Evelyn knows enough about me already that there is little point in holding back, so I decide not to avoid her question this time. “I don’t deserve anyone’s sympathy,” I say, walking over to her couch and plopping down. I’m tempted to tell her to sit, but I don’t want to order her around in her own apartment. Instead, I just wait and she slowly walks to a chair and sits down on her own.
“I wasn’t asking for it. I just told you that you don’t know who I am, and you only see what you think you see. That isn’t me arguing that I’m misunderstood. That perception is by design.”
“What do you mean?” She raises an eyebrow above one of the black smears. She only made them worse when she started to try and clean them and then stopped. Her eyes are a green today, almost an emerald color, shining brighter than they have in the past. Gorgeous. “Whose design?”
“Mine. What you and everyone else sees is Bash, a hard-drinking, hard-living, motorcycle thug that no one would ever think to tie to corporate America. I’ve been there since almost the beginning. Even though some of the members have changed over the years, and I’m not as close to them as I could be because of the secrets I keep, I still think of them as family. The closest thing I have to a family, anyway. But they’re a troubled family.”
“I’m still waiting to hear the part where you’re something other than what I see. So far, none of this is a surprise.”
I narrow my eyes. I’m not used to a woman talking to me like this, and I’m not sure if it makes me horny or angry. I can’t imagine Jez ever taking a sarcastic tone with me, but I’ve never been as attracted to Jez as I am to Evelyn. My hunger for her goes deeper than a physical desire, and it’s as confusing as it is annoying, so it needs to be pushed aside. I don’t let things like that distract me. Distractions take your eye off the ball and lead to mistakes, and I can’t afford mistakes. The fact that she found out about both sides of my life was an unfortunate coincidence, but unavoidable, from my perspective. I don’t have to make it worse by falling for her.
“The part that you don’t see is internal to the club. The Chrome Soldiers were never a violent club, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t up to no good. Or even that we wouldn’t bring violence, if it was necessary. But we did what needed to be done for everyone to earn a living and so that everyone around knew not to fuck with us. But times change.
“As I started to build my company, I realized that the two worlds could never mix. But at the same time, I had success that I wanted to share with my crew. I wanted them to be successful and, if possible, put them on a path that would allow them to not have to do the shit that we do in order to make a living. Not because I was some goody fucking two-shoes, all of a sudden, but because I didn’t want to see my boys end up in prison or dead. No matter how small-time we were, things have a way of escalating in our world. That means that those two final destinations are part of our general retirement scenario.”
I have her attention now.
“So I started to do shit for them. I arranged for a ‘heist’ of a shipment of fancy electronics. You know, televisions, sound systems, you name it. Enough for everyone in the club to deck their houses out in the best shit. In reality, everything was completely paid for and the crew just thought they made a lucky score. Then I arranged for us to fall into some legitimate businesses. Places the guys can work at and earn a real living, instead of having to pull jobs all of the time and risk getting sent away. Businesses I personally bought, but let them think we acquired in ways they’d find more suitable. It’s a slow migration, but I mean to make these guys all go legit eventually.” Kicking and screaming, for many of them.
“Even at the office, as Sebastian, I have a carefully cultivated image. Clean cut, mid-level executive, keeps to himself at the office. Aside from the board, barely anyone there even knows my name. Many of the other executives haven’t a clue what I do. Most of them think that I’m related in some way to Hans, which explains why I have a job at all, and why I’m often talking to him in his office alone. It’s a rumor I started myself.”
Evelyn is shaking her head. “This is all so crazy to me. But okay, fine. You’re a complex man living a complex life, and maybe you aren’t a criminal. At least, not anymore. Fine. But that still doesn’t answer the question of why you’re here. What do you want from me? Why do you care if I come and work for you? There are a million EAs, and none of them come with the baggage I’m coming with.”
My fingers curl into the leather of my jacket, pressing hard against my thigh, and I tilt my head down to stare at my whitening knuckles. I had a very clear reason about why I needed to hire Evelyn when I showed up at her door. I wanted to keep an eye on her. Make sure my secrets stay safe. But I know now that isn’t the issue. I’m a good enough judge of character to know she isn’t going to be looking to profit off of my secrets, even if I walk out of her life right now and never look back. And that reason would never get her to agree to come work for me.
There’s only one thing I can say that has a chance of convincing her.
The truth.
“There’s no one in the world that knows the truth about both sides of my life. Keeping that secret on my own is… hard. And I’ve been doing it for a long time.”
“Alone,” she says. Her voice is quiet, but the word resonates in my head as if it’s echoing inside of the Grand Canyon.
“Alone,” I agree. I didn’t realize it until I was talking. Until I was finally admitting what I’ve been doing for the past decade. It was only then that I realized how much of a relief it was to tell someone. How much of a relief it would be to finally not have to hide it from at least one person in my life. But even so, I’m still not convinced as to whether her coming to work for me would be the best idea I ever had, or the biggest mistake of my life.
“Okay.”
When I finally look up at her, I notice that she’s moved off of the chair and is now standing right in front of me with a little smile on her face. I raise my eyebrow, confused for a moment at what she’s agreeing to.
“Okay, I’ll come and work for you,” she clarifies. “I’ll be your EA.”
I stand as well, coming up almost a full head taller than she is, and look down at her face, lifting one of my hands and placing it on the side of her cheek as I brush against the mascara that is still lining her face.
“I’ll work for you,” she says with a serious look, although she makes no move to push my hand away. “But I promised myself that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes that I made with Edward. I can’t sleep with my boss again.”
“Then it’s a good thing I don’t need you to start until tomorrow. I won’t be your boss until then.”
I dip my head down and crush my lips against hers. I feel a moment of hesitation in her response, but then she returns my kiss just as hard. My tongue just slips between her lips when a sudden knock at the door causes us to both jump back in surprise.
“The pizza,” she breathes.
“Let me take care of that…”
12
Evelyn
The pizza is still lying on the floor where Bash dropped it as soon as he closed the door, but I’m not hungry anymore. Not for pizza, anyway.
The site of his leather-clad figure standing in my door was a shock, especially given the fact that I had just convinced myself he was probably going to kill me, but it didn’t take long to realize that didn’t make any sense. He’s too smart to walk through security downstairs, with all of the cameras, and announce which apartment he’s going to, just to kill me. He’d never get away with that. Which means I’m safe, at least for now.
Of course, as absolutely gorgeous as he is every time I see him, his mouth hasn’t stopped spouting the same crass nonsense as it always does. That dichotomy keeps my feelings split between wanting to fuck this guy and punch him in the face. Yet when he opened up at the end, it all made a kind of sense. Even though the situation he’s in is his own doing, he’s so very alone in all of this and has been for years. Right or
wrong, he feels like he has to keep everyone away, and that attitude is probably the best way he knows how to do it.
As soon as I realized that, I felt an overwhelming urge to kiss him again, and when he made the first move, my brain offered no good reasons to stop him.
Of course, there are good reasons. Plenty of them. But I just can’t think of any now that his teeth are nibbling my neck and one of his fingers is under my shirt in a quest for my hard nipples. I gasp as soon as he reaches his prize, and he answers that sound by clamping his jaws down against my collarbone.
My squeal seems to only delight him more, and he bites a little harder as his fingers close down on the swollen nub beneath my shirt. I was expecting a night alone, so there is no bra to slow him down. And there are no panties, either. Something I know he’ll figure out soon enough.
Suddenly he’s pulling my shirt off, rearing back for a moment to watch as my tits bounce free. “Fucking gorgeous,” he growls. He slides his large, calloused hands under my ass and then lifts me up. I wrap my legs around his waist almost automatically when I lose contact with the ground, and Bash swings me around to press my back up against the wall. Our lips meet again, and now he uses only one hand to hold me by the ass while the other squeezes my bare breasts once again.
“You have phenomenal tits,” he murmurs, tone thick with lust, but his kisses resume before I can respond, the ever present stubble on his face scratching my chin as he presses hungrily against me.
Bash is wearing tight jeans again, and pressed up against me hard enough to hold me against the wall, I can feel the hardness underneath them. His bulge is rubbing at just the right spot, and I do my best to wiggle my hips in a way that grinds against him.
“I need to fuck you,” he says. The hand he was propping me up with drops away as he moves from the wall, but my legs are holding tight and I continue to grind. I know he expected me to let go and drop back to the floor, but now that I know he can feel me, I want to tease him a bit. His other hand leaves my breast and both of them hook into the elastic of my sweats, but he can’t pull them down with me wrapped around his waist like this.
Now it’s my turn to drive him crazy, so I feather soft, wet kisses along the artery in his neck and grasp the leather of his jacket for leverage, trying to push my hot center even harder against his proud bulge.
Undeterred, Brash finally slips his fingers past the waistband of my pants and slides them against my bare cheeks. He can’t get my pants off while I’m like this, but that doesn’t mean he’s out of ideas. His rough, warm fingers slide against my skin, scratching and tickling even as goose bumps of pleasure spark out along each inch of flesh that he touches.
I bite down on his neck now, in exactly the same place that he bit me, and smile into his shoulder at the sound he produces. But his gasp is followed by an even louder one of my own. His searching fingers haven’t stopped, and now they’ve pushed all the way back along my ass and then in between. I squirm, but he isn’t at his final destination just yet. Pushing even further with his long arms, his fingertips finally touch the bottom of my pussy and slide in, penetrating me without the slightest hesitation on his part, or resistance on mine.
Bash spins me around again, and this time he’s facing the couch. I know what he has in mind. It’s the only thing on mine as well, but not here.
“The bedroom,” I squeak, tilting my head toward the door to my room. Bash just grunts a response and pivots, before walking quickly in the direction I motioned. He uses my back to push open my door and crosses the room in two strides before letting us both fall down onto my mattress. I don’t even care that my room is a mess, my clothes from today’s interview piled upon the floor. He hasn’t noticed, and I know he wouldn’t care, anyway.
The moment my back lands with a bounce onto my bed, my legs release him and he wastes no time. His hands are still in my pants, and with a yank, he leans to the side and almost tears them off of me as I work on pushing his jacket off of his shoulders. With my pants joining the rest of my clothes on the floor, he helps me by shrugging off his leather and then peeling his shirt off. My eyes instantly drink in the tattoos that flow along his upper body, moving in waves along the contours of his chest and abs.
“You’re so hot and wet, but this time, I have to taste you,” he says, and then his body disappears as he pushes himself back down along the end of the bed to drop onto his knees. He doesn’t even give me a moment to prepare myself before his mouth is against my folds, spreading them with his probing tongue.
“Holy shit!” I can’t help but cry out at the urgency of his wet kisses, and I grab onto his head to hold him in place. His hair is short, but long enough that I can tangle my fingers in its dark strands and hold on. That’s important, because a moment later, Bash has me bucking against his face in one of the quickest, and most intense, orgasms I can ever remember having. Even the burning of his stubble against my thighs isn’t enough to distract me from coming so fast.
I don’t even notice that my eyes are screwed shut until I jump in surprise as Bash’s body slides over me again. I open them, but I don’t need to see to know that he’s shucked his own pants. His cock is hot and hard against my thigh, and ready to move forward.
“Hold on,” I whisper. My nightstand is within reach, and I hand him a condom from it as quickly as I can. I need him inside of me before the burning pleasure sparkling through me begins to subside. Luckily it only takes moments for him to get it on, and then he’s on top of me, the tip of his cock nudging me open. No more teasing. I grab his ass with both hands, all but pulling him up and inside of me.
I need this now. The pounding of his hips. The hardness of his cock as it moves in and out, nearly splitting me in two. The panting of his breath in my ear that tells me he wants me, maybe even needs me—or at least, the pleasure my body can give him. There’s no big joke being played on me this time. Bash is here because he wants to be. He’s inside of me because he desires me, even if it’s just at this moment. And none of the lies that Edward has been spreading about me has stopped Bash from showing up at my door. Or from leading to this moment. He doesn’t have control over all of my life. He doesn’t have control over this. Over Bash.
Which means he doesn’t control everything. There’s still hope for me yet.
I trace my fingertips along the biker’s muscular back as he stretches and bends above me, and then dig in my nails as he hits just the right spot. One of his arms drops and slips under my leg, bending it up until he hooks it at the knee. He adjusts his own body now and resumes moving at a new angle that lets him hit me even deeper. No sound escapes my open mouth now. I want to scream in rapture, but I can’t even concentrate enough to do that. I’ve never felt bliss like this before.
When Bash finally groans with his own release, I let loose some sounds of my own, but at this point they’re merely strangled pants as my chest heaves, trying to get enough oxygen to my lungs. I didn’t even realize I had been holding my breath that whole time, and I could only breathe again when he stopped slamming so deeply inside of me.
I feel his last few shudders as he straightens his arm, letting my leg drop, which yanks him out from inside of me. I almost cry out in protest as his warmth and hardness disappears. He’s breathing just as heavily as I am, and although we’re no longer connected between the legs, a thin sheen of sweat still joins us. Heat is coming off of him in waves and making me drowsy.
We lie together quietly for a few minutes as our breathing starts to normalize. Bash’s mouth is next to my ear, and each fervent gust of air causes a wisp of my own hair to tickle my ear.
“I can’t believe we just did this again,” I finally say, wondering if he feels the same way.
He doesn’t answer right away, and I start to wonder if he’s fallen asleep. “Oh, right, I forgot. You’re Evelyn Silver, the girl that likes to live life by the book. I guess the books you read don’t include hot sex.”
“That’s not what I mean,” I protest. I really didn’t mean i
t as a regret this time. I think the first time might have been a mistake, but we’d already crossed this bridge, doing it again doesn’t make anything worse, does it? “I just… I didn’t expect this would happen again. With you.”
Bash rolls off the bed and bends down to slide his pants up his legs. “You and me both. I gotta get to Axle’s. The club is expecting me.”
“Of course, sure.” I don’t expect him to stay the night. Maybe a few minutes would have been nice, though.
He barely looks at me as he finishes getting dressed and walks to my bedroom door. “So I expect to see you tomorrow morning. Check in with Catherine when you get in. She’ll have all the paperwork you need to get started.”
I sit up, watching and waiting to see if he turns around. He does, eventually—sort of. He turns his head to the side, and I know he can see me out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t look right at me. He looks like he wants to say something else, but then he seems to think better of it and starts to turn away again.
“So that’s it, then?” I say. I’m not sure what else I expect there to be. We both pretty much agreed this would just be a one last fling if I’m starting to work for him tomorrow. I don’t want anything else from him, but I don’t like the way his personality just switches so easily back to ass mode.
He pauses again. Turns, but still not quite all the way around.
“Yeah, that’s it. Just make sure that I don’t regret giving you this job.” That’s all he says as he leaves, his footsteps the only sound left until I hear the front door close.
That image on the back of his leather cut blazes in front of my eyes like an afterimage, all aglow in the dim lighting of my bedroom. That armored skeleton, grinning at me, mocking me, daring me to come just one step closer.
Armor. Now that’s fitting, considering the defenses Bash has put up against me. I’m left with just two questions about that: do I have it in me to take it off him, and more importantly… do I want to?
Bounty Page 62