by Zoey Parker
“I think you guys were right. She told me she works for a collector who has her procure—her word, not mine—valuable art, jewelry, and other items.” I watched her from the window while I talked. She didn’t look like she was checking in with her boss. She looked like she was reading the email she had told me about. I should have taken the opportunity to look through her phone when I had it.
“So she helps her boss buy them?”
“I asked her that, but she sort of dodged the idea of purchasing them. She made it sound like she doesn’t use very legitimate means to get these items. I’m thinking she’s trying to find the Sun Stone for her boss, and they’re going to try to steal it from me.” She glanced up at the house a few times while she worked on her phone, obviously checking to see if anyone was watching her. I was fairly certain she’d been sent to get the diamond now.
“Sounds to me like you need to either kick her out or tie her up for a while,” Duncan suggested. He wasn’t laughing.
“I’ve tied her up already,” I joked.
“Oh, I bet you have, but you might want to look into something more permanent, Gunner.”
“No, I’m pretty certain she’s not going to find it,” I insisted. “She’s been here how long, and she still hasn’t found it.”
“When was the last time you saw it?” he asked, sending a chill up my spine. It had been a couple of days since the last time I went downstairs to look at it, but no one had said anything yet. I was fairly certain it was still there.
“Trust me, she hasn’t found it. She’s still here.”
“You don’t know that for certain, though, do you?” he argued.
Watching Sierra study her phone and watch the house for anyone spying on her, I realized I didn’t know for certain that she hadn’t found it, but I wasn’t about to admit that to Duncan.
“Just find out what you can about her,” I told him. “We’ll meet tonight to discuss what needs to happen next with all this diamond business.”
“On it, boss. See you then.” He disconnected the line and left me standing there with my phone in my hand as Sierra came back inside. The time I had been dreading seemed to be upon us. I was going to have to admit that she was really after the diamond and not just after a good time or someone to take care of her.
To make matters worse, I realized I needed to do something about it. I had known all along that something wasn’t right, and I was finally starting to figure out what it was. I slid my phone back into my pocket.
A knock came at my door just as it opened. I looked up, unable to say anything as Sierra’s beautiful red hair and green eyes popped through the opening.
“Hey,” she said cheerily.
“Hey, yourself.” I shared her smile, unable to force myself to continue being paranoid or upset about what I was piecing together.
She stepped into my office in a loose, slinky black tank top and tight, form-fitting jeans that hugged her lines perfectly. She wasn’t wearing a bra under her top. I could see the shape of her tits perfectly, and her nipples were poking out against the fabric. I wanted to grab her and put her against my door.
My friendly smile turned to a knowing smirk as I realized she’d been using sex to distract me, just as I’d been using it to subdue her and slow her down. Our little game was certainly amusing. However, it seemed to be getting complicated. There was no way she would actually reach the diamond even if she found the vault, so I wasn’t too worried about it. I was just worried about how to handle the situation we were in.
“What are you all dressed down for?” I nodded to indicate what she was wearing before I forced myself to look away and shuffle papers on my desk in an effort to look busy.
“I was thinking we could go on a ride,” she answered.
“A ride?” I didn’t look up. I continued stacking and restacking papers.
“Yeah. I know you still ride, despite all the work you put into your wealthy appearance. I know that deep down you’re still a biker, just as you’ve always been.” Her voice was so devious and tempting. It dripped with suggestion, as if just the idea of getting on the back of my motorcycle was enough to make her wet.
I wanted to go around the desk and bend her over it again. I wanted to shove everything on the floor and stab her with my hardening cock until she couldn’t walk anymore. I wanted to remind her she belonged to me. I wished I had made a rule that we couldn’t handle any business while we were together. I made a note of it, reminding myself to use it if I did this with someone else in the future.
“Well, that’s a separate part of my life,” I explained, looking into her eyes.
“It doesn’t have to be,” she pouted.
I sighed. I never stood a chance against this woman. I reached across the desk and pulled her to me. We shared a long, tender kiss. There was something sad about it, which I found odd. If all of this was just work, was she sad that it would be over soon? Was I? Better yet, was I ready to admit that I was going to miss her once it was all said and done? The answer was I wasn’t ready to admit anything.
“You’re right. We should go for a ride. Come upstairs with me while I get changed.” I didn’t want her to stay down in my office alone while I went to change clothes. I didn’t know how much she already knew, but I didn’t want to risk letting her learn more.
I walked up behind her, watching how her jeans hugged her ass the whole way up the stairs. Her body was hypnotic and entrancing. Every time I looked at her, I wanted to throw her down and get inside her. I wanted to hear the way she breathed when I touched her. I wanted to feel her body underneath me.
I wondered if sex was really the only reason I was playing nice and letting her stay despite the fact that I was pretty sure she was working against me with another local boss. She didn’t look like she worked with any small-time jewelry thief either. Sierra Farrow’s boss had to be someone with some status in the underworld. I didn’t know anyone who fit the description right off the top of my head.
I resisted her as we reached my bedroom, but I changed into my riding clothes with the closet door open so I could keep an eye on her. She sat on the bed with her legs crossed, watching me, adoring my body with her emerald eyes.
Once I changed into my jeans, a t-shirt, my colors, and my boots, I stepped out of the closet and cut off the light behind me.
“Ready to ride?” I asked her.
“Baby, I was born ready,” she said playfully.
Her beauty was disarming. I couldn’t stay focused on what was wrong with our situation. I could only focus on her gorgeous body and her beautiful smile. She was good. She was definitely a professional. And I was hooked. But I wondered if she was, too, even just a little bit.
She hopped up from the bed and walked downstairs in front of me. We walked down the hallway past my office to the garage where I kept my bike. I handed her a helmet and grabbed my own.
“You ever ridden before?”
“Honestly? No, I haven’t,” she admitted.
“I find that hard to believe. You’re probably never going to want to get off the bike, knowing you,” I joked with her.
She slid onto the bike behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist.
“Whatever you do, don’t let go,” I said with a smirk.
Her arms gripped me tighter and I felt her legs spread wide along mine. She leaned forward against me, pressing her chest against my back. I appreciated that she was reaching out to me to get further into my life, but I also knew she was only doing it for a job. That knowledge created a strange mixture of emotions in me.
If Sierra hadn’t found the diamond yet, there was still time to distract her from her goal and make her abandon her work for me. Knowing how physical she was, and how much she craved pleasure, I figured giving her a ride on the back of my bike would get me just a little closer to achieving that level of distraction.
I fired up the engine and walked the bike out of the garage, into the afternoon sun. I realized I probably should have told her to wear
sunscreen so she wouldn’t burn, but I figured she could use a reminder of the ride for a few days afterwards.
I revved up the engine a few times before letting her go.
“You ready?” I shouted over the bike.
“Yeah, let’s go,” she shouted back, and I felt her arms tighten again.
Having her pressed against me made the ride so much better than it would have been otherwise. I didn’t take the bike out much these days except for when it was for the MC. We would occasionally go riding together, or I would drive it to meetings. Every once in a while we had a job to do that required us to take our bikes out.
We had just been moving away from the biker image over the last few years. We had all become wealthy as The Immortal Devils, and with that wealth had come a change in lifestyle. We were still the MC, and we were still known as bikers, but our business had grown so far beyond what we had done as just another motorcycle club or biker gang.
As one percenters, we definitely qualified as a biker gang, but as successful businessmen, we ran a motorcycle club. The difference was merely superficial, but the terms meant different things to different people. We had recognized that early on and used those differences when we needed to.
One of the great things about being on the back of the bike, whether for business or for pleasure, was that none of that mattered for a little while. For a time, no matter how brief, it was just us. Just us and the road. It felt natural to be back on the road with my old lady riding behind me.
I felt free. On the road there was no diamond. There was no other underworld boss trying to steal it from me by using a gorgeous redhead to seduce me while she looked for it. There were no concerns about the woman riding behind me with her arms wrapped tightly around my waist, other than making sure she was still there. There were no arrangements like the one Sierra and I had made. No, as long as we were on the bike together, we were together.
I turned away from town so we could stay on less travelled roads. If it was her first time, we were going to make it special. We were going out to my favorite scenic route so she could see the beautiful land surrounding the city.
This was what it was about. It was about making my own rules and following my own path. I figured that was something Sierra could understand. I also figured that when we got back, she would want us to forge our own path together and stop working against each other.
Chapter Eighteen
Sierra
The motorcycle purred underneath me after he first cranked her up. I had never realized just how open the ride was on the back of one. I had always known that it was very different from riding in a car, but there was nothing between my body and the outside world, or the road.
I held onto Gunner for dear life as he pulled out of his driveway and onto the road. The bike roared between my legs, sending vibrations up through my whole body. The tender, delicate places between my legs trembled with ecstasy to have Gunner pressed against me while experiencing such strong vibrations.
That wasn’t the exciting part, though.
He steered us away from town. He took me into the suburbs, the smaller communities spaced out around our big city. There were stretches of nothing for miles, and we would suddenly drive past or through a small neighborhood, or something that looked like a downtown area as we rolled through another of the smaller towns surrounding us.
My work took me to so many different places, but it was always by plane or in the backseat of a cab or hired car. Travelling by motorcycle was something completely different. I didn’t just see the small, old buildings and the tall, wide houses; it was like I was right there in front of them. In a way, I was, but I felt more like I was standing in front of them instead of sitting in a car and missing half of what passed me by.
Once we were out of the big city and into the smaller towns, everything looked very different. Whereas in the city, the buildings and houses would push nature aside, the opposite seemed to be true once we pulled into a smaller town on the outskirts. We would pass newer subdivisions where everything was in its proper place and every lot looked exactly the same. Then, we would pull through an older neighborhood, and it seemed the houses were built so that they didn’t get in the way of the trees or rows of hedges.
After riding on the back of the bike for a while, I couldn’t feel my body. I was numb from the vibrations, but it felt great. I felt free. I understood why so many people loved motorcycles. I understood the culture of rebellion that surrounded them.
I had to stay focused, though. This trip wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about connecting with Gunner on any sort of meaningful level. This trip was about merely convincing him that I was trying to do that.
We pulled up to an old store with a porch out front. Several men stood around talking on the porch when we stopped. Gunner pulled up to the building and cut the engine. The men looked over at us and nodded their heads in greeting.
I pulled my helmet off and shook out my hair. I stretched out my jaw. My head felt cramped from being confined in the helmet for so long. Meanwhile, my skin felt as windblown as my hair would have been if I hadn’t worn the helmet.
“Why are we stopping here?” I asked Gunner as he took off his helmet and climbed off the bike.
“I just want to get up and stretch my legs, grab a drink, and maybe hang out for a few minutes before we get back on the road and head home,” he answered.
“Sounds like a plan. What are we getting?” I climbed off the bike behind him and followed him up the steps of the porch.
“I’m just going to grab a bottle of root beer. You can get whatever you want,” he told me.
“Root beer? Okay,” I said under my breath as we walked into the store.
Gunner nodded at the clerk behind the counter, and from the look they shared, I wondered if he knew the guy. And if he knew the guy, I wondered if I hadn’t just found myself in trouble for planning on screwing him over with the diamond.
As we walked down separate aisles of the store, I noticed a couple of people giving Gunner nasty looks. They knew what he was and obviously didn’t approve. I wondered if that was why he opted for the businessman and playboy look he normally sported over the biker look.
I watched as he went straight for the glass root beer bottles in the cooler. I grabbed a bottle of water. When we got back up to the counter, he had two bottles in his hand. The clerk punched the prices in instead of ringing us up with a scanner like so many other places did back in town.
“Here.” Gunner handed me one of the bottles on the way out of the store.
“What’s this for?” I asked.
“You’re drinking one with me,” he said.
“Okay.” I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but root beer? Were we ten again?
Once outside the store, he walked over to one of the picnic tables on the wide porch. The men hanging out by the door didn’t even glance at us as we passed. The whole scene just seemed surreal. We were in a town that looked like it had missed the last thirty years or more, sitting down on the porch at an old convenience store, and drinking root beer like we were kids again.
“What’s all this about?” I asked him after we both took sips from our bottles.
“I just like to come out here from time to time.” He looked around like he was really taking in the scenery. “You know, if I ever take the time to just get on the back of my bike and ride, I like to come out here, sit on this porch, and have a root beer, just like when I was a kid.”
“Wait,” I stopped him. “You mean, you used to come out here when you were a kid?” Oh, it was getting thick out here. By trying to make him think I was trying to connect with him on a deeper level, I had opened the door to something I did not need to know. I didn’t need to know where he was from or what his childhood was like. Those things would just make what I had to do that much harder.
“This is where I grew up, Sierra,” he told me.
I sat back and looked around. The area was obviously poor. The men standing by the do
or wore old, worn clothes that looked stained from years of hard work. I took a deep breath and looked around at the worn out buildings around us. If he had grown up in a place like this, it certainly explained why he didn’t have any personal pictures out in his office. Instead, it seemed he wanted to focus on his successes in life. I could definitely understand that.
“Did it always look like this?” I asked him quietly as I took a sip from my root beer. Root beer just always tasted like childhood to me. I figured if someone wanted to reminisce, it was the perfect drink.
“No, actually. You see that building on the corner over there?” He pointed across the street to where we had just crossed the railroad tracks before pulling up to the store.
“The tall white one with the boarded up windows?” I asked. It also didn’t have a lot. It stood right on the curb. The door opened onto the sidewalk. Or, it would have, if the place still had a door. Instead, it had a couple of sheets of plywood where the door should have been.