Secret Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 5)

by Marysol James

  He laughed, then sobered up when he saw the red marks on her wrists. They were faint, but they were there, and his jaw tensed as he ran his fingers over them gently.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Not at all.”

  “But your wrists. They’re red. The restraints dug in to you.”

  “They don’t hurt.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  He lifted her wrists to his lips one at time, caressed the delicate skin with his lips and tongue. She shivered, loving this man so much, she thought her heart might burst. He lowered her wrists, examined them again.

  “The marks are fading,” he said with obvious relief. “Maybe it’s just because your skin is so pale, everything shows up on it.”

  “Hmmmm.” She considered the lines. “Yeah, that’s it, I think. I’ve always bruised easy. Even jewelry marks my fingers and wrists sometimes.”

  “You mean bracelets and rings mark your skin?”

  “Uh-huh. Even if they’re not too tight, they sometimes just rub, and they leave marks. I swear, babe, the restraints didn’t hurt me. I’d have told you if they did.” Her eyes glowed. “I’d have called ‘curves’.”

  His hands ran over her gorgeous curves again, loving her generous shape. “OK, then.” He sat up, grabbed the condom off the floor. “I’ll be right back.”

  She nodded and curled up in the bed, looking for all the world like a sated little kitten. He couldn’t get back to her fast enough, and he dragged her in to his arms the second he climbed back in to bed.

  Tessa relaxed against Curtis’ powerful body, wondering what the hell she’d ever done to deserve this man. Her fingers traced his tattoos, and she watched his chest rise and fall steadily.

  “I love you,” she said now. “I love you so much, and I thank whatever power runs the show out there in the huge, astounding universe that you’re with me.”

  “Me too, sweetness.” His kiss was a miracle of tenderness and possession. “How’d it feel, Tessa? To just relinquish control so completely?”

  She thought about that, her head on his broad shoulder. “It felt – liberating.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I had no idea that it could feel so good to just give over, you know? To just – to let it all go, and let it sweep me away. The feelings, and the sensations, and the pleasure. I’ve always kind of fought against that, I think.”

  “What? Feeling good?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled up at him. “I never knew it, but I think that I’ve always thought of orgasm as the ultimate loss of control, and I just couldn’t give that much power over me to anyone. Not fully.”

  “But you can give it to me?” he asked gently. “You can trust me in that moment of total release of control over your own body?”

  “Yes,” she said right away, without any hesitation or pause. “I trust you completely.”

  Curtis’ heart squeezed at her quiet admission. He turned her face to his, held her eyes.

  “I’m never going to betray that trust, Tessa. Never, ever.” His face was so open and sweet, she felt tears sting her eyes. “You believe me?”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed now, amazed yet again that this woman was in his life, in his bed. In his heart. He barely deserved her, but now that he had her, he wasn’t letting her go.

  She was his. He was hers. There was just fucking nothing more to be said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jackson Taylor pulled up to the cabin at the end of the dirt road. Despite the remote location, he looked around carefully before opening the door of the SUV and climbing out. Ace’s motorcycle was already there, and Jack shook his head at the idiocy of driving a motorcycle up the mountain back roads in the winter. But he supposed that Ace had his bad-ass street cred to think about, and so the bike it was.

  He approached the cabin cautiously, his gun out. Yeah, King had Ace by the balls and no doubt about it, but Jack knew good and well that people did odd things when they were desperate. And if there was one thing about Ace that was slowly but surely becoming clear, it was that the man was growing increasingly desperate.

  No wonder and no surprise, though. Ace Cuddy may be the President of the Fallen Angels MC now – but he only got kicked up to the top spot after King had killed Trigger MacGee, the former President. He’d used Ace’s own gun to commit the murder, and effectively backed Ace in to a corner. Several corners, actually.

  King had told Ace that if he didn’t work with King’s Men and turn informant on Kirk Jensen, then King would make sure the gun turned up. Ace knew that if his MC brothers thought for even one second that he’d killed Trigger, his life would be forfeit. Worse than that, actually.

  But that wasn’t Ace’s only secret; it wasn’t even the biggest one. The one that had Ace twisting and turning and losing sleep was named Liam ‘Spider’ Vance, Ace’s ex-boyfriend. In the world of MC members, Ace’s sexual orientation was nothing less than unthinkable… and if the other Fallen Angels knew that their new Prez was a gay man, both Ace and Spider would be dead and gone without a word. They’d disappear so completely, it’s be like they never were.

  Jack was Ace’s direct contact to King’s Men, and besides being an ex-Marine, he was also a former FBI profiler and an expert in psychology and micro-expressions. He’d seen Ace’s fear and paranoia and guilt grow over the past couple of months. The man was terrified that he’d be exposed as an informant, a murderer, a gay man. It was a lot, and Jack was starting to wonder if it was too much, even for a hard, brutal ex-con like Ace Cuddy.

  Jack entered the cabin, his gun out. He poked his head around the corner, and saw Ace standing in the kitchen drinking a cup of instant coffee.

  Jack tightened his grip his weapon, didn’t drop it an inch. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Ace responded. “I’m unarmed.”

  Jack followed his gaze, saw Ace’s gun on the window sill. This was their arrangement now: Ace arrived first and left his gun by the door, Jack showed up ready to shoot Ace in the fucking head if necessary. It tended to set things off on the wrong foot, but Jack didn’t trust the man. He demonstrated this suspicion now.

  “Turn around.”

  Ace nodded, and lifted his shirt to reveal a sculpted torso covered in scars and ink. He did a slow spin, showing Jack that he had nothing tucked in to his jeans, and no shoulder holster. Then he bent over and lifted the legs of his jeans, so Jack could see that he had nothing in his boots. That was when Jack finally lowered his weapon.

  “Coffee?” Ace offered.

  “No.” Jack walked a bit closer. “So, what’s happening with Jensen?”

  Ace turned to look at Jack. “It’s big.”

  “Yeah, you said.” Jack’s hard blue eyes were all over Ace’s body and face, clocking every hand gesture, every twitch, every jumping nerve and muscle. “What is it?”

  “Jensen’s fucking furious about the drugs bust a few weeks ago, man,” Ace said. “It was the last straw, on top of all the other recent setbacks that his businesses have suffered. He’s decided that he has a mole in his operation, and he’s spent the past few weeks checking in to everyone, and now he thinks he knows who it is.”

  This was not an unforeseen development, but it had happened faster than Jack had thought it would. He was on high alert from the word go.

  No matter how rocky and combative this relationship between King’s Men and Ace had been when it had started, Ace was an amazingly good informant, one who more than held up his end of the deal. On his information, King’s Men and the Denver PD had broken up several of Jensen’s trafficking, gambling, and prostitution rings. None of them were huge all on their own, but the thing about taking down an untouchable asshole like Kirk Jensen was that you had to kick his legs out from under him one small thing at a time.

  It was all about maki
ng Jensen feel insecure, uncertain. Get his mind running and spinning like a rat in a cage. Make him start to question the loyalty of his own people, make him speculate who may be selling him out… because no way an operation as established and slick as his suddenly started falling apart overnight. Not unless someone inside was making sure that was happening.

  So, here they were, then. At the point that Jack had predicted, and King had been waiting for: Kirk Jensen was now turning his wrath and attention inward, on his own people. This was what they wanted; this was where huge gains could be made.

  “So,” Jack said, his voice gravel. “Tell me everything you know.”

  “OK.” Ace walked in to the living room area now, and sat in the arm chair farthest from the big window. “Short and sweet: Kirk figures that Crusher Alcott is the rat.”

  Jack barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes at the guy’s name. Where the hell did these MC idiots get their road names from? Jesus, it gave him a headache.

  “Who’s Crusher Alcott?” Jack asked. “He’s not local.”

  “No. Crusher runs the Highway Hellions MC in Utah. We work with them running Jensen’s drugs over in to Nevada.”

  “Got it. And why does Kirk think this guy Crusher would sell him out to the cops? They have a history?”

  “Oh, yeah. For damn sure.” Ace drank some coffee. “I don’t know details, but I do know that Kirk’s never totally trusted the guy. Told me once that he thought Crusher was looking to set up a rival drug trade in to Las Vegas.”

  “Anything ever come of that?”

  “Nope. But Kirk thinks it’s on Crusher’s mind pretty much all the damn time, and he says that if he got taken out of the way, the Highway Hellions could just pick up Kirk’s contacts and customers. They’d have a distribution channel set up between here and there, and they know most every player in the game. It’d be easy enough to just pick up where Kirk left off, and Crusher’d pocket all the profits from the Denver to Las Vegas operation.”

  “Huh. And what’s the thing that you told me is coming?”

  “Yeah. Kirk’s big plan.” Ace sighed, and ran his hand through his dark hair. “He’s going to have the Fallen Angels grab Crusher’s sister, and hold her hostage.”

  “What?” Jack stared in horror at him. “You and your guys are going to kidnap a woman?”

  “Yep.” He shrugged. “It’s not like it’s the first time.”

  Jack ignored that part. “Shit. Where is she?”

  “Up in Montana. Me and Joker and a few other boys are to go over there and grab her, bring her back here. Kirk will hold it over Crusher’s head that we’ve got his sister, and he thinks that’ll get Crusher to admit to being the rat.” Ace paused, and a twisted little grin crossed his face. “Except Crusher ain’t the rat. I am. And that girl’s going to be scared and maybe even hurt, and all for nothing.”

  “What do you mean ‘hurt’?” Jack snapped. “You aren’t going to do anything to her, are you?”

  “Me? Nah.” Ace shook his head. “I won’t let any of my boys touch her either, no matter how bad they want to hurt her. But if Kirk gets it in to his head to pay her a visit, up the ante a bit? Beat her around, have some ‘fun’ with her, and take pictures of it all to send Crusher? Anything could happen to her Taylor, and I won’t be able to stop it.”

  “Fuck.” Jack looked at the floor, already worried about this woman. “When’s all this supposed to go down?”

  “Before the New Year. So in the next two weeks, for sure.”

  “Christ,” Jack growled. “I don’t like this.”

  “I don’t like any of this,” Ace said. “I haven’t liked it from the beginning.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’ve told me a million times, a million different ways.”

  Ace’s black eyes flashed. “You do know that I’ve lost seven of my Fallen Angels in the past two months, all because I told you about some shit that we were involved in? Seven men, Taylor, seven men that I cared about like they were my own blood… they died, and they died because of me.”

  “I know,” Jack said quietly. He had no goddamn use whatsoever for Ace Cuddy and his ilk, but he did understand the concept of adopted family. King’s Men were like Jack’s brothers and sisters at this point, and he knew that the ties in a motorcycle club went just as deep.

  Ace had lost brothers – actual, real brothers – and he’d lost them because he’d opened his mouth and ratted. The guilt about this was huge, and more than any other emotion that Ace was experiencing, it was this one that Jack was most sure was going to do him in. It was the kind of thing that made a man put a gun to his own temple, and pull the trigger. Ace wasn’t there – not yet – but Jack was sure he’d get there eventually, if things carried on the way they were.

  “My boys are howling for revenge and for blood, you get me?” Ace continued. “If I get that woman here, and Joker and Sands and a few of the other hardcore guys get it in to their heads to help Jensen out, and teach Crusher Alcott’s sister a lesson? I’ll stop it, no doubt. That’s my prerogative as President – but I can’t always be there. Accidents happen in the clubhouse back rooms, all the time. You get what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah.” Jack’s blood ran cold at the thought of the kind of ‘accident’ that could befall an innocent woman at Joker Kane’s hands. The man was an abusive monster, a convicted rapist, and by King’s Men’s best guess, he’d killed four women. Joker loved strangling women and then slashing their throats, and even though everyone knew what he’d done, hard evidence was hard to come by. Witnesses were even more so.

  “OK, I get how serious this is,” Jack said. “But it’s worth pointing out that if Jensen’s after Crusher, then you’re in the clear.”

  “Oh, yeah. And it’s actually more than that. Kirk thinks that the Fallen Angels are being targeted along with him. He thinks we’re fellow victims, that the rat is after him and me and my boys. He’s even floated the theory that Crusher killed Trigger to declare war on the Fallen Angels.”

  “That’s all good for you, you know.”

  “Yeah?” A bitter smile twisted Ace’s rugged face. “Funny. It doesn’t feel good.”

  Jack froze, stared at Ace close and hard. Ace had chosen a violent, dark life, and he couldn’t get away with going all soft and sad when that life turned on him. On the other hand, King needed Ace to tough it out just a bit longer. The plan was that once they’d taken down Kirk Jensen – alive or dead, nobody cared much which at this point – Ace was going to be off the hook as King’s regular informant. Not totally, but mostly.

  Oh, they hadn’t shared this with Ace yet, of course. The man needed to be kept off-balance, and under King’s thumb, and they’d thought he’d be able to handle it just fine. But looking at him now, suddenly Jack was worried that he was closer to the edge than they’d realized. This suspicion was confirmed by Ace’s next question.

  “Taylor?”

  “Yeah?”

  Ace hesitated. “You seen Liam?”

  And there it was. Ace’s biggest weakness, his biggest regret, his biggest skeleton. The man that he loved.

  Jack didn’t use the word ‘love’ lightly, not ever, and when he was talking about a monstrous one-percenter like Ace Cuddy, he used it even more judiciously. But Jack also knew that horrible people were capable of feeling positive emotions, that even killers loved deep and hard. Ace loved Liam, loved him in the best and only way that he knew how, and that made Jack soften. Just a bit.

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “I saw him last week.”

  “How is he?”

  “OK. Worried about all the shit on the news lately. He knows it’s got to do with you and the Fallen Angels, and he knows you’re behind it all.”

  “He asked about me?”

  Jack paused. God, the hope shining on Ace’s face was almost too painful to look at. It made Ace look young, vulnerable, gentle. />
  “Yes,” Jack said, left it there.

  “He’s safe?” Ace’s rough voice had a tender note beneath it. “Jack… Liam’s safe, right?”

  Jack narrowed his eyes at Ace using his first name. That had never happened before.

  “He’s safe, I promise you.”

  Ace nodded, sighed heavily. “OK, so. What’s the plan for dealing with Shay Alcott?”

  “That’s the sister’s name? Shay?”

  “Yeah. She’s a goddamn teacher, if you can believe it, man.” Ace finished his coffee, set down the cup. “Teaches at some swanky all-girls private school up north.”

  “She have anything to do with her brother’s MC?”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Ace said. “She’s up there on her own. No husband, no kids, no ties to the Highway Hellions at all. She rarely goes back to Utah, but when she does, she stays in a hotel.”

  “Not at the clubhouse? Not with her brother?”

  “Nope. Never.”

  “And how is she supposed to just disappear from her life in Montana, and have nobody notice?”

  “Winter break from school. Kirk says the private school’s closed for four weeks, so the rich parents can take their crotch fruit skiing in Switzerland, and to the family yacht in the Seychelles.”

  “Ah.” Jack sighed. “Yeah. Four weeks is plenty of time to take care of business.”

  “When Kirk Jensen’s running the fucking show?” Ace shook his head, took his coffee cup to the kitchen to rinse it out. “Four hours can be an eternity, man. Especially for the person he’s got in his crosshairs.”

  “That’s true.” Jack paused. “You going to be able to handle this, Cuddy? Kidnapping a woman, and then doing your damnedest to protect her, despite Jensen’s intentions to hurt her?”

  Ace looked grim. “I’ve been a fucking traitor to my cut and club for months now. I’ve gotten my brothers killed. I’ve blown up my boss’ operations, cost him millions. I’ve done all of that without losing sleep, because I’ve done it to save my own ass, and protect Liam. I can betray Jensen’s trust one more time to keep an innocent woman safe, Taylor. No problem.”