suddenly doesn’t feel serious enough.

  I’m acting as the Riders’ enforcer for the time being. It’s a temporary role while the regularly appointed enforcer deals with some shit that went down a few months back, but it means regular meetings with the prez and the Riders’ officers. I was already on the executive board, so the meetings aren’t new. But meetings where we discuss killing someone?

  That’s something that doesn’t call for casual.

  Serious or not, though, I leave my kutte off, because no one’s expecting me to split logs wearing a leather vest.

  If I was splitting heads? That’s another matter.

  They’re all eyeing the mountain of wood as I wave them in, then grab a few deck chairs from the porch and drag them down to the woodpile.

  Good thing about cut logs is they make for a fine place to set a beer—or a lemonade.

  The prez settles in, looking amused as hell. Maybe because of the pile of wood, maybe because Willie Nelson’s crooning from my pop’s ancient cassette player. The prez is a big motherfucker, though not as big as me, and there’s few men I respect more. “Laying in for the winter?”

  “A couple of winters,” I tell him.

  “Can’t be too prepared,” he agrees.

  Lemonade in his big hand, Thorne takes a seat on a log instead of the deck chair. He’s about as old as my dad, and is one of the men I respect even more than the prez—though partially it’s because I’ve been riding with him a hell of a lot longer. We were both Steel Titans before we were Hellfire Riders, and a lot of what I know about being in a motorcycle club, about brotherhood, I learned from Thorne.

  And he’s one of the few people in Pine Valley who’s friends with my dad. Not close friends—my dad doesn’t have anyone that close except for me. But Thorne doesn’t look at my dad like he’s just some kook living out in the woods.

  That goes a long way for me.

  Now he asks, “Is Will around?”

  “Inside.”

  “I got a lead on some military surplus that’s off the books. I’m looking at the weapons but I hear there’s gear, too. Thought he might be interested.”

  “Yeah, he would.”

  Thorne nods. “I’ll head in and talk to him after, then.”

  Blowback doesn’t say anything but I don’t expect him to. Small talk isn’t the warlord’s strong suit. Killing is. So for now he just leans back against the porch and waits and listens.

  The prez gets right to it. “What’s the holdup with Osprey?”

  The fucker we’re trying to get our hands on. “Woodridge says he got spooked.”

  “Is he running?”

  “Out of state? Don’t think so. Word is he holed up. Probably waiting until his picture isn’t flashed on the news every damn night. And Christ knows he’s probably got more than enough holes to hide in. So Woodridge is setting up a new meet.”

  The prez’s mouth flattens. Pissed. Because the longer it takes to find Osprey, the more likely it’ll be the cops who find him first.

  His gaze shoots to Blowback. “You heard anything on him?”

  The warlord shakes his head. “If I had, I’d be bringing you his body instead of nothing.”

  “Fuck.” The prez’s gaze swings back to me. “Is this asshole Woodridge giving us the runaround?”

  “I’ll tell you true, boss—Vern Woodridge is the dumbest piece of shit I’ve ever met. But when it comes to getting what you need, he does what he says. When there’s something or someone that needs to be found, he finds it.”

  “I ag
ree,” Blowback says, but his attention is shifting away from us. Turning toward the road. “Though I have met dumber pieces of shit than Woodridge.”

  I hear it now, too. The sound of a vehicle coming up the drive. Not a Harley. A car, sounds like.

  For a second I think that maybe Sara jumped the gun, that she’s coming to my place before I head to hers. But she drives one of those hybrid Toyotas and the engine I’m hearing isn’t that quiet. This one’s got some cylinders under the hood.

  As a pink Cadillac comes into view, Blowback says, “New evidence says Woodridge is the dumbest piece of shit I’ve ever met.”

  Jesus fucking Christ. I yank the maul out of the chopping block. “I got this,” I tell them.

  And ol’ Vern still has a tiny bit of brains, because he swings that big boat around when he reaches the clearing, like he might be driving away real fast.

  Maybe because I’m coming after him with a big fucking axe.

  “Wait, wait!” The stupid fucker gets out and heads around the back of the car, hands up like he’s under arrest. “I got something for you!”

  “If it’s not a meetup with Osprey, you’re two fucking seconds from having your dick shoved down your throat—and even a meetup might not fucking save you.” I grab the front of his shirt and yank him in real close. “You came to my house? My fucking house?”

  The stink of fear is pouring off him as he babbles, “I got the meetup! But, man—I couldn’t get it by the time you wanted. He said in three days and I couldn’t talk him down because he was getting real antsy.”

  “Three days?”

  “Yeah, man. Three days! Thursday night at midnight I’ll be meeting him behind the Baptist church on Oak. But I knew you’d be pissed so I got you something to, you know, show you that my word is good. To show you I can get you anything you want.”

  “I told you I didn’t want anything from any other fucking dealer,” I growl at him. “I gave you twenty fucking thousand dollars for crystal from Osprey. I don’t want anyone else’s shit product.”

  Don’t want anyone else but Osprey. But this fucker doesn’t know we’re going after the dealer, not the meth.