by Ruin, Olivia
“Leslie… I know that things have been rocky between us ever since that night.” He didn’t have to say which night it was. I don’t think there had been a more important night for either of us in our lives than the one where I had revealed my cover and the motorcycle gang had been busted along with any number of Mexican cartel members. Jed’s ribs still showed a wicked welt from where the bullet had entered his body.
“I think rocky is a bit of an understatement.”
He sighed. “You’re right. I like you, Leslie. I think we fit together really well. We have a chemistry that I’ve never had with anyone else.”
“Even Kat?” I didn’t really want Kat in the room at the moment, even the mere mention of her, but after the past few days I couldn’t help myself from asking.
His dark eyes locked onto mine. “Even Kat. Something special, primal, comes out when we get together. It’s incredible.”
Hearing him say those words was a huge vindication. The way his voice rumbled was as though it were a rough caress. What he thought about our passion sent a shot straight to my groin.
“But that’s all we have, Leslie. I feel like I’m being overly sensitive for saying it, but when it comes right down to it, all we have is great sex. Is that enough for a relationship?”
“I know, Jed. I can’t ever get enough of your body, of you. Not having sex over the past three weeks has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and you know that it’s not by my choice. I want to make this into more, into something great. What do I need to tell you so that we can keep us alive?”
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” Jed said. “Even if you tell me everything about you, your past, what makes you tick, how do I know if it’s the truth? You’re an undercover agent, lying is in your job description. How do I know that you aren’t just sucking me in deeper, using me even harder than you did the first time?”
His words were like a physical blow to me. I had no idea that he had these thoughts running through his mind. No wonder he can’t get past it in order to have sex with me.
“Jed!” I put a hand on his arm and looked up into his eyes. The extra head of height he had on me was all the more imposing from inches away. “I’m me. I’m Leslie. I haven’t lied to you since you were shot. And even before that I never hid my personality, who I am. I only ever lied about my background and my job, and if we’re being completely honest here, you were never exactly interested until you knew it was a cover.”
As much as Jed played the hurt party, it was true. We had used each other for sex, and I had used him for information. He couldn’t be too hurt that I had lied about who I was, because he barely knew anything about my cover anyway.
“I had a very elaborate cover prepared, down to the smallest details of where I went to kindergarten and the name of my imaginary best friend when I was little. Months of preparation went into that role, and the most I ever used was saying I was from out of town and looking for work.”
As I started to think about it more, the more indignant I got. “The first night we met, you literally pushed me to my knees in front of you and fed me your cock without so much as asking. I never even planned on sleeping with you until that happened, so you can’t act all wounded warrior to me!”
Jed stood there, looking down at me, bemused expression on his face. “You had a fake imaginary friend prepped and ready to go?”
“Of course I did. I’m thorough. His name was Charles, and he was a flying koala bear. He and I used to go on imaginary rides to faraway lands and fight evil armies with swords made from sticks.”
Jed laughed, a genuine, full-bellied roar that startled me with its intensity.
Caught in the middle of a self-righteous rant, I stared at him as his composure completely disappeared. When he was no longer able to remain upright and bent over to put his hands on his knees, a smile crept onto my face no matter how hard I tried to keep it off.
“Jed, come on, I’m trying to yell at you here.”
If anything he laughed harder. “Ch… Ch… Charles! The flying koala bear?” He straightened up and looked at me as he wiped tears from his eyes. “Did he have wings or did he fly around in a miniature helicopter?”
“Well… neither, actually. He had a pet dragon named Snuffles that he rode around.”
Jed and I locked gazes. I saw the corner of his mouth twitch and felt my own begin to do the same in response.
The dam burst.
My stomach hurt from ten straight minutes of laughing. My abs never got that much of a workout even when I was trying to target them intentionally. It felt as though my ribs had split open by the time our chuckles died out and we both managed to not start off again.
“Oh, fuck,” Jed said. “That was too funny. I can’t believe that you went to such lengths for such a minuscule detail. How did you ever think that I would ask anything remotely close to that?”
I smiled. “I admit it was a long shot. If I’d known that all I had to do was drop to my knees and open wide it would have saved me a lot of work.”
“I have to admit, you really know what you’re doing down there.”
The air was cleared from the bout of hilarity, but it started to get serious. Serious in a good way.
Jed closed the distance between us in that scarily fast way that he did sometimes. His hand cupped the back of my head and tilted my lips up towards his. He hovered just out of reach for a few seconds. The nearness of him, the scent of his masculinity overwhelmed me.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I put both hands on his shoulders and pulled him towards me, meeting his lips in a blaze of glory.
I moaned into his mouth as I pressed my body against his. For the first time since the bust I could feel him respond whole-heartedly. His manhood stirred against me through our clothes, and my own body responded. I clutched at his powerful shoulders and lost myself in the feeling of his lips on mine.
He pulled my shirt off and I reluctantly let him break off the kiss as the fabric separated us for a moment that felt far too long. His hands deftly reached behind me and unsnapped my bra, freeing my breasts to the cool air. His fingers splayed against my bared skin, stroking the sensitive flesh at the swell of my breast and making me pant.
“Take your fucking shirt off,” I said, but didn’t wait for a response before I tackled it myself. His skin and the hard muscles that I so admired felt incredible beneath my needy fingertips. It had been too long since I had gotten a good feel for him without having to worry if he was going to cut it off prematurely.
I latched my mouth onto his chest. The hot flesh under my tongue was smooth.
The sensation as he cupped me was enough to make me lose myself in the pleasure, a feeling that I had been waiting for. His fingers rolled my nipples, tweaking them just a little in the way that he had learned I liked.
“Mmm, Jed, that feels so good.” We shared another hot kiss as we caressed each other’s bodies.
Jed’s phone started to ring. He growled and fished it out of his pocket. He didn’t even look at the number on the screen before he flung it across the room onto the couch. It sat there, beeping in reproach at being abandoned by its owner.
My hands had crept down and found the front of his jeans. I couldn’t resist dropping over top of the denim. My loins grew even hotter as I felt how hard and ready he was for me already. His sizable shaft strained against the faded fabric, and I hurried to try and release it from its cage.
The distinctive piercing buzz of my cell started to ring from my own pocket.
“Who the hell is calling?” If it was the same person who had called Jed then it might be important. I took the phone out of my pocket but before I could answer it the cell was ripped from my hands by Jed.
“I’ve waited too long, we aren’t answering our phones, got it?” He stared into my face, the lust clear on his strong features.
I nodded meekly, certain that I was about to be manhandled by the man of my dreams.
He picked me up and I wrappe
d my legs around his waist. I slammed into the wall as he pinned me there. One of his big hands captured both of my wrists and held them above my head, leaving me powerless. It was hotter than anything I could have imagined.
I moaned loudly as his other hand began to have its way with me, first groping my chest roughly and then unbuttoning my jeans. They were too tight for him to be able to reach a hand down the front in our position, so he settled for dancing his digits through my pants and underwear on top of my pussy.
“Oh, fuck!” Even with the deadening of sensation from the denim I still almost couldn’t stand the intensity from Jed finally touching me where I most wanted him to. I had longed for his touch for so long. Now that it was happening my body was throwing me for loops with crazy levels of sensitivity.
My breasts heaved as I watched his face, the intensity there as he slowly rediscovered and possessed my body. I would let him take complete control of me. Feeling helpless with my hands unavailable turned me on more than I thought possible. I had always been the one to take control.
Someone pounded at the front door of the apartment. “Jed! Leslie! Are you in there?”
It was Nathan. He shouted through the door.
Jed and I froze as we looked at each other. Nathan wouldn’t come barging in unless it was important.
“Jed? Please tell me you’re in there!”
“Nathan?” Jed shouted back. “We’re here, what’s going on?”
“It’s Tim. He’s dead.”
Fuck. Just my luck. My brain hadn’t quite processed the news yet. High off lust and adrenaline, all it cared about was that this would interfere with the sex that it so desperately craved.
Immediately Jed released my hands and let me drop back to stand on my own two feet. He cast about for his shirt and pulled it on while he made his way across the room to the door.
“Wait!” I called out before he opened it. I couldn’t find my bra and settled for just throwing my shirt back on. “OK, go ahead.”
Jed threw the door open to reveal a distraught Nathan.
“I’m glad you two are alive. I wasn’t hearing anything from Tim so I sent a couple guys over to his house to tell him to come to the Roost where we’d all be together. They found him bled out in his living room.”
“Fuck.” Jed held his face in his hands. All he’d ever wanted was to ride free and enjoy the biker life, and instead he had to deal with the ticking time bombs that Frank had left for him. “Is everyone else accounted for?”
“Yeah, for now. Half the guys are keeping watch at Tim’s house, the other half are at headquarters.”
“Ok, good. We’ll be along to Tim’s in a couple seconds. Has Kat been told yet?”
I couldn’t believe his first thought was to his ex. They had split years ago and she’d only been back in town for a few days, but it seemed as though they had a closer bond than Jed and I did.
Nathan shook his head. “I haven’t yet, I don’t think anyone else has. Did you want me to, or are you going to break it to her?”
Jed pondered. “I should tell her. After we deal with things there though.” He turned back to me. “Are you good to go? I’ll have to catch a ride in your car.”
I nodded. “Sure. Let’s go.”
FRIEND
I see why Nathan described it as finding Tim bled out.
The living room was a mess.
Tim’s body was lying across the area rug in the wide expanse of the room. His TV on the wall continued to play sports highlights; nobody had turned it off yet.
Jed stood there, silent, almost the exact same pose that he had held when first seeing Patrick’s body a couple of days ago. I knew that thoughts warred fast and furiously inside of his head, but I left him to his contemplations as I completed my own circuit around the scene.
“Has anyone else been in and touched stuff here?” I asked Nathan. “It’s vital that we keep the crime scene clean for when the teams come in to check for clues.”
“We’re not going to call this in,” Jed said.
I stared at him, incredulous. “Are you kidding? I need to report this, Jed. Patty was one thing, that could have been just a drunk crash, an accident. This is a completely different situation now, someone is hunting down the members of the club!”
Jed shook his head. “Getting the cops or the feds involved isn’t going to help anything, Leslie. This is my club, and my town, and I’m going to find this fucker. I’m not going to go running to your bosses every time something happens, ok?”
I could believe my ears. “This isn’t running away or being weak, Jed. No one would blame you for getting some outside help on this one. Frank, Patty and Tim are dead, and you and Kat are lucky to be alive after the blast that took out Nightshade. This needs to go to the proper authorities so we have the best chance of catching the one responsible before more people die.”
I could tell by the set of his chin that my arguments weren’t making a dent on his decision. “We deal with this ourselves, that’s final.” He paced away, turning his back on me.
I turned to Nathan. “Nathan, you have to admit that the right thing to do here is to let me call this in and bring in the experts. Anything else is just foolish. It could be Jed next, or you. Or Kat, or anyone else in the club. Is that what you want?”
Nathan looked me in the eyes, looked after Jed, and grimaced. “I wish it was my call to make, Leslie, but it isn’t. Jed’s the president, and his word is law in this town. I can’t control you, either, but I would say that you hold off at least for a little while. Things were bound to get messy sooner or later, and the feds can’t come in and bail us out every time. Otherwise word will find a way out and we’ll be useless to their plans for penetrating the bigger crime rings.”
He had a point. There was a certain amount of gang warfare that had to go on if only to maintain appearances. But my biggest concern wasn’t with the DEA and its desires.
“Dammit, I’m not saying this as an agent, I’m saying this as someone who cares about the members of this club. Let me report this, and help stop any more deaths. This is crazy.”
Stony silence met my plea.
Fine, I’ll at least take a look myself to figure out what I can. Then I can report it and there’s nothing they can do to stop me.
I turned back to the crime scene and tried to approach it logically, analytically, and forget that I had joked around with Tim just that morning. It wasn’t the first time that I had traded barbs in the morning with someone who had ended up a cadaver by bedtime, but it never got easier.
Tim was sprawled face down on the rug. A large amount of blood stained it a shocking red that spread out in a pool from the body. It was more blood than I was used to seeing, but then most dead bodies I had seen were the result of gun fire.
“Was he stabbed?”
Nathan nodded. “It looked like he was hit right in the gut and chest five or six times. I rolled him over long enough to see that before I let him drop back down.”
I didn’t blame him. Tim and Nathan were great friends, and you never wanted to let your last memory of a good friend be their mangled corpse after a violent murder.
My training had never covered the intimate details of crime scene investigation. I settled for using my logic and intellect to try and figure out at least something about the murder that wasn’t immediately obvious. Something that would help us to figure out who was doing this.
Let’s see. Tim was stabbed in the front, and it looks as though he was sitting on the bed and slid off onto the ground after the attack. There was a blood smear that showed where he had slipped off the white leather couch.
If he had been stabbed in the front, there should have been some sign of a struggle. Why the front? And while he was sitting down… it’s almost as though Tim didn’t even try to protect himself. I hunted around, looking for clues. Beside the body was the low-slung coffee table which held a couple of magazines, the TV remote, and Tim’s beer.
He had settled in to watch the ga
me, grabbed a beer. He might not have heard an intruder over the sounds of the TV, but that doesn’t explain why he didn’t get stabbed in the back, or at least stand up before he died.
Then I saw it, a detail that my eyes had skipped over several times as normal.
“Nathan, do you mind stepping outside so that I can talk to Jed alone, for a moment?”
He looked at me and cast a glance at the scene. He had stared at it far more than was healthy over the past hour, but he was obviously confused at what had given me a sudden burst of insight. “Yeah, sure. I’ll be out front with the others.”
Jed still stood with his back to me, looking into Tim’s kitchen. I waited for him to come over but he stayed there, obstinate.
“Please.” It was all I said, but we both knew that I was asking for a few things with the one word.
His back softened, and after a moment he turned around. Pain covered his face, distress at losing yet another member of his crew.
I held out my hand to him, and he took the few halting steps necessary to grab it.
“Don’t blame yourself, Jed. You warned everyone, Tim knew that there was danger. There wasn’t much else you could do.” I knew that I wouldn’t change his mind, but I said the words anyway. Maybe they would give him a measure of comfort.
“What did you find?” He didn’t bother to address my words of solace.
I walked with him over to the couch and pointed at Tim’s back. “Why was Tim stabbed in the front?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“I mean why did the attacker stab Tim in the chest? If the murderer broke in and found Tim sitting here, wouldn’t he just hit him in the back? It would be quicker, easier, and less dangerous.”
Jed looked at Tim’s back. There were no wounds there, the black fabric of his shirt stretched across the chilled flesh in an unbroken expanse.
“Uh, I don’t really know…”
“Well I do. There’s something else that I noticed. It’s so ordinary that it took me a while to realize that it might be out of place, but look, right there.” I point at the small table that stood next to the other chair.