by Blair Grey
I wouldn’t throw a punch at Cameron, but to be honest, the idea of a punching bag had never sounded better. Even fishing couldn’t help me clear my head when it got like this.
Braxton suddenly burst through the door of the clubhouse. “There you are,” he muttered, stalking up to me. “All right, everyone. Get out of here early today,” he said to the recruits. He tugged me toward the door. “I need to talk to you,” he said in an undertone.
I wanted to protest, to tell him to come back some other time, but his urgency made me curious.
“What’s going on?” I asked once we were outside.
“We’re going to kill that motherfucker once and for all,” Braxton hissed. “Come on.”
I stopped cold. “Braxton, you know we can’t do that,” I said.
Braxton whirled around to face me. “Why not?” he asked. “Because you’re afraid that Ray won’t like the plan, or because you’re afraid that the mafia will come after us? Because if it’s the latter, I’ve got news for you: the mafia is already after us. It can’t get much worse than it already is. If it isn’t Ryan helping them out, it’ll just be someone else. I think we need to take Ryan out of the picture and show them that we’re still firmly in control of our territory.”
I gnawed at my lower lip. “You maybe be right,” I finally said. “But Ray is still going to be pissed.”
“Fuck it, whatever,” Braxton said. “It’s not the first time that I’ve done something in a different way from what he would recommend.”
“The guy had a gun, though,” I pointed out. “Probably more than one. I know he doesn’t want to shoot us, but if we bother him enough, there’s no reason to believe that he won’t.”
“So we shoot first,” Braxton said, pressing a cold gun into my hands.
I automatically adjusted my grip, testing the weight of it. “You want us to shoot him,” I said flatly. Did Ryan deserve to die? Probably. He was like a rabid dog, biting at everything that came close enough. Without him, maybe this whole undercover group would fall apart. Maybe we wouldn’t have to go after Holly and the rest of them.
I didn’t like the idea of shooting him, but Braxton was still dragging me along. He was more than ready to go. “Look, if you don’t want to come, don’t come,” he finally said. “But I’m going, whether you go or not, and it would be really nice to have someone there to guard my back.”
I stared at him for a long moment. I knew that this wasn’t the right thing to do, but more than that, I knew that I couldn’t let Braxton go it alone. I had to go with him. I shoved the gun into my belt and hurried after him.
But we didn’t even make it as far as the door. Instead, when we pulled onto the road that Ryan’s house was on, we could see flashing lights in nearly every direction. The police were there, dragging a handcuffed Ryan out of his house. I peered closer. Yeah, there was Holly, too. Helping the police. I couldn’t see any of the other members of the undercover unit there, and I suddenly wondered if Holly had two-timed Ryan. It certainly seemed that way.
“Fuck!” Braxton said, slamming his palm against the side of the steering wheel. “I was looking forward to putting a bullet into that dude.” I could practically feel the energy pulsing off from him, and I knew that he must have been building this up in his mind ever since we’d been here before.
I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “Guess that’s going to have to wait,” I said. “What do you think they got him on?”
“No idea,” Braxton said. “But Ryan is the kind of guy who will tell the police everything about the mob in New York.” He paused. “You know, this could still spell trouble for Red Eyes. We’ve still got the mob after us. Unless Ryan spills and gets all of them locked up. But if he does spill their names, it’ll be because he got some sort of plea bargain. And that’ll mean that he goes free and is our problem again.”
“I know,” I said. “Like you’re saying, I get the feeling that if he goes free, he’s going to be our problem whether or not the mafia is paying him to take us down. But it’s not like we can go after him right now. We’re not going to shoot out all these cop cars, so it’s probably better if we get the hell out of here.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Braxton sighed.
“Hey, can you drop me off at the diner on the way back into town?” I asked. “You know, my usual place.”
“Sure thing,” Braxton said. I could tell that he was still imagining that perfect hit that he’d been planning. He wasn’t really focusing on me. He didn’t ask why I wanted to go to the diner. If I knew him at all, and I liked to think that I did by now, I knew that he was probably going to head straight to the shooting range to get his aggressions out that way.
I waited at the diner for a while. I realized now that I needed to talk to Holly. To hear what her story really was. Which side had she been playing this whole time? Was what she and I had had together really a lie? I had to believe that it wasn’t. But maybe that was just wishful thinking.
Holly came into the diner eventually, and I could see her eyes light up when she saw me, sitting at my usual table. She made a beeline for me, and then her steps faltered. “Is it okay if I join you?” she asked, looking scared and timid.
“Just sit down, before I change my mind about being here,” I told her gruffly. Holly scrambled to obey. “I saw you earlier,” I said. “And if I’m not mistaken, you were helping to put one of your colleagues behind bars.”
Holly’s eyes widened. “You saw that?” she asked.
“I told you that your unit was in trouble,” I told her. “Braxton was planning on shooting Ryan right through the head.”
“Probably a good thing that he didn’t,” Holly said.
“Why, because you think he would have gotten arrested?” I asked.
“No, it just would have been a messy cleanup,” Holly said. She paused. “I went to the police academy.”
“I figured, if they let you have a badge and all,” I said.
“Right,” Holly said slowly. “But with all my training, I have to admit that I never saw any criminal activity with Red Eyes. As far as I’m aware, you guys haven’t done anything that’s worthy of being punished for.”
“But you were still protecting us against Ryan?” I asked, frowning at her.
“Not just you, per se,” she said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and looking out the window. She almost looked embarrassed. “All of them,” she said, gesturing toward the rest of the city. I understood what she meant. She was making sure that Ryan couldn’t just go around burning down buildings willy-nilly. I had to appreciate a motive like that.
She looked back at me. “Ryan wasn’t going to stop until he had you guys behind bars, and I knew that you didn’t deserve it. But even more than that, I knew that people like Linda don’t deserve to have their lives ripped out from under them because someone like Ryan wants to send a message or prove a point. I don’t even know what point he was hoping to make.”
“Apparently, he had connections with the mob in New York,” I said. “We’re actually sort of hoping that he’ll give up those connections. Get those guys behind bars, and Red Eyes won’t have to worry about all of them coming after us.”
I wasn’t sure whether I should really tell her all of that or if that was too close to talking about club business with someone who wasn’t a member of the club. But I decided to tell her anyway. Maybe she could help us out. Ensure that those guys get locked up.
“Noted,” Holly said, her eyes only widening a fraction. She paused. “You know, I’m not really from Montana.”
“I know,” I said. “I looked you up once I knew that you were part of the police force.”
Holly grimaced. “I didn’t like lying to you,” she said. “I know that doesn’t make it any better, but I didn’t want to lie to you.”
“Then why did you do it?”
Holly had a fierce look in her eyes when she answered, “Because this is my community. These are my people. The shops that I go to, the places
I visit. And I want to protect them. I always have. I’ve wanted to be a cop for years now, and I finally got to be one. Not only that, but I got my first undercover assignment. Ryan kept telling me that if I didn’t do my job, then he was going to make sure that this was the last job that I had. That I was going to be stuck doing office work for the rest of my life.” She shrugged. “I know that probably seems stupid to you, but it struck a chord with me. I didn’t want to lose that job, so I had to do what Ryan asked me to do.”
“What was that, exactly?”
Holly looked scared to even tell me. “He wanted me to seduce you,” she said.
I felt my lips press together. “I should have known that it was all an act.”
“It wasn’t, though,” Holly said desperately, grabbing my hand. “I swear, it wasn’t an act. God, we’d barely done anything together before I realized that I really liked you. And that you definitely weren’t the murderous drug dealer that Ryan told me you’d be.”
I stared at her for a long moment, wondering if I could really believe her. But deep down, I knew that I already did. There was something in her eyes. It had been there all along.
I also knew that I probably shouldn’t take her home with me right now. We had just made up, and things between us were still too tender, too raw. But at the same time, I had the feeling that if I didn’t bring her home now, I was going to lose my chance with her. She wasn’t going to come looking for me again. The ball was in my court, waiting for me to take a shot.
I didn’t like the idea of losing her. That much I was sure about.
“Why don’t you come home with me,” I suggested, my voice quiet. Careful.
“I’d love that,” Holly said, exhaling a breath as though she’d been holding it through that whole conversation. She was just as nervous as I was, I realized. And somehow, that made things all right.
I led her toward my home with my hand resting on her lower back. She leaned in close to me. “I’m not still your assignment, am I?” I asked as we were getting close to my place. It was partly just teasing, but I also needed the reassurance.
Holly didn’t seem to think the question was too strange. “No, you’re not still my assignment,” she said quietly. Her lips quirked upward in a smile. “It turns out that I was a pretty terrible choice for the person who would seduce you. Because instead, I found myself being more seduced by you, and that meant I’ve been compromised since nearly the very start.”
I laughed and led her up to the door. I opened it carefully, feeling as though there were something fragile in the air between us. Some nebulous sense of feeling, something that hadn’t been there before.
I backed her up against the wall, leaning into her, hemming her in with my body. Her hands came to rest on my hips, while my own hands cupped her cheeks. “I love you,” I breathed against her lips, before pressing my mouth against hers.
She responded with a moan, her fingers coming up to twist in the back of my hair. My whole body flared with heat, and I knew that I had made the right decision in choosing to forgive her. She might have deceived me from the start, but deep down, I knew the person that she was.
And I loved her. It was as simple as that.
38
Holly
I was surprised that Grant let me apologize to him, even after he told me that he had seen me there while they were taking care of Ryan. I was surprised that things had moved so quickly with Ryan, to be honest. But it turned out that once Andrews had something he wanted, he could get things done quickly. He had managed to scrape up enough material against Ryan to get him locked up for a decent amount of time. If I tipped him off about the ties with the mafia, I was sure we could get even more time.
Of course, the trouble there was that he might go for a plea bargain where he would name some of the other operatives of the New York mafia to decrease his own sentence. We wouldn’t want that. Anyway, I wasn’t a lawyer. I just gave all the information over to Andrews and let him deal with it from there.
It was just nice to know that that chapter was mostly closed now. Finally. It had been a long time coming.
In fact, though, I hadn’t been on Ryan’s team for that long. Nor had I known Grant for all that long, in the scheme of things. But it sure felt like ages. With Grant, it felt like I had known him for years. We understood each other. And when he said that he loved me, I really trusted that he meant it. Because I felt the same way deep down.
Before I could tell him that I loved him as well, though, his mouth was on mine. It lacked the sloppy fierceness of our previous kisses. No, this one was delicate, soft, sweet. But just as passionate. With this kiss, I felt like he wanted to sink into every fiber of my being, melding us as one, bringing us into perfect harmony.
He pulled away from me, giving me a serious, searching look, and I knew this was my cue to tell him that I loved him as well. But before I could, he was tugging me toward the stairs, and I didn’t want to just call it after him. I wanted to say it properly to his face.
We were in the bedroom now, and he was stripping me out of my clothes, his mouth hot against every inch of bare skin that he revealed. He laved at my skin, tasting me, touching me, turning me on with every nip and suck of his lips and ever swipe of his calloused fingers. I forced myself to take a step back so that I could see him properly: so that I could strip him down as well.
He smiled at me, giving me a little nudge toward the bed. Then, he stripped off his clothes much more efficiently than I would have been able to manage and joined me, pulling me into his arms. For a while, we continued to make out, exploring each other’s mouths. As turned on as I was, there was something so intimate about this process of discovery that I almost would have been happy to stay doing that forever. It was as though we had all the time in the world left to learn what made the other person tick. I liked that.
He started to move down my body again, but he didn’t get far before I used one of my self-defense moves to flip us over, so that he was on his back staring up at me. That startled a laugh out of Grant. “Jesus, that was hot,” he said, sounding amazed. I fought the urge to preen.
Instead, I figured it was my turn to tease. I kissed down the length of Grant’s body until I got to his heavy, hard cock. I caught it in my hand, giving it a few experimental tugs. Precum had already left a sticky pool there on his stomach, and as I pumped his length, another drop oozed out of his tip. I lowered my mouth to taste it, experimentally flicking my tongue across the tip, and Grant made a gargled noise of pleasure.
I lowered my mouth onto him, swallowing him down as far as I could until I was nearly gagging on his length. He was just so big inside of my mouth, pressing at the back of my throat. I sucked as hard as I could, dragging my lips back along his length, carefully not to catch my teeth on his sensitive skin. I tongued again at his tip and was rewarded by another groan.
But as much as I wanted to tease him, I also felt an increasing need for pleasure of my own. I sucked at him for a little while longer, using the fingers of my left hand to play with myself, giving me some of the stimulation that I needed. But it wasn’t enough. I was wet and open, so ready to sink down onto his length. I couldn’t wait any longer.
I shifted my way up his body, reaching down between us to line his tip up with my hole. Then, I rocked my hips downward.
My head immediately fell back as I gave a low, throaty moan. His hands grasped my hips, and I caught onto his wrists, feeling like I was already close to exploding, to flying apart into a million pieces. When the sensations became manageable again, I shifted against him, lifting myself up and then slowly sliding back down.
I liked this, being in control, being the one to set the rhythm. He was so deep inside of me like this too. He fit so perfectly, hitting me in all the right spots. I breathed in a deep breath and let it out slowly and then repeated that motion, lifting myself up and then dropping quickly back down. Fuck, it felt so good. A little tug just below my navel, right at the base of my gut, told me that I’d be comi
ng soon if I kept this up.
Grant shifted a little to get a better grip on my hips, and the next thing I knew, he was thrusting up into me, clearly impatient with the speed that I’d been setting before. He used his heels against the bed for leverage, as I bounced on top of him. He reached out one hand for my breast, fondling it, sending another jolt of feeling bursting through my core.
I bent forward, unable to keep myself upright anymore, clinging to his shoulders as he continued to rock into me. And then suddenly, he slowed entirely. I whimpered, close to the edge. Was he teasing me again? I bit my lower lip, almost begging him to continue. When I looked up at him, I could see that his pupils were totally blown out, his eyes dark and lusty as they latched onto mine.
Slowly, he started to move against me, an easy rocking motion that focused more on opening me up rather than jamming into that spot in my core. I gasped, feeling his firm member drag against my walls. This was it; this was the end; this was the climax; this was—
I cried out his name as I shook apart into a million pieces, shattering but somehow knowing that I was safely twined in his arms. He was holding me, even as he spilled through an orgasm of his own, his member spewing liquid fire inside of me. Here in this timeless space, it felt like we could promise each other forever. That we could actually make things work between us.
And maybe we could. Now that he wasn’t my job assignment and now that we both knew the truth about each other, maybe we could make things work. I’d have to get Vera on the same page, of course, because I could never seriously date someone my sister disapproved of, but I was pretty sure I could make things work.
I was willing to try anyway.
I shivered as I came down from my orgasm, and as I was rapidly becoming familiar, Grant pulled me into his arms, letting me lay my head on his chest. I could feel his heartbeat, rapidly beating beneath my ear, and I imagined for a second that our heartbeats matched, as though we really were one.