Under Fire (Winged Enemy MC Romance)

by Ruin, Olivia

  Under Fire

  Winged Enemy MC Romance

  Copyright © 2014 Olivia Ruin

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of amazing fiction. All characters are figments of the author's imagination and any resemblances to actual people are purely coincidental (although occasionally hilarious).

  To all of the special people in my life who encourage me to follow my dreams. Your support is humbling.

  ~Olivia

  To find out about upcoming romance releases and sales from Olivia Ruin, sign up for the mailing list!

  A merry campfire burned away in the middle of a clearing. The thick New Mexico brush had been cut back in a wide circle. Crushed beer cans littered the clearing, old and new. Many of the cans were so old that they were no more than slabs of rust, the beer logo long gone. Newer cans lay here and there, the metal shiny in contrast. The flickering flames of the fire caught the bent and twisted aluminum and lit the edges with a hypnotic glimmer.

  A small but growing number of the cans were still wet on the inside and smelled of fresh beer.

  With the grating sound of crushed metal, another casualty hit the dusty ground beside an old and beat-up red camper chair. The occupant’s eyes glowed red as they stared into the fire’s depths. A stick prodded the fire, stirring a cloud of ash into the air. A collapsing log summoned a whirlwind of sparks that rose into sky and danced like miniature fairies before they flicked out one by one.

  Beside the occupied chair, there was another of the exact same style. The empty chair was a sad blue, the fabric torn and faded. Stained rings on the seat showed where the sparsely fallen summer rain had pooled and sunk into the fabric.

  The eyes lifted, and a snarl crossed the face hidden in shadow. The long-barreled rifle that had lain across the figure’s knees rose up in a smooth, easy motion and a shot rang out through the still night. The casing landed in the midst of the can graveyard, a secondary echo.

  “Got you, you son of a bitch.” It was not a loud proclamation; the voice was full of quiet rage.

  Across the campfire a big wooden board rested on sturdy supports. The surface was marred by old scars; bullet holes, stab wounds, scorch marks. If it had been alive the ground underneath would have been stained red.

  Four posters hung on the board, pinned by metal tacks. The poster on the left was emblazoned with the frightening visage of an older man with creases on his face that told of an intimate knowledge of the many ways to hurt a man deeply. A beaten and faded leather jacket with as many patches as cow skin fit over his torso like a second skin. A smoking bullet hole through the paper took the place of one of the man’s eyes. Bold font ran across the bottom of the page; Frank.

  The next page to the right showed a man just past his prime. Brown hair started to turn silver at the temples. He was similarly adorned as the man in the other picture, but his jacket wasn’t as faded. The name on the bottom of the page read Nathan.

  The third poster held the image of a much younger man. This was someone full of the vibrancy of life, his dark features and strong cheekbones gave him an air of danger and mystique. His jacket was worn but not nearly to the degree of the others, and it hadn’t yet settled into the state of constant familiarity where it wouldn’t be surprising if he wore it to bed every night. The jacket hid his well-shaped physique, but it was impossible not to guess its presence by the way the leather draped over his shoulder and the very way he held himself. His page was labeled Jed.

  The last poster broke the trend. A bright brunette smiled at the faraway camera, unsuspecting of the menace that lay on the other side of the lens in the future. Brown hair flowed free down past her shoulders and a cowboy hat capped her head. She looked earnest and care-free in a way the men did not. Just below the full cleavage of her photo read the name Leslie.

  “You’re going to pay,” said the voice, emptied of emotion. “Sooner or later, all of you are going to pay.”

  Three more shots fired from the old rifle, and each of the remaining pictures joined Frank’s in sporting a smoking hole for an eye.

  ALMOST

  Wham!

  My back slammed into the wall. Breathless from the impact, I ignored it and went right back to what I was doing.

  And what I was doing, is finally getting Jed out of his pants.

  I worked my hands rapidly on his belt, ripping it out of his jeans and throwing it across the room. Jed’s mouth was hard at work on my neck, fastening on and swamping me with delirium.

  Oh god, it’s finally happening. I need this so fucking badly.

  Jed’s hands came up and cupped my breasts through my shirt. I had skipped the bra that morning, and I was glad I did as the sensations burst through my body. “Oh, yes, right there Jed.” I encouraged him to ravage me as I struggled to take his pants down.

  He grabbed my hands in one of his and forced them above me, pinning me to the wall even more completely. His other hand grabbed onto my cheap t-shirt at the neck and ripped it open, freeing my tits.

  “Oh, shit. Yes, baby, take it! Take what you want!”

  I was hornier than I had ever been in my life. In the past three weeks since we had come home from the hospital we hadn’t had sex a single time. After the torrid pace of the affair we had maintained before the incident the sudden cessation of all sex confused my body and left it desperate for attention. Every time I had gotten Jed alone he had backed away or gone cold on me.

  I’m not going to let that happen this time.

  His hand took my bare breast into his palm. He squeezed it gently and rubbed the rough skin over my nipple. I gasped. My panties dampened as his assault on my body continued, revving me up even higher.

  “Let me take your pants off, Jed. Let me suck that big cock of yours.” I said it in a sultry of a voice as I could muster, writhing under his mouth and hands so that he couldn’t possibly miss how much I needed it.

  “Mmm, I don’t think so,” he growled. “I need to taste you first.”

  Yes!

  Jed’s tongue was a pleasure I had been yearning for, even dreaming about. But for that matter so was his fingers, his hand, his rippling muscles, and his hard cock. I wanted it all, hard, and often, but I hadn’t gotten it. I had lost all ability to think straight in his presence, lost in my need.

  His powerful hands scooped me up and cradled me against him. I took the opportunity to run my hands under his shirt and lift it over his head. I let my hands run across his abs, marveling as always at his level of perfect fitness. My left hand wrapped around his shoulder while the right pulled his head down towards mine. A kiss connected us, passionate and fierce, the kind that we used to share. It had been almost three weeks since I had felt him kiss me like that.

  The kiss broke when he reached my bedroom and threw me onto the bed.

  “Ahh!” I shrieked and flailed my arms as I landed on the firm mattress and bounded upwards. I didn’t wait to come to a stop before I started to take my own pants off. I impatiently ripped the fasteners open and started to shimmy the tight denim down my thighs.

  Why the hell did I have to wear such tight pants?

  I was so used to being disappointed lately that the seconds-long delay felt like it might give Jed time to come to his senses and bail on me as had become the norm. Any time we started to get intimate, he recalled my betrayal, and he had to leave.

  I kicked frantically to shake the fabric loose from the death grip it held on my ankles. It would have been funny if I wasn’t so turned on and longing for my lover’s touch.

  “Come here, Jed, let me take care of you,” I patted the bed beside me.

  The rugged biker stood at the foot of my bed, staring at me. His eyes tra
ced my lithe legs and found my heaving breasts. Despite the promising path his gaze took, I could see the tightening of his face that signaled bad memories coming to the fore.

  “Jed, please?” My voice softened with entreaty. “Come to bed with me?”

  He stood there, staring, and didn’t say anything. I could all but hear the battle going on in his mind.

  “I don’t… I can’t… sorry, Leslie, I can’t do this.” Jed turned away and walked out the door.

  “Jed! Jed, come back!” I shouted after him, but his shadow didn’t darken my bedroom door any longer.

  I sank back against the pillows. From experience I knew that running after him wouldn’t change anything, and it would just cause both of us to get hurt.

  I let him go.

  This has to end. I know he cares about me. I know I want to be with him, too. He just can’t get past what I did to him.

  It sucked, but I knew that there wasn’t much I could do except wait for him and hope that time would heal that wound. He knew there wasn’t anything I could do to change the past, and how we met.

  Becoming an undercover agent was the defining moment of my life in many ways, but it was easy to regret that it had caused such a serious rift in my budding relationship with this man that I cared for so much. I didn’t dare let myself even consider the L word just yet.

  My womanhood twinged, a reminder that it had been promised some action and then yet again been ruthlessly denied.

  I’m going to have to take care of this myself. Again. Goddamn it Jed, I know you have your reasons, but you’d think a man would be able to turn his brain off to get laid.

  GONE

  I woke after a night of restless dreaming. Flashbacks from the ambush three weeks ago haunted me, and I saw Jed get shot time after time. In the dreams he was hit much worse, and bled out in my arms. I had to watch him die, unable to do anything about it, and then after having my heart wrung out the entire dream sequence would start again with only a slight variation.

  The third time that I awoke in a cold sweat I decided enough was enough.

  What time is it? Four o’clock? Fuck it.

  I had enough of watching my lover die again and again. If my mind was going to torture me with visions of awful things, then I wasn’t going to just sit there and take it.

  My running pants and a tight shirt were all I tossed on. Five minutes later I was headed out of town, legs pumping as I breathed in the cooler pre-dawn air. The eastern horizon glowed pink as the sun made ready its morning appearance. Birds chirped, already greeting the day.

  It was beautiful enough that I was able to put the nightmares out of my mind and just let the beat of the run flow through me. My feet pounded rhythmically on the pavement while I tried to beat my fastest time in the loop I had taken to running around town.

  Jed and his mates in the Winged Enemy MC experienced the roads and the countryside with the immediacy of a motorbike, but I hadn’t yet gotten one of my own. The way that I learned the roads, learned the secrets that driving a car wouldn’t tell you, was with my feet.

  I smelled a fire halfway through the jog at the furthest point of my loop, but my mind automatically categorized it and filed it away as the remains of a campfire. Nothing to be concerned about. My agent’s subconsciousness was constantly on the look-out for anything outside of normal, anything that needed to be noted and remembered.

  It had been three weeks since the Winged Enemy had been ambushed in a weapons drop by Mexican mobsters from Las Cruces and surrounding areas. The club’s old leader, Frank, had been cutting out the middle men in the gun and drug trade, and they weren’t happy about it.

  Having gone undercover as a new girl in town applying to be the bartender at the Devil’s Roost, the gang’s home bar, I had learned through my sources that the ambush was coming but the only way I could convince Jed that he and the group were in trouble was by telling him directly and blowing my cover. The burgeoning romance between us was severely damaged, set back further than square one in some ways by the deception that had formed the base of our relationship.

  As it so often did, my mind played through all of the things that I had done and had happened over such a short period of time three weeks ago. There were times that I thought I was crazy for trying to stick with a man I had only known for less than a month, but every time I was close to Jed I felt a magnetic pull in his direction that I couldn’t explain.

  I had never been in love before, and I was loath to use the word before I knew for sure, but it felt like I was caught up in a ridiculous tale of a damsel and a dark and handsome hero.

  The sun rose and beat down upon me for the last leg of the run, and by the time I returned to the apartment sweat had beaded up on my firm skin and started to pour down my body. The dirty clothes hit the floor as I stripped naked.

  I ran my hands along my skin. I had been in excellent condition before, as an agent should, but taking my frustrations out with running had raised my fitness to all new levels. Despite that, Jed didn’t seem to want to get any further than second base and it killed me.

  Under the pounding heat of the shower I took care of my needs again. And then, because I had more than enough time and I couldn’t get Jed’s dark eyes out of my mind, I did it again.

  It’s a good thing that going blind from masturbation is a myth, otherwise I would have lost my eyes completely over the past three weeks.

  A drought that had started out of necessity due to Jed’s injury had continued once his strength had returned enough to move around. It was enough to drive me to distraction, and the almost constant contact we maintained while trying to get the bar up and running again and go through all of Frank’s files didn’t help me cool off any.

  Somewhere in Frank’s notes should be a record of what exactly he had been up to, and with what criminal groups. He had mentioned his ambitions to Jed, his former vice president, but had been careful never to reveal enough for Jed to know exactly what was going on. In a group of men that traditionally acted as a big family, Frank had operated solo in the most important matters, the powerful patriarch who never let anyone get remotely close to the information he held.

  Jed and I had searched everything and everywhere we could think of, but had come up empty-handed. Somewhere there had to the information that would help Jed and I take down more criminals for the DEA, but it was hidden very well.

  I left the apartment after getting dressed and eating a sparse breakfast. I smiled as I heard the welcoming beep from my new car.

  It was nothing fancy, but compared to the complete piece of junk I had driven before as part of my cover, it was heaven. The old car had become so riddled with bullet holes due to its role protecting Jed and me in the ambush that it was impossible to salvage.

  Now that my cover was blown within the gang itself, it was deemed allowable to give me a bit of an upgrade in the car department.

  The Devil’s Roost was across town, but the town was so small that I pulled up to the outside in a mere five minutes. The bar shone like new, a sharp departure from the musty heap that it had been the first time I walked through the doors.

  As the site of an attack by the Mexican gang, the Roost had been absolutely destroyed. Countless rounds of bullets had been fired into the bar from the streets, and five members of the Winged Enemy had lost their lives in the attack.

  I had escaped with my life, but by taking out three of the four men who had come in to finish the job I had put a target on my back and almost blown my cover. It had been that or die, which was really no choice at all.

  The past three weeks had seen most of the gang come out every day to rebuild the bar from scratch, turning it from a smoking heap about to collapse into a modern establishment. I had assisted with the work in my guise as a biker groupie/bartender, and I was proud of the job I had done in helping to optimize the design.

  Some of the older men had wanted to build it just the way it was, but I had helped Jed and Nathan see that this was a golden opportu
nity to improve on the place that they spent half their time.

  Today was the grand opening of the new and improved Devil’s Roost. I was still early as a typical biker’s schedule went, so there were only three hogs out front of the building. One of them was Nightshade, Jed’s jet black motorcycle. Every time I saw it my breath hitched, for multiple reasons. Beyond being just a beautiful machine that reminded me of him, I had reached my first orgasm in this town not from Jed or my own fingers, but from the rumble of Nightshade’s powerful engine.

  The Roost’s doors swung open easily at the slightest push of my finger, and I stepped into the interior of the bar.

  I whistled. I hadn’t seen it for a few days; Jed had kicked me out and not let me come back in until it was done so that it would have some wow factor left in it.

  I had helped to design the place and even lent a hand to assist building a good portion of it, but I was still amazed at how well everything had pulled together. Glossy wooden tables matched with elegant and comfortable leather chairs in an open concept gave the place more of a clubhouse vibe than a dingy biker bar, and there were large flatscreens in every corner so that the men could watch whatever they pleased.

  New pool tables stood at the back, in almost the same spot that the old ones occupied; the same spot that I met Jed for the first time. New leather couches surrounded the tables so that the men could wait for the next game in comfort.

  Last but not least, the impressive new bar occupied the entire wall of the south side of the bar. My new office for my cover, and it was something else. Gleaming draught towers had a prominent location on the new bar. The counter top itself was a gigantic slab of wood that Jed had tracked down with a couple of the guys and wouldn’t say where it came from. It had been sanded, stained and lacquered, and now it was as impressive as any bar I had ever seen before.

  Jed stood at the bar, pint in hand, talking to Nathan. I’d disliked Nathan ever since he had almost broken my cover and been a driving force in the most humiliating experience of my life. Forced to prove that I wasn’t an undercover agent, I was given the choice between walking out of the town and failing my mission, or I had to let Jed fuck me in front of the entire club.